Joshua 26
Safeguards of Freedom
Joshua 17, tonight we finish the allotment. Remember the book of Joshua is basically
divided into two portions, the conquest and the allotment; the holy war, and
then dividing the spoils. We have been
studying that second part, the allotment or the dividing of the spoils, or the
gaining of the inheritance. The thing to
remember about this book of Joshua is that it is the manual on holy war, and
should forever dispel any ideas that Christianity promotes pacifism. I don’t know where this comes from but it
seems to me that we have more and more people who would claim that you cannot
be a Christian and kill people. Nothing
could be further from the truth. In
fact, in some situations if you don’t kill people you have every reason to
wonder about one’s salvation, for if a person is not interested in fulfilling
their commitment to defend their country, does not think enough of the freedom,
does not think enough of the institution of marriage and family to protect it,
with his life if necessary, and to take other lives if that is necessary, then
one has all the reason to wonder if the person ever heard of the word, the
Bible.
Since this is a fundamental thing it’s something to think about every
time you come to these pages; you are looking at a book of war. Never forget this; this sets the tone for the
rest of the Bible, this sets the tone for the Christian life. Our rest in the land does not come in this
life. Joshua was not able to lead these
people into rest, as the book of Hebrew says, and we have a rest only within
our regenerate [can’t understand word] but we never have a rest from the
struggle of sin, we never have rest from the struggle against Satan’s
wiles. This is why Martin could write
the hymn we sung tonight, A Mighty Fortress is our God. There’s nothing peaceful about that hymn;
obviously because Martin Luther was a very astute Christian leader and he
realized there is no peace of that kind in the Christian life; it’s a battle. So I think as we go through this it’s well to
keep remembering this, that the whole tone of the Christian life in the Bible
is one of battle.
Now in Joshua 17 we hurried through verses 14-18 last time and there’s
just a little notation here. Remember in
chapters 13-17 we dealt with the first distribution. In other words, there are going to be two
distributions in this book. The first
distribution is from a place called Gilgal, which was the base camp of Joshua. And this first distribution included two
tribes, the tribe of
In verse 14-18 we have part of the tribe of Joseph, and by the way,
remember Joseph broke up into two tribes, named for his children, Ephraim and
Manasseh. They both took an area north
of
Verse 16, “And the children of Joseph said,” now notice the reply, you
see in this little dialogue, as the dialogue goes on you find out why they’ve
come in for a handout. See, they said
they were a great people, and you notice they said that little remark in verse
14, “the Lord has blessed me hitherto,” in other words, God has blessed me all
over the board and now you should give me something. And Joshua just applies simple logic, well if
God is blessing you why don’t you just get up there and get it yourself, it’s
very simple. Then in verse 16 the truth
of the matter comes out, “And the children of Joseph said, The hill is not enough
for us; and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have
chariots of iron, both they who are of Beth-shean and its towns, and they who
are of the
Now walking by faith in the Christian life doesn’t mean floating and
letting everything drop into your lap.
Walking by faith, in another way, would be walking and accomplishing
activities in the confidence that God is there working with you. In other words, that you are in the center of
His will. Faith is trust, perfect trust,
perfect confidence, that what you are doing is in the will of God. That’s walking by faith. But notice it is walking, it is not flinching
by faith and it’s not lying down by faith, it’s walking by faith. And we have here something that we’ve seen
again and again in the Christian life and in the struggle back in the conquest
period and that is the struggle to maintain balance between sovereignty and
volition. And this is always a struggle
in the Christian life because as a result of a lot of this deeper life
conferences people say why it’s all of God and all we have to do is sit around
and let go and let God, and the Holy Spirit will do it all, etc. What they fail to realize is that who is the
Holy Spirit going to use as instruments; the Holy Spirit, by the way, doesn’t
have a body. Do you know who the Holy
Spirit indwells? The Holy Spirit
indwells believers, so therefore if the Holy Spirit is going to do something
guess who He’s going to use. So it’s
utterly wrong for someone to say oh, the Holy Spirit is going to do this.
If you’ll notice carefully in your Christian life, if you look at it
carefully, if you’re trained, the first prerequisite in doing battle is, of
course, to learn how to use your weapons.
But if you are trained and you have taken the time to take in Bible
doctrine and understand it, I don’t mean just listen, and it just going in one
ear and out the other, but actually understanding the Bible doctrine and you
are prepared, God will move you out into a situation where He’ll use it. You don’t have to worry about the
opportunity; it will always come your way.
But you have to be willing, willing to be a soldier for Christ and be willing
to do something and that doesn’t mean get involved in ten thousand religious
activities, it simply means using what you know, walking by faith. And here these people expected this thing to
be dropped in their laps and you have the classic recitation of it here where
Joshua says if this is to be into your hands, it is going to be done by you
taking your feet and going left right, left right, left right, right up Mount
Ephraim.
So the function of volition is outlined in verse 15 and in verse 16 what
is paralyzing volition, the lack of faith comes out. In verses 17-18 Joshua gives them a
promise. “And Joshua spoke unto the
house of Joseph, even to Ephraim and to Manasseh, saying, Thou art a great
people, and hast great power; thou shalt not have one lot only. [18] But the
mountain shall be thine; for it is a forest, and thou shalt cut it down, and
the borders of it shall be thine; for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites,
though they have iron chariots, and thou they are strong.” So he gives them a promise and he says you’re
going to do this, now let’s get going.
