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Preacher: Pastor David Ball
Scripture: Joshua 18:1-10
In Joshua 18, God’s people were reluctant to claim the inheritance that had been given to them by God. Despite the riches of His blessing they had become quite content with their lives the way they were. Like God’s people in Joshua 18, we also fail to claim the fullness of our inheritance in Christ. We grow content with our lives the way they are. When the surpassing riches of our inheritance in Christ are just waiting to be claimed. Jesus is calling us to a new life of freedom as the heirs of His glorious Kingdom, and all we have to do is claim what has been given to us by God’s grace.
Transcript
Can you imagine not accepting an inheritance that was offered to you can you imagine that uh it does happen and sometimes purposefully uh Ironically in fact I heard of one just a few minutes ago AG go about a very good reason to not receive an inheritance because it could be passed on to the next person uh who would be the inheritor uh maybe it could be decided that you would deny an inheritance because you wanted to uh avoid the creditors who were going to come after you right and you wanted to protect it so you passed it on to the next person uh who would receive it or or maybe it was for some personal conviction that you might have had that uh you just weren’t about to accept this inheritance from this person because they were just that disgusting um but most often uh it doesn’t really you know it happens on purpose but but most often it probably happens actually by accident surprisingly billions of dollars worth of inheritance go unclaimed every year it’s kind of shocking isn’t it I know you lawyers and bankers out there probably have experienced that in some ways uh and you know what happens when the when that inh heritance goes unclaimed right Uncle Sam gets it right and we don’t want that so you need to do good estate planning uh to make sure that that that doesn’t happen you don’t need them managing uh your money do you know what the largest unclaimed inheritance in American history is I didn’t but I looked it up uh in 2016 a Chicago res presid by the the name Joseph stancak I think I’m pronouncing his name right passed away at the age of 87 uh and stancak uh despite living a a misery existence at least as described by his neighbors uh when he died he left an estate that was valued at 11
million1 million which is the largest according to this article Anyway by uh Katherine Hatter who’s a lawyer who was writing about this which is the largest unclaimed property amount in American history and uh when he died he died without a will and uh he never had any children and his six siblings died before he did and they didn’t have any children of their own can you imagine
all those riches and no one there to claim them now lawyers got involved and they desperately have tried to figure out the figure out who what descendants exist how far you have to go back it goes all the way back to uh uh to Eastern Europe that they’ve tried to find some people and since then some some random group has come in and said that there actually is a will that exists that suddenly appeared you know how that goes uh all that’s still happening it’s in Probate Court so you’ll have to be watching for what what eventually happens with all of that now if you were named the inheritor of his estate and all of his riches would you receive it sure right of course you would why why wouldn’t you uh and without hesitation I hope uh you You’ drop everything you’d run to Chicago to the courthouse as fast as you can and you’d lay down your claim for The Inheritance that was uh was given to you sure you would but that’s right and you’d give 10% at least to the Lord’s work at church of our
savior that’s right a bridge to the Future
amen but can you imagine being named the uh the to be named as the heir of that inheritance and thinking this you know what I think I’ll just wait a little bit before I decide to go and claim it I’ll just wait it out or maybe you know what I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now uh you know I I’ll maybe worry about that later or or thinking you know I I’ve got I’ve got it pretty good right now life’s fine you know I’ve got everything I’m content and that money maybe will just create bigger problems in my life and so I’ll just ignore it seems ridiculous right I know I know none of us would would do that and yet in Joshua 18 that seems to be exactly what God’s people were thinking in some way concerning their inheritance The Inheritance that God had so graciously given to them and as Joshua 18 is a foreshadowing of of the Gospel the good news of Jesus Christ it’s a picture of how we handle the inheritance that’s been so freely given to us by God through the finished work of his son Jesus Christ neglecting it and more often than not leaving it completely
