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Scripture Reading: Joshua 17:14-18
In Joshua 17:14-18 we read about the children of Joseph. The children of Joseph consisted of Manasseh and Ephraim; but the superior one was Ephraim. That is why Joshua was addressing more to Ephraim than Manasseh in this portion of scripture. Ephraim was the younger one but he had the double portion as prophesied by Jacob.
The tribe of Joseph was always a double portion because Jacob replaced Joseph with Ephraim and Manasseh as his adopted children, thus giving them double portion. Jacob had twelve children but Levites had no inheritance because the Lord was his inheritance and in its place were Ephraim and Manasseh. So the tribe of Joseph had two lots, two portions. It should not be one lot as Joshua said in Joshua 17:17 ‘thou shalt not have one lot only.’ When the blessings of Jacob were allotted to his 12 children, the children of Joseph always had the double portion.
Joseph is a type of Christ. When Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, the one always in favor with God and man, we, his children actually received the double portion. We are more special than any other people on earth. No one people on earth can be compared to us because we have the double portion of God. We are a type of Ephraim. Not only has the tribe of Joseph have the double portion over the rest of the 12 tribes, within the two children of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, Ephraim has the double portion over Manasseh.
What can we learn from this portion of Scripture?
1 The Greatness of Ephraim
Let’s consider the assertion of their greatness. In Joshua 17:14 it says ‘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 (that is I should have double portion), forasmuch as the Lord hath blessed me hitherto?’
The attitude of the children of Ephraim throughout their history can be summarized in this text; they were proud of their numerical strength over the twelve tribes. The tribe of Ephraim, at the census described in Numbers (beginning of Exodus), outnumbered every tribe and was co-equal with the tribe of Judah. Later at end of Exodus, when the census was taken again in the plains of Moab, the tribe of Ephraim outnumbered them all, though this time, the relative proportion of Ephraim and Manasseh were altered, Ephraim being now considerably the larger of the two tribe of Joseph.
The life of Ephraim was not meant for one lot, one portion because as the scripture says ‘the Lord hath blessed him hitherto’. His life has always been meant for double portion. Ephraim and Manasseh were the head of the most fruitful tribes. The assertion of their greatness was not just their numerical strength. But they were great also because of their favorable parentage. They were the descendants of the man whom Pharaoh had made lord of Egypt. This was their pride. The pride of Ephraim is shown constantly in their murmuring against Gideon in Judges 8:1, which says ‘And the men of Ephraim said unto him (Gideon), “Why has thou served us thus (why you did not call us), when thou wentest to fight with the Midianties?” And they did chide with him sharply.’ The same pride also appeared in the conduct of Jephthah in Judges 12:1 which says ‘And the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together and went northward, and said unto Jephthah, “Wherefore passedst thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee? We will burn thine house upon thee with fire’. And later still in the days of David they were constantly asserting their claim to superiority in Israel.
I was very much convicted when I was preparing this message. I ask myself – “Have I become proud like Ephraim?” When I became a Christian I grew until I achieved certain strength in the presence of all those around us. My life and blessings have always been double portion. I have become what Ephraim said ‘forasmuch as the Lord hath blessed me hitherto.’ If I am great today (which I am not) it is because of my spiritual parentage – Jesus Christ. This double portion blessing was from Jesus Christ. That is my beaming pride. In my lives, have I become like Ephraim, constantly jealous of other people’s achievement and always wanting greater blessings, greater acknowledgement? Have I always wanted to be the head and not the tail? Have I always wanted to be the leader and not subordinate to others? Have I always wanted to be better than others? Always wanting to be a step ahead of others? And I cannot accept the one portion lot and one portion blessing? Many of us have fallen into the sins of Ephraim. If others have children, we must have children. If others have one child, we must have two. If others have one building, we must have two. If our neighbor has a TV, we must have a bigger one. If others are blessed, we asked God why we are not blessed. That is what Ephraim said to Joshua ‘Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a great people’. We want the double lot, the double portion. We feel we deserve to share in their blessings. We are competitive people, quarrelsome people. We cannot congratulate the success of others but pick a quarrel and grow angry over matters. We cannot stand the success of others. When others are victorious, our pride is wounded. We are always dissatisfied, longing for booty and striving for leadership. Pride is the bottom of our quarrel. Many of our complaints are causeless and unjust. But the fact of the matter is that if we are ever blessed it is simply because of our link to Jesus Christ.
