The General's Final Orders

THE GENERAL’S FINAL ORDERS

• Imagine that you only had one moment, one thing you could tell your kids. Or your spouse, or your best friend. Like a scene from a movie, imagine that you only had time to say one thing or you were on an extreme time constraint to tell them and then you would never be able to see them again.

• What parting words would you give? What would you say?

• Remember me.

• Remember who you are.

• Never give up.

• Whatever comes to your mind, whatever you said would be incredibly important, would it not? Your last words, by all accounts, would not be easily forgotten by the ones you love.

• On June 14, 2000, (13 years ago!) I was sitting in a smelly Waffle House in Nashville with my family, my mom, dad, and little sister. In less than an hour, I would get on a plane and head to Recruit Training for the Marine Corps in South Carolina.

• I’ve never liked goodbyes. I knew that for at least 3 months, I would not see or hear from my family. One of the aspects of Marine Corps training is “separation” from the civilian life that you once knew. Granted, it wasn’t any kind of permanent farewell, but to an 18 year old, 3 months might as well have been an eternity.

• I will never forget what my dad said to me that day. I don’t remember a lot about that day, but I remember what my dad said. He said, “Keep your head up.” To which he added, “Unless you’re getting shot at, then keep it down.”

My dad has always been a joker. He’s always been able to make me laugh.

But that has stuck with me the last 13 years. Anything I do, whether it’s in ministry or in college or in another job or maybe just mowing the yard, I have learned that I need to keep my head up. To take pride in what I do. To always look on the positive side of things. My dad’s advice is something I’ve always remembered through the years.

In Joshua 23, we see that Joshua is now an old man. He has trusted in God all these years, and God has brought them, through Joshua’s leadership, to this place of peace. Let’s turn there to Joshua 23 as we look over this passage before we get into our lesson tonight.

Israel has been at war a long time, but there’s been a period of peace. Israel now for all intents and purposes had their enemies under their boot. It’s been fourteen years since the fighting stopped, and Joshua is calling together all the leaders of the nation because Joshua knows that for him, the end is near. Joshua knows something else that’s very important - that this is a new generation. This is a generation that never saw the miraculous things that God did for the chosen people of Israel.

Joshua chooses his parting words very carefully. He begins and tells them what God has done for them and led them to this peace. In fact, the first half of chapter 24 is just that - a history lesson, if you will, about how God has delivered this nation from the false gods to the One True God.

He says that any future enemies, with their trust in God, will be vanquished.

He implores the nation to not turn from the Law of Moses, and not to mix with these nations in marraige or in religion. That’s a theme we hear a lot - to not inter-marry with other religions. Why is that? It’s not because of racism or bigotry, it’s because God knew how impressionable His people were. He knew that if they did inter-marry to other religions, then they would be swayed by those religions and turn away from Him, the One True God.

Joshua has many words to say from experience here in these final two chapters of this book. If you only had one chance to tell the next generation of Christians what was most important, what would you say?

Tonight we will spotlight three of the “General’s Final Orders” in these two chapters tonight and make applications to our Christian lives in 2013. We’re going to find that there’s a lot we can learn from Joshua.

[ I ] STICK TO THE WORD

Our first spotlighted verse is chapter 23, verse 6:

“Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left.”

I work with young people, and young people are cosntantly trying to find loopholes. You know what I’m talking about. They are constantly trying to figure out how to push the envelope, push the limits of what they can do, most of the time in a negative way. I have conversations all the time with kids about “Well why can’t I do this?” or “Why can’t I do that?” We sometimes look at the Bible and look at scripture and see a DON’T kind of lifestyle.

What I mean by that is that we have sometimes emphasized what we DON’T do, and we have let that define us as Christians.

I DON’T drink, I DON’T smoke, I DON’T have sex. I go to church. I must be a good Christian.

On the way here I stopped by the Mall in south Nashville. In Lewisburg we don’t have fancy things like malls and stuff, so we have to go elsewhere for those things. But I stopped by the mall to pick some things up and was passing by a department store. And in the window, there modeling clothes, I saw a manneqiun. You know, the lifeless, faceless, made to look like human statues.

If I were to take that mannequin and dress him up in a suit and tie and put him here on the front row, you know what, he would be here for every service. He wouldn’t sing or pray, because he’s a mannequin and therefore not real. But he would be here for every service, every sermon.

He also would not drink, smoke or have sex either.

Does that make him a Christian?

It absolutely does not. You see, we read verses like this one in Joshua 23 and we see “keep the law and all that is written, and turn neither from the right or the left” and we immeidiately think about what we DON’T do.

We immediately think: “Well I don’t do that, so I’m good.”

As Christians, we must get out of the don’t mindset. Christianity is a religion of ‘do’, not ‘don’t.’

And the rules, guidelines, statutes, and laws that God has put in place for us aren’t to spoil our fun, they’re for our protection. Teenagers sometimes don’t realize that.

So when Joshua says here to basically keep the word of the law, he’s putting God’s people in a special state of protection. Sometimes we look at keeping God’s Word as living to a higher standard, but I perfer to think of it as a better state of protection, to sometimes even protect me from myself.

1 John 2.3-4 sums this up perfectly: And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

Today, in 2013, do people who see you and interact with you know Who you follow? If people don’t know that you follow Jesus, and the truth that his Gospel brings, then what do they know about you?

