Judah's Inheritance

A Particular Promise.

God doesn’t deal in generalities, but specifics.

Previously we’ve seen God’s promise to give the land to the descendants of Abraham. It started in Gen.12:1-3 “The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Then again in Gen.15:1 “After these events, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield; your reward will be very great.” and Gen.15:7 “He also said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

This promise was reaffirmed to Joshua all the way back in the beginning: Josh.1:1-3 “After the death of Moses the Lord’s servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’s assistant: “Moses my servant is dead. Now you and all the people prepare to cross over the Jordan to the land I am giving the Israelites. I have given you every place where the sole of your foot treads, just as I promised Moses.”

But so far, we’ve dealt largely in generalities. There’s been a blanket statement about the land, but we’ve not been dealt many specifics. Here, God begins to unveil His promise, and He does so in a very specific manner. First, He outlines the territory lines given to particular clans, then after another snapshot of Caleb, He comes back to talk about specific cities. Now a clan is basically the lowest level of the family unit to which the land needed to be alloted. The boundary lines would move around from clan to clan, but it would never pass outside the tribe, the individual and particular descendants of the twelves “sons” of Jacob/Israel. What we get is an up-close-and-personal account of the specifics of God’s blessing. Honestly, when you think of it in those terms, that’s pretty cool.

From this detailed account of boundary lines given to particular clans, I think we can draw two conclusions about the Christian life:

Just as individual tribes receive the blessing of God, and again, that’s the lowest rung on the family ladder that needed to be discussed…think of it more of a family tree rooted in Jacob’s children’s children, so to speak…so each individual city and local church can expect to experience the blessing and provision of God. Yes, all of the clans of Israel belong to Israel as a whole, just like every local church belongs to the universal body of Christ, but each clan individually experienced God’s provision, just like each church and every believer can and should experience the provision and power of God through the Holy Spirit.

The second conclusion we can take from this is maybe better told in the ebbs and flows of everyday life. Consider a typical day in my house. The kids are up, eating breakfast and getting ready for the day. Cereal, waffles, eggs, oatmeal…something for everyone? Check. Clean clothes? Check. Jakob, did you put on deodorant? Check. Micah, is the dog fed? Check. Caleb, is your hair done? Check. Out the door to school. Maybe it’s Friday, trash day at our house. The can’s at the road, a little overflowing, ready for pick-up. You know, a typical day in a typical week. Nothing special, nothing to write home about. But yet, remember this: God doesn’t deal in generalities, but specifics. The food on the breakfast table, the clothes, the electricity and hot water, all of it is God’s gracious provision. Those are the little things that He rarely gets thanked for, but they’re the details God is interested in providing. The trash in the can by the road, slightly overflowing, it’s a reminder that God has not only provided, but provided abundantly. We don’t often think of the mundane details of life as being the harbingers of abundant praise, but this chapter reminds us that every single detail in our life is from a God who is interested in specifics. And as such, we should give Him the praise He is due.

A Functioning Faith.

God doesn’t simply make promises; He invites response.

Once again Caleb steps into view. And what do we see happening? We see the active steps Caleb is taking to move forward in faith. That’s the things about God’s promises — they’re typically not meant to be passively received. Most of the time, they are an invitation to respond to God. Just to be clear: I’m not advocating for any type of works-based salvation or some God helps those who help themselves theology. What I’m saying is that the character and nature of God is an invitation for us to respond to Him.

Caleb, who is a Kennizite (by the way, Kennizites were almost certainly descended from Kenaz, Esau’s first-born son, meaning Caleb is grafted into the line of Judah! We could really hammer this home — grafted in through the line of Judah!!!), remember how he has held on to God’s promise all this time? Forty-five years he’s held on to it, and now that the land is alloted to him and his family, what’s he do? If God gives me strength, I’m going to take it. And so he does. There’s a difference between agreeing with facts and moving in faith.

