Lesson 24
God is Faithful – 14:1-15
Tonight we begin a section of Joshua in the last part that runs from
chapter 14-17. This section deals with
the distribution of the inheritance to three tribes, Judah, Ephraim and
Manasseh. All three of these tribes are
special tribes and have special blessings and special roles to play in
history. So for at least two evenings
we’ll be on this. In chapter 14 we start
with a five verse synopsis of the distribution.
I point this out because this is something that again and again you will
see in your Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament and that is that your summary is
always first; the details follow. This
explains, by the way, the structure of Genesis.
Genesis 1-2:4 is a summary of creation; Genesis 2:5 and following has to
do with the details; there is no conflict between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis
chapter 2 if you understand Hebrew style. The only thing probably in American
writings that comes closest to this style would be newspaper reporting where
you have in the newspaper the reporter tries to get through in the first few
sentences the major part of the story, to get your interest to read on down,
and then he gradually fills you in with details. It’s the same thing here, so in verses 1-5 we
have this whole concept of summary.
Let’s read verses 1-5. “And these
are the countries which the children of
Now as we said last time in chapter 13 we come to a change; a change in
outlook in the nation
In Deut. 7:22-24 we read: “And the LORD thy God will put out those
nations before thee by little and little; you may not consume them at once,
lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee.” There’s God’s concern for ecology, even in
the middle of holy war. [23] But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee,
and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. [24]
And He shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their
name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until
thou hast destroyed them.” And obviously
the prediction was that you have two steps; first you have the destruction of
all of the nation and secondly you have the inheritance, in that order. And this is the way the order seemed to
appear prophetically up until the time we strike Joshua 13.
Turn to Joshua 13, we just refer you to something we covered last week
but I want you to see that something has changed by the time Joshua has at
least done what he’s don up to chapter 12.
In 13:2 God says, “This is the land that yet remains,” the concept of
the land that yet remains is something new added to this prophetic
picture. The land that yet remains is
plotted out to inheritance before it is destroyed. All of these areas, area one, Philistia, area
number two was the coastal strip, area number three was Syria; those three
areas with the exception of Syria, are petitioned off and allotted to those who
would claim it by inheritance. Now
here’s what’s happened; watch, a switch is happened. Now here you begin to have the inheritance
parceled out before the destruction.
This is a minor change, and it introduces one of the two principles of
history that we’d like to point out before going further in Joshua.
One great principle in history is the surprise principle. This is due to the fact that though God is
omniscient, we are not. So God has
revealed things to us; we never have the true complete prophetic picture. In other words, God’s prophetic outline of
history is not airtight; there’s flexibility within its prophecy for last
minute changes. So although the
prophetic charts are correct in the sense that you have a long chart, you have
the tribulation and the millennium and all of these things, you’ve seen these
charts, they are good to visualize the picture the Bible gives, you must always
remember that as God did in the past so God can do again. And that is, there can be details that are
not prophesied that crop up from time to time.
For example, if you turn in the New Testament, one of the major changes
of the program of God occurred in Matt. 13. Up until this time Jesus had spoken
of the fact that the kingdom of heaven and the
Now what are the mysteries of the
Now turn to 1 Peter 1:10 and you’ll see this principle and how prophecy
always contains an element of surprise.
In the Old Testament the prophesies had been woven together. Many of the elements were there but they were
woven together in such a way that it wasn’t so clear that you could draw a
prophetic [can’t understand word]. For
example, the greatest believer in the Old Testament could never have drawn
exactly a picture of future history. He
could give you a rough outline of it but not an exact picture of it and in 1
Pet. 1:10 we read, “Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, [11]
Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was n them did
signify when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory
that should follow.” Two things
prophesied about Christ; the sufferings and the glory, in other words, two
things that appeal to be mutually contradictory. You can go back in Isaiah 9, the Mighty God,
the Wonderful Counselor, etc. there’s the glory of Christ. Go to Isaiah 53 and we have seen Him
stricken, the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, and there are the
sufferings of Messiah. The two together,
how do you unweave them, and verses 10-11 says the men in the Old Testament had
struggled with this problem, they had the pieces of prophecy but they weren’t
always able to filter them all out in great detail.
So verse 12, “Unto whom it was revealed that, not unto themselves but
unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them
that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Spirit….” Now in our day
we have quantitatively a lot more prophecy than was available in the Old
Testament. Therefore, of course, we can
draw a more specific picture. But the
thing to remember about this, and learn this from Joshua, is that though God
predicts in the future what is going to happen there is always flexibility in
the program. And there’s a theological
reason for this. Do you know why? It’s because of volition. Suppose, for example the prophets of the Old
Testament were really able to predict what would happen t Jesus Christ. Suppose you were to ask Micah or Zechariah,
some of the prophets of the Old Testament, let’s draw a prophecy chart, and so
they would say okay, here’s how it’s going to be; John the Baptist is going to
come here, Jesus is going to come here, He’s going to be rejected, He’s going
to die on the cross, etc. there’ll be an interim age, and then Jesus will come
again to set up the millennial kingdom.
