Famous Last Words

Your future, it can seem mysterious and frightening. But there's good news. God has a promised land for you to move into, courageously and fearlessly. And the book of Joshua shows you how it can happen. How to live your promised land life. Well, good morning. And grab your message notes that look like this as we wrap up our series in the book of Joshua. That's a book in the Old Testament, in the Bible. Fascinating book full of high adventure. And we're going to see how Joshua concludes that book this morning.

My name's René. I'm one of the pastors here at TLC. Super glad that you're here. As you're taking those notes out, I got to tell you, there's one thing I, for some reason, am just super fascinated by. It's the famous last words of different celebrities throughout history. I don't know why, but I'm just drawn to these. Sometimes they reveal things to you about these people. Let me just give you some examples.

Ethan Allen, famous American revolutionary general, in response to the doctor who tried to comfort him by saying, "General, the angels are waiting for you," he said, "Waiting? Waiting, are they? Well, let them wait." I like that. You know? John Sedgwick, a Civil War general who was killed in battle—these were his last words. This is true. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist—" And that was it. That was all she wrote for the general.

Karl Marx said to his housekeeper, who had just asked him for his last words so she could write them down for posterity. And he said, "Get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." And so those were his last words. Probably not the best choice. Thomas Edison, the famous inventor—I love this—he said, "It is very beautiful over there." And then he died. Isn't that intriguing? And then Steve Jobs famously and intriguingly said, "Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow." Took a breath, and that was it for Jobs. Wouldn't you love to know what it was that he saw?

Sometimes people try to give advice with their last words. Somebody asked Conrad Hilton, the famous hotel impresario, for some final words of wisdom when he knew he was about to die. And true story, he said, "Please, always put the shower curtain inside the tub." Well, in the Bible passage that we're going to look at this morning, Joshua gives what you could call his own famous last words.

Now, let me set the scene for you. Let me show you the actual stage of his own last words. If you drive north out of Jerusalem, then you go into the West Bank, and you keep going for about 30 miles, you get to a bowl-shaped valley that is nestled between two mountains. And thousands of years ago, a city was first built between these two mountains. Today, it's called Nablus. But in the ancient days, it was called Shechem. And that shows up in the Bible again and again and again. It was the place that people came to make commitments to God for thousands of years.

Shechem was the place where God spoke to Abraham and promised to give him the promised land. Shechem was where Jacob stopped to bury the foreign idols that he'd been traveling with and rededicate his life to God. Shechem was where Joseph was buried. In Joshua 8, Joshua, a week after the people entered the promised land, stops at Shechem and has all the people rededicate themselves to God. And decades after that, the dying old man Joshua gives a farewell message at Shechem.

The point is that over all those centuries, Shechem was a place where great spiritual decisions were made. So this morning, I want you to imagine that we, all of us, are gathered in that valley at Shechem, along with millions of other Israelites. And Joshua is giving us his last words. And why is this the best way to end this series? Because we've learned a lot of great principles in the book of Joshua. So the question is, OK, what's the takeaway? What's the big idea from this study that Joshua, if he were here live himself, would want us to take away from this book?

Now, before we dig into this, let me just say for a minute, some people have told me, you know, I've loved this study in the book of Joshua, but there's one thing that's kind of, frankly, bothered me. And that's all the violence. Well, if the battles, the war in the book of Joshua has understandably been kind of bugging you, you've been asking, so there's all this war in Joshua? Does that mean God supports holy war against the infidels or something? That's a great question.

And so on page three of your notes, I put a short little resource list there where it says, "War in Joshua. Did God command war? How do you reconcile a violent Old Testament with a loving Jesus? Thoughts on the battles in Joshua?" And then there's a sequel to Joshua in the Bible named Judges, where there are some violent scenes there too. Here's a link to a great little two-page PDF that Tim Keller put out on this. He's a pastor in Manhattan. And then there's a book that a great philosopher named Paul Kippon wrote on this too.

