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The book of Joshua is an exceedingly old book. It was written, I suppose, some 3,000 years ago. But still today, as we read it as believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, the book has power to speak to our hearts directly. It does that because we cannot read it without the books reminding us of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. In the first place, the name of our Lord Jesus is but the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew name Joshua, which you would gather if you read your authorized version of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Or you remember in Hebrews chapter four and verse eight, the writer remarks, if Joshua had given them rest, that is when he brought the Israelites into the Promised Land, if Joshua had given them complete rest, God would not thereafter have spoken of another rest. But you'll see in the Greek, it says if Jesus had given them rest, and therefore the authorized translators of that verse, Hebrews four and eight, translated it thus, if Jesus had given them rest. Which reminds us, as I say, that Jesus is but the Greek form of the name Joshua.
Therefore, the early Christians were very soon onto the point that the book of Joshua and the exploits of Joshua remind us believers of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus. And then, of course, we may go deeper, for it is not merely a name, it is what Joshua did for the people of his time that so vividly reminds us of what our blessed Lord has done for us. Joshua was the man under God who brought Israel into their God-given inheritance. And when we read these chapters, how Joshua brought the people of God into their delightful inheritance, flowing with milk and honey, then our hearts will immediately jump the centuries and think of our Joshua, who has done similarly for us and brought us into our God-given inheritance.
We shall be moved, irresistibly moved, as we read this ancient history, and it causes us to think of the Lord Jesus. We shall be moved to give thanks to the Father, who has qualified us, who has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. So as we read about Joshua bringing the Israelites into their land, we shall not begrudge the old Israelites not one blade of grass in their country, nor one little pot of honey. We shall say, yes, thank God for that, but we have an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us.
And already, through Jesus Christ our Lord, God has made us fit. God has qualified us for our share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Perhaps you might be inclined to ask this afternoon, pray tell us, you say, exactly what do we mean when we think of this term inheritance? We read the term very frequently throughout the New Testament. It is, of course, taken from the Old Testament, and taken in particular from these stories that tell how God promised Canaan to the Israelites as their inheritance.
How, when they got into the land, the land was divided up, and the surveyors went round and they measured out the farms, and they gave three acres and a cow, what have you, to each of the Israelites for their enjoyment. So that in term inheritance was taken from the Old Testament and used in the new of our inheritance. Of course, even in the Old Testament, if you mark how the Israelites used it, you will find as the centuries went by and the Israelites pondered the tremendous blessings that God had given them in their inheritance. They went beyond the literal land of Canaan, did they not? They went beyond the grass and the cows and the milk and the honey.
Listen, for instance, to the psalmist, talking in Psalm sixteen. says he, you know, the Lord is the portion of my cup. The lines, says he, are fallen unto me in pleasant places. What does he mean, the lines have fallen to me? Why, he's thinking of the ancient story, how when Israel went into the land, then eventually they described the land and wrote it down in a book, and lots were cast, and each citizen received his bit of land, or say. Some of the citizens thought that was marvelous because they got rich countryside like you have around here in a Hockhill, and some of them weren't so pleased because they got bits like up in the Sperrin Mountains, and it was difficult to farm it, you'll see.
And some were very content, and some were not so content. Uh... But as the centuries went by, the great prophets and psalmists thought not only of the physical inheritance that God had given them, but began to think of the great spiritual inheritance that even then, in that far off day, they enjoyed. And the psalmist says to God, well, it's the Lord, after all, the Lord who gave me this three acres and a cow. It's the Lord himself who's behind the inheritance that is the portion of my cup. And as I think of him, I can truly and honestly and sincerely say, the lines of my inheritance, the bit that's been measured out for me, the lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places.
Yea, I have a goodly heritage. And if we went no further than that this afternoon, we've been moved, haven't we, to think of a wonderful thing. Oh, the infinite God has not only brought us into inheritance, qualified us to enjoy that inheritance, but has given to each one of us our particular share of that inheritance, has he not? And you have an experience of the Lord in common with me, and then you have an experience of the Lord that you only will ever have, altogether peculiar to you.
