The Promised Land

     We have had the opportunity to see God fulfill promise after promise that He has made to Israel, but there is one promise made to Abraham that is yet to be fulfilled.  The Israelites are not yet in the “Promised Land”.  God has guided the people of Israel to the edge of the “Promised Land” and we will begin from here to see what happened.  We will read Number 13:25 – 14:25 to see what happened.              

     God had commanded Moses to send one person from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.  They went to spy out the land for 40 days.  They all came back and said, “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces.  But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified.”  They came back and a bad report, but one person is mentioned standing up to the others bringing the bad report.  Caleb said, “Let’s go at once to take the land, we can certainly conquer it!”, but the others were unconvinced.  In fact, they decided to spread the news about how bad an idea trying to conquer these people was, and the people began to grumble.  This seems to be exactly what happens today.  We watch God move time after time.  We see God do miracle after miracle, and when He demands that we move forward we yell back at Him, “Impossible, I don’t want to do it that way, or this is the way we have always done things around here.”  The fact is the Israelites and often times people today do not trust God, so they try to do it another way.  The Israelites begin grumbling even wishing to be back in slavery in Egypt.  “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!” they complained.  “Why is the Lord taking us to this country only to have us die in battle? Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?”  God had done so much for them.  God had carried them miraculously out of Egypt and now they did not trust Him and God said that this generation would die before Israel made it into the “Promised Land”.  2 people would live.  Joshua and Caleb would live because they believed that God would bring them into the “Promised Land” successfully.  They trusted God to do what God had said He would do.  All of the other adults died, including Moses at the end of the book Deuteronomy.               
     Caleb stood up for the Lord and what was right; he understood that God would protect them and lead them into the battle.  Caleb was aloud to live, and Caleb was allowed to see the “Promised Land”.  Caleb believed God and believed what God had said about Himself.  The fact is not trusting God is to not really believe that God is who He says that He is.  When God revealed Himself to Moses in the form of a burning bush He told Moses who He was.  Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"  God said to Moses, "I am who I am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "  God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” –Exodus 3:13-15  God, by saying His name was “I AM” revealed to the Israelites that He was the Uncreated God of the Universe.  He is independent of anything and He does not change His mind.  He is who He is because of whom He is, not based on anything outside of Himself.  We do not change God, neither does anything else.  He is trustworthy, because He is all powerful, all knowing, infinitely reliable, and unchanging. 
“God’s name is thus a proclamation of his sovereign self-sufficiency and self-consistency: he is free and independent; he acts as he pleases; he does what he wills; what he purposes and promises, that he also performs.”  -J.I. Packer God’s Words 

     The people of the book of Genesis called God ‘Yahweh’ which signified that God had limitless life and power.  God revealed this to Moses, and Moses told the Israelites.  And now the Israelites are not trusting God.  We do this all the time.  We sin because we think we have a better way of doing things than the infinitely wise God.  God has proven Himself over and over yet we chose to do things another way.  If you will see how big God is and how reliable God is then you will avoid a lot of the problems of the Israelites.  They had seen Him work mighty miracles and then forgot what He had done.  Remember these things that God has done.  Study them in your Bibles.  Talk about them with your friends.  Learn about them at Church.  Notice the things that God has done for you, in your life.  The Israelites realized their mistake after God pronounced judgment on them.  At that time many of the Israelites tried to do it without God.  He had told them not to go, they were now to wander the desert.  The Lord did not go with them and they were slaughtered.  The Desert Wandering had begun and would continue for 40 years.           

     After an entire generation of Israelites had died in the desert ending with Moses’ death God gave Joshua the role of leading the Israelites.  It was time to get into action and Joshua doesn’t hesitate at all.  He begins to rally the troops to get ready for the wars that are to come.  Joshua actively begins to get ready to do all that the Lord has promised that they would do.  This is what we need to see as people of God.  God promised that He would do this, so Joshua immediately begins working on making it happen.  He knew that God would come through for them, so He began to work.              We do not have time to cover all of the battles fought, but God successfully gave the “Promised Land” to the Israelites.  They were now in the land flowing with milk and honey that they had been waiting for, and the covenant was renewed between the Israelites and God.  "Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.” – Joshua 23:14- God had fulfilled every promise that He had made to Israel, without a single failure.  We should take note of God’s faithfulness and if we do, it will give us a freedom and ability to do the hard things that God will have us to do.  We must remember God’s unchanging nature and His faithfulness, or we will fail.
(Joshua 24:1-28)    




Dwain Minor