Covenant Renewal

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Would you meet me at Joshua chapter 24? Joshua chapter 24. We're at the last two sermons in our series of Joshua. Congratulations, you have made it a long, long way. Joshua chapter 24. And we'll be looking at the first 28 verses of this chapter. Joshua chapter 24, the first 28 verses. Brothers and sisters, this is the word of the living God. Let's pay careful attention to it.

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God. And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says Jehovah, God of Israel, your fathers, including Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, dwelt on the other side of the river in old times, and they served other gods.

I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his descendants and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Seir to possess. But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. Also, I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt according to what I did among them.

Afterward, I brought you out. Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea. And the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. So they cried out to Jehovah, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them and covered them, and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. Then you dwelt in the wilderness a long time. And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, and they fought with you.

But I gave them into your hand, that you might possess their land. And I destroyed them from before you. Then Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose to make war against Israel, and sent and called Balaam, the son of Beor, to curse you. But I would not listen to Balaam. Therefore he continued to bless you. So I delivered you out of his hand.

Then you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the men of Jericho fought against you, also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, but I delivered them into your hand. I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out from before you, also two kings of the Amorites, but not with your sword or with your bow. I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwelt in them. You eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.

Now, therefore, fear the Lord. Serve Him in sincerity and truth. And put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites and whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. For He is our God. So the people answered and said, Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. For the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. who did those great signs in our sights and preserved us in all the way that we went and among all the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites who dwell in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.

But Joshua said to the people, You cannot serve Jehovah, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. For if you forsake Yahweh and serve foreign gods, that He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done you good.

And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve Yehovah. So Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen Jehovah for yourselves to serve him. And they said to him, we are witnesses. Now, therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you and incline your hearts to Yahweh, God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, Jehovah, our God, we will serve and his voice we will obey.

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. Then Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Jehovah. And Joshua said to the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness to us For it has heard the words of Yahweh which he spoke to us. It shall therefore be a witness to you, lest you deny your God. So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray now that your Holy Spirit might wield your sword. For it is sharper than any two-edged sword, and we pray that it would pierce even joint and marrow, soul and spirit, that you would discern our hearts and give us wisdom and insight this morning. God, give me words to speak, and may you be glorified. In Jesus' name, amen.

Sermon

One of my favorite things of all times is weddings. And it's not because of the cake, though I do love wedding cake. But weddings are this beautiful picture that God gives of how He interacts with His people. This is why He calls the church in Ephesians chapter 5 His bride. This is why the picture that we have is that we are going to the wedding feast of the Lamb. And weddings are this beautiful picture of a bride and a groom being married. The groom in this picture is Christ and the bride is His church. And this is the picture that we see all throughout scripture, that God is the husband and his people are his bride.

And when you come into a marriage covenant with someone, there's an exclusivity, isn't it? Right? When you come into a marriage, you promise to love and to keep, through better or for worse, through richer or poorer, through sickness and in health, in the good times and in the bad. Now, when you make that promise, everything's going good, isn't it? For most people, your wedding day is like one of the best days of your life. Everything is going well, at least you hope so, right?

And weddings can have all sorts of crazy things happen. But you make those promises with resolve that even when the things aren't going well, you're not holding back from your spouse. You're not saying, well, maybe if things go bad, I'll go find someone else.

And this is what the Lord is showing us here. He is his people's God. And they are his people. And this is an exclusive relationship. There's no open marriage here. Go read the book of Hosea if you want to see what happens with the people then. But this is this beautiful picture that God is giving them here. Joshua is about to die. That's the next sermon. And this is the This is a renewing of their vows to the Lord. A covenant renewal that happens at Shechem.

And so as a table of contents for you, where the text is going to take us this morning, is we're going to see in the first 13 verses that there is a covenant history that God gives to His people. And then in verses 14 through 24, we find this covenant ceremony actually happening. And then in verses 25 through 28, we're going to see that there's a sign of the covenant that's given. So first, what's this covenant history that happens in verses 1 through 14?

Well, if you look at verses 1 through 5, this is going all the way from the patriarchs, from Abraham, all the way to Egypt. These first five verses are when he's saying that he called Abraham from the other side of the river. He's saying, when Abraham lived in the land of Ur, of the Chaldeans, on the other side of the Euphrates River, by my grace, I called him.

I brought him to myself. I brought him throughout the land of Canaan, and I made promises to him. I brought him into covenant with myself, and I promised him the land, and I promised him a people. And I kept my promise. I gave him Isaac, and I gave him Jacob. I gave Isaac, Jacob, and Esau.

