40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Joshua 20:1-22:34 (Episode 196)

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

The cities of refuge are set up and land is allotted to the tribe of Levi. God doesn't let His promises "fall" but fulfills them all for everyone. How does God having one plan for both Jews and Gentiles shape our eschatology? And why does the building of an altar almost start a civil war? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, go to the events page, because we've got city events coming up in 2020 in Houston, Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada. In Houston, Texas, Chad will be there, along with a whole bunch of other people, including myself, talking about what happens when people encounter Jesus.

That's what we're going to talk about. I think Chad's going to be talking about, it's a little Old Testament feeling, you know, kind of. It's Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night, trying to figure out if this is the one that the Old Testament talks so much about. If you want to hear Chad talk about that encounter, you have to come out to the city event. But the nice thing is it's free. You can come out for free. So if you're in Texas, come out to Houston and join us and a whole bunch of other people.

Also, in March, we're going to be in Las Vegas talking about the Book of Galatians, the whole thing. We're going to talk about the whole Book of Galatians. We have six speakers, six chapters, and we're just going to cover the whole thing right there in Sin City. So come on out. Las Vegas also, they have made it to where you can fly to Las Vegas from everywhere for not that much money because Las Vegas is interested in you getting there to spend your money. But that's not what we want you to do. We want you to take advantage of them wanting you to get there and spend your money to come there and not spend your money because the event's free. February 22nd

in Houston, Texas. March 21st in Las Vegas. We'd love to see all the information that's over there on the events page chad we're recording this before christmas but it's coming out after christmas so well we have to say i hope you had a really good christmas even though it's not yeah but i hope it was good for you yeah i'm gonna be uh with family in north texas when this drops uh next week so i will be celebrating probably where it's cold there you go unlike Unlike San Antonio, but it'll be good. We'll be up there for a few days as a family, so always enjoyable. Yeah, it's cold here right now, especially a couple days ago.

It was earlier in the week. It was cold, cold enough that I walked out one morning to take my daughter to school, and there was white stuff all over everything. The cursed white stuff, yeah. I see all those pictures on Facebook, Instagram of ice and snow. It sure makes me glad I live where I do. Well, this was more like a good enough dusting where it sort of just kind of got on everything but didn't affect anything at all. It just made everything like a white layer.

And then it was super bright out. It was cold, but everything's kind of white. So actually, when you walk out into that, you're like, oh, this is kind of nice. This is kind of pretty. I mean, I wouldn't want it all the time. What's terrible is that weather where it's cold and gray and it's trying to figure out if it's going to snow or rain. and is doing a little bit of both like that's the worst i live with that for years in the midwest when i lived in indiana and ohio so do not do not miss that i'll take the sunshine any day i mean

i'm one of those people like if we have two days in a row of cloudy weather i start getting irritable like the third day i'm just like yeah i'm like impatient and i'm like what's wrong with me and then i realized oh i haven't any sunshine like three days so this is the problem with texas the problem with texas is when it does decide it's going to get rainy and stuff for a couple days it just becomes a mud hole yeah yeah or flash flood there's just too much dirt there man this is true this is true well where are we at in joshua well buckle your seat belt because uh we are i'm like committing myself to this so we got to do this uh we are covering not one not two but three chapters today oh which i don't know that that might be a record i'm not

sure bold attempt though bold attempt so up front i'm not saying i hope i'm saying we will so so he's saying this episode might go long he's gonna it's like yes it's gonna be this is gonna be 70 minutes in the old testament one way we're getting through this these three chapters one way or another yeah one way or another extra extra few minutes for you no i think we'll be able to do it because the first two chapters is material that we have covered previously. So we'll just touch on a few matters, and then we will get on to the next chapter. So the chapters we're looking at, those three chapters, are Joshua 20, 21, and 22. 22 is the one with the most interesting material in it, so we'll spend most of our time there.

So the first chapter, chapter 20, is a pretty short chapter. It's only nine verses, and it's about the cities of refuge. which we covered back in the book of Numbers. And I think it was chapter 35. Yeah, number 35. And we touch on it a little bit also in Deuteronomy chapter 19. So you may remember, if you're a longtime listener, you remember the discussion of these cities of refuge.