There will be a whole interim period here due to Jesus’ rejection; here
are the sufferings of Christ, there is the glory which shall follow. But if this had been clear cut then Jesus,
during this time period, could no way have bonafidely offered Himself and the
kingdom to
In other words, when Jesus of Nazareth the Kingdom is among you, I am
your King, the Kingdom is about to come, it was a bona fide offer at that point.
It was an offer to their volition and they had the responsibility to
accept it or to reject it. But had this
program been clear it would not and could not have been a bona fide offer since prophecy guaranteed that the nation to whom
it was first revealed and offered would reject it. You see this in the book of Acts, you see
this again and again through Scripture, that God, as it were, gives enough
prophetic details to show that He is the sovereign Lord of history and to show
us various things to anticipate and expect, but not enough to draw a totally
closed chart. The chart is approximate. And this has to be borne in mind as we see in
this time of Joshua 14.
We read, “And these are the countries which the children of
For example, verse 1 takes careful note to draw your attention to the
fact that Eleazar, the priest is the one who does this along with Joshua. Why is this noticed in there? To show you the continuity principle. Turn back to Num. 27:18, “And the LORD said
unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Sprit, and
lay thine hand upon him.” Now this is
said forty or fifty years before the passage we’re studying tonight. [19] “And set him before Eleazar, the priest,
and before all the congregation, and give him a charge in their sight.” Verse 21, “And he shall stand before Eleazar,
the priest, who shall ask counsel for him after the judgment of Urim before the
LORD; at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both
he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.” The point is here that when Moses dies and
passes away there’s not going to be left a man who has direct access to
God. Therefore Joshua is going to have
to approach God through the high priest who has the Urim and the Thummim.
I’ve done a lot of study on the Urim and Thummim and to this day I still
don’t know they are. The Urim and
Thummim are mysterious words there that occur in the Bible for something that
was carried on the breastplate of the high priest; the high priest had what
looked like an undershirt on, if you want a very undignified term, it was a
glorified undershirt. And over this he
had, again the only thing I can think of is something you’d have on a cold day
you’d put your hands in it, a muff of some sort, but it hangs down from your neck. The point is that you have this thing in the
front where the priest reaches in, not to keep his hands warm but this is what
it looked like. Now inside this were
these Urim and Thummim. Some scholars
believe that the Urim and Thummim were two rocks, one of which had one letter
of the Hebrew alphabet, one has another, and one rock represented yes and the
other represented no. This is not
divination because it had to be done only by the high priest Himself.
So at a time when there came a problem of justice, there was a decision
to be made, and it came to a problem with the lots of the land, then the high
priest in a very eloquent ceremony would reach into this area and pull forth
one of these stones, yes or no, and this is how they attained guidance. Another theory says that on the breastplate
of the high priest there were many stones and these stones lit up. For example, Josephus says that up until 200
years before the time he wrote the high priest had an onyx stone on his right
shoulder, and when they would go forth into battle or offer a good sacrifice
this stone would glow. But he said 200
years before I began my writings these stones no longer flashed, and evidently
the priesthood had become corrupt. So
there was something supernatural going on by which God was able to guide on a
yes/no basis. This is not prophecy; the
prophets were verbal revelation, this is just a yes/no type revelation, and God
would use this Urim and Thummim.
Apparently this is what Joshua would use to a lot the land. But the point to remember about Numbers 27 is
that Joshua is following exactly these instructions.
So when we come back to Joshua 14 you should see that there’s a
continuity here, Joshua is submitting to the authority of Moses. Why is it that we have these two principles
of history, the continuity principle that says there is a flow to history, it’s
a rational flow to history, not like Hegel; Hegel was a 19th century
philosopher who said history moves by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and it
was kind of an irrational thing, so you had the absolute spirit that controls
history and you have an irrational synthesis of historic progress. Now this is exactly opposite to
Christianity. Christianity holds to no
irrational synthesis, Christian holds to a rational progress throughout
history. It’s progress that operates
this way, not thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
And many religions follow Hegel in this irrationalism; many of the eastern
cults, such as Ba’hai, etc. follow the concept that God reveals in some sort of
a synthetic progress down through time.
