The Lord is In Our Midst

Our Father in heaven as we come now to Your Word we ask once again not merely out of habit, but out of a sense of our need that you would help us help me to speak only what is true and helpful, give me humility that I might decrease and Christ would increase and give to all your people the ears to hear, the ears and the eyes of faith that we would receive Your Word with gladness and obey. In Jesus we pray. Amen.

We come this morning to Joshua chapter 22. We’ve been going back and forth a bit in this new year as I’ve had some travel and as we have special speakers with John Piper and then our missions week coming up we are slowly making our way to the end of the book of Joshua, then we’ll be into the Lenten season and we’ll do a series on the parables in Matthew as we head into Easter.

This morning as come to the last three chapters, we come to the application portion of this book. Now there has already been plenty of application along the way, but now we come to it very deliberately as the Holy Spirit worked through the author to put this book together and perhaps at some points it might have been read aloud in a single sitting. This would have been deliberately the section of the so what. Chapters 1 through 5 entering the land, chapters 6 through12 conquering the land, chapters 13 through 21 dividing the land, and now chapters 22 through 24 you might call living in the land.

Look up at the last paragraph in chapter 21 because here we have a very deliberate summary of the whole long section of the land allotments and in some ways it can be a summary of everything we’ve seen in the Book of Joshua. Verse 43, “Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and they settled there, and The Lord gave them rest on every site just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them for The Lord had given all their enemies into their hands, not one word of all the good promises that The Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed, all came to pass.”

That’s really a summary of everything we’ve seen in the Book of Joshua. You have all these themes that The Lord gave Israel. Yes they had to go in and fight, but really it was a gift He gave to Israel the land, the land is at rest, and then the overarching theme, and it’s repeated here several times, “Just as he had swore to give them the land” verse 43. And then verse 44, “He gave them rest, just as he had sworn to their fathers.” And then verse 45, “Not one word of all the good promises he made to Israel had failed. God kept his word.” That’s what Joshua has been about. God did everything he swore to them, not one promise has failed. You could almost think of Joshua up to this point it’s kind of like Romans 1 through 11, God’s grace, God’s mercy, everything He has done for his people, but as some of you know Romans 11 then Romans 12, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” So there is a turn now to the therefore, to the application, and it’s really quite deliberate. Three times in these three chapters we have an intentional gathering of God’s people.

So look at verse 1. At that time Joshua summoned the Reubenites, the Gadites, the half tribe of Manasseh. So here’s the first one, the first gathering he summons these two and a half tribes and we’ll read about them in just a moment, but turn the page and see in chapter 23. A long time afterward when The Lord had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, Joshua summoned all Israel, it’s elders and heads, it’s judges and officers, and he gives another speech. So that’s the second gathering and in chapter 24 the same thing. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, summoned the elders, the heads, the judges, the officers of Israel and Joshua said to all the people there in verse 2, three times in these last three chapters. It’s a very neat, tidy, obvious division that Joshua is gathering the people. This is really three points of application at the end of this long sermon and here’s the first one in chapter 22 as he gathers these people together.

Now I thought about how best to work through this passage, I thought of reading the whole thing, then explaining it, or reading it and then breaking it up into several Salian lessons, but I think the best approach is the simplest approach and we are going to work our way through this episode bit by bit, we’re going to stop along the way, offer some explanation, some commentary so you can understand what this is about. That will take most of our time and then at the end we’re gonna step back and say okay, so that’s what happened, now what really is the lesson, what was the lesson for them living in the land, what’s the lesson for us as Christians? So follow along, let’s begin with this first paragraph.

At that time Joshua summoned the Reubenites and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and said to them, “You have kept all that Moses, the servant of The Lord commanded you, and have obeyed my voice and all that I have commanded you. You have not forsaken your brothers these many days, down to this day, but have been careful to keep the charge of The Lord, your God, and now The Lord your God has given rest to your brothers as he promised them. Therefore, turn to and go to your tents in the land where your possession lies which Moses the servant of The Lord gave you on the other side of the Jordan, only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of The Lord commanded you to love The Lord your God, and to walk in all His ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to Him and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul so Joshua blessed them and sent them away and they went to their tents.

