Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

**SCRIPTURE READING: JOSHUA 18**

Please stand. We shall read some more of God’s planting of his vine in the land of Canaan. Joshua 18.

And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there. And the land was subdued before them. And there remained among the children of Israel, seven tribes which had not yet received their inheritance. And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, “How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you?

Give out from among you three men for each tribe, and I will send them, and they shall rise and go through the land, and describe it according to the inheritance of them, and they shall come again to me, and they shall divide it into seven parts. Judah shall abide in their coast in the south, and the house of Joseph shall abide in their coast in the north. Ye shall therefore describe the land into seven parts, and bring the description hither to me, that I may cast lots for you here before the Lord our God.

But the Levites have no part among you. For the priest of the Lord is their inheritance, and Gad and Reuben, and half the tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance beyond Jordan on the east, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave them. And the men arose and went away. And Joshua charged them that went out to describe the land, saying, “Go and walk to the land and describe it, and come again to me, that I may cast lots for you before the Lord in Shiloh.

And the men went and passed through the land and described it by cities into seven parts in a book and came again to Joshua to the host at Shiloh. And Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before the Lord. And there Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel according to their divisions. And the lot of the tribe of the children of Benjamin came up according to their families. And the coast of their lot came forth between the children of Judah and the children of Joseph.

And their border on the north side was from Jordan. And the border went up to the side of Jericho on the north side, and went up through the mountains westward. And the goings out thereof were at the wilderness of Bethaaven. And the border went out from there toward Lo to the side of Lo, which is Bethel, southward. And the border descended to Ataroth Addar, near the hill that lieth on the south side of the nether Bethhoron.

And the border was drawn then, encompassed the town of the sea southward from the hill that lieth beforehand southward and the goings out thereof was at Kirjath Baal which is Kirjath Jearim a city of the children of Judah. This was the west quarter. And the south quarter was from the end of Kirjath Jearim. And the border went out on the west and went out to the well of waters at Nephtoah. And the border came down to the end of the mountain that lieth before the valley of the son of Hinnom and which is in the valley of the giants on the north.

And descended to the valley of Hinnom to the side of Jebusi on the south and descended to Enrogel, and was drawn from the north, and went forth to Enshepsheah, and went forth toward Geliloth, which is over against the going up of Adommim, and descended to the stone of Bohan, the son of Reuben, and passed along toward the side over against Araba northward, and went down unto Araba. And the border passed along to the side of Bethogla northward, and the Outgoings of the border were at the north bay of the salt sea at the south end of Jordan.

This was the south coast and Jordan was the border of it on the east side. This was the inheritance of the children of Benjamin by the coast thereof roundabout according to their families. Now the cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin according to their families were Jericho and Bethhogla and the valley of Keziz and Betharbah and Zemaraim and Bethel and Ananoth and Perazim and Ophrah and Chepharammoni and Ophni and Gaba, 12 cities with their villages, Gibeon and Rama and Beeroth and Mizpah and Chephirah and Mozah and Rekem and Taraphah and Zelah, Eleph, and Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, Gibeah and Kirjath, 14 cities with their villages.

This is the inheritance of the children of Benjamin according to their families. We thank God for his word and pray that he would illuminate this word to our understanding through his holy spirit.

—

Okay. Well, we’re going back to the book of Joshua today. We’re picking it up in chapter 18, which if you remember correctly, two weeks ago today, I gave an election day sermon out of the first few verses of chapter 18, which we read again this Sunday.

And I’ve decided late last night that the outline is too long for today. And so we’re only going to deal with the first three sections of the outline and the fourth section I’ll save to next week. My apologies to Richard who does the announcements for that change, but I think that would be best not to try to crowd all this in together.

I noticed as I was listening to Richard’s tape by the way of last Sunday that he also left out a portion of his outline. And later on we’ll talk a little bit just briefly about the relationship between study and life. And I just might as well mention here that of course that we end up usually far too overstudied in terms of applying it into our lives. And so I think that it’s typical of Richard and I know that we can study an awful lot of the scriptures more than we can fit into a Lord’s Day service or sermon.

And I think it’s important to recognize we need to take the study that we have been given by God and break it up so we can begin to apply it into our lives. And so this relationship between study and application is one of the reasons why I’ve chosen to split this into two different sermons, so the first three points of the outline will cover today and then point four next week.

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And I wanted to just begin by reviewing the sermon from two weeks ago. That is the setting for what happens here with the next couple of chapters. Chapters 18 and 19 describe the inheritance of the seven remaining tribes.

And so the first few verses of chapter 18 is the proper setting or framework for what follows it. And because we had a week’s intermission there and plus I didn’t really get to all the points I wanted to make two weeks ago, I wanted to review that just a bit.

