Let's open with me to Joshua chapter 22, and before we read it, I want to set just a little bit of context. We'll read verses 10 through 34, but so that we know what's going on here. Let me add a little bit of background that mainly comes from Numbers 32. And what we read there is that Israel, before they crossed over the Jordan, they defeated a few kings, Sihon and Og, on the east side of the Jordan, whereas most of Canaan was on the west side of the Jordan. And after they defeated them, the tribes of Reuben and Gad, they looked at the land and they saw it was good for their sheep and their goats, and they asked Moses if they could have this as their inheritance, this on the east side of the Jordan. And Moses at first thought they were trying to get out of fighting any more battles, and so he was displeased. But once they said that they would go over, they would build places for their families and flocks to stay behind, but then they would march over with all of Israel to continue in the conquest of the land than Moses agrees to their request as long as they keep their promise to fight until the land is ready to be divided up. And so the Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh end up with an inheritance on the east side of the Jordan. And the remaining nine and a half tribes, they have their division on the west side of the Jordan. And so at the beginning of chapter 22, Moses is dismissing these two and a half tribes, Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. And all seems to be going well. The land's subdued, and they are traveling back home with Joshua's blessing. And so we can pick up then chapter 22, verse 10. And when they, so this is those two and a half tribes, when they came to the region of the Jordan that is in the land of Canaan, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by the Jordan, an altar of imposing signs. And the people of Israel heard it. And the people of Israel heard it. They said, Behold, the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built the altar at the frontier of the land of Canaan in the region about the Jordan, on the side that belongs to the people of Israel. And when the people of Israel heard it, the whole assembly of the people of Israel gathered at Shiloh to make war against them. Then the people of Israel sent to the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh in the land of Gilead, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest, and with him ten chiefs, one from each of the tribal families of Israel, every one of them the head of a family among the clans of Israel. And they came to the people of Reuben, the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh in the land of Gilead, and they said to them, Thus says the whole congregation of the Lord, What is this breach of faith that you have committed against the God of Israel in turning away this day from following the Lord by building yourselves an altar this day in rebellion against the Lord? Have we not had enough of the sin of Peor from which even yet we have not cleansed ourselves and for which there came a plague upon the congregation of the Lord that you too must turn away this day from following the Lord? And if you too rebel against the Lord today, then tomorrow he will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel. But now, if the land of your possession is unclean, pass over into the Lord's land, where the Lord's tabernacle stands, and take for yourself a possession among us. Only do not rebel against the Lord or make us as rebels by building for yourself an altar other than the altar of the Lord our God. Did not Achan, the son of Zerah, break faith in the matter of the devoted things? And wrath fell upon all the congregation of Israel. And he did not perish alone for his iniquity. Then the people of Reuben, the people of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh said in answer to the heads of the families of Israel, The mighty one, God the Lord, the mighty one, God the Lord, he knows. And let Israel itself know. If it wasn't in rebellion or in breach of faith against the Lord, do not spare us today for building an altar to turn away from following the Lord. For if we did so to offer burnt offerings or grain offerings or peace offerings on it, may the Lord himself take vengeance. No, but we did it from fear. That in time to come, your children might say to our children, what have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? But the Lord has made a Jordan, made the Jordan a boundary between us and you. Your people of Reuben and you people of Gad, you have no portion in the Lord. So your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord. Therefore, we said, let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you and between our generations after us that we do perform the service of the Lord in his presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and peace offerings. So your children will not say to our children in time to come, you have no portion in the Lord. And we thought if this should be said to us or to our descendants in time to come, we should say, behold, the copy of the altar of the Lord, which our fathers made not for burnt offering nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you. far be it from us that we should rebel against the lord and turn away this day from following the lord by building an altar for burnt offering grain offering or sacrifice other than the altar the lord our god that stands before his tabernacle when phineas the priest and the chiefs of the congregation the heads of the families of israel who were with him heard the words that the people of reuben and the people of gad and the people of manasseh spoke it was good in their eyes and Then Phinehas, the son of Eliezer, the priest said to the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the people of Manasseh, Today we know that the Lord is in our midst because you have not committed this breach of faith against the Lord. Now you have delivered the people of Israel from the hand of the Lord. Then Phinehas, the son of Eliezer, the priest and the chiefs returned from the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the land of Gilead to the land of Canaan to the people of Israel and brought back word to them. and the report was good in the eyes of the people of Israel. And the people of Israel blessed God and spoke no more of making war against them to destroy the land where the people of Reuben and the people of Gad were settled. The people of Reuben and