All right, if you would open
your Bibles to Joshua chapter 18. Joshua chapter 18. Gracious Father, meet with us
this morning. Make your Son known to us by
your Spirit. Show us the things of Christ,
for He alone can do us good. He alone is the source of our
joy and spiritual strength. And it's in the name of your
Son that we pray it. Amen. All right, let's read the
first three verses. The whole assembly of the Israelites
gathered at Shiloh and set up the tent of meeting there. The
country was brought under their control, but there were still
seven Israelite tribes who had not yet received their inheritance. So Joshua said to the Israelites,
how long will you wait before you begin to take possession
of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given
you? Shiloh, and I'll continue pronouncing
it that way, but the Hebrew pronunciation is Shiloh. But Shiloh was a prominent
city in the history of the Jewish people. In this chapter here,
we see that the people gathered to move the tabernacle from Gilgal
to its last place of residence until it was moved to Jerusalem. Now, commentators said that the
tabernacle was in Gilgal for seven years. I'm not exactly
sure where they get that information, but several of them say it, so
there must be somewhere that it makes that statement. The
tabernacle remained in Shiloh for about 350 years. Shiloh was
about 24 miles north of Jerusalem, making it centrally
located in the Promised Land. And that was the right way to
do it because people from all over the land would be required
to come there a few times a year. So rather than I put it way in
the south or way in the north or something like that. It was
somewhat centrally located. Now the tabernacle was a picture
of Christ, for it represented the glory of God dwelling among
his people. Remember in the tabernacle that,
you know, You had the fence all the way
around it, and you would go in there, and inside that area,
and there was a brazen altar, and if you went through the first
curtain, since this was a tent, it wasn't doors, it was a curtain,
you were in the holy place, and in the holy place, were several
pieces of furniture, and then there was another curtain, and
beyond that curtain was what was called the Most Holy Place,
which even in the tabernacle, before the temple was ever built,
it was a massive room. It was about a 15-foot cube,
as much as a 20-foot cube. which is the kind of measurement
that the scriptures use, varied from time to time and from place
to place. In fact, I've read there was
a common cubit, which was about 18 inches, And then there was
the temple cubit, which if I recall correct, was about 25 inches,
but usually I just keep two feet in my mind. One and a half feet
and two feet, that makes it easy. Well, if it was two feet, that
means it was a 20 foot cube. Now to give you an idea of what
that would be, these side walls of our church building are 16
feet tall. So either that, That room was
just shy of the top of those walls or went up four feet past
those walls, one or the other. And then it was the same amount
wide and the same amount deep. And in there was, of course,
the Ark of the Covenant with the cherubim over the mercy seat. And between the cherubim was
what was referred to as the Shekinah Glory. And you won't find that
phrase or that term in the scripture. It is a phrase developed, I guess,
just by the Jews themselves to describe whatever it must be
that was the representation of the presence of God. Now, God
is invisible. Immortal, invisible. Now it says of Abraham, he saw
him who is invisible. But that's because the invisible
one made himself visible in various forms until he made himself visible
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the form in which he
even now remains a visible representation of the invisible God. God is essentially invisible
because, as the Scriptures say, He dwells in light to which no
man can approach. And we might think the light
is so bright they dare not approach it, but I think it has more to
do with the kind of light it is. And no man can approach there
because no one can go where God is because where God is has no
where to it. No when. And so that God, as
he was slash is, before he made the heavens and the earth, that
God is unapproachable. He's invisible, unknowable, can't
communicate with him. He knows everything we say, of
course, but if he were to speak from his eternal existence, we
wouldn't hear him. He's gotta come within the framework
of space and time to make it known to us. Now, I said all that to point out
that this representation of God, which the Jews said this kind
of glory, I guess, was essentially just like a glowing ball. Yeah, how they knew that, I don't
know. Only the high priest could go in there only once a year.
And he was, before he went in there, he was supposed to just
fill the room with smoke so that even he could not see clearly
what was back there. Nonetheless, the glory of God
was represented in that place. Now, if you look at John 1, verse
14, we see that the tabernacle was a picture of Christ. John 1, verse 14. In the first 13 verses, John
had given an introduction as to the essential
deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He is God. But in verse
14 it says, the Word became flesh. and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory
of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace
and truth." Now, he became flesh. This is God, as one hymn put
it, Love was when God became a man locked in time and space
without rank or place. And indeed, our Lord did bring
himself into time and space. And then the apostle says, oh,
I mean, he said, made his dwelling, and that word translated dwelling
is the word elsewhere used to describe the tabernacle. he tabernacled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory
of the one and only. Of course, John saw his glory
revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration, but there's other glory to our
Lord, and they saw that as well. But this tabernacle set up there at Shiloh. And we're going to get into the
meaning of the word Shiloh in a few minutes because that's
significant. But this temple there is a picture
of God among his people. Now at this time, there were
seven tribes that had not yet taken possession of their inheritance. I don't know if they hadn't taken
possession of the inheritance because they had not engaged
the inhabitants there in battle, or they just never got, you know,
they run at least most of them off, but hadn't gone in and actually
taken possession of it. I don't know, but they hadn't.
