Today we’re in Joshua 24.
Today, in the book of Joshua, the book of Joshua concludes by looking very intentionally at the reality of death. Today we’re going to talk about dying. Wait, today’s Easter, I’m talking about dying? Can we talk about living? Well actually, we’re going to talk about dying. Because the good news of the resurrection of Christ is made good because of the reality that every single one of you is going to die. An earthly death. That’s the reality: you will die. Congratulations.
Now, as I was preparing, I looked back at 2022 to look at all the famous people who died because that’s, you know, famous people think they’re going to live forever. Sometimes. They’re all dead. They’re all going to die, too. You had some famous names from television and movies like Olivia Newton John, Bob Saget. Barbara Walters, Sidney Poitier, Kirstie Alley, Gilbert Godfried and James Caan. 2022 actually wasn’t a very good year for television and movie stars dying. It was just meh. Singers. We got Coolio, Meatloaf, and everyone’s favorite, Aaron Carter. I’ll tell you what, probably the most famous person though, that died last year was Queen Elizabeth. She was pretty famous. I’ll give the queen that. In England, there was all kinds of celebration and remembrance of a life well lived as the Queen. But when people die, famous people die, that’s often something we remember. Those who may be a little more seasoned among us. Do you remember when JFK was assassinated? Or maybe John Lennon? Something that sticks in your mind? Of course, it’s not just about people. There are events that gets seared into our mind. How about when the space shuttle Challenger exploded? You remember that? Or perhaps more recently, an event that many of us remember, I remember I was in college, my first year on the date of 9/11, when the two towers fell. The passing of people in these tragic events is something that we often mark our lives by. And yet the reality of death is around us all the time. Since 2020 and COVID, we have been inundated with the messaging and the reminder, the fear mongering of death. And some of us have probably lost loved ones recently. Most of us certainly will lose loved ones. And that’s always very hard. And not just sickness through a disease. But there’s war going on. We look at Ukraine, and the tragedy of the war over there. Hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Ukraine and Russian soldiers needlessly slaughtered. And natural disasters too. The earthquake that just happened a couple months ago, in the Middle East. Terrible. Hundreds of thousands of people dying in Turkey alone. It’s tragic. It’s terrible.
If you stop and actually think about it and contemplate it, it can be overwhelming. Did you know that God hates death? It wasn’t his design. It wasn’t his plan. but it’s the consequence of wanting to be a god yourself. Because we always screw things up. Just like Adam and Eve.
In our narrative that we have been studying through the book of Joshua, death has been a constant theme. If you go back to chapter one, verse one, the very beginning of the book, the entire story begins with what? Death. Moses had just died. And we’re reminded of that. And not just Moses, but an entire generation of Israel had been lost wandering in the wilderness due to their lack of faith. These people were surrounded by death. And then when they came into the promise, they came into the Promised Land, death surrounded them through the warfare that they fought. Through the narrative, the Lord gives victory in the midst of the death. Amen, praise God. But at the end of it all, at the end of the book, we come to a place where again, the most prominent figures in the entire story are dead.
Isn’t this so chipper and cheery? It’ll get better, I promise. And so we read in Joshua 24:29-33
29 After these things Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being 110 years old. 30 And they buried him in his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.
31 Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel.
32 As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money.[c] It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
33 And Eleazar the son of Aaron died, and they buried him at Gibeah, the town of Phinehas his son, which had been given him in the hill country of Ephraim.
The story is over, the people have renewed their covenants. Once more with Joshua, Joshua’s work is finished. And after his work, an entire lifetime of serving the Lord, serving Moses, serving the people of Israel, he died. And we have a very faithful man. A man who in so many ways, points forward to Jesus in his example to us of how to live his life, came to an end. And we read for the very first time in Scripture, a description of Joshua, as the servant of the Lord. Did you catch that? Verse 29, in all of the chapters of this book, and throughout Torah, where he is referenced, he is never anywhere else referred to as the servant of the Lord. This is the first place and if you read through the narrative of Moses, Moses is only referred to as the servant of the Lord at the end of his life. In Deuteronomy 34:5, that’s the first spot that Moses is called the servant of Lord, and then again in Joshua 1. Referring to his death, he is referred to as a servant of the Lord.
