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Okay, so we're going to pick
up in Joshua chapter 13, and as I said, we're going to try
and make our way through several sections of this second half
of the book. I'd like to get as far as a section
in chapter 20, Lord willing. And if we make it that far, then
we'll have two weeks remaining in our study of the book of Joshua,
and then after that we'll move into Judges. The second half
of the book of Joshua is a record of the settlement of the land.
And it is difficult reading. Not difficult because it's technical,
but difficult because it's a bit tedious. And I want to just kind
of address that here at the outset. If this were the second time
that we were going through the book of Joshua together, we've
got some chairs up here. Nobody wants this fine real estate
right here up front. The second half of Joshua can
be a little bit tedious, but if this were the second time
that we were going through the book, we would actually be studying
all of this material. One of the things that I like
to do with Bible classes that was done for me even when I was
a child in studying the Old Testament is giving you blank maps and
having you draw off all of the tribal allotments. very familiar
with the geography, be able to identify all of the major waterways
and to know where each tribe was settled. It was my judgment
at this stage of our church's life that maybe that's not the
best use of our time right now. I want to give you a bird's eye
view, see the forest, don't get lost in the trees. And so that
means that in the second half of the book, I'm not going to
be teaching every section. I'm going to broadly survey and
say, okay, over the next A couple of chapters, you've got tribes
receiving their allotments and then just move on to the next
narrative section. That's what we did in much of
the Pentateuch. That's what we're going to do
in Joshua as well. So that being said, I want to
encourage you to recognize that there is value in this material,
even though we are not giving full attention and diligence
to studying it this time through. This is precious as a history
of our fathers. Now, you may be saying, I'm not
a Jew, I'm a Gentile, it's not my family, it's not my father's,
but it is. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10,
Paul addresses a Gentile church and he says, all our fathers
passed through the sea. The church's fathers is Israel,
right? They are the patriarchs. They
are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, his brothers, or his 12 sons rather,
and all of the tribes that come from them. These are our fathers.
And as such, this is part of our heritage. And even though
it may not seem to have a great deal of relevance to us immediately
in our own lives, it has tremendous relevance in terms of showing
to us God's power, God's faithfulness, the fulfillment of God's promises.
All of that is witnessed to in the book of Joshua. So I want
to encourage you, this is one of those sections that when you
hit it in your Bible reading, you're going to have a tendency
to slow down, get discouraged, kind of fall off schedule, skim,
scan, whatever. I recognize that we do that sometimes.
I just want to encourage you that like with the genealogies,
don't do that all the time. This is here for a reason, and
the Bible is given to us by inspiration, and it is profitable. All Scripture,
Paul says, is profitable for the people of God. Now that being
said, we're going to start in chapter 13 and look at verses
1-7 this evening. Joshua chapter 13, beginning
at verse 1. Now Joshua was old and advanced
in years, and Yahweh said to him, You are old and advanced
in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess. This
is the land that yet remains. All the regions of the Philistines
and all those of the Geshurites from Shihur, which is east of
Egypt, northwards of the boundary of Ekron, it is counted as Canaanite. There are five rulers of the
Philistines, those of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. and
those of the Avim in the south, all the land of the Canaanites,
and Merah that belongs to the Sidonians, to Aphek, to the boundary
of the Amorites, and the land of the Gebelites, and all Lebanon
toward the sunrise, from Baal-Gad below Mount Herban, to Lebo-Hamath,
all the inhabitants of the hill country, from Lebanon to Misraphoth-Mayim,
even all the Sidonians, I myself," this is the Lord speaking, I
myself will drive them out from before the people of Israel.
Only allot the land to Israel for an inheritance as I have
commanded you. Now therefore divide this land
for an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of
Manasseh." You'll remember that two of the tribes plus half of
the tribe of Manasseh had already received their tribal allotments
on the east side of the Jordan River. Now, one of the things
about this section that immediately jumps off the page is that there's
still a lot of work to be done. Here we are at the end of the
conquest, and the great general of Israel, Joshua, is old and
advanced in years. And don't you love the way that
the Bible begins saying, now, Joshua was old and advanced in
years. And the first thing that God says to Joshua is, Joshua,
you are old and advanced in years. Wouldn't you love to receive
divine revelation like that, right? And so immediately you
think, well, with all of this work yet to be done, how is this
work going to be done? Joshua is in decline, right? He's aging. His time leading
the people is about done at this stage, and yet there's still
so much to be done. Two things that you need to see.
Number one, God was going to give this land to the children
of Israel successively in stages. He says this in Deuteronomy.
