Joshua 18:1-10 | Episode #1240

July 17, 2026

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

Joshua 18:1-10

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. Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Joshua, chapter 18 and gonna deal with verses one through ten. There's seven tribes that have not taken possession of the land. That's the context of where we're at and they're really gonna be the context of the rest of the, most of the rest of the book of Joshua. The next three or four chapters is gonna deal with this idea that there were seven tribes that didn't have their really illuminates a idea or an understanding that's hard to navigate for believers. It's just a real difficult understanding or idea how to navigate things for believers. And oftentimes rather than figuring out how to do it the biblical way, you end up washed on one side or the other. In a political spectrum it'd be washed to the left, to the right, but it's not a political spectrum. It's figuring out how to, how, how to live the Christian life. And, and one way is one way, one side is we're just gonna willy nilly just run and, and just believe God and act in faith and you know, just do whatever, whenever, however, and let whatever stick stick. And, and people end up doing it living their life that way. They, if they, if they get a notion or they get a, they get a whim, boom, they're gone. Then the other side is we're not going to plan. I mean we're going to plant everything out and we're really not going to pray. We're going to organize it and we're going to be in full control of it, and we're going to troll it all the way to the end. And one side doesn't engage God in his divine way because you're just doing things willy nilly. And the other side doesn't engage God by faith, which allows God to guide us. And what happens here in Joshua 18 is there's seven tribes that haven't taken their land. In fact, it says now the whole congregation of the children of Israel assemble together at Shiloh. That means peace. And that's important. They assemble together where they began, at Shiloh, which is the word for peace. So in order to get the peace of God, to prepare yourself to hear from God, they assemble at Shiloh and they set up the tabernacle of meeting there. That's where they're going to meet with God. And the land was subdued before them. But there remained among the children of Israel, seven tribes which had not received their inheritance. Now, so there's an issue. There's a problem. They're worshiping God. They're at the place of peace. And there's an issue that has arisen. What's the issue? Well, seven tribes don't have the land. It says, so Joshua took the. So Joshua said to the children of Israel, how long will you neglect to possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers has given you? What he's saying is you need to get busy in doing what God told you to do. Now that's, that's okay. So there's a problem. And we, and we generally know God's will in the problem. Okay, that doesn't mean that we know how to get to the end of that will, but we generally know God's will. And the problem and God's will is that they possess the land. He says, pick out from among you three men of each tribe. Always love three. Three is the number of the Godhead. What he's saying is pick three people from each tribe, and those three are going to. Those three people are going to represent a seeking after God's will, God's character, God's nature. He says, and I will send them. They shall rise and go through the land, survey it according to the inheritance. What he's saying is, go scout out the land that's left and come back to me. And they shall divide it into seven parts. Judah shall remain in the territory in the south, and the house of Joseph shall remain in the territory to the north. You shall therefore survey the land. So you got Judah in the south, you've got Joseph. Ephraim and the tribes of Joseph up in the north. You shall therefore survey the land in seven parts and bring the survey here to me that I may cast lots for you before the Lord our God. But the Levites have no part among you. For the priesthood of the Lord is their inheritance. He's always saying that, that the priesthood's inheritance is God. That's very important because we are a royal priesthood. So oftentimes our inheritance is God. Our inheritance is that treasure which we earn by living out the law of love in the world. And the treasure is the hearts of human beings. It's human beings, it's their love, it's relationship with those people. That's the treasure that believers amass as they live on the earth. And their treasure is their inheritance is God. He says, but the Levites have no inheritance. And Gad and Reuben and half tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance beyond the Jordan and to the east. So you've got two and a half tribes on the east. The half tribe of Manasseh has gotten part of their, the other part of their inheritance. So you got three that's taken care of. You've got basically three others that have not been taken care. I mean, three others that have been taken care of in the promised land, the two tribes of Joseph and then Judah. So you've got seven tribes left. You got six other tribes plus, plus Levi. You go, well, there's 13 there. Remember, there's two tribes for, there's two tribes for Joseph. And that's going to play out historically in a lot of things. And so he says, the men arose to go away and Joshua charged those who went up to survey the land, saying, go walk through the land. Survey it. Meaning make a plan. We want you to go and figure out where the different the water, the mountains, the hill country, the valleys, where it is you can, you can settle. And where it'd seem right for that to have be a tribe's property. Go survey it out, go make a plan and come back to me that I may cast lots before you, before the Lord at Shiloh. So the men went, passed through the land and wrote the survey in a book, seven parts by cities. And they came to Joshua at the camp of Shiloh. Then Joshua cast lots for them and Shiloh before the Lord. And there Joshua divided the land, the children of Israel, according to their vision. And you go, well, okay, I've got that. What, what is the lesson that I've got to learn? Well, the lesson that you've got to learn and, and this is. This is how we learn to walk with God. Well, it's really kind of spelled out in Proverbs 16, 9. It says, A man's heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Okay, and what does that mean? Well, if you don't make in your heart a plan to move, I'm going to get up and move, then you're going to be paralyzed sitting there. Okay. There has to be initiative on your part. Your faith has to have action. Your faith has to speak out and act out what you believe about God. Now, that doesn't mean that you know all the time how it's all going to play out. In fact, you don't know how it's going to play out. But you can know the character of God and you can know the situation, and