Category: Band

It doesn’t take long. After only one generation, the people of Israel forgot about the Lord. They had received the incredible blessings of the Lord as they moved into the Promised Land, but they forgot the ways of God and fashioned their lives around themselves and what they wanted. They began to look to the nations around them and desired to be accepted by them. Instead of teaching their children about the ways of God, the parents forgot about God, and now the next generation of Israelites know nothing about God and how they came to be where they are now.

After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the LORD’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

Judges 2:10-13

Only one generation. That is all that it takes to forget. One generation that doesn’t teach the next generation, and that next generation walks away from the Lord. Instead, that generation will go on to serve other gods. That other generation will look for something to worship, and they will be easily deceived by others around them. They may even say that they know all about the Lord, when in fact they are completely ignorant of the ways of God.

We see similar symptoms today. We are walking far from God, and it is primarily because we have not taught our children the ways of the Lord. We have preferred the “gods” of wealth, sex, and fame that are found in the culture all around us. Or we have looked for other social causes to give ourselves to that they themselves have become driving forces, other gods themselves. Meanwhile, we have said that we know the Lord…but we don’t want to believe.

Very little has changed from the time of the Israelites entering the Promised Land up to now. But we have a choice that we can make. We can determine that our house will serve the Lord. Will we? Will you?

Joshua is giving his final fairwell address to the nation of Israel, having gathered them from across the entire land. Joshua is warning the people to stay true to the one true God, Yahweh. He recounts for them that their people left the traditions of their fathers, particularly the father of Abraham, who worshiped gods and idols in his house, to follow one God, the God of Israel.

But now, despite their best efforts, there are still people who serve other gods who remain in the Promised Land. They also serve and worship other gods, but Joshua implores the Israelites that they should stay separate from them, that they should not intermarry with them, because by doing so, they will go to their ruin. God will no longer allow the Israelites to stay in the Promised Land. He will no longer protect them, and instead, the Israelites will be driven out of the land that God has given to them.

If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you.

Joshua 23:16

So the Promised Land is conditional – conditional upon the idea that they will serve the Lord, and serve him only. The Israelites can have no other gods. They can have no one else before him. He is the one and only. If the Israelites will obey these commandments, then they will stay in the land. If they will not, punishment will rain down upon them and they will be driven out.

We know, of course, that they leave God. They walk away from him. Despite having been given everything, the Israelites betray the Lord and do not continue to serve him. The history of the rest of the Old Testament is the story of the Israelites’ betrayal of the Lord, and in fact, they do come to their ruin. Several nations come to attack and rule over the Israelites, and they win. And the Israelites are scattered to the four corners of the earth. They no longer have access to the Promised Land.

Except there was a prophecy that God would gather his people from the north, the south, the east, and the west and at some point they would return home. And that is exactly what happened. In 1947, the people of Israel returned to nation of Israel, back in the Promised Land, back to Canaan, and this is the root of much of the conflict that we have seen recently in the Middle East. In the same way that there was war many millenia ago as Joshua and the Israelites entered the land, there continues to be war in the land even today.

And that war will only come to peace in one way. Only through the coming of the one true king, and the one true kingdom, Jesus Christ, the king in the kingdom of God. This time is coming, and we must be prepared for our king to come, so we must ask ourselves…

Will we intermarry with the culture around us?

Or will we, in our houses, serve the Lord, and him only?

As the Promised Land was being divided up between the twelve tribes of the Israelites, the Levites were given no land and no inheritance. Instead, the space that they would have would be land and cities within the inheritance of each of the other tribes. Their role would be to live among the other tribes and serve the Lord amongst those others.

Instead of solely providing for themselves by farming, trade, or some other type of work, the Levites would administer the sacrifices and the service and worship to the Lord. Their role would be to help facilitate coming before the Lord for each of the other tribes.

So the Levites would live there amongst them, each of the tribes, but they would also receive their living from them. Those that they would serve would also be those from whom they would live, those from whom they would eat.

