90. Possess the Land that God Gives
Deuteronomy 1:8 Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.
Over and over God promised the Land to the patriarchs and the people of Israel. The Lord repeats the promise to Moses, who speaks to the people on the plains of Moab just across the Jordan River from the Land. Moses led them up to the land, and now he gives the command of God to go in and possess it. This possessing is what the Book of Joshua is all about.
“God gave freely, but we are commanded to possess.” This is a bit puzzling, but it is crucial to our understanding of our relationship with God. It is the tension between Grace and Faith. God gives but we must still receive. Faith is the hand that takes hold of the free gift. We are justified by grace through faith. The Land that God gives, and we must possess, is Eternal Life, the Kingdom of God, or Heaven in our hearts now and Heaven in eternity with God later. The Land is the Life of God, the Holiness and Righteousness of God, the Love and Peace of God, and all the blessings that the Lord has for us. It is our inheritance, earned as a right by Jesus Christ, freely given, and guaranteed to us by the Holy Spirit. But we must still believe God, which is how we possess. We cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Christ, but God helps us believe by calling us to faith through the Gospel. If we have heard the Good News and believed it personally, it is the Holy Spirit who has given us the faith to believe.
Just as with Joshua, it feels like we are doing the work of possessing, driving out the evil, and doing the believing. But it is actually God’s doing entirely: He initiated the possessing, carried it out, and will finish what He started. So it is with all the thousands of promises from God. He gives by grace, but we must still must take it and receive it. The Spirit grants the faith to possess when we hear the Gospel. Once we possess it, it is ours, and we live in the Land, the spiritual kingdom of God.
“To possess the Land” is the same thing as ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God,” and the same as “Whoever believes in me has eternal life.” So how do we “possess?” By repenting and believing the Gospel, for the kingdom has come. Joshua (Hebrew for Jesus) is our Commander who takes us into the Land God gave for us to possess.