So this last section closes out the end of the chapter, with verses
14-18, because it’s just one of those little incidents that you ought to
remember, that shows you that walking by faith does not mean sitting around for
a bolt of lightning out of the blue. Now
you see this oftentimes in personal witnessing and evangelism, where people say
oh yeah, I read it, but when it comes to an opportunity they don’t initiate
it. They must expect that the Holy
Spirit is just going to come up to them and kind of open their mouth and close
it, like a puppet, and somehow the gospel is going to get out your lips and
this is how it works. Well, that isn’t
how it works. You have to initiate it;
sometimes it means you have to walk through a door and initiate it. But the reason we have this paralysis and
imbalance, first of all, sloppy Bible doctrine and second is minus faith. You don’t have the faith in the first
place. You see if you don’t have faith
or confidence, naturally you don’t want to witness, you don’t want to do
anything else, obviously because you’re embarrassed, because you’re afraid that
something is going to happen, that somebody is going to look at you cross-eyed
or something, or you’ll have an encounter with somebody and you don’t know what
to do with the person.
So therefore you have to have faith first and when you begin to have
faith, and then you move. But if you do
have faith you will move, the two together.
Immobility never goes with faith; immobility never goes with faith! Yet this is the image that I’m discovering in
Christians right here in Lubbock have received in some of these deeper life
conferences where they have learned that the concept of faith is just kind of
sit and relax. Well, you can be relaxed
but sitting around doing nothing is not faith; that’s just carnality, it has
nothing to do with faith, shouldn’t be confused with faith in any way.
Now beginning in chapter 18, we want to deal with the rest of the
tribes. In chapters 18 and 19 we deal
with the so-called second distribution.
Now this distribution covers seven tribes. There are seven tribes that are going to be
covered here instead of two like the first distribution. It is done from a different place; the first
place was Gilgal, just west of the
Now that’s a vital lesson to remember, and that’s something that goes
hand in hand with the New Testament and that is when God gives us something in
phase two or just life He never gives it to us so that we are without
activity. This goes, incidentally, for
securing the position as a mature believer; it requires activity. Notice this, you have area one, the
Philistines, the pentapolis, the five cities of the Philistines, the Sea
People. And then north, all the way on
up the coast of
And we found last time how this went.
If you remember 16:63, what happened at Jerusalem; well, Jerusalem still
remained, “the Jebusites still dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem
unto this day,” so even by that time they were not able to kill off the
Jebusites in that city. Remember their
job, according to Deut. 20 was to kill, to kill, k-i-l-l, some of you don’t like
the word; that was their job as unto the Lord.
Now later on we find Judah and in 16:10 what happened to Ephraim, she
received her land here the last time and she had all of this territory, all of
this unconquered territory and what does verse 10 report, “And they drove not
out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites dwell among the
Ephraimites even unto this day, and served under tribute.” There they are again, unable or unwilling to
conquer.
Chapter 17:12-13, “Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the
inhabitants of those cities; but the Canaanites determined to dwell in that
land,” and the word “would” is the Hebrew verb which means to determine, and
the Canaanites obviously were not willing to have themselves killed, and so the
instinct for survival forced them to put up a whale of a fight and they refused
to budge off the ground. But these
people, it says in verse 12, were not able to do this. So at first you might excuse them, that
they’re not strong enough. Analogy to
the believer today, they are not simply mature enough yet, they don’t have
enough Bible doctrine, they don’t have enough experience under their belt in
applying it and following the Lord’s will in various areas and so they’re not
strong enough. But then verse 13 knocks
that interpretation out of consideration, because it adds, “Yet it came to
pass, when the children of
We have an analogy to this as Christians, Christians who are a position
where they are educated enough to do it, where they have the position to do it,
are under the mandate by the Word of God to utterly refute and contradict every
major idea, whatever field it’s in, that opposes the Word of God, because 2
Cor. 10:5 says, “Casting down vain imaginations and every high thing that
exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”
This is a mandate for battle on the part of every believer in whatever
his field is, that no believer can remain at rest in his sphere of
responsibility. He must always be in collision
with the human viewpoint that dominates that particular field or that
particular activity. He must always be
in opposition against it. This is why
believers who have done their job in history are always attacked by the
liberals in the classroom. This is why
there are two curse words used in the history courses and they both refer to
groups of believers who did their job and therefore were rewarded in the eyes
of the world with hatred; one word is Calvinism and the other word is
Puritanism. And wherever you see those
words used in a classroom they are always used derogatory. Horace Mann, one of the leading educators in
the
Well, Horace Mann and others who have written always have to go to the
Calvinists, always knock the Puritans and it’s very easy why. Why don’t they knock some of the other
Christian groups? Do you know why? Because none of the other Christian groups did
their homework, none of the other Christian groups applied the Word of God in
the area of education except two people and they basically were one but under
two names, the Puritans and the Calvinists.
