We’ve been learning, through Joshua’s remarkable book, what marks God’s people if they’re moving into victory. And we want to know about that!
Well: when we come to the end of ch19 the long initial struggle is over: `They finished dividing the land.` And ch21: `So the Lord gave Israel all the land He had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it… Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed.` So the remaining chapters will raise a different but equally important question for us: when you’ve come into a place of blessing, victory, growth… how do you make it last?
Chapters 22, 23 and 24 are actually very `simple`; chapters we should read then turn straight into prayer: Lord please help me live out the obvious lessons here! (We’ll come on to chs 20 and 21.) In ch22 we read how the western tribes nearly went to war with the three eastern ones when they seemed to be `breaking faith` with God, by developing worship but in ways contrary to what He commanded (v16). Now we know that the old testament often presents in physical terms the spiritual issues we find in the new. So this chapter poses a question to me: how far am I willing to `contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints`, as Jesus’ brother Jude (v4) urges his readers? With, perhaps, the cost, and pain, and criticism for negativity and boat-rocking, that this may bring upon me?
In recent years I’ve grown increasingly aware that, if we want to build things that will last, it’s not enough to be faithful to the Bible and the gospel ourselves (the `faith once for all entrusted`); we have to care whether others are. That’s why, for example, as a pastor looking after homegroups I felt it essential that we had a policy whereby, each year, our group leaders confirmed in writing that they still wholeheartedly affirmed our statement of faith. (Any of us can drift doctrinally: through midlife crisis, through neglecting God’s Word, through reading too much of the wrong kind of theology…) If we want what God has built with us to last, we must have that prayerful passion that we see in ch22, to `contend` for biblical faithfulness throughout our church, and our denomination. It’s struck me recently how, when faithfulness to the gospel was being lost in Acts 15:2, Paul and Barnabas ensured that the `sugar hit the fan`! (Rather than just smiling tolerantly and saying, Well these are brothers with a different perspective…) Lord, give me that heart…!
But ch22 shows us the other side too. Indeed the western tribes took the initiative (a `passionate piety`, Davis calls it) when they saw spiritual danger. And it’s instructive how they assessed and presented the issue via what was recorded of how God acted in the past (v17). And, they were willing to pay a real personal price (reducing their own inheritances) to stop the error (v19). But it’s equally instructive that this wasn’t a witch hunt; nor was it a way of pursuing personality clashes under the guise of apparent doctrinal issues (as happens too often, even among leaders). No: they listened, and they absorbed what the `other side` were really saying. And when they saw that the easterners weren’t being doctrinally unfaithful, even though they were doing something it would never have occurred to Phinehas and Co to do, they rejoiced – indeed they praised God (v33). Wow! Examples to follow… Let no one say this stuff is irrelevant, or lacking in application to our contemporary situations…
But now ch 23 (and 24, next week): again so relevant. Joshua knows he’s `well advanced in years` (23:2); but that doesn’t lead to disinterest in what’s going on, rather what’s clearly on his mind is how things will be after he’s gone. I was taught in IFES that it’s a key part of leadership to set things up well for when you’ve handed over; indeed, that to some extent the test of a person’s leadership is how matters go when they’ve finished. And so Joshua sets out all the good things God has done for them; and then he takes them back to the principles by which they came into victory, repeating ch1, particularly with regard to being `very strong` in careful, radical obedience to God’s Word (v6, cf Joshua 1:7), and avoiding any influences that would undermine that (23:7). And this, he makes clear, is what it means to `be very careful to love the Lord your God` (vv11-12; cf 1 John 5:3)! It’s striking too exactly how he chooses to finish (isn’t he being unnecessarily negative?, asks Dale Ralph Davis ironically): if his hearers let these things slip, the results will be genuinely catastrophic (vv15-16), he says – and then sits down! Again: it’s a chapter for us to read meditatively, and then pray: Lord, thankyou for all You have done for me; help me by Your Spirit to stay totally faithful in holy discipleship to You and to Your Word!
Vital stuff to pray about there if we’ve come into a place of blessing and victory, and we want to make it last! However — treat this as a PS if you like: Let’s not forget chs 20 and 21 – what else marks God’s people when they’re living in the place of victory?
