HIGHLIGHTS IN JOSHUA
Number 24
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HEART
Joshua 24:16-27
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"Now then, said Joshua, throw away the foreign God's that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel."
Joshua 24:23.
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THIS last chapter of Joshua has been taken up with Joshua's final charge to the people of Israel. Like Paul in Galatians, Joshua has been so concerned that the people should not turn from the Lord. Like the Galatians whom Paul wrote to, spiritual declension had already crept into the life of Israel, and they had been seduced to give devotion to foreign gods, which were nothing but false gods and idols. Joshua was frightened for them after he had died that they would forsake the God of their salvation.

Like a good teacher and pastor, Joshua has already brought to their remembrance the goodness of God towards them, and the wonderful and gracious action of God in saving and keeping them and fulfilling his promise to give them the land they now possessed. He has wooed them to God by the remembrance of all God's love, grace and mercy to them. Then he exhorts them to give themselves to the Lord.

In the verses before us we have Israel's response to Joshua's plea and exhortation, and we have laid before us a profound truth concerning our human condition. Our theme is the importance of the heart in religion. Joshua exhorts Israel to give their hearts to the Lord. He is not talking about the physical organ that pumps blood through the body. Joshua is speaking about the seat of the affections. He is speaking about the inner person, and the bent and inclinations of the inner person, the real person we are that governs all our thoughts and actions.

THE NATURAL CORRUPTION OF OUR FLESH

Joshua is thinking of the natural corruption of the human heart in his immediate response to Israel's declaration in verse 18 that they will serve the Lord. He speaks in verse 19 "You are not able to serve the Lord".

Israel, like most of us, was easily moved by the occasion. Joshua had been passionate for God. Joshua, under the power of the Holy Spirit, had moved them with his account of the goodness of God. That Israel had been moved is illustrated in verses 17 and 18 where they affirm the truth of all that Joshua had related to them. At that moment they really wanted to serve the Lord as is affirmed in verse 16. In the moment of challenge we may have a sincere desire to serve the Lord, and a strong determination to do it. We may feel that there will be no problem in doing this. We affirm that the Lord is good and worthy to be praised. Israel were not insincere in their declaration to serve God. What they had not remembered, which is so common in human nature, was the fact of past promises they had made and failures to keep their promises, and the truth this past failure proved. They failed to take into account their fallen and corrupt nature. It is all very well to say it is human to fail and sin, but this will not do before God, unless we are prepared to face that failure, and throw ourselves on the grace, mercy and strength of the Lord.

Joshua knew of the foreign gods (v.23) that Israel had already embraced. Joshua knew that they had forgotten for the moment, in their enthusiasm for Jehovah, these foreign gods. They had not faced the fact that when they got home, and faced the next day, these foreign gods would loom large in Israel's consciousness and to give them up would be an impossible thing in their own strength.

There is no mileage in forgetting the truth about ourselves. Although we are born again, and the new person we are in Christ is created in righteousness and true holiness, yet our flesh is the same corrupt thing as it has always been, and in this life we have to live with this fact. The flesh cannot be improved. It can only be mortified. All our lives in this world we have to turn away from the flesh and live in the Spirit and according to affections and aspirations of the new born person we have become. We can only be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Promises like Israel made in verse 16 must be made with humility and with the knowledge that our hope is in the Lord, and not in our flesh. Constant using of the means of grace God has given us - prayer, God's word, worship, preaching, the sacraments, fellowship, etc. - must be our aim.

A DEBTOR TO MERCY ALONE

After warning Israel of the weakness of their flesh in the words of verse 19 "You are not able to serve the Lord" Joshua goes on to say "He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sin".

Israel had slipped into the common human failing of imagining that forgiveness for God was a very simple matter, and that God had only decide to forgive and it was done. It is view that imagines God is no more troubled by sin and evil than we are, and that all that is needed is to forget about sins. This is a very dangerous failing. God cannot forgive sin unless his holiness and justice is satisfied. God cannot forgive unjustly. This means before the sinner can be forgiven, the sin of the sinner must meet its just desert before his holy justice. Our sin can only be forgiven if our sin has been punished.

Forgiveness for God is a mostly costly thing. God had pointed to this fact in the sacrificial system given to Israel in the law of Moses. Sin was forgiven only when the sin had been transferred to the sacrificial animal and the animal had been put to death for that sin. These sacrifices could only be temporary and could never themselves atone for sin. They were symbols of the great sacrifice which God had planned from the foundation of the world. A sacrifice so costly that it is impossible for us creatures to compute its value. The sacrifice which God made was of his only begotten Son. God gave himself to be the punishment of our sin, so that in meeting all his holy law's demands, he could justly forgive the sin of those who called upon him for grace and mercy.

There is no place in the life of holiness for the thinking that seems to have crept into Israel at this time, of thinking that sin was a very little matter and that God is almost obliged to forgive us whatever we do. No we are debtors to mercy alone, and we can never get beyond this fact. It must be a constant understanding and experience that we live with. We must not only constantly be reminded of the weakness of our flesh, but also live constantly in the reality of God's infinite love and mercy that in Christ he has met all the demands of his justice on our behalf, and that this is pure grace. Such understanding puts the heart in the right frame. The heart becomes a humble heart. The heart becomes a grateful heart. The heart becomes a trembling heart that puts trust alone in the Lord and his mercy. The heart lays aside all presumption and self-righteousness. The heart becomes tender so that sin becomes to us evil as it is to God. The heart becomes a loving heart towards God who has poured out such love and mercy.

