How Long Will You Neglect to Go In?

1The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the Tent of Meeting there. The land was subdued before them. 2Seven tribes remained among the children of Israel, which had not yet divided their inheritance. 3Joshua said to the children of Israel, “How long will you neglect to go in to possess the land, which Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you? 4Appoint for yourselves three men from each tribe. I will send them, and they shall arise, walk through the land, and describe it according to their inheritance; and they shall come to me. 5They shall divide it into seven portions. Judah shall live in his borders on the south, and the house of Joseph shall live in their borders on the north. 6You shall survey the land into seven parts, and bring the description here to me; and I will cast lots for you here before Yahweh our God. 7However, the Levites have no portion among you; for the priesthood of Yahweh is their inheritance. Gad, Reuben, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance east of the Jordan, which Moses the servant of Yahweh gave them.” 8The men arose and went. Joshua commanded those who went to survey the land, saying, “Go walk through the land, survey it, and come again to me. I will cast lots for you here before Yahweh in Shiloh.” 9The men went and passed through the land, and surveyed it by cities into seven portions in a book. They came to Joshua to the camp at Shiloh. 10Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before Yahweh. There Joshua divided the land to the children of Israel according to their divisions.

Those who believe in God’s work go through life strong and courageous. Because they live by faith whatever comes, they can be faithful to the present rather than anxious about the future. The future is not made according to our own plans. When we put God’s will first, God sees that faith and helps us in life. That is why living by the word comes first.

Joseph was a man who gave his life to God without reserve. Yet his brothers, who hated and envied him, sold him as a slave to the Ishmaelites. Though he suffered the pain of being cast off by his own family, he did not abandon his faith. Wrongly made a slave, falsely accused and thrown into prison, he lived a life of steadfast obedience to God all his days.

When we consider how Joseph overcame every hardship and became governor, we can think of two ways in which he kept his faith until he reached that position. First, I wonder whether Joseph, young as he was, had grasped God’s great plan to make a nation out of Abraham’s descendants. Because he believed that promise would one day surely be fulfilled, he lived through every situation as preparation for that time, so that he could take part in God’s work even though he was not its central figure. That faith made Joseph a principal figure in forming the nation of Israel and became the strength to endure every hardship. Because he lived for God alone, his was a life that gave thanks in all things.

The second way, seen from another angle, is this: though he could not see the great design as in the first case, he believed that God is the sovereign one who rules over his life. So whatever concerned God, he obeyed as a matter of habit and without condition. He could not understand at once what was happening to him, but he lived with the faith that God surely had a reason for doing this, and gradually he came to understand why God had sent him to Egypt.

As time went on, he came to know for certain that he had been called as the instrument through which God would fulfill his promise to Abraham, and that God had sent him to Egypt. So when he met again in Egypt the brothers who had sold him as a slave, he could forgive them, because he knew that God had used them too as instruments. Joseph did not resist hardship and could stand firm in faith for one reason alone: he relied on God with all his heart.

If you too believe that God is ruling over your life, you will not rage or despair whatever hardship you meet. Why? Because you know what task you have been given to fulfill. And so those who have received God’s call strive not to sin.

When the brothers who had sold him to the Ishmaelites came to Egypt to buy grain, listen to what Joseph said to them, and you will see how well he understood God’s will. His brothers trembled with fear at the sight of their younger brother, now governor of Egypt. For he told them not to be afraid: though they had sold him here, God had used them as his instruments and had sent him ahead to preserve the lives of them all.

Those who know and understand God’s will do not waste their time on revenge, because they know that, while the world and Satan use people to fill the world with evil, God turns that evil into good.

As a boy, Joseph once had two dreams. In the first, they were binding sheaves in the field, and Joseph’s sheaf rose and stood upright while his brothers’ sheaves gathered around and bowed down to it. In the second, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowed down to him. When Jacob heard the dream, he rebuked Joseph sharply in front of his brothers, but he kept the dream in mind.

Having had two spiritual dreams, Joseph would have been waiting to see what God would do through him. If his brothers too had believed God’s promise, they would have shown the maturity to look forward to what God would do through Joseph. But when they heard his dreams, they were jealous, because Joseph, who already had their father’s special love, seemed to have God’s love as well, and out of that jealousy they sold him.

Joseph had not only his father’s love but God’s special care. Yet he became the slave of Potiphar, the captain of the guard in Egypt. He fell from the place of a cherished son to that of a slave, but even in those hard circumstances he remembered the word of God he had learned from his father. Because he did not know what God would do through him, he always kept himself ready and gave his best to whatever circumstances he was in. Joseph prepared himself to obey at once whenever God commanded and lived by faith, and God must have looked on him as precious.

Seeing that Joseph was honest by nature, Potiphar put him in charge of every affair of the household except his own wife. Joseph was a well-built, handsome young man. Potiphar’s wife saw him and demanded that he lie with her, but Joseph firmly refused, because it would be a sin against God. He knew that for a slave to refuse his master’s demand meant death, yet he refused, and when he was thrown into prison on his mistress’s false accusation, he did not defend himself.

