Joshua 28
Joshua 21-22
You’ll recall that we have been covering a large section of the book of
Joshua beginning in chapter 12 which continues to chapter 22 and this
particular section of the book of Joshua deals with the giving of the
inheritance. This book is actually
hinged at the center, chapter 5-12 deal with the conquest and chapters 13-22
deal with the gaining of the inheritance.
Just the overall structure of the book itself should teach you a vital
principle about the Christian life: blessing comes only after struggle. This is a hard concept to get across to
believers because many believers are infiltrated with the “I want it now”
mentality of our age. And this rubs off
in certain so-called “deeper life” movements where you get all of the deeper life
with one shot and all you have to do is go to some dedication service and
dedicate your life to Christ and go through some hyper ecstatic experience and
this automatically gives you all of the sanctification you need for at least
five years and then when that runs down you come back for another shot. This is a kind of do-it-yourself thing, I
want it now, I want it without any effort on my part, I want the Holy Spirit to
live my life for me, I don’t want to make any of the decisions, etc.
Now it’s very dangerous and this is the balance that you always run into
between law and grace. You can become a
legalist in which you do the doing and you don’t rely upon the Holy Spirit, but
there’s a balance. And out of fear of
going over to that extreme we’re majoring on attacking the concept of passivity
in the Christian life, that you just sit around as a person sort of hypnotized
and the Holy Spirit is supposed to control your life without you doing the
choosing. This, of course, if carried to
its logical conclusion would eliminate judgment; you could not be held for
rewards nor held for responsibility for the goof off that you’ve done, it would
all be blamed on the Holy Spirit. This
is a false anti-Scriptural concept of volition.
It is an attempt to destroy volition and certainly the book of Joshua
shows that you have to exert your volition in an active struggle in order to
gain the blessing of God. It was this
that the early Puritans had in mind when they talked about the struggle against
the flesh. The struggle against the
flesh, contrary to what you may have heard in the classroom was not some morbid
self-reflection of their sin and they weren’t going around saying oh, I’m
awful, I’m terrible, I’m all the rest, etc. this kind of thing. That was not what the Puritans did; what the
Puritans understood and what their latter day critics fail to understand was
that their problem, the barrier between them and blessing was the flesh and
they would have to beat the flesh into shape, as it were, doing this by spiritual
growth of course, relying on the Holy Spirit who alone can energize our new
nature. But still there had to be a
conflict with the flesh.
And today I have found in counseling with individuals and talking to
them that the average person has been so imbued with this problem that they
have a psychological problem and we’ve got to understand this psychological
problem, etc. Now there is room for this
kind of thing but I have observed that in practice this is being used as an
excuse. Really, if you want to look at
every one of us has a psychological problem, it’s described in Romans 7 and
it’s a result of the fall in Adam. Every
person has psychological problems; therefore you can’t blame your psychology. Where this comes forth is when believers sin
against the will of God. The Word of God
declares certain inviolable rules and principles. Believers run contrary to these rules and
principles and then they wonder why they suffer. This is nothing more than self-induced
misery.
We find, for example, certain things in Scripture that says, say for
example, 2 Cor. 6, dealing with the principle of separation and applied to
marriage, no believer ought to mess around with a non-Christian in a romantic
way; they’re all asking for trouble.
Nevertheless, we have all sorts of excuses: why, all I have to do is
date them and that’s how I win them to Christ, if I marry so and so they’ll
come to Christ, etc.
We see this in David’s family.
David committed adultery with Bathsheba, David murdered. God forgave him, we know this from Psalm 51,
32 and 38, also from 2 Sam. 12, but God did not erase the effects of David’s
foolishness in his life for David had to live through a hell on earth; he had
to see his own sons commit the very same sins that he did. David set in motion by his foolishness
suffering and David, therefore, experienced self-induced misery. Now there are ways through this and we are
going to see one example of how a group of people became buried under
self-induced misery and as a result of obedience were able, under God’s grace,
to turn the cursing into blessing. And
we’re speaking of the Levites beginning in chapter 21.
Now the Levites are the last tribe we have to deal with. So far we have dealt with tribe after tribe;
we have seen a principle of history that has operated here, we have seen that
in 1800 BC Jacob made a blessing; that’s Gen. 49. We have seen in 1400 BC or four centuries
later Moses made a blessing given to us in Deut. 33. We see these blessings have to do with every
one of the twelve tribes. All these
twelve tribes were prophesied to have a certain destiny, that this destiny is
coming true. There’s a continuity from
one moment in history to the next moment. Every new moment is not totally new;
it has the effects of the previous moment.
This is why this country is an illustration. We as Americans, and our
children and grandchildren are going to suffer, if the Lord tarries, for the
foolishness that has gone on in high places in this country. We are going to suffer for the mediocrity of
the citizens, for the low class mentality that most American citizens have at
this hour in our history. And we are
suffering for the low class mentality they had 30 years ago and our sons and
grandsons will be suffering for it.
These are God’s rules: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, whosoever
shall sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” This is the cause
of much of the suffering in our time.
Moses and Jacob predicted there would be a continuity, a flow, and that
these tribes, once they got into the land would experience certain things by
way of blessing; certain things by way of cursing that had to do with previous
generations. And so we have certain tribes
prophesied here with blessings given them, such as
But we have one tribe, the Levites, and the Levites have a very
fascinating history. We’re going to go
back to Gen. 49:5-7 to get a glimpse of the history of the Levites. This teaches, by the way, by implication,
heredity. And though biologists might
not have realized all the principles of heredity, had they read their Bibles
carefully or had the Christian public read their Bibles carefully they would
have obviously recognized there’s a principle of heredity in Scripture, that
the sin nature is transmitted from father to son, father to son, father to
son. That certain behavior patterns,
certain weaknesses that we incur comes from our fathers and our mothers. And we find this all the way back to
Adam. We find Adam and Eve passing on
the sin nature. We all receive this sin
nature but we receive it in different forms.
So we have all different kinds of people and they have an area of
weakness, a second area, third area, fourth area, fifth area; you can have five
people and [can’t understand word] the sin nature. But as the human race diversifies through time
they pick up all sorts of special characteristics. This molds a person’s character. And you have entire cultures and entire races
that from several generations on in will have a very weak character and a very
low moral character. And this of course
is taught in Scripture.