And hence they incurred the wrath; even to this day people hate those
people. They don’t know why, they’re
just taught to hate the name. And the
reason why you have been taught to hate the name is because these people were
believers who stuck with the Word of God, and that means you will be castigated
if you have the guts to stand up and apply the Word of God in whatever your
field is or if you want to be a Mickey Mouse Christian like a lot, just go
along and have your little personal devotional life and never worry about one
iota about taking the Word of God over into your field and you can have all the
friends you want to and you can wear smiles and shake hands, etc. nobody will
cut you down behind your back, it’s a nice cozy life to lead. But if you want the life of a soldier it
means that you cannot live that kind of a live as a Christian, it means you are
in continual battle and conflict over bringing the Word of God into every area
of life.
So this is part of this holy war that goes on, and when we read in
chapter 18, we read about the second distribution, we find something of the
same sort of this pattern of failure.
These tribes were strong enough but they lived off of them. That was the first distribution; all these
tribes eventually did get mature enough spiritually to do battle, but once they
got to that point of spiritual strength and maturity, what happened? They settled down. I would suggest there are two reasons why
they settled down. One was a lust for
wealth and another was just the abhorrence of always being in tension with
somebody. Now I understand that, it’s
not nice, you don’t relish to always have to be in opposition to somebody. In fact, if you examine many of the people in
the history of the nation who you have learned to label as obstructionists,
people who may appear to be obnoxious in their zeal for righteousness, you will
find upon closely examining their biographies that none of them really enjoyed
the battle. They weren’t in it for
personal enjoyment. The early
fundamentalists in the 1920s and 30s who did battle within denominational
circles, those men didn’t do it because they loved it; they did it because they
realized and they saw the handwriting on the wall, if we go this way this is
what happens and if we are to be honest to Jesus Christ we cannot go this way,
whether we like it or not. Promotions
have nothing to do with it; the issue is where is the Lord’s will. And so oftentimes the biographies of the
great men who are just looked down upon as obscurantist and fundamentalists and
fighters and apostles of discord, etc. actually are men who do not like to
fight. But they are men who God has
called into the fight because they have had to.
So this is the attitude that should prevail at least among some of the
tribes in the second distribution, but unfortunately beginning with verse 1 we
are going to see things are about the same, except a little worse. The first 10 verses of chapter 18 deal with
some background of the Shiloh distribution.
We are up here now, the first distribution came from Gilgal. But now “the whole congregation of the
children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh,” Shiloh is the place where the
Ark of the Covenant was moved. The Ark
of the Covenant stayed here from 1400 BC down until the time it was destroyed
after the battle of Asick, when the Philistines in zone one began to move up
here, and it was under a divine discipline situation, God had spanked the
nation Israel and when God is spanking you the solution is not to resist the
spanking. The solution is to examine
yourself to find out why you’re being spanked and solve that problem and the
spanking will take care of itself.
Now unfortunately believers don’t often apply this principle. For example, we have both seen this, you see
an organization that starts out very docile, very Christ centered and after a
while something happens and they get into a financial jam, and the first thing
you know, you get dunning bills after dunning message after prayer letter after
prayer letter asking you for money; oh, we’re behind, we’re in the red, we’re a
thousand dollars behind this month, etc. and we’re in debt, etc. and they get
enough Christians to feel sorry for them and they get some more money to
perpetuate their agony. And this goes on
and on and on, and every month you get a letter saying we’re behind.
Now if they were operating doctrinally, at the first sign that you
weren’t getting money it’s obviously a sign that God’s not providing. Well then what’s the obvious thing to
do? If God isn’t providing, let’s find
out why He isn’t providing; maybe He doesn’t want that work to continue any
more, you know that’s very possible. But
a lot of Christian work is like the government, you get an organization started
and it never ends, it’s got to go on to do something else; but it may just be
that God would have that particular work was raised up to do a job now it’s to
dissipate and the men can go somewhere else and do another job. That may be one reason why the money is not
received. Another reason the money may
not be received is because of a personal stand on the part of many of the
people that are participating and this has to be taken care of. But instead of doing that, the obvious, what
happens? Hire a PR man and then you can
go out and squeeze Christians for thousands of dollars through cleverly planned
advertising. Do you know how I know this
goes on and why it’s a racket? Because I
get it in my mail; there are people going around this country, and I have
answered at least six of these things have come to my desk in about the last
month and these guys are professions juicers that go around and play on
pastors. They say are you having trouble
raising funds, well brother, just hire me and we’ll guarantee you so much money
and they have all sorts of these gimmicks, money raising things, rummage sales,
junk sales, and we’re not in the junk selling business, we’re in the Word of
God business. They are nothing but
professional money-raising organizations, and a lot of them are money-raising
for a lot of non-Christian organizations and they’re using the same techniques
that he would use on a non-Christian organization, coming over and pitching it
to Christians, putting Jesus on it, the word “Jesus” looks good in every other
paragraph, and most Christians are dumb enough to see Jesus and oh boy, it must
be good. But this is going around and
pastors just buy the program and John Q. just comes in and raises money, but
it’s not of the Lord and it’s not authorized by the Word of God. That is not God’s way of raising money. That
is one illustration of how not to do it.
