Well, we're up to Joshua chapter 16. Here are the word of the Lord. The lot fell to the children of Joseph from the Jordan by Jericho to the waters of Jericho on the east, to the wilderness that goes up from Jericho through the mountains to Bethel, then went out from Bethel to Luz, passed along to the border of the Archites at Ataroth, and went down westward to the boundary of the Jophletites, as far as the boundary of lower Beth-horon to Gezer. and it ended at the sea, so the children of Joseph, Manasseh, and Ephraim took their inheritance. The border of the children of Ephraim, according to their families, was thus. The border of their inheritance on the east side was Atharoth, Adar, as far as upper Beth-horon, and the border went out toward the sea on the north side of Methoth. Then the border went around eastward to Ta'anath, Shiloh, and passed by it on the east of Jonoah. Then it went down from Jenoha to Atrath and Na'arah, reached to Jericho, and came out at the Jordan. The border went out from Tapua westward to the brook Qana, and it ended at the sea. This was the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Ephraim according to their families. The separate cities for the children of Ephraim were among the inheritance of the children of Manasseh, all the cities with their villages. and they did not drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day, and have become forced laborers." Father, we thank you for this, your word, and I pray that as we begin to dig into it, that you would open the eyes of our understanding, that we might grow through it, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Well, this morning, Jeff Krutz showed me the map blown up. And then he overlaid Nebraska onto it, just so that you could see a little bit of what the borders looked like. I think it's a pretty cool project that he gave. So up at the top here, he's got Sioux City. And down at the bottom here, he's got Marysville. Here's Lincoln and Philistia, where it probably belongs. And we got Red Oak on the far east side over here. Sorry about that. We're going to take over. Just like David conquered Philistines, right? We're going to take over. And then Denison's way over on the east side here, but it gives you a little bit of an idea of the size of this, and you can kind of pass that around as we go. And I'm going to be preaching on all of chapter 16 today, and it will be kind of an odd sermon, I will admit. But before we dive into the text, I want to answer a question that one person had. And that is, why were both Ephraim and Manasseh given territory? Doesn't that make 13 tribes? And yes, that's a very correct observation. And if you've done much study on this subject, you know it's a very puzzling observation because the Bible only speaks about 12 tribes, not 13. If you haven't read ahead, let me explain why someone even had this question. All of chapters 16 through 17 are devoted to describing the massive land holdings that were given to the tribe of Joseph. Or, wait a minute, is the tribes of Joseph. This is what's a little bit puzzling. These verses clearly indicate that Joseph's two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, constituted two separate tribes, each of which got different land inheritance borders. And so that makes 13 tribes, right? And I thought it was a good enough question that I should at least give an introduction to these chapters to answer that question. My view is if one person has a question like this, there's probably a bunch of others that do as well. And if you get confused by this and it doesn't make sense, don't worry about it. I think it is a very practical answer that comes. In fact, let me give you a heads up of where we're heading on this. This whole concept of the 12 tribes we're going to see as I go through some of the scriptures, shows the unity of God's body from Genesis to Revelation and a tight connection between the New Testament church and the Old Testament church. And you might wonder, how on earth do you get to that? Now you guys can be Bereans, you can always disagree with me if you don't see it in the scripture, but we're going to start with Genesis. In Genesis chapters 48 and 49, God blessed Joseph's two sons equally with the other brothers of Joseph. In fact, commentators point out that Joseph actually adopted his two grandsons as if they were his own sons, making 13 sons, or some people count 14 sons. depending on how you count it, but certainly it was not 12. And another way of looking at this that some people take is that Joseph just received a double inheritance and Ezekiel 47, 13 words the double blessing this way, Joseph shall have two portions when the land is divided. Now, if that's all that it said about Joseph, it would be pretty easy to explain what's the problem. Well, commentators point out that Genesis makes it crystal clear that the reason God had Jacob adopt both of Joseph's sons was that God intended for Manasseh and Ephraim to be the leader of two separate tribes. The Bible refers to the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh 54 times. Okay. And both tribes are actually counted when they enumerate the tribes. Both tribes are actually counted as two of the 12 tribes. That's what's confusing. More than 50 passages make it crystal clear that Ephraim and Manasseh