THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION

Joshua: God's Faithful Giving Of The Promised Land To Israel

Part III: God's Dividing The Land For Israel's Inheritance, Joshua 13:1-21:45

C. Judah's Inheritance: God's Reward For Selflessly Protective Oversight

(Joshua 15:1-63)

Introduction: (To show the need . . .)

It is probably not a secret to anyone that there are problems with human leadership in today's world:

(1) Justice Scalia's dissent on the U. S. Supreme Court's ruling last week on Obamacare called the majority opinion "quite absurd,'" "'interpretive jiggery-pokery,'" that "'(w)e should start calling this law SCOTUScare'" for Supreme Court of the United States care! ("Antonin Scalia Dissents," The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2015, p. A13)

(2) Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for the late President Ronald Reagan, in her recent column of the journal (Ibid., "Hillary Will Glide Above It All," June 20-21, 2015, p. A13) recently claimed that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, frontrunners in the race for the presidency, along with the current president himself, "operate at a certain remove" from the average, grassroots American voter!

(3) The problem affects religions, too: William McGurn's column (Ibid., "The Miracle of Pope Francis") claimed that economists and entrepreneurs "will tell you . . . there is no nation so poor that its people cannot lift up themselves if they have the freedom to take advantage of modern technology and participate in the global marketplace," but that "Pope Francis suggests . . . the impoverished . . . can never have better lives or a cleaner environment until the West imposes a much-reduced standard of living on itself." Such thinking is oppressive to many in the West, "pessimism" opposite the pope's own earlier "apostolic exhortation" for "'The Gospel of Joy'"!

(5) At the local level, in the last two weeks alone, I have been involved in multiple conversations with a number of believers on leadership problems involving a variety of people and three different Christian institutions!

Need: So, we ask, "With the many problems in leadership today, what key quality does God seek in a leader?!"

I. The land inheritance God gave the tribe of Judah by lot in Joshua 15:1a fulfilled ancestor Jacob's prophetic blessing regarding his son Judah and his seed with a special emphasis on Judah's leadership:

A. Jacob's blessing given just before his death predicted in Genesis 49:8-9 that Judah's line would counter Gentile foes and rule the rest of Israel, Bible Know. Com., O. T., p. 359. Judah's land ran roughly from the length of the western shore of the Dead Sea westward to the Mediterranean Sea (Jos. 15:1b-63), so these foes were Moab to the east, Edom to the south, Amalek to the southwest and the Philistines to the west of Judah (Ibid.). This tribe needed gifted leaders to protect its own territory and thus the territories of the rest of Israel from potent foes on Judah's border, so its land territory became a buffer and a its men leaders for the rest of Israel.

B. Importantly, this prophecy predicted Messiah would come from Judah, Gen. 49:10-12; Ibid., p. 359, 98-99:

1. Judah would end up dominating Israel's Gentile foes and leading his brethren as a lion, Genesis 49:8-9.

2. Then, the Ultimate Ruler to arise from Judah would be the Messiah Himself, Genesis 49:10.

3. With the arrival of the Messiah would come the Messianic age of blessing, Genesis 49:11-12:

a. Every line in Genesis 49:11-12 predicts the golden Messianic age of abundant agricultural blessing, B. K. C., O. T., p. 98. Parts of Judah were fertile in Joshua's era, but much was then wilderness, Ibid., p. 359.

b. Thus, the Messianic age would be marked by a blossoming of even this wilderness area, with grapevines growing so profusely that people would hitch their donkeys or horses to them though such animals typically voraciously ate the leaves of such vines, Genesis 49:11a; Ibid., p. 98

c. Wine in the Messianic era would be as abundant as wash water, Genesis 49:11b,c; Ibid.

d. Judah's people would consequently possess bright eyes and healthy teeth from the great nutritional opulence of the vegetation and its consequent livestock production in the Messianic era, Gen. 49:12; Ibid.

II. However, this elevation of Judah to rule Jacob's other sons needs to be explained, for normally the eldest son in Reuben would be the one to rule, and neither Reuben nor Judah were perfect men (as follows):

A. Though Reuben as the eldest would normally be given leadership over his brothers, he shamed his father in cohabiting with Jacob's concubine (Gen. 49:3-4; 35:22), so Jacob demoted Reuben in his blessing, Gen. 49:4.

B. Yet, Judah whose seed was given the leadership role was likewise far from perfect: Judah failed to keep his pledge to his widowed, childless daughter-in-law Tamar to give his younger son to her to raise up seed to Tamar's deceased husband, Genesis 38:1-12. Tamar then disguised herself as a harlot and presented herself seductively to Judah, and he yielded, he cohabitated with her in sin and she conceived, Genesis 38:13-23.