So you got a guy and he and his buddy go out to chop some wood. And, you know, they're working, they're having a good time. and all of a sudden, one of the guy's axe heads flies off his axe and hits the other guy in the head, and down he goes, and he's dead. Now, what's this guy going to do? Well, in that particular culture, you had these designated family members, and in Hebrew, they would be called a goel, which is ordinarily translated as redeemer, because it does actually have that meaning in a lot of context. So a goel is like a kinsman redeemer, but what they do is kind of depending upon the context. I mean, most people are familiar with a goel from the book of Ruth, right? Where you have

a goel acting to take care of Ruth and Naomi, to take care of that family. So he acts as a goel in taking on Ruth as his wife. But there's a whole lot of other uses of goel in the old testament and this happens to be one of these uses of a redeemer or as it's translated here in in uh in my translation it's called an avenger so verse two talks about an avenger of blood basically here's what happens so this guy who accidentally you know without premeditation killed his friend well he he could be subject to this guy's family member coming after him to exact revenge or justice or whatever it might be. So what's he going to do? Well, I mean, we don't have, I kind of wish we had some instances of this in the Old Testament so

we could see actually how this worked. I mean, I can't imagine that every time somebody was killed accidentally that that person had to run away. I mean, I can, you know, this happens, of course, all the time. Somebody accidentally kills somebody else. Just one of those terrible things in life. And it doesn't mean every time that the family of the deceased member is out for blood. So I can imagine that in Israel, it was always like that. But of course, the scenarios would happen. So what Moses did by the Lord's instruction way back in the book of Numbers was to set up these cities of refuge. There's six of them, and they're scattered kind of in a horseshoe shape throughout the land of Israel. There's three on the eastern side of the Jordan

and there's three on the western side of the Jordan. And they're divided up geographically so that, you know, a guy doesn't have to travel all the way from one end of Israel to another one if he's fleeing for his very life. So they're scattered around so a guy can get to them relatively quickly, hopefully before the Goel gets to him. So he runs away to the city and the elders of the city meet him at the gate and they kind of hear his story out what's going on and then and if he claims it was an accident they take him in and eventually there's going to be a trial and there's a decision as to whether he actually did kill his friend without premeditation that it was accidental or whether he actually murdered and is found guilty of that and if he is

then he's he's not given any kind of asylum instead if he's found guilty if he actually is a murderer then he's returned to the place from which he came and he's he's put to death but if he's not if he found innocent then he remains in that city until the death of the high priest so as long as long as he's in one of these six cities cities of refuge then he's he's fine If he leaves, well, he's putting, you know, his blood be on his own head, he's putting his own life. But if he stays there, he's under that city's protection. And once the high priest, whoever the high priest is in office at that time, once he dies, then that death serves as a sort of strange atonement, we might say, a covering for the blood, for the death that had befallen the person years before. So anyway, that's kind of the way these work. There's six of these. That's their purpose and kind of the way it worked with the judicial system at that time.

And as we pointed out back in that discussion, the real kind of implicit theology in this that we see come to its full revelation in the New Testament is that it's the death of the high priest, the ultimate high priest, Christ, who then is setting us free so there's this theme of liberation and of his death covering us so that at the death of our great high priest then we're freed and of course we're not innocent but we are we are freed we're liberated in in his death so you had that high priest christological theology that's embedded in this bigger than narrative and it's weird that you would have something that was it may be understandable if there was like a city of refuge there's one you know and it was sort of like a yeah and there's a city where people can go and then you know you never hear about it whatever but the fact that they have six of

these things and it's so intentional you're gonna put them here and then over here and then we have not one example is pretty weird you like really have one time in all of old testament where someone does this right right it's kind of it's kind of strange so but it could be one of those situations where you know we just don't hear about it and you know it's not too surprising do we do we even hear about the cities of refuge anywhere else after this as like make sure those remain set up or anything like that that's a that's a good question and i don't remember off the top of my head of course the cities themselves yes i mean many of these cities are actually uh major cities in in the history of israel like hebron yeah for instance yeah i just don't

