Joshua 24:29-33
Let’s hear God’s word together,
Joshua 24, verses 29 to 33. It says, after these things,
Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110
years old. They buried him in his own inheritance
at Temnath-Sara, which is in the hill country of Ephraim,
north of the mountain of Gash. Israel served the Lord all the
days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua
and had known all the work that the Lord had done for Israel.
As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought
up from Egypt, They buried them at Shechem in the piece of land
that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem,
for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the
descendants of Joseph. And Eleazar the son of Aaron
died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas,
his son, which had been given him in the hill country of Ephraim. Amen. This is the word of the
living God for us. We probably should ask the question
now that we’re at the end of Joshua, why was Joshua written? Was it written to give us history?
Was it to share with us some theology? Was it written to give
us a bunch of names and places so that we might get us a map
of Israel and look at it? Or maybe this is a good one.
Was it written so that Old Testament scholars and archaeologists could
argue about whether the Bible was true because of all the names
and the places and what they found and what they’ve not found?
Well, I think the answer is a little different than all these. The
answer is really this. Why was Joshua written? It was
written to show God’s faithfulness to Israel so that the next generation
might keep their duty before the Lord. One of the great phrases
in this passage is this, all the work that the Lord did for
Israel. all the blessings, all the wars,
all the battles, all the rivers that dried up, all the manna,
all the bread from heaven, all the lots and the plots and the
grapes and the vineyards and the houses. Show God’s faithfulness
to a generation and then to the next generation that they might
follow the Lord and serve him. I think about our church in 2025,
our church will be 60 years old. And one of the things we have
to wonder about our church in this dark generation, this crooked
and depraved generation is, will it be here for another generation? Will it be here in another 60
years? And that does not depend on the
sanctuary fund. It doesn’t really depend on the
legacy fund. It doesn’t really depend on the
general fund. That really depends on whether
parents, whether grandparents, And whether people entrust with
their children, the deposit of the faith, the gospel of Jesus
Christ, that phrase, all the work that the Lord did for Israel
translates for us. Do we share the story of the
cross with our little ones? Are we training up a generation
to carry on? and to be steadfast in the church
of the living God. What we have in front of us in
Joshua is a generation in danger, a dangerous cycle of apostasy
is ahead for Israel. And it’s going to take quite
a bit of work to pull them out of the darkness that we’ll read
of in the book of Judges. It’s a generation in danger,
not just because of the temptations of the world or the lust of the
flesh or the work of the devil, It’s a generation in danger because
they’re gonna find themselves in love with the present evil
age. They did not drive out the Canaanites,
or the Geshurites, or some of the other ites. They left them
living, and they, as God promised, will become a thorn in their
side. And so we’re gonna see, as we make our way through the
Judges, at some point in time, the cycles of unfaithfulness
and apostasy, and God sending judgment through enemies, and
them crying out to God for help, all because they forgot the work
that the Lord did for Israel. This passage is a strange ending. It has three funerals. It has
a question, though you may not see it as a question, but then
I think it paints a wonderful picture of God’s faithfulness
to Israel. So I want us to look at each of those three things.