He says, I'm not going to give you all of it at once, because
if I did, you could not possess it all, and the wild beasts and
the wild vines would run over and take over. So this is part
of the plan, is that the invasion was not the end of this process. There was still to be a division
and then a settlement of the land. And this is going to continue
on for a couple of generations. Secondly, God was not going to
complete this great work by any single great leader. It was not
going to be Moses who was going to give the land of Israel to
the children of Israel. It was not going to be Joshua
who fully and finally secured all of the borders. Yahweh would
be the one who would do that great work. And this is an opportunity
for the people to be tested in terms of their devotion to God.
This is what we're going to see at the beginning of the book
of Judges. And unfortunately, what we're going to see is that
they largely fail this test. Right? They are not faithful.
And we're even going to see some early indications of that in
our section tonight. So, God is not going to simply
give them a figure like Moses or Joshua to finish this work. He is calling them to walk by
faith and to settle the land. Now, one of the other things
that we need to notice in this section is that the boundaries
of Israel's allotment are much larger than they almost ever
possessed. Probably the only time that Israel
controls the land that is described in this paragraph is during the
reign of Solomon. Maybe the latter years of David
and the early reign of Solomon. Beyond that, Israel does not
experience the fullness of possession that is described here. Because
what's described here stretches all the way from Syria, just
south of the Euphrates River, all the way down to the eastern
border of Egypt at the Wadi al-Arish, right? That's a huge swath of
territory. They are to possess that land.
They are to possess the land that the Philistines occupied.
They are to completely secure this territory. And their failure
to do so through much of their history is unfortunately a reminder
of their failure of faith. If we go down just a little bit
in this chapter, you'll see that God is allotting the inheritance. He starts on the east side of
the Jordan, marking out that that has already been designated,
and yet you'll notice in the second half of chapter 13 that
it's Moses who gave that inheritance. It's recorded here because this
portion of the book of Joshua is the deed, right? It's the title to the land. It's
the title for each one of the tribes. So even though that inheritance
has already been given to those tribes, it is reaffirmed and
recorded here. But I want you to notice one
little verse, verse 13, that is significant in foreshadowing
several other features in the rest of the book and in the text
that is yet to come in the book of Judges. In verse 13, Yet the
people of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maekethites,
but Geshur and Maeketh dwell in the midst of Israel to this
day. Whoever is the scribe that is recording this final edition
of the book, they say, yep, Gesher and Maekath are still there,
right? Now this is probably in the early
divided, or the early United Kingdom, rather. This is not
very far past Joshua's lifetime. And yet, it will continue to
be true for some time even to come. God promises in verse 6,
I myself will drive them out. And I don't want to steal all
of my thunder from the first two chapters of the book of Judges,
but there are going to be three reasons that they are not all
driven out. And this is one of the three
reasons, and that is Israel fails in their responsibility. This
is the first example in terms of the settlement of the land
of the unbelief of the nation. Now, do you see the words unbelief
in verse 13? You won't see the word, but you
should see the concept. Go home and read Hebrews chapters
3 and 4. You'll see that unbelief and
disobedience to God's instructions are considered hand in hand.
How do you see unbelief? You see disobedience. When we
disobey the Lord, guess what we are evidencing? Unbelief. This is why that prayer of the
Father in Mark chapter 9 is so important. Lord, I believe, help
my unbelief. You say, I'm not an unbeliever,
I'm a believer. Really? How do you relate to God in His
law? Are you a law keeper or a law
breaker? Are you a covenant keeper or
a covenant breaker? If you're honest, then you recognize
that every one of us break the law all the time. We don't want
to, we try not to, but we fall short of the glory of God every
day in more ways than we know. And our disobedience, our failure
to keep the law, is itself a manifestation of our unbelief. And it certainly
is in this case. God has promised, He says, I
will myself drive out those nations. How does Israel fail to do that?
if they do not believe what God said, if they do not trust the
promises of God. And this is what it comes down
to. Our ladies class, we were talking a little bit about another
application of this yesterday, when we mentioned the fact that
fundamentally, We have to believe what God has said. I was counseling
someone recently, the last couple of weeks, about assurance. And
with our assurance, we say, I just can't believe that I am forgiven.
Well, I can assure you that you're not worthy of being forgiven.
You don't deserve to be forgiven. But what has God promised in
His Word? If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous
to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, you either believe what God says or you don't. And it
ultimately comes down to a matter of faith. Faith that is real,
faith that is true, faith that is living, is evidenced by obedience,
submission to His Word. And that includes trusting His
promises, and it includes acting upon His commands. Does that
make sense? Alright, now let's go a little
bit further into chapter 14 now. I'm going to just skip ahead,
and I hate to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I want
to pick up the reading in chapter 14 in verse 6, and I have to
say this is perhaps my favorite part of the book of Joshua. Maybe.
