It is said that Abraham Lincoln was walking through Springfield, Illinois with his two little sons. Both boys were screaming their lungs out, while dad seemed to completely ignore them. A friend, who was passing by, asked what the problem was, and Lincoln replied: “I have three walnuts and both boys want two.” That illustration may be old, quaint and perhaps fictitious, but it fits the common state of man very well. It reminds us of our pride, our childishness, our selfishness and our greed. If dad had dispensed the nuts, giving two to the oldest boy, or the smallest, or whomever, then what? Would either boy have become a better person, stronger, smarter, or more generous person? Not very likely, because the momentary satisfying of greed never silences that greed. In fact as we see in government handouts and a dozen other places, satisfying a craving doesn’t make it go away, it increases and intensifies it. Let’s say those Lincoln boys passed a general store a couple minutes later and spied a jar of candy. They might have completely forgotten about the nuts they had just eaten. At that point they might have started crying for something sweet.
Greed and materialism are two of the greatest plagues facing our society. Greed and materialism consume a great quantity of the world’s energies – not to mention time and money. And yet when temporarily filled our old nature is almost never satisfied. Very few people are happy with simply meeting our needs. We also have a multitudes of wants which we want to meet. But God calls on us to live by faith and with contentedness as far as our general lives are concerned. Paul said in I Timothy 6:6: “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” To be satisfied with the Lord and His provision is wealth which the world cannot get or give. Unfortunately not even Christians possesses that contentment or that godliness. And this brings us to today’s scripture.
I will confess that there is one aspect of this passage which I am having a hard time trying to grasp. When verse 14 speaks of the children of Joseph, I wonder if that means Manasseh, Ephraim or both. Jacob, who was renamed “Israel” by the Lord, had twelve sons, which formed the twelve tribes of Israel. But God took one of those sons, Levi, away from Israel to become His priestly tribe. And then He split the tribe of Joseph into the children of Ephraim and the children of Manasseh. In this scripture one verse points me toward one tribe, and then the next verse to the other tribe. One verse seems to speak of one of the sons, and then the next speaks of them both together. Since they are referred to as the children of Joseph, I lean toward both of them together. But if both Ephraim and Manasseh are the subject, why does verse 14 talk about only one portion of land? Manasseh had already received a huge tract of land north and east of the Sea of Chinnereth. “Chinnereth” was the old name for the Sea of Galilee, which became known as the Sea of Tiberius. Manasseh had their trans-Jordanian inheritance, and chapter 16 describes their second portion which was larger than several other tribes put together. Perhaps the eastern half of the tribe is not being considered here, since Joshua is in the process of dividing up the rest of the land. But then Joshua referred to “mount Ephraim.” And yet when he mentions Bethshean and the valley of Jezreel, he was describing property already deeded to Manasseh. Perhaps Mount Ephraim is a description of the property of Manasseh. How confusing. Which brings me back to my first thought – that he was talking to both of the children of Joseph.
Despite the confusion, I think that it is easy to see the lesson in these five verses. We all need to face the sin of discontentedness. Let’s use this scripture to look at their source and their solution.
Think first of all about the SOURCE of Joseph’s discontent.
“And the children of Joseph spake unto Joshua, saying, Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a great people, forasmuch as the LORD hath blessed me hitherto?” The first problem with discontent is that it is rooted in PRIDE. Pride is a very dangerous, and yet almost universal sin. Rarely do you ever find a person who does not “think more highly of himself than he ought to think.” It is a part of our fallen human nature. Don’t we strive hard to find something in us that makes us better than our chosen rival or our neighbor? One person measures his superiority over others with his mirror and his beauty. This is probably one of the worse of all possible measurements, because beauty evaporates even more quickly than money. If beauty is the measure of our worth, then we are all going to die in poverty. The next person, replies that he is smarter than most people in some minute area. Another person compares himself to both of them by displaying the balance in his check book. Another talks about the size of his TV
or his computer monitor. Someone points to his kids and then points to yours – or perhaps it is his grandchildren. Another lists the number of toys in his garage. Why do people spend $50,000 to buy a humungous bright yellow used Humvee? Isn’t it often the choice of pride – and an attempt to make another person envious? There is probably not a single person on earth who doesn’t excel in something large or small. And even if it is not much in itself, he will go looking for someone more insignificant than himself, so that he have at least one person over whom he is superior. Brethren that is sin, detested by God.
