Look to God

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. We open in your Bibles with me to Joshua chapter 13. Joshua chapter 13. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua. Joshua chapter 13. And this morning we'll be looking at verses 8 through the end of the chapter. Joshua chapter 13, verses 8 through 33. Joshua chapter 13, you're going to be able to find that on page 205 of your pew bibles. Brothers and sisters, this is the word of God, let's pay careful attention to it.

With the other half-tribe, the Reubenites and the Gadites, received their inheritance, which Moses had given them beyond the Jordan eastward, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had given them. From Aror, which is on the bank of the river Arnon, and to the town that is in the midst of the ravine, and all the plain of Medeba, as far as Zebon, All the cities of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, as far as the border of the children of Ammon. Gilead and the border of the Gesherites and Makaathites, all Mount Hermon. And all Bashan, as far as Salkaab. And all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Dreadrim. who remained of the remnant of the giants, for Moses had defeated and cast out these. Nevertheless, the children of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Makaathites. But the Geshurites and the Makaathites dwell among the Israelites until this day.

Only to the tribe of Levi he had given no inheritance. The sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel made by fire are their inheritance as he said to them. And Moses had given to the tribe of the children of Reuben an inheritance according to their families.

Their territory was from Aror, which is on the bank of the river Arnon, and the city that is in the midst of the ravine, and all the plain of Medeba, Heshbon, and all its cities that are in the plain, Debon, Bemothbaal, Bethbaalmeon, Jahaz, Kedmoth, Mephah, Kirjathim, Sibna, Zareth, Sahar, on the mountain of the valley, Beth-peor, the slopes of Pisgah, and Beth-Jeshama, all the cities of the plain, and all the kingdoms of Sihon, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses had struck with the princes of Midian.

Evi, Rechem, Zur, Hur, and Reba who were princes of Sihon dwelling in the country. The children of Israel also killed with the sword Balaam the son of Beor the soothsayer among those who were killed by them. And the border of the children of Reuben was the bank of the Jordan. This was the inheritance of the children of Reuben according to their families, the cities, and their villages.

Moses also had given an inheritance to the tribe of Gad, to the children of Gad, according to their families. Their territory was Jazer, and all the cities of Gilead, and half the land of the Ammonites, as far as Arur, which is before Rabah, and from Heshbon to Ramoth Mizpah and Betanim, and from Mahanaim to the border of Debir. and in the valley Beth-Haram, Beth-Nimrah, Sukkoth, and Zaphon. The rest of the kingdom of Sihon, king of Heshbon, with the Jordan and its border as far as the edge of the Sea of Chinareth, on the other side of the Jordan eastward. This is the inheritance of the children of Gad according to their families, the cities, and their villages.

Moses also had given an inheritance to half the tribe of Manasseh. It was for half the tribe of the children of Manasseh, according to their families, Their territory was from Mahanaim, all Bashan, all the kingdoms of Og, king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jir, which are in Bashan. Six cities, half of Gilead, and Ashteroth, and Andraeum. Cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan were for the children of Mahir, the son of Manasseh. For half the children of Mahir, according to their families. These are the areas which Moses had distributed as an inheritance in the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward. But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance. The Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as he had said to them.

Prayer for Illumination

Brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. And we pray now that your Holy Spirit might attend to it. We pray that these might not just be dead words on a page, ancient geography marking, but Lord, that you would take these words and that you would pierce our hearts, transform our minds, make us love you. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen.

Sermon

Well, this is the type of book, or the type of chapter, that I don't know about you, but I need a map to go along with. Just as a plug for Talk & Talk, that's exactly what we're going to do this afternoon. But when we come to this passage, there are three interesting points that I think are meant to draw our eyes towards a point of this passage. There are three main points that what we're supposed to look at and who we're supposed to behold as we read this passage.

The first, well, the main point is, brothers and sisters, we're to look to God. And so first, we're to look to what God has done. We're to be to beware of looking to prosperity. And lastly, we are to look to God as our ultimate inheritance. So first, look at what God has already done.

As we read through this, there are a few names that came up time and time again, and these would have been names that would have encouraged the Israelites. God has just promised them in verse 6 that as they go into this land, He is going to drive out the people from before them, and now He's bringing up names of kings that He has already driven out.