you can apply the character of God to the situation, which is wisdom. You can apply how God sees the universe, how God sees the world, how God sees you, how God sees your situation. You can apply that because you can know God's word and you can apply that to the situation. So you know the truth in that situation. If you know the truth in that situation, you can begin to move on that truth. Okay, you can begin to. Well, you can begin to plan out. I mean, that's what the proverb says, right? It says that man heart plans his way, meaning you think through, okay, how do I plan the way I should go? And if that plan is focused on the character and the will of God applied to the situation you're in, you're in good step. You're in good steps. You're. You're doing what you need to be doing. Okay? But then you can't just forget about God in the, in the going in the way. You can't forget about God in the walking in that way. You. You've got to continue. You've got to continue to allow God to direct you in that path. And that's why it says, but the Lord directs his steps just because I have. And by the way, that's part of the maturing, the salvific, the Sonzo process is to learn to be and act in the character and nature of God. He wants us to do that. He wants us to learn how to act in his character and nature. That's his desire. That's the desire of his heart, is for you to be able to learn how to do that. All right, so I've got. And the only way to do that is to begin trying to learn how to do it, which means Necessarily, necessarily, that means you're not gonna do it well sometimes, in fact, necessarily, that means you're gonna do it poorly a lot of the time, okay? But you can't learn how to do it until you start trying to do it, okay? You can't learn how to do it until you decide, I'm going to go ahead and do this thing that God has told me to do. I know God's character. I feel like this is how God would do it. You step out in doing it, you allow God to direct your steps and you learn, okay, that's not really totally right about the character of God. I probably ought to deviate a little bit over here. God's directing my steps over here. He's pushing me closer and closer to his character. And then I get to the end of the situation and I figure out, okay, I've learned this about God's character. I've accomplished this in the kingdom. I've gone through a lot of troubles. I twisted my ankle once, I stumbled and fell three times. I got off the path for bad time, for a way there. Then I got back on the path and I got to the end. That's how it works. So I've got to. I've got to. If you don't, if you do not decide, okay, if you don't start with God, what is God's character nature? How does it apply to the situation? You don't start with God, you're going to fail, okay? If you don't start, you're going to fail, okay? Meaning once you figure it out and you head in that direction, if you don't start, you're going to fail, okay? Then once you've started, you can't just willy nilly run at what you started to do without continuing to allow God to guide your steps. You've planned in your heart the way, okay, this is where we're going. And then I've got to let God guide my steps. And that's what Joshua is telling the children of Israel to do in this situation. He's saying, you go survey at the land and then we're going to allow God to guide our steps and figure out exactly where everybody ought to be. And we're going to go through this process and get to the end where we can possess the land that God has given us. And we know it's God's will for us to possess the land. We know that we need to do it. It's our job to do it. We need to plan it out and then we need to allow God to guide our steps. And that's the whole thing about casting lots, allowing God to decide, okay? We're allowing God to decide our steps. And you go, well, do we cast lots before the Lord? No, we don't do that anymore, okay? We. We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We have no need of casting lots, okay? That's not how it works anymore. We allow the Holy Spirit to speak inside of our hearts. And by the way, when you're working with a group of people, we work off a consensus of God's word, God's will. You go, what? What do you mean by that? Well, I don't make decisions in church by votes, okay? I've never made decisions in church by votes. I'm not ever going to make decisions in church by votes. Every vote I've ever been a part of, every group of people that I've ever been a part of that were believers trying to vote and figure out what God's will is, has ended in ruin, okay? What you do is the people who God has put in the position to make the decision. If it's a ministry, it's the person that's leading that ministry. It's the people actively involved in that ministry. It might be some person in the leadership of the church, an elder or pastor who's kind of overseeing that ministry and helping the minister do their job. You pull them together. You begin to seek out God's will. You begin to seek out what we understand God's plan is for this situation, God's will applied to this situation. Then once you reach a consensus, everybody knows, okay, this is the way God is. This is the situation. This is how we feel like God would have us move forward. Then you begin to move forward. And then when you begin to move forward, you don't just move forward and forget about God. Every step of the way, you're still seeking God. Okay, God, you know, tell me. It's really like Marco Polo. If you want to know the truth, you're saying, Marco, God saying Polo. He's pulling you toward his will because you're seeking him out. Because in many ways we are blind. In many ways, we don't totally understand. We don't see the things. And that's why God's got to guide our steps. And when we do that, and we learn how to do that, and we learn how to do it well, we reap the reward. We reap the benefit of. Of walking with God. And that's what it is for him to guide our steps, okay? We plan the way we we. God's given us that, that free will to do that. He's given us the free will to, to plan out and to, to surmise to try to know God and know his will, surmise what his. How he would do it and then seek him out in the process. And when we do it well, and when we get up and move and get up and do those things right, well, God blesses us even if we were wrong about the end. Because why he gets us to the right end, not the wrong end, because we're still listening to Him. He ultimately proves himself to be God in the situation and get you to the right place, even when you didn't realize that was the right place. That's why it's called the Christian life. It's not called the Christian way or process or. It's not. It's the life. It's the whole life. He does give us the way though. We are the people of the way. That being said, we got to figure out what the way is. And the only way to do that is to know he who is the way. And that's Jesus himself. Foreign. 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.