Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: The Greatest Love Story

As mentioned in the previous post, we are bringing this series on the book of Joshua to an end with the sermon on Jos. 24 in this post. I hope you have enjoyed this book and learning about living the Christian life as much as I have. I hope God has used it to bless your soul as much as He has used it to bless mine.

To introduce this sermon, let's review ever-so-briefly: This book shows us the Kingdom of God spreading physically into the land of Canaan as the people follow Joshua and Joshua follows God in the conquest of the Promised Land. And, again, as we have said almost every week as we have gone through this book, they had to fight by faith in God who truly fights for them. Well, in a similar way, our lives are mirrored but spiritually; not physically. Today, we’re following Jesus—the Commander of the Lord’s army to whom Joshua points us—we’re following Him as He spreads the Kingdom spiritually in our hearts and throughout the world. Yes, for us it’s spiritual and our enemies are not literal people like they were for Joshua and the Israelites, but our battles are no less real. And, their battles, just like ours, rested on spiritual principles—fighting by faith—and those principles are the same throughout space and time. So, we’ve learned a lot so far about faith and living by faith from this book as we’ve worked our way through it, and here the story of this book ends with God’s people coming together before God one more time to renew the covenant. And, this covenant renewal shows us the greatest love story of all time—a love story that not only draws us to Jesus but motivates and compels us to live for Him.

If you want to hear more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here.

I pray that God will use it and this whole series to magnify His glory in your heart and fortify you for the battles of this Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Sacrificing for the Emperor: Cultural Orthodoxy and God's People

"At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." ~ George Orwell, "The Freedom of the Press" (emphasis added)

My friends, this is a post that I have wanted to write for several years now. It has been a part of many conversations that I have had with friends, congregants, family, and many, many others over the past few years. Last year, with the SCOTUS ruling on marriage, my desire to write it has been "amped up," but yet, I have continued to let other things get in the way. One of those things is my perfectionist idolatry: there have been parts of this that I felt I was not prepared to write well and I struggle with idolizing perfection. (My idolatrous perfectionism is actually one of the things that keeps me from writing more, which I know God is working on in me but my progress is slow.) Yet, lately, it has been coming back in full-force through many conversations with graduate students in my church. In fact, I lead a graduate student Bible study on Virginia Tech campus, and we are studying the Old Testament book Daniel, which has brought this back up over and over again. We are about to finish with Daniel 6, and again, I have been reminded of this subject and felt compelled to write, whether or not I am prepared to do it perfectly. So, this post will partially be a study in Daniel 6 and partially my musings on current cultural trends in light of God's Word and history, and then, next week, Lord willing, I will write another talking about how Daniel and other believes have been faithful under harsh times.

It is no secret that our current culture is pushing Christians to capitulate on its views of sexuality and sexual identity. Any Christian who upholds a biblical view of marriage and sexuality is labeled a "bigot" and "hateful," no matter how politely or lovingly they make their stand or even if they hold that view quietly, and any Christian who refuses to use their business to support any agenda of a sexual-progressive movement is sued and most are losing those suits (in this most recent case, even actor and vocal supporter of LGBT issues, Patrick Stuart, is against the ruling). In fact, even teaching the biblical view of sexuality in a Sunday school class might soon be labeled "extremist" and suppressed in the UK. And, some are coming right out and saying that anyone who descents from the culture's view of sexuality should be forced to comply with it. It seems our society is approaching a totalitarian state, where a particular worldview of sexuality is the only one allowed in the public square, which reminds us more of the Brave New World of Huxley or Orwell's 1984 than a democracy where individuals are supposedly given human rights. Now, I am not writing this to talk about the details of this cultural issue itself, transgender ideology, whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal, or anything like that. Others have written on the subject, and many have done a better job than I could. I want to look behind this and ask the question, "What is going on? Why is this happening? Is there anything behind this cultural push?" and hopefully provide some biblical and historical encouragement for Christians to follow Christ instead of culture.

That is why I started with a George Orwell quote. Many of you have probably read Animal Farm, and if you have not, I would be willing to bet you have at least heard of it. What you may not know is that Orwell wrote a preface to it that did not end up in the published work called "The Freedom of the Press," from which I quote above. In it, he talks about what we might call "cultural orthodoxy," which every culture has had, although it has taken many different forms. That cultural orthodoxy is, as Orwell writes, a body of ideas that all "right-thinking" people are assumed to hold, and anyone who descents from them in any way is never given a fair hearing, actively suppressed, and often persecuted. Sound familiar? It should. In Orwell's time, it was communist philosophy. In our time, in the West, it is sexual sovereignty: "I am sovereign over my own body and sexuality, and no one can tell me or believe otherwise." But, I think the real issue is not actually sexuality or really even cultural orthodoxy, per se: it is an issue of highest loyalty. To whom will we give our highest loyalty? The Kingdom of God or some kingdom of man?

Let me start with Daniel. Any Christian who grew up in the Church is familiar with Daniel 6: Daniel and the Lion's Den. It is a popular children's story, but, like almost all popular children's stories, it is often taught wrongly. It is often taught as "If you obey God and do what's right, everything will turn out fine for you." There is a grain of truth to that, but it depends on what we mean by "fine." Often by "fine" people mean that life will be generally comfortable and you will avoid most suffering. But, biblically-speaking, "fine" does not mean we will not suffer in this life; quite the contrary, actually. The biblical "fine" means God will use our suffering for our ultimate good, but we will still suffer. But, even that is not the point of the story. The point of the story comes out in the decree that the king is duped into making: "O King Darius, live forever! All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps, the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction, that whoever makes petition to any god or man for thirty days, except to you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions." (vv. 6-7)

We look at that and on the surface are tempted to think it is about praying and worship. That is part of it, but ultimately it goes deeper. The ESV gets the translation right because it is about making a petition not just praying. Praying is certainly in that category, but asking a satrap for tax money to fix a road would be as well, which is why they qualify it with "any god or man." So, then what are these enemies of Daniel doing? They are appealing to the vanity of King Darius--to his desire to be the highest dependence and highest loyalty in Babylon. Whatever we depend upon most will be the thing to which we are most loyal--our highest loyalty. In essence, they are saying, "Make a law, King Darius, that for thirty days no one can have a higher loyalty than you; no one can be more dependent on anyone else than you." That would be a tempting prospect to anyone, and, indeed, it is the original temptation: "You will be like God." (Ge. 3:5) They know Darius will love the idea of being everyone's highest loyalty, and they know that Daniel will not give in to that command. That is why in v. 5 his enemies say to one another, "We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God." Thus, they have set the trap: make the highest loyalty someone other than God and watch Daniel maintain his loyalty to God. It is a test of loyalty that they know Daniel will fail.