And the people were multiplied. There were so many of them that when they went down into Egypt, there was over 70. And there in Egypt, God was still faithful to them. He continued to multiply them. He continued to keep them safe. He continued to watch over them. And when things began to go drastically wrong, and they remembered their God and cried out, God still remembered them.

In verses 6 and 7, the history is given of their exodus out of Egypt, and their time in the wilderness. He gave them Moses and Aaron in verse 5, and He brings their minds to that point when they were at the edge of the Red Sea. when he had brought the 10 plagues, the Passover had happened, all the firstborn of the Egyptians were dead, they make their way to the edge of the Red Sea, and there are chariots horsemen, there are Pharaoh's armed men coming to battle them, and they cry out to God, and what does the Lord do? He opens the Red Sea for them. They cross through on dry ground, and the Lord covers over the Egyptians. He kills the Egyptians.

God was faithful to his covenant. And then I love the understatement of verse 7. Your eyes saw what I did in Egypt. Then you dwelt in the wilderness for a long time. Just one sentence about their time in the wilderness. That's all we get. There's multiple stories in the Pentateuch about their time in the wilderness, but they were there for a long time.

The point is that whole time, God was faithful to them, though they weren't always faithful to Him. Notice He doesn't bring up the golden calf. He doesn't bring up them being tricked into marrying Moabite women. He doesn't bring up the killing of Korah's sons. He says He was with them.

They were there for a long time. And then in verses 8 through 10, he shows his covenant faithfulness continued even when they came into the land of Moab. What happened? When they came into the Amorite territory as they were there, the kings tried to hire Balaam, that witch doctor, to come and to call curses down upon God's people. And God said, nope, wouldn't let him. The entire time he was trying to call down curses, I said, no, you're going to bless them. And out of Balaam's mouth comes blessings instead of curses. Why? Because God was in covenant with his people and nobody was going to turn his heart away from his people.

And so he gave them the land of Bashan. And he gave them the land of the Amorites. And then in verse 11 through 13, he continues to show his faithfulness, not just in Egypt, not just on the other side of the Jordan River, but even when they came into the Promised Land, even as they crossed over the Jordan River on dry ground, who was fighting for them when they came to Jericho? It was the Lord. It was the Lord who was fighting for them. when they came against Jericho. But it wasn't just against Jericho.

It lists the different enemies they'd come against. The Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Notice the last words of verse 11. What does their covenant king do for them? But I delivered them into your hand. No matter what foe they came against, their king was with them. No matter who they were fighting against, their Lord was for them. And this was not just an accident, but it was purposeful. Verse 12, God is actively involved in this.

He sends swarms of hornets in front of them. Joshua might be a wonderful commander. Caleb might be an awesome general being able to fight an entire town of giants by himself, but none of them can command armies of hornets. It's the God of creation who drives out the inhabitants before them. This is why he says at the end of verse 12, but not with your sword or your bow. God has been a gracious covenant keeping God. That's why he says in verse 13, they're eating from orchards they didn't plant. They're living in houses they didn't build. They didn't have to go out and till the field and plant the seeds. They arrived at harvest and it was ready for them to reap.

God had been faithful to them the entire time. And so this is a history. The first 13 verses are nothing but a history of God's faithfulness to His people. And so what should be the consequence of that? They should serve their God. And this is where the heart of the covenant ceremony happens. Verse 14, now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth.

This word for sincerity, I would actually rather translate it, serve Him with integrity and in truth. I remember when I was in the Navy, I heard different words that the drill instructors were always trying to teach us, you know, honor, courage, and devotion, integrity, you know, words like that. And this one always stuck with me. They said, do you know what integrity is? You need to be men of integrity.

And that means who you are when no one else is watching you. Who are you behind closed doors? Who are you in front of your children? Who are you when you're all by yourself? Who are you alone? Will you serve Him? When you wake up in the wee hours of the morning and nobody else is around, is your heart devoted to the Lord? When it's late at night and everybody else is asleep, what has your mind stayed on? Do you serve Him? with integrity and with truth. Are you a hypocrite?

Or do the things that come out of your mouth when you say you love the Lord, when you say that you're a Christian, is that true? Do you really fear the Lord? It's one of the difficult things for elders, right? We have to examine people, whether we think that they have a credible profession of faith, but at the end of the day, you fearing the Lord is only something that you and your soul know.

