Hebrews Lesson 192 April 1, 2010
NKJ Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;
We're starting this evening in Hebrew 11, moving into the next little section. The last section that we've dealt with for several weeks (several lessons) was on faith in the life of Moses: one example of the faith of his parents, the other faith in the life of Moses and in the life of the Israelites as they crossed the Red Sea.
Now we move from the Exodus event to the conquest. And you can just use this as an opportunity to sort of think your way through the Old Testament. If you're thinking your way through Genesis, if you remember. This is a quiz. Take out a piece of paper and write down 4 events and 4 people in Genesis. We studied that before. You should remember that – just joking. The four events are what? Creation, fall, flood, Tower of Babel. The four people are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. If you can remember those 8 things you've worked your way through Genesis.
Then when you come to Exodus we have the birth of Moses. Then we have the call of Moses and the 10 plagues. Then we have the departure (the rescue, the redemption) through the Red Sea. Then we have the Israelites going to Mt Sinai where they are given the Law. The whole second half of Exodus has to do with explicating the Mosaic Law in terms of the ritual primarily. There is other civil law that's there; but primarily it's focused on the laws of sacrifices and the construction of the Tabernacle. That takes us through Exodus. The last event historically is when they are on Mount Sinai. Moses gets the Law.
Then Moses brings it down to the people, and then we have the explanation of what's in the Law.
The next major event that occurs of course is described in Numbers when they depart Sinai, go to Kadesh Barnea, and God instructs Moses to send 12 spies into the land that He has promised to give them to see the nature of what they will be up against when God takes them in to destroy the Canaanites.
They misunderstand the order. It's one of the classic examples in Scripture of the misinterpretation of Scripture. They completely misunderstood. God didn't say, "See if you can do it." He said to go spy out the land. It's a recon trip to see what it's like, what the layout of the land is. The purpose isn't to see if they can do it, the purpose is to understand the layout of the land so that as God takes them in they will have an understanding of what's there.
They fail to understand. Ten of the spies come back and they're whining and crying and saying they can't do it. They can't face these Canaanites because they've got too many cities, fortified cities (walled cities). The people are too numerous and there are giants in the land.
Only two (Caleb and Joshua) are exercising faith and trust in the Word. Now that's interesting. Neither Caleb nor Joshua ends up in Hebrews 11, which I thought was just an observation in terms of who's there. The writer of Hebrews is hitting certain high points; but that event is not one of the points that he focuses on.
What he does focus on is when that generation has died off after the forty years in the wilderness and a new generation (the generation that is born to the Exodus generation) now is on the verge of entering the land, and God gives them orders on how to enter the land and how to defeat the particular cities that are there. That is the next event that the writer of Hebrews comes to in Hebrews 11:30-31. These 2 events, which are connected, deal with the conquest of Jericho. One has to do with the obedience (the faith) of the Israelites in their following the orders of God, and how they were to take Jericho. Then the other has to do with the faith of Rahab who is the Gentile the prostitute who is inside of this city in the pagan environment there and her response to God. So we have these two different events that come out of the first six chapters of the book of Joshua.
So we want to take a little time to understand the background there and to understand the focus of this particular section. Now as we have gone through and as we have proceeded through Hebrews 11, the focus goes back to developing the idea in the first two verses.
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
It is a conviction. Faith is a conviction. It is an understanding of revelation. The object of faith is always in something that is revealed - in this case promises. Faith always takes the promise and is convinced that it's true even though there may not be any empirical evidence of its fulfillment. That has particular bearing not only in the life of those to whom the writer of Hebrews is speaking but also to us because often we don't see God fulfill certain promises in our lives the way we think they ought to be fulfilled. We don't understand how for example all things work together for good. We don't see necessarily see that in our lives. We just know that even when we go through difficult times; we know that God is working all things together for good in terms of His plan. We have to trust Him even though we don't see, don't have that empirical evidence of that fulfillment.
