Old Testament in a Year: Joshua 19-Judges 5

May 17, 2026
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God brought Israel through the wilderness not just to free them from Egypt, but to teach them how to walk with Him. Yet even after witnessing miracles, hearts still drifted toward compromise. The same tension exists in us. We can sing the songs, build the ministry, and learn the language of faith while still resisting surrender in the hidden places of our hearts. But God is not after performance. He is after devotion. He is searching for people who will choose obedience over convenience, holiness over compromise, and His presence over everything else. This message is a reminder that the Christian life cannot be lived in human strength. We need the Holy Spirit. We need spiritual fathers and mothers. And above all, we need to truly know Him — not just know about Him.

Today we're going to jump back into our series going through the Old Testament, and we're going to be going through Joshua 19 to judges five. So hopefully you don't have any lunch plans today. No, it's really cool because as I'm going through these chapters, really what the Lord is highlighting that's on his heart today is what lessons I feel like he's been teaching these students. So, guys, if this is redundant for you, don't tune out. But I feel like this is what is on the Lord's heart for us as a body today and for the entire church.

And I want to start off with the question, what is the most important thing in your life? What's the most important thing?

I'm going to leave you hanging on that one. We'll come back to it later. All right. I want to establish a perspective before we get into Scripture that I feel like is necessary for us to understand fully what God is trying to convey to us. Because the Old Testament, yes, it's a historical narrative and an account, but more than that, it's a prophetic message of both our lives today as believers and Christians, and a future age of total fulfillment to come when Jesus comes back in his second coming and ushers in his kingdom in a final way.

And today, I want to center on our lives today, how it's applying to us as believers. So with that perspective, when we look at Exodus through Deuteronomy, we can understand this is so much more than just people wandering around the desert and a bunch of random laws and then building a tent and a wooden box and like a bunch of weird stuff about oozing wounds and all that, that you're like, all right, glad I made it through that one. You know, it's actually revealing God bringing His people from death to life out of captivity into the freedom and life with God that He desires all of us to have. Right? It's the journey from Egypt, which is our old lives, into what would be the promised Land, which is the life he desires for us to have.

And then going through a season of wilderness in order to learn about who God is, what it looks like to follow God, what His standards are, his nature and his character are revealed all throughout the giving of his law and his ordinances, his statutes. So when you read that, you know, next time you go back through the books of the law, don't just read it as like, well, this is a good checklist of rules for the old covenant. Thank God we don't have to do that anymore. But Next time I want you to have the lens of saying God is trying to teach the nation of Israel, which is symbolic of us as the church, what he is like, right? He's trying to show them what it means to follow God, what it means to live for God.

Right? This isn't just a random tent he's having them build out in the desert. It's revealing about, hey, what does the presence of God look like? There's colors, there's vibrancy, there's scarlet thread that speaks of the blood. There's angels sewn into the, into the fabric.

There's bells, there's fruit, because that's what life in God is meant to look like. It's supposed to be fruitful, it's supposed to be joyful, it's supposed to be vibrant. It's supposed to be a place where heaven invades earth. Right?

There's a lot that you can. We could probably go back through all of that and that'd be another two year series, so I'll spare you on that one. But as you're reading it, there's a lot of life to be found there. But when we look at Joshua, Joshua is meant to represent to us the fulfillment of God's promises and coming into this new life in God. And Joshua, his name is actually Yehoshua, which is the name of Jesus.

Yehoshua, right. Both Joshua and Jesus, how we got the two different transliterations of their name is just because of Hebrew and Greek and all the historical context, but original language. Both their names are Yehoshua, which means the Lord is salvation. So when we look at Joshua, he's meant to represent Jesus to us, this warrior leader who is ushering the people into the promises of God.

I want to pick up and just go back through Joshua 3 because this is important, especially as we're approaching Pentecost next week. As we look at Joshua chapter three, we see the people crossing the Jordan river, which is the second time they're crossing a body of water that the Lord parts and allows them through on dry ground. The first time, they're exiting Egypt and they cross through the Red Sea into the wilderness. And this is a picture of baptism as they're transitioning from the land of captivity, a place of death, into a freedom and life with God. God is ushering them through an incrossable way, a way that could not be traversed.

