HIGHLIGHTS IN JOSHUA
Number 22
RECOLLECTION
Joshua 24:1-13
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WHEN we come to worship, whether it is in the church fellowship or in our private communion with God, one of the important ingredients of our worship is recollection of God and of all he is and all he has done and does in our lives. If we engaged in recollection at the beginning of all our praying, half our praying would be done. Recollection is the source of all our continuing in faith, and is the basis of all our progress in holiness and perseverance in service.

Recollection of God is that which Joshua is calling Israel to and engaging Israel in, throughout the verses we are considering in this meditation. Joshua takes them through their history from the time of Abraham up to the present, and reminds them of all that God has been to them and has done for them. The noticeable thing about these verses is the emphasis which Joshua puts upon God. God is in all the life and history of Israel. All their achievements and blessings come from God. Throughout the verses God acts, God blesses, God gives. This recollection is of a God who is everything to Israel and the source of all their life. Without God they have nothing. With God and because of God they have everything. Israel owes everything to God.

It is not just that Israel owes everything to God, but that God has blessed them freely. He has not waited until they were worthy. He has not laid down what they must do first before he will act. God acted first, and then he called for love and obedience as a response.

This history of Israel is an illustration of the spiritual life. From Israel's recollection we can trace our own spiritual life and stimulate our own recollection, and this is the purpose of this meditation. We will live with Joshua and recollect God in our lives. From this will come praise, love, faith, obedience and service to God.

RECOLLECT GOD'S GRACE

The beginning of this recollection for Israel was recollection of God's grace. In verse 2 we are told that Abraham lived worshipping other God's. He and his fore-fathers lived for the world and were under the dominion of Satan. They were, in the words of St.Paul, without hope and without God in the world. In fact Abraham was like all who are born into this world. We are lost and alienated from God and all that is good. We are hopeless and helpless.

What do we read? This is so profound and so essential to grasp. God took Abraham from the land beyond the river. God acted in a sovereign way. God acted in grace. His action of taking Abraham for himself from the worship of other God's was totally undeserved. There is no mention that Abraham sought God, or that he did anything in any way to call God's notice and gratitude towards him. Out of pure grace God chose to take Abraham out of the world and into fellowship with himself.

We are told in Hebrews 11 that Abraham acted in faith when he left the land of his birth to go where God would lead him, but here in the narrative Joshua relates, this faith and obedience was solely due to God and God's gracious and loving action. This action of grace was the continual action of God towards Israel, and we also know the same action of God in our lives.

We were born in sin. We were born lost and alienated from God. We are believers not because we chose God but that he chose us in grace as he chose Abraham. We believed not by our own effort, but because God took us out of the world and brought us into his heavenly kingdom by his grace. God enabled us to see and know the guilt of our sins and the corruption of our nature, and to repent and call upon him. It was God's grace who showed us his great love in giving us Christ to bear our guilt in his body on the cross. It was God who enabled us to believe and lay hold of Christ alone for our salvation. It is God alone in his grace that keeps us resting in Christ with assurance in the midst of all our sin and failing. Like Abraham, it is by God's grace alone that we are saved and are made the children of God.

RECOLLECT GOD'S GOODNESS

The next thing Joshua reminds Israel is of the goodness of God. God gave to Abraham. God gave Abraham descendants. God gave him a family. In giving Abraham a family, God gave blessings to nourish and support that family. God gave promises to Abraham concerning the future and the land he was to possess, but most of all, bound up in the family God gave Abraham, was the promise of God that he would be Abraham's God, and Abraham and his family would be his people.

For God to be Abraham's God included God's provision and guidance. It included his presence and his love. It included his protection and support. This is the goodness of God to those he chooses and predestines to life. Paul tells us in Romans 8 that those God justifies he glorifies. In this sentence is summed up the glorious truth that God's purpose of salvation, which he will most surely perform, is that his chosen ones should be brought to glory, and that all his salvation in Christ includes this as a certainty. So we know that God will not allow us to be plucked from him and be lost. We know that, in spite of the weakness and sinfulness of our flesh, we shall persevere to the end. Toplady in two verses of one of his hymns expresses this wonderful assurance. He writes "The work that his goodness began, the arm of his strength will complete. His promise is yea and amen; and has never been forfeited yet." "So I to the end will endure, as sure as the earnest is given. More happy but not more secure; when glorified with him in heaven."