Now, Manasseh and the tribe of Manasseh was split in two. Manassah
had a portion on the east side of the Jordan River, and it had
some on the west side. And so it's often referred to
as the half-tribe of Manassah here, and the half-tribe of Manassah
there. But it was a single tribe. The
promised land was supposed, if you remember, the Jordan River
was supposed to mark its eastern boundary. But there were several
tribes that wanted land to the east of it. And those tribes
were a portion of Manasseh, and then the tribe of Gad, and the
tribe of Reuben. And then inside the land, we
had Judah and Ephraim had also conquered
and occupied their land. This left Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun,
Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan not occupying, not possessing
the land that God had given to them on promise. And if you say, well, what about
the tribe of Levi? Remember, that's the tribe of
priests. They were not given a tribal allotment. Their inheritance
was the Lord himself, their inheritance was the word of the Lord, and
their inheritance was the service of the temple. Each one of them
may have had land within the various tribes, but there was
not an allotment in which all the Levites were concentrated. Now the final settlement of all
that the children possessed of all that God had given to them
by way of promise, it was settled at Shiloh. Now this also pictures
our Lord Jesus Christ as the singular person from whom all
blessings flow. In John chapter one, verse 16,
we read this, from the fullness of his grace, we have all received
one blessing after another. And then Ephesians 1 verse 3
says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing
in Christ. So just as it was there at the
tabernacle, erected there in Shiloh, that these tribes were
apportioned their inheritance in the land, so do all the people
of God get their inheritance, their allotment, their portion
in Christ. Every reference to Shiloh in
the Old Testament, with the exception of one, refers to Shiloh as a
city, a location, It is a place with spiritual significance and
pictures some matters of the church and the gospel. Judges
chapter 18 verse 31 teaches us the house of God was in Shiloh. So, of course, the house of God,
that's the place where God dwells. It's there in Shiloh. Does that
not make Shiloh a very important place? We would think that we
would want to be wherever God has his dwelling. While we know that God is everywhere,
we also realize there are places in which it may be said that
God's presence is especially noted. One of those is in the
gathering of God's people, where two or three are gathered together
in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Now notice this,
it does not say where two or three are gathered together in
an organized church. You know, with a proper church
building and the whole structure that so many people think is
so important of the proper, quote, officers in place. No, it just
says where two or three are gathered in my name, it doesn't matter
if it's in a house, it doesn't matter if it's in some rented
building, doesn't matter if it's outside. Doesn't matter if it's
in a car going down the road. And they begin to speak to one
another concerning the things of Christ. Where two or three
are gathered in His name, there God is. And if that promise is
so, if that promise is so, should that not make us want to be there? Why wouldn't we want to be where
God is. In Jeremiah 17 verse 12, the
Lord says that it was in Shiloh where I set my name at the first. Remember that in the Bible, when
it refers to someone's name, it means more than what we think
of in a person's name. A person's name in the Old Testament
didn't just give us a set of syllables by which we can get
someone's attention. A name was supposed to be a revelation
of what that person is. You know, I often say, blessed
be the name of the Lord, both now and forever. And I do not
mean by that that those four Hebrew letters, Y-H-W-H, that
make up the name of our God, that somehow that Y-H-W-H, you
know, is a blessed thing. Rather, it's what that YHWH says
about God. It is a revelation of who God
is as the eternal one, and in the context in which it was revealed
to Moses, and he was told to use that name to identify him
among the Jews, it shows him to be a God of covenant, a God
of promise. That's why the name is blessed. We do get some sense of what
the Bible word name means when we hear people say, and there's
a lot of this going on now in the political world, as it's
being described, they are weaponizing the Department of Justice. you
know, doing anything they can to discredit others. And those
who have fallen under that device, that means of political power,
they say, I'm fighting this to restore my good name. So the name of the Lord was there
at Shiloh And in 1 Samuel 3.21, the Bible teaches us that revelation
took place at Shiloh. Now this would have been when
Eli was there. Eli, who was, I believe he was
probably the high priest, but he was also like a judge in Israel. And it says, at that place in
1 Samuel 3.21, and the Lord appeared again in Shiloh, for the Lord
revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord. And I think it's interesting
that the Lord revealed himself to Samuel, and he did it by the
word of the Lord, and I don't think the word of the Lord was
a bunch of words. I think the word of the Lord
was the person, that person who when he came into this world
for his final appearance, or the final kind of appearance
he'd make, John called him the Word of God. And I think that our Lord, in
what we theologians call a pre-incarnate appearance, he appeared to Samuel
and spoke to him, just as he appeared to Moses at the Tent
of Meeting. John chapter 1 verse 18 says
this of our Lord Jesus Christ, no one has ever seen God, but
God, the one and only, who is at the Father's side, has made
him known. Or God, the only begotten. In
other words, what it's saying is no one has ever seen God,
and God could not, and understand this is not a lack of power,
it's just the way things are, God could not reveal himself
