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Tonight in our study, we shall notice a big change, both in the tempo of the narrative and in the topics that this second half of the book of Joshua deals with. For now we enter upon the second phase of the conquest of the land, the second phase of the occupation. Hitherto, of course, we have been spending our time considering the wonderful lessons to be learned from the first half of the book, the first phase of the occupation of the land. We have been reading how Joshua, the appointed servant of God and captain of Israel's salvation, led the people of God into their great inheritance, the inheritance promised long centuries before by God to Abraham, but not actually given to the Israelites until Moses was dead and Joshua was raised up to take the Israelites into their inheritance.
And of course, as we thought of those ancient historical events, our minds in irresistibly went to our blessed Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation, our New Testament Joshua, his very name Jesus being the equivalent of the Hebrew Joshua. And we have been thinking together how he, by God's good grace, has brought us into our inheritance. He has made us meet, he has qualified us for our share and for our enjoyment of the inheritance of the saints in light. Through his grace, we have not only found forgiveness, but he has imparted God's Holy Spirit to us, and that Holy Spirit, we are told, is the earnest of our great inheritance, for already we enjoy it.
Not only have we an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for us, but even here and now, we have the very first fruits of that inheritance. We have the Holy Spirit as the earnest of that inheritance, and illimitable joys and spiritual blessings are ours, who know the Savior, who has qualified us by his death and made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, and then from the practical point of view has given us his Holy Spirit that we might already begin to enter into the joys and blessings of our great inheritance.
And we discovered that there was more than a heavy rumor going about. Ha. That not only is shall we one day be physically in glory and with the Lord Jesus, but in a very real sense, it is true, though sometimes difficult to grasp, but that in raising our blessed Lord Jesus from the dead and seating him at his own right hand in glory, God has in fact raised us up too, and Holy Scripture is not afraid to assert for our investigation and appropriation that we too have been given life in Christ. We too have been raised and caused to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
And last night, as we were thinking of the final stage of that first phase of the inheritance, how Joshua gained the victory for Israel over all the kings, the princes, the principalities, and powers that hitherto had occupied Canaan. And we saw in our imagination five of those kings slain and made a show of openly as Joshua hanged them on five trees. Then our hearts began to overflow and thrill with the idea that you'll see our blessed Lord Jesus has not only delivered us from the power of darkness, but seated us in Christ in the heavenly places, far above all principalities, powers, mights, and dominions, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but that which is to come.
And then, as we saw last night, how Joshua eventually put down the final, uh, confederacy that came against him from the northern part of the realm, and finally gave the land rest. We look forward to the blessed ti- to the time when our blessed Lord Jesus shall come again. The Bible informs us he's going to put down all rule and authority. He shall come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. He shall, thank God, take to himself his great power and reign, and he must reign, says Holy Scripture, until the very last enemy is destroyed.
And one day we left last night as we considered it with a hallelujah in our hearts. One day we shall say with more meaning than even now, O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But now we move over to the second phase of the conquest and the occupation. We shall find the pace alters. For in the first phase, Joshua had led the united armies, and they had to remain united. As he went round the country and, uh, part after part, he subdued it and broke the power of the opposition.
So Israel were brought into the land of their inheritance. At that stage, no individual tribe was allowed to settle down. No tribe was allowed to break off from the main body of the army. They all had to get together. It was absolutely essential in that first phase of the occupation that the united armies stayed together, else they had been no match for the confederacies of kings that came against them. But when at last all opposition had been broken and the land had rest from full-scale war, now the time came for the individual tribes to begin to split off the main body and to go, each one of them, into that particular part of Canaan that God in his wisdom assigned to them for their inheritance.
So at once you'll see there were two necessary phases in this matter. First of all, Joshua gained their inheritance for them. First of all, he put down the opposition and brought them by God's miraculous power into their inheritance so that their feet actually stood in their God-given inheritance. But then there had to come the second phase, when the individual tribes had to separate off and, in fear and trust of God, had to enter into the particular areas that were assigned them and appropriate them. That is to take hold of them, enter the houses, enter the vineyards, begin to plow the fields, raise their children there, have their stock, and generally reap the harvests of the inheritance that God had now given them.
Develop it, explore it, and exploit its potential, and make something of the inheritance that God had actually given them. And in the process of that, of course, there was still some fighting to be done. For while the main armies had broken the opposition of the Canaanites, as you might expect, an odd Canaanite here and there wasn't for being, uh, uh, killed all at once, and ran off and hid behind this rock and in that barn and down the other well, and goodness knows where behind the mountains and up in the hills and in the forests, all ready and waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting Israelite who came his way with the notion in his head that he was now going to enter into his inheritance.