Niko spoke several weeks ago about legacy. I can’t think of a better legacy that I would want to be able to live out and have said of me than that I was a servant of the Lord. Amen. It makes us think about the parable of Jesus. Remember, he told lots of stories. And he told stories of the servants, who are given different resources to steward and oversee. And the ones who were faithful in their stewardship, faithful in the use of those resources. Jesus said to them, well done good and faithful servant. That was at the end of that parable. After they had shown themselves faithful. This was at the end of Joshua’s life, he was finally referred to as the servant of the Lord. It’s interesting. Why is it interesting? Well, Scripture tells us all the time to persevere, doesn’t it? To endure, to press on, to run the race, to fight the good fight. Because it’s so easy to give up and give in, isn’t it? It’s so easy to fall to the right or to the left. And it’s only by the grace of God through the Spirit of God indwelling us and leading us that we will continue on the narrow path through the narrow gate. And to finish the race as a servant of the King. Amen. That’s our prayer. That’s our goal. But Joshua is interesting because in a lot of ways, he represents the mantle of Moses. Moses, who by the way, Scripture says there was no other prophet in all the Old Testament like Moses, who saw God face to face (Deuteronomy 34:10). Joshua took up that mantle of leadership of speaking truth to the people of God. And then at 110 years old, after faithfully serving he passes and Joshua reminds us that no matter how faithful and full of service alife we live, death still comes.
But the narrative doesn’t just end with Joshua, in verses 29-30. It moves on to Joseph. And we haven’t really heard anything about Joseph through this entire book. And yet here he is, at the end, in the epilogue of the story, and we see that Joseph has his bones buried at Shechem. Now, if you’ve been with us at all through the last, well, year and a half, you know that Shechem is a pretty important place in Israel. It is the place where the covenant was renewed, just this chapter, earlier in the chapter. It was also the place where they affirmed the blessings and the curses. And earlier in Israel’s history, it was a place of importance as well. You know, I’m not going to rehash that, we’ve taught on that. But this is where Joseph’s bones are buried. Who remembers who Joseph was? You might remember his really fancy coat. He was the favorite son of Jacob and his brothers hated him for it. He also, depending on how you read his story, might have had a bit of a chip on his shoulder and it was a young buck. Hey, let me tell you about this dream where you’re going to bow down to me. And his brothers, well, didn’t take well to that, sold him into slavery, sent him off to Egypt, where through the course of the story. He ultimately rose, to be the right-hand man of Pharaoh. Pharaoh, you will recall in Egyptian culture was essentially a god man. And the one who sat at the right hand of Pharaoh was essentially the king of Egypt, underneath the god man. And so here, Joseph, we have a man who was wise, who interpreted dreams, who could provide and make righteous decisions governing an entire nation. He saved his brothers. He forgave his brothers when they came back during the famine seeking food. And he brought the Israelites into Egypt and provided for them. And at the end of his life, which by the way, Joseph died living 110 years. Apparently, some historians will tell you, the Egyptians believed that 110 years was the perfect lifespan. So, coincidence that both Joseph and Joshua lived 110 years. But Joseph, in all of his exercise of power, and influence, all of his ability to provide and make a nation great still came to an end. And we are reminded that no matter the great things we do in this life, no matter how many people we save, from hardship and difficulty, death still comes, even to a king, the right hand of a god.
