The Family Inheritance

Every once in a while, there's a story in the news about members of a wealthy family who are battling with each other over their share of the family inheritance.

Some of those battles are more serious and more intense than others, but a handful of them have made national news headlines at various times.

In 1991, when the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, passed away, one of his daughters filed a legal challenge over her portion of the inheritance by claiming that her father was not mentally competent at the time that his will was finalized.

She and her two siblings were each set to receive$500,000 in cash as well as a certain percentage of the family trust.

More specifically, her brother was supposed to get 50% of the trust, and she and her sister were each supposed to get 25%.

But about six weeks after his death, she hired a legal team to help her get a larger percentage of the trust.

However, she was unaware of the fact that her father included a no-contest clause in his will, which stated that any one of them who challenged it would automatically lose the inheritance that was left to them.

So apparently, even from the grave, this was a dad who didn't want to listen to fighting or complaining from his kids.

But that being the case, after filing this legal challenge, one of his daughters ultimately did lose out on her share of the family trust, which some estimate could have grown to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in future earnings.

Also in 2007, another wealthy family made news headlines when it was discovered that Leona Helmsley, the New York City real estate mogul, left a larger inheritance to her dog than she did to her own flesh and blood grandchildren.

Her only son Jay had already passed away before her, but instead of leaving her entire fortune to be split evenly among her four grandchildren, she left most of it to charity and gave a few million bucks to two of her grandkids and then left the other two with nothing, but then left a total of$12 million to her dog, a little Maltese named Trouble.

Not only that, her will also included specific instructions for how Trouble was to be cared for after she was gone.

For example, she designated$100,000 per year for security to protect the dog,$60,000 per year for a full-time caregiver,$18,000 per year for medical care, and$8,000 per year for grooming.

And to top it all off, she specified that when Trouble died, she wanted the dog to be buried beside her in the family mausoleum.

Meanwhile, two of her flesh and blood grandchildren were left out of the will entirely, and the other two were required to go visit their father's grave at least once per year, and then provide documentation of those visits in order to collect on their portion of the inheritance.

Family inheritances can be unpredictable and complicated because people are unpredictable and complicated.

Greed and jealousy and bitterness and relational conflict all have a direct impact on decisions that are made during the estate planning process in some families, because people are fickle and relationships are volatile, and time and time again promises are made, and then those same promises are broken, which sometimes makes the subject of family inheritance complicated.

But in the passage of scripture we're looking at this morning, we are reminded that the family inheritance for the household of God, those who are covenantally united to him by faith, is anything but unpredictable because the faithfulness of our heavenly Father is always perfectly predictable.

He is always faithful to his people and to his promises.

We've been marching through the book of Joshua for the past several weeks now, and as we come back to the text again this morning, we've officially reached a turning point in the narrator's account, which marks a whole new section of the book.

So chapters 1 through 12 make up the first section, which records the events of Joshua and the Israelite people first coming into the land of Canaan and beating all of their enemies in battle.

And then chapters 13 through 21 make up the second section, which actually records the official distribution of the land inheritance to the various tribes of Israel.

Now it took us 10 weeks to make our way through those first 12 chapters that make up the first section of the book.

But today we're covering all nine chapters of the second section in one shot.

And the reason we're doing that is not because these chapters don't matter, they matter greatly, but we're doing this because in chapters 13 through 21, the narrator lists out in meticulous detail the geographic allotments of the promised land.

In fact, throughout these nine chapters, well over 200 geographic locations or landmarks are listed, and the word inheritance appears roughly 50 different times.

So what we have in this section is a carefully crafted word map that describes in great detail the promised inheritance for all the various tribes of Israel.

So rather than spreading this section out over multiple weeks, we thought it just made sense to go ahead and cover all of it in one sermon.

And in order to do that, we are going to read every single word of these nine chaps.

No, we're not doing that.

You're like, I wouldn't put it past you though.

No, instead of doing that, I'm going to spend about 15 minutes giving a flyover summary of what is going on in all of these chapters.

And then we're going to land the plane at the very end of chapter 21, where we find the summary verses of not just this section, but really some would argue the summary verses for the entire book of Joshua, which we just heard read by Patrick a few minutes ago.