But let me just briefly reiterate, as we've said before, the book of Joshua is about the war of independence for this nation of Israel. It's sort of like our revolutionary war. It lasted for about seven years. And the point, the big takeaway of the book of Joshua is not that God wants us all to fight a literal war against the infidels and heretics or something like that. The point of Joshua, Joshua's point is that God is always faithful to all his promises. So he is always worthy of all your trust.

How do I know that's the point? Because that is the point Joshua makes himself. So let's say this out loud together. Would you say this out loud? Because somebody here needs to hear this today. God is always faithful to all his promises. So he is always worthy of all your trust.

So imagine you are in that valley. Even today, the acoustics are amazing. It's kind of shaped like a football stadium. So you can just imagine hundreds of thousands of people lining the hillside as they listen to this highly honored, old, legendary leader. And he starts in chapter 23, the second to last chapter of the book of Joshua by talking to the leaders. And then in chapter 24, the ultimate chapter, he gathers the whole nation.

And this old man stands in the stadium-shaped valley. And he shouts out his final charge. And those are the last words we ever hear from Joshua before he dies. The Bible says he's 110 when he gives this speech. So he's very elderly. But he says to the leaders. And then he says to the people, here's the lessons you need to learn. Here's what I want you to realize after I am gone. And he says really two things.

Number one, he says in chapter 23, you have to remember. You got to remember what God has done here because it is so easy to forget. Remember what? Well, he talks about three things. First, remember what God provided for you. Remember all that God provided for you. Verse 3, "Yourselves have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake. It was the Lord your God who fought for you." Verse 9, "The Lord has driven up before you great and powerful nations. To this day, no one has been able to withstand you."

And by the way, he's referring in part to a story that we didn't even talk about in the book of Joshua. And that is that God sent hornets. Apparently, there was this infestation one year of hornets or wasps. And it was so bad that entire villages were emptied as people fled north and toward the sea. And all these people were leaving. And in some of these cities, the people of Israel didn't even have to lift a sword to fight them. They just walked into vineyards and cities as people fled this plague of hornets that had gone before them. And that's what he's talking about when he says, "The Lord your God fought for you."

Notice he keeps saying not you did this. He says the Lord did this. And we all need to remember that no matter how successful we are, no matter what happens, it all comes from him. When we get to breathe our first breath of life, we didn't earn that gift of life. We didn't even get to ask for it. That's a gift from God. When we get to smell flowers or see the ocean or the sunset or the sunrise or hear birds singing, that's a gift from God. When we find faith, that's 100% a gift from God. And when we find opportunities to do good for people, all of those are gifts from God too.

So from start to finish, we are just lavished by God with layer upon layer upon layer of gifts. So you gotta remember that. And you gotta pass it on to the next generation so that they don't forget the stories of God's blessings on your family. And then he says, remember what God promised to you. In verse 5, "He will drive them out before you and you will take possession of their land as the Lord your God promised you." Do you know what God promised you? Really the same thing. A promised land, right? The new heavens and the new earth for yourself and for all those who trust in the Lord to live in.

There's a great verse in 2 Corinthians 1:20 and I want us all to read this verse out loud together. You see it on the screen and in your notes. Let's read it. Here we go. "For all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding yes. And through Christ our amen ascends to God for his glory." Now what's that all about? Watch this. It means that in a sense we too have been given all of the promises of God that they got. Because think about it. That he'll be with us. Yeah, we have that promise. That he'll empower us. We have that promise. That we have an inheritance, a promised land life to walk into. We have that promise.

And when we trust in God's promises, what happens is that it lifts our spirits and our amen, which means yes God ascends to God for his glory. That means there's just something about believing God's promises that replaces your inner no with an inner yes. And I don't know about you, but often I have an inner no going on in my heart. And when you go no God has great things for you, it replaces that kind of the set of your compass. So that you start saying yes amen. God it changes you from the inside out. When you remember his promises, remember his provision, and then remember what God produced in you.

Look at how God has changed you. He says in verse 10, "One of you routes a thousand because the Lord your God fights for you just as he promised." And guess what? God fights for you too. Because the Holy Spirit's always there empowering you. And so Joshua says to the people when you consider all of this. I love this in verse 14. He says, "I'm about to go the way of all the earth." What's a great way to say I'm about to die. I'm about to go the way of all the earth. And you know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled not one has failed.