However, the Bible says there is rational progress, that what Moses says
here, these are Moses’ words, Joshua may add to them but Joshua can never
contradict them logically. You can
always add but you cannot contradict so you have a rational synthesis. This is, by the way, why we hold, as
fundamentalists to the fact that there are no errors in the Bible; there are no
contradictions in the Bible. If there
were contradictions in the Bible then that would be bona fide evidence that this book is not inspired by a rational
God. So if we’re going to hold that the
universe is created rationally, then we have to hold that prophecy and all of
these historical records are logically consistent with one another.
Now why is it that we have the surprise principle: that’s the continuity
principle, we have the surprise principle that we have seen here in
Joshua. Why is this? This is because as humans, being finite, we
do not have absolute truth in all its encompassing capacity. We don’t have
infinite truth; we have partial truth but we do not have infinite truth. Therefore we can never know everything,
therefore our knowledge, even of revelation, is partial. For example, on a theoretical basis it might
be very possible that God has ten other attributes we don’t know of. Today all we know of God’s attributes are
those that He has given to us in Scripture.
But we have no guarantee that God does not have other attributes. These may be the “secret things” of Deut.
29:29 that He has not yet revealed to us.
So you want to see this, this prophecy is always true, it’s consistent
but it’s always partial. It is never
total. You can never say here’s a whole
picture of everything, I’ve got it all in one box because you can’t put God in
a box. God is infinite and you never can
do this to Him. That’s why, for example, when I draw God’s so-called essence
box, you never see me close it it’s always open on the top and on the right
side. And the reason for that is to show
that God is infinite and you never can close Him off and say I totally
understand. Do you know what that
would mean, by the way, if you said you could totally understand God? It would
mean that you’re God; it would mean that you have infinite knowledge, so obviously
we can never say that.
Now in Joshua 14 it says something in the last part of verse 1,
“distribute the inheritance to them.”
Now we want to have some understanding about inheritance in the Bible,
how this word is used and what it means and why all this nitpicking
detail. Throughout the next several
chapters you are going to get into boundary lines, cities, and go up to the
hill here, then you go over to the city here, and you wonder what is going on
with all this detail. Well this has to
do with the importance of an inheritance.
The first thing about an inheritance to realize is that all of what you
are going to read in these chapters are specific fulfillments of prophecy. In other words, what these are are real
estate records that vindicate God is faithful.
When God said He was going to promise “I will bring you into the land,”
it wasn’t vague; it wasn’t something pie in the sky by and by, or off in the
wild blue yonder some place and some mystical solution. It was actual literal fulfillment in space
time history. So that what you have is a
set of real estate records. So if you
want to think of this as detail, boring, just think of it, these are real
estate records, just like you’d go down t the country courthouse and you would
pull out property things, you’d find your lot, Lot # 289 of the subsection of
such and such. That is less important
than this book; this book is the real estate record for all the twelve
tribes.
Now to show you the value of this turn to Lev. 25:23, here you see why it
is necessary to go into all these details.
Now you can be thankful I am not going to go into all the details of the
nitty-gritty of the real estate records.
All I’m trying to show you is why the details are there. If you’re
gung-ho real estate person you can go ahead and read them yourself, but I want
to give you just the principles of why they’re there. In Lev. 25:23, “The land shall not be sold
forever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with
Me.” And God is saying here that He has
title to this land, it can neither be bought nor can it be sold. The records, then, of Joshua become very
crucial. These are the records that are
going to be used to execute this strange little custom that we’re going to read
here in a few verses. Verse 24, “And in
all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. [25]
If thy brother hath become poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and
if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother
sold. [26] And if the man have none to redeem it, and he himself be able to
redeem it, [27] Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore
the overpayment unto the man to whom he sold it, that he may return unto his
possession. [28] But if he be not able
to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him
that has bought it until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it shall go
out, and he shall return unto his possession.”
Now let’s summarize what it says here.
This is one of the most phenomenal systems of economics and welfare that
has ever been conceived in the history of man.
If you want a perfect system of economic and social justice, you have
but to look in the Law of Moses. Here
was such a masterful system that no person would ever go hungry, but there
would never be indolence on the welfare rolls building up and building up and
building up as we have in our society.
Here’s how they did it. Every
man, by virtue of his family owned part of that land. This is why this inheritance becomes very
crucial in Joshua. He actually owned
part of that land because he was the son of a father of a father who lived at
the time that you’re reading about in Joshua.
When those people came into that land, the fathers of this generation,
in Joshua 14, 15, 16, and 17 were the men that assumed title to this land.
