Joshua 21
Amen. Please turn in your copy
of God’s word to Joshua 21. Joshua 21 is a chapter in its
entirety about the Levites not receiving an inheritance, but
having places to live. We’ll talk about that and explain
that a bit more. Uh, if you flip over a page or
two, you can see, we only have three chapters to go, uh, after
this. So we’re nearing the end of Joshua.
And I think, uh, the next place to go is judges. So, uh, we’ll
probably be doing that. So on Wednesday evenings, we’ll
finish, uh, Genesis very soon and do Exodus and Lord willing
in the years to come Leviticus numbers, Deuteronomy. And then
we’ll have been through Joshua judges. Um, it would be fun to
do Samuel and Kings and Chronicles on Sunday nights. We’ll see what
we can do. Uh, and so with that in mind,
make your way to Joshua 21 and hear God’s word together with
me as I read it. Then the heads of the fathers,
houses of the Levites came to Eliezer, the priest and to Joshua,
the son of nine. and to the heads of the fathers’
houses of the tribes of the people of Israel. And they said to them
at Shiloh in the land of Canaan, the Lord commanded through Moses
that we be given cities to dwell in along with their pasture lands
for our livestock. So by command of the Lord, the
people of Israel gave to the Levites the following cities
and pasture lands out of their inheritance. The lot came out
for the clans of the Kohathites. So those Levites who were descendants
of Aaron, the priest received by lot from the tribes of Judah,
Simeon, Benjamin, 13 cities. And the rest of the Kohathites
received by lot from the clans of the tribe of Ephraim, from
the tribe of Dan, and the half tribe of Manasseh, 10 cities.
The Gershonites received by lot from the clans of the tribe of
Issachar, from the tribe of Asher, and from the tribe of Naphtali,
and from the half tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, 13 cities. The Merorites,
according to their clans, received from the tribe of Reuben, the
tribe of Gad, and the tribe of Zebulun, 12 cities. These cities
and their pasture lands, the people of Israel gave by lot
to the Levites, as the Lord had commanded through Moses. Out
of the tribe of the people of Judah and the tribe of the people
of Simeon, they gave the following cities mentioned by name. which
went to the descendants of Aaron, one of the clans of the Kohathites,
who belonged to the people of Levi, since the lot fell to them
first. They gave them Kiriath Arba,
Arba being the father of Anak, that is Hebron in the hill country
of Judah, along with the pasture lands around it. But the fields
of the city and its villages had been given to Caleb, the
son of Jephunneh, as his possession. And to the descendants of Aaron
the priest, they gave Hebron the city of refuge for the manslayer
with its pasture lands. Libna with its pasture lands,
Jatir with its pasture lands, Eshtimoa with its pasture lands,
Holon with its pasture lands, Dabir with its pasture lands,
Aon with its pasture lands, Jutta with its pasture lands, Beth
Shemesh with its pasture lands, nine cities out of these two
tribes. Then out of the tribe of Benjamin, Gibeon with its
pasture lands, Geba with its pasture lands, Anathoth with
its pasture lands, and Almon with its pasture lands, four
cities. The cities of the descendants
of Aaron the priest were in all 13 cities with their pasture
lands. As to the rest of the Kohathites
belonging to the Kohathite clans of the Levites, the cities allotted
to them were out of the tribe of Ephraim. To them were given
Shechem, the city of refuge for the manslayer with its pasture
lands, and the hill country of Ephraim, Gezer with all its pasture
lands, Kibzaim with its pasture lands, Beth-horon with its pasture
lands, four cities, and out of the tribe of Dan, Eltike, with
its pasture lands, Gibethon with its pasture lands, Ajalon with
its pasture lands, Gathrimon with its pasture lands, four
cities, and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Tanakh with its
pasture lands, Gathrimon with its pasture lands, two cities.
