I want this evening to read in three places in the Bible: two in the New Testament and one in the Old Testament.
First of all, in the Hebrew letter, Hebrews 6:11-12:
And we desire that each one of you may show the same diligence unto the fulness of hope even to the end:
that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Then, in the Old Testament, Joshua 1:1-9:
Now it came to pass after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying,
Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it, as I spake unto Moses.
From the wilderness, and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your border.
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 good courage; for thou shalt cause this people to inherit the land which I sware unto their fathers to give them.
Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law, which Moses My servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest.
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.
Then again, in the New Testament, Hebrews 3:12-19 and Hebrews 4:1-11:
Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God:
but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called To-day; lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we are become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end:
while it is said, To-day if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
For who, when they heard, did provoke? Nay, did not all they that came out of Egypt by Moses?
And with whom was He displeased forty years? Was it not with them that sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that were disobedient?
And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard.
For we who have believed do enter into that rest; even as He hath said,
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest:
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
For He hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all His works;
and in this place again, They shall not enter into My rest.
Seeing therefore it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, and they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to enter in because of disobedience, He again defineth a certain day, To-day, saying in David, so long a time afterward, even as hath been said before,
To-day if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken afterward of another day.
There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God.
For he that is entered into His rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.
Shall we just bow together in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, we are glad that we have come again this evening into Thy presence, and that we have come once more to Thy Word. We want, Lord, to confess and recognise in Thy presence this evening that apart from Thee we can do nothing. Whether in speaking Thy Word or whether in hearing Thy Word, Lord, apart from Thee we can do nothing.
We ask, therefore, that Thou wilt graciously fill this whole place with Thy presence, in such a way that Thy Word will live to every one of us. May it not be misapplied, misunderstood, or misinterpreted, but, Lord, may it come to us from Thyself—livingly, clearly, lucidly.
To that end, O Heavenly Father, we would together take by faith that anointing which is ours in the Lord Jesus, for speaking and for hearing, that Thy purpose for this time may be fulfilled. And we shall give to Thee all the praise and the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I have been speaking in these evening times for which I am responsible about living faith. I do not want this evening to go over what I have already said, or we shall not be able to cover what I feel we need to cover this evening. But what I have said in the previous evenings is, in fact, very important as an introduction to what we have to consider this evening.
I want to consider tonight living faith and possessing our possession; or, if you like, entering into what is ours in the Lord Jesus; or, if you like, exploring and experiencing to the full our so great salvation. However you like to put it, it comes to the same thing: the possessing, the realising, the entering into what the Lord Jesus has so dearly won for us.
Now, this matter of living faith is tremendously important. There are so many Christians who are barely saved. They know that they have been saved by the grace of God, but that is as far as they can go. When they meet the problems of life, the temptations in life, and all the issues bound to come up in the course of a single human life, they are unable really to overcome those things, unable to go through.
We sing about so great a salvation; we sing about so great a Saviour. We sing about the fact that He can save to the uttermost, that He has given us life eternal; but, when it comes to experience or practice, we are often very, very poverty-stricken. We are living defeated lives.
This matter of possessing our possessions, or entering into all that He has won for us, is therefore of tremendous importance. As I said last night, if every single one of us in this place tonight were the possessor of a living, practical, working faith, what a colossal influence we would have upon our families, our relatives, our dear ones, our circle of unsaved friends, and the society around us. Dare we say that we would have a very real impact upon national life, if we were only the possessors of living faith?
If, through that faith, we were able to enter into the good of all that the Lord Jesus has won for us at Calvary, which is made available to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Be not sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
I would like straightaway to take you to the Old Testament, and to this marvellous picture we have of this whole matter in the land promised to the children of Israel by God.
The first thing I would like to underline is this: that land, promised and given by God, had clearly defined boundaries. God gave to His covenant people, His redeemed ones, the children of Israel, a land which He clearly defined.
He said it was from the great Lebanon down to the wilderness in the south; from the river Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. You find that in Joshua 1:4. It was clearly defined.
God not only promised that land, but within it He gave every single thing necessary for national life, family life, and social life, that His purpose for that people might be fulfilled. Every single thing was found within the borders of that land.
If you turn to Deuteronomy 8:7-10, we have there some very beautiful words:
For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land,
a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills;
a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig trees and pomegranates;
a land of olive trees and honey;
a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness,
thou shalt not lack anything in it;
a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig copper.
