And the people served the LORD throughout the days of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him, who had seen all the great works that the LORD had done for Israel. Sermons
I. TESTIMONY IS OF GREATEST EFFECT WHEN IT IS THAT OF THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN AND KNOWN. St. John makes this claim for himself and his fellow apostles (1 John 1:1), and even St. Paul declares that Christ was manifested to him also as unto one that was born out of due time. It is a law of our nature upon which this proceeds. The nearer we are to our own personal experience, other things being equal, the more are we impressed with the reality of events. It was as if the people themselves had seen the miracles of the exodus when they had still amongst them Joshua and the elders. This advantage may be realised by Christians to-day, The gospel facts must become a real experience in the heart of him who would seek to influence others. By faith it may be so. We too may see our Saviour face to face. The preacher's vivid realisation of the supernatural and the Divine often exercises an overwhelming effect upon the hearer; whereas, on the other hand, to speak of our Saviour and his works as if we were telling an idle tale is to expose ourselves to certain failure. A Church that could relive the heroisms of the cross would be irresistible. II. IT RECEIVES FRESH CONFIRMATION IN THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE WITNESSES. They were holy men. They lived in the constant remembrance of those awe-inspiring scenes. This was the most effective way of conveying to others their own impression and enthusiasm. Witness like this is within reach of all, and does not require scholarship to make it possible. III. DEATH AND TIME ARE THE GREAT IMPAIRERS OF THIS INFLUENCE. With each good man who dies a witness disappears. The further we get in years from the actual scenes of miraculous power, the less effect are they calculated to produce. But the word of God liveth and endureth for ever, and God repeats spiritually the sigmas and mighty acts of his salvation in the experience of every true believer. - M.
The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua. I. THE POWER OF A GREAT MAN TO ADAPT HIMSELF TO CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES, AND TO BE EQUALLY GREAT UNDER VARYING CONDITIONS. Many a man great in conquest is a nonentity in peaceful times. The great warrior does not always make a great statesman. Joshua, on the contrary, was the moral ruler of the nation in peace as well as the military commander of the army in war. The Romans are said to have conquered like savages and ruled like philosophic statesmen. Joshua, too, excelled in war and peace. Perhaps he was greatest in peace, because "he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." Contrast Napoleon in St. Helena with Joshua at Timnath Heres.II. THE FORMATIVE INFLUENCE OF ONE GREAT LIFE IN GIVING CHARACTER TO AN AGE. Such men as Joshua are necessarily exceptional, There is a Divine economy in the sending of great men. Like miracles, they must not be allowed to degenerate into commonplaces. There is a reserve in producing great leaders: they come one in a century — in some instances, one in a millennium. Men of the Joshua type are sent to give a character to their time. The history of the world is largely the history of single champions. III. THE LIMITATIONS OF A PERSONAL INFLUENCE — even one of the most powerful kind; for we see here the strange capacity of one age to prove untrue to the best traditions of that which preceded it: "There arose another generation," etc. 1. This generation suffered from the lack of direct personal testimony. They could not say, "We speak that which we do know, and testify that which we have seen." All they knew was by hearsay, and spirituality must be very vigorous and intense to breathe life into hearsay. 2. These people sadly under-estimated, and therefore ignored, the value of historic record — "knew not," etc. They severed themselves from the past. 3. This was an age of ease, and, as such, the least productive of noble manhood. These were poverty-stricken times. The nation was no longer braced by one common ambition, or bent upon one object. They had lapsed into a state of indolence and indifference. Moreover, there was no central supreme power, for they had leaders only in times of war, and the old leader and his subordinates were dead. This was a time when a great character was most needed to save the nation from degeneracy. Such ages often succeed the iron ages of history. I am not sure that we, as Christians, have not lost much of the robustness of the past age. IV. WHAT A RESPONSIBILITY IS INVOLVED IN THIS SUCCESSION OF AGES TO MAINTAIN THE CONTINUITY, to be worthy followers of those who through faith and patience have inherited the promises; to be, of a truth, successors of the apostles and of other holy men! V. THANK GOD, THE RECORD