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 ENTERING THE PROMISED LAND:
THEN AND NOW
Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on May 28, 1989 Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Joshua 1:2 I HAVE A VERY LONG INRODUCTION TODAY, followed by a short message. Turn in your Bible to the book of Joshua, where we read, “Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass, that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.” There was one little problem with this command: the Jordan River was at flood stage! If you are familiar with the geography of the area, you know that the Jordan River descends rapidly down the Jordan Rift into the Dead Sea. Imagine being ordered to cross one of the fastest rivers raging at its maximum intensity. I read the work of one of the early explorers of that region. He had brought a famed swimmer with him, and even this athlete could only cross the river with the help of a rope attached to his body. The children of Israel had to camp by that river for three days, watching the raging water. Imagine their response when they received the command: “Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan.” If I had been Joshua, I might have said, “But Lord, its flooding! Are you aware that these people have been wandering in the desert for forty years with nary a swimming pool in which they could learn to swim? And there are millions of them! You want us to go now?” As a pastor, I understand the difficulty of the task Joshua faced: getting people to move in faith. What is worse is the command began with the word now. I might have said, “Let’s study this situation awhile. God said to go over this Jordan, but maybe we can find another way into the Promised Land.” Put yourself in Joshua’s place. Get into the flesh-and-blood reality of the situation. Many people go to church thinking that the Bible is all poetry and stories. They think, “We’re not really supposed to believe any of this stuff, are we? Rivers are not rivers, and three million people reduce down to the few names we find mentioned in the Bible. Plus, we already know what God is going to do, because we have read the end of the book. God will simply wall up the water and send the people over on dry land. Why make such a big deal out of it? I would cross the Jordan too, if God would wall up the water like that.” Sometimes I wish I could preach to a congregation that has never read the Bible, as I used to do on the mission field. Most congregations are ruined because they already know what is going to happen: God will part the river. But the people in Joshua’s day did not know that, which is why I want you to pause for a moment and try to see things from their point of view. I am inclined to sympathize with the children of Israel. God, through His promises, often asks us to do things that do not make any sense to us. The natural man is inclined to think that some of God’s commands are stupid. You might think that after forty years in the wilderness, God could have led His people in such a way that they would arrive at the Jordan in the fall, when the water level would be lower. The snows on Mount Hermon melt in the spring and the water races down like rapids. What is the matter with God? He had forty years to plan their entrance! No good general would even plan an invasion that required crossing a river at flood stage. God made them camp out and watch that river for three days. I would have said, “Behold, there is much water moving very fast, and it can drown me! We’ve waited for forty years, so what is another month or two?” I often argue with God’s way of doing things. Furthermore, why didn’t God say, “Moses my servant is dead; therefore arise sometime, and go over this Jordan?” It is the word now that bothers me. Circle the word “now” in your Bible. What is it about God and His “nows?” Personally, I prefer words like tomorrow, the next time, and maybe. Some of my favorite words are how? and why? Those are questions that take time to answer. I have been “reasoning” with God like this for many years. I keep thinking I will open the Bible one day and see that He has learned something from me. For almost every promise God has made, I could help Him “save face” and give Him a way to escape – if He would only leave out the word now! God brought them to the river at what was obviously the wrong time. Then He said, “Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.” Notice that God said, “that have I given unto you,” in the past tense. God stated it as an accomplished fact. Once God’s word declares something, it is forever settled in heaven. Our circumstances often contradict what God has promised. But what looks like a contradiction is actually an opportunity for faith, an obstacle waiting for someone to come along with the faith to displace it. God defined the boundaries of their inheritance in the Promised Land. He promised Joshua, “From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea,” that is, the Mediterranean, “toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” I want a conceptual awareness to settle in. God did not say those things out of the blue. Centuries earlier, He gave a promise to Abram. We read in Genesis 12:1, “Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee . . .” Notice again that the words “the LORD had said” are in the past tense. The Lord had already given this command to Abram. But Abram did not fully obey: he did not separate from his father’s house nor from his kindred. I take great comfort in the fact that this man, who would become known as “the father of faith,” began with faltering steps. The Lord had said, “Get thee out of thy country,” but Abram stopped at Haran, which was still under Babylon’s control. The Lord had said, “Get thee out from thy kindred,” but he took his father and other relatives with him. It is hard for some people to realize that God might have something in mind for them that does not include their family. That is an unpopular message today. The family is elevated above everything; indeed, there is a modern cult of the family. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword…And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Jesus would be in trouble if He said that today. The newspapers would say, “A cult leader has come to town!” But if you are going to be a man or woman of faith, everything else must take second place to God’s claim on your life. Abram did not get out of the land completely. He stopped at Haran. His father contributed to that decision. The years went by. His father died there, so it was a little easier to leave him. Abram might have thought, “Now I can act more spiritual: I can forsake my father to follow God!” It is a wander that God did not strike Abram dead. But Abram finally packed up and moved on. Let’s read starting at Genesis 12:1 again and continue into verse 4: “The LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him. . .” Lot went with him. Didn’t God command Abram to get himself out “from thy kindred?” “And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance . . .” All the land had been promised to Abram, but he took Lot with him. I do not know how many years it took Abram to rid himself of Lot, but he lost the best part of the land in the process. After Lot left, the Lord spoke to Abram again. We read in Genesis 13:14-15, “And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.” Again, God uses that word now, saying, Lift up now thine eyes.” In Genesis 15, the Lord appeared to Abram in a vision and again promised to give him the land as an inheritance. Abram asked God, “Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” God put him into a deep sleep and showed him a vision that was a nightmare. He laid out so convincing a proof that, once it was unveiled, no one who honestly looked at it could say it happened by chance. God told Abram that his children would go down to a land where they would be strangers. They would become slaves in that land, and in the fourth generation, they would come out richer than when they went in. Then they would come back to the same land that God had promised him. That was a revelation of a proof that would take four generations to unfold. I can imagine God explaining to Abram, “You wanted to know. You are the one who asked the question. Your descendants might hate Me and hate you even more if they understood how this came about. But to make sure that the record will show that I keep My word, that I am in control, and that I have the power to make all these things come to pass: this land will be yours, and your children will come back to this place richer than when they left.” The children of Israel went down to Egypt. Psalm 105 says that God Himself sent a man ahead of them, namely Joseph, and God elevated him to be ruler over that land. They were given the best of that land, with their brother Joseph as the total potentate, controlling its every asset. Many years later, their descendants became slaves in that land. There is a Jewish tradition that Pharaoh was warned by his astrologers that a deliverer would come, which might have contributed to his decision to slay every male child born in that generation. If that is true, it is strange indeed that even Pharaoh and the false prophets of Egypt had more faith in God’s ability to keep His word than God’s own people had! At exactly the right time, God raised up Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt’s bondage. When they came to the Red Sea, Moses said, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD.” God parted the sea and drowned their enemies, and God’s people rejoiced on the other side. But after a little testing in the wilderness, they put God on trial, as if He had to prove to them again that He could perform. God through Moses led the children of Israel to Kadesh-barnea. They sent a group of men into the Promised Land to spy it out for forty days. The spies came back and reported that the land was everything God had said it would be, but there were giants there. Except for Joshua and Caleb, the people were overcome with fear and refused to go into the land. In God’s eyes, it was one disbelieving response too many. Put that into perspective. God had demonstrated His performance by giving a proof that should have convinced any man of ordinary intelligence. The people should have declared with confidence, “With a God who can exercise control over history like this, what are a few giants?” But instead, they murmured and complained once again. This time, God got so angry with them that He said He would scatter their bones through the wilderness. The people actually accused God of bringing them into the wilderness to kill their children. This brings us back to the matter of the family. When I was a child, I knew my parents loved me, but I also knew they loved God more. I rarely saw them during the early years of their ministry. I lived with my grandparents while my parents traveled and preached the gospel. Years later, when I traveled around the world as a missionary, my parents had to call the missions department of our denomination to ask them where I was. The missions department told them they had not heard from me in months. They thought I might