So hang with me this morning because even though many people would categorize these chapters as frankly being pretty boring, nonetheless, I do believe the Lord wants to encourage us this morning by reminding us of the promised inheritance that we have in Christ if we are united to him by faith.

Now the narrator begins this new section of the book in kind of a comical way.

I don't know if he's trying to be funny or not, but he writes this in verse 1 of chapter 13.

Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, You are old and advanced in years.

There's no way he didn't chuckle to himself when he wrote that.

But he says, You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.

And the second part of that statement is particularly interesting considering everything that's taken place in this book so far.

Over the past several weeks, we've covered chapter after chapter of Israelites defeating their enemies in battle, and we're even told at the end of chapter 11 that Joshua took the whole land according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses.

So by the end of that first section of the book, it seems as though the Israelites have taken full control of the promised land.

Everybody is defeated.

The land now belongs to them.

But then we get to chapter 13 and we find out that there's actually quite a bit of territory that is still left for them to possess.

But the difference is now the majority of the warfare and the battling is complete.

The fighting portion is kind of over.

By the providential hand of God, they have completely overwhelmed their enemies to the point where the vast majority of Canaanite resistance is overpowered and depleted.

And so now, even though there's still some Canaanites living kind of scattered throughout the land, the primary focus of the narrative now shifts from battling to officially possessing.

God is basically telling Joshua, the conquest is finished, that part is done, now it's time to take possession of everything that I am giving you.

In fact, after listing off all the regions that still need to be officially possessed, the Lord tells Joshua this at the end of verse 6 I myself will drive them out from before the people of Israel.

Only allot the land to Israel for an inheritance as I have commanded you.

In other words, I'll make sure nobody stops you.

You just focus on distributing the inheritance to each tribe of Israel.

Now, before all of the land starts getting portioned off, we are quickly reminded in the second half of chapter 13 that there were a few tribes whom Moses had promised land to on the eastern side of the Jordan rather than on the western side of the Jordan with the rest of the nation.

So the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh were all previously told that they could have plots of land east of the Jordan.

So the narrator reminds us of that fact first, and then from there, the next several chapters go into extensive detail about all the land allotments on the western side of the Jordan where the majority of the Canaanites had previously lived.

The first tribe to receive their inheritance, and for good reason, is the tribe of Judah.

You may recall from the book of Genesis that Jacob's son Judah got off to a pretty rocky start, made some pretty bad decisions, but he grew in character and leadership and even offered himself as a substitute to try to save the life of his youngest brother in Egypt.

And then, of course, if we skip ahead in the biblical story, we ultimately find that Judah is the tribe through which Jesus, the promised Messiah, would be born.

So naturally, as the tribe of the Messianic promise, Judah receives their land inheritance first.

And within that allotment for Judah, Caleb is specifically given his own city.

So remember, back when Moses sent spies into Canaan to kind of go get a good look at the land and see what it was going to be like, Joshua and Caleb were the only ones who came back and brought a positive report to Moses, fully believing that God would give them victory over their enemies.

And so even though Joshua was the one who was chosen as the successor to Moses, Caleb's faithfulness did not go overlooked.

We're told in chapter 14, verse 13, that Joshua blessed him and he gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunah, for an inheritance.

So chapters 14 and 15 deal with Caleb and the tribe of Judah.

And then as we move into chapters 16 and 17, we're told this in 16, verse 4.

The people of Joseph, Manasseh and Ephraim, received their inheritance.

So Joseph, because of his faithfulness and his leadership in Egypt, he was actually given a double portioned inheritance that was to be carried out through his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

And Manasseh specifically was such an extremely large tribe that they were given two separate allotments of land.

So the half tribe of Manasseh was first given a portion on the eastern side of the Jordan, and then the other half tribe was given land on the western side of the Jordan, next to the tribe of Ephraim.

So Joseph's double portioned inheritance that was carried out through his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, that's described in great detail.

And then we get to chapter 18, and we read this in verses one through six.

Then the whole congregation of the people of Israel assembled at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there, the land they subdued before them.

There remained among the people of Israel seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been apportioned.

So Joshua said to the people of Israel, How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land which the Lord the God of your fathers has given you?

Provide three men from each tribe, and I will send them out that they may set out and go up and down the land.

They shall write a description of it with a view to their inheritances, and then come to me.

