We're up to Joshua chapter 13 verse 8. It's going to be a longer section that we're reading and we're going to be dealing with some controversial issues. And it's not my views that dictate anybody's consciences. It's God's Word. And so really try to evaluate God's Word as we read this and have your hearts open to it. Joshua 13 verse 8. With the other half-tribe, the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses had given them, beyond the Jordan, eastward, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had given them. From Aror, which is on the bank of the river Arnon, and the town that is in the midst of the ravine, and all the plain of Medeba, as far as Debon, all the cities of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, as far as the border of the children of Ammon, Gilead and the border of the Geshurites and the Maakathites, all Mount Hermon and all Bashan as far as Salka, all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and Edri, who remained of the remnant of the giants, for Moses had defeated and cast out these. Nevertheless, the children of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maakathites, but the Geshurites and the Maakathites dwell among the Israelites until this day. Only to the tribe of Levi he had given no inheritance. The sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel made by fire are their inheritance as he said to them. And Moses had given to the tribe of the children of Reuben an inheritance according to their families. Their territory was from Aror, which is on the bank of the river Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the ravine, and all the plain of Medibah, Teshbon, and all its cities that are in the plain, Dibon, Bemoth Baal, Beth Baal-Me'on, Jehaza, Kedemoth, Mepha'ath, Kirjathayim, Sibma, Zareth, Shahar on the mountains of the valley, Beth Peor, the slopes of Pisgah, and Beth Jeshimoth, all the cities of the plain and all the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses had struck with the princes of Midian. Avi, Rechem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, who were princes of Sihon dwelling in the country. The children of Israel also killed with a sword, Balaam the son of Beor the soothsayer among those who were killed by them. And the border of the children of Reuben was the bank of the Jordan. This was the inheritance of the children of Reuben according to their families, the cities, and their villages. Moses also had given inheritance to the tribe of Gad, to the children of Gad according to their families. Their territory was Jazer and all the cities of Gilead, and half the land of the Ammonites as far as Arorah, which is before Rabah, and from Heshbon to Ramoth, Mizpah, and Bet-Tonim, and from Mahanaim to the border of Dabir. and in the valley Beth-Haram, Beth-Nimrah, Succoth, and Zaphon, and the rest of the kingdom of Sihon, king of Heshbon, with the Jordan as its border, as far as the edge of the Sea of Chinaroth, on the other side of the Jordan eastward. This is the inheritance of the children of Gad, according to their families, the cities, and their villages. Moses also had given inheritance to half the tribe of Manasseh. It was for half the tribe of the children of Manasseh, according to their families. Their territory was from Mahanaim, all Bashan, all the kingdom of Og, king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jayar, which are in Bashan, 60 cities, half of Gilead and Ashtaroth and Eddrai, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan, were for the children of Makir, the son of Manasseh, for half of the children of Makir, according to their families. These are the areas which Moses had distributed as an inheritance in the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward. But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance. The Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as he had said to them. These are the areas which the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel distributed as an inheritance to them. Their inheritance was by lot as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine tribes and the half tribe. For Moses had given the inheritance of the two tribes and the half tribe on the other side of the Jordan, but to the Levites he had given no inheritance among them. For the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, and they gave no part to the Levites in the land except cities to dwell in with their common lands for their livestock and their property, as the Lord had commanded Moses. So the children of Israel did. and they divided the land. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And as we dig into your word, I pray that you would anoint my lips, enable me to faithfully interpret it, and each one of us to receive it. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, from Genesis chapter one all the way through to the last chapter of the book of Revelation, God shows how important land and water is to mankind. I've never heard anyone preach on it, but you find it all throughout the scripture. And we're going to be touching on the importance of water in the next sermon, something that Elijah Dirksen has learned a lot about recently and really come to appreciate. But land itself, very, very important as well. During the previous 40 years, Israel had wandered around without any land because they were a nomadic people that was Wandering in a desolate region, God had to miraculously provide for them. They knew what it meant to be landless. And numerous statements indicate that they were landless for 40 years because of their disobedience, okay? Land and water are also stated repeatedly to be foundational to dominion. And we're gonna be seeing that even those who went into the cities had a symbiotic relationship with the the land and the water that was around them, and they themselves owned land within the cities. So this socialistic idea of common land is absolutely destructive to dominion. It is, well, we'll get into that, but this sermon's gonna be flying a little bit higher altitude, and this is the longest section that we have preached on thus far, but I think you'll see the reason why. I'm just going to give you just a few handful of lessons as we look through the chapter as a whole each time. First thing that I want to emphasize is how important land is to God's plan. Just knowing the amount of space that God devotes to land in this book shows that it's very, very important to God. The word land occurs 75 times, but you find the concept of land everywhere. Several scholars have actually pointed out that the whole book can be divided up structurally by four words, Hebrew words that relate to land. First Hebrew word is abur, and it means to cross over. And so chapters one through five have that word repeated a number of times as they're crossing over into the land. But again, the focus is on land future. Then the word lakach is used in chapters 6 through 11 for Israel taking the land. The Hebrew word halak is used in chapters 12 through 22 for Israel dividing or apportioning the land. And then the Hebrew word abad is used in chapters 23 through 24 for Israel serving the Lord in the land. And he says in those chapters, if they serve the Lord faithfully, he's going to bless the land. If they don't serve faithfully, he will curse the land and eventually the land itself will spew them out. So in terms of the importance of land, Martins speaks of the land being part of God's triangle of completeness with the three parts being God's presence, God's people, and God's land. Another author, Brueggemann, claims that the land, quote, is a central, if not the central theme in biblical faith. Now you could argue whether that's a huge overstatement or not. It probably is somewhat of an overstatement, but man, when you skim read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, it's astounding how much it talks about the land. We many times skip over those things as if they're window dressing, but they really are not. Jesus commanded us to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, every word of the Bible. And so that applies to this less than exciting passage for some people. It's something he wants us to learn from. Okay. So the first lesson. is that we need to treat the land as important. Keep that in mind the next time you talk to a full Preterist who wants to spiritualize the new heavens and the new earth, or to say, you know, these bodies are not really important, nothing physical is important, God's prepared a non-physical home in heaven for us. What they're doing is they're overturning an incredibly central theme of the Bible. God created a physical creation in Genesis 1, and he called it very good. The physical is very good. Now, granted, sin cursed the earth, right? It impacted the land with thorns and thistles and deserts and infertility and virtually everything, even where the land casts its citizens out. But God began reversing that. The redemption of Jesus was foretold in the Old Testament in many different ways, but one of them was the blood of redemption being applied to the land itself. And the cross reverses the curse even of the land. If you read all of the scriptures that deal with God's curse on the earth, it's, you know, like the hymn, Joy to the World, it goes far as the curse is found. Everything impacted by the fall will be redeemed, including the creation of a beautiful earth with real land. And so we aren't going to be skipping over these chapters like so many sermon series. You look at sermon series, all of a sudden there's a huge gap of 12 through 20. No, we're going to be trying to apply these and learn what God has for us. They are important chapters. But lest we get the idea that everybody should be a farmer, I want to point out that God considers the cities to be even more important than the land that was around those cities. Where the word land is mentioned 75 times in Joshua, cities are mentioned 130 times, and villages another 31 times, and the word for cities occurs 10 times, just in the little section that we read right here. For example, verse 30 mentions 60 cities in Bashan that were inherited from the Lord and that they were to inhabit. So this is a gift from God. See cities as a gift from God. See, not everybody is gifted to work on a farm. God's plan was for each tribe to have its cities absolutely teeming with people. Verse 23 says, this was the inheritance of the children of Reuben according to their families, the cities, and their villages. It's an inheritance. It's a gift from God. And that concept is repeated for each tribe. And I especially want to comment on the Levitical cities where some of the pastors, especially