The greatness of Thy loving heart. Thou must give me gaze upon it, and when beauty fills my soul. Oh, my God, yes, for me. Thou hast made me whole.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art. I am finding out the greatness of Thy loving heart.
Oh, how great Thy loving-kindness, vaster, broader than the sea! Oh, the fullness of Thy love—it is all for me.
Yes, I rest in Thee, Beloved, know what wealth of grace is Thine, know Thy certainty of promise, and have made it mine.
Lord Jesus, I behold Thee, and the fullness of Thy beauty satisfies my heart. Satisfies its deepest longings, meets, supplies its every need.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art. I am finding out the greatness of Thy love.
Ever lift Thy face upon me, as I work and wait for Thee; rest beneath Thy smile, Lord Jesus—earth’s dark shadows flee.
Brightness of my Father’s glory, sunshine of my Father’s face, keep me ever trusting, resting, fill me with Thy grace.
Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of God. I am finding out the greatness of Thy love.
Good evening, brothers and sisters. Can you hear me okay? Okay.
Can we turn to the theme verse in Joshua, chapter 1?
Joshua 1:9:
Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and courageous.
Do not tremble or be dismayed,
for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Maybe we just bow with a further word of prayer.
Lord, we come to You and come before Your word. Lord, we feel so humble to be here, to be able to be seated at Your feet. Lord, we pray that You may speak to our hearts concerning the things that concern You, Lord—the burden that You have for each one of us.
So, Lord, we pray that You may give us attentive ears. Lord, quicken our bodies, our spirits, Lord, that we may be able to hear, to digest, and to understand. We pray that Your Holy Spirit may be the Lord of our time. Lord, we just commit these words back into Your hands, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
So, it is always dangerous—or not that great—to be the last speaker, because you never know if the previous person is going to say everything you wanted to say. Thankfully, the Lord knows everything in advance.
Our brother last night said he was going to do a flyover of Joshua. He quickly pointed different things out in Joshua, and our brother Lucia this morning said we needed to set some historical context of five hundred years. I breathed a sigh of relief, because what the Lord laid on my heart was to kind of pan back even more.
I feel almost like when you take a digital photo and you are zoomed in, and sometimes you want to zoom out to take the whole picture in—maybe even like a panorama. Somehow, I think that is what the Lord has placed in my heart to share with you concerning Joshua.
As I was meditating before the Lord on this very fascinating story of Joshua, here were the people of Israel right before they were going to enter the promised land. It was almost as if excitement had been building up. The previous generation almost got in. They were right about to go in, and then, oh man, they could not get in. Even Moses could not go in.
But now this excitement had been built up. They were actually going to finally be able to enter into the promised land. As I was seeking the Lord on this matter—what does this land really speak about?—the question became: How do we set this in the context of the eternal purpose of God, something really, really big?
Somehow, I felt in my heart that the Lord wanted me to take a step back. Our brother last night asked a question: Why are we even here? I do not know if all of us know why we are here this weekend. I am here because I was invited, but you know what I mean.
The bigger question is: Why are we even here on this earth? This is the big question philosophers love to ask, right? What is the purpose of life? Where did we come from, and where are we going? In many ways, we should ask that question: What is the purpose of life? Why did God create man in the first place? What is our purpose in this world?
I think, of course, over the course of the years, the Lord gives us glimpses of that. But I think we need to go back to the beginning. If you want to read a good book and understand what it is about, you look at the first few pages to see what the introduction is about, and then you go to the back of the book and ask, “How did it conclude?” Then you flip through a few pages in the middle and get an idea of what that book is about.
In the same way, for us to understand what God is doing, I think the Lord gives us very clear evidence in the beginning of the Bible. Of course, everything in between is wonderful, but I think the Lord really sets out clearly what He is seeking to do.
When we come to the beginning of the Bible, we read about God’s creation. My family and I drove down from New Jersey, and we actually had the chance to go through Williamstown, Kentucky. We got to see a replica of Noah’s Ark. It was fascinating; it was really wonderful. It brought us back to the book of Genesis.
We read about God creating man, forming the earth, making it habitable again, and placing man in the garden of Eden. The question is: Why did God even do that? I think God is very clear.
In Genesis 1, after God had created the heavens and the earth, He spent six days forming the earth and making it habitable. On the seventh day, He rested. Then, toward the end of the chapter, He said:
Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;
and let them rule over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the sky,
and over the cattle,
and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created them.Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it;
and rule over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the sky
and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Here the Lord is very explicitly clear about the first job that man had. God wanted man to rule the earth. God wanted man to be king of the earth. Not only that, man was supposed to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. God’s purpose was that man would fill this earth and be able to rule this earth.