Blessings have always been in the mind of God for us. Blessing was the word reiterated over and over again by the dying patriarch, Jacob, as he gazed upon the children of his best beloved son, Joseph. I said that Joseph is a type of Christ; we are the children of God’s best beloved son, Jesus Christ. God said to Jesus ‘This is my son whom I am well pleased’. Therefore he will give Jesus’ children, and that is us, the best blessings ever. I mean God has always wanted us to be the head and not the tail. God has always told us that we shall excel above others. God has always told us we shall be more prosperous than others. The name Ephraim means “doubly fruitful”. God has never meant for us for one lot, one portion. God has always meant for us double lot, double portion. So that problem is not with God wanting to bless us. The problem is us. There was someone or something there in that portion of scripture that is preventing the double lot, double portion. That something or someone is the Canaanite.
2 The Tragedy of Coexistence
You can trace it to the sin of co-existence. It is very interesting to study the lives of Ephraim. It was said concerning Ephraim and concerning us is in Psalms 78:9-10 which says ‘The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law. And forgat his works, and his wonders that he had shewed them.’ Blessing is the word reiterated again and again for us but like Ephraim, we forgot the fact that the blessing was conditional. It is recorded of the Ephraimites in Joshua 16:10, ‘they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute’. They co-existed with Canaan. And again in Joshua 17:12 it says ‘yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land.”
One of my favorite movies was a 1996 film entitled ‘Independence Day’. It is about a worldwide alien attack and the subsequent rallying of humankind to fight back. I remembered in the show the President of United States, acted by Bill Pullman, was in a conversation with a captured alien. He was trying to salvage his country and even the world from total destruction. This is the conversation:
The President:
I know there is much to learn from each other if we can negotiate a truce. We can find a way to Co-exist. Can there be a peace between us?
The Alien replied:
Peace? NO PEACE!
The President:
Then what is it you want us to do?
The Alien replied:
Die… Die.
It was then that the President realized that they only wanted one thing: destruction. And together with the General, they calculated the time it’d take to destroy a city and they realized they were looking at the worldwide destruction of every major city in the next 36 hours. At that realization, the President suddenly exclaimed: “We’d have been exterminated.”
Our enemies the Canaanites only want one thing for us: destruction. As Christian we try to find a way to co-exist with the Canaanites. We long for peace with the Canaanites. But there will never be peace but destruction and you will suddenly say out loud: I am being slowly exterminated by the Canaanites.
Joshua 17:13 says
‘Yet it came to pass when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute but did not utterly drive them out.
The Bible dictionary traced the inhabitants of Canaan to be Syro-Palestinian (Syrian and Palestinian) in origin. This is not a make-up story but it is compiled by biblical researcher. I want to tell you that the anti-Christ will be a Syrian, mentioned in the Bible. In Israel today the Hamas backed by Syria and the Palestinians, live in Gaza. Gaza belongs to Israel (It is part of the Promised Land given to God by them in the time of Abraham and Moses) but the Canaanites (Syria/Palestinians) are allowed to dwell there because Israel did not utterly drive them out in the 1948 and 1967 war. Today it is the Palestinian and the Syrian that give Israel the most headaches. The Israelites, when they were led to the Promised Land, were commanded utterly to destroy the descendants of Canaan, then possessing it. This was to be done “by little and little,” The extermination of these tribes, however, was never fully carried out. After 2000 years God brought Israel back to their promised land which is Israel today and little by little they are to drive out the Canaanites but they are repeating the same mistakes 4000 years ago. They are what Joshua 16:10 and Joshua 17:12 says ‘but the Canaanites dwell among the Emphramites to this day’ and ‘the Canaanites would dwell in that land.’ The Ephraimites coexisted with the Canaanites.
I just read a latest write-out about the Canaanites just a few days ago. It is written by a Canaanite to Israel:- “A top Syrian businessman at the weekend insisted that the Middle East peace process is a farce (a charade, a mockery), and that there will never be peace or coexistence between average Arabs and the Jews of Israel.”Don’t let the moderate Arab leaders delude you,” Yasser Kashlak, who is of Palestinian descent, said on Hizballah’s al-Manar television, “[you] cannot make peace with us.” “Our children will return to Palestine, you have no reason for coexistence,” he continued. “Even if our leaders will sign a peace agreement, we will not sign.” Kashlak is financing a flotilla of ships departing from Lebanon with the intent of breaking the Israeli maritime blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. He said the Jews of Israel should seriously consider getting on those ships and returning to Europe, as they will never find peace in the Middle East. During his tirade, Kashlak referred to the Jews as “Europe’s refuse,” suggesting that Jews are foreign to the Middle East, a concept those supportive of the “Palestinian cause” have long advocated.
3 The Seven Canaanite Spirit
Canaan symbolized the Canaanite spirits that lives among us and in us. There can never be co-existence between the Canaanites spirits and us. In the long run we will be exterminated. In the end we will be destroyed.
Canaan is a group of 7 people grouping that occupied the land of Canaan that God instructed Israel to drive them out. The seven people are called the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amoritesand the Jebusites and each represents a spirit.
