Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
Our text this morning is Joshua chapter 11. After the first five books of Moses we have the book of Joshua. We’ve been here for a couple of months and this really is the halfway point in this book, the second half we’ll take at a little brisker pace as we come to the land allotments. But this morning chapter 11 and 12, though just going to read chapter 11 and focus our attention there, this brings us to the end of the first half of the book of Joshua.
Chapter 11, you can see the heading in the ESV, recounts the northern campaign after we had the southern campaign in chapter 10, and then if you turn and you look at chapter 12, you’ll notice we have a list of the kings defeated by Moses. So before they enter the Promised Land on the far side of the Jordan, that is on the eastern side, they defeated some of those kings, most famously the two kings on the far side of the river, Sihon and Og, who show up many times in the Bible.
Then to show continuity between the pre-conquest and the conquest proper, we then have a list of the kings that were conquered by Joshua. It reads almost like a checklist. Look at chapter 12, verse 9: The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai which is beside Bethel, one; the king of Jerusalem, one; the king of Hebron, one. And so on. You almost wonder if they had up on a bulletin board somewhere with a box, all right, Jericho, check, one; Ai, one. And you see it adds up at the very end, verse 34, all told 31 kings.
We’re not going to read the chapter, but it does remind me of that song, do kids still learn it in Sunday school? Count your blessings, count them one by one, count your blessings, see what God has done. All right, you don’t know it, but count your blessings. That’s what they did there. One by one, they enumerated all of the kings that God had given into their hands.
Now you look at chapter 13, the heading, “Land Still to be Conquered.” So it isn’t that every last city, stronghold, village, and people had been subdued but a great victory had been won, enough for the people to say, reasonably so, “we have won the war, the Promised Land is ours.”
So turn back then to chapter 11 as we read about the final stages in the conquest.
“When Jabin, king of Hazor, heard of this, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, and to the kings who were in the northern hill country, and in the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the lowland, and in Naphoth-dor on the west, to the Canaanites in the east and the west, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Jebusites in the hill country, and the Hivites under Hermon in the land of Mizpah. And they came out with all their troops, a great horde, in number like the sand that is on the seashore, with very many horses and chariots. And all these kings joined their forces and came and encamped together at the waters of Merom to fight against Israel.”
So this is the largest battle yet. All of these people. And you hear it’s using that covenantal language but in reverse here, they are numerous as the sand on the seashore and they mount, they have horses pulling chariots. This is the technology, the stealth fighters, the destroyers, the fighter jets, the tanks. They’re coming in, amassing this massive force against Israel.
“And the Lord said to Joshua,” verse 6, ““Do not be afraid.” How many times have we heard this in the book already? From chapter 1 all the way through the end of the conquest here in chapter 11. ““Do not be afraid of them, for tomorrow at this time I will give over all of them, slain, to Israel. You shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with fire.” So Joshua and all his warriors came suddenly against them by the waters of Merom and fell upon them. And the Lord gave them into the hand of Israel, who struck them and chased them as far as Great Sidon and Misrephoth-maim, and eastward as far as the Valley of Mizpeh. And they struck them until he left none remaining. And Joshua did to them just as the Lord said to him: he hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with fire.”
“And Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword, for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms. And they struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire. And all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua captured, and struck them with the edge of the sword, devoting them to destruction, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. But none of the cities that stood on mounds did Israel burn, except Hazor alone; that Joshua burned.”
So they haven’t destroyed every possible habitation they might live in, but this city they did, the leading city of the region.
“And all the spoil of these cities and the livestock, the people of Israel took for their plunder. But every person they struck with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them, and they did not leave any who breathed. Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did. He left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses.”
“So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the Lord commanded Moses.”
“And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.”
1 Corinthians 15:10 is one of the most important verses for your Christian life. Many of you may know of 1 Corinthians 15 because Paul famously gives that great distillation of the Gospel, that Jesus died on the cross for our sins according to the Scriptures, dead, buried, rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, appeared to many witnesses. Right there we have the very heart of the good news of the Gospel, Jesus’s death, resurrection, and then His appearance.
But you may remember in 1 Corinthians 15:10 we also have this verse. Paul says, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.”
That’s one of the most important verses for the Christian. We see those two things. Paul does not hesitate to say, “I as a Christian minister and simply as a Christian disciple, I have worked very hard.” There is nothing in life of great consequence that you’re going to accomplish that likely does not involve some hard work. Any great artistic accomplishment, to have excellence in some athletic field or in business, or whatever hobby you may do, takes this kind of hard work, and even more so when it comes to the spiritual life.
