God allocates our lot in life for his glory. It may not make sense to us now. It may not be what we would have chosen. But is gives us a life of eternal meaning and significance. Our piece in his story for his glory.
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Transcript
Dan:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to trainingforliferedeemed. I am your host Dan. And as always, I’m joined by my dad, David Jackson. Today, we are diving into Joshua 16 to 18, and Dad you’ve titled this our lot in life. Why the title
David:
We get to this wonderful point now where we’re going to actually divvy up the land and decide who gets which bit. So Judah has got their bit , and now we’ve got all these other fellows to share out the rest and the whole process –you can imagine if you had 12 brothers and you wanted to divide something evenly between them –and you’ve got land that’s desert land, that’s mountainous lands that’s all over the place. Can you imagine the arguments and the argy-bargy? You know , so it’s a very simple system. This is God’s property. We don’t get to decide where we fit in God’s property. And it helps to remember that we’re God’s creation. So he doesn’t just own the land. He owns me and he bought me back on the cross. So he gets to decide what to do with me. And so you go before the Lord. We are up at the tent where God dwells with his people in Shiloh, and which is right in the middle of all of this stuff. So we go there and we’re going to allocate the land by lot, which is basically 12 names going a hat. And instead of running an auction, or instead of an argument, we just go, right, who’s next, pull the name out , pull the block of land out of the hat . That’s your bit. Off you go. So we’ve got a map, we’ve got little numbered sections and , who gets what is drawn out by a raffle. And it’s done in front of the place where God dwells. And the idea is, this is God picking out who gets what? And when you go through all these place names, they may be boring to people, but when you go through it, the land doesn’t match the number of people in a tribe. You know, big tribes get a little bit and skinny, little tribes, thin little tribes, get a massive bit. There’s nothing in here that says I’m getting what I deserve. You’re getting what God has planned for you to do. And that’s your lot. It takes me back to this Psalm. I’ve got to read it. Psalm 16:5-6 “Yahweh is the allotment of my share . And my cup.” The heart of the inheritance is, my inheritance is that I am a member of God’s family. He allocated me to his family. so the Psalmist says “you picked out my lot, the lines, the b orders fell to me with delight.” Indeed an inheritance that’s beautiful for me. So it’s a way of going back to God and saying, thank you for giving me this redeemed life and thank you for my life story. A nd I think that’s- I was very challenged a bit earlier today. We’re in the middle of a COVID pandemic, and we’re having some very sad stories about people who made some very bad choices. And I’m just reminded , as people want to look at their life and say, this is too hard, this is too bad. I want to step off the planet. We have to go back and say what we’re doing here. What were the thing that gives meaning to life is it , this is a story God wrote for his glory and everything I say and everything I do God planned. And that’s God’s story. We call it his story, history, but he wrote it. And it has eternal significance. Whether I be suffering, whether I be prospering, whatever’s happening, I’m living a life of eternal significance, lots of other things, you know, God’s allocated to me my little part in his jigsaw of his story. And that that’s a huge privilege that we get to , to have that little part of glorifying God and enjoying him forever. That’s my allocation. That’s not something to grumble about, or be depressed about. You know , that’s something to look at and go, wow. When we get to eternity, everybody who ever got saved is going to want to know that little part of the picture, you know, because God wrote it. It’s like a little jewel tucked away in the middle of some massive artwork, and we’re going to have time to explore all of that. That’s exciting. So my allocation by God has nothing to do with what I earn or how many I am, or have big I am or short I am how many hairs on my head? It’s all all about God writing a story. And it’s a wonderful story.
Dan:
Oh, that sounds a lot like a perspective that Manasseh could have learnt .
David:
Yeah. So God is teaching us this story. He’s got to counter our natural inclination for life to be all about me. The, the bit of broken pottery with Manasseh’s name on it. And he looks at the block of land that he won and he starts whingeing. Now , this is the first time we’ve had whingeing and grumbling, since that previous generation died off. So Manasseh is whingeing . This is not a good sign for the future. And God’s answer to that. And Joshua’s answer to that. It makes me laugh. You’ve got so many people and this land is not big enough for you. Okay. You see that hill over there. You can have that as well. Only one minor little problem with that hill. It’s absolutely covered in forest. And if you want to go and do anything with it, well, go buy an ax. You’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of you if you want that hill, but it’s yours, you know, enjoy the hill. He gives them Mount Carmel and it’s a magnificent place, but they’re sort of grumbling.
