And behold this day I am going the way of all the earth.
Death common to all
Death is so dim-sighted and so blundering-footed that he staggers across Axminster tapestry as though it were a bare floor, and sees no difference between the fluttering rags of a tatterdemalion and a conqueror’s gonfalon. Side by side we must all come down. No first class, second class, or third class in death or the grave. Death goes into the house at Gad’s Hill, and he says, “I want that novelist.” Death goes into Windsor Castle, and he says, “I want Victoria’s consort.” Death goes into Ford’s Theatre, at Washington, and says, “I want that President.” Death goes on the Zulu battlefield, and says, “I want that French Prince Imperial.” Death goes into the marble palace at Madrid, and says “Give me Queen Mercedes.” Death goes into the almshouse, and says, “Give me that pauper.” Death comes to the Tay Bridge, and says, “Discharge into my cold bosom all those passengers.” (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Premonitions of death
The first symptom of approaching death with some, is the strong presentiment that they are about to die. Oganan, the mathematician, while in apparent health, rejected pupils from the feeling that he was on the eve of resting from his labours; and he expired soon after of an apoplectic stroke. Fletcher, the divine, had a dream which shadowed out his impending dissolution, and believing it to be the merciful warning of Heaven, he sent for a sculptor and ordered his tomb. “Begin your work forthwith,” he said at parting; “there is no time to lose.” And unless the artist had obeyed the admonition, death would have proved the quicker workman of the two. Mozart wrote his Requiem under the conviction that the monument he was raising to his genius would, by the power of association, prove a universal monument to his remains. When life was fleeting very fast, he called for the score, and musing over it, said, “Did I not tell you truly that it was for myself that I composed this death chant?”
Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord . . . spake.
Joshua’s dying testimony to the faithfulness of God
I.Death is a way. It leads the believer from the means and streams of religious ordinances to thefountain-head of living waters; from the society of earthly, and at best imperfect connections, to the company of triumphant saints, &c.
II. Death is a way that all must go. Some journeys may be deferred and postponed a week, a month, a year, and perhaps be wholly declined. But this cannot be put off or avoided.
III. Death is a way which we may soon be required to take. (Isaac Bachus, D. D.)
Joshua’s last confession
With Joshua as with Simeon, at eventide it was light, the hues of a golden sunset coloured with the tints of the rainbow, which St. John beheld before the throne. The words that I have read to you contain a retrospect and a prospect. He looks behind for them; he looks forward for himself.
1. We, too, have a retrospect like his, and we too have a prospect. Let us look back at life, each from our own standing-point, each colouring with the hues of his own experience the common outline. Begin at the beginning, and look back at childhood. I do not think childhood the happiest time of life, and therefore I will not say it is. And yet in the spring of our life, though it had its biting winds and its cold nights, lest our characters should bud too fast and in an atmosphere too genial we should grow unequally and develop too rapidly, there were gleams of bright sunshine, showers dropping with fruitfulness, in which our minds expanded and our souls grew. Some of us it may be were brought to the feet of Jesus, to hear His Word. As children we knew the Holy Scriptures, and our infant lips were tutored in prayer. But manhood is the time of man’s glory, when we partake of the full joys of home life, when opinions mature and cultivation grows, and experience mellows, and noble duties open out before us, and grow into the full liberty of the sons of God, and by faith we overcome the wicked one. Oh, how full manhood may be of pure and generous happiness, if lived unto God, if we will but look up to Him as a reconciled Father, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost follow the Lamb whithersoever He went on earth! Sorrow there must be, but there is strength to bear it; losses, but there is time to redeem them; sin, but the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin; imperfectness, but then we are complete in Him. And then, as to old age, in one view of it that is the best of all. The aged man, if he is a Christian, is nearly at home. His activities may be diminished, but his wisdom is augmented. If not strong in action, he is great in counsel. He looks back over a past of unbroken, unvarying love, and his song is, “Surely, goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” Oh, I pray you, wherever in life you be, whatever in life you have, gather up your mercies and count them; see how the Lord’s faithfulness has given you every one of the good things that He has promised to His people. Where you wandered, it was through your own wilfulness, and He brought you back. When you fell He lifted you up. When you wept your tears came to you with a message from God. You may indeed be forgetting Him; that I know not, but this I do know, that He has been love to you, trying to embrace you with the arms of His mercy, willing to draw you with the cords of love.
2. There is also a prospect. “Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth.” “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.” My brethren, this way is a universal way, and a sorrowful way, and a cloudy way. (Bp. Thorold.)