the ones that worked at the temple, and worked in the cities of refuge dealt with. They were given the city as well as pasture lands around the cities. So chapter 14, verse 4 says, for the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, and they gave no part to the Levites in the land except cities to dwell in with their pasture lands for their livestock and their property. So the pastors had parcels of land within the cities, they had some parcels outside, and God expected them to be working full-time in their theological work part-time as gardeners. So why were cities seen as being so important? I think cities have been given a bad rap in some Christian circles. And so it's important to see that God really did value them. And they weren't valued simply because this was a place you could escape to, you know, easily defendable. If it was a walled city, that would be the case. But no, there's way more than that. From the early chapters of Genesis through to the book of Revelation, cities are seen as being the primary centers of cultural development. and providing the primary means for expanding the Dominion Mandate. That's not an exaggeration. Cities are ultra-important. And a biblical theology of cities shows that if the city's prospered, the land as a whole is going to prosper. On Tuesday, Gary found out what I was preaching about and he said, well, there's a scripture that I memorized when I headed to the city. He didn't really want to go to the city, but somebody gave him this verse and it helped him to really appreciate cities. It was Jeremiah 29, 7, which says, and seek the welfare of the city which I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it, for in its welfare you will have welfare. And the word for welfare there is shalom, and it's translated a variety of ways, you know, peace, wholeness, blessing. Now it's true the Bible also warns us that cities are also potentially places for promoting a concentrated evil culture as well, right? Either way, it can go for good or it can go for bad. And we're seeing some of the bad that's happening in American cities. But in a righteous society, cities can result in unparalleled good. And the reason for this is you've got a concentration of people who make money through other trades rather than farming, and through specialization of labor, they're producing goods that the farmers are going to enjoy and the nation as a whole is going to enjoy. And so, as long as a free market is freely operating, you don't have a tyrant trying to manage the economy, Everybody prospers. When tyrants begin to try to manage, you know, what can and cannot be done within an economy, the cities stagnate and the whole culture of the nation begins to suffer as well. And I'll just illustrate that with one example. Many could be given. Numerous industries, such as garment making, leather works, traders, blacksmithing, prospered during the generation that the book of Joshua deals with and the next generation. But let me just show you, when the government intrudes on just one trade, just one trade, it can have a rippling negative effect on the whole economy. 1 Samuel 13, 19. And we're back to normal. Don't make a mad rush. Watch each other. 1 Samuel 13, 19 says, now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel. For the Philistines said, lest the Hebrews make swords or spears. So the government was trying to protect itself by saying, you know, we really need to limit this industry here. And as a result of limiting that, the absence of blacksmiths disrupted many other industries, including farming. Anyway, entire books have been written on this by Christians and non-Christians. Actually, Josh and William and I were doing a book study on one of those books. So I'm not going to get into any of that. I just want you to be aware that there is a number of books that deal with this philosophy of how land and cities have a symbiotic relationship with each other. And it's very important that farmers specialize in what they're doing, but that they also appreciate the specialization that goes on in the cities. God ordained this reciprocal relationship. But the next point I think is a critical one to lay hold of if we're going to have a biblical theology of cities and land. God owns the land, the cities, and the people who are in that land. And He entrusts the land to people as a stewardship trust. And if there's one thing I think the book of Joshua teaches very, very clearly, it's that humans are tenants on the land. not ultimate owners, yes, there's private property, but they're tenants on His land, and He can dispossess them any time that they begin to be unfaithful with the land that the Lord has entrusted to them. So verse 26 is one of many verses that speaks of the land being an inheritance, an inheritance, and that occurs 17 times, just in our little section here. It was an inheritance from God to them. Likewise, the Hebrew word natan is used to speak of the land being entrusted to the people, and it's used 37 times just in our little section that we read. Chapter 14 verse 5 shows how God is in charge of how the land. You can't just deal with the land any way you willy-nilly want to. He's in charge. It says, as the Lord had commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did, and they divided the land. as the Lord had commanded Israel. So that