Joshua 19:24-31 | Episode #1245

July 24, 2026

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

Joshua 19:24-31

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 to today, in

the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Joshua, chapter 19, Joshua chapter 19, dealing with verse 24 through 31. The tribe of Asher, interesting tribe. Very, very interesting. One of the 10 tribes in the north that get taken into captivity. And each one of them have their own real reason for that happening. Asher is interest because Asher is. Well, other than probably Judah, Asher is the most wealthy tribe in Israel during the times of the United Kingdom and during the time of the Northern Kingdom, Asher is. Well, it's the tribe by the sea up near the north. You're gonna, as you read through the tribe of Asher and its legal description, you have Mount Carmel as one of its boundaries, which is real important in the history of Israel. You've got Zebulun, which is one of its borders. So you kind of understand where it is. It's in the northwest corner of Israel. It's along the Mediterranean Sea. And the main place that you're gonna

see

as you're reading it is, it is just south of a Phoenician city called Sidon. Now, Phoenicia is the group of people that ultimately are the cause of all this worship of the BAAL gods and eventually actually human sacrifice. Phoenicia is going to be the parent of Carthage and the Carthaginians are. Well, the Romans just can't stand them. And the reason Roman can't stand them is because they, they are part of the same type of worship, but they take it too far. And there's a lot of other things, rivalries and things like that that go on. And if you want to study Carthage and Roman history, it's the Punic wars, there's three of them. But the Phoenicians are. Well, I mean, the best way for me to describe the Phoenicians, they're evil. They're absolutely evil. But they're wealthy. And Asher is right near them, right next to them and just to the south of them. And you've got the twin cities, the two cities that are right next to each other called Tyre and Sidon. You're gonna see those names mentioned a lot throughout Scripture. And you're gonna see those names go all the way into the New Testament. Jesus deals with them, some people from that area, and he actually, in his min. Moves through Zebulun, the Naphtali, all the way over into something that he definitely did some ministry in Asher and near Tyre and Sidon. So we know that Jesus ministry stretched almost to, or if not right into Asher. And so Asher is an important place. And so why is it important? Well, we learned something from it because they. During the time of the Judges, which is the next book, and the Judges are going to be individuals who rise to defend Israel, to fight not only the Phoenicians, not only the Canaanites, but they eventually begin to deal with the Philistines. And all these are tribes that, and the Philistines, many think are akin to the Phoenicians. The tribe of Asher does not join in those fights. When Deborah is fighting, when Gideon is fighting these tribes that God has said to drive out, Asher does not join. Asher stays out. Asher stays on the sidelines. Because they have great wealth and they don't need God's help, and they don't need God. And they don't want to mess up their trade. They don't want to mess up their financial relationships by getting into these squabbles that these other less educated, less erudite, less important tribes are getting into. They're getting in all these fights. And if we get in these fights, the Phoenicians or our training partners across the Mediterranean Sea may cause us problems. And so we don't want to get into those issues. And so we're going to remain on the sidelines. We're not going to take a side in these issues. And you see what happens. And I'm gonna tell you that that is a. That is not just a problem for nations, but it's a problem for churches. It's a problem for churches who are unwilling to stand and to call evil evil. And Good, good. And in fact, what happens is when you're unwilling. Now listen, we're not talking about being condemning. We're not talking about being hateful. We talking about being mean. What we're talking about is a stand on what is true and what is right. And to put your life on the line in the sense of your finances, your reputation, to put yourself in line with God and what he says. And the way that is couched is that we want to be. We want to be loving, which we should be. We want to be caring, which we should be. But we don't want to be condemning, which, by the way, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But as you kind of go through this, you eventually say, you know, we want to. We don't want to call evil evil. We want to allow things to be such that we don't take that stand. We just want to be a people of love. And the problem is that you can't have love without truth. And there's no way to do that. And so when you remove the truth, you don't really have love. You just have emotionalism. And when you remove love from the truth, all you have is condemnation and death. And so we've got to have both. And they don't have that. They don't have that. They want to compromise in every possible way, and then they become compromised and eventually they get carried off into captivity. And. And to tell you the truth, they become one of the reasons why the Assyrians would want to take the northern kingdom. Because they have great wealth. They are a nation of great wealth, and they become a target for those who would come and take from them. And so their wealth actually becomes the attractive thing that causes their destruction. And so what they do is they hold onto their position, their wealth, their influence, their relationships, and then. And then make no stand as to the truth. And so after they do that, they make themselves the target. And that's a great lesson to learn spiritually. You can't stand on the fence. You can't ride the fence with God. Jesus is a king and he does have a kingdom. And, and we are part of that kingdom and we live in that kingdom. And if you refuse to wholeheartedly join in what the kingdom work is, and by the way, the kingdom work is giving the good news of Jesus Christ. It is the gospel, but it's the whole understanding of Jesus Christ. You can't sit on the fence about that. You have to. You have to. There has to be. You have to take the whole not, not the part. And when we, when we just try to take the parts of Jesus that we like, what we do is we make a Jesus in our own image and we go from worshiping God to worshiping ourselves. And that's natural, the natural attraction for us. That's what we naturally do. There are three things. Everybody who's ever existed are going to worship. One of these three and their general category. Two of them are specific and one of them is a general category. The first one is they worship something that God made. But eventually they begin to worship the one thing that's most important that God made to them, and that's themselves or you worship God. And when you worship God, you have to place him first. And that's hard, it's not easy. But you cannot tolerate evil. And the Bible says, do not tolerate evil, but to cling to what is good. And so the world tells us to be tolerant. We cannot do that. We cannot say that you do your own thing. We have to stand for what is right and good, and especially what God's Word teaches is right and good. And so we don't have to. We do not take the position of tolerance. That's not a biblical. That is not a biblical understanding. In fact, it's not scriptural. It just has no theological base to it. We have to stand by everything that is our Lord. And that's how it has to be. Because if you don't, over time,

you

make yourself into the world and eventually you make yourself the full target of the world. And so it's a great lesson to learn because Asher is one of the major problems in the Northern Kingdom, because Asher refuses to take a stand for the God that gave them the Promised Land. Now, I trust that that won't be you. Generally speaking, when people study the Bible, especially study the Bible as deeply as we study it in the Old Testament and New Testament, they generally are not a people that are desirous of, of being like the world, but they are seeking to be like their Lord. And so as we do this, we need to learn to love greatly, but we also need to learn to stand on truth with both feet. And when we do both of those things, we're powerful and God has made us 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.