IN OUR TEXT IS ONLY FRAGMENTARY. That age was not a final break upon the progress of revelation. History is progressive after all. Span the centuries. Don't let the point of observation be too narrow or near. Ascending from lowlands to highlands there are undulations; but take a span large enough, and you will find that it is an ascent all the way. So in the history of our race. God has been advancing throughout all time in spite of the "dark ages"of the world, and in spite of human relapses into sin. (D. Davies.) Homilist. I. THE MORAL OBLIGATION OF EVERY MEMBER OF OUR RACE (ver. 7).1. All creatures are the servants of God, but they serve Him in different ways. (1) (2) (3) (4) 2. To serve Him in this way is the obligation of the race. But there is one condition indispensable to this — supreme love for Him as the Sovereign. This will — (1) (2) II. THE SERVICE OF ONE GOOD MAN TO OUR RACE. 1. That a man can induce his race to serve the Lord. Joshua did. 2. That a man, to do this, must himself be a servant of the Lord. Joshua was. 3. That, however useful a man may be to his race in this respect, he must die. Joshua died. III. THE MELANCHOLY SUCCESSION OF OUR RACE (ver. 10). 1. The succession involves no extinction. The mighty generations that are gone live on some other shore. 2. The mode of the succession involves a moral cause. We say the "mode," not the "fact." If the race continue to multiply as now, the limitation of the world's area and provisions would require a succession. This planet was probably intended as a stepping-stone to another. Had there been no sin, however, instead of the succession taking place through the grave, it might have been through a "chariot of fire," as in the case of Elijah. IV. THE DEGENERATING TENDENCY OF OUR RACE. 1. This degenerating tendency is often found stronger than the most elevating influences of truth. Peter fell in the very presence of Christ. 2. This degenerating tendency indicates the necessity of a conscious reliance upon the gracious help of God. (Homilist.) II. THE APOSTASY OF THE SUCCEEDING GENERATION. 1. The nature of their apostasy. God is jealous of His own honour; and to unite His name with idols, and to His worship to join the revolting orgies of Ashtoreth, was diabolism, and must be judged and punished. 2. Their apostasy was intensified by all the distinguishing privileges and blessings they had enjoyed. As virtue is proportioned in vigour to the temptations resisted, so transgression is proportioned to the forces of conscience, education, example and blessing which have been fought with and conquered. Nor was this all their sin. To the list must be added disobedience. They refused to execute the Divine command to expel the Canaanites from the land. It was terrible surgery, and not murder, that the Israelites were commanded to perform as touching the heathen idolators — a true and just surgery, cutting away unflinchingly the diseased part, that themselves might remain sound. Stopping short in the operation, they became infected with the moral leprosy which made the Canaanites loathsome to heaven and earth (Leviticus 18:21-30; Deuteronomy 12:30-32).(1) Mercies despised, privileges scorned, pledges made to God in covenant and broken, become the foundation for towering iniquity. The best things perverted are the worst.(2) Nothing is more fatal to the Christian calling than alliances with the ungodly. He who makes the experiment of such entangling alliances will speedily discover that his power is lost; that what he builds with one hand he pulls down with the other; that he does not win the world to God: the world wins him. It is a notorious fact that alliances with the wicked do not command the respect of the very men for whose favour they are formed. The world scorns those who sacrifice their religious principles to worldly policy or social ambitions. III. THE PUNISHMENT OF THEIR APOSTASY. 1. No two ideas are more inseparably linked together than these two of sin and suffering. The one follows the other by a law as fixed and imperative as the agony of a burning hand. They are the "twin serpents" of the race, inseparable companions. 2. But all suffering is not penal. With respect to God's people it is remedial and corrective. Moses Browne truly saith, "A great deal of rust requires a rough file." IV. GOD'S MERCIFUL PROVISION FOR ISRAEL'S DELIVERANCE. God answered the cries of distress by sending them Judges — men chosen and qualified to act as His vicegerents in the emergencies of the nation. Let no Christian despair or be discouraged even in the most adverse circumstances. Evermore it is true that "Man's extremity is God's opportunity." (W. G. Moorehead, D. D.) There arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord Sermons by the Monday Club. With ages of schooling, and always the same lessons, mankind is slow to learn the absolute and unalterable conditions of prosperity; equally slow to note and steer clear of the reefs