And you remember we said there that essentially the center of that beginning portion of chapter 18 in the book of Joshua is that line “How long are you slack to go to possess the land?” And that had application to our elections a couple weeks ago and I try to make it a lot broader application in all of our lives. And I said that in some sense, don’t take it too far, but in some sense, we are somewhat like those seven tribes here at RCC.

We’ve begun a lot of good things, an awful lot of good things. We’re going to begin some more good things, I think, in the next few weeks. But it’s important that we follow through with what we start. It’s important we not get too weary to continue the work that God has given us to do.

I attended a—as Richard I think mentioned—last week, I attended a conference or a seminar I guess on world missions put on by a group called World Thrust—three days last week—and it was excellent. It was a tremendous encouragement to me and challenge to get Reformation Covenant Church more involved directly in world missions.

I say directly because many people in the congregation are involved in their own lives. We’ll go over that and I’ll make a few comments about that before communion but I bring it up because one of the things that impressed me about the people that put on this conference last week—this 3-day workshop or seminar—was they’re extremely professional. They understood covenant, although they don’t really think in terms of covenant. I think everything they do is contractually oriented and they also understand the cycle of our lives that God teaches us through the Sabbath week, through the Sabbath day at the beginning of the week and then also at the end of the week.

And again, they may not understand that self-consciously, but they understand the need to plan, to do, and then to evaluate what we’ve done. And Sunday is in many respects essentially a day of evaluation. We come before the Lord and we evaluate. And of course, we’re always found wanting. We always plead nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ. But we also look at the things that God has built into our lives the past week that are good.

We try to discern the things that aren’t so good and where we need work and evaluation and further commitment and planning. Well, that’s all I was trying to do a couple weeks ago is to do a little evaluation here at RCC.

—

And I want to just mention several things briefly, hopefully briefly, in terms of application again in our lives. And the very first one is world missions. Because it is one that I do think needs more of an emphasis at Reformation Covenant institutionally as opposed to just in the lives of the people that attend here.

You’ll notice that Richard in today’s announcements on the back had a page from Operation World, which is an excellent little book that many of us have and some use periodically or regularly in their family devotional period. Each day of the week is a different country to pray for. It has specific information, etc. We’re going to try doing that on a regular basis and the announcements is one way to keep the needs of the whole world and to win the whole world to Jesus Christ in front of you to be praying for on a regular basis.

And so we’re going to evaluate, we’re going to make some plans, we’re going to do some evaluation over the next few months. And I’d ask you to pray for Richard and I and the other men of the church as we begin to do some of these things and think it through.

And that’s certainly one area I think in a real important sense, Reformation Covenant understands the cultural mandate of the evangelization and then the discipleship of the world. It was interesting at this conference I attended that they said we’re talking about the evangelization of the world, not the Christianization because they’re eschatologically pessimistic. Well, I thought that, you know, we probably want to say we do want to Christianize the world, but a better term might be the discipleship of the world because that’s what Jesus commands us specifically to do in the great commission.

And that’s of course just a summation of all the scriptures teach. Evangelization is important, but discipleship goes hand in hand with that. And I think it’s important that we’ve committed ourselves to this. We know we have, but it’s important to build in regular evaluation times as well as we move along toward that goal.

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Another area specifically I thought of a couple of weeks ago in terms of Reformation Covenant and particularly in light of the election and the results at a national level. There were very good results on a local level in terms of our state legislature but on the national level I wanted to mention briefly the subject of debt.

Not a comfortable thing to mention but you know if you pray the Lord’s Prayer on a regular basis we pray that God would forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Debt and transgression in the scriptures are kind of linked together. So sin produces a debt relationship to God and God graciously forgives us of those debts. So debt is at the core of our Christian faith really in the sense of sin and trespass.

But it also is a practical fact in our life that is in some ways impossible to be completely free from debt because debt implies relationship or dependence upon other people. So we want to take what I say here with the proper framework of recognizing that I know that in a sense there is indebtedness on a regular basis.

But the scriptures are clear to us that our goal according to the book of Romans is to owe no man anything and to not be in a debt position economically. Now the context for that in the book of Romans is the honor we’re to owe to magistrates and rulers. But it doesn’t say owe no man any of this honor due to them. It says owe no man anything. The goal is not to be in a debt relationship in terms of men and certainly that would include economically.

Now I bring this up because this church was committed to this goal early on in our founding if you remember if you were here with the ordination of one of our deacons specifically the charge there was to try to help people manage their finances to the end that we could eliminate debt from the congregation of Reformation Covenant so as we come together to possess and think of how are we going to possess the land in a more fervent sense, that’s one area I think that’s extremely important. It relates specifically to the material blessings that God gives us which are good and proper and it is one point in which we should be on a regular basis evaluating ourselves.

I mentioned the election. You know, the election said, “Are you better off this year now than you were four years ago?” That’s how some people wanted to phrase the election. And that was the way Ronald Reagan did it when he beat Jimmy Carter. Well, I suppose we’d want to ask ourselves Reformation Covenant on a regular basis, “Are you more out of debt this year or four years than you were four years ago?”