constituted their own tribes within the 12. The Bible says it over and over again. For example, Joshua 14.4 says, for the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim. And these two chapters clearly treat them as two separate tribes getting their own separate land inheritance. So it seems to make 13. So why does the Bible never, ever, ever speak of 13 tribes? Never. It always speaks of 12 tribes, and some people come up with an answer. They say, well, that's because Levi was not given any land to inherit. All it got was cities, and the rest of them were scattered elsewhere. And on the surface, that seems like a plausible answer, but it is not an adequate answer for three reasons. First, the tribe of Simeon is exactly a parallel case. Simeon didn't get a state with boundaries either. Now on the map you're going to notice there's a circle. I probably shouldn't have put a circle around that because they weren't given any land. That's just the area where the main cities were that were given to Simeon and we saw last week that Simeon's cities were counted as if they were Judah's cities, okay? They were assimilated into Judah, and this is exactly what Jacob had prophesied would happen, that both Levi and Simeon would be scattered among the tribes of Israel. And yet, both Simeon and Levi are spoken of repeatedly as two of the 12 tribes, all the way through the Old Testament, all the way up until Revelation chapter seven. So the phrase, the tribe of Levi, occurs a bunch of times, as does the phrase, the tribe of Simeon. Second, 12 tribes are listed in Genesis 49, just boom, boom, boom, all the way down, yet Levi is listed as one of those 12 tribes. Same is true of the listing of 12 tribes in Ezekiel 48. Levi is there. Same is true of the listing of the 12 tribes in Revelation 7. So it is simply not true to say that Levi is not one of the 12 tribes. It is enumerated as one of the 12 tribes all the way up to Revelation 7. Third, Gengel and Bramer point out, and I'm quoting from their commentary here, in the 29 lists of the tribes of Israel found in the Old and New Testaments, never are more than 12 names listed. Often it is the name of Levi that is missing, although the tribe of Dan that became so idolatrous is left out on occasion. For example, Dan was left out of the listing in 1 Chronicles 6 and also in Revelation 7. And interestingly, in Revelation 7, It talks about Manasseh and Joseph being two tribes, even though Manasseh was the son of Joseph. And so it's a very deliberate naming there. So the name Joseph has to represent the other tribe. But by naming it Manasseh and Joseph, he's making it crystal clear they are two separate tribes. There's no getting around it. And this has been a head scratcher for those scholars who insist on being literalists. Rather than taking the number 12 here as being symbolic, as I do and as most commentaries do, So the literalists in Revelation 7, who, by the way, tend to be the dispensationalists, and I love them. I grew up a dispensationalist, but I think they're wrong on this. They insist that Dan was not mentioned in Revelation 7, and in a couple of other passages they don't mention, but in Revelation 7, because they say, well, Dan must have disappeared by the time the New Testament came around. But sorry, that doesn't work. Scholars point out that it can't work because Ezekiel prophesies of exactly the same city in exactly the same time period. and lists Dan as being the same city of God, as having its gates named Dan, so that the tribe of Dan could come in and out of that gate. That's Ezekiel 48, 32. So Danites must be around during that same time period. And there's a lot of other evidence that forces us to the conclusion that the number 12 was always intended to be a symbolic number, not a literal number. Wilcox says, the fact of the matter is that the Bible, which often lists the sons or tribes of Israel, does so in a number of different ways. It has been reckoned that there are no fewer than 17 variations in the order of the names. Further, there's no uniformity as to which names are put in and which are left out. One factor, however, is almost invariable, the number 12. Now I'm spending so much time on this introduction to help explain why it is that we do need to see this as a symbolic number. Though Joshua earlier called Joseph's two sons, two tribes in Genesis 14 verse four, just two chapters earlier, he does something unique in these chapters in order to maintain the perfect number 12. Beginning with Matthew Henry, many commentators believe that he calls Manasseh and Ephraim half-tribes. Although admittedly, there's controversy on that. There's other ways of explaining that. So what in the world is going on? Well, most commentators agree that the number 12 is clearly symbolic in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And concerning the New Testament, Ryken says this, the significance of 12 carries over into the New Testament. Jesus appointed 12 apostles, probably as a symbol of the restoration of Israel. Similar symbolism is probably intended in the gathering up of the 12 baskets of fragments following the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus's promise that the 12 would someday sit on 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel, probably had to do with his desire to restore Israel. James's reference to the 12 tribes of the dispersion in James 1.1 in all probability reflects similar thinking. The symbolism of 12 appears frequently in the book of Revelation. 