unclaimed and the dire way that that affects not only our own lives but the lives o of the people around us is not insignificant ultimately Joshua 18 is for us a wakeup call it’s a wakeup call to us to claim daily The unsurpassing Riches of The Inheritance that God of God’s grace that’s been given to us and our Savior Jesus Christ and get there I want us to work together through at least the first three verses of Joshua 18 and so I invite you to open uh your bulletins or your Bibles to Joshua 18 really I’m only asking for three verses here so I think you we can handle it uh uh we are going to look at another book of the Bible too with it but uh but in verse one this is this is what we’re told for those who are visiting with us today we’ve been working through Joshua uh for a long time now so we uh uh I I don’t want to take for granted that you know what’s going on we’re we’re in the midst of the allotments that are being given to all the tribes of Israel it gets a bit monotonous uh but even these are pointing us to Jesus and and we’re finding out as we work through them and this is what verse one tells us 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 so some interesting things here that were told uh the tent of meeting that where the Tabernacle is where the Ark of the Covenant is held has found its new home for the next 369 years as best as we can tell uh historically and from the the biblical record uh this is the place where the Ark of the Covenant will be located now after wandering with God’s people through the the 40 Years of desert wandering it’s now found its home for the next 369 years this is the place the tent of meeting where God God meets with his people where God meets with his people and it’s going to remain in Shiloh until the days of Samuel uh when the people call for it to be brought uh to another town while they were battling God’s people were battling against the the Philistines and they hoped that by bringing the ark that it would give them a special blessing and give them Victory but they really were just treating God like some sort of magic Idol uh that they could invoke for their their own blessing uh and the Ark ended up being captured and carried carried off in into uh to the Philistines but in Joshua 18 the tent of meeting the Tabernacle and the Ark are all set up here for the first time in Shiloh and God meets with his people who have gathered together here as the allotment of the rest of the tribes is happening and then we’re told in verse two there remained among the people of Israel seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been a portioned now we’ve been reading all about these allotments of the land for the tribes of Israel for the past uh well it feels like forever uh all but seven have been accounted for thus far uh but for the seven that remain this seems to be more than just an issue of them waiting patiently for the will to be read there seems to be more going on here than that so that they could then once the will was read they could then take possession of of that which God had so graciously given them for an inheritance there’s something more going on because in Joshua 18:3 Joshua says this to the remaining seven tribes how long will you put off going in to take possession of the land which the Lord the god of your fathers has given to you how long will you put it off what this tells us is the
allotment hasn’t take taken place because they haven’t yet done what they were supposed to do to com to claim what was theirs Joshua asked them how long will you put off going in to take possession of the land the word translated is put off it also means to relax or to wait or to even in extreme cases it can mean to abandon how long will you abandon taking possession of The Inheritance that God has so graciously given you you know this doesn’t paint a positive picture of why they haven’t taken possession of the land yet you know the King this is where it can be kind of helpful to look at some of the different translations and how they uh translated the same word to put off King James version says how long are ye slack to go to possess the land so basically King James version is calling them Slackers right they’re just a bunch of slackers they’re not doing it the new King James version says how long will you neglect to go and possess the land so basically uh the new King James version was calling them neglectful they were neglectful in their duties to do what they should have done the message by Eugene Peterson which I wouldn’t call a translation but it’s at least a a beautiful commentary uh on this uh on the Bible says how long are you going to sit around on your hands putting off taking possession of the land that the God lord your God has given you I love that image sitting on your hands right but here’s my favorite translation of it and this comes from the Wickliffe Bible uh and for those who are the history nerds uh the wickliff Bible is the first uh unauthorized English translation of the Bible right got wickliff in a lot of trouble uh but uh but he translated it now we uh Anglican snobs will also will claim that the first authorized translation of the English Bible that came through Thomas krer and Henry VII uh later in the great Bible but the wickliff Bible is good enough uh but this is what uh this is how Wickliffe translated this verse he said this how long fade ye or wallow through sloth and enter not to wield the land which the Lord hath given ye that’s beautiful isn’t it that’s beautiful so the question is why did they put it off why did they put it off in such a way as to Garner the the rebuke or encouragement maybe of of Joshua but it sounds pretty pretty harsh he’s you know he’s giving them a sharp rebuke here uh the Bible translators have described them as Slackers neglectful lazy at best
