Joshua Bible Study Lesson Snippet
What is the greatest inheritance a person can get?
Deu 10:8-9 At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister and to pronounce blessings in his name, as they still do today. (9) That is why the Levites have no share or inheritance among their brothers; the LORD is their inheritance, as the LORD your God told them.)
What the Lord is saying here is that on that day when He was going to bestow a blessing on this tribe this is what He actually did, He separated them. And the first thing He says is 'they were separated to bare the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord;' so in other words their first calling really was to carry the holiness and the presence of God, which stood in the Ark of the Covenant. They were singled out for this task---no-one else could carry the Ark but this family of Levi. We all know about David when he is bringing back the Ark which had been in the hands of the Philistines, and he makes that tragic mistake when the Ark is going to fall that an Israelite put out his hand to steady the Ark and was struck dead. This was because David was trying to do a righteous thing in a wrong way. There was only one family which could actually carry the ark and this guy had no right to touch it, so David had to go and relearn these principles that God had instilled.
Levi and You
So what does all this mean for us? We, like the tribe of Levi also had terrible beginnings, and all of us had done many wrong things, and yet all it takes is a little seed of faith and a looking toward God and God just showers upon us blessing upon blessing all in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now if you had been of this tribe, how do you think you would have reacted when the land was divided up? What is it you would have wanted? Would you have wanted land? When you think about your own life, many Christians are disillusioned with their lot in life. Life can be very, very harsh. A lot of the dreams that we once had don't come to pass. For many, there are financial worries that come upon them and some people can't even rub a couple of cents together and so they feel disillusioned with their lot. You can feel disillusioned with your lot if you are continually plagued by bad health. For some people it is a bad marriage. For some it is a partner that they have lost and for some people that they have never married and remain single and so they feel disillusioned with their lot because the things that they want, they don't seem to have.
When we look, we see that God actually determined each lot for these tribes. It was all determined by lot. He knew which tribe was going to get which amount of land. It is exactly the same for us. He knows. He appoints a lot unto us. Many Christians don't have a home, they don't have land. Everything seems difficult, everything seems hard and they feel like they have been short changed really by the inheritance they have. But we are all, in essence, like this tribe of Levi, because God Himself is our lot. If you have come to Christ, you have had your big break in life, because nothing else really compares with having the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. That is the greatest lot that you could ever obtain. Everything else is fleeting.
When it is all summed up you can have lots of earthly inheritances which are nice, they can help you but when you strip everything away the only thing that really counts is the Lord Jesus Christ and the people that know Him. So God was to be the inheritance of the Levites; He should be for us. Whatever communities God puts us in we are there on behalf of the people there and we are also to bless in His name, to make an impact with the risen Christ. So God Himself is really the greatest inheritance we could ever get.
From: Joshua Chapter 13: The Inheritance of the tribe of Levi