This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day three of week five of our look through the book of Joshua. We're
going to look at Joshua chapter 22 today, and it's an exciting chapter. It has a
principle for receiving God's promises that might be surprising to you.

If I'm going to live at home with God's promises, one of the things I have to do
is I have to watch my words. Watch my words. I have to monitor my
communications.

If I don't, then the way that I talk actually can become an obstacle to
receiving God's promises, to possessing God's promises in my daily life. Listen
to this experience that they went through in chapter 22, and we're going to
learn from the people of Israel how to actually watch our words. Some very
practical, very practical tips for us today, and how to talk in such a way that
it actually invites the possession of God's promises in my daily life.

Here's the experience that happened, beginning down in verse 10 through verse
12. He's talking about the tribes of Israel, by the way, just a little
background, that were on the other side of the Jordan. You might remember the
three tribes of Israel on the other side of the Jordan, and here's what he says.

"When they came to Galiloth near the Jordan in the land of Canaan, the
Rubanites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh built an imposing altar
there by the Jordan. And when the Israelites heard that they had built the altar
on the border of Canaan at Galiloth near the Jordan on the Israelite side, the
whole assembly of Israel gathered at Shiloh to go to war against them. " They
were thinking they're building this altar, they're all of a sudden building some
altar, some false god.

These three tribes, or two tribes and half-tribe that are on the other side of
the Jordan, they've already wandered away from the faith. You'd be surprised as
we walk through this, we're going to find out that one of the major obstacles to
receiving God's promise in our lives can be our mouths. What we say and what we
listen to is all important to beginning to feel at home and live at home with
God's promises.

Consider, just for a second, how dramatically our words can affect God's
promises. Our words can share God's promises, they can discourage God's
promises, they can excite us about God's promises, they can turn us aside from
God's promises, they can talk about the fulfillment of God's promises, they can
obstruct God's promises. If we're to feel at home with God's promise, we have to
watch our words, monitor our communications.

Israel gives us some very strong teaching about communicating in these verses in
this passage. Israel's going to teach us that we have to anticipate breakdowns,
we have to avoid breakups, and we have to strive for breakthroughs in our
communication. First you have to anticipate breakdowns.

Why? Because we're human beings, and we have breakdowns in our communication.
And those breakdowns sometimes can discourage your Christian life, they can
discourage your life of faith, they can discourage the promise of God right out
of you.

In this case we see two common reasons why we have breakdowns, misinterpretation
and separation. Misinterpretation, they didn't understand why they were building
this altar, so it almost became a war. And we have misinterpretation all the
time.

Did she say what I thought she meant to say? Or did she mean to say what I
thought she meant? We just can't get it right.

Misinterpretation can get you into trouble fast. And added to that we have
separation. These were the tribes on the other side of the Jordan.

They weren't able to talk to each other, communicate with each other all the
time. The fact that they were separated contributed greatly to the problem. And
we live separate lives in many ways.

We live in separate bodies, we come out of separate backgrounds. We look at life
from separate perspectives. And all of these differences can conspire to destroy
our communications.

And when our communications are destroyed with fellow believers, it can be very
destructive to the living out of God's promise in your daily life. You get stuck
on the battle with a fellow believer instead of encouraging each other to live
out God's promises. So that's why it's important to not just anticipate
breakdowns, but number two, to avoid breakups.

It's all too easy to write other people off. And if we do, we just cut off all
the strength that we need for living out God's purposes in our lives. Israel did
a couple of things here that declared how important it is to avoid breakups.

First they went to these tribes that they were angry with. Verses 13 and 14
listen to what happened. So they all go and they all ask the question.

Down in verse 16, the whole assembly of the Lord says, "How could you break
faith with the God of Israel like this? " So instead of just starting a war,
they go to them, they talk to them. And as they talk to them, they recognize,
here's the second thing that happens, they recognize that they stood or they
fell together.

In verse 18, "And are you now turning away from the Lord? If you rebel against
the Lord today, tomorrow he will be angry with the whole community of Israel. If
you rebel today, it's going to affect us all tomorrow.

" You don't have to read the New Testament even very closely to realize that we
stand together as fellow followers of Jesus Christ. And when we allow Satan to
get into our communications so that there's some kind of a war between us, it
hurts our faith, it hurts our testimony, it hurts the body of Christ. We are one
body, hurt one part, all the parts hurt.

Now this may seem extremely small and simple, but what we're looking at here is
the solution to 99% of our breakups. You go to the other person when you have a
problem. You talk to them and you realize that this isn't me against them, this
is us together trying to work something out because we stand together as
followers of Jesus Christ.

So when you have a problem with someone, do you go to them or do you wait for
them to come to you? Do you grumble about it to everyone else in the world? If
you are following Christ, if you're a follower of Jesus, there is only one right
answer when you have a problem with a fellow believer.

You go to them. You go to them. When you go, there are some things that you can
do in that communication to begin to break through the problems that we have.

You strive, number three, for breakthroughs. Strive for breakthroughs.
Anticipate breakdowns, avoid breakups, and then strive for breakthroughs.

Here are these two groups in Israel struggling against each other. And in their
struggle, they're having to try to figure out how in the world do we come to a
good point of communication. And at the beginning, they're just angry.

But at least they go. At least they talk. And out of that conversation, some
good things happen.

We're going to look at six, real quickly, six things that they did that you can
learn from. First three are in verses that we've already read. In verse 14, what
did they do that was smart here to strive for a breakthrough?

They included all involved and only all involved. Verse 14, we just read they
included representatives of all the tribes. No one was left out and no other
groups were added in.