It's certainly in the top 24 of the chapters in the book.
Let's think about that for a second. Verse 6, Then the people of Judah
came to Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the
Kenizzite said to him, You know what Yahweh said to Moses the
man of God in Kadesh Barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years
old when Moses the servant of Yahweh sent me from Kadesh Barnea
to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my
heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of
the people melt, yet I wholly followed Yahweh my God. And Moses
swore on that day, saying, Surely the land on which your foot has
trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever,
because you have wholly followed Yahweh my God." And now, behold,
Yahweh has kept me alive, just as He said, these 45 years since
the time that Yahweh spoke this word to Moses while Israel walked
in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day
85 years old. I am still as strong today as
I was in the day that Moses sent me. My strength now is as my
strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now
give me this hill country of which Yahweh spoke on that day,
for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there with great
fortified cities. It may be that Yahweh will be
with me, and I shall drive them out, just as Yahweh said." Then
Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jethunah,
for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance
of Caleb, the son of Jethunah, the Kenizzite to this day, because
he wholly followed Yahweh, the God of Israel. Now, the name
of Hebron, formerly, was Kiriath Arba. Arba was the greatest man
among the Anakim, and the land had rest from war. This is great. Do you realize what you just
heard? This is an 85-year-old man who's been waiting 45 years
for a particular fight, and he wants that fight. He says, the time has come. There's
a lot here to unpack, but let's turn back for just a second,
just a few pages back to Numbers chapter 13. I want to make sure
that you appreciate the historical background here to be able to
understand this conversation. Numbers chapter 13, the children
of Israel have come out of the land of Egypt, they've spent
a year at Mount Sinai, they've built the tabernacle, they've
gone up to Kadesh Barnea on the southern edge of the border of
Canaan, they've sent 12 spies into the land for 40 days, spying
out the land. They come back, they say it's
a magnificent land, but 10 of the spies say, we can't take
it. Let's pick up the reading in verse 25. We came to the land to which
you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the
cities are fortified and very large, and besides, we saw the
descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land
of the Negev, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell
in the hill country, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea along
the Jordan." But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said,
Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome
it. Then the men who had gone up with him said, We are not
able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we
are. So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the
land that they had spied out, saying, the land through which
we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants,
and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And
there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the
Nephilim. And we seem to ourselves like
grasshoppers, and so we seem to them." The sons of Anak, the
sons of Anak, which live in Hebron, which is the territory that Caleb
asks Moses for and says, when we come back 40 years from now,
I want that hill. Caleb has been waiting 45 years. It's 45 years from the conversation
in Numbers chapter 13 to Joshua chapter 14. This is, by the way,
how we date the general period of the conquest. We said that
it's typically thought to be 6 or 7, maybe 6 1⁄2 to 7 1⁄2
years. You can do the math, right? From
the time that they leave Kadesh Barnea and begin the wilderness
wandering, it is 39 years from that time until they cross the
Jordan to invade the land of Canaan. 39 years because they've
already spent one year in the wilderness between the time of
the Exodus and the time that the spies are sent in. And so
now, 45 years later, a six or seven year campaign has been
waged and Caleb says, it's my turn. I want the hill that Moses
promised to give me." Three times in Numbers chapter 14, did you
notice the phrase, Caleb wholly followed Yahweh? Not H-O-L-Y,
but W-H-O-L-L-Y. He entirely followed Yahweh's
will. Does that mean that Caleb was
sinless? No. Does it mean that he keeps every
part of the law in every respect? No, he's not Jesus. But within
the specific context of this passage, he has entirely followed
God's will. His faith is in contrast to the
unbelief, not only of the ten spies, but of the entire nation. It is their unbelief that causes
them to be exiled into the wilderness so that they will die there.
And Caleb waits for them to die. And then he goes into the land
and he waits for the conquest to be complete. And then he says,
now it is time. 45 years ago, the Lord promised
me, through His servant Moses, that I could have Hebron I wanted. Why does He want Hebron? Because
that is where the sons of Anak are located. The sons of Anak
do not populate the entire territory of Canaan. The sons of Anak was
one particular clan, one specific people group, in a land that
was populated by many different kinds of Canaanite tribes. But the sons of Anak were big.
They were scary. The giants and the sons of Anak
are one and the same. And there's this group of the
sons of Anak living in Hebron. Caleb says, they are the reason
that ten of the spies brought a bad report. They are the reason
that they come back in Numbers chapter 13 and say, we were like
grasshoppers. We felt like bugs. And Caleb
says, I want to go and take them down. He wants to fight the giants. And that to me is remarkable.
So let me give you a few points of application here. I want to
be careful about this. We've tried to be... I'm sorry.