Remember, we have seen this several times, this has been a recurring refrain in the Book of Joshua. Twelve tribes, you’ve got the Jordan River here going north to south and Canaan proper is on the western side, you have nine and a half tribes over there and on the eastern side you have two and a half tribes, Reuben, Gad and then the half tribe of Manasseh. And way back in the first five books of the Bible we saw that these two and a half tribes that we want to stay on this side of the Jordan and Moses said, “Okay, you can have this land, but you have to go with your brothers into the promised land, you have to help them fight. We can’t just let you stay here and you get out easy and you don’t have to do anything to fight with the rest of your brothers.” So now Moses is saying, we’re at rest, we’re over here, you’re free to go back to your home. You have done your job, a salute, you fought, you kept your end of the bargain, now you can go home over on the eastern side of the Jordan to your two and a half tribes there, well done, but make sure, be very careful that you don’t forget all of the law of Moses and all of the commandments. So, return to your home, but go and be obedient.

Verse 7. Now to the one and a half of the tribe of Manasseh, Moses had given a possession in Bashan, but to the other half Joshua had given a possession beside their brothers in the land west of the Jordan, so that’s the half tribe of Manasseh, they have land on both sides. And when Joshua sent them away to their homes and blessed them he said to them, “Go back to your tents with much wealth and with very much livestock, with silver, gold, bronze, and iron, and with much clothing, divide the spoil of your enemies with your brothers. So, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh returned to home parting from the people of Israel at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan, to go to the land of Gilead, their own land of which they had possessed themselves by command of The Lord through Moses. He says, “You’re very rich, we’ve plundered our enemies, you can divide the spoil, return to your land”, and notice where they are. Look there at the last verse, 9, they’re at Shiloh.

Remember Shiloh, if you go back to chapter 18:1, the whole congregation of the people assembled at Shiloh for the remaining allotment of the land. This will be important in just a moment because it’s at Shiloh that they set up the tents of meeting. While they were wandering in the wilderness, they had the tabernacle which was a portable tent and you could set it up and then the Levi’s could take it down, and you could move to the next location, but now that they are in the land they need a permanent home for the dwelling place of God. They don’t yet have a temple, that’s going to come centuries later in Jerusalem. David will build a house, Solomon will build a temple. They don’t have the temple, they have the temporary version which is the tabernacle. And they don’t have Jerusalem yet because the Jebusites still have Jerusalem, that’s coming, but they’re in Shiloh which is right in the middle of Israel. So, that’s been named the one place, the holy place, they’re there, that’s where the tabernacle is, they depart from Shiloh and they go back to their land on the eastern side of the Jordan.

Verse 10. “And when they came to the region of the Jordan that is in the land of Canaan, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by the Jordan, an altar of imposing size.” And the people of Israel heard it said, behold the people of Reuben and the people of Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh have built the altar at the frontier of the Land of Canaan in the region about the Jordan on the side that belongs to the people of Israel and when the people of Israel heard of it the whole assembly of the people of Israel gathered at Shiloh to make war against them. This is taking a dark turn very quickly. All of a sudden we are on the brink of civil war so what’s happened? Well they built an altar, scholars debate a lot, at some point in the story it sounds like it’s on the western side, other times it sounds like it’s on the eastern side right here when it says it’s there with Israel which is the land given to Canaan proper, sounds like it’s on the western side, wherever it is, they have built there right on the region entering their land and it’s of imposing size. This is a giant altar. Now what do you do at an altar? An altar is where you make sacrifices. The point is that these eastern tribes build an altar right at the boundary line of their land and it’s big enough that the people on the western side can see it and the rumor gets back to the rest of the tribes.