But in Joshua 18:1 we have these people coming to Shiloh and they set
the Ark of the Covenant. And when the
Philistines came up from the southwest they went out to meet them. This was 300 years after this passage; this
is when they lost the Ark. And instead of solving their discipline problems,
what they decided to do was use the Ark as a lucky charm. And so they put the
Ark out and said look, we’re having a lot of trouble with these Philistines, so
what we’re going to do is just take the Ark out and parade it in front of us,
as though the Ark itself is going to solve it, you know, rub God’s belly, He’s
kind of a genie, and yet the form, just take His Ark out there and this is
supposed to protect you. You can read
this for yourself in 1 Samuel 4, they took this thing down, they were pulling
the “lucky charm” bit. There’s only
problem, the Philistines weren’t impressed and so what happened, they took
their lucky charm and that was the end of the ark; a very unglorious end to the
Ark of the Lord. It ended up as a lucky
charm and the Philistines took it and removed it. And it was the best lesson that Israel ever
had. But this was the place, in Shiloh,
where the ark stayed for at least three centuries.
Now it’s from this place that this distribution is going to begin. And in verse 2, “And there remained among the
children of Israel seven tribes which had not yet received their inheritance.
[3] And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, How long are ye slack to go to
possess the land, which the LORD God of your father has given you? [4] Appoint
from among you three men for each tribe; and I will send them, and they shall
rise, and go through the land and describe it according to the inheritance of
them; and they shall come again to me.”
The interesting thing about this is Joshua’s remark in verse 2, “there remains
among the children of Israel seven tribes who had not yet received their
inheritance.” But remember what I said
about interpreting this part of the Bible?
The man who wrote this, the prophetic historian, doesn’t come right out
and tell you the interpretation, but they always put these little hints in
there and if you read that narrative sharply you’ll see and learn, your eye
will learn to see the hints that they put in the text. Do you notice what the sentence is just
before this? It’s one of those prophetic
little hints and they’re trying to tell you something, “and the land was
subdued before them.” And then
immediately they say “and there remained among the children of Israel seven
tribes.” In other words, there were no
obstructions to them receiving their inheritance, therefore, the conclusion
right away, before we go any further, the conclusion is these believers are out
of it. They have been brought into the
land, there’s no military reason, the land was subdued before them, why they
can’t have their inheritance but they just haven’t claimed it.
So Joshua, in verse 3, says how long are you going to sit around here,
are you sitting around waiting for God to drop your inheritance in your lap or
are you going to go out there and secure it yourself, with one foot in front of
the other, left right, left right, left right, left right, and move. And this is what he’s soliciting in verse 3,
“how long” and in the Hebrew it’s a very sarcastic things, “how long are you
going to sit around here,” is Joshua’s claim, you need to go to possess the
land. Now you just get our from among
you three men from each tribe and I’ll send them. In other words, you know why he’s kind of
irritated here, because Joshua evidently has covered that he’s not to inherit
his land until all the tribes have inherited theirs, so Joshua has been sitting
around waiting for these believers to get going because he’d like his
inheritance some day along the line. So
they’re just sitting around, having prayer meetings before the ark probably, or
going around singing hymns or something but they’re having their little
meeting, but they are not going out to claim their inheritance. And so Joshua
sends them out, and he sends out these men.
Now we don’t know much from verse 4 about these men except that they are
sent out to survey the land, however, as often happens, the books of Josephus
give us some background. Josephus was a
Jewish historian who wrote after the time of Christ, and here’s what he says
about these men. And I just read this short notice from Josephus because it
gives you insight into the quality of men that Joshua had do this, so it breaks
down further that image I’m trying to break down in your minds, that these
people were these poor half cave men that dropped out of Sinai some place and
had no education and were the most unsophisticated brutes in the Near
East.
Listen to the culture and listen to the education that these men
had. “Now Joshua, when he had thus
spoken to them, found that the multitude approved of his proposal. So he sent
men to measure their country and sent with them [can’t understand word] who
could not easily fail of knowing the truth on account of their skill in that
art. He also gave them a charge to
estimate the measure of that part of the land that was most fruitful and what
was not so good, for such is the nature of the land of Canaan, that one may see
large plains and such as are exceedingly fit to produce fruit which yet if they
were compared to other parts of the country might be reckoned easily
exceedingly fruitful. Yet if it were to
be compared with the fields about Jericho and to those that belong to Jerusalem
will appear to be of no account at all, and although it so falls out that these
people have but a very little of this sort of land and that it is for the mean,
mountainous also, yet does not come behind other parts on account of its
exceeding goodness and beauty.”
Now Joshua has two basic missions that he assigned these men. One mission was to compute the size of the
cities. He had a reason for this because
he wanted population centers for his people.
Now this is part of God’s grace.
When God provides the believer, He always provides your exact needs, no
more and no less. And it’s a wonderful lesson to realize that, God never
overpays and He never underpays. And
when the people went into the land God had so graciously worked it out that
when they walked in they just walked into homes that were already built for
them. Now true, Joshua burned some of
the cities, but most of the cities Joshua did not burn; therefore, the
buildings, the homes, the gardens, the vineyards, everything, the plumbing, the
water supply was turned right over to them; they had it already made. And Joshua had, therefore, to compute the
size of the cities and he also had the wealth of the land agriculturally. And so this is what we read in the basic
description of it.
