Joshua 1.
THERE is a new commander now. Joshua having succeeded Moses, and the word goes out to the host of Israel to prepare to enter the land by crossing the Jordan. The wilderness they had traversed was the way, but not the end.
The land was all theirs (verse 2) in one sense; it was theirs also only as they took possession of it (verse 3). So it is with the Christian, in what Canaan typifies, —the rest for the people of God. The Epistle to the Ephesians brings this out, showing in chapter 1, verse 3, the believer’s present portion, blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ (Israel’s blessings were earthly); and in chapter 6, verses 10 and following, having a warfare to carry on against Satan, who will seek to hinder the Christian’s progress in the new life. What then is the subject of the book of Joshua? It is not the rest, but the fight with the powers of Satan, to possess the promises of God.
Verse 4: The limits of the land here given have never been fully taken possession of by the children of Israel, but they will be in the millennium.
Together with God’s promise, “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,” is the injunction, “Be strong and of a good courage ... .Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee turn not from it to the right hand or to the left that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.” etc., (verses 5 to 9).
It is forgetfulness of just such directions as these in verses 1 to 9 (notice especially the importance attached to God’s Word here, of course, limited to what was then written) that explains the failure of the children of God to live practically the life of faith in our day, as it explains the failure of Israel in the day of Joshua to take full possession of the land of Canaan.
All the fighting force must cross the Jordan, though the choice of some of them was on this side of the river. They had been attracted by a place which was not Egypt but though it was within Israel’s dominions, it was not Canaan; the docks and herds and goodly pastures were more to them than the place to be won by Joshua in the power of the Spirit of God.
Just so it is with many of the children of God today; their circumstances are what guide them, rather than the heavenly Leader: they lower Christianity to an earthly level; Christ should be our object, not the “much cattle.”
ML 05/10/1925