Joshua 19

The Lord has a great inheritance for His people. We are co-heirs with Christ. We need to hear that the meek shall inherit the earth, and we need to persevere with heaven-sent endurance, setting our hearts on Jesus and the coming resurrection.

The Lord is continually giving us good gifts, even in this life. James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Not only that, the Lord who died for us has gone above. All these blessings come to us through Him, and He went ahead of us into heavenly realms to prepare a place for us there.

It is with this greatest of all inheritances in mind, that my soul considers the tribal allotments to Israel. We have already heard about the most prominent tribes. Now we hear about the rest of them. The Lord is not only the God of His prominent servants who are known in this life by so many people. He is our God too. It is His glory to work through many people whose names may be forgotten by people after they are gone. But the Lord Jesus remembers. Our names are written on the palms of His hands.

Jesus is our High Priest. In the Old Testament, the High Priest wore special garments with jewels on the breastplate, reminding the man who ministered before God for Israel that He offered up sacrifices not only for Judah, Joseph, Benjamin, and Levi, but for all the tribes of Israel, for they were all precious in His sight. When Christ offered up Himself as a sacrifice for us, He atoned for your sins too.

Simeon had an inheritance in Israel within the land of Judah. They were part of the Lord's plan in having dominion over the large allotment that Judah had received from the Lord in the south. They were soon lost to man's accounting, but God has never lost them. They belong to Him.

Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, and Naphtali would form the northern part of Israel. Isaiah would prophesy about this region many centuries later:

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
(Isaiah 9:1-2)

This passage would be quoted by Matthew as Jesus fulfilled the ancient prophesies that others seemed to have forgotten. When the Messiah was doing so much of His teaching and so many of His miracles in these less respected parts of Israel, the response of many of the religious leaders in Jerusalem was the one recorded in John 7:52, “Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” They had missed the reference in Isaiah, but the Lord fulfilled His great plan for the land of these less-known Northern tribes.

The final tribal inheritance (not including the Levitical cities and pasturelands noted in Joshua 21) went to the tribe of Dan. The territory of Dan was along the central seacoast of Israel. This land would be very difficult to hold on to, a story that is told more fully in the book of Judges. Though the territory of Dan was lost to them before its time, it was not lost to God. Many centuries later, in the early years of the church moving out beyond Jerusalem and Judea, we have great reports of the churches in Lydda and Joppa, where Peter performed great miracles. It was while he was in Joppa in the ancient territory given to the tribe of Dan, that an adventure came to him from heaven, teaching him that he should not think of the Gentiles as unclean anymore.

Joshua 19 closes with the mention of a city allotted to Joshua. Our new Joshua, Jesus the Messiah, is the King of the kingdom of God. He is bringing the city of God down from heaven. He is the one who worked miracles through Peter, and who opened a door of blessing to the nations. He remembers the tribe of Simeon when everyone has forgotten it in the midst of Judah. He has a plan of blessing for places that are despised and rejected by everyone. He knows what it means to seem to lose everything that you cared most about, as happened to the tribe of Dan.

He knows your name, and He is well aware of your situation today. He has carried your sorrows on the cross, and He will never leave you nor forsake you. You have a great inheritance in Him in a place where He will wipe away your tears, and where you will do amazing deeds to the glory of God forever.