Such a situation is not unique in the history of God's people. This was also the main issue at stake when it came to the official Roman persecutions of Christians. (You can read my summary of early Church persecutions here.) The Romans were remarkably tolerant of religions, philosophies, worldviews, etc. so long as the Roman State was your highest loyalty. They deeply distrusted and hated anyone who had a higher loyalty than the State. If they ever found out that you had a higher loyalty than the State, you were persecuted, and that was exactly the issue that caused the first empire-wide persecutions of Christians from 250 AD onward. Before 250 AD, the persecutions of Christians were localized to various regions of the Empire, and they were not yet a matter of official Roman policy. Then, Emperior Decius came along. Decius issued a decree that commanded all people under Roman rule to offer a single sacrifice once a year to the Roman gods for the well-being of the emperor by burning incense before the local magistrate. When you did, you were given a libellus (the image above is a surviving libellus), which was your proof of sacrifice. If you could not present a libellus when ask for it, then you were sentenced to death. Do you see what he was doing? He was testing the loyalty of his people. If they were ultimately loyal to Rome, they would sacrifice, even if they also had other gods they served, but if they had a higher loyalty to their God, they would not sacrifice. The ones whose highest loyalty was not to the State could then be identified and erradicated. Rome was fine with your religious beliefs, so long as you were loyalty to it above all else. It was a test of loyalty that Decius knew many Christians would fail.

For Daniel and the early Christians, the test of cultural orthodoxy many have been different, but the underlying issue was the same: Who is your highest loyalty? Whom do you really serve above all else? And, what we are seeing today has the same underlying issue, even though the test of cultural orthodoxy is different. The real issue is not sexual autonomy. That is just a symptom of something deeper: a culture that deeply distrusts those who have a higher loyalty than the culture itself, e.g. Christians.

Our culture is fine with religious beliefs and "spirituality" and even encourages it, so long as those beliefs do not lead you to question the prevailing cultural dogma, so long as you pass the test of cultural orthodoxy. For, if you pass that test, it shows you are more loyal to the culture than you are your religious or spiritual beliefs. If you are willing to compromise on that one belief, it shows your highest loyalty is really to the culture; not the God of the Bible. Last year, Frank Bruni of the NY Times tipped this hand and revealed these cards in his article "Bigotry, the Bible and Lessons from Indiana." There he lays it on the line. He tells us that religious freedom is really "freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity." I added emphasis to show you his bottom line: all people, religious or not, must bow to the "enlightenments of modernity," i.e. all people should be more loyal to the culture than their god, religous text, or spiritual beliefs. It is a test of loyalty: Is our highest loyalty to the culture (the "enlightenments of modernity") or to our God?

You see, friends, what we are seeing in culture is what Christians have experienced in all cultures in all times. It is just that the specifics of the test are different for us. Why do I point this out? For two reasons:

• First, we Christians need to be reminded of this so that we do not begin to think that we are going through something no other Christian community has. We are not. Our struggle is not unique. The true Church of God's people has never been on the "right side" of human history and has always been at odds with cultural orthodoxy. And, in those times where we seemed not to be at odds with the surrounding culture, I would argue that those are the times we have been least faithful to God and His Word. It was not because the test was not there but because we passed it (from the culture's perspective). I will talk more about this in the next post, but we need to remember that because then we can look back on history and see that God sustained His people during all those times and tests, no matter how bad the persecution became. He will do the same today. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church (Mt. 16:18). 
• Second, I want us to realize that whatever the test of cultural orthodoxy is, the issue at the base is always spiritual. The fundamental issue is not sexuality, communism, or petitions. It is always a test of whether or not we will worship God and depend on Him above all else, even if it costs us everything we have in this world. In fact, these were really the issues at stake in devil's temptations of Jesus. And, if we are going to follow Christ through these tests, we need to see them for what they really are: spiritual battles. We need to look past the arguments over sexuality and see what lies behind it: Will we trust God, believe His Word, make use of His means of grace to sustain and train us, and make Him our highest loyalty? That is the question that really matters. It was what mattered for Daniel, the early Church, and all other Christians throughout space and time. 

For now, I leave you with that to ponder. Next week, Lord willing, we will learn from Daniel and a little from Church history how we live as faithful Christians in the midst of these tests of cultural orthodoxy.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Holy War and the Gospel

First, let me apologize for taking a couple of weeks to continue this series. I had meant to post these devotionals and sermons once a week, but the past couple of weeks have been really busy for my family and I. However, we are back in the swing of things now, and so here is the next devotional, with the next sermon coming on Sunday.

As I have alluded to a few times throughout this series so far, there are some difficult issues that come up in the book of Joshua that often get attention in from Christians and non-Christians alike. Well, the one that Joshua 6 brings up is probably the biggest: holy war. In the episode we will consider on Sunday, God commands that all living things be killed in Jericho, and v. 21 tells us, "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." This is simply a result of the commands God gave to them in the book of Deuteronomy, like 7:1-2:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

This should bother us or at the very least make us pause when we read that, and we need to know how to think about it within the whole context of Scripture and what it teaches us about God.

So, what about the "holy war"? How does "show no mercy to them" square with Jesus' teaching about loving our enemies? Well, I want to argue that most often our main hangup here is that we do not have a high enough view of God's holiness. As Christians, we have encountered the grace of God in Jesus, which allows us to enter into God’s holy presence with boldness (He. 10:19-25), because of the promise that we are being remade after the pattern of that same holiness. But, in that grace, we may sometimes forget what holiness looks like to someone who is not so covered by Christ. And, non-Christians, generally do not have a very high or realistic view of sin, thinking of God more as a "smiling grandfather" than a holy, upright, perfect, and just God. However, both those views of God are not true to His being.

God is supremely holy, which means He cannot abide sin without a response. God is a consuming fire (He. 12:29), a purifying power that cannot abide the unholy to remain in His presence without destroying it. God, however, is also a gracious God who does not desire the complete destruction of the works of His hands (cf. Eze. 18:32)--who holds back the consuming fire like a dam holds back a flood. (For more on this balance, see this excellent article by John Piper.) With that tension in mind, I think the conquest of Canaan is best understood as a profound and temporary in-breaking of God’s holiness into an unholy world for a specific redemptive purpose. Let me explain.

In creation, God created the world and humans holy--in perfect communion with Him. Yet, we fell from that holiness and therefore incurred the wrath of the holy God. God's holiness consumes unholiness just as light consumes darkness, and that is what we all deserve in our natural state. Only God can hold back the consumption for a time. And, at the fall of Adam and Eve, God, in His grace, temporarily suspended His full wrath until the day of Final Judgment (cf. Mt. 25:31ff), otherwise Adam and Eve would have been judged and sent to hell on the spot. So, common grace--God's forbearance of final judgment--became a part of the world in which we live.