And so Farmer Giles, you know, while he was plowing his field one day, would suddenly come to a rock, and over the head of the rock would appear a very unshaven head, and that would be one of the old Canaanites still. And if you tried to put him down, he suddenly collected a whole army, if you didn't know where from, and began to oppose you, you'll see, tooth and nail. So this matter of entering into your inheritance personally and beginning to enjoy it and exploit it would from time to time involve quite a bit of hard work, not only plowing the fields and scattering the good seed on the land and reaping the harvest of it, but also still a war against an enemy that wouldn't give up.
You know, as we think of those two phases of the conquest, is it not obvious that they bear a very striking analogy to our present position? Yes, on the one side, as we have been reminding ourselves, our blessed Lord has already brought us into our inheritance, and we have taken quite a considerable time considering the methods and the means that our blessed Lord has used to bring us into our inheritance, breaking the barrier of death, making provision that the righteous requirement of the law shall be fulfilled in us, by his more than human strength overcoming the opposition that was against us.
There is a sense, then, in which we are already in our inheritance because Christ has brought us in. And yet, and yet, is it not obvious? Well, it's obvious to me, at any rate, we're not in heaven yet. I have the impression we're still in a hawk hill. We're not completely in our inheritance yet, are we? And truth to tell, even that kind of experience that is open to us, every one of us, because we have the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. Yet who of us has explored it to the full as it could be explored? Why, even the apostle says to us towards the end of his life when he was in prison, my brethren, he says, I push on, I strive forward to the great mark to know the blessed Lord Jesus, to experience ever more deeply, ever more fully the wonder, the power of his resurrection translated into practical living.
I would know what it means, says he, to be conformed to his death, if by any means I might attain in spiritual experience to the power of the resurrection from the dead. Not, says he, that I have already attained. I follow after. I pursue like an a- Olympic athlete with every nerve and sino in my body. I pursue the glorious objectives that God has put before me, even now, to enter more deeply into the glorious inheritance that Christ has procured for us.
And if the Apostle Paul would have to speak like that, how much more must we speak like that? There is a second phase of occupation. Oh, my brother, my sister, there is, isn't there? In which God puts before us all the great potential that even now, if we had a mind to, we could, uh, enter into it. And urges and exhorts and challenges us now to roll up our sleeves and gird up the loins of our mind, and with every ounce of spiritual energy we possess, to enter into our inheritance, to make it our own, to make it real, to make it personal, to explore all the potential of the great salvation we have, and to enter into the good of it.
So it seems to me that Joshua, on the very surface of it, and according to its literary arrangement, preaches us these basic lessons. And if I'm not mistaken, God in his wisdom would here preserve us from either of two extremes. You'll see some dear folks, they try to enter into their inheritance and strive, uh, every nerve they have to enter into the fullness of the Christian inheritance, and they haven't let Joshua bring them into the inheritance to start with. Ah, they've not been born again, to put it bluntly. They have not received the blessed Holy Spirit.
If you ask them were they sure of their inheritance in heaven, they would hang their heads and say, uh, no, you can't be sure, can you? Well, if only they'd let the, the greater than Joshua bring them into the inheritance, they would be abundantly sure, you'll see. Because he is already, he gives already, as I said, to the believer, he gives the earnest of the inheritance, and God is the most, uh, law-abiding businessman that ever was. If he gives you a down payment, he'll pay the whole one day, guaranteed to do it. There are some folks in this life that go to buy a vacuum cleaner, and they can't afford the whole lump sum at once, so they put a deposit on it, and they take the vacuum cleaner, and they assure the businessman that they'll pay the rest, and they never do, and the old vacuum cleaner is worn out before they pay the full price.
God doesn't behave like that. If God has given you the part payment, and he has if you are a believer, he has given you the Holy Spirit, the earnest Old English for part payment. Then it's God's pledge that he will give you one day the full payment of the complete inheritance. And that is the delight of those who have allowed the Lord Jesus to bring them into the inheritance. You know, we shall never satisfactorily explore the great spiritual wealth that Christ has for us unless we start by allowing him first to bring us into the inheritance by his grace and by his power.
And then the other mistake to be made sometimes, and sometimes we make it, surely, is made by those of us who are already in the inheritance. Yes, we have, we've no doubt about it, we have the earnest of that inheritance, the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Then... we don't altogether bother too much about exploring and exploiting and developing all the great potential of the salvation that our blessed Lord has introduced us to. We say to ourselves, well, there'll be time enough to do that when I get home to heaven.