In verse 7 there is an exception, the Levites. “But the Levites have no
portion among you; for the priesthood of the LORD is their inheritance.” Now we’re going to deal with the Levites
later but suffice it at this point to say the Levites were the professional
teachers, they were the educators, the national educators of their day. They were supported on a… two-thirds of the
national budget went to education, except they were more than just educators,
they actually were Bible teachers.
Two-thirds of the national budget went into Bible teaching and education
and this was the norm, now later on it didn’t actually in practice work out
that way. But under the Mosaic norm
sixty-six percent of the national budget was to go to education and Bible
teaching. You can imagine what would
happen in this country if sixty-sixty percent of our national budget went into
missions and Bible teaching. But this is
the way the budget broke down under Moses.
So in verse 10 we read, “And Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before
the LORD; and there Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel
according to their divisions.” They came
back, they wrote it in a book, and by the way, notice that these men who, when
they come back, in verse 9 they “described it by cities into seven portions in
a book,” notice that because always we have these people that say oh, they
didn’t write in that day, Moses couldn’t have written anything. Here you have it; in the book of Judges I
just discovered one little passage in the book of Judges where Gideon is going
up to the city there and turns to this little kid in the road and says hey,
would you write us the name of the people in the town, the kid takes out his
scratch pad and writes all the names down.
So it obviously shows that the children were taught reading and writing
in ancient Israel. It’s not surprising, they
had to know the Word of God, how else would they know it except they read and
write.
So “Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh,” and says to us means that he
and the priest consulted the Urim and the Thummim before God. This is not casting dice, they didn’t do it
by chance, this is God divinely directing.
I note that because from this point forward, to the end of chapter 19,
we’re going to go through a section of details about each tribe. As I go
through each one of these tribes, we’re not going to go into that great detail,
but I’m going to keep going back to a principle. So starting at this verse, verse 11, we’re
going to go tribe by tribe down through to the end. But when I get done I’m going to come back to
the principle of verse 10 and it’s going to be crucial that you understand this
is not chance that’s operating. These
lots are not like dice that they’re throwing here and we’re getting so many
odds on a parcel of land. That’s not the
way it happened because there’s a tremendous principle that’s going to come out
of this. So just keep tuned to verse 10,
that is not chance, that God in His sovereign direction.
Now we’re going to start with the tribes but don’t lose the forest for
the trees. Just hold that big picture,
that God is directing the process. And
when we get done with the details of these tribes you’re going to see how God
directed them, in a most marvelous way imaginable.
The first tribe we work with in Benjamin, verse 11-28, the rest of
chapter 18. Now Benjamin is going to
inherit a parcel of land like this… last time we dealt with Judah, and we dealt
with Joseph up here, Ephraim and Manasseh.
Notice there’s a boundary between them, there’s a split or a corridor
that runs from east to west. Half of
that corridor is filled up with the tribe of Benjamin. Now you may say isn’t that boring, all that
real estate data, etc. But I want to tie
that into the history. Remember, we have
four to five centuries of this nation’s history already behind us. Now when you examine that history you’re
going to discover a very interesting principle; the principle is that God is
sovereignly directing so that when this tribe occupies the land between Judah
and Joseph, the tribe itself partakes of the original character of the boy
called Benjamin. And the tribe is going
to do to Joseph in the north, and Judah in the south what little Benjamin did
literally to Joseph and Judah, his brothers, 400 years before.
Turn back to Genesis 44. We have
to go back 400 years. What you’re seeing
here is what I consider one of the greatest proofs that the Bible is the Word
of God, an objective proof. The reason
why I say this is because these details fit together too neatly for a human
author. There are little details that
kind of accidentally, seemingly, fall into place, but it shows you there is one
Lord of history, He’s in control. Now
Gen. 44:18, I’m just going to give you the highlights of this, I don’t have
time to give the whole story, but this picks up an incident in the life of
Jacob’s children. Jacob, other wise
known as Israel had many sons. One of
these sons was Joseph. Joseph went to
Egypt; he was kind of helped down there by his brothers. Joseph, if you believe the face value of the
text was kind of a little daddy’s boy and a brat, and any time his brothers got
in trouble little Joseph would run off to daddy and tell Him all about it. And
finally the older brothers had had about all they could handle of Joseph and so
decided to get rid of this little monster and so they dropped him in a
pit. They were going to kill him except
some of these other brothers decided to plead his cause and they sold him to
the Midianites who sent him down to Egypt.
As political irony would have it, Joseph goes down to Egypt, he has many
experiences down there, he gets involved with Potiphar’s wife and goes to jail,
etc. and gets out of jail and becomes Pharaoh’s vice regent. Why?
Because Joseph interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh about the seven lean
years, etc. By the way, we have
historical evidence that that actually occurred. Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern text is a
tradition of the seven lean years. Of
course, it’s not apparently linked to the Joseph story by historians but I
think it should be.