God owns the land and entrusts it to his people, I think is a very clear testimony, and that he has the right to dispossess the Canaanites is also a clear testimony. So what difference should this make? Well, it means God expects us to take care of His land. He doesn't want it overused, as is illustrated by His commands in the law to give the land rest. He doesn't want the land to be burned out, as is illustrated by what God says about fertilizer. He does not want the land to be unused and turned back into a wilderness. He considers that a curse. And he does not want the land being polluted. He wants us to improve the land. He wants us to take dominion of it. So when you see your house and your land as ultimately belonging to God, and you're a steward of it, then you're gonna take better care of that land. You're not gonna let your house get dilapidated. You're gonna try to take care of it. Some of you have been following the pictures of the Noah's trip to Egypt. You may have noticed garbage everywhere in certain areas. Even among Christians, your worldview affects how you treat your environment. If you live in a communist country where no one truly owns the land and therefore nobody's accountable to God for how the land is treated, Man, the land is abused. Pollution is rampant in communist countries, but it's not just communist countries. Anywhere that people don't value the land as a God-given trust, you see abandoned cars and garbage thrown out of the windows, and you see trash everywhere. In contrast, when you live in a culture where people see themselves as stewards of the land, they're not just gonna toss stuff out their car window and not care about it. But there are other implications of seeing our gardens, our farms, our houses as a stewardship trust. There was one book. It's actually not that great of a book. It was a biblical theology of land. But it does have some helpful things in it. And it pointed out that there are many scriptures that show land ownership comes with responsibilities of hospitality, care for widows, orphans, and the poor. So when you have the privilege of ownership of land, God says, you now have a responsibility to those who are landless. The land, the cities, the houses are tools to serve the Lord. And when he blesses us with those things, he wants us to bless others. And I'll just give you one of dozens of scriptures that could be read along these lines. Leviticus 23, 22. It says, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the strangers. I am the Lord, your God. So the third lesson is stewardship. Next lesson, I don't need to comment on this very much, is the importance of storing title deed, the properties you own, and preserving them for the next generation. He devotes 11 chapters to nailing down the exact location of each property, which tribe owns which territories, and within that territory, which families owned which lands and houses. Six times it mentions families here getting an inheritance. These chapters are amount. to a legal property boundary to scripture, title deed that was being preserved. And that this is something important for the Christian, can be just illustrated with one external scripture, that faith can be involved. Jeremiah 32, Jeremiah buys a property. that the Babylonians already in, they're surrounding Jerusalem. And he decides to buy a property that's out there under Babylonian control. And the person who owns the property, I'm sure he's rubbing his hands like, oh wow, somebody wants to buy my property, you bet, he's gonna sell it. And then he seals it in a jar and he buries it, making a note to his children where to find this so that when the Israelites come back, they will know the exact boundaries of the property that he bought. It's another example of how much God values land. He connects faith to it. Do you have a multi-generational perspective on land? Now let's move next to the importance of borders. This is a super controversial subject, and I will not pretend to have the last answer on it or even to have an adequate answer. Actually, I rewrote this section four times and finally just threw up my hands. And I said, there is no way everybody is going to be able to track with all of the detail. I had 15 minutes that I've crammed down to five now. So I'll try to be brief, but at least introduce you to the subject. Verse six indicates it wasn't just individuals who got a plot of land, but the nation as a whole got what was called an inheritance. The whole territory was their inheritance. Now, the Hebrew word for inheritance, nakhalah, is defined by the dictionary this way, inalienable hereditary property. It's exactly the same word that is used for each of the individuals who got their own plot of land, hereditary property. Now, this may seem puzzling. But the nation as a whole can own this whole territory if property ownership is true. How can both be true? And some people have scratched their heads over that. Ezekiel actually talks about the prince, in other words the ruler, the chief executive, having his own little property and distinguishes that from the property of the nation as a whole. So it's not a communist idea where the government owns all of the property in the sense that you don't have private property, you still have private ownership. And again, some people scratch their heads over this as if there's a