Joshua 13:1-23. I hope that you all stay with me through this section of Joshua it is very detailed. Actually the detail is what is interesting to me today. Over the past several days, actually extending back into our reading in Judges, I have tried to stay up with the geography. I have used the maps in the back of my Bible and a Bible dictionary. Sometimes the places mentioned are no longer known. Sometimes experts are unsure about the exact location. So what does that mean to us? There are several things we can learn from this.
First the Bible has many critics. People just don’t like what it has to say. If you have read “The Old Testament Connection” you know that the message of the Bible is about human failure and the need for God’s help. This is very offensive to people that want to believe in man’s goodness or ability to do everything. Other people are insulted by the idea that there is only one way to God. Others don’t like the idea of right and wrong or they don’t like the specific right’s and wrong’s in the Bible. For some reason though people cannot just ignore the Bible. If you don’t like it why not just blow it off? “Hey, why can’t we just coexist?” some people say. But they are usually unwilling to do that, they want to disprove the Bible every way they can. Of course this has been going on for a long time. Satan tempted Eve not to believe what God had told them. When Jesus’ body came up missing the religious leaders paid the guards to say Jesus was stolen (Matthew 28:11-15), and when Paul started talking about the resurrection to a group of listeners they made fun of him and left (Acts 17:32).
That is where a list like this becomes very interesting. One way people down through the ages have tried to discredit the Bible is by attacking the geography or archaeology in it. “This guy never existed. That city was never there. Those people never existed.” Those sorts of statements are made all the time. The problem is that the world is a big place, even a territory as small as Israel is still a big place. And these events happened a long time ago. Cities were built on certain locations because of things like tactical advantage (high and unapproachable or hidden) resources (like fresh water, good farm land, a harbor) or perhaps other reasons. When a city was destroyed by a calamity (like fire, flood, or earthquake) or by an invasion it would often be rebuilt on the same site maybe even reusing some of the same materials. But things like tablets from a destroyed library would not be salvaged. Later on writings on skins or paper would have been destroyed all together, at least by a fire. This stuff would be buried and forgotten. If evidence of people and places still exists it may very well be buried still. Archaeology is discovering new stuff every year. So to say another place or person never existed because we haven’t found any evidence is inappropriate. And to say the Bible is inaccurate or false because it mentions theses places is also premature.
On the other hand the kind of detail in a list like this could disprove the Bible if it could be proven false. If a verse in the Bible said that a person “walked from Jerusalem toward the setting sun until he reached the Jordan River, a journey of two hours” we would know that the verses was a lie. The Jordan is east not west of Jerusalem. If a person wanted to go west from Jerusalem to the Jordan River it would take much more that 2 hours and they would have to do a lot of swimming. If the Bible were made up by men they probably would not include so much detail and would be very sure of the detail that they did include.
But the part of the detail that I like the best is how specific God is with giving the land to the Israelites and how much land there is. Two stories in my life will help you know why I like the detail. First, most mornings I get up and weigh myself. I have the scale in the same place. I use the same scale. I step on the scale the same way. I try to be wearing the same clothes. Sometimes I will step on the scale and realize I have my keys in my pocket or I left my socks on. I will get rid of the extra items and reweigh. Once in a while a whole pound will disappear because I put my keys down or took my socks off (I love it when that happens). Now my keys or socks do not weigh a whole pound. What I am seeing is the effects of the precision of the scale. It only weighs to the nearest ½ pound. If I get rid of something that weights right around ½ pound it can drop a whole pound. These stories in the Bible are very precise. Abraham was promised all the land he could see from a certain place (Genesis 13:14-14). Not very precise. In Joshua the division of the land is very specific. Now for the second story. Several years ago there was a news story about Israel. There was talk about a treaty between the Israelites and the “Palestinians”. And they were talking about land on the “West Bank”. They were talking about land on the west side of the Jordan River. At the time I remember thinking, “The West Bank? That all belongs to Israel, or should.” Even a dummy like me knew that there should be no dispute about that land being part of the land promised to the Israelites. God’s description is much more exact than “all the land you can see” or “the west bank”. God’s division, which he had Joshua and Eleazar (Numbers 34:16-29) do was city by city, valley by valley. The lines were very exact. And the timing of the ownership was very exact too, forever (Genesis 13:15, Exodus 32:13). And even now 3400 years later while we dispute the boundaries of the land that Israel should own God knows exactly where every town was, every valley, every tree or stone or what ever made up the boundaries. For us things change but God remembers.
Israel does not have all the land, I’m not sure they ever actually controlled all of it. Throughout their history they may have come close but really I think they are still waiting. And that’s OK. There is a lot of waiting in the Bible. God is patient (2 Peter 3:9), the Old Testament prophets and others were patient (Hebrew 11) and we need to be patient too. And we can be because the Bible is accurate and everything that we can verify has checked out. God is 100% on His promises so far and we should be sure that he will be 100% on all of them, down to the smallest detail. When men make promises we paint big pictures to give ourselves lots of room for mistakes. But God is very detailed and is faithful and powerful to finish exactly what he started. Thank you Lord for being so specific. The fact that so many details are included in your plan gives me a lot of comfort. I know that your promises are not fortune cookie promises. “Something good will come to you soon” then a plastic bag shows up on my porch to fill with stuff for Good Will. You have promised eternal life, peace, resurrection, and so much more. Thank you for loving me. And thank you for loving others, every single person in the whole world. Thank you for using your power so specifically for us.
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