You see, if that’s the goal, then we should be evaluating ourselves according to that goal. We just had an election of a Democratic administration, which it is not clear what they will do in terms of economic policy, but there will be strong pressures and probably yielding to those pressures to inflate the currency even more to go toward a really bad period of inflation or maybe even hyperinflation. Some people say stagflation where the economy is stagnant yet inflation occurs.

Inflation is one of the greatest inducements to people to get into debt. It’s extremely difficult to avoid debt in an inflationary cycle. We’ve gone through the providence of God and according to his blessing several years here very little inflation which we should have been preparing ourselves for the inducements of debt and inflation against that temptation and so what I’m saying is there’s specific economic things that are happening in the providence of God that need that we need to recommit ourselves, I think if we understand and believe that’s what the scriptures teach, to try to eliminate personal debt in our lives.

You know, I mentioned before but you had Babylon and you had Assyria in the Old Testament. Assyria’s ways to enslave the people of God in other nations was primarily through terror. They would cut heads off and pile big piles of heads in front of cities and very effective. And the other model was Babylon. Babylon would go in and send their merchants in first and indebted. And you know if you look at I know it’s a little simplistic extremely so but if you look at the USSR at one point in time and America, Assyria’s gone now. That system of terror control of people has been essentially delivered from that in the province of God to a large extent.

I know it still exists in many places across the world as people on the mission field can tell you. But that was the model for Russia: intimidation and control through terror. The model for the United States is control through debt. To the extent that you allow yourselves to stay in debt in a long period of time, you really run the risk of demoralization and being less effective for the work of the kingdom.

So I would challenge you in terms of possessing the land that you do this on a regular basis. Now probably almost you know, probably many of you out there are in debt today and I don’t want to make you feel bad. It’s not the goal. My goal is to try to make you shoot for a goal of seeing an elimination of debt in your life.

Now there are some people who see debt as what it is in the scriptures. Scriptures say it is slavery. The borrower is servant to the lender. And I could give you example after example where that’s the case even in our culture which tries to eliminate that or not make it obvious on the surface as it induces people into great debt.

There are people who are in debt who recognize that principle and that is a good thing. In terms of property ownership for instance it is almost impossible to fully avoid debt in our culture. Renting I think is a good alternative because you can have the freedom to move. You can’t make the rent move in with somebody else move to a cheaper place etc. A house and you’re making a payment that isn’t like that. The house mortgages are not totally secured by the homes in this state. There’s only one or two states in the country where that exists.

So the point is I know that debt is almost unavoidable in terms of property ownership. But recognize it for what it is if you’re in that kind of relationship, that there is a servitude aspect to it to the person that loaned you the money, the bank usually, and then try to get out of that slavery, try to move away from that debt position and enslavement over time.

See, it’s one thing to be a servant, a slave, as most people today in American culture are, if you recognize the implications of it. But what our culture will try to get you to do, and unfortunately all too many Christian ministries go along with this, is they try to redefine debt to make it not a possession of slavery. That is not a good thing because then you will not get out of it ever.

If you redefine it to say that debt is not a bad thing or maybe this relationship isn’t even debt, you’ve given up all hope of moving toward freedom in terms of economics and then moving toward more power in terms of your life. So I’ve probably said enough about that, but I just want to put that out there as one thing in which specifically this congregation should focus.

It did focus early on. We’re going to continue to focus on it over the years. And it’s important that you in your life, in my life, all of us here, I tell you, I tell myself, evaluate yourself according to this principle and see if you’re applying biblical economics to the end that you would eliminate personal debt in your life.

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Secondly, politics. I mentioned this before. I want to stress it again, though. Denny Woods recently wrote a letter to the Oregon Family Council about the Christian Voters’s Guide. Excellent letter. And Denny’s point is there are other things we should be getting involved with as the Christian community instead of just the moral issues.

Denny pointed out that five out of the six questions in the Oregon voters’s guide had to do either directly or indirectly with some form of sexual perversion. Well, if that’s all our political agenda is—eliminating sexual perversion—we’re not thinking Christianly as it applies to the political sphere.

There’s many more things that could be that have to be—the word of God should be proclaimed into and the society changed. We’d land a list of cities here in Benjamin’s area. Political reorganization of the land occurred in the conquest. And if the conquest is the picture of what happens in Jesus Christ and the army of God who follows Christ into all the world, then political reorganization of the cities is also a goal of ours.

This church is focused on homeschooling. That’s good. That’s proper. It’s a defensive measure and it’s a good one. And we did that. We won that battle essentially—it’s essentially over. The existing control of the Oregon legislature—there’s no way homeschoolers are going to suffer any kind of major defeat for a number of years to come in this state. We got to move on from that.