Now what God said was that if those men, or their sons or their
grandsons, or their great-grandsons, on down in history, lost control of that
land through bad business deals, etc. that at the 50th year this
land would revert back to the family who originally had title to it. So for example, if this land had been used on
a collateral for a loan, and the loan fell through and somebody seized this
land to pay for that loan, the land ultimately would have to go back to that
person who originally had title to it in this book of Joshua. Thus you can see Joshua becomes crucial
because this process, of the Jubilee year, can’t operate unless you have an
infallible real estate record of who owned what. So therefore we have all of these details in
the book of Joshua. In other words, this
is the basis to make this thing go.
I want you to notice something which was typical of their system, not
just this particular mechanic but in all areas of welfare. They had ways of providing for those people
who would become poor through loss of loved ones, through husbands dying,
through catastrophes in the family, financial reversals, etc. They had ways of providing food for these
people and providing a start again. And the way God seemed to work in the
welfare system of the Old Testament was that if a person had become financially
insolvent and had essentially got down to the point where he had no assets
whatever, there would be enough food in each city so that he would never have
to go hungry. One-third of the national
budget went to provide food for those who could not afford it. It was 33% of the national budget that went
to welfare. But, 66% of the national
budget went to Bible teaching and missionary activity. So that gives you an idea of the ratio of
this thing, how it worked out. So every
third year, every township, say for example you’d have a city and they’d tithe;
well, every third year they’d take that tithe, which would be food content,
it’s not money, it’s actual food, and they would store it locally in the
towns. What for? For people who would be on welfare, people
who needed food, people who would starve otherwise would eat from this
storehouse. So you had a means of providing for those who could not provide for
themselves. But, this happened only once
every third year so that you would not have a constant buildup of this.
And the land thing that we see in Lev. 25 worked such that if a person
was really lazy and they wanted to take advantage of the welfare system there’s
no real way they could do it because they’d have to wait 49 years to get that
land back. So this acted as a deterrent
to making foolish sorts of things and so on.
So there was built into… I developed this in the Deuteronomy series in
far more detail, but there are built in measures so that you have welfare for
those who need it, but you have built-in corrective devices so that you never
get this welfare problem that we’ve got in this country of everybody and his
uncle on the welfare roles. How does
this start? It starts because of poor
design. God has the perfect design and
yet no nation, with the exception of the early Americans to this continent,
have ever tried to design a welfare system based on the Bible. Not one nation, and yet here you have
principles for the most fantastic workable system in history, but no nation, to
my knowledge, has ever tried to take these principles and build up a system in
this area.
Let’s go back to Joshua; by now you should be acquainted with why this
book is important and this section and why all these real estate things are
important for they form the basis for making this welfare system work.
The other thing that we want to remember about this inheritance is that
as this is a fulfillment of prophecy it proves the supernaturalness of the
Bible. Fulfilled prophecy is one of the
great evidences that the Bible is a supernatural book because the only way to
explain these supernatural prophecies and their fulfillment is one of two ways;
you can try to explain it by chance.
Suppose you’re sitting there and you say I don’t want to accept the
supernaturalness of the Bible. You have
two ways you can get around it, or try to.
I would suggest you can try chance and say well, I can calculate the
chances of this prophecy coming true simply on the basis of randomness. But if you do that and take the time to do it
mathematically you’ll see that it’s almost infinitesimally small.
The second thing that you can do, as the liberals do with this chapter,
and say well, the prophecy back there that the descendants of Abraham would get
this land is just made up, so this is really the starting point in the Bible,
Joshua, and everything that you read this side of Joshua is just made up, it’s
a foundation that is made up to give it a platform or something underneath
it. This is where all your modern
commentaries and most of the graduates of most seminaries today hold to this
view, that Abraham and the early chapters of Genesis are just fabrication.
Now before we go any further I want to take the word “inheritance” and
come over to the New Testament to show you that we have an inheritance as
believers and ours is apportioned to us by Christ as this was apportioned to
Israel by Joshua. The first stop will be
Hebrews 9:15, the inheritance of the New Testament Christian so you will see
that you to have an inheritance that is eternal. This is you, now the other part is Israel,
you’re not part of Israel, the principle applies but you are in the Church Age,
so for you, in Heb. 9:15 it says, “And for this cause He [Jesus Christ] is the
mediator of the New Testament,” or the New Covenant, “that by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament”
or covenant, “ they who are called might receive the promise of etrnal
inheritance.” In other words, Jesus
Christ has died to bring about the possibility of inheritance. What can you think of happened in Joshua by
way of analogy? The conquest of the
land. Joshua had to conquer the land in
order for the tribes to be able to inherit it.
Jesus Christ had to actually go to the cross and die and rise again from
the dead in order for you to be able to inherit your eternal inheritance, so
both are analogous in that somebody had to do the ground work, and until that
ground work was done your inheritance was untouchable.