How goes it with you, my brother, my sister? As you think of the glorious inheritance that Christ has given you in God, I wonder, can you honestly say this afternoon, yes, indeed, thank God, the lines are fallen to me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage. If we want to know a little bit in more gra- in greater detail what our inheritance means, well, we could start, couldn't we, as Christians, considering the earnest of our inheritance. For more than once, the New Testament uses that.
We not only have an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for us, but if you please, God has already given us a part payment, an earnest of that inheritance, so that of all the joys that one day we shall have, some of them we have already now. The great earnest of our inheritance, so the New Testament declares, is the Holy Spirit of God himself. We have the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.
I have no need to remind you of all that that means, what that blessed Holy Spirit has done within us, regenerating us, giving us the very life of God already, introducing us into peace with God, access by one spirit unto the Father, moving in our hearts that deep sense of assurance as he pours out the love of God in our hearts. Leading us to cry in genuine reality, Abba Father, already sensing and knowing that God is our Father, that we are children of God, and if children of God, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Our great inheritance, therefore. The very terminology based on these ancient parts of the Old Testament and the book of Joshua in particular. Not only are our, is our inheritance concerned with spiritual blessings. Two Corinthians five verse five, Paul reminds us that we have the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts, and that is why, says he, that is why I would gladly go home. For the body in which I now dwell, he says, is but a fragile tent, blown about with the winds and dilapidated and, uh, coming down.
A temporary accommodation. Well, we know that if this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God, eternal in the heavens, and we long to be there because we know to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord. And then Paul adds, this is not escapism, you know. This isn't the word and attitude of somebody for whom life has been too much and he's glad to escape it. The thing that has made heaven real to us, the certainty that we shall have an eternal building, a body suited to our glorified personalities, is that already God has given us an earnest of it by giving us the Holy Spirit in our hearts.
Enough then to show, uh, in sketch form the vast blessing that our inheritance gives us in Christ. If we would see the relevance, however, the story of Joshua to our experience, we must, first of all, give a little patience and study Joshua in its ancient historical context. So to see the significance of what Joshua did, I must ask you now, if you will, to turn back in your Bibles to Genesis and chapter fifteen. Genesis fifteen is an even more remote scripture, is it not, than Joshua?
But it tells us two exceedingly important and basic things. Let us look in verse six to start with, to see the first major thing that Genesis fifteen tells us of. And Abraham, it says, believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness, point number one. And you say, whatever has that got to do with us of a Sunday afternoon at half past four here in a hokil? Why, my good friend, it's got everything to do with you. If you have any hope whatsoever of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that hope is to be found here in Genesis fifteen and verse 6.
Why is that? Because Genesis fifteen and verse six lays down the legal precedent that tells us once and for all how people are justified, how they have peace with God. You'll see, if Abram was justified by faith, then it follows as a legal precedent that everybody after Abram will have to be justified by faith in the same way that Abram was justified. But God has no favorites. God is consistent. And I repeat, if Abram was justified by faith, then you are justified by faith, if you're justified at all.
Genesis fifteen six lays down the abiding principle by which men and women are made right with God. And you see that, don't you, from Paul's discussion of it in the Epistle to the Romans, chapter four, He has made the point that we're justified by faith. But then in Romans four he says, and let me prove it to you. Let me prove it to you by citing the case of Abraham himself. What says the scripture? How was our father Abraham justified? Paul proceeds to quote Genesis fifteen six that lays it down explicitly. Abraham justified simply by faith.
So Genesis fifteen six has everything to do with us. But then pray notice, if you will, what follows in Genesis fifteen verses seven to twenty one. There we read that God made a covenant with Abraham, and by that covenant he promised him a glorious inheritance. Verse thirteen: And he said unto Abram, know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward they shall come out with great substance. Verse eighteen.
In that day, the Lord God made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite. Two things, therefore, in Genesis fifteen, and the one of them is that Abraham was justified by faith, and so must we be. And the second one was that God covenanted to give to Abraham and to his seed this great and glorious inheritance that consisted of so much territory in what we now call the Middle East.