Then the writer begins to give examples starting with creation going through the period before the Noahic Flood focusing then on Noah, then on Abraham, and then Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph (the patriarchs), and then on Moses, showing that they in many cases did not see the evidence of the fulfillment of those promises that God had given to them. We focus on what faith is and the role of faith in the conquest of the land and by application the role of faith in the spiritual life of the believer.
Several things I want to cover just by way of introduction here. First of all we have to be reminded that for the last series of examples that we've looked at in Hebrews 11 – the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the faith of Moses – all ultimately went back to specific promises that God had made to Abraham with reference to the Abrahamic Covenant. He had promised that He would give him a land and that this was first laid out in Genesis 12:7 when God promised that "to your descendants I will give this land."
Then Abraham responded in faith and built an altar to the Lord and worshipped Him there at Bethel.
Then in Genesis 15:18-21 this is incorporated within the Abrahamic Covenant. God makes a covenant with him and says in verse 18:
NKJ Genesis 15:18 On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: "To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates --
This is just a broad sweeping description of the boundaries. The Euphrates actually is to the northeast of Israel, and then the River of Egypt is to the southwest. So it covers this broad sweep. It's not as detailed as it is in some subsequent passages. But all of that land (which would today incorporate Lebanon) – would incorporate what is both the West Bank as well as Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, much of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on up into Syria. All of that area would be part of the land that God promised to Abraham.
The second point that we should be reminded of is that the land promised was reiterated to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Several more times God restated this promise to Abraham that He was giving this land to Abraham and to his seed forever. This is a permanent promise from God. It's not based on any condition. The giving of the land is not based on any condition. What we'll learn is that the enjoyment of the land, the enjoyment of the blessing of the land, the benefits of the land, the actual possession and ownership of the land will be dependent upon their obedience. If they're not obedient they'll be kicked out of the land; but the title deed for the land is still theirs. That's the permanence of it.
God doesn't say, "Okay. Finally you've been disobedience so much that I'm taking this land away from you; and it's not yours anymore."
It is still theirs. The land promise is reiterated to Abraham, again to Isaac two or three times, to Jacob two or three times, but none of them ever saw that promise fulfilled.
Hebrews 11:9-10 makes that point.
NKJ Hebrews 11:9 By faith he dwelt
That is Abraham.
in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise;
NKJ Hebrews 11:10 for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
He's looking forward to that promise; but the point that (the application really) that the writer of Hebrews is making to these Jewish believers in Jesus the Messiah is that as they're tempted to give up and to go back into the Judaism of that time (1st century Judaism) and to just give up on everything; he is saying that they're going to be difficult times. We can't grow weary. We can't give up no matter what the obstacles may be, no matter what the temptations or testing may be. We have to learn to hang in there, to endure in obedience just as these examples of the Old Testament patriarchs did. They never saw the fulfillment of the promise; but they kept their focus. It was more real to them than if it had a physical empirical presence.
Third, in the book of Joshua, the promise begins to be fulfilled. The nation is now on the border of the land that God has promised them. They're beginning to get specific direction from God as to how they are to cross the Jordan River, how they are to go into the land, what the order of march should be among the tribes. God is not just giving them general instructions (go into the land) but He is telling them generally what they are to do and specifically the methods that they are to use in getting there.
That I think is it is important. God does not always go into that much detail but at times and in particular cases and situations we not only have broad general promises, but we have specific statements in Scripture as to how we are to do certain things. In other situations and in other areas of application we might just have broad general promises. You see both of those take place in the book of Joshua.
In the book of Joshua, the promise begins to be fulfilled. Now think with me before we go any further, think with me in terms of the history of Israel, how the nation as a corporate entity is to depict the Christian life. Remember they are in slavery in Egypt. Then God redeems them at the Passover. There is the sacrificial lamb that covers the house so that when the blood is applied when God comes to bring death to the firstborn; there's no death to the house of those who have the blood applied. That is a picture of our individual salvation, that when we put our faith in Christ and the death of Christ on the cross is applied to us in that sense then spiritual death is reversed and we're regenerate.