Go to 1 Pet. 1:4, this is the only kind of inheritance that Christians
should worry about. If you have money
and you have a lot of funds, the thing to do is give it away while you’re
alive, give it to your children or whoever you want to give it to while you’re
alive; the last thing to do with it is endow a religious institution; the
liberals in this country have made their money and they have taken over
religious organization after religious organization because nitwit Christian
endowed these with millions of dollars and if those Christians had never
endowed the liberalism would never have existed in this nation because liberals
cannot get people to support them. They
are parasites and they live off endowed institutions. We saw this in New
England. In New England you had independent
congregational churches in every town and they made a mistake. Those churches were the common property of
the town and early in the late 1600s and early 1700s and even later than that
the Unitarians came into New England and they began to vote and as soon as they
would get a 51% vote against the Congregationalists in every town they put
through a petition and we lost hundreds of churches in New England. This is why to this day evangelicalism is in
a dark corner of the world in New England.
When the power blackout happened two or three years ago that was
typological oaf the spiritual blackout because that area of the country was
destroyed, basically, by this system. We
had people who would endowed Harvard University with millions and millions of
dollars, and that institution was set up by godly men to teach men the classics,
not just the Bible but the classics, so they would have a true education within
the divine viewpoint framework, a true unified liberal education. And that institution went down and there was
no way they could stop it because the attorney general of the State of
Massachusetts ruled the dead hand cannot control property in the next
generation, no matter what your will is; no will is strong enough to protect
property. So lesson, if you have
property, get rid of it while you’re alive because it’ll probably wind up in
the hand of some liberal after you’re dead.
1 Peter 1:4, this is the inheritance to be concerned with, our
inheritance “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not
away, reserved in heaven for you.” Key
words: first “incorruptible: this means it is not subject to death therefore it
cannot be part of the old creation. You
have two parts of the universe. You have
one part which is the new universe consisting right now of Jesus Christ, plus
the spirit of regenerate Christians and nothing else. The old universe is under the condemnation of
Gen. 2, death. So therefore, if this
inheritance is incorruptible it can’t be part of the old universe, it must be
part of this new universe down here. So
that’s what Peter speaks of. It is
“undefiled,” and this means… in the Greek it means free from stain. It means that it is untouchable by the
pollution of this world. So if you
happen to have friends in Los Angeles tell them that at least this inheritance
is free from pollution. And that “fadeth
not away” means wear not out; in other words, this thing is not going to wear
out, it’s going to be eternal. So there
are some more descriptive words for our inheritance.
Now go to Col. 3:24 for another verse on the inheritance of a Christian. In Colossians 3:24 we read, “Knowing that of
the LORD ye will receive the reward of the inheritance; for ye serve the Lord
Christ.” And here again we have the
inheritance of the believer and here the inheritance is tied with reward; if
you’re sharp enough to see the vocabulary here you’re going to see there’s a
seemingly contradiction because in an inheritance you don’t do anything to gain
an inheritance but you do do something to gain a reward. And this introduces the two aspects of the
Christian life, sovereignty and free will.
God sovereignly says I give you this inheritance but it turns out in
history that inheritance you have earned by your Christian activity. So that by the time you get down there to
phase three you actually have earned this inheritance, not in the sense of
salvation by works or anything like that but it’s credited to your
account. This is what it means “will
receive the reward of the inheritance.”
I’ll read a passage from Rev. 14:13 where this same concept comes
out. “And I heard a voice from heaven
saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from
henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that
they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them.” Now let’s read this again. Here it says believers who are going to die,
they’re going to go to heaven and be face to face with the Lord, but this verse
says “their works do follow them.” Now
what does that mean? It means, as I have
said again and again, you create your own historical record to present to
God. You are a responsible creature, you
can’t blame it on environment, somebody else, you can’t stand the person you
live with, your husband, your wife, your child, your parents, some other
situation, it’s always somebody else. God says you write your own historical
record, you are a free responsible agent and you may have frustration after
frustration but God says that those frustrations are not above the grace assets
that He gives you to meet them. So therefore
there’s no excuse for Christians saying I couldn’t help it because of something
else. You are personally held
responsible. So this is another area.
Finally, one further passage in the New Testament on the Christian’s
inheritance, Eph. 1:11. I want you to
see that we truly do have an inheritance, that is going to be as literal and
going to be more glorious than the tribes are inheriting in the book of
Joshua. “In whom also we have obtained
an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh
all things after the counsel of his own will,” the thing to remember there is
that this actually in the Greek it means we have been picked as an inheritance,
but the idea will flow as you’ll see in a moment. Predestination is brought in. Why?