Then we get to verse 33, with Eleazar. Eleazar was the high priest, the son of Aaron. And you read through, he is in the Torah, the first five books, he’s one of the very few people along with Joshua and Caleb, who came into the Promised Land. We don’t know if he was older than 20 when the Lord said that, you guys are not going to make it, this generation. But he was one of the old heads with Joshua and Caleb. And he lived a faithful life, serving the Lord, the temple wasn’t there at the time, but serving in the tabernacle, offering the sacrifices. And to Eleazar’s is his credit, he is one of the few fathers in all of Scripture who seems to have raised a godly son. You ever notice how many godly men don’t raise godly kids in Scripture? It’s a pretty common theme, actually. And it’s heartbreaking. And that’s a whole other topic. We’re not going to go down that rabbit trail. But Eleazar didn’t, because we read about his son Phinehas, who would become the next High Priest, who himself was a godly zealous man. We’ve met Phinehas through the book of Joshua already. And yet, for all of his spirituality, for all of his pursuit of religiosity and zeal, Phinehas reminds us that death still comes to the religious, to the zealous, to the spiritual. And I find it interesting in the midst of this text, in the midst of the accounts of the death of this prophet, the death of this king and the death of this priest, we have an account in verse 31. That in response to the faithful leadership of Joshua and Eleazar, and the elders who lead alongside of those men, Israel remained faithful to the Lord. Now, at first glance, we might read this, and we might think that’s great. These people remain faithful to the Lord. They were faithful for a whole generation. But then you take a step back. And these people who lived out coming into the Promised Land, having victory after victory, seeing the Lord literally make the sun stand still. And part the Jordan so they could cross over bringing the walls of Jericho down in an awesome display of his power. These people were faithful.
But it was just one generation. It took just one generation.
And you read the book of Judges, and you see how quickly they spiraled into their own selfish pursuits. In Judges 2, if you want to turn over just a couple of pages in your Bible. When he’s talking, it’s recounting again, the death of Joshua.
Judges 2:10a And all that generation [meaning the faithful generation] also were gathered to their fathers.
They died. The generation that was faithful, that worshipped Yahweh, they all died. And we’re shown yet again that to the faithful death still comes. That passage continues on, however,
Judges 2:10b And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
Pause there. They knew the Lord. Intellectually. They knew the stories that were told, that their parents told them. They knew what who Yahweh is. But the Hebrew word here for “know” means to have relationship with, to intimately, submit to, to follow, to be one with. Despite everything that their parents taught them, their hearts were not right before God
Judges 2:11 And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them.
And if you turn to the last chapter in the book of Judges 21:25 (this is the concluding remark of the book of Judges) “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Why was there no king in Israel? Well, there actually was. It was supposed to be Yaweh as king, right? But they had rejected him. And so they just lived however they wanted. They lived doing right in their own eyes. Sounds a lot like our culture today, does it not?
And those people who did write in their own eyes, who would not submit to Yahweh as King, they lived for themselves. Hedonistically indulging in whatever pleasures they wanted, worshiping whatever gods were around them, trying to get ahead in life. And some had worldly success, some had riches, some had power, some had position, and the praises of the world. And what happened to them? They all died. In the midst of all of the things that the world offers, we are reminded that, go ahead and indulge in it. But death still comes.
Joshua, Joseph and Eleazar they were faithful men. But they could not overcome death. None of the prophets and the kings and the priests of the Old Testament would ever walk victoriously out of the grave. But they all pointed to the one who did. Amen.
Okay, now’s the time when we start to get happy and excited. Scripture tells us that Jesus is the greatest prophet. In Acts 7:37, when Stephen is recounting the history of Israel, he says that God (he’s quoting Moses), God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. That’s Deuteronomy 18, referring to Jesus. Jesus is the prophet. He is the one who would speak truth. In fact, he doesn’t just speak truth. What did you just say about himself in John 14: “I am the truth.” Everything about Jesus is prophetic. He fulfills all of the Law and the Prophets. He is truth for us. He is the perfect prophet, the one who Joshua and all the prophets pointed to. But he is not just the perfect prophet. Jesus is also the perfect High Priest. In fact, he’s a better high priest than Aaron, than Eleazar, than Phinehas than the entire order. He’s a High Priest, Hebrews tells us, in the order of Melchizedek. Meaning that he is superseding the law, greater than anything within Judaism. He has a deeper and more pure relationship with the Father, the Creator of righteousness, Yahweh. Hebrews 4:14-16 says, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Jesus is the ultimate prophet. He is the ultimate high priest, and we know that Jesus is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords.
Revelation 19:11-16, “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
That is our king. We do not worship a weak, mamby pamby god. I praise God that he came in grace and mercy first, amen. I praise God that He came to extend life to us, that He died for us, because when he comes again, He is coming to rule and to reign.