You'll say, yes, that's nice, but that hasn't, surely that hasn't got anything to do with us whatsoever. You'll say, you'll see that was the promise given to Abraham of an earthly inheritance, uh, and of course, that's nothing to do with us because in this present day, we who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, we're part of the church, my good preacher, know that, we're aware of that in a hokil, and our portion is a heavenly portion, you'll see. So, this covenant with Abraham that God was going to give him certain square miles in the Middle East, well, that's interesting historically, but it doesn't have anything that much in particular to do with us. Well, just a minute.
Whether it has anything to do with us or not. Shall we observe first the historical context? Here was God four hundred years before promising to Abram that he would give him a glorious inheritance. The program was this, that Abram's seed would develop into a nation. They would go down into Egypt. They would pass through years of affliction. After that, God would bring them out. He would take them through the wilderness, and finally he would bring them into the glorious inheritance, and God had covenanted to do it, and do it God would. And the centuries passed by, and Abram's seed went down into Egypt.
We know the story well. We know how eventually they were afflicted in Egypt. It proved a very oven of affliction to them. We know the stirring story how God raised up Moses, and Moses celebrated the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea, and he brought the Israelites out. Step by step, they marched across the Sinai Peninsula until they got within breathing distance of the glorious inheritance, and then... Moses could take them no further. What a dismal story it was. Not only did the first generation disobey God in the wilderness and prove to be an apostate nation, and God had to swear to them in his wrath, you will never enter my inheritance.
But Moses himself, poor old Moses, being hard pressed by the sufferings of the wilderness, rebelled against God himself, and for that was told he could never enter the promised land. What a dismal story it would be if the Bible ended with Deuteronomy and didn't go on to Joshua. But we're here to tell you this afternoon the wonderful gospel that what God covenanted to Abraham, God intended to fulfill. And what Moses could not do, that Joshua did.
All the wonder of it. Joshua is the great book of the Savior, of course it is. Of the glorious Savior that God raised up to do what Moses could not do, namely to bring God's people into their God-given inheritance. And I fancy, as you think of it, you'll say, yes, and aha, aha, I could tell you something else in addition to that. Our blessed Lord has done. Yes, you could, couldn't you? What the law could not do, what Moses could not do for all his holiness, that God sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law should be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.
In that way, then, it is that, uh, Joshua, the book of Joshua is going to talk to us about our blessed Lord Jesus, the great captain of our salvation, who does for us what Moses certainly could never do, and has brought us into the God-promised inheritance. Yes, but let me backtrack a minute or two, else you might perhaps charge me with fancifulness, and that would never do, would it, if I were guilty of fancifulness. Um, this inheritance that God promised and covenanted to Abraham, are you absolutely sure it's got nothing to do with you?
You say, yes, of course I am sure. I mean, say what God promised to Abraham were these, uh, acres in Canaan, you know, the land of the Hittites and all that in the Middle East, and you say that's nothing to do with us in the church. Our portion is a heavenly portion. It would be a little bit worldly of us as the church to, uh, interest ourselves in some sort of earthly inheritance, wouldn't it? Well, would it? Tell me, is the Lord Jesus going to interest himself in any earthly inheritance? Or has he given up the earth completely? His portion is certainly going to be heavenly, isn't it?
But has the Lord Jesus no interest in the, in this earth? I thought Psalm two uh, describes him as saying, ah, says God in Psalm two at least, ask of me and I shall give thee the uttermost parts of the earth for thine inheritance. Oh yes, my brothers and sisters, our blessed Lord has not given up interest in this earth. I hope you believe that bit. Jesus shall reign where'er the sun doth his successive journeys run, his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moon shall wax and wane no more.
God is not going to dismiss this little earth, tiny as it is, into complete bankruptcy. This earth has been stained with the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son. On our planet earth, a crucif- a cross has been raised, staked into the ground, and the Lord of glory himself impaled on it. Before God calls an end to the history of planet earth, God is yet going to redeem his covenant that he made with Abram, recorded in Genesis chapter fifteen. God is going to give the Middle East, and I tell you what, he'll give more than the Middle East, he'll give the whole planet to his blessed son.