How is the inheritance allocated in the Old Testament? It is allocated by God’s sovereign will, they
had to consult the Urim and the Thummim; the tribes have no say what the exact
nature of their inheritance is going to be;
So the exact nature of our inheritance is planned for us in
predestination, verse 11.
Verse 12, “That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first
trusted in Christ, [13] In whom also ye trusted, after ye heard the word of
truth, the gospel of your salvation … the Holy Spirit of promise,” verse 14,
“Who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased
possession, unto the praise of His glory.”
Now this teaches something that’s tremendous about indwelling. Verse 14 is saying that the indwelling Holy
Spirit and the effects that He produces in your life are an earnest or
foretaste of what this future inheritance is going to be like. It’s a preview of coming attractions, in
other words. The indwelling Holy Spirit,
the quality of life that He produces, the peace, the joy and the power, that we
described in Romans 8, this is actually a foretaste of that which is exactly
the same in eternity. Now the word
“earnest” in the Greek was used for down payment. The down payment was that which ultimately
would be paid, same concept, same thing.
So the blessings of the Spirit now in the present are actually part and
parcel of that which is going to be showered in great, great magnitude in the
future.
So therefore it should be exciting to you to realize that walking in the
power of the Spirit is actually a fore taste of heaven. As one man said, the
Christian life should be lived as though we were transported to heaven and came
back down again, and we are actually living on the momentum that we got while
we were up in heaven. So that you have
this present connected to the future, a continuity.
One more verse in the New Testament, Heb. 4 and then we’ll finish up
with Joshua 14:3, again we have this interesting contradiction that seems to
appear in the text. Remember we said the
inheritance is something God sovereignly gives you, yet on the other hand it’s
said to be a reward for your own volition.
Here you have the same thing in Heb. 4:3; it says “For we who have
believed do enter into rest, as he said,” but then in 4:11 it says, “Let us
labor, therefore, to enter into that rest.”
See in verse 3 you have the certainty that the Christian will enter into
that final inheritance. But in verse 11
it says you’ve got to labor to get into that inheritance. Why?
It’s simple, the Christian is held responsible for carving out his
historical record in history that is part and parcel of that which is
future. The Christian influences future
destiny moment by moment because he has volition and he is responsible as a
creature that has volition for that which is future. So it’s connected; it is sovereignly
guaranteed but it is brought about, not fatalistically but it is brought about
by cause and effect, volition, volition, volition, volition. Every time, for example, you walk in the
power of the Spirit, you are building that future inheritance.
Now let’s come back to Joshua 14.
In verse 2 it says they did this “by lot.” Now here’s the problem, you have the real
estate, here’s the Sea of Galilee, you have area one, Philistia, you have the
coastal strip, area two, and to the north you have area three. Apart from these areas the rest of the land
is now free, mostly, you have Jerusalem hung up here with the Jebusites, etc.
but you have the land basically open to occupation at this point. Now in verse 2 it says “By lot was their
inheritance,” here’s the Urim and the Thummim, here’s where God is giving out
these sections of land. For example, Judah is going to settle right in here. Ephraim is going to settle right in here; in
other words, there are going to be tracts of land laid out and it’s going to be
under the sovereign control of God, the inheritance sovereignly given to them.
Then in verses 3-4 we have a minor explanation of a problem and that is
the mathematics doesn’t seem to work out because if you take the nine and a
half tribes, how do you get nine and a half from twelve. Well, verses 3-4 explain this. You have the Levites eliminated from the system;
this leaves eleven tribes. You have the
Levites eliminated. Why? Because the Levites were people who were to be God’s
own people. After the Levites were
eliminated you have Joseph. So let’s
take the Levites out, that leaves 11, one short. Well how do you get twelve then, if you take
two and a half away you get nine and a half from twelve, but if you take two
and a half away from eleven you don’t get nine and a half. So verses 3 and 4 explain it by saying that
Joseph split, and we’re going to go into that next time, split into Manasseh
and Ephraim and that’s why we have the math here.
I just take this time to point out this because I want you to see
something that often times I’ve had college students come to me with a problem
thrown out to them in the classroom and they don’t know enough of the word to
catch it, but the insinuation is that the redactors or the editors as the
liberal would teach them in the college classroom, the redactors were some sort
of an idiot who didn’t think logically.
And they just kind of piled everything together in some little illogical
hodge-podge. If that’s the case, why do
you have notices like this? If these
people didn’t think logically why did they take all this time to explain things
like you have in verses 3-4? It’s
simple, they did think logically and it’s the liberal student who comes to the
Bible that’s wrong in this area.
Finally verse 5 of this introduction shows you that all of it was done
according to Moses. Verse 5 is going to
summarize everything from chapter 14-22; it’s all wrapped up in verse 5. Verse 5 is a summary verse; it is not
chronologically going before verse 6.
