HIGHLIGHTS IN JOSHUA
Number 25
RISE AND FALL
Joshua 24:28-33
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"Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had experienced everything that the Lord had done for Israel."
Joshua 24:31
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IF we look into the history of the church we will not fail to notice that there are times of great spiritual life and growth and there are times of decline and spiritual deadness. History tells us that after a time of great revival there comes a decline, and the spiritual life is lost. After times of blessing the church seems to fall back into a mediocrity where there is a faithful remnant, but the visible church seems to embrace worldliness and error.

The church in the Old Testament, which was the nation of Israel, also showed this rise and fall in devotion to God. In these last few verses of Joshua we read verse 31 which has all the hallmark of this problem. The time of Joshua had been a time of great devotion to Jehovah, and Israel had experienced great blessing from God. Israel had been brought into the promised land and given strength and power to possess their inheritance over all the heathen power which had previously lived in the land. The people served the Lord in this time. Our text suggests that this devotion to the Lord did not last. It suggests that after Joshua had died and the leaders during this time of possessing the promised land died, the people fell away from devotion to Jehovah. As we read on in the book of Judges, we see that this fall in the spiritual life of Israel was a fact. The rest of the Old Testament is a dismal account of this rise and fall. There were revivals in the time of Josiah and Hezekiah, but again soon after the people fell away from there service of the Lord.

This is all very sad and depressing, but can we learn something from our text and these last verses in Joshua which may help us with this problem of rise and fall in the church, and perhaps have some guidance as to how to limit the churches tendency to fall away from true devotion to God. I believe we can, and it is bound up in the words, firstly in verse 28 "each had their own inheritance" and secondly in verse 31 "experienced everything the Lord had done for Israel".

GIVEN AN INHERITANCE

The strength of Israel lay in the election of God. God chose them as his people and gave them an inheritance. This is where all true religion begins. True religion begins in God's choosing us and bestowing on us eternal life. Paul tells us this in Ephesians 1:3-14. We were chosen by God to be his people from the creation of the world. We were predestined to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. Through Christ we have received redemption the forgiveness of our sins.

Israel was devoted to the Lord and served him, not because they were better than other nations, but because God chose them to give them an inheritance. They possessed the inheritance, not because of any latent power in themselves, but because God in free grace gave it to them.

We are servants of God and enjoy this privilege of being children of God because of God's free electing grace. We love God because he first loved us and saved us through the blood of Jesus. God has shed abroad his love in our hearts. God has given us new birth. God has raised us together with Christ. This salvation is our inheritance by gift from God.

It is the inheritance in Christ which God bestows upon us which is the heart of all devotion to God. It is the experience of salvation and God's deep eternal love in calling us to faith in Jesus as our Saviour that brings devotion to Jesus and the desire to crown him Lord of our lives. When this is missing the Lord is not known, and people go after other gods. In our society it is all sorts of other things and ideologies that we espouse, and if we have a Christian culture, it is some parody of God that we conjure up to worship.

This syndrome of decline is told more explicitly in Judges 2 and specially verse 10. We read of Israel "After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord or what he had done for Israel." Without the inheritance, that is the experience of salvation which brings us into fellowship with the Lord, devotion to God will decline; true religion will be corrupted; and deadness will enter the church. There must be life (new birth) or there will be no serving the Lord.

What is required then? What is required is not so much a campaign against sins in society. What is required is not even so much campaigns against false doctrine. What is required is to set forth Christ in all the beauty of his love and grace, and to open up more and more the wonder of all he has done for us in his life, death and resurrection. Jesus in all his saving glory must be known, and the wonder and blessing of his love and salvation felt and experienced. In this way there will be those added to the church on a regular basis, and the people of God will be kept in Christ's love and stimulated in love for Christ. It is a sad thing that in our day so little of this exaltation of Christ and his work for us is seen in preaching and ministry, even by those who claim to be the ones who identify with Christ in this way. Ministry and preaching is occupied with all sorts of issues and experience, all important in their way, but which without Christ and his grace are without power.

IMPORTANCE OF THE MINISTRY

We read that decline in Israel was held at bay while those who knew the Lord and experienced the Lord working in power and had seen the great things he had done for Israel were still alive to exert their influence (Joshua 24:31 & Judges 2:10). The implication is that they held fast to the Lord in love and service and kept alive the great works of the Lord in the society of Israel. This is what kept Israel true to the Lord.

From this we see that it is essential for every child of God to live in the light of Jesus' love and to shine forth the light of Jesus in their lives. We are meant to be openly lovers of Jesus, and our lives are meant to shine with the love and character of Jesus. In this way the Lord is held before the eyes of people, and his way of life glorified.