12,000 persons from each of the 12 tribes of Israel are sealed, totaling 144,000 in all. The woman, Israel, gives birth to the child, Jesus, is crowned with 12 stars, probably an allusion to the 12 tribes. The new Jerusalem, which will descend from heaven, is rich with symbolism, much of which revolves around the number 12. The eschatological city will have 12 gates, 12 angels as gatekeepers, and the names of the 12 tribes written on the gates. We are told that these gates are 12 pearls. The wall of the city will rest on 12 foundations, on which will be inscribed the names of the 12 apostles. The city will be 12,000 stadia square. Finally, the Tree of Life, an image that surely is meant to recall the Tree of Life that once stood in the Garden of Eden, will stand in the city and bear 12 kinds of fruit every month for the healing of the nations. Now, when you look at all of the different usages of that number 12, there's three things that really strongly emerge concerning the symbolic meaning of 12. The first is the concept or the idea of fullness or completeness. The second is the idea of God's organization of that fullness and completeness. And then the third is the people of God, the completeness of the people of God. All three are wrapped up in that number. And so McKnight says, Over and over in the Old Testament, 12 means the covenant people of God in their fullness or in their totality. One is not far from the truth in saying that 12 is an ecclesial or church term more than it is a prophetic or an eschatological term. And thus, when Jesus took 12 apostles, most commentaries agree that Jesus was establishing a new Israel taken out of the old Israel. You got to realize that the church started off 100% Jewish. It was very literally the new Israel. As Mingao words it, the sending of the 12 apostles symbolizes the eschatological regathering of the 12 tribes of Israel. While the number 12 denotes the nation of Israel, the number 70 symbolizes all the nations of the world. And I won't get into it much, but those nations of the world are eventually incorporated into the new Israel as they get converted. Revelation will make clear that both Jew and Gentile are included in the new Israel. And of course, we saw earlier in the book of Joshua, Jew and Gentile were included in the old Israel as well. I mean, even Caleb himself came from Gentile background, as did some other citizens of that generation. So it's significant that even though all of the harmonies of the Gospels that I own show that Judas hanged himself prior to Christ's crucifixion, which means there are only 11 living apostles at that point. And even though Matthias was not selected to replace Judas until Acts chapter one, Paul says the just resurrected Jesus, quote, was seen by Cephas, then by the 12 prior to Acts one. Hmm, that means that there, even though there's 11, it's still symbolically designating them as the 12. Likewise, Paul and Barnabas were designated as being among the apostles, Acts 14, 14. And depending on how you translate the Greek, possibly even James, the brother of Jesus, was said to be an apostle in Galatians 1, 19. Though there's huge controversy on how to translate that verse. Paul speaks of himself as being an apostle born out of due time. In other words, a little bit late. It was added in an odd way. And just as the other apostles were trained by Jesus for three years, he was trained by Jesus for three years in Arabia. And yet God still numbers the apostles in Revelation 21, 14 as the 12 apostles. On everyone's enumeration, there are more than 12 apostles, but they're still spoken of as the 12 or the 12 apostles. It says about the new Jerusalem, Now the wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the land. And so the point is, most people agree the phrase the 12 apostles is just as symbolic as the phrase the 12 tribes. It speaks to the leaders of the new Israel, the church, which constitutes the fullness of the people of God. But there's more. According to Ephesians 2.20, Those 12 apostles form the foundation of the church, just like Revelation 21 says. with Jesus being the chief cornerstone, and that church did not leave out the Old Testament saints. The New Jerusalem in Revelation has the names of the 12 tribes of Israel on all 12 gates of the city, and it's got the names of the 12 apostles on the foundations, but it's still just one city. Okay, that's Revelation 21, 12 through 14. There is a unity of the people of God in that imagery from Genesis to Revelation. There are not two peoples of God. There's just one. That's the key application. And there are serious theological and practical problems when dispensationalists insist that there are two peoples of God, not one, and God has always had two purposes in history, and for eternity, they say, one for Israel, one for the church, two separate purposes. No, there's just been one. Now I realize it was maybe a longer explanation than you may have wanted to know about why 13 tribes are called 12 and why these chapters use one of 17 different ways of squeezing 13 down to 12. But anyway, I won't say more on that question. I've probably