The cities of the clans of the rest of the Kohathites were Tenenal
with their pasture lands. and to the Gershonites, one of
the clans of the Levites, were given out of the half-tribe of
Manasseh, Golan and Bashan with its pasture lands, the city of
refuge for the manslayer, and Beshtara with its pasture lands,
two cities, and out of the tribe of Issachar, Kishyon with its
pasture lands, Daburath with its pasture lands, Jarmuth with
its pasture lands, in Ganim with its pasture lands, four cities. And out of the tribe of Asher,
Mishel with its pasture lands, Abdon with its pasture lands,
Helkath with its pasture lands, and Rehob with his pasture lands,
four cities. And out of the tribe of Naphtali,
Kedesh, and Galilee with its pasture lands, the city of refuge
for the manslayer, Hamoth Dor with its pasture lands, and Karten
with its pasture lands, three cities. The cities of the several
clans of the Gershonites were in all 13 with their pasture
lands. And to the rest of the Levites,
the Mererite clans were given out of the tribe of Zebulun,
Jotnium with its pasture lands, Karta, with its pasture lands,
Demna with its pasture lands, Nahlah with its pasture lands,
four cities, and out of the tribe of Ruman, Bezer with its pasture
lands, Jehez with its pasture lands, Kedemoth with its pasture
lands, and Mephith with its pasture lands, four cities, and out of
the tribe of Gad, Ramoth and Gilead with its pasture lands,
the city of refuge for the manslaver, Slayer Mahanim with its pasture
lands, Heshbon with its pasture lands, Jezer with its pasture
lands, four cities in all. As for the cities of the several
Merite clans, that is the remainder of the clans of Levites, those
allotted to them were in all 12 cities. The cities of the
Levites in the midst of the possession of the people of Israel were
in all 48 cities with their pasture lands. These cities each had
its pasture lands around it, so it was with all their cities.
Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to
give to their fathers. And they took possession of it
and they 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
them 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. all came to pass. Amen. The word of the living
God. Well, hopefully you have never
said these words. I know some of us in the room
have heard these words and they’re terrible words. Lord, you keep
him humble and we’ll keep him poor. Those are the famous or
infamous words of usually the boss elder in a church. Lord,
what a pious prayer. Lord, you keep him humble and
we’ll keep him poor. I was sitting at a men’s breakfast.
This would have been 20 years ago when I was in seminary. I
sat with these guys every Friday morning at breakfast, and I think
it did not connect with them that I was a preacher’s kid.
I was a seminary student. I was an intern in the church,
and that probably meant that someday, very soon, I would become
a preacher. And one of them had the nerve
to say this, boy, preachers sure have it made. They have a free
house and a Buick. What else do they need? I can
remember who said it, when he said it, what chair he was sitting
in, and I remember staring holes in him. Tacky comments abound
for people in ministry all the time. Oh, why do you need insurance? Let the Lord take care of you.
I know some of you pastors, some of you pastors’ wives, some of
you PKs in the room, you know how this goes. Or let his wife
work. Let his wife work, she’ll make
the extras that we don’t want to pay him. I have lived and
seen both extremes as a preacher’s kid and both as a pastor. I grew
up in two mansions. I’ve never lived in one as a
pastor myself. But I have seen people be generous
to ministers and I’ve seen people be awful to ministers. I can
remember as a kid, the local oil man would bring heating oil
to the church. And he would bring some over
to the manse. I was very little when I saw
this, but I remember one church dispute where he didn’t get his
way. And so there was no heating oil
for the church or for the manse that year. And so you could see
this fellow leverage his giving or his lack thereof in the life
of the church. I’ve seen my parents go through
a stretch of ministry. We had no health insurance. We
had no nothing. But the Lord took care of us.
I’ve also seen God’s people be very generous. I remember right
after the Jimmy Carter years when heating oil was high, we
had high heating bills in our house, and one of the men of
the church bought us a wood stove, bought us a load of wood, and
that helped us out greatly. I’ve also seen ministers with
poor money skills, poor management skills. And I’ve also seen ministers
who, when they’re taken care of, they’re a blessing to others.
And so as we think about the support of God’s people through
this study of the Levites, I hope to help us think through how
we ought to care for people in Christian ministry. We prayed
for our missionaries tonight. And sometimes our attitude about
missionaries is, oh, let them get their clothes out of the
missionary barrel. That’s what it’s for after all, right? Sometimes
we get really tacky when it comes to God’s people, God’s servants.
