Joshua, Exit Moses Enter Joshua

Jimmy Draper discusses the book of Joshua and its focus on the land promised to Israel by God. He explains that the book highlights God's faithfulness in keeping his promises and recounts various miracles and conquests that took place during the possession of the land. The speaker emphasizes the importance of remembering God's promises and the comfort it brings in difficult times. The transcription also mentions the role of Moses in the book and introduces Joshua as his successor. Eddie, you never have to apologize for what you don't say. Eddie, it's a good one. Yeah, but some of us, and I'm one of us, talk sometimes about thinking. And it's gotten me in more than a little bit of trouble over the years. But the older we get, the more we need to think hard before we say anything. Jim, where'd Jim go? Back there. Jim's brother, Jim, I was thinking about Jim. Jim's brother, Jim, died. Yeah, what's your name? I get them all mixed up, twin brothers and everything. But, Carol & I went back there with Jim, Jim's brother, who passed away this past year. And we're glad you're back. Glad you're with your grandkids and folks up in Kentucky, but always glad to have you home. Well, we're starting off in the book of Joshua today. It's going to be a new experience for me, because I've always just gone verse by verse. And suddenly we're in a book where we're going to have to probably go event by event, which will be a new experience for me. So I'm going to kick us off this morning, and Brother Jack will pick up with verse 1 next week. And we'll look at an overview of it. Let's just have a little review, see how much y'all have listened over the years. What do they call the first five books of Genesis? Pentateuch. Pentateuch, that's one. There's three names. What's another one? The Torah. What's another one? Books of Moses. So all three names are used frequently throughout people who study those books. And it's good for us to remember. Pentateuch, what we call today, Brother Jack? I'm doing Passover next week. Speak loud, I can't hear you. I'm doing Passover next week. Okay, don't worry. Jack's reminding me that he's doing Passover next week. And that'll be good. And we don't meet on Easter, so we'll be back at the end of the chapters after Easter. But anyway, we're going to try to dive into the book of Joshua, which is a strange book in a lot of ways. Joshua is not the main focus of the book, nor did he write the book. Nobody's quoted in the book, but the book of Joshua is named after Joshua. But the focus of the book of Joshua is on the greatness of God and the fact that he keeps his promises. Now, we'll talk a little bit about this later. When God called Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, the first thing he said was, I'm going to take you to a land, to a land. In chapter 15, when he made his covenant with Abraham, the very first thing he said was, I'm going to give you a land. So it reminds us, to the Jewish people, the land is everything. The most common phrase that you will hear all the time in Israel is, Eretz Israel, the land of Israel. Everything happens in the land. That was promised to Abraham when he was called. It was promised in the first covenant. The great thing in Joshua that we see toward the end of the book is that the Israelis, the Jewish people, reaffirmed and renewed their covenant with God at the very end of the book of Joshua. So the land is more than just giving people a piece of property. This is something God gave to Israel. I won't get into all the furor that's going on about whether the Jews belong in the land or whether the Arabs belong in the land. The truth is the Jews were there a thousand years before the Arabs ever showed up. So you can't go back on the basis of history and say it belongs to the Arabs. Nor can you go back to 1947 when Israel became a nation and the United Nations resolution to create the state of Israel actually was a two-state resolution. The resolution stated that there would be a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. The Arabs refused it. They turned it down. They didn't want it. So they gave it to Israel and because of the preciousness and because of the promise of the covenant of God, when the Jews got there, they took it all. The United Nations says divide it. The Arabs said no. Now they're wanting to have a Palestinian state. It's kind of interesting. But whether you go back to when Israel was formed and how they did not accept the two-state conditions of the United Nations proposition, the resolution, or back to the time where God said he gives the land to Israel, they really have no standing, biblically or historically, for the Arabs to say this is our land. They had an opportunity to have a state of Palestine and they turned it down. You never hear anybody mention that. This book of Joshua focuses largely on the land that God promised to give them and the whole story that we face in Joshua is not only the promise of the land but the possession of the land. So the whole book of Joshua is dealing with that journey. It's a historical book. It has incredible things that happened there, great moments in the book. There was