That is the first clue as to why God created man. Then, in Genesis 2:5, it says:
Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth,
and no plant of the field had yet sprouted,
for the Lord had not sent rain upon the earth;
and there was no man to cultivate the ground.
“Cultivate” is a fairly modern term; it is a farmer’s term. But if you read the original Hebrew, the word translated “cultivate” is actually serve—to serve the ground, to serve what God had created.
Here is a second clue that God gave us. First, we were to rule. Second, we would serve. We would serve the world He created and serve God Himself through His creation.
We have those two perspectives, but then I think we need to read another portion in the Scriptures. It is always important to use the Bible to interpret God’s own word, to allow the Lord Himself to explain His creation. This can be found in Psalm 8.
I assume all of you know this psalm very well. There is actually a song: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth?” I am not here to sing, but anyway, you get the point.
Psalm 8 speaks about God’s creation:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name in all the earth,
Who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!From the mouth of infants and nursing babes
You have established strength
because of Your adversaries,
to make the enemy and the revengeful cease.When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which You have ordained;
what is man that You take thought of him,
and the son of man that You care for him?Yet You have made him a little lower than the angels,
and You crown him with glory and majesty!
You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet.
Again, it talks about man ruling the earth, ruling over the works of God. But there is something deeper that the psalmist David explains: “From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength.”
God created man and made him small. Our brothers have been talking about the fact that we are so weak. Joshua was weak; we are weak. But it is by design. From the mouth of infants and nursing babes, God established strength. When the Lord Jesus said, “Let the children come to Me,” we see that we are to have hearts like children, because the Lord did it on purpose.
Why? “Because of Your adversaries, to make the enemy and the revengeful cease.” Why did God create man? Because God put man in a battlefield. God had an enemy, and we all know that enemy was Lucifer.
Lucifer was this wonderful archangel who led the angels in praise of God, but he was not satisfied. He fell, he sinned against God, and God cast him down. Yet God did not decide to destroy Satan right away. He could have very easily just squashed him to death, right?
But by squashing Satan to death, God would be able to demonstrate His power, but He would not be able to demonstrate His wisdom. In God’s wisdom, He wanted to use man—made a little lower than the angels—to defeat His enemy and take back the lost territory.
Ephesians 3:9-10 says:
To bring to light what is the administration of the mystery
which for ages has been hidden in God, who created all things;
so that the manifold wisdom of God
might now be made known through the church
to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.
The work of God is that He wanted to use man to defeat the enemy. God was not just going to squash him; God had a plan to use man to defeat the enemy. The purpose of man was that he was created so that he would defeat the enemy.
David had the same question we have been having. When he considered the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and the stars, he asked, “What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” David must have looked at the stars and the wonder of God’s creation and asked, “What is man that God would even want to use me in this wonderful work of defeating His enemy?”
At the time David was writing the psalm, he only had his naked eye to observe the universe. But Romans 1:20 tells us:
Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes,
His eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen,
being understood through what has been made,
so that they are without excuse.
We are in the twenty-first century. We have to thank scientists for bringing us the Hubble telescope. We know a lot more about the universe, and hopefully these are things that can help us understand how much greater our God is than we have kind of boxed Him in to be.
I have been helping our high-school students and reading up on God’s creation. We think the sun is pretty amazing. On a hot summer day, you think, “Wow, the sun is pretty hot.” But the sun could fit approximately 1.3 million Earths inside it.
That sounds impressive, but our sun is considered relatively average in size. There is a star called HR 5171. It has a radius about 1,300 times greater than the sun, and it is about a million times brighter than the sun. It is approximately 1.5 billion times the volume of our sun, and it is about seventy thousand light-years away.
The point is this: our sun is nothing compared with this other star. That is just one perspective.
Then think about our solar system. We think Earth is pretty big. My wife, my family, and I took a trip from New Jersey. It took us a week to get here. If we drove straight, it would have been sixteen hours and twelve hundred miles—a long trip, especially with three little kids. Those of you with kids know how that is.
But if we took a 747, it would take us twenty years to get to the sun. Imagine a twenty-year trip with kids! You would probably get to the sun.
If you took our solar system and put it on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the sun would be like a beach ball on the Capitol grounds. Earth would be like a marble, one hundred eighty yards away on the lawn. Saturn would be like a softball near the Washington Monument, and Pluto—when I was in high school, it was still a planet—would be two and a half miles away at the Lincoln Memorial.