They shall divide it into seven portions.

Judah shall continue in his territory on the south, and the house of Joseph shall continue in their territory on the north, and you shall describe the land in seven divisions, and bring the description here to me, and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord our God.

Alright, so first the narrator quickly mentions the fact that the tabernacle is now set up in Shiloh, and even though that's just a brief little verse, it is a significant detail, because from this point on, the tabernacle at Shiloh was now the epicenter of worship within the nation of Israel in the Promised Land, until the temple was finally built in Jerusalem three to four hundred years later, under the reign of King Solomon.

So the city of Shiloh becomes a very important location in the biblical story from this point forward.

But now that Judah and all the people of Joseph had received all of their inheritance and that the tabernacle is set up in Shiloh, there's still now seven tribes left who had not received their land yet.

And so Joshua tells them all, send three men from each remaining tribe and go survey the rest of the land together, and then bring a description of it back to me, and with all of the dividing lines of each territory, and then I will cast lots before the Lord to see which tribe gets which of those allotments of land.

Casting lots was an ancient Jewish practice to try to determine God's will in a given situation.

It's not a perfect comparison, but it's it's sort of like drawing straws or flipping a coin, but in a spiritual way.

They would sometimes use stones or sticks or other objects to determine what God would have them do.

And so in chapters 18 and 19, Joshua casts lots to decide the land portions for the rest of the nation.

And the first lot comes up on Benjamin, and then Simeon, and then Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan.

And then in verses 49 and 50 of chapter 19, we're told when they had finished distributing the several territories of the land as inheritances, the people of Israel gave an inheritance among them to Joshua, the son of Nun.

By the command of the Lord they gave him the city that he asked, Timat Sarah, in the hill country of Ephraim, and he rebuilt the city and settled in it.

So just like Caleb, Joshua was given his own city as an inheritance for himself, because of his faithful service to the Lord as the leader of Israel.

And it's not accidental that he received his last, because he was always a leader who put everyone else before himself.

And now as we move into the final two chapters of this second section of the book, chapters 20 and 21, all of the land has officially been divided between the various tribes, but in chapter 20, the narrator lists six specific cities within these different territories that are called cities of refuge.

So these were six cities throughout the nation of Israel where somebody could flee for safety if they had accidentally killed someone while doing manual labor.

And there's an example that's given back in Deuteronomy chapter 19 that says this.

Deuteronomy 19 · chapter mention

And if it was decided that it truly was an accident, then the person could safely live in that city and receive protection from any family members of the deceased person who might be looking for them.

It might strike us as kind of an odd little thing, but it was just one of many ways of maintaining law and order and proper justice between the families now that they were officially settled in the promised land.

And now, lastly, as we come to chapter 21, you may or may not have noticed that there's one tribe who did not receive a portion of the land.

So we've mentioned Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan, and we've mentioned Judah and the other half of Manasseh and Ephraim, and we've mentioned Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan.

But what about the tribe of Levi?

Why wasn't Levi given a territory of their own?

Well, in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, we are told that the Levites were given a special role within the nation.

This was the tribe that provided priests to minister in the tabernacle and carry out sacrifices for sins and teach God's laws and commandments to the rest of Israel.

And due to that special priestly role that they had, God told them long ago they were not going to be given a territory of land because God Himself was their inheritance.

In other words, the privileged role that God had given them was so special and so unique that they had no need for a territory of land because their entire purpose and calling was to minister in the tabernacle and teach God's law.

However, God still had an intentional plan for them within the promised land, even though they didn't get their own territory.

Chapter 21 lists out 48 different cities that the Lord had given to them that were spread all throughout the land of Canaan.

And this was very strategic because rather than putting all of the Levites together in one enclosed territory, instead, God spread them out into cities throughout all of the tribal territories so that every tribe and every territory had nearby access to the teaching of God's law.

Deuteronomy 33 specifies the fact that the Levites were responsible for faithfully teaching the Torah to all of Israel.

So by placing these 48 cities all throughout the nation, God was ensuring that regardless of where you lived, if you lived in Judah or Simeon or Naphtali or Gad, wherever you lived in the nation, you could always know that there was a Levite city nearby where a priest lived or priests lived who could teach you the laws and commandments of the Lord.

This was kind of like old covenant church planting.