I'm not quite sure there will be. The rumor is that eternity will last an extraordinary long time, of course, by definition. But how much I enjoy eternity, if I've read Holy Scripture right, will depend upon the development of my capacity now. And if I would have the maximum enjoyment of the maximum inheritance in the age to come, I must start down here developing my spiritual potential and translating it into actual capacity. So the second part of Joshua then is going to talk to us about this matter.
Now let's notice another general thing before we get down to detail. By the good virtues of Mr. Campbell, once more, this sheet has been prepared. It is meant simply to be the very simplest of table of contents of the book of Joshua. I hope you have somewhere, someone, a, a copy near your elbow. You will notice that just as the first half of the book of Joshua was in three parts, and in each of those three parts there was a very clear objective set before the people, an objective that was achieved, so the second part of the book is in three parts, and in each of those three parts, just as clearly, another major objective is indicated.
And so I've listed them for you from, uh, section four onward. With the arrival of Israel and the land having rest, now as the inheritance is, uh, distributed to the tribes, the first great objective is reached and achieved. When the two and a half tribes had their inheritance, then Judah and Benjamin had theirs, of course. Then the tribes of Joseph were given theirs, and then, not waiting for all the other tribes to get their portions, there came a most significant achievement. We are told in Joshua chapter eighteen and verse one, then the whole of the congregation of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there, and the land was subdued before them.
That is saying that they set up the tabernacle there. You see, hitherto the tabernacle had been kept in the army camp, guarded day and night when the camp was settled, guarded day and night when the camp was on the march. Now Israel had progressed so far. Judah had his part of the territory. Israel was settled in their part of the territory. Now it became possible, without waiting for the other seven tribes to get theirs, now at last they had enough territory to take the tabernacle out of the camp of the army and to set it up in its own place, and they set up the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, triumphantly in the place called Shiloh, that there the presence of God may come and dwell.
There the tent of meeting should form the center that would keep the nation together, as now the different tribes went off from the army into their individual inheritances. This is what would be their heart that kept the nation together. This would be what their center was, the chief of all the blessings that had ever could come to them in the land of Canaan. I repeat, you will see the importance of this objective by the fact that they didn't wait until all the tribes were in their inheritance. They did it as soon as it could be done. With Judah and Joseph settled, they grabbed Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there.
I want to suggest to you tonight, on that simple basis, that if you were to ask yourself what was the chief objective of the Israelites now as they went to enter into their inheritance. What was the chiefest blessing they were aiming at? What would you say? You say the whole point of entering the Promised Land was so you could have the, the aforementioned, the afore promised grass, of course, and the cattle, you know, it's got to be a land flowing with milk and honey. And if you're going to have milk, you've got to have cows, and if you're going to have cows, you've got to have grass, and if you're going to have honey, you'll have to have bees and plenty of flowers. And surely the whole point of their being redeemed out of Egypt was so that at last they could get into the land and start, uh, munching their honey and eating their grapes and drinking their milk.
What else? I mean, why else would you want to be redeemed? They had been slaves in Egypt under the taskmasters. They didn't get much honey down there, though they got a few cucumbers, apparently. They didn't get much honey down there. They were slaves and owned very little. Surely the whole point of redemption was to get them into the inheritance so they could settle down in their beautiful bungalow before, and settling in their bungalows, enjoy their farm, the milk and the honey. Is that so? Well, that, if you think that, I must ask you another question. You going home one of these days to your inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and the face not aware? You going home to heaven?
You said, yes, of course I am. Looking forward to it? You say, immensely. What do you want to go to heaven for? I mean, what's the chief point of going to heaven, would you say? You say it's to be able to ride down the streets made of gold instead of this wretched tarmac round here, and to have a new body with no more arthritis and no more pains, you'll see, and have doors made of pearls, whole pearls. I mean, why else would you want to go to heaven? Well, why else? In other words, what is the chief point of redemption?
What is its goal? What is its chiefest enjoyment? Oh, let this ancient text tell us what, in God's mind, was the chief benefit that he would confer upon them when they came into the land of Egypt. Yes, grass and cows and bees and honeys and flowers and wine presses and olive presses and a bungalow or two, yes, but what were they compared with this supreme benefit that even there in Canyon, the transcendent Lord of all creation, above time and space, the absolute Lord condescended to ca- come down and dwell among them.