He's at 110 years old. He can say God has provided our needs every step of the way. There was somebody in my life who kept affirming this again and again. And I've told you many of you some of the stories. And if you've heard these before I apologize. But I'll tell you what I need to hear them again. I need to keep remembering. But my own mother, and I think I'm thinking about her because her birthday's coming up this week. But she died less than two years ago after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. And toward the end of that battle it became more and more difficult for her to speak.

For a long time she couldn't really put more than maybe a four or five word sentence together. And then it came down to individual words. And then she lost the ability to speak at all. But we would still go for long walks together because she loved that. And one time we were for a walk down along the ocean on a beautiful day in Santa Cruz. And later that afternoon I was speaking at a big funeral for a local man who had died suddenly of cancer at age 36. And his wife was 32 and his children, a boy was four and a little girl was one and a half. The exact same ages of our family when my father died at 36 leaving a 32-year-old widow with a four-year-old boy and a one and a half-year-old daughter.

So I told my mom all of this and I said, now that you're decades removed from that tragedy what would you say to a young woman who's in literally the exact same situation that you were in all those years ago? Because I wanna say that at the memorial service. And she stopped and she looked out at the ocean and she looked and she looked. And after a long time I thought maybe because of the Alzheimer's she didn't understand my questions so I was trying to reformulate it and that she turned to me with a smile and tears on her face and she said, "Tell her," in her Swiss accent, "The Lord will provide." And that was all she could get out but that's all she needed to say. The Lord will provide.

And I should have known that would have been her advice because all through our growing up years I must have heard that a thousand times from her directed toward me and my little sister. I told some of you about the time that we didn't have any more milk and she said, "Well, we can't afford milk," but she looked at us both, "The Lord will provide." And we held hands in a little circle and we prayed for milk. And somebody left some powdered milk on our doorstep. A miracle, the Lord provided.

And another time I needed shoes. The soles of my shoes were just open to the air and she said, "The Lord will provide." And we prayed and somebody gave us some shoes that their son didn't want because they were a really ugly puke green but that kind of ruins the story so I won't get into that. Never forget telling mom, but mom I don't wanna wear these shoes. There's this ugly shade of green and she said, "The Lord provided so you reveal them." So I did. But I'll tell you what, that lesson gets ingrained into your head, it's just tattooed onto your brain. The Lord will provide. Not always in the ways that you want or think you need but he really does always provide.

Now some of you might be thinking, well the Lord didn't provide for her because she got Alzheimer's disease. What kind of provision is that? He let her down at the end after all those years. Well, I'll tell you something. The Lord still provided for her. I mean for one thing my sister and I both took care of her in our homes in the last few years of her life. But for another thing, while she lost the ability to speak, she still had the ability to hear and sing songs, especially old church hymns. And often if she was anxious or upset, I would take her into my arms and just hold her close because I couldn't have a conversation with her. I would start to sing old hymns.

And she could sing them along every word even though she couldn't speak in sentences. And one of her favorites was when I start to sing, "When we all get to heaven," and she starts singing, "What a day of rejoicing that will be. When we all see Jesus, we'll sing and shout the victory." And she believed it with all of her heart. That God still had a promised land for her. And let me tell you something. When you believe that, it makes all the difference.

Well, when she passed away, my sister and I had to decide what to put on her tombstone. She's buried over in Los Gatos. And after like one second of thought, it was clear what we needed to put on her grave. And so if you go visit it today, it has her name and the year she lived and underneath that, it says, "The Lord will provide." And that's what at 110 years old, Joshua is saying to the children of Israel. He's saying, guys, I have seen it all from bad to worse to good to great to challenging. And let me tell you after 110 years, here's the lesson. The Lord will provide. He is always faithful to all his promises.