Now, where would the closest star be on that scale? Somebody said Tokyo. Good guess. It would actually be Shanghai—about seventy-five hundred miles away. That is just the next star, the neighboring star.
I recently read an article about a billionaire in Russia who wanted to invest in a project to send a nanoprobe—just a few grams in weight, with cameras—to take pictures of the next star, Alpha Centauri. They wanted to accelerate it with a laser so that it could travel at one-fifth the speed of light.
How long would it take to get there? Twenty years. Then it would take another four and a half years for the pictures to come back. He invested billions of dollars, and they say it might cost a hundred billion total. Imagine all this technology we have, and to get to the next star, it would take us twenty years just to take some pictures.
That is just how big our universe is. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way. Our solar system is only one among perhaps two hundred to three hundred billion stars in the Milky Way.
If the Milky Way were the size of the United States, how large would our solar system be? A quarter. That is how big our solar system would be. It takes twenty years in a 747 to get to the sun, but that is just a quarter in the scale of our galaxy.
Scientists think there may be two hundred to three hundred billion galaxies in the universe. Some scientists estimate that there are around a trillion trillion stars in the universe. Do not quote us on the exact number, because scientists differ, but the point is that it is a really big number.
Yet Isaiah 40:26 says:
Lift up your eyes on high
and see who has created these stars,
the One who leads forth their host by number.
He calls them all by name;
because of the greatness of His might
and the strength of His power,
not one of them is missing.
It could be a trillion trillion stars; it could be more. But, brothers and sisters, the Lord not only knows the number. He calls them by name, and He knows that not one is missing.
Remember when God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore and as the stars in the sky. Think about it: the Lord knows them by name.
Psalm 103:11-12 says:
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Scientists estimate that the observable universe is around ninety-six billion light-years across. If you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you ninety-six billion years to cross it, and it is still expanding. Scientists also believe that the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old.
When we think about eternity, we have no grasp of what that is. But somehow, through His creation, God is showing us how great, how vast He is. Our brother this morning talked about the unfathomable riches of Christ. Brothers and sisters, we sometimes box our God in to be so small, so little. Think about the numbers we have quoted. It is unfathomable, but Christ is greater than all of that. He is the Creator of all of that.
Like David, we need to echo this phrase: “What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?”
God, in His vastness and greatness, decided that He wanted to make earth the theater—the place where everything took place, where this supreme battle of the universe would take place. Somehow, He would allow man to take a part in that.
Through the mouth of infants and nursing babes, He would make the enemy and the revengeful cease. He would defeat the enemy, but somehow the Lord allows us to be a part of this, so that we could rule over the works of His hands and serve Him. We could serve the ground; we could cultivate the ground.
Most importantly: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!” We have talked about the first two things: ruling over the earth and serving Him. The third piece is that the glory of God would be that His name would fill the earth.
In heaven, heaven is heaven—no surprise, right? The glory of heaven is no surprise because God is there. But God’s plan is that heaven would be heaven on earth, and earth would essentially be a reflection of heaven.
Have you ever been to one of those wonderful places with very still lakes, where mountains are reflected perfectly in the water? You see a perfect reflection of that mountain, that beautiful scenery. That is God’s intent: that earth would be a reflection of heaven.
God, in His love, wanted to share His glory with man. That was God’s plan from the beginning.
When God placed man in the garden of Eden, there were a few trees: the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and fruit trees. God did not explicitly tell man what he had to choose. Man ultimately decided to take the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But God’s plan, God’s hope, was that man would partake of the tree of life, because that was the life of God Himself. By taking of that tree of life, man would learn how to submit to the Father.
Ultimately, New Testament church life is nothing but the life of our Lord Jesus. Remember how submissive that life was. God wanted man to declare his dependence on Him.
God created us spirit, soul, and body. Adam became a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils. We were created in God’s image, and so we have a mind, will, and emotion. That makes up our soul. We can think, “I think, therefore I am.” We can love and hate, and we can decide.
God did not create us to be little robots doing exactly what He wants us to do. He gave us a free will because He is a God of free will. In God’s wisdom, He created us so that we could hopefully choose Him.
As man learned to obey Him, man would know how to rule this world. Man would know how to serve Him. As he became fruitful and multiplied, the life of God would fill this earth, and earth would become a reflection of heaven. Then man would have fulfilled the purpose of God.
