Our text this morning is Joshua chapter 15. We’ve been in a series in this book since the beginning of the fall/end of the summer, and we’ll go one more week, next week Joshua 16 and 17, Lord willing, and we’ll take a three-week break. Yes, we will take a little break from land allotment for the Christmas season and I’ll do a three-week series on Christmas from the book of Matthew.
But this morning we are in Joshua chapter 15. If you’re new to this church, what we normally do on Sunday morning and Sunday evening is we’re going verse by verse through a book of the Bible, and that means you get the very high points and then you get the chapters that seem a little harder to understand, and that if it were up to us we might skip, and to be honest this is one of those chapters that we might skip.
Just let your eyes just glance over all that is Joshua chapter 15. You’re going to see a lot of names there. Good news is I’m going to try to read them, not you, and I’ll do my best. There’s a lot of boundaries, geography, and you may be thinking to yourself, “Surely, he’s not going to read this chapter.” But I am going to read this chapter.
And there’s a reason. It’s not that every time we have a long chapter we can’t summarize it, and we’ll probably do that with some of the chapters coming up, but I think it is important to understand from this chapter the particularities. The title of this sermon is “The Particulars of the Promise,” and that’s what I want us to see, that each of these names of a city, a village, a boundary, a family, is an expression of the concrete particularities of God’s promise being fulfilled.
Now before I read chapter 15, let me orient you just a little bit where we are. This is the second half of Joshua and we are going to have for several chapters an allotment of the land. So I want you to picture a map of Israel, maybe you have one in the back of your Bible, you can go ahead and you can cheat and you can look there, or you can just imagine with me here.
It’s not too hard to imagine because Israel conveniently is on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, all over here, and there’s this little sliver of land. That’s Israel. And it has in the east a couple of important boundary markers, as the Sea of Galilee, you read about that a lot in the New Testament, in the north, and then in the south it has the Dead Sea, or called the Salt Sea, because it has so much salt, and then connecting those two bodies of water is the Jordan River.
So we’ve seen here in the conquest that Joshua led the Israelites from the east to the west across the Jordan River.
Now roughly speaking you have this bit of land here and Judah is the big property in the south, and then the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, those are the sons of Joseph, are the big tribes in the north. I said last week that because Reuben, the firstborn of Jacob, sinned, he lost the blessing and the promise. One way to think about it is the blessing then went to Joseph and his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh, so they have the next two chapters to come, and then the promise went to Judah. In the middle there’s a little sliver of Benjamin, that’s important, and that land will eventually, it overlaps and kind of gets swallowed up with Judah, but that’s how to think of it.
What we’re talking about here is this southern part of Israel, the land allotment given to Judah.
There are three basic sections in this chapter. You can see them in your Bible and I’ll mark them as we read through them, but verses 1 through 12, you can see that’s one long paragraph. Those are the boundary markers, that’s the geography of where this land is. Now some of it is the fullest extent, the aspirational extent of the land of Judah, and as we’ll see they have to still cleanse out some of the remaining people in the land.
Then we have a little interlude, verses 13 through 19. This is the story about Caleb’s family. Last week we saw in chapter 14 Caleb, this old man, says, “I’ve still got some fight in these bones. Give me Hebron, give me this mountain.” So we’re going to see what happens with Caleb’s family.
Then verses 20 through 62 are all of these cities and villages and then a little ominous postscript in verse 63.
So follow along as I read. This first section here are the boundaries of the land of Judah.