Joshua intimating his own departure, and the favour of God toward Israel
I. The circumstances in which joshua here represents himself as placed. Time has gathered death’s memorials on that form; and warned, perhaps, by some communication from the world invisible, or feeling, it may be, in the pain, the weakness, or the gathering wrinkles, that his closing hour is near, he thus addresses the multitude around: “Behold, this day I am going the way of all the earth.” What was dying Joshua but just the representative of dying man? and what is Joshua dead but an instance, from the midst of ten thousand times ten thousand of the human form, erect andstrong, and animated once, consigned to mournful silence, and the human spirit vanished from the scenes of enterprise and life, where it thought so loftily or toiled so zealously of old? And if we commit ourselves to the pages of recorded history, and find them full throughout with the alternations of life and death, or mark the common course of society and providence around us, how many an illustration may be found of what to us is specially momentous in the idea afforded by the words, “the way of all the earth” I
II. The appeal which joshua makes to the people he addresses.
1. Joshua’s appeal may suggest the idea of a pious and active old age. To earlier years and robuster vigour may belong the more stirring and laborious forms of Christian enterprise and zeal; but age has the same principles of duty to regard, and the same animating motives to cherish in the heart. In the apparent proximity of death it has a consideration in some degree peculiar, to urge it on to zealous and devoted services for God; and, oh! how powerfully ought that consideration and many a motive else to animate the minds of those who, “old and stricken in age,” are ready, like Joshua, to say, “I am going the way of all the earth”! If you have given your more vigorous years to sin, why should you delay with contrite and devout heart to give the close of your continuance here to Christ, and piety, and God? And if you have, in some degree, like Joshua, given your earlier life to the cause of righteousness, oh I have you not found, in your experience of its dignity, anti blessedness, and worth, a motive strong to keep you steadfast to the end?
2. Not only is the appeal of Joshua in the text representative of a pious and zealous old age, but it expresses an important fact presented by the providence of God: “Ye know,” says he, “in all your hearts, and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed,” &c. Of all men Christian believers perhaps will be the readiest to perceive, and the most willing to acknowledge, the absolute faithfulness and the gracious liberality of God; and how can they but know that, sad as the outward condition of God’s chosen may sometimes be, and sadder still as may be the general aspect of the earth, to neither can the Almighty’s pledge be broken, to neither can His promise fail? (Alex. S. Patterson.)
A man dying
I. A man dying in philosophic calmness: “I am going the way of all the earth.”
1. It is not a strange road. All that have ever been, have gone through it; and all that ever will be, must.
2. It is not an avoidable road. To complain is useless.
II. A man dying fully satisfied with god: “Not one thing hath failed,” &c.
1. That God had promised “good things.”
2. That all the “good things” promised had come.
III. A man dying with spiritual interest in survivors: “Ye know,” &c. He wished his contemporaries and survivors to cherish confidence in God when he was gone. (Homilist.)
The solicitude and testimony of a dying man
I.The solicitude of a noble veteran. Joshua was solicitous that the Israelites
(1) should continue in love to God (verse 11);
(2) should be separated from the world (verses 7, 12, 13);
(3) should be courageous m the ways of righteousness (verse 6).
II. The testimony of an aged pilgrim: “And behold this,” &c. We learn here
(1) That the faithfulness of God may be relied on.
(2) That the faithfulness of God extends to all His children.
(3) That the faithfulness of God is to His believing ones a conscious realisation.
III. The calmness of a dying saint. What a peaceful, glowing sunset! (W. Fry.)
Joshua’s retrospect
There are certain occasions in life when it is irresistibly natural to look back. After climbing a difficult ascent, or concluding a tedious negotiation, or even winding up a long and troublesome letter, we like to take a final view of the whole. Joshua had now arrived at the culminating point of his mission.
I. The largeness of God’s promises. To bring Israel out of the prison-land of Egypt, through the death-land of the wilderness, into triumphant possession of the fortress-land of Canaan, was what God undertook. If some great leader had undertaken, some years back, to emancipate the negroes of the Southern States of America, to conduct them over the broad Atlantic, and make them owners and masters of military and imperial France, he would scarcely have promised any more, allowing for the difference of the times. All God’s promises are “exceeding great and precious.”
II. The steadiness of God’s purposes. Just when the promise appeared utterly forgotten, its final fulfilment was being planned. Just when the good seed appeared altogether perished, the labourers who were to gather in the harvest were being engaged. The rest of the history to which Joshua looked back furnished other instances of like kind.
