Joshua 13-19
“Inheritance”
April 11, 2010 - Second Sunday of Easter

         Have you read the deed to your house ? Not just your name and the name of the seller and the purchase price, but the actual legal description of your property? You know, the stuff that goes like this: “A tract of land in the west half, west half, northwest quarter of section 27” in such and such county, “being a portion of H.E.S. no. 94, and described by metes and bounds as follows: Beginning at corner No. 1, which is a point that lies N. 45° 36' 21" W., 682.4 feet from corner No. 9, of H.E.S. 94. Thence N. 45 ° W., 126.15 feet to corner No. 2, thence N. 62° 50' E., 212.4 feet to corner No. 3…” and on till your eyes glaze over.

         Why would anyone sit down and read the next seven chapters of Joshua? Most of it is boundary descriptions for territories assigned to the tribes of Israel. It is incomprehensible to us as all those degrees and minutes and seconds, full of unpronounceable place names, all incredibly repetitive and even more incredibly dull. Why not skip this section of Scripture and get on with something more interesting?

         I’m with you. I hate to be bored. I generally won’t watch a movie twice, even if it’s a good movie and it’s been years since I’ve seen it. That’s why when I was planning these sermons on Joshua I leafed through these middle chapters and lumped them all together for one sermon. That would be more than enough for this boring material.

         Yet when I sat down Tuesday to the painful task of carefully reading Joshua 13-19 and then read some commentary on it, I realized there is more here than a casual glance reveals. I should have planned more than one sermon on these chapters.

         Despite what my friend Bob Hubbard called the “mind-numbing” dullness of these chapters, they are, he says, the heart of Joshua. Lines like these from chapter 15, “The northern boundary started from the bay of the sea at the mouth of the Jordan went up to Beth Hoglah and continued north of Beth Arabah to the Stone of Bohan son of Reuben. The boundary then went up to Debir from the Valley of Achor and turned north to Gilgal, which faces the Pass of Adumim south of the Gorge…” aren’t going to become anyone’s life verses from the Bible, but they tell an important story. God kept His promise. His people entered the Promised Land, received it as their own property, and settled down in it as their rightful inheritance.

         In a way, it’s the same story we read in the Gospel of John this morning. We heard how Jesus raised from the dead appeared to His disciples. God follows through. God makes happen great things that seem impossible to us. He gives His people what He promised. He gave the Israelites a home in Canaan. He gives us eternal life and salvation in Jesus Christ.

         There is another note that sounds in these chapters of Joshua which also sounds in the Gospel story. As great as the fulfillment of God’s promises is, it’s not yet complete. The whole narrative of dividing up the land begins with God speaking to Joshua in chapter 13, verse 1, “You are now very old, and there are still large areas of land to be taken over.” You might remember from our last Joshua sermon before Holy Week that in spite of all the success Joshua had, all the victories celebrated, there was still resistance in Canaan, pockets of insurgency, if you like. They had conquered the land, God had given it to them, but the job wasn’t done.

         In John 20 Jesus showed Himself to ten of the disciples, but one was missing. They were all convinced, but one still needed to see the risen Lord with his own eyes, touch Him with his own hands. And Thomas was only the beginning of those who are still to be persuaded. John says he wrote his Gospel so that you, the reader, might also believe in Jesus. The Good News didn’t finish its work on Easter. It’s still pressing forward, centuries later, into new territory, conquering new hearts and minds and bringing life and hope.

         So just like the Israelites in Canaan, we have a glorious but incomplete inheritance in Christ. God has given us forgiveness and salvation, but it’s not all worked out yet. There are countries and towns and cultures and places in our own souls where Christ is not yet Lord.

         In our first house we had a basement. It was mostly finished. We had a large family room, a second bathroom, a laundry room and a small paneled niche I used for an office. Yet there was an unfinished space the dimensions of a medium-sized bedroom. There was no ceiling, just studs and wires and pipes hanging over your head. The two outside walls were rough block and the other two were studs with no insulation or drywall. The floor was bare, cold concrete. We lived there six years and always intended to finish that room. We threw an old rug down and called it a play room, but Susan didn’t really like it. So we filled it with boxes and an old exercise bike and other junk. That “room” never felt like living space. It wasn’t even really part of the house to us. It was ours, but we didn’t claim it.

         That’s how it is with much of what God gives His people, gives us. The Israelites had a load of unfinished space, unclaimed territory, even though as He goes on to say in chapter 13, He would give it to them. He Himself would drive out the Canaanites. In Jesus God has given us new life, victory over sin, an assurance of hope and our own resurrection. Yet much of that life, that victory, that hope, just sits unclaimed, unused, even unnoticed.

         Individually, God wants us to claim for Him all the territory of our hearts and minds. Think of those dark, forgotten, unused rooms in our souls, such as the habit that needs to be driven out, the anger that needs to be overcome, the talent that could be employed for His glory. Like the unconquered corners of Canaan, there are spaces in each of us to be claimed and brought under the control God’s Holy Spirit. It’s our inheritance.

         Even more, though, we as God’s people, as followers of Jesus Christ, have unconquered territory to claim in our community around us, in the world. Every bit of sidewalk where someone beds down for the night in a cardboard box and an old blanket is waiting for us to claim it with the warmth and love of Christ. Every home where a child lives in hunger or fear or untreated illness is land ready to be invaded by Jesus. Every person who suffers guilt or the fear of death or a hopelessness about the future is unclaimed country for the Good News of forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ. These are also our inheritance.