remember i don't remember them as city the fact that their city is a refuge ever being brought up again but i could be wrong yeah i'd have to double check on that but i don't remember it being brought up once we kind of get past uh joshua yeah yeah it's kind of just kind of there in the history okay so uh that's all i got on chapter 20 anything else you want to add that's it man we're doing pretty pretty good all right sounds good so uh if anybody wants to hear more about that we did talk about it a little bit more on those previous podcasts so go back to the one on number 35 and you can uh you can listen in okay uh chapter 21 now we get to uh a division this is kind of like some of the other material we covered except these this chapter is focused

not upon the distribution of big chunks of land to the tribes instead this is about the particular cities that were assigned to the Levitical tribe. So we talked about all the various groupings of land, the territories that were given to the other tribes. Of course, you have some east of the Jordan, you have some west, most of them west of the Jordan. So we covered all of that. But we get to the tribe of Levi, and as I pointed out multiple times, they did not inherit a particular tract of land or territory in the Holy Land. Instead, they inhabited cities. And this chapter actually follows perfectly on what we just discussed, because those six cities of refuge were actually Levitical cities. So they're repeated here in chapter 21. So those six cities of refuge were

Levitical cities. That's where the descendants of Levi lived. Then we have a division, basically a three-fold division between all of these cities. So Levi, the person Levi, the patriarch Levi, he had three sons, Kohath, and Gershon, and Merari, and that is the way these particular cities are divided out. Now Kohath, his descendants are the priest. So you remember you have the whole tribe of levi and they're set apart they're like we we cover this quite a while back in the torah but they kind of took the place of the firstborn of israel so the levites were sort of the redemption price for the rest of the firstborn sons of israel so they were always a tribe set apart they were set apart even more at the whole golden calf incident back in exodus when

the Levites were those who answered the call of Moses to put to death the idolaters. So you kind of got a twofold setting apart of the tribe of Levi. But you had divisions within the tribe of Levi. So you had the descendants of Aaron of the tribe of Levi. They were the only ones who could serve as priests. Of course, the priest did a lot of things the Levites couldn't do. So the Levites were more or less like the official temple servants. If you come from a church with like priests and deacons or pastors and deacons, it's kind of like that, and that the deacons are sort of there to help out, to assist. It's sort of what the Levites were. They did a lot of the work around the tabernacle and the temple, but they couldn't offer sacrifices. They couldn't enter

into the holy place, and they certainly could not serve as a high priest. Only the descendants of Aaron from the tribe of Levi could do that. So anyway, those are part of the groupings under Kohath, and that begins in verse 8. And they happen to have, this is sort of, you can see how God was so arranging things providentially to make sure that the priestly cities of the tribe of Levi all happen to be pretty close to Jerusalem, which of course just makes practical sense, because eventually that's where the tabernacle and temple are going to be located so just for ease of travel it would make sense to stick the priest in cities that are relatively close to jerusalem so that's where most of their cities are located and then the rest of the chapter

just goes through all of these various places that were given to uh the rest of the rest of the tribe of levi so you got 48 48 cities in all scattered here there and everywhere throughout the land of israel with most of the cities of the descendants of aaron being located pretty close to the city of jerusalem it's not spelled out here but it's kind of by way of filling out the whole story later on this is the way it worked uh all of the all of the priests were divided according to families, and those families were set up to serve certain times during the calendar year at the temple in Jerusalem. So if you've ever wondered kind of how does that work, like do all the priests live in Jerusalem, or they kind of like take turns, because you don't need everybody

there all the time. Well, that's the way it works. So if you were a priest, and say you lived in Jericho, well, when your time, most of the time, yeah, you just lived in Jericho with your family, And you did whatever you did, you know, maybe had some sheep or farm or whatever. That was, that was what you did. But maybe a couple of times a year, your, your family would come up for priestly service. And so you'd make the trip from Jericho up to Jerusalem and you'd serve there for your two weeks and then you go home and you wouldn't have to go back until your next term of service came up.

So the parable of the Good Samaritan, of course, is probably describing this priest who was coming from Jerusalem, going back down to Jericho after he had served his time of service there at the temple. Because we know there were a lot of priests who lived in Jericho. But anyway, that's the way it was set up later on. It's not spelled out here that way, but as time went on and the temple was built, and you had more and more people and you needed more and more organization and kind of a logistical plan, that's the way it was all set up. Yeah, in the New Testament, you have the Good Samaritan parable.