III. The completeness of God’s work. God had wrought all that He had promised. I apply the subject to the earnest expectations of the humble believer in Christ. You too are looking forward to the end of your wanderings, to the enjoyment of absolute rest, to perfection of spiritual condition, to the subjugation of every enemy, in a word, to complete conformity to your Lord. Be assured that the time is approaching when you shall look back in triumph upon all. (Homilist.)
The last words of Joshua
You can hardly overdraw the character of the patriarch warrior who is about to surrender his command. He is one of the rare men of either economy of whom inspiration, always faithful, has preserved no record of blemish. And if you ask wherein lay the main charm of his character, we find it in the fact that he himself is so much concealed behind the grandeur of his own exploits. That is the highest order of excellence--to be self-concealed by the glory of events whereof we are the authors. “I have sent for you,” said a great man of modern days, from his death-bed to a youth who stood beside him, “that you may see how a Christian can die.” Let us see how a “servant of the Lord” can die who only saw the day of Christ from a distance. We might dwell, for a warrant in favour of repetition, on the fact that Joshua spends his last breath in telling something to the children of Israel which he himself admits they know already “in all their hearts and in all their souls.” Old-fashioned doctrines never look so new, never so precious, as when seen from the edge of the grave. But what absorbs the interest of this spectacle is not so much the triteness of the discussion as the motive Chat moved to its delivery. If Joshua does not say, he implies, that because the chills of death are at the very moment creeping round his heart and the tongue will not serve him much longer, on that very account he stirs them up to remembrance that “the Lord has not been slack concerning His promise.” Oh, surely, this is something new in the treatment of an old doctrine! The last faculties of the mind before it ceases to act and move amongst the living, turned upon the character and the honour of the great God, and that not so much towards the man himself, but towards the other men addressed. That a human being should be so able to forget himself, if not in the very struggles, in the nearest prospect, of mortality, as to busy himself entirely with the credit and the character of his Creator, that he should gather around him the thousands who will survive him, for nothing but to wring from them the acknowledgment that God is true--oh! you may fairly enough conclude that the speaker is not far off the world where God will be all in all. There is no test of a man’s chief good like death. The miser will ask for his old strong-box to be placed beside him on the bed that he may see the last of the deity he has worshipped whilst he lived. The husband will turn his latest, fondest look, amongst all bystanders, towards the one sad face that belongs to her who has weathered with him so many a storm, and proved her love through evil and through good report. The statesman wanders in his last delirium on the future of the country, the helm of whose affairs he is quitting for ever. The scholar, too, seems reluctant to die till that one great work, the study of years, has received its finishing touch; and the mechanician, or the chemist, or the astronomer, is startled by the grim summons from the busy calculation, or the tiresome experiment, or the sweeping survey of the stars. And if each of these were to leave a witness from the death-bed, that witness would turn for a topic to the favourite and the darling of the life that is leaving him. Joshua does the same. “What will they think of my God when I am gathered to the grave? I know Him, but do they? They do; but will they remember what they know? Will they serve my God as if they recollected that He has never failed them? It is not certain hearts that know forget: souls that have learned love their own lessons. Therefore will I make this work, the honour of Jehovah, at least as perfect as I can make it by hallowing in its behalf the faltering of the dying lip and the clouding of the dying brain.” “I must,” says the dying hero, “spend the last sands in the glass in putting the glory of the Divine administration beyond all reach of reproach. Are my warriors and myself at one upon the doctrine that the whole of an inheritance promised is as good, to faith, as the whole of it conferred? Are we going to part agreed that Palestine is already as truly the property of the sons of Abraham as Timnath-Serah, in Mount Ephraim, belongs to me?” And so the good man could not rest in his grave till he had exchanged with his brethren in arms a new vow of allegiance to Him who has not, even in our day, with absolutely literal truth, accomplished the fulness of what is here taken as done. Here is faith for you The captain of the army will not die till he has overleapt centuries by a faith of his own, and carried all his squadrons with him in the leap. One of our great warriors ordered his ships into action with the shout of “Victory, or Westminster Abbey!” But what should we have thought had the cry been “Victory and Westminster Abbey!” Joshua foresaw that his own death, and the death of whole generations of soldiers, would make no difference to the conquest of Canaan. Millenniums are shorter than moments to “him that believeth.” This then was Joshua’s judgment of the right business for a dying day. Beautiful ministry for last moments, to strengthen bystanders in their trust upon God’s word. It was to Israel almost as if a spectre spoke. You contract heavy responsibilities--you who stand, from time to time, in the chambers of dying believers. Next to hearing voices from heaven comes the hearing of voices from those who are just stepping from earth. Books are nothing to the last whispers-even the last smiles--of warriors laying down their swords, and of pilgrims sinking into rest. I pray that we may all die leaving some witness to the faithfulness of Christ. (H. Christopherson.)
