God Gives the Promised Land

MEMORY VERSE: “And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children’s forever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.” —Joshua 14:9

JOSHUA 1:1-6; 24:1, 2, 14-18

JOSHUA, one of the two faithful spies whom the Lord instructed Moses to send into the Land of Canaan was, upon the death of Moses, appointed to be his successor. His divine commission was to lead the children of Israel over Jordan into the Promised Land, and divide it among the twelve tribes. This was a Herculean task.

God gave Joshua the assurance of his help, saying to him, “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. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them.”—Josh. 1:5,6

While this promise was made to one of the faithful natural Israelites, it applies equally in principle to the Lord’s people at the present time. In entering Canaan, Joshua would be encountering enemies, and as followers of the Master we have enemies who are warring against us continuously. The “Canaanites” who oppose us are the world, the flesh, and the Devil. These combine to defeat and destroy us as new creatures in Christ Jesus.

However, we have the assurances of the Word that God is for us, even as he was for Joshua. This being true, we also can have good courage, for, as Paul wrote, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31) The implication here is that no one can succeed in harming those who are kept by the power of God.

Paul also wrote, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present., nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature., shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”—Rom. 8:35-39

When the task of dividing the land was about accomplished Joshua, who now was growing old, called the elders of Israel together, and exhorted them to faithfulness in serving the true and living God, and warned them against serving the gods of the land into which they had entered, the Canaanite gods. He asked them to make a choice between serving the true God of Israel and the false gods of the Canaanites.

To this “the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods; for the Lord our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight., and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed.”—Joshua 24:16,17

The people were evidently sincere in this declaration of loyalty to the God of Israel. The record is that “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel.”—Joshua. 24:31

Our memory verse—Joshua 14:9—sets forth the words of Caleb, the other faithful spy who looked over the land of Canaan and its people forty years prior to the time when, under the leadership of Joshua, the Israelites entered therein. He had been given special assurance by the Lord that he would inherit his portion of the land, “Because thou hast wholly followed the Lord.” This is a wonderful testimony to Caleb’s faithfulness. He was a wholehearted servant of the Lord. And this is the way it should be with us. The Lord wants us also to be wholly devoted to him.

QUESTIONS

Who was Joshua, and what assurance did the Lord give him?

Were the Israelites faithful to the Lord under Joshua’s leadership?

Who was Caleb, and what assurance did the Lord give him?

| Home Page | Table of Contents |