reluctant but there have to be some good reasons right I mean this doesn’t just uh this doesn’t just happen in a vacuum there’s reasons for why they would have responded this way because this is like being offered 11 million inheritance and just taking your sweet time to collect it unfortunately the text doesn’t tell us exactly it doesn’t tell us exactly why uh but we can make some I think contextual assumptions or at best look at the possibilities for why they might have been neglectful in doing this maybe that they’ve been afraid maybe they’ve been
afraid now we’re told that the the
laidback we’re told that the land laid now subdued for the the first time right the whole land was subdued but there’s been violent opposition up to this point maybe they were just afraid to take it maybe they were afraid to take what God had already promised for them maybe it was a sense of Doubt or or or skepticism was the reason why they didn’t do it will God really give this to us will he really is he really good can we really trust him because this is risky
or maybe there’s this sense of feeling of you know we really did this under our own strength anyway we we won by our own uh our own military prowess our own strength and if we did it ourselves then how do we know that we’re going to be able to possess it now maybe we don’t have the strength maybe we don’t have the resources to accomplish it now or maybe it was just laziness or maybe it was just a sense of laziness that comes with contentment you know think think about it that way you know uh that you know we’ve come a long way we’ve got it pretty good now we’ve certainly got it a lot better than we used to we were wandering in the desert and now we’ve got at least a bigger land like we’re here we’re comfortable it sounds like a lot of challenging work to take the next step to do what God’s told us to do and once we get it it’s not just like a free gift now we got to defend it now we got to maintain it no thanks we’ve got all that we can handle right now on our own thank you very much or or maybe they were just tired maybe they were just tired fatigue maybe they just said we’ve been through a lot and we just don’t have the ener ener to do this right now we just can’t or maybe they were discouraged in some way the truth is we don’t know exactly but most likely it was one of these reasons or uh probably a combination and I think uh we’ll get to what I think was really uh the driving reason uh in just a few minutes uh it it took the Gathering of God’s people around the presence of God himself in the tent of meeting and the encouragement and the sharp rebuke of their leader to get them to move to get them to move forward and to lay claim to what God had already
declared was theirs to begin with it was already theirs all they had to do was claim it so what does this have to do with us my friends we have been given a far greater inheritance than the people of God in Joshua 18 could have ever hoped for or possibly imagined an inheritance of unsurpassing wealth an eternal inheritance with Christ and yet most of us walk around every day as if uh we’re destitute and helpless and we fight with everyone for every little morsel of the thing that we can find left but we think in this idea of scarcity that it’s all that’s going to be left and we better get
ours you know CS Lewis described it this way and I’m sure I’ve read this quote many times but you probably forget or hopefully you do and so it seems new again uh and the and the weight of Glory CS Lewis wrote this we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite Joy is offered to us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea we are far too easily pleased and in the end I think CS LS in that quote was nailed the reason why God’s people in Joshua 18 failed to claim their enhan and their inheritance and why we on a day-to-day level fail to Fully live into and claim our inheritance in Christ that’s been given to us as the free gift of God’s grace through the death and resurrection of his son Our Savior Jesus Christ we don’t have to live in
doubt we don’t have to live in doubt through the death and resurrection of our savior J Jesus Christ he’s proclaimed that he has chosen in us we don’t have to try harder to be righteous because we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus and now we’re free to Bear the fruit of that righteousness in our lives we don’t have to question who we are and trying to make a name for ourselves through ruthless ambition because we are sons of God meaning we’re kings and queens we have nothing more to prove to anyone we don’t have to prove our worth because we have been redeemed by the blood of our savior we are of infinite Worth to him who is willing to die for
us we don’t have to fear the past and all that the mistakes that we’ve made or carry the guilt and The Shame of the things that we’ve done and the things that we’ve left undone because in Christ we’ve been