Having said this, what is even more important, and essential is that the ministers of the church should be glorifying Jesus and his salvation, and preaching Christ in all the fullness of his love in his work for us. I do not mean by this that every Sunday and every service a gospel sermon of the sort that tells people they are sinners and calls them to receive Christ as Saviour should be the sum of ministry. No! Christ in all his fullness is the subject of our preaching and teaching. Paul said he determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. What this meant for Paul is seen in his letters. Read Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and so on, and we see Paul setting forth all the wonder and depth of the person and work of Christ. He explains in detail and depth all the wonder of God's plan of saving love, and of the meaning and achievement of Christ's life and death. This is rarely being done today. There is, I believe, a need for returning to expository preaching that takes people through a whole book of the Bible or Gospel or letter in the New Testament. This must not be done in a dry and academic way, but prophetically. The minister communing with Lord as he or she studies and prepares for preaching, so that the Lord illuminates the minister with the wonder of Christ, and gives the minister the understanding and the theme for each exposition.

Let us pray for this, and for those of us in ministry, let us determine to preach Christ, seeing and knowing that the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe. Not just giving power to people, but more importantly and chiefly, that the gospel of Christ's procuring righteousness for us is the power in itself - that Christ's work is the power and is bestowed freely.

IMPORTANCE OF A VITAL EXPERIENCE

I have emphasised already that service for God depends on experience of God and his saving love. There is no real, true and continuing service for God in the right way unless a person has believed in Jesus, received the forgiveness of sins, and been raised to new life in Christ. Having emphasised this there is a further reality, and that is that the experience of God needs to be kept alive. We cannot and must not live in the past and on past experience.

Our experience of conversion must never be forgotten or denied. There we met the Lord. At that time we knew peace with God and the joy of God's love. This sealed to us and continues to seal to us the truth of the Gospel we read and understand in the Bible. However the reality of this experience must be a present reality also. The soul must be continually feeling and having applied to it the Gospel blessings and the Gospel implications.

If we are to keep our experience of God alive and live in the present reality and joy of God's love then we must heed practically the words of Paul in Galatians 5:16-18. We must live by the Spirit. However we can well ask what does it mean to live by the Spirit? This I would seek to answer in the rest of this sermon.

The experience of God through faith in Jesus is an experience of new life. We are born again. Paul describes this in 2 Corinthians as a new creation. Paul amplifies this in Ephesians by saying we have been created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. Thus being born again is being reborn with a new holy life which replaces the old person we were, and this new person enjoys the heavenly realm and can experience it, and has only holy desires and aspirations. In this new person God dwells in the person of the Holy Spirit. We experience this new life and the Spirit's presence by the new spiritual and holy desires which we find within us. We hunger after God. We find the Bible precious. Worship of God is a delight and a longing in our souls. We long to please God and live in his holiness and so we find a hate within us of all that falls short of that holy perfection.

All this is true even though we still live in this world through the sinful flesh in our earthly bodies. Our sinful flesh still contains the lusts of the flesh and the expressions of that corruption, and the flesh continually demands attention and satisfaction. In the least expression of this fleshly influence we find ourselves acting out of character with our new born self in such ways as losing our temper, expressing pride, failing in love, and living for ourselves. This can become greater if we lean towards the desires of our flesh and allow them to dominate and take over our lives.

To live by the Spirit is to always heed, lean to, and go after the lovely desires of our new born self which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It means to nurture the new born self by seeking God in worship and the Bible. It means dwelling in the presence of God and seeking to know God's will. To do this we must spend time in sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear his word to us. This means prayerfully reading and meditating in the Bible, not being content until we receive a blessing. Then if, from time to time, we seem to be dry, coming back continually to Jesus in the Bible until he speaks to us and illuminates our minds and hearts with his truth and love.

To live by the Spirit means also to spend the day in prayer. I don't mean we are on our knees before God all the time. What I mean is that it should become increasingly a natural thing for us to talk to God in our hearts and minds throughout the day in all the different changes and happenings we experience. Just as we may talk to a friend we must learn to talk to God and share with him every part of out lives and living. If we do this we shall find it is increasingly difficult to contemplate things that he would disapprove of. We will find our hearts loving the things of God more and more. We will find we are reflecting the love of God in a natural and appealing way.

Above all we shall be deepening our knowledge of all God has done for us and learning in experience all this means for us in our lives for time and eternity. In this way the flesh will be mortified, not so much by conscious saying no to fleshly desires, but rather by the expulsion of the fleshly desires by the new affection we have for God.

This is living in the Spirit, and when we do, our experience of God and his works will be always alive and present with us. We shall show his works in our lives continually in the present. Then we shall be devoted to the Lord and be his faithful servants.

CONCLUSION

In this way we will be continually living in the experience of what God has done for us and is doing for us in Christ, so we will be kept from spiritual decline, and we will be contributing to the preservation of the church from decline. Also where decline has entered the church, we will be contributing to the revival of the church again.