Verse 11. They heard it said, there’s whispers, there’s rumblings, “Did you hear what happened? No, what happened?” Well, those two and a half tribes, they built an altar, an altar of, I wanna say of unusual size, but those are the rodents of unusual size, this is the altar of imposing size. Now what’s the big deal? You say lots of altars have been built by God’s people, Abraham built several altars, Israel and Jacob did too, or Isaac and Jacob, Joshua lead a covenant ceremony at an altar on Mount Ebal in chapter 8, so God’s people have built lots of altars. It’s one of the things when they’re ready to worship they build an altar. An altar speaks of worship and atonement because an altar is where a sacrifice takes place, little parentheses 13:22 why we called, hmm it’s not here, where is The Lord’s table, well we didn’t have it this week, but when it’s here and we have The Lord’s supper we call it a table, Catholic churches call it an altar, but it’s a table because it’s not a sacrifice, there is no longer a sacrifice to be made, it’s a table where we gather for a meal, an altar is where sacrifices take place. So, the people are nervous because Shiloh has already been identified as that one place where God’s tent now will dwell. So there’s one place.

In order to understand why this is such a serious sin as they see it, is because of God’s instructions in Deuteronomy. So I want you to see this for yourself, go back one book, Joshua, before that is the Book of Deuteronomy. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 12 which envisions a time when God will establish just one place in the land, so right now the first place is Shiloh. Centuries later it will be Jerusalem, right now it’s Shiloh. Here’s what God says, Deuteronomy chapter 12. You can see in the ESV the heading, The Lord’s Chosen Place of Worship. “These are the statutes and rules that you shall be careful to do in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers has given you to possess, all the days that you live on earth.” So, it’s looking forward when you’re in the land. “You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars, dash in pieces their pillars, burn their Asherim, those are like totem poles, with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods, destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.”

And then jump to verse 13. “Take care that you do not offer your burnt offerings at any place that you see, but at the place that the Lord will choose in one of your tribes, there you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I am commanding you.” This was very important and it teaches us something important about worship. God says when you get into the land, this is not a make up your own religion for yourself. You’re gonna be in a land that that had lots of pagan gods and goddesses and you may be tempted to think, “Ya know what, there’s already some high places here, why don’t we use those? There’s already some nice venues for worship, why don’t we use those?”, and God says, “As soon as you do that, you’re gonna become syncretistic.” You’re gonna be, and you see this all over the world today, that we have our own kind of syncretism in the west, which is less with altars and other part of Africa or Asia, it might be a syncretism with the spirit of your ancestors or with some sacred tree. This is no, it’s not you go and do whatever you want wherever you want. There’s going to be one place. Dale Ralph Davis puts it in his commentary it meant one altar, one faith, one people. So God did not allow his people to do whatever they wanted to do when they just had a hankering to go out and have a nice experience with God.

Alright, well I wanna go worship God and here I am, I’m a long ways away from Shiloh or from Jerusalem later, but I’m a religious person, God ought to be happy whatever I do. No, they tried that, remember with the golden calf and that did not turn out well. God understands, giving you one place, one altar, one people. Otherwise, you’re going to be mixed up with Canaanite practices, Canaanite beliefs, Canaanite gods. You’re gonna become syncretistic, that is your religion is going to blend in with their religion and you’ll say, “We call it Yahweh, you call it Baal, you call it Asherah, potato potato, it’s all the same thing.” Nope, one altar, one people, one place. Ah, so that’s why the Israelite tribes are so alarmed, “did you hear Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh have built their own altar.” Well this sounds terrible, this is precisely what they are not supposed to do so they send out a scout team. Verse 13.

Then the people of Israel sent to the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh in the Land of Gilead, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest, and with him 10 chiefs, one from each of the tribal families of Israel, every one of them the head of a family among the clans of Israel. So they send out this scouting party, 10 chiefs from each of the 10 tribes on the other side and then a Levite who is Phineas, so he’s a chief, so there are 11 chiefs, there’s the Super Bowl reference, 11 chiefs. Notice it’s not Joshua, you might say well send Joshua there. Who’s the high priest at this time? Eleazar, he’s been instrumental in the leadership, but it’s not Eleazar, it’s Eleazar’s son Phineas.