Literally 2 million people are ushered through at the same time. That's the picture of baptism. Him bringing us from death to life and passing us through an impassable way. The second time these people are going through the waters of the Jordan river is meant to represent to us that baptism is not just a one time thing, it's a continual lifestyle. We're always being brought from death to life.

We're continually being renewed in our life with God. And it represents a second baptism that we get to experience as we journey through the life with God. And that is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that is marked by the day of Pentecost. The differences here is the Red Sea was literally an impassable path for the Israelites. The Jordan river was a much smaller body of water that the people probably could have swam across if they were strong enough swimmers.

Yet they were not able to maintain the standard of God that God had given them. Wearing the garments and carrying the Ark of the Covenant and walking in this formation that looks like a cross, by the way, if you actually drew out the diagram that the Lord prescribed, they're literally traveling around the desert in the shape of a giant cross. So, I mean, that's pretty. If God's not ahead of 11 steps ahead of us, then.

But the point here is, in order to step into what the Lord has for us, the promise, we have to be in relationship with the Holy Spirit. We have to walk in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, right? There might be things that we can do in our own strength, but we can never do them in the way of God. We can never maintain the standards of God without His Holy Spirit enabling us to do so. So the rest of the book of Joshua is really intended to show the fulfillment of God's promises for the people of Israel.

And Joshua 23:14 really summarizes it perfectly. And now I am about to go the way of all the earth. And you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed. Of all the good things that the Lord your God has promised concerning you, all have come to pass for you. Not one of them has failed.

It is establishing the fact that God has been faithful to His Word and is saying to us that as we live for God and walk in obedience to what he's called us to, we're going to experience the fulfillment of His Word and His promises. Amen. That's a great news. Amen. We're going to experience eternal life is what that means.

If you're watching online, if you're watching through the Pando app, you're going to experience eternal life in God because He's faithful to His Word. And that's what he's trying to communicate here, hey, I'm sending you out into this land. You're going to be able to captivate it. People that are stronger than you aren't going to be able to stand against you.

So God is faithful to His Word. But here's the thing. He doesn't give the whole Promised Land immediately. Why Deuteronomy 7:22 tells us as well as Judges 2:21, starting in Deuteronomy, says the Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them quickly, lest the wild beast grow too numerous for you.

In Judges 2:21 22, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died in order to test Israel by them whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did, or not. So really, there's two reasons that the people didn't inherit the Promised Land immediately, and that's because the Lord knows they're not going to be able to handle it if he gives it all to them, and wild beasts will come and kill them and devour them. And also he wants to test what is actually in their heart if they're just following God for what God can do for them, or if they're following God because they love Him. So for us, what God is trying to communicate here is that as he's releasing promises in your life, he's gonna do so at a pace that is good and healthy for you, that's not gonna overwhelm you, that's not gonna be detrimental to you, and he may be slow in doing so so that he can test what is in your heart. And if I'm honest with you, God already knows what's in your heart, right?

God's not confused about if you're actually serving him because you love him, or if you're just trying to get good things from Him. He just wants to reveal that to you. He wants to reveal that to us. And nothing like a little waiting to do that, right? If you've ever had to wait for something, you're going to be able to see pretty clearly what's inside of you.

None of us like it, right? But it's a good thing.

So where does that leave us? What do we need to understand and how do we need to respond? Well, first off, I think we have to consider, Are we serving the Lord because we love Him? Are we his disciples because he has the words to eternal life? There's no other place we can go besides him, or because we know that he's going to bless us and we're going to get good things out of him, and he's going to help our marriage, or help our finances, or help our relationships, or grow our business, or fulfill our dreams, because that's not who God is.

That's not what he's for. And you're actually missing out on the beauty of life with God if that's all you've signed up for.

Joshua 24:14, 25 is really kind of the crux of where I want us to land.

And I'm just going to read this out now. Therefore, fear the Lord. Serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.

But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Then the people answered, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God, who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the ways that we went and among all the people through whom we passed. And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore, we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God. But Joshua said to the people, you're not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.

He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgression or your sin. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good. And the people said to Joshua, no, but we will serve the Lord. Then Joshua said to the people, you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him.

And they said, we are witnesses. He said to them, put away then the foreign gods that are among you and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel. And the people said to Joshua, the Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for them at Sichim.