His son shall inherit the very ends of the earth. Don't say heaven is enough for Jesus Christ. Isn't it it? He shall inherit the earth as well. He's the heir of all things. Hebrews chapter one tells us simply upholds the all things, the great universe. He upholds it. He is the heir of it. And one day he shall come into his rights. And it's not I merely with the preacher's fervor that said so. The New Testament explicitly says so, doesn't it? And so that we may get this historical context well into our hearts, let's turn to the passage in the New Testament that says this explicitly.
The passage is, of course, Galatians chapter three And verses uh fifteen following. We cannot read the whole passage, but you will remember what the argument of Galatians is at this point. Paul has been striving to prove that justification is by faith. In order to prove that, he proves three other things. He proves that not only justification is by faith, but the promises made to Abraham are to be received by faith as well. And the blessing of Abraham is to be received by faith as well.
And if you please, the covenant is granted on terms of faith, and because the covenant is thus granted, the inheritance is by faith. So not only justification by faith, but all these other things, they are by faith as well. So let's prepare ourselves to be spiritual millionaires if we can, and enlarge our hearts and see the argument that Paul uses to prove it by. So first of all, take that covenant, you'll see. And says, uh, Paul in Galatians chapter three verse sixteen, now to Abraham were the promises spoken and to his seed.
He says not and to seeds in the plural, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. Some people have thought that Paul is arguing unfairly, but he's not, is he? He's giving us, in the first place, a little lang- lesson in grammar. When I was an infant and went to school, teachers labored to tell me that there were such things in the English language as collective nouns. What do you mean? Well, nouns that looked as if they were s- uh, singular, but really were plural. Do you see? So you could say one horse, that was one, two horses, that's a plural.
But then you could say, here's a sack of seed. Huh. And when you looked at the sack, there were millions of seeds in the sack. But if somebody asked you what that was, you said it was seed. You didn't say it was seeds. Well, you could say it was seeds. You could say, how many seeds in that little packet of flower seeds did you get for half a crown? Twenty two forget me not, seeds in the plural. But if you like, you could refer to it in the singular, couldn't you, as seed. And Paul is, uh, taking advantage of that fact here in his argument. The promises were originally made to Abraham and to his seed. Notice not seeds, but seed.
And ultimately, says Paul, the seed in question was Christ. Yes. So here is the affirmation that that inheritance promised in Genesis fifteen and secured by covenant was made to Christ. He shall inherit the land. He shall inherit, in fact, the whole earth. You'll say, well, what's that got to do with me? And how do I come into it? And you ask very well, don't you? Because here is a question ripe for the lawyers. You'll see, Paul has just made the point, doesn't he? In verse fifteen, Brethren, I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet when it has been confirmed, no one maketh it void or addeth thereto.
If somebody makes a covenant in the form of a will, once the will is signed, sealed, and settled, you can't add anything, can you? You, your great-grandmother dies, and of course you shed as many tears as you can manage to because you didn't want her to die, but then you're all eager to come and hear the lawyer read the will, you see, because your great-grandmother was considerably wealthy, and you have reason to expect that she might have looked favorably upon you before she left this scene. So you attend with all the rest of the aunts and the uncles who are got similar ideas in their heads as well, but that's beside the point. And the lawyer reads it out, my house to my daughter Emily, the farm to my son George, my jewelry to Emmalina, my stocks and shares to grandson, uh, uh, Brutus, you'll see.
And eventually the list has gone through, and your name hasn't appeared. And you'll say to the solicitor, now, well, read the rest. He says, no, there is no more. You say, well, what do you mean, no more? Well, he says, that's the end of it. That can't be. Why not? Well, you haven't mentioned my name yet. He says, who are you? Well, I'm Mabel, and I want to know what my great-grandmother has left me. Well, he puts his glasses on the end of his nose, that will cost you more, and he reads again. You'll say, no, I'm sorry, there's nothing about Mabel down here. Sorry. Well, you say there must be. I, I knew my great-grandmother wanted to me to inherit something, so put my name in.
