Miracle in the Mundane
From the Series: Miracles
Speaker: Heather Zempel
Date: May 2, 2010
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Transcript
How many of you thanked God this week for the miracle of land distribution? I’m going to be in Joshua 24, turn over there. Let’s review some of the miracles we’ve read about in the previous couple of weeks. There was the parting of the Red Sea. There is water coming out of a rock, that’s a miracle. There is manna coming down from heaven, that is a miracle. There is the Jordan River parting, that’s a miracle. There is the Jericho Wall tumbling down, that’s a miracle. There is distribution of land, miracle? Hmm.
We are going to dig into the last chapter of Joshua today, but I want to start with verses 13 and 14.
I gave you land you had not worked for and I gave you cities you did not build, the cities in which you are now living. I gave you vineyards and olive groves for food, though you did not plant them. So honor the Lord and serve Him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshipped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River. Serve the Lord alone.
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Heather Zempel. I work with our discipleship department here at National Community Church. Before I did this, I worked on Capitol Hill. I was a staffer doing environment and energy policies for a U.S. Senator, and one of the bills that came out every year is an appropriations bills. Most of my spring was consumed with mayors and county commissioners and university presidents coming into the office and presenting projects that they felt like were eligible for federal funding. So, we spent a lot of long hours listening to those requests and filling out paperwork and doing all this stuff for people who wanted a little piece of the federal budget. When those bills came out every year in the fall, or depending on how long the Senate was taking, Christmas Eve, we’d get the bill and these were usually big suckers and usually they got all rolled together in one omnibus bill and these were the most boring bills we ever worked on because the majority of it was a listing of cities or of projects with a dollar amount beside it. We would have to take these bills and go through them section by section, line by line, word by word, looking for projects in our state or in our district that got funded. What’s interesting about it is that while those bills were probably the most boring in terms of content, they were the most exciting for the people that they potentially benefited. Lots and lots of people are sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for this really boring bill to come out. I think that sometimes we skim over places in Scripture that we think are boring but they are really the spots that tell us the most about God’s sovereignty and goodness and faithfulness.
Here is an example. Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy. Matthew is writing his gospel to Jewish people to try to convince them that Jesus is the Messiah. Pastor Mark has been a great mentor to me in terms of writing and how to be a good writer. One of the things he has taught me is that you should spend the majority of your writing time on your introduction. In fact, I think one time he told me that he spends as much time writing an introduction to a book as he spends on the rest of the book. You want to work on your introduction in the beginning of the process and then at the end of the process, because if you don’t capture your reader in the introduction, you’ve lost them for the rest of the book. So Matthew is writing the most important thing of his life and he begins his book with a list of names, that no one can pronounce. Yet, in that boring list, we see God’s sovereignty as He brings is promise into being. We see lists of names of broken people that He brings his promise through. We see the names of women who were never listed in genealogies at that time, most of whom were prostitutes or had practiced all kinds of sexual perversion or were not even Jewish. We see God’s sovereignty through that. Or what about in the Book of Exodus where we read chapter after chapter about the tabernacle and how it should be decorated? We read God telling Moses how the tabernacle should be set up. Then we read God telling the people of Israel what God said to him about how the tabernacle should be set up. Then we read about how they set up and decorated the tabernacle. What that says to us is the great care and desire that God had to create a place where people could come into his presence. We see something about the beauty of God and the care that He takes, the details that He is interested in the make sure we have a place where we can connect with Him.
What about all the Levitical laws? That’s where a lot of us get bogged down. We read all of these details and graphic directions about sacrifices and we read about the duties of the high priest and we read about how to drain blood out of animals so that the sacrifice is accepted and about how they needed to wring the heads off of birds. What that tells us in about the atonement of God and it points to the cross. So I would submit that maybe some of the most boring places in Scripture are the ones that tell us the most about God and his character. What we’ve read this week is several days and several chapters of land distribution. Names of tribes and what they got out of the deal.
To back up a little bit, the first 12 chapters of Joshua are very exciting. Joshua has been cast as the new leader after Moses’ death and spies are sent into Jericho and Jericho falls and we see the Jordan River parting and we see all of this great stuff happening. Walls come down and miracles happen and five Amorite kings are defeated, and then we get to Chapter 13 and the narrative comes to a screeching halt. We’ve had battles and treason and victories and then in Chapter 13, everything just stops. What we read is this, in Joshua 13:1
Now Joshua was old and advanced in years and the Lord said to him, “You are old and advanced in years and there remains yet very much land to possess.”