Yet Paul quickly adds, “I worked harder than anybody,” yet, careful, this isn’t a bootstrap message, “it wasn’t really me. It was God at work within me.” Just like he says in Philippians 2, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Now that verse does not mean work out your justification, those two terms are not identical, but salvation, that is the whole scope of your Christian life requires effort, yet he says we know it is God to will and to work within us.
Or to put it in theological terms, we see something here of these twin truths in the Bible of divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
When I joined the church back in Jenison, Michigan, when I was a wee little lad and I was in the fourth grade, and I had to meet with my pastor. We had to read one-on-one through the Heidelberg Catechism. Then I had to meet with all the others. There was no great system in place for a Catechism Communicants class to come through and I was a bit on the younger side. My parents waited until I mentioned it a couple of times and they said, “Okay, you’re ready,” so I met with my pastor. Then I had to meet with all of the elders. There was maybe six or seven of them. They seemed to be giants to me, it was very intimidating. And I am told, because this tale was often retold, recounted to me, they asked me questions about the Heidelberg Catechism and they asked me…
Now I just want, young people, I just want you to know that your elders will not ask you this question when you come before them, but they asked me, fourth grade, “How might you explain divine sovereignty and human responsibility?” True. And I said to them, “I think that’s what you call a paradox.”
Now you say was I a boy genius? I was not. My dad told me, “Now they might ask you.” Now I don’t know if my dad was feeding them questions, he wasn’t on the session at the time, or he knew what I didn’t know that this was just a stumper question for fourth graders, so I came in ready, and when they asked it, I just thought I cannot believe they are asking this question and I’m glad I listened to my dad and that’s why I said, “It’s what you call a paradox.” And many times since then the elders would say, “Remember when you came and you told us about the paradox?”
A paradox is not something that actually is contradictory but does seem to be contradictory, that God is sovereign over all things and with are responsible.
Well, we see that in Paul’s language in 1 Corinthians 15 – I worked harder than everybody. You might think Paul says this is all dependent upon me, yet not really, this was God at work within me.
That’s the same thing, those same twin ideas, we see here in Joshua 11 in several places, and it’s fitting when we come to the end of the conquest that we would see these two themes. On the one hand you could say Joshua worked harder than everyone, and yet then you’d quickly have to say, yet it wasn’t really Joshua, it was the Lord at work within him.
Those are the two things I want you to know about your Christian life, from 1 Corinthians 15:10 and from this passage in Joshua. Two things you absolutely have to have deep in your heart as a mature Christian – you need to work hard, there’s no getting around that, and then second you need to trust that God is going to do the work. Both of those.
So one. You need to work hard.
I want you to notice two verses in particular that spell this out from the life of Joshua here in this chapter. Look first at verse 15: “Just as the Lord had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did.” Then we come to this last sentence in verse 15, and it’s something like a banner waving over Joshua’s life, perhaps an epithet there, or an epitaph there, on his tombstone. We read: “He left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses.”
What a life verse. What a life sentence to be said about someone. You know what their life was about? They did what God told them to do.
Moses, no doubt, had many more memorable moments in his life. Now Joshua had a couple – crossing the Jordan River and parting, that was a big deal; Jericho, that was a miracle. Yet compared to Moses, that was a pretty ordinary life. There was blood and guts and a lot of battles. You’ve got Moses, the basket in the Nile, the burning bush, the staff with the snake and the snake eats the other staffs, and the 10 plagues, and the Red Sea, and the hands in the air with the battle and the water from the rock, and the snake in the wilderness, and seeing God face-to-face and the 10 commandments. That is a tough act to follow.
But what it says about Joshua is just about the best thing that could be said about anyone. Joshua was obedient. Now we know not perfectly. He missed something there with Ai and he missed something with the Gibeonites, but you notice when he messes up he gets up and he prays and he learns from it and he keeps going. So much so that it can be said, not perfectly but as the general sweep of his life, here’s what you need to know about Joshua – he left nothing undone, he was a git-er done kind of guy. He did what the Lord commanded of him.
Now let’s be honest. I wonder how many of us would be a little disappointed if this were the main thing said at our funeral. Would you want something else a little more dramatic? If the main thing, over and over, was you know what? She did what the Lord commended. You know what his life was about? He did whatever God wanted him to do.
Think of how many stories, movies, television shows in our culture operate with the premise, it’s so persistent and prevalent that you don’t even notice it, operate with the premise that external authority is bad and mistaken, and true freedom is found in charting your own path.
Now I love the songs, we know them, from Moana, bad grandmother telling disobey your father. So Moana is, “my dad says this and this is the way you’re supposed to do things in our tribe, but I got something in my heart.” Ratatouille, that mouse, that rat. He disobeys. The other rats in the family are telling him this is just how we do things here. How to train a dragon, you’ve got that big warlord guy and then his son doesn’t want to do things that way.
Now, you say, I like all those movies. Okay. They’re good, but part of what a good movie does is they so work with you and in each of those cases you think, yeah, well, but the father, the father figure, he’s sort of unreasonable, he’s overbearing, he doesn’t understand things.
And that may be the case in a particular story. Think of not a cartoon but Dead Poets’ Society. The whole premise of that story is there are external structures and rules and of course they make them to be very completely overbearing, that everyone would hate them, and then if you just find the great poetry within.
This is how almost every story works. There’s a father or a father figure who’s unreasonable, overbearing, bound to tradition, bound to the old ways, and the protagonist is very sympathetic as he or she learns to listen to the voice within and there’s a better, higher, truer calling.
So many of us, truth be told, would think it a very lame thing to be said about us, you know what? He/she always did what they were told, followed the rules. Oh, well, that’s not very exciting. Even fast food restaurants tell you not to follow the rules. That’s not what we do as Americans.
Yet as God’s people, now parentheses here, some rules are overbearing, some rules are oppressive. We obey God, not man. So there’s always those exceptions. But when it comes to God’s rules, there is virtually nothing better that could be said. Think about Jesus and the Great Commission. You go and you teach people, what? To obey. Jesus Himself said that’s what you’re to do, teach people to obey everything I have commanded.
He didn’t just say, “I want you to teach people to have a powerful experience.” We like those. Teach people to follow the intuition in their hearts. He said, “I want you to teach people…” Here’s the central thing you’re doing in the Great Commission, they would obey Jesus.
Jesus said about the Father in John 8: I always do what pleases Him.
So if you think, well, that’s lame, I don’t want to be the sort of person who just follows what someone in authority tells me to do, well, then, you don’t like Jesus. Jesus said, His incarnate, __ office, “All I do is I want to please My Father. I live to please My Father.”
So this word about Joshua, he left nothing undone of all that was required of him, he worked hard and he obeyed. Hardly can say anything better about somebody.
I want you to notice a second verse that underscores Joshua’s obedience and hard work. Did you notice it right there in verse 18? Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.
This has gone by very quickly. Jericho gets a chapter, Ai gets a chapter, then you’ve got to clean up Ai and do it again. Now Gibeon gets a chapter and then a whole bunch of kings in the south, chapter 10, a whole bunch of kings in the north, chapter 11, and here we are. It’s moving very quickly, but we’re told in verse 18 what we should have suspected – this has taken a long time.
How long? Well, let’s try to do some math. Everyone likes math in a sermon. We have in Deuteronomy 2:14 we read, “And the time from our leaving Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the brook Zered was 38 years.” So that’s when the Israelites, they’re not quite to the Jordan River but they’ve crossed this other little boundary marker, the brook Zered, and they say from Kadesh-barnea. What was Kadesh-barnea? That’s in the southern region in between Israel and Egypt, that’s where the Israelites were supposed to enter the Promised Land. And they sent the spies, the 12 spies and 10 of them give a bad report, “We could never do it,” and two of them say, “No, we can,” Caleb and Joshua. That was Kadesh-barnea.
So they left Egypt, they had already been for a better part of a year or more, maybe up to two. So at Kadesh-barnea, where they should have gone into the Promised Land, but their punishment was to wander for another 40 years give or take, we can deal with round numbers, 38 years until they come to the cusp of the Promised Land. So you’ve got that in your head, 38 years.
Now I want you to turn over to Joshua 14. Look at verse 7. This is Caleb. Remember Caleb? One of the few people which didn’t die in the wilderness because he was faithful as a spy, and he says in verse 7, “I was 40 years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.” So there he is, 40 years at that moment.
Now you go down to verse 10: “And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as He said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old.”
So we have some of the math as he presents it, how old he was, 40 years old at Kadesh-barnea, and now he’s 85. So it’s been 45 years in Caleb’s life, 38 of which were that wandering from Kadesh-barnea to the cusp of the Promised Land. So you get the math? So 45 minus 38 means 7, so as best as we can figure, this conquest in Canaan has taken 7 years. We do that there by the math that Caleb gives. How old was I when we set out? How old am I now? 45 minus 38. It’s taken 7 years.