“The allotment for the tribe of the people of Judah according to their clans reached southward to the boundary of Edom, to the wilderness of Zin at the farthest south. And their south boundary ran from the end of the Salt Sea,” remember that’s the Dead Sea, “from the bay that faces southward. It goes out southward of the ascent of Akrabbim, passes along to Zin, and goes up south of Kadesh-barnea, along by Hezron, up to Addar, turns about to Karka, passes along to Azmon, goes out by the Brook of Egypt, and comes to its end at the sea. This shall be your south boundary. And the east boundary is the Salt Sea, to the mouth of the Jordan. And the boundary on the north side runs from the bay of the sea at the mouth of the Jordan. And the boundary goes up to Beth-hoglah and passes along north of Beth-arabah. And the boundary goes up to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben. And the boundary goes up to Debir from the Valley of Achor, and so northward, turning toward Gilgal, which is opposite the ascent of Adummim, which is on the south side of the valley. And the boundary passes along to the waters of En-shemesh and ends at En-rogel. Then the boundary goes up by the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the southern shoulder of the Jebusite (that is, Jerusalem). And the boundary goes up to the top of the mountain that lies over against the Valley of Hinnom, on the west, at the northern end of the Valley of Rephaim. Then the boundary extends from the top of the mountain to the spring of the waters of Nephtoah, and from there to the cities of Mount Ephron. Then the boundary bends around to Baalah (that is, Kiriath-jearim). And the boundary circles west of Baalah to Mount Seir, passes along to the northern shoulder of Mount Jearim (that is, Chesalon), and goes down to Beth-shemesh and passes along by Timnah. The boundary goes out to the shoulder of the hill north of Ekron, then the boundary bends around to Shikkeron and passes along to Mount Baalah and goes out to Jabneel. Then the boundary comes to an end at the sea. And the west boundary was the Great Sea,” that’s the Mediterranean, “with its coastline. This is the boundary around the people of Judah according to their clans.”
That’s a mouthful because many of these places aren’t familiar to us. But you imagine if you were hearing it and it was a land that we might be familiar with, telling us where you would live and it was to say over to Providence and up to Rama, that road that changes names 18 times it seems like as it goes across Charlotte, and down to 485, you would have some recollection, you would have some understanding, “Ah, this is where we’re going to live.”
So this is setting the boundary. Here picture along the Mediterranean Sea this southern region of Israel.
Now we have the story of Caleb.
“According to the commandment of the Lord to Joshua, he gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh a portion among the people of Judah, Kiriath-arba, that is, Hebron (Arba was the father of Anak).”
Remember Anak is the giant. He was the chief of the giants, the Anakim were the giants in the land, the reason 45 years ago that God’s people chickened out and didn’t enter the Promised Land and now finally Caleb is going to conquer these remaining giants.
“He Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak, Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai, the descendants of Anak. And he went up from there against the inhabitants of Debir. Now the name of Debir formerly was Kiriath-sepher.”
Now a little Bible trivia. Kiriath-sepher, Kiriath means city, sepher means scribe or books. This is the city of books. That’s the city I would take as well. Go up to the city of books. So it may be that there was a famous library at the time. He says we’re going to get Debir, also called the city of books.
“And Caleb said, “Whoever strikes the city of books and captures it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter as wife.” And Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, captured it. And he gave him Achsah his daughter as wife. When she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she got off her donkey, and Caleb said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Give me a blessing. Since you have given me the land of the Negev, give me also springs of water.” And he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.”
So we’ve had the boundary. We’ve had this interlude about Caleb’s family. Now we come to all the names, the many, many cities and villages.
“This is the inheritance of the tribe of the people of Judah according to their clans. The cities belonging to the tribe of the people of Judah in the extreme south, toward the boundary of Edom, were Kabzeel, Eder, Jagur, Kinah, Dimonah, Adadah, Kedesh, Hazor, Ithnan, Ziph, Telem, Bealoth, Hazor-hadattah, Kerioth-hezron (that is, Hazor), Amam, Shema, Moladah, Hazar-gaddah, Heshmon, Beth-pelet, Hazar-shual, Beersheba, Biziothiah, Baalah, Iim, Ezem, Eltolad, Chesil, Hormah, Ziklag, Madmannah, Sansannah, Lebaoth, Shilhim, Ain, and Rimmon: in all, twenty-nine cities with their villages.”
So we’re moving around the boundary, and now we come to the lowland.
“Eshtaol, Zorah, Ashnah, Zanoah, En-gannim, Tappuah, Enam, Jarmuth, Adullam, Socoh, Azekah, Shaaraim, Adithaim, Gederah, Gederothaim: fourteen cities with their villages.”
