THROUGH THE BIBLE - Joshua 1..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. I want to speak to you about how to wholly follow the Lord. Following the Lord is very important for the soul of every true and genuine believer.

If a person has been visited by the grace that comes from on high, if a person has been given life, life of the Spirit, If the heart of a person has been genuinely transformed from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, if the affections of a person dead in Adam have been revived by the Holy Spirit, then that person who calls himself or herself a Christian will naturally and organically desire to follow the Lord. That person will naturally, from the heart, not as a burden of the flesh, not as a burden of something that has to be done so I will fit myself into the square of religion so that others will see me and accept me into their circle, but rather by the natural power of the Spirit in the life of that person, that person will be naturally and organically moved to desire to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. That person will desire to die to self and to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. And here in this chapter that we have in front of us, we have a very good example of a saint of the Old Testament that because of his way of following the Lord was given the inheritance of the land. What we are going to be reading here, my brother, maybe your brother and sister, is precisely that the allocation of the portion of land to Caleb.

Caleb is going to come to Joshua, his friend, and ask for the portion of land that belongs to him. And the reason why he is going to inherit that portion of the land is because of the faith that he manifested years before this and the faith that he continues to have following the Lord. the Lord God of Israel in this case. So, brethren, I'm going to invite you to read carefully these 15 verses in which indeed we're going to see how Caleb is going to receive the inheritance of the land. And then we will speak about how to wholly follow the Lord.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us read together. Chapter 14 of Joshua. These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers' houses of the tribes of the people of Israel gave to them to inherit. Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one-half tribes.

For Moses had given an inheritance to the two and one-half tribes, tribes beyond the Jordan, but to the Levites he gave no inheritance among them. For the people of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, and no portion was given to the Levites in the land, but only cities to dwell in with their pasture lands for their livestock and their substance. The people of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses. They allotted the land. Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal.

And Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the king of Zion, said to him, You know what the Lord said to Moses, the man of God in Kadesh Barnea, concerning you and me? I was forty years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. And I brought him word again, as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt. Yet I wholly followed the Lord, my God.

And Moses swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your food has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have Holy followed the Lord my God. And now behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said these 45 years, since the time that the Lord spoke his word to Moses while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now behold, I am this day 85 years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me. My strength now is as my strength was then, forward and forgoing and coming.

So now give me this healed country of which the Lord spoke on that day. For you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out, just as the Lord said. Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.

Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath Arba. Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim, and the land had rest from war. Amen. This is the word of the Lord. My dear brother and my dear sister, we know that the people of Israel have not only made it into the promised land, but through the commanding role given to Joshua, they have now defeated many of the kings.

And one of the things that we learned last time in chapter 13, it was that because even though the many successes, and the advancements of Joshua and the people of Israel and the many kings that had been defeated by the power of the Lord through Joshua and the people of Israel, there was still many portions of the land that were yet to be divided and given to the people of Israel. Something that I wanted to share with you last week, it was that in chapter 13, the Lord gave the promise that he was going to be the one who was going to draw Joshua is going to allocate that land, not only by virtue of the land and the kings that he has conquered, but also by virtue of that promise that the Lord gave him in chapter 13. between the 9.5 tribes that were supposed to live there. That started now in chapter 13, when we read about the distribution of the land on the east side of the Jordan, that was through Moses for the 2.

5 tribes that were going to live there. But now, as we find ourselves in chapter 14, we will see the distribution of the land that Joshua will start between the 9.5 tribes on the west side of the Jordan. Many tribes will come to Joshua to receive their inheritance, and the first one that comes is the tribe of Judah, the tribe of the Lord. Judah will come to receive the person that belongs to them.

And from Judah, it will be Caleb, the one that is going to... Ask for the inheritance for his family and for his clan. Caleb, the one who has been sent with Joshua, you remember in Numbers chapter 13 to spy the land. And here we're going to see and we are told that Caleb received the portion of the land because he wholly followed the Lord. The question that we ask ourselves is, how did Caleb wholly followed the Lord?

Because for a person to wholly follow the Lord, something supernatural has to happen. We have been told in the Scriptures that no one is able to follow after the Lord, that after the fall in Adam, we are all dead and nobody is able to follow the Lord, less wholly and completely follow the Lord. How did Caleb wholly follow the Lord? And that answer is very clearly given to us implicitly in the text. And not only there in the text, but also in Numbers chapter 13 and 14.