But in Genesis 44:18 we pick up the story up as Judah comes down to
Egypt to get food, it’s a famine. And he
meets Joseph, his brother down there, but he doesn’t know it’s Joseph. And Joseph is playing a trick with him and he
wants to see if his brothers recognize who it is. “Then Judah came near unto him,” Joseph “and
said, O my lord, let thy servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord’s ears,
and let not thine anger burn against thy servant; for thou are even as Pharaoh.
[19] My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother? [20]
And we said unto my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child of his age,
a little one; and his brother is dead,” see, they think Joseph is dead, “and he
alone is left of his mother; and his father loves him.” Now “he alone is left
of his mother” is Benjamin. This wife of
Jacob who bore Joseph also bore Benjamin.
Benjamin and Joseph were brothers; notice the configuration the tribes
wind up taking. Benjamin is just south
of the tribe of Joseph. Originally the
boy Benjamin and the boy Joseph were brothers.
You say weren’t all of Jacob’s sons brothers; no, they were half brothers
because Jacob married several women. He
had problems getting girls, so he wound up having several wives and as a result
many of his children were half brothers.
So “he alone that is left of his mother” is Benjamin. But you see, Joseph is going to play a trick,
he’s going to take Benjamin as hostage and his brothers resent this deeply
because they know that Jacob’s love, the love that he had for Joseph has now
gone to Benjamin and now they fear that the father will just die of a complete
heart attack if he finds that Benjamin too is gone. So we won’t go on, you can read it for
yourself, this extends down to 45:24, in this dialogue you have Joseph and
Judah competing for this loved Benjamin, and this sets the archetype because
Joseph and Judah are brought together by the mediatorship of Benjamin. Isn’t it interesting that the north and south
elements of the land of Israel are mediated by the tribe of Benjamin lying
exactly in between? Now do you see what
I mean? Why those lots weren’t just
chance. God was divinely directing so
that the tribe would fulfill the same type of Benjamin. In other words, this little area of Benjamin
is the ideal cement to glue together the Joseph tribe and the Judah tribe and
it’s an archetype of this story in Gen. 44:18-45:24.
Now we also know something else about the character of Benjamin, just a
few historical notices to appreciate the nature of this tribe. We’ll cover this
in the book of Judges, but in Judges chapter 19 we have a story about Benjamin
that’s fantastic. It turns out that
Benjamin takes on all the tribes of Israel; they declare war on Benjamin, and
Benjamin is not afraid of them. It turns
out what happened was there was a man who had his concubine and he was going
through one of the towns in Benjamin and they got to this house and nobody
offered them a room except this stranger, and the stranger invited the man in
and invited his mistress in with him and then what happened, people started
knocking on the door, and it came ala Sodom and Gomorrah type in the
homosexuals and everything else outside the door, and they wanted to go in and
attack this man.
Well, again, like Lot did with his daughter, this man put out his
mistress at the door and they assaulted her all night until they killed her in
the morning, when he woke up in the morning he found her dead. And he said well, I’m going to fix this area,
he was vacationing in Benjamin, so he said I’m going to get every tribe in
Israel mad. So he took his butcher knife
and his mistress was lying out there on the doorstep and he cut her up in
twelve pieces, hacked her body up in twelve pieces and put one on each horse
and said you go to Issachar, you go to Zebulun, you go to Judah, you go to
Ephraim and I want every tribe in Israel to see what they did to my beloved. So they did and it started a war. So all the tribes came after Benjamin and
Benjamin stood them off, for many, many days.
This shows you that the tribe of Benjamin was fighters. They were very tenacious people and you can
tell by the men in the Bible who came from this tribe. Saul, King Saul was a Benjaminite; a woman, a
famous woman who was from the tribe of Benjamin who manifested this same spirit
of bravery is Queen Esther, and Mordecai, in the book of Esther, they came from
the tribe of Benjamin. And finally, that great apostle, Paul, came from the
tribe of Benjamin. So the tribe of
Benjamin in history has always displayed a marked aggressiveness.
Joshua 19:1-9, Simeon’s inheritance; and here again we are going to see
one of these interesting principles of history.
Simeon is going to be a tribe that is all scattered out, and you wonder
why in southern Judah they’re all scattered out, it looks like it’s Judah’s
territory, and it is. If you read verse
19, “Out of the portion of the children of Judah was the inheritance of the
children of Simeon, for the portion of the children of Judah was too much for
them. Therefore the children of Simeon had their inheritance within the
inheritance of them.” “Them” are Judah. But notice something, you see how it started
out like this; they’re all scattered out into cities and if you read carefully
verses 2-8 and you plotted a little map, all the cities of Simeon you’d find
them scattered all over the place. You’d
say isn’t this peculiar, this is odd, to have in inheritance scattered all over
like this?
Again for history turn back three or four hundred years to Genesis
49:5-7. Here you see another remarkable
aspect about God in His prophetic program.
This is the blessing of Jacob; the blessing of Jacob upon his sons.
Before he died he gives, you might say his last will and testament or his
blessing to his sons. When he gets to
these two, Simeon and Levi, he says: “Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments
of cruelty are in their habitations. [6] O my soul, come not thou into their
secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united; for in their anger
they slew a man and in their self-will they digged down a wall [hamstrung
oxen]. [7] Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it
was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” A prophecy.