very briefly. First, think about God’s faithfulness
to Israel. It says in verse 29, very simply
after these things. Now, what things is it referring
to? Is it referring to, um, Joshua’s
speech? Is it referring to the covenant
renewal at Shechem? Is it renewed? Is it referring
to, uh, the allotment of the land? Is it referring to the
inheritance of the people? Is it referring to the fight
they had with the two and a half tribes from the other side of
the river? What, What is it referring to? Is it stretching back to
Israel being in Egypt and Moses redeeming them and bringing them
through the wilderness? Well, I think the reference is
to maybe some of that or even all of that. And what do we see
in God’s actions to Israel? Well, we see this. Nothing is
going to stop God. Not the people of Jericho, not
the biggest army in the land, and not even Israel’s unfaithfulness. That ought to bring us some really
good comfort. God is going to be faithful to
his people and to his church. We are unfaithful. We are covenant
breakers. We daily break God’s law and
thought, word and deed. We don’t love our neighbor as
ourself. We don’t love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and
strength. Yet God loves with an everlasting love. He brings
us out of Egypt. He brings us across the sea on
dry land. He takes us through tough battles
and he gives us an inheritance. And so now Israel is settled
in the promised land. They have peace from their enemies
and their boundaries create what we might think of as a holy precinct,
a holy nation where God can be worshiped and lived for so that
the nations around will see there is no other God like the God
of Israel. And so this little phrase, all
the work that the Lord did for Israel ought to be near and dear
to our hearts. It shows us God is faithful to
Israel. Remember from a couple of chapters
ago, not one word of all the good promises of God have failed.
In fact, all have come to pass. God is good to Israel. God is
good to his church. God is good to his people. And
that’s evident in our study of Joshua. But a second thing this
passage brings up is God’s faithfulness, not just to Israel, but to three
individuals. We’ve got Joshua, we have Joseph,
and we have Eleazar. In verses 29 and 30, it tells
us that Joshua, the servant of the Lord, had died. He was 110 years old. And I bet
none of you thought of this, but you’re gonna remember this.
When it says Joshua, the servant of the Lord, died at the end
of Joshua, it ought to point us back. Maybe you use your little
cheat notes, the cross-references. It ought to take you back to
the first chapter of Joshua, where it says Moses, the servant
of the Lord, died. And so we begin with the death
of Moses and we end with the death of Joshua. And sometimes
in life, we think, how can we go on without our fearless leader?
You remember our last president, or two presidents ago, said,
I think I should get a third term. Remember that? And everybody
that loved him said, oh, we think you should, too. You’re so wonderful.
We love all your hope and change. Our last president was pretty
sure he was coming back, but that didn’t happen. We have the
song, How Can I Live Without You. We think we can’t make it without
our human leaders, but who is the one who is over all things? It’s God. Think of our greeting
that we often use on Sunday morning from Revelation chapter one,
grace to you in peace from God our father, or no, grace and
peace from him who is and was and is to come, that’s the father.
And from the seven spirits before the throne, there’s the Holy
Spirit. And from Christ Jesus, the faithful witness, the firstborn
from among the dead. But how does it go after that?
And over all the rulers and kings of the earth. God is over Moses
and God is over Joshua, so leaders will come and go. But we see
God’s faithfulness to each of these men, Joshua, Joseph, and
Eleazar. Now we know who Joshua is. The
whole book has talked about him. He’s the warrior. the, the, the
deliverer of Israel after Moses. He’s the covenant mediator and
he lives a full life and is brought and buried in his inheritance.
We all know who Joseph is. He was the son of Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob. He was Jacob’s son. He got sold into slavery, the
coat of many colors. We’ve talked about him on Wednesday
night. He’s the prince of Egypt, the deliverer of Israel during
the great famine. He’s going to die in the promised
land and he’s going to make them promise, don’t bury my bones
in Egypt, take them back. And so these hundreds of years
later, his bones are buried in the promised land. And you might
think that’s a little strange for that to be mentioned here.