Now, we are only half way through this book and Joshua is already old and advanced in his years. What I love about this is that if we didn’t catch it the first time, Joshua is old and advanced in years, then God says, ‘You are old and advanced in years.’ Now when God tells you that you are old, you are old! So what He says to Joshua is that there is still land to posses, and what happens, we always think of Joshua as the great captain, the great general of this army that went in and conquered the land, but when he gets old and advanced in years, in about half of the rest of the Book of Joshua, he switches gears from general to administrator and he begins to divide out the land and what we see is that this word ‘possess’ is really interesting here. They’ve gone in and conquered but what Scripture tells us is that there were still Canaanites living in the land, but they had conquered enough to be able to go in and settle it. They were told to go in and live and settle, and the rest of the expulsion of the Canaanites was up to individual tribes to do. The thought was if they are already given their piece of land, what belongs to them, then they will have responsibilities and have the motivation to finish the job. So for the next nine chapters, we read about land distribution. This is about like reading a dictionary, although there is actually somebody at NCC who does this. They were telling me the other day that they like to read the dictionary. I won’t tell you who it is but I will say they are the only other member that is a woman and they attend Ballston Campus and I’ll tell you it’s Maegan Stout. Everybody point to her and laugh, she reads the dictionary. It’s like reading a phone book at first glance. It’s just land distribution to people.
The biblical scholar Matthew Henry said this, “We are not to skip over these chapters of hard names as useless and not to be regarded, for where God has a mouth to speak and a hand to write, we should find an ear to hear and an eye to read and God will give us a heart to profit.”
I think that some of these boring places in Scripture not only tell us something really unique and meaningful about God’s character and provision and goodness and sovereignty and faithfulness, what I’m thinking is that the part of the book that we find the most boring is actually the most exciting for the people who were actually living in the story. Let’s put ourselves in their shoes for just a moment. They had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. They had been wondering around in the desert for 40 years. And now they are standing in the Promised Land about to be given their territory! What’s most boring for us was the most exciting for them as they saw God’s hand of sovereignty and faithfulness and provision and trustworthiness. The part that we skim over is the part in which they gave God the most glory. There was a miracle in the mundane. We go all the way back to Genesis 15 and what we read is God saying to Abraham, ‘I have brought you out to give you the land that I want you to possess.’ When we read Joshua 13 through 21, we are seeing the actualization, the realization of that promise that was given back in Genesis 15. And this word ‘inheritance’ shows up over 50 times in these nine chapters. God is being faithful to his promise. There are miracles in the mundane ramblings of the Book of Joshua.
So just to review how this land was divided up in these chapters, there were two and half tribes that decided they wanted land on the other side of the Jordan, so they crossed the Jordan River with the rest of the tribes and helped to conquer the Promised Land and then they were given their land allotment on the other side of the River, and they returned home to their families and lived. Then there was an allotment of land made at Gilgal and then the other tribes got their allotment at Shihor, and we read all of this very painstaking graphically detailed down to the last little mile allotment of land. I think what that tells us is that there isn’t any miracle we are asking God for that is insignificant. To those tribes, all of that detailed information about what they got was their miracle. It was their actualization of their miracle. While we read it today and think that’s insignificant information, it was extremely significant to them.
My guess is that we’ve been in this miracle series and we’ve talked about big miracles and we’ve shared about the big miracles from Scripture and we see our friends and families maybe experiencing big miracles and we just assume that the thing we are asking God for is really not that important; that the thing we are believing God for probably isn’t as high on his radar screen as some of the things that we’ve talked about. But God is concerned about the measurement of the land distribution to the tribes of Israel. He is concerned about whatever miracle it is that you are believing Him for. There is no miracle too big for God. There is no miracle too small for God.