How often do we include everyone but the ones who need to be involved in solving
a problem? Or how often do we not include the people that need to be involved?
Of course it's not going to work if you don't have the right person in the
conversation.

So they included the people that need to be involved. The second thing that
happened, we saw in verse 15, is they walked to meet the other tribes. That
simple thing they had to do, walk from one place to the other.

Maybe their greatest asset was the long walk they had before they had the
meeting. They took time in that walk. Time gave them an opportunity to approach
the situation with more wisdom, with the calming of the spirit.

They used up energy in that walk. The anger that they had at Shiloh had some
time to cool. I don't know what that means for you, but there needs to be some
time between when you have the instant reaction and you have the communication.

Many times you'll read maybe an email or a text and your instant reaction will
be anger and you'll start typing out as fast as you can the answer. Don't send
that answer. You might even write it out.

Well, that's even dangerous. You might accidentally send it. Don't send that
answer.

Give it some time. Let your emotions cool. That's the way we communicate with
each other.

And then they did a third thing. They asked before they attacked. What is this
that you're doing, they said.

What if they come and instead of asking, they'd attacked first. They'd taken out
their swords and they'd run at the leaders of these tribes. Sometimes we
subscribe to a no questions asked policy on our communications.

We have it in our mind what happened and why it happened and so we just run
after the other person. Ask before you attack. I have been embarrassed honestly
so many times at what I thought was the situation only to ask and find out I had
it totally wrong.

What I was thinking is not what they were thinking at all. What I was thinking
is not what the situation was at all. You only have to have that happen a few
times to get the humility to ask before you attack.

Then as we continue down through these verses, we see that they did three other
things. The fourth thing they did is they offered an alternative. They offered
an alternative.

Verse 19, "If the land you possess is defiled, come over to the Lord's land or
the Lord's tabernacle stands and share this land with us, but do not rebel
against the Lord or against us by building an altar for yourselves other than
the altar of the Lord our God. " They offered a compromise, an alternative. If
you feel like the land you're on needs some kind of special altar because it's
not God's land, you come on in and move in with us.

Now, don't miss the fact that that would mean some of them would have to give up
some of their land in order to accomplish this because it was all divided up
amidst the people of Israel. They would have to be a sacrifice in this
compromise, but they were willing to offer an alternative, an alternative here
that declared, "I care more about you than about getting my way, about being
right in this situation. " The fifth thing they did is when the truth finally
came out, they humbly admitted a misunderstanding.

Listen to what these three tribes said in verse 22, "The mighty one, God the
Lord, the mighty one, God the Lord, he knows and let Israel know. If this has
been in rebellion or disobedience to the Lord, do not spare us this day. No, we
did it for fear that someday your descendants might say to ours, 'What do you
have to do with the Lord, the God of Israel?

'" They weren't building an altar. They were building a witness, a place to say,
"We are connected to the people of Israel. " Down in verse 30, "When Phineas the
priest and the leaders of the community, the heads of the clans of the
Israelites, heard what Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh had to say, they were pleased.

And Phineas, son of Eliezer the priest, said to Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh,
'Today we know that the Lord is with us because you have not acted unfaithfully
toward the Lord in this matter. Now you have rescued the Israelites from the
Lord's hand. ' Phineas says, 'We were wrong.

We misunderstood. You had a good reason for building this altar. '" How they
handled that misunderstanding is all important because, let's just admit it,
it's embarrassing to get things wrong.

And too often that embarrassment becomes the source of a prideful response. So
when the other person even shows us wrong, we attack even more. We say things
like, "Well, take the altar down anyway," instead of having the humility to
recognize that we were wrong.

The humility to recognize that we all make mistakes, we all struggle in our
communication, is key to clear communication. And they had the strength from the
Lord to humbly admit a misunderstanding. And then there's a sixth thing that
they do.

They reported the solution to all. In verse 32, "Then Phineas, son of Eliezer
the priest, and the leaders returned to Canaan from the meeting with the
Rubanites and Gadites and Gilead, and reported to the Israelites. They were glad
to hear the report and praised God, and they talked no more about going to war
against them to devastate the country where the Rubanites and the Gadites lived.

And the Rubanites and the Gadites gave the altar this name, a witness between us
that the Lord is God. " They brought back word to everyone, and that changed the
heart and attitude of everyone. A lot of times we proclaim our problems loudly,
and then once we figure out that we've misunderstood, we don't tell very many
people.

That one we just tell a few close friends. Let everyone know. Let everyone know.

If you proclaim the problem, let everyone know how God has solved it. Leaving
loose ends invites the problem to continue. And this has been a very quick look
through this chapter.

You realize we could have spent a lot of time on every one of these points, but
maybe it's a good reminder to you today in some situation, some circumstance
that's going to come about today or you've been living with. Just walk through
these six things. Include all involved and only all involved.

Take the time to let your spirit calm before you talk. Number three, ask before
you attack. Number four, offer an alternative.

Number five, humbly admit when there's a misunderstanding. And number six,
report the solution to all. How you use your mouth determines in great measure
how you will respond to God's promises.

And you can get caught up the rest of your life in little conflicts with fellow
believers and cheat them and cheat you at a living a life of God's promises. So
are you misunderstanding and miscommunicating, resulting in bitterness and
conflicts, or are you building up others? And as you do that, finding the
strengthening of God's promise in your life and their lives as well.

Lord Jesus, we come to you and we simply ask today that you'd help us to watch
our words. You'd help us to communicate with wisdom, with grace, with love. We
need your strength to do that.

We can't do this on our own strength. So do in us what we cannot do for
ourselves. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

Tomorrow we're going to look at how God's promises begin with God's choice.