What we're to understand here, and this really is the call to discipleship that Joshua, who is representing Jesus, is giving to the people of Israel or Jesus is now giving to us. This is how we maintain and continue to receive the full promises that God has in store for us. It's by choosing to serve in the Lord not only in word, but in heart and in action. It's by saying, I am going to serve the Lord and be obedient to what he has asked of me. I'm not gonna compromise.

I'm not gonna get caught up in the things that other people are doing and the mixture that is around me. I'm gonna stay steadfast in the ways of the Lord because the Lord is a jealous God. He is a God of holiness. He is a God who has a standard he expects us to follow in his ways if we're gonna choose Him. He expects us to live according to His Word.

And he's not going to change his standards for anyone. He's not going to compromise his ways because we don't really feel like doing that because we have a different preference or we have a different opinion.

And can I tell you, there's really only two gods that we can choose from. There is the Lord of Heaven and Earth and the universe God, or there is ourselves, tiny little baby G God, us, Coal that we can serve because we don't have a bunch of idols hanging around. But we do have some idols, right? There are comfort, there are dreams, there are opinions. Our perspective.

We tend to worship those things without even realizing it. How do we know that? Because we hear the word of God and yet we debate. We say, ah, I don't really need to apply that. Or that's not.

That's not really addressing me, you know, I already know that, so I'm good. Well, you know it, but are you living it? You come in here every week and you hear the Word, and sometimes that can create a casualness, that can create a complacency when it comes to what God actually says and what standard he's calling us to live out, right? We can compromise and feel like, ah, that's not really a big deal because it's not a big one, right? I'm not sleeping around with anybody.

I'm not going out drinking. I'm not living this crazy lifestyle. So I'm pretty good. But we're engaging in gossip. We're allowing vanity, exalting our own feelings above what the Lord says.

Slander, greed, selfishness. Any husbands out there? You know how selfish you are? Any parents, man, Let me know when you get to the end of that one. I'll go to your discipleship school, okay?

But these are the things that will kill us. These are the things that will keep us from experiencing what God actually has in store for us. These are the things that will corrupt what God meant to be pure, what God has instituted that will lead us into life and truth and peace, the fulfillment of his promises unto us. We don't like to talk this way, but we're so casual about sin. And God is so not casual about sin.

So we label those who are fully devoted as other legalistic. Oh, man. They're too hyper spiritual. You know, I like my God nice and warm, you know, just right.

I'm being a little facetious because I want us to understand how silly this is to the Lord. You know, I don't think people were calling Phinehas legalistic when he ran and speared two people that were sinning against the Lord. And God said, hey, finally someone represented my zeal and took care of business. I don't think people were calling the Lord legalistic when he killed the sons of Aaron for burning the wrong kind of fire. All right, we can look at that and like, oh, God's so harsh.

No, God is holy and he's got a standard. And if you're casual and complacent, we'll miss it. That's Old Testament stuff, Pastor. Well, let me bring out the New Testament then. What about Ananias and Sapphira, who lied to the Holy Spirit and dropped dead?

I don't think God was being legalistic in that matter. I think God was saying, I've entrusted you with my Holy Spirit and you're going to do this. Nope, can't have it. That doesn't mean we have to be perfect. Doesn't mean we have to walk around like, woe is me.

I can never do this. It means that we're real and vulnerable and honest where we need him and we depend on Him. Right. I can never live up to that standard. God, please help me.

God. I want to represent the holiness of God. Please help me. I can't do that in my own strength. You cannot do it in your own strength.

You need the Holy Spirit telling you Pentecost Sunday is next week. And that's not just a random date to God. That's a day he prescribed. I want to see what would happen if we would just take it serious, if we maybe fasted and prayed in advance and said, God, I want to receive your Holy Spirit.

So I'm going to come expectant. Maybe we try it, see what happens.

I got to get moving.

So what are the Other gods that we put before the Lord. I want you to answer that. I don't know. I'm not in your life. I can't answer that for you.

But I can tell you that can be anything. That can be ministry, and that can be easy to hide behind and say, yeah, look how amazing these students are. I love the Lord so much. I'm doing his work, but if I'm not serving him, it doesn't really matter to the Lord. I'll just be used of the Lord and then tossed to the side like a log for fire.

But we can hide behind, comfort our circle of people. That can be our idol. I love my people. Well, what about random guy at the gas station he just met? Do you love him?