First ch20. This is another case of the odd way hints of the gospel echo though Joshua. Joshua is among other things a record of God’s judgment on the Canaanites’ uniquely horrendous evil; but it’s also about those who are delivered from judgment; most obviously Rahab, but let’s also remember that Caleb, last week’s hero, was in fact a Canaanite. Now in ch20 we find God’s provision for people unintentionally guilty of manslaughter; He provides `cities of refuge` to which they could flee to safety from the `avenger of blood`. Three interesting things here: first, the refuge cities are the Levite cities; that is, the community of worship is the refuge for the helpless slayer. Second, as Numbers 35 makes clear, he must not step outside the refuge God has provided, there is safety nowhere else. (I’ve never forgotten hearing a dramatic rendition of the story of Abner in 2 Samuel 3, who dies because of exactly this folly.) But thirdly, there is a time when he can return to his home and his inheritance – and have we not here another of these bizarre echoes of the gospel? That time is at the time of the death of the high priest (20:6). When the high priest dies, justice is satisfied and the sinner’s penalty has been fully paid. Well… we have a Great High Priest (Hebrews 4), through whose death our penalty was paid, and our inheritance restored… Is the cross echoed here, in the extraordinary way God’s Word often does? Maybe!
Anyway we can pray: Lord, You know that in ways I didn’t intend or maybe even now haven’t realized, I have sinned; but thankyou that there is a safe place of refuge for me, and the death of my Great High Priest means all my penalty is paid!
Then ch21 about the tribe of Levi. Let me share something thought-provoking I learned from YWAM’s John Dawson about tribes. How are God’s people best organized longterm? The new testament records only show us the Church over relatively few decades. Even then it’s obvious that power isn’t centralized: Paul appoints local people, even fairly young believers, as elders in the new churches he plants, he doesn’t bring in leaders from Jerusalem across the region. But Dawson pointed out that it’s in the old testament we see the system that God set up for a period of generations; and He chose to work, not through a centralized king (when Israel went that way later it was not God’s will, 1 Sam 12) – but, through a system of tribes: united as parts of the same family, yet diverse. It makes sense; in this world, we need to limit centralized concentrations of power, because power corrupts, even among believers.
But also it’s striking, and (I think) helpful, to think of God’s evangelical, Bible-and-gospel people in terms of tribes: firmly united (it must be!) on what’s `of first importance`, that (1 Cor 15:3) Christ died to pay for our sins, and that the Scriptures He gave us are totally trustworthy and authoritative; but beyond that our different `tribes`, denominations, streams, will be gloriously diverse, both in style and indeed secondary doctrines. (Tongues, say, or politics, or predestination, or what does and doesn’t grieve the Spirit about women’s ministry.) That’s not quite to say that every tribe will act equally wisely; arguably history shows that the eastern tribes weren’t wise to choose an inheritance outside the promised land, even though they clearly did it first with God’s blessing. But in general, the point for us to grasp about tribes is that, while vitally united on what’s `of first importance`, in all sorts of other ways we’ll be diverse; one tribe will do something that would simply never occur to another (and might even shock them, until there’s real sharing). But we’ll love each other, and pray for each other, and (vitally) thank God for each other… which is just what we’ve seen Phinehas and Co doing in chapter 22! Lord, please help me apply this and do it…
So one last PS then, chapter 21, the tribe that got left out when Joshua parcelled out the land; the Levites themselves. `But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance; the Lord, the God of Israel, is their inheritance, as He promised them` (13:33). This has to be really important, because the book keeps coming back to it: in 13:14, 14:3-4, 18:7. There’s something thought-provoking here, the idea that people who make worship happen (like Levites) will be people whose heart is for nothing whatsoever but God. Yet, of course, there’s a balance; no matter how dedicated they are, they and their families need somewhere to live and the wherewithal to live on; which is what ch21 is about, and in the new testament 1 Corinthians 9. (And if we apply it right now it means, in a time of Covid we can’t just cut the global mission budget; because the people living by the gospel (whether expats or nationals), and their children, still need money for health care, children’s education, old age pension provision; and `loving our neighbours the way we do ourselves` means seeing to that, just as we do for ourselves…)
It’s striking too that, tucked away here, are verses telling how Hebron, the giants’ stronghold captured by Caleb in the great story (last week) of ch14, now gets given to the Levites (21:11). So, quietly and without fanfare, one man of faith provides for the needs of a very different group of people of faith! Still, for me that earlier verse is the thought-provoking (if enigmatic) one here, and Lord, please help me see what it means in my own life: `To the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance; the Lord, the God of Israel, is their inheritance, as He promised them…`
Chapters apparently so much less important than Joshua’s earlier ones. And yet, when we start to dig and reflect with God, there’s so much that’s profound; so much that’s profoundly relevant, to turn into prayer…?