“Zenan, Hadashah, Migdal-gad, Dilean, Mizpeh, Joktheel, Lachish, Bozkath, Eglon, 40 Cabbon, Lahmam, Chitlish, Gederoth, Beth-dagon, Naamah, and Makkedah: sixteen cities with their villages.”
“Libnah, Ether, Ashan, Iphtah, Ashnah, Nezib, Keilah, Achzib, and Mareshah: nine cities with their villages.”
“Ekron, with its towns and its villages; from Ekron to the sea, all that were by the side of Ashdod, with their villages.”
“Ashdod, its towns and its villages; Gaza, its towns and its villages; to the Brook of Egypt, and the Great Sea with its coastline.”
Now notice right there those three towns. Those are towns maybe you recognize, these in the rest of the Old Testament are Philistine towns. Perhaps we don’t have a marker here of the number of cities and villages because these were towns that never quite got under Israel’s grasp until many years later with David and Solomon.
So we continue.
“And in the hill country, Shamir, Jattir, Socoh, Dannah, Kiriath-sannah (that is, Debir), Anab, Eshtemoh, Anim, Goshen, Holon, and Giloh: eleven cities with their villages.”
“Arab, Dumah, Eshan, Janim, Beth-tappuah, Aphekah, Humtah, Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), and Zior: nine cities with their villages.”
“Maon, Carmel, Ziph, Juttah, Jezreel, Jokdeam, Zanoah, Kain, Gibeah, and Timnah: ten cities with their villages.”
“Halhul, Beth-zur, Gedor, Maarath, Beth-anoth, and Eltekon: six cities with their villages.”
“Kiriath-baal (that is, Kiriath-jearim), and Rabbah: two cities with their villages.”
“In the wilderness, Beth-arabah, Middin, Secacah, Nibshan, the City of Salt, and Engedi: six cities with their villages.”
“But the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the people of Judah could not drive out, so the Jebusites dwell with the people of Judah at Jerusalem to this day.”
So there’s that ominous postscript. All these cities and villages and yet it’s marking out here, this is before the time of David when he would finally conquer Jebus, the city of Jerusalem, saying, “Ah, this city of Jerusalem which overlaps with Benjamin,” was not yet theirs.
These chapters, this one and the ones that follow up to chapter 22, have a number of different themes, but here’s the main theme that we ought to see: God keeps His promises.
So though it is difficult to read through all those names, and I understand it can feel tedious to listen to all those names, some of you are saying, “Uh, I had my family stay through church before they drove home and this is the sermon that Pastor Kevin gives us.” But again, you have to remember it’s tedious to us unless this is your home, unless every one of these cities and villages is an indication of God’s blessing to you.
And even the littlest among them may have leaned in to listen as the scroll might have been read or Joshua declared it to the people. “Mommy, Daddy, where are we going to live? Where’s our house? Which village? Which city do we get?” Every word here is an indication of God fulfilling His promises.
Three lessons for us from these verses.
Number one. Be gutsy in claiming the promises of God.
Number two. Have eyes to see the blessings of God all around you.
Number three. Be confident of better things yet to come.
Three lessons.
Number one. Be gutsy in claiming the promises of God. Here I want to focus on that middle section. Mercifully, we have a little bit of narrative in the midst of all of these names, 13 through 19, Caleb and his family.
We saw last week in chapter 14 the manly courage of Caleb. He’s 85 years old and amazingly, maybe because people lived longer then, but 85, he says, “I still got it. I’m as strong as I ever was.” Now we don’t know if any of his kids or his wife said, “Mmm, no, you’re…” but he thinks he is. God has given him this strength and he says, “While I still have breath, all these many years ago when I was a young man and I was there spying out the land and I stood on Hebron,” and now finally it’s come, the promise fulfilled, and he defeats the three sons of Anak, or the three descendants, Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai.
He makes this promise. Whoever will go to Kiriath-sepher, the city of books, Debir, he says, “I will give my daughter.” Now we might think, “Is this a foolish vow?” How could you do this to your daughter? But it was not uncommon in the day and it probably meant a strong alliance, figuring whoever is going to come forward, and you’ll see here it’s someone from his own family, he may have suspected that, thinking this will be a good alliance to be married to my daughter. This is liable to be a strong man, a leader of men, who asserts himself to take the town.