We plant churches all over the globe today, so that everybody all over the world has close-by access to faithful Bible teaching.

And likewise, in this scenario, God planted Levite cities all over Israel so that everyone in the nation could have close-by teaching of the Torah.

And so now that the promised land has been fully inherited, we finish this nine-chapter section of the book with the following summary verses in Joshua 21, 43 through 45.

Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers.

And they took possession of it and settled there.

And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their fathers.

Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands.

Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed.

We need to take note of the exhaustive and comprehensive language of these verses.

God gave them all of the land.

He gave them rest on every side.

He gave all their enemies into their hands, and all of his promises came to pass.

So finally, after roughly 700 years, after God first called Abram and promised to give this land to his descendants, after 400 years of slavery in Egypt, and then 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and after facing off against over 30 different Canaanite kings and dozens of cities and territories, the Lord finally gave the Israelite people their promised inheritance.

But he didn't just give it to them.

I love that.

He gave it to them in astonishing and meticulous detail.

Every boundary, every territory, every city, every town is listed out with unbelievable specificity and precision.

And even though it might make for some challenging reading for us, it should still fill us with encouragement over the kind of Heavenly Father that we have.

Because God keeps every single promise down to every single detail for every single one of his people.

God keeps every single promise down to every single detail for every single one of his people.

Unlike a worldly family inheritance, which can be unpredictable because people are unpredictable.

And time and time again, promises are made and promises are broken because greed and jealousy and bitterness and relational conflict they all have an impact on the decisions that are.

Made in that process.

Unlike that reality, this section of the book of Joshua reminds us that the family inheritance for the household of God is anything but unpredictable because the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father is always perfectly predictable.

He keeps every single promise down to every single detail for every single one of his people.

See, as modern-day readers, we come to a section of scripture like this and our eyes glaze over and we get incredibly bored trying to make our way through it and read through it because the names of the places on this carefully crafted word map really mean nothing to us.

We're too far removed by time and place to read any of these locations and have them really mean anything.

It's completely foreign to us.

But you know who this wasn't boring for.

You know who this was unbelievably exciting for.

You know who would have been sitting on the edge of their seats for all of this.

The people receiving their inheritance.

To them, the detail with which God was fulfilling his promises to them would have been overwhelming.

It would have been stunning.

It would have been staggering.

It would have been anything but boring.

A few years ago, my wife and I were in the market for new siding on our house.

The old wooden siding we had was kind of starting to crumble and was looking pretty rough.

So we made some calls about replacing it with vinyl siding.

And the first place that we talked to was one of the big big box providers, which, if I said their name, you would know who it is.

And they sent someone out to our house and I sat down with them and he gave me his sales pitch, and the price that he quoted actually took my breath away.

Like I don't know what I was expecting because I was going in completely blind, but I was floored at how expensive it was.

So after that meeting, I did what everybody should do when they're considering a house project of some kind.

I called Jameson Masters to see if he had a siding guy.

Is Jameson in here?

He's out there, of course he is, serving out there.

And of course, he did, in fact, have a siding guy.

And he told me, this guy does great work, but he works alone.

He's a one-man show, so he doesn't move very fast.

But his attention to detail is incredible.

So I went ahead and I called the guy, and he came out to my house and he gave me a price that was less than half of what the big box company had quoted me.

And after one conversation, I was completely sold and I hired him, and sure enough, he was indeed a one-man show, and he was not in a hurry to get the job done.

In fact, I think it took him about two months to finish.

But his attention to detail was off the charts.

He was meticulous about making sure every square inch of the house was done absolutely perfectly.

So much so that there was one day where he couldn't make it there, so he sent a buddy of his to work on the house in his place.

And the next day when he got there, he didn't like the work that his buddy had done, so he took it all off and redid it all himself to make sure it was done properly.

So even though the job took a while, when it was all said and done, we could not have been more thrilled with the work that he did.

Have you ever had an experience like that?

Maybe you hired someone to do some work on your house or on your yard or on your car or something, and you were just blown away at their attention to detail, things you never would have even considered, things you never would have seen or thought about.

They had meticulous precision.

Well, friends, even our best experiences like that pale in comparison to the attention to detail that God has in keeping his promises to his people.

And I think as Christians, we regularly forget this because we hate waiting.