And I think what we see from the New Testament, I think what
we see from this passage in the scriptures is we ought to esteem
those in service to God. We ought to take care of them
in such a way that they are free from worldly care. There’s a
passage in first Corinthians. Well, we actually read it tonight
in chapter nine. It’s echoed again in first Timothy five,
where Paul takes the Old Testament quote, do not muzzle the ox while
it treads out the grain. And he applies it to those in
Christian ministry. The ox was able to. you know,
make his way around the grain, whatever it was back in those
days. And he got to dip his snout down in it and eat a little.
They could have shoot him away or put a muzzle over him to keep
him from it. But it was an Old Testament law,
much like gleaning. You remember the Old Testament
law that greatly helped Ruth in the story of Ruth and Boaz.
She was able to go glean the extra. Remember, you don’t pick
your field completely. You leave some around the edges
for the poor to come and get. And so the same idea is there.
While God wanted Israel to look after the sojourner and give
them gleaning privileges, God also wanted us to look after
our animals and to feed them. And so Paul takes this principle
from the Old Testament. Do not muzzle the ox while he
treads out the grain. And he applies it in the New
Testament and says the laborer deserves his wages. So we want to think tonight about
the Levites and God’s provision for them. They did not have an
inheritance in the land of Israel. Think for a moment about the
Levites. They were the sons of Levi who in Genesis 49 were promised
when they were blessed by God that they would be ministers
of the people of God spread throughout the cities of Israel to be a
blessing. Some of the Levites were priests.
That would be the descendants of Abraham or Aaron. I’m sorry.
Uh, other Levites would be singers. They would be gatekeepers. They
would be money counters. They would be a temple keeper
uppers. We might say, uh, they had all
kinds of duties in the maintenance and in the setting up of the
tabernacle. And then when, uh, the, the city
of God opened up in Jerusalem, David city, Solomon city, they
became servants of the temple. And it was a vast number of people
who served Almighty God and served the people and the cultic practices
of the nation of Israel. And so we want to think about.
how God provided for them in their need for a place to live. Think about this, not like a
reservation or like an old folks home. These were people that
continually needed work. You might think of it in the
modern day sense when churches, they really don’t do this much
anymore, but the churches used to often own a house called a
manse or a parsonage. And it was a way for the church
to own a house and to offset the cost of having a minister.
And so when the minister would come to town, he would get the
Buick in the house that my friends at the Friday morning breakfast
were disparagingly speaking of. But it was a way for a church
to house their minister without great cost. You all know the
real estate market. It’s quite volatile. And a man’s
can be a wonderful thing, both for a church and for a pastor. And so you might want to think
of it this way. It’s providing some of the basics. I think of
Jim Knox growing up a longer generation ago than I did as
a pastor. And he speaks of, you know, farmers bringing eggs and
chickens and produce from the farm as part of their pay, part
of their upkeep as a minister. So that’s the idea here. The
Levites are a necessary part of Israel and their ministry
before God and the people. And so God was saying, you’ve
got to take care of them. Well, in our passage, as you
would suspect would happen, they hold a church meeting. That’s
what happens at the beginning of chapter 21 of Joshua. They
hold a church meeting at Shiloh. That’s where the tabernacle is
set up. And at this church meeting, the leaders and the tribes of
Israel all come, the leaders of the 12 tribes, and then the
priest, they come and the Levites show up and they say, look, God
promised long ago through Moses, you can look at it in Deuteronomy
and in Numbers and other places, God promised that we would have
places to live among the Israelites. And so here we are in the midst
of the whole book of Joshua, where for 10 or so chapters,
they’ve been divvying up the land. Well, you may have noticed
the Levites didn’t get a territory. And God said that’s the way it
would be. But the rest of Israel would provide cities for them.