And sure enough, it’s Othniel. Commentators disagree exactly the relationship, but appears to be a nephew, the son of Caleb’s younger brother, and he goes up and Othniel, he comes again later in the book of Judges and is the first judge in that book, so there’s some overlap here in the timeframe, but Othniel goes and he takes the city and so Caleb gives to Othniel, and again this is a close relation, not something we would do but not uncommon in that time, and he gives his daughter Achsah.
I want you to notice. If Caleb has some manly courage, then how should I put this? Achsah has some girly guts. This is a strong woman. You notice she makes a request, and it’s not that she’s scheming for more. She is insisting on all that is rightfully hers. So her husband says, “Why don’t you go ask him for the field? For the spring?”
And in fact, the next women who will be mentioned in Joshua chapter 17 are those women I preached about a couple of years ago, the famous daughters of Zelophehad, one of the great names in the Bible. This man Zelophehad had no sons so when it came time for his inheritance to pass to the next generation, usually it would go to the sons but they had no sons, so these daughters, full of faith and gutsy courage, came forward to Moses many years ago and said, “Now when we get into the Promised Land, it’s not right that our father Zelophehad should disappear. Can we inherit the land?” So Moses makes an allowance that they can. So the next women that we’re going to see are also these women with a tenacious faith.
Achsah here is acting the part of a new Rebekah. When Rebekah meets Isaac way back in Genesis 24, we see a number of parallels. One – Isaac there is returning from the Negev – Negev just means the southern land – he’s returning from the Negev. Rebekah arrives on a camel. She gets off her animal and she asks a question.
Well, in a deliberate parallel I think here in Joshua 15, again at play is this land of the Negev and now Achsah acting as a new kind of Rebekah arrives, this time on a donkey, not on a camel, and she gets off her animal and then Caleb asks her a question.
Now perhaps they wouldn’t have seen it, but these people are well-steeped in their own stories and they know their Bible and they’re thinking to themselves, “Ah, that’s just like the matriarch Rebekah did with Isaac coming up from the Negev and coming in and getting off her animal and asking a question.”
So here she says, “Give me the spring.” The verb natan, to give, appears several times in this passage and many times there in verse 19. First Caleb said, “What do you want?” and then she said, “Give me a blessing,” that’s one use of the verb. “Since you have given me the land,” that’s the second, “give me also the springs,” that’s the third, “and he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs,” that’s the fourth.
This is an example of a gutsy faith, claiming the promises of God. It sounds very spiritual, doesn’t it? You expect to hear that in church, promises of God and depend upon the promises and leaning on the promises. But to trust in the promises of God should not make us passive. Sometimes it means we have to wait; that’s hard. But it never makes us passive. There’s no just “let go and let God.”
No, we claim the promises of God. In fact, what we’ve seen here, the whole reason that we have Caleb leading off these stories in chapter 14, is to show Caleb is the example of how it ought to be done, that as they receive their allotted inheritance and there are still some people in the land, be like Caleb with a courageous faith, be like Achsah commanding and asking for a blessing, rather than what we see in verse 63 – ah, even great Judah, some of the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites and that will haunt God’s people for centuries, that some of these Canaanite people were left in the land, which would lead to compromise, to pagan rituals, to violating God’s decrees and commandments.
But here we see with Caleb and then with Achsah, not a passivity but an eagerness, a zeal to go. God has promised it – why wouldn’t I go and defeat the Anakim in Hebron? Achsah says, “God has promised, He has given us this land. In fact, you, Caleb, said that you would give to Othniel and now I am wed to Othniel, so give us not only this land, but give me the springs of water,” because you need springs. There’s almost nothing more important in this part of the world, especially that you have some springs of water. And he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.
One of the things you can do to help with your Bible reading in the morning, which can grow rote and a bit perfunctory, look for a promise every morning. If you’re reading one chapter, two chapters, three, four, look for a promise. What has God promised you in His Word? To be with you, not to forsake you. To forgive you. To hear you. To bless you. Look for a promise of God and then cling to that and claim that promise. Pray the promise back to God.