Joshua’s farewell charge
Notice, first, that in parting he says nothing of himself. He recalls to their minds only the source of all the power that was theirs in the past, and all the power that could be theirs in the future. His one thought in leaving them is to remind them of the character of God. That should ever be the thought of the pastor who is parting with his people--that he should say nothing of himself, or what he has done, or what, known only to himself and God perhaps, he has utterly failed to do, but that he should be exceeding anxious and exceeding jealous as to the character of God. The question which he seems to ask himself as he is about to leave them is not, “What will the people think about me when I am gone from them?” but, “What will this people think about God? Will they serve Him as if they really believed in their heart and in their soul that God can never tail them? Will they feel that they may, and that they must, because of all that they know of God in the past, trust Him absolutely and utterly for the future?” It is just possible he imagined that they might not, and so his endeavour is in parting to make this great truth of the absolute fidelity of God, which must be the foundation of all true religion, as strong in them as it could be. It is easy to say, of course, that God is true and faithful; but is there a man or woman here to-day who believes that every premise that God, in His written Word, or in revelation to their inmost and deepest spiritual nature, has made is actually fulfilled? What a changed world it would be if every baptized man and woman believed in their heart and soul, as a child believes the assurance of his father, that not one promise of God has ever failed! Joshua called them to witness that day that not one single promise that God had made them had failed; and yet there were the tribes that He had promised to drive out still occupying many places in the land; there was the Star unrisen yet that had been promised to come out of Jacob; there was the sceptre as yet unwielded by Israel; there were many things, if you read the history literally, that God had promised, and that, as far as mere human eye could see, were not accomplished; nay, the approach of their fulfilment was not discernible. And, nevertheless, he called on these men, who longed for these things, to whom these things had been promised and had not yet come, he calls them to bear witness that day that not one promise of the Lord their God had failed them. To his heart of faith and to his eye of faith, because God hath promised them, they were come to pass already; and he could not part from his people without endeavouring to make them as deeply persuaded of that truth as he was himself. And that, amid all the flux of time, that, amid all the great social, political, and economic changes that have swept over the world, that is the one foundation-truth still for nations and for men. In our national life it is the truth we mostly need. In our national life forces are being developed to-day into activity, of which none can at present forecast the issue. Beneath the smooth surface of our modern life fires are seething which reveal themselves now and again, as it were, in tongues of lurid flame that leap through the thin film of our civilisation. Now amid all this how can we look with anything like manly confidence to the remote, or even to the immediate, future? We must sink, as it seems to me, into despair, if we can only think of the schemes of rival politicians, or the impotence of social nostrums, or if we can only hear, as words of hope, the flabby platitudes of the feeble philanthropist. Our confidence and our hope must be based upon faith in the faithfulness of God, in Him as the eternal I Am, who sitteth above the water-floods, be the earthnever so unquiet. Our cardinal faith must be that the Lord, who was God in all history, is God in history still, that He holds in His hands to-day all the strength and all the weakness of the nation and of man. He is not the God of the dead but of the living; and, if we will learn the lesson which He wilt be teaching us somehow, by prosperity or by disaster, even now, as we look around us on all the portents of the time, we may do so in the absolute confidence and in the faith and hope which we ought to possess as we say: “No one good thing which the Lord our God hath promised has ever failed us.” (Canon T. T. Shore.)
What made Joshua the man he was
Joshua, when he spoke those words, was one of God’s grand old friends. He and Caleb were the oldest men in that company. He tells them his experience of life. It is worth while to askwhat made old Joshua the man he was. It was his character. If I met a man on the Manchester Exchange, and he told me hewas building anew mill, fitting it up with the newestmachinery, and that he would shortly turn out the finest yarn in the country, well, I would say tohim: “You’ve got your work cut out, bur we shall see.” So I walk round that way, and look at the new mill, with its fine machinery; see the manager--one who knows his business--and I say, “That’s all right.” Then I walk down to the mill gate to see what kind of raw material comes in. If the raw material is inferior, then the fine mill, with its machines, all goes for nothing--it won’t do. The yarn won’t wear. Now, make a man up of poor material, and he’ll not wear. What character has a man; what is he made of? That is a great question. There are two things about Joshua’s character to be noticed.