This has bearing on the conquest of the Promised Land (henceforth referred to as "the Conquest"). The ethics of the Conquest are ultimately those of a completely holy and good God calling the rebellious people, the illegal aliens on His property into account for their sins. And, since the Fall affects all of us as equally as it affected the Canaanites, the implication is that we all deserve, always and everywhere, what they got then and there in Canaan from the Israelite armies. In light of this reality, we must admit that the sheer fact that the Conquest was confined to only one very geographically limited area at only one point in human history is a sign of God’s mercy.

What? A sign of mercy? Yes: one of the purposes of the Conquest is for us to see what must be the inevitable result of our natural standing with God as the sinful human race. Without Christ, we all deserve what they received. The ethics of the Conquest can be seen as a type of what is called "intrusion ethics" (a term coined by Meredith Kline)—a temporary intrusion into history of the ethics of the Final Judgment, i.e. that moment when God finally brings the created order to account so that He can judge all evil and create the new heavens and new earth. That is to say, the Conquest reveals in history, however briefly, what the end of history will look like when Jesus returns in glory to reclaim in total His land and create the true Promised Land.

As we talked about in the devotional a couple of weeks ago, this is an Old Testament type. A type is a real person, place, event, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does). Just as the OT Promised Land (a type) ultimately points to the true Promised Land--new heavens and the new earth; just as Joshua is a type of Jesus Himself, the Conquest (another type) points to the judgment where God ultimately judges and punishes evil through Jesus as the Judge (2 Pt. 3:10)--the punishment He stayed/delayed at the Fall--and creates the new heavens and the new earth (the true Promised Land). One purpose of seeing such a thing in history is, therefore, to bring mankind to repentance, so that we might be spared that fate when the Day arrives. Not only will God have given humanity the whole of their history of time to turn back to Him, He will have also made it abundantly clear by the Conquest what is to come. But, still many "stiffen their necks" against Him.

All of this has profound ramifications for how we square the goodness of God, as we have encountered it in Jesus, with the severity of God, as we see it in the Conquest. In many respects, they are two sides of the same coin. They both show the extreme lengths to which God must go in order to get humanity's attention. The sad history of Jesus' rejection by His own people only reinforces the point that humankind's fallen hearts are so hardened that we do not respond to God, even when He comes in meekness. Such a sorry state of affairs, such a clear example of our rebellion, makes the extreme ethics of the Conquest seem all the more justified. Further, it illustrates with vivid clarity how, in not getting always and everywhere what the Canaanites got then and there, humanity as a whole has seen merciful forbearance (common grace) on God’s part.

And, we also need to note that God's use of the Israelites of the instrument of His judgment was not because of their goodness. In fact, this is explicitly laid out in Dt. 9:4-5:

“Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

God chose the Israelites (and us) simply because of His unmerited, free grace. The Israelites were very wicked and just as deserving of judgment as the Canaanites, just like all mankind is without Jesus. One commentator explains:

Hence Israel must not assume a holier-than-you-all attitude, for Yahweh will not bring his people into the land because they are righteous and deserving; ‘it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out before you’ (Deut. 9:4–5). The conquest is not a bunch of land-hungry marauders wiping out, at the behest of their vicious God, hundreds of innocent, God-fearing folks. In the biblical view, the God of the Bible uses none-too-righteous Israel as the instrument of his just judgment on a people who had persistently reveled in their iniquity.

God, in His sovereignty, chose to satisfy His holy wrath against the Canaanites by judgment and against the Israelites by redemption (cf. Ro. 9:14-21).

Perhaps a typological chart would be helpful when thinking about OT types and the true, spiritual reality in Christ to which they point:

Old Testament Type	True, Spiritual Reality in Christ
The Exodus	Christ’s redemption
The wilderness wandering	This present life
The Promised Land	The new heavens and the new earth
The conquest of the Land	The Final Judgment
King David	King Jesus
Solomon’s kingdom	Jesus’ rule in the new heavens and the new earth

Before I end this discussion, though, there is one more intrusion ethic that we need to mention: the cross of Christ. Just as the Conquest was a temporary in-breaking of God's final-judgment, holy wrath into history, so was the cross, but in this case, God's final-judgment, holy wrath fell not on the culpable human race that deserves His wrath but on His perfect, innocent Son. Christ did not deserve anything but full reward from God, and yet, on the cross, Jesus took the full wrath of God that He would have poured out on His elect in the Final Judgment. That means that all God's holy wrath against His people has been satisfied. Even though He is completely holy and we do not really even understand the depth of that holiness or our sinfulness in comparison, He has satisfied His holiness by pouring out His wrath on Christ for all His elect. This is how the faithful Israelites and all true Christians avoid what the Canaanites got. We deserve the Final Judgment, but since Christ came into space and time and lived as one of us, since He fulfilled the law perfectly, and since He withstood the intrusion of final judgment on the cross, we can have eternal life in the true Promised Land forever.

So, the Conquest is a sad, hard part of Scripture to read, but it is a perfectly just action of the holy God. Yet, we should not look at it mechanically as that but in two ways: 1) as a warning that causes us to pray for and seek the conversion of the lost so they do not get what the Canaanites did and 2) to praise God for sending Jesus Christ to take the holy wrath that we deserve so that we can live with God forever in the true Promised Land. That should lead us to praise as Paul praised God in Ro. 11:33-36 after he finished detailing out these gospel truths about God:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: God Graciously Reassures Our Faith

In the previous post, we talked about how, when God brought His people into the Promised Land, He gave them a down payment of the abundant provision He would give them when they had conquered the Land. What they ate after that first Passover wasn't remarkable ("unleavened cakes and parched grain"), but it was a sign that God has so much more to come in the Promised Land.

In the same passage, we also see God reassuring the faith of His people through the sacraments of the Old Testament. They were at a very critical point in the taking the Promised Land: the beginning when all their fears would probably be right before their eyes. Yet, God does not just command them to march forward, but He graciously reassures their faith. And, as we will talk about in this sermon, God does the same for us today as we fight the battles of this Christian life.

If you want to hear more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here.

I pray that God will use it to magnify His glory in your heart and fortify you for the battles of this Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: A Down Payment of What is to Come

This Sunday, we will take a look at most of Jos. 5, where right after they enter the Promised Land, God commands Israel to celebrate the two sacraments that they had in the Old Testament: circumcision and the Passover. A sacrament is a visible sign that God gives His people to represent and seal to them an invisible grace. In the Old Testament (OT), they had circumcision and the Passover. In the New Testament (NT), Jesus has given us baptism and the Lord's Supper, both of which are visible signs and seals of invisible grace that God gives us in Christ when we look to Him in faith.

We will talk some about that on Sunday as we talk about how God reassures the Israelites' and our faith. But, one thing I probably will not get to is talking about how the eating the produce of the Promised Land for the first time was a kind of down payment to the Israelites of what was to come.