So you have 10 western tribes, their chiefs, one for each, and they you’ve got one Levite, the high priest’s son, Phineas, and they’re gonna come and see what’s happening. Now Phineas, now this is a particularly good choice because of what happened in Numbers chapter 25. You don’t have to turn there. Remind you of the story in Numbers 25, the people of Israel, it says, began to whore with the daughters of Moab. Whether that is intermarrying or it may have just been prostitution or concubines or mistresses, but there were sexual dalliances between the Moabite woman and the Israelite men which lead to sacrificing to pagan gods and then bowing down to pagan gods and Numbers says, “Israel yoked himself to Baal Peor and the anger of the Lord was kindled.” That was the name of the place, Baal, the God of the Canaanites and in his place Peor so that happened in number 25, God is angry at his people, they have sinned sexually and it’s lead to the syncretistic worship and in Numbers 25 we read while God’s people are weeping for the judgement that was coming upon them, a man walks out with his Medianite mistress. I don’t think this was an accident, they kind of come waltzing in, it’s a brazen sin.

God is going to render judgement on them for this very thing and then there’s a man with his Medianite mistress and Phineas gets up, takes a spear, runs into the tent, and he kills both of them, the man and the Medianite woman. Sounds like vigilante justice to us. That’s not what it was. The man and the woman in that story had committed an intentional act of brazen provocation. It would have been like, okay, yep God’s angry, let’s see what God’s gonna do about it, and they just came on in, no big deal, and Phineas is praised for his zeal. It said that he was zealous for the name of the Lord and that in his zeal he made atonement for the people and helped to stay the hand of the Lord from being even worse upon God’s people. So, you know the history of Israel and they knew the history of Israel. When you send Phineas you mean business. Alright, this guy did not mess around. We are sending one, he is zealous for the Lord in a good way, and he will not allow iniquity in the land to fester at all. So, you’ve got Phineas and these 10 other chiefs. They come, and here’s what they find.

Verse 15. And they came to the people of Reuben, people of Gad, the half tribe of Manasseh in the Land of Gilead and they said to them, “Thus says the whole congregation of the Lord, what is this breach of faith that you have committed against the God of Israel and turning away this day from following the Lord by building yourselves an altar this day in rebellion against the Lord. Have we not had enough of the sin at Peor?” There’s the reference I just mentioned from Numbers 25. “From which even yet we have not cleansed ourselves and for which there came a plague upon the congregation of the Lord, that you too must turn away this day from following the Lord, and if you too rebel against the Lord today then tomorrow he will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel, but now if the land of your possession is unclean, pass over into the Lord’s land where the Lord’s tabernacle stands and take for yourselves a possession among us, only do not rebel against the Lord or make us as rebels by building for yourselves an altar other than the altar of the Lord our God.”

Did not Achan, the son of Zerah break faith in a matter of the devoted things and wrath fell upon all the congregation of Israel and he did not parish alone for his iniquity. It’s quite an important speech. They say to the two and a half tribes, “Look you have put us all in quite a pickle.” Two examples, Peor, remember that, remember that sin, all of us were punished because sin was tolerated in the camp. And then the other example, Achan, remember when he stole some of the thing and the whole camp was made to suffer because there was sin in the midst of the camp. In other words, your rebellion here is going to affect all of us. Those men did not suffer alone for their sins, we also suffered when their sin went unchecked. And they say, look if you built an altar because something is wrong with your land and you think it’s polluted, then come on over here, the land is fine on this western side of the Jordan. We’ll figure out a place for you to live here near the real altar, but don’t go and do this wicked thing. Sin permitted leads to punishment deserved. That’s their point. If we permit this sin, if we look at this as God’s people in our midst and we say that’s not a big deal, we’re gonna look the other way, I didn’t do it, they did it, it’s not a big deal. Sin permitted leads to punishment deserved. So what sort of response do the two and a half tribes give, that’s where we find verse 21.

Then the people of Reuben, the people of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh said and answered to the heads of the families of Israel, “The mighty one, God the Lord, the mighty one, God the Lord, he knows and let Israel itself know if it was in rebellion or in breach of faith against the Lord, do not spare us today for building an altar to turn away from following the Lord. Or if we did so, to offer burnt offerings or grain offerings, or peace offerings on, may the Lord himself take vengeance?” No, but we did it from fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, “What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel, for the Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you, people of Jordan, people of Reuben and the people of Gad, you have no portion in the Lord, so your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord.” Therefore we said, “Let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering, not for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you and between our generations after us so that we do perform the service of the Lord in the presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and peace offerings so your children will not say to our children in time to come, you have no portion in the Lord.” And we thought if this should be said to us and our descendants in time to come, we should say, behold the copy of the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made, not for burnt offerings, not for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you. Far be it from us that we should rebel against the Lord and turn away this day from following the Lord by building an altar for burnt offering, grain offering, or sacrifice other than the altar of the Lord our God that stands before his tabernacle.