Oh, what joy would you compare with that? How would you rate the grass and the honey compared with having the living God dwell in your very midst? So that you may go to his tent of meeting and see the glory of its color and the purity of its holiness and the wonder of its service, and know your prayers reach the very heart of God, who was not a long, long way off in his he- heaven, but had come down to dwell in your very midst. Oh, my brother, my sister, you really meant to say, didn't you, that the real point of going home to heaven is not a few golden streets and a few pearly gates and one or two angels around you as servants.
Your real point that you're longing for is to see the great tabernacle of God descend from heaven. Isn't it the goal of it? The various portions of God's holy book tell us that, as John the seer stood to watch what is the issue of time, when time is no more and the present earth and heaven flee away, John stands to see, well now, what is the goal to which all history has led? What is the goal of all God's redemptive ways? And he tells us, I saw the heaven opened and the new city, the new Jerusalem, adorned like a bride from her husband coming down out of heaven.
And I heard a voice saying, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them. And a moment's thought shows us that must be so, surely. All the sorrows of Calvary, the virgin birth, the manger, Gethsemane, and the cross, and the resurrection were not done sim- simply so that we should tread golden streets. They come from the very heart of God, who proposes to confer on us the biggest joy and wonder that little creatures could know, to have the living God dwelling in our midst.
Isn't that why you want to go? There came a day, you know, in Israel's history in the wilderness when they had grievously sinned against God and gone after their golden calf and I don't know what other silly, nonsensical idols, and found them other goals to aim at in their desert pilgrimage, and God was so wrathy he threatened to destroy them. And then Moses pleaded with them, and God in part forgave them and said, all right, Moses, I tell you what, Moses. Look, I did say, I, I, I, I, I admit it now. I did say, Moses, that I would give Israel the land flowing with milk and honey.
Well, I tell you what, Moses, you can have it. Go on, Moses, you take them up. I don't mind. I have a bit of grass and a few cows. You take them to Canaan, and I can have the land that flowing with milk and honey. There's just this about it, Moses, I shan't be coming with you. They don't want me, do they? They want their golden calf. All right, they can have the land, and they can have it without me. You take them, Moses. I shan't be coming with you. What would you have said to that offer? You would have said, well, that's a pity to the Lord, because we really would have liked you to come because the land is very nice and we're looking forward to enjoying it, you know.
The houses will be very comfortable and the lawns will be spick and span. You'll say, sorry you're not coming, Lord, but thank you very much. We're very interested to go. Would you have so said? What Moses was said was this. Oh, but Lord, he said, if you don't go with us, please, we don't want to go. Oh friend, if you could have heaven without the Lord, would you go? What would a few pearls be if you could get home to glory and never meet the Lord?
But if we have this hope that one day the chiefest glory of heaven will be the tabernacle of God with men, it carries an implication, doesn't it? My friend, what is the chief point of our salvation, of our being saved, you and me? I say the chief point of that is to save us from being slaves under various spiritual pharaohs, and to save us from the risk of it per- perishing eternally. Is that the chief point? Surely not. Listen to the blessed Lord Jesus. He's discussing the matter in the famous fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, and before he leaves his disciples, he wants to tell them two things mainly, and he says this: I'm going away.
If I go away, I'm going to prepare a place for you, and if I go away, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Oh, praise God for that hope. One day he's coming. He shall take us to heaven, that where he is, there we may be also. But it was not long after that he said, oh no, if any man love me, he will keep my commandments, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him.
And my little heart says, in spite of its waywardness, oh Lord, is not this the biggest thing I could know even of my salvation now, that the Lord Jesus and the Father should come and make their abode in my little heart now. Objective number one of entering the inheritance. And what would objective number two be?
Well, it follows on logically, doesn't it? For you see in division five of the book of Joshua that when, uh, the, uh, seven tribes were eventually given their particular inheritances, then two things are specially mentioned. From their inheritance, they had to give certain cities back. In the first place, they had to give up a number of cities that became cities of refuge, so that if anybody accidentally killed a fellow human being, he could flee to that city of refuge and there find security and safety, uh, uh, from the hands of the avenger of blood.
So these cities had to be given up. The Israelites had to give back some of their inheritance so that it would be set aside for this purpose, the salvation of men who were in mortal danger. And then they had to give up a lot more cities, and this time they had to give these cities as cities for the Levites to dwell in. You see, it was marvelous to have God dwelling among them in a tabernacle, but if God was going to dwell among them in a tabernacle, God would need to be served, wouldn't he? And you would need Levites to serve him on behalf of the nation.