an espionage spy trip with the twelve spies that went in. If you have a Bible with maps in it, you might have a map that says the map of the spies. If you'll notice, they went all the way to the north, all the way up to Lebanon and all the way back down. They really did a thorough job in that spy trip and that's where we first noticed Joshua because ten of the people who went on the trip said there are walled cities, we can't handle them. They have armies and we have walled cities to face and we don't have any of that, we can't do it. Of course Joshua and Caleb were the minority and they managed to give a minority report and said yes we can. Why do you think we can? We don't have any army, we're not a warlike people and the reason was that God had promised it. So if God promised it, it's ours to go and take. So it doesn't say so much about Israel defeating the enemies, but in each instance it was a miraculous move of God that made the whole possession of the land and the journey possible. In this we have the miraculous crossing of the Jordan River. It says it was a flood stage which means that it was hundreds of yards wide and roaring waters and they still crossed a miraculous crossing. In fact, the book of Exodus says at the last verse of the chapter that it's in, that they crossed over on dry land. Imagine that. Raging, roaring, flooded river, wide, impossible. God said I'll take care of that. Stopped it. Not only did he stop the water, he dried up the ground. They crossed on dry land. Miracle after miracle took place. You have the conquest of Jericho. What a strange battle plan. March around the city for seven days. In the last days you light the candle, blow the trumpet and break the lamps or whatever and shout and lo and behold the whole thing fell down. Miracle. Miracle of God. And we meet Rahab the harlot, the prostitute. Oh, by the way, in Hebrews 11, verse 31, she made the hall of faith. In Hebrews 11. Because she was faithful to hide the spies and we know she was saved or she wouldn't be in there with all the other heroes of our faith. But she's there. A miracle of God which is what every new birth is. Every perfection of faith is a miracle of God. We can't do it. God does it. We get over it sometimes. But what a miracle for just the very presence of Rahab the harlot. Oh, and by the way, remember the sun standing still? Sun standing still in chapter 10? Miracle. Many victories were won as Israel possessed the land. God led them all the way and God is the focal point of it. God gets the glory for all these conquests. Great strategy militarily. When the Israelites crossed the Jordan and went into the land, they cut right across the middle, divided north and south, then they turned south and conquered the south, and then they came back and conquered the north. I mean, it was a systematic military victory that God had to give them. They had no manpower, no intelligence reports, anything. God just did a miraculous conquest of the land. And then when they got in the land, they divided the land up. And you have the record of the division of the land where all the tribes ended up. And coming into chapter 24, then the renewal of the covenant that God had given with Abraham. It's an exciting adventure of books. It's a battlefield book, but it's a battlefield that God directed. God's victory always came not because of Israel's intelligence or strength or might, but because of God's faithfulness to his promises. It would be good for us to keep in mind that our God is a promise-keeping God. God promises something, he's going to do it. Now, sometimes the road gets rough. I have two pastor friends, both of whom are retired, whose wives are dying of cancer right now. One within days, probably. There will be rough spots along the way. But God has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. That was the promise that he made to Abraham, and that's the promise he makes to us. We will never go through anything God allows in our lives that he doesn't go through it with us. And though we cannot understand it, and though it's often mysterious, we know it's going to happen because God promised it. He's going to be with us through every step of life. Oh, and by the way, the truth is, none of us could get through this life by ourselves. I mean, there's not a... You know, every time I hear some tragedy, it seems like it's every day that we get news, I think, how could you face that if you didn't have the promises of God? How could you face the things that we face without knowing that God's faithful and he's going to be with us? I'll give you a lot of illustrations of that, but then I need to think before I speak, so I won't do that right now. But God doesn't waste any time. Let's just look at the first chapter here of Joshua. And God doesn't waste any time. He's not gentle about this. He's not trying to soft-pedal this. He just starts off in verse 2. Moses, my servant, is dead. That's pretty blunt, isn't it? Didn't sound like good bedside manners, did it? But he launches right into it. And he introduces Joshua, but there's also Moses. He mentions Moses 57 times in this book. And 14 of those times, he's called the servant of the Lord. So, I