Here’s their explanation. It seems a little strange, but the other tribes we’ll see our satisfied. They say, hold on a second, time out, this is not a functioning altar. You notice several times they say we’re not gonna sacrifice anything on this altar. Now it talks about their service to the Lord, that they would have to travel for pilgrimage fees, they would still have to make a way for sacrifices at the appointed place, but they underscore several times this is a copy, a model of imposing sides. Remember when Moses received the instructions for the tabernacle that was a copy of the heavenly reality, a copy of what he saw so this is a copy of the copy of what’s in heaven. This is a model, this is to show them in times to come that they are one people with the western tribes. What they fear is that this Jordan river would become a kind of Berlin wall separating east and west. You think, well rivers get crossed all the time, well this is before you have bridges and remember what a big deal it was when God had to dry up the Jordan river just for them to get across, so they had to look for the fords, they had to look for a small area or a wadi where they could wade across to the other side. It was not so easily done and their fear is that in the years ahead the next generation will come over and say, mom and dad whose over there across the Jordan? This is Israel, this is Canaan, and they’ll say, “Well those are not Israelites, that’s not our family over there”, and then they will go and they will be divided and they’ll end up worshiping some pagan god and not see themselves as one people. And so the eastern tribes are thinking, we want to build something as a witness lest we be set aside as not the same as you.

Now notice this language, go back to verse 9, 10 and 11. You can see it’s very deliberate and you could understand why they would fear that they might be forgotten as a part of God’s people, because look at verse 9, they’re called the people of Reuben, people of Gad, half tribe of Manasseh. That’s those people on the east. The people on the west are the people of Israel. The people of Israel live in Canaan. We see the same thing in verse 10, they came to the region of the Jordan, that’s in the land of Canaan and the people of Reuben, Gad, half tribe of Manasseh built their altar by the Jordan and in verse 11 people of Israel said people of Reuben, Gad, half tribe of Manasseh so they’re already understanding properly speaking we’re Israel, you’re Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, this is Canaan, you are there on the other side of the Jordan. And so with that reality, they thought this Jordan river would be a chasm that would divide them from their brothers and so they build an altar, not for sacrifice, but as witness. I’m trying to think an analogy might be if American settlers were settling some new land and they said okay this is going to be America and they’re separated by a river and those on one side built a replica White House and a true to size capital building and supreme court building and over here the people say, “What are they doing, I thought we were one people, I thought we had one seat of government here and they’ve gone and they’ve built their own White House, their own capital building, their own supreme court building, they think that they’re another nation, they think they have their own government over there, why else would you build those buildings for the three branches of government and then they get there ready for civil war and they say, ” Time-out, it’s a cardboard cutout”, or they say “Look, open the doors, there’s nothing inside, there’s nobody here, there’s no oval offices, there’s no congress, there’s no supreme court justices, it’s just a model, it’s a copy, we’re not meaning to have a seat of government here.” So that’s what these tribes are saying, it’s a copy, we want everyone to see it, but we’re not actually doing any sacrifices. So, crisis averted.

Look at verse 30 when Phineas, the priest and chiefs of the congregation, the heads of the families of Israel who are with him heard the words of the people of Reuben, the people of Gad, the people of Manasseh spoke. It was good in their eyes and Phineas the son of Eleazar the priest said to the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the people of Manasseh, “Today we know that the Lord is in Our Midst, because you have not committed this breach of faith against the Lord, now you have delivered the people of Israel from the hand of the Lord.” Then Phineas the son of Eleazar the priest and the chiefs returned from the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the Land of Gilead to the Land of Canaan to the people of Israel and brought back word to them and the report was good in the eyes of the people of Israel and the people of Israel blessed God and spoke no more of making war against them to destroy the land where the people of Reuben and the people of Gad were settled. The people of Reuben and the people of Gad called the altar witness for they said it is a witness between us that the Lord is God. That was a close call so God preserved them, they had not been unfaithful, they did not slay all of their brothers, crisis averted.