In addition, the Levites were given land around the cities where they would live. They were allowed also to have animals that they would graze, so in addition to the work that they had done, they were also allowed to have a way in which they would be able to have animals to supplement their food, to supplement the provision that they were given by the other tribes that they served. Maybe this was from tradition, given that Moses himself herded sheep for his father in-law, or maybe this was from the fact that there would be future times that the other tribes didn’t provide well for the Levites. In any case, both were allowed. They lived from the provision of the other tribes and were also allowed pasture lands around the cities.

But they didn’t have an inheritance of a larger piece of land. They didn’t have space where they would grow or work to become generationally wealthy. No, instead, the inheritance of the Levites was that of the Lord, and so the promise from Moses was that they would be given cities within the midst of the other tribes where they would settle.

Now the family heads of the Levites approached Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the heads of the other tribal families of Israel at Shiloh in Canaan and said to them, “The LORD commanded through Moses that you give us towns to live in, with pasturelands for our livestock.” So, as the LORD had commanded, the Israelites gave the Levites the following towns and pasturelands out of their own inheritance.

Joshua 21:1-3

As we think forward to today, what are the parallels that we see?

The Promised Land is a representation of God’s relationship with the Israelites. God promised the land to Abraham and extended his covenant relationship with the Israelites through the line of Isaac and Jacob, ultimately bringing the nation of Israel into the Promised Land through Moses and with Joshua as we are reading now.

This land, that of Canaan, is given to the Israelites and God remains to be their God and they are to be his people. That is the covenant that God made with his people, and the land remains an earthly representation of that covenant. That is the place where they will live, and that is the place from which the entire earth will know the Lord.

With regard to the Levites, they were the priests before the Lord.

We all are considered to be priests before the Lord. Peter calls us a royal priesthood:

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

1 Peter 2:9

In the same way, as they worshiped Jesus in heaven, God’s people also sang a song that said:

You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.

Revelation 5:10

So there is definitely a parallel here. In the same way that the Levites received the Lord as their inheritance because they were the priests for the people of Israel, we are also called to be priests before our king, Lord Jesus. We have received him as our inheritance. Instead of a promised land, as the Jews received, we have the kingdom of God, and if we find it, we will be able to live within it, depending upon him forever. This is our hope as the shadow of the Levite inheritance shows us the way toward our life in Christ.

God had given Moses a command that he should set up cities where people who had been party to the death of another person should have a place to go so that they could find refuge while they received a fair hearing for what had happened. Another person, presumably connected to the family who experienced the loss through the death of their family member, and referred to as the avenger of blood, may pursue them to the city of refuge, but in that place, the person should not be handed over to the avenger because he or she deserves to have a fair hearing.

Then the LORD said to Joshua: “Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood. When they flee to one of these cities, they are to stand in the entrance of the city gate and state their case before the elders of that city. Then the elders are to admit the fugitive into their city and provide a place to live among them. If the avenger of blood comes in pursuit, the elders must not surrender the fugitive, because the fugitive killed their neighbor unintentionally and without malice aforethought. They are to stay in that city until they have stood trial before the assembly and until the death of the high priest who is serving at that time. Then they may go back to their own home in the town from which they fled.”

Joshua 20:1-6

The assumption was that the death was caused by accident, or unintentionally. This seems to be similar to the idea that a person could sin unintentionally, as we see in Leviticus 4 when God provided the sacrificial system to the Israelites. In these cases, the unintentional sin, or the unintentional death, should have a hearing before the judge. That situation should be understood fully and judged rightly, offering the opportunity for grace and mercy, even if repairations are also in order by the offending party. In any case, the person should not simply be left for the avenger to come and strike down the person’s life.

This does, of course, offer us echoes of our place in God. We have, in God, an avenger of blood because of his desire and requirement for justice for sin. As we sin, both against other people and against God’s commandments and in offense to his holiness and glory, our life is required. Blood is required…and nothing less.

But we also have in God a place of refuge. He has given us himself in Jesus Christ and he has taken our place by shedding his blood for us. Jesus is our refuge from the judgment of God that will come as an avenger. By placing our faith in him, we trust ourselves to God’s grace and mercy in Christ.

As the Israelites come to a pause in their fighting as they have taken over the Promised Land of Canaan, Joshua begins to divide up the land and give it to the individual tribes of Israel. Two of the tribes, the Reubenites and the Gadites, were given land on the eastern side of the Jordan River, yet their armies had crossed over and fought along with the rest of the Israelites so as to help their fellow Israelites conquer the people in Canaan.