Now what is he talking about, this incident that happened for which he
curses Simeon. Turn back to Gen. 34:25
you see that incident, and this shows that the tribal nature of Simeon was one
of cruelty. We have an incident, we
don’t have time to develop all the details, but there was some shady
relationships going on between one of Jacob’s girls and some of the inhabitants
of this land. It turns out that Dinah,
the girl that was involved, was the sister of Simeon and Levi. And they didn’t particularly like the fact
that their sister had been assaulted, etc. by the inhabitants, they were going
to go out and get revenge for what had been done to their sister. So verse 25, “And it came to pass on the
third day, when they were sore, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi,
Dinah’s brethren took each man his sword, and came upon the city boldly, and
slew all the males. [26] And they slew Hamor and Shechem, his son, with the
edge of the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house, and went out. [27]
And the sons of Jacob came upon the slain, and spoiled the city, because they
had defiled their sister. [28] They took their sheep, and their oxen, and their
asses, and all that was in the city, and all that was in the field, [29] And
all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive,
and spoiled even all that was in the house. [30] And Jacob said to Simeon and
Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land,”
in other words, they could have handled this thing in a right way but they
didn’t, they blew up and went in there and destroyed and got a bad reputation.
This is the act, in Genesis 49, that Jacob refers to and this is the
basis for making an extremely different prognosis about these two tribes. Now in Genesis 49 he links the two together,
Simeon and Levi, you will be scattered in Jacob. But now think what’s going to happen in
history. Here we have one part of that
branch; here’s Simeon and here’s Levi. They both are prophesied to be scattered
in the land. But notice something, and
this is a principle we can apply to our Christian lives; God can turn your
cursing into a tremendous blessing and no matter how bad you may think you have
it, and you may have badly blown it on some occasion, and you may have been
worse than that, you may have been around other believers who were not grace
oriented, and they couldn’t do anything except malign you and make you feel
like the worst flunky in God’s kingdom because you blew it on some little thing
and so now they are looking down their long nose at you and making you feel like you can’t possibly
be ever used by God again, you have lost every opportunity to be a blessing to
the Lord, etc. And they start maligning
you and criticizing you and go on with this legalism. But if you have grace orientation you will
realize the principle that is going to be explained here with Levi and Simeon.
Both are cursed at this point.
The discipline is irretrievable, in other words, irrevocable, it cannot
be changed. The discipline is that both
these tribes will be scattered; God is not going to change that prophecy. That is a statement of His sovereign
will. You say wait a minute, if God’s
sovereignly said that this is going to happen, how then, can that kind of
person ever be turned around for blessing.
Well, it was in history. Simeon,
evidently, persisted in negative volition, pretty much as a tribe, and he wound
up scattered in this fashion. But Levi,
later on in history the Levites did something very much an act of obedience in
Moses’ day, and therefore when you get Moses you find God saying to Moses, I’m
going to take Levi’s scattering and I’ll scatter him, but instead of scattering
him as a tribe he is going to be scattered as the leaders of the nation Israel
and so the Levites, on positive volition recover from their discipline and they
still are scattered by this prophecy, but they’re scattered now as spiritual
leaders in the nation. So cursing was
turned to blessing. Was God’s sovereign
decree fulfilled? Yes, they were
scattered. Were they cursed? No, they were blessed because they had an
exalted position in the nation. So this one little prophecy about I will
scatter both of them, if you read later in history you see the difference was
that one confessed his sins and moved on, God changed the cursing into blessing
and they rolled. And the rest of them
stayed carnal and obviously in this archetype I’m drawing they wound up as
cursed and scattered.
Now quickly back to Joshua 19, we have four tribes, we’ll just mention
very quickly. I think we’ve mentioned
enough to show you how these tribes all fit the pattern. In 19:10, “And the third lot came up for the
children of Zebulun according to their families; and the border of their
inheritance was to Sarid.” In verse 17,
“And the fourth lot Came out to Issachar, for the children of Issachar according
to their families. In verse 24, “And the
fifth lot came out for the tribe of the children of Asher according to their
families.” By the way, the tribe of Asher occupied this second zone; the tribe
of Zebulun occupied this area, notice they were both equal tribes. This is going to play a part in the book of
Judges. These tribes went out of the
Mediterranean and [can’t understand who] believes that some of these tribes
have had a phenomenal effect in history most people didn’t know about. But in the 14th century remember
this, these northern tribes were sea going tribes and Israel had a navy
centuries before Solomon. So you have
these northern tribes and Asher is up here.
In verse 32, “The sixth lot came out to the children of Naphtali,” now
there are four tribes, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher and Naphtali. You look those up if your Bible has a map in
the back, but these are called the Galilean tribes. And we have a blessing out of this too
because these Galilean tribes are very plain Jane’s, they have no big popular
history like Simeon or Levi or Judah or Benjamin, and they are kind of almost
brushed over in the Word of God, except in history which tribe first heard the
preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ? And
from which tribe did probably eleven and certainly ten of the apostles come
from? All of these tribes. When Jesus Christ [can’t understand word] his
ministry He concentrated His ministry up in this area. Why didn’t He do it down here? [Blank spot] … yet they were the ones that
God chose in His sovereignty to bless, the plain Jane’s.
