Joshua 13 - What do we do with "dry" passages?

What do you do when you come across a passage of scripture that feels so dry you can hardly make your way through it?  You start skimming over details and names that are hard to sound out and kind of wonder what kind of encouragement you’re supposed to take from this.  What’s the spiritual insight here? I’ll do my best to answer those kinds of questions and I’ll give you five easy tips to help your quiet times to remain vibrant. We’re in Joshua 13, the beginning of the part where Israel figures out who is going to live where.

Transcript

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What do you do when you come across a passage of scripture that is just so dry that you can hardly make your way through it? You start reading and you come across details and names of places and people that are kind of hard to sound out, and you're sort of wondering what the encouragement is here. What's the spiritual insight that you're supposed to take away from this? On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am so glad that you've joined in today. And yes, I'll do my best to answer those kinds of questions. What do we do? And I'll give you five tips to help keep your quiet times vibrant, even in the dry parts. We're in Joshua 13 today. It's the part of the story where everybody in Israel is learning who gets to live where. We're gonna get into this together, but before we do anything else, let's pray. Jesus, thank you that you are present here even now with us. As I'm recording this and as people are listening or watching to this, God, we just recognize that you you care about us and you desire to meet with us as much as we desire to meet with you. God, show us your goodness. We're excited about that. We love you. Amen. All right. So because of the nature of Joshua 13, I am not going to read all of that uh through for us. In fact, I'm just going to invite you to read it either before or after you've taken in this particular podcast episode. Uh, and you know, because I could read it and then you could all just kind of like make fun of the way I pronounce, you know, like because I'm supposed to know how to say all this stuff. And I can I can give it a good solid effort, you know, you just say those names, you know, quick and confident, and then most people think you're saying it right. That's not a bad way to do it. But the reality is, is, is that there are things that we can glean from from this particular chapter and from those dry chapters in general. So let's jump into sort of talking about Joshua 13. And there is a data-heavy aspect to this particular uh passage, but I'm gonna do my best to keep this as uh, I guess, as encouraging and as life-giving, like without doing violence to the text or anything like that, but just to recognize that there actually are some good things for us as we jump into passages like this one. All right, so what can we learn uh from this particular chapter? The first thing is in the first verse, actually, we just we learned that Joshua was old and there was still land to be conquered, there was still work to be done. And this to me is actually a pretty important piece because we just finished in chapter 12 reading a list of all of the kings that had been conquered, a few by Moses, and then 31, right, by Joshua and the people of Israel. It was kind of this period at the end of this pretty amazing narrative that goes from Joshua 1 all the way through Joshua 12 of just like uh incredible adventure, the ups and downs, the dealings with all of that kind of thing. And there's a sense of like, wow, we we really did something. And that's true. But then we get to chapter 13, verse 1, and the Lord's talking to Joshua, and he's saying, Hey, I noticed you're pretty old. And there's still work to be done, and it it sort of tempers that whole thing, and it's not that it puts a damper on everything, but it's sort of this reality check, right? And sometimes we need that in the context of our own lives for sure, but certainly in scripture as well, like, okay, well, I've heard this part of this story, but what did that actually look like in the day-to-day? And it turns out that there was work left to be done. It also reminds me that while God always keeps his promises, and having spent, you know, most of my life uh in the scriptures, in the context of church world, just growing as a as a follower of Jesus myself, my experience, my personal experience as well as my experience with scripture is that God's promises are kept. Period. Now, here's the other part. They're rarely kept quickly. You know, it just doesn't, it does happen. I'm not gonna say that it that it doesn't happen, but most of the time we have this like microwave, you know, click the button, do the thing, and you know, sort of this instant reward from from the request. And it life rarely actually works that way. So sometimes our frustration uh in our own faith journey is that we're just trying to run way faster than God wants us to run. And so there is a little bit of a like, hey, hang on a second here. God's doing things in his time, in his way. And uh, and there are probably some growing points for us there in the midst of all of that. So the next bit is that we are, and I've kind of been talking about this already, we're introduced to the data heavy part of Joshua. Again, that narrative is essentially over. Now we're seeing how this all plays out, how it all works out. We're learning about boundaries, we're doing about all these different things. And chapter 13 focuses in on the allotment east of the Jordan. So that's the section of land that uh the people had been in before they crossed the Jordan in, so where Joshua begins, uh, and and so all of that has happened there. So it's