Dan:
Yeah. But then now I’ve got, beautiful ocean views.
David:
They certainly do.
Dan:
All right . So after this grumbling and they get allocated Mount Carmel, we’ll then move on to Zelophehad’s daughters. And we have a bit of a case study here with these girls and God providing some kind of justice system for how, we have a dad now who’s going to die with no sons and two girls. And how do we keep the land in his family? Basically it will be, at least his name will continue through that land .
David:
The Zelophehad ladies are coming forward and saying, what about our dad ? Zelophehad is part of Manasseh . He dies. We get married. There’s this big vacant block of land that everybody can sort of climb in and grab all the cousins and brothers or whatever. And the decision is, girls normally would marry their husband and move onto the husband’s property. You can’t run a marriage at two separate addresses. That doesn’t work. So either the girls move on to the guy’s property or the guys move on to the girl’s property. So in this case, the girls would be abandoning dad’s farm and dad’s name would be forgotten. So the deal is by all means, the girls can inherit the land, but we can’t have the land move out of that tribe. So, ladies, that means you’ve got to marry somebody within your father’s tribe to keep your father’s land in that tribe. And the girls say, sure, problem-solve d
Dan:
As you do , when God tells you the answer
David:
And he gives you the land, he says yes, to what you asked for. So that’s that, that. It sets a legal precedent, that if a man has no sons, his daughters can inherit that land, but they would need to marry people within that extended clan and family. So that the grandchildren who inherit the land , are part of that tribe, and they keep the allocation where God put it ,.
Dan:
What happens then with Benjamin that we have this section with Benjamin and Shiloh. What’s the importance of this?
David:
This is a really neat story. if we go back to Egypt, when Joseph was in power, you remember the argy-bargy that was going on. Joseph, was doing a great payback on his brothers for selling him into slavery. And he really puts the screws on those guys. They’re terrified. So they’ve got to go back to their father and bring Benjamin down to Egypt. And for a year, I think it’s about a year. It could be two years. Their dad says there’s no way my last, you know, the only son I love, as opposed to all of you. You know, you killed. Joseph is dead. I’ve only got one son left. He actually says that. This is pretty cruel. And so a year or so goes by and they’re running out of food. And Judah says, look, let me take Benjamin down. And it’s my life for his life. Anything happens to him, kill me, you don’t love me anyway. So he takes Benjamin down . Benjamin gets arrested and Joseph says, I’ll give you Benjamin back If you go and bring your father down. And Judah offers himself. Keep me, let Benjamin go. And Joseph goes, Nah!, You know, he’s really messing with them. So here we are, hundreds of years later, and Benjamin happens to get the block of land next to Judah. And in another 500 years, when the country splits in half, Benjamin’s going to stay with Judah. He’s not going to go with the other boys. He’s gonna stay with Judah. And so Benjamin and Judah become the Southern kingdom. And Benjamin’s loyalty, even though he’s probably one of the most messed up tribes, God, in his grace, this is part of the story. Benjamin becomes the worst behaved tribe in Israel’s history. And yet he’s incorporated into the King’s land . And he’s kept within the bounds of the people God brings back to the land. There’s, there’s sort of what we’re looking at. All these weird places. They’re not random. God has planned this for Benjamin and Judah to be together. And Jerusalem is just inside Benjamin’s territory. The King’s palace is going to be occupied by Judah on Benjamin’s land. And they’re sort of joined at the hip now from then on. that’s a great story, Ephraim and Manasseh , the next two tribes up. They become Samaria. They’re going to be the people that the Jews are going to avoid because of their behaviour. And yet Jesus will go there and we’ll have Samaritans converted. God keeps his promises, but he’s setting the land up so that you can see the story. That’s really exciting stuff that the Benjamin, I like the Benjamin Judah story.
Dan:
That’s a very nice story that brings us to the end of this episode. So thank you guys so much for listening to us today. I would ask you if you enjoy this episode, please leave us a review. Wherever you’re listening to this podcast. If you want to come over and grab the study notes and stuff that go with this episode, please head over to trainingforliferedeemed .com/ 44, and you can grab everything there. And of course, make sure that you click the subscribe button and come back and join us next week. As we continue to look through the book of Joshua, see you then.