We hate waiting.

We would much rather put God on our timetable than have God put us on his timetable.

And this is especially true when we're praying for something in particular, right?

So we have something specific that we're bringing to God in prayer, that we're pleading with the Lord over.

We typically don't want to wait very long to see that prayer get answered.

And sometimes what happens is that while we are waiting, it can be tempting to think that God doesn't care about the details of our lives.

Maybe he only cares about big picture stuff, but he doesn't really care about the details, because if he did, he would answer those prayers the way that we want in the time frame that we want.

But the opposite is actually true.

It's not that he doesn't care about the details, it's that he cares about the details more than we do.

And he cares about more details than we do.

We might have one or two things that we find especially pressing or especially important, but in his perfect wisdom and sovereignty, the Lord has innumerable things that we cannot see, that he's doing in our lives at any given time, and his attention to detail with all of those things is more than we are capable of comprehending.

So just because we hate waiting, it doesn't mean that God doesn't care.

It just means he cares about more things than we do.

He cares about the details of our souls, he cares about the details of our Christ-likeness.

He cares about the details of our holiness, and he cares about the details of every single one of his promises to us, and he cares about all of it far more than we do.

In fact, he cares about all of it so much that he sent his son to secure all of it for us.

Which is why in 2 Corinthians 1 the Apostle Paul says that all the promises of God, again, notice that comprehensive and exhaustive language, all the promises of God find their yes in him, in Christ.

That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.

See, even though God gave the Israelites all of the land, and he gave them rest on every side, and he gave all of their enemies into their hands, and all of his promises came to pass, sadly, in the very next book of the Bible, in the book of Judges, we find out that after the death of Joshua, the people of Israel turned their back on the Lord and gave themselves over to evil idolatry.

Which means a physical inheritance of land was not enough to change the hearts of sinful people.

Instead, God's people needed a greater Joshua whose death didn't mean a temporary setback to their faithfulness, but whose death meant the permanent securing of their forgiveness.

Which is why Paul writes this in Galatians chapter 4, that when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

Galatians 4 · chapter mention

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

The land of Canaan in the days of Joshua was a small foretaste of the way that God delivers on his promises.

A small foretaste because the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are what truly secure an eternal family inheritance for everyone in the household of God.

For everyone who's united to him by grace through faith.

All the promises of God find their yes in Christ.

They don't find their yes in our good behavior.

They don't find their yes in our good performance.

They don't find their yes in our personal accomplishments.

All the promises of God find their yes in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

And because of that, our family inheritance can never be taken from us.

If you are in Christ, nobody can take your inheritance from you.

And it's an inheritance beyond our wildest dreams, an inheritance that includes eternal life with our Creator and a new heavens and a new earth where the sting of sin and suffering and sickness and death will be removed forever, and in place of those things will be nothing but perfect peace and total comfort and fullness of joy forever and ever and ever and ever.

In fact, I want to close our time this morning by reading a passage of incredible detail that describes with meticulous precision just some of what is included in our family inheritance.

As the Apostle John was given a vision from the Lord with these amazing images depicting beauty and purity of the new creation to come, he wrote these unbelievable words in Revelation 21, starting in verse 9.

Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me, saying, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

And he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal.

It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and at the twelve gates angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the Son of Israel were inscribed.

On the east, three gates, on the north three gates, on the south, three gates, on the west, three gates, and the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls.

The city lies four square, its length the same as its width, and he measured the city with a rod, twelve thousand stadia, its length and width and height are equal.

He also measured its wall, one hundred and forty-four cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement.

The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold like clear glass.

The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel.

The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third Agate, the fourth, emerald, the fifth Onyx, the sixth Cornelian, the seventh, Chrysalite, the eighth barrel, the ninth, topaz, the tenth, Chrysoprase, the eleventh Jasinth, and the twelfth Amethyst.

And the twelfth twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there, and they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

There is a lot to unpack there.

But for now it is just a powerful reminder of the breathtaking beauty and purity that is awaiting everyone who repents of their sin and trusts in Christ.

And even though waiting is extremely hard, we can rest in the faithfulness of Jesus, knowing that nobody can take our inheritance from us.

And we can cling to the truth that God keeps every single promise down to every single detail for every single one of his people.