Lessons in spiritual thinking and living

Text Joshua 18 Time 22 11 20 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church (Zoom)

We are in the section of Joshua where the land is divided among the people. So far we have looked at how the land was given to Judah and to Ephraim and Manasseh. We know that land had already been allotted to two and half tribes on the east of the Jordan and that the Levites did not receive an inheritance like the others. There were seven more allotments to be made then.

We come next to Joshua 18 where this final exercise begins and we read about the allotment to Benjamin. The allotment to Benjamin is in verses 11-28 and the first ten verses are by way of introduction to Chapters 18 and 19.

1. Centralisation, Control, Commissioning a survey - lessons in spiritual thinking

There are three things to note in the opening four verses.

1. Centralisation

In verse 1 we read that The whole assembly of the Israelites gathered at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting or tabernacle there. For many, many years, before the ark and the Temple were in Jerusalem, they were based in Shiloh. Shiloh was pretty central in the territory of Ephraim, a few miles north of Bethel. It is here that at this time Joshua set up the tent of meeting or tabernacle permanently. God speaks about this in Deuteronomy 12.

It begins These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you to possess - as long as you live in the land.

First, he says negatively Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, etc ... wipe out their names from those places. You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.

Then positively But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, etc ... There, in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you. You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the LORD your God is giving you. But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name - there you are to bring everything I command you: your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, etc ... And there rejoice before the LORD your God - you, your sons and daughters, etc ... and the Levites .... Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the LORD will choose in one of your tribes, and there observe everything I command you.

Of course, under the new covenant there is no temple or at least not in the same way. Under the new covenant every individual is a Temple of the Holy Spirit and then together we who are believers form a spiritual temple for God's praise. Perhaps the application is that at the heart of our thinking must be the worship of God. It is not an extra but something central. Is that how we think?

2. Control

Then in verses 2 and 3 it says but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance. So Joshua said to the Israelites: "How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you?"

Time is moving on and still the Israelites have not really taken control of the country. Many Canaanites have been untouched. Things go on in great swathes of the country - the Baal worship and the wickedness - very much as they were going on before Israel invaded. How long are they going to take before they really begin to control the country in the way that they should?

Now in a similar way, there is a question here for some of us who have been Christians for a while. How long will you wait before you begin to live the Christian life that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given to you? When God saved you it was not his purpose that you should live as you had been living in the past. He did not plan merely superficial and limited changes either. No, his purpose was to completely revolutionise your life. Now I know the revolution has begun but has it been halted somewhere along the line? Are you possessing your possession as we might put it? Are you really living the Christian life as it should be lived. Romans 8:13 if despite having been converted you live according to the flesh, you will die; you will go around as though you had never been saved but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live you will live as a Christian, as you really should.

Let me challenge you then. Are you really living the Christian life to the max? Is it all and everything to you? Can you say with Paul, for to me to live is Christ? That is how it should be. Possess your possession.

3. Commissioning a survey

What happens next is interesting. In verse 4 Joshua says Appoint three men from each tribe. I will send them out to make a survey of the land and to write a description of it, according to the inheritance of each. Then they will return to me. So at this stage Joshua proposes sending men out to do a survey. These are the pioneers of this sort of work - the work carried out in more recent times by Mason and Dixon in America and Burke and Wills in Australia. These anonymous men were to survey the land and describe it, setting out what inheritances were available and then return to Joshua.

Now this is in part the work that Christian ministers do. They have ideally visited the parts of the Christian life that others have not and can describe them and show the way to them too. That is what I am trying to do here. I am trying to show you the shape of the Christian life if you are going to live it. It begins with worship like this on the Lord's Day and goes on with prayer and praise and holy living, fighting against sin wherever it lurks. This is your heritage in Christ.

2. Description, Division, Distribution - lessons in spiritual living

Next we go on to look at verses 5-10. In verse 5 these men are told that they are to divide the land into seven parts. Judah is to remain in its territory on the south and the tribes of Joseph in their territory on the north. After you have written descriptions of the seven parts of the land, bring them the tribes here to me and I will cast lots for you in the presence of the LORD our God. The Levites, however, do not get a portion among you, because the priestly service of the LORD is their inheritance. And Gad, Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh have already received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan. Moses the servant of the LORD gave it to them.