the people of Gad called the altar witness, for they said, it is a witness between us that the Lord is God. Thus ends the reading of God's word. Now, as we sang Psalm 133, Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It gives that great picture of oil running down the hair. Maybe that doesn't appeal to us as much as ancient Israel. But the dew upon the ground, this is this great thing. But let's be honest. It's usually not a reality, is it? Our relationships too often are filled with jealousy, distrust, anger, indifference, and that's even amongst fellow Christians. And it's not just individuals, is it? It's often churches, denominations. Distrust is everywhere. And as we'll see in our scripture today, Israel was no different. But it's not immediately obvious, or at least the first time I looked at this passage, what exactly is the point of this? This is a long passage. Why is it there? Is this a great example of how to handle misunderstandings and thus resolve your conflicts? We could maybe learn a little bit about that. Is it illustrating maybe a somewhat ideal time in Israel? Is that what it's supposed to show us? Israel being their most obedient and unified. And we could say in one sense, everything seems to turn out. The western tribes, they're worried about right worship, that altar that was there. Those eastern tribes, they're worried about being included in right worship. And yet as we read it, something just doesn't seem right. This really isn't much of an image of brothers dwelling together in unity. And as we think of it, it's important to see how this passage fits into the book of Joshua. We know the beginning of Joshua. That's the part we read the most. Chapters 1 through 12 is cross the Jordan and fight against Jericho and then the rest of the conquest. And then there's that part we skip over where there's a bunch of cities listed and all of the various inheritances for the various parts, chapters 13 through 21. There's a lot more going on there, but we won't dwell on that now. Then we have the end of the book, and that's chapters 22 through 24. And they are very much tying us now to the future. Joshua has come and he's done all of this. And now the end of the book is looking to the future. What will it be like for Israel? Chapter 23 and 24 are both farewell speeches of Joshua. And in those speeches, he very much dwells on Israel's need for obedience and whether they will be obedient. And he calls, he has that famous call in chapter 24, 15, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And as we look at that, that theme of obedience, we then move into the book of Judges, and we say, how did they fare? Not very well. Well, this last section, Joshua 22, is part of this last section looking forward. And here, obedience is there, but the bigger question is Israel's unity. Can this group of 12 tribes that came across the Jordan and fought against all these people, can they stick together, or are they just going to fall apart? And the answer, again, as you read in the book of Judges, is in the negative. By the end of the book of Judges, we have civil war going on. And we see much later on in kings also, as you end up with two kingdoms. So as we look at chapter 22, we need to see this underlying tension in this showdown at the Jordan. And we'll look at it in three parts. First, you have the reaction of the Western tribes, the nine and a half tribes, and we'll call them the prosecution. And then you have the response of the two and a half tribes, the Eastern tribes. We'll call them the defense. And then you get the final response of the Western tribes that we'll call the verdict. So the prosecution, the defense, and then the verdict. So to start out with that prosecution, right at the beginning, chapter 22, verse 10 there, we have those tribes coming and stopping and making an altar. That's all we read. No comment. They don't leave a sign or anything saying what this is. They don't send a note, post it anywhere. And we should say, well, what would be the big deal with an altar? You see altars all over the place in the Old Testament. Noah built one. Abraham had a number of them. Israel even had, earlier in Joshua, built one at Mount Ebal in Joshua 8. Well, the issue was that God said he would be worshipped in one place. Deuteronomy tells us that, chapter 12, especially that they're to bring their sacrifices to one place. And that's where the tabernacle would be, where the altar that God had designed and had Moses build, where it was. That altar at Ebal was this exception. God commanded it when they entered the land. But to build another altar for sacrifice would be in direct violation of what God had commanded in his law. And so we wonder, along with these other tribes, what is going on here? Well, what is the reaction of these other tribes? Well, you see there at the end of verse 12. they gathered for war. They gathered their spears, they gathered their swords, and they were ready to set out. This, they assume, was a breach of faith, an act of sacrilege, a sin against God's holy tabernacle, and they're ready to come wipe them off of the face of the earth, as we hear in the back part, to destroy their land. Now, thankfully, they send a delegation first. Maybe as an afterthought, we're not told, but they send this delegation headed by Phineas, including these other leaders of the tribe. And it's interesting to note how the delegation comes. They don't come asking exactly, what are you doing? They come bringing accusations. Why are you rebelling? It's like coming up to somebody and asking, when are you going to stop stealing from your employer? It assumes something there in the question. So why are you rebelling is assuming that they're already rebelling. So we see that, verse 16, as they come. Thus says the whole congregation of the Lord, what is this breach of faith that you have committed against the God of Israel in turning away this day from following the Lord by building yourself an altar this day in rebellion against the Lord. They've already passed judgment. They've already reached their verdict. And now they come with that accusation. And I think this reaction of the tribes to the altar shows this fundamental distrust that was there in Israel. They had just fought a war together. And now they're ready to think the worst of what their brothers are doing. They have this suspicion. Maybe they were always a little suspicious about those across the river tribes. And now they're just showing who they are. And now, lest you think I'm being too