Now in Gen. 49:5-7 Jacob recognizes something about two of his
sons. One is Simeon, the other is Levi
and they both had an incident happen in their lives where it manifested a
certain cruelty. In other words, their
sin nature manifested itself in a certain cruelness. Their character was essentially hard and
calloused in certain areas. Now this is
going to work together for good, as we’re going to see in a moment, but right
here it worked together for bad. In
other words, a hard calloused character can be good or bad in certain
situations; in the situation Jacob is talking about in verses 5-7 the kind of
personality these two brothers had worked together for evil. “Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of
cruelty are in their habitations,” manifest their character. [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.].” Now this
indicates a very aggressive attitude; this indicates the kind of person who,
when you cross them, they’re going to get you and they’re not going to stop at
anything until they do get you. So you
have, therefore, in Levi and Simeon two very determined kind of
personalities. And when these people are
on negative volition, and when they’re sinning and when they’re in rebellion
against the known will of God, their pattern of carnality is one of cruelty;
this is how they manifest it.
Verse 7, Jacob says “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
We saw how this was fulfilled with Simeon when the tribes went into the
land. We found that after Judah and
Joseph had been given their land area, we find Simeon scattered in
Now we’re going to see, although this looks like cursing, this is the
same destiny predicted for Levi, that he too, because of his cruelty and
because of his tough character, he too will have to be scattered throughout the
land. But something very different is
going to happen to Levi than happened to Simeon, and it’s all due because a
later generation went on positive volition and turned the cursing into
blessing. You can see this if you turn
to Exodus 32. Here we go down four
centuries in time. Here’s the time when
they had spent 400 years in Egypt, they had come out and merged, now not as
brothers but Simeon and Levi were now the names of various tribes who had
descended from these two brothers. So
when you see the word Levi and you see the word Simeon it no longer means
individual brothers, it means the sons who have the genes of Simeon and have
the genes of Levi.
So in Exodus 32 we have a incident; we have an incident that begins with
Aaron. This is while Moses is on Mount
Sinai. You recall that Moses went up to
Mount Sinai to get the Law treaty. That
is, this was the time when God would take over as king over the nation and the
Ten Commandments were not written on two tablets of stone as Sunday School
literature portrayed, they were written, all ten, on each tablet of stone so
that each tablet was one copy of the treaty.
When a great king made a treaty with a small nation, he had two copies;
one in his temple, the temple of the great king, and one in the temple of the
vassal. So you have these on deposit for
ready reference to the terms of the treaty.
Now Moses is getting these two copies from Jehovah on Mount Sinai. This also shows a principle about the
Christian life. God did not expect these
people to live by the Ten Commandments before they were believers or before
they were redeemed. The nation was
redeemed first from Egypt, then and only then were they expected to live by the
Ten Commandments. Notice the order. They were not saved out of Egypt by keeping
the Law, any more than you are saved today because you live a lily white
life. That isn’t going to save anyone,
it didn’t save the Israelites from Egypt, it’s not going to save you because
you can’t do it. You may think you live
a lily white life but when measured by the standard of the Word of God you fail
miserably and sometimes you manage to compare your good points with someone
else’s weak points and come out on top, but God looks at the whole thing and He
says you don’t come out on top and therefore you need a Savior, and that Savior
is the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. That’s salvation.
But notice again, the Ten Commandments or the will of God declared does
not enter your life until after you become a believer, then it’s a question of
following the Lord and of doing this and doing that. But if you’re without Christ and you’re not
yet a Christian, God’s will for your life consists of only one thing, trust His
Son; ONLY one thing, with several exceptions, of course, the laws of
creation. But nevertheless, these laws,
the Law treaty comes after the nation was redeemed. And Moses is up making this
treaty. But meanwhile back at the ranch,
the people are having a ball down at the bottom, and they get into a wild religious
and sex orgy. Now religion is a powerful
force and sex is a powerful force and when you combine the two you get
something fantastic and this was Canaanite religion. They were able and they were one of the few
peoples on earth who successfully combined religion and sex into sort of an amalgamated
religion, and this is why it’s so popular.
You see, if you have religion and sex you get everybody. If someone doesn’t like sex they are usually
religious, and if they like sex maybe they’re not religious, so if you combine
religion and sex you can pick up about anybody you want to. And so the devil has this kind of religion to
the Canaanites.
Well, this thing is going on and Moses gets kind of frosted when he
comes down and he reaches up and he breaks these tablets. Now the picture usually is that Moses breaks
these in anger. Well, he may have been
angry when he was breaking them but that isn’t the meaning of the
incident. The incident of the breaking
of the tablets is a signal, and Moses, by the way, was conducting the Law
treaty ceremony at this point, he was conducting a formal ceremony of breaking
the tablets to signify that the covenant had been broken. This was a legal act, not just an act of
anger, it was a legal act. I often
wonder from verse 24 why he didn’t come along and bring Aaron with the
tablets. I must admit, if I had been
Moses I would have walked down there and clobbered Aaron with the two plates,
put his head in between and had an Aaron sandwich, because of verse 24.
Moses confronts Aaron, what is going on, I left you in charge, now
what’s all this. So Aaron, verses 22,
begins to make excuses, as usual. “And
Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord burn: thou knoweth the people, that
they are set on mischief,” operation buck passing, it’s the people’s
fault. [23] “For they said unto me, Make
us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought
us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what has become of him. [224] And I
said unto them, Whosoever has any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the
fire, and there came out this calf.” Now
isn’t that a sweet explanation; he just put the gold in the fire and it just
happened to form in the manner of a small bull.
Now that’s a real smart explanation.
So this is what he comes up with to explain to Moses.
In verse 25 and following we have an incident that is going to change
the destiny of the cursed tribe of Levi.
“And when Moses saw that the people were naked (for Aaron had made them
naked unto their shame among their enemies),” notice, “for Aaron had made them
naked unto their shame.” [26] “Then
Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’s side? Let
him come unto me. And all the sons of
Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
[27] And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every
man his sword by his side, and go in and out from the gate to gate throughout
the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and
every man his neighbor. [28] And the children of Levi did according to the word
of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”
Now here you have what sounds like a very cruel incident. I want you to notice something; God takes
care of Levi’s nature. We learned from
Gen. 49 that Levi had a tough, callous and cruel nature. This was part of his area of weakness; this
was his inheritance, you might say, and he is responsible, that he cannot use
this is a determinist way, we’re not arguing determinism here; we’re not saying
that because Levi has a cruel nature therefore he’s excused. We’re not arguing
that way, we’re simply saying that Levi has a tendency toward cruelty, he is
held responsible for it, but any wise person will understand that being a
sinner and being fallen and totally depraved he will fall and stumble in this
area more than other areas; so therefore the prophecy of Jacob. Now what Moses does, he discovers something
about the tribe of Levi. They are tough
and when they go on positive volition they are also cruel and callous. And so when the assignment came, go through
this camp and cut them down, get your sword, so Levi went in. So you see the same continuity of the nature of
Levi in one incident; it is on negative volition in defiance against God but on
the other hand you have the same nature consecrated to the purpose of God
accomplishing it. In other words, he
could cut down his neighbor with no mercy whatever. And this may sound cruel to you, and if it
does I’m sorry, you have the wrong concept of justice. Anybody who finds this cruel in the bad sense
of the word cruel, you have a very, very wrong notion of justice and you need
some straightening out in the Word of God as to what the word j-u-s-t-i-c-e means. But, this is a case where he goes through and
they slaughter people; there’s going to be blood and guts all over the place
when they get through and it’s due to the fact that they received a divine
commandment to kill. So you see the
continuity of the nature of Levi.