God’s Word should be the absoulte truth for our lives. It should be our guide, our sheild, and our sword. But our lives aren’t refelcting that.

I tell kids that you are literally walking billboards for Christ. We know what billboards do - they advertise a product or service. They literally represent the company which they are advertising.

So tonight, what are you advertising? Do you put your whole faith in God and his Word as a guide for the way we live our lives, or are we looking to the world for that?

So in the first place, Joshua implores us to stick with the Word of God.

[ II ] LOVE GOD

Our second spotlighted verse in the “General’s Final Orders” is, in my mind, a unique one to the Old Testament. Farther down in chapter 23, verse 11, Joshua says this:

“Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God.”

When modern-day Christians look at the Old Testament, we may not exactly see a God of love. We may not see many Biblical characters exhorting us to love God. We see bloody battles and God striking people down for not following his Word to the letter. Love is an idea that is so prevalent in the New Testament, but sometimes not the Old.

But yet, Joshua says it here. It almost seems out of place. Why?

Joshua knows: Because if we love someone, we will not leave them.

In his book “The DNA of Relationships”, Dr. Gary Smalley explains that we are made for three great relationships—with God, others, and ourselves. He has a special program now for married couples who are planning to divorce - and the turnaround rate of those couples that are planning to divorce is astounding - 95% of couples decide to stick together. 95%! One of his founding principles, in a nutshell, is if we truly love someone, we will not leave them.

Joshua wanted the same thing for his people. He wanted them to remember to love God, because he knew if they loved Him, they would not leave Him.

The same is true for us today. If we truly love God then we will not leave him.

1 John 4 is replete with the word love, and the word love is used in that chapter is used over 26 times in just 14 verses. I want to read that scripture: 1 John 4, beginning in verse 7:

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

I used to have a professor in college that any time a certain piece of material was going to be on an upcoming test, he would say it twice. He was pretty open about it to. For example, he’d say a phrase like, “A muckraker is a crusading journalist, who typically challenges the powerful on behalf of those less so.” (2X)

He would say it twice because it was important and it would be on the test. Don’t you think John here really wants to get his point across if he says “love” 26 times in just 14 verses here?

Of course. Without love, for both God and our brothers and sisters in Christ, we have nothing.

When you boil down the Bible, the Gospel, Jesus Christ, and God, the most basic and fundamental idea you get is love.

Sure, there’s lots of other things you have to know. But love for God means we will obey him, and obey his son Jesus Christ and try to be like him as well. Which, in turn, means that we want to obey the Gospel.

Baptism isn’t just dunking someone in water. It is an act which literally cleanses us of our sins, because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

If we love God, we obey him. If obey him, we become one of his through baptism. And baptism is the beginning of our journey with Christ, not the end.

The ultimate show of love was Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us. And the ultimate show of love back to Him is service and sacrifice for His sake.

If we truly love God, then we will serve him in our worship and loving others, we will honor Him by standing up for what is right (even if it’s unpopular) and we will follow Him because we know that His way is the only way for our lives.

[ III ] MAKE A CHOICE

The third of the “General’s Final Orders” that we will spotlight here tonight comes in chapter 24, beginning in verse 14:

“Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

The story of Salmon is an intresting one. It starts out with a genetic mechanism in the salmon that causes a change in the make-up of their bodies enabling them to leave the fresh water and commit to live the next couple of years making their habitat the ocean.

After spending 2-4 years in the salt water they are mature and ready for the final and most difficult journey of their lives. This return requires them to travel upstream reversing the swim they made years earlier to reach the sea.

In the course of this journey they eat nothing, using energy stored while they were in the ocean. Finally, those who survive reach the river where they were born years earlier and lay their eggs.

Matthew Henry, connecting this with Joshua 24.15, says, “Those that are bound for heaven must be willing to swim against the stream. They must not do as the most do, but as the best do.”

Joshua knew what the easy path for his people were. He knew that marrying whomever they wanted, not following God’s precepts, and worshipping other Gods was the easy way out. But he implores the nation of Israel to put away those god and serve the one true God. He even adds here: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Tonight, are you willing to do the hard things required to be a child of God?

I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey, and while I don’t subscribe to everything he says, I do most of what he says is correct. He has a saying: “Live like no one else NOW so that LATER you can live like no one else.”

He’s talking about money, I’m talking about getting to Heaven. To get there, we will have to swim upstream. We will have to live our lives in service to God, like no one else around us. Are we prepared to do that?

Finally, in the last verse of the book of Joshua in chapter 24 beginning in verse 29, we see that Joshua is finally laid to rest. In verse 29, Joshua is given high praise. He’s referred to as “Joshua the son of Nun, servant of The Lord.”

Will you be able to be called that after you’re gone? A “servant of The Lord?” It is a calling that every Christian has received, a calling that we must all obey if we’re going to inherit eternal life.

Let’s pray.

Tonight we’ve spotlighted three of the “General’s Final Orders.” It’s amazing to me how Joshua’s words can apply so much to our lives thousands of years later. We must remember his words. We must remember his final orders to stick to the Word of God, to Love God and serve Him, and to make a choice every day to live for Him.

INVITATION

Tonight, are you in need of prayers? Are you struggling this evening? Whatever it is, if we give it to God, we can know that He is faithful. Perhaps you haven’t made that choice to follow God, to become a child of His through baptism. My question to you tonight is why do you wait? There’s no time like the present. Won’t you come right now, while we stand and while we sing.