The Passover meal itself depicts salvation.
The nation is redeemed at that point. What happens after that redemption is not a picture of redemption anymore because that is over with. That is accomplished. That was that singular event. What happens from that point on is in the history of Israel is to depict sanctification in the life of the believer. It depicts the life now of obedience. They're saved as it were at the Exodus. They're identified at the Red Sea as I pointed out last time with the faith of Moses so that that's comparable to our position in Christ. They in a sense have their position through their identification with Moses.
Then now that they are a redeemed people the issue at Mount Sinai is - how does a redeemed sanctified people adopted as God's firstborn son supposed to live? How do they live? So from that point on the doctrine (the application) is in the direction of sanctification. When we look at Joshua, the promise begins to get fulfilled and the examples that we see in all the events after Sinai really relate to sanctification.
Under point 4 we will look at some background to the book of Joshua just to get a little bit of the fly over. The book of Joshua is about conquest. That is the single one word you can use to remember what is going on in Joshua. It is about a battle. It is a tremendous picture of the believer's battle (the fight we all are engaged in) in terms of spiritual warfare. The physical warfare of Israel against the Canaanites is analogous to the fight that every believer has against the paganism that is in his own soul.
So first of all, the background to the book. The title of the book Joshua comes from the central character in the book who is Joshua. His name is the same name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Yeshua, which is related to salvation. He is the one who will bring the people into the land.
The first point was title named for the central person in the book. The second point has to do with authorship. We don't know who wrote Joshua. We know that sections of it were probably written by Joshua; other sections were not written by Joshua. For example, the parts written after his death. It is very likely that he wrote large sections of it due to the use of the first person singular pronoun at places. It is clear that an eyewitness wrote it because of the first person plural that's used in places: "we" and "us" along with detailed descriptions that would only be known to somebody who was present at the time of these events.
Furthermore in 6:25 there is the comment related to Rahab: that "she lives even to this day." Rahab is still alive at the writing of Joshua and the Jebusites are still in control of Jerusalem. This means that written before David defeated the Jebusites and conquered Jerusalem as part of his kingdom. Several times the writer notes something and then says "to this day." We don't know who the human author was but it is clearly authored by God the Holy Spirit who writes through someone who has the gift of prophet, I'm sure.
Then we have the date of the book or the dates and the time period covered in the book. It was probably written (concluded, finished) by 1380 BC. The events covered the period from 1406 BC when they entered the land to 1380 BC.
The purpose is to demonstrate God's faithfulness to His promises in fulfilling the promise He made to the patriarchs and Moses to give the land to Israel by holy war. So God has made that promise. So when we take that and we plug it into what we're reading in Hebrews 11, once again both of these examples of faith that we looked at (faith in conquering Jericho, the faith of Rehab) ultimately go back to the promise that God has given them the land.
One of the things is quite striking in the dialogue that the two spies have when they first meet Rahab is that she already knows that God has given the land to the Israelites. She has heard all of the stories about how God delivered them from Israel and so have all the Canaanites. And they've been scared to death for forty years. They were more afraid of the Israelite's forty years earlier when the spies came in to the land than the spies were afraid of the Canaanites. But they didn't know it. When the Canaanites had heard all of these stories (and they probably had been exaggerated and developed about how all of the plagues of how God had defeated the armies of - the great magnificent armies and chariots of pharaoh) so the Canaanites were already operating in tremendous fear expecting to be completely defeated. So the purpose of this book is to demonstrate the faithfulness of God to His promise as well as to demonstrate the people's faith in God in fulfilling the promise, which fits right in with the theme of Hebrews 11.