So the focus is now not on Judah or Ephraim and Manasseh or the Levites or the two and a half tribes east of the Jordan. Rather, it is on the remaining tribes who have not been allocated land - Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali and Dan. What we have then in verses 8-10 is how the men describe the land and return to Joshua who divides it by lot and then the beginning of the distribution of the land.

1. Description

8 As the men started on their way to map out the land, Joshua instructed them, "Go and make a survey of the land and write a description of it." As we have said, this is what is going on now. I am describing to you now what the Christian life is like. So, for example, if we go to the end of one of Paul's New Testament letters, we will see there the sort of thing that ought to be going on in our lives. So taking 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 as an example I would say to you

Rejoice always, Do everything you can to stay joyful. Don't give in to the temptation to be morose and discouraged.

pray continually Begin the day with prayer, end it with prayer, pray at certain points. Try and keep a spirit of prayer throughout the day.

give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Don't take anything for granted. Thank God each time you eat, thank him at the end of the day. Be thankful even when everything seems to be going wrong. There are always reasons to be thankful.

Do not quench the Spirit be sensitive to the Spirit. He will only be active where we are open to his ministry and are not driving him away with our unbelief, our unloving ways and our despair.

Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; our attitude to the Word of God and to the Word of God preached ought to be receptive. There must not be contempt but a willingness to believe.

hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil. Here is a final catch all. If anything is good, hold on to it. If it is evil then reject it, whatever its source.

A lot more could be said but you see the drift.

2. Division

Joshua goes on. Once these men have described what they see Joshua says Then return to me, and I will cast lots for you here at Shiloh in the presence of the LORD. So following the description comes the dividing up of the land among the different tribes left. Verse 9, 10a So the men left and went through the land. They wrote its description on a scroll, town by town, in seven parts, and returned to Joshua in the camp at Shiloh. Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh in the presence of the LORD.

A story is often told about a man arriving at church very late indeed one Sunday morning, so late in fact that it looked as though the service was over, which it was. And so he said to a man in the church near the door, “Is the sermon done yet?” The man replied, “It all depends what you mean by done. The sermon has been preached certainly, it is done in that sense or over, but it has yet to be done by anyone.” You see his point.

The old Puritans were always very careful about this. They would arrange their sermons in a particular order - first the text and its explanation and then the doctrine to be drawn from this text and finally the application or uses.

I remember when Sinclair Ferguson was ministering in Glasgow in the Tron church there was a bit of fuss about what he should wear in the pulpit. I remember him saying once, jokingly, that he was trying to arrange a sponsorship deal with Nike so that he would wear the sort of ecclesiastical robe some were keen for him to wear and when he came to the end of the sermon he would simply turn his back on the congregation, lift his arms and they would see the Nike tick on his back and the Nike slogan Just do it! Because in the end the application or use is the most important thing. So let's not miss the use or application here.

Just as the land was first described then divided so let each of you start looking for something to take away from this sermon. What are you actually going to do about what I am saying? In one sense the application will be different for different people. I don't know where you are at present.

Some of you perhaps are ignorant. You don't know much about how to live the Christian life. Of the ignorant, some perhaps are arrogant and not ready to learn from me. I want to try and wake you up to the fact and urge you to begin seeking God more earnestly. Others of you know you are ignorant and weak and I hope something I say will help you to know how you should be living.

Then others are quite knowledgeable. You have heard many sermons on these sorts of subjects. You've read whole books on living the Christian life. That may have made you big headed so that you feel there's not much you can learn from me. Again, I want to try and wake you up and remind you that the question is not how many sermons you've listened to this week but how much you are putting into practice what you here. And then those of you who know a lot I want gently to remind you of those things and to encourage you to go forward in the things of God.