At the end of the passage that we will read--in vv. 11-12--the text tells us three times that God's people ate, for the first time, the produce of the land, i.e. instead of eating manna from heaven, they ate the crops of the Promised Land. Constantly in the Pentateuch, the Promised Land is described as a "land flowing with milk and honey" (cf. e.g. Dt. 26:9), i.e. it is a land so rich with food that they will hardly have to work for it. This was a wonderful promise to a people who had been slaves in Egypt and had wandered in the desert for forty years. One day, God would give them a land that will flow with provision so abundant that they will see it as "flowing with milk and honey." And, at the end of the passage that we will study on Sunday, the people finally "ate of the produce of the land." It must have been a joyous occasion, but it was much more than that. It was a down payment, of sorts--God saying to them, "This is just the beginning. You will possess this land and have abundant provision from me." What they ate after that first Passover wasn't remarkable ("unleavened cakes and parched grain"), but it was a sign that God has so much more to come in the Promised Land.

Friends, one way that we can see Christ in this text is here. Remember, in the last sermon, we talked about a question we can ask of any OT text to help us see Christ in it is: How does this passage show us the redeeming nature of God? Here we can see God's redeeming nature in how He gives us a foretaste of what He promises us.

The Promised Land of Canaan was never the true Promised Land that God has ultimately for His people. It was simply an earthly, temporary fulfillment that pointed to something greater: the new heavens and new earth (cf. He. 4; 11). Jesus has secured the new heavens and new earth for all His people (OT and NT believers) and will one day bring us all into that true Promised Land, which will be a land so great, so wonderful, so glorious that describing it as "flowing with milk and honey" cannot do it justice (cf. Re. 21-22). Yet, God gives us a foretaste of that glorious blessing even now.

When we rest on the Lord's Day (the Christian Sabbath), we are given a taste of the eternal rest and provision that God will give us in the new heavens and new earth. In fact, one of the Reformed catechisms, the Heidelberg Catechism, reminds us in question 103 that keeping the fourth commandment (i.e. remembering the sabbath to keep it holy) shows us this:

Q. What is God’s will for you in the fourth commandment?
A. First, that the gospel ministry and education for it be maintained, and that, especially on the festive day of rest, I regularly attend the assembly of God’s people to learn what God’s Word teaches, to participate in the sacraments, to pray to God publicly, and to bring Christian offerings for the poor. Second, that every day of my life I rest from my evil ways, let the Lord work in me through his Spirit, and so begin already in this life the eternal Sabbath.

God gives us a foretaste of that wonderful rest that is to come as a kind of "down payment" in the Lord's Day, and we get to start our weeks being reminded of that. We get to start our weeks being reminded that even the best Sunday is nothing compared to what eternity will be like in the new heavens and new earth--it is just a down payment.

Another way we can get a foretaste of what is to come is the way God graciously provides for our needs even now. We will talk a little more about this on Sunday, but God provided for the Israelites needs in the wilderness through the miraculous manna. Yet, once they entered the land, God ceased the manna and instead provided for their needs through the regular produce of the land. As we will discuss Sunday, that might have seemed quite ordinary (crops, cattle, etc.) but is actually extraordinary--they never had to worry because God's provision was regular and predictable. Today, God also generally supplies our needs not by miracles but by the regular, "mundane" things such as jobs, food on the table, health, etc. It is easy for us to take that for granted, but I think this passage is showing us that's God's regular provision for us is a down payment of how we will be eternally, perfectly, abundantly blessed by Him in the new heavens and new earth. If God cares for our needs now (while we are still sinners, still wanders), how much more will He provide when we are in perfect fellowship with Him for all eternity in the true Promised Land? What we have right now is a kind of down payment, in which God says to us, "This is just the beginning. You will possess the true Promised Land and have abundant, super-abundant provision from me."

The last lines of C. S. Lewis' Narnia book, The Last Battle, reminds me of this. At the end of that book, Aslan returns to Narnia to defeat his enemies and take his people into the New Narnia, and he does so with a mighty roar that brings an end to the old Narnia and takes them into the new. Meanwhile, in the human world Lucy and her siblings are on a train in England, and then all of a sudden, they find themselves in a field, clothed in Narnian garb, but it is unlike any Narnian garb they had ever seen--it is without flaw or blemish and almost glows. Then, they see some of their friends from Narnia and Aslan himself. They explain to Lucy and her brothers that the old Narnia has passed away and they are in the New Narnia, and then Aslan looks at them with laughter in his eyes and darts off like an arrow, yelling behind him “Come further in! Come further up!” As they follow as best they can, they find this New Narnia resembles the old that they knew and loved, but this one is bigger, brighter, and more magnificent than anything they had known or ever imagined. At one point Lucy says, “Isn’t it wonderful? Have you noticed one can’t be afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.” Yet, as they go further in and further up after Aslan, Aslan looks at Lucy and says, “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.” She replies, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.” She doesn’t want to leave the glories that she’s experienced because they’re everything she ever wanted and so much more. Aslan looks at her with eyes that comfort all sorrow and explains to her that she died in a railway accident, and that is why she’s now in the New Narnia. “The term is over,” he says, “the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And, Lewis ends the book by narrating, “And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story… which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

That last statement is a wonderful description of the glory that awaits us in the true Promised Land--each chapter will be better than the one before. And, right now, all that God graciously provides for His people is a "down payment" of sorts through His provision and through His Sabbath, reminding us that the best is yet to come.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Faith's Greatest Nemesis

In the previous post in this Joshua series, we looked at how Joshua is a type of Jesus--i.e. he is a kind of "working model" of Jesus for us in the Old Testament (OT). In today's sermon, we are going to look at Joshua 3-4, and through Joshua see Jesus--the object of our faith--and we will also learn a little more about faith.

If I were to ask you “What is the nemesis of faith?” What would you say? Last week, we looked at ch. 2 where this book shows us true faith from a gentile harlot—Rahab. Given what you know from that—that true faith is knowledge, conviction, and trust—what do you think faith’s greatest nemesis is? What’s its greatest enemy that plagues it all its life? Many of us would probably be tempted to answer, “Doubt,” but I think that’s a mistake and so does the author of this book.

If you want to hear more (and if you do, you will understand the picture on this post), you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here.

I pray that God will use it to magnify His glory in your heart and fortify you for the battles of this Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Joshua and Jesus

This Sunday the sermon I post will look at Joshua 3-4, and since we do not have time to look at everything this passage could tell us, there are some things I will have to skip in the sermon. One of those is v. 3:7: "Today I [God] will begin to exalt you [Joshua] in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you."

We might look at that and wonder, "Why would God want to exalt Joshua in the eyes of the people? Shouldn't Joshua exalt God?" And, certainly, Joshua should and does exalt God and glorify Him before the people, but God still wants to exalt Joshua. Why? Well, there are actually two reasons: one from Joshua's life and one that points us to Jesus.