A. Canaanites Spirit
Canaan was the fourth son of Ham. His descendants were under the curse of God because of the transgression of Ham. So if you co-exist with Canaan you will likewise live under the curse of God. The term Canaan or Canaanites represents both a people and a land. The Canaanites had a very highly developed open culture and they practiced a nature and sex-oriented culture. They continued to attract straying Israel (the people of God) for hundreds of years. The people of God are continually being wandering off, drifting off, getting lost because of them. Their goddess Asherah has multi-colored personalities and violent characters. She was the goddess of sex and war. The first people among the 7 peoples of Canaan is the Canaanites. The Canaanites spirit represents a spirit of lust and greed. The Canaanite spirit believes in an open and free society and practiced a sex-oriented culture.
As Christian if we keep not the covenant of the Lord and refused to walk in his laws but we believe in the highly developed environment of open and free culture and practiced a sex-oriented way of life, we are co-existing with the Canaanites. I heard a statement made by a supposedly Christian man to a dedicated Christian girl, ‘If you become intimate with me physically, then I will pour out my soul before you’. The Canaanites spirits are spirits behind addictions and sexual perversions, sex before marriage, multiple sex partners. It is to become active seekers of pleasure and false bliss. This spirit is also a spirit of carnal excess and dissolution.
People who falls into alcoholism (which is a Canaanite spirit) generally start drinking through someone or something convincing them that heavy drinking is normal and is being done by everyone. It is a very frightening truth that many churches all over the world is saying that drinking is normal. A pastor in Australia said that you cannot preach in his church if you are against drinking. Can you see the Canaanites spirit seeping into the church today? I remember 20 years ago, we are so against drinking. Now 20 years has passed and Christians are saying that drinking is ok. Today, we Christian are constantly struggling. We have lost our innocence and childlike faith in God. We have lost our ideals and visions and dreams given to us by God because we have been co-existing with the Canaanite spirit. We are into pornography, masturbation, voyeurism, internet cyber sexual escapades. Our mind is warped and corrupted and we wonder why we are not blessed. We only have one lot, one portion blessing not the two lots, double portions and a chief reason is this Canaanite spirit; a spirit of lust, and sexual sins.
B. The Hivites Spirit
History also tells us that the Canaanites eventually settled down and ruled in Phoenicia proper with its sea ports and emerged as the maritime Phoenicians of the 1st millennium BC. That is why Joshua 5:12, in the Septuagint, read the land of Phoenicians instead of the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan and the land of Phoenicians was used interchangeably. The name Canaanites came to signify traders or merchants. They became merchants and traders of the sea. They were called Phoenicians by the Greeks and Poeni by the Romans. That brings us to the second spirit and that is the Hivite Spirit.
The Hivite sprit is the way of the world which promotes pleasures and prosperity at the expense of eternal values. It is the spirit of materialism. It speaks of a person that is seeking materialism and never gives a thought about seeking God. We Christian are so rich in the world but we are so bankrupt before God. I was reading an article about this German who married a Singaporean lady and migrated to Singapore. He said that he has to buy a watch every year that cost him $8000 to $10,000 every year. It is said that in Korea, everyone must at least own a branded good even though you may live in the slum. In Korea Louis Vitton has a slogan which is called 5 second. It is said that when you walk the streets of Korea, every 5 second you will meet someone who carries a Louis Vitton bag. We must have the latest cell phone, the latest computer, the latest iPod, the latest net book, the latest hottest product in the market. We spend our entire lives chasing after materialism and we know nothing about God. I remember when one of the Sunday School teachers asked all his Sunday School children whether they know who the Centurion was, they all said “yes”. The Sunday School teacher was so impressed only to find out that it is not the Centurion in the Bible that they know but the Centurion in the famous cartoon series called Transformer. When we become materialistic, we eventually lose our spirituality. We become lukewarm. One of the greatest problems in the church of today is that Christians has become so rich in the world but so poor in the things of God. Why? Because we co-exist with the Hivite Spirit.
C. The Girgashite Spirit
There are evil consequences of co-existing with the Canaanites. The next spirit is the Girgashite spirit. The Girgashite spirit is a turning back spirit behind apostasy. It means you backslide and you became an apostate. An Argentinan Pastor who has a very large church, together with his father decided to do a study together about their church in La Plata, Argentina. They designed a test and gave it to the entire congregation. They were able to draw some enlightening conclusions about believers in the church.
During the first five years, after conversion, most believers continued to grow spiritually. But there seemed to be a five year turning point. They discovered that a majority of the people who left the church did so in their fifth year of conversion. It was as if they had finished a cycle. The first phase of Christianity had ended for them, and their earlier enthusiasm for the Lord had begun to wane. They began to lose their first love. Some of the believers became bitter, critical and divided from the rest of the body. In their study they discovered that at the end of five years, believers had done one of two things.