And I mentioned two particular areas. The Children’s Services Division, the abortion and the child abuse—a problem where Christian, good Christian families are frequently beset upon by the Children’s Services agency and that’s an area that we have a real open window of opportunity in the next couple of years because of a CSD report. That’s an important area but it’s defensive also. An offensive measure that we could go into would be the whole idea of restitution, crime and punishment, not just restitution—death penalty issues as well. So there’s a whole range of things we should do here and I think it’s important that the people that were in this church originally that had a vision for a political action committee—taking the word of God into a specific area in terms of education.

We shouldn’t limit ourselves to that focus, but broaden out. I think you see other political action committees come out of this church geared towards some of these other problems or maybe the reorganization of the PAC into something that could address some of these other issues—to speak the word of God into these political structures is important. And that’s an area that we should be evaluating ourselves on to make sure we’re not content with the small victories that God has graciously granted us so far, but we go on to possess the entire land.

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I could talk about the institutional church here. You know, there’s institutional things we’re doing. But just in terms of the church as a community, it’s important that we continue to build the sense of community at Reformation Covenant Church. We have a modicum of that now. We have—I think a better—if you look at most churches today, I think that the people at RCC know each other, are more committed to each other than in most churches, but that can continue to develop and improve.

And I think all these things being worked together will produce growth and blessing to us from God. So that’s the setting really for the inheritance of Benjamin. I’m going to say about Benjamin’s area has this proper setting, this command by Joshua, this almost rebuke to a tired nation to not be slack to possess the land. Go forward the blessing of God and God will go with you and God will bless you.

And it’s only in doing that work that we have the promise and the rest given to us from God. The word of God, as I said two weeks ago, is a command word, but it is a promise word. And those two things always go together. Reassurance, blessing, peace to your lives as you move in relationship to the command word of God. So both of those things go together and that’s what I think Lord’s Day services are all about.

That’s the framework for Benjamin’s inheritance.

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Now, let’s look at the recipients of Benjamin’s inheritance real quickly. Who is Benjamin? Well, the scriptures give us several things coming up to the place of Benjamin in the promised land. And I’m going to talk about that a little bit.

Benjamin was the second son of Rachel. You remember Rachel was Jacob’s real love, so to speak. Now, he ended up having 12 sons—two by Rachel and then some by Leah, Rachel’s servant Bilhah and Leah’s servant Zilpah. So we have these 12 tribes of Israel do not come from one mother. Only two come from Rachel, Jacob’s first love, so to speak, and that was Benjamin and then Joseph, of course.

Benjamin’s birth is recorded in Genesis 35. And verse 18, what’s going on here is that they’re on their way from Bethel to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And if you look on your outlines in the back, there’s a map over there. I’m sorry it isn’t a little clearer, but if you look in the middle up here, this area is Benjamin’s inheritance. To the south of them is Judah. To the north of them is Ephraim. And you look up there in the northern border up by Ephraim, and you’ll see Bethel up there in that area. And down at the southern part of Benjamin’s territory, down actually in Judah’s territory, but just south of Benjamin is Bethlehem.

Well, that’s where Rachel was going. She was on the road nearly at Ephrath or Bethlehem according to the scriptures when she gave birth to Benjamin. She died giving birth. It was hard labor according to the scriptures. You know, the scriptures talk about labor itself as hard. So this was really difficult labor to the extent that she didn’t know if the son would be born or not. And the person attending her said, “Yes, the son will be born. He will survive.” But then Rachel gives up the ghost. The spirit departs her. She dies.

And before she dies, she names the son that she’s giving birth to, Benoni—son of my sorrow or son of my pain. And Genesis 35 tells us that. But then it goes on to say, “But his father called him Benjamin.” So Benjamin is born in sorrow and travail, but he’s born to be the son of the right hand. That’s what Benjamin means. Ben is son. Jamin or Yamin is right hand. Son of the right hand. Instead of the son of sorrow or constant pain, he’s instead referred to as the son of the right hand.

We’ll talk about that at the end of our sermon. That’s his birth. And he’s a beloved of his father. You remember that when Joseph is taken into captivity in Egypt, his father, of course, thinks he’s dead. And then his sons go down because of the famine and they go down to Egypt and they’re attended to by Joseph, though they don’t know it. And the father—Joseph wants Benjamin, his other son, to come with him next time. And they say, “Our father doesn’t want to send Benjamin.” The father was so affectionate toward Benjamin, his youngest son, by the way, and also the second son of his beloved wife, Rachel, that he didn’t want to send him to Egypt, but he has to because the family’s going to starve otherwise.

So he is greatly beloved by his father. And in Egypt, Joseph gives Benjamin a multiple portion of the food that he gives the other brothers. In verse 34, for instance, Benjamin’s portion of food was five times as much. Joseph loved Benjamin a lot, and he honored him by giving him five times as much food. But Benjamin also remember is the one who Joseph hides the cup in his bag as they’re leaving and going back to their father and then sends men out saying, “Who stole my stuff?” It was your younger son Benjamin.