You see this. You also see kind of this with Zechariah, where he makes mention of the fact that it was his turn, right? So that which makes it, well, which lets you know that it's not always his turn, but that this was, he was in rotation. So, I mean, even, yeah, so even to the time of Christ, this was it's weird because there's not not everything is exactly the same by the time you

get to christ i mean i mean the pharisees have been jacked up this system a little bit and you have 400 years of silence where i don't know what was going on but things got things got a little bit weird but this is one thing that appears that that stayed pretty consistent throughout from this point on is that the the they mean they they rolled with the levites and that they they did this rotating uh kind of thing which is still obviously jesus uses it in a parable and you see it right at the beginning of the new testament that this is what's going on with zachariah yeah it was probably pretty unusual for zachariah to be doing what he did too i mean you have a lot of pre-serving and yet he was the one who was chosen to go into the holy place and to burn

incense and offer prayers so it was probably a pretty unique moment for him too and while he's doing it this angel happens to appear to himself you can imagine the surprise that he had you know not only was he like the man for that particular day for that particular duty but all of a sudden an angel appears to him he's probably like is this what goes on in here yeah nobody ever told me no idea so uh that's it that that fills in a bit of the that gap as to what happens later on with the Levitical priest. All right, so that covers most of the chapter to verse 42. So from 1 to 42 is the division of the various cities, the 48 cities to the tribe of Levi. Now, the last three verses, 43 through 45, are significant because they are a summary statement, as it were, of

everything that's happened before. There's some echoes in these three verses of some language you heard all the way back in the first chapter, Joshua. So let me read those three verses and talk about those for a minute. This is 21 beginning of 43. So the Lord gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give to their fathers, and they possessed it and lived in it. And the Lord gave them rest on every side, according to all that he had sworn to their fathers. And no one of all their enemies stood before them the lord gave all their enemies into their hand and i'll come back to this verse in a minute i'll just read you the translation i have then i'll point out a couple things not one of the good promises which the lord had made to the house of israel failed all came

to pass so let me comment first on this uh this verse 45 uh at the end of at the end of 21 so it it's a lot more fun in the hebrew you can't really tell this in the english translation but you have a three-fold occurrence of the word hebrew word devar devar is the word that actually means word it can also mean thing it can mean promise so devar has this kind of multiplicity of meanings word thing promise matter something like that so literally i'll see if i can translate it literally in the Hebrew. Something like, not one word fell from all the good word which the Lord worded to the house of Israel. Everything happened, or everything came true. So you have a threefold occurrence of this Hebrew noun for word, or for sometimes used as a verb for speaking.

So not one word fell. That's kind of a Hebrew idiom, meaning, you know, it didn't like fall to the ground. It happened. So not one word fell. Of all the good words, of all these promises that God made to, that God spoke to the house of Israel. And then the last phrase in this particular summary section is hakolba, which is something like, literally it would be, the everything came. one translation has it it all came true which i think it's a pretty good pretty good way to to summarize this so everything happened it all came true which is which is really a a beautiful way to sum up everything that's happened so far so you get to the first chapter joshua and god's given them all these promises you know take possession of the land it's my gift to you and once you've done that you're going to have rest you're going to have the fulfillment of

all these promises which i've which i've sworn to give to you and so at the end of chapter 21 this is exactly what we have the lord gave israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers and they possessed it and lived in it and the lord gave them rest on every side just like he had sworn to their fathers none of their enemies were able to stand before them because god gave them all into their hands and all this happened as verse 45 says because all of these promises that God promised, the good promises, God made this all come to pass. So it's kind of a, it's a beautiful way to sum up everything that's happened for the house of Israel. Now, all that being said, it is interesting, and you see this very commonly in the Old Testament,