III. Nevertheless, unlike Reuben and the rest of his brothers, JUDAH exercised SELFLESS PROTECTION of the FAMILY MEMBERS when their LIVES and WELFARE were THREATENED (as follows):

A. Jacob's sons all came to hate their brother Joseph as his father favored him (Gen. 37:3-4), and Joseph unwisely and selfishly enhanced their hatred by telling his brothers about his dream of his coming exaltation over them (Ibid., ftn. to Gen. 37:6-8), so his brothers planned to kill him and blame it on a wild animal, Gen. 37:17b-20!

B. The oldest son Reuben realized the plan was sinful, so he directed his brothers not to kill Joseph, but to cast him into a pit, planning later to rescue him and give him back to his father Jacob, Genesis. 37:21-22.

C. However, when his brothers caught and cast Joseph into the pit, instead of staying to watch over Joseph's welfare, Reuben carelessly left the scene (Gen. 37:29), and Judah who stayed responsibly urged the other brothers to sell him as a slave to passing Midianites and not kill him since he was their brother, Gen. 37:26-28.

D. The Hebrew text on this event contrasts Reuben's self-centered focus with Judah's other-centered focus:

1. When Reuben learned that Joseph was gone from the pit, he asked his brothers in Genesis 37:30 (literally), "Now I myself (emph. pron.) -- where will I myself (emph. pron. again) go?" (Kittel, Bib. Heb., p. 57)

2. In contrast, when Judah in Genesis 37:26-27 urged his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery versus killing him, Judah argued (literally), " . . . for HE himself (emph. pron.) is our brother, our flesh!" (Ibid.)

3. Thus, Reuben's use of the emphatic pronoun "I myself" betrays his self-centered focus and Judah's use of the emphatic pronoun "HE himself" reveals his other-centered focus on his brother and family ties!

E. This selfless protection characteristic in Judah showed up in other events in his life (as follows):

1. When Tamar was revealed to be with child, and Judah at first called for her execution for acting as a harlot (Gen. 38:24), he withdrew his call for her death upon being shown by Tamar to be the father of her unborn sons. Judah admitted that she had been more righteous than he in preserving her deceased husband's honor opposite his failure, Gen. 38:25-26. Judah confessed his sin both against Tamar and his immorality with her, and he withdrew his charge, saving the lives of Tamar and her unborn twin sons, Genesis 38:27-30.

2. Again, in Genesis 43:3-11, Judah sacrificially told his father that he himself would be forever responsible to his father Jacob if he did not see that his youngest son Benjamin was returned to him from Egypt.

3. When Joseph who was at the time unknown to Judah threatened to keep Benjamin in Egypt, Judah pleaded with him in behalf of his father Jacob's welfare, urging that he himself, Judah, be taken prisoner in place of Benjamin that his father might not die an early death due to overwhelming grief, Genesis 44:1-34.

F. Judah's lead in seeking selflessly to protect other family members later won him the confidence of his father to where Judah was the son that Jacob sent ahead to get directions from Joseph on meeting him, Genesis 46:28.

G. Thus, Judah's level of selfless protectiveness of others in the family exceeded that of his brothers, so God through Jacob's blessing rewarded him by having his seed both rule his brothers' descendants and produce the selflessly protective Messiah, Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us on the cross to save us, Mark 10:45.

Lesson: Though Judah was far from perfect, he more than his brothers possessed the key positive leadership quality of selfless protectiveness of other family members, so he was rewarded with the leadership role in his tribal blessing, including the ancestry of the ultimate selflessly protecting Ruler, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us on the cross that we might have eternal life through Him, John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Application: (1) May we believe in Christ to have eternal life, John 3:16. (2) Then, (a) may we rely on the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16-23) to (b) act with selfless protection for our subordinates to please the Lord and to be blessed.

Conclusion: (To illustrate the message . . .)

As an illustration of this message, the humble selflessness of the translators of the 1611 King James Version of the Bible in their preface help to protect us today from the problematic and errant "King James Only" view:

On page 10 of their preface, "The Translators to the Reader," the KJV translators affirmed that a "(v)ariety of translations is profitable for the finding out of the sense of the Scriptures . . . [It] must needs do good, yea, is necessary, as we are persuaded," Robert A. Joyner, Th. D., Ph. D., King James Only?, 1999, p. 5, 12. The KJV translators, opposite the "King James Only" promoters today, recommended that their readers read other translations besides their own work, effectively denying that they wrote a divinely inspired version of the Bible!

Also, on page 9 of that preface, the 1611 KJV translators humbly admitted: "Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should needs to make a new translation, or yet to make a bad one, a good one. But to make good ones better or out of many good ones, one principal good one." (Ibid., Joyner, p. 5, 10)

May we trust in Christ to be saved. Then, may we selflessly protect subordinates for God's blessing!