Okay, I said just going through the story would take most of our time. But now we have to think why, why is this story here? Remember, this is the first, you might say, of the three point application of the Book of Joshua. Three times, 22, 23, 24 Joshua summons the people, over and over, up to this point we have heard how God has been faithful to his people. In fact that was the summary paragraph at the end of chapter 21. Not one word fell to the ground. All that he promised came to pass so God has been faithful. Now Joshua is gathering them together on three occasions to remind them God has been faithful to you, you must be faithful to God. Indicatives always lead to imperatives. There is always a therefore in the Christian life. Sometimes, and especially sometimes among reformed Christians it should not be this way, but it is sometimes, because we rightly want to emphasize justification by faith alone, the grade of God, unconditional election, God’s sovereignty as we should that we get nervous about commands, we get nervous about imperatives, we get nervous about saying, “Well now you have to live a certain way.” But we shouldn’t, this is the pattern in the Old Testament and the New Testament. I got you out of Egypt, I dried up the Red Sea, dried up the Jordan, I gave you the land, you’re in it, now I want you to live in it and what does it look like to live as God’s people in the land.

This story is here to show them and to show us two things that undermine God’s people in the promise land and these are two threats to us as well. Notice in this story the biggest threat to the people of God, it’s not the Egyptians to the south, it’s not the Assyrians to the north, the biggest threat was not even the Canaanites per se, the biggest threat was not an invading army. God had proven more than capable of defeating any military foe if they would but trust and obey. No, the two threats to God’s people in the land and the two threats to God’s people today. Number one, a lack of unity. Number two, a lack of fidelity. Number one, a lack of unity. It’s easy to see how this could have gone real bad really quickly. There’s a rumor, turns out to be a misunderstanding, but they march off with Phineas at the head, zealous Phineas, ready to wipe out their brothers. Now zeal for your house is a good thing, zeal for the Lord is a command in scripture. That’s good, but there’s some wisdom here, some people and it’s often men, but it can be men and women, they got a Phineas personality and they think every moment is a Phineas moment. Well the last time the answer was, take up your spear and go kill them right now, but that would not have been the right thing to do so Phineas goes and he talks to them, there were questions, not ready, fire, aim, that’s how many people do it, but let’s figure out what’s happening. Some Christians get so used to fighting maybe because they came out of a liberal church background or maybe because they feel the pressure of the culture or maybe they’ve just been through the trenches a number of times that they feel like they’re not good Christians unless they have someone to fight. I heard a friend of mine say years ago about another Christian minister, “He is good in wartime, but no in peacetime.” And it turned out an accurate warning about this man who only knew how to throw elbows. Sometimes was on the right side and never knew how to live in peacetime, only knew how to make war with everyone around him, a son of thunder, daughter of thunder.

Now notice that the unity here was not a paper thin unity, it’s not that they found that God’s people had been sinning and they said, “Well the unity of God’s people means that we need to look the other way.” That’s too often in liberal churches the way unity has been understood. Well don’t care about doctrine, don’t care about sin, you just have unity. Well, no it turned out that the sin was not actually a sin, it was a misunderstanding. The two and a half tribes on the eastern side of the Jordan were right to wonder if they might be forgotten, might they become second class citizens in their own nation. There’s the real people, they are on west, and then there’s the fakes, they’re on the east. This is a perennial human problem. You remember with the church the very first problem that threatened the church in the Book of Acts, yes they were persecuted, but they said Lord give us boldness, let us keep sharing in this name. The first thing to really possibly blow up the church was in Acts 6 and it was with the distribution of the food to the widows, and there were Greek widows and Hebrew widows and it looked like it was an ethnic partiality, that maybe all of the Jewish leaders were just favoring the Jewish widows and they didn’t care about the Greek widows, and so the Apostles had to appoint some men full of the Holy Spirit, protodeacons to care for those women. It was the same kind of thing. What if we’re overlooked, what if we’re treated as second class citizens in our own community. There’s a reason in John 17, Jesus prayed that we might be one, that Ephesians 4 says we are one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God, and Father of all who is overall and through all and in all. It is a precious thing.