forgiven 1 Peter 2 verse 24 he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness by his wounds you have been healed and in Christ we don’t have to do life on our
own for we’ve been given the helper the promised one the Holy Spirit spirit of God to dwell in us through faith in Jesus the Holy Spirit who is at work in US convicting us convincing us of Jesus every day these are the riches of our inheritance in Christ if you want a concise place that that that lists out the The Riches of our inheritance go to Ephesians 1 it write it lists all these out for us blessed be God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as Sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glorious Grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved in him we have Redemption through his blood the Forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace which he lavished Upon Us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose for which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him things in heaven and on Earth in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who worked all things according to the counsel of his will so that we who were the first to Hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory in him you also when you heard the word of Truth The Gospel of your salvation and believed in him we’re sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory that’s our inheritance that we have in Christ that is ours this is the riches The Riches of our inheritance in Christ and yet many days we fail to claim them don’t
we and we fall into doubt we fear we’re not good enough for God we think that we’re nothing more than orphans left in this world we think that we have to prove our Worth to everyone we meet letting everyone know how important we really are I don’t know about you but I find myself doing that all the time and it’s it’s not as overt like I I I know how to do it stealthily enough you know to steer the conversation back to me um you know to like chime in with my little story about myself oh I know it’s your saying is important but here’s how here here’s bring it back to me like how my situation you know I I I do that all the time I’m sure you
don’t we’re consumed by our own guilt and shame absolutely crippling in our lives why why do we struggle so much to claim our inheritance and to live into the freedom of what Christ has done once and for all for us I think it goes back to Joshua 18 and what CS Lewis described we’re we’re far too easily pleased by what this world has to offer we’re far too easily pleased far too content with the way things are and we cannot even fathom the full Riches of The Inheritance that’s being guarded for us in the Heavenly Realms and so we just don’t claim it maybe we think we don’t need it we can get along just fine everything is going all right but you know what not claiming your inheritance an here’s what it first of all does to us
ourselves you’ll never be good enough you’ll never be good enough you’ll receive every criticism that people have to offer you and it’s a lot it’s a lot and you’ll take it deeply to heart and eventually it’ll Crush you you’ll be crushed by everyone else’s expectations of you it’ll lead to insecurity a troubled Spirit a fearfulness in life that’s what failing to claim The Inheritance that has been won for us by Christ that’s the fruit it yields in our lives and you know what it not only treats the way we see it affects the way we see ourselves it affects the way that we treat other people around us in our
lives because the truth is in our mind they’ll never quite be good enough or they’ll never be exactly the way that we think they should be or the way that we want them to be and so the fruit that we bear of not claiming our inheritance is usually more of a spirit of
judgmentalism we condemn people we’re certainly
impatient and most likely angry at the people around us but let’s look at what a life of of claimed inheritance looks like you know what a life of claimed inheritance looks like it looks loving and peaceful and patient and kind and merciful and good and faithful and gentle and one with self-control I’m not just making this up that’s Galatians 5 that’s the fruit of the spirit that our inheritance in Christ that’s the fruit that dwells in us when we have claimed that our inheritance that is the fruit that is being born in us friends today as Joshua called out the seven tribes for their neglect of God ‘s gift and their contentment but just the way things were Jesus is calling us out Jesus is calling us out just consider those words from our Gospel reading in John 15 Jesus said you didn’t choose me but I chose you and I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide that fruit of the spirit claiming your inheritance claim cling who you are now in me what I have won for you these things I command you that you love one another that’s the ultimate outward sign of our claimed inheritance isn’t it that we have love for one
another friends the will has been read the promise of God’s inherit in Christ it’s been given to you will you trust God and all that he has given to you and claim it for your own today and every day amen
[Music]