So this, though we read it in just a couple of chapters, has taken a long time, seven years. If you want to do something of significance and excellence in your life, and this is not even as a Christian, just in general, it’s going to take effort. A building project, athletic ability, artistic, musical ability, and advanced degree, an intellectual pursuit. You want to learn a language, you want to be an expert at a trade, a craft. You want to write a book, a garden, any kind of hobby… It’s going to take time.
This is equally true in the Christian life. It doesn’t mean that because you’re a Christian and you can pray that somehow the normal equation of effort plus time no longer applies. That’s most often in life how you accomplish something of significance. Effort plus time. That equation is virtually undefeated. And it’s true as a Christian. You show up, you come to worship, you come to Sunday school, you come in the evening, you sign up, you get involved, you pay attention, you stick around, you invest in people, you do your devotions, you raise your children to the glory of God. It’s a long obedience in the same direction.
When you don’t know what to do in your life and you’re not sure where your life is headed, here’s what you can do. You can do the next right thing. Whatever the next right thing is.
It’s true. You can become famous overnight. It’s never been easier to have your 15 minutes, seconds of fame. The internet will allow you to become famous overnight. You may even be able to become rich overnight. You cannot become truly great overnight. True greatness, as a person with a skill and certainly true greatness unto the Lord, depends upon the same unbroken formula of hard work plus time.
That’s why Paul says, “You know what? I worked harder than everybody.”
Hard work is not just good advice or good middle class values or good work ethic. It’s biblical. Work hard.
Joshua worked hard. He obeyed what the Lord told him to do and for seven years he went at this conquest. Just like Paul says, “I outworked everyone.”
So the first thing you and I need to know if we’re going to live as mature Christians, is it requires you, there’s no shortcut, you have to work hard.
Second. And even more important than the first point. Point number one, you must work hard. Point number two, you must trust that God is actually the One doing the work.
If you don’t do the first part, work hard, you become a kind of __ and you just expect for sanctification by osmosis, let go and let God. I told you before about that demotivation poster the person hanging on a cliff and it says, “Let go and let God.” Yeah, see how that works for you. So if you don’t have that first part, you’re not going to make any progress as a Christian. If you don’t have this second part, you’re not really a Christian. It’s God at work within us.
So we read in verses 1 through 8 these overwhelming odds against Joshua as the sand on the seashore, a great horde, and yet God says, “Don’t be afraid. I got this. I’m going to give them into your hand.” And sure enough, He does. And when He does, I want you to notice what Joshua does, because it seems very strange, but the Lord is teaching him and us a powerful lesson.
Look at verse 9: “And Joshua did to them just as the Lord said to him.” Now this was what the Lord commanded up in verse 6 and now He’s doing it in verse 9. What did He do? He hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with fire.
So you cut the big tendon in the back of the horse’s leg, the hamstring. Some people say, well, then you have to, the horses would have died and this was the next step was to euthanize them, others say well, maybe they injured them in such a way that they could still be horses but they simply couldn’t be military horses. Whatever it is, they are literally cutting away their military advantage with the horses and they burned the chariots.
You may know the verse, Psalm 20 verse 7: Some trust in chariots, some trust in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
It’s like saying, “Some trust in our weapons, some trust in our military advantage, or some trust in the strength of our economy.” See, that’s what horses and chariots. They weren’t mounting horses at this point but the horses were pulling the chariots with the warriors. This was the new technology.
Now this is not saying that a modern army can’t have tanks and fighter jets and destroyers and aircraft carriers and all the rest. This is not a righteousness for how a modern nation state should think of their military or how police officers should think of the weapons that they carry, but it is giving us a powerful spiritual lesson.
There in Psalm 20 it’s reinforced earlier here in Joshua 11 because the temptation once you defeat your enemies, then you look out and Joshua’s men could have said, “Man, we don’t have horses. We don’t have chariots. We’re going to be the most powerful military force in this whole region. We’ve the brand new technology right here – horses and chariots. And you might have thought you defeated them all and now take to yourselves the horses and the chariots. You’ll be an invincible superpower.”
God says, “No, I want you to make sure the horses are no good to you and I want you to burn all of the chariots.”
You wonder if Joshua and the men of war were cringing as it took place, “But we could have used these. This could have meant we were invincible.” But God knew that if they had horses and they had chariots they would depend upon the horses and the chariots and they would no longer trust in the name of the Lord their God.