Notice in verse 10, He mentions Sihon. And then in verse 21, who does he mention? Sion. And then in verse 27, who does he mention? Sion. Three times he mentions this king who ruled in Heshbon. And in their memory, the only memory these people have now of this king is, oh yeah, we remember when Moses and us went in and we demolished him. God gave us victory there. And he gave them the land.

And then, in verse 30 and 31, who does he bring up? In verse 30 and 31, as he's talking about the half-tribe of Manasseh, he brings up Og, king of Bashan. And he brings up, in these passages, why is he bringing up Sihon? Why is he bringing up Og? Well, the same question can be asked in verse 22. That old foe.

The children of Israel also killed with the sword Balaam, the son of Beor, the soothsayer, among those who were killed by them." Do you remember the story of Balaam? Do you remember? It was the story of these kings who had wanted Balaam, who was a witch doctor, a soothsayer, some type of sorcerer, and he was trying to get God to curse the people, to curse the Israelites.

And God wouldn't allow him to do it. Eventually he would figure out how to trip up the Israelites by getting them to intermarry with Canaanite and Moabite women. But when he was trying to use some type of supernatural trickery, the Lord wasn't having it. So even this enemy, even this enemy, Balaam himself, The Lord had wiped off the earth. This was supposed to be encouraging to the people. This is kind of weird for us, right? Because we weren't there. It's weird for us because we're talking about thousands of years removed. But step for a second into the shoes of the Israelites. They remember going into battle. They remember fighting these armies. They remember what it was like to go and to conquer that land on the other side of the Jordan.

And right before this, in Joshua chapter 13, 1 through 7, this is what we look at last week. The Lord is saying, I'm giving you this land. Go conquer it. And what does He do just following that? He says, oh yeah, remember. Remember the land I've already allotted to the two and a half tribes on the east side of the Jordan River. See, remembering is an important thing. Remembering what God has done encourages us. We need to be reminded, we are a forgetful people.

Have you ever read through the Old Testament before? I mean, you read through the Old Testament and you're kind of like, come on, it's only been like two chapters, how did you forget what God just did? You read about the Israelites, and they're walking through the Red Sea, and you think, man, if I walked through the Red Sea, and I had seen the water-like walls, and I walked through there, there's no way I would ever forget who God was. And then what do you find a couple chapters later?

Moses, we don't have any food. Were there not enough graves in Egypt? Why don't you just let us die there? We're given this so we understand that we are forgetful people. That we need to remember that God is the King of Kings, who is greater than any ruler, greater than any nation. That's exactly why last week was so important. What's one of the last things that Jesus does before he dies? He institutes a meal, a sacrament, the Lord's Supper. that we might remember what He has done.

You see, we forget this regularly. We forget what Christ has done for us. We forget what Jesus has done for us. We forget what God has done. And here, God is telling the people, the Israelites, don't forget what I did for the two and a half tribes over there. This is why our forgetfulness and our need to remember is why we might find it boring But this is why we have to open up the Word of God. Because we get bored by God's Word.

Let's be honest with yourselves. I'm guessing a few of you, your eyes glazed over as I was reading all those different cities and landmarks. But these are real places! God really did these things! Do you see how common it can become to us? We're just reading through it and it's like, okay, yeah, okay, I don't know where these places are. They did know where these are. These were their homes.

This is where God had given them an inheritance. And they needed to remember that it was God who had given it to them. So remember what Christ has done in your life. Remember the care that Jesus has shown for you. We must be those who look to God and remember what He has done in our lives. Not forgetting the things of the past.

That's one of the things I love doing. I love sitting down with biographies and autobiographies and just hearing the stories. of Christians in the past. One of the things I used to love doing was sitting by Ralph McDonald's chair and he would just tell me stories. I would have to kind of poke and prod him a little bit to draw out the stories, but when you got him going, he would tell me these incredible stories of this congregation and God's faithfulness to the people. About men he loved and families he cared for and how they had grown up before his eyes.

And some of you are those people now. You have gray hair. See, we're encouraged when we remember what God has done in the past. So look to what God has done. But there's a danger. A real danger. I want you to look with me at verse 13. Joshua 13, verse 13. There's a real danger that you need to be aware of. Nevertheless, the children of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Makahites. But the Geshurites and the Makahites dwell among Israel until this day. There is this half-hearted conquest in some sense. See, we can get wrapped up. The Israelites got wrapped up in what they actually had and they forgot that there was still work that needed to be done.