And so Benjamin is beloved by Joseph, but used by Joseph to bring conviction to the other sons of their sin in relationship to him and to bring them distress and trouble and trouble the father as well. But then of course when the whole story plays out and the family is reunited in Egypt, Joseph falls upon Benjamin’s neck, loves him, greatly affectionate toward him, and then he gives him a number, I think five sets of garments, raiments instead of the single set he’d given to the other ones, etc.

So, we know Benjamin’s birth. We know his story in Egypt and when he first came to Egypt. And the scriptures go on to tell us then a few other things about Benjamin, specifically, we’re told the enumeration of the tribe of Benjamin as they left the promised land—as they left Egypt for the promised land at the Exodus.

At the Exodus, the tribe of Benjamin coming from this beloved one has grown to 35,400 men. That’s the 11th largest in the list of the 12 tribes in terms of population, one of the smallest. After 40 years in the wilderness, however, Benjamin now has 45,600 men and they moved up to the seventh position in terms of population.

The Psalms talks about the little tribe of Benjamin, but that doesn’t happen till later and we’ll talk about that mostly next week. That happens as a result of Benjamin’s later sin and their almost elimination by the other tribes of Israel. We’ll talk about that next week.

Benjamin is blessed by God numerically as they go through the wilderness wanderings. It’s important too to recognize that the Benjamites, the sons of the right hand are a lot of times characterized in the scriptures as sons of the left hand in a sense. Ehud was a Benjamite. He was a left-handed judge. And the scriptures tell us that the Benjamites were left-handed archers.

Some of them were so good—let’s see. Book of Judges tells us that among those people, Benjamin, there were 700 chosen men, left-handed. Everyone could sling stones at a hair’s breadth and not miss. These guys were skilled in combat, skilled with the sling, skilled with the sword as well from other verses. They were really good warriors, but frequently they’re characterized as being left-handed warriors, which is kind of interesting.

There are two blessings of the tribes. We’ll talk about these for the next few weeks in the scriptures. One is in Genesis 49. And in Genesis 49, we read this of Benjamin: “Benjamin shall raven as a wolf. In the morning, he shall devour his prey, and at night, he shall divide the spoil.”

So his war, his ability to make war is talked about in one of the blessings pronounced upon him in Genesis 49. In Deuteronomy 33, there’s the other side of that blessing really, which is the source of his strength. And of Benjamin, he said, “The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him, and the Lord shall cover him all day long and he shall dwell between his shoulders.”

So here the Lord covers Benjamin and God’s presence with Benjamin is related to it. And those two things of course are really essential to our Christian life. The presence of God and then victory for the struggles and conquest that God leads us into.

Benjamin became so fierce in war that in Judges 5 in Deborah’s song, remember Deborah’s war against God’s enemies, she’s listing the tribes that helped her in her war. And she says in verse 14, “Out of Ephraim was there a root of them against Amalek after thee Benjamin among thy people.”

Benjamin was between Ephraim on the north as I said and Judah on the south—big tribes the two big important tribes so to speak amongst the 12 tribes. They were a little tribe in between, little bit of land but when Deborah calls out the men to assist her in Judges 5, after Benjamin these other troops come. So while little Benjamin was really powerful. Okay, small maybe in stature or in physical size and later in numbers but very powerful for God and as a result a leader among men in many ways.

So Benjamin is characterized as being powerful, beloved, the presence of God, the power, the victory of God in battle. And one other thing we should notice here is that the familial link between Benjamin and Joseph is extremely important to keep in mind.

In the wilderness wanderings, you know, the tribes marched under four different standards—12 tribes, four groups of three tribes in each group and Benjamin was with the sons of Joseph. The standard was carried by Ephraim and included Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin. We just sang in that psalm from the Psalter: “And Ephraim and Manasseh and Benjamin’s height.” Those were linked together in that psalm because they were related. Remember that Ephraim and Manasseh take the place of Joseph. They’re Joseph’s sons and Benjamin has the same mother as Joseph. See, so there’s some familial ties there and they’re linked together as they come out of Egypt, out of the land of Egypt rather, to possess the land in the wilderness wanderings.

They’re linked together as a unit. They’re related. They’re closer to those people. Now, that’s real important, too. We’ll talk about it more next week again, but one of the big things that goes on in terms of the history of Benjamin’s tribe in the Old Testament is the relationship of water and blood. Benjamin’s major sin described in the scriptures as a relationship formed by blood instead of by water.

By that, I mean Benjamin’s tribal associations and physical genealogy closer to him. So that is more important early on in his history than covenant or water. Well, later on Benjamin reverses that and becomes more geared toward covenant instead of blood. He becomes linked with Judah as opposed to Joseph’s sons who are part of the northern tribes. Benjamin’s the only one that joins the southern tribe of Judah.

So Benjamin’s history is that of moving away from ties by blood to ties by water, ties by family relationships instead to ties by the church and that’s one of the big themes in Benjamin as well.

So that’s who receives this land—Benjamin and then of course his tribe—and those are some important things from the history of Benjamin’s tribe.

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Okay, what is their inheritance? This is the third point of the outline and the last one we’re going to deal with today. Now we’re going to actually talk about what is the land that Benjamin inherits. And this is just before I get into this I want to just thank Richard for last week’s sermon and say that it really is excellent in terms of setting up an understanding as we look at these inheritance portions of the book of Joshua to see them not completely as allegorical but to see them as linked to the land. The land’s incredibly important.

Psalm 16 verses 5 and 6 says, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup. Thou maintainest my lot. The lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage.” That’s a perfect balance. God is his inheritance ultimately. Okay. And the Lord has blessed him. But the Lord maintains his lot, the divisions of his land. The lines are drawn for me in pleasant places. This talking about land here.

You know, we don’t want to miss that from this psalm. Yes, God is his inheritance. Yes, the spiritual realities are important, but the land is important, too. The spiritual reality ushers forth in the giving of a specific geography to Benjamin, the one beloved of the father. So, it’s very important that we see these things together.

And of course, we see the application of that to the New Testament and this is why world missions is so important—is that the lines are drawn over the whole earth in the New Testament and now we don’t have, as Richard talked about, a beachhead stronghold or a toehold or beachfront, whatever it was—we don’t have just a start. We got the whole world that Jesus sends us out into.

Okay, so what is this physical inheritance? It’s important. Now this is the last long list of borders and cities that we’re going to have before we move out of the book of Joshua and that’s why I wanted to take most of today all of what is left to deal with this physical inheritance as opposed to going on to the history of the tribe of Benjamin which we’ll do next week.

Now, okay, this beginning—the first of all, we have two things listed in chapter 18. We have the borders described of Benjamin and then we have the city lists of Benjamin. Okay, and the borders are laid out first. The north borders are laid out in verses 12 and 13 and then the west borders are laid out in verse 14. The southern border is laid out in verses 15 through 19 and then the east border is verse 20. Okay, so verses 12-20 is the borders and they go north, west, south and east and we’ll look at those in a minute.

And then secondly after that we then have two lists of cities given. First there are 12 cities that—scriptures don’t point this out explicitly. If you look at a map the first set of 12 cities enumerated here are in the east and the last set of 14 cities—12 + 2—are in the west. Okay.

The physical land that we’re talking about here—again, you can look at your map. It is essentially a strip of land between Mount Ephraim and the hills of Judah. While the northern border is not totally clear, it is definitely the southern border of Ephraim. Now, in chapter 16, in the first three verses, we had the southern border of Ephraim pointed out for us. And you can compare the northern border of Benjamin to the southern border of Ephraim and see if they’re essentially the same.

So they’re on the south of Ephraim and then as I said they’re on the north of Judah. Now it’s interesting that in the providence of God these two big tribes that would kind of struggle for leadership—Ephraim and Judah—in the beginnings of the Old Testament history they’re this buffer zone of Benjamin and then also Dan over on that side but mostly Benjamin between the two of them.

And Benjamin then as I said the warfare goes on of the tribe of Benjamin in their heart and soul. Do they side with Ephraim their blood so to speak or do they side with Judah who becomes or the covenant people, southern kingdom and David? And we’ll talk about that next week.

But anyway, this land is about 20 to 25 miles at the furthest point east to west and maybe 10 to 12 miles north to south. Okay, at the maximums. Those are maximums. It would be fairly easy to walk around this border in a week’s time or so. Okay, it was not that big an area. You could do it fairly leisurely, take some time to walk around the borders and that’s what we’re going to do here in just a couple of minutes.

There are some major cities in Benjamin. Rama, Gibiah, Gibeon, Mizpah. When it says Gibeah is one of the last cities listed at the end of chapter 18, that’s the same as Gibiah. And that becomes very important next week as we’ll talk about, but Gibiah is there. Jericho and Ai are within its borders. Jerusalem’s border just touches on Jerusalem. And there’s some disagreement among scholars, but essentially Jerusalem is essentially identified with Benjamin, the ruler for the kingly city of Jerusalem will come from Judah from the south. But the city itself belongs properly in the context to Benjamin.

Benjamin speaks of the right hand—like I said the name Benjamin means son of the right hand. The right hand in the scriptures—God’s right hand—is associated with power and strength. So the son of the right hand becomes powerful and strength and he is emblematic of that on your map. For instance, you look at Benjamin—that’s the power of God.