First, way back in the book of Numbers, shortly after the people had been redeemed from Egypt by God, Moses sent twelve men to spy out the land of Canaan. When those twelve men came back, ten of them said the land was great but the people too powerful, so there's no way they could conquer it. But, Joshua and Caleb (the other two spies) told the people that they could do it because God was on their side. The people, however, chose not to trust God and to listen to the ten (which is why they ended up wandering in the wilderness for forty years), and in Numbers 14, it tells us that they sought to humiliate and kill Joshua and Caleb. Well, there were some present on that fateful day (those under the age of twenty) who were standing at the Jordan in Joshua 3 and who would have remembered that how the nation did not believe Joshua and Caleb and tried to humiliate and kill them. They would see that God waited forty years, but He is reversing that here. God is vindicating Joshua and showing the people that he was right all along, so they would know that they can trust him as their leader.

Second, and this goes deeper, here we are pointed to Jesus. In fact, in Joshua, we can see Jesus. Joshua is a kind of "working model" of Jesus called an Old Testament (OT) "type." A "type" is another way to see Jesus in OT stories, but it is more than just a singular event or one-time object that points us to Jesus. A type is a real person, place, or object that God ordained to act as a visible pattern of Jesus' person (who He is) and/or work (what He does), and the type gives us that visible pattern not just for an episode of a story (e.g. the scarlet cord or Rahab) but for most, if not all the time the person, place, or object is talked about in the Bible. A type spans over many stories and perhaps even many books. And, Joshua is that for us. We do not see Jesus in just one or two episodes about Joshua but in Joshua himself throughout the whole time he is in the Bible.

We will talk more about this when we get to later episodes, like Joshua 6 where Joshua encounters the commander of the LORD's armies (i.e. the Son of God Himself), but Joshua is a type of Christ throughout this whole book and, indeed, really during all the time he is a character in the biblical story:

• Joshua is first mentioned in Numbers 13, but at first, his name is Hoshea, which means "salvation" in Hebrew. But, in Numbers 13:16, Moses changes his name to Yeshua in Hebrew (Joshua in English), which means "YHWH saves!" Did you know that is Jesus' name in Hebrew? "Jesus" is the English, but in Hebrew, His name is "Yeshua"--YHWH saves! Moses gave Hoshea the same name that the angel Gabriel would tell Joseph to name his and Mary's son, 1500 years later: Yeshua, Jesus. Moses probably did not know it, but changing Hoshea's name to Yeshua (Joshua) had far-greater significance than simply a change of calling on his life: In Joshua, God is going to demonstrate to His people a pattern of salvation that He would bring to its culmination in His one and only Son, Jesus.
• One of the patterns that Joshua shows us in this book is his place in the story itself. Remember, this book shows us God's redeemed people heading towards God's Promised Land, having to learn to live and fight their battles by faith. And, who leads them the whole way? Joshua. Well, we too are God's redeemed people heading towards the true Promised Land, and who leads us the whole way? Jesus, but Jesus goes beyond Joshua, for He not only leads us but has already secured the victory and the blessings of the Promised Land for us! Jesus is the greater Joshua, and as we see the Israelites following Joshua in these stories, we can read that as a mirror (spiritually, not physically) of us following Jesus through this life.
• Another pattern that we can see in Joshua 3 is Joshua's humiliation and then exaltation by God. Like Joshua was humiliated by his people and they sought to kill him back in Numbers 14, Jesus became one of us and was humiliated by His people as they killed Him. But, like Joshua's humiliation eventually led to God's exaltation of him as the leader the people should follow, Jesus' humiliation eventually led to God "highly exalting Him and bestowing on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Joshua's move from humiliated status to exalted status is the pattern that Jesus' life would follow, 1500 years later.

There are many more instances of this pattern to be seen in this book, and we will hopefully see most as we go through it. For now, remember, as you read this book, Joshua's life and call as the leader of God's people is a type, pattern of Jesus Himself. It is not just in one or two stories but in his whole life. Look for those patterns, and then look to Christ as your Yeshua--the true, ultimate Yeshua.

By His Grace,

Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: True Faith from a Shady Lady

In my last post in the Joshua series, I talked about how we should look at Rahab's deception in Jos. 2. As I mentioned in that post, I think we often get distracted by the way Rahab helps the spies and miss the whole point of this story. So, that is why I talked about the deception in a post and not the sermon on her story. It is not an unimportant detail, but it is not nearly as important as what Rahab shows us about faith.

So, what does Rahab show us about faith? Well, in short, she shows us what true faith is, which is incredibly important for the overall purpose of this book. As I talked about in the first sermon, this book shows us how to live by faith in our God who truly fights our battles for us. If that is the case, then early on the author needs to show us what true faith is, and for the Jews (and probably us too), there is no more convicting way to do that than to do it through a Gentile prostitute.

If you want to hear more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here.

I pray that God will use it to magnify His glory in your heart and fortify you for the battles of this Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Rahab's Deception and God's Providence

The passage of the sermon that I will post this coming Sunday is one of the many difficult passages in the books of Joshua and Judges. If you have read the book of Joshua (and Judges), you know there are several difficult stories that present ethical behavior that is challenging (at best) or completely appalling (at worst). I am going to try to address these difficulties in Joshua as we move through this book, but even as I do, we need to remember that almost all of them are secondary issues at best, so I do not plan to bring them up in the sermons. But, I also cannot just leave them unaddressed, so I will try to address them in these posts.

This first thorny issue surrounds Rahab's method of protecting the spies in her house in Jos. 2. She deceives the king of Jericho, telling him that the spies had left, when she was really hiding them on her roof. So, the question that has been debated a lot throughout the history of the Church is: What do we do with that? The NT praises Rahab for her protection of the spies, so how do we reconcile that with her deception here?

First, let me say again, this is not the point of the story at all. This is actually quite a minor detail in the story as a whole, and even the structure of the passage shows us that. The author uses a common Hebrew literary technique called a "chiasm," which looks like this:

     A: Opening information to set up the story

          B: Secondary detail

               C: The point of the passage

          B': Matching secondary detail to parallel the first

     A': Closing information to parallel and close out the opening

There can be more layers in the middle of parallel information, but the point is that the center of a chiasm is the important part of the story--the point of the story, and this literary technique was a way Hebrew authors highlight the most important part of their story. This chapter follows that pattern like this:

     A: V. 1a -- Opening detail telling us Joshua's assignment to the spies
          B: Vv. 2-7 -- Secondary details of how they entered Jericho and were protected
               C: Vv. 8-14 -- Rahab's confession of faith: the point of the story
          B': Vv. 15-21 -- Secondary details of how they left Jericho and escaped
     A: Vv. 22-24 -- Closing detail telling us how the spies report back to Joshua

The beginning and ending hold the passage together, so they are pretty important, but the passage is primarily about Rahab's confession of faith; not her deception. The section that contains her deception is actually the most minor of the passage. So many people get hung up on Rahab's deception and miss her glorious truth that she confesses, and we do not need to get hung up on it.