conflict, but there is not at all once you dig into it. Bottom line is that the state has a different kind of ownership than the private citizen, but it's still an inheritance of land. And we need to try to come to grips with that concept if we're gonna deal adequately with this controversial subject of border control. Verse 7 says, now therefore divide this land as an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of Manasseh, and it uses the same Hebrew word for an alienable hereditary property that's used of the nation as a whole. So the nation owns some territory, the states own some territory. Now why do I bring this up? Because the same laws against trespassing on an individual's property are also applied by God to trespassing on a nation's land without permission. And we'll get to that in a little bit. Let me first of all give you a little bit more data that will hopefully clear things up. Verse 10 mentions the border of Ammon. Verse 11 mentions the border of the Geshurites and the Moccathites. Now, God was gonna expand Israel's territory to include the borders of the Moccathites and the Gershite, but he was not going to allow them to cross over and take any land from Syria, which on your map is called Aram, I believe, or into Moab or Edom, any of those countries on the east, Ammon. They were not allowed to go across into those borders. Now, what would happen if one of those four countries came into Israel or swiped some of the boundary lines, you know, extended their boundary lines into Israel? Well, there are several scriptures that say that God would treat that as an act of war. Jeremiah 49, one through two, condemns Ammon for incorporating some of the tribe of Gad's land into their country. And it uses the Hebrew word yarash, indicating it's a form of theft. So what's interesting about this is nothing was stolen from the private individual's, you know, own property. It's just a border change. Those guys are now living in a different country. And yet it's using the term theft here. So it was simply territory stolen or taken from the tribe of Gad. Zephaniah 2.8 condemns Moab over a similar border dispute. Now how can one nation steal from another nation, you know, the word theft, how can that happen? if the nation does not own property in some sense of the word own. If God considers it theft, something was obviously being stolen from the state. And as mentioned, our chapter does indicate that each tribe owned an inheritance. They also owned borders. This chapter uses exactly the same Hebrew word, gebul, that is used for an individual's property boundaries. And it uses it to describe the borders of tribes and the borders of nations. Sometimes it's translated as territory, but usually as borders. Now, likewise, I have a number of passages here that I won't get into that speak of the city's property, as if the city owns some property. And yet, in context, 100% of the city's property is also privately owned. So there is a sense in which individual families own their own property. There is another sense in which the civil governments of those cities owned a geographic area that included those private properties without owning the private properties themselves. I know it may be a little confusing, but same is true of states. Joshua says Manasseh's territory was adjoining Asher on the north and Issachar on the east. So they owned it in some sense. Now here's an interesting contrast that helps to clarify all of these points. Individual Levites had an inheritance of property, but the tribal unit as a whole had none, none whatsoever. But when it came to other tribes, the citizens had private property, and the corporate tribe owned all of the territory within which these citizens lived. So Manasseh's territory cannot be just simply said to be, oh, well, that's just, you know, that tribe's a bunch of individuals. Levite individuals owned property, but not the tribe. The citizens of Manasseh owned property, but so did the corporate state of Manasseh. And so there's a contrast between the tribe of Levi and the other tribes. Levi did not corporately own property. But the other tribes did. So it's clear that for one tribal unit, which is equivalent to one of our states, like Nebraska, to intrude into the geographical area of the next tribe was considered a form of theft and overstepping their jurisdiction. And for skeptics, I've got a whole bunch more scriptures I'm not going to read, but I'll just mention For example, that states owned at least something within certain borders, like the Bible repeatedly speaks of the entire land being the king's land, or his land, or your land. He possessed it in some sense. Now, besides the artificial lines made by fences and stones that divided between family properties, Joshua mentions 51 geographical features that help to obviously provide borderlines, like mountain ridges, streams, brooks, Jordan River. Hebrew word for borders is used 205 times. It's obviously an extremely important topic. So how does a nation protect its borders? Some people have a philosophy of open borders where anyone other than armies can come in and out at will, and there does seem to be some evidence of that. We'll look at exactly what that is. I think that the biblical idea is more nuanced than you typically hear. So here's my question. Is it only armies that march a mile wide that are