And the answer to that is simply by genuine faith. My dear brethren, Caliph genuinely believed the words of the Lord. Caliph and Joshua genuinely believed the words of the Lord. When the Lord has said, given the promise that there was going to be a land that was a beautiful land that was flowing with milk and honey, and that he was going to do everything to give them that land, Caliph and Joshua believed, had faith and believed the word of the Lord. And it's by and through genuine faith that a person is enabled to wholly follow the Lord.

And in this case, in our case of the new covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ. But brethren, we know that a person follows the Lord by faith. The question is, what type of faith did Caleb have? that allowed him or empowered him by the Spirit to follow the Lord completely and wholly. There's a couple of things that are very interesting in the story of Caleb that I want to show you if you quickly come with me to Numbers chapter 13.

A couple of things in the faith of Caliph that empower him by the presence of the spirit that was in him in regeneration, that allow him to wholly follow the Lord. A couple of things that were present in his belief. A couple of things that were characteristic of his faith, that if we learned and we take them into the new covenant, Let me tell you, my dear brother, we will be empowered to see Christ and Him crucified and to have the faith not only of Caliph, but the faith that is empowered by the Holy Spirit to take up our crosses and not only to follow the Lord, but to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, to follow the one who has called us to be fisher of men, the one who has called us to take up our crosses and to follow Him, the one who has called us to die to self, to die to the world and to follow Him. The context in which the faith of Caleb was manifested, if you remember, as we spoke in Numbers chapter 13 and 14, was the context in which the spies will return and give the report to Moses. And they were afraid of the things that had taken place.

Very briefly, let us read in chapter 3, verse 27, the report that they gave, the spies that they gave. This is what they said in verse 27. And they told him, We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its root. However, the people who dwelt in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large.

And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan." They said the Amalekites live there.

If you quickly go there to verse 33, it gives us a little bit of explanation of these. fearful people that put this fear in the eyes or in the hearts of these two spies. In verse 33 it says, And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who came from the Nephilim, and we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seem to them. Now, my dear brother, this is the context in which Caleb and Joshua are going to respond to the report of the other spies. The other spies were not so much lying about what they had seen in the land.

They were actually telling the truth. They were speaking of the things they had observed and the fruit that they had seen, but they had been frightened or they were fearful because of the things that they had seen, their eyes had observed. And those people who were in the land were strong and powerful and their cities were fortified and strong. And because of that, they said, yes, the land is rich and everything in all the fruit. The land is as you told us that it would be.

But those who are in the land are so strong, are so powerful, they're so big that we are not going to be able to go and take the land. As he has said that we will do, but these are the words of Caleb there in verse 30. It says, but Caleb, I don't know how you pronounce that word, quieted, quieted the people before Moses and said, this is Caleb, right? But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it. What is the faith of Caliph and Joshua?

What is the type of faith that empowers a person to wholly follow the Lord? My dear brother and sister, it's the faith that sees things as the Lord sees. It's the faith that empowers a person to observe and see things in the same way that the Lord sees things. Because the nature of faith is, as he says, that is the conviction, the certainty of things that we have not seen and the things that we hope for yet through faith. The will of the person is so aligned with the will of the Lord that a person is able to see things and observe things as the Lord sees those things.

He's not the power of the person, but he's the power of the Spirit that gives that faith to see and to observe things as the Lord says. That's why when Joshua and Caleb are given again the report, if you go to chapter 14 in verse 6, this is the words of the faith that sees things as the Lord says, verse 6, Joshua, and Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jethuneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes upon the faithless report, and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. My dear brother and sister, this glorious Christian virtue that comes from above, that separates humanity into two different types, those who have faith, and those who are faithless. Genuine spirit given faith enables the sinner who once was dead and was unable to do anything before the Lord to not only see and not only believe, but live and see according to the will of the Lord.

And there is no greatest privilege. than to have access to the will and the desires of God through the faith that the Spirit gives. So here we have Caleb and Joshua that, empowered by the Holy Spirit, are able to stand firm in the promise that they had heard from the Lord and to be in alignment, full alignment, with the will of the Lord, because faith that allows a person to wholly follow the Lord is a faith that sees as the Lord sees. But not only that, it's also a faith, my brother and my sister, that opposes those who are faithless. If a person is so taken by the Spirit of God and the Word of God is deposited in a person, that this person now is taken in full certainty and conviction that what the Lord says is truth, that if he says that something is going to happen, it will indeed happen.