And so when the Israelites were given their inheritance now, they were called upon to give some of it back that it might support the Levites who should maintain the service of God in his tabernacle on behalf of the nation. We have of our spiritual inheritance, it is given gratis and for nothing. But am I not right in thinking that God has a claim on us and what he has given us? My brother, my sister. One of the richest bunch of grapes you'll find, particularly around the first bit of the border of your inheritance, is the lovely grapes of forgiveness, you know, such as David munched when he wrote his glorious psalm, oh, the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquities are covered.
What a thing it is to sit down, isn't it, and enjoy those lovely grapes. Part of our God-given inheritance. Tell me, has God given me that wonderful gift of forgiveness just for my own selfish benefit? Or is it not true that there are men and women around us who are in mortal danger? The avenger of blood is on their tracks, and they need to be saved. God has a claim on us, you know.
He'll expect now some of the blessings that we have been given, the spiritual freedom, the spiritual joy, the knowledge of salvation. He'll expect us to take it and use it to construct cities of refuge for the men and women around that are in mortal danger of perishing eternally. Isn't that so? You'll say there could come creeping over me at times a kind of a feeling that because I'm saved and secure, and I know the wonderful forgiveness of the Lord, that's all I need bother.
No, Christian friend, no, never no. The Lord who has given us these great gifts of salvation requires of us that in return we take and share in the evangelization of the world. And what shall I say, because it's the obvious, isn't it? In Israel, service of the Lord was conducted by priests and Levites. God's claim on them, we haven't time to elucidate the details.
God's claim on them was ultimately based on the claim of redemption, that in the day of the Passover, God had spared Israel's firstborn, whereas the firstborn of the Egyptians had perished. And by an intricate arrangement thereafter, the Levites were taken instead of the firstborn, that they might serve God. The logic was this, that God had provided the Passover lamb by which the wrath of the destroying angel was averted, and the firstborn was saved, says God, you know, if it hadn't have been for me, the firstborn would have perished.
Now that they are alive because of my redeeming mercy, I claim the firstborn for myself. It's no good arguing, was it? But Lord, I, I've got right to my own life. The Lord's reply would have been, no, you don't. But I do. I don't want to feel that I've got to give my life up to the Lord. Well, then you shouldn't have got saved, God would have said. You shouldn't have asked me to save you. And I think the logic remains the same now, doesn't it? Our blessed Lord Jesus died.
But who was there of us that didn't know that if we fled to Christ for refuge and claimed him as the savior that died instead of us, then the scheme was that he died for all, that they which live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died and rose again for them. You're not your own, says Paul. You're bought with a price. And you know, there's a word in Irish, there's a word in Anglo-Irish for taking something that isn't yours and appropriating it to yourself, and it's a very nasty word.
If as believers we take ourselves when we're not our own, we've been bought with a price, and we take ourselves and use ourselves simply for ourselves. And forget that we're owned by the Lord and meant to be living for him. And ladies and gentlemen, we are guilty of the most appalling theft that it is possible for a human being to be guilty of. To take something bought with the blood of Christ and belonging to him, and to misappropriate it merely for ourselves.
Oh, who shall describe it? When the Levites entered upon their office, according to the book of Numbers in chapter eight, chapter eight, first of all, they were taken in sight of the altar, and there Moses offered them to God a living sacrifice. And the same logic is applied to us in the New Testament, isn't it? I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service.
You say, where shall I get the strength to do it from? Where shall I get the spiritual puff and the energy? You'll get it from your great inheritance that God has given you. Yes, won't you? It won't come necessarily out of our poverty-stricken hearts, but begin munching your grapes, my brother, and let your cows munch the grass and give you the milk, and feast yourself on the riches you have in Christ, and see whether your heart doesn't begin to burn and grow with desires to give yourself to the blessed Lord, your reasonable service. And so the second objective was achieved.
Out of their inheritance, they set up the cities of refuge for those in mortal danger. Out of their inheritance, they maintained the Levitical priesthood to serve the blessed Lord in his tabernacle. And we're seeing how God's spirit puts the whole business of redemption and enjoying the inheritance in its true sense of proportion. When on Sunday, if God will, we come to consider the sixth and the last part of the second phase of the occupation, we shall find it deals not with an objective that was actually achieved, but with an objective that was put before the Israelites, that it might ever remain before their hearts and eyes and minds as an objective to be aimed at.