Verse 5 summarizes everything.
Now verse 6 and following, we have the story of Caleb. Why is the story of Caleb put here
first? For two reasons, number one,
Caleb was a man who had his own real estate picked out. God had already promised Caleb something and
Caleb said wait a minute, before we start having lots here I want mine and he
had the right to do this. But the second
and more powerful reason for having the story of Caleb is because of this man’s
mental attitude. He had the mental
attitude of perfect confidence in the will of God and we’re going to see this
in a moment. Verse 6, “Then the children
of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal,” remember they’re back in Gilgal now, it’s
the headquarters, “and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh,” now who he was is a
problem in Scripture, his exact lineage, “Thou knowest the thing that the LORD
said unto Moses, the man of God, concerning me and thee in Kadesh-barnea.”
Now he’s referring to an event that happened in Num. 13 we don’t have
time to go back to that but the Israelites were moving north into the land,
they were going to start their southern penetration, they met the Amalekites
around Kadesh-barnea and were repulsed.
The reason for this however was a spiritual one. It was that the spies were sent into the land
and they saw these Anakim. Now the spies
really saw giants; these guys would walk around and they were just utterly
amazed and terrified at these men and they cam back looking at the whole thing
in a naturalistic framework, except two.
One was Joshua and the other was Caleb.
By the way, Caleb in the Hebrew means dog; it’s a very unglorious name. Joshua means salvation and this is dog. Now why his parents ever called him dog I
don’t know but poor Caleb had a very, very bad name; whether his mother called
him here doggie, here doggie I don’t know but that’s what Caleb, it’s the
Hebrew word for dog. And yet this man,
working out from under that name, actually as far as God is concerned it’s a
very wonderful name because of what follows.
Verse 8, “Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of
the people melt; but I wholly followed the LORD my God.” Now he’s not bragging there, this is an
expression, which is a technical one, used in Scripture, “wholly followed” does
not mean intensity of commitment.
“Wholly follow” means duration of commitment, it’s horizontal, not
vertical. “Wholly follow” means a
Christian makes it to death in fellowship.
A Christian or a believer who does not wholly follow the Lord is a
person who in his latter days, after a previously successful Christian life
fades out. Several examples of this are
given in Scripture. One man is Solomon;
he is said to be a man who did not “wholly follow the Lord.” And we can tell from Solomon’s life why;
prosperous in the beginning, faded out at the end, sin unto death. So what Caleb is saying here is that I wholly
followed the Lord, I was obedient like Joshua was.
Verse 9, “And Moses swore on that day,” this is at Kadesh-barnea,
“Surely the land whereon my feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance,” now
that actually is a quotation from Deut. 1:36 and I want you to see something
about this man by the name of dog. He was
given that promise 45 years before he claimed it. For 45 years he held onto to that promise and
for 45 years while they were traipsing out in the wilderness and for 45 years
all the way on up through the time of the conquest Caleb held onto that promise. Now that’s something fantastic. God gave him a promise and for 45 years it
was crisis after crisis after crisis but he held onto that promise and he’s
going to cash it in now, with great dividends.
He couldn’t apply it right away, like many promises you are going to
learn you are not going to be able to apply right away but you hold on and I
guarantee there’ll be a time come in your life when there will be an occasion
where you’re going to need those promises, and you’re going to have a
catastrophe come into your life or some pressure into your life and those
promises are going to come in very handy.
And here Caleb, 45 years after that promise was given… think of it, in
45 years he couldn’t claim it once, but now it’s ready and he claims it.
So in verse 10, 11 and 12 you have a strong Hebrew word to emphasize now
is the time; you see it in your English, verse 10, “And now, behold,” and you
see it in the last part of verse 10, “and now, lo,” and you see it at the beginning of verse 12,
“now,” and this is a powerful Hebrew expression used so often in the Psalms,
where the Psalmist is pessimistic and he has his troubles and his trials, and
everything is black. And then the Psalm
is neatly cut in the Hebrew, you can see this, it’s usually involved with [can’t
understand Hebrew word] and this Hebrew expression, “and now,” and there’s a
complete switch in the Psalm, in the last part of the Psalm the Psalmist is
thanking God in his life because God has answered his prayer. In other words, this is a sharp transition in
the Hebrew. It’s a very sharp word. So what he’s saying is that I’ve held this
promise 45 years and now I’m cashing it in.
Now is the time.
So, “And now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, as he said, these
forty and five years,” by the way, verse 10 is from where we find out how long
it took Joshua to conquer the land. Some
of you mathematicians should be able to figure this out. When was Joshua given the promise of verse 1? He was given it two years after they went
in. Forty minus two is
thirty-eight. So from Kadesh-barnea to
the time of the end of the wilderness wanderings are 38 years. 38 from 45 is 7, it took Joshua 7 years to
get to this point. This is how we know
it took Joshua 7 years to conquer the land.
Verse 11, “And yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that
Moses sent me,” look at this man, he’s 85, by the way if this seems unusual it
is. If you plot a graph from Biblical
data, you can do this on semi-log paper or on regular block graph paper and you
work up a chart of the age at death you’ll get a chart that looks like
this. Here’s the flood, after the flood
we have two curves, both what we call exponential decay curves, one here,
stopped at Eber and begins with Peleg, and this one starts what we call [can’t
understand word] to a line here which is 70 years, which is the normal life
span. But at this point, we’re here at
1400 BC, this line is actually at 90 years, so the average life span of human
beings at this time was 90 years. You
may find this hard to believe but this is the literal Biblical record and the
exponential curve certainly proves this is not due to calendar switching; this
is actually due to a bio-physical thing operating in the human system.
So in verse 11 we have this statement made, even though he is 85, “I
still am strong,” in the Hebrew it’s much more powerful than in the
English. You read this in the Hebrew
word and the word “still” is prominent, and if I were to translate it literally
from the Hebrew it would read this way: “STILL I am strong,” 45 years later, I
have been holding this promise and I’m still strong, I’m still able to do this
as I was when I was 40 years old.
In verse 12 he says, “Now, therefore, give me this mountain, of which
the LORD spoke in that day; for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there,
and that the cities were great and fortified; if so be the LORD will be with
me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.” And what he asks for, think of this, the
first man given the land, 85 years old, and he picks the toughest area that he
possibly can, because it was precisely that mountainous area around Hebron
where the Anakim were, that scared the pants of these little namby-pamby spies
that went in there, that were looking at things from the human viewpoint and
the naturalistic framework and couldn’t take it. So this 85 year old walks sin there, 45 years
later, and says I’m taking it. And so
Caleb takes over and he actually drives these people out. This is one of the phenomenal unsung heroes;
you don’t read much about Caleb in history; he’s a man in the Old Testament
much like Barnabas is in the new, a man who is tremendous in grace and yet the
Holy Spirit did not see fit to give us all the details of his life.
Then finally in verses 13 and following Joshua gives this to him. [“And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto
Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, Hebron for an inheritance. [14] Hebron, therefore,
became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, unto this
day because he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel. [15] And the name of
Hebron before was Kirjath-arba; which Arba was a great man among the
Anakim. And the land had rest from
war.”]
There’s one point to remark about verse 11 before we close and that is
the problem of a person who is a believer who gradually gets older and older in
life and reaches old age. The older a
person is in Scripture, you get this Scriptural principle come forth, there’s a
danger that happens, and this is why at the end of verse 11 it says I have
“strength now, for war,” and then it’s amplified, “both to go out, and to come
in.” Why is that there? Turn to Titus and we’ll see a Biblical
principle about old age, something which as a pastor you have to constantly be
aware of, you can see it operate in church history, men who were at one time
strong Christians, and it’s very natural to sympathize with them, men who in
their day stood up for the absolutes, who did battle when it had to be done,
when they get older they forsake the battleground. And so in Titus 2, Titus is a young pastor,
going to the isle of Crete, was warned about older Christians. Paul told Titus these various things, and in
2:1, “But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine.” He’s telling him to warn these things about
various groups within the local congregation.
In verse 2, “That the aged men [let them] be sober-minded, grave,
temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience.” And translated the word “sober” is the Greek
word meaning alert, mentally alert. In
other words, there’s a tendency in old age to relax, relax your guard, and
frankly you can observe this in many, many religious institutions. Who is it that continues to go back to the
institution that they were brought up and raised in in childhood even though
that same institution has become apostate?
It’s simply that because in their earlier days they’d never have done
that, never would they have, but in their later days they don’t want to fight
any more. And the tendency and the
natural temptation is to just do… I haven’t got many years let me live in
peace.
But that’s not divine viewpoint, if God has you breathing this morning,
that means He has a plan for your life, and when He wants you to relax, he’s
going to take you home to be with Him.
So as long as you are living, you have a battle to fight. And in verse 2, that’s the principle he’s
giving here, he says Titus, make sure that these aged men stay alert, and
“grave” and “temperate” means… the word here basically means discipline,
especially in the area of mental attitude.
And this is a model we find in Caleb; I am still ready for war. And this should be the motto of every
believer. As long as you live be ready
for war; when you’re not ready for war it’s time to be face to face with the
Lord and He assigns that time and He’ll take you to be with Himself.