Again, this doesn’t mean it’s wrong that you have savings in your bank or you have insurance. There’s proverbs about look to the ant and his wisdom. But surely at a heart level, at least, we need to heed this lesson. All of us, and this happens, doesn’t it? As we get older. It certainly has as I’ve gotten older. It’s one thing when you’re a young college student in your 20s to talk about risking everything and change the world. We get less prone to take risks the older we get. Some of that could be some wisdom and more people depend upon you, but it also may mean that we kind of like the horses and the chariots. We love God, but we’ve got horses and chariots. We’re going to be fine.
It may be that some of you are in a crisis moment right now, a difficult situation you did not expect, and it’s difficult and no one wants to be in those, but maybe one of the blessings God is giving you is to help you in this moment learn that you must not trust in horses and chariots but you can trust in the name of the Lord our God.
What might we do as individuals, as families, or as a church to make sure that we are not relying upon our inherent advantages? We’re not relying upon our spiritual technology. We’re not relying upon our bank accounts or all that the Lord has given to us as a church, that we might not only talk like we have faith but actually exercise faith. You see the lesson the Lord was teaching Joshua – you don’t get to keep the horses and the chariots because you won’t trust Me. I’ve brought you this far. I’ve given all of these people into your hands. More than you need horses and chariots, you need the Lord your God.
Then look at verse 20. You see what else God does in His sovereignty? It was the Lord’s doing, verse 20, to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy.
We’ve seen, surprisingly, a couple of examples that it did not have to be this way. There’s the way of Rahab – come in humility and faith and you’re saved. There’s also the way of the Gibeonites – the Lord used even their deception and they had a treaty and they were saved. Here we read there was nobody else among these peoples except these Gibeonites who came and tried to make peace with us. Why? The Lord hardened their hearts. This is talking about a judicial hardening, what Romans might say, “And the Lord handed them over. He handed them over.”
Now lest you think this makes God seem capricious, no, He’s handing them over to what is at work in their hearts. The hardening of their hearts is not that God would harden someone’s heart so that they want to be repentant and God says, “No, no, you can’t come to Me.” Jesus says that in John chapter 6 – You can’t come to the Father unless you’re drawn, and everyone who comes to the Father will never be cast away. There is no one who ever comes to the Father in true faith and repentance and then God says, “Nope, you can’t come.”
So the hardening does not mean that they’re prevented, they will but they’re not able to come, but rather that they no longer have the ability to will to come, they get what they want.
And it actually shows how God in His conquest is a God of justice. I’ve mentioned several times before, way back in Genesis 15, it said that the sins of the Amorites needed to accumulate for 400 years before the conquest would happen. One of the reasons God’s people went to slavery was the sins of the Amorites had not yet accumulated such that God would be just to wipe them out. This is not a peace-loving people, these are not just holding hands and we just love you and welcome you into our homes and into our communities, these are implacably set against God, His people, and His will.
And in order that God would be just to militarily wipe them out, their hearts were hardened so that they fiercely, forcibly mounted an assault against Israel. Therefore they were destroyed. It was the Lord’s will that they might be destroyed.
Then I want you to notice one last group to be conquered. Do you see it there in verse 21? Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim. Okay, maybe some of you have this in your head, it’s starting to jog your memory. Who are the Anakim? The name may literally mean “long-necked ones.” It became a euphemism among God’s people that some people who were great and mighty were hailed, Deuteronomy 2:11, as tall as the Anakim.
You may remember the Anakim were the reason the spies failed 45 years earlier. They went and they said it’s a great land, flowing with milk and honey. This is amazing, this could be our forever home, and then 10 of the spies said, “But there’s Anakim.” There’s giants. They’re really big, fierce warriors here. Caleb said, “We can do it. God’ll be with us.” But 10 men said, “We’ll never do it. They have the sons of Anak there, they are descendants of the Nephilim, and we are like grasshoppers compared to them.”
So the Anakim, these sons of Anak, were the mighty men, the giants. Perhaps you’ve noticed here, it’s interesting, verse 22, they cut off the Anakim except some remained in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod. Goliath will come from Gath, perhaps he was one of the remaining descendants of these mighty men, these giant warriors, these fierce soldiers.
Forty-five years earlier Caleb and Joshua had said, “I know they’re strong but we can defeat them,” and God’s people rebelled. Now isn’t it fitting the last people to be conquered are the Anakim?