I think it is sometimes a fair criticism of Reformed Christians, Presbyterian Christians, that we can be a little bit afraid to boldly ask God for things. At least I know that to be true in my own heart. I fall back, as we should, but maybe too quickly, on “not my will, but Yours be done.” Now that’s good. When you pray, Jesus said that, so we should have that attitude of mind, “not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.”
Yet sometimes I fear that it can make us rather passive and rather afraid. We don’t want to get our hopes up. If you’ve got a sports team, if you have sports teams like mine, no reason to have any hope about anything ever. Always dashed. I am that typical sports fan. First play of the game, it doesn’t go well, “Game over. Kids, turn it off. This is gone.” And I’m almost always right.
We can feel like that as Christians sometimes. “Nope, God won’t do it. Nope, never. But guard my heart.”
Ask. Seek. Knock. Claim the promises of God. Be gutsy in your faith. Be bold in asking God for help and assistance. Be like Caleb. Be like Achsah.
That’s the first lesson. Be gutsy in claiming the promises of God.
Second. Have eyes to see the blessing of God all around you.
As I said, this chapter is about the particularities of God’s promise, and it can feel somewhat dull and tedious unless of course it’s a description of your land, your home, your inheritance.
Let me read something to you that will not immediately be scintillating. Parcel ID 22702602. Legal description: M35-011. Census track number 58.33. Exhilarating, isn’t it? Address: 800 Fullwood Lane, Matthews, North Carolina. That’s where we’re sitting right now. If you just have the coordinates and the parcel and the official legalese, there’s nothing much about it until you realize all of that is to officially mark out the very land in which we are sitting. 29.35 acres right here, another 10 over across the street, and another 30 over there. Amazing what the Lord has given to us.
Do you have eyes to see it? All of these particularities are there, that God’s people might know in a very concrete way that God has blessed them. Every hard-to-pronounce city and village in this chapter is a tangible expression of God’s faithfulness. You realize as a Christian God is not just in the business of giving us good feelings, He doesn’t just promise I’m going to help you feel some good things, He gives us good things.
Each city, each village, named here is a little incarnation of blessing and promise, or an instantiation, leading up the ultimate incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There are a lot of double names here. In fact, there are a lot of double names all throughout the Bible. Maybe you’ve noticed some of them. They’re mentioned several times. Hebron used to be Kiriath-arba. Bethel, hear about that in the Old Testament, used to be Luz. City of Dan used to be Laish. Jerusalem here used to be the city of Jebus, or the Jebusites.
Just like there are all sorts of people in the Old Testament who get a new name. Abram to Abraham. Sarai to Sarah. Jacob to Israel. All of these are indicators that God is doing something new.
Every one of these cities. Remember what it used to be called? It’s gotten a new name. It’s your home now. It’s your place. Can you see it?
Are you the sort of person who looks around you and marvels at so many promises fulfilled? Or are you and I the sort of people who grind our teeth at God to think how hard life is for us and how better off it is for someone else? It’s not to say there aren’t hard things in life. We could take all day to recount genuinely hard things that many of you are having to endure.
Yet there is a profound spiritual reality here. Kids, I hope you’re listening, because this is something you need to learn as kids, and when we’re adults we still need to learn it, we just learn how to fake it a little bit better. That’s this powerful lesson – do you wake up each day, you’ve got to put on these glasses like it do because I can’t see anything, you’re all just, never looked better, until I put these on. Do you wake up each day and put on the glasses of gratitude or are you looking at all of life with the glasses of fairness? Just measuring out, meting out everybody. No, that’s not fair.
Totally different way to live, and there’s a parable about this. One of my favorite parables, Matthew chapter 20, the laborers in the vineyard. Some of you may remember the story. The landowner is pulling out the laborers all throughout the day and some of them have to work the whole livelong day out in the heat of the sun and the landowner promised them a denarius. That’s a day’s wage; it’s a fair kind of minimum wage payment you get. The ones who came in at the eleventh hour only worked one hour and these folks worked 12 times as long and these people who were first get a denarius and the ones who have been there all day start to think, “Surely, let’s do the math. We might, maybe we’ll get 12. Surely we’ll get more.” And then they, too, get a denarius and they grumbled at the landowner. “How dare you?”