And that's simply put in a phrase as this. All three major stories are concerned with the un- the uninterrupted service of the Lord. Provision made so that in spite of all the difficulties that might come in the way and interrupt the service of the Lord, the service of the Lord might nonetheless continue. So far then, we have thought in general terms and surveyed the message that is conveyed to us by the simple literary structure of this book. In our closing moments, let's think very briefly of those four stories we read from section four.
Easy to be remembered, aren't they? I like them because, you know, a lot of the rest is full of names of geographical places that are impossible to pronounce, and, uh, well, who would know what they meant? But here, at least, the four stories related to the inheritance that anybody could see what they meant. Four stories. First of Caleb, who, when it came to the inheritance, cla- came and claimed what had been promised. And then Caleb and Axar, his daughter, they came and asked for more, if you please. And then from Joseph there came the son, the daughters of Zelophehad, and they came, and they claimed what had been promised to them.
Finally came the tribe of Joseph, the whole tribe, and asked for more, but didn't get exactly what they asked. Let's think of them for a few moments. The story of Caleb is a story very well known by believers all around the world. Caleb, by and large, is a character and a personality much beloved by many believers. He's been an inspiration to thousands. They'd like to picture him in their minds eighty years plus and still chasing giants of his inheritance. Oh God, give us a few more Calebs. He saw giants not as potential opposition, he saw them as meat to be eaten, as something to exercise his muscles on of a morning, and giants to be cleared away so that he might enter into his glorious inheritance.
I suppose when Caleb set himself to prayer, he talked now and again about difficulties, but I'm persuaded he didn't talk about difficulties like we do in our prayer meetings. You should listen to us. Oh, our prayers full of difficulties. I have a difficulty. I have a difficulty. Well, Caleb had a few giants, but he didn't seem to treat them like we treat our difficulties, let them get him down in the dumps. He honestly believed that God meant him to enter in his inheritance, and giants were made to be taken, taken alive if need be. Ha. And he came to Joshua and says, give this me this mountain. What would you want that for? Well, he said, I've heard there's a few giants up there.
I'd like to have a go at them. Good old Caleb, intending to go into his inheritance. He wholly followed the Lord, says times over. But then perhaps we shall see the significance of that more fully, if first of all we take a few seconds to put it in its true historical context. You'll see when Ja- when Caleb says, I wholly followed the Lord, he is not thinking of what he did when he got into Canaan and his inheritance, is he? He did carry on following the Lord, of course, but when he says I followed to the Lord, wholly followed the Lord, he's thinking of what he did all those forty years in the wilderness before he got into his inheritance.
And the point of his remark is this. He said, Joshua, you remember when you and I went with the spies, Joshua, old, old boy. He said, we went into the land and the rest of the, uh, spies, the ten of them, brought back an evil report and discouraged the people. As we know, they apostatized from God. The whole nation led by the ten spies revolted against the Lord, revolted against Moses, and refused to go into their inheritance, and talked about making a captain to go back to Egypt. And God reacted by saying, very good if you don't want the inheritance I provided, you needn't have it, gentlemen. In fact, I tell you, says God, you won't have it either.
And I swear in my wrath, God subsequently reported, that they should never enter my rest. It is against the background of that great apostasy upon the part of the whole nation that Caleb says to Joshua, but I, unlike those apostates, but I fully followed the Lord. I did not give up the hope of the inheritance. I did not turn round and go after other gods. I wholly followed the Lord, and Moses promised me that one day I should have my inheritance, uh, when God took us into the land.
All those forty years I have lived, says Caleb, and for all his, uh, his faithfulness to God, for forty years he didn't get into the land, did he? He had to wander around the wilderness with the rest of them. For forty years he maintained his hope over those long years that God would fulfill his word, that one day he would enter into the inheritance. He hoped Moses would bring him in. Moses proved incapable of the task. And Caleb had to wait forty years plus until Joshua was raised up, and Joshua took Israel at last into their inheritance.
And when Joshua came and took them in, then Caleb came and said, Joshua, now I claim what God promised me all those years ago, and now I want to cash in the promise. I believed it, now give it me. And as I think of Caleb, you know, I think not first of us Gentile believers, I think of the whole Jewish nation, all down the centuries. Or at least I think of that part of the Jewish nation that remained faithful to God. Sometimes the part that remained faithful to God was reduced to an almost vanishing point, wasn't it? In the desert, it was reduced to two or three or four people.