And thou shalt eat and be full,
and thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which He hath given thee.
Every single thing that they needed was to be found within the land that God gave to them freely. It was God who gave it to them. They did not earn it. They were not worthy of it. It was a land promised to their forefathers before there was even a nation. It was the gift of God. It was the grace of God that gave them that land.
When that people went out of Egypt, it was a Passover lamb that sealed their redemption. They did not get out from the powers of darkness, from Pharaoh’s grip in the land of Egypt, by their own might, ingenuity, intelligence, cleverness, or power.
They got out of that land by a lamb: a perfect lamb, a year-old male, slain; blood put upon the lintels and gateposts of each home; and the lamb eaten within the house upon which the blood had been placed.
When that lamb was slain and the blood was put upon those doorposts and lintels, the angel of death visited Egypt and passed over every house upon which the blood had been placed. It was a tremendous picture of something yet to be fulfilled. That whole people got out of the land through the Passover Lamb and into this promised land that God was going to give them. The Passover Lamb was the secret to the whole thing.
Within those borders, God gave everything. Outside of those borders, God gave nothing. Have you got that clear? As far as this people were concerned, it was no good wandering off to Italy—pardon all you Italian Americans! It was no good if they wandered off to Italy in the west, or went right to the east to Persia, or wandered to the north to Armenia, or went down south to Ethiopia.
God had no provision for them in those lands. Maybe He had provision for other nations in those lands, but for this people, His covenant people, He had no provision outside of those borders. Within those borders, He had every provision needed.
Not only that, the place which He chose to cause His name to dwell—where they could meet Him, hear Him, make their offerings, worship Him, and sacrifice acceptably to Him—was not Babylon, Nineveh, Rameses, Thebes, or somewhere else in the world. It was within those clearly defined borders. It was Jerusalem.
They did not at that time realise it, for He had said, “I shall lead you to the place where I shall cause My name to dwell. There you shall offer your sacrifices, and not in every place which you shall choose.”
Everything was to be found within that land. The purpose of God was bound up with that land. The coming of the Messiah was bound up with that land. The whole great purpose of God, to bring salvation to the ends of the earth, was bound up with that little land and its clearly defined borders.
Within it, everything was provided; outside of it, nothing was provided. If they went outside, it would be the grace of God which preserved them, and He would only preserve them to lead them back to that land. You understand?
There is something else I would like to underline here. There is a marvellous little phrase that comes in the prophets and in 1 Kings 4:25: “Every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree.”
People often wonder what on earth this little phrase means. It recurs two or three times in the Old Testament: “Everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree.” Well, it simply means this. First of all, it is a very interesting fact that vines and figs grow together. Wherever you go in the land of Israel to this day, when you see a fig tree, you will almost certainly see a vine, because somehow they always seem to be in association with one another.
But even more, it meant this: it was not some sweet, poetic way, as if God were being poetic. What God was saying was this: every one of you who are people of My covenant, every one of you who has been redeemed by the Passover Lamb out of Egypt and saved by My grace, will have your own allotment in that land—large enough to carry a fig tree.
Now, a fig tree—I’ve never seen a fig tree in these parts—but where I live, a fig tree can be a very big tree. So, I mean, you can have a really good allotment of ground. Every one of them was to have an allotment. It was not that rich people would have vast allotments and the poor would have nothing. Every single one of those redeemed people was to have their own portion of that land.
They would not get it in the wilderness. They would not have it in Egypt. They would not get it in Babylon. They would not get it anywhere else but within those clearly defined boundaries. God had for them their own inheritance.
Now, isn’t this a marvellous picture? The most marvellous thing of all was that it was to be given to them. It was given to them by God. Think of that. This land was given to them by God.
If you turn to Exodus 23:23, we read these wonderful words:
For Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.
Thank God. Verse 27:
I will send My terror before thee, and will discomfit all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.
Thank God. Verse 28:
And I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
Have you ever seen a real hornet? Oh, what a marvellous salvation! What a marvellous land given by God! You would almost feel that all you have to do is sit down and praise the Lord. He is going to do it all.
The angel of the Lord is going before them. He is going to put terror into all these enemies so that they will all disappear—every one of them: Hittites, Hivites, Canaanites, Amorites, Perizzites, all of them. The angel of the Lord will go before them. He will discomfit them. He will drive them out. He will bring them into the land which God has promised.