And even the lawyer wouldn't do that, would he? However much you pay him. Once the will is signed, sealed, and settled, there's that. You can't add any more names to it. So what about this inheritance then, that according to Genesis, uh, fifteen and Galatians chapter three was promised to Abraham and to his seed, that is Christ. What ground have you or hope of ever inheriting under the terms of that covenant? I never met your name yet. I read about the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites. I never did read about the Hochilites in Genesis chapter fifteen.
What then is our ground for hope? Listen, as Paul comes to the end of his argument, Galatians chapter three, you'll see, and he says, verse twenty seven, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, and if you are Christ's, then are you Abram's seed. And as according to the promise, all your heart ought to be jumping for joy for the spiritual millionaire that you are, who shall measure your inheritance if this be true.
The great inheritance promised to Abram and his seed, but if you have genuinely put your faith in Christ, and you've been baptized into Christ, in God's sight you put on Christ. And if you are Christ's, if you are part of him, then you are part of the seed that God had in mind when he made his great covenant with Abraham. Oh, dance for joy. Do it very soberly, and not here, but in your bathroom or somewhere. Dance for very joy for the unimaginable, immeasurable wealth that is yours if you be Christ's and are the seed intended by the terms of the ancient covenant.
We'll say, tell us again, please, because it's getting interesting. Tell us again, what is this inheritance we're going to inherit? According to Genesis fifteen six, you say it was, uh, some area in the Middle East. Yes. Actually, it's more than that. Would you care to look in Romans chapter four? Romans chapter 4, in verse thirteen. For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise is made of none effect.
For the law worketh wrath, but where there is no law, there neither is there transgression. For this cause it is of faith, that it may be according to grace, to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed, not only to that which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. And here you perceive that when Paul interprets the Old Testament, he informs us that the inheritance promised under the terms of the covenant is now to be understood as nothing less than inheritance of the whole world.
The promise, verse fifteen, to Abram and to his seed, that he should be heir of the world. You say, how can you get that out of Genesis fifteen? And my dear good sir, you've already told us it's impossible. You've told us that when a covenant is signed, sealed, and settled, you can't add anything to it. And the covenant in Genesis fifteen only mentioned, uh, uh, the land of Palestine. So how can you now turn around and say it meant the whole world? Ah, yes. Well, there is one possibility of doing it. We'll see, if you are the good grandmother dishing out her estate, we'll see, and you've made your will, signed, sealed, and settled it.
If later on you choose to give Mabel an extra piece of ground, you're going to add a codicil to the will, can't you? Hmm. And God, having made the promise to Abraham, when we come to the Old Testament, God tells us that he in fact intended far more than you might even suspect from the literal description in Genesis fifteen. God has added his codicil to the will and to the covenant, and he's going to give to the seed not only Canaan, but the whole world. Yes. And now we see the relevance of the story of Joshua, do we not?
With so much at stake. Here was God promising to Abraham and to his seed that he would give them this inheritance, first of all, Palestine. Moses came and delivered the Israelites from Egypt, but Moses could not bring them into their inheritance. It had to wait the coming of Joshua to do it, and what Moses couldn't do, that but did. We've a vested interest, and as we think about it, we shall see the parallel between that history and ours, aren't we? For here in Galatians chapter three, Paul is arguing like this: the promises of the inheritance made now, not simply to Abraham, but to the blessed Lord Jesus, of worldwide inheritance.
How is that covenant, how is that inheritance to be secured? By the keeping of the law? No, no, no, says Paul. No, certainly not. That is the whole argument of of Galatians three, isn't it? The covenant was made with Abraham long before the law is given. In the covenant, there was no mention of the keeping of the law. The covenant was a covenant of God's absolute grace, given as a gift to Abraham and his seed, and therefore utterly irrevocable. The law that came in between cannot alter that. How then is that covenant to be realized and all its blessings secured?