mean, Moses is bigger than life. I mean, he was an 800-pound gorilla. I mean, Moses was something else. No one like Moses has ever appeared again. Deuteronomy closes, we read of Moses as the leader of God's people, and then he introduces the new leader of Israel in Joshua in chapters 34. At the age of 120, Moses died. The Israelites wept for Moses, according to the scripture, for 30 days. They had a 30-day mourning period. By the way, there's still a practice in Israel today about what you do when your spouse dies. Back in 1983, I led a group of Jewish rabbis and Baptist preachers. Bailey Smith had done that in 82. You know, sometimes you say things, speaking and saying things about thinking. Bailey was famous for that. I was listening to him as he preached a message at the Southern Baptist Convention that year, and he just said, God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews. That's what I did. I said, oh, my goodness, he's going to live to regret that. Well, sure enough, oh, my goodness, the press ate him up as did everybody. It turned out to be a pretty good thing because it opened up a lot of communications with the Jews. So he led a group of Jewish rabbis. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League asked Bailey to bring some Baptist preachers and some Jewish rabbis to Israel. I had to pay for all of it, but they arranged the trip. We had ten days in Israel at the government's expense. We were to meet with the various leaders. I met with four or five men who either were at that time or since then had been prime ministers of Israel. I was due to meet with Prime Minister Begin, but I was going to meet him in L.A. I was flying. I already had my ticket and bags packed. I was leaving next morning to go to L.A. to meet with Prime Minister Begin, and I get this call that his wife had died. So for two months he went into seclusion. That was in November of 1983. When we got to Israel with that group of rabbis and Baptist pastors, we were the first group he met with since his wife had died. It had been through a period of mourning. The Jews practiced some things that we slide by pretty easily. We don't get over things, but we don't string it out with any specific instructions like the Jews do. I was scheduled to meet him here. What happened as soon as he got the word, they got on his plane and took him home. We did get to meet him there later, but he was the first one. It came after a period of mourning. Scripture says that the Israelites mourned for Moses for 30 days. Weeping and mourning for Moses came to an end. This is what Deuteronomy 34 says. Joshua, son of Nun, was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him as the Lord commanded Moses. No prophet has arisen again in Israel like Moses, who knew the Lord face to face. He was unparalleled for all the signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do against the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all his land, and for all the mighty acts of power and terrifying deeds that Moses performed in the sight of Israel. Moses was gone, but he was not forgotten. Scripture says that at the time that it was recorded that there was never someone that arose in Israel again like Moses, Joshua is introduced, and his original name was Hoshea, which means salvation. But Moses gave him a new name, Joshua. That name is actually in the language that it was used, Eashus, which is the New Testament name for Jesus. So even in Joshua's coming here introduced by Moses to take the lead of Israel, you have the anticipation of the coming of the Messiah. As Moses neared death, Joshua went with him, according to Deuteronomy 31, to the tent of meeting to meet with God. While they were there, God assured Joshua that he would be with him as he brought the Israelites into the land, Deuteronomy 31.23. Joshua was to lead the Israelites on the actual journey into the possession of the land. The book of Joshua is not a biography of Joshua. It gives us many insights into this remarkable man, but God took many years and events to get Joshua ready to take the place of Moses. There were events that Joshua had to experience to prepare him for that. He was born into slavery. He understood and experienced much of the suffering that took place in Egypt. The cry for deliverance that we read about in Exodus described the kind of life that the Israelites suffered under. Verses 7 and 8 of Exodus 3 says, Then the Lord said, I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land flowing with milk and honey. Joshua lived in the middle of that. So he knew the suffering of the people. He was born a slave. He was trained and skilled as a soldier. He became Moses' right-hand man. In Exodus 24, I think it refers to him as Moses' minister. He ministered to Moses. So he was his servant, his minister. And in that role, he went through everything that happened under Moses' leadership. Joshua had experienced it. He was with Moses in it. And when he got his merit badge, Joshua was thrust up against the Amalekites and it riveted him. And that was his first victory. God gave him that victory, and it was good background and good place. He submitted to the authority of Moses