Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Be Present Where God Has Placed You | Historical Books | Joshua 21

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Do you treat certain parts of the Bible like "flyover country"? Do you suffer from placelessness? Are you disconnected from God's purposes? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Joshua 21 encourages us to be present where God has placed us. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Joshua 21

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. I live in a part of the United States called Flyover Country. Now, depending on who you talk to, invoking that phrase flyover country or flyover states is either a geographical jab or a badge of honor. The moniker describes an expanse of land in the middle of the continental United States, nestled between the more magnetic east and west coasts. And in the popular imagination, nothing very exciting happens in the vast Midwest landscape. It's just sitting there for everyone to fly over en route to more interesting destinations.

There are places not worth much attention, places to be passed over and ignored. As the country musician Jason Aldine mused in his hit song about flyover states, people and airplanes in the sky, they look down and they say, who'd want to live down there in the middle of nowhere? Now, there's a version of flyover country that most folks have when it comes to their approach to the Bible. For example, the genealogies of Genesis, the instructions for building the tabernacle in Exodus, the meticulous outline of the sacrificial system in Leviticus. We look down at these long stretches of scripture and we wonder if they're passages that aren't worth much attention. We wonder if they're better off being passed over and ignored. Joshua 21 is probably classified as flyover country for many people who travel the pages of the Bible. I mean, who'd want to land the plane and think deeply about these pages, about land and allocating space for the Levites.

it feels like you're in the middle of nowhere. Now, while we might be inclined to treat parts of the Bible like Joshua 21 as flyover country, we'll do some work today to examine the landscape of this passage from the perspective of the ancient Israelites. And as we do so, we'll see that it's really worth slowing our speed to land the plane, to linger, and learn something important about God and the places he plants us. And before we dive into our passage for today, let's just slow down ourselves and ask for God's grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath in this new day. It is a gift from you. Thank you for your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxieties and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies.

God, we ask you to meet us amidst all those things happening in our lives. Meet us in this space. this time. Jesus, help us abide in you, to remain in you to be connected to you as we engage with your truth. Holy Spirit, we ask you to relentlessly move in and through this time in Joshua 21. And as we read these words of yours, let these words read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Chapter 21 closes out the section of Joshua, where the problem, land is being allocated to the tribes of Israel. Yet the focus here in chapter 21 is on the land given to a very particular tribe, the tribe of Levi. Now, why this specific emphasis on the Levites here in Joshua 21? Because the portions of land devoted to Levi would serve as hotspots of preserving

worship. They were seed beds of passing on the faith. So when it comes to the cultivation of faith, life of Israel and the life of God's people, place makes a difference. Now, this detail about place should strike our modern ears as important because we have a tendency as modern people to minimize the role of our physical location, our physical place. If we don't like a church, we move on to the next one. If we don't like a community group of some kind, whether it's related to faith or our hobbies, we move on to the next one. I like the way that the Old Testament scholar Craig Bartholomew describes this tendency of ours as a kind of placelessness. He says this in his book, Where Mortals Dwell.

He says, the suffering of placelessness is not confined to refugees and those in exile, agonizing as their experiences are. Every person constantly on the move suffers from placelessness in one of the same. form or another. So despite our longing to be long, we all have a tendency to be placeless wherever we are. To be there, but not really be there. Joshua 21 is telling us that there's a power in living faithfully wherever God has us. And the emphasis on the Levites here tells us that this place is filled with the potential of worship, of being a hotspot of praise to the creation. king. Now, amidst this emphasis on the importance of physical location here in Joshua 21, we need to get to the end of the chapter to see how the truly astounding message here

isn't just about the place where the Israelites live, but about the one who has placed them there. So when we get to verse 43, we read this. 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. That's huge. Notice how this passage is for sure about the importance of a physical place. But the reason for that importance is because God's promises are playing out in that particular place. The promises going back to Genesis 12, the promise given to Abraham that God would provide people and land in order to be a blessing to the nations to make all things new, the promise to provide rest, the promise to be with them and be their

God. And just in case we didn't get the big point, verse 45 goes on to say this, not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the House of Israel had failed. All came to pass. For the original hearers, the regional audience of Joshua 21, this section here is not fly over country in scripture. This is scripture that illuminates the faithfulness of God. As these people are entering their allotment of the promised land, they are thinking, as they hear this, it is not an accident that we are here. This place, this is a place of promise, a place of potential worship. We are here because God is faithful. Now, one of my favorite Bible study tools is a simple two-word question,

but it's a simple two-word question that really changes everything when we read the Bible. It's this, so what? So what? I mean, this is great news for the Israelites, for the Levites. But those people lived a long time ago. What about us? So what? What difference does this make for you and me today?

I mean, most of us are tired or stressed or disoriented. We're living with a low-grade degree of anxiety or depression over whether this moment, this day, or this place where we are is just a stretch of flyover country that doesn't really matter. Joshua 21 is impressing upon us the truth that there is an intimate connection between the place God has us and the promises he's given us. This is the so what?

whether you consider the place of your job, your school, your family, your friends, your hobbies, wherever God has you, it is not an accident that you are there. Maybe you're even there right now as you're listening to this. Now, this can be especially challenging for the transient nature of the faith community today, especially in the modern West, where we live as placeless people moving from church to church, group to group, always wanting to fit somewhere, but never really staying anywhere. Joshua 21 is saying, do not take your place lightly. Even if you're just there for a season, God has you there for a reason. Because not only are you there, God's presence and God's promises are there too. So as you reflect on the themes of place and God's promises in Joshua 21,

think about this. Are there ways that you recognize a kind of flyover attitude toward the place that God has you now? Ways that you recognize your own tendency to be placeless. Maybe you've been quiet quitting in your job. Or maybe wherever you live, you've been an absent observer in your neighborhood, your apartment complex and your dorm complex, you're disconnected from other people there and ultimately disconnected from God's purposes there. What would it look like for you to see wherever you are differently? To move from seeing it as flyover country

and instead land the plane and see it as a place of purpose where God's promises are playing out. To see it and live in it as a place where you can worship to be present instead of placeless, present so that you can love other people and thereby show them the love of Jesus. But here's the thing, there's no way to love other people

and show them the love of Jesus without being present, without being there. There are no flyover places in the Bible, and there are no flyover places in our lives. Every place, every space is filled with the presence of God's faithfulness, and the potential for our faithfulness. Heavenly Father, we praise you as the God who makes and keeps your promises.

Your faithfulness is the foundation of hope that we cling to. Jesus, in whatever place you have us, we ask you to move through us, to make us your hands and your feet. Let our love be a reflection of your sacrificial love. Holy Spirit awaken in us the purpose and potentiality. of wherever we are, help us slow down and land the plane of our lives to be wherever you've placed us. Help us live faithfully wherever you have us because you are there with us. In Jesus' name, amen.