The rest of the nation apostatized. The days before the exile, the vast majority in the nation had apostatized from God. It was but a few faithful folks like Daniel that wholly followed the Lord. Come the time when our blessed Lord walked the earth incarnate, and nearly the whole nation crucified him. All praise to the Calibs of all the long generations, who, in spite of Israel's apostasies, remained faithful to God all down the centuries.
In spite of that, they couldn't enter the inheritance, could they? Oh, they had inherit- had entered Palestine with its grass and its bees, yes, but as the Epistle to the Hebrews points out, the real rest of God they had not yet entered. Nor could they enter, of course, through Moses, could they? As the Epistle to the Hebrews said, they, with faith and patience, they saw the promises afar off, they embraced them, they lived in the hope, but they never actually received the benefit of those promises. I quote the words of actual scripture at the end of Hebrews chapter eleven. And why weren't they allowed immediately to enter into all the spectacular blessings that we have entered into?
The writer to the Hebrews says that they, without us, should not be made perfect. God had provided some better thing in connection with us, so that those ancient Jewish saints without us should not be made perfect. They had to wait, didn't they, until the blessed Lord Jesus. Yes. King David himself never entered the holiest of all, did he? King David himself was obliged to offer sacrifice after sacrifice, year after year, in which he showed that not yet did he have a conscience made perfect.
But the prophet that he was, like Abraham, he saw the coming great promises of God of the glorious inheritance and had to wait for it until the greater than Joshua came and brought his people into their inheritance. But then you see, that has a lesson for us as well, doesn't it? For the New Testament letter to the Hebrews is written by who knows who, to people that obviously were Jews by birth. They had made some profession of believing on the Lord Jesus. In their early days, they had suffered persecution for the sake of the Lord Jesus, but more recently, they had been absenting themselves from meetings of the church, and the writer is beginning to get worried about them.
Why aren't they coming to the meetings of the church with their fellow believers? Could it be? And then the terrible question enters the writer's mind. Could it be that they are in fact behaving like the generation in the wilderness behaved? You see, the generation in the wilderness came out of Egypt. They journeyed towards the Promised Land. When they got there and put their noses across the border, they said, oh no, not on your life, Moses. If we'd have known it like that, we wouldn't have come. And they apostatized from the living God. And showed, says the writer to the Hebrews, that they were not and never had been genuine believers.
We see that they could not enter in. Why couldn't they? Because of unbelief and because of disobedience. The word that the writer uses for disobedience is a word that throughout its many times usages in the New Testament is never used of a true believer, but only of those who profess to be r- religious, but refuse God's salvation. Ah, the people in the wilderness, Caleb's contemporaries, came out of Egypt, but they in the end were shown never to have been believers at all.
And the writer to the Hebrews is wondering in his mind, these people to whom he writes, they profess to be Christians, but are they Christians? Could it be that there's happening to them what happened to their forefathers in the wilderness? That is, they have professed to be redeemed, professed to believe in the Lord Jesus, but now the reason why they are abandoning the meetings of the church, abandoning fellowship with the believers, and not making progress in the things of God is because at heart they never were true believers at all. We should not shun the exhortation to examine our hearts, should we?
We have professed to be believers, professed to be on our way to glory. Am I a true believer? Am I a Caleb? Who wholly follows the Lord? Or have I merely had a kind of a religious experience and some spiritual excitement without ever having been genuinely born again? You say, how would you know whether you were one of the other? Well, let's put it this way, let's use one very simple test from among many.
We're hoping one day to be in the inheritance, and there to be conformed to the image of God's Son. Now, the fact is, says the inspired Apostle John, that everyone that has that hope in him purifies himself. That's not an exhortation, that's a statement of fact. Everyone who genuinely has the hope purifies himself, even as he is pure. Caleb wholly followed the Lord and showed himself a genuine Old Testament believer.
There were many more who followed him, and at last, when the Lord Jesus came, he brought them into the full revelation of God. Then there was Axar and Othniel. They didn't claim what was promised, greedy souls. They, they asked for more. Could you imagine it? Well, said Axar, daddy, you know, I'm grateful for this bit of ground you're giving us, my inheritance, you call it, don't you? But to be honest, she said, Papa, I mean, just have a look at the thing. It is as dry as dust, she said, Papa. I mean, who could make anything of that? As useless, actually, thank you very much for it, but as useless giving us, uh, Othniel, dear, and me, a bit of dry old ground in the southern Negev like that.