Art, go ahead. What do you know about the Nephilim? The Nephilim
go all the way back to questions dating from Genesis chapter 6
and then in the post-Diluvian period. In some way, shape, or
form, these Nephilim are related to the giant race that Goliath
and Anak and others are going to come from. There's a whole
lot of thought, speculation among that you know well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let me observe the Passover
on that question, and we can talk about it later. Randy. Probably
so. and ready to die, and Caleb says,
hey, I'm like a 20-year-old. I'm ready to go fight. So what's
the significance of that? Yeah. Yeah. So two possibilities. Some people read this text and
think that Caleb is just being naively optimistic, right? That
he's just still got a lot of fire in his belly, and he's ready
to go. That wouldn't be inspired, though. Yeah, right. I tend to
think that this is another episode like Moses. If you remember when
Moses dies at 120, the Bible says that his eyesight had not
dimmed and his strength had not faded. God preserves some people
that way. And for whatever reason, I think
that he preserves Caleb, perhaps because the Lord is the one who
promised to give him Hebron, and he's going to preserve him
until he gets it, you know? So, I would see that as the providence
of God. But for whatever it's worth,
I mean, the other argument would say, well, Caleb is just claiming
this. It's not as though the narrator
affirms it. So anyway. So I want to be careful
about making applications of this because we try to read the
Old Testament primarily Christologically. And so we're not just looking
at Abraham, Moses, David, Caleb as role models for Christians.
We're looking at them as types pointing us to Jesus Christ.
And yet I do think that there is something about Caleb's example
here that is noteworthy and that we would do well to pay attention
to, and especially maybe our young men. This is one of the
things we try to do at our house, is I want my girls to think of
Ruth and Esther and Mary as role models in the family, right? And I want my boys to see Abraham
and Moses and David and Joshua and Caleb as role models for
them as well. And there are a few things that
you learn about a man who trusts God like Caleb does, a man who
wholly follows the Lord. What does it look like to wholly
follow the Lord? One of the things that it looks like is he's willing
to fight battles that other people are not willing to fight. When
everybody else is saying, we can't do it, he's saying, God
said we can do it. If God says we can do it, then
we can. A person who wholly follows the Lord trusts God's word, and
it doesn't matter if everyone else stands against him. It doesn't
matter because he's going to be on the Lord's side. And even
if that means defying his family, his friends, his peers, so be
it. And that needs to be our spirit.
That's part of what it means to follow the Lord entirely. That person is also always ready
for a greater challenge. And this gets to Randy's point.
If Joshua and Caleb are contemporaries, we would think that they're from
basically the same generation. Joshua's ready to retire. That's
not any indication of a lack of faith on his part. It's just
that his work is done. But Caleb's isn't done yet. And
at the time where a lot of people would be wanting to slow down,
kick back, enjoy the benefits of retirement, Caleb is looking
for another fight. Caleb is ready to go. I've said
this before. I know I've got to say this carefully,
living in Apache Junction, Arizona. But I'm really not sure that
retirement is biblical. Really not sure of that at all.
I think retiring from a career is completely biblical. In fact,
I would love for you to do that sooner rather than later. If
you have the liberty to do that, do that, right? But retirement,
I'm not sure at all is a biblical category. The psalmist describes
the righteous bearing fruit in old age. And if you have the
freedom and the liberty to say, hey, I no longer have to work
40 or 60 or 80 hours a week to put food on the table, praise
God, now I have that 40 or 60 or 80 hours to do things that
are really meaningful, that are eternal, to invest in people,
to invest in the work of the Lord. And many of you, by the
way, in your retirement have done and are doing that, and
I praise God for that. This church benefits tremendously from that.
But it's something we've got to think about. It's to say that
a person who wholly follows the Lord doesn't look at that as
saying, I'm going to wholly follow the Lord while I have this responsibility. And once that's done, you know,
I'm kind of done with that. I've scratched that off my to-do list.
I move on to whatever I want to do. That's not the way this
works. What I want to do is God's will.
If I'm a child of God, that should be my attitude. My will is to
do God's will. And that's going to look different
at different stages of life. Let me tell you, when you're
working in your career, or when you're raising small children,
or when you're caring for an aging parent, that is God's will
for your life. I have to tell this to my kids.
I say, look, guys, your job right now is to get up and do your
schoolwork. and to do it well, and to do
it with an appropriate Christian attitude, right? That's your
job. That won't always be your job. But whatever you are given
to do on any given day or at any given season of your life,
our job is to wholly follow the Lord. And we need to be prepared
for greater challenges, right? Caleb is arguably facing his
greatest challenge at the end of his life. Moses certainly
did, right? God spends 80 years preparing
him for the last third of his life, which is undoubtedly the
hardest thing that he ever did. Third, a person who wholly follows
the Lord may find that his ability to do certain things fades or
is taken away. And yet his zeal like Caleb's
is going to always endure. Now I've already said, I don't
think that Caleb's physical strength is diminishing. I think he's
another one like Moses that God providentially preserves. But
recognize that for 45 years he can't do anything about this.
You know, when the Lord tells the nation, go back into the
wilderness, Caleb has to go with them. It was not Caleb's fault.
Caleb was ready to go fight. Caleb would probably go to Hebron
and storm the gates by himself. But that wasn't what he was supposed
to do at that point. He's supposed to be with the nation. Right? He recognizes that he's part
of a covenant community. And he can't just launch off
on his own and do his own thing. Now this is hard. Sometimes you
may find yourself in a situation where your ability to do what
you believe needs to be done is taken away. And that should
not change your zeal for God's will. Do not lose heart. The Lord tells the prophet Habakkuk
about the judgment that is coming against Judah, and he says, though
it tarries, wait for it. Those who wait upon the Lord,
Isaiah says, the Lord shall renew their strength. They will mount
up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they
shall walk and not faint. Right? But you sometimes have
to wait for that. You may find, unlike Caleb, that
your physical ability does decline. And you may say, I'm not able
to do everything that I once could do, and I wish that I could
do more than I'm able to do. That's okay. But the zeal for
the Lord of hosts, that zeal should still be burning. Right? That fire should still be there,
just like it was for Caleb. And then fourth, a person who
wholly follows the Lord leads by example. Our men this morning,
we were studying in 1 Peter chapter 5, we were looking at a passage
actually that we're going to touch on next Lord's Day, not
this coming Lord's Day, but the last lesson in this series on
church leadership. And we talk about shepherd leadership
and what it means for leaders to shepherd the flock and deacons
to care for the congregation and members to serve one another. What does that look like? It
doesn't look like telling other people what they ought to do,
right? headship, leadership in the family
and in the church looks like a shepherd walking in front of
the flock, leading them by voice, leading them by example. Now
granted, there are times where the shepherd has to pull the
sheep's feet out from under him, put him up on the shoulders and
say, no dummy, go this way, right? But the reality is that a lot
of us associate leadership with power to command obedience. And that's not the way that it
works in the home or in the church. Husbands, love your wives as
Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. It is not
my job to make sure that my wife obeys the Lord's will. It's not
my job. That's between her and the Holy
Spirit. My job is to care for her, to sacrifice for her, to
serve her, and to lead her and my children by example and by
teaching, by voice. That's what leaders in Scripture
do. Old Testament and New Testament. And so Caleb, he doesn't come
out here telling everybody else what they ought to do. He says,
no, no, let me have Hebron. This is what I want. And God
promises it to him 45 years before. And now he's ready to claim that
promise. People who wholly follow the
Lord are concerned about the one person that they are able
to control. And let's face it, you're not
even really able to fully control that person either. Right? You
cannot control your spouse, your children, your grandchildren,
your brethren, The only person that you have influence over
in any kind of an ultimate sense is yourself. You worry about
your attitude, you worry about your actions. And you lead by
example, right? And you let the Lord work on
everybody else. Randy? I would think the meekness of
wisdom is as our body starts to fail, our wisdom should increase. So it's not that our service
stops, but it changes. That's right. That's an excellent
point. That's exactly right. And I do think that that, you
know, again, I told the men this morning about a great sermon
title from years ago from another friend of mine, but he said,
why don't more mature Christians act like it? Well, unfortunately,
we don't always see that increase of wisdom and discernment as
our bodies age. But that should be the way it
is in the family of God, to recognize I may not be able to do some
of the things that I was able to do in my physical strength.