be somewhere in South America. I do not often use personal illustrations, but many people have been impressed with the beauty of my father and mother now working so closely with me at this church, remaining faithful in their elder years. I am grateful that God in His grace has twined our family together. But God found out a long time ago that we would forsake one another for His calling, painful though it might be. My parents have never had any illusions about my commitment. They know that if God were to urge me to leave for Calcutta tomorrow, there might be some tears shed, but I would tell them, “I will see you in heaven.” And I know they feel the same way. God has been true to His promise: “Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time . . . with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.” God must be first. Yet these people in the Old Testament wanted to club God. It is amazing how people can get so familiar with God when they backslide, and how they can twist God’s word to serve whatever they want to do. It was not enough for them to say, “I don’t have the faith to believe that You can help us defeat those giants.” They had the audacity to tell Moses, “You led us here so our children would die in the wilderness! Would to God we had stayed back in Egypt.” What an insult to God! So God said, in essence, “You are worried about your children? Okay, I am going to kill you and save your children! You have put Me on trial as though I have to pass a test with you. You didn’t realize I have had you on trial to see if you would pass the test with Me. You failed the test. I am not wasting My time with you anymore. You will die in this wilderness, but I will save your children whom you said I brought here to die. I will take them into the Promised Land!” Moses’ last song is recorded in Deuteronomy. He knew that God was going to take the people into the Promised Land without him, and he said in Deuteronomy 11, “But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which he did.” Doesn’t that make you want to say, “I wish I could have been there and seen some of those great miracles?” Use your eyes: you see them right here in God’s preserved record, the Holy Writ! “Your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which he did. Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, whither ye go to possess it . . .” It is “a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the LORD thy God careth for: the eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.” The land was occupied by Canaanites, Perizzites, Hittites, Jebusites, and other ungodly heathen people, and yet it was the land that God cared for. “Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul . . . Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall our coast be.” We could say that these promises were “sitting on a shelf,” just waiting to be picked up. God had given them repeatedly. So when He told Joshua, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses,” it was not a new promise. God’s promises to Joshua, His promises to the church, or His promises that apply to you and me individually today, do not come easily. People think they can presumptuously say to God, “You said it, so let me have it!" Many people have foolish thoughts about God’s will. They think to themselves, “I am going to do what I want to do. If the Lord wants something done, He will get it done.” That is foolish. God is not interested in merely getting His will done. Do you know how He could get it done? If He wanted to eliminate the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Canaanites, He could make them vanish with a word or with a wave of His hand. God has something else in mind. He lost a third of heaven when Satan and his angels were cast out. God set out to repopulate that void with a people created in His image. God’s word, from cover to cover, can be condensed into two statements: God is faithful; be thou faithful. He wants a people who are like Himself. He is faithful to His word, and He wants us to be faithful to His word. Through all the ups and downs over the past fourteen years that I have been pastor of this church, I have had one message. I said when I was elected that I would restore this church to faith. Faith is not sitting around polishing your beliefs; faith is hanging your body on what God has said and defying every circumstance, no matter what it looks like! When God says something, it is forever settled in heaven. When you get knocked down, you must get up again. Grab a promise of God and hang on until you receive it or die still hanging on. When you wake up in eternity, you can ask God about it. Don’t let go of God’s word! I have heard all the excuses people give for forsaking their commitment to God. I have had enough of crybabies. If you have lost your grip of faith, don’t blame the pastor. Someone will complain, “But this Christian journey is too hard!” Hebrews 11 presents a roster of the heroes of faith, which makes our antics of faith look like a mere walk in the park by comparison. We are told to consider those who have gone before us. They were separated from their families; some lived in caves, and some were torn asunder by wild animals. God said the world was not worthy of them. He also said He is not ashamed to be called their God. Looking unto these heroes of faith, seeing that these kinds of people have gone ahead of us to populate the heavenly regions, we are told in Hebrews 12, “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience…” Literally, let us fun with endurance, never letting go. Let us run “the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus . . .” I look at my friends, I look at my pocketbook, I look at my pains, and I look at my condition. I look at my family, I look at my hopes, and I look at everyone around me. But the Bible says I ought to be “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Notice that the word “our” is in italics in the King James Version, indicating it was added by the translators and is not in the original text. It should read, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of faith,” not “of our faith.” Jesus is the author and finisher of faith; He is the Pacesetter. There are too many false starters; they might look like great authors, but they are not finishers. For those who complain that the journey is too difficult, the writer of Hebrews goes on to say, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood . . .” Have you ever endured anything that matched what Jesus went through? You might say, “But I gave up everything.” Jesus emptied Himself of heaven’s glory. You might say, “I have had many painful, humiliating experiences.” Were they worse than His? You say, “But He was raised from the dead!” You will be too, if you are faithful. You say, “But He will reign throughout eternity.” So will you! What do you think this Christian walk is about? You might ask, “Why does God let bad things happen to me?” The same chapter of Hebrews says, “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” The Greek word translated “chasteneth” is a form of paideuo, which means “to child train.” God toughens you when He knows you are going to face a tougher task. The Bible is very blunt: it says that if God does not treat you that way, you are a “bastard;” you are illegitimate. There are many “bastard” Christians in the world today. They are the product of television evangelists who convey that everything in the life of the Christian should be blessed and sweet, and that God never chastens us. But God does not bother with the illegitimate ones, those whom He does not chasten. If you are one of His true children, in whom His life has been planted, He is forever leading you along the road of ever-increasing faith, and you are led into ever-increasing faith by ever-increasing challenges. Now turn to Joshua 14 and read beginning at verse 6: Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadesh-barnea. Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh-barnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart. Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God. And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children’s for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God. And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the LORD spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old . . . Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said. Think of it: Caleb was eighty-five years old! For thirty-eight years, he had to wander in the wilderness with those complaining, rebellious people. I am sure he must have felt bogged down by them. It is like the expression, “How can you soar like an eagle when you are flying with buzzards?” Caleb’s faith never wavered as he waited for that generation to die off. Remember, the children of Israel had been scared away by the report of the giants. Now, when the Promised Land was being divided, Caleb said to Joshua, “Give me this very mountain where those giants live!” Caleb’s confidence was in the Lord. He said, “If so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.” Then “Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance.” A man like Caleb makes all our excuses pale. All of that was an introduction to today’s message. Now turn to Hebrews 3, which chronicles the failure of God’s people to be as Caleb was. We read, beginning from verse 7, “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day,” not tomorrow, “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest). Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.” Hebrews 4 begins, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” In other words, we ought to fear lest we wait one day too long to pick up a promise of God and act on it. I could preach the same message from Zechariah, who was sent to motivate God’s people to rebuild the temple. He warned them not to be like their fathers, who had heard the word of the Lord but did not listen. “Your fathers, where are they?” he asked. “And the prophets, do they live for ever? But my words and my statutes . . . did they not take hold of your fathers?” Literally, “Did they not overtake your fathers?” In other words, God’s word marches on! We stand at the threshold of the Promised Land. God’s word is sure. Our choice is to get on board and make it happen. Too many people have jumped off the train of God’s word, but “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Before we can occupy the land, we must first cross the Jordan that is in front of us. We must go on to Gilgal, and to Jericho, and we must do the spiritual house-cleaning that is symbolized by what happened at Ai. I intend to follow God’s direction and timing as we move forward to face our greatest tests. I am saying today, and am asking you to say it along with me, and with Caleb: “Let me have this mountain!” The victory is ours to claim, in Jesus’ name. Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | July, 2023 Wingspread | June, 2023 Wingspread | May, 2023 Wingspread | April, 2023 Wingspread | March, 2023 Wingspread | February, 2023 Wingspread | January, 2023 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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