We can hide behind our feelings, and that's a big one, guys. Our feelings get the better of us so many times. I don't know anything else that can cause us to go against the word of God like our feelings can.

Hey, the word of God says anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Yeah, but I just feel defeated. Okay, sorry, I didn't realize your feelings or so much more powerful than the word of God. And I hope I'm stepping on your toes today because I'm stepping on my own toes, man. The Lord has been really correcting me as I've prepared for this.

There are so many ways that I trust myself over the Lord that he's asking me to lay down. He's asking me to let go of control and say, I need you to give me this, or you believe this. And that's not what I've said.

So I can hide behind my ministry and say, well, I'm a man of God. And that would just be a facade, you guys. That would just be fake. And God is not fake. So I'm needing this today, and I hope you are, because there's so much more available to us.

There's so much more. Whenever I say, okay, God, I'll trust you. Okay, God, I'll die to this belief. I'll die to this need for control. Because when I die, I live.

When I take up my cross resurrection power, and I get to experience peace and joy and life unlike anything I can experience on my own that the world can offer you. It's only through one way, and that's through Jesus. That's through being his disciple. That's what these guys have done these past nine months. They've said yes to the Lord and they look different than they did nine months ago.

I'm going to wrap up here. Judges, Chapter one. It tells us that the people of Israel did not fully obey God. They did not complete the conquest. They let certain groups remain.

And Judges, Chapter two, verse one through three says, now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochum and said, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars. But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this that you have done?

So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your side, and their God shall be a snare to you.

The people of Israel compromised in their obedience to the Lord. And it cost them. It cost them. It cost us when we don't walk in obedience to the Lord. It costs us when we don't fully submit to the Lord.

And not just us. It didn't just cost the Israelites, it cost the future generations.

It will not just cost you, it will cost your family. It will cost those coming after you. Judges 2:10 through 15 says, and all that generation were also gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.

And they went after other gods from among the gods of the people who were around them and bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them and he sold them into the hand of the surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies whenever they marched out. The hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

Can I have five more minutes?

I want to give an appeal to the younger generation and to the older generation. Gen Z, Gen Alpha Millennials. We need the older generation. We need mentorship. We need those who have experienced the Lord, those who have tasted and seen of his goodness and have walked through the seasons of life with them, those who know what it looks like to serve God and do so for decades.

We need that AI can't give that to us. Social media can't provide that. We have so much information and Paul even says, you have so many teachers but so few fathers. We need fathers, younger generation. We need to be fathered and mothered by these older ones in the faith, by our spiritual mothers and fathers in the faith.

If you don't have a mentor, get one. Humble yourself and find one. There's plenty of good ones around here.

And to the older generation, to those who have experienced the Lord, to those who have tasted of his goodness and know his ways, we need you. We need you. Now is not the time to get complacent and to say, it's good enough. I'm retiring and going off to spend my years at the beach. You know, we need you to step into that role and mentor us.

We need those who are not just going to tell us what the Lord did, but show us the way to walk after Him. Give us an example to follow. So on behalf of your younger brothers and sisters in the faith, please take your post on the wall. Commit to the Lord. Follow through with what he's assigned you and your generation.

Because we need those fathers and mothers in the faith. We need those who will finish the work of the Lord so that in our generation we can know him and his works and we can serve him all of our days.

Last thing I want to say here as it relates to just following after the Lord, we can do it well.

We can do everything. Outwardly we can show up to church, can do our best to be good people. But if you don't actually know him in the process, if you're not actually doing life with him, then everything you do isn't producing what you want it to. Everything that you're working so hard to achieve, you're missing the main thing.

Yes, do the good things, but make sure that he is at the center of it. Make sure it's for him that you're doing it. Make sure you're living conscientious of Him.

Because God is looking for people who will be fully committed to Him. That's what the Book of Judges is about. He's looking for the people he can entrust his spirit to. He's looking for the people who say, even if no one else will, I'll stand for God. I'll take him serious.

I'll live by the standard the Lord has set, even if it looks excessive or legalistic or extreme.

We serve a God who has done some extreme things. So I think we should look a little extreme.

So Let me ask you again. What is the most important thing in your life? But don't just say it. Don't just tell me. What does your life say is the most important thing?

What are your decisions and your choices and your thoughts convey as the most important thing? What is your finances? What does your time say is the most important thing?