Oh, you couldn't grow anything on it, you see, she said, Papa, if you're going to give us this, you must give us some water. And Papa was moved and said, you're right, my dear, like papas do to their daughters. And he said, Joel say, ah, I tell you what, I'll give you the upper and the nether springs. And with the irrigating the land, of course they could make something of it, and they grew the fruits of Zion, if anybody did, with these upper and never springs. They asked for more. And should not we? We've been brought into our inheritance. You'll say, you yourself, Mr. Preacher, told us just now that we have the Holy Spirit, so why should I ever ask for more?
Well, precisely because you have the Holy Spirit, that's why. For Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, says, now, my dear fellow Christians, I know you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, but he says, you know, I daily pray for you. I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of the Lord, that you might see with the hearts illumined by the Holy Spirit what is the hope of his calling and what the infinite riches of inher- is his inheritance in the saints, and what is his exceeding power towards us? Oh, my little heart is so small, you know, my imagination so poverty stricken.
I'm saved, I tell myself, and I haven't scarce the beginnings of a notion of what the great hope is that is set before me. Oh, I need more. Shall I not come like Othniel's wife constantly to the blessed Lord and pray for the ever increasing illumination of his spirit, that I may grasp what is the hope of his calling? Oh, my dear believer, is it well and truly in your heart? What will it be to be with Christ, to dwell with the Lord, to be part of his bride, queen when he is king. What shall it be with him to rule and to reign and to administer the great universe that yet shall be?
Oh, who can tell the wonder of it, that wee little bits of clay from Northern Ireland should not only be forgiven, but united with the divine person, baptized into his spirit, made to drink of his spirit, united with the divine person, the Son of God himself. Who can explain the mystery? I do so need to grasp it, that the reality and the wonder of his salvation and the hope before me grip my heart. It will only be understood and appreciated as the blessed Holy Spirit continues his work of illumination in my heart.
I need to know the riches of his inheritance in the saints. Oh, my dear brother, my sister, if I could see you as one day you will be when you're at home with the Lord, I should be tempted right now to get down on my knees and worship you, like John worshiped the angels. You're going to be better than angels, aren't you? That dear man sitting by your side, I know he's a bit of a trial sometimes, like we all are, but you should see him when Christ is finished with him. You believe it, don't you? Oh, what a treasure. And I don't know about you, but so easily the wealth of divine things ebbs away out of my heart, and spiritual things become a grind, a penal servitude.
They go like Pharaoh's chariots with the wheels off. We lose the wealth of it. Well, at least I do, perhaps you don't. But I need to pray for more. More of God's Holy Spirit. More of his spirit in our Bible readings, in our evangelization, in our worship, in our personal devotions. More of his spirit illumining our heart. And as Paul prayed also, strengthening our hearts that the blessed Lord Jesus may dwell in our heart. Who says there already. Well, I believe that. He wants to extend his residence, my brother, my sister, into every nook and cranny of our personality.
For that it will be necessary that we be strengthened in our heart by God's Holy Spirit, that Christ may dwell in our hearts. Or am I a genuine believer? And I hope to dwell with the Lord above. I really mean that. But I shan't be content to have the Lord dwelling in a little bit of me now, shall I? I shall pray ever for more, to be strengthened by God's spirit in the inner man, that Christ may ever more completely take up his residence within. Finally, there were the other two stories, but the tape is about to run out on me, and I mustn't enlarge upon them, nor test your patience anymore, for I myself will then turn into a giant whom you might persecute.
But the daughters of Zelophead came, and they claimed what had been promised. Their promise was this. They said, our father died and he had no sons. If you don't give us his inheritance, the family name will die out. And they said, our claim is this, that our father was not involved in the rebellion of Korah. He died in his own sin. Why then should his family name die out? And Moses took it to God, and God said, well spoken, the girls can inherit and keep the family name alive. They came now to Joshua and claimed what God and Moses had promised to them. We better be able to f- to urge the same claim before God, hadn't we?
We're none of us perfect, but thank God if we too can say we haven't been involved in the sin of Korah. Do you say, is that kind of thing possible nowadays? Of course it is, man. Our dear brother Jude warns us of the very same thing, writing to some of the early Christians, he says, now beware of the false teachers that have and will enter Christendom. Woe unto them, they've gone in the way of Cain. They followed after the error of Balaam like the gadaren swine, says James, and they have perished in the gainsaying of Korah. What did Jude mean? Well, he was drawing an analogy between Korah and his spiritual rebellion and some of the false teachers that were already getting into Christendom.
To put it in through brief words, Korah raised a rebellion against the apostle of his faith, that is Moses, and against the high priest, and he rejected both. At Calvary, the Jewish nation rose up. They argued against, says Hebrews.