Now as a result of this, we can come to Moses’ blessing in Deut.
33. Here Moses makes a prediction and
again the prediction shows Moses is conscious of the fierce nature of
Levi. But now something is going to
happen. Remember the original prophecy,
that they would be scattered throughout the land; they’re still going to be
scattered because this was a sovereign unchanging absolutely certain prediction
by God. So you can’t change this word
but you can give it a new flavor and this is what Moses is going to do. Remember, you can’t controvert a sovereign
decree of God; you can’t do this. Jacob
has reflected in his blessing and cursing upon Levi the sovereign will of God
and this is incontrovertible, but it can be given a new direction and Moses is
going to do this in verses 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Deut. 33.
“And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one,
whom thou didst prove [test] at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the
waters of Meribah; [9] Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not
seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children;
for they have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant.” And verse 10 describes
now what Levi is going to do. “They
shall teach Jacob thine ordinances, and Israel thy law’ they shall put incense
before Thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar. [11] Bless, LORD, his”
or Levi’s, “substance, and accept the work of his hands: smite through the
loins of them who rise against him, and of them who hate him, that they rise not
again.”
So you have Moses enforcing and putting Levi into a very interesting
position. Levi now becomes the legal
representative of God. In other words,
Levi is going to have his nature and his bent or his various direction in his
character, this is going to be used by God for a particular ministry and Levi
is going to be used to enforce the Law.
It takes somebody who is slightly calloused to people, who have an
insistence that the Law will be obeyed, regardless of who you are, and it takes
this kind of insistence and this kind of nature to teach the Word of God and to
insist on its behavior. So Levi is then
picked to perform this function.
So now we come to Joshua 21; this is eight years later, after the holy
wars. And now whereas Simeon was scattered
throughout the land, Levi is going to have 48 cities scattered throughout the
land. Again it reminds you of Simeon,
he’s scattered throughout Judah. But
Levi is going to have various cities; note the principle, the sovereign will of
God that he be scattered is being fulfilled.
The scattering has not changed.
That was sovereignly decreed in 1800 BC; in 1400 BC the tribe does
something, however, to merit blessing.
And so therefore as a result of their obedience God changes the kind of
scattering. It’s not going to be just a
tearing of father and son and uncle from family, etc. like Simeon, but it’s
going to be a careful distribution throughout the land in 48 cities, and their
suburbs, of this tribe, and their function will be not just to stay there like
Simeon but they’re going to have a tremendous ministry of blessing to the
nation by teaching them the Word of God.
So we read in Joshua 21 about these cities. In verse 2 they come, “And they spoke unto
them at Shiloh in the land of Canaan,” Shiloh is where the tabernacle was and
the throne of the King of Kings who was God, “saying, The LORD commanded by the
hand of Moses to give us cities to dwell in, with the suburbs, [pasture lands
thereof for our cattle.]” So they’re
given it [And the children of Israel gave unto the Levites out of their
inheritance, at the commandment of the LORD, these cities and their pasture
lands.” Verse 4, “And the lot came out
for the families of the Kohathites; and the children of Aaron, the priest,” now
this is important because it shows you… you have an entire tribe of Levi and
part and only part of that tribe are priests.
Not all Levites are priests; they all have a teaching function and
sometimes I refer to them as teaching priests but actually in the strict sense
of the word, though it is a priestly tribe, all of them are not functioning
priests; only the sons of Aaron are actually functioning priests. And these priests, it turns out, are “the
Kohathites, and the children of Aaron the priest.”
Now look where they settled, “and the children of Aaron the priest, who
were of the Levites, had by lot out of the tribe of” notice, “Judah, and out of
the tribe of Simeon, and out of the tribe of Benjamin, thirteen cities.” Again we go to our chart and see where in the
geographical terrain this occurred. Levi
and the priesthood of Levi was confined to this area, which is Benjamin, and
this area which is Judah including the scattered cities of Levi. Now those of you who know your history will
be able immediately to look at that chart and relate it to a great historical
event that happened in 930 BC, the great civil war. Now this is centuries yet to come but I want
you to see how God in His sovereignty, in His omniscience provides ahead of
time for cursing. He is providing ahead
of time to fulfill His promises, just like He provided Christ “slain before the
foundation of the world” before man even fell.
And here God is providing for that nation in its crisis hour, that would
happen some 500 years later in the great civil war of 930 BC. In that civil war we have a fracture in
Israel, and the northern kingdom, known at that time as the house of Israel,
would go away with ten tribes. The house
of Judah would stay in the south with two tribes. Actually this whole area, which was then
Judah, in 930 BC, this in 930 BC, 500 years later, this whole area south of the
horizontal line, is going to be that part of the nation that inherits the
Davidic promise of 2 Sam. 7. That is,
God is promising a continual historical existence to the seed of David and no
one can cut the seed of David forever!
Now the seed of David must be protected.
God’s sovereign decrees never exclude real responsible history. And so part of the guarding of David’s seed
is going to be the fact, and you can read this later on in the Bible, that when
the great civil war comes the historians note a very strange thing happens;
there are no priests in the north. All
the priests are in the south. And this
compels later a king by the name of Jeroboam to set up his own religious
system, a syncretist religious system, he has one area down here and he has
another area up at Dan, one at Bethel and one at Dan and you recall that this
is the great fracture that occurred in 930 BC, King Jeroboam I, king of the
northern half broke off and he was in a fix because he had no priests. And you recall the story how Jeroboam got
some renegade priests and set up his own religion instead of going to the
south.
Now this was a divine provision because God knew that when this nation
split He had to keep it united religiously.
So as far as religion goes they had to be one; as far as politics goes
they had to be two, but the religious unity must remain. And the way God did this and providing in
advance was to have one location, Jerusalem, for the temple, and one priesthood
and those priests were all in the south.
