Day 176: God Gives The Land [2]

Today's Connected Passages: 

• Joshua 1:10-18; 5:13-15; 6:1-27 [Hebrews 11:30]; 
• Joshua 12:1-24; 22:1-8; 24:11-13 
• 2 Samuel 5:6-15 
• 1 Chronicles 11:4-9 
• Psalm 135:1-12 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. I want to thank you so much for joining us here on day number 176 of the Canon Connected. And right now we are talking about, over a span of seven days, the physical land of Israel in the Old Testament. And it truly is a very significant theme in the Old Testament. There's no doubt about that, regardless of what a person believes about Israel as a nation state or Israel as the people of God in the Old Testament and even the new, even as Jesus changed the covenant. There's no doubt that what God promised those people all the way back in the time of Abraham and how he fulfilled it through the days of Moses and particularly Joshua is it's it's important. It's important for us to read this, it's important for us to understand this, and we can truly get a good, you know, five, six, seven days out of this. The last two days of this particular week are going to be on God's just wars because that's part of this story, and we're going to develop that that theology a little bit. But the idea that God, you know, promised the land, he gave the land, and he divided the land is there's, I mean, innumerable chapters almost, just a lot of readings on this, so much so that we spanned it over, again, the course of almost an entire week with the last two days being an addendum on God's just wars and how God, you know, did command war at time in the Bible at times in the Bible. But yesterday we looked at mostly, although it did spill over some into Joshua and the promise to take the actual promised land. But we have even seen, you know, that going back to Abraham and possibly even Genesis 1, that I've talked about the last couple of days, but maybe not. But all the way back to Abraham, God promised this, and his promise was so sure, they they had to be confident. They were, they were, they were commanded to be confident. They had they had to believe God, you know, and not just believe it in their head, but to the point where they went into the promised land despite the long odds against them. And we saw yesterday that even before, again, Joshua and uh and and the actual Battle of Jericho and all of that, and taking the the the actual promised land, two and a half tribes wanted, you know, the land uh on the east side of the Jordan for their for their uh for their um their animals, um their herds to be able to graze. And that's a big part of the story too, because that almost seemed like it, you know, and there was even a time this the idea of the two and a half tribes, you know, building that that altar that people thought it was supposed to be, you know, uh worship of a false god or a graven image, whatever, but it was really just supposed to be a memorial. That was a big part of the story because it almost caused a division between the tribes, but God worked through that, and I think God allowed them to have the land that the east of the Jordan, you know, Gad and Manesseh, or the half tribe of Manessa and Reuben. But now we're gonna see today, the through the readings today, and you have seen if you've done all the readings the actual, you know, Joshua part of the story, because that is truly the heart of the story. That's what we typically think of, even with the two and a half tribes as you know, part of as part of the story too. The the heart of the story truly is, you know, Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down, and it's not just you know a story without without context. It's the context of God promised the land, God's now giving the land. And it did not matter, as you see today, all right. Um, God even says, you know, be but your strong warriors, fully armed, must lead the other tribes across the Jordan to help them conquer their territory to the two and a half tribes. It talk of it took a battle, and uh it took them fighting, it took warfare. And as we saw yesterday from Deuteronomy 9, and as we saw a legion of times when we did God's sovereignty and especially God of heaven's armies and God as a warrior, God really won the battle. He fought for them. But in this case, unlike with Sennacherib, king of Assyria and some other, you know, um stories in the Old Testament, they did have to pick up weaponry, they did have to go fight, and they had to be brave, and as we talked about with Joshua before in a reading, they had to be strong and courageous. And so that's what we see in Joshua chapter 1, the rallying of the men, Joshua chapter 5, coming toward Jericho, and even this interesting interaction that he had with the commander of the Lord's army. Because again, this is what's about to happen. As we saw in Deuteronomy 9 yesterday, this is a strong connection. God's, you know, the commander of God's army is here, okay? He's going with them, all right? And I didn't make this connection we could have. I didn't think it was strong enough, truly, but it's worth noting, at least in the podcast, that he tells them, you know, this place where you're standing is his holy ground, just as he told Moses. Of course, Moses was in Midian at the time, so we know that the holy ground really is not truly just the promised land. It's wherever God is, and I think that's important to remember as well. But then Joshua 6, truly a famous story, okay? A lot of connections