Mature believers, even when they suffer for doing good, have the calm to accept hardship, trusting that God will deliver them. When Joseph was imprisoned, he believed that God would surely act for him, the one who had done what was right. So when he met Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer and chief baker in prison, he interpreted their dreams and gave his best to every task before him. Joseph’s power to interpret dreams shows that he lived at peace with God and possessed spiritual power. Of course, for two years they forgot him, but Joseph lived diligently, waiting for God’s time. He understood it only after he became governor, but those two hard years of waiting were training to make him stronger, a test he had to bear by faith.

Two years after the chief cupbearer was restored to his post, Pharaoh had a dream. He was standing by the Nile, and seven sleek and fat cows came up out of the river and grazed in the marsh grass. Then seven ugly and thin cows came up after them out of the river and ate up the sleek and fat cows. In the second dream, seven heads of grain, full and good, came up on one stalk. After them sprouted seven heads, thin and blasted by the east wind, and they swallowed up the seven full heads. Pharaoh searched everywhere for someone who could interpret these dreams.

Only then did the chief cupbearer remember Joseph, who had interpreted his dream. At last, this was the moment Joseph’s suffering came to an end. His life, always diligent and steadfast in faith, bore fruit, and he was given the opportunity to stand before Pharaoh. Because no one knows which part of life will one day bear the fruit of blessing, we must be faithful to the present. After interpreting Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph became governor, yet he remained humble and true to the word. As we saw at the start, his faith can be viewed in two ways. But whether he understood God’s promise from the beginning or came to understand God’s plan gradually as he was sanctified, both are lives of faith, and so the outcome is the same.

If Joseph had been sold as a slave by his brothers without knowing God’s will, the suffering he endured would have felt bitterly unjust and painful. How could my brothers sell me? Should I never have told them about my dreams? What will become of my future? He would have been full of such thoughts. But because he had the faith that he must endure until God’s time came, Joseph was able to live a life that did not waver.

Joseph won Potiphar’s trust but did not grow proud, for it is only natural that someone who believes in the almighty God should be recognized by people of the world. If Joseph had not known God, he might have been torn when he had to refuse the advances of Potiphar’s wife by his own will alone, knowing that if he gave in to his mistress he could live in ease. There is a great difference between one who understands God’s providence and lives by faith of their own accord, and one who grudgingly endures because God has promised blessing. For those who believe in God with all their heart, the suffering and endurance they go through have already ceased to be pain.

You know that God created all things and gave humankind dominion over all he had made. You must also know that because of human sin, God the Son came into a world where there was not one righteous person, bore the cross, and became the atoning sacrifice, and that by his blood the gate of heaven was opened again. And you know that Jesus, who will return on the last day of the world, is now at the right hand of the throne, praying for us.

Now then, knowing all this, what you must do as those who have been saved is to serve faithfully so that more souls may be saved. Saints who have received God’s call and gladly given their lives to him are not made miserable or discouraged by the hardships the world brings. Because God, the Lord of the future, is with them, their eagerness to see how their lives will unfold is all the greater.

When you place your final hope in God, you can love everyone you meet along life’s road and treat them generously. But those who know the word only in their heads and do not give themselves to it will be deeply torn inside. Going to church, reading the word, praying: all of it will be a burden of pain. They know heaven exists, so they cannot give up walking with God. Yet when they try, their hearts will not move, leaving them always full of guilt.

Yet Joseph shows us that the life of faith must be lived even when we have to force ourselves. When Potiphar’s wife tempts us, we refuse, if only out of fear of God, and when we are unjustly thrown into prison, we hold on, believing that God will never put us to shame. If Joseph had been lazy and not faithful in his present, he could not have connected God’s plan for him to the future.

Had he paid no attention when the officials were troubled by their dreams, he would never have left the prison. It is those who are faithful to their present lives in God who have a future, and who can hold great dreams and ambitions. Of course, people of the world can also do well and gain ability if they work hard. But as we live, we meet Satan’s temptations, the competition of others, and unforeseen circumstances that our own strength cannot overcome, and that is why we must look to the almighty God.

As time passed, Joseph came to understand that God meant to fulfill through him the promise he had made to Abraham. He did not know when, where, or how God would use him, so he lived always ready and served faithfully in every task without delay. God wants his people to live with a faith like Joseph’s.

Some people are earnest while they suffer, but the moment their prayers are answered, they change until they cannot be told apart from the people of the world. God does not use the rest of such a life. That is a great misfortune, so the more we are blessed, the more we must never grow proud. No one is as foolish and unhappy as one who leaves God after a little success in the world, since anyone who keeps striving, eager to see how God will use their present success, will be led by him to places beyond human imagining.