Now we have the last tribe, Joshua 19:40-48, the tribe of Daniel. This section of this chapter proves the
liberals are wrong in their dating of this book, because in verse 47 it says,
“And the border of the children of Dan went out too little for them; therefore
the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it
with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt in it, and called
Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan, their father.” Now this whole tribe, notice this one area on
the map, that is the tribe of Dan, that was the original zone that Dan
had. However, it says it was too small;
so therefore they went on a pilgrimage all the way up north of Galilee and
carved out a very [can’t understand words] in what is known as the battle of
Leshem.
[Tape is inaudible for a section and the rest of tape is difficult to
hear]
You’ll notice I have kept referring back to Genesis and
Deuteronomy. I referred to Gen. 49 and
there’s another, Deut. 33; Gen. 49 and Deut. 33. This happened about 1800 BC, Genesis 49,
Deut. 33 about 1400 BC. How many years
separate those two? 400 years separate
those two. Take a good look, 400 years
separate those two chapters. How many
years separate the chapter we’re looking at?
Oh, probably about fifty, say fifty years, probably less than that. It took Joshua seven years to conquer the
land; we don’t know how many years they fiddled around, plus the 40 years, etc.
of the wilderness wandering, so let’s just say rough number, 50 years between
this. So look at these three points in
your time line; Gen. 48, 1800; Deut. 33, 1400; this chapter around 1350.
Now do you notice something interesting about that? Back in 1800 Jacob predicted the destiny of
all of his sons. How did he do
that? Inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. He looked carefully at the
character of each one of his sons and Jacob and God working through Jacob laid
forth the destiny of all these tribes.
Moses comes along in Deut. 33 and he amplifies the destiny of these
tribes again, he gives you more details about them. And now we come in this book to the final
fulfillment of those two prophecies. A
lot of the Bible is prophetic but a lot of the Bible refers back to previous
prophecy.
What you have just finished in this section, from chapters 13-19 in this
book is a record that will show you that God kept His promises of these
chapters; that is why all of these details are important, so that as you study
these details you will remember that these two chapters God spoke way, way before,
and history has come down to that. Why
is this important? Because it means that
history is under prophetic control.
History is under prophetic control!
No other religion on earth, and you can say this with complete
assurance, has prophecy like I showed you tonight; unspectacular you might
think, in comparison to the prophecies about Jesus, but let me show you
something. Don’t you see that the kind
of prophecy we’ve just seen here operating is the Bible? It’s not the case that the Bible contains a prophecy
here and a prophecy there and a prophecy here.
It’s true, the Bible does contain those prophecies, but don’t you see
the whole flow of the Bible is prophecy.
All this historical detail between 1800 BC and 1350 BC flow along
through God’s prophetic program. The
whole Bible is prophecy; it’s not that the Bible contains prophecy, it is
prophecy, it’s a recording of the outworking of God’s program. It’s like a carpet being unrolled across the
floor and that’s why history is so crucial and why the Biblical record is
absolutely mandatory to understand.
So remember this, the prophecies that characterize Biblical Christianity
is a prophecy that is not about whether so and so is going to happen in 1840 or
something is going to happen like that; you can get those through heathen
oracles. The kind of prophecy we talk
about and the kind of prophecy that validates the Christian claim is all
history; history is prophecy and only if we have a God who is infinite and omniscient
can we ever have any explanation for this book.
How do you explain it? Those of
you who took the Framework course, do you remember the remark we discussed one
time? Why is it that of all the nations
on the earth, of all the civilizations of man that historians have studied, why
is it that they’ve only picked apart the historical records of one nation?
Why pick on Israel? For this
reason, if you’re not a Christian and if you don’t have a Biblical framework,
what are you going to do with Genesis 49, Deuteronomy 33 and Joshua chapters
13-17? You’ve got no explanation for
it. The only explanation you can posit
as you sit there, the only explanation any of you could possibly come up with
if you try to operate outside of the Biblical framework is to do something like
this: well, I see where it wound up and I kind of believe the Joshua record, so
I guess what I’ll have to say is that Deuteronomy 33 was made up [can’t
understand words] in other words, the whole stuff about Moses is just made up,
or about Joseph, it’s just made up, so that you have to invent a whole theory
to explain the origin of the Bible because otherwise you have no explanation
for this material. So the closing
challenge I make before you, when you look at these “dull” details of the book
of Joshua, just remember something, there’s a very important principle
here. You have to think about this and
think [can’t understand words] a lot of Christians, if you haven’t studied the
Word of God or if you are a Christian and have a friend in this condition, how
do you explain this material? What is
your explanation? Do you have to invent
kind of a fairy story theory to invent where the Bible came from because in
your system you know you haven’t got answers to explain this kind of
thing? Your system can’t even tolerate
one prophecy because if one prophecy comes into your system and that is
verified, you’ve got supernaturalism.
That brings the whole thing to the ground.
With our heads bowed….