The Meaning Of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/joshua/23.htm

In this chapter, Joshua is preparing for death, and he calls everyone together to give them one last pep talk. And it was warranted. How many pep talks do we get when we go to church, but then stumbled in the week after? (And they will stumble).

“15Therefore it shall come to pass, that as all the good things have come upon you which the Lord your God promised you, so the Lord will bring upon you all harmful things, until He has destroyed you from this good land which the Lord your God has given you. 16[d]When you have transgressed the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and have gone and served other gods, and bowed down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you shall perish quickly from the good land which He has given you.”

First, Joshua is warning them that if they obey God, they will receive blessings, and if they don’t obey, they will not receive blessings; he gives warnings about idolatry, which was a big problem back then.

Second, and I have to beat the same old drum, this passage is why people view God as an angry tyrant. This sounds as if you don’t obey God, He will destroy you. But that is not what I believe.

I cannot say this enough.
1. “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father”. As Christians, we follow Christ, and those were His words. He (God), is just like Jesus. Do you see Jesus as an angry tyrant that will kill you for disobedience? A big “NO” to that. God does not kill…He may take away your “hedge of protection” because you are rebellious, but He will not kill you. It’s as if your children, despite how hard you’ve tried to raise them in a good manner, rebel and start to do bad things. You can talk, you can lecture, you can plead, but once they’re an adult, you have no control, and if they continue to rebel, you have no choice but to let them learn their lessons the hard way. You can no longer protect them. It’s the same with God, He can speak to you Himself, He can send messengers like Noah, and Moses, and Joshua to warn you of what will happen if you don’t obey, but if you absolutely reject God, He can no longer protect you from Satan, and Satan wants to kill you, and Satan will kill you!

How many times have you seen a small child who disobeys their parents, perhaps at a carnival or festival and they stray away, then when something scares them, they go screaming and running back to mommy and daddy. It’s the same with God. We can stray away from Him, we can disobey what He has told us, and hopefully when we get scared, we will run back to Him. If we don’t, we perish. And that is what sin does. God doesn’t kill us, our separation from God allows Satan to snatch us up and kill us.

And we have to keep in mind the time frame upon which this was written. Yes, Joshua met Jesus when the “Commander of God’s army” made His appearance, but Joshua didn’t know Jesus like we do today. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t know Jesus. Since He walked this earth though, and taught us, we have a better understanding of how we should live. Moses and Joshua did not have that benefit, and it may well have been that their perception of God at the time they wrote that God was angry. They didn’t have the distractions we have today; they could hear God and see His miracles. If we see a miracle today, we write it off as “good luck” rather than Divine intervention. And, one final thought on this matter, how many times have we been caught in a bad situation and think, “God must be really angry with me!” Those are the time when we truly repent, but unfortunately, sometimes our repentance doesn’t last long.

Finally, notice how no one is afraid of dying in those days? They didn’t have the “worldly” things we have today. Today, we “live it up”, and we don’t want to miss out on the good things. But they were closer to God back then than we are today. They weren’t afraid. They knew why God put them on this earth, and they knew their mission was over and it was time for someone else to take over, just like Moses knew his days were coming to an end, and that his faithful servant Joshua would be in charge of leading the Israelites into the promised land.

There is no need to fear death. Death is like going to sleep at night…you don’t know when you fall asleep, it just comes. And unless you die a horrible death, as some people have, you really don’t know. My wife had a terminal disease and died from it. She knew it was coming, and asked the doctor for “Do Not Resuscitate” orders. She was trying to get out of her chair to go to the bathroom when death came over her, and her last words were, “I’m falling”. Then she peacefully fell back in the chair and went to sleep, the same way as if she had been watching a movie and dozed off. And her next waking thought will be at the resurrection, just like our next waking thought at night is when our alarm clock is going off.

I once had a nightmare, before I came back to God, that I heard a noise outside of my house, and when I went to the front door to see what it was, I found an angel there who took me up. Dreams are funny, but in this one, we flew to the Public Works Warehouse where my dad worked for 34 years, and across the street was the City’s Power Plant. In my dream, I could see people looking out of the windows, and I knew one place was Heaven and the other was Hell, and I was wondering which one the angel was leading me to. Long story short, I woke up crying because my last thought in my dream was my wife, and how much I was going to miss her.

Now, this dream I had is in no way an accurate depiction of how death is. If I had have died, I wouldn’t have had that last thought about my wife, I would have simply fallen asleep.

I will share my beliefs about heaven and hell and death and resurrection later. I’m sure you will be shocked because they go against all theological teachings known to man. But my point today is, do not fear death. The only thing you should fear is being separated from God at the time of your death.

A man once asked a pastor, “when is the best time to repent?”. The pastor answered, “Right before you die.” The man asked, “How am I supposed to know when that is?” The pastor smiled and said, “Exactly”.

God’s blessings to you all.