In fact, I had thought about showing the ways Christians have tried to reconcile the ethics of this passage, but that still gets us distracted from the point even of her actions themselves. If we narrow in on her deception, there is still a bigger and more important theological point: God's providence.

Church family, for Rahab's confession of faith to be genuine and for her actions to be something God uses for good, it is not crucial that we justify her deception. She was a sinner like us. In fact, she was a new believer from a pagan, Canaanite city, so, of course, we should not expect that she have all her ethics straight in her first act of faith. When we do things for God out of faith, we have mixed motives or mixed actions that often, if not always, mix some sin in with the good works we try to do for God. Does that mean God cannot use them? Not at all. Sinful or not, God can use our actions anyway, and Rahab's protection of the spies shows us this. He uses the actions of sinful men and women to bring about His glorious plans (cf. e.g. Ge. 50:20 Ac. 2:23). In fact, since all He has to work with in humanity is sinful men and women, He must be able to use all our actions for His sovereign plan--sinful or not.

Certainly, we cannot use that as an excuse for sinning (cf. Ro. 6:1-2), and certainly we need to think through difficult ethical issues and try to do what is faithful to God's Word. But, the amazing grace and providence of God reminds us that even if we do that and fail, we cannot mess up God's plan; even if we do that and fail, the blood of Christ covers those sins too. So, while we should think through ethical issues and attempt to be faithful to God's Word in the decisions we make, we also can rest in the fact Christ catches us when we fall. This is basically what John says in 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

In the sermon from the church service that I will post on Sunday, my congregation confessed together what true faith is from the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a 450-year-old reformed set of questions and answers. Well, that catechism also has a very good question and answer about God's providence--Question 27:

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?
A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from His fatherly hand.

Friends, we can talk about Rahab's deception and debate whether it was sinful or not (and if you want to talk about it, feel free to ask), but ultimately, what we should see in it is God's providence. He is "God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath" as Rahab confessed, which means He so rules all things that He can use our and Rahab's actions whether sinful or not. He is also the God who grants mercy, as Rahab saw, and He covers all our sins by the blood of Christ when we put our faith in Him. We can rest in that. We can try to live a faithful life and fight the battles of this Christian life as best we can resting in that truth.

But, one might respond and ask as the Heidelberg asks in question 64:

Q. But doesn’t this teaching make people indifferent and wicked?
A. No. It is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude.

As we will see in Rahab on Sunday, when God works true faith in our hearts, we will want to serve Him, we will want to live for Him out of gratitude. But, we will also fail in that. When we do, We have His promises in places like 1 Jn. 2:1, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous."

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Be Strong and Courageous

This past Friday, I began posting my sermon and devotional series on Joshua from the summer. I began with the first devotional, which argued for the historical veracity of the book of Joshua. Now, here is my sermon on the book of Joshua from Jos. 1:1-9, 16-18: "Be Strong and Courageous."

Since this sermon is the first in a series, I began with an extended introduction to the book of Joshua. It was longer than most normal introductions (about 10 minutes), but that is because before we dive into this important book, we need to understand why it is important and how it is applicable to our lives. In short, the book of Joshua teaches about the Christian life--how to fight the good fight of the faith--and if we view this book rightly, it will fortify us for the Christian life. There more detail below and in the sermon.

The book of Joshua tells us the story of God’s people after they had been redeemed from Egypt under Moses and wandered in the wilderness for forty years because of their sinful rejection of God’s promises. It tells us the story of how God’s people entered into the land of Canaan that God had promised to them and began to conquer it. But, more than that, the book of Joshua is a story about a great period of transition for God’s people.

Hundreds of years earlier, God had promised Abraham two things: God would make him a great nation, and He would give him the land of Canaan as an inheritance in which that nation would dwell. The following centuries had seen God’s people vastly grow in number, but they had yet to possess the land of Canaan. In fact, while the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, it may have seemed like God’s promises would never come true. But, under Moses, God redeemed them from slavery, and under Moses, God formed them into a nation through the giving of the Law. But, there was still that very important piece left: the land. God promised Abraham in Ge. 17:8, “I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” And, Deuteronomy promises God’s people that this land will be a place where they can find rest. But, they still needed to possess it. And, this book tells us the story of that great transition: God taking the wandering nation and giving them the physical land that He had promised to Abraham.

So, there’s a lot of history in this book, and it’s a very important time in the history of Israel. That’s why modern Bibles categorize Joshua under the “history” books. But, would it surprise you to know that the Jews didn’t categorize Joshua that way? They didn’t. From the time of King David onward, Joshua was placed in the section of books in the OT called the “former prophets”—they viewed Joshua as prophecy. Now, that sounds a little odd to us because we tend to think of prophecy as foretelling the future, and certainly some prophecy has that component to it. But, by and large, the prophecies of the OT were not so much about foretelling the future but forthtelling about the present, i.e. they took God’s Word written and His mighty works performed and applied them to the lives of the people in the present. Prophecy in Scripture is taking the Word and works of God and saying, “This is how this word from God or these events apply to your life. There is a message God has for you in them, and here it is.” In particular, Joshua is a record of how the Word of God written in the first five books of the Bible—the Pentateuch—began to work in the lives of God’s people as they moved through this great transition, and, in fact, God has a message for all His people in this book.

Now, it’s important for us to grasp that difference because mere history is just a record of facts, from which we might learn something but aren’t necessarily compelled to. But, history that’s also prophecy means this book is meant to convict, not simply inform; it’s meant to compel a response, not merely enlighten with information; it’s meant to encourage, not merely report. It’s a message from God to us as much as it is about God’s work in history.

Now, you might read this book and think, “Well, this book is a whole lot of battles, and that does not really have anything for me. I’m a professor, student, teacher, homemaker, business professional, or something else like that.” We may be tempted to think about the book of Joshua, but nothing could be further from the truth. You see, the taking of the land in this book isn’t primarily about property, but it symbolizes for all the Bible and us the spreading of the Kingdom of God itself, which is far bigger than a small piece of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The battles and events of this book are seen by the whole Bible as opportunities to learn what faith really is and how we live a life of faith in God. Even for the OT believers who fought these literal battles, it was all about learning to live and fight by faith in their Savior. And, in fact, ultimately it points us to the work of Christ as our King who fought for us and secured the true Promised Land of the new heavens and new earth that all believers—His Kingdom people—will one day possess.

In fact, we are in a great transition just like the Israelites. We stand on the shores of Jordan, you could say, having been redeemed but also having to fight spiritual battles until we’re given our heavenly Promised Land by our King. And, even as Israel stood on the shores of the Jordan as a nation, their battles were still dependent on faith. In every battle in Joshua (and later on in Judges), it didn’t matter if they had inferior numbers, weapons, or strategies, and in fact, on several occasions God commands them to fight that way. We can’t replicate the strategies for Jericho, Hazor, or most of the other battles because they were battles that had to be fought God’s way in faith that God would provide the victory. They still had to fight, yes, but they had to use His strategies in faith that He would make them successful, even when they looked as ridiculous as simply marching around a city and screaming.