harsh on these Israelites, We should ask if building an altar is itself wrong. And we could say, well, look at the end of the story. Did they destroy the altar? No, they seemed to let it stand. So there was a possible legitimate reason for doing it. The tribes weren't interested in finding that they didn't give them the benefit of the doubt. They didn't hold off the war drums at all. And we could say personally that could happen in many ways in our lives. We might see a member of the congregation going to a questionable part of town to an establishment that we might not think is a good place and immediately jump to the worst conclusions and start telling others about those conclusions we've reached. Now, we properly should have concern for our brothers and sisters. If we think that they're going in error and we should approach them and we should ask, we shouldn't jump to the worst possible conclusions. We should approach them in love and ask them what is going on. How we address our concerns is often as important as having them in the first place. Now, as we look at the content of the speech, this prosecution of these Western tribes, I think we need to notice that they also in many ways are concerned for themselves. And there is a legitimacy to this. But they give up two examples of what possibly could happen as they ask, why are you rebelling? Because they know it's going to affect them. That's the way it worked in Israel. And so that was a proper concern, but we sometimes want to ask here if they're just wondering, like when you ask your brother not to cry just because you're worried that your parents will then hear and you both get in trouble. But Israel, they bring up two serious incidences. Verses 17 and 18, they talk about Peor. They say, have we not had enough of the sin of Peor, from which even yet we have not cleansed ourselves? And so this was right before entering, as they were led astray and God brought a plague upon the whole people. And then the other one they bring up is a little closer in the book of Joshua. Verse 20 there, Did not Achan, the son of Zerah, break faith in the matter of the devoted things? And we know that story he took from stuff that was dedicated to destruction from Jericho. And then all of Israel lost the next battle against Ai. And so, the tribe west of the Jordan, they are offering a solution. Verse 19 there. You can move. But now, if the land of your possession is unclean, pass over the Lord's land where the Lord's tabernacle stands and take for yourself a possession among us. Only don't rebel against the Lord or make us as rebels by building for yourself an altar other than the altar of our God. And so we'll mention that again a little bit later. Come to the right side of the Jordan. So now we get the response of the eastern side. You have an accusation brought by the western side. What will the defense be? Well, if the level of distrust is implicit with those western tribes that came over, it's stated even more explicitly with the eastern tribes, Reuben, Gad, and that half-tribe of Manasseh. As they bring their answer to this accusation that was against them, they really answer it with another accusation. They respond with this denial of the charges brought against them. But they give as their reason. Why would you build this altar? They give as their reason this accusation that shows their distrust. And though they put it into the future. And so we can see this. They start out with really an oath, and then we get two more oaths. And their first oath, they deny that they were going to ever sacrifice on this altar, that it was this place of sacrilege. And they're willing to submit to God. But at the center of this oath, and this is what we'll focus on, they explain why they made that altar. And this, in short, is this lack of trust. They thought that the other tribes were going to cut them out. They thought that those tribes across the Jordan would one day, their children would say, well, there's a river between us. You have no part in us. You can't come here to worship, and we know all too well Those who control worship control everything else. And so they state that, verses 24 through 25. No, but we did it from fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, what have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? For the Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you. You people of Reuben and people of Gad, you have no portion in the Lord. So your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord. That was their concern. They were that distrustful of those brothers that they had fought and what their children would do in the future, that they had this idea, maybe strange as it sounds, to make an altar. And this altar was going to be in the same form as the altar, the true altar, and so they could use it to prove in those future generations that they had a part. See, we know what the altar looks like. It's right here. We made this copy. Our fathers made this copy to show that we always have a place. And they emphasize throughout that again and again that this wasn't for sacrifice. It's to be this witness, this proof. when you guys across the Jordan in the future try to disinherit us from Israel, try to kick us out, then they can show this, they can give this answer. And I think that even though, right, as I've alluded to, even though this language is focused on worship, certainly in Israel, worship and politics were very intertwined. They're afraid of being excluded from Israel, being treated as outsiders, outside of important decisions. And we can look later in history as worship again plays important roles. Jeroboam becomes king of the north, and he says, oh, I can't let them keep going to Jerusalem because they'll all end up running back to the Davidic king there. I've got to make my own altars to do that. And if we look at this passage, we can see that they actually have good reason for their fears. We can note the language used by the Western tribes. In their accusation, in verse 16, they begin with this accusation, Thus says the whole congregation of Israel. Us nine and a half tribes on the west side of the Jordan. The right side of the Jordan. And when they offer that chance to move, they say, right, come over to the Lord's land. You're not in the Lord's land, by the way. Come over to the right side of the Jordan, to the Lord's land where the Lord's tabernacle is. they have already made that Jordan a boundary. And those eastern tribes are outside of it. They're in this land that, for all they