and became a skilled military commander. And during the first part of his life, he obeyed Moses. In the last years of his life, he obeyed God himself. And the report of Joshua's obedience to God's command to Moses was passed on to Joshua. And Joshua 11 says, Just as the Lord had commanded his servant Moses, Moses commanded Joshua. That is what Joshua did, leaving nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses. So as Joshua completed God's assignment, he led the people to the promised land. He died at the age of 110, and they buried him in the land. They buried him at Timnath Sarah in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaiash. Now, I wanted to mention that just to pronounce it. G-A-A-S-H. Strange things about languages. It's not evident in English. We don't separate vowels. For instance, Swahili, which we ran into in Kenya and in East Africa, every vowel has a distinct sound. So if you have two or three vowels stuck together, each of those vowels will get the sound. And apparently Hebrew is something like that, because when they decided that it has no vowels in the original language, it just has consonants. And so when it was translated to where we could understand it, they spelled it with two A's. And I looked it up. I have a little book called That's Easy for You to Say. And one of our wonderful employees at Lifeway, before I got there, had written that book, and he took every proper name in the Bible and showed you phonetically how to pronounce it. Now, some of you don't know what I mean by phonetically. Carol Ann never was taught phonetically. I was taught to read by phonics, and it's much easier, because you can pronounce something and it gives you an idea of how to spell it. But phonetically, G-A-A-S-H is Gerash. And so that's where it is mentioned that Joshua was buried somewhere north of Mount Gerash. The interesting thing is that Israel obeyed the commands of the Lord throughout Joshua's lifetime and during the lifetime of the elders who outlived Joshua and who had experienced all the works that God had done for Israel. Deuteronomy 24, again, tells us that in verses 29 to 31. Now, both Moses and Joshua were called the Lord's servants. Now, we'll find descriptions of Joshua's leadership in the book, but we know that he was a man who lived in constant sense with the very presence of God. He was someone who knew God well, and God knew him well. God communicated his will to Joshua, and Joshua obeyed him. It's like I've told you before, before Carol Ann and I married, long story, and I won't go into that, but we prayed a prayer together that if anything happens to one of us, the other one would keep serving the Lord. We'll say yes, our answer is yes to whatever you want us to do. Our answer is yes for now and the rest of our lives. And I can tell you that I don't think we ever made a mistake about where we served because every place we served, we had the confidence and assurance that God had said go. And if God said go, then we had to go. Now, this is what Joshua did. Joshua, just whatever God said, Joshua did that. And it's interesting that four times, four times in the early part of Joshua, he tells Joshua to be strong and courageous. A good leader needs to have a lot of good strength and to be courageous, so you're going to face a lot of challenges. But Joshua had courage and he did his job and the Lord gave many victories to this gifted soldier. And God's plan that he revealed to Joshua was given with persistent instructions. And whether it was God told him specifically to divide the southern part of the land from the northern part and then move methodically through the south and to the north, God specifically told him to do that. Joshua, under God's instructions, led Israel to conquer the main cities of the land first, conquer the cities and then take control of the land. Several times God told him to have his troops march in all-night marches to surprise the enemy. God told him to do that. So God again is the focal point of Joshua. It is clear that the conquest of Canaan was not the work of one man. It was not even the names of the soldiers who marched that we don't have a name for. He would have failed without them. But he would especially have failed if he had not been obedient to God. And his obedience to God brought the Lord into the battle. And the people of Israel marched with Joshua because they trusted him and they trusted his unquestioned integrity. And Joshua had learned that all his success was because of the Lord. When the people crossed the Jordan River, chapter 3, verse 10, Joshua gave glory to God for the miraculous crossing of Jordan. When the crossing was complete, Joshua erected a monument and said, according to 424, This is so that the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord's hand is mighty, and so that you may always fear the Lord your God. Joshua fully understood the importance of giving God the glory. He claimed nothing for his own strength and skills because he knew that success was due to the power of God. Now, take a pause. We are seeing evidence in many ways today of what happens when successful leaders take credit themselves. It could be that the