Why, not through Moses, not through the keeping of the law, but through Jesus Christ our Lord. In what melancholy form of mind we would be sitting here this afternoon, wouldn't we? If having thought of all those glorious inheritance, worldwide inheritance with Christ, ah, more than that, an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven for us. The Holy Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance, and one day our very bodies glorified like the bodies of the Lord Jesus, and a vast eternity of God's ingenuity, providing delight and entertainment beyond our imagination. If this afternoon we thought that all that blessing depended upon our ability to keep the law of Moses.
Well, all of us, without exception, would give up hope forthwith of ever inheriting so much as one blade of grass or one pot of honey. For the law works wrath. The law works condemnation. If the inheritance was of the law, then none of us have any hope. Hear the message. It's Romans chapter four again and verse fifteen. But for this reason it was of grace. Why is it of grace? That the promise may be absolutely sure to all the seed.
Yes. And so, in the days when God's promise was being fulfilled at the level of the prototype, then it wasn't Moses who brought them into Canaan. Moses was not allowed to do it, couldn't do it, in fact. But what Moses couldn't do, that Joshua did. And so it is with us, in the extended sense, that what the law could never do, that is to turn us into heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, that our blessed Joshua, the captain of our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord, has done.
Say hallelujah, even with your dying breath. But then you see, we must ask ourselves one or two more things. You will say, when shall we come into this great inheritance, we Christians, when shall we come into our inheritance? And how, Mr. Preacher, are you going to interpret the book of Joshua anyway? The story is how Joshua brought the people across the River Jordan and into the land of Canaan. You're saying, now we've got you, preacher, behind that platform. Now we shall not let you go until you boldly confess before us all.
What do you think is our equivalent of crossing of Jordan and entering into the Promised Land? Mm. It's, it's dying, isn't it, and going home to heaven. You say, what an impossible preacher we've got now. Well, of course not, you say. Dear, dear me, what an elementary blunder. No. How could it be that crossing Jordan and entering the Promised Land, how could that be a picture of going to heaven? Goodness me, it can't, you say. Dear me, for the simple obvious reason that, uh, when Joshua got the people into the promised land, there was a lot of fighting to do, and they had to fight to enter their inheritance.
You see, you say, that can't be a picture of heaven. When we get home to heaven, there won't be any fighting to do. Oh. Well, I was wrong then. What would you say it was? You say, uh, crossing Jordan and enter the Promised Land, that's a picture of where we are now. What, really? Yes, you say, according to Ephesians chapter six, we're seated with Christ in heavenly places, but of course we have to wrestle against principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. So there is fighting for us now because we're over Jordan, so to speak.
We died with Christ, we've risen with Christ, we're seated with Christ in heavenly places. Already are we seated. But of course, at the moment, there's still fighting to do, very serious fighting, just like Joshua and the Israelites, when they got into the land, uh, had to fight the enemy. Ah, but then I shall have to, I shall have to correct my notion, can't I? And agree with you, yes, entering into Canaan. The equivalent of that is our position in the heavenlies at the present moment, seated with Christ, but still having a lot of fighting to do. Yes. But then, uh, take me this time, but it's the Apostle Peter, uh, and he talks, doesn't he, of our equivalent of Canaan?
And doesn't he put it like this, that we have been begotten again unto a living hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God until salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. According to Master Peter, therefore, there is a sense, isn't there, in which our inheritance is reserved in heaven, and we're not yet there. Ah, how then shall we interpret the book so that we're not at cross purposes all the subsequent evenings of the week?
It seems to me that we would be wise again to look at our history book a little bit more carefully. The great conquest of the land of Canaan under Joshua was in several different phases, was it not? There was the first phase, and that first phase is recorded for us in the book of Joshua from chapter one to chapter twelve. That was the first phase of the conquest. After the first phase, of course, came the second, and they were very different phases of the conquest, very different senses in which Israel entered their inheritance.