And yet, there are other ways in which I am contributing to
the work of God and supporting the work of the Lord in this
church and in this world, and that is by means of wisdom, that
is by means of prayer, that is by means of counsel, that is
older men discipling younger men, older women discipling younger
women, right? And recognizing that the role
that we play within the family will change over the years. We're
not always going to be in the same spot, right? And that's
okay. That's okay. I just want to be
used up, right? I don't care how I'm used. I
just want to be used up. Now, I want to point something out
to you just very, very quickly. We're not going to spend any
time on this, but if you go down to chapter 17 now, some commentators
believe that there is a bracket here, and I want to at least
point out the possibility. I can't say that I'm completely
convinced, but I do think that it's plausible. At the end of
chapter 17, you do seem to have in chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, this
is the primary allotment of the main body of the land. And then
there's some bits and pieces in chapter 18 and 19. But at the end of chapter 17,
you have this interesting contrast between Caleb's courage on the
one hand and the fearfulness and timidity of the tribe of
Joseph on the other. Then the people of Joseph, I'm
in verse 14 of chapter 17. Then the people of Joseph spoke
to Joshua, saying, Why have you given me but one lot and one
portion as an inheritance, although I am a numerous people, since
all along Yahweh has blessed me? And Joshua said to them,
If you are a numerous people, go up by yourselves to the forest,
and there clear ground for yourselves in the land of the Perizzites
and the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow
for you. The people of Joseph said, The hill country is not
enough for us. Yet all the Canaanites who dwell
in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Bethshean
and its villages, and those in the valley of Jezreel. And Joshua
said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, you
are a numerous people and have great power. You shall not have
one allotment only, but the hill country shall be yours. For though
it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest
borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they
have chariots of iron and though they are strong. Except they
didn't, as we'll see in Judges. It's interesting to me, you see
this contrast. And again, whether this is intended
to be a literary bracket, not as convinced of that. But I do
think there's an interesting contrast between Caleb and the
sons of Joseph here. Caleb is not talking about what
other people ought to do. He's saying this is what God
promised and I want to go do, right? God promised this territory
to me, give it to me, it's enough for me, I'll take care of it.
Instead, you've got Joseph coming across quite honestly a little
whiny. I mean, we're a great big tribe, and you've only given
us one allotment of territory." And Joshua says, well, no, you're
not going to have just one allotment. You've got the hill country as
well, and you can go and clear the forest there and settle that
lowland. And they say, but no, the hill
country won't be enough for us even if we take that, and down
in the valley there are chariots of iron, and what are you going
to do for us? You know, that's kind of the
spirit. And such a contrast. This is the spirit that you will
see in the first two chapters of the book of Judges. This is
the kind of self-pity, timidity, and unbelief that brings us to
the period of the Judges when Israel is being oppressed by
her enemies because they are not trusting the Lord. So I bring
that out just as kind of a, again, by way of contrast, to say, which
example are we following much of the time, right? Am I following
the courageous example of Caleb who is trusting God and seeking
to wholly follow what the Lord has said, resting in His promises,
acting upon His precepts? Or am I more like the sons of
Joseph who are acting out of self-pity and timidity and unbelief,
right? Well, if only someone else would
do for me, you know, if somebody else would fix my problems, and
everything that they offer to me, that just won't work either.
Well, you know, that's a very different spirit, it seems to
me, than what we see in Caleb. Does that make sense? Okay, real
quick then, I think we've got time. Let's go to chapter 20.
We've been waiting on this for, well, since we were in Deuteronomy.
I gave you kind of an introduction to the cities of refuge in the
book of Deuteronomy. And now we're going to kind of
come deal with the tail end of this. You'll remember that the
tribe of Levi does not receive a territorial allotment. Instead,
they receive 48 cities within Canaan proper and the fields
and pasture land that are immediately adjacent to those cities. Of
those 48 cities, six of the cities, three on the east side of the
Jordan, three on the west side of the Jordan, are designated
as cities of refuge. And if you remember when we summarized
the civil law of the Mosaic Covenant, in Israel, God takes life very
seriously. If you committed an unjustified
homicide, which is to kill another person without good reason, right? I know we always think we have
a good reason, but you know what I mean. Legally, if you had no
right to take that life, you were to be put to death. Period. Full stop. You were to be put
to death. It didn't matter if you were
sorry. It didn't matter how angry you'd gotten. You were to die.
Your life is forfeit because that person is an image-bearer
of God and whoever sheds man's blood by man's blood should be
shed. Pretty simple, right? What if, though, you were responsible
for the death of another person and it was accidental? The examples
that Deuteronomy gives us, the axe head flies off the handle
while you're cutting wood, strikes your brother in the head and
kills him, right? You're clearing a ravine and
you push a rock off and you don't see that another person is trapped
underneath. You know, there are situations
where there is manslaughter. Our judicial system recognizes
this distinction, right? But in Israel, if you were guilty
of manslaughter, you forfeited your freedom. One of the things
I appreciate about the Mosaic Law is that there is no institutionalized
system of incarceration. You were punished, you paid restitution,
you could be executed, or you could be enslaved, but you never
went to prison, right? And I would argue that much of
that is far superior to our system today. That's a different conversation.
But if you committed manslaughter, You had to go to one of the cities
of refuge. You had to petition for your
case to be heard, for there to be a trial. If the elders of
the city adjudicated your case as, in fact, an example of manslaughter,
then you were spared. You would not be executed. But
you had to remain within the city of refuge until the high
priest died. You were not incarcerated, but
you had to leave your home, you had to leave your business. If
your family wanted to go with you, they would have to relocate
as well. You would have to stay within the confines of that city
until the high priest died, which in some cases could be a life
sentence, because you might die before the high priest did. Now
as this territory is being settled, or at least divided up for the
purposes of settling, there's some further instruction about
the cities of refuge in chapter 20. Then Yahweh said to Joshua,
Say to the people of Israel, appoint the cities of refuge
of which I spoke to you through Moses, that the manslayer who
strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there.