WORDS ARE OF NO VALUE WITHOUT ACTION

Although our salvation is all of God, and God has pledged his word that no one and nothing can pluck us from his care, the only practical way of proving that we have new life and have received salvation is the change that it makes in our life. Thus our actions, and the way we live, give evidence whether we have experienced new birth or not.

Joshua makes this clear in our study passage. In verse 23 he exhorts Israel "Now then throw away the foreign Gods that are among you". For Israel to say that they would not forsake the Lord to serve other gods (v.16) and to say that the Lord was their God (v.18) and that they would serve God (v.18,21) and then keep hold of the foreign gods to which they had been giving worship was a contradiction. It made all their protestations concerning Jehovah vain words, and hypocrisy. Joshua called them to prove the sincerity of their words and promises by throwing away the foreign gods they had taken to themselves. It was very offensive to God when Israel said that God was their God, and then still followed heathen idols. All through the Bible, the sin of idolatry and giving love and worship to other gods, and putting other things first in the life, is always the most serious sin and calls the sharpest censure from God.

The only proof that we are born anew and have truly received eternal life is the change that is manifest in the way we live. Christ must come first, and that he is the chief love of our lives must be revealed in the way we live and the place and attention we give to Christ. If we say we love someone the evidence is seen in the attention we give to that person, and the time we spend with them and so on. This is why it is a nonsense to say that you can be a Christian and not want to go to church and worship the Lord. If it is impossible for us, through sickness or some such reason, to attend Sunday worship, then not being able to go to church does not sever us from Christ. Indeed Christ draws even closer to us. However to say we love Christ and then not seek to meet him where he says he will meet with us - in worship - is just vain words.

Salvation brings the soul into a love relationship with the Lord Jesus. When this is real it is seen in the way we live, and the way we seek to live to please the lover of our souls.

TRUE COMMITMENT COMES FROM THE HEART

The most important word of Joshua in our passage is the second half of verse 23. He says "yield your hearts to the Lord God of Israel". We speak of something as the heart of the matter. By this we mean that this is the governing issue and the one that controls everything else. The heart, as Joshua speaks of it, is the seat of our affections which governs our wills. With the mind we can know something is right or best, but our actions, the decision of our wills, are rarely governed by the mind. Rather they are governed by the heart.

Here lies the secret of true Christianity. Israel, in the Old Testament, was continually turning away from the Lord and embracing idols, as is seen happening here in our passage. Much later in the history of Israel we see Jeremiah complaining about this tendency in Israel, and indeed all humanity. God gives him new hope. God promises Jeremiah a new covenant. We read of this in Jeremiah 31:31f. It will be different to the covenant made in the time of Moses. This was a covenant where God gave his law and made obedience to it a condition of his favour. The law came from outside the person, but gave no power to keep it. The heart was not in tune with this law of God so it was too difficult to keep. Now God says to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:33 "I will put my law in their minds and write it upon their hearts". God was doing something wonderful and powerful. God promised to change the heart, the inner seat of affection, and cause people to love his law and his ways, and to love him. In this new covenant their would be a new birth whereby the ways of God would be the desire of the heart.

This is the new covenant in Christ. Christ came not only to reconcile us to God by his blood, whereby he works a perfect righteousness which is put to the eternal account of all who receive him as Saviour, and thus God reckons the believer perfectly righteous; but also Christ brings his believing people into new life. We are risen with Christ. We are born again. We receive a new heart. Whereas under the Old Covenant with Adam and Moses, the corruption of the human heart made it impossible to keep the law of God, because there was no real love for that law. Now in Christ new life within gives us the affection for God's righteousness which causes us to run after it. The exhortation of Joshua to yield the heart to the Lord is now possible and a reality.

Although Christ had not come in Old Testament times to inaugurate this new covenant, yet all Old Testament saints were blest by it in anticipation, and they loved the law of God, as so often expressed in the Psalms, because God had renewed their hearts as in the Gospel. Although Christ died in time and rose again to give us life, yet he was crucified in the estimation of God from before the foundation of the world.

In this new Gospel Covenant it is possible for us to yield our hearts to God. This we must do. Paul speaks of this in Romans 6:15-23. The corruption of our flesh still exerts great influence, but we now have a new heart - new life by regeneration. Paul tells us that it is the business of the believer to yield our lives to this new love and desire of the heart, and mortify the desires of the flesh. In Romans 6:19 he says at the end of the verse offer yourself "in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness". The new affection of the heart after God makes it possible for us to do this, and to deny the desires of the flesh. This is the way of faith and righteousness.

CONCLUSION

Thus we need a new heart through faith in Christ. Having been born again we are called to yield ourselves to the life of God which is expressed in this new nature and new life. We groan here on earth because we are so afflicted with the corruption of the flesh and so often succumb to it. However we groan because the new life causes us to hate this corruption and long to be free of it. So the believer looks forward with longing to the time when, passing from this life to glory, we shall be free of this sinful flesh, and can serve God in complete righteousness and holiness.