But this is a book that does tell history and it tells us
that God is faithful to Israel and here God is faithful to Joseph
just as he buried Joshua in his inheritance. Joseph’s bones make
it all the way to Egypt or all the way out of Egypt and into
the promised land. And don’t you think that was a special
ceremony? We don’t get the details, but it was a big deal for the
bones of Joseph, one of Israel’s saviors. to be buried in the
promised land. And then there’s Eleazar. Eleazar
is the son of Aaron, the priest. He’s the one who at Shechem or
Shiloh would have cashed the lots that would have assigned
the pieces of the promised land to the Israelites. And so we
have a patriarch, Joseph, we have a warrior, Joshua, and we
have a priest, Eleazar, who trusted in all the work that the Lord
did for Israel. And God brought them into their
inheritance and he placed them in their grave where they might
rest. And these bones of Joseph, these
bones of Joshua and these bones of Eliezer are resting in their
grave until the resurrection of Jesus Christ to their greater
inheritance. So there’s God’s faithfulness
to Israel, his faithfulness to these three men. Now we have
a little bit of a different question. And the question is this, will
Israel be faithful to God? And the question pops up in verse
30. Uh, what is it? Verse 31. It’s not posed as a question,
but you kind of see it there. It says Israel served the Lord
all the days of Joshua. Okay. We know about that. And
they served the Lord all the days of the elders who outlived
Joshua and who knew all the work that the Lord had done for Israel.
And so for some time after Joshua’s life, that generation followed
the Lord. Remember the question, why was
this book written? Well, it was written so that it’s first hearers
might see the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of a
generation before them. If you flip over in your Bible
to the book of Judges and you look at chapter two and you look
at Israel’s disobedience, you look at the death of Joshua as
recounted, you get to verse 11 and it speaks of Israel’s unfaithfulness. But verse 10 is probably the
saddest verse. There arose another generation
after these who did not know the Lord or the work. that he
had done for Israel. And so there’s a great challenge
to us here. Will Israel be faithful to God?
Yes, they were for a few years, maybe 20, perhaps 30, until the
death of the contemporaries of Joshua. They had faith in the
wilderness captain. They had faith in Jesus. They
knew the wages of sin was death. They saw what happens when there
was unbelief or covetousness. And they saw Yahweh triumph over
their enemies. And they saw God provide for
them as he had promised for them that he would do. So the question
is, will they or won’t they? And we know the answer. But here’s
a question for us. Will we or won’t we? We’re living in a strange time.
The book of Galatians, as our greeting in our bulletin said,
that Jesus has come to die for our sins and deliver us from
the present evil age. Well, he hasn’t yet delivered
us from the present evil age. We’re still here. And you think
about all the enemies that Israel didn’t clean out of the promised
land. There’s so many temptations that come our way from the enemies
of the present evil age. There’s so much coming in our
televisions, our internet, there’s so much coming across our desk,
our mind, our hearts. And so there’s a real question,
will we or won’t we follow God? And the challenge to Israel was
to clear out the clutter, to declutter all the voices of the
world, all the temptations that come their way. We just sort
of unlock our door and open it and we let it in. And I wonder,
I wonder how much longer Christianity will last in America, because
I think we’re trying to have it both ways. But we ought to
fix our eyes on God, fix our eyes on Christ, and be sure to
recount the stories. Some years ago, maybe two or
three years ago, I remember we had a group of young people over
to our house and we had this little Bible trivia game. These
were all kids that had grown up in the church. And so we started,
you know, for fun, playing the game, asking the questions. Hardly
anybody knew any of the answers. And so like that generation of
Judges chapter two, verse 10, we’ve got to take care not to
raise an illiterate generation, illiterate to the people of the
Bible, the places of the Bible, the stories of the Bible, the
hero, Jesus of the Bible. And we’ve got to take care of
ourselves lest we forget. And we’ve got to put our faith,
our hope, our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So why was Joshua
written? It was written for its first
hearers to see a faithful God and a challenge and a call to
be faithful. But why else was it written? Well, the exact same
thing for us so that we might see who God is, what he’s done,
and that we might continue to look to him in faith. Let’s pray
together. Lord, we ask that you would let
your word sink deeply into us and that we might trust you and
believe you and walk with you. Lord, it’s easy to be enamored
by the world. It’s easy to be tugged at by
our flesh, our remaining sin. And it’s easy to let the devil
do his work. We want to hear the voice of
Christ. We want to live by your word, and we want to walk by
the spirit. And it’s not easily done. We
need your help and grace, so give it to us, we ask in the
name of Christ, amen.