In fact, the NT shows us that even the nation and the land for which they fought was merely a temporary fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham anyway. Canaan could never be the eternal land of rest God promised Abraham. The book of Hebrews shows us that Abraham and the true believers of the OT were never really looking forward to an earthly land but in faith to a heavenly one that Jesus Himself would secure for them through His life, death, and resurrection—the new heavens and new earth that Re. 21-22 describe for us, and that will be eternal rest for us. And, our Savior and His true, eternal Promised Land can also only be possessed by faith.

This is why Joshua has so much to teach us about the Christian life. It‘s a story of God’s redeemed people having to fight by faith in the King who truly fights the battles for them, using God’s ways to possess rest in the Promised Land, which is exactly a mirror of our lives today, although spiritually; not physically. The life of a Christian isn’t something that’s comfortable and easy, and I know you all know that. This life is a relentless, spiritual war that we must fight by faith in our King who truly fights for us, which precedes our eternal rest in the true Promised Land that Jesus secured for us. Church family, from a spiritual perspective, we’re in all-out war—spiritual battles are constant—and Christians have the terrible privilege of being the target of satan—that roaring lion who seeks to devour us, as Peter says in 1 Pt. 5. We do not “wrestle against flesh and blood but against… the spiritual forces of evil,” as Paul says in Eph. 6. Our enemies are no longer literal people that we’re called to drive out like the Israelites, but the Canaanites still exist in here [our hearts] and still need to be driven out. For us, the Canaanites are in our sinful hearts, the temptations of the world, and the attacks of the devil. This is why we need “to fight the good fight of the faith,” as we heard earlier in 1 Ti. 6, looking to our Savior and King who truly fights for us. And, if we see this book rightly as prophecy and history, God can use it to fortify us for the battle of the Christian life. That’s why this book is so relevant for God’s people even today.

If you want to hear more, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here.

 I pray that God will use it to magnify His glory in your heart and fortify you for the battles of this Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Fight the Good Fight of the Faith: Joshua in History

Wow, it has been quite a long time since I have had a chance to write. I apologize for being MIA for so long. It has been quite a busy past few months while my senior pastor has been on sabbatical, and I have barely had enough time to get done what I have needed to get done for my family and church over the past few months, so I have just let writing fall to the wayside. I still do not have a lot of time to write presently, but I have also recently finished a sermon series at my church (GCPC), and it should give me enough for a couple of posts per week for a while.

The sermon series was called "Joshua: Fight the Good Fight of the Faith," and it is the story of the battles of the Christian life from the book of Joshua. Each week I wrote a short devotional that went out as an email to my church, which related to the passage on which the sermon was focused and, of course, preached a sermon from that passage. So, I will put all that up here as the weeks progress

The first weekly devotional for this series was a short summary of the historical debates and issues surrounding the book of Joshua. I argued that it is a reliable source of history that matches up well with what we know of Canaan and the ancient Near East in the second millennium BC. This historical basis is important because if it is just tales, then it does not actually teach us about the true God or tell us what He has done, so there is no reason for us to care about it. Legend does not help us in the Christian life. So, here it is. On Sunday I will post the first sermon entitled, "Be Strong and Courageous."
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This Sunday we start our summer sermon series, which will go through the book of Joshua. And, any time we take a look at Scripture, particular the books of the Old Testament, it is helpful and even necessary to address the question of the historicity of the book.

Joshua is the book that tells the story of God's people entering the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua, after the exodus from Egypt and forty years of wandering in the wilderness under Moses. Yet, the book of Joshua is much more than the story of God's people beginning the conquest of the land of Canaan: it is history and presents itself as history. In fact, as I will talk more about in the sermon posted Sunday, it is prophetic history--historical events recorded not merely to inform us of what happened but to proclaim a message from God Himself to us, a message that has much to teach us about our spiritual battles and the Christian life.

However, like many or even most Old Testament books, the historical truthfulness of the book of Joshua has come under fire in recent times, and since that is the case, it is necessary for us to talk briefly about its history and why we can trust it.

Much of the claim that the book of Joshua is "closer to fiction than it is history" comes from the fact that there is little archaeological evidence and historical documentation to corroborate what Scripture tells us. Now, hidden in this objection is the idea that Scripture itself is not history and therefore cannot be taken as historical evidence in its own right. That is a dubious assumption, to say the least, and it commits the logical fallacy of "begging the question" (i.e. failing to prove what it assumes). Many great books have been written on the historical veracity of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament (e.g. Kingdom of Priests is a good one), so I will not take that up here. It is too broad of a subject to address in this post, but keep in mind that since Scripture presents itself as history, when someone claims it is not, the burden of proof is on them to show that Scripture contradicts established, historical facts. It is not enough to say, "Well, there is no corroborating evidence," for that is an argument from silence or it assumes that historians are in possession of every bit of ancient historical evidence, which, of course, we know they are not. There is still much discovery to be done when it comes to archaeology and ancient history, and saying that there is no or little corroborating evidence to date is not a sufficient objection. The objector must prove that there is well-established, irrefutable evidence that contradicts the Bible before they can say, "Yes, the Bible presents itself as history, but we should not take it that way."

When I preached on Exodus last summer, I wrote about the historical evidence for the exodus from Egypt here, which might be a good place to start for extra reading. In that article, I argued for a date of 1446 BC for the exodus from Egypt, which has been questioned in recent times, and I address those objections to that date in the article, showing why it is biblical and fits the historical evidence from the time.

Given the date of 1446 BC for the exodus and the fact that the Scriptures tell us God's people wandered in the desert for forty years after that, that puts the date of the beginning of the conquest of the land of Canaan at 1406 BC. So, the main question then is: Is there verifiable archaeological and/or historical evidence that contradicts that date? If not, then there is no good reason to believe that what the Bible presents is not true history. A secondary question is: Is there corroborating evidence for this date? So, let's look at those two questions briefly:

In answer to the first (Is there verifiable archaeological and/or historical evidence that contradicts that date?): no, but that is not always the answer some scholars try to give. However, let me give a couple of reasons why the answer to that question is "No, there is no evidence that contradicts that Bible":