manses, if you will, parsonages, cities. And do you know what
was the most often word I kept repeating? And their pasture
lands. I think I must’ve said that 80
times. They got cities and they got
pasture lands to live in where they might serve among all the
people across the whole land. So in this church meeting, At
Shiloh, they bring their request. God made this provision. Moses
spoke of this provision and there should be 48 cities up and down
the land of Israel across every single of the 12 tribes. And
we’ve come to lay hold of God’s promises of provision for us. This is a rather strategic exercise
in the sovereignty of God. If you think about it, 48 cities
up and down that little sliver of land, it’s 150 miles tall
and it’s 50 miles wide in some places, 25 miles wide in other
places. But can you imagine 48 cities
of Levites of priests up and down the promised land? One of
the main tasks of the Levites was to teach the people of Israel,
the law of God. This would be like in our minds
in the United States. I believe everywhere there’s
a post office, there’s probably a Methodist church. And I don’t
say that in a joking way or tongue in cheek, but that was part of
the Methodist mission. We want to put a church in every
community where people live. You could probably make a joke
about it and say everywhere there’s a post office, there’s a Hardee’s
and a Methodist church. The Hardee’s has fallen on hard
times, I do think. But you get the picture up and
down across the land, there were God’s servants so that the people
of God would have a representative or a minister of God. So we wanna
think about a couple of the things that pop up in this passage and
how they might help and encourage us. The first thing is we should
take encouragement, I believe, from these Levites. They read
their Bibles. They understood what God had
promised for them. And that’s really the basis of
our prayers, isn’t it? When we go to God in prayer,
we don’t sit down at the kitchen table and get out a little grocery
blank sheet of paper and say, Lord, I want you to give me this.
Give me this. Give me this. Give me this. That’s not how God is
to be treated. But we sit down at our table
to pray with our open Bible. Lord, in your word, you have
promised to bring deliverance. You promised to give strength.
You promised to be a God to your people. You promised that your
people will never go begging for bread. You’ve promised that
you will rescue us from our enemies. You’ve promised to forgive those
who are contrite in heart. You promise, you promise. So
give based on your promise. That’s the idea here of the Levites
and ought to be the idea that we carry home with us. When God
makes a promise, we can lay claim to it. When God makes a promise,
he is a promise keeping God. In fact, if you look at the very
end of chapter 21, it says in verse 45, not one word of all
the good promises of God. that the Lord had made to the
house of Israel had failed, all came to pass. You’ve got to think
back here all the way to Abraham. Remember when he brought Abraham
out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of idolatry and into the promised
land, he said, Abraham, look around everywhere that the sole
of your foot touches. I’m going to give it to you and
your people. Look up Abraham and see all the stars in the
heaven. All the stars in the sky cannot outnumber the offspring
that I will give to you. And so God’s covenant promises,
his covenant blessings are coming true to Israel. And so just as
Israel, the 12 tribes, including the Levites have now done, we
ought to lay claim to God’s promises. And so we ought to know his word,
Lord, your word says this. And so I lay claim to these,
your promises, this from your word. One of the great blessings
God promised Israel was this promise land. And it was a gift
to them and they were to be stewards of it. It was to be useful to
them. It was to provide grapes and grain and wine and to give
water from the wells and refuge from enemies. But they were to
take part of their stewardship and share it among their ministers. The maintenance of the Levites
depended on the faithfulness and the generosity of the people.
So you see, God provides for Israel. And when he provides
for Israel, he provides for all but the Levites. And so the Levites
fully depend on God, yes, but they depend on the generosity
and the faithfulness of the people. And that’s something that we
ought to carry forward. Um, I know I could say this shamelessly
because I’m the pastor and it is getting to be budget time.
And I should say, you know, you should take care of your preacher.
Now I want to say this because some of you may not be here forever
and you may go to another church and you may be the only sane
person in the room. Most churches. And when I say
most, that’s a heavy, most, most churches do not take care of
their preachers. They really don’t and it’s shameful. And
so whether you stay here forever or go somewhere else, make it
your goal in life to see that as God provides for you, you
provide for those who bring God’s word to you. I think of our pastor’s
calls that are usually only read once at Presbyterian, once when
the church votes at a congregational meeting, but they usually begin
this way. Dear pastor, so that you may
be free from worldly care. we commit to you these things. And it could be milk and eggs
and chickens, and it could be a house in a Buick, and it could
be clothes from the missionary barrel. That may be all some
churches can do, but we’re living in a pretty wealthy time. And
I think God’s houses across the nation have fallen on hard times.
God’s people don’t give what they ought to. And so you look
at the statistics for many pastors in America, they are not well-paid
at all, most of them without insurance. I think I read recently,
where 69% of Southern Baptist ministers do not have insurance. That’s the biggest Protestant
denomination in the world. And they can’t somehow, out of
their abundance, provide the terms of insurance for their
ministers. That’s actually to their shame, I do believe. And so we ought to think about
laying claim to what God has promised to provide us, but also
where we are able to be God-like to others, especially where it
is our responsibility, we ought to do that. I want to think about
the clans of the Levites. There were three clans. They’re
listed in those early verses, the Kohathites, the Gershonites,
and the Mererites. Now you understand within the
Levites, there are different classes of service. The Levites, the Kohathites and
the Gershonites, God positioned them in proximity to where they
needed to do their work. So all of the priests lived really
near Judah and Jerusalem. So all of the priests would have
stayed in the southern region, so they could be near Jerusalem.
And then the others were in proximity to Jerusalem as they needed,
but they worked their way up the promised land. But God provided
for each of these clans. He provided for each of these
people according to their needs. Some got 12 cities, some got
13 cities. The Kohathites were given 23
cities, 13 of them for the priest, 10 for the non-priest. And so you look through these
numbers, you look through these names, and you see God tailor made his
provision for each of them. according to their needs and
their need to be at a certain location at a certain time. So
think about the clans. Let’s also think about the casting
of lots. We might think of casting of
lots as sort of like a crap game, you know, shooting craps. You
know, we throw the dice and whatever happens, happens. But the lot
is cast, right? But who makes the plans? It’s
God. And we only have to look back
to Genesis 49 to see that God portioned out the lots. He portioned
out the tailor-made, providentially prepared portions of land for
the various tribes and clans. And so you Wednesday-nighters,
we’re almost to Genesis 49, and it’s where Jacob in his old age,
before he dies, he’s going to bless Israel. He’s going to bless
the sons of Israel and he’s going to say to the Levites, you’re
going to be scattered through the land to be a ministry, to
be ministers among the people. You’ll be all over the land for
the good. You think about what it’s like
in portions of America or portions of Europe where there is no church.
Usually it’s bad, right? Look on your evening news. Why
is this city bad? Why is that city bad? It’s generally
because there’s no preaching of the word and no living righteously. And so you think about how God
gave them these lots, these portions, and it was to spread godliness
and ministers and guardians across the promised land. Well, let’s
think for a moment about pastors and Levites. We’re going to lump
pastors and Levites together for a moment. God calls men to
these unique tasks. And sometimes he says you can
be rooted and live for a long time. If you’re a Methodist,
I think you get pushed around about every three or four years.
The Levites were in and out of Jerusalem. They were back and
forth, back and forth doing their different duties. And sometimes
as a minister, as a Levite, you don’t get to drive your tent
pegs deep into the ground. I think about in my lifetime,
since I was born, I have lived in several different cities,
several different towns, several different houses. All the while,
some of you have probably lived in the same home. And you begin
to understand, I think, that stability for a minister is not
a blessing in this life. We often stand in awe when we
talk about military people. Military people get moved here
and there and there and here and here and there. But generally
they live in military housing and the military foots that bill.
But you think about a minister or a Levite. Over the history
of their career, how many times do they have to move? How many
times do they pay 6% commission? How many times do they get to
sell in an up market? Or as I’ve done, in a down market?
And so one of the things you have to think about when you
think about the Levites or you think about ministry ministers
in today’s culture, they often don’t get the blessings of longevity. like you do. Some of you have
probably lived in your house longer than I’ve been alive.
And what a great blessing that is. But you have to think about
the economics of ministers who are mobile today. When the church
gets volatile and says move on, sometimes that’s in a volatile
economic downturn. Sometimes that’s in a volatile
real estate downturn. And so we should never hold against
our ministers, their Mants and their Buick. Because like the
Levites, sometimes that’s all they’ve got in this world. We should never hold against
a minister his pension and his paycheck. For they are living
examples of how we all ought to think. We are aliens and strangers
and we are sojourners in this land. We’re just passing through. And they have to, the Levites,
completely rest in God for their provision. Could you imagine
being an American Levite, just to take the American dream, what
we’re used to, and put that on the Levites in the ancient Near
East? What do you mean I don’t get to own a house? What do you
mean I’ll have nothing to show for my career? What do you mean
I won’t have a deed that’s mine and a bank note that’s paid off?
Can you imagine those sorts of thoughts? And so they have to
completely rest in God for their living, for their provisions. And so their lives, their prayers,
their example are something that we ought to consider. The last
thing we want to think about from this passage is the little
couple verses at the end. It says in verse 44, and the
Lord gave them rest. Verse 43 says, the Lord gave
to Israel all the land he swore to give their fathers. And then
verse 45, not one word of all the good promises failed. Why
is this tacked on to the Levites? You’re probably sitting here
thinking, this is enough business about the Levites. This is enough
business about modern day ministers. But let me lump you in. Not everything in this world
is promised. The stock market crashes, our health gives way.
We are probably, it may not happen in some of your lifetimes, but
we are probably going to live through, if our politicians can
have their way, the great reset, the great reset of our economy.
And so probably in the next 50 years, Americans who have been
prosperous are going to live through some very hard times.
And we may have to live more like the Levites. more like the
pilgrims, more like some of our Reformation forebears who had
nothing in this world, but everything in Jesus. And I think what this
passage shows us as we look at the Levites, but really, as we
look at the Israelites who just came out of the wilderness, if
you got it, it’s because God gave it to you. And if you don’t
got it, it’s because God doesn’t want you to have it just yet.
And so the people of God need to rest in their eternal inheritance. Don’t drive your tent pegs too
deep into the ground. Don’t fill up your bank accounts
with money that will be eaten up. Don’t fill your attics with
stuff that moth and rust will destroy. We need to, as the Levites
look for their inheritance or their lack thereof in the promised
land, we need to look to the heavenly city where Jesus promises
there is a house with many mansions. I’m going to prepare a place
for you. We live in a world that accumulates so much. You know,
we get older, maybe we pass on to glory and thank goodness we’re
not gonna be there, but our children are gonna call the junk truck.
You know, one 800 junk. How easy is that? And that thing’s
going to come up and they’re going to take your house and
hold it by the ankles. And they’re going to dump all the stuff you
said you could never get rid of. They’re going to dump it
in that truck and it’s going to get hauled off to the dump.
You’re going to be in glory, not knowing a thing about it.
So why not live now with your eyes on heaven? That’s the challenge
for us. We need to let loose our fingers. of the things of this earth,
because if we’ve got it, God’s given it to us. And if we don’t
have it, he doesn’t mean for us to have it yet. But we need
to long for heaven and we need to look for God’s promises that
are all true in Jesus Christ. Let’s go to God in prayer. Pray
with me. Lord, we thank you for the provision of the land for
Israel, the provision of cities for the Levites, and we thank
you for providing ministers to your churches and that we get
to provide for them so they can minister among us. And we also
thank you for our heavenly home, our eternal home. Thank you for
reminding us that we are strangers, sojourners, pilgrims. We’re passing
through and too often we put ourselves in granite and panels
and we drive our tent stakes deep into the ground because
we think we’re going to be here on and on, but remind us that
our days may be short. Our lives are in your hands and
that everything we need to long for and look for is in heaven.
But Lord, as we do live on this earth, as we do need things and
you provide them for us, help us to hold on loosely to use
them for good. May we serve our neighbor and
bring glory to your name through all our possessions. Through
all that we have, may it help serve others and serve for your
glory. We ask in the name of Christ, amen.