But Joseph’s pride is almost laughable. When Moses took the last census of Israel, there were 32,200 people in the tribe of Manasseh, And there were 40,500 in Ephraim. Those number made them the two smallest tribes in Israel at that time? Together they were larger than any other single tribe, but God no longer counted them together. So what do they mean when they say, “I am a great people since the Lord has blessed me?” I have no idea. But whatever it was, they believed themselves to be worthy of more land than the Lord had given them. Pride reaches its highest and most dangerous point, when it competes with the Lord and His will. And in that case pride clearly proves its Satanic origin. Satan said, “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.” But the highest point of pride is also the most dangerous, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” We need to learn to deal with our pride; to humble our pride and to kill our pride. “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” Only the Lord has reason to be proud – and He never is.
Perhaps Ephraim was expecting some pork barrel politics. The President of Israel at this time was a member of the tribe of Ephraim. But Joshua’s affiliations didn’t sway his mind about the will of the Lord – or about the sin of his kin.
I’ve already suggested the second source of Joseph’s pride – COMPARISONS. Was this a matter of Ephraim versus Manasseh, just as it was with Cain and Abel? Is Ephraim looking at his brother and saying, “But he got two walnuts and I only got one.” Or is he looking south toward Judah which had already received its inheritance earlier? The land of Israel is as diverse as either the state of Washington or the state of Idaho. There were deserts, lake districts, mountains, farm land, open range, forests – you name it. I personally think that there is wealth and beauty in every kind of property. And if the Lord puts you amongst the lemon groves, start making lemonade. I have driven most of the major highways in Idaho from I-90 to I-80, and from I-15 to US 95. I have seen the lava beds, the salt desert, the Bitterroot mountains and the Panhandle. Personally, I prefer living right here over living in Boise or Pocatello. I’m sure that there are people in those places who prefer those places over Post Falls. But probably, if giving the chance, some of the people of Arco would move to Coeur d’Alene. It was no different in Israel. “But I want to live in the mountains.” “But I want to raise my pigs on the banks of the beautiful Sea of Galilee.” “Why do I have to live in the hot southern part of the country?” We all need to learn to make the best out of the lot we have been given. If the Lord plants you amongst the trees, become a lumberjack. If the Lord gives you good rich bottom land then plant potatoes. We need to learn to make the best out of the lot that we have been GIVEN. And maybe we ought to stress that word “given.“ The Lord has graciously blessed Joseph with their particular lot. They deserved to die in the wilderness just as much as their parents did. In fact that might be said of us as well. Those people should have been looking at the potential of what they had, not the possession of what they didn’t have. The people of Joseph began complaining after they started comparing.
Very closely related to this, the sin of UNTHANKFULNESS was also at the root of their discontent. Let’s say that Mr. Lincoln gave to each of his sons, one of those walnuts. And then he said that he’d give the last nut to the boy who first solved this mathematical question: “What is 99 times 42?” After a couple of moments one of the boys came up with the correct answer and was rewarded with the second walnut. Generally speaking, how important is the first walnut after we have been given a second walnut? When we learn to practice true thanksgiving, our greed for more will be sharply curtailed.
Look at the fathers of this particular generation of Israel. They were feasting on manna from heaven, for which they “labored not, neither did they spin.” They were protected from their enemies by the presence of the Lord in the pillar of cloud and fire. They had a miraculous source of water. They didn’t have a Walmart, but then, they never needed one either, because the Lord maintained their shoes and coats. They had privilege after privilege which no other peoples of the world ever enjoyed. But they would not be satisfied. They wanted meat instead of manna. They wanted physical ease instead of divine direction. They wanted a change of human leadership instead of stodgy old Moses. Yet despite the difficulties of the wilderness, which, incidentally, they had brought upon themselves… Despite the difficulties of the wilderness, they couldn’t bring themselves to be thankful for the Lord’s care and blessing. This was the same with the children of Joseph in Joshua’s day. And it is true of so many of us as well. “Where are the nine? Weren’t there ten lepers that were healed?”
A fourth source to Joseph’s discontent was their UNCONTROLLED IMAGINATION. They wanted different property because they were afraid that they couldn’t occupy the land which they had been given. “And the children of Joseph said, The hill is not enough for us: and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron, both they who are of Bethshean and her towns, and they who are of the valley of Jezreel” – Joshua 17:16. When I refer to uncontrolled imagination, in this case I am referring to WORRY. Their spies had seen there were chariots parked outside the walls of several of the Canaanite cities. And perhaps they had heard from inside those walls the neighing of war horses. Those chariots may have had scythes attached to the hubs for mowing men down like grass. And there were still children of the gigantic Anakims living in some of those cities. The armies of Israel were staffed with nothing but infantry, with not many even 6 feet tall. Israel was forbidden by God to bolster their ranks with panzers or tanks. Even in the day of battle their trust was to be in the Lord and not their military war machine. Just like their sin 45 years earlier at Kadesh Barnea, these unbelievers saw themselves as grasshoppers in the sight of the enemy. They visualized defeat, and the blood of their children oozing from their bodies.