when you have God fulfilling his promises. It's like, yes, for sure. God fulfilled his promises. he did all this he gave them rest he fulfilled the good word to the house of israel but then after you say that you have to you have to add kind of a new testament little twist to it and say but wait there's more right i mean that's kind of the way this a lot of this works so god gives them the land he gives them rest but it's like but wait there's even more there's even more good coming. Or he gives them the King David and establishes his throne and sets everything up for him. But then it's like, but wait, there's more. There's always more that's kind of built into the Old Testament. There's this anticipation that yes, yeah, yeah, God's fulfilling his

promises. He's giving them all this good stuff. He's giving them rest. But believe it or not, he has even better things in store. And that's kind of the message of, for instance, the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews, which picks up on this idea of rest. You know, in Hebrews 4, you have the author talking about the Sabbath rest at the beginning of creation. You have him talking about the rest that happened or maybe happened in the time of Joshua. And you have been quoting from the Psalm, which talks about God giving them rest. And then he finally wraps up everything by saying, but wait, there's more. We finally receive the rest that God ultimately had planned for Israel and for the entire world, not from Joshua or not from the Sabbath, but

instead from Christ himself. So he is that ultimate rest that God has been leading his people toward all the way from the seventh day of creation through the time of Joshua, through the time of David, and onward. So you kind of have a... When you hear summary statements like this at the end of Joshua 21, it's like, yes, amen to all that,

but you just wait because God has something even greater in store down the road. Yeah, this is what it means, that all God's promises find their yes and amen in Christ, right? Right. So that God can fulfill his promises, which he certainly did to Joshua and stuff, but still there's a greater fulfillment of them.

So it's not even that there's more promises that he's going to fulfill, which there are, but even these promises that you would maybe think that he had fulfilled, he isn't quite done fulfilling yet. It's even better than that. like that the ultimate fulfillment like this promise is going to ultimately find its its yes and amen in the person of christ i do like just not one of the you know one of god's promises fell yeah i mean this is this is just like a hebrew way of saying that that god doesn't drop his promises he doesn't drop the ball english way this yeah he doesn't drop the ball right good

english way to say it yeah that's just all it's like he doesn't he didn't he didn't leave one back there somewhere like it fell out of his fell out of his arms and and this is not how god works that nothing falls from his hand yeah yeah i think this is one of the i see this perpetually one of the problems that uh not problems of one of the confusions people have with regard to the old testament and thinking for instance that some of these promises are yet to be fulfilled right you see this a lot in uh discussions about the old testament where there's this little there's some confusion and people will make a separation between Jews and the church or Jews and Gentiles. And they'll talk about, yeah, I mean, all of the gospel promises are yes for us

in Christ who are Gentiles, but then they have kind of a separate category for the Jews and they'll try and take some of these Old Testament promises and relate those to the physical descendants of Abraham today, and I think part of the reason sometimes that happens is because there's this confusion of these kinds of promises in the Old Testament. Yeah, I mean, God did give promises, and God did fulfill promises, but everything that God promised from Genesis onward finds its yes and amen in Christ for everybody. God doesn't have like two plans of salvation, and you will hear that sometimes from people in the church, like, yeah, well, plan A is the gospel, the church, but plan B is the covenant for the children of Israel. No, no.

There was one plan and one gospel for all people. And I just don't see how that could be any clearer in the New Testament, because who is the New Testament church? Well, it's all Jewish, right? All the disciples, almost every single one of the people that you see on the pages of the new testament are jewish so they're not looking for another plan i mean paul the the the evangelist i mean he he isn't he's not traveling around synagogues saying hey i got great news god did this wonderful stuff for the gentiles and he's got another plan for us he's going to synagogue saying hey the messiah is here his name is jesus of nazareth and he's fulfilled all of god promises for us so never let somebody kind of confusion of thinking god has one plan of salvation

for Jews, one plan of salvation for Gentiles. There's one plan of salvation, and his name is Jesus. And he's for all people, because all God's promises find their fulfillment completely and solely in him. Well, this kind of theology is actually pretty pervasive. It's pervasive in the United States. I had a guy not that long ago get livid with me, in person, get livid with me over this, was screaming at me that I believed in a false theology, and was saying, I can't believe that you believe in replacement theology freaking out and uh and and it was because he held this distinction between the jews and the gentiles and god's plan for them and i and i did this is strictly pauline i mean i mean paul says there is no distinction right like say you're saying

you're upset and he said he's like you don't think there's any distinction between jews and gentiles i'm like paul doesn't think there is he says i'm not making this up it's it's all over the new testament yeah it's like have you read the book of hebrews yeah i mean that is the whole message of the book of hebrews people get married to this this theology too because it has political uh ramifications because israel as a nation then becomes something that you have to be concerned about in ways that you're not concerned about other nations and i mean so you see this sort of thing going on all the time you know uh you can support israel or not whatever you want to do but But the idea that it's imperative that you do because it needs to exist because there's some super unique plan of God for that is just not the case.