Further encompassed in the goodness of God are the facts which Paul speaks of in Romans 5. We stand in grace. This is our realm. Grace is that which operates in our lives. Grace brings all the love and presence and care of God for us all the time. Further his goodness bring us peace. Peace of conscience because in spite of our sinning we are accounted sinless before God for Christ's sake, peace from worry because God is our Father, and peace with our neighbours. We live in grace so that we have access to God all the time through the merits of Christ for us. Further we rejoice in a certain and assured hope. This is the hope that we will be brought to glory through God's gracious goodness. Thus we can face the trials and tribulations of life with strength and assurance. Further God has poured out his Holy Spirit in our hearts that we may dwell in his love and know the strength of his presence with us always. Such is the goodness of God poured out upon us. God is the lover of our souls and he loves us with an everlasting and enduring and deep love.

As Abraham was given a family, God brings every believer into his family. This wonder is expressed by John in 1 John 3:1 - "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are." We are brought into God's eternal and heavenly family by God's grace, and we are given the spirit of adoption by the Holy Spirit, so that we cry from the heart to God "Abba, Father". This goodness of God is experienced in the spiritual realm so that in prayer we can come to our Father and place all our needs and fears in his care, and also in this temporal life we have in other believers spiritual brothers and sisters who love us in Christ.

RECOLLECT GOD'S DELIVERANCES

Joshua goes on with his recollection of God's action in the life and history of Israel in verses 5-12 to recount the way God delivered Israel from all their enemies and gave them victory over them. He reminds Israel of the great way God delivered Israel from the Egyptians, and how in answer to their cry for deliverance, God prevented the Egyptians from attacking them as they sought to escape, opened the Red sea for them to walk over on dry land, and then drowned the Egyptian army in the Red sea as they pursued them. The same mighty deliverance continued through all the conflict they had with opposing nations. Joshua reminds Israel that they had but to call upon God and he would come to their aid. He reminded them that God kept his promise and brought them through all their enemies into the promised land.

This illustrates vividly the spiritual conflict which every believer has. Our great foe is Satan, who wages war against us through the world and the flesh. Satan also wars against us by bring doubts and fears and accusations against the saints of God who have put their faith in Jesus for deliverance. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him, Jesus, who has loved us and washed us from our sins. Paul expresses the certainty of this deliverance in Romans 8 where he crys, "who shall separate us from the love of God", and then goes on to speak of all that would try, ending with the words of victory quoted above, and goes on to say in verse 38 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This recollection of God's deliverance of his people through Christ is confirmed in our experience. We can look back to failure and sin, yet God's forgiveness in Christ has been all-sufficient, and he has never let us fall. The good shepherd has found his sheep and carried us home on his shoulder rejoicing. Further we have been brought through trials and difficulties, which have assaulted our faith. The Lord has delivered us. Though we walked through the valley of the shadow of death, we feared no evil, for he was with us, and his strength sustained and delivered us.

We view our weakness and sinfulness and we recollect God's promise in Christ, and the way he has kept this promise to the present, and we are sure that, having justified us completely in Christ, he will glorify us with him in heaven one day. We cannot fail, not because we are strong, but because the Lord is our mighty deliverer.

RECOLLECT OUR INHERITANCE

Joshua ends his calling Israel to remember with the final glory. He reminds of what God has done in verse 13. God has given them a land. He gave it to them complete flowing with riches and blessings. This is nothing less than a picture of the land the Lord has promised and will give to all who trust in Christ as Saviour and deliverer. The promise is that whosoever believes has eternal life. Eternal life is a comprehensive way of speaking of the glory of our inheritance. It encompasses the new spiritual life we have been raised to in Christ - the life which is fit for God's heavenly realm, and which causes us to be born into that realm. It encompasses the promise to bring us to that eternal glory after this earthly and temporal life ceases. It encompasses all the blessings of that glory, where we shall be free from sin and all the evils sin has brought into this earthly life. There there will be no sin or sorrow, no weariness or pain. God will be our everlasting reward and comfort, and we shall fulfill the purpose of our creation in giving him glory and praise in our lives forever. We shall dwell in God's love.

CONCLUSION

As we recollect God's grace in saving us, his goodness in blessing us, his deliverance in keeping us, and his certain promise of glory, then we are raised up to sit with Christ in heavenly places as we praise and thank him, rest in his unfailing love, and trust in his keeping power. In such recollection we are renewed. We are made strong.

How wise Joshua was that, before he called Israel to deep commitment to the Lord, he recalled to them the love and greatness of God for them. It is by such recollection that our hearts are bound to God in strong unbreakable cords, which shall never be broken.