Joshua 12 - Life is (more than) Pain

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something". That, of course, is a quote from the Princess Bride when Westley responds to Princess Buttercup’s complaint, "You mock my pain.”

And it’s true to an extent.  Life is hard and if we don’t acknowledge and process the hard stuff, we aren’t likely to live a healthy, full life. The other side is also true, we need to remember and celebrate the highlights of life.  Every victory is a gift that can remind us that Westley was only partially right. We’re in Joshua 12, the part of the story when they write down all that God has done for them up to this point.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Life is pain, Highness, and anyone who says differently is selling something. That, of course, is a quote from the Princess Bride when Wesley responds to Princess Buttercup's complaint of, you mock my pain. And to a point, he's right. Life is hard, and unless we're willing to accept and deal with the hard parts, we're not likely to have a full, healthy kind of a life. But the other side is also true. We need to take time to not just remember pain, but to remember wins and victories, to remember the highlights of life as well. On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am so glad that you've joined us today. We're in Joshua chapter twelve. It's the part of the story when Joshua and the Israelites together write down all of the victories, the good things that God has done for them up to this point. We're gonna understand this chapter together, but before we do anything else, let's take a moment and pray. Jesus, thank you for all of life. God, we we recognize that that sometimes there are really difficult things that we need to go through and we don't necessarily like them, but we know that we can learn from them. But thank you, God, that there's not just hard things, that we do get to experience joys and victories along the way. Be with us now. We're here to meet with you. Amen. All right. We're going to read uh just the first eight verses of this text together. Uh you'll notice that uh the last portion of the chapter is literally just a list of kings, and I didn't know that that would be necessarily beneficial to read just the list of names, but we'll set the stage for that and then we'll hopefully have a really encouraging and uh and good conversation about it. These are the kings of the land whom the Israelites had defeated and whose territory they took over east of the Jordan, from the Arnon Gorge to Mount Hermon, including all the eastern side of the Arabah. Sion, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon. He ruled from Ar on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, from the middle of the gorge to Jabak River, which is the border of the Ammonites. This included half of Gilead. He also ruled over the eastern Araba from the Sea of Galilee to the Sea of the Araba, that is the Dead Sea, to Beth Jeshemoth, and then southward below the slopes of Piscah. And the territory of Ag, King of Bashan, one of the last of the Rephites, that was the ancient tribe of giants, who reigned in Ashtarath and Edrai. He ruled over Mount Hermon, Salakah, all of Bashan to the border of the people of Gesher and Makkah, and half of Gilead to the border of Sion, King of Heshbon. Moses, the servant of the Lord, and the Israelites conquered them, and Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave their land to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh to be their possession. Here is a list of the kings of the land that Joshua and the Israelites conquered on the west side of the Jordan, from Baalgad in the valley of Lebanon to Mount Halak, which rises towards Sair. Joshua gave their lands as an inheritance to the tribes of Israel according to their tribal divisions. The lands included the hill country, the western foothills, the Araba, the mountain slopes, the wilderness, and the Negev. These were the lands of the Hittites, and yes, these are the same people that Abraham bought a plot of land from them in Genesis 23 in order to bury Sarah. We talked about that just this past Wednesday. And then the Ammonites, sorry, the Amorites, the Canaanites, Peritites, Hivites, and Jebusites, these were the kings. And then it lists 31, all 31 of them that are there. Let's go ahead and take a moment just to pause and see what the Lord might be speaking into our hearts. If you'd like to pause this for just a moment to give yourself space, go ahead and do that, and then we'll jump into it together. All right, so let's make a few observations. And uh admittedly, when we go through a chapter like this, I'm like, okay, well, what's the spiritual insight here? Like, because it really is, it's kind of more data-driven in its in its nature and is just kind of describing territories and kings and and different things that are that are taking place. But I wanted to just remind us that this chapter, chapter 12, really serves as the period at the end of the sentence, so to speak, for chapters 1 through 11 of Joshua. So there has been a lot of conquest, and and this chapter kind of summarizes it for us. And you may have noticed that in those first, I think it was six verses, uh, it's actually talking about things that happened under Moses' leadership, not Joshua. So before Moses passes away, as they're still in the desert, but they're preparing to come into the land of Canaan, the promised land, uh, they they do some uh some work beforehand and and take out uh certain sections that are east of uh of the Jordan River. And this would be one of those moments where you might want to like pull out your Bible map and just take a peek at what what we're talking about here. But uh that that's