numerous instances of leading ministers in the Christian world have fallen into sin and been discredited and removed from their responsibilities because perhaps they took credit for what God did. We had a good run here for 16 years, but I could not in any way take credit for that. But I can tell you what happened. I can tell you a few months after we arrived, we always had a prayer room here that was not organized. We decided we were going to organize an intercessory prayer ministry. We had Ron Dunn, who was at that time pastored over in Irving at MacArthur Boulevard, come, and we had an evening meeting. I don't remember whether it was on a Wednesday night or a Sunday night or when, and we were going to kick off the intercessory prayer ministry. We had a little room that doesn't exist anymore on the north end of our buildings that had an opening into a hallway and an outside door. It was a small room, maybe about eight feet wide and ten feet long. We had a kneeling bench in it, and we had a telephone in it that could be used in case of emergencies. We had rolodex of prayers and answers to prayers in that little room, so we wanted to ask ourselves to come to the prayer room and to pray 24 hours a day, every day. We were going to kick that off and get the intercessions lined up that night. The weather was horrendous. Once we got in the building, it poured down rain in a strong, stormy way. Leaks were everywhere in that old building that we tore down. I mean, the water flowed freely. Ron Dunn preached, and he just kept preaching through the storm, and the service went on and on, and I think, now this is just my idea, I think God sent the storm so we couldn't leave until we had all the hours filled. Because by the time he got through and all the hours had been accounted for, every hour of the week had somebody come into the prayer room to pray. Now, I'd like to tell you that continued seven days a week, all night long. It did not, but most of the hours were covered for a number of years. I have no doubt. I mean, we had double-digit growth in everything for ten years. We doubled finances every year. We doubled attendance every year. We doubled baptisms every year. We had double-digit growth. In fact, while I was president of the Southern Baptist Convention, we had 2,500 additions, and I wasn't here very much. I was gone most of the weeks, rarely missed a Sunday, but I was gone. Dr. Bell took over Wednesday nights, which is probably the best thing that I did in a long time. A wonderful friend and Bible teacher. But I wasn't there. I can take credit for that. God did it because our people prayed, and that's why prayer is such an important part of what we do. I've told you that when I had meningitis about 15 years ago, one pastor wrote to me and said, How can I do less for you than pray? And I hadn't really thought about that, but what he was saying was, the most important thing you can do is pray. Well, our church believed that. I believe this church is a living testimony, especially in those early years, to the movement of God. God just did things that we couldn't have manipulated, that we couldn't have done it ourselves. God did it. Joshua learned early and never forgot that the success did not depend upon him, but it depended upon God. Oh, and by the way, your walk with God doesn't just depend upon you doing certain things that you ought to be doing and praying and reading the Bible and all that. It depends upon the presence of God in your life. None of us are smart enough, brave enough, courageous enough to face this world by ourselves. There's too much that will knock us to our knees or on our backs in life in just the normal living of a lifetime. God's always there, and whatever God allows into our lives, he says, I'll never leave you or forsake you. You may not like it, but you can know he's going to be there when you fail or when you go through the valley or when you experience the enemy. It's not a pleasant time, but God says you'll never be in it by yourself. You never carry a burden that he's not carrying with you. You never face a challenge that he's not right there with you. Everything in life, God is there with us, and Joshua is teaching us that. We're going to see this throughout this book. Joshua is teaching that whatever we need, whatever the circumstances, God is still with us. Joshua learned that all his success was because of the Lord, and he gave glory to the God. Now, he was strong and he was courageous, but he was not perfect. Isn't that good news? I'm not talking about a perfect guy. In fact, he made mistakes. He dealt with those mistakes by admitting them and seeking the Lord's guidance, but he kept on obeying God. The first thing my dad said when I was called to my first church was this. He said, Son, you're not going to always be right. But he said, It's okay. Just admit that you were wrong. Promise never to let it happen again, and you'll be all right. He said, What are they going to do to you after you admit it? They already knew it. If you admit it, what are they going to do to you? Seriously, that's what Joshua did. He admitted it to God, and he kept on obeying God. And that's what we're all to do. What do you