That was God’s plan from the beginning. God’s wonderful plan was that man would rule, he would serve, and he would be a testimony of God Himself.
But, of course, unfortunately, man sinned. Man partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and man made a mess of things. Before you knew it, Cain was killing Abel.
Soon after, in Genesis 6, man fell into the flesh. God saw the Nephilim, the giants, when the angels went in to the daughters of men. We read about giants even in Joshua—the Anakim, related to the Nephilim or the giants. Then God sent the flood and provided the ark.
In Genesis 11, not only had man fallen into flesh, but man united in rebellion against God. Remember the tower of Babel. They wanted to build a tower. They said, “We do not need God. We can go to heaven on our own.”
But thank the Lord, Genesis 12 was the call of Abraham. God then started the work of recovery. God never gave up on His plan.
God’s plan was that man would rule, man would serve, and man would be a testimony. God never swayed from that. So, what was God doing in Genesis 12?
Genesis 12 says:
Go forth from your country,
and from your relatives
and from your father’s house,
to the land which I will show you;
and I will make you a great nation,
and I will bless you,
and make your name great;
and so you shall be a blessing.And I will bless those who bless you,
and the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
The Lord was even more explicit in Genesis 15:18:
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying,
“To your descendants I have given this land,
from the river of Egypt
as far as the great river, the river Euphrates:
the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite
and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim
and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite.”
This is the promised land. God was not just calling Abraham as an individual. Ultimately, Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac had Jacob, and Jacob had twelve sons, who became the nation of Israel. God wanted to gain that family and ultimately gain that nation.
But that nation was to have a piece of land. Genesis 15 talks about this whole piece of land. Ultimately, it is the same piece of land that Joshua and the people were going to conquer. That piece of land is very important.
After Abraham offered Isaac, Genesis 22:16-18 says:
By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord,
because you have done this thing
and have not withheld your son, your only son,
indeed I will greatly bless you,
and I will greatly multiply your seed
as the stars of the heavens
and as the sand which is on the seashore;
and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.
In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,
because you have obeyed My voice.
Because Abraham was obedient, God fully disclosed His purpose. His descendants would be as numerous as the stars in heaven and as the sand on the seashore. The sand on the seashore speaks about the earthly people of God, while the stars speak about the heavenly people.
That is the distant fulfilment of this prophecy, but there was also a nearer fulfilment: the descendants would become as numerous as the sand of the seashore.
Why am I talking about all of this? Because in God’s wisdom, in the beginning, He chose this whole earth to be His place of work. He wanted this whole earth to be filled with His glory. Unfortunately, man fell and sinned.
So what was God doing in His work of recovery? God’s plan was that, at least in the land of Canaan, there would be a people after His own heart. On a much smaller scale than God’s original plan for the whole earth, there would be a piece of land and a people who would obey Him, make Him Lord, and somehow fulfil God’s purpose in a small way.
That is why the land was so important. God entrusted His word to the people of Israel. Moses represents the prophets. This is very important.
Before they even got to that land, what did God have them do? He had Moses build a tabernacle. God restored His word, and God also restored the tabernacle. In order to serve the tabernacle, you need priests—someone to serve God’s house and serve God Himself.
The third thing God was after was a king. Why was that land so important? It serves as a backdrop to the story of Joshua. God was not just after that land. The land was, in a sense, equivalent to the earth, but God needed to fulfil His full purpose.
Through the people of Israel, God wanted to restore His purpose: man as a testimony, represented by the prophet; man as a servant, represented by the priest; and man as king, represented by David and Solomon.
Starting with Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob, God gained a nation. They were in Egypt, and they had to come out of Egypt. They had to be delivered, and then they had to come into the land.
What did that land speak of? Our brothers mentioned that it spoke about the unsearchable riches of Christ. But it meant much more, because it was upon this land that Jerusalem would be established. In Jerusalem, the temple was going to be built.
The temple spoke about the place where the name of God would be—the place where the presence of God would be. The city of Jerusalem spoke about the testimony of God, while the house was the place where all the service would happen.
Not only that, the throne of David needed to be established. David established his throne near the temple itself. Again, we see those three things: the king, the service of the priest, and the testimony.
It all started with God giving revelation to Moses. God gave him the Ten Commandments, the tablets of testimony, and had him put them in the ark of the testimony.
The ark was at the very center of the tabernacle and at the very center of the temple. In the ark, you had the tablets of testimony, but you also had the manna. The jar of manna spoke about God’s daily provision.