Fifth point by way of introduction to Joshua is that in the Hebrew Bible it's the first of the former prophets. The Hebrew Bible is divided into three sections: the Torah (which means instruction. That is, the first five books – what we call the Pentateuch. Torah means law. In one sense it also means instruction. So you have the first five books of the Torah.) The second division is the Prophets. There are two subdivisions. You have the early prophets (or the former prophets) and the latter prophets. The former prophets are Joshua, Judges (and Ruth is considered part of Judges in the Hebrew canon), Samuel, Kings. These are part of the prophets. We think of those in the English Bible as historical books, but it's not just history. It is a prophetically edited history showing what God is doing in light of the promises in Deuteronomy, the blessings and the curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30 so that they are written by prophets and those early books are showing the outworking of God's promises for blessing and promises of judgment in those historical books.
Joshua is the first one. That tells us something about Joshua. It's not simply a historical narrative on how God gave the land to Israel. It is to be interpreted within the framework of theology that we get coming out of Deuteronomy. Of course we just talked about this on Tuesday night when we were in Revelation. We were talking about how the Jews will finally turn back to God at the end of the tribulation period and when they are corporately saved as a nation. I went back all the way to Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30 to locate the basis for that event in the future in what God promised and predicted in those blessing and cursing passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Joshua, then, if we think of it not as history but as God showing the outworking of what He stated in Deuteronomy and in the promises in the Torah, then we have an understanding of why this is important and how then we can take these events and put them within a grid that overlays the spiritual life of the Church Age believer, giving us a framework for application.
That's why the Old Testament is important. It gives us a pattern, an analogy. Often we call that typology. It's translated "example", for example in 1 Corinthians 10:1-3. These things happened to them as an example for us.
Now we all know that none of us learn anything from example! Not one person here! We always see the examples. People tell us about all the wonderful things they learned about how they made mistakes.
And we go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that won't apply to me."
We really don't learn very much from example. But that's what it's there for – to teach us. It helps us structure that understanding which I'll talk about in the next point.
The 6th point deals for the structure (the outline) of the book. The first five chapters deal with God bringing the nation to enter the land of Canaan, crossing into Jordan. When they first enter the land, the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant lead them across the Jordan, which is just a raging torrent at that time.
That took a tremendous act of faith. Now that's an example of what I'm going to focus on tonight: how faith works. We often think of faith as being opposed to works; but that's because this word "work" (and we also use the word "doing") are words that have broader meanings. We often think of works and we talk about works of faith as opposed to works. And it is, if we're understanding works to be something we do that's supposed to impress God, or bring merit to us because of what we do. But faith always involves doing something related to faith. Sometimes it's something that's more intellectual; sometimes it's something that's more overt. But when God told the Israelites that this is how you're going to cross into the land. The priests are going to go first carrying the Ark of the Covenant. They're going to carry it on the poles by which it should be carried because "if you don't trust Me then you are going to carry it and touch the Ark and you're going to die instantly." So trust involves doing the instructions (following the instructions.)
They are to step off. They come to this steep bank there of the Jordan. I don't know if you've ever been around a river that is flowing very rapidly or is at flood stage; but you realize the danger that is there as this water is rushing passed you recognizing that if you fall into that then the current is such that you can easily be swept away and easily be drowned. The water isn't going to stop.
It wasn't like the situation at the Red Sea where Moses held up his staff and the Red Sea parted and then they went forward. At this event, God told them that the priests are to step into the river and when their feet actually hit ground the water will have stopped. So as their feet hit the ground, the water is splitting just under their feet so that when their feet hit something solid it's dry ground. They're trusting God and doing something than ran completely contrary to what their eyes and their brain was telling them they should do. That's when faith in the Word of God is more real - what God says is more real to us than what are our experience (what our senses) tell us. That must have been quite a challenge for them to take that step into the Jordan. But that is a picture of the kind of faith rest action that's part of the spiritual life.
God led him to enter the land of Canaan, the first five chapters. Then starting in verse 13 to 12:24 we have the beginnings of the conquest of the land. In 5:13 the Angel of the Lord as the commander of the armies of the Lord (the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ) begins to address Joshua giving him instructions on how they are to take Jericho, which just has some of the most unusual military tactics that we've ever seen. That covers the period to 12:24.