I. Joshua became the man he was because he kept company with one older and better than himself. He was Moses’ servant. Watching Moses and hearing his words moulded Joshua’s character. My advice to young people is to keep company with folks older and better than yourselves. Why does God let people live to a long age, if not to give the younger generation their experience? Don’t leave home in a hurry. If father and mother are people that pray, don’t hurry to leave them. It is the same with old books: those used to be bound in sheepskin; nothing to look at outside, but all inside. Nowadays they put it all outside, and the bookbinder does what the author should have done. It is a responsibility which older people should consider, that they ought to live so as to attract the young. This is one of the wants of the age. Live so that your young people may say when they go out into life, “I leave my best friends behind.” I never had such a fine compliment paid me before as I had from my boy the other day. It was in class, and when I came to my son Charlie, he said: “Well, father, I am only getting my eyes opened to see what a privilege mine has been to live with such people as you and mother are.” I wouldn’t give that away for £20,000.
II. Joshua became the man he was because he had the courage of his convictions. There were twelve of them sent to spy Canaan, tea of them said, “It’s no use. The country is good enough, but it is full of giants.” “Yes, we shall go up,” said Joshua and Caleb. Joshua was willing to be out-voted. It was ten to two, but the ten had their coffins made before the two. Have the courage to vote for the right. One man and God makes a strong party. Joshua’s experience was that God had been as good as His word. There are no crises but what God can surmount them. Go and ask George Muller. A man thought that he would give a thankoffering for his life being spared to fifty years. He intended to give £50, and he thought he would send the Bristol Orphanage £10. He was so haunted by this thought that he could not wait for his birthday, but got an envelope and despatched a cheque for £10. He got the usual receipt, and there was no more of it until the yearly report of the Orphanage appeared. He thought he would just turn up the date and see if his money were there. There at the very date he saw George Muller’s words, “No money and no bread to-day, but cheque has arrived for £10.” Friends, believe in a prayer-hearing God. Don’t be afraid to leave your case in His hands if you are doing right. Some of these days you will have to say with Joshua, “I go the way of all the earth.” You will have to give up going to business and to lie in bed. Everything is growing dim, and the loved voices seem miles away. Will some of those loved ones, writing to the son in Australia, have to say, “Father’s last words were these: ‘Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord spake’”? (T. Champness.)
An elevation that explains the whole of life
The traveller who has reached the highest attainable summit of the Andes, and stands in the pure and cloudless atmosphere around them, can expatiate over a wide and almost boundless horizon; while another who remains in the valley below, amidst the haze of mist and vapour, must be satisfied with a comparatively poor and trifling view of the magnificence and beauty that surround him. It is thus with the Christian militant, in the war fare of his earthly state, and after his release to join the armies of the blessed in the rest of God. Here dimness and obscurity may in part intercept or much distort the prospect of Divine mercy, and all the rich consolations of a Saviour’s love. But when his liberated soul shall attain the felicities of heaven, he will stand upon an elevation commanding the boundless extent of Divine operation in the walk and world of providence and grace. His eye will be strengthened to behold, and his comprehension will be enlarged to understand them with knowledge, love, and wonder, increasing throughout eternity. No cloud will be seen throughout the universe of blessedness to intercept his vision. Every dispensation by which the Saviour visited and helped him, however misunderstood in the days of earthly darkness and ignorance, will then be fully explained, every difficulty solved, and every apparent contradiction harmonised for ever. (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
The promise of God has its season
As the herbs and flowers which sleep all winter in their roots underground, when the time of spring approacheth presently startforth of their beds, where they had lain so long unperceived, thus will the waits for the appointed time, and then comes. Every promise is dated, but with a mysterious character; and for want of skill in God’s chronology we are prone to think that God forgets us, when indeed we forget ourselves in being so bold to set God a time of our own, and in being angry that He comes not just then to us.
Confidence in God’s faithfulness
Your boy comes to you and asks you to buy him a fishing-rod, and he says, “I saw one to-day in a window, which was just what I want. Can’t I go down now and buy it?” And you say, “No, not to-day, wait a little.” A week passes, and the lad begins to say to himself, “I wonder if father has forgotten all about it?” Then you put into his hands a better rod than he has ever seen before, and the boy is overwhelmed with surprise and pleasure. And yet the main thing in all this is not that your son received what he wanted, but the gift won, through delay, has given him a new view of his father’s wisdom, and a new confidence in his affection, which makes him say, “Hereafter, when I want anything of this kind, I will leave it all to father.” And so the main thing that a man gains, when God at last answers his prayer, is not the gift, but the clearer consciousness that God is better than His gifts, that he has all in God. (R. Vincent.)