Matthew 4:4 says:
Man shall not live on bread alone,
but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
It was not just the objective word of God, the Ten Commandments; it was a living experience of that word as well. That is spoken of by the manna. The other item in the ark was Aaron’s staff, which spoke of priesthood.
Finally, the Bible talks about the ark as the footstool of God. It speaks again about kingship. Here, at the very center of the temple, we see these matters brought together.
We are bringing a lot to the table here. Please go home and read more and find it for yourself. It is so abundant and so rich. We just want to do a thirty-thousand-foot view of everything.
The important matter is that God, in His recovery, wanted at least a piece of land where there would be people after His own heart—people who understood His purpose and could serve as His testimony.
Exodus 19:5-6 confirms this:
Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice
and keep My covenant,
then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples,
for all the earth is Mine;
and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation.
God’s original plan was that as many citizens as there were in Israel, that is how many priests there would be. But because of the fall, it fell upon the Levites and the house of Aaron. God’s plan was never for there to be just a small representation of priests. Every member of Israel should have been a priest.
Later on, the people of Israel wanted a king. Saul came along, and then David came along. David and Solomon finally came into rule, and they became kings of Israel.
Remember the promise to Abraham: they would have the land, and his descendants would be as numerous as the sand of the seashore. Did it happen?
In 1 Kings 4:20-21, when Solomon was in power, we read:
Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance;
they were eating and drinking and rejoicing.
Now Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms
from the River to the land of the Philistines
and to the border of Egypt;
they brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life.
Remember the two promises: first, they would be as numerous as the sand of the seashore; second, the whole land God promised would be occupied by the people of Israel. During the rule of Solomon, those promises were fulfilled.
Every Jewish scholar will tell you that the height of the nation of Israel was when Solomon was in power. All the nations looked up to it. The queen of Sheba came from far away because of the fame of Solomon.
Israel had a testimony at that time of the glory of God. Solomon represented all the splendor and all the glory. Read about the riches in his palace and the beauty of the temple. All the temple services were in place. The ark was there. You saw the glory of God fill the whole nation of Israel.
For a short period of time, on this earth, there was a piece of land where God’s glory was throughout that land. How majestic was God’s name in all Israel, or throughout all the land of Canaan.
In history, there was a time when God’s purpose, in a small way, was fulfilled on this earth. The people were as numerous as the sand of the seashore, and the land God had promised to Israel was actually possessed.
When God says, “Be strong and courageous, because I am going to do it,” ultimately it was done. But, brothers and sisters, this is the Old Testament. This was very much only in part.
The unfortunate thing is that you just read the next chapter, and Solomon, because of his wives, began to worship idols. Listen, be content with your wife. One is enough. Think of Jacob too. He had four wives, and what a headache he had, right? My wife is not around. Okay.
Many wives became a real problem. Solomon’s heart turned to worship idols, and then the nation was divided. The problem is that bad trees produce bad fruit.
For a very short period of time, there could be a glimpse of the work of God. But man needed the tree of life. We come back to that.
God’s plan seemed frustrated, and the nation of Israel was divided. But thank the Lord, God started another work of recovery through Ezra and Nehemiah. Some people came back—only fifty thousand came back. They rebuilt the temple. It was not as nice as it had been.
But thank the Lord. What did the Lord say? “The latter glory shall be greater than the former glory.” Even though they came back and restored in part, man was still fallen in nature. Man needed a Savior.
Thank the Lord that the Lord Jesus was willing to say, “I am willing to come, and I am willing to deliver them.” That is the wonderful story.
The whole Old Testament shows us a little picture of what God is actually doing. Is God’s plan done? Of course not. He is not done by any means.
What we saw in the Old Testament was just the type. The reality was yet to come. We thank the Lord that the reality is found in our Lord Jesus.
We have quickly covered the Old Testament, but thank the Lord, we can come to the New Testament, which is our hope. Our brother mentioned this morning that when you talk about the land, you talk about the unsearchable riches of Christ. You talk about the land flowing with milk and honey.
Milk is the essence of animal life, and honey is the essence of vegetable life. Put them together, and you get the essence of life. In New Testament terms, the Holy Spirit uses a different way to explain that.
How do you explain who Christ is? He is so rich. We talked about the vastness of the universe, and He is beyond that. In Revelation 4, and also in Ezekiel, the Holy Spirit gives us a little picture of this life.
In Revelation 4, life is pictured through four living creatures. They had four different faces: one had the face of a lion, one the face of an ox, one the face of a man, and one the face of an eagle.
