Sermons

When all the elders who had served alongside Joshua had died, the people did not drive out the Canaanites but settled among them. God used the nations that remained as instruments to train Israel, and Israel took their daughters as wives, served their gods, and slowly crumbled.

It was a rod that would never have been needed had they driven those nations out from the beginning, as they were commanded. God tested his people because, watching them do what was right in their own eyes, he longed for them to turn back. Daniel passed through the same test. Knowing he would be thrown into the lions’ den, he still opened his windows toward Jerusalem and prayed, and God shut the lions’ mouths and spared his life.

Even the temple and long years of faith can be shaken when the test comes. Yet had they obeyed from the start, grace and rest would have been theirs, and God is with those who endure to the end. Daniel’s confession, “If I perish, I perish,” must become the confession of those who believe today.

Though Israel had been delivered out of Egypt, the people looked at how well the Canaanites lived, mingled with them and served their idols. When the people complained that there was no water and took up stones against Moses, he could not master his feelings and struck the rock twice, even though God had said that he himself would stand on the rock.

Just as the landowner paid a denarius even to those who came to work late, before God no sin weighs more or less, whether between those who labored early and those who labored late, or between leaders and the people. It was not so much a sense of having given more of himself as despair at a people who would not change that kept Moses from displaying God’s holiness. Grace and miracles cannot transform anyone who does not receive them with a sincere heart.

Because of the promise he himself made, and a love that would save even one soul, God remains patient through betrayal, wrath and forgiveness, over and over again. Moses died without entering Canaan, yet he later appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, his faith acknowledged. Only by persevering until the moment they meet God, and giving themselves up to the very last, will God’s people be spared a bitter end.

The angel of Yahweh comes up from Gilgal to Bochim and speaks to Israel. He says that it was he who brought them out of Egypt, he who gave them the land he swore to their fathers, and he who said he would never break his covenant. Then he rebukes them because they made a covenant with the people of Canaan and did not break down their altars. When the people hear this word, they weep aloud and offer sacrifices.

God speaks of the past again and again because his heart is heavy as he looks at his people now. If the hedge of protection is taken away, they will live among thorns and snares just like the people of the world. Yet the tears the people shed were not tears of sorrow for their sin. They wept because they were afraid of losing the blessings they had enjoyed. So even after offering sacrifices, before long they do evil again.

Peter and Judas Iscariot both betrayed Jesus, and both repented, but the outcomes were as different as heaven and earth. True humility is recognizing sin, not committing it again, and living by the word for God. God still longs for Joshua, who obeyed, and he is waiting for even one person to return with a sincere heart.

The tribes of Judah and Simeon go up together and win a great victory, driving out the people of the hill country. Yet when they see that those living in the valley have iron chariots, they hold back of their own accord.

They fail to drive them out not for lack of strength; they could have done it, and they did not. The truth that God was with them had not changed in the least, but the moment they measured themselves against an enemy who looked stronger, fear brought them to their knees. Later, even when they had grown strong, they put those peoples to forced labor rather than driving them out, bending the command to suit their own comfort.

When what can be seen looms larger than God, faith gives way at that very point. God’s word allows no compromise, and only in obedience does the soul live. God’s people must live out the confession that it is God who gives and God who takes away.

When Joshua died, Israel was left without a leader. Everyone began to do what was right in his own eyes, and in the end the people turned away from God and fell into sin, crying out to him only once foreign nations had oppressed them.

A faith that a leader lives out on the people’s behalf is not true faith. God did not raise up a new leader after Joshua because he wanted his people to remember the word they had been taught and to walk with him by a faith of their own. Sin is like a sheer wall of ice that cannot be scaled in one’s own strength; without Jesus Christ as the rope, no one can stand on the summit.

After Joshua’s death, when Israel came to God of their own accord and inquired of him, God raised up Judah and gave a great victory in the battle against Adoni-Bezek. To a people who pray to him directly and obey him even without a leader, God grants victory in the face of any power.

God created the world free of chaos, and gave humankind the setting best suited to life, a long span of years, and a holy heart. Yet by their sin people shut out that love and spoiled his handiwork with their own hands.

The light made on the first day divided day from night, though the sun did not appear until the fourth day, and plants had already been created on the third. This order overturns the human assumption that nothing green can live without the sun, and shows that the source of life is not the sun but God himself. That first-day light is Jesus Christ, and whoever follows him will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

God swore by himself, ‘Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth,’ and the word that has gone out of his mouth he does not take back. Adam and Eve, Joab, and Judas Iscariot all turned away from God, fell captive to darkness and pride, and perished. Anyone whose heart is now dark and troubled must turn back and come to God, and then his light will heal the soul and restore all things.