said too much already, at least for some of you. But anyway, 12 stands for the fullness of God's people. He is a covenant-keeping God from Genesis to Revelation, and the only way any people can be a people of God is by union with Jesus. It's the same gospel in both Testaments. Now, with that as a background, let's dive into the text. If there is one people of God, there must be applications that we can garner from this text. Verse one says, the lot fell to the children of Joseph. Joseph was the 11th child of Jacob, and yet Joseph's children are the second ones to get distribution of the land. Now to the Jews of that day, that probably seemed a little bit odd. Cause normally the firstborn got the double inheritance, but because of Joseph's faithfulness to the Lord, Joseph got the double portion. And it was a massive, you look at your maps, it's a massive inheritance and it's a very rich and fertile inheritance. Campbell says their territory in Canaan was in many respects, the most beautiful and fertile. See, God's allotments don't always seem fair to us. It probably didn't seem fair to the other tribes, some of which got just a tiny allotment compared to what Judah and what Joseph got, but this teaches us we need to trust that God knows what he's doing rather than to envy what he has given to others. But beyond the lesson of avoiding envy, there's a second application. Let me develop it. In Genesis 48 through 49, God not only promised to profoundly bless Joseph with rich blessings of land, but he also gave four promises that he would make Joseph more fruitful than any other tribe, despite the fact that Joseph had a late start and he only had two children. We'll see in chapter 17 that Joseph's descendants were by far the most numerous. When you take Ephraim and Manasseh together, at the second census, just before they entered the land, The total adult males among Joseph's descendants were 85,200. compared to Judah's population of 76,500, and Judah's was huge compared to any of the other tribes. And Joseph, especially his son Ephraim, kept multiplying and multiplying exponentially as you go down through history, much faster than the others, just as God promised that they would in Genesis. The faithfulness of Joseph during times of difficulty brought incredible blessing to his descendants. In terms of land allocation, you can see that Joseph got the biggest land allocation, probably the best. God was super generous to Joseph's descendants. And hopefully this will be a motivation to you parents and even to you singles, because Joseph was single for a long time, right? It'll be a motivation to be faithful to the Lord during difficult times, knowing that your current faithfulness in the midst of sacrifice can have a huge positive impact upon your descendants. Don't just look at the difficulties of maintaining righteousness now. Okay, have a long range perspective of what God might produce hundreds of years from now in your descendants. And yes, you as an individual, what you do right now can have a profound impact upon your descendants in the future. Profound. That's the kind of future orientation you should maintain. And if you do, I think it'll make the sacrifices you're now making seem totally worthwhile. So to summarize both chapters, chapter 16 and 17, Joseph's second son, Ephraim, will have his portion allocated in this chapter. And Joseph's first son, Manasseh, will have his portion allocated in chapter 17. And the rest of the tribes, they're going to have to have patience. They're going to have to wait until they get their inheritance. God very deliberately made it so that there would have to be patience. But the next point shows that Joseph himself modeled patience and humility to everyone. You see, he came from the tribe of Ephraim, and he could have gotten his land right away, just like all of the other Ephraimites got it in this chapter. But Joshua deliberately waited till everyone else got their land before he and his family settled into his own personal inheritance. And so Joshua is a model of patience. He did not push for his own rights ahead of others. Spence Jones says, Joshua's task would not be completed until everybody in every tribe got into their land. And interestingly, even then, he didn't take the land for himself. Instead, the people offered him a super generous portion for the leadership that he had provided. They were not stingy, but he waited for that. Our politicians today, I think, could learn from Joshua. He did not use his position to gain personal advantage over others. He did not tyrannically use his authority to enrich himself. On the other hand, we'll see in chapter 19 that the people did richly reward him with good land. In any case, I see Joshua as a model public servant. He served God first and foremost. He served his people second, and he served himself last. I think he's a wonderful role model for us. Leadership means humble, self-sacrificing service. Don't even think about being a leader unless you've already developed humble, self-sacrificing service. Okay, dads, that's what you're called to. Us elders and deacons, that's what we are called to. But let's move on to the next point. I've commented on the word laud in the previous chapter, and so I won't say a lot on it today. We saw in chapter 15 that the Lot spoke to God's