just kind of divvying uh all of that out. And then thirdly, uh, I just wanted to say that in this next series of chapters, we're getting a clearer picture of God's promise to Abraham way back in Genesis. So the promise back then is like as numerous as the as the grains of sand on the seashore, as numerous as the stars in the sky, so shall your descendants be. Go and walk the width and the breadth of the land. This will be the land of your people. And now we're seeing, okay, well, these are his people, and this is where they're going to live, this is how they're going to fulfill it. So just appreciating those things as we read passages like this. All right, the next thing I wanted to say is that when we come to this whole section, and we'll we'll do this frequently here, I want you to know that maps are our friends. Uh, so I'm gonna show you uh up here on the on the blank space, my little teaching space. I just took a quick pick from one of the back of my or the back of one of my Bibles. I can talk. And and I just I did it that way because I wanted us to appreciate that you don't need to have like fancy software or anything like that in order to kind of like clue into this stuff. And I get it, I um, you know, I read the scriptures often on my on my tablet. Uh, you know, I access the digital world quite a bit that way, but there is something kind of nice about having that physical Bible, and most Bibles would have this kind of a map in it. So there's something to that. So when you're reading, sometimes it's just nice to have that, and it's it's not, it doesn't need to be difficult, is what I'm trying to say. So uh on this first picture you can see uh the allotments and the nation as a whole, and so that's just kind of a full picture, and that's what Joshua is unpacking for us. Uh, and then we'll see uh here in this chapter, we're talking uh about these uh these three tribes here that are east of the Jordan, and those are the ones that are focused in on in chapter 13. So sometimes just looking at it is like, oh, that's what it's talking about, that's what it's describing to me. And you're like, okay, I get it. You know, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. All right, I promised you five tips to keep your uh your quiet times with the Lord, you know, vibrant and meaningful, uh, even when you come to a dry passage like this. So point number one, don't I'm supposed to to myself. This is what I do. So sometimes we come into our quiet time with some kind of a like an obligatory feeling. Like, I'm coming to do this thing, maybe because I'm I'm supposed somebody told me to do it, and I know it's good for me, so I'm gonna take it like vitamins, right? It's it's that kind of a mentality, and that's not necessarily helpful. Uh, the other thing that we tend to do is is we're like, well, I'm spending this time, shouldn't I feel a certain way, or shouldn't I have these aha moments, or there should be like um, you know, those of those sorts of things. So don't don't bring that to the table. It'll it's just a helpful tip in general. So don't, I'm supposed to, right, to yourself. Number two, uh, I remind myself that following Jesus isn't always about the goosebumps. Sometimes it isn't, and that's super okay. Uh sometimes we come to the text, and yeah, with just some information. And that's all right. It doesn't necessarily need to be more than that. Again, just kind of taking away some of those things that some of us stress ourselves out about. So just there you have it. Number three, the logistics reveal that there was a plan in place. And whether we're in a book like Joshua or we're in a book like Leviticus or Chronicles or Numbers, those places where they tend to have those like lists of tribes and names and all these different things are there, those logistics reveal that there that there actually was a plan in place. This wasn't just like about ideals. Our faith isn't just about belief or aspiring to like an outlandish, outlandish, ambiguous kind of uh an experience. There are like nuts and bolts to all of this. And as we read about that for like the people of Israel or even for ourselves, uh, there's just a recognition that God does uh have order in all that he does. And then fourthly, there's usually a story behind the data, and that's something I found to be pretty true, and we'll kind of get into that a little bit more uh next week and following, but even this week, like the story is it's not a big one, right? And we've been learning about him all the way through, but it's it's about Joshua. It's about Joshua having lived a faithful life, but he's gotten to the place of being old, and and it can compel us to reflect a little bit, but also to recognize him as a human being. He did some good stuff, he was obedient, he didn't finish. And that's just part of what we recognize in it. So we'll highlight some of those stories as we go through, and then finally, and this one is always good whenever you have your quiet time with the Lord, but especially when you're like, okay, I read that. I don't think that there's a lot there for me to like dig deep into and sort out. Uh, I just will ask uh God a little more, hey, what is it that you're trying to speak into my life today? Like, even never mind the text for for just a moment, but God just talk to me. And I anticipate that. So I hope that those things are helpful to you, and uh, and then I'm excited for this journey that we're on together as we go through this data heavy part of Joshua. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this wonderful day that you've given us. God, thank you that we get to learn even from these um detailed parts of Scripture. God, would you be with us now? Would you be our life and our joy? We ask this in your name. Amen.