And yet the point of the story as Jesus tells it, he was giving exactly what he had promised. And if wanted to be exceedingly gracious to someone else, then let him. The only reason that they had any work to do in the first place is that the landowner went out and he hired them and he agreed to give them a denarius. That they had work was grace. The last will be first, the first will be last, is how Jesus summarizes the parable.
It’s the sort of story that makes us ask that uncomfortable question – how are you looking at life? Do you wake up each day looking for gratitude or looking to grumble? Are you looking to sigh about fairness or to sing about grace?
I’ll give you a very concrete example in my own heart, where I need to, where the Lord’s convicted me. See, we have a lot of trees in our yard. The thing that happens with trees at this time of the year is they lose all their leaves. Beautiful trees, if you’ve ever been to our house. I mean, some 100-year-old oaks and just falling upon falling and it has been a lot of work and they’re not even half done. Every day another leaf falls. Thousands of them. I told my wife, every leaf, I just look out my window, every leaf that falls is just another weight to crush my broken heart. And the children that help me with the army of blowers and the bags and hauling them back into the woods and all of it.
I’ve been convicted. Do I see leaves? Or do I see trees? You got leaves, you got trees. You got a lot of leaves, we got grass, land, trees. I do have the sort of heart, maybe you do, too, that it’s very easy just to see the leaves. Now think, well, why do I have these leaves to pick up and to rake and to blow and to bend over and hurt my back? Because we have these glorious trees.
Now I do have to say I am planning next time to bless someone by paying them to pick up all those glorious leaves, so I am blessed to be a blessing. I’m paying it forward. But too often I’m like that. If you have a houseful of people over Thanksgiving or over Christmas and do you think this is chaos or do you think, wow, people, family, friends, life, noise, activity.
Do you see only the leaves that have fallen, or do you see the trees that have produced those leaves?
Let me ask you some questions. No one will answer yes to every one of these questions, but everyone will answer yes to some of these questions and many of you here will answer yes to most of these questions.
Do you have plenty of clothes to wear? The rest of the questions are rhetorical. You can save your answers to the end. But I appreciate that. The answer is yes.
Is your house warm in the winter, cool in the summer? Do you eat to your heart’s content? Will your concern over the next month be eating too much or eating too little? Can you read and write? Do you have the Bible in a language you can understand? Is there a good church within driving distance from your home? Have you texted with friends and family this week? Have you laughed at some funny meme that went between you? Do you have cousins to play with? Has the Lord blessed you with a husband or a wife? Or perhaps the Lord has taken them home in the past year and yet are you blessed with precious memories of that husband or wife? Has He blessed you with children, by birth or by adoption? Has He blessed you with grandchildren? Do you have children walking with the Lord? Have you been able in the past year to see a child or a grandchild or a niece or a nephew play soccer or baseball or football or tennis or run a race or sing in the choir or play in the orchestra or have a part in a play?
Are you able to worship God freely according to your conscience? Has God given you faithful pastors to preach the Word, faithful elders and deacons to care for your body and soul? Has He given us in this country yet to this day free speech and free exercise of religion? Did you take a vacation in this past year? Did you travel to another state or another country? Have you heard a beautiful piece of music that warmed your heart or thrilled your soul? Have you seen the glory of God in the mountains or a field or a lake or an ocean? Do you have clean water to drink? Do you have indoor plumbing? Do you have a TV? Internet? Cellphone? Do you own a car?
Have you flown safely on a plane in the past year? Did you walk to your pew this morning, or if you cannot walk, did you have some kind person to help you to your seat? Do you ever look out your window and see squirrels or birds or deer, or at our house, cats and chickens? Have you been blessed with Christian parents? Christian grandparents? Have you heard the Gospel? Do you know Jesus? Do you know how to be saved?