sovereignty, and I'm just going to assume that you remember that. Part of that sovereignty here could be seen in the fact that Ephraim got its land before Manasseh did. Why is that odd? Well, as I've already mentioned, Manasseh is the firstborn, so one would think Manasseh should have received his portion first, and actually that was the way that that Joseph intended his father Jacob to do it. When Joseph brought his sons to Jacob so that Jacob could prophetically bless his sons, his dad couldn't see. And so Joseph came up and very deliberately put his firstborn Manasseh near to his right hand and his secondborn Ephraim next to his left hand, and the text says that Jacob knowingly crossed his hands in a very awkward way, put his right hand onto the secondborn. And Joseph was very upset about that. He tried to guide his father's hand back to the firstborn, and he said, not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head. But the text goes on to say, But his father refused and said, I know my son, I know. He also shall become a people and he also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations. So he blessed them that day, saying, by you Israel will bless, saying, may God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh. And thus he set Ephraim before Manasseh. Somebody just before the service asked me, so how come Ephraim's territory is smaller? It is smaller, but it's the best land. And if you look at the census of Ephraim, they had way more population than Manasseh. Manasseh had herds and things like that. But anyway, Jacob had finally learned that God alone is the author of blessing, and we cannot manipulate him. And Jacob's earlier attempts to manipulate and to circumvent God's sovereignty backfired on him. It did not go well. Joseph needs to learn the same thing. God is sovereign, and we need to submit to him when he puts his greater blessing on others. Now, there are a number of other lessons in chapter 16. I'm going to go through them fairly quickly. First, the names related to Joseph's family take on special meaning, I think, when you understand the sufferings that he went through with his brothers and that he later went through in the early years of Egypt. The name Joseph means he shall add. Though God took almost everything away from Joseph in his early years, he added so much more to Joseph as Joseph maintained his faith in God. When God was Joseph's supreme focus, God could trust him with more. That's the point. And when God takes things away from you, Don't get bent out of shape. Don't give up. Look to God in faith, just as Joseph did, and you will eventually realize that even what God has taken away is an incredible blessing. And God will eventually add to you. It may not seem like that, that he would be faithful in that way when you're sitting in prison like Joseph was, apparently forgotten, but God does add. You can bank on it. Second, in verse four, God gives the names in the birth order to make it obvious that the inheritance of the land was going to be reversed in orders very deliberate juxtaposition So we'll examine each name in the birth order Joseph named his firstborn son Manasseh, which means causing me to forget and he explained the meaning of the name He said it is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household Genesis 41 51 So God's rich blessings that he had begun to experience in Egypt helped him to forget the horrible, painful experiences that he had gone through growing up. He was an abused brother. And God can do the same for us. It's important that we not become bitter over life's unfairness, but we learn to release the past and step into God's future blessings by faith, just like Joseph had learned to do. Third, Joseph named his second son Ephraim. Dictionary defines the literal meaning of the word double land or twin land with the eem of Ephraim dealing with that duality. Or it can have a metaphorical meaning of double fruitfulness and that seems to be the way that Joseph mainly intended it because he explained the name saying, For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction." Genesis 41, 52. Now either way, whether double land or double fruitfulness, his name was a prophetic statement about the future of Joseph's descendants. They got a double portion in the land and they would become very, very fruitful. So this was really a prophetic statement of faith concerning the future because he never had any other children. He just had two. And yet God multiplied him exceedingly. And God can multiply the little bits that you have exceedingly as well when you live by faith, just like he multiplied the loaves and the fish. I may have already mentioned the next lesson, but all these blessings that Ephraim and Manasseh got, they got because God promised those blessings. And God never forgets his promises. We might forget his promises, but God does not. And this is why I encourage people, memorize, memorize the promises of God that relate to your particular situation. Trust God to be a promise keeping God. Another lesson could have been given in any of these chapters. And that is that God considers land to be super important. And this balances out what I said about cities last week, okay? Verses one through eight is God's second gift of land to his people. And I love what Dale Davis said