to the last two days to this story, God's promise, you know, and then the buildup to this. Hebrews 11 absolutely gives its one verse commentary on this by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, through every all that chapter. It was by faith that the people of Israel marched around Jericho for seven days and the walls came crashing down. We're going to revisit this story in a later reading months from now, I think, on how God doesn't always make sense. Why did God ask Gideon to do what he did, paring his army down from 32,000 to 300, and why the marching around for six days and doing nothing, and then on the seventh day, you know, doing what they did? Because God doesn't make sense in at first to us, but in hindsight, he always makes sense. Faith means believing in advance, but will only make sense in reverse. We'll revisit that. But then you do have some more commentary on this event, the the battle of Jericho and the taking of the land. Um, and one of the things that is repeated too throughout these days as well is how they didn't drive all the nations out the way that God wanted them to. God commanded that and they didn't do it, and that always caused problems. But even though they took the land for the most part, that is something, again, that is recalled again uh significantly, Joshua 12, Joshua 22, um, Joshua 24. This leads in well to the dividing of the land that we're going to see. And even David, I included this. I don't know, maybe this is not a good connection. I don't know. But the fact they didn't have Jerusalem at first, and Jerusalem became the place where the Ark of the Covenant eventually became to rest, and this was where God's presence and glory was going to be centralized, and it had traveled around, you know, and it had stayed in other places before they took over um Jerusalem in David's day. But David took Jerusalem, and the way he did it is very clever, by the way. This is a man who understands strategy and war and things like that. You can read that in the stories today, both in 2 Samuel 5 and 1 Chronicles 11. But David wanted this part of the land because he wanted it to be God's headquarters, so to speak. You know, this is where the the temple was going to be eventually. And uh, and so um it's it's a part of the taking of the land to me. Um, as again, much later in time, but still uh I think it's part as part of this story. And then Psalm 135, I love this because the the in the Bible they sing about everything good that God does. You can't get around the stories. Here's connections, narratives, stories, and the Psalms. There are so many connections there because so many of the Psalms are singing about what happened. They're not just praising God for who he is, they're praising God for what he has done. And that's part of Psalm 135 that we see here. He struck down great nations and slaughtered mighty kings. God of heaven's armies, God is a warrior, okay, God is sovereign. All of it connects in ways that uh it's like juggling seven balls in the air, and I can only juggle two, you know, sometimes. Um and he says he struck down and slaughtered mighty kings, Sihon, king of the Amorites. We talked about that yesterday. That's the land of the two and a half tribes, God, king of Bashan, and all the kings of Canaan. So he talked about all of the land that was that God gave them in this psalm. He gave their land as an inheritance, a special possession to his people Israel. And that is again a significant uh statement. That is not something just to be glossed over or to be, you know, discarded because it's it's it sparks debates now, you know, since Israel became a country again in the 1940s. Um, and that land. It is absolutely something in the Old Testament, when we when we view it properly in the biblical framework that I think we need to talk about, we need to explain and talk about it, you know, and why God's promises matter and why the Abrahamic covenant wasn't just about children and blessings as far as reputation and making his name great, but it truly was about a physical land. And again, as I've mentioned a couple of times already in Acts 17, Paul even alluded to this. You know, God put people where he wanted them, even as far as borders and countries, and probably even languages, I would say, um, for a reason. They would reach out, you know, and try to find him based on where they were. And so that is the giving of the land, promise of the land, two days of giving the land. Now we're going to talk about the dividing of the land. We've talked about this somewhat with the twelve tribes already, but it again manifests God's desire for fairness, it manifests God's desire for justice, it manifests that God wants to take diversity and make it unified. And so, even though the two and a half tribes were on the east side of the Jordan and the Levites didn't get land as an inheritance, there is still this diversity within unity aspect to how God, you know, wanted this land to be for, you know, his people in the sense of twelve distinct tribes, and how he and how he explains all of that, and how in Joshua and even beyond in Judges and beyond, we see that the land being divided, and how it again speaks to justice and fairness, equality, diversity within unity, all these things that matter. So come back and be with us again tomorrow as we continue to read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections on the promise, giving, and dividing of the land. Thank you.