Crossing Over Into the Land // It's Time to Take the Promised Land, Part 3

You know something – you and I can read about and listen to the promises of God until the cows come home.  But eventually, eventually the day comes when we have to cross over into the promised land. Eventually the day comes for us to lay hold of God’s promises and live in them.

 

Sending Spies into the Land

We’ve been talking the last couple of weeks about taking hold of God’s wonderful and outrageous promises in our lives. It’s not easy sometimes; it seems that we face uphill battle after uphill battle. And we’re left wondering is this really what God’s promises are all about? But my hunch is that when God makes promises he means us to believe them and to press through those battles like we believe them.

A bit like Joshua: when he was about to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land after centuries of slavery in Egypt and 40 years wondering through the desert, he was standing on the banks of the Jordan river, ready to cross over into that promised land.

As we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, God told Joshua that there would be lots and lots of battles. But he also reminded Joshua that this was the Promised Land and then, then Joshua did something that’s bothered me for a long time. He sent some spies across the Jordan to check out this so called Promised Land.

And you see here’s the dilemma for me: on the one hand we’re supposed to trust God. Without faith it’s impossible to please God, right? And look at what God said to Joshua about the battles that they were going to face when they headed into the Promised Land. You can read this: grab a Bible and open it up, Joshua chapter 1, beginning of verse 5 this is what God says, he says:

No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you so be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land that I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and courageous, don’t be terrified, don’t be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

 Isn’t that just the most awesome promise from God? And when you get a promise from God like that, that’s serious stuff. God is calling Joshua into a difficult place but encouraging him with his promises. And Joshua had a decision to make: to step across the Jordan, to head down the path that God had called him to and encounter battles one after the other, trusting in God, battling his way through to keep going.

And it’s exactly the same for us. When we step forward into the promises of God we’re going to encounter battles. So Joshua gets this amazing promise from God but look at what he does. He hears the promises of God but before he heads off, before he crosses the Jordan to go into the Promised Land, he sends some spies across to check it all out. To go to the very first city that they were going to have a battle with which was the city of Jericho. Read it: in Joshua chapter 2, beginning of verse 1:

Then Joshua secretly sent two spies into the land telling them: go and look over the land, especially in Jericho. So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

 Can I ask you a question? Is that really trusting God? God promises you the land, he promises you that he’s going to be with you, he promises you that no one will be able to stand against you. And then, it’s almost like Joshua doesn’t trust him: he sends out spies into the land and they go and stay with a prostitute.

Now the rest of the story is, we’re not going to read it now, is that they check out the land. The king finds out and comes to try and kill them and Rahab the prostitute helps them to flee and they promise to keep her and her family safe when they come against Jericho. And when they came back to Joshua on the other side of the Jordan this is what they said, "The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us."

Now this has bothered me for a long time. Why did Joshua do that? Why didn’t he just trust in God and go and take what God had promised him? And why is it that God didn’t get upset with Joshua for sending the spies and checking it out for himself?

Well they’re all good questions and the answer came to me one day when I was reading a story centuries later in the New Testament. It was when the apostle Peter was in jail and the angel came and sprung him out of jail. The angel woke Peter up in the middle of the night and said, "Get up quickly", and the chains fell off. And the angel said to him, "Fasten your belt, put on your sandals", and Peter did. "Wrap your cloak around you’ said the angel, "and follow me." And Peter did that and the gates swung open. You can read about it in Acts chapter 12, beginning over verse 6.

Do you notice something about that? The angel didn’t dress Peter because he could do that for himself. The angel didn’t put his sandals or his belt or his cloak on, the angel didn’t get him to stand up; Peter did those things for himself because he could. What the angel did were the miracles that Peter himself couldn’t do. The angel did the miracle of causing the chains to fall off him; the angel did the miracle of flinging the gates open.

Now for me, I’m a doer: I plan and execute and achieve. I’ve been like that all my life. I go and get it. I’m a Type A personality. And the struggle for me is when God comes along and promises me all these things that for my whole life have eluded me: relationships and peace and joy and a quiet, calm delight. The promised land of God.

I’ve a choice either to try and do this in my own strength, well that would never work, or I let God have the driver’s seat and let him be in control and follow after him in faith. It’s obviously the latter but you know something? We can say I’m not going to do anything and we become spiritual couch potatoes doing that. But God calls us to do our bit too.

Joshua receives the promises of God and then he sends spies ahead into the land. Why? Because any good military operation always does its forward reconnaissance to see what’s out there to plan ahead. And there’s an important principle here: Joshua receives the promises of God. He had to cross over into that land to do the things that he could do and should do to plan and to look ahead and to organise the people and the armies and to get them through and then rely on the miracles that God could only do.