And it’s interesting that to the south of the power of God is Judah, the tribe that rules. Praise God is what Judah means. Praise Jehovah. But he’s the ruling tribe. Remember we said about from the blessings in Genesis 49. And to the north of Benjamin is Ephraim. And remember that means essentially fruitful, doubly fruitful.

And some commentators—the numeric Bible specifically—has talked about how really it’s very important that the right hand of God’s power is what develops rule and also leads to fruitfulness on the north. And so we’re talk about that a little bit now as we look at the borders of this city.

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Several years ago, my wife and I were looking at this book she bought from Costco, I think, on tools or something. And the fellow mentioned rogation day and we’d never heard of rogation day. Now, I think at the Catholic church, although I’m not sure, rogation days were, I think, three days of procession leading up to Ascension, the day of Ascension.

And I’m not sure how this even happened, but historically in the colonies here in the early days of this country and I think in the European countries as well, rogation days were days of processionals, but they were also days of asking for God’s blessing upon the land and fruitfulness there.

Well, I don’t know how it happened, but rogation day and the way this book used the term that Chris W. and I read, we did some study and we found out that at Rogation Days, they would take the oldest son out and they would go out and mark the borders of their land and then pray for the land. And they would actually, I’m not sure why, but they’d actually take the son out and he’d come to the border, you know, and say, “Well, this is where farmer Jones’s house is and this is our property and they’d bump him up against the fence post or the tree to make sure he learned the borders that were circumscribed for his particular household and his heritage.

And I think it’s interesting again in the providence of God and history that the Ascension of Christ is linked to the land, the understanding of the need for stewardship over the land and then God’s blessing upon our inheritance.

Well, we’re going to take a little rogation day walk around the inheritance of Benjamin, okay? Along these lists of borders and cities. And I hope I hope this doesn’t strike you as too odd. I want to just say right away here that many of these names, at least some of them, it’s hard to find out the real meaning in scripture. The language is not real clear in some cases. There’s some differences of commentators.

What I’m going to talk to you about now is by way of application as opposed to way of interpretation. Okay? There’s one interpretation for the text of scripture. There’s many applications. And here, you know, the specific interpretations—these are specific geographic points and boundaries drawn by God for the tribe of Benjamin. But by application, I want us to think a little bit about these boundaries and why these particular names are used.

At this missions conference I went to, there was a Wycliffe translator there. And I got to talking to him at lunchtime. I’ve heard about this thing called dynamic equivalency where for instance instead of translating the word sheep or shepherd, they’ll say pig or pig herder in certain tribes because these tribes have never seen sheep. They don’t have a word for sheep. They don’t know sheep. We’ll just call them pigs.

I’ve got a problem with that. I know that it’s common practice today for translators according to Wycliffe, people involved in the translation of the scriptures. And I thank God for Wycliffe, and I thank God for the men and women who sacrificially go out and try to do these things and are called to be professionals in terms of language translation. But I got a problem. As we were talking, this fellow said, “Well, you know, Jesus just used the common things of his day. He just happened to be around sheep, and so he would talk about sheep.”

See? Well, that’s the way I used to think. But when I became a thoroughgoing Calvinist and Van Tilian subject of God’s word. God is sovereign over all things. He’s decreed whatsoever comes to pass. Then I realized that no, no, it wasn’t like Jesus just got dropped into a cultural setting. The cultural setting was a result of God’s providence for 4,000 years leading up to that. And whatever place we have the scriptures come out of, whether it’s the Old Testament or Jesus’s time, whatever it is, the context is always God-given.

And I don’t know why God chose sheep. Why God said that Jesus is the lamb of God, the lamb of the world, the you know the lamb that was slain before all time for the sake of his people. I don’t know all the reasons. I can think of some applications but I’m not going to think I’m so wise as to know all the reasons.

I bring that up because these names are important. Every detail of history is important. And every detail in the scriptures is important. And these names are there for a specific reason. I don’t know the reason why some of these names are there. But I think that as we look through these names and what they mean in the Hebrew text, it can be used as an application to us in terms of our own Christian faith.

And I also want to use this exercise not just to talk about that and remind you of the Christian faith and what our life consists of, but I also want to use it to challenge you to do the same thing in your lives. If you live on a street, think about the name of the street when you’re driving that street. What does that mean? Now, not all the time. And I’m not saying you always got to be decoding symbols around you, but I’m saying that, you know, again, names are important and they’re given to us by God, and we should at least have an appreciation of them as teaching devices, if nothing else, for our children about the faith.

I saw them post 55 as I was driving on the freeway this morning. I was riding. My wife was driving. I don’t think she was going 55, but we were. I saw a sign that said 55 and five and five. And I thought of the five sets of commandments for how we love God and how we love our neighbor. And I’m not saying you got to think that way all the time, but I think these names are important to think through what they mean.

Okay, I belabor the point enough.