Now we have to be careful we don’t moralize the Bible here in a clumsy way and say, “What are the giants in your life?” What’s the movie, The Three Amigos said, “We all have our personal El Guapos to face.”
But it’s not a bad application at this point because what were the Anakim? They were big, they were scary, they were strong, they were fierce, and they were unknown. You may have that – a job, a diagnosis, a wayward child, something scary, big, strong, fierce, unknown. We’re not given a promise that every single thing we want will come true, but we are told, undeniably, God is bigger than all of those strong, fierce, big, scary, tall, unknown things in your life.
So the last, the first people that caused them to rebel and not enter the Promised Land are the very last people to be subdued and conquered. The race of giants among them are wiped out.
So we come to the fitting conclusion in verse 23, “and the land had rest from war.”
We already read earlier in the service, Zach did, from Hebrews chapter 4, which builds on this because later Psalm 95 David is going to say that there’s another rest. So there’s a rest and then the author of Hebrews says, “Well, there must have been a spiritual rest that was to come even greater than this physical rest,” and Hebrews makes the point that the true, deepest, Sabbath rest can be found only in Jesus, it’s that fight of faith to cling not to your works or to your effort but to Christ alone.
That’s why we have that strange language, “strive to enter the rest.” Wait a minute. Strive to enter the rest? That’s called a Sunday nap in our household. It’s a lot of work to quarantine some kids and get them down and the little ones… It is a striving to enter the rest that we all need.
J.C. Ryle famously said there are two marks of the true Christian – his inner warfare and his inner peace.
Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden,” and you know what He said – I will give to you rest.
To be a Christian is to fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, but mark this, friends, to be a Christian is to have that incomparable rest that the whole world is searching after and cannot find in fame, in money, in sex, in power, only in Christ can we find this rest with ourselves, with the world, and with God, and the Church therefore must be a place of rest.
Yes, there is a sense in which gathering here is to feed the troops to go out and fight the battle, but this must also be a haven of rest.
Some of you may have heard of, or perhaps read, J. Gresham Machen’s famous book, Christianity and Liberalism, as theological liberalism. It came out in 1923, 100-year anniversary was last year, a number of new editions were published. You should read the book if you haven’t. Liberalism there means denying the virgin birth, denying the inspiration of the Bible, denying the wrath of God, denying the resurrection, denying the miracles, denying the importance of doctrine – all of that which is essential to authentic Christianity.
But what many people don’t realize, or forget about the book, is how it ends. Machen comes to his conclusion, and his last point, so it’s easy for people like us who probably say, “Yes, that’s all bad, we’re not theological liberals. Good.” But he comes to his conclusion and he says, “You know what the heart of the problem is? Liberalism doesn’t give you any rest. It’s all this worldly,” he says, “it’s all about advancing a cultural, political, social agenda. It brings all the earthly divisions into the Church and makes them worse. It brings all of the earthly exhaustion into the Church and intensifies it.”
And perhaps on this Sunday before an election it’s worth reading this paragraph from Machen. He says: There must be somewhere groups of redeemed men and women who can gather together humbly in the name of Christ to give thanks to Him for His unspeakable gift and to worship the Father through Him. There are congregations, even in the present age of conflict, that are gathered around the table of the crucified Lord. There are pastors that are pastors, indeed.
But he continues: Such congregations in many cities are difficult to find. Weary with the conflicts of the world, one goes into the Church to seek refreshment for the soul and what does one find? Alas, too often, one finds only the turmoil of the world. The preacher comes forward not out of a secret place of meditation and power, not with the authority of God’s Word permeating his message, not with human wisdom pushed into the background by the glory of the cross, but he comes with human opinions about social problems of the hour, he comes with easy solutions to the vast problems of sin. Such is the sermon. Thus the warfare of the world has entered even the house of God and sad, indeed, is the heart of man who has come seeking peace.
In other words, Machen calls the Church to be a place of refuge from the strife of the world, a place where, yes, we prepare for the battle of life, a place where true Christians can be united in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the cross, and here’s his last sentence: If there be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven, and from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we thank You that You have given us Your Spirit that we might work hard and that You have promised to do the work within us, that we might be at war against sin, the flesh, and the devil, that we might be at war against the forces of darkness in this world, and yet know Your command is to stand, knowing, resting, confident that in Jesus we already have the victory. Would You refresh our weary hearts and from the threshold of this place send out streams throughout our city and state, country and world, to refresh this exhausted, strife-torn land with the Gospel? In Jesus we pray. Amen.