Then from the 13th chapter through the end of the book is basically real-estate deeds where God is dividing the land and giving the borders for all the different tribes and how that will be apportioned.
The 7th point we need to understand in relation to Joshua has to do with what the book is teaching us: how we should read Joshua so that we understand it is more than just describing what God did some 3,500 years ago. It has a teaching emphasis in relationship to experiential sanctification. We have to understand a little bit about what that term means. I've got about five or six points on the experiential sanctification in understanding that meaning.
The word sanctification is a word that's used to describe the believer's position in relationship to God. The word sanctification comes from two word groups, one in Hebrew and one in Greek. The Hebrew word is qadash – qdsh. The sh is one consonant (one symbol) in the Hebrew alphabet – qadash. The root meaning there is to be set apart to the service of a deity. It isn't the idea of holy with the sense of purity as we've seen in some passages. The masculine participle of that word is the term used for the male prostitutes that functioned in Baal worship. That's certainly not a morally pure endeavor. The root meaning of qadash or holy means set apart or consecrated to the service of God. So sanctification describes the believer as one who is set part of the service of God.
But it has two senses. The first sense has to do with positional sanctification and the second is experiential sanctification. If we think of the history of Israel as being a pattern for the individual spiritual life of the believer, then the covenant with Abraham is a picture of positional sanctification.
God called out Abraham and He said, " In your seed all nations shall be blessed."
They have a new position. In Abraham they are set apart from all the other nations on the earth to serve God in a special way. That is going to be through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all nations will be blessed first and foremost through salvation that will come through the Messiah that will come through that line. Secondly, because it is through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the Scriptures (the Word of God) are going to be revealed to man. They are the custodians of the Word of God.
They are positionally set apart in Abraham based on an unconditional or permanent covenant that can't ever be changed. That is a picture of eternal security for us. That same kind of agreement that God made with Abraham which is the foundation for our relationship with God. Positionally we can't ever lose that identification with Christ where we are set apart to the service of God.
However as we go through day-to-day life, we are often disobedient. We are often self-absorbed. We are always or often operating on our sin nature. At those times we are not living as one who is set apart to God. We are living on the basis of our own lusts and our own sin nature and we have to learn to say "no" to the sin nature and "yes" to the Word of God. That is a process of spiritual growth that we refer to as experiential sanctification where we're learning to live in the service of God experientially through the application of the Word of God.
Positional sanctification describes the believer's position before God which can't be lost (can't be changed) and that Old Testament type relates to Abraham. Then experiential sanctification is going to relate to the application of specific commands and promises that God has made in relationship to how we're to serve Him.
In terms of Israel they are positionally set apart when they crossed the Red Sea. At Sinai they learn how they are to serve God in terms of day-to-day obedience. The Mosaic Law then becomes a pattern for sanctification, and it is the basis for the experiential sanctification for the Old Testament believer in Israel.
In the whole doctrine of sanctification from the Old Testament, we see that the land is promised to Abraham. It is given to Israel on a permanent basis, but the actual benefit and enjoyment and blessing of the land is theirs only if they are obedient to God, only if they are applying the law.
God said, "If you disobey the law; then I will remove you from the land and you won't enjoy its blessings."
In the same way by analogy the believer is given a certain number of blessings and privileges in Christ. We have all the spiritual assets we have in Christ. We are blessed with an infinite number of blessings. God has given us everything related to life and godliness. We have the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. We're empowered by the Holy Spirit. We have the completed the canon of Scripture. All these things are ours positionally in Christ but they only become ours experientially as we learn the Word and then as we apply it on a day-to-day basis.
One of the metaphors that the Scripture uses to teach how we grow spiritually is the metaphor of warfare. We see this in passages such as 2 Corinthians 10:4-5.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 10:4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,
These are strongholds of thought that are deeply entrenched in our mind (in our thinking). These weapons of warfare are for the purpose of casting down arguments.