This speaks about four aspects of the life of our Lord Jesus. Our Lord is so abundant—the unsearchable riches of Christ. It was not enough for one Gospel to explain Him. It took four Gospels to explain the riches of Christ: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Matthew speaks about our Lord as King. Mark speaks about our Lord as Servant. Luke speaks about our Lord as the perfect testimony, as Man, the Son of Man. John speaks about our Lord’s perfect testimony as the Son of God.
The lion speaks of kingship. Matthew 1:1 says:
The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah,
the Son of David,
the Son of Abraham.
Matthew describes Him as the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Who was the son of David? Solomon. Who was the son of Abraham? Isaac. These two sum up what kind of King our Lord was.
In Matthew 12, the Lord said, “Behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” The people were seeking a sign from Him, and He said He would give no sign except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man would be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.
Here we see the suffering King. The Lord also said, “Behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” Solomon was the wisest man ever to have lived, other than the Lord Himself. But the Lord is greater than Solomon.
If you read the Gospel of Matthew, especially if you have a Bible that has the Lord’s words in red, you will see that about two-thirds of Matthew is in red. This is our King. Here is Someone greater than Solomon.
But He is also the Son of Abraham. He was the One willing to die. The Lord said, “I came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” He was the Seed willing to die—the serving King, the suffering King, willing to die in our place.
The second Gospel is the Gospel of Mark, which speaks about the Lord as Servant. Mark is very different from Matthew. Matthew is two-thirds in red; in Mark, you barely see any red. Why? Because a servant does not talk a lot. When you pay someone to clean your house, you do not want them to come in and chat with you; you want them to clean your house.
In the Gospel of Mark, the word immediately appears over forty times. Immediately He did this; immediately He did that. This was the kind of Servant the Lord was.
The ox speaks of service. Mark 1 through 8 speaks of our Lord as the ox in the field, tilling the ground. He was healing the sick, teaching His disciples, ministering to those lost around Him, and working very diligently—immediately, immediately.
Mark 9 through 16 speaks of Him as the ox on the altar. He offered Himself as a ransom for us. He was willing to serve on the cross for the purpose of God. That is the Lord as Servant.
In the Gospel of Luke, He is the perfect Son of Man. Luke is another place where you see the genealogy, but this genealogy traces the Lord as the son of Joseph, the son of Adam, the Son of God. You see Him as the perfect Son of Man.
As Brother Con, or perhaps Brother Ernie, would always say: He is one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man. In the Gospel of Luke, we see Him as the Son of Man.
The Holy Spirit chose Luke, a physician—someone who saw sick people—to describe the perfect Man. Interestingly, if you read the Gospel of Luke, you read about diseases that you do not read about in the other Gospels. It took someone who saw a lot of imperfect people to describe the perfect Man.
Luke is the one place where you read about the Lord being born in a manger. It talks about His thirty-three and a half years, and it ends with His ascension.
Someone described the earth and its atmosphere as being like a coffin: the earth is the bottom, and the top of the atmosphere is the lid. Everybody who enters in never gets out. We come in horizontally, and we leave horizontally.
When I was driving down to Memphis, there were signs that said, “Elvis is alive.” Elvis is not alive. Elvis is dead. So are Prince, Michael Jackson, Carrie Fisher, Robin Williams—anybody who has made a name. They have not made it out of here.
But thank the Lord, our Lord was the perfect Man. On the Mount of Transfiguration, our heavenly Father said:
This is My beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased.
At the end of the Gospel of Luke, our Lord ascends. He was the first Man to come in horizontally and leave vertically. There is a Man in glory. Brothers and sisters, that serves as such a wonderful hope for us.
Our Lord did not just come and overcome as the Son of God. He came as the Son of Man. He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. He learned to be a carpenter. He learned to be an obedient Son. He started in a manger. What a wonderful story. What a wonderful Lord.
Last but not least, the Gospel of John presents Him as the Son of God:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
John 1:14 says:
And the Word became flesh,
and dwelt among us,
and we saw His glory.
God was so far away, so indescribable, unfathomable. But John talks about the things “we have handled with our hands.” We touched Him. He became so personal. John was the one able to lay on His bosom. God was so far away, but now God was made real.
When God called Moses in Exodus 3, Moses first said, “Who am I?” He was like David: “What is man?” Who am I to go speak to Pharaoh? But a few verses later, Moses asked, “Lord, who are You? What am I going to tell people about who You are?”
