Joshua 15-18: Have You Ever Waited 600 Years for Something?

"Then the whole congregation of the people of Israel assembled at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there. The land lay subdued before them." Joshua 18:1

Have you ever waited 600 years for something? I bet not. However, the people of Israel did. In the time of Abraham (around 2000ish B.C.), God made a promise that Abraham's descendants would inherit the land of Canaan (see Genesis 12:1-9). Around six hundred years later in the time of Joshua (1406 B.C.), that promise was finally fulfilled. Talk about patience!

This morning we open up to God's Word and find some of the most exciting portions in all of the Bible: the land allotments to the tribes of Israel. What? Not the part that you were thinking when I said the word "exciting"? Well, let me gently say that you may be reading your Bible wrong, because they are exciting! Although there is a lot of detail of old cities and rivers that we don't know much about, these are still the inspired words of God, and we ought to figure out why they are written down for us and how they can apply to our lives.

Most simply, as I've stated above, these words in Joshua 15-18 and following are a testimony to how Israel received the land that it was promised hundreds of years before, but what does this mean? Well, in order to answer that question, we have to bounce back to Genesis 12 where God promised to make a covenant with Abraham, a big part of that covenant promising the land that his future posterity would inherit. We might find this covenant rather odd, since neither Abraham, his direct sons (Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph), or even Moses never fully inherited the land (see Hebrews 11:39-40). However, the promise was still not in vain. The very hope that drove Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses would be the very same hope that came to fulfillment in the book of Joshua, specifically in Joshua 15-18.

Thus, we find one great message from these chapters: that God is a God who keeps his promises. Let us note how it did take six hundred years, but God did eventually fulfill his promises. Yet how can we apply this to our lives today? Often, people consider the Old Testament old, dull, and inapplicable to our daily lives. My response would be this, "Have you ever read the Old Testament?" I don't know about you, but finding story upon story about how God is a faithful God who keeps his promises is nothing "old," "dull," or "inapplicable." Especially in the lives that were are living today, amidst a time of great chaos and uncertainty, is it not comforting to know that we serve a God who keeps his promises? Amen!

So, my admonition for you today is this: take faith in a God who is faithful to his promises. Furthermore, let us be patient as well. Have you found it difficult to trust in the Lord to be faithful for a day, a week, or perhaps even a month (the given time length of, oh I don't know, a "Safer at Home" order?)? Well, keep waiting, because the Lord is always faithful to his word. And what promises will he be faithful to, do you ask? Well, all of them, but perhaps this one may be especially comforting to you today, as it is for me:

". . .be content with what you have, for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.' So we can confidently say, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?'" Hebrews 13:5b-6