In the end, each tribe was given an inheritance of land.

Now these are the areas the Israelites received as an inheritance in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun and the heads of the tribal clans of Israel allotted to them.

Joshua 14:1

Here is an illustration of the land as it was divided up amongst the tribes:

As we often would reading through the Old Testament, we can think of the Promised Land given to the Israelites as both an historical act as well as an indication of things that will come in the future.

The Promised Land meant an inheritance and a place of rest for the Israelites. They had been under a hand of oppression as they were in slavery in Egypt. They had been working for the Egyptians, to build the kingdom of Egypt, but now they were entering a place of rest provided by God, a place that they no longer needed to work for others and the well-being of those others, but instead living within the land that God had given to them.

This is similar to the rest that God gives to us. As we leave the slavery of sin and our desire to be fed by the systems of the world, obeying what it has to say to us, we instead end up moving in the direction of freedom in Christ within the New Covenant that we have through Christ and his blood. In a similar way that the nation of Israel received a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of abundance and provision, we enter a life that we can live to the full in Christ. A life that is a complete blessing because we know him and we are in relationship with God. This is an outworking of the inheritance that we receive through Christ even today.

I hate those game shows, whether they are surviving, running obstacle courses, or whatever they are doing, where they put people on the show and have them start making predictions about how they are the next great… whatever they say they are going to be. They all say it, and I’m sure they all believe it. And then all but one of them gets embarrassed because they have talked a big game but then there is little that stands behind what they have said.

I don’t know – is it a special kind of person who can stand in front of a camera, in front of a show that will be broadcast to millions of people, and declare that they will do it? I can’t even imagine being willing to allow those words to come out of my mouth. Maybe it is just that type of person that the producers of those shows look for when they are casting the shows. In any case, it is amazing to me.

The truth is that most of the time, when a person declares that they are going to do something, they are probably going to fail, or it will turn out quite differently than what they originally thought. We can describe a vision for what we would like to do, but we can rarely accomplish the vision in precisely the way that we imagine.

On the other hand, we also see these types of predictions throughout the Bible. When they come from God, they come true in precisely the way that he predicts. Here is an example from a time that God made a prediction to Joshua as they fought the people who were in the land of Canaan.

The LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them, slain, over to Israel. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.”

Joshua 11:6

God makes a prediction because he has full knowledge of the past, present, and the future. He has the ability to see all things in all time. And he is the only one who can. The predictions that God makes come true, even if the fulfillment is long in coming, God will bring it to a conclusion.

Another example? How about this one from Isaiah 43 that was even fulfilled within the last 80 years?

But now, this is what the LORD says—
he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
Cush and Seba in your stead.

Since you are precious and honored in my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life.

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.

I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth —

everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made. ”

Isaiah 43:1-7

Do you see it? Through Isaiah God is saying that his people, the Israelites, who were scattered throughout the earth as a judgment and punishment for their sin, will be gathered back together once again. That didn’t happen until Israel was brought together again as a nation in 1947.

Of course, I think that this prophecy speaks to more than just the nation of Israel. As the Lord says that he will gather his people from the north, south, east, and west, he is talking about the blessing of God, the new covenant, being available to all nations. Yet it does also speak to the fact that God’s chosen people will be gathered back together again. He will accomplish this. He will do it. And he has done it, even in our lifetime.

We need to know the one who will do these things. We need to know him who keeps his promises. Men will fail, but in God we will succeed if we follow him and do as he calls us to do because his plans will succeed as they always have.

We have to check ourselves to remember by which sight we are walking, and by which sight we are moving or speaking. Very often, we react based on what we see instead of doing based on what God has said to us.

This is what happened to the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. They took Jericho, and then after some consternation because someone had taken items from Jericho that should have been given to the Lord, they also took Ai. Now, word began to spread that the Israelites were on the march and each king and each city were making their preparations to decide what they should do to defend against the threat of the oncoming army of the Israelites.

For most of the cities, they band together, developing an alliance so that they will try to fight against the Israelites. That won’t go well.