NKJ 2 Corinthians 10:5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,
These participles that we have there (pulling down stronghold, casting down arguments and bringing every thought into captivity) deal with the progress of our spiritual growth. It is a process where we learn the Word and we apply the Word. As we apply the Word, we're doing certain things.
There's that terrible word. All of a sudden it's legalism! No, that's not what legalism is. Legalism is when you say you have to do something in order to get God's merit; that He blesses you because you do certain things whereas obedience to the Word is not done from that motive. It is the application of faith.
That's what James talks about when he talks about, "don't be hearer only, but also to doer." That phraseology is often lost on us because of the familiarity with the terms. But James is saying, don't be a listener – don't just take notes. Don't' just fill up your doctrinal notebook with all these doctrines, but apply them so that when the Scripture says that you are to speak the truth in love, that you speak the truth in love. You don't speak the truth in a way that is intended to be harmful or destructive or vindictive towards somebody else where you're just trying to lash out at them.
When the Scriptures talk about how we are to be honest and how we are to be continuously in prayer - all of these things are things we are to do.
When the Scripture says to pray without ceasing then what that means is I don't just write that down in my Bible, but it means that I need to discipline my life and arrange my time schedule so that I have consistent patterns of prayer in my life. So we're not just listeners; we are doing.
Then in James 2, James changed the terminology from "hearing and doing" to "faith and works." Faith is comparable to hearing. When we hear God's Word, we say, "Okay, I believe that's true." Well, if we believe it's true; then we're going to do what it says to do or in other words we're going to perform whatever it is that we are commanded to perform. We're going to do the works in that sense, not in a meritorious sense, which is the problem that the Pharisees had. The problem that the Judiazers had is that they thought that their works (what they did) was what gave them meritorious standing before God rather than that it was a result of a meritorious standing before God.
Let me give you a couple of examples to try to help us think our way through this.
Colossians says:
NKJ Colossians 2:6 As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,
How did you receive Christ? We receive Christ by faith. But that faith was in a particular promise of God. Now how are we to walk? In the same way Colossians says we are to walk in the same way that we first became a believer – trusting in Him. Some people have taken that and abused it by going into a quasi-mysticism where there's really no object to the faith, it is just faith. You just somehow have faith. It becomes a faith in faith. Then that gets real fuzzy because it picks up a lot of ideas that come out of paganism. For example, you have various mind control cults that came out of the New Age movement and then if I just think it then I can make it happen. And I need to get involved in things such as creative visualization where I can control my reality by the things that I think. This is all part of Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking and Robert Schuler's Power of Possibility Thinking and all of that lead into what became known as a positive confession of the health and wealth name-it-and-claim-it movement that was part of the Charismatic movement. It is an abuse of faith because the faith in Scripture is not a faith in faith. It is not faith in and of itself that is significant; it's the object of faith.
The first example I have is in relationship to justification, in relationship to phase one salvation. When Paul and Silas were arrested in Philippi and put into the jail there, which wasn't very large, they were singing hymns to God. An angel came and the shackles came off. They didn't leave. When the jailor discovered this he came running in to see what happened. They were still sitting there, but he was scared to death because the penalty in the Roman Empire for someone if the prisoner escaped (if anything happened). They would lose their life. So he is panicky, but he has also been hearing their testimony and their hymn singing.
He says to them. "What must I do to be saved?"
Their answer is given as believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved, you and your household.
Another verse that connects to that is the verse that we have in Romans 4:3, which relates to justification. As Paul is explaining the great doctrine of justification by Faith in Romans 4 he goes to the example of Abraham from Abraham in Genesis 15:7.
NKJ Genesis 15:7 Then He said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it."
Abraham believes some promise from God. It's not just he believed in God; but he believed God. God told him something, and he believed it. There was content (a promise) to what he had believed. In Acts 16:31 the key word that we want to hone in on is that word believe. It is an aorist active imperative which indicates that it is a priority statement that they are calling upon the Philippian jailer at that moment to trust in Jesus Christ.