about this when he was commenting on Judah's apportionment earlier. I think it applies here as well. He said, we Western Christians probably need to get a hard grip on this. We need to rediscover the earthiness of God. We must realize that even enjoying the grand act of the kingdom of God will not mean floating as a beeping soul in some sort of spiritual ether, but walking around with a resurrection body in a new heavens and a new earth. Now, the Gnostics, They wanted to escape from their body. They did not consider the physical world to be important. They were focused only on what they considered to be spiritual, and by spiritual, they meant invisible. What we've seen in the past, that is a gross misuse of the word spiritual. We've seen everything can become spiritual if it is given by the Holy Spirit and if it is blessed by the Holy Spirit, and that includes your house, your yard, and if you're a farmer, your land. Land is important to God and it should be important to us. I mean we rejoice in the 1.3 small acre plot that God has given to us and if land is important to God Then it means that we need to steward it well and make the most of our land Let me tell you something controversial letting land go to wilderness as the conservationists want us to do is considered a curse by God and Okay, wilderness is not considered to be a blessing. He considers it to be a curse. Why? Because God made man for the land. On the other hand, abusing the land by turning it toxic is also wrong. The Dominion Mandate calls us to steward the land, and I've given a little picture of the Cornwall Alliance in there. Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation has some fantastic resources that deal with how best to steward the land. In fact, on March 19, I think it is, they're coming out with a brand new book that has all kinds of scholars contributing to it. that's going to make all of this politically correct stuff out there just look foolish. Pray for them. The left hates them. Cornwall Alliance has come under cyber attacks and slander and relentless persecution. But I praise God for their presence, and Gary does as well. They've got a wonderful ministry. Now, one curious fact in this chapter that some might have questions about is why verse nine says that Ephraim and Manasseh shared cities on their borders. Or as some take it, some of Ephraim's cities actually resided within Manasseh. It says the separate cities for the children of Ephraim were among the inheritance of the children of Manasseh, all the cities with their villages. Now he doesn't name the cities, but either Ephraim owned cities within Manasseh or there was an overlap. Now, obviously, we have that in America as well, where some sprawling cities are on both sides of a border, of state borders. In any case, some commentators say that this may have been designed to maintain a brotherly tribal unity between those two groups. Others suggest it may have been a deal worked out by the citizens of the city, saying, we want to be under the jurisdiction of this state. Others are guessing maybe it's just geography that dictated it. Whichever theory is correct, it speaks to the importance of intertribal cooperation. States within Israel were not supposed to be in competition with each other. Yes, they were supposed to seek the welfare of their citizens, but not at the expense of the citizens of neighboring states. And I think our church models well that Iowans and Nebraskans can get along pretty well until football season. Another question is, why were most of the cities of Ephraim not even mentioned? That's a puzzling one. It stands in such stark contrast to chapter 15. In chapter 15, we saw that the cities of Judah numbered 100. They named all the cities, 122 cities, and there's hardly any mention of cities here or with any of the other tribes. Well, there are two possibilities for this strange omission. One is that the lessons that we looked at related to the cities, at least the ones that God wanted us to know, only needed to be mentioned once. The other possibility might be that Judah was the leading state, and much more detail was devoted to its description than to the rest. I think it's both reasons, but especially the first one. Since the relationship of cities, towns, villages, and farms was so clearly addressed in chapter 15, why bother listing the cities of the other tribes in order to teach that lesson again? But there is one city that's very significant. It is the city in verse six called Ta'anath Shiloh, later simply shortened to Shiloh. And when almost no cities are mentioned, we ought to ask, why is this one mentioned? Well, in chapter 18, we'll find that the tabernacle of the Lord was set up in Shiloh and remained in Shiloh during the whole period of the judges and way on up into the early part of King David's reign. This was one of the blessings given to Joseph in Genesis 49. Even though Judah will have God's presence in their midst later on after David in Jerusalem, Jacob prophesied that God's meeting place would be in Ephraim. And that may be why Revelation 7, by the way, calls Ephraim Joseph. Anyway, Genesis 49, 24 says about Ephraim, from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel, with shepherd and stone being capitalized because it's referring to God himself. And so what happened