Some years back Francis Chan gave one of the best illustrations dealing with our lack of functioning faith. I’ll do my best to communicate it this morning.

Here’s the thing: throughout Scripture we get a picture of who God is. And, throughout Scripture, this picture of God provides us an opportunity to respond to God. And, Scripture gives a name to this faith response when we hear of who God is, when we remember His promises and move forward in obedience. This response is called WORSHIP. When we rightly understand who God and what God has said, and then we respond accordingly, that’s what it means in John 4 to worship God in truth — to rightly respond to who God is and what He has said. And here’s Caleb, worshiping God with a functional faith, a faith that responds to God’s invitation.

A Discernable Deity.

God doesn’t work in abstraction, but in real life.

Here’s the thing: God does not give His people a bunch of thoughts about land. Now, He gives them actual cities to go and life in. Often our Bible studies deal in theological abstracts. Listen, I can be guilty of it. After all, we need a right understanding of God and His truth to form the foundation of our worldview and belief systems, to have a filter by which we determine true and false, good and evil, right and wrong. And, I’d much rather make sure I get the representation of God and His truth right. But, this passage is quite the reminder that God operates in real life. He deals in the real world. His gifts to the Israelites are not thoughts but towns, not ideas but boundaries.

This is underscored in the person of Jesus, the God who became flesh and made His dwelling among us. What we call the incarnation, when Jesus emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, became obedient to death so that He could literally die and literally be raised from the dead on our behalf, Jesus actually coming to earth is a vivid reminder that God deals in the real world, not just in the spiritual plane.

So, a couple of thoughts on this:

Sometimes we dismiss the very real pains and struggles of this physical life because, well, you know, we don’t wrestle with flesh and blood…the spiritual realm is real…the devil’s after us. But I think this passage is a reminder that we really can know and recognize and experience the hand of God at work in our everyday lives. He is very much concerned about the sickness, about bills, about the experience at the workplace, about the wayward child, about the childless couple…you name it. God cares about it. His answer may not always be what we’d like, because He operates from an eternal, righteous perspective. But like the song the choir sings so wonderfully, “He dries every tear that falls.” He encourages us, 1 Pet.5:7 “casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.”

Second, perhaps we should remember and look forward to and long for what Canaan foreshadows: a real resurrected body, a real new heaven, a real new earth, and the real presence of God among us.

And finally, let us deal with the last troublesome verse, because I think it is a fine warning for the people of God. Josh.15:63 “But the descendants of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem. So the Jebusites still live in Jerusalem among the descendants of Judah today.”

The first people mentioned in the actual Promised Land, the land west of the Jordan, to not be driven out. They inhabit the area of Jerusalem, and these folks will actually remain in the land until King David eventually drives them out. We’re given no reason why they couldn’t drive them out, but this brief reminder warns all of God’s people, Israel in Joshua’s day and the NT church in ours, that just because God promises something, it doesn’t mean we will experience it until we press on in obedient faith. Knowing God’s promises and actually experiencing God’s promises are two entire different things.

Their failure to drive the Jebusites out reveals a fault many of us struggle with — we often climb MOST of the mountain only to give out before reaching the top. We get tired, worn out from serving God and others. Trying to live for God, trying to mature spiritually is a daunting task. I believe it’s partly the reason Jesus gives this warning in Luke 14:28-30 ““For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.’” Complacency sets in, and too often we’re content to just live with the junk in our lives rather than pressing forward and running with endurance the race marked out before us.

Questions for Commitment:

Do you see God in the details of your life? Are you conscious of His daily blessings, and do you frequently thank Him for His detailed provision?

Are you clinging to the balance beam, scared of moving forward in faith, or do you rightly respond to who God is and what God has said, letting your life be lived as an act of worship?

Do you carry the concerns of your life to the Lord, casting your burdens on Him?

Finally, have you stopped dealing with the difficult issues of life, content to simply live with what doesn’t belong there rather than fighting to see it uprooted and driven out?