I often think of Psalm 16:6, and I hope you’ll think of this verse in a new way after this sermon and the ones to follow. Psalm 16:6 – The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
That was the psalm that God’s people were to sing as the natural overflow of their heart to look at whatever had been given them by lot, by God’s own apportionment. Paul says in Acts 17 that God assigned to each people their place in which they are to dwell, that they would look around and with a smile and satisfaction say, “My, oh, my. Surely the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.” It’s not that you don’t have leaves falling on the ground, but you have many, many trees, blessings. Do you have eyes to see the goodness of the Lord’s promises all around?
Then here’s a final lesson. Be confident, even with all of these blessings, be confident of better things yet to come.
You’ll notice the very first tribe is Judah. Judah in the Bible undergoes quite a transformation. In Genesis 37 Judah is the one who comes up with the idea to sell Joseph, his younger brother, off to the Ishmaelites. In chapter 38 we have one of the awkward, nastiest chapters in the Bible as Judah, the original Judah, holds back his son from being married and then he goes into a prostitute, turns out to be his daughter-in-law. That’s Judah.
But in Genesis this Judah becomes transformed in Genesis 44. He is the first person in the Bible to offer himself for the life of another as he says, “Would you let Benjamin go free and you can put me in prison.” And then in Genesis 49, Jacob prophesies that a lion of a ruler will come from the tribe of Judah. Judah is inheriting the promise so that in the book of Numbers, Judah is listed first. Judah is the largest. Judah leads out the tribes in battle. Judah is going to be so important that eventually the northern part of the country will be called Israel and the southern nation will be called Judah.
There’s a connection here that you can’t see until a commentator or someone points it out to you, but did you notice all the times in this passage it says and 14 cities with their villages, and 16 cities with their villages? This is very deliberate because if you added them all up, just by name, it doesn’t exactly work out that way because he’s thinking of some of these are cities and some of these are villages. So if you go through and you find that the names and the numbers don’t match, that’s intentional, but it’s giving to us each of these enumerated lists.
Here are all the numbers from the tribe of Judah: 29 plus 14 plus 16 plus 9 plus 11 plus 9 plus 10 plus 6 plus 2 plus 6. You got it? 112. 112. All of the remaining tribes, now they have lots of places that are often not enumerated. They’re listed but they don’t give a number. But the times that they do give a number, the same refrain “cities and villages” with the remaining tribes, 12 plus 14 plus 13 plus 4 plus 12 plus 16 plus 22 plus 19 equals same number, 112. Quite deliberately to give these stylized lists to show that Judah, with its enumerated cities and villages, is equal to all of the remaining tribes here on this side of the Jordan with their enumerated cities and villages, showing the central place that Judah is to play in the lift of God’s people.
Remember, this is written before David, before Jerusalem is their capital. Yet already here they know the promise of God and they can see something. They smell something of what is happening about the importance of Judah. The first king, Saul, will be from Benjamin. But then, of course, David will be from Judah.
Israel is promised a Davidic king to sit on the throne forever, just like way back in Genesis 49 that said there is a ruler whose scepter will never fade away, who is coming from this tribe of Judah. And they would understand if they had the eyes of faith and the ears to believe that there was another son of David who was coming, a lion of the tribe of Judah, this leading tribe, was coming.
We’ve already been singing about His coming and we will celebrate His coming all month, and beloved, you know that He is coming again, so that we, too, have received already something of our inheritance and yet we are waiting for the totality, our heavenly inheritance, and it will come. It will come. Do you think they waited all those years and at many times they probably thought these promises are just, they’re pie in the sky, they’re just to help us feel good, they’re just to give us some warm fuzzies, they’re not actually going to be real? But they were.
So at the end of the age, in the new age to come, in the new heavens and the new earth, our blessings will be tangible, physical, material, real. The particularities of the promise fulfilled. Already begun, finally to be realized.
So wait for it. Cling to it. Share this good news in this Advent season of the lion of the tribe of Judah who has come and who is coming again. Rejoice in it. Believe the promise of the Lord Jesus Himself and believe and cling to it with all your heart – blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for Your many great and precious promises, which are ours in Christ Jesus. As we come now to this table, nourish us, strengthen us, feed us through believing, that we may know Jesus better and His life for ours. In His name we pray. Amen.