Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome back to Missions on Point. This is episode 232. We are continuing our series on preaching about missions. We’ve covered the first five books and today we will talk about the next three together.

When we preach the Great Commission, we must determine what that means according to God’s Word. And we cannot understand our role in God’s plan to save sinners, unless we understand history as it has unfolded according to God’s purposes. For shallow Christianity, one of the most neglected aspects of scripture is its history. But, the Bible leads the church to obey the Great Commission because we find our story situated within God’s larger story in all of history. Our part to play in bringing glory to God is to go into all the world and make disciples of every nation. The tribes, nations, and languages that have divided people into separate groups have existed since the Tower of Babel and the subsequent promise given to Abraham to bless all nations through his offspring. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, as we have seen, are critically foundational for our understanding of every other book after it, so we spent a week on each of those. Today we are considering the next three books of history, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. So, let us think about their unique contribution to the story of the entire scriptures and how they lead us to where we find ourselves now.

Before we get to those books though, I want us to begin with thinking about the last two verses in Hebrews chapter 11. These verses help us understand all of the history in the Old Testament, and how that applies to Christians today. After this long chapter of faulty saints who were saved by faith in the promised Messiah, we then read these verses.

Hebrews 11:39-40, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

Who are the us there? Those are Christians: Jewish and Gentile believers who have been united together into the one body of Jesus Christ, the church. God has promised an inheritance of which Jesus has won the decisive victory in obtaining, and that inheritance is an inheritance of nations. As we think about saints in the Old Testament, remember these verses. They did not receive what was promised to them, because God was providing something better for us. Apart from the many nations of Gentile believers being folded into the family of God through faith in Jesus, those Jewish Old Testament Saints would not be made perfect. The promised reward is all of God’s children coming to faith in Jesus.

So, how do the books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth inform the church about obeying the Great Commission?

In the book of Joshua, we have the second generation of Israel after the Exodus, led by Moses’ replacement, Joshua, who obediently led the Israelites to conquer the Promised Land. God’s personal presence with Israel is the focus as Joshua is told to be strong and courageous. God has promised to give them the land as an inheritance, yet they must obey and devote the Canaanite people and their cities to complete destruction. And the primary way we can think about missions in this book is that it’s focused on God’s glory over every nation. The Canaanites deserve God’s judgment. And Israel’s relationship to the pagan nations is of utmost concern. And immediately, in chapter 2, this comes into focus. Rahab fears God because of his power displayed in the Exodus. What God is doing with this one nation is on display for all nations. The crossing of the Jordan emphasizes this too, as God is called the Lord of all the earth. And chapter 4:24 says that God brought Israel here, “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.” The cities of Jericho and Ai are destroyed to highlight that Israel must be obedient to God to drive out evil in the land. One man’s sin threatens to bring God’s wrath on the entire community. God’s purposes must be accomplished by faith in God and obedience to his ways. This is tested by the deceptive Gibeonites, where the Israelites failed to seek God’s counsel. Surprisingly God tells Israel to keep their covenant with Gibeon, because God too is a covenant-keeping God. God uses this to lure the southern kingdoms to their defeat. And God’s power is on full display. He throws them into panic, he hurls stones from heaven. He causes the sun to stop. And he curses the kings by hanging them on trees.  Joshua is victorious, because God fights for them. Where a single sin threatens to undo the entire endeavor, it only succeeds because God is faithful to his promises. Joshua’s faithfulness is set side by side with God’s faithfulness. So too in missions, we must be faithful to obey God to go into all the nations, because first and foremost God is faithful to save a people for himself from them. We must fight to inherit the promises, on guard against enemies on every side, trusting that God is the one who wins the victory for us. A large part of the book of Joshua focuses on the distribution of the land to the Israelites, with special emphasis given to the cities of refuge and the Levitical cities. God had provided for his people, and not just land, but the ministry of the priests and the preservation of justice. Yet, there remained inhabitants who had not been driven out. Joshua had brought a peaceful rest, yet there was more work to be done. So, it is today. The work is not done until we all find rest in the promised land of heaven. It’s like that verse in Hebrews 11 telling us that they did not receive what was promised. Finally, in the book of Joshua, there is a strange account at the end of the book about an eastern altar of witness which tests the purity, obedience, and unity of the people of God. Their victory is fragile and tenuous, leaving us wanting something better. Like in the Garden of Eden, even one sin threatens to kick the people out of God’s presence, making God’s people just like all the other nations. For any nation of the world, the Israelites included, if they have any hope of remaining in God’s presence forever, we need a sinless leader better than Joshua.