So this is just a historical notice but it shows you how carefully you
have to read your Bible because if you read your Bible carefully you’re going
to see a lot of details that should point you, if you’re an intelligent person
and really thinking, it should point you to the massive sovereign program of
God in history; how history has one continual flow to it. It’s not disjointed, it has one progression
to it and we see it even in these small details.
Now the other things to notice about the division of cities in Joshua 21
is more than just these details. Notice
in verse 13 what is said about one of the cities. “Thus they gave to the
children of Aaron, the priest, Hebron with its suburbs [pasture lands], to be a
city of refuge for the slayer; and Libnah with its suburbs.” Notice in verse 21, “For they gave them
Shechem with its suburbs in Mount Ephraim, to be a city of refuge for the
slayer; and Gezer with its suburbs.”
Verse 27, “And unto the children of Gershon, of the families of the
Levites, out of the other have tribe of Manasseh they gave Golan in Bashan with
it suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the slayer….” And in verse 38, “And out of the tribe of
Gad, Ramoth in Gilead with her suburbs, to be a city of refuge for the
slayer.”
Now I want you to notice something.
Do you see the connection between the Levites and the cities of
refuge? The cities of refuge are the
Levite’s cities. Now why do you suppose
there’s this connection? Why do you
suppose that the tribe of Levi has administration over the cities of refuge? Remember what we said about the cities of
refuge; when we concluded last time we gave five parallels between the cities
of refuge and the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and we showed you how the
cities of refuge was a good concept in ancient law whereby they maintained
capital punishment and they restrained themselves against the two errors of
justice. Any judicial system suffers
from one of two weaknesses; either you have vengeance or you have
sentimentality; you go one way or the other; those of you who have served on a
jury know what I mean, you have people on the jury that are out to get the
individual, you have other people on the jury that wouldn’t convict Judas
Iscariot. So you have all this, the
principle and problems of justice. Any
Christian should be the best juror possible because you have the Word of God
and you have an objective standard of judgment so don’t you shirk jury duty; we
need Christians on juries.
So we have these two things, the problem of vengeance and the problem of
sentimentality in civil justice. Now the
cities of refuge had a function; their function was to protect the man who had
killed another man but who had done it by an accident. And we said this
paralleled the work of Christ. Now I’m
tying this together because I want you to remember, in the back of your minds
while I’m saying this keep saying to yourself, Levi is the priestly tribe… Levi
is the priestly tribe. In other words,
here’s the nation, here’s God, Levi forms the priestly intercession between the
nation and God.
Now let’s connect this with the cities of refuge. Remember the first principle paralleled
between Christ and the cities of refuge or that both are pointed ahead of the
need; Christ was slain before the foundation of the world, before Adam fell,
before there was any sin to be atoned for Christ had already been slain in the
mind of God, so it was a provision in advance.
So the cities of refuge were provision in advance, as sort of a type of
the provision of Christ. That reflects
the grace principle.
The second principle we noticed paralleling the cities of refuge and the
work of Christ were that both were sheltered from real danger. There’s nothing imaginary about the cross of
Jesus Christ and some of you may have come to Christ on the idea that Christ is
an aspirin and He can give you a better life, He can numb out the pain and He
can give you a bed of roses. And this
has been the pitch in many so-called gospel presentations where Jesus Christ
work is ignored and all you do is kind of look at the word Jesus and you
conjure up the sweet image and what He can do for your life and how He can
change your life and you invite Jesus into your heart. Now that’s not the New Testament gospel. The New Testament gospel is that you are
totally depraved, a damned sinner in the eyes of God and you need a Savior, and
you are morally guilty and cannot atone for your own guilt and there’s only one
way of doing it and that is through the bloody cross of Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ provides shelter from God’s
judgment; we find this referred to in Heb. 6:18; these cities of refuge did the
same thing. If the man who had fled to
one of these cities stepped outside to enter his garbage or something, he could
never be assured that the goel or the
kinsman redeemer wasn’t out there and going to grab him. So the cities of refuge were a shelter from
real danger.
The third parallel between the work of Christ and the cities of refuge
that both were accessible. We said the
roads to the cities of refuge had to be repaired every spring, all the signs
had to point to the city of refuge so that if something happened you could take
off and jog to the nearest city of refuge.
So you had to have the way cleared, it had to be accessible. So the cross of Jesus Christ is accessible to
all; it is open to male, to female, regardless of your race or education, it is
accessible to all.
The fourth parallel between the cities of refuge and the work of Christ
were that both required the death of the high priest. Remember the man in the city of refuge could
stay there but he had to be separated from his family and his loved ones until
the high priest died, which might be tomorrow and it might be forty years, but
whenever the high priest died then he was released. So similarly our salvation does not come to
man until the death of the great high priest, Jesus Christ.
Finally the fifth principle was that the willful sinner is
excluded. A person who commits the
unpardonable sin is excluded from salvation.
A person who rejects Jesus Christ and rejects and rejects and rejects,
whether he pretends to join the church, he can pretend to give his money, he
can pretend to come to Bible class, he can pretend through all these things,
commit the unpardonable sin and he’s excluded from Christ’s grace. So similarly here we have a man who was the
real murderer would be excluded from the city.
Now why go through all this? To
show you a principle, the cities of refuge mirror God’s work of salvation. And that work of salvation, whether it’s in a
civil sense of maintaining law and order in the society or whether it’s in a spiritual
sense of saving the individual sinner is done through a priesthood, and the
priesthood served in the ancient world to be the link between the king and the
citizens. For example, if you go to the
Hittites and you read about their treaties, they had a system of justice which
goes like this, at one part in their treaty it says this: now the commander of
the garrison, you see in the Hittite Empire they had garrisons located all
around the country; sort of like the old west, they had these forts and they
had troops in each one of these forts to control and maintain law and order in
all these areas. And it says this: the
commander of the garrison, the mayor and the elders shall administer justice
fairly and the people shall bring their cases.
If, however, anyone brings a case and the case is too involved he will
refer it to the king. And by this he
meant that he would refer it to the man who was the commander of the
garrison. Why this? Because the garrison commander was the
representative of the king. Each one of
these garrison commanders would be representative of the king, as in the early
days of the west the commanding officer of each fort essentially would be a
representative of the chief executive or the President of the United States.