Joseph looked forward to a nation that would have God as Israel’s king, and he took part in that purpose. Seven years of famine came, just as Pharaoh had dreamed, but Joseph used his worldly office as governor to bring his family to the land of Goshen, and they came safely through the famine. Through the twelve sons of Jacob, God spent four hundred years making one family into a nation, and by making them suffer Pharaoh’s cruel oppression, he kept them from being absorbed into the Gentiles and scattered. There is no peace that comes for nothing, and no suffering that comes for no reason. I hope you will keep in mind that God surely has a reason for allowing this time, and do your best in the place you have been given. Let us remember that the time we have now is an instrument to be used again one day, that is, fruit, and let us live by faith, giving it our all.

Joshua 18:3

3Joshua said to the children of Israel, “How long will you neglect to go in to possess the land, which Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you?

God gave Israel victory in every battle in Canaan, but because they could not make up their minds in faith, they failed to drive out the Canaanites. Having received the land of Canaan as the gift of the covenant, they grew idle and did not give their all to conquering it. Joshua rebuked them in their sorry state: how long would they neglect to conquer the land of the covenant that God had given them?

As I have said, God spent hundreds of years bringing them to Canaan, the land of the covenant, but the Israelites did not have faith like Joseph’s. Joshua, like Joseph, walked with an understanding of God’s providence, and it is easy to imagine how frustrated he was as he watched a people with no will to conquer Canaan. If only they had the will, God would drive out the Canaanites. The trouble was that Israel had no heart to clear the land for themselves.

Seven tribes had still not received their inheritance, so Joshua commanded that three men be chosen from each tribe to survey the land of Canaan still to be conquered and draw a map of it. He meant to divide the land by casting lots over the maps they brought back. The descendants of men of great faith like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph had entered Canaan and yet were not taking the land. They had entirely forgotten how earnestly their forefathers in faith had longed to enter this land, and how long God had waited patiently to give Canaan to Israel. Joshua wanted to set this Israel, whose faith had sunk so low, back on its feet.

Joshua 18:10

10Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before Yahweh. There Joshua divided the land to the children of Israel according to their divisions.

The seven tribes that had brought back their maps cast lots before Yahweh. Now, whoever would receive fertile land and whoever would receive hill country as Caleb had, they had to go forward without question, as God decided. Even if the land allotted to them before Yahweh was hill country, they could survive only by fighting for it with their lives.

Churches and their members today have also been allotted a land of faith by God. When God calls you, he sometimes calls each of you by name, but he also calls all of us together Watercourse Church. Just as every church has a duty to conquer the land allotted to it, our church too must give itself with all its life to conquering the land allotted to us. That land is the land of the covenant, a land where God has already won the victory, so if only we act in faith, we can conquer as much of it as we will. We have no time to complain, like Israel, asking for more land to be handed to us for nothing. We have no time to delay, saying our church is too small to do anything. We have no time to live self-centered lives like the Israelites, who said it was easier to keep the Canaanites as slaves even if it meant defying God’s word.

You will have seen how nations everywhere are suffering from earthquakes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, and volcanic eruptions. Without anyone predicting, as the cults do, that the end will come in such a year, month, and day, the signs of the end that Jesus spoke of are appearing everywhere. It is not one or two people meeting the end of their lives. Hundreds, even thousands, are dying all at once. Look around, and there are so many causes of death that there is no way to escape them.

If you do not do your utmost to conquer the land allotted to you, you may be rebuked by God, as Israel was. No one can escape the end and the judgment. You need to hold up to the light of the word the life you are living now, day by day, and ask whether it will be a reward before God or a rebuke. No one knows when the end of the world will come, and no one knows the end of their own life either. So while God gives you time today, gives you opportunity, and helps you, may you live by faith.

Judges 3:2

2only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at least those who knew nothing of it before:

God left powerful foreign nations such as the Philistines as instruments to teach his children. He did so to test whether Israel would obey the commands he had taught them through Moses or defy them. This is what the suffering of God’s people is. God does not send you hardship to torment you, but shakes you for a moment to see how far you have become able to resolve it. War is certainly great pain and hardship. But if Israel is attacked and ruled by the very people they should have driven out in God’s name, that shows how meager Israel’s faith is.

The world entrusted to you was given so that you would rule it by faith. If you do not rule it, you will be ruled by it instead. To be ruled by pleasure, ruled by possessions, and to bow to people and become their slaves is not what God desires. Like Joseph, we must understand God’s will and master even our hardships.

The power and authority of the world, its wars and its competition, may be instruments God has prepared to test his people now. So, since we do not know when the end will come, we must give ourselves to the task we have received, even to the point of death.

How long will you neglect to go in? When will you get up from that place of spiritual idleness and run? I pray you will not be a foolish people who, though equipped with the power God has given, are overrun by the forces of darkness, but will rise up resolutely to conquer the land God has allotted you. If only you resolve to do it, God will work out all the rest.

Like Joseph, may you hold on to your faith in every circumstance, look far ahead with spiritual eyes, and live according to God’s will. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.