coming upon a nation that are going to be recognized as an act of war? What about an army of 100,000 that are single file? What about an army that only comes over a period of a year, week by week, in 10s and 25s and 50s? Are they an army? How do you tell what's an army? What's a threat or what is not a threat? Quite a number of people that are obviously part of terrorist cell groups that have come into America, one at a time, ten at a time, here and there, and they appear to be a part of a hostile army. They are a threat to America. And because of this, some want to build a wall that could keep everyone out. But walls also imprison everyone in. So how do we deal with these things? What does the Bible say about these borders? There are many passages that indicate that the Bible actually allowed for free trade between countries. A lot of fairly unrestricted travel that happened back and forth. In fact, even in chapter 8, we saw that there were a lot of foreigners who had actually embraced God. They didn't become Jews, they didn't get circumcised, but they embraced the philosophy and benefited from God's economy. And I won't give the entire answer away in the sermon, but let me just give you some hints. First, God wanted borders maintained and not encroached upon. Several passages indicate that these borders were intended to separate the nations from others. For example, Deuteronomy 32.8 says, when the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set boundaries of the people. So there's three words that deal with separation that make a very strong case, I think, for keeping citizenship of different nations separate. It was God's purpose to separate the sons of Adam into distinct groups with boundaries around them. Acts 17, 26, and he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings. Second, God commanded Israel not to trespass on the territory of various nations. And actually, in two of the cases, they asked permission If they could just travel on the road, we're not going to go to the right or left, we're not going to take anything, we're just going to travel through your country. They asked permission and the two nations said, no, you can't do it. And they honored that denial. There was a recognition of state territorial rights. Third, Psalm 147, verse 14 indicates that even during peacetime, there is a need for borders. It isn't just keeping out armies. Indeed, Isaiah 19 and Isaiah 60 both predict a time when there will be worldwide peace, no threat of war, Christianized world, and yet there will still be borders of discrete nations. Isaiah 19, 19. Isaiah 60, 18. Fourth, Joshua mentions the strategic fortress cities that guarded virtually every road that went into and out of the country. Solomon rebuilt, expanded upon this network. It really served as a watchdog. on the borders. Let me quote from Howard Voss. He says, Solomon's system of fortresses created a formidable barrier for would-be invaders. Hazor guarded a strategic point north of the Sea of Galilee. Megiddo stood at the base of the plain of Esdraelon. Bethhoron blocked the path to Jerusalem by way of Aijalon. Baaloth stood on the highway from Jerusalem to the port of Joppa. Gezer protected the main road and entrance to the Valley of Sorek. Tamar on the southern border could defend caravans from Eze-on-Geber. No fortress stood east of Jerusalem, the Valley of the Jordan being considered a sufficient barrier. Excavations at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer reveal significant Solomonic construction at each place. Okay, so that protected against Danger, invading armies. What about individuals, free trade, and tourist travel? Well, that God allowed foreigners to travel into and out of Israel's borders, even allowed them to work within Israel, and even become residents of Israel, can be seen by the law of God itself. That is, they became residents if they embraced Israel's religion. Entry into and exiting from the country did have conditions. There were checkpoints, but most honest travelers were not going to be permanent residents, and yet they were allowed in and out as well. Let me give you some sample evidence. First, there were social laws, such as the gleaning laws of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy that protected the foreigner in the land. Now, they had to ask permission of the landowner to glean. That's an important point. But God commanded the landowners to be generous, to bless these Gentile sojourners and the Hebrew word for sojourners there is gerim. They were the foreigners who had become permanent residents. Well, that means that the law expected these sojourners to be present from time to time. Second, there were judicial laws that explicitly say that judges were to give justice to the sojourner when a dispute might arise between him and an Israelite. Third, there were religious laws that welcomed the foreigner to worship worship services. We've already seen that in Joshua 8, but the Sabbath law was both explicitly given for the Jew and for the Gentile sojourner. Likewise, the foreigner could join in the festivities at the Festival of Weeks. Fourth, Ezekiel 47, 22 through 23, allowed foreigners to become full-time residents. Faith was actually required to own land and be a citizen, but God allowed non-citizens to rent. Fifth, the Bible distinguished between gerim, those