Yeah, it's driven by a false eschatology, a false understanding of the young time, which gets read back into the New Testament and into modern political discourse. So, yeah, unfortunately, it's pretty widespread. but yeah read read hebrews read paul's epistles it's pretty clear there okay uh let's go 22 let's do it i gotta i gotta keep my promise yeah man we got we got time yeah we're good we're good so chapter 22 is it's following on the heels of what we just talked about like all these promises being fulfilled it's uh it's sort of humorous just because you know it seems like as soon as everything kind of comes together the way it should israel falls apart that at least that's the impression that you get from the the uh comparison of 21 with 22 so 22 23 and 24 the

last three chapters of the book are at least in part three farewell addresses of joshua so all of like he doesn't have as much to say as as moses moses took up like a whole book deuteronomy as his farewell sermon joshua divides his sort of between three different contexts there's a little bit in 20 in 22 and then a lot more in 23 and 24 so it starts out where okay god's fulfilled all his promises he's given the the israelites all this land therefore the two and a half tribes who wanted to live on the eastern side of the jordan they're free to go You remember they made the deal, right? Moses made the deal with them.

All right, you want the land east of the Jordan? Okay. It didn't seem like he was all that happy about it, but okay, we'll make a compromise. You can have it. But on this condition, that when we conquer the Holy Land, you go with us.

So you fight alongside your brothers. And once we have conquered this land, once we've taken possession of it, then and only then can you go back. Well, it just happens. so it's time to bid farewell to the two and a half tribes so you have this little speech that Joshua starts out the chapter with and he begins by saying to them in verse two look you did it you kept all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you and you've listened to my voice and

all that I commanded you you've not forsaken your brothers he goes on to say and so God's given us rest so you can go back he says go back to the land of your possession but then he adds a little uh little encouragement little warning here in verse five only be careful very careful to observe the commandment and the law which moses servant of the lord commanded you to love the lord your god and walk in all his ways and keep his commandments and hold fast to him and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul so you know more or less remember the shema heroism of the lord of god the lord is one you shall love him with everything that you are and keep his torah be faithful to his word all this kind of stuff very deuteronomy kind of sermon joshua blesses them

and they go back and he says you know when you go back you got a bunch of stuff here yellow all these spoils of war that you've taken from the various peoples that we've conquered well when you take that back make sure you don't hoard it but divide it between your your brothers he talks about that in verse 8. So that's what happened. So the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh, they pack up and they head home. That's the end of verse 9. Well, so far, so good. And then there's this explosion, big, big controversy that almost ends in a full-blown Civil War. Verse 10 says that when they got to the Jordan, that the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, they came up with this idea. They said, why don't we build an altar

at the Jordan River? This big, big altar. We don't know how big, but it says it's a large altar in appearance. Okay, that's all we're told is that they did this. We're not told why. We're just told the fact of their construction of this altar. Well, verse 11 goes on with the story. They build this altar, and then somebody sees it, and word gets back to the rest of the Israelites that, this is verse 11 and following, that the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built this altar right there at the Jordan River. And verse 12 says their reaction. it's like all right oh we're gonna go to war with them it's just like there's there's like oh i wonder there's not like any curiosity i wonder why they did that you know or nothing

like that it's like all right get your swords get your spears we're gonna go kill them so there's at least before they like do a full-blown attack they decide they're gonna send 11 guys Phineas the one we've heard about at least twice now you know he's the one who stopped the plague by putting a spear through uh the Israelite and the uh the non-Israelite who were having sex and he put a spear right right uh right through both of them in the very act and stopped the plague so we meet very zealous Phineas way back then yeah you see this you see this guy rolling out to do some questioning it's like oh man great yeah you don't want to see phineas coming to integrate you so he goes with these other with these other people and uh they they come and