So now do you see why in this list of chapter 21 the Levites must
administer the cities of refuge, because they are Jehovah’s
representative? Justice is administered
by Jehovah. And this is why the theme
song runs throughout the Old Testament, the judgment is God’s because God is
king. And that’s a slogan you find
throughout the Mosaic Law. The civil
authorities do not enforce the people’s law; the civil authorities enforce
God’s law. And this is what is precisely
wrong with the fuzzy headed thinking that’s going on about capital punishment
today, and that is when you hear of a legislator, usually it’s some nitwit
believer I’m ashamed to admit, who comes out against capital punishment, you
have a man who is defying the will of God because capital punishment is not
community vengeance. Every time I get in
a debate they always accuse me of saying that I am for community
vengeance. I am not for community
vengeance; I am for the enforcing of God’s law; capital punishment can’t be
made by the community, the community doesn’t have the authority to do it unless
it’s delegated from God, which it is. So
capital punishment is God-centered, not man.
So here you couldn’t have it clearer and this is the thing you want to
come away with out of Joshua 21, is that the administration of the so-called
civil laws in this nation were done by the priestly representatives of
Jehovah. It shows you, therefore, the
holy nature of what we call secular civil law.
This is a fallacy in a lot of believer’s thinking, people who don’t comprehend
that the government is a divine institution, not a human institution, and they
fail to realize that civil law is God’s will.
And this is why Romans 13 says you as Christians are to obey the civil
law because in doing so you are obeying God’s rule, and that includes the draft
law. So we have laws in this country and
those laws reflect God’s will and they are to be obeyed. They may be bad and you may not like them;
you are free to leave this country at any time.
But the laws that are given, and we are free to change them, and I think
a lot of them should be changed. One of
the worst laws that we have is state education.
This is an apostate thing; we should have compulsory education but not
state education. State education will
always work to the detriment of believers.
We have a lot of things I’d like to see changed but I’m not going to go
out here and defy the law, you just work with it and you suffer with it. That’s part of the fact that we have had in
the past foolish people in high places so it’s part of the destiny for our
generation to suffer. Now we may not
like to suffer; we have to suffer, they made the laws, they set it up so we
suffer for it.
But the point here of this chapter is the whole connection between the
cities of refuge which is a civil function and the religious function of the
priesthood. The two are united. This is why Paul could say in the New
Testament, that Roman soldier down on the corner, do you see him? And the Romans would patrol through the
market places with their swords. They
were like a policeman on the beat and these Roman soldiers would walk through
on shifts, down through the market place, etc.
And Paul said you see that Roman soldier, he is a minister of God. Can’t you just see some uptight believers,
he’s not saved; and Paul says that’s right, he’s not saved, but that still does
not disqualify him as a minister of God because he is a minister of the divine
institution, it doesn’t matter whether he’s saved or not. He can act as a minister of God like many of
the great men in history have acted in God’s will, the great conquerors, etc.
have carried out God’s plan and they were nowhere near salvation. We’re not talking about individual salvation;
we’re talking about the rules and principles that God uses to control society
and here we have one of these great principles.
All right, verses 3-35, the last part, form the summary statement
actually to this part of the book. “And
the LORD gave unto Israel all the land which He swore to give unto their fathers,
and they possessed it, and dwelt in it. [44] And the LORD gave them rest round
about, according to all that he swore unto their fathers; and there stood not a
man of all their enemies before them.
The LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand. [45] There failed
nothing of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel;
all came to pass.”
Now if you’ve been carefully watching this map and you recall the fact
that Joshua had given them part of the inheritance, you should be disturbed…
you should be disturbed by verses 43-45.
Something in those verses should make you think, now just a minute,
what’s going on here. Throughout verse
43-45 I read over and over again no good thing has failed, God has given
everything. Wait a minute, I look on
that map and I see three zones that are not yet conquered; zone one, the
Philistine pentapolis, that’s totally enemy occupied. It has been designated to Judah but it’s not
conquered. Zone two, the Phoenicians
stretching along the coast line, that hasn’t been conquered, they control the
whole coast line. Zone three up in the
north, the northern area, this is an area that extends for miles, all the way
up the Hamoth, and the mountain, the Tigris-Euphrates River and that isn’t
occupied either. So what’s the
deal? How can this statement be made in
verses 43-45. And of course the liberals
would say this is an exaggeration by somebody that didn’t know what they were
writing.
But before we conclude that way, there might be another explanation; to
see this turn to the first part of this book, Joshua 1:3-4. In Joshua 1:3-4, let’s go to verse 2, “Moses,
My servant is dead,” this is the commission we started the book with, “now
therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land
which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. [3] Every place that
the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said
unto Moses. [4] From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river,
the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the Great Sea
toward the going down of the sun, shall be your border. [5] There shall not any
man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. [As I was with
Moses, so I will be with thee; I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”] And then verse 6, “…for unto this people
shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swore unto their fathers
to give them.”
Now that was the commission, the promise, given Joshua. Now if you’ll read the fine print you should
notice something about this promise.
It’s such in a logical way and you’ve got to read it carefully to see
what he’s saying there and what he’s not saying. It’s not that God’s sneaky and tricks you but
it is that God always respects volition.
And He will never do anything for you apart from your active willing or
desire. Now you may not be able to do
it, that’s true, we can’t live the Christian life except through the ministry
of the Holy Spirit. But you can desire
to want it.
And so here, the phrase is verse 3, verse 4 gives you the outer
boundaries, that gives you the maximum limits of the land, but verse 3 says
“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given
unto you,” out to the boundaries of verse 4.
And the third thing about this is in verse 6, you, Joshua, will divide
this land for an inheritance. Now that
has been fulfilled; we are now at the end of Joshua, we’ve gone through chapter
13, all the way down, we’re working with chapters 21-22, we’ve gone through all
these chapters and I’ve given you all these little details about this tribe,
that tribe, etc. but the big picture is that Joshua has historically arrived at
that moment when he is dividing the land to the people. But what is it that he divides to the
people? Is it the territory all the way
out to the boundaries? He does go all
the way out to the boundaries, he does designate all the land, but the
occupation of the land is only that which the people themselves have by choice
conquered. Verse 3, every place that you
have walked on I have given you.
Now there are a lot of unoccupied square miles indicated on this
map. And this is territory that is
theirs for the choosing. Now there’s an
important principle that we can pull out of this for us as believers in Jesus
Christ because the moment that we receive Christ God puts us in union with
Christ and we share… Dr. Chafer at Dallas Seminary has a list, in his
Systematic Theology; Bob Thieme has amplified this list, we have 36 things that
we receive at the moment of salvation that you can find in Scripture. You might be able to find more but there are
at least 36 different things that God has given you as a believer. He makes you His son; He makes you a priest;
He gives you a destiny equal to that of His own son, Jesus Christ; He gives you
the indwelling Spirit; He regenerates you; He baptizes you; He seals you; He
has a relationship to you as father and son, as one who spanks his child, and
one who blesses his child. The whole
trinity is related to you; you share the resurrection nature of Jesus Christ
and all these things are given to you just as the land was divided to Israel,
but there’s a catch and that is that you don’t actually enjoy these beyond that
which you have claimed by faith.