to us apart from entering our reality, and that is God the
Only Begotten. And God the Only Begotten One
is the one who has indeed seen the Father, because he was with
the Father before the world began. He was one with the Father, remained
one with the Father, and yet was here in the form of flesh. And he's the only one who can
reveal God. Therefore, Shiloh pictures him. Shiloh as a locality was where
the tabernacle of God, where the house of God was, where God
said His name at first, where God appeared and revealed Himself
by the word of the Lord, and it was where worship was centered. And again, does that not picture
our Lord Jesus Christ? Peter said, through him, that
is through Jesus, you believe in God, and the fundamental act
of worship is to believe him. And then, in Genesis chapter
49, Shiloh appears as a personal name. Jacob is blessing his sons. And when he gets to Judah, he
says this, among other things, the scepter will not depart from
Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until Shiloh
comes. And the obedience of the nations
is his. Now our translation instead of
using Shiloh as a personal name, simply gave what is likely the
best translation of that name. For it says, the scepter will
not depart from Judah nor the ruler's staff from between his
feet until he comes to whom it belongs. Well, that's our Lord
Jesus Christ. The scepter is his, the ruler's
staff is his. It talks about that the ruler's
staff will not depart from between the feet of Jacob. It is said
that when the kings of old would sit on their throne, they had
their scepter. It's the same thing as the ruler's
staff. but they would have it, it would be on the ground between
their feet. I mean, they have drawings of
this, that's just the way it was, and that's what's being
pictured. And it says that even though Judah possessed
that scepter, that ruler's staff, there would come a time when
it would depart from Judah. it would depart from natural
Judah for sure. And that's when the one to whom
the authority and the sovereignty represented by that scepter and
shaft until he came. And when Christ
came, well, do you remember that when
he was being tried, One of the accusations made against him
was that he declared himself to be the king of the Jews. And
then Pilate says, are you the king of the Jews? And I believe
that the actual words are, you said it, about what it means. It's a way of affirming a question
like that. The Lord said, yes, I'm king
of the Jews. And even though The Jews of that day, the leadership
of the Jews in that day did all they could to, as it were, keep
that staff in the hands of a natural Judah, which was really silly
of them when you consider the king of the Jews at that time
was Herod and he was not even a Jew. And that King Herod was under
the dominion of the government of Rome. You know, it's kind of silly,
like when the Jews said in response to our Lord, if the Son shall
make you free, you'll be free indeed. And they said, what do
you mean make us free? We've never been in bondage to
anybody. And you know, it's kind of like,
well, did you all forget Egypt? Did you all forget the Babylonian
captivity? And have you forgotten the fact
that right now, A pagan king holds authority over your nation. There was hardly a time they
weren't in bondage. Now, in the King James, after
it says, until Shiloh come, and then it says, and to him shall
the gathering of the people be. But that word translated gathering
would be best translated obedience. Not only this, it's not the people. The word is plural. To him shall
be the obedience of the peoples. Our translation puts it as the
nations. Once that scepter passed from
natural Judah to the lion of the tribe of Judah, No longer
is he merely the sovereign of a nation that never has been
a big shot nation within the world. He is the king over the
entire world. All authority in heaven and earth
has been given unto me, he said. And people from every kindred,
tongue, tribe, and nation come to him. Indeed, they do gather
to Him, but the point is, they become obedient to Him. Not obedient
to Him like someone might be obedient to Moses. It's talking
about being obedient to the Gospel. And being obedient to the Gospel
is not a matter of doing righteous works or good works. Obedience
to the Gospel is faith. They said, what should we do
that we would do the works of God and The Lord Jesus says,
this is the work of God that you should believe on him whom
God has sent, which was Christ. To obey the gospel is very simply
to believe it. And all the peoples have come
to Christ. Now, let me, I wanna finish up
this lesson, so we'll skip right down to the end, verse three.
So Joshua said to the Israelites, how long will you wait before
you begin to take possession of the land the Lord, the God
of your fathers, has given you? Now, for whatever reason, these
seven tribes had not yet taken possession. They had not occupied
the land given to them. It may have been lack of faith,
may have been laziness. They may have been thinking,
you know, I'm good with where I am. But for whatever reason, they
had not occupied their own possession. Note where and under what circumstances
it is they are exhorted to active faith. It's right there in Shiloh,
which by all the things that it can mean, represents the Lord
Jesus Christ. And right there at the tent of
meeting or the tabernacle where God is, which is also a representation
of Christ. When we find ourselves wallowing
in unbelief, or we find ourselves being lazy in our pursuit to
do, as Paul says, lay hold of those things for which we have
been laid hold of by God, what should we do? Should we try to
energize ourselves in the flesh? No. We go to God. We pursue Him in His place, where
He is, in Christ. And from there, we receive encouragement,
strength, exhortation. All of it's there. And indeed,
the remaining tribes went on to possess their inheritance. Shiloh, a word that means The
one to whom it belongs, it also seems to be related to the Hebrew
word for peace and for rest. All these things are given to
us in Christ. Okay, you are dismissed.