And so he says, therefore, he is worthy of your commitment to him. And that's the second thing that he says in chapter 24. He says, therefore, you have to choose. You have to make a choice to trust this God who is always faithful to all his promises. You gotta choose to follow him. Now, before we get into the famous last line of this speech of Joshua's, let me just say that what he's saying to the Israelites is that decisions matter. Choosing which direction you want to go in life matters, even though it may seem like such a small thing when in church you say, "I'm committing my life to God," that makes a difference.

I mentioned that our whole family is from Switzerland. In Switzerland, of course, there's Alps, but there is also the Continental Divide of the Continental Watershed. And it's a dramatic ridge of mountains known as the Wittenwasserenstok. That's right, I said the Wittenwasserenstok. Say that with me, let me hear you. The Wittenwasserenstok. Gesundheit. So this is the ridge that forms the line between the Continental Watersheds. And what that means is when you hike around here, there's a lake at the bottom of this ridge. And when you hike there, there is a sign in one spot. And it says, "The rain that falls on one side of this sign will flow all the way out to the Black Sea. And the rain that falls on the other side of this sign will flow all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean. And the rain that falls on the third side of this sign will flow all the way out to the North Sea."

Literally a half an inch difference between where the rain falls makes continent-sized differences to where it eventually ends up. And that is the power of choice. One small decision could eventually make a difference in your life the size of a continent. For good or for bad, depending on where you end up. Joshua's seen it in his life. But now he's looking in this valley of Shechem at a nation that still doesn't get it. It's a nation that still has not really decided whether to follow the Lord or not. And so he gives them this famous challenge in verse 15 of Joshua 24. "If serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, those would have been the old traditional gods. Or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are now living. Those would have been the gods of fertility and sex and so on. But he says, 'But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.' It's a remarkable challenge for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it is a personal choice. He says, "Choose for yourselves." He gives them a choice. And to me, this is really the spirit of biblical faith. When you share your faith, you don't need to try to coerce people into faith. You present them your faith, and then if they choose some other way, so be it. It's always a mistake to crowd people when you talk about Jesus and try to coerce them. First of all, it's unbiblical. And secondly, we have nothing to fear and everything to gain by just presenting the options and then giving people the God-given right to make up their own minds. You can relax about it and just bear witness to your faith.

It's a personal choice, and this is a pervasive choice. He says, "As for me and my household," and pervasive means it leaks into every area of your life. It's not just about what church I go to. It impacts my household, my spouse, my kids, my friends, my business, and this is a public choice. Joshua is making this choice in front of everybody, and he says, "I don't care what the rest of you do. I am going to serve the Lord."

Now, what does this kind of a choice look like, for reals, in our world today? I wanna read you an email that I got just a few days ago that I just love because this is a young mom here at TLC, and she writes, "I was raised," listen to this, "by a very atheist single mom, and have found my faith by what I consider the true grace of God." She says, "I cared for my mom since I was 18, as she battled cancer for 12 years, and I questioned God's existence." Well, she says, "Three years ago, I came between lakes one weekend and have never stopped. I have truly been able to find what I was missing my entire life, Jesus."

Now, listen to this, "Since accepting Jesus, I have gone through the hardest times of my life," and she details them, including the death of her mother, but she says, "With Jesus, the living Jesus by my side, and by the grace of God, I am still standing, filled with hope while refocusing on God every step of the way." She says, "I believe wholeheartedly in his promises. I was baptized last September at the beach, and as I continue to work in my 10th year in the same challenging pediatric oncology department at a hospital in San Jose, many of us nurses are now empowered by Jesus Christ. Just yesterday, as I cut a mohawk into my 18-year-old patient's head, who has relapsed leukemia, we talked about the promises of God. I have all the nurses praising Jesus. Some are even believers, and some are not, but it's apparent the power of the Holy Spirit has touched us all."

Man, there is so much I love about this, but first of all, from an atheist to an evangelist, in the best sense of the word, man, that's what it's all about. That's the task of the church, right? But what she models is exactly what Joshua's talking about. Did you pick up on it? It was, of course, a very personal choice for her, especially for her, having been raised by atheist parents, and having no background. She had to make it very personal. She couldn't inherit it from anybody. And then it's a pervasive choice. It impacts her not only personally, but also her public, her professional life. And it's a public choice. She decided to make it public by being baptized at the beach in September. I love it.