Now how do you claim this by faith?
I want to straighten out a few things.
We have people going around just kind of grit your teeth, I believe it,
I believe it, I believe it, and go through this kind of thing, through this
great emotional thing where you work up faith.
That’s not true. The first thing
you have to do to claim something by faith is test for its truth. This is where Bible Christianity differs from
religion. Religions always asks you to
believe in nothing, step into the void, never test anything to see whether
there’s anything under there that’s going to support your weight. Now the Bible always ask for you to test
before you believe, none of this nonsense you can’t know it’s true so you have
to believe it’s true. Bologna; you know
it’s true and therefore you believe it’s true.
You trust it, in other words. So
you have to test something and this means it’s going to be hard. It may mean that some of you may have to
spend months and years in the text of the Word of God before you are convinced
that you really are a son of God.
I’m convinced of this from counseling; you meet so many people in
counseling experience that have this fat guilt complex that they’re not
acceptable in God’s sight, they’re a child of God but somehow they’re not
acceptable to their Father. Now a lot of
this, it’s true, comes out of their lousy family background. And this is why when one generation plays
around and destroys the home you see the results in the next generation. And we have had a generation in this country
who’ve played fast and loose with the home and they’ve destroyed the home so
guess what? Now I have to evangelize a
generation and my colleagues in the ministry who don’t even know what “father”
means. What are you supposed to do when
it says God is your Father and you have somebody from a broken home and they
don’t know what father means? They don’t
know what it means to be acceptable to a father, regardless of whether they’re
bad or good. They have no concept of a
love of a father for children and so they read the New Testament, when I
believe in Jesus I become a child of God, isn’t that sweet. And what happens is they have some human
viewpoint concept they picked up in their broken home and they carry it over in
their Christian life, and they always learned in that home when they were bad
they were excluded, period. I don’t mean
just in a disciplinary sense, they really felt hatred, anger and
rejection. And maybe even when they
were good they felt anger and rejection, etc. from the home. So there they are and they have the human
viewpoint concept. So guess what? As
believers they walk along and they goof at some point, and guess what they
feel? They feel toward God as their
heavenly Father as they felt toward their earthly father or whatever they had
as an excuse for a father. So this human
viewpoint pattern or programming comes directly by violation.
You see, all these divine institutions work together. Here’s a violation of the third divine
institutions and you see why it’s so necessary, because if you violate this you
set up human viewpoint patterns and concept in children that almost destroy
them even after they become believers and it takes them a long, long time to
recover so they can say I know I’m acceptable in God’s sight no matter how many
sins I commit. For some of you that’s a
tremendous concept and for some of you, you haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m
talking about. You have no idea what it
means to be perfectly acceptable in God’s sight. And you may have believed on Jesus Christ 30
years ago and still to this day you do not feel accepted in God’s sight
fully. You think He’s an old meany and
you think He’s out to get you, cause you all sorts of static and deliberately
get you. Why? Probably because you’ve
seen this pattern, maybe you’ve acted this way toward your own children. And you can’t understand how God loves you
and can discipline you while He loves you.
So this all fits together and carries out, and so I’m convinced a lot of
believers don’t know the first thing about their possessions in Christ. So the amount that you can enjoy your
possessions in Christ varies directly as the land did for Israel.
Every place where your foot has gone on I have given you. In other words, all this land, let’s take a
square section here, suppose they walk around and here we have left right, left
right, and they walk around this thing and come back here, so here they have
the land. So they enjoy that land, isn’t
that thrilling, we’ve got all this land, when they’ve got all this land out
here but they’re not willing to walk on it. Walking is a picture of
trusting. In the New Testament you trust
something when you believe it will bear your weight, when you’ve tested it and
come to the conclusion that it holds, and so then you walk on it. So when you begin to see that it’s true that
you are a son of God at the moment you receive Jesus Christ, that you are
perfectly acceptable in His sight, that you share the destiny of Jesus Christ,
that all these things are true, then and only then can you walk on it. Now some of you can fake it. And you can say well I think it’s true and
I’ll kind of oouch out and see and you pretend to walk. That’s not what I’m asking you, that’s not
what the Word of God asks you. Don’t
fake belief, if you don’t believe it, admit it and test it and find out if it’s
true, and then you walk, just like these people had to walk. But notice, they wound up in Joshua 21 with
only the territory that they had claimed by faith and no more, even though all
this territory was open, all of it was theirs, but they only received that, and
enjoyed and experienced that which they claimed by faith.
So similarly we can make this square into a circle and say here are all
your possessions in Christ; here’s your sonship, here’s your destiny with
Christ, here’s your election, here’s the sharing of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, here’s the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, so you have all these
things and you may have a hang-up somewhere, because of your background or
something you just can’t accept sonship and so you have a big fat guilt complex
and you’re never going to experience this and you walk around with a glum look
on your face because you really don’t believe that God loves you, no concept of
love. So you don’t believe God loves you
and so there’s something missing in your Christian life but don’t blame God
about it. And this is not something you
pick up on a Holy Ghost baptism experience 30 years after you’re saved. This is something that you pick up as you
expand your faith. And notice it takes
an act of choice to do it, it doesn’t come automatically.
Let’s move to Joshua 22 and we’ll finish this last chapter of the
section. When we finish chapter 22 we’re
at the end of this section. We have two
more weeks in Joshua when we finish up his exhortation to the people. I want to give you some background for this
chapter; we’re not going through it verse by verse, we’re going to go through
it section by section. We’re going to go
through it fast so I want to give you some background so you understand what’s
going on. There’s an incident here
that’s going to happen but you’re not going to understand this incident until
you get some background on what the deal is about this problem of unity.
Let’s look at the land, this isn’t a good map but here’s the Sea of
Galilee, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River.
This area to the right, to the east, is called Transjordania. Transjordania was given to two and a half
tribes, Gad, Reuben and half of Manasseh.