Now remember they've been singing hymns, and they've been talking for some time. This isn't all that he knew. There's not really enough content in that verse to give you the gospel, but there is enough content in the context for them to have understood what that meant. This is the conclusion of what Paul and Silas had communicated to him in terms of what Jesus Christ had done for him. There's a command to believe. What is the response? The response is that the individual has an option whether to accept what has been said as true and trust and rely on it as true or not.
Now there's nothing to do in terms of any other action or any other overt behavior in relationship to justification. It is simply affirming (assenting to) a truth that Jesus Christ died for me and I am trusting exclusively upon Him for salvation so that the object is the work of Christ on the cross. So faith always has an object and that object is expressed as a promise or as a description of what Christ did on the cross. In this case there's not an external action that must be taken. It's not that he has to believe and go be baptized, or believe and go joint the church or believe and give half his money to God. He simply believes or trusts in what Christ did on the cross and the result is that he's saved; he's justified.
Now the second example that I want to use is related not to the gospel (justification issue) but is related to understanding faith as it operates in the believer's life after salvation in terms of what we're studying in Hebrews 11 as well as what was happening in Joshua. This takes us to one of the great illustrations of faith in the Gospels, which is when Peter was walking on the water. This is covered in Matthew 14:29-31.
Jesus had already walked out to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, so they could see that it could be done and they knew the Sea of Galilee better than anyone. They knew that He was not walking on stones. There's not a sandbar there. That's the view that liberals will come up with because their presupposition is miracles really can't happen. So we have to explain how this really took place in a naturalistic manner."
Jesus walked out there. Now Peter wants to do it. Peter is so enthusiastic.
"Lord that's great. I want to do it."
NKJ Matthew 14:29 So He said, "Come." And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus.
Then he saw the wind. He heard the wind. He saw the wind picking up and the waves. The wind became boisterous and he became afraid. He began to sink.
NKJ Matthew 14:30 But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink he cried out, saying, "Lord, save me!"
NKJ Matthew 14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him,
This indicates Peter had walked some distance from the boat out to where Jesus was. It wasn't just one or two steps and then he took his eyes off the Lord, but he had gone some distance. Now he's 20-30 feet from the boat. He's getting close to Jesus and he's seeing the waves come up. So Jesus stuck out his hand, caught him and said to him (and this is where we understand what the lesson is.
and said to him, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?"
That is the focal point of this episode. That is the teaching point. It is on faith.
Peter is not having some sort of a close encounter with his navel on the boat. He's not going through some sort of altered state of consciousness like a Hindu or Buddhist in terms of generating some sort of mystical faith power that is faith in faith. It has been an object, and the object is the Lord Jesus Christ and His command. The command is expressed in verse 29 – come. Interestingly, it is the same grammatical structure that we have in Acts 16:31. It's an aorist active imperative. He says, "Come."
Peter gets out of the boat and he begins to walk. He's trusting in Christ but the trust is coupled with doing something specific. That is, he can't just sit there in the boat with his doctrinal notebook and understand that "Okay, this is how I'm supposed to use the faith rest drill. I just finished reading the book. There are a lot of great promises there. Isn't that wonderful! Let's close in prayer and go home."
He's got to get out of the boat and start walking on the water. He's got to put what he believed, what he says he believed (what he learned) and he has to now apply it and implement it. That's another good word for doing it; not in a meritorious sense. He has to get out of the boat and start walking on the water and initially things are smooth; but then things start to get a little tough.
The water gets rough and the wind comes up and the waves come up. All of a sudden Peter becomes distracted by what's happening around him. He gets his eyes off of the promise and on to the problems which is what happens to us from a regular basis where we get our eyes off of our relationship with the Lord and onto the details of life and what can go wrong and how this can't work and why Jesus really doesn't take care of me in times of testing and difficulty. We get our focus completely off the Lord. Jesus uses this to illustrate the whole principle that faith in certain instances related to certain mandates involves a specific action that is directly related to the mandate.
