Joshua 16:4-10 | Episode #1237

July 14, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Joshua 16:4-10

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Hope Alive where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Foreign. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Joshua chapter 16. Joshua chapter 16. We're going to finish out the chapter today. And as is in the book of Joshua, there's a lot of geography and, and you know how I am about geography because really I love it. I love maps, I love looking at it, I love studying does not mess up my, my study of it's not messed up by dyslexia for some reason maps don't flip but letters do. And so it is, it is a very fun thing for me to do to study maps and, and to study history. And maps are a part of history and if you don't really know the, the geography, it's hard to really know what was going on. Geogr and so when I'm studying it that's important. But what's important about this and it is a geography and a map question is there's a lesson to be learned in this passage out of all this geography. And the lesson is a very important lesson. It's a spiritual lesson and it teaches us something about the spirit filled Christian life. Teaches us about how to live out the life that God has made for us to have. And so when we study this, it's really, really important that we get this lesson for sure. Now I'm not saying this is only lesson from this passage. Probably not. There's probably so many lessons that I can't see because I've not really lived in Israel and I don't know these areas intimately. I've not walked the land I've not been there. So for me, it would be blind to go at this Bible study in that direction. But there's something clearly that I can see, there's something that is clear that I can see, that is in this passage, that gives us some insight. It gives us some great insight. And the thing that I can see, because in verse five, it starts describing the Buddha of the children of Ephraim according to their families and their inheritance. And it goes all the way through, and it gives all the borders. Verse 6 says the border went out toward the sea. This is toward the Mediterranean Sea. Then it went down, and then it reached Jericho. And then you've got all the boundaries that are described here. But then you get to verse 10. And verse 10 says something that we can all understand, whether we like maps or not. Verse 10 says this. And they did not drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day and have become forced laborers. Okay, what that saying is, is the Canaanites that God told them to drive out the Ephraimites to drive out that they did not drive them out. And in fact, we know from later on in scripture that they began to worship their gods. And in fact, after not long after that, you're going to see that the Northern Kingdom oftentimes is going to be called Ephraim. And the reason it's going to be called Ephraim is because the Ephraimites are the ones who led the Northern Kingdom, not totally, but mostly led the Northern Kingdom to worship these other gods and in fact, began to worship these other gods in what is known as in Samaria, or the Mountain of the Samaritans. And that was a high place for the worship of these Canaanite pagan gods. And you're going to see, as we go through the rest of Scripture, you're going to see that they began to involve themselves in the thing that God told them to destroy them for. They began to involve themselves in child sacrifice. And so God says to them, he's not going to release them from that. He's not going to allow them to get get away from that. There's going to be no in the idea of bondage if I'm not released from it. The spiritual understanding is I'm not forgiven. I'm not released from the consequences of that action. And so what we see here is the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer, they did not drive out the Canaanites. And the result of that is going to be the children of Israel slowly slipping into the bondage of the sin of the Canaanites, which God utterly detest. In fact, he wanted them destroyed for. And so knowing that and understanding that, then you kind of sit back and go, well, this is a key passage here. This is something that I need to see. Because, you know, they go into the northern kingdom goes into captivity and is totally obliterated. The southern kingdom goes into captivity because they also were slowly being involved in, not necessarily child sacrifice, but they were slowly being involved in that type of worship and corrupted by it. And then they go into captivity. And then ultimately, after Jesus's time, their nation gets destroyed. And so understanding that the consequences of this are dire for the generations that are going to come after it. Now here it seems like it's innocuous. It seems like. So, okay, why? Because the Canaanites were forced laborers for them. That's. If you say forced laborers, that slavery, okay. By the way, slavery exists in the world for. Well, since human beings began to live on the earth and only began to be eradicated in the 17th century and was eradicated by Western culture. Western culture is what began to eradicate slavery in the world, starting with the English and eventually culminating in slavery in the Western world being eradicated by the turn of the century. And then that slavery has not been eradicated in other parts of the world. And so we see that the slaves eventually become the master. And that's what happens here. And so when we're studying this, that's important. Then I go, okay, well did that have any effect? And what's so interesting about it is that yeah, it had a huge effect. It had a huge effect. In fact, if you measure out the land of the Ephraimites and you look at the map of Israel when they became a nation, you see that right there in the middle of the country, Israel just had a little bitty strip along the ocean, just a small 5 to 7 mile strip that connected their northern region to their southern region. And the area that was so narrow and involved what is known as the Palestinians today. It was the people that lived in Israel along with the Jews. Prior to Israel becoming a nation, those people that lived there along the sea lived in what is modern day Ephraim. And so even generations, even thousands of years later, when Israel becomes a nation, what happens? Israel has to go back and take that land from the Ephraimites or those who they failed to conquer in Ephraim. And you go, what does that matter? It matters A whole lot. Because the things that we spiritually refuse to take today, the things that we spiritually don't obey God for today, we pass on to the generations after us and force them to have to handle it. Rather than them progressing past us, they have to come back and fix us. They have to resolve the problems that we refuse to address in the days that we live. And that happens in families, that happens in cultures, that happens in societies, that happens in communities, that happens for generation, generation, generation, for years and years to come. So what is the answer to that? The answer to that is that for your family, just like Joshua was going to say at the end of this book, as for me and my house will serve the Lord, your family has to, it has to start with you. Just like with anything, it has to start with you. And you have to allow God to change you, grow you, make you renew you, make you become. You have to do that. And then you have to, you have to address the issues of your family, the things that have been passed down in your family. And then once you address those things, you need to, you begin to branch out and you begin to. Because you've been a changing force in your own life. You've operated in faith and allowed God to do the big things in your own life. And then you operate in faith and allow God to do the big things in your family's life. Now you're a change agent. Now you're someone who actually is. Walking in light is like changing the world that you live in. When that's going on, when that's happening around us, when, when, when we're serving God in that way, when, when those things are, are going on. Well, God does big things in our lives. God, God, God begins to make things new. He makes things powerful. He makes things different. And he does it not just in the times that we live in, he does it generationally down the road. And so, you know, all of us talk about us loving our grandchildren and hoping one day we might even see our great grandchildren and all the desires that we have about our families. But the truth is, the best thing you can do for your family is pass along to them a life changing, grace filled faith. And passing that on to them will first of all directly deal with the just open and obvious issues that were passed on to you by your family. And it will also provide them the tools to move forward in their lives. Families who do the things that are necessary for their children and their grandchildren to be nurtured and grown in their faith become influential and powerful Families for the future and those that don't dissipate. And we know that. And so there were parts of the land of Israel that were taken and there were parts that weren't taken. But I can. I know this for sure by looking at the map. The, the Ephraimites didn't take all of their area. They allowed the Canaanites to remain. And they remained till 1948 and really weren't driven out until 1969. 67. 68, 69. And so that's a long time. And if you look at it from a spiritual sense, how many things could you actually deal with that would be a blessing to the generations to come for maybe even a thousand years? How many things can you do that would cause your children and your grandchildren to be blessed? And we're not talking about money and we're not talking about land. We're talking about a heritage of faith. How many things could you deal with that would totally change the world of the people that come after you? And a desire to do that and desire to make that difference is a true sign of a spiritual field believer. A spirit filled believer always looks to what I pass to those behind me. And this passage gives us that insight. It says to us, it screams to us from history, look at me, listen to me. What you do will have consequence way down the road. And the reason, it will have consequences because you are a person of consequence. You're consequential. You matter. And the things that you do spiritually especially have eternal value. And they have consequential value for those who come after you. And so you have to. You have to begin to look at life that way and seek it out that way.

As you go. Today, I pray that the Lord will

bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.