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Let’s look at them. Now, let’s look then at the borders of Benjamin. And first of all, the northern border. So, look to the verses here. Joshua 18. And get your outlines out and your maps out. We’ll look at some of these things.

The north border is described in verses 12 and 13. “And the border on the north side was from Jordan, and the border went up to the side of Jericho on the north side, and went up through the mountains westward, and the goings out thereof were at the wilderness of Bethaaven. And the border went out from there toward Lo to the side of Lo, which is Bethel, southward.”

The description, the starting point for the inheritance of Benjamin. And if we were going to do a rogation’s day walk in the tribe of Benjamin according to this circuit that God gives for us, we would start our walk around Benjamin’s inheritance at the River Jordan.

Now, by way of application again, the River Jordan is what? It is a symbol to us of death and judgment by God and then resurrection as they’re delivered out of the Jordan. The Jordan throughout the scriptures is used as a symbol of death and then for his people is resurrection crossing over the river Jordan in the grace of God following the ark representing the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ.

And I would suggest to you that our Christian life has that same point of origin. Our life in the empowerment and enlivened by the spirit begins with death and resurrection identification with the Lord Jesus Christ who goes before us with his death and his resurrection as he comes up out of the Jordan. And of course, our savior was baptized in that same river as a picture of the baptism that he would undergo at death and then his resurrection.

And when you go by the river Jordan in Palestine and when you read of it, you should have those kind of associations. And rivers in general represent that same thing to us.

And I’d ask you to make sure as you begin your Christian walk, your spiritual pilgrimage, as you walk around the inheritance, the lot that God gives you, to make sure that your starting point is not obedience to the law of God and is not somehow a belief in your abilities since you’ve been baptized, whatever, to have natural privilege before God, but that your starting point of your Christian life is the recognition that the wages of sin are death and that only Jesus Christ can pay the price for that sin of yours and he did pay it through his atonement.

Your starting point in your Christian life must be a realization. You must be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ in his death and then in his resurrection accepting his death. Your death can never atone for your sins. Only Christ can. But then the result of that, the result of your spiritual pilgrimage as it begins in identification with Christ’s death and resurrection is a daily putting to death your desires as they depart from God’s desires, as they walk outside of Christ’s desires.

The total claims the total body went through the river Jordan and God’s claims upon you are total to die to your own understanding, your own knowledge, your own power, your own skill, and instead be empowered by the Holy Spirit with knowledge, strength, power, and wisdom.

Okay, that’s the beginning place of the Christian life. And as this circuit of Benjamin continues, it goes through then to Jericho. And it’s interesting because it says “on the north side was from Jordan. The border went up to the side of Jericho on the north side.”

Now, promised land is in the northern hemisphere. And the north side of a mountain is the dark side of the mountain. That’s the land of shadows. I think it’s appropriate when we think of shadows occasionally to think of how God is with us through the valley of the shadow of death.

And our Christian life frequently we walk out and we go by Jericho as we’re traversing this route along with Benjamin. And we see the results of God’s judgment upon sin and the death and destruction to Jericho and the curse on anybody who would try to rebuild that city—to found a city to found their political structures, whatever it is upon the wisdom of man and his power and strength. That’s what Jericho represents—the fragrance of the world which we reject and becomes then to us a symbol of our own need to avoid the darkness of sin and death.

And so they passed through Jordan, passed from the Jordan rather to the north to the side of Jericho on the north side and up through the mountains westward and the goings out there were at the wilderness of Bethaaven.

Beth Aaven—Bethaaven is interpreted. Beth is house, Bethlehem, house of bread. Beth Aaven, Bethel, house of God. Beth Aaven is the house of vanity. And see all this association with Jericho, the north side, the shadows. And then Bethaaven, they go through Bethaaven on the circuit route. And it reminds them of the wages of sin and death. All sin ultimately is vanity and pride before God. And the house of pride is spoken of there in terms of wilderness. That’s the curse of God upon pride.

And those things would come through the mind of the sons of Benjamin as they traverse this route on their annual circuit to look at their borders. And then verse 13, “the border went out from there toward Lo to the side of Lo, which is Bethel, southward.”

Now, Lo origin was an area. Bethel was a city, but they came essentially to be associated as one specific area. They’re identical in the scriptures. They grow to be the same thing. Lo means consecration or be set apart. And Bethel means house of God.

And as we leave the Jordan in the resurrection power of Christ, as we forsake the city of Jericho and pass safely through the valley of the shadow of death and move past that house of pride and vanity in the wilderness of it, we then come to consecration to God—which is also Bethel—the house of God. God where we abide with God as we are consecrated to him.

And throughout the scriptures Jesus promises us that he will make his abode with us. He creates a house for us, but he also comes. He makes his abode with us through the Holy Spirit. We are Bethel. The city of the church is Bethel. The house of God and God comes to abide with us as we are consecrated and set apart to him and that consecration…