Moses had warned them about this in the book of Numbers. Numbers chapter 33 verses 55 and 56 tell us that if they were to leave the people and the land, they would become like barbs in their eyes and thorns in their sides. And what God had planned to do to the Canaanites, He would actually do to the Israelites. It's a pretty sobering warning.

But here in verse 13, we find that this is the first in the book of Joshua, and we're going to find this again and again, especially in chapter 15 and following. And we see the people weren't going all the way by faith. But once they settled into their houses, once they got their vineyards, once they had their orchards, once they had their fields planted, it was really easy to be concerned with the stuff of this life, instead of forgetting what God had commanded them to do. And it came true.

If we go and we think about David's life in 2 Samuel chapter 3, David marries another woman. It's a problem of David. He shouldn't be marrying all these wives. It's actually forbidden. But he takes on this other wife and she's a Gesherite princess. She's of the tribe of Gesher. It's right here. Nevertheless, the children of Israel did not drive out the Gesherites. And David goes and marries a woman from this family. And she has a son.

And his son's name, that son's name is Absalom. Who would be a barb in his eye and a thorn in his side. A son who would try to rip the kingdom apart with a civil war. A tribe that David would go into the caves weeping and crying for Absalom because of his treachery.

See, we might not think that, oh, this is a big deal, but when we don't deal with things in our lives seriously now, the effects might not be on us in the harsh way, but it might be to our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren. The Lord visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.

This is a scary thing about this. They did not drive them out. See, in verse 6 we had read last week, all the inhabitants of the mountains from Lebanon as far as the book of Brook Misharraf and all the Sidonians, them I will drive out before the children of Israel. He had promised them this. He was going to do this.

But there's a way in which we can abuse God's promises. Lots of you mentioned last week that you were really encouraged by God's promises. But we can abuse God's promises as well. We can so cling to the assurity that the promises might give us, that then we actually start to walk in disbelief rather than by faith. See, God is not a cosmic toy that does whatever we want and all we have to do is pull these right levers, say the right prayers, and all of a sudden God's going to dump open blessings from heaven. No, God's not a toy.

He's not going to be mocked. He's told them what to do. They are to walk by faith. They are to act on their faith. They were to keep their eyes on God and do what He had told them to do. But they didn't wipe them out. Instead, they got comfortable with their land.

Dale Davis, writing on this passage, a commentator, says this, We frequently and strangely prove faithful in the great crises of faith. We remain steadfast in severe storms. Perhaps we even relish the excitement of the heaviest assaults. There are many people When the fire is really under their feet, when the pressure is really on, that their faith seems really strong. That's what he's getting at here. Yet, we lack the tenacity, the dogged endurance, the patient plodding often required in the prosaic affairs of believing life. We are often loathe to be faithful. in little.

In Proverbs chapter 30, Proverbs chapter 30, I love this proverb. I'd actually encourage you to go there and look at this. This is one that you can write on your heart, put it on the mirror in your house, keep it before your eyes. Proverbs chapter 30, verse 7, I have no clue what that is page-wise in your Bibles, it's after the Psalms.

Proverbs chapter 30, beginning at verse 7, two things I request Deprive me not before I die. You're really expecting something good here, aren't you? God, give me two things. Give me two things, Lord. That's what he wants before he dies. Notice what he asks for. Mercy.

Remove falsehood and lies from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be fooled and deny. you, and say, Who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of God." Did you catch it? This is why Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread.

Because the danger is, and I'm telling you, this is the American danger. As I go out and interact, and as you go out and evangelize your people, there are going to be plenty of people who are really content with their toys, their tractors, and their trucks, and have no room in their heart for God. That it's all about their work, it's all about their place, it's all about what they want to do, because they're content in life. Because see, prosperity sometimes is a bigger snare to the human soul than even suffering.

And this is what the Israelites are finding here in Joshua chapter 13, verse 13. They had found prosperity. God really did give them houses. He really did give them farms. He gave them vineyards. He gave them orchards. But yet, instead of being faithful in the midst of that prosperity, they gave him half-hearted service. This is...