That person is so single-eyed to the Lord that then that person by nature and organically will oppose Everything that comes contrary to the purposes of the Lord, to the words of the Lord, and to the promises of the Lord. So, empowered by the same faith, Caleb and Joshua, the same faith that allowed them to say to the people, this land is good, we can take it as the Lord has said, is the faith that empowers them to do what they did in verse 9. It says, Only opposing the faithless by the power of the faith that was given to them. Only do not rebel or rebel against the Lord. And do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us.

Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. Rebuking the faithless, but even enduring persecution. Verse 10 says, Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tenth of meeting to all the people of Israel.

And they were, of course, rescued by the hand of the Lord. If the eye of a person, brethren, if the soul of a person is so taken by the presence of the Lord, if the mind and the heart, if your heart is so filled with the words of the Lord, that now naturally and organically, you know that what he says is true. If you know that what he has promised will come to happen, if you know that everything that is written in these books is in the truth, now naturally and organically, you're going to see as the Lord sees. You're going to observe as the Lord observes. You're going to desire as the Lord desires.

Your will will be in alignment with the will of the Lord and the will of the Lord. It's not only with a purpose of fulfillment, but also in opposition to everything that is darkness, everything that is sin, everything that is unrighteousness, and everything that opposes the purpose of the Lord. Then the person now is willing to die for the Lord. Why? Because the stone is not coming against them.

It's coming against the purpose of the Lord. That's why the Lord Jesus Christ can say with all authority, Come, come and follow me. Take up your cross and follow me. Come and follow me. Leave the world, husband and wife and family in the face of the world.

Come and follow me. Come and follow me. Because in following the Lord Jesus Christ, the single greatest purpose that I saw can be given is set before the eyes of that person. And by virtue of the presence of the spirit, a person can follow the Lord Jesus Christ and die generally to the things of the world, die generally to the opposition of the things of the world. And my dear brother and my dear sister, if a saint of the old covenant of the Old Testament, it was said of a saint of the old covenant that he wholly followed the Lord, someone who had the shadows of that what was to come, Someone who had not heard the name Jesus.

Someone who had not heard the story of the cross. Someone who had not seen the fulfillment of the glorious desire of the Father. Someone who was partaking of the shadows of the things to come. And someone who, yes, the presence of the Spirit was in him, regenerating him and giving him faith. But someone who did not have the Holy Spirit as the church received the Holy Spirit.

when the Lord Jesus Christ was ascended. A church that now has the presence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit commanding the church in a way in which the people of God had never before been guided and commanded. The Lord said that it was necessary for him to go so that he will send another advocate, a comforter. And it was upon the death, the resurrection and the coronation of the Lord Jesus Christ that a Holy Spirit is sent to the church. Not only for helping us to remember what happened 2000 years ago, but brethren, the Lord says that He is the Holy Spirit, the one that points us to truth.

That is the one that brings remembrance of the things that took place. If a saint of the old covenant was empowered by the shadows and by the things that were going to pass away to wholly follow the Lord, What is that of the members of the new and a better covenant? Those who have heard, those who have seen the Lord by faith, not that we have seen him physically, but the apostle says the person that we have now seen the Lord Jesus Christ, we believe in him and we love him because he's not this faith that we have, brethren, the one that empowered us to Holy followed the Lord. If a saint of the Old Testament received the inheritance by the faith that was given to him by the Spirit upon the shadows of the old covenant, how much more certainty can have the saint of the new covenant? that now having witnessed through the Scriptures and the presence of the Spirit in the life and the soul of that person, that the Lord Jesus Christ has already died, that the price has already been paid, that the soul has already been rescued, that forgiveness has already been given, that your soul has already been taken from darkness to life, that you have already been given the eternal promise of the eternal inheritance.

How much more? Are we not going to take up our crosses and to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, die to self, to the things of the world, to the things that are passing away and perishing, and to wholly follow the Lord, the One who loved us? and gave himself for us, the one who knows the depths of the unrighteousness of our hearts in the present, in the future and everything that we have done. Yet he has condescended to remain faithful when we are not. He remains faithful even when we are in darkness.

He remains faithful even when we sin and he cleanses us. of all unrighteousness when we confess. And it's not that we confess, it's that the Spirit comes upon us to convict us of our sin and to move us onto confession, biblical confession of sin, to bring us to the Lord. How much more is the saint of the new covenant, brethren? to die to self and to follow this Lord Jesus Christ, this King of kings and this Lord of lords, the one that is altogether lovely, the one who spoke with words like the words of a human, condescended to live like us, the one who was in the midst of sinners, the one who heard words of unrighteousness, the one who witnessed things that were contrary to his nature.

That one loved us and gave himself for us. May the Lord help us to wholly follow our Savior. Amen.