God said, “I AM WHO I AM.” In the Hebrew, it is simply, “I AM.” Tell them, “I AM sent you.” In the Old Testament, this was a frightful thing.
But thank the Lord that this “I AM” became so personal. That is why, in the Gospel of John, our Lord Jesus said:
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
I am the resurrection and the life.
I am the vine.
I am the bread of life.
I am the light of the world.
This great “I AM” became personal, real, and tangible. John 1 through 7 speaks of Him as life. His life is the light of men. John 8 through 12 speaks of Him as light, the light of the world. John 13 through 21 speaks of love. God is love.
The three L’s: He is life, He is light, and He is love. This is who the Lord Jesus is.
He delighted the Father because He was the perfect King, the perfect Servant, and the perfect testimony of who God is. Go back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis. What was God after? Kingship, priesthood, and testimony. The Lord was the perfect representation of that.
Thank the Lord for our Lord Jesus. But it does not stop there. This is the good news for us. What is the gospel? The good news is, of course, that the Lord died for us on the cross and our sins are forgiven.
But it is not just enough to come out of something. Thank the Lord, He has delivered us out of our sins, out of Egypt, out of the world, and out of our flesh. But He is bringing us into something.
What is He bringing us into? He is bringing us into the reality that everything in Christ can become real in each one of us practically.
Romans 8:28-29 says:
God causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose.
For those whom He foreknew,
He also predestined to become conformed
to the image of His Son.
That reality is not just in Christ. He has given us His life, and He wants to make that our reality too, individually as well as corporately.
First Peter 2:5 says:
You also, as living stones,
are being built up as a spiritual house.
I started by saying that if you look at the beginning, you can understand God’s purpose, but you also have to look at how it concludes. How does it conclude? With the picture of the New Jerusalem.
There are things found both in Genesis and Revelation. We talked about ruling. Toward the end, in Revelation 20, we see the overcomers reigning with Christ for a thousand years. There is reigning.
There were four rivers in the garden of Eden, and there is a river in the book of Revelation. In the rivers of Genesis, there were bdellium, onyx, and gold. Bdellium is another word for pearl. So you have gold, pearl, and precious stone.
In the New Jerusalem, the materials are precious stone—the twelve foundation stones. The gates are made of pearl, and the streets are transparent gold. You, as living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house. That is the New Jerusalem.
Today, if you think about the most precious thing we have on this earth, it is a diamond. De Beers has a commercial: “A diamond is forever.” You are supposed to pay something like two months’ salary for a diamond ring. I am sure someone in the industry decided that.
Diamonds are precious because they are rare, and because they take a lot of time to produce—lots of heat and lots of pressure. Diamonds are made of carbon.
A pencil is made with graphite. It is brittle, dark, and opaque. The lead breaks off and leaves a trace; that is how you are able to write. But that same dark carbon, if you put it in the heart of the earth and give it enough heat, enough pressure, and millions of years, will produce a diamond.
Then the diamond gets cut. A five-carat diamond in this room would be worthless if you shut off the lights, because you would not see anything. What gives it worth is that light goes into it and is captured in it. A diamond is also the hardest material known to man.
Before the process, that carbon is brittle and dark. Now it becomes transparent and hard. That is the process the Lord is putting us through: to form Christ in us.
When the Lord gives us His life, He gives us His patience and His gentleness. It is all there. But do you sometimes feel that the patience comes and goes? You wake up in the morning and say, “Oh, thank You, Lord.” You have your morning devotions, and it is wonderful.
Then, before you know it, you are driving to work, someone cuts you off, and you get angry. “Oh man, I cannot believe you cut me off!” You lose all of that. Your patience comes and goes.
But the wonderful thing is that the Lord is doing something lasting, just like that diamond, so that it becomes part of our character. He is forming that character in us.
Think about transparent gold. The Bible talks about a new heaven and a new earth. Today, you cannot make gold transparent, but it is the same principle. In a different physics, in a different world, you could take gold, apply heat and pressure, and produce transparent gold.
The wonderful thing about that whole city is that the Bible says it does not need any light, because God and the Lamb are its light. It is almost like a huge diamond. The whole city is transparent, and it is a huge bearer of light.
Now it starts to make sense, does it not? When John was writing to the seven churches about the lampstands, what is the Lord doing today?
The Lord is doing a work of restoration. God has placed us in each of our localities. God causes all things to work together for good.