Because when we make that choice, and we make it sincerely, it can impact everything, every molecule of our lives. Now, just in case you're going, yes, I will commit to serving God, or recommit based on Joshua's stirring last charge, here's what Joshua might say to you. This is kind of a little coda to the story at the very end of chapter 24, that personally I've never heard any other pastor preach, because it doesn't really preach that good. Because most of them just end right there on that verse, right, oh, it's very stirring. So what happens is all the people go, "Yes, yes, yes, yay, God, we will serve the Lord." And what you want to do is just like fade to black.

Well, it doesn't, because what happens is Joshua goes, "Yeah, you're not gonna do it." You're not gonna serve God. And then Joshua warned the people, verse 19, "You won't keep worshiping the Lord." I love it, 'cause he sounds like such an old man, doesn't he? "You gotta turn and worship the Lord, we will." "No, you won't." And the people said to Joshua, "No, we really will worship the Lord." It's funny, isn't it? And the Joshua answered, "All right, do you agree to be witnesses? Not just witnesses, but witnesses against yourselves. 'Cause this is gonna come back to haunt you, that you have chosen to worship the Lord." They replied, "We are witnesses."

And Joshua said, "Now put aside the foreign gods that are reminding you." Hit pause. Decades after coming into the promised land, they still have the foreign gods among them. So Joshua goes, "Well, you need to put those aside, because you can't serve all the gods. You gotta pick one, right?" And then he says, "And worship the Lord your God." And then the people said to Joshua, "We will," notice they don't say, "We will put aside the foreign gods." "We will worship the Lord our God." That is so psychologically true of human nature, isn't it?

I love that this is in the chapter, and I wish all preachers preached on this, because this is exactly what happens after a camp experience, after a mountaintop experience, after we come forward during church to pray with the Stephen minister, after we commit to the Lord again in tears in our bedroom, we go, "We won't follow you, I will follow you." And then a little bit after the buzz spiritually wears off, we go, "And maybe this little idol too that I love so much, my precious. You know, and this one too, I'm gonna hide it in my tent because I love it, and I love God too, right?"

Here's what Joshua's getting at. We're not called to one-time enthusiasm, right? They had the enthusiasm. We're called to daily commitment, what someone called a long obedience in the same direction. Now I love enthusiasm. I wanna be an enthusiastic person, but making Jesus the Lord of your life means a daily commitment to what he would want you to do. And that's not easy. In fact, I wanna say no one is perfect in this, and that's why Jesus, the only truly 100% faithful one, gave his life for us so that God now sees me as faithful as Jesus. And that means that when I do fail, I can get back up knowing God does not condemn me. He is for me.

Now three or four things before we wrap this up, because a call to a commitment elicits some responses. One is if you are a habitually indecisive person, which I tend to be, you know? You're the person that takes an hour with the menu at the restaurant. When the server comes up and says, "And we have some daily specials as well," you go, "Man, just give me another hour, because now I have new information." If that's you, let's look at three common excuses for indecision. And the first goes like this. If I don't decide anything that I won't make any mistakes, the problem is often inaction is worse than a bad decision, right? I mean, think of the squirrel you almost ran over on your street earlier today. You know, "Should I go to this side or that side? I'll just stay in the middle of the road." Joshua's saying, "The middle of the road is gonna kill you. You've got to choose one."

And here's another myth. I can keep all my options always open, but the truth is often in not choosing one, all the options close, right? And then here's one I hear a lot. "If I have any doubts at all, then I can't decide." If I have any doubts about Jesus or about marrying that person or about my job, if I don't have a peace in my heart about every major decision, then I cannot make that choice and I cannot move ahead. Listen, peace in your heart is very overrated by Christians as a trigger for decisions. First of all, it's not really in the Bible. What's in the Bible is this truth. Progress is not about absolute certainty. It's about choice.