So Joshua is calling them here to fear the Lord, to serve Him with integrity and with truth. And what does that mean? It means being honest. It's either the Lord or someone else. God doesn't share His glory with any other. He will not allow you to have a side hustle on the side. No. This is why verse 14 says, Serve him in sincerity and in truth and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord.

Joshua is an old man and he's been around the block. He knows what's going on in their houses. He knew that Abraham was called out of a pagan land. And it was going to be hard for him to serve the Lord alone. He knew that when they were in Egypt, yeah, they were God's people, but they struggled with the gods of Egypt.

Did you know? Have you ever wondered? When they're at Mount Sinai and Moses was taken too long up in the mountain, they're like, we don't know what happened to this dude. And they come up to Aaron and they're like, hey, make us some gods that will show us what the Lord is like. Have you ever wondered why they make them? golden calf. It's one of the gods of Egypt. They take a model that they had seen in a pagan land, and they're even sometimes importing that into their own faith.

And Joshua is saying here, put them away. They've been living in the land now for decades. This is the end of the book of Joshua. And all the people are in front of him. The last chapter is just the leaders. The judges. The officials. The elders. They were in front of him. Now it says that all the tribes are assembled. All the people are there. And Joshua is looking them straight in the eye. The man with the old hair. The man who brought them through the Jordan River. The man who is there at every battle. Now he's looking at them dead in the eye and he's saying, Guys, I know what's going on in your heart. I know that in some of your houses, there are idols and your hearts are divided.

Today, you need to make a choice. Today, you need to decide who you are. If you want to go serve male, go serve him. If you're going to go prostitute yourself to Asherah, go do it. Right? Just go be a pagan. If you're going to be a pagan, if you're going to serve the gods, the Amorites, the Paravites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, all the other ites around, if you're going to be corrupted, go be corrupted. But don't act like you're Yahweh's people. If behind closed doors you really have other gods you're serving as well.

I called to choose that day in verses 14 and 15. Joshua knows where he stands, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua has shown that faithfulness Since the time he was a young man and was a spy, coming back and trusting God's promises, and now he's an old man, and he's saying, we're going to continue. And what do people say in verses 16 through 18? How do they respond to this? There's six parts of this ceremony. This is the second part. The first part is this call to choose. The second part is an affirmation.

And the people answered and said, Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh to serve other gods. For Yehovah our God is He who brought us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, who did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way that we went among all the people through whom we passed. And Yahweh drove out from before us all the people, including the Amorites, who dwelt in the land, so we will serve Yehovah, for He is our God." They repeat all the covenant history. And they say, yeah, He did all this, and we're going to follow Him. But Joshua presses down on them. The third part of this is Joshua shows the weightiness of what they're saying. I was kind of struck by these words in 1920 as I was translating. Honestly, I was surprised. But Joshua said to the people, you cannot serve Jehovah, for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. if you forsake Jehovah and serve foreign gods then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after he has done you good there is a sin there is a sin that God tells us do not pray for that there is a sin that Jesus teaches us that the Father will not forgive. A heart of disbelief. A heart where you play like you are devoted to God, but in all reality, you have all these other allegiances. God won't have it.

He is a holy God. In heaven, when Isaiah sees the throne room of God, the burning ones, the seraphim, have to cover their eyes with two of their wings, and cover their feet with two of their wings, and they fly with two of their wings, and what do they cry out all day and night? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, and the whole earth is filled with His glory. God is totally set apart.

There's no one else around his throne. There's no other gods. If you read the Greek gods, there's a whole pantheon of them. There's a whole bunch of them all around. Not so, that's a lie. It's a myth. Because in heaven there is one throne. And there is one king. And that king is holy. And that king is a jealous god. Joshua's leaning into the people and he's telling them, listen up. God is like a husband. He will not share his wife with any other man.

You're either devoted to the Lord wholeheartedly, or you're what Ezekiel brings out later. You're adulteresses. like you were down in Egypt. He's calling them now. Are you really devoted to the Lord? Because if you make this vow, if you come into this covenant with your Lord and you say, yes, I believe I'm wholeheartedly going to serve the Lord. And then in your duplicity, in your home, you still have your idols. In your heart, you still pray to other gods. You still go to those high places where no one else is looking. The Lord will not forgive such disbelief. The Lord will not just look over that type of treachery. You sure about this?

And what do the people say? And the people said to Joshua, no. but we will serve Jehovah. So Joshua said to them, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen Jehovah for yourselves to serve him. And they take an oath. They make a vow. They put their hands in the air. And they say, we're telling the truth. We're gonna serve Him.