But that ruling God lowered himself to become a man like you and I. Philippians 2, it was obedience to the point of death on that cross. He died, just like all of us are going to die. Unless he comes back, which would be sweet. I mean, that’s kind of the caveat to all this. Right? Got our little exclusion. Those legal contracts you read: well, this is going to happen unless! I pray Jesus comes back. Although, I gotta tell you, for me, I want him to come back right now. That’s very selfish of me. Do you know why? Because when he comes back, that’s going to be bad news for billions of people around the world. And so I want him to return, I want to go see him. I’d rather be dead than alive. Because then I’m not actually in a fake kind of prison of flesh. I am truly alive when this goes away, right? Here’s the reality. Every single one of us is going to live forever. Did you know that? You all have eternal life. Congratulations. Your bodies are all going to die. They’re all going to pass away. Don’t get too attached. Right? All of us who spend so much time dressing up and looking fancy, you know. Putting your face on, getting your hair done. Your hair is going to fall out, your facing is going to get saggy. That’s what Ecclesiastes says, right? Going to get old. If you’re lucky, you’re going to get old. Body’s going to die, waste away. The world knows that. That’s why they’re trying to upload your consciousness to like Starlink or something like that. I don’t know.
Terminator was right, it’s coming. You watch out for Skynet? God’s not going to let it get there? He’s going to come back before then. How do I know that? Jesus said that as it was in the days of Noah so it shall be at the end. What was it like in the days of Noah? The days of Noah, it was rampant idolatry and rampant hedonism. People doing everything they want. It’s been that way throughout history. That’s not new. Man has always been depraved. What was really going on in the days of Noah, the adulteration of man as an image bearer of God, because of the fallen angels who had interbred. God will not stand for his image being adulterated. He will not stand for it. And so as we go further down the path of transhumanism, of adulterating the image of God, that will be the indicator (I believe my opinion Matthew’s opinion) that Jesus is coming because God will not stand for it. But I digress.
As long as man tries to live good, good, good for you guys. Guess what? You’re dead. You’re going to die. All you rich guys go into space trying to prolong your life, you’re dead. Are you people taking your pills trying to slow the metabolism and the degeneration of your body? Good for you, you’re going to die.
And then the question is, what do we do? Because we have a king. Did you catch in there: he’s not only going to return, he is the judge of the living and the dead. And he gives life to those who trust in Him, who looked to him, who submit to Him. Jesus has overcome death We sang this morning about the fact that Jesus has taken away the sting of death. 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 says, “… ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
By faith in Jesus, the sting of death is gone. We do not need to fear death. We do not need to go through this life in these frail bodies which are going to fade away, worried about what happens when it finally gives out if we trust in Jesus. If we simply submit to him and say, “Lord, you are my King, and I bow to you, what would you have me do?” And he’ll tell you, he’ll show you, he’ll mature you, he’ll refine you. He will help you to become more and more and more and more like him and then guess what happens? You die. And then guess what happens? You live for real! We live. That is what our God does for us. That is why this day is so amazing, and why it is such cause for celebration and joy. We can come here and we can sing songs. And it’s nice, and it’s Easter, and I’m going to go have some ham or something, with my family. It’s not about any of that. It’s about that my King defeated death. And he has given me the opportunity to walk in the newness of life right now. I can walk in the newness of life right now. And continue to walk in that life, even after this body fades away. Because that’s what our king does. That’s what King Jesus does. And that’s what he extends to every single person on this planet if they would hear it and receive it. And that’s what our job is church. Our job here is to live lives of praise and worship of our King: true, sincere, thankful worship of our king. But it’s not just about that. That’s a selfish existence. Our job is to go and live a life that is so full of the life of the king that others say, “Whoa, what do you got that I don’t?” And I say, I’m going to live forever with Jesus. And you can too. He’s offering you that same thing. What are you going to do? Are you going to receive it? Are you going to die and remain separated? I don’t want that, Jesus doesn’t want that. God doesn’t want that. He wants you to be with him. Which is why he said, John 11:25-27, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Do you believe this? If the answer is yes, Church, praise God. Do not keep it to yourself. Share it. And that’s, by God’s grace, what we’re going to talk about now with this next series, is our responsibility to share the life we have with all those around us. Amen.