Now we come to the book of Judges. And this book provides a stark contrast to the book of Joshua. This book tells a much grimmer picture than the previous one. While Joshua was filled with victory, Judges is filled with an ever more depressing account of the nation’s sinfulness. And the judges that rise up to save Israel, though members of that hall of faith in Hebrews 11, demonstrate their many flaws and our need for a perfect savior, one who not only does what is right and defeats the enemy, but who leads the people to be righteous too. It’s all in the repetition. The Israelites failed to drive out the Canaanites, who became a snare and thorn in their side. They abandon the Lord and follow after idols. God disciplines his people, because he loves them. A judge is sent to deliver the people. But when the judge dies, the people revert to their evil, often to a worse degree. The death of Joshua is recorded twice, emphasizing that because of Israel’s sinfulness, they desperately need a godly king to lead them in keeping God’s covenant. The most repeated phrases are these three: “The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD,” “In those days there was no king in Israel,” and “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” And today, we have that king, in Jesus, who now leads us, his people, to do what is right, to take up our crosses and following him, and to go into all the world and preach the gospel of the kingdom of God. The people of the nations of the world today do what is right in their own eyes, and they need the only righteous king to lead them.

I want to remember those verses from Hebrews 11 that I read at the beginning. Four of the judges here are listed in that hall of faith, namely Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah. It’s no doubt that these judges were deeply flawed men. Yet, they had faith. They believed God and obeyed. They saw their own weaknesses and ineptitude. They saw the depths of the people’s sinfulness, and they knew that Israel needed a better savior than they.  This is the heart of missions, exalting Jesus Christ so that all men might be saved. Israel faces a crisis of their inheritance and a crisis of their faith. Their idolatry is polluting their land. Yet, God disciplines them. He loves them and doesn’t give up on them. So too, God leads his church to obey him in the Great Commission, and he corrects us and rebukes our slothful ease, and he doesn’t give up on us, nor does he give up on those whom he has saved from all the world.

Lastly, we consider the book of Ruth. This book takes place during the days when the judges ruled Israel. And it provides a relief from the stories of the judges. We take an intimate look at a few people who lived in the midst of widespread unfaithfulness, and a yet there are a few who are faithful. It is no doubt a love story between the pagan Gentile, Ruth, King David’s great-grandmother, and Boaz, the son of another Gentile, Rahab from Jericho. The contrast of those who are faithful to those who are not is accentuated by Elimelech and Naomi and their two sons, who leave the land in a time of famine. The men all die and Naomi is exceedingly bitter toward God. The widow Ruth, though, abandons her paganism and attaches herself to her mother-in-law and Israel’s God. When they return to Israel, they don’t find a famine, but a field to harvest. Boaz sees Ruth’s faithfulness, and he says, “The LORD repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” It’s a story of a departure from God in unfaithfulness and a welcome return to God and finding redemption upon their return. Boaz is the kinsman redeemer, the closest relative who was willing to redeem a disgraced widow, and a foreign Moabitess at that. So too, is the story of our redemption for all who have faith in Jesus Christ, our true Redeemer. Even though we have left God in our sin, and even though we are far away from God’s promises because we are Gentiles, Jesus would take us under his wings should we turn to him. I think it is appropriate here to remind us that for the overwhelmingly vast majority of Christians who are reading or hearing these words from the book of Ruth, they should see themselves in this story not as the Jews, but as the Gentiles. We are all outside of God’s promises, yet God has adopted us foreign Gentiles into his storyline, just like Rahab and Ruth in the lineage of Jesus. When it comes to the covenant of God, most Christians are no different than any other Gentile. If God would be so kind to redeem us, so too should we freely offer the gospel to all peoples on the earth.

I hope you have been encouraged by these quick overviews of these three books of the bible. I hope you recognize that talking about missions is often not explicit in these passages. But when we see them in light of passages like Hebrews 11, we learn to turn our minds to God’s new covenant hope for all peoples on the earth. God’s power and redemption were on display in the nation of Israel so that God might provide something better for us Gentiles. God is sure to win the victory and gain the inheritance of the nations.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at Propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.