They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. He
shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance
of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that
city. Then they shall take him into the city and give him a
place and he shall remain with them. And if the avenger of blood
pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand,
because he struck his neighbor unknowingly and did not hate
him in the past. And he shall remain in that city
until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until
the death of him who was high priest at the time. Then the
manslayer may return to his own hometown, to his own town and
to his own home, to the town from which he fled. At the very
end of the chapter in verse 9, these were the cities designated
for all the people of Israel, and for the stranger sojourning
among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could
flee there, so that he might not die by the hand of the avenger
of blood, till he stood before the congregation. The assumption
here, by the way, is that if you've been guilty of manslaughter,
you truly are grieved by this. You notice the provision there
that he did not hate him in the past. Nobody is going to believe
a manslayer's defense if he has a history of animosity against
the person that died. The presumption is this is a
person who is truly penitent. He's not guilty of murder, and
he deeply regrets that a life has been taken. But one of the
things that we need to see here is how seriously God takes life.
And we mentioned this back in Deuteronomy. You've got to see,
God takes life seriously. And this is a frightening thing
that in our nation today, we protect animals better and more
diligently than we protect unborn children. Right? And we do not punish homicide
in a consistently just manner. Sometimes we over-punish those
who are not guilty, and oftentimes we under-punish those who are.
Our judicial system is far from perfect. I'd rather be under
it than any other system in the world today, but it is not just
in many, many cases. And you can go to prison for
killing certain animals and not go to prison for killing certain
human beings. And we have a debate now about
assisted suicide. That's just coming, folks. You
just might as well resign yourself to that. That's going to be legalized
everywhere, probably within most of our lifetimes. And you need
to see how far out of balance our nation's ethical framework
is. We have called evil good and
good evil. God takes life very seriously.
And not only that, but if you remember in Deuteronomy, the
Lord says, if you've got a case of murder where you cannot identify
the perpetrator, or because you don't have enough witness testimony,
you cannot execute him, there was an entire process for the
elders of the closest town to come and make atonement by means
of sacrifice for that blood that was shed. God says the blood
cries out from the ground for justice. What do you think 55
million unborn children's blood is doing right now? Right? So just think about that when
you think that you live in a Christian nation. Just kind of get back
to me about what a Christian nation looks like. Right? We
slaughter the innocent and we allow the guilty to go unpunished. God does not accept that. God will not have any regard
for that. At the same time, in the cities of refuge, you see
the mercy of God. You see the way in which allowance
is made for what is, in this case, an accident, and for a
person who is truly penitent. For a person who has caused the
death of another person, but not through any malice. He may
be responsible for that death, and yet he is not, in the fullest
sense, culpable for it. And God makes allowance for that.
There needs to be mercy mixed with our justice. I told you
that when we studied Deuteronomy, that many of the prescriptions
for punishment in Deuteronomy appear to be maximum sentences. That they would not always necessarily
reach that... It's not as simple as you're
either punished or you're not punished, and if you are punished,
this is where it's at. No, there is some discretion
within the law. We see that in the Old Testament. And that's
appropriate. There needs to be discernment,
there needs to be judgment that is mixed with mercy. What I want
you to think about tonight for just a minute is the Christological
aspects of the cities of refuge. We hinted at this several months
ago and I wanted to deal with this when we got to Joshua. You
might look at this and you say, well, I don't see a clear type
of Christ here. I mean, surely the manslayer
is not a type of Christ. And it's even hard for me to
see the manslayer as myself, because after all, I was the
guy that committed murder, not the guy that committed manslaughter,
right? I mean, my sin problem is not
an accident, right? Even though I may be penitent
at this point, it wasn't an accident. I was a rebel against God. I
was deserving of death. Whereas we might have some pity
on the manslayer. But the Christ figure in this
story is not, in my judgment at least, the manslayer or the
elders. It's the high priest. You do
not ever have atonement apart from death. The only way that
sin is forgiven is by means of the shedding of blood. And understand
what the shedding of blood means. Jesus does not come and get his
finger pricked. to save his people. He doesn't donate blood where
they take a few vials. The shedding of blood in scripture
refers to the taking of a life, the loss of life. The wages of
sin is death. The reason that we are under
the penalty of death because of our sin is that we were made
in the image of God. God breathed into our nostrils
the breath of life. He gave us life for the purpose
of knowing Him and glorifying Him. And we took that gift and
we grossly abused it. Right? We destroyed that which
God gave us. And that's why our life is forfeit.