they just read them the riot act i mean they're verse 16 what is this unfaithful act that you've committed against the god of israel turning away to follow the turning away from father lord and building this altar. And they go on to say, you know, in 17 and following, they list a couple examples. It's like, was it, you know, is what happened at Baal Peor, was that not quite bad enough? Or, you know, do you want to repeat what happened in the case of Achan way back in Joshua chapter 7, when he took some of the spoil that he wasn't supposed to, and we ended up losing 36 of our soldiers. And we lost thousands upon thousands at the plague that broke out when Israel was committing idolatry there at Baal Peor. So they hearken back to these incidents that have already

happened saying, listen, what are you thinking? You're building an altar here to commit idolatry and you're going to bring the wrath of God on all of us. So there's a group concern here. So they're not just concerned about the two and a half tribe but they're afraid but because of this altar it's over for israel so at this point affinius is done he's probably red in the face and the the two and a half tribes get their chance to explain they look like whoa slow down they start out with this this this uh calling upon god el elohim yahweh el elohim yahweh they say in verse 22 the mighty one god the lord the mighty one god the lord he knows it's like they're trying to like calm phineas down he knows what's up and let us tell you what's up and then they

tell them what's up in the verses that follow well it was all a big confusion so the purpose of the altar they say was not to offer sacrifices on it we weren't going to offer any kind of sacrifices on it. I mean, I know we're living east of the Jordan, but we have one altar and that one altar as at the tabernacle in Shiloh, it's the only altar we're going to sacrifice on. This altar is a witness. It stands there as a witness between us and you, between your children and our children, so that when we see it and when you see it, we're reminded of the fact that, hey, we all are one people. Their concern is that we're moving east of the Jordan and maybe you're going to disown us or maybe your descendants will disown us so we want this all

to the stand here as a witness that hey we are all united here so don't kill us don't go to war against us instead understand the true purpose of true purpose of the altar i still think it was a really dumb idea on multiple levels i at least should have said hey before they left hey we're going to build this kind of replica altar at the jordan so don't freak out when you hear about it because here's its real purpose but they didn't do that that would have solved a lot of issues yeah i love how there's two things going on here one go love the lord with all your heart soul mind and strength you know just make sure you go out there and do the right thing can do and like off that immediately like you're about to have you know send some dudes off with a little bit

of law immediately you're about to have like a massacre on your hands so that doesn't work well also this seems to me like the first time uh in in the in the history where people were real concerned about like a church split you know like where they're like what are these guys doing over here where they start their own church over there because because this is ultimately what they're thinking right like they're gonna start doing their own sacrifices they're gonna get their own priests they're gonna do their own thing you know if you're just reading it you're like what's the big deal like why are you freaking out man it's building an altar like chill out you know You can even understand why they're saying exactly that.

Like, calm down. What's going on here? You're seriously going to kill us all? But the issue was, already, you're going to break faith with us, and we're not going to be one people and offer sacrifices together and all this kind of stuff. You're going to already start building your own altars, do your own sacrifices.

This is what they're upset about. Right, right. Yeah, that's it. So, yes, I mean, it all worked out, thankfully, in the end. But I think both parties could have gone about this very differently. Yeah. Yeah. Could have been better communication would have stopped Phineas from, like, going full-blown Phineas on these people.

I think if anything else, and we're out of time here, but I think if anything else, it shows that at this point in Israel's history, like they they're very aware of any threat of idolatry and that's that was their fear with the building of this altar and and also i think it it just it points back to the fact that probably the the original idea for these two and a half tribes to leave live east of the jordan was was not the best idea it was a compromise that they worked out yeah but it was not part of the original plan that god had for for all the israelites but anyway uh it's a it's a very it's a very uh insightful story into what's going on with israel and uh kind of where they were at in their history and we covered our three chapters there it is man we covered three we ended we ended the year right

with a three chapter march and and this is the thing this is the last episode of 2019 so guys we will see you in 2020. Chad, happy new year. Happy new year.