Jericho was a fortified city, Jericho was impregnable but when they crossed over into the land God said to them march around for seven days blowing your horns and the walls will fall down. And sure enough, that’s what they did; that’s exactly what happened. God did the miracle.

The problem with us is we receive the promises of God and then we kind of expect it all to go smoothly. We expect God to put everything on autopilot and we never want to think ahead or do the forward reconnaissance to look at what’s likely to happen.

There are obstacles, there are battles and you know as we follow after the promises of God the enemy and the world are going to come against us. And we need to get our minds around those things, in a sense we need to think forward and look forward and plan to know what to expect. To use the brains that God has given us and then to rely on the miracles that he is going to do along the way to do the things that we can’t do to get us into that Promised Land.

 

 

My Way or the Highway

Now most of us like to be in control of our lives but at the same time we like to experience the promises of God. Problem is, those two don’t always go together. It turns out that there’s only one way into God’s Promised Land.

Joshua sent those spies and they came back with a good report. I want to have a look now at how Joshua led his people through the Jordan and crossed over into the Promised Land. See, we have to take the Promised Land just like Joshua and the Israelites. God doesn’t deliver it like a pizza; it’s there to be taken.

Now I have a confession to make: I used to be a very much my way or the high way kind of guy. And every now and then that attitude still raises its ugly head. So it was a major thing for me to hand my life over to God. Not just kind of to believe in Jesus from a distance but to live my life for him, to truly call him the Lord of my life.

There’s a big difference and what I’ve discovered is that on the one hand you have to give up some things if you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life but on the other I can do so much more because instead of having to do everything in my own strength. He shows up and does miracle and after miracle in every department of my life and I look back on that journey and think wow I could never have done those things. But our natural instinct is to do things our way, to be in charge and in control and that problem is that that job belongs to God. And anyway, it’s hard work. So what is it? What do we have to do to make Jesus the Lord of our lives?

We’ve been looking at these last few weeks at taking hold of the promises of God, taking the Promised Land. Joshua leading Israel into the Promised Land after centuries of slavery in Egypt and 40 years wondering through the desert on the exodus. And this book of Joshua recalls the history. You go back to the promises of God and God promises to Abraham that he would give the descendents of Abraham this Promised Land. And God comes to Joshua when he’s about to lead Abraham’s descendents into the Promised Land and he says, "Everywhere where your foot will tread, I have already given to you."

So Joshua, as we saw before the break, sent some spies across to check it out. He did the normal military thing that you’d expect any commander to do. Now, now comes time to cross over the Jordan River. They’re going to have so many battles when they get there. Cities and nations who don’t want them to have the Promised Lands. So it was so easy for Joshua to say, "Well, I’m in charge here, it’s my way or this high way."

But what Joshua did next, well there are some pretty amazing things that he did, four things in all. And it tells us who Joshua thought was really in charge. The first is he sent his officers through the camp to tell his people this, "When you see the arc of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the priests, then you shall set out from your place. Follow it so that you may know where you should go for you have not passed this way before." You can read that in Joshua chapter 3, beginning of verse 3.

See, this whole nation of Israel was about to cross over into the Promised Land, who did Joshua put at the head of the nation? Was it Joshua? It was the arc of the covenant, the symbol of their relationship with God, the place where the presence of God rested. For Joshua God was at the head of the nation.

And then there was another thing they did. You can go to Joshua chapter 4, beginning of verse 4. So Joshua called together the 12 men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each of the twelve tribes. And he said to them, ‘Go before the arc of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of tribes of the Israelites. To serve as a sign among you. In the future when your children ask "What do these stones mean?" Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the arc of the covenant of the Lord.

See, Joshua got them to pick up these stones and on the other side of the Jordan River they built a monument honouring God. And what that monument was all about was saying: he did this, God did this, God achieved this. This is about recognising God’s goodness for generations to come. It’s about honouring God first.

And then you think right, we must definitely be ready now to cross over into the Promised Land. Now this next bit is going to seem bizarre to us and even in their context it must have been a big call. Joshua decided to circumcise all the men in the nation because circumcision was a sign, an outward sign, of the covenant relationship between God and his people. Abraham did it to all his household and all Israelite males under the law of the Jews should be circumcised on the eighth day, it’s part of their law. It’s a symbol of the relationship between God and Israel and on the exodus in the desert between Egypt and the Promised Land for 40 years they hadn’t been doing that.

So it was time to set things right between God and his people. God said make flint knives and circumcise them. Makes me wince, my eyes water. They’re ready to go, they’re ready to cross over into the Promised Land. They must all have been there with such anticipation and Joshua says, "Woah, stop! Got a great idea! We’re going to have a circumcision. All the males"’ And not only did they circumcise all the males, they then had to wait there for several days for them all to heal. This was about getting the nation of Israel right before God in their relationship.