And I can prove it to you. Once a man asked Jesus to heal his son, and Jesus said, "Well, do you believe I can?" And the man said, "I do believe. Help my unbelief." That's another one like the very end of Joshua. Aren't you glad that's in the Bible? Isn't that psychologically true? "I do believe in you. Oh, and help the ways that I don't believe in you." And you know what Jesus says? He says, "I can work with that." And he heals his son. See, commitment is not about absolute certainty. It's about thinking that something is worth taking the risk to go all in. Does that make sense? We're not talking about a lack of any doubt. We're talking about volition. We're talking about commitment. Commitment doesn't mean I'm 100% doubt-free. It means I'm 100% committed. And that's a huge difference.

Now, one thing I wanna make clear. I think people tend to get messed up even when we use the word commitment, committing your life to God. I was messed up in many ways earlier in my Christian life because I misunderstood what the Bible means when it says this. Because there are two different meanings of the word commit in the English language, and they're almost opposite. The first one and the one that most people think of when they hear this word is, well, it's related to the Oakland Raiders. I hate to bring up a sore spot if you are a Raiders fan. But what is the Raiders motto? Does anybody remember what it is? It's not the Al Davis just win baby, but there's a formal motto. Do you remember what it is? Commitment to excellence. It's certainly not commitment to Oakland. We've learned that, but it's commitment to excellence.

And this kind of commitment means try harder. Nose to the grindstone, just try as hard as you possibly can. But there's another definition of the word commitment, and it's almost the opposite of that first one. When I go in for surgery and I say I am committing myself into the hands of my trusted surgeon, that doesn't mean I'm trying really hard to help the surgeon, does it? I'm there on the operating room table. (grunting) Here's my gallbladder. You know, that doesn't mean that at all. It means I'm giving myself, I'm surrendering to the total care of the surgeon. I'm unconscious. I choose to totally trust her. It's that kind of commitment that Josh was calling the people to. Not the first kind, the second kind, to have total surrender to God.

See, when we talk about commitment, or when we talk about recommitment in church, we're not waving our finger and saying, "You people try harder next time." We're talking about a total yielding to God, a total absolute trust, throwing the full weight of my faith on God, because I trust he's faithful. Let me bring this in for a landing and show you what this looks like. We started with some famous last words, so I'll end with one. From a man who's more famous now than he's been in a long time, Alexander Hamilton. You know, he became a believer in Jesus Christ, and his last words were these. "I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty through the merits of Jesus. I am a sinner, and I look to him for mercy." Isn't that powerful?

First of all, I read things like that, you know, and I think I hope I have the time and the wit to come up with something profound, but I have a funny feeling that my last word is gonna be something more like, "Ouch," and then that'll be it. What did Dad say? He said, "Ouch." But you look at where he was coming from. Now, which kind of commitment is that? That's the second kind of commitment, isn't it? Or I'm just throwing the full weight of my fate on the mercy of God through the merits of Jesus Christ. And that's the bottom line. Do I fully trust God? In the end, it comes down to that. It doesn't happen by accident. It can't be inherited from your parents. You don't usually get all your questions answered, but at some point in your life with your faith, like with every major decision in life, you just have to own it and move ahead.

And I wanna give you a chance to do that right now in a word of prayer. So would you bow your heads with me? And listen to what I'm saying as your head's bowed because I'm gonna pray a prayer of commitment as in surrender. And if my words reflect your heart, I invite you to pray along. Maybe for the first time, maybe you're not sure if you ever did this, you wanna settle the issue, or maybe there's been a lot of water under the bridge and you just know you need to kind of re-surrender and put the total weight of your trust in God again. Wherever you're at, the words I'm gonna say aren't magic. It's the attitude of your heart that counts. But if that sounds good to you, you can pray something like this.

Lord, I put the full weight of my trust in you and your mercy through the merits of Jesus Christ. You don't have to say it out loud, but just in your heart. Lord, I just put the full weight of my trust in you as my Lord and Savior. I don't understand it all, but I choose to trust in you and not the other gods of this world, money, achievement, pleasure. And specifically, I know I can trust in you because you are faithful, because all your promises are yes to us in Christ. And so I receive your grace toward me. Help me to grow in my understanding of it. Thank you so much for your love for me. In Jesus' name, amen.