But in the case of the city of Gibeon, they decide instead to fool the Israelites, making it look like they have come from a long way away, presumably outside of Canaan. They put on worn out clothes and worn out sandals. They bring dry, moldy bread with them, and they have wine in old, cracked wineskins. The Gibeonites make it look like they have come from far away, beyond where even the Israelites would know where they are from.

Their aim is to write a treaty with the Israelites so that they won’t come to attack them. And their trick works! All it takes to fool the leaders of Israel is to have them taste some of their bread and wine. Israel believes that they are from far away and now they write a treaty with the Gibeonites.

The Israelites didn’t, however, ask God anything about the Gibeonites:

The Israelites sampled their provisions but did not inquire of the LORD.

Joshua 9:14

They have the ability to do it. God speaks to them. They have prayed when they were in trouble. They have called out to God when they are in need. But now, it seems that the Israelites feel that they are in charge. It seems that they are sensing that they are pushing forward, but now they do it by their own physical senses, their own sight. And their own sight fools them.

Instead of looking to God…instead of looking to the one who truly can see what is going on and who will be leading them, the Israelites depend on themselves. They sign the treaty based on their own understanding instead of depending on God and his wisdom.

The result is the first step in the direction of the ruin of the Israelites. The foreign people, and most importantly, their foreign and fake, demonic “gods” remain in the land. It is difficult to read about how God commanded the Israelites to wipe out the peoples in front of them as they entered Canaan, but the reason was that they should have no other gods before the one and true God, Yahweh. This is commandment number one. The most important commandment. And now, without even realizing what has happened, the Israelites have allowed the gods of the Gibeonites to remain in the land and a compromise has been made.

We have to learn a lesson from the Israelites in this case. We have to learn to inquire of the Lord regularly and at each step along the way. We have to ask the Lord for his sight in each matter instead of our own.

The Israelites had taken Jericho, and now they thought that, after that first incredible victory, God would continue to lead them forward. The way in which the walls fell was astounding. It was amazing to see such strength and power come to nothing before God’s power, and so the Israelites felt that nothing could go wrong.

As a result, as they looked forward to the city of Ai, they thought that they could just send a small fraction of their army to defeat that city. They may have been correct, except they had sinned as they had defeated Jericho. Amongst them was one who had kept some of the “devoted things”, those things from the plunder of Jericho that should have remained devoted to God. Achan had seen his opportunity to enrich himself instead of remain faithful to God’s plan and his instruction. He had taken a Babylonian robe, a bar of gold, and several pieces of silver and buried them under his tent.

So as the small detachment from the army of Israel went to fight Ai, God was not with them. Yahweh did not faithfully lead this army because the Israelites had not been faithful to him. The Israelites had violated the covenant that God had made with them, so God would not go with them. He wouldn’t honor the covenant when the Israelites had not honored it either.

But as Achan was identified and the cancer of sin which prevented the Israelites from completely following God was removed, God rejoined the Israelites and they routed the city of Ai.

Achan replied, “It is true! I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I have done: When I saw in the plunder a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing fifty shekels, I coveted them and took them. They are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver underneath.”

Joshua 7:20-21

We frequently have actions and attitudes that stand in our way of our relationship with God. We make our plans. We make our ideas. We look to enrich and glorify ourselves instead of placing the glory where it belongs, upon God, and we create the same types of problems and issues come upon ourselves.

Yesterday, I met with a man and we discussed together the parable of Jesus that says that the kingdom of God is like a treasure in a field. When the man found it, he went joyfully to sell everything that he owned so that he could buy the treasure in the field.

There is value in the other things in life, but look at the value that they have when compared to the value of the treasure of the kingdom of God. It is worth more than anything else. The man sold everything so that he could have the field that contained the treasure. And he did it joyfully! He was happy to sell everything.

In Achan’s, he thought that having the devoted things, those things that should have been devoted to God, would enrich him, and he preferred, instead of honoring God and giving all to him, to honor himself and give himself everything. He found greater joy in keeping everything for himself instead of giving it to God, and as a result, he was destroyed and the people of Israel was defeated. In the same way, if we desire to see success, we must offer and give all that we have to God so that he will be honored and glorified and we will find our joy in him.

Now that God has brought the Israelites into the Promised Land of Canaan, it is time that they will go to war. They will fight for the land.