And fourthly, before they went. Can you imagine this huge logistical operation of crossing over into the Promised Land? It was the time of the Passover, the time when they remembered back 40 years to when God had taken them out of slavery in Egypt. To the time when the angel of death passed over and killed all of the first born in the land of Egypt except for the Israelites because they killed the lamb and put the blood on the top of their doors and the angel of death passed over them. It was time to celebrate the Passover, to remember how 40 years before God had taken them out of Egypt. To look back and remember God’s goodness.

And see the four things that Joshua did? He put God at the head of the procession. He built an alter, a monument to God that would be remembered for generations. He got the nation right before God by circumcising all the males and then he celebrated the Passover to honour God.

Sure, we want to cross over in the Promised Land just like the Israelites did but what this is saying to us is that God comes first. The arc goes first, we follow him, we take his lead. We put a marker here in faith to remember for generations to come what God’s done. We get right before God, we honour God for what he’s done. See here’s the crunch: there’s this huge promise ahead of them but they were going to take hold of that promise not in their own strength but honouring God first. It’s not my way or the high way, it’s God’s way. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome, his way and it’s the same for us today.

So many people believe in Jesus and they want to lay hold of the promises of God for their lives but they want to do it their own way. Jesus is Lord, we sing. Really? Then let’s do it his way. No little compromises, no little shortcuts, no "I’ll forget about him and not pray today", no "Oh well, I don’t have to read his word the Bible today." Wake up! God’s promises only happen one way, his way and Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." This radical, edgy saviour. Not into pampering himself; he was into going out there and following God.

 

 

 

The Promises of God

I truly believe that the promises of God are for each one of us. Now let me share a part of my story with you because I’m sharing this not from a textbook but from a changed life. Twelve years ago my life was an incredible mess, I can’t tell you the dysfunction and pain.

Now that stuff happens to us. I’m not some kind of loser; I was a competent, successful businessman with all the trappings of wealth and success but inside, inside I was an incredible mess. And when you’re in that place the promises of God seem to be, well, so difficult to accept. When God records in John chapter 10, verse 10 what Jesus said:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life and have it in all of its abundance.

 Literally superabundantly. Boy that can be hard to take when you feel down and out. When you think of Joshua there on the banks of Jordan, he really was on the threshold of a promise made to Abraham centuries before. And from Abraham the nation of Israel grew and they were in slavery and they were part of God’s miraculous escape plan as Moses led them through the red sea and then 40 years in the desert. And now, here they are and Moses has just died.

How impossible must it have seemed to Joshua when God spoke to him on the banks of the Jordan and said, "I have given you every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to the Lebanon and from the great river Euphrates through all the Hittites country to the great see of the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life because as I was with Moses so I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you."

You know what our problem is? Sometimes when we look at God’s promises and then we look at our circumstances, in our hearts we let our circumstances win every time. Because that’s what we can see and it’s the circumstances and the difficulties and the obstacles that fill our vision.

Today I just want to say that God wants to remind us of what Joshua did. It was a step of faith against impossible odds. Moses was dead, all those people and nations and kings and armies were in this so called Promised Land. Jericho was fortified and Joshua sent some spies in the land to check it out. And they came back with a rosy report despite the fortifications around Jericho and he mobilised his people and he crossed over. But not only his own strength but by honouring God, by putting God first.

You know something? I think it’s time for us to do the same. No matter what circumstances we face, no matter how big the obstacles, no matter how big the fortifications of our enemies or how powerful they appear, I believe with all that I am that Jesus died so that we could live in the Promised Land, the kingdom of God, in a dynamic and vital relationship with him.

And it’s time to count the cost, to look at what that means, to send a spine to that land in a sense by opening up God’s word and reading those promises for ourselves. Because there is a cost, we need to read about that cost. The things that we might have to give up, the sin in our lives that we have to lay down in order to realise the promises of God and then stepping out in faith.

Just start honouring God, even when it’s a mess, even when things aren’t going well, even when it all looks impossible. Just as Joshua and the nation of Israel did, to start honouring God. Put him first in everything, draw close to him in prayer, in Bible reading, in the way that we live our lives.

Come on, honouring him with all that we are and all that we have and with every hope and with every dream just laying that down before him. Just believing in faith that his kingdom will come and that as we simply walk in faith, putting him first, he’ll step into those battles for us and with us and win them for us.

And before we know it, before we know it, we’ll look back and say, "Wow, look at what God’s done, I really am in the Promised Land." What do you think? Where are you in your life? What are the battles that lay before you? Is it time to take your eyes off the battles and set them firmly on God and believe his promises and honour him and step forward in faith into his Promised Land?