3. Distribution

Of course, the final bit is in verse 10b and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions. This is what is described next. For us this is the ongoing life that we live after the sermon is a distant memory. This is life in the real world. For all of us the parameters are different and so our lives will be different, just as each of the tribes inhabited different terrain and found themselves in different circumstances. Take temperament as an example. We are all different. You have people like Luther and Spurgeon who were very jolly men and to the point but who suffered with depression. There are scholarly types like Calvin and Henry Martyn and I suppose John Wesley. There are emotional types like George Whitefield. The thing is we need to be godly whatever our temperament or circumstances. We need to live out the Christian life in our own sphere.

3. The inheritance of Benjamin - an example of God's goodness

We read in verse 11 that The first lot came up for the tribe of Benjamin according to its clans. The territory is then described. Their allotted territory lay between the tribes of Judah to the south and Joseph to the north. It then says that (12, 13) On the north side their boundary began at the Jordan, passed the northern slope of Jericho within Benjamin and headed west into the hill country, coming out at the wilderness of Beth Aven near Ai and just east of Bethel From there it crossed to the south slope of Luz (that is, Bethel) and went down to Ataroth Addar on the hill south of Lower Beth Horon. That is the northern border.

Next the west (14) From the hill facing Beth Horon on the south the boundary turned south along the western side and came out at Kiriath Baal (that is, Kiriath Jearim), a town of the people of Judah. This was the western side.

Then the south (15-19) The southern side began at the outskirts of Kiriath Jearim on the west, and the boundary came out travelling east at the spring of the waters of Nephtoah. The boundary went down to the foot of the hill facing the Valley of Ben Hinnom, south east of Jerusalem north of the Valley of Rephaim. It continued down the Hinnom Valley along the southern slope of the Jebusite city Jerusalem and so to En Rogel. It then curved north, went to En Shemesh, continued to Geliloth, which faces the Pass of Adummim, and ran down to the Stone of Bohan son of Reuben. It continued to the northern slope of Beth Arabah and on down into the Arabah which today means the area immediately south of the Dead Sea but was then used for the whole area of the Jordan Rift Valley. It then went to the northern slope of Beth Hoglah and came out at the northern bay of the Dead Sea, at the mouth of the Jordan in the south. This was the southern boundary.

20 The Jordan formed the boundary on the eastern side.

These were the boundaries that marked out the inheritance of the clans of Benjamin on all sides.

We then have a list of its towns in groups of 12 and 14 - The tribe of Benjamin, according to its clans, had the following towns: Jericho, Beth Hoglah, Emek Keziz, Beth Arabah, Zemaraim, Bethel which became the centre of idol worship in Israel later, Avvim, Parah, Ophrah, Kephar Ammoni, Ophni and Geba Which was made a Levite town- twelve towns and their villages. (21-24)

Gibeon, mentioned earlier in the book as the place where those deceivers who fooled Joshua came from Ramah, Beeroth, Mizpah, Kephirah, Mozah, Rekem, Irpeel, Taralah, Zelah, Haeleph, the Jebusite city (that is, Jerusalem), Gibeah mentioned in Judges, the name means hill and so is called Gibeah of Benjamin sometimes or Gibeah of Saul as Saul reigned there and Kiriath - fourteen towns and their villages.

This was the inheritance of Benjamin for its clans.

As with the other tribes Benjamin had its boundaries and to be a Benjaminite you really had to live in certain towns and not elsewhere. In a similar way God has given certain boundaries to us all to live within. And so for example, we can eat and drink and own things but only if they are ours not someone else's, we can drink alcohol but we must never get drunk, we can be in a sexual relationship but only in marriage, we can say many things but those things must be true and we must not gossip or slander people or misuse God's name. We can worship God in various ways but we must not make an image or bow down to idols. We can work long and hard but on the Lord's Day we must focus on worshipping him. And so on. Obviously our circumstances will impinge on our ability to obey. If you were in Benjamin getting to Jerusalem to worship God was easy once the temple was in Jerusalem, although at this time it was in Shiloh and so a little effort was required. And so some of us have no taste for alcohol and so are not likely to get drunk or we do a job that is not likely to involve Sunday work. Others will not find things so easy.

The thing is that whoever we are we must love and serve the Lord as the Benjaminites and others sought to do.