For the past several days we have been laying the
foundation and background for our study in the Book of Joshua. The Book of
Joshua is the book of new beginnings for the people of God, and many believers
today need a new beginning. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness,
Israel claimed their inheritance and enjoyed the blessings of the land that God
had prepared for them. That's the kind of life God wants us to experience
today.
God gave Israel a new leader, Joshua. For us to enjoy and experience
God’s blessings in our life as a believer we must follow our new leader, Jesus
Christ. God gave Israel a new land, Canaan, which is the “Promise Land”. As believers
we have been given a new inheritance in Jesus Christ. Today we are going to
talk about how God also gave Israel a new life. We have a new life in Jesus Christ.
Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things
have become new.”
The events recorded in the Book of Joshua have to do with
the life of God's people and not their death! The Book of Joshua records
battles, defeats, sins, and failures—none of which will take place in heaven.
This book illustrates how believers today can say good-bye to the old life and
enter into their rich inheritance in Jesus Christ. I love how Peter put it in 2
Peter 1:2-4; “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God
and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that
pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by
glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious
promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
The Book of Joshua explains how we can meet our enemies and
defeat them, and how to claim for ourselves all that we have in Jesus Christ. Paul
wrote about this to the Church of Ephesus. “Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians1:3). What Paul's letter to the
Ephesians explains doctrinally, the Book of Joshua illustrates practically. It
shows us how to claim our riches in Christ.
But the Book of Joshua also shows us how to claim our rest
in Christ. This is one of the major themes of the Book of Hebrews and is
explained in chapters 3 and 4 of that epistle. In those chapters, we find four
different "rests," all of which are related: God's Sabbath rest after
creating the worlds (Heb. 4:4; Gen. 2:2); the salvation rest we have in Christ
(Heb. 4:1, 3, 8-9; Matt. 11:28-30); the believer's eternal rest in heaven (Heb.
4:11); and the rest God gave Israel after their conquest of Canaan (Heb. 3:7-19).
God's promise to Moses was "My Presence will go
with you, and I will give you rest" (Exodus 33:14). The Jews certainly
had no rest in Egypt or during their wilderness wanderings, but in the Promised
Land, God would give them rest. In his farewell message to the people, Moses
said, "For as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance
which the Lord your God is giving you" (Deuteronomy 12:9). This
"Canaan rest" is a picture of the rest that Christian believers
experience when they yield their all to Christ and claim their inheritance by
faith.
Jesus taught us in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek,
For they shall inherit the earth.” To be meek means to be totally surrendered to
the authority of Jesus Christ in our lives. That is why daily we present our
bodies as a living sacrifice in our service to Christ which is only our reasonable
service (Romans 12:1).
Yes, my friend, today would be a good day to quit striving
and simply surrender and yield our lives to the power of the Holy Spirit!
God bless!