They were ranchers and they liked it, it was cattle country. And they liked beef and they wanted to go
into the ranching business. So they
liked this land and though it was not part of the promised land, you have to
keep this in mind to get the background for chapter 22, it was not part of the
original promised land, but you remember when Moses was conducting his eastern
campaign they came up there and they had a few guys like Og and a few others,
and they wanted to give Israel a hard time so God clobbered them and as a bonus
they got all this real estate, this ranch country. So they decided to set up a ranching
operation and these two and a half tribes went out there and did this. And so they inherit at this point.
Now what’s the problem in chapter 22; it involves these two and a half
tribes. When Joshua took the troops
across Jordan he demanded that the two and a half tribes give him five
divisions of men. Remember he took five
divisions of men across Jordan with him to help out. He said I want you people, you’ve got your
ranch land over there, you’ve got your inheritance but you’re not going to
enjoy your inheritance until you get over here and do some fighting for your
brethren, so you just get on over here, they had a residue left to take care of
the cattle, etc. but you get over here and you fight. So we begin chapter 22 eight years
later. This is a very emotional moment,
because here are men that have fought and they’ve seen their comrades die; it’s
a parting of the ways for men who have fought side by side for years. And you can see this and observe it in
history, how men have become very attached to other men in the military,
particularly if they’ve gone through struggles and battles together and they’ve
had some of their buddies wounded and killed in battle. They know what it means to stand side by side
and fight together. These men have
fought together for eight years. So over
this extended period of time you’ve had these men fight together; they’re
comrades in arms and now they come to the parting of the ways.
Verse 1, “Then Joshua called the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the
half tribe of Manasseh, [2] And said unto them, Ye have kept all that Moses,
the servant of the LORD, commanded you, and have obeyed my voice in all that I
have commanded you. [3] You have not left your brethren these many days unto
this day, but have kept the charge of the commandment of the LORD your God. [4]
And now the LORD your God has given rest unto your brethren, as He promised;
therefore, now return you, and get you unto your tents, and unto the land of
your possession, which Moses, the servant of the LORD gave you, on the other side of the Jordan.
And in verse 5 Joshua exhorts them to stay under the rule of the King,
and he says, “[But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the Law, which
Moses, the servant of the LORD] charged you, to love the LORD your God, and to
walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments, and to cleave unto Him, and
to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” And here we have the background for the
incident that’s going to come up. Israel
is a theocracy; you’ve heard of the word “democracy,” well look at this word,
“theocracy,” it means God rules. God is
the King; any act of unpatriotic nature is sin, it’s rebellion against the
authority of the King. The King must
rule. How does the King rule and from
where does He rule? Where’s the King’s
throne? It’s the ark. Where’s the ark? Shiloh.
So we have the King ruling at this point from Shiloh. That’s the actual location of the throne of
the great King.
Conceive of this ark as the throne of the King. Now there has to be, for this nation to hang
together, remember you’ve got twelve tribes out here and the tendency is to
have a centrifugal effect where they just get thrown off, there’s a tendency to
split. So they’ve got to hold the nation
together. Let me just take a few moments
to explain some principles from the book of Deuteronomy on national unity and
how the nation Israel had to achieve unity, and if you can master these you
will also be an astute commentator on why we don’t have unity in this nation
today, because this principle, although true in its pure form only for Israel
holds for any national entity that ever existed in history.
In Deut. 12-16 we have an extended section in the Word of God dealing
with how a nation holds together. In
Deut. 12 we have the first thing required is that there be only throne. There had to be only one authorized place of
worship. So the whole thrust of this
chapter is one altar…. One altar! And I
just want you to mentally translate the word “altar” into “throne,” it will
keep your thinking straight on what’s going on here. One throne, does that makes sense? Can you
have unity in a nation with many kings?
No, you have one king, so you can only have one throne so that’s easy to
see. We come to chapter 13 and you have
to have one doctrine or religion. That’s
chapter 13, no such thing as religious freedom in the Bible, only one religion,
the true one; all others, they either got with it or they were executed. And then chapters 14-15 we have only one
culture, cultural tradition, and in chapter 16 we only have one system of
national holidays, a national calendar actually that portrayed history.
Now these four items, the book of Deuteronomy, which is the Law, insist
must be there to have national unity.
And by just a footnote on this you can see what’s happening in the
United States. We came to this country,
most people came to this country, they were denominations and sure, we had
freedom of religion, but it was within a Christian framework. It was freedom of religion within, say the
Baptists, the Methodists and the Presbyterians but it was all within the Christian
framework. That was the original concept. And so of course you could have the 13
colonies uniting together, you had people that understood, that worked within
the same framework. And so what
happened? Very unwisely this country swallowed a line that you had to admit
every Tom, Dick and Harry, from whatever country or culture they come
from. And we allowed our immigration
quotas to move people into this country who came from countries without that
culture and religious background and we have been destrtoyed by it. Immigration has destroyed this country
because we have allowed individuals into this nation who do not share the
cultural heritage of the original 13 colonies.
That may sound like bigotry to you; I’m just giving you the mechanics.
You can have all the immigration you want to but I’m just telling you
you’re going to have a result and the result is you’re going to have a melting
pot and after a while you’re not even going to have the pot. That’s going to be melted too and that’s
what’s happened here in our country. So
we have invited people in, helter-skelter, on all sorts of basis. It’s like Israel inviting the Canaanites, the
Assyrians and the Hittites, come on down we’ll have a good party here, we have
freedom, lots of money, a good economy, so come on over. And then they have these Canaanites, the
Hittites, etc. no concept of work, they don’t know what means. Israel had a concept of work, you work as
unto the Lord; it involved sweat. Oh,
you don’t work, so first thing you know you have to have a welfare system to
take care of all the monsters that are too lazy to work. This goes on and you tear the guts out of
your country because you have people that are unsympathetic to the general
background.
I’m not saying everybody was a Christian; I’m simply saying there was
what I would call a Christian consensus.
That consensus was destroyed by the end of the 19th century
in this country and today we are rapidly moving to something else, and this is
the sinister half of this rule. Mark my
word, every country goes one of two ways; you can observe it in history. Either a country gets unity or it
fragments. You can see this in the case
of Europe; you can see this in the case of South American with the Portuguese
and the Spaniards. You can see this
operate in Ireland between northern Ireland and the Erie state in the south,
etc. So you have this fragmentation
along religious grounds. Now a nation
can only go one way; it can go this way and have unity and it will always
involve a culture and a religion. Or you
can have a diversity in which case the nation will split and fall apart. This is why the Christians were accused of
being seditious people in the Roman Empire because they represented a threat to
the culture and religion of Rome. And
this is why in the book of Acts the people were known as the people who turned
the world upside down.