So the last part of this ceremony is verses 23 and 24, this call once again. This call of exclusivity. Now therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord God, of Israel. We come to this passage, and we come to this, and I want to tell you that my natural inclination is I want to tell you, choose this day who you will serve.

Right? I want to come to this passage, and I want to tell you, are you ready to make that commitment for yourself? Right? He's been faithful to us as well. Ephesians chapter two, we were those who are dead in our trespasses and sins. And he raised us to newness of life in Christ Jesus. We are those who he's been faithful to. And I want to call you to that faithfulness. Choose this day whom you will serve. Will it be the Lord or will it be someone else?

But the problem is we're no Joshua's. Problem is you look through Israel's history. There's only one page until you have to get to the book of Judges. And if we're honest with ourselves, we look at that and we go, man, how could they mess that up? And then we look at our lives and we go, man, how do we mess this up? We need a Joshua.

We need someone who could actually come to this passage and can say, I have loved the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. From the day I was born to my dying breath, I have trusted and followed my God. This is not a passage that calls us to moralism or a bootstrap theology that tells you just try hard enough in your faith. But when we read this in the light of all the scripture, we see that it points us to Jesus Christ. That our identity, our desperate need, was for Matthew chapter one.

That a child would come from Abraham, who would actually keep God's commandments and would not have idols in his heart. Our desperate need was to have someone who would come and would be a better prophet, priest, and king. Who would be better than David. Who was better than Solomon, who would get torn away by these foreign gods. Our desperate need is for Christ. Our desperate need is for one who would come and keep the covenant perfectly. I want to press upon you this morning the seriousness of idolatry. I don't want you to hear me say, look to Christ and think that that means that God's exclusive claims are any less for your life.

This is why Jesus has to ask Peter three times. Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? And he's grieved because Jesus asked him a third time. Peter, do you love me? I ask you this morning, is your heart divided? I ask you this morning, are you still latching onto this world? Or is Christ your only hope in life and death? I ask you this morning, do you have faith in a King who has been faithful to you and who has kept all the commandments of God perfectly? I ask you this morning, do you love Jesus Christ?

And I warn you, The book of Hebrews style warning. I want to warn you against apostasy. We believe in the perseverance of the saints. We believe that those who are saved will be persevered unto the end. But I want to warn you that that should not give you complacency in your life. I want to warn you that your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a lion seeking to devour you.

You might live in the Midwest where we think we have decent morals, but I'm telling you the apostasy lies deep down in your heart. As Calvin said, our hearts are a factory of idols. I want to warn you. That you must fight your own heart. You must go and cling to Christ. You must choose this day. Is Jesus Christ your covenant king? Or are you going to go your own way?

The final part of this passage of this covenant renewal is verses 25 through 28. There's a sign of this covenant given. And Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. Then Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness to us. For it has heard all the words of the Lord, which he spoke to us. And it shall therefore be a witness to you, lest you deny your God."

Isn't it interesting that in the last moments Jesus had with all of his disciples together, he institutes a covenant sign. In that upper room, he brings them the Lord's Supper. And when he takes the cup, he says, this is a new covenant in my blood. This is why we take the Lord's Supper.

This is why God tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 that we must not come to the Lord's table in an unworthy manner, but we must rightly discern the body and the blood of the Lord. Because when we eat of this bread and drink of this cup, we proclaim our Lord's death and resurrection again until He comes. But we also, if we're eating with disbelieving hearts, eat and drink judgment against ourselves. This is one of the reasons why we ask people before they become members, or before they take of the Lord's Supper, is this truly what's in the depths of your soul? Because when we take the Lord's Supper and we come to this, it's as if God Himself is saying, you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen Jesus for yourself to serve Him. When you take this supper, when you bring these elements to your lips, you're saying, I am a witness. I believe in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And I'll proclaim it until it comes again.

If you open up your psalter, And many of your Psalters, maybe not all of them, mine actually doesn't have it, bad illustration. But in the front of many of your Psalters, you're going to find your own vows. Promises that you made before becoming a member of this church. Affirmations you took before the elders. I was reading recently in one church, every time before they take the Lord's Supper, they actually read those membership vows as a congregation. I'm not gonna have us do that this morning. But I want you to think about this, especially the first three vows. Do you still hold to these? Is he still your covenant king? Do you still believe his word? Do you still cling to his promises? Is he your only hope?

We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.