already happened under Moses, but they acknowledged like that was a part of of taking this promised land, and and so that's acknowledged there. And then we have it moves on there in verse 7 into Joshua's um Joshua's part, or at least the the time under Joshua's leadership. So we see that transition from Moses to Joshua, and we acknowledge both. This the the the text acknowledges both. And then I I wanted to to remind myself as well as you that along the way, so as we just kind of think about Joshua chapter one all the way through to Joshua chapter 11, there has been a ton of stuff that has happened. There have been major, major wins, right? The the Battle of Jericho, probably the most famous one, but there have been other big ones along the way, like the the battle when uh the Lord uh, well, Joshua says, uh, Son be still, and the Lord honors that request, and and just really miraculous things that have that have taken place. There have been acts of courage, absolute courage, when uh when people stepped into leadership roles and put themselves uh on the line. So we've seen courageous uh acts happen. There has been sin, unfortunately, and consequences to that sin. Of course, we think about Achan uh as the primary culprit there, but but the whole nation needed to learn from that lesson. And then there have been like spiritual lessons learned along the way. And we see this development of Joshua as a leader. I mean, he's already well established, you know, by the time that he takes over from Moses, and yet we see him step into things in his own right. Uh, his um, you know, be strong and courageous, uh, you know, the Lord gives that to him and he gives that to the rest of the people. And he really does live that out, even when it seems like things don't go as expected or how they had hoped. But there is that that that experience that I think we can all relate to, where we're moving through life and and we do have good moments, but we also have some some tough ones along the way. What do we do with all of that? How do we respond? How do we come back after uh we find out that we, you know, that sin has taken place and or we've just experienced defeat, whether it was because of a spiritual reason or just because it was something that happened, all of that is um is just part of life, and and we get to grow in that context. So we come to this point and we recognize that the book of Joshua is shifting into more data and less story, but this is still valuable for us. And if you've spent time in church uh for a long time, you you've probably heard sermons on the first like nine or ten, you know, chapters of Joshua. And and maybe, you know, certainly Joshua chapter 24, particularly verse 15. That's a that's a famous verse. We sometimes call those vinyl verses, the kind that people post on their walls. But uh these these next chapters, between chapters 12 and uh kind of 19, 20, somewhere in there, there's just a lot of information. And we don't typically dive into that. But I'm excited to do that with you over the course of the next several weeks as we come back together on Fridays. But you'll notice that I'll do my best to keep these episodes shorter because I think we don't necessarily need to drag them out when we're just kind of processing data. But there are cool bits that I think we we want to recognize. So we'll we'll talk about things like the story of Joseph, right? Joseph way back in Genesis. Yep, his legacy uh happens here in the book of Joshua, which I think is really cool. We'll talk about Caleb's story, we'll talk about the way things happen and the role of the Levites and all of these other things that that come along the way. So uh absolutely tune in because we'll make it worth your while and we'll keep you here a little bit shorter, then you can move into prayer time uh maybe sooner than usual. All right. Having said all of that, I wanted to leave you with a reflective activity uh to do. And I would encourage you to actually do this, because I think I think we spend a lot of time doing things that reflect uh Wesley's comment in in The Princess Bride. I think, I think our culture, and and I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, by the way, but we have become uh more proficient at recognizing things that have wounded us in the past, uh, baggage that we carry, and and I it is it is important that we recognize and work through those processes, but it's also important that we take time to write down the good parts of life, the victories. You know, for Joshua and Israel, this is kind of a straightforward moment. They're like, yeah, we conquered this king and that king, and we took care of this guy and that guy. All of that's there. And our stories are different than that, but we still benefit greatly when we take time to to just mark all of the ways that God has shown up in our lives. Maybe in in moments where where we didn't recognize him at first, but he was present nonetheless. So take some time and and sort of take an inventory, right? My 12-step friends would would recognize that language, take an inventory, not just of the hard things, but the the good things, the good things that God has done, and uh and just uh take a moment to to do that. So go ahead, grab that that pencil or pen, a sheet of paper, grab your laptop, whatever you have uh around, and and just take time to to journal them down. And then once you've completed that, just take a moment to say thank you to the Lord for all that he's done in your life. All right, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this amazing day that you've given us. God, thank you for victory. Uh God, we we never want to take any of that for granted. Uh thank you for meeting us, but we're gonna continue meeting with you. Amen.