Many times at our session meetings, our officer meetings with elders and deacons, one of the things we have in these years have often given thanks for, is that Lord it seems that you have given to us a spirit of harmony and joy and unity in the congregation and we hope that’s the case. It seems like it is and that’s a gift from God and it’s something that Jesus himself prays for and it is a delicate thing, it easily comes undone we see here with a rumor, with someone charging ahead with all of the right motives and not stopping to listen, not willing to change their mind, what if the 10 tribes and Phineas hadn’t been willing to say, “Ya know what, we got it wrong, we thought we had you figured out and it turned out we were wrong about you.” That’s unity and you see what will threaten God’s people in the land it this lack of national unity, same for the church, but there’s a second threat, it’s the lack of fidelity. Just because some fighting is needless, doesn’t mean that it’s always wrong to fight, that is fighting for truth, fighting for holiness, fighting for the honor of God, fighting for the purity of his people. Not all skirmishes are worthwhile and likewise not every compromise is an act of grace. See, it takes a lot of wisdom to be a Christian. It’s easy for one set of Christians to just have as a model, Jesus overturning the temple, tables, the money changers and just everything in every situation means zeal Phineas fight. Well sometimes that’s the right response and sometimes it’s not. Or other people who say, “Well Acts 15and the Jerusalem council and we agree to disagree, that’s always the right way is we disagree to disagree. Well, no, that’s not always right.

We see here that Phineas and the 10 chiefs were right to confront the two and a half tribes, and if they had done this thing, built a real altar, it was a sin deserving of punishment. There was a threat of idolatrous compromise, syncretism, manmade religion, manmade doctrines, manmade worship. There’s a lesson here that will prove true throughout the history of the church. It may sound cliché, but it is true, the biggest dangers to the church always emanate from within the church. Now it’s not to say that the outside doesn’t matter, the outside also often provides the pressure points, the temptations, the areas of compromise, but it’s from within the unity that is fragile and the fidelity that must always be pursued and notice the reason God’s people here could have unity is because it proved that they actually had fidelity. Unity must always be based on fidelity. Ephesians 4, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, that chapter begins by calling us to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. This is how unity works in the church, it’s not a papered over unity, it says maintain, it says look around, if you really have one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all, you believe the same things about God, about the gospel, about faith, about Christ, about obedience. If you have that spiritual unity, Ephesians 4 says work so hard to maintain that in the bond of peace.

Now sometimes you can only do what you can do and the other person isn’t willing to put any work and Roman says, “In so far as it depends on you be at peace with all people.” But there it is, work hard to maintain unity where there exists fidelity. This is why churches must practice church discipline, it’s why we cannot excuse serious doctrinal error or excuse flagrant sin. The reason for unity and for fidelity is right there in verse 31. We know today that the Lord is in our midst. If the Lord is in our midst and we all belong to the Lord, that we ought to work hard to maintain the unity with that one Lord in the bond of peace. And if the Lord is in our midst in this church we are the Church of the Living God, we are a temple indwelled by the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ walks among us says Revelation 6, then of course we have to take holiness seriously, membership, discipline seriously, the pursuit of Christ and his Word seriously. When each of you joined the church, for those of you who are members, this is the very last vow you promised. You promised before God to do this, do you submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church and promise to further, two things, it’s purity and it’s peace. You see that’s exactly what this passage is about, unity and fidelity, purity and peace. You need both of those things in a healthy church, a zealous pursuit of the purity of doctrine and faith and practice in Christ and a zealous pursuit that we who are one, the same theology, the same faith, the same baptism might do everything in our power to maintain that unity of the spirit and doesn’t this reflect the one that we worship, the Lord Jesus Christ who came from the Father full of truth and grace. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven we ask that you would protect Christ Covenant Church. You have given to us many, many blessings, godly men to serve as elders and deacons, godly women to lead in women’s ministry and serve in a thousand different ways in the church. Protect the marriages in particular of those who have any position of leadership among us, protect our lives, may we keep a close watch on our life and our doctrine, and as you have been faithful to us, help us to be faithful to you. In Jesus we pray. Amen.