Joshua 1:1-2 - Claiming Our New Life

For the past several days we have been laying the foundation and background for our study in the Book of Joshua. The Book of Joshua is the book of new beginnings for the people of God, and many believers today need a new beginning. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness, Israel claimed their inheritance and enjoyed the blessings of the land that God had prepared for them. That's the kind of life God wants us to experience today.   God gave Israel a new leader, Joshua. For us to enjoy and experience God’s blessings in our life as a believer we must follow our new leader, Jesus Christ. God gave Israel a new land, Canaan, which is the “Promise Land”. As believers we have been given a new inheritance in Jesus Christ. Today we are going to talk about how God also gave Israel a new life. We have a new life in Jesus Christ. Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”   The events recorded in the Book of Joshua have to do with the life of God's people and not their death! The Book of Joshua records battles, defeats, sins, and failures—none of which will take place in heaven. This book illustrates how believers today can say good-bye to the old life and enter into their rich inheritance in Jesus Christ. I love how Peter put it in 2 Peter 1:2-4; “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”   The Book of Joshua explains how we can meet our enemies and defeat them, and how to claim for ourselves all that we have in Jesus Christ. Paul wrote about this to the Church of Ephesus. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians1:3). What Paul's letter to the Ephesians explains doctrinally, the Book of Joshua illustrates practically. It shows us how to claim our riches in Christ.   But the Book of Joshua also shows us how to claim our rest in Christ. This is one of the major themes of the Book of Hebrews and is explained in chapters 3 and 4 of that epistle. In those chapters, we find four different "rests," all of which are related: God's Sabbath rest after creating the worlds (Heb. 4:4; Gen. 2:2); the salvation rest we have in Christ (Heb. 4:1, 3, 8-9; Matt. 11:28-30); the believer's eternal rest in heaven (Heb. 4:11); and the rest God gave Israel after their conquest of Canaan (Heb. 3:7-19).   God's promise to Moses was "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest" (Exodus 33:14). The Jews certainly had no rest in Egypt or during their wilderness wanderings, but in the Promised Land, God would give them rest. In his farewell message to the people, Moses said, "For as yet you have not come to the rest and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you" (Deuteronomy 12:9). This "Canaan rest" is a picture of the rest that Christian believers experience when they yield their all to Christ and claim their inheritance by faith.   Jesus taught us in Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.”  To be meek means to be totally surrendered to the authority of Jesus Christ in our lives. That is why daily we present our bodies as a living sacrifice in our service to Christ which is only our reasonable service (Romans 12:1).   Yes, my friend, today would be a good day to quit striving and simply surrender and yield our lives to the power of the Holy Spirit!   God bless!