do when faced with an obstacle you don't know what to do with? What do you do when the mountain is so high you can't climb it, and the sea is so deep you can't plummet? What do you do at those times? You just keep on obeying God, because he's promised to be there with you, and that's the safest place to be. Oh, and if you don't make it, like Karen Watson, missionary over in Iraq, our Southern Baptist missionary. We had them not far from Moshi in Iraq. We had five missionaries. A car was riddled with bullets, and all but one of them was killed. Karen was one of those. Her pastor was one of my trustees at LifeWay, and he called and said, talk to me about doing her funeral. Him. He said, I just need some counsel. Well, I had read the letter. She left a letter with her pastor when she went on that mission trip and assignment. Sealed letter to be opened upon my death. I wish I had thought to bring a copy of the letter, but it was a remarkable letter of faith, no regrets. I know God's will has been accomplished. You see, the good news is, Satan can't defeat us. He can make life miserable for us, but if he kills us, to die is gain. I mean, we're in a win-win situation. To live is Christ, to die is gain. I mean, it's better. Why is it better? Because we're with him. We're with him. Now, I'm going to give you my opinion that's loosely held at this point. I have some things that are permanent. I know they're not. I think heaven's going to be right here. Can you think of a more beautiful place than this earth if it didn't have any sin, if it didn't have any evil, if it didn't have any violence, if there were no wars, if no one ever had a squabble that ended poorly? I believe that when the new Jerusalem comes down, it is coming down, and it's going to land here. It's going to be about the size of Los Angeles to New York, cubed. Rattle that around in your head just a little bit. I think God's just going to remove everything that's evil, everything that's threatening, everything that's harmful, and heaven will be right here. Wouldn't it be a beautiful place? Just think. I remember when we first went to Israel. I remembered the thrill of topping the hill just south, just north maybe, over the Sea of Galilee. The beauty of it was absolutely breathtaking. I remember going to Hawaii one time, and we were on the island of Kauai, and they had there what they called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. Unbelievable beauty. The road dead ends at the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and then the valley goes back from there. Beautiful thing. Just think of what would happen if God had a chance to recreate it again. Just what heaven's going to be. Well, just a thought. Don't hold me to that, but when we find out differently, we'll still be happy. So that's all right. So he was strong and courageous, but he just kept on a bit. When he lost the battle at Ai. Now Ai, let me give you a second. Ai, let's think of Dallas-Fort Worth. It's way too big for this to be a good comparison. But Ai was just a little hole in the road just outside of the city where they were living. I mean, it would be like Crum. Do you all know where Crum is? Yeah. Just north of Denton. It's just really a wide hole. Iredale. I pastored Iredale. I mean, just 300-some odd people live there. If Dallas-Fort Worth marshaled all their armies and all their patrols and police and attacked Crum or Iredale and got whipped, that's what happened at Ai. I mean, Ai was a pushover. They weren't going to stand in. I mean, after all, they had just conquered the whole land, but they got defeated. Well, you know the reason, and this is a good lesson too. This is the kind of lessons that we'll think about through this. God had told them, don't you take any of the spores. Don't take any of the, don't plunder the land. And wherever you go, don't take things that would be memories of the battle and the victory. But one of the soldiers named Akin kept something that was not supposed to be kept. Nobody knew it but him and God. And the next time they went out, they were facing Ai, and Ai whipped them up. And God said, until you take care of the sin that was committed and disobedience, you're not going to succeed. A mistake. It wasn't Joshua's, but it was his people. He later made some foolish covenants with pagan nations. That was a mistake. But he knew his mistakes, and he needed the wisdom of God, and he moved forward with God's guidance. He made an agreement with the Gibeonites and took it to the Lord and followed the Lord's directions, and he learned from his mistakes. By the way, we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. I just think about it. When I was in Jacksonville as a boy, I had a Sunday school teacher named Robert Huttash. Now, he was an outstanding Christian layman, had a couple of boys that the Lord had provided him. And he told us one day how he taught them not to touch a hot stove. He said what he did, he took the boy's hand, stuck it on the hot stove and said, hot! He said the boys never touched the hot stove again. We learn from the things that are not pleasant, from our mistakes, from the pain we face. All of those things are helping us if