Either they had become very involved in ministry, evidencing spiritual maturity, or they had left the church completely and returned to the world. It was as though there was a tendency to return to the past after a certain amount of time. That is if they were a drunkard before they became a Christian, after 5 years of conversion, they will go back to drinking. If they were fornicators they’d go back to fornications. They will go back to their former self, former sins. If they have feminine tendency, they’d go back to homosexuality. It was a trace to a lack of integrity in their heart towards God and a co-existing of sins in their lives. Actually if you study the Israelites or the people of God, including us, because they coexist with the Canaanite, the Girgashite spirit began to dwell among them. They continued to wander off and lose their way because of the influence of Girgashite culture until they were finally sent to captivity in Babylon. The Girgashite spirit appealed to the bestial (inhuman, animal) and material in human nature. Those with the Girgashite spirit finally received its divine judgment because of the evils associated with its beliefs.
D. The Amorite Spirit
The next is the Amorite spirit. It is a spirit behind evil speech, defiling by words –defamation and gossip. There is a lady that is always scolding vulgarity in the house and towards neighbors. She was in church but she is always speaking bad words. After a number of years, she just suddenly died one day. Another lady who was on fire for our church, brought her husband to church. Initially she served God in the church. But her problem was her mouth. She is a contentious woman. She always bickers with her husband.
It is a spirit behind evil speech. She speaks evil speech, defiling words, defamation and gossip against her husband until finally the spirit overtook her. In the end she left the church. But recently her husband was killed by someone when he was drunk. I want to say that our mouth must be sanctified. If we are always evil speaking of our husband, children, our neighbors, strangers, uttering harsh cruel, defaming words and gossip, eventually you will be destroyed by life.
E. The Perizzite Spirit
The next is the Perizzite spirit; a spirit of separation to leave the believer helpless and unprotected. This spirit aims always to separate the Christians from the church. Look at some of you who love to distant yourself from the church and Christians and be near to the unbelievers. If the majority of your time and passion is with the unbelievers, then you have allowed the Perizzite spirit reign in your life.
F. The Hittite Spirit and the Jebusite Spirit
The next spirit is the Hittite spirit. The Hittite spirit is the spirit of fear. If we co-exist with our enemies, we shall have no strength to overcome our foes. Eventually you will have a Hittite spirit. Psalms 78:9-10 says ‘The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle’. Why did we turn back? Because of the spirit of fear. The Hittite spirit is closely related to the Jebusite spirit.
The Jebusite spirit is a downtrodden spirit, a treading down spirit. You have the spirit of intimidation (you are easily intimidated and frightened by environment, circumstances and even your future). You have a spirit of condemnation and discouragement. The Jebusite spirit has its reference made of the ‘chariot of iron’ possessed by those who occupied the adjacent point to their co-existence with Israel. The Jebusite are giants. It refers to the stronghold, the bondages that control us; the spirit of fear and a downtrodden person who has no strength to overcome anything in life. They are real forces of darkness and because we give in them they become giants in our lives and are chariots of irons over us. When we co-exist with sin. There will be unbelief and timidity in our heart. When we co-exist with sin, there will always be a spirit of discontent with our lot in life. A spirit of discontent will come upon us. Unbelief occupies our mind, soul and heart. The might of the Jebusite and the Hittite will dispirit us. The iron chariots refer to superior armament that we could not overcome in our own strength.
Finally in conclusion-the Canaanite spirits accounted for God’s withholding of His power and blessing upon our efforts in life. God will not show himself strong on our behalf. Like poor Samson, we’d say ‘I will go out as at other times, but wist not that the Lord was departed from us. Joshua is from the tribe of Ephraim but the Emphramites has lost the spirit of Joshua, that anything is possible that with God all things are possible. Ephraimites came to a point that they were afraid to drive out the inhabitants and take full possession of their promise. Instead they begged for more land.
Isn’t this what is happening to us today? We cannot drive out the Canaanites spirits from us and yet we continue to ask God for more blessings. But the blessings will not come until we get rid of the Canaanite spirits. Joshua’s message to them was pressing upon them to discharge their responsibility, calling upon them to trust in the Lord and go forward and drive out the Canaanites from their lives. Joshua today is stirring us up to perform our duty looking to the Lord for protection and help, and to count upon His enabling to drive out those Canaanites and then possess that land which He has given us. God has never called for co-existence between us and our enemies. Actually we are called to guard against the temptations and dangers on every side, be faithful in holding the truth of God both doctrinally and practically, be not dismayed and be not undaunted by those who oppose us. Instead we should conduct ourselves boldly and bravely. We should always be striving against sin, resisting the Devil, bringing forth the fruits of holiness.
End of Sermon
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