and shoals on which nationality after nationality has gone to wreck.I. THE DRIFT OF HUMAN NATURE. It is towards sin, and away from God. The Israelites were men no better and no worse than other men. Sentimental philosophers of the modern type may write out in soft phrase their exalted estimates of human nature; they may enlarge upon its beauties and excellences; but, in spite of their fancies and ecstacies, here the fact asserts itself in the record, as it does on every page of history, that human nature, left to itself, gravitates downward. II. THE INFLUENCE OF MEN IN HIGH STATION. The significant fact is recorded that "the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua," etc. A great responsibility rests upon those who occupy prominent places in society or in the State — a responsibility that is not discharged by fidelity to the specific duties of their position. There is that undefined, incalculable something of influence which is inseparable from their station, which they are to guard and direct. III. THE DANGER OF RELIGIOUS INSENSIBILITY. It is twofold. There is danger that men will come into a state of mind and heart where they will be unmoved by Divine truth, and there is great danger in that state. The children of Israel did not sweep over at once and in a body into idolatry. They drifted, by slow and unrecognised gradations, from the service of God to the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth. Carelessness about single duties, indifference to single truths — here were the causes of their final detection. The process has been often repeated, is still in progress. Men and women walk our streets to-day utterly indifferent to the most solemn truths of religion, to whom all the truths of God were once intensely real. There was a time when conscience was quick, and the least wandering from duty brought sorrow and repentance. There was a time when immortality, with its heaven of blessedness and its land of infinite sorrow, loomed colossal on the horizon of thought. There was such a time, but it has passed, perhaps for ever. Neglect of duty, lack of watchfulness against sin, disobedience to many a heavenly calling — things like these, slight and unnoticed in themselves, have swept them away from the moorings of faith and interest, and they are adrift on the dark sea of unbelief and indifference. IV. THE SECRET OF PROSPERITY. The Israelites had all the human factors of success — a fruitful country, a genial climate, experience in the arts of war and peace, and the prestige of a triumphant march from Egypt to Canaan. These were seemingly enough to make them a power among the nations. But one thing, the indispensable thing, was missing — the Divine favour which they had forfeited by their sin. Is God for us or against us? is the decisive question. If He frown, empires with the glow of centuries of art and culture transfiguring them may crumble to dishonoured dust, and the shame of their defeat become greater than the splendour of their conquests. From the tawny sands that cover the old-time magnificence of Babylon and Nineveh, and the scores of historic centres that have faded out of sight, comes one and the same declaration, voiced by the desert wind that moans over their graves, "Even so shall it be with the nations that forget God." And what is true of men in the mass is true of individuals. The conditions of real and enduring success in life are always the same. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" Many things are rightly estimated as elements in what is called a successful life. Enterprise, thrift, patience, energy — all these are helpful and desirable forces; but it still remains unalterably and everlastingly true that the sovereign maxim of political and social economy is that given long ago by Jesus on the mount: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," etc. (Sermons by the Monday Club.) People Israelites, Joshua, NunPlaces Bochim, Egypt, Gaash, Gilgal, Timnath-heresTopics TRUE, Elders, Joshua, Lifetime, Outlived, Prolonged, Responsible, Serve, Served, Survived, Throughout, Worked, Works, WroughtOutline 1. An angel rebukes the people at Bochim6. The wickedness of the new generation after Joshua 14. God's anger and pity toward them 20. The Canaanites left to prove Israel Dictionary of Bible Themes Judges 2:7Library A Summary of Israel's Faithlessness and God's Patience'And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. 2. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? 3. Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods … Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Israel's Obstinacy and God's Patience Whether the Female Sex is an Impediment to Receiving Orders? The Judges. The Unmistakable Honesty of the Writers of the Bible Attests to Its Heavenly Origin The Death of Abraham Formation and History of the Hebrew Canon. The Doctrine of Angels. 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