were the sojourners that were residents we just talked about, and two other words, nokri and zar, who were the transient workers and the travelers. And if you want some really good detailed, I'm gonna put on the web Tremper Longman's article He gives a lot of evidence that the Gerim were immigrants who had not only been permitted by the government to enter, just like Nokri and Zar, temporary travelers were, but they'd also become Gentile converts adopting Israel's God and His law without becoming Jews. It's an extremely important point. The Gerim were converted Gentiles who worshipped with Israel, had permits to be permanent residents. They were not at all equivalent to the undocumented illegal aliens of today who do not share America's values at all. These Gerim did share Israel's values as was clear from Joshua 8. So Israel is allowed full integration of the Garim who had entered the land legally, and Tremper-Longman says about these Garim, they should receive the full judicial and social rights and responsibilities of native-born citizens and should be invited to fully participate in the church's worship and life. At present, this view is reflected in the public policy of the United States, where only the right to vote is withheld until full citizenship. Christians should be the last people who fear immigration, even with its attendant risks, to our own physical and economic well-being. The bad actors who should be refused entry into our country should not be used as an excuse to restrict others from coming. But immigration is different than ignoring border control. And Tremper-Longman appeals to quite a number of texts, including The Cities of Refuge, to show how there needs to be some provision for citizens from other states and other countries who are fleeing injustice to be able to find sanctuary within a Christian nation. But the very fact that a city of refuge could refuse entry to a criminal shows that there was border control of that city. And I think David Dykstra brought this up rather well earlier. I think it's a valid point. And Tremper Longman fills that concept out a lot more. So if the Levitical cities had border control, it's not much of a stretch to apply the same principles to a state. And there are several passages that seem, notice I say seem, I'm not going to be dogmatic on this, but seem to apply those same principles to the country as a whole. For example, Deuteronomy 27, 19 says that Israel is cursed if it denies a foreigner justice. So here's a person coming from another country, fleeing injustice, and it says Israel better grant it justice. Okay, well that implies, that word justice also implies that if this person is a criminal, then you're going to exclude that person, right? Otherwise it's going to be an injustice to the citizens. And so Jeremiah 22.3 is another passage that calls upon the nation to rescue the foreigner seeking to escape justice. Now, again, I've had to hugely reduce all of the biblical evidence for the sermon, but the bottom line is that the Bible's position is somewhere in between the typical two arguments that you will see out there on border control. A nation does have a right to exclude people it considers criminals, or people with a worldview that's going to undermine our Christian heritage. But it should be a safe harbor for upright believers seeking to escape tyranny. Immigration of Christians, I think, is a one-to-one application from the Gerim laws that provided sanctuary for them. Now, unbelievers could also travel in and out of Israel. but they weren't given resident status. Unbelievers were not given resident status because their lack of a good worldview would undermine the nation. Only those who embraced Israel's values could become citizens. Now, in stark contrast, the Biden administration has allowed a flood of people into this country who completely are undermining the values of our country, and yet, at the same time, has been trying to evict the Romecki family, a Christian family that was fleeing injustice in German law against homeschooling. I mean, it's completely backwards, the exact opposite of the Bibles. It's an ungodly immigration policy. Now, of course, our government has complicated the equation by offering welfare and handouts that attract the wrong kind of immigrants. But that's totally different than the gleaning laws, which were privately given to people who had a good work ethic. So I think both sides of the debate agree our immigration policy needs fixing. But doing away with border control is not the solution. And this is a chapter that deals with the importance of borders. They are ultra, ultra important. I've already touched on the next point that the tribe of Levi did not have a tribal allotment, which meant that they didn't have their own state government. There was a civil state governing a civil territory for all other tribes, not for the Levites. Levites who served in the temple, yeah, they had cities, but all of the other Levites are scattered in every town and city of Israel. And so almost all of them were under the jurisdiction of another state. They were able to own property. but their source of income was from the tithes of the people in the synagogues. And the text here says that God was their inheritance, the sacrifices were their inheritance, and other passages say those who were scattered throughout