The Lord will cause not one of their enemies to be able to stand before them. They will turn their backs and flee from them. What a marvellous salvation! We can just sing hymns, have a wonderful time of worship, have a wonderful time of praise, and the Lord will do it all!
They are not going to have to use a sword. We are not going to have to use any might or power. We do not have to be violent. We will just wait, and when there is a sound of absolute stillness, we shall go in and find them all gone—the homes left to us, the vineyards, the fig trees, and the fields. We shall just come in and take it all. Oh, it is going to be absolutely marvellous!
A land was given to them, with everything within those borders provided by God. What a picture this is of your salvation and my salvation—of all that is ours in the Lord Jesus.
God has given to you and me the Lord Jesus, His unspeakable gift. The whole purpose of God for the universe and for eternity is centred within the Lord Jesus. The very house of God, in which we meet God and God meets us, where we hear God and He hears us, where we can offer sacrifices acceptable to Him, is in the Lord Jesus.
Isn’t it marvellous? When you think about it like this, this marvellous salvation which God has given to us has clearly defined boundaries. Outside of Christ, God provides nothing; inside of Christ, God provides everything. There is not a thing that God does not provide in our Lord Jesus. Oh, if we only believed it!
Everything in Him; nothing outside of Him. You can go to the ends of the world trying to get a spiritual experience, and all you will end up with is a counterfeit experience—a psychic experience, an emotional, transient experience. If it is outside of the Lord Jesus, you can work up religious fervour, bring great devotion, have great zeal, and do all kinds of things, but it will not be something eternal. Whatever God does is forever.
But in the Lord Jesus, you come to God, and you will find all the provision you need. Every single thing you require to be a child of God is in the Lord Jesus. He has done it all.
Every single thing you require to be changed from a sinner to a saint—it is a lifetime’s job—but it is in the Lord Jesus, provided by God. Every single thing you and I need to know what it is to live a crucified life is in the Lord Jesus.
Everything you and I need to be those who can fall into the ground and die—the power to fall into the ground and die so that there is an eternal harvest—is found in the Lord Jesus. Every single thing you require to know the fullness, the indwelling, the gifts, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is found in the Lord Jesus.
If you want to know what it is to be immersed in the power of the Holy Spirit, you will find it in and through the Lord Jesus. Do you want to be able to serve God acceptably? You can only do that in and through the Lord Jesus.
Do you want to know what it is to be in the church of God, part of the church of God, part of the functioning body of Christ? It is in the Lord Jesus. Every single thing is found in Him.
From beginning to end, He is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the Amen of God.
Well, what a salvation, then, is ours. I gave you a few Scriptures on the night we had that introduction, but I will give you a few more, just so that you realise how marvellous this matter is.
Take 1 Corinthians 1:30. Listen:
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Now, those may sound very theological words to you, but in actual fact they are tremendous matters. Righteousness is to be justified forever and eternally in the sight of God. What a marvellous thing it is to be justified! God looks upon you just as if you had never sinned. He declares you in His sight absolutely righteous because Jesus became your sin, that you might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Righteousness; sanctification. Some people have made this matter of sanctification such a wearisome thing. It is all a matter of dark clothes and dark looks. Somehow or other, you have got to dress in sombre colours, look very afflicted, and look as if the way is heavy and difficult, with many tribulations. The smell of burning must be upon you!
No wonder there has been a reaction against holiness. People think it is black holiness to sit there in a drab, colourless, dark, heavy manner. That is what it is to be holy! What is heaven going to be like if it is a holy place and everyone there is dressed in dark colours, everybody has a heavy look upon their face, and they sing very slow songs?
Holiness is wholeness. Wholeness. It comes from a root in Hebrew and in Greek: health. Wholeness—absolutely a full personality. Wholeness.
What a wonderful thing it is to be sanctified! It does not mean you cannot laugh; it just means you laugh in a pure way. It does not mean that you have no joy; it means you have joy unspeakable and full of glory in the deepest of afflictions.
It does not mean that you do not have peace, that you become a restless, neurotic person—of which there are thousands upon thousands in Christian circles. Has any group got more neurotics than Christians? I mean it. I am not just making a joke. It is true.
Any psychiatrist will tell you that a third to a half of his patients are evangelical people. Why? Because evangelicals have a tender conscience about sin, that is why. If we do not know what it is to be justified in the presence of God, we shall be followed by the accuser all our days, until we have sleepless nights. There will not be a thing we can do without being bound with fear, condemnation, and the torment that comes from such fear.