As we have all seen, 98% of the things about which we worry have no basis or substance, and yet we worry. The ancient old man Caleb whipped the giants who lived in the city which was deeded to him. Why couldn’t the great people of Ephraim beat the giants in their inheritance? Yes, possibly they could, but what about those nasty horses and chariots? Does the presence of a chariot guarantee that there was a capable charioteer? Remember that Joshua and the armies of Israel had decimated the Canaanites from Dan to Beersheba. Yes, there were enemy which had escaped and fled home to their cities, but they were relatively few. And those who did escape were not readily filled with confidence about facing Israel again. The resistence which Joseph was imagining, was, for the most part, imaginary. And then we come to Joshua 21:44: “And the LORD gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the LORD delivered all their enemies into their hand.” Once again, there was absolutely nothing to fear, if they were obedient to the Lord.
So what argument does that backslidden Christian man use for taking that second job which keeps him out of church and away from the family supper table where his wife and kids need him? He says that the condition of today’s economy is so unstable, he’s afraid he’ll never be able to retire. He says that the ten year old car probably won’t last more than another year, so he needs to take on another bank loan. He is so worried about suppositions he can’t be satisfied with all the good things which the Lord has given him. He is so full of unbelief that he can’t trust the Lord to meet his needs in the future, assuming that he might have some.
The reason that the children of Joseph were dissatisfied with their inheritance was basically due to pride, unthankfulness and godless worry.
Now notice what Joshua offered as a SOLUTION to this discontentment problem.
First, Joshua didn’t argue – even though there was plenty of room to do so. In fact, when the sons of Joseph boasted “we be a great people,” Joshua turned their boast right back. “SINCE you’re such a GREAT PEOPLE, YOU WILL NOT have merely a single inheritance. God is giving you two or three inheritances depending on your point of view. And yet, I am NOT LETTING YOU GET OUT of taking occupancy of that mountain.” “Since you’re such a great people, get out there and prove it.”
Part of the solution to this discontent, was Joshua’s refusal to acknowledge or justify it. He basically said, “You have no grounds for whining and carping. The Lord has been extremely good to us. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
The primary response to the discontent of Joseph was a terrible and fearful four letter word – “WORK.” “And Joshua answered them, If thou be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country, And cut down for thyself there in the land of the Perizzites and of the giants, If mount Ephraim be too narrow for thee” – verse 15. “The mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: And the outgoings of it shall be thine: for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, Though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong” – verse 18. The inheritance of Ephraim and Manasseh was in some ways more like North Idaho than Southern Idaho. It had beautiful valleys and tree-covered mountains. The Valleys of Jezereel and Megiddo were two of the most productive crop-growing areas in Israel. But unfortunately, that was where most of the Canaanite chariots were found. Joshua basically said, “If you think that God can’t defeat the Canaanites then move to the hills.” It’s a lie to think that God can’t knock the socks off those idolaters, but let’s for the sake of argument say that He can’t do it. Then in that case move up into the hills.” “The mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings of it shall be thine.” The outgoings of the mountain were the revenues derived from the clearing of the land. As Israel took occupancy of the Promised Land there would be a need for lots and lots of timber. “Can’t you see that God has given you a fortune?”
I believe that no matter what lot the Lord has given us in this life, it has been marinated in grace. We have every reason to be dissatisfied with ourselves, BUT NEVER WITH THE LORD. We should strive to personally learn and to grow. We should cut down the forests in our lives and plow up the fallow ground. We must drive out the remnants of the wicked world in our lives and mortify our flesh. But the Lord is to be loved and worshiped for all of the kindness and grace which He has given us. There is no reason, never a reason to raise our fist toward heaven.
Is there someone here today who is dissatisfied with his or her perception of God and His blessings? Perhaps the reason is that you’ve never really met Him. If you knew Him, you’d love Him, and you’d know that He can capably take care of you. If this is the case and you lack any love or respect for the Lord, then let me introduce you to Jehovah through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to meet God, then it has to be at Calvary. If you want to meet the Lord, it has to be from on your knees not your high horse. If you want to meet the Lord, it has to be with repentance and faith.