A new year is beginning. The people of Israel could not forget the gods of Egypt and grumbled in the wilderness, and judgment fell on them; yet those who stayed close to the Lord lived to see that day.

They survived not because they were strong or wise, but because they never left God’s side. Salvation is not a matter of standing well in the eyes of others; it is a one-to-one relationship between God and oneself. Neither Noah nor the apostle Paul sought the approval of people, and God alone took notice of their obedience.

In the year ahead, fellow Christians and even pastors may not fully appreciate that devotion. Yet the Holy Spirit does not depart for a single moment, and he affirms that faith. Seeking God’s approval rather than the approval of people, the faithful must live each day according to his Word.

Having come out of the ark, Noah becomes drunk with wine and falls asleep uncovered. Ham sees him like this and goes out to tell his brothers, as though mocking him, while Shem and Japheth walk in backwards and cover their father. When Noah wakes, he curses Ham’s son Canaan to be a servant, and Shem and Japheth are blessed.

Ham was able to board the ark because his father was the one God had chosen. Yet as time went on, pride grew in him: he had helped with the ark, he thought, and had come aboard by his own faith. His respect for his father was gone. His sin did not appear suddenly that day. What had already filled him overflowed in that moment.

The same thing happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu. They owed their priesthood to their father, yet they did not fear God, and in the end they lost their lives offering fire he had not commanded. Being on the ark or being made a priest only means that a person has been given good circumstances. Unless a person stands within them with a humble and honest character, grace turns to wrath.

Luke set down for Theophilus a careful account of how the gospel passed through Jerusalem and went on to reach Rome. Though Theophilus had never seen Jesus with his own eyes, the word passed on to him was enough: he believed as though he could see the invisible God, and he received the hope of heaven.

As Israel stood on the edge of Canaan, Moses earnestly pleaded with them to keep the statutes and ordinances, for that was the way to life. God showed them no form, because he knew the people would turn any form into an idol. Yet Christians too measure God by the standards of the world, fashioning images of their own and serving them.

Some nine hundred years before Jesus came, David heard in advance, by the Holy Spirit, of Christ’s death and resurrection, and he held fast to that hope and lived it out even in the midst of suffering. Jesus came as the prophecy foretold and fulfilled that promise. We have seen this and know it, so we must proclaim the gospel more boldly than David did, and live with thankfulness and perseverance.

Just as Jesus had said, that though one dies, one will live, and will never die, he rose again three days after his death on the cross. The Roman soldiers trembled with fear, but the elders paid them to spread the rumor that the disciples had stolen the body. Even so, Jesus appeared first to the women, Mary Magdalene among them.

The women and the disciples had plainly heard him say that he would rise again, yet they could not believe until they saw it with their own eyes. Thomas, too, declared that he would not believe unless he could touch him with his own hands. People are like this: they insist on seeing before they will believe, and, forgetting the word they have heard, they pour all their effort into what can be seen.

Yet God’s word has never once changed. As he had promised, Jesus met his disciples in Galilee, gave them the Holy Spirit and commanded them to preach the gospel to the whole world. The risen Jesus is alive even now and will come again; so it falls to the faithful not to doubt, but to entrust their lives to him and to live out the word they have heard.

When Jesus collapses from exhaustion, the Roman soldiers seize Simon of Cyrene as he passes by and force him to carry the cross in his place. Simon was only a stranger who had come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, and he finds himself on that road with no preparation of heart at all.

All the way to Golgotha, Simon sees from close at hand how Jesus is nailed to the cross, the words he exchanges with the robbers, his patience and his silence. The road he began against his will opened his eyes, and in later years his son Rufus and his household became a family of faith who gave great help to the apostle Paul.

It is all right if the work of God begins under compulsion. In worldly work, the harder one strives, the heavier the burden grows, but the work of God becomes lighter the more one shoulders it. That one day when he happened to be seized made Simon and his descendants a blessed people.

Pilate asks Jesus whether he is the King of the Jews, and three times declares that he finds no guilt in him. Yet when the chief priests stir up the crowd, he washes his hands and gives way to the cry to crucify him.

Had Jesus defended himself there, he might have gone free. But then the plan of salvation that God had long prepared would have come to nothing. His silence, then, was not helplessness; facing the suffering he had to bear, he was not swayed by his feelings.

The name of God’s people is not to be taken lightly. Those who bear it need to be bold in what is right and, for the salvation of souls, must learn like Jesus to endure patiently and to keep silent.