we'll pay attention, if we'll pay attention and then be obedient. That's what Joshua did. The whole book is really, God's the hero of the book. He is the one whose overriding presence and power is what takes place in the events. And the land itself now is really the focus under the power of God. Caroline and I had an Easter Seder meal with the head of the Jewish Defamation League in Dallas named Mark Briskeman. He had helped plan the trip that I took with the Jewish rabbis and pastors and he wanted us to have the Seder meal with them. In the Jewish Seder, when the meal is over, the leader of the household will say, next year in Jerusalem, next year in Jerusalem. And if you want to know the most common sign you will probably see in Israel, in key places, is Eretz Israel, the land of Israel. I mean, this is a big deal to the Jews. The land. Everything that happened to God's people happened in the land. And so it's very much this journey to the promised land is an incredible time because God chose the land to be where the redemption of mankind would be revealed. And the promise of God to send a Savior into the world occurred in the land. God chose the tribe of Judah and the family of David to provide a Savior. They resided in the land. The Savior was born in Bethlehem. That was in the land. He would be born of a virgin in Bethlehem in the land. One day he would die on a cross in Jerusalem and pay the penalty for our sins, and that was in the land. The drama of redemption was born in the land, and that's what Joshua is talking to us about. Now I have a problem. I'm not near through. So Jack, let's push back one week. Let me do next Sunday. Does that mess up what we talked about, the things you have? I know we moved some things. Could I have next week? Or you could finish up this. I mean, you have more material than I do on the introduction. Why don't you finish the introduction to Joshua and then go on into the book, the first chapter? That's a better solution. Okay. All right. So we're just checking signals here. I have to do that every once in a while. So Joshua led the people with excellence, and they served the Lord under his leadership, and the Israelites renewed the covenant. Joshua is mentioned twice in the New Testament in Acts and Hebrews. He died at the age of 110 and was buried in the land, Joshua 19 and 24. He served the people well. Under his leadership, the people served the Lord. Now I can take a couple of minutes. The book does not claim an author. We do not know who wrote the book. We don't know when it was written. We don't have any details about that. But we do know that it was written to show the possession of the land, the journey of Israel to possess the promised land. And so Joshua is closely related to Deuteronomy. The Pentateuch, especially Deuteronomy, looked forward to the promised land that was promised to Israel. Joshua takes us there. Under Joshua, they realized that they had possessed the land. And the book of Joshua has a lot to do not only with the history of Israel, but with our own lives. The book of Joshua records battles, defeats, sins, and failures, none of which will be present in heaven. And so the book illustrates how believers today can say goodbye to an old life and enter into the rich inheritance which is ours in Christ Jesus. By the way, and I'll stop with this. Warren Wiersbe, I love reading Warren Wiersbe now. I didn't like to read him when I was a pastor because he's so much like me. If I read him, I'll preach him. And so I wasn't going to parrot any of his sermons. But in his little commentary called, Be Strong, on... Mike went off? Well, he's trying to tell me I'm over time. So anyway, he said, in our day, we talked about crossing the Jordan and entering Canaan as if that represents death. But he said, Canaan is not heaven. So they battled and fought and failed. And none of that is going to be present in heaven. So you can't call heaven and crossing the Jordan Canaan because it doesn't fit. So I agree with him but never had thought about it before. But we're going to get them into the promised land. But the focal point of this book is on God Himself. And that will always be our focal point. Never expect perfection from people you respect because they will disappoint you. Not a one of us could stand to try to live up to the press clippings that we may have in our lives. It all depends upon... No, I'm through. Yeah, I'm through. You've still got to say a closing prayer. Well, I want to be able to hear it. Well, we've got six minutes till 11. Keep on going. So anyway, next week we'll start here. Yes, sir, Omer? I can't hear you. Was the Garden of Eden like heaven? Probably, yeah. Yeah, it was perfect. And still they rebelled. That's why at the end of the millennium there's still going to be a judgment because the people will choose to rebel again. We are incurably rebellious. All right, thank you for your patience. Lord, thank you for your love for us. Thank you that you have a plan for our lives. Thank you that it's too big for us, too hard for us, too difficult for us. We can't do it, but you can through us. So we claim your presence and thank you for your promises in Jesus' name. Amen.