         The neighborhood right around our church is unclaimed territory for God. God has given us this corner. Through thick and thin, lean times and rich times, He helped us hang onto this land, this building. But all around us are homes and apartments and schools and businesses we haven’t entered yet, haven’t left this corner and claimed for Christ. There are seniors to the south of us, people with handicaps to the east of us, students to the west of us, and low income folks to the north of us. That’s our land. That’s why God put us here—to claim those parts of our community for Him. They all need Jesus, they all need you and I to claim and share with them the inheritance we have in Christ.

         When I came here seventeen years ago many of us considered ourselves young, in our thirties. We had little children and our mission from God was to raise them up, to teach them about the Lord, and bring them to faith. We’ve largely done that. After we send off seven high school seniors to college this coming year, there won’t be too many left of those kids God placed in our care. It’s tempting for the older ones of us to think our job is done. We can rest, cultivate our own land, quit looking for new territory.

         Yet in chapter 14 we meet again Caleb, Joshua’s old comrade in arms. Forty-five years earlier as fairly young men they had been spies together, entering Canaan to search it out for Moses. Out of twelve they were the only two to come back with a good report, believing God would help them take the land. The price of the other ten’s bad report was forty years of wandering and waiting in the wilderness for a new generation to take over. Yet Caleb and Joshua were promised a reward for their faith. Caleb came to claim it.

         Caleb is eighty-five years old at this point. You might think he’d want nice, comfortable ground in a fertile valley where all the Canaanites have already been dispatched or enslaved. He and his clan could settle down, plant some fig trees and vineyards, raise goats and sheep and grandchildren and enjoy old age. But that’s not what Caleb wants.

         “Now give to me this hill country that the Lord promised me,” he says in verse 12. “Yes, you and I know there are still some Anakites there, some giants, but with the Lord’s help I’ll drive them out, I’ll take that rough, dangerous, unconquered land.”

         May you and I who are older among us be like Caleb. Let’s not sit down to rest and tend to our own concerns, but get up and look for the inheritance of love and service that’s still waiting for us to claim it. That Sunday School class that needs a teacher. A home fellowship group waiting to be restarted. Mission projects which need leaders. Community ministries looking for representatives from our congregation. Visitors who need an invitation to lunch. Neighbors and friends waiting to be invited to a service or a concert or a meal. Children looking for adults who will show them love and show them Jesus. They sounds like giant tasks, but with God’s help we can take them on.

         And we are not alone. These chapters in Joshua begin by reminding us that two and a half tribes, Gad and Reuben and part of Manasseh, had already received land on the east of the Jordan, but came to fight for Canaan alongside their fellow Israelites. No tribe was all alone. In chapter 19, we find Judah, the strongest and predominant tribe, sharing its land with Simeon. We find the tribes working together in chapter 18, sending out a joint surveying team and then peacefully dividing the land by lots. We even find in chapter 17 a special provision made for a family which had no male heirs to receive a land inheritance. So in Manasseh the daughters of Zelophehad are given land alongside their uncles’ lands.

         All in all, in those “mind-numbing” details we get a picture of great diversity among the tribes of Israel—both large and small tracts of land; areas full of enemies that need to be fought and areas already conquered. We see tribes like Judah with leaders like Caleb ready to fight hard for their territory. In chapter 17 we see the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh whining because their assigned portion was too small and the Canaanites they needed to battle were too strong.

         Part of the message of Joshua is that this all is Israel. All twelve tribes, including the Levites who received no land at all, settled down to receive God’s inheritance together in one region. Even as they spread out to fill that country and settle it in different ways, they were one people, with one God.

         Valley Covenant is one “tribe,” if you will, among the dozens of Christian churches in Eugene and Springfield and the area around us. We are not here to bring our cities to Jesus by ourselves. We are together with all God’s people, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox, Baptist, Presbyterian and Lutheran, evangelical, fundamentalist, pentecostal and mainline. God’s kingdom lies in all of us together, not just in parts of us separately. That’s why we pray for different churches in our community every Sunday. The ancient tribal divisions in the midst of unity for Israel show us how God’s people can still be one in spite of all our divisions today.

         One area of our inheritance God wants us to claim is the unity we have in Jesus. Our denomination’s name, “Covenant,” is a biblical word all about working together, about being united in God’s mission to the world. You probably know someone from a different congregation. How could your churches work with each other? We share the Family Shelter with two other congregations. Could our youth join another group for some fun or service? Could our seniors play cards or eat together? Could we study the Bible or worship together? Don’t just come up with an idea. Be like Caleb. Make it happen yourself.

         We have this amazing, huge, beautiful inheritance in Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God that we are meant to inhabit is bigger and lovelier and richer than Canaan ever was. Yet just like Israel we haven’t claimed our inheritance completely. There is so much more that belongs to us, both individually and corporately, and God is waiting to give it to us.

         I struggle myself to envision what new and good things God has for me and for us together. I get tired. I get lazy. The state of Oregon has a web site where you can search for unclaimed property, land or bank accounts, in your name. A couple years ago a friend plugged our name, “Bilynskyj,” into the search form and found something listed for my mother. She let us know, but I haven’t done anything about it. The results say it’s less than $50, probably a little tax refund or something. It just sits there, part of my inheritance, but I haven’t done any more inquiries, filled out any forms, done anything at all to try and claim it. I fear that I’ve ignored far more of my inheritance in Christ.

         May you and I wake today to the reality of what God has given us and still wants to give us. May we be more like Caleb, ready and willing to go forth into the new places God puts in front of us. May we be less like Ephraim and Manasseh, complaining that we don’t have enough and that the battle is too hard.

         Most of all, may we join with God in claiming His inheritance in people’s lives. Let us claim hope for the hopeless, food for the hungry, grace for the sinful, shelter for the homeless, friendship for the lonely and riches of all kinds for the poor. That’s our inheritance. That’s what Jesus left to us, and no matter how we divide it up there is always enough, plenty of room. Let’s enter and claim His Promised Land.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj