Now it’s worth asking at this point what the secret of this man’s greatness was. In fact, it was no great secret. Caleb had total faith in God, and he gave himself to God utterly. It’s not hard to see his faith. That comes out very simply in this matter of the spies’ initial report.
The second thing that we see in Joshua 14 comes out in this word, “wholeheartedly,” which is repeated there three times (vv. 8, 9, 14). That’s the same idea that is involved in Deuteronomy 6:5, which Jesus quoted when He was asked what was the first and greatest of all the commandments. He said, “It’s that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.” Because Caleb loved the Lord his God with all his heart, he served him with all his heart. And he did it through a long, long lifetime. And here at the end, he’s still doing it.
There’s a great contrast here in this story, and I’m sure it’s why it’s told at this point, right in the middle of this account of the division of the land. It’s the contrast between Caleb, who followed the Lord wholeheartedly to the very end and took the land that he’d been promised so many years before, and the people who, for the most part, failed to fully possess these possessions. Oh, they had the land. They were there. The power of the Canaanites was broken during the seven years of military conquest. All of the great cities had been overthrown. But when the land was divided up, they were to go into their individual portions of the land, subdue it, and drive the inhabitants out. And we’re told again and again in these chapters that they didn’t quite do it. They settled down, and instead enjoyed the conquest without carrying it through to completion.
And yet, there were special cities even among all these other cities. They’re described in Joshua 20 and 21. Chapter 21 tells about the towns that were given to the Levites. The Levites, the priests, didn’t have any land of their own; they were not given a tribal territory. Instead, God scattered the priests throughout Israel as a blessing to the whole people. And they were given these priestly cities in which they lived. There were 48 of them, and chapter 21 lists them. And then at the very end, there’s a summation, which says, “The towns of the Levites and the territory held by the Israelites were 48 in all, together with their pasture lands.”
This is where these cities of refuge came in. God appointed in the law that these six cities should be set up throughout the land, equally spaced, so whenever anything like this happened, a person who had unintentionally and accidentally killed another person would have a place to flee to. As soon as the accident happened, this man would get to one of these cities as fast as he could and upon arrival, stand in the gate. He was to present his case to the elders of the city, who were the Levitical priests, and explain what had happened. It says explicitly in these texts that if his case is just, they were to hear it. It was not a device by which a murderer could escape justice; but if his cause was just, if this really was an accidental killing, then they were not to turn him away.
Yesterday we talked about the first important thing from the creation of these cities of refuge, which was the great value on human life, rooted in God’s revealed law. The second thing about them is also quite interesting, and it’s based on what’s mentioned here in Joshua 20:9 about who was welcome to flee to those cities: “Any of the Israelites or any alien living among them who killed someone accidentally could flee to these designated cities.”
Now, let me say that there is an obligation upon us as Christian people who know the way to the refuge that is found in Jesus Christ to make that way plain. If I can use the imagery of these cities, we are to build roads so that people may get to Jesus Christ easily. We are to construct bridges over any chasms in their thinking or that our society might put in the way. We are to erect signs that point to Him. And what is more, we are to stand at the crossroads. We are to point people to Jesus, and we are to say, “Look, this is the way. There is safety. Flee to Him.”
A third parallel about these cities is that they were open to aliens as well as to Jews. It’s easy to apply that. The way to salvation—the way to life through Christ—is open to anyone. It’s open to you, no matter who you may be. You may say, “Well, I’m too old. I’ve lived a whole life and I’m now firmly fixed in my own pattern of behavior.” But why should you die and suffer in hell because of an earlier pattern of behavior? That pattern can be undone. The Apostle Paul was in a rigorous pattern of behavior, but the Lord Jesus Christ reached him on the road to Damascus and turned him around radically. Why shouldn’t He do the same for you?
We’re drawing quite near the end of our study of this great Old Testament book. It’s an appropriate time to look back over it a bit in terms of the outline and see how far we have come and how we have yet to go. Joshua falls into four main parts.
Now, we stand at the very end of the third portion, after all the land has been divided up among the tribes. In addition, in chapters 20 and 21 we find a portion that deals with the establishing of certain special cities. There were 48 cities throughout Israel that were given to the priests, who came from the tribe of Levi. One category of these cities, the cities of refuge, we looked at last week. There were six of these cities, strategically spread out around the country, to which a person who had unintentionally killed another person could flee for refuge lest the avenger of blood should overtake him in accordance with the customs of that period.
Now in chapter 21, we find out more about these Levitical cities. Six of the 48 cities were for refuge; but there were still the other 42 cities that were scattered all throughout the land. Joshua 21 spells it out in great detail city by city, telling us exactly where these cities of the Levites were. This involves a very interesting story. To understand why the cities of the Levites were so important and why they were such a blessing, not only to the people but to the Levites themselves, you have to go back to Genesis 34.
At the end of Genesis, in chapter 49, Jacob gives a great prophecy that concerns the future of each of his sons and the people who should come from them. And when he gets to Simeon and Levi, it is this incident from Genesis 34 that he remembers. Here are his words: “Simeon and Levi are brothers—their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel” (vv. 5-7a). You see, even all those many years after that event, the horror of it still stuck in Jacob’s mind. And then he pronounced this prophecy: “I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel” (v. 7b).
You see how important this is? When we talk about God’s judgment on sin, as we must if we’re faithful to the teaching of the Word of God, we stress that God cannot tolerate sin. And God will not tolerate sin in His people. Sometimes we can preach or talk about judgment as if God is almost anxious to pour it out when sins are committed. But it’s not the case. God is a gracious God. Even when God judges His people, as He will do if you persist in sin, none of us has ever received in full what we deserve. And God is always ready, if we draw close to Him, to transmute that judgment into blessing.
In this chapter, Joshua gives specific commands and a challenge to the 2½ eastern tribes who were going to dwell on the far side of the Jordan River. And the chapter contains an emotional parting and also an incident that grows out of that which is one of the most instructive incidents in the entire book.
Yesterday we saw the first two things Joshua tells the eastern tribes before going to their inheritance across the Jordan. There is a third item, as he says in chapter 22, verse 5, “But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave to you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to obey His commands, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul.”
But there’s something else. The war that looked like it was on the verge of starting did not begin at once. Rash people might have simply rushed to the Jordan and attacked the other people; but these Israelites didn’t do that. They were willing to fight for the Lord’s honor, but they were also willing to talk about the situation. So instead of just rushing off to the battle, they elected Phinehas, the son of Eliezer the priest, and ten of the chief men of Israel (one from each tribe) as a delegation. They dispatched this delegation to go down and meet with the others to see if it might not be possible to work to get some kind of peaceful resolution to this terrible error, as they assumed it to be.
The story has a happy ending. When this sort of thing happens in the church today, it doesn’t always have a happy ending, as we know. But it did in this situation. The tribes that had gone down to the Jordan explained what it was that they had done, and that the western tribes had simply misunderstood. First of all, those on the east were greatly shocked that what they had done could be interpreted that way. You have to pick that up from the language. When this great challenge to them was made, they responded by saying that God knows what their intentions were in building the altar, and they now want all Israel to know it too.
At the very end of this chapter, after the two bodies of people had parted, the Reubenites and the Gadites were standing there beside their memorial. And they called it “Witness,” because, as they said, “it is a witness between us that the Lord is God.” Isn’t it marvelous when we can look back on past history to things that have happened, and disputes we have had, and see the way in which it has been worked out according to Christian principles? Isn’t it wonderful to be able to say, “That’s a witness”? When things happen in that way, that’s a memorial. That’s a testimony to the fact that the Lord is God, and He is our God, and we follow Him.
Joshua was a great man and, as he came to the end of his life, he wanted to give a charge to the people. He wanted to say something they would remember and by which they could guide their actions in significant ways in the years that lay ahead.
God does great things for us, and God has done great things. Still we find ourselves drifting away from the memory of what God has done and so falling away from a following after God as we should do.
The second part of Joshua’s address is that on the basis of what God has done, you have present obligations. There are a couple of them. One obligation is the obligation of obedience. It’s what he talks about in verses 6 to 8: “Be very strong. Be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. Do not associate with these nations that remain among you. Do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them. But you are to hold fast to the Lord your God as you have until now.”
Yesterday we looked at the first obligation in response to God’s past actions. The second obligation of the people is in verse 11, where Joshua says, “So be very careful to love the Lord your God.” That hasn’t been emphasized much until now. The need for obedience has been there all along; but now Joshua is stressing, as he talks to them, that they really must love God. The clue to interpreting what Joshua means here in chapter 23 is the way he talks about love in chapter 22. It’s interesting that each of these chapters throws light on the other.
Well, we come to the last part of Joshua’s charge, and it’s in the form of a challenge. He challenges them not to drift along, but rather to make a choice for God. Perhaps it’s not as clear here at the end of chapter 23 as it’s going to become in chapter 24, where the very word, “choose” occurs: “Choose you this day whom you will serve,” says Joshua. But that’s still the idea here in chapter 23.
Now Joshua was not a preacher; he was a soldier and a great administrator. And yet, Joshua must have thought about the nature of preaching, because towards the end of his life this great general, whose campaigns and whose life we’ve been studying, became something of a preacher. I suppose the reason for this was his deep knowledge of human nature and his anticipation with some foreboding of what was likely to happen to the people after his departure, and perhaps also after the death of those who had lived with him through the great miracles and victories of the Canaanite campaign.
The point at which this sermon begins is with a reminder of what God had already done for the people in the past. Now that’s the pattern Joshua had used earlier in chapters 22 and 23. But here in chapter 24 we have the lengthiest rehearsal of all these great works of God on behalf of the people in past days. Joshua goes all the way back to Abraham, the father of the people, and even beyond Abraham, to Abraham’s father, Terah, and his grandfather, Nahor, when in those far distant days they worshipped other gods.
Paul wrote that no one does good and no one seeks after God. That’s the way God sees the human heart. And if, when God looks down from heaven upon the heart of man, all He sees is that the heart of man is only deceitful and practicing wicked all the time from His perspective, how could God possibly find a little bit of human faith upon which to build unless He Himself had first put it there? This, of course, is what He did in the case of Abraham.
Joshua’s challenge to them is to choose God. I mentioned when we were talking about Joshua 22 and 23 that this has been his challenge all along. “You must make a decision,” he’s saying. “You must choose to serve God.” For the first time here in chapter 24, the word “choose” occurs: “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether it’s the gods your forefathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (v. 15).
Those were Israel’s three choices if they did not want to worship the Lord. Joshua says, “Make your choice. You’ve got the gods of Egypt, the gods of Babylon, the gods of Canaan, or the God of Israel. What will it be? You have to choose. You have to go on choosing. But as for me and my house, we are going to choose God.” Now the people made their choice, which seemed easy. After all, God had given them the land. Why shouldn’t they worship God? That’s the way they reply in verses 16-18: “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our forefathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.”
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