Let me talk about a couple miracles here in the land distribution that I think are fascinating. One is this idea of the city of refuge. There were six cities that were set up for people to run to for sanctuary if they were guilty of manslaughter. They could go to these cities of refuge and be safe until they could stand trial. What Jewish tradition tells us is that the road to these cities of refuge were kept in really good repair and that there were signs at the crossroads to clearly mark how to get to a city of refuge, and it is even believed that there were runners posted at different places to help escort people into these cities of refuge so that they could get there safely. Here’s what’s really interesting about this whole city of refuge thing, you had to stay in the city of refuge to keep yourself safe until the high priest died. When the high priest died, you had the freedom to go back home. All the people in the cities of refuge were able to go back home; they were free. I have no idea what that’s about, other than this, when Jesus, our great High Priest died, it brought freedom to all of us.
Another thing that’s really cool in the land distribution is the idea of the land for the Levites. The Levites were the clan, the tribe, that had been charged with spiritual leadership for the people of Israel, and before Moses dies, he actually told Joshua and told the people what the Levites were going to get to possess. This is what it says
But Moses gave no land to the tribe of Levi, for the Lord the God of Israel had promised to be their inheritance.
So they didn’t get any land. There were 48 cities that were set apart for them to insure that there was Levitical, spiritual guidance leadership basically within 10 miles of anybody that lived in this land. So they didn’t get their own big tract of land, they got pastureland in cities inside larger tracts of land. So, one of the things that tells me is that God is concerned about making sure people have spiritual guidance close to them. But then, for the Levites themselves, I wonder how they felt about this whole set up. Everybody else is getting huge tracts of land, but they don’t get land because their inheritance is going to be God, whatever that means! Land, God, everybody is getting land. But what the Levites got to do is they were the people that the Levitical priests were able to go into the holy of holies and experience God’s presence. They were the only people that got to do that. If you are praying for a miracle that would potentially take you out of the presence of God, I would encourage you to stop praying for that miracle.
Then Joshua was given his own city. We’ve had nine chapters of land distribution. What’s the take away from all of this? What does it mean for us today? We get that it was great for them, but it’s still boring for us to read, so what’s the take away? I think the take away for us today, the way we apply this is that we need to mark and measure God’s work in our lives. Joshua was very intentional about marking and measuring, down to the most minute details the work of God in the lives of the people of Israel. I don’t think we can praise God specifically if we haven’t marked and measured specifically. Each of these tribes could praise God and thank God specifically for the work that He had done because it was recorded. We need to mark and measure. Now, this is going to look differently for each of us. For the Israelites, they set up monuments, physical monuments and memorials to remind them of God’s work among them and then they wrote it down in painstaking detail. What that tells me for us is that some of us do that physical monument building thing. Pastor Mark does that. If you’ve ever been to his office, there is a table and a ledge of what would look like junk to us, but to him, they are reminders of the goodness and the sovereignty of God. We would go up there and look at that stuff and think, ‘Why would anyone in the world decorate their office like this?’ We don’t get it, but to him, he is marking and measuring the work of God in his life. I tend to be more of a journaler. I’ve got stacks of spiral-bound notebooks of God’s work in my life. I pulled those out not too long ago and was reading through them and was shocked by some of the things I’d forgotten about. I was able to praise God for things that happened 10 years ago that I had forgotten about because I had marked and measured. Some of you are artists and artistic expression might be the best way for you to mark and measure the work of God in your life. I don’t think it matters how you do it, but how are you marking and measuring? Is there a way we can remember to praise God as specifically as God is true to his promises? God is true to his promises in a specific, detailed way, we need to praise Him in the same way.
Let’s get back to Joshua 24. Joshua 24, many years later, Joshua is now 110 and he is giving his final speech to the children of Israel. These are his last words. Shakespeare said, ‘The tongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony.’ We tend to pay attention to the final words of people. Nathan Hale, ‘My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.’ Braveheart, the last word of William Wallace, the last word he says, ‘Freedom!’ Citizen Kane, ‘Rosebud.’ We listen to the dying words of people. These are Joshua’s final words and this is what he says.
1 Then Joshua summoned all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, including their elders, leaders, judges, and officers. So they came and presented themselves to God.
It is fascinating that he does it in the particular location because this is where God promised Abraham that He would make him a great nation through which all the other nations of the world would be blessed. It is also the place where Jacob and his entourage decided to renounce the foreign gods they had worshipped and bury their idols and all the idolatry and jewelry and trappings they had with that. It is also the place where, hundreds of year later, Jesus will have a conversation with the woman at the well that will change a city.
2 Joshua said to the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Long ago your ancestors, including Terah, the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River, and they worshiped other gods. 3 But I took your ancestor Abraham from the land beyond the Euphrates and led him into the land of Canaan. I gave him many descendants through his son Isaac. 4 To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Seir, while Jacob and his children went down into Egypt.
5 “Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I brought terrible plagues on Egypt; and afterward I brought you out as a free people. 6 But when your ancestors arrived at the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after you with chariots and charioteers. 7 When your ancestors cried out to the Lord, I put darkness between you and the Egyptians. I brought the sea crashing down on the Egyptians, drowning them. With your very own eyes you saw what I did. Then you lived in the wilderness for many years.
8 “Finally, I brought you into the land of the Amorites on the east side of the Jordan. They fought against you, but I destroyed them before you. I gave you victory over them, and you took possession of their land. 9 Then Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, started a war against Israel. He summoned Balaam son of Beor to curse you, 10 but I would not listen to him. Instead, I made Balaam bless you, and so I rescued you from Balak.
11 “When you crossed the Jordan River and came to Jericho, the men of Jericho fought against you, as did the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. But I gave you victory over them. 12 And I sent hornets ahead of you to drive out the two kings of the Amorites. It was not your swords or bows that brought you victory. 13 I gave you land you had not worked on, and I gave you towns you did not build—the towns where you are now living. I gave you vineyards and olive groves for food, though you did not plant them.
14 “So fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone.
Joshua basically walks through their whole story with them, recounting all the miracles that God had done along the way. I love the way that, at this church, we steward our story. We are a very futuristic oriented church. Pastor Mark has a new idea like every second, and those of us on staff know that when we walk into a staff meeting and Pastor Mark says, ‘Hey, I have an idea,’ we groan because we know that is work for us. We are very future oriented but we also build and remember and praise God for what He did in the past. We remember the stories. Look at some of the miracles that have happened to get them to the place where they are. He made a promise to Abraham and multiplied his children and made him into a great nation. We see plagues coming on Egypt and then God delivering them out of Egypt and giving them freedom and parting the Red Sea. We see the defeat of the Amorites and the Moabites and the fall of the walls of Jericho and then we get to where it says, ‘Then I sent hornets ahead of you to drive out the two kings of the Amorites, it was not your swords or bows that brought you victory.’ Hornets. Now this is an interesting miracle. What does that even mean? More accurate translations say, ‘I sent the hornet ahead of you,’ like a superhero or something.
I’m going to time-out from the message and talk about what do we do when we run into stuff like that in Scripture. What do we do when we read stuff like this and we think it doesn’t make sense? The first thing I would say is if you have a study Bible, there is probably a footnote on that. So that’s easy, just look down and read what it says and it’ll probably give you a few different meanings and you’ll go, ‘Oh, ok, that’s really interesting,’ and then you’ll move on. What I would recommend if you don’t have a study Bible, I would encourage an ESV Study Bible or a Life Application Bible in an NIV or NLT translation. The other thing I like to do is cross-reference. One of the principles of Scriptural understanding and interpretation is to let Scripture interpret Scripture. So if you read something in the Bible that doesn’t make any sense, then you find other places in the Bible that talk about that and go read what they say. So in this case, I looked it up and there are two other places that talk about this, in Exodus and Deuteronomy. So in Exodus 23:28, it says
28 I will send hornets ahead of you to drive out the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites.
Deuteronomy 7:20 says
20 And then the Lord your God will send terror to drive out the few survivors still hiding from you!
This doesn’t help much. The hornet goes ahead. Ok. So then I go and pick up books from people who are much smarter than me. You find this in things called commentaries. Here’s what they say. They say there are really three basic meanings of this. It could be literal, physical insects that God send ahead. He did this in Egypt. He sent insects, real insects to stir up trouble. Others believe it could be referring to an Egyptian king who had gone in and already fought against some of these enemies and weakened them before the children of Israel got there. The interpretation that is most commonly embraced though is the idea that it was the terror of the Lord. It is metaphorical. The hornet was the terror of the Lord that went before them. The reputation of God went before them. We see this earlier in Joshua, in Joshua 2, with Rahab when she says, ‘I have heard,’ ‘We have heard,’ we see this happen a lot, people have heard. We really don’t know which of these interpretations it is, but we do know it was God. It wasn’t by their efforts, it was God. God had gone before them. Sometimes we don’t know how God is going to work the miracles He is going to work in our lives, but the how doesn’t really matter, it is about who the Miracle Maker is. This is about stewarding the story that God has given to us. God has worked miracles in our lives. Are we stewarding that story? Joshua is stewarding the story. He kept telling the story of the people of Israel. We read
13 I gave you land you had not worked on, and I gave you towns you did not build—the towns where you are now living. I gave you vineyards and olive groves for food, though you did not plant them.
That is a miracle. As we read about all the land distribution and the boarders and the boundaries, they have been given land that they did nothing to obtain. God gave it to them. And that’s a story they needed to keep talking about. In verse 14
14 “So honor the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. 15 But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”
The interesting thing here is I’ve always read this as Joshua putting before them a choice, like they had a legitimate choice, they could serve or they could serve foreign gods. But if we read this in context, what Joshua is actually doing here is being a little bit sarcastic. He has just talked about how God has kicked the butt of all the other gods! He has already said our God has routed all of these other gods so who are you going to serve? If you don’t want to serve God, pick one of these. Really? Yet we serve other gods.
Martin Luther said anything that one relies on and trusts is a god. Who or what are we trusting for our miracles? Who or what has the right answer? Who or what are we trusting more than God for our miracles?
This word ‘serve’ ‘serve the Lord wholeheartedly’ shows up 15 times in Joshua 24 between the verses of 13 and 33. It is this idea of orienting our hearts around the things of God. I feel like every time I talk to y’all these days, I’m talking about idols. I don’t know if that reveals what’s going on in my heart that God is having to deal with me about, or if it’s just how often He talks about it in his Word. It is probably a combination of both. But we have got to throw the idols out of our lives and serve God wholeheartedly. This is really not about miracles; it is about the Miracle Maker. Are we serving Him with everything we’ve got? He has provided for us down to every detail in the promises He has given to us. Do we serve Him with that level of detail?
We go on and Joshua dies at the age of 110, and in Joshua 24:31, we read this
31 The people of Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him—those who had personally experienced all that the Lord had done for Israel.
So while Joshua is alive and his leaders, those that have experienced and knew the stories of God, the people of Israel served God. But we turn in our Bibles one page over to the Book of Judges, and in Judges 2 we read: And another generation grew up who did not know the Lord nor remember his might works for Israel and disaster broke out.
When God has done miracles in our lives, we need to tell them and steward those stories and pass those stories along. I think this changes the way we view that uncomfortable word ‘evangelism.’ Evangelism is not about us becoming junior apologists of the faith. It is not about us having a list of statements and beliefs and getting people to check yes or no boxes. Evangelism is about knowing the story of God in our lives and passing that on to the people around us to make sure there is not another generation around us that grows up that doesn’t know the work of the Lord. Where has God been faithful in our lives and we’ve forgotten it? Where has God been faithful in our lives and we have failed to pass that on? Where has God been faithful in our lives and we failed to praise Him for it? Where has God already given us a possession, already given us a miracle and we have not lived in it? Pass the story on. God is true to his promises down to the very last detail. Praise Him for that level of detail. As God has written these incredible stories in our lives, are we passing those stories on to the next generation? As God has been faithful to us, are we being faithful back to Him and serving Him wholeheartedly?
God does miracles. Sometimes it’s the walls of Jericho crumbling to the ground. Sometimes it is miracles that we find in the mundane. If anybody else was to read about them, they wouldn’t see anything special about them, but to us, they mean everything. Regardless of whether it is one of those big miracles of the walls crashing down or something that only would be cared about between us and our Maker, they all deserve our complete praise and glory.
God thank You so much for the miracles that You have done in our lives that we haven’t even noticed or paid attention to. Thank You for the miracles that You have yet to do that other people might look at and say, ‘That’s really not a big deal,’ but to us it means everything. God, I pray that we would see You in the boring parts of your Word and that it would change the way we look at You and it would change the way we live. God, we thank You for your goodness and your sovereignty and your faithfulness and your trustworthiness down to the very last detail. God, with that level of care, with that level of attention, may we honor You and serve You and be wholly and completely devoted to You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