And we have to say this: as a Christian citizen in this country, if you
are a citizen of this country then you operate in one of these ways. Either the country goes along with the Christian
consensus, in which case what is your role?
If the country is moving toward a Christian consensus, then you are the
national glue because you are the ones that are feeding the national consensus
by articulating your beliefs as a Christian.
So as a Christian citizen you find it easy because you are the ones that
are basically cementing the nation together.
But now suppose the nation is headed in an opposite direction towards
humanism; suppose now the nation, because remember the rule, a nation has to go
toward some system or fragment; it’s got to do this. Our nation today is moving toward humanism;
now what is your role as a citizen? Now
your role becomes very unpleasant because stubbornly adhering to your Christian
beliefs it will become more and more obvious that it is the Christians who are
breaking up the unity of a humanistic state.
Now where is this showing forth today?
State education. You can have
compulsory education without having state education, but when the state makes a
rule… now a state can operate this way, it could say look, every person has to
go to school, that’s compulsory education, that’s fine, but you parents set up
your own schools, go to private schools, go to some school but you’ve got to go
to a school. That’s compulsory education. But state education says you not only have to
go to a school you will go to the government school. That’s what we’ve got, state education. Now in state education what happens is when
you have humanism take over you have the Christians that are going to start to
buck the tide, and we are living in the 1970’s where the Christian citizens are
rising up and bucking the tide and you mark my word, by the end of the 1970s
the Christians are going to be accused of fracturing the state education of the
United States government. It’s already
happened in California. Christian
citizens who are taking their stand against humanism must act as a fragmenting
device in this national state; they’ve got to operate this way when you have
this.
This is the background and let’s show the highlights of this passage,
Joshua 22:9-12. And the children of
Reuben and the children of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh returned, and
departed from the children of Israel out of Shiloh, which is in the land of
Canaan, to go unto the country of Gilead….”
Last part of verse 10, they “built there an altar by the Jordan, a great
altar to see.” So here’s the problem,
they built a great monument and they built it right next to the Jordan River so
everybody could see it. So verse 11, all
the other tribes on the west side of Jordan hear about, and verse 12, they
“gathered themselves together at Shiloh,” which is the throne of the great
King. So the decide they’re going to
make war on it.
But notice, verses 13-20 you have an investigation before war. Now if you want to see how to conduct war
biblically, this is how to do it. Before
you pop off and start some activity you find out something because war in a
part of a national entity is what? God’s
judgment on evil. All right, before you
can have war you’ve got to find out what is the evil. That’s just exactly what has not happened in
Vietnam. Nobody knows what the evil is,
tell the soldiers to go over there and don’t let them shoot at the VC
trucks. It’s an enemy truck down there,
you can’t even shoot at it and if you do they take the guns away from you. That’s ridiculous.
Notice these people, they have an investigation in verse 13 and
following, they send the son of the high priest, Phinehas, and he goes out and
he finds out, is this report true of these tribes building an altar or not;
have they violated the Law in other words.
So the armies, in verse 12, are gathered together but before the war
starts a commission is given to find out, is there or is there not evil, and
two, what is the evil so we can direct our military commanders to the
target. So they go, verse 14, they are
sent, and in verse 16 they begin to chew out these people on the other side of
Jordan for building this idiotic altar, and they say at the end of verse 16,
“that you have built you an altar, that
ye might rebel this day against the LORD?”
See, another altar would mean another throne. Don’t you see, this is an act of treason
against the great King, it is an unauthorized throne? And it violates Deut. 12 and 13. So it’s an act of treason.
Verse 18, “But you must turn away this day from following the LORD? And
it will be, seeing ye rebel today against the LORD, that tomorrow He will be
angry with the whole congregation of Israel.”
He says you’re not only going to get disciplined, we’re going to get
disciplined; you are calling down the wrath of God on this entire nation. By the way, this is a principle how you as a
believer… some of you men may be in partnership with a believer in your
business and if that believer is out of line you are going to get spanked. So before you go into business partnership
with somebody, if you’re a Christian businessman you ought to think it through
because if you’re in close association with somebody and he’s an out-of-it-believer,
you are going to ask to get in trouble because when God spanks him He’s going
to spank you because the only way God can hit him is through his business and
when He hits the business you’re going to get it. So this is another principle, anytime you’re
married to a person, this is another way.
If you’re married to a believer, the believer is out of it, God clobbers
the believer, you get it. So anytime you
get near some other believer that is getting it you share in it, and this is
the principle here, that everybody is going to get disciplined if this keeps
up. This is the principle, by the way,
that we find over and over again in the New Testament.
The explanation, verses 21-29 is that they didn’t mean any harm by it,
in fact, what they wanted to do was construct a monument. And the monument, verse 24, “In time to come
your children might speak unto our children, saying, What have ye to do with
the LORD God of Israel? [25] For the LORD has made the Jordan a border between
us and you, ye have children of Reuben and children of Gad; ye have no portion
in the LORD: so shall your children make our children cease from fearing the
LORD.” So they erected this altar,
supposedly, to help glue the nation together.
But I want you to notice something: God never told them to build the
altar. And this is symbolic of a lot of
work Christians do that is uncalled for in God’s sight. God never asked them to build an altar, He
already had the mechanics. See, what the
mechanics of keeping national unity were—three annual feasts every year, every
male had to go to Jerusalem, every male had to go to the temple and as they
followed that they would have kept their unity and the proof of it is that in
the great civil war of 930 Jeroboam recognized it and that scared him because
he knew that as long as every male member had to go south to that nation down
there he couldn’t keep it separate. So
there was plenty of provision, they didn’t have to build this altar.
Now in verse 30-34 you’ll notice that they were approved, the commission
went away, no war was declared because there was no evil involved, but you’ll
notice if you read carefully verses 30-34 that there’s no mention of the altar,
only their motive. They say all right,
you didn’t mean wrong but there’s never approval given to this secondary altar
and you’ll never find it in the Word of God.
This is an unauthorized good work, and this altar is going to cause
problems. Transjordania, remember, was
unauthorized. Remember I told you at the
beginning how they went over there and that was not part of the Promised Land,
now you see what else is happening? Now they’ve got an altar over here, and
this should show you something, when you move out and move ahead of the Lord,
and you do things that He personally does not call for you to do, you may very
often set up some stumbling blocks that are going to hurt you later on. We’re going to see later on in the history of
this nation how this very foolish move actually works together for evil because
God didn’t tell them to do it but they went ahead and did it anyway and they’re
setting in motion wheels that they are going to wish they never set in
motion. With our heads bowed….