So that at the history level, we need to get these different phases clear in our minds, don't we, before we begin to apply them as prototypes to our own spiritual experience. Phase number one, The first twelve chapters of the book of Joshua, when Joshua led the united armies of Israel across Jordan and demolished all the opposition of the kings of Canaan. That was operation number one. Notice its peculiar features. Throughout those twelve chapters, their attack upon the kings of, uh, of Canaan, their demolishing and subduing the kings of Canaan, they all had to move together as one solid army.
None of them was allowed to settle down. For instance, when they conquered Ai, they weren't allowed to settle, some of them to say, well, all right, now this, uh, we've had enough ourselves, and this will content us, so we'll settle down in Ai and let the rest of you go on. No, no, no, no. The two and a half tribes who had already been given land east of Jordan, they weren't allowed to settle down. Witness again Joshua chapter one, where Joshua straightly tells them, now, gentlemen, Moses gave you this land, I know he did, but you are not to settle down. You are to come with the united army. You are not to begin to think of settling in your inheritance until the united army has demolished all opposition in the land.
And you can see why that's important, can't you? For if, having conquered Jericho and Ai, two of the tribes had settled down there, and then after they'd conquered Gibeon, three more had settled down there, by the time they got up the road towards the north, the Israelite army would have been so small as the enemy would have wiped them out without any difficulty. The first phase, therefore, was not each individual tribe going into its own inheritance and possessing its possessions. First of all, Joshua had to bring them in, in the sense that he broke all the opposition. He brought them in by unleashing the judgments of God upon that land.
That's how he brought them in. And not until the last enemy was destroyed, were the people able to settle down, and Joshua gave them rest. The second phase was the phase in which then the tribes individually went off and possessed their possessions. And I stress that this afternoon because it may be that in your studies of Joshua so far, some of you at least have concentrated on that second phase, and Joshua to you is a book that preaches the message to us Christians, look, we are believers, we are justified, now we have to enter into our possessions, possess your possessions.
That would be a true exposition of the second half of the book, wouldn't it? But not the first. You can't possess the possessions until you're in the possessions, can you? What? The Israelites couldn't, uh, possess, go into their individual possessions in Palestine until, to start with, they crossed Jordan. And until the enemy were being subdued. That Joshua did. And in the early part of the week, we shall, God willing, be looking at that first phase of the o- o- o- of the conquest, how Joshua brought them in. How did he get them across Jordan?
How did he destroy their enemies? How did he, and on what terms did he give them the land? We shall find that in the first half of the book of Joshua, Joshua achieves three great objectives. Objective number one is told us in chapters three and four. Joshua brought Israel across Jordan. Once more, I repeat, it was a something that Moses had commanded, which Moses himself couldn't do. You know, good old Moses, he was very good at commanding, wasn't he?
He wasn't also always so good as getting it done, you know. He commanded Israel that they were to go into the land. He couldn't bring them in. Ah, but what Moses couldn't do, that Joshua did. We shall read the soul-stirring words tomorrow, that as the ark stayed in the bed of the river under Joshua's captaincy, it stayed there until all Israel were passed clean over into their promised inheritance. Oh, what a marvel Joshua was. How great a marvel is our blessed Lord.
This I shall find, for such is his mind. He'll not be in glory and leave me behind. Every believer will he bring over Jordan fully and finally into their great inheritance. Not only so, but there were other objectives that were to be achieved in that first phase of the conquest, but then we shall have to leave till another occasion. Shall we pray? Father, we thank thee for these vivid stories of thine Old Testament servant Joshua.
We thank thee for the encouragement it is to our hearts to read that the promise that thou didst make with Abraham um four hundred years before, thou didst eventually fulfill and fulfill it completely. We bless thee for the encouragement that this gives us as we think of our blessed Lord Jesus, that greater than Joshua, and we give thanks now before thee at the remembrance. Through him thou hast made us fit, qualified, meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in life, for which now we bless thee, for which we shall be blessing thee throughout the unending ages of eternity.
So we thank thee for thy word. We pray grace that we may understand it ever more fully, and I help tonight as we seek to preach it, that it may bring salvation to those who need, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
