Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Your Soul, Your Life, Your All | Historical Books | Joshua 22:1-20

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

God's love demands our obedience. Are you fighting hard to obey him? Are you taking the consequences of your sin lightly? In today's episode, Keith shares how Joshua 22:1-20 reminds us of the love of God that demands your soul, your life, your all. 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 22:1-20

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 Keith Simon. Tim Ferran had a foot in two different worlds. In the first world, he was a British politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in England from 2015 to 2017. In the other world, Tim Ferran was a Christian. He grew up in a Protestant family and says that becoming a Christian at the age of 18 was the most massive choice I have ever made. made. Eventually, those two worlds, the worlds of politics and Christianity collided, and Farron was put

in a position where he had to either resign his place within the party or compromise his faith. Well, Tim Ferran resigned. He refused to compromise. In his resignation letter, he wrote this. I joined our party when I was 16. It is in my blood. I love our history, our people. I thoroughly love my party. So imagine how proud I am to lead this party. And then, imagine what would lead me to voluntarily relinquish that honor. In the words of Isaac Watts, it would have to be something so amazing, so divine, that it demands my heart, my life, my all. Joshua 21 ends with a verse about God's faithfulness. Here's the last verse. Not one of all the Lord's good promises to Israel failed. Everyone was fulfilled. Now the rest of the book of Joshua

says that Israel must respond by obeying God. The logic is something like this. Since God has been faithful to you, you should be faithful to him. God's grace leads to our obedience. That takes me back to Tim Ferran. His quote was a famous hymn called When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Like he said, it was written by Isaac Watts, and it was published in 1707. The last line of the song is, Love So Amazing, So Divine.

demands my soul, my life, my all. God's love demands everything from us, including our obedience. And that's exactly what we see in Joshua 22. God's faithfulness calls for our obedience. Here's how the chapter starts in verse one. Then Joshua has summoned the Rubinites, the Gaddites, and the half-tribed of Manasseh and said to them, you have done all that Moses, the servant of the Lord commanded, and you have obeyed me in everything I commanded. For a long time now, to this very day, you have not deserted your brothers, but have carried out the mission the Lord your God gave you. See, way back in Numbers chapter 32, when Israel was marching through the wilderness of Gilead, these two and a half tribes, the Rubinites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh.

Well, they came to Moses and asked to settle the land east of the Jordan River. They liked that land, and someone needed to occupy it, so they asked if they could live there. Moses said they could, under one condition, that the soldiers of these tribes continue to fight with the rest of the tribes. And they did so. That's what Joshua means here in verse 2 when he says, you have done all that Moses commanded. They had literally fought the good fight. Let's continue in verse 4. It says, now that the Lord your God has given your brother's rest as he promised.

So when you read that, you can almost hear the emotion in Joshua's voice as he talks to these soldiers who, have fought seven long years with him. And Joshua says, return to your homes in the land that Moses, the servant of the Lord gave you on the other side of the Jordan. But he warns them, be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord gave you. And that commandment is this, to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to obey his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul. So Joshua calls these tough and seasoned soldiers to a rigorous love and obedience to God. If you want to be the person God wants you to be, let me encourage you to notice the verbs in

verse 5. It says to keep, to love, to walk, to obey, to hold fast, to serve. God's people go hard after God. Those verbs radiate intensity. They emphasize a relationship with God that's characterized by a passion to obey God. That's what Joshua wanted from these men. It's what God wants from us. See, I wanted to get another second to consider their obedience.

It's easy to focus on the way that Christians fall short of obeying God. And that's something we should focus on. We all have a lot of sin to confess. But I don't want to neglect all the ways that Christians obey God. Think of the high school student who chooses not to drink alcohol with her friends. Think of the college student who resists sexual sin. Think of the person in their 20s who faithfully serves in their church, even though it's inconvenient for their life. Think of the business professional who does their work to the glory of God.

Think of the mom or dad who patiently loves and disciplines their child. Think of the husband or wife who extends grace to their spouse. See, obedience pleases God. Obedience is the right response to God's grace and kindness in our life. One more thing. obedience isn't legalism. Sometimes you hear well-meaning Christians talk as if those who really get grace

feel more comfortable disobeying God. Their thinking seems to go like this. Since God is so gracious and kind towards sinners, it really doesn't matter whether I obey him or not. We've really misunderstood grace if it causes us to treat sin lightly. Okay, I think I've made my point. Let's move on in this story

because I think there's more to learn in this chapter. In verse 9, the two and a half tribes leave and head back across the Jordan to settle on the east side, just like Joshua gave them permission to do. Then in verse 10, it says, the Rubinites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh built an imposing altar there by the River Jordan. And when the other tribes heard about it, they gathered at Shiloh to go to war against them. Wait a minute, what's going on here? Why are they going to go to war against each other? Well, the nine and a half tribes sent a delegation to the two and a half tribes and they asked them, how could you break faith with God like this? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourself an altar of rebellion against him? So why were these nine and a half tribes ready to blow away the two and a half?

Because they saw this imposing altar as an altar of rebellion. Building a second altar amounted to apostasy. it amounted to denying their faith, and the nine and a half were convinced that the two and a half tribes had lapsed into apostasy. Why is it a problem to build this altar? Well, we have to go back to Deuteronomy 12. Here Moses is speaking about the day that has come in Joshua 22, when they will cross and possess the land.

And Moses tells them, but you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your ancestors. enemies around you so that you will live in safety. Then to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, there you are to bring everything I command you. Then in verse 13, he says, be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings anywhere you please. Offer them only at the place the Lord will choose in one of your tribes and there observe everything I command you. Now, why did God do this? Why did God tell them that they are not supposed to set up altars in various

places, but instead to have one altar in one place that he designated. And that's because God knows our tendency to idolatry. So therefore, to maintain our purity before him and our unity with other believers, God states that their worship will be centralized in one place, one location, a location he will choose. That will keep them from lapsing into idolatry and apostasy. According to Deuteronomy There's only supposed to be one altar, not two altars, not three altars. So the Western tribes say, look, guys, you can't build your own altar. Your sin will have an effect on all of us. Here's what they say in verse 18.

And are you now turning away from the Lord? If you rebel against the Lord today, tomorrow he will be angry with the whole community of Israel. See, they remember the sin of Aiken that we covered back in Joshua chapter 6. There, one-man's sin put the whole nation under God's judgment. So it's no surprise that the Western tribes are upset about the sin of the Eastern tribes. They want the whole community to faithfully follow God's laws. I think there's something for us to recognize here, and that is that our sin affects other people. Sometimes we tell ourselves a story that our sin only affects us, and so therefore it's not a big deal if we choose to sin because we're only hurting our own relationship with God.

But every kid who grew up in the home of an addict knows that's not true. Every workplace that has a gossip in it knows that that gossiping person destroys relationships. If a spouse commits adultery, it affects all their community, their whole friendship group, maybe even their small group at church. I mean, you can just go on and on down the list. The more responsibility, the more leadership a person has, the more their sin affects more people. And yet all of us have to wrestle with the fact that our sin doesn't just affect us. It affects the people that we love and care about.

God's faithfulness should lead us to say like Tim Ferran did that we want to give him our all. We can go back to that song of Isaac Watts. We have been touched. We have been forgiven by a love that is so amazing, so divine, that it demands our heart, our life, our all. We could add it demands our obedience. If God has convicted you of any area of your life that is out of sync with him, this is a time to confess it and ask him to forgive you, to cleanse you,

and to give you a desire to obey him. Let's all pray that we would be people who obey God and give him our all.