• Some scholars have argued that there is no archaeological evidence for a large-scale destruction of Canaanite cities until ca. 1250 BC. Given that, it is argued, the story of Joshua and Israel's conquest of Canaan in Scripture cannot be squared with archaeology, so the book his not historical. However, such an argument flat-out ignores the biblical account of Israel's conquest of Canaan. That argument assumes that the Israelites would have followed traditional conquest patterns of the time (i.e. complete destruction of cities) instead of taking seriously how Scripture describes the conquest:
• Joshua was specifically told by God only to destroy completely Jericho, Ai, and Hazor. The other cities were specifically not to be destroyed so that the Israelites would have places to live when "all was said and done" (cf. e.g. Dt. 6:10-11; 19:1). So, we should not expect there to be any evidence for a large-scale destruction of the cities in Canaan ca. 1406 BC. In fact, the archaeological evidence for a large-scale destruction ca. 1250 BC could easily be attributed to the severe oppression of Israel during the time of Deborah in the book of Judges.
• In addition, renown archaeologist John Garstangs's excavation of Jericho shows that the walls of the city fell outward and that it was probably destroyed ca. 1400 BC (though this date is still debated among archaeologists), both of which fit the biblical data quite well.
• Furthermore, Yigael Yadin's work in the excavation of Hazor (cf. Jos. 11) has shown that it was leveled in also around 1400 BC, which again comports well with the Bible's story and chronology.
• Dating the conquest to 1406 BC does fit what little archaeological and historical evidence in Canaan that we have.
• Furthermore, the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan also fits well with the surround events in the other nations of the ancient Near East (ANE). In fact, when the surrounding history is viewed with an eye that looks for God's providential hand, ca. 1400 BC was the perfect time for the conquest. All of the major powers surrounding Canaan that could have hindered Israel were all preoccupied somehow, which left Canaan ripe for conquest:
• The Hittites (a major power) and Mitannites were at war, and even if the Hittites could have fought on two fronts, they would not press into Canaan for fear of angering Egypt (who had claim to Canaan at the time through treaties with the peoples there).
• Syria was brought under Hittite control during this time, so it posed no threat to Israel in Canaan.
• Assyria and Egypt had entered into a treaty, so Assyria would not risk that treaty by interfering with Canaanites affairs.
• And, even though Egypt had claim to Canaan ca. 1400 BC, it was disinterested in Canaan because Amenhotep III (1417-1379 BC) had turned inward to focus on hunting and arts, and Amenhotep IV (1379-1362 BC) was engaged in religious pursuits and disinterested in Canaan as well. In fact, Burnaburias II of the Kassites wrote a letter to Amenhotep IV (1370 BC) complaining about the shoddy treatment of his messengers that traveled through Canaan (a letter which does not appear to have received a response), and the description in the letter fits the biblical account of the time of the Judges after the conquest.
• As the historian and biblical scholar Eugene H. Merrill says, "The other side of the coin of Egyptian indifference to Canaanite affairs surely has to be the hand of Yahweh, who provided exactly the right circumstances in which His people could possess the land He had promised them."

In answer to the second question: (Is there corroborating evidence for the conquest?): perhaps, though it is not so solid that we can say without a doubt that the documentation of the time refers directly to the Bible's account of the conquest:

• At this time, there was a group of people known as the 'Apiru or Habiru (in the Canaanite language). They do not appear to be an ethnic group (i.e. a race like Hebrews or Hittites) but probably a social class, specifically: mercenaries. There exists a series of letters coming from Canaan to Egypt pleading for help defending against the 'Apiru called the Amarna Letters, and these letters have been dated to ca. 1400-1350 BC. (Egypt did not respond to any of them, by the way, because the Pharaohs described above were disinterested in Canaan and ignored them.) Now, it is clear that these people are not to be fully identified with the Israelites, however, given that their name is remarkably linguistically similar to the word "Hebrew" in Canaanite, it is possible that the Canaanites may have confused the Hebrews with the 'Apiru and perhaps some of the Amarna Letters are really referring to the Hebrews. This would make sense for the Canaanites probably would not have been able to distinguish between peoples attacking them from the outside, especially when their names were so similar.
• There are several Amarna Letters that sound almost exactly like parts of the biblical account of the conquest. Merrill collects several of these together in his book Kingdom of Priests and shows how they fit quite well with the biblical account of the Israelite ownership of Shechem, the defeat of Megiddo, the account of the enslavement of the inhabitants of Gezer by Ephraim of Israel, and the taking of part of Jerusalem by Judah. So, some of the Amarna Letters could very well refer to the Hebrews and not the actual 'Apiru.
• In fact, this possible confusion of the 'Apiru with the Hebrews might explain why the OT very rarely shows the Israelites using "Hebrew" for self-reference--they almost never called themselves "Hebrews." They would not call themselves something that would confuse them with a social class of mercenaries. This confusion also could explain 1 Sa. 13:3, 6-7; 14:21, which distinguish the Hebrews from the Israelites (where these distinguished Hebrews really 'Apiru?).

So, while the 'Apiru cannot be completely identified with the Hebrews, some of the Amarna letters may, in fact, describe the Hebrews (being confused with the 'Apiru). And, even if they do not, they do not contradict the biblical account at all.

As stated above, when one wants to question this historical truthfulness of the book of Joshua, one has to show that it contradicts established, verified archaeological and historical evidence. Hopefully, the above overview shows that it does not, but, in fact, what little extra-biblical data there is for Canaan ca. 1400 BC fits quite well with Scripture and may even offer support for its account of the conquest in the book of Joshua.

On Sunday, we will begin looking at the narrative itself and see how it can fortify us for the Christian life.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Exodus: A Great Salvation -- The Lamb of God

Today we come to the final post in this series, and it is fitting to end with the Passover and exodus—the climax of this book and the great miracle of the Old Testament. As we saw in the last sermon, during the first nine plagues, Pharaoh became increasingly hardened before God and would not let the Hebrews go. God, of course, had told Moses this would be the case because God is making His glory known through Pharaoh’s stubbornness. What we did not read in the last sermon, however, was Pharaoh’s last words to Moses before the tenth plague: “Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” Those are really bold words from a man who’s just seen his entire nation and pantheon of gods defeated by the God of a rag-tag group of slaves. Pharaoh’s arrogance in this story is striking, for even with the tenth plague predicted, he still doesn’t relent, and he’s conceited enough to think that he can threaten Moses’ life, even though Yahweh has devastated his country and worldview. When thinking about Pharaoh as I prepared for this sermon, I was reminded of a poem by William Henley, in the late 19th century, called “Invictus”:

Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul. 

Even though this poem was written thousands of years later, it’s a pretty good description of Pharaoh’s attitude toward God. Yahweh has just answered his question—“Who is the LORD?”—with nine plagues of devastation, and yet he still remains unbowed; still thinks that he’s master of his fate. Well, God has one more plague that will show Pharaoh he is, in fact, not the captain of his soul. Yet, this plague isn’t like the previous nine, for in the midst of it, we not only see Pharaoh, Egypt, and all their so-called gods judged by God—showing they’re not masters of their fate—but also God’s great salvation remembered and His ultimate salvation in Jesus—the Lamb of God—foretold. In the midst of judgment, we see redemption by the blood of the Lamb.

If you want to find out more of how the plagues display God's sovereignty, you can listen to the sermon here or read the transcript here. I pray that the Holy Spirit will use it to magnify Christ in your heart and mind to the glory of God.

By His Grace,
Taylor