Some of us are in New Jersey, some may be in Memphis, some in Shanghai, and some all over the world. The Lord has those whom He has called. He has given them His life. He has called people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.
In each locality, the Lord is doing a work in us individually and corporately. He is changing us and transforming Christ in us. He is teaching us how to serve, how to shine and be a testimony, and how to reign.
I will give you one bad example. I have used this example for years, but this was before Donald Trump ran for president. Donald Trump has a son named Donald Trump Jr. If you think about it, Donald Trump has this big enterprise, and I am sure all along his hope was that one day his son would take over for him. That is why he named him Junior, right?
Donald Trump went to the Wharton School of Business, and his son also went to the Wharton School of Business. When he had his Apprentice show, he would bring his son along and train him.
I am sure that in his heart Donald Trump hoped that one day his son would be like him, although most of us probably would not want him to be like him. But you get my point: somehow, one day, he would be able to take over.
He was not going to take over as a three-year-old or a five-year-old. There was a process in which he needed to be trained. He needed to develop character. Not only that, but he would have to be allowed to run things and administer things. That is parallel to service. Character is parallel to testimony.
Finally, one day, he could be the CEO of some enterprise. It is a very incomplete example, and Donald Trump is nothing compared with our Lord, but you get my point. The Lord is trying to entrust something into our hands. He is training us that we may learn how to reign, how to serve, and how to be a testimony.
This was God’s plan from the beginning. God said, “I will do it,” and He did it in the land of Israel. He established David and Solomon as kings. He built the house. He had the priests serve in His house. There was a testimony when the queen of Sheba came and saw it.
God said, “I am going to do it.” In the end, He is going to do it. We know from Revelation that New Jerusalem is going to come down out of heaven. We know that the overcomers are going to reign with Christ.
Revelation 20:4 says:
Then I saw thrones, and they sat on them,
and judgment was given to them.
And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded
because of the testimony of Jesus
and because of the word of God,
and those who had not worshiped the beast or his image,
and had not received the mark on their forehead and on their hand;
and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
Brothers and sisters, God’s original plan was that man would be king of the earth. One day, many will reign with Him on this earth for a thousand years.
Then it continues:
The rest of the dead did not come to life
until the thousand years were completed.
This is the first resurrection.
First, you see the testimony, and then they reign. Revelation 20:6 says:
Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection;
over these the second death has no power,
but they will be priests of God and of Christ
and will reign with Him for a thousand years.
People ask, “What are we going to be doing in eternity?” Well, three things: we are going to reign with Him, we are going to serve Him eternally, and we will shine. Just like that city, we will shine and be a testimony.
Again, those three functions we talked about: the king, the priest, and the prophet. Ultimately, God is able to do this.
One last thing before I conclude. The book of Ephesians talks about the unsearchable riches of Christ and how we need to come into all of it. But Ephesians ends with chapter 6.
Ephesians 6 talks about children obeying their parents, honoring father and mother, husbands loving their wives, and wives being submissive to their husbands. Our Lord Jesus learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
“All things work together for good” is not out there in la-la land. It is very practical. It is in the everyday, mundane things of life: the little quarrels we have with our spouses, the difficult rebelliousness in our kids, all of that.
The Lord is transforming us and conforming us to the image of His Son. Ultimately, God’s purpose is going to be fulfilled.
This is the book of the Bible, right? We have the beginning, and we see the end—God’s purpose. Hopefully, we see a little bit of what God is doing.
Hopefully, this sets the context for why it was so important for Joshua and the people of Israel. They had the land of Canaan in front of them, and that land of Canaan represents everything that God is going to do—all of the riches of Christ that He plans to build into us.
In facing all of that, the Lord God says, “Be strong and courageous. I am going to do it.” Ultimately, He did it. In the same way, He is going to do it in us, in reality. The Old Testament was just a picture, but for us, it should be our reality.
May the Lord speak to us through these words, and we will continue tomorrow. Let us bow with a word of prayer.
Lord, we ask that You may take the incomplete words of man, interpret them, and speak to our hearts. Lord, we pray that the Holy Spirit may do the work of interpretation and explanation.
Lord, we want to worship You and thank You. What is man that You take thought of him, that we could be a part of such a wonderful purpose?
Lord, we see through Your creation Your vastness and greatness—just a little glimpse of it. But Lord, Your love was so great that You reached down to puny little people like us and allowed us to be a part of Your wonderful purpose.
Lord, we just want to thank You and praise You. We pray that You may continue to work in each one of our hearts. We thank You in Jesus’ precious name.