Now, you don't have forgiveness without a loss of life. It may be a sacrifice. It may
be, in the case of a murderer, your own. Who dies in place of
the manslayer in this story? The high priest does. This is
not the only time you're going to see this in the Old Testament.
We're going to come back here when we get to 2 Samuel, really,
more than 1 Samuel. There are occasions where woven
into the biblical story, there is a type of Christ who dies
not as a sacrifice, but nevertheless suffers the death of the wrongdoer. And I believe it's the high priest
here. The high priest is not executed for a crime. He dies
a natural death. And yet, how long was the sinner
in bondage? until the high priest died. Guess how long you and I are
in bondage to sin? We're in bondage to sin until
the high priest dies. There's no animal sacrifice here
that serves as a type of Christ. It's not the offender himself
who is the type of Christ, it's the high priest whose life is
in place of the manslayer. And I think points ahead to Jesus,
who as the high priest offers himself, offers his own blood,
and the guilty go free. Does that make sense? So I think
there is a Christological dimension to this. We can only be saved
by the death of the innocent high priest, the one who is not
guilty of this crime. You couldn't have a manslayer
be set free by paying restitution to the family. You couldn't go
free. By any works of his hands, I'm
going to try and be a good person, I'm going to save three other
people's lives and then I can go free. I'm not going to be
able to repent my way into freedom. I'm really, really sorry. I'll
be more careful in the future." It doesn't matter. There's only
one way out of that city. The only way out of that city
is the death of the high priest. Now, last point and then we'll
go. One other possible way in which
the cities of refuge point to Christ is the city itself. The
city of refuge becomes the place where you can flee to find Safety,
right? And Christ is that city of refuge.
Christ is that strong tower. Christ is that rock where we
can hide and God puts his hand over us as we hide in the cleft. And so I think there is a Christological
dimension just to the idea that God provides a place of security
and that rest is always, typologically speaking, Christ. So I'll give
you two possibilities. For me, the high priest is maybe
the big one. Okay, yeah, yeah, the way that
faith brings us to. Yeah, it's the object of the
faith, Christ himself, not faith. Yeah, exactly. That's good. That's
good. All right, does that make sense?
Okay, so I hope this was not too just all over the map. I mean, jumping through those
chapters. But I wanted to move through that section and just
lift some of those ideas out. Now, before we close in prayer,
let me tell you where we're going to go. For next week, you can
read chapters 22 and 23. And we're just going to march
through those two chapters. We may not be able to make it
all the way through both of those chapters in one class, but you'll
be prepared either way. And then, Lord willing, the following
week, we'll cover chapter 24. And so those last three chapters
have got a lot of really great material in them that we want
to explore and take apart. It is good stuff. Yeah. Like,
for instance, when Joshua tells Israel, you cannot serve the
Lord because He's holy. Does that unsettle you at all?
They say, oh, we'll serve the Lord. And he says, you cannot
serve the Lord because He's holy. Yeah, I enjoy teaching that section.
But you'll have to come back in a couple of weeks if you want
to hear that section. Alright, that's in chapter 24. You can
read ahead. Yeah, Sandy. Yes, ma'am. Lord willing. Yep.
We'll do judges after that. Yep. My intention is for right
now in these Wednesday night classes to just keep marching
through the historical literature. I want to give you that bird's
eye view before we try and do anything too detailed. Alright?
Okay, thank you for being here tonight. Let's close our time
in prayer. Our God and Father, we marvel
at the ways in which your work in the history of your people
shows to us your power and your promises. The promises that you
kept, the promises that you've made and will yet keep. The way
in which you providentially worked in their lives even as you work
in ours for the good that you have appointed. Lord, we do thank
you for Christ, who is a place of refuge for us, and who is
the high priest whose life was given in our stead. And we thank
you indeed, O God, for your servant Caleb, for the way that his faith
and his desire to wholly follow you serves as a model for us
all. We pray, O God, that You would
bless us, that the stories that we've looked at, the texts that
we have read, would rest upon our heart, and that You would
use it for our good and for the up-building of Your people. We
continue to pray, Lord, that Your mercy would be upon us.
For we know, O God, that apart from Christ and apart from Your
grace, we are in bondage to sin and without hope. And yet we
thank You, O God, that You did send the Son into the world as
a Savior for sinners. And we rest in Him, we thank
You for Him, and we pray in His name. Amen.
The Book of Joshua 13-20
Series The Book of Joshua
| Sermon ID | 15171959303 |
| Duration | 50:43 |
| Date | |
| Category | Bible Study |
| Bible Text | Joshua 13 |
| Language | English |
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