the tribes, the double portion, the tithes, were their inheritance. And Isaiah 66 and other passages compare us pastors to those Levites. Henleke's commentary words it this way. This ensured the priority of theology over geography. And I think it's a good way of wording it. God wanted the pastors in the synagogues to be freed up to not have to work another job, to have sufficient support where they could devote themselves to ministry. Now I'll barely touch on the next point. A close analysis of this section will show some tribes had spots within other tribes. Now that should seem weird. They were living within other tribes and several of the tribes don't even have almost anything that had been given to them. And you can see that by the dark outline and the first map on your, uh, the bottom one is the what's promised and on the top map it's the color ones that are promised, but the dark outline is what they actually possessed. Now, In Judges, we find that other tribes offered to help these tribes continue the conquest, but in the meantime, they had to squeeze into a smaller space. And to me, there's two applications we can make from this. First, it's good to learn to adjust to less than the ideal when God's providence calls for it. Some of you have had to learn how to get by with less. You know, your families are growing, but your house is not growing, and you've had to adapt. Actually, this was true of Kathy and me. In our Manderson house, we eventually had to have build two triple bunks in one of the rooms, you know, so as to be able to fit everybody in. So God calls us to adapt to his providences, rather than overextending ourselves. Second, God forced them to act like a body working together in the first 12 chapters, and this remaining land that needed to be conquered will force them to continue to act like a body by helping those in the downsized tribes to expand their borders like God had originally promised. Now, the people already had their land. They could have said, oh, tough, you gotta go conquer your own land, but they didn't. They sacrificially helped each other out. And you can see in verses 2, 11, 13, the Geshurites, the Maakathites, they still occupied land within Israel's current borders. Now, that was gonna be remedied, but only because those who already had land helped those who did not have land. And I think our congregation exemplifies this kind of body life beautifully, not only in the gifts that go back and forth, but even yesterday's riffing party for the lanes, I think is a fantastic example. I praise the Lord for that. Now there's one more lesson I want to highlight from this difficult section here. It's the mention of the execution of Balaam in verse 22. Now here's the thing, that execution had already happened way back in Numbers 31.8. So why is it being brought up here? There are some liberal commentaries say it's just out of place. And I say, no, it fits. I think it was put here for the same reason the story was repeated in Nehemiah, Micah, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. Here's the point of the story. When God blesses us with property and riches, it becomes very easy to become comfortable, to let down our guard, and to succumb to the temptations of the world, just like Israel did in the book of Numbers. Back in Numbers, King Balak had hired Balaam to curse Israel, and he tried, but God wouldn't let him curse. In fact, he forces Balak to bless Israel. And yet, because Balaam really wanted to get the money offered by the king, what 2 Peter calls the wages of unrighteousness, Jude calls it his greed, he goes to the king and says, okay, I've figured out a way where you can make Israel powerless. And he says, just send some women into there and seduce the men. And when the men, God will abandon his people. And that's exactly what happened. They compromised with adultery. God withdrew his blessing. They became powerless. And so Joshua inserts this warning here because riches and property and comfort can make God's people relax and put down their guard. I think this is a great point to end on. This chapter shows God loves to bless His people with property and riches. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we always need to be on guard when we become more self-sufficient. And any number of illustrations, you can look at the kings Solomon and Isaiah and Hezekiah, when they became strong and wealthy and famous. and comfortable, pride set in, and as a result of pride, they began not having God's discernment, and they began to sin, and then God's blessing was removed from them. This is a formula that always happens. It's a warning that continues to apply to us. If we start getting soft spiritually, and we no longer engage in spiritual disciplines, we can become vulnerable to temptation. So rejoice in God's tangible gifts of land, houses, cities, technology, and wealth, but make sure to always use those things as a stewardship trust for God. Don't let your blessings become a curse. Amen. Father, I thank you for even the tougher sections of your word, and I pray that you would help us as we dig to gain more and more insight into how to apply it. I thank you for this people. I pray that the principles of this chapter would be embedded not only in their minds, but in their hearts and in their lives. We bless you for your word. In Jesus' name, amen.