know, might be unclean. And yet, with even all these signs, these eastern tribes really are guilty of what the others are as they think the worst, assume the worst of their brothers. Those western tribes, they're power-hungry, They'll seek to cut us out. We must foil them. We have to answer their accusation with our own accusation. Thankfully, we're never like that, right? We don't think the worst of people jump to conclusions. Our churches never relate that way. Filled with suspicion, distrust of other Christians, ready to believe the worst. We're not called to be naive. We're not called to not be vigilant. But we are called to love. And be loving even as we ask questions, hard questions sometimes. Be willing to be wronged even. Be willing to forgive. And so we always need to ask that question. As we think of the church, we see so many denominations. And in one sense, they're needed for now. But they should never sit well with us. And even as we look at the churches, are they divided sometimes based on which side of the tracks you're on? Does someone's social status, does their wealth, their dress, their looks, their smell, does it affect how they're treated in the church? Or do we look beyond all of that and find that unity that we have in the family of God? As we dwell on that, I confess, I'm as guilty as often as Israel was of thinking the wrong thing. Well, then we come to the verdict here. And on the surface, it doesn't seem that there's much to say. The rest, right, the nine and a half tribes, they come back. What was told to them is good in their ears. They go tell it to everybody else, and it's good in their ears. And so they put their swords down. They stop talking about destruction. And yet we could look and dwell just a little bit on verse 31. Phinehas, as he gives his conclusion there. And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the priest said to the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the people of Manasseh, Today we know that the Lord is in our midst Just because you have not committed this breach of faith against the Lord, now you have delivered the people of Israel from the hand of the Lord. And his statement here needs to be connected with those fears of the western tribes as they brought their accusation. They thought there was wrath that was going to come on Israel because of this rebellion of those eastern tribes. But since there was no sacrilege, no wrongdoing, those tribes, in a sense, have saved Israel from God's hand. The question is, were they ever really in danger? And those eastern tribes, right up front, when they called out to the western tribes, in verse 22, as they call out to the Lord, they say, He knows, God knows what our motivation is. And let Israel itself know. And since it comes up earlier in the book, I think that we might have here an example again of Israel failing to turn to the Lord in times of crisis. Israel earlier fails to inquire of the Lord, and so we may wonder, As the tribes say, God knows. Well, why didn't the nine and a half tribes ask God? As they're right there in Shiloh, and Phinehas' father is the priest before the Lord who they could inquire of. They certainly could have done that before they started what could have easily become a civil war. And so we could ask about that first part of that statement, now that we know that God is in our midst. Phineas, he meant it in a sense that you haven't driven God off by your sacrilege, your rebellion. But I think we should see here a little bit of irony. Are the events of this chapter really a good image of God's people with God in their midst? These brothers dwelling together in unity, or as we've argued, is maybe God not so much in their midst as they are brothers filled with accusations for one another? But all of this, as I mentioned at the beginning, is leading us to Judges. The book of Joshua leaves us with lots of questions. What will happen to these tribes? Will they stay together? Will they follow the Lord? And the book of Judges makes it all too clear. We look at that record and we see their failures. They turn to other gods. They fight amongst one another. Phinehas we actually find in the book of Judges at the end there as he's overseeing the civil war now. And so what did Israel need? What did Israel need as they had that natural inclination, sinful inclination, we all do, to hate God and hate their neighbor? Well, again, we keep looking on in the story, because that's what God does. He unfolds the solution for us. We see the problem, and then we look forward to the solution. And the book of Judges again alludes to it as it talks about what was missing. There was no king in Israel. And now Pastor Gordon is taking us through this rise of kingship in Samuel. And David, that one who would become king, the man after God's own heart, we find in him a man who leads Israel in right worship and unites them together. And when he becomes king in 2 Samuel 5, 12, it says, And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel. Israel needed this king to lead them in worship, lead them in unity. And yet, we know David isn't that king. David has civil wars in his reign. His sons rebel against him, and the north goes against him. And it's not long after his son, Israel remains unified, but then after him, there's the division. We are still waiting. Israel was still waiting for that greater king to come. The one that would unite a people, not only out of the 12 tribes of Israel, But out of every tribe and nation under heaven. And bring them together into one body. And we, we have that unity. We need to be reminded of it. We share this one confession. We eat on one loaf. We believe in one gospel. And so dear people of God, as we look to Jesus, we know that he is the only way that sin and its inclination to hate God and our neighbor is overcome. As we know that we are ones loved by God, that is the only way that we can love him and love each other. Because he has loved us first. Let us remember that as we go out in this week. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, may your love dwell in us richly as we think of the work of Christ on our behalf. And as we look at our neighbor, may we see an image bearer. And as we look at our brothers and sisters in Christ, may we see those loved by God and those we are to pour out our love for. And so may you change our hearts, give us hearts that are willing to serve and to trust and even be wronged as we seek for peace among your people. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.