In just case you think that maybe this is just Pastor Brian, you know, preaching against materialism, this is Jesus' warning. When Jesus warns the people of the different types of soil, he's telling his disciples, they're going to go out and they're going to spread the seeds, they're going to share the gospel with a whole bunch of different types of people, and there's going to be different types of people. Some people it's going to be like it's falling on the ground, and it doesn't even have a chance to take root or anything, the gospel is just going to be picked up by the birds and gone. There's going to be other soil, it's going to be rocky soil, and it's going to come up quickly, but trials and persecution are going to come, it doesn't have much root, so it's going to burn away. But then there's a third type of soil. I think this is predominantly what we have in the American church. This is a soil that, when the seed falls on it, it takes root, it starts growing, but then the weeds grow up with it, and it chokes out the plant. When Jesus is explaining this parable to his disciples, he says, the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life will choke it out. This is what they're facing.

See, we're not so different from Israel here in Joshua 13. I need to warn you. My God, we live in the lap of luxury. I talk to these Indian pastors every week and they're like, man, I don't have power today. You know, they have a little bit of charge on their phone, but it might die during our meeting. They don't have running water in their houses. They literally still have outhouses they go to. We live in the lap of luxury. But do you know how hungry some of these people are in India when I talk to them about the gospel?

Man, they want it. They hunger and they thirst for it. There was a time in our country that that was the case. But Satan would love nothing more than just to keep our minds on the things of this life. So beware. Beware of looking to prosperity. Your happiness is never going to come from having all this stuff. But our joy comes from the Lord. So look to Him.

Lastly, look to Him as your inheritance. Look to him as your inheritance. Look with me, just one verse below, verse 14, and then verse 33. Joshua 13, verse 14. Only to the tribe of Levi he had given no inheritance. The sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel, made by fire, are their inheritance, as he said to them. And then the very last two verses of this chapter. These are the areas which Moses had distributed as an inheritance in the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward. But to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance.

Sidney Coleman, why? Why didn't they get any land? Why didn't they get any farms? Notice what it says. The Lord God of Israel was His inheritance, as He said to them. The Israelites all got land, but the Levites, they got some cities of refuge, but they didn't get huge plots of land. Because the Lord God Himself was theirs.

Let me ask you, what's better? a prime 80 acres, or the Kingdom of Heaven? What's better, a comforting life, or the God of Heaven? Would you rather eat from the garden, from the tree of life that gives us fruit season after season after season? Wherever you go, there's always fruit to be had, or will you satisfy your belly in this life?

Jeremiah, when he's writing the book of Lamentations, he says, It wasn't just the Israelites who had the Lord as their portion. But all of the Israelites, the Levites, were supposed to point that truth out to them, that God was their portion. Yeah, he had given them land, but it was God who was their ultimate inheritance.

This is why the psalmist cries out in Psalm 142, I cried out to you, O Lord. I said, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living. And then in Psalm 73, verse 26, it says, my soul and my heart fail. But, how do you say, my life is in shambles. But, what's his only hope? But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forevermore.

Brethren and sisters, 1 Peter 2 teaches us that we are a kingdom of priests, a royal priesthood, a nation of God's people because of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Your inheritance isn't supposed to be sought. here on earth. But our inheritance is Jesus Christ Himself. Our inheritance is what we saw in Revelation chapter 19 through 22 over the last few weeks.

And we get to dwell with God forever. And we get to come into His presence with thanksgiving. That we get to sing that His loving kindness endures forever and we get to sing that song forever. That we get to join the myriad of angels in heaven and cry out, worthy is the Lamb who was slain. We get to join the heavenly throng. We get to praise the Lamb forever. We get to take the crowns off our heads and cast them at Jesus' feet and worship Him because we have Christ forever. See, we look to God as our inheritance, like the Levites did.

We need to be aware that this world is going to try to sell us a bill of goods, that if you have it nice in this world, your heart is going to be full. No, you're going to be the richest person in the world and the most cruel person I've ever met. See, we must keep our eyes fixed on God. We must seek after Him. We must desire Him and out of a love for Him, brothers and sisters, walk in His ways.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Oh, Father, we thank you that you don't paint fancy fairy tales for us. You don't hide a hard truth from us. But you tell us and tell us how. How hard hearted people can be, how hard hearted we can be. Lord, you show us that the Israelites were a stiff neck people and you show us that we are too. God, we plead for your Holy Spirit that you might let us cling to Christ as the one who did accomplish all your words perfectly and has secured for us a home with you forever.

In Jesus's name we pray. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.