is God's glory cloud very visibly resided over the tabernacle in Ephraim during the whole period of the judges until God authorized the change to go to Jerusalem. So this was yet another blessing that God bestowed upon his faithful servant Joseph. He would honor his descendants by having his glory cloud residing in their midst for hundreds of years. I am so thankful in the new covenant, all of us can experience God's presence right within us. His glory can reside within us. But it was certainly a blessing to Ephraim. But there is one sad note in this chapter, and this is what we'll end with. It's in verse 10, which says, and they did not drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day and have become forced laborers. Notice it doesn't say that they could not drive them out. It says they did not drive them out. And furthermore, it's obvious that if they were able to turn them into forced laborers, which they were, then they should have been able to drive them out or destroy them as God had commanded. So why did they not do so? A pastor once suggested to me four possible reasons, and I thought they were at least worth considering. His first suggestion was that since the land itself, or most of the land, had already been taken, what difference would it make to leave a few Canaanites alone? They were no danger anymore, and it would be an inconvenience to continue fighting. But if we fail to do God's will because it is inconvenient to do so, we will eventually suffer. And these Canaanites would become a thorn in the flesh of Israel in the future. Throw the excuse of inconvenience out the window. Inconvenience can never be in our vocabulary as an excuse for disobedience. The second possible reason was financial gain. And this seems very probable. They might have thought, hey, instead of killing them, Why don't we profit from their labor? Let's put them to work. Be a waste not to do so. And after all, these Canaanites are begging for their lives. They say, hey, we'll work for you as slaves instead of you killing us. If we can make a profit by keeping them alive, why not? But worldly gain at the expense of obeying God's commands will always come back to haunt us, often with our children taking our compromises much further than we did. And that's exactly what happens in the book of Judges. A third possible reason was that these Canaanites were no longer a threat. There was nothing to fear from them anymore. But when feelings contradict God's word, we should ignore our feelings. Feelings are never a reliable guide. God's word is. The fourth possible reason was that they perhaps felt that they could eventually win these people over to their side. And if that was the case, it was an absolutely false hope. What actually happened in the first chapters of Judges is that the Canaanites influenced the Ephraimites negatively rather than the Ephraimites influencing the Canaanites positively. And of course, we're not told why they chose to put them to forced labor rather than killing them as God commanded. It may have been one of those reasons, all four of them, maybe a totally different reason. But the bottom line we know for a fact is that it was a compromise and all compromises eventually cost us. In their case, it was not, interestingly, the parents who initially felt the cost. It was their children. And this is how sneaky Satan can be. Satan doesn't make us feel the cost of our compromises immediately. In fact, sometimes it feels way better to compromise. We feel a lot better. But down the road, our children or our children's children will feel the pain just as theirs did in the book of Judges. And so this chapter presents us with the incredible blessings God poured out in Ephraim and Manasseh, and it ends with the compromise that actually led the Israelites to cry out in anguish as they began to experience the pervasive influence, negative influence and tyranny of the Canaanites. That's what's happened in America. God built this nation. He blessed this nation, but because our nation gradually forgot God's law and refused to apply the gospel to education, to culture, to civics. This nation's godly influence began to be undermined to the point where now it's the Canaanites who dominate the entire country and it's tough to take it back. Not impossible, but it's tough. I think we are living in America in the time of the judges, which by the way should be encouraging because the judges show us it's not impossible for God to take these things back, right? But in any case, small compromises can lead to large consequences. May we learn from this verse by faithfully obeying all God's commandments, doing so by grace to his glory and receiving his blessings by faith. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word and the reminders that it gives to us of the rest of the scriptures, and I pray that you would help us as we continue through the book of Joshua. to put off any obstacles, to tear down any strongholds that would hinder us from fully entering into the freedom and the liberty of the sons of God, from fully entering into the blessings and the inheritance that Jesus purchased for us. May we have faith to lay claim to everything you purchased for us through the cost that Jesus paid. And I pray for your blessing upon this, your people, in Jesus' name, amen.