The Lord's statement at the end there tells us that this whole episode it is all about faith. This is again what James is talking about when he says that we are not to just listen to the Word but that we are to do it. It is faith plus works. It is all related to what is occurring in the believers' growth process after salvation.
Now the same thing is true in the spiritual combat that the believer enters into in the Church Age. We're in a battle and the Lord has described how we are to fight the battle, what the tools are in the battle, what our weapons are and how we are to achieve victory not in our own power but in the power of what God has given us utilizing the promises and principles that God has described in the Scripture.
We do need to take that whole model of spiritual combat and lay that over what is happening in Joshua to understand how this faith principle operates in terms of combat.
In Joshua you have the Israelites who are on the edge of the land. They are now in a position to go into the area of blessing that God has promised them (the land) and to enjoy what God has given them. But in order to live in the land they have to apply what God revealed to them on Mount Sinai. They have to implement the law because God told them at the end of the law that if they didn't implement it right then God would eventually kick them out of the land. There would be a whole series of various disciplinary procedures and eventually if they were rebellious (if they were disobedient) God would remove them from the land completely. The physical holy war that they are engaged when they enter the land is analogous to the spiritual warfare that we're engaged in.
When you first became a believer you had a territory to conquer. That territory you need to conquer was between your ears. It's in our thinking. We are to learn to think as Christ thinks. We are to take every thought captive for Christ and we are not to be conformed to the thinking of the world but to be transformed by the renewing our mind. So your mind was under the control of the Canaanites. Your mind was thinking according to pagan human viewpoint thinking; and there were certain strongholds of thought processes and habits of thinking (bad habits in life whatever they were) sinful procedures (we all have these things). Now we have to start engaging the enemy at these different strongholds on the basis of the promises and the procedures that the Scriptures proscribe for us.
Sometimes we just have broad general promises related to faith and trust. In other areas we not only have broad general promises, but there are specific commands and prohibitions in the Scripture as to what we are supposed to do in order to evict that pagan thought from our head.
Holy war depicts the battle. The holy physical holy war of the Old Testament depicts the spiritual battle in the soul and the basic method of operation is on the basis of faith. But it's not faith as an autonomous or independent mystical power, it is faith or belief in the promise of God, the procedures He outlines, and in the power of God the Holy Spirit. Those three things go together: the promises, the procedures and the power of God the Holy Spirit. They work together. You can't have one of those without the other. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals the Word of God. It is the Holy Spirit that takes the Word of God and puts it into our life. It is through the Word of God the Holy Spirit leads, guides and directs us.
So when we entered into this focal point on these two events that the writer of Hebrews brings to our attention here – the defeat of Jericho, the conquest of Jericho and the behavior of Rahab who is inside the fortress – then we come to understand that this has great application for us and the spiritual life, as part of the faith-rest drill.
We'll begin with that next time when we look at how God commissions Joshua because in that commissioning God gives him again it reiterates one more time for him the promise of the land. Now He is promised us all kinds of blessings in the spiritual life. God reiterates the general promise of the land in the first chapter. But then the first place they come to is going to be Jericho.
He says, "This is how you take care of Jericho. You're going to walk around the city one time a day for 6 days and nobody is going to make a sound. Then on the 7th days you are going to walk around seven times and then blow the ram's horn and the walls are going to come down. But then the next city they have to attach is Ai. They do it a different way. Each problem we face in the spiritual life demands a different solution, different procedures.
So we have broad promises and we have specific promises and each area involves different areas of application and different doctrines. That's why we have the problem solving devices. We have personal love for God and we have impersonal love for all mankind or unconditional love. We have occupation with Christ. We have doctrinal orientation, grace orientation. All these different things are different ways (strategies, tactics) that God has given us for dealing with the enemy that lies between our ears. So if you want to have victory in the spiritual life we have to understand faith because that is foundational. The faith rest drill is foundational to everything else.
So we'll come back and get into that in specifics next Thursday night.
Illustrations