But that doesn’t meant that the fight will be easy. The first thing that the Israelites see? The walls of Jericho. Jericho had built a fortress and the walls around the city were tall and strong, making it nearly impenetrable. How would the Israelites possibly begin to live in the Promised Land if they weren’t able to even take the first city that they came upon?

And yet despite those challenges, God has a plan in mind. The fear of the Canaanites was justified. They had heard that God had brought them through the Red Sea, and then they saw that God had brought them across the Jordan River. Beating the Canaanties won’t be a significant challenge for a God that can stand water up and make the land underneath it dry up.

In fact, this is what God says to Joshua:

Then the LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.

Joshua 6:2

God explains that he has delivered Jericho into Joshua’s hands. It won’t happen by the hands of Joshua, nor by the strength of the Israelite army, but the Promised Land will only become the possession of the Jews by the might of Yahweh who will deliver the land that he had promised into the hands of the Jews, conquering the Canaanites who live there.

So frequently we have challenges in our lives that create fear and anxiety, but when God goes with us, our fear is undeserved. We must follow God’s lead, staying connected to him, doing what he has called us to do, and by doing this, we will see God work, see him move in his time and in his way, and we, like the Jews and the Canaanites, will learn that he is God, the one who is sovereign and able to lead us where he desires that we will go.

They were headed to war. Moses was dead and Joshua had been chosen to lead the people into the Promised Land. Joshua had stood with Caleb 40 years prior to tell the people that they should cross the Jordan River and go into Canaan, the Promised Land, just as God had told them, but the people rebelled and Moses folded, so the people were doomed to wander through the desert for 40 years until the entire generation had passed away.

What a waste…and for what? They didn’t believe that God would take care of them. They didn’t believe that they could do what God had called them to do. They looked and saw the challenges that stood in their way instead of looking at the God that was with them, so they turned around and walked away from what God was leading them into.

But now, the time had come. Now, Joshua had been chosen to take them into the next step. He believed that God would go with them. He would lead the people and go into Canaan, into the Promised Land.

However, there were people there already. It wasn’t as if the people would be happy to simply give up their land. No, they would have to take it, even if the Canaanites were strong. Even if the challenge is daunting. Even if there would be difficulty after difficulty. But God…

But God was with them, and that made all of the difference.

No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.

“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:5-9

Is God calling Joshua to a strength and a courage that is simply something that Joshua will need to muster up, pull himself up by his bootstraps, and call the people into some type of fake courage, even if he doesn’t believe it?

Or maybe we can ask the question in another way… who is the source of this strength and courage that God is telling Joshua that he should have? Is it Joshua? No, it is God! Joshua should have courage, despite the fact that he will be going into battle…despite the fact that he is going with people who have failed to have courage previously…despite the fact the enemies that they will encounter on the other side of the river are very formidable… He is to have courage because God is with him. The source of his strength and courage isn’t from him. It is from God.

And now, what about us? Is there a parallel for us? Are we in a similar situation?

Yes, we are. Jesus has called us into a “battle”, of sorts. He told his disciples that he would send them out like sheep among wolves. They were headed into the a spiritual battle that would have very real physical consequences, and the odds didn’t look very well in their favor.

In the same way, Jesus has sent us into the world. He said that he has all of the authority, so we should go and make disciples of him.

And will the world be OK with this? Will the kingdom of darkness willingly let the people go and enter into the kingdom of God? Heck no… In the same way that it happened with Joshua…in the same way that it happened with Jesus’s disciples…it now also happens with us. We are sent, and God’s words to Joshua still echo to us: Be strong and courageous.

And why? Because we are the source of that strength and courage? No, it is because Jesus promises to go with us. We should be strong and courageous because Jesus is with us as we go. My strength and courage do not come from me, but instead they should come directly from Jesus himself. In the same way that God was with Joshua, Jesus is with us.

And so now, we have to ask ourselves: Do we believe it? Will we go, as Joshua did? Will we be strong and courageous as God asked him to be because God was with him?

Or will we shrink back? Will we fold at that point of entry at the Jordan River as the unbelieving Israelites did and that Moses allowed them to do? Is Jesus with you? And will you go as a result of the strength and courage that he gives you?