But of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification.
That is, not only declared righteous in the presence of God, but given the power to be conformed to the image of God’s Son—a growing wholeness, a growing healthiness, spirit, soul, and body.
And redemption. Redemption has to do with this old body. Every day, I imagine you feel the need of a new body. Those of you who are getting a little older know exactly what I mean. The aches increase as you get older, and the need of a new body is apparent.
Isn’t it a strange thing, this kind of Greek idea that swept through Christianity—that the body, flesh, is all wrong, and that if only you have spirit, you are pure? God never made us like angels, spirits. He made us spirit, soul, and body.
It was Charles Haddon Spurgeon who preached that magnificent sermon, “Not a Hoof, Not a Horn Shall Remain in Egypt.” You remember Moses’ word to Pharaoh: “Not a hoof nor a horn.”
On the basis of that, Spurgeon said, “Not a hair of your head will be left to the old creation, or to the old man, or to the old world.” So great is our salvation that it is not only a matter of justification, declared righteous in the sight of God, and sanctification, the power to know what it is to be one with the Lord Jesus and conformed to His image until finally we grow up into Him. It is also finally to do with a new body, a redeemed body that is without sin.
What a salvation! What a salvation!
Oh, I could give you lots of other Scriptures if you want them. I think of John 10:10:
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Some people think that the Lord was saying He came that we might have life, but that we will not get much of it down here. It is just sort of an earnest—a living death, in actual fact. Never mind, we sing the hymns about it; one day, after we are dead, we are going to have life more abundant!
Thank God for life more abundant now. The Lord Jesus not only came to give life eternal—that was marvellous in itself—He came to give us life more abundant.
Oh, once we have tasted such abundant spiritual life, once we have begun to enter into the power of that endless life, to live by the principle of resurrection, how much more glorious is what lies ahead of us! If it can be so marvellous here, and we can know what it is to overcome here by the power of His endless life, what is it going to be like when finally we receive a redeemed body and know what it is to be glorified with His glory?
I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Oh, what a land this is! Here we have got a Lamb; we may have life and still be in the wilderness. We want to get over the Jordan into the promised land and find life more abundant.
Do you want to wander round the wilderness all your days, in a wearisome cycle, forever doing the same thing and never arriving? There are Christians who spend their whole lives going round and round and round. It is not even a spiral that goes up. It is just round.
Now, do not get me wrong. There is manna in the wilderness—the bread of life to be experienced. There is water out of the rock, wonderful to be able to quench your thirst. There is the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night to lead you. There is real guidance there as well.
Your shoes will not wear out, your ankles will not swell, and your clothes will not grow old. What miracles there are! But I will tell you one thing: you can keep them all. If it is a question of getting over into the land, I would rather be in the land, where there are rivers and springs, where the rain comes down from heaven and waters the ground, where there are fig trees, vines, wheat, barley, and all these wonderful things that belong to this land God has given us.
I do not want to wander round the wilderness on that manna week after week, year after year, all those years, with just a change now and again when a few quails come in. I would rather be in the land.
Some people say, “Oh, it is so marvellous to know the Lord.” Of course it is marvellous to know the Lord. It is wonderful to be guided. Some people think you can only be guided if you get into the land. That is nonsense. “You cannot really know the Lord unless you have got in.” No, that is nonsense.
There are people who spend all their days in that cycle, going round and round the wilderness, who get to know the Lord; but they never enter into the rest of the Lord. It is not rivers of living water flowing out from within; it is merely quenching their thirst, so they have to come back each time, again and again and again, just to quench their thirst.
They know life, but not life more abundant. They are slaves to circumstances. They do not get the victory over all the many enemies of God. They keep away from them.
There are many marvellous things about that wilderness, but oh, to know God in this way! Ephesians 1:3 says:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What a tremendous experience this must be—to be in the land and to know all these blessings. Not all at once; it would kill us! But they are all there: every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, in heavenly places.
How wonderful it all is. I think again of Colossians 2:2-3:
That their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ,
in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.
Think of that land: all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. All the facts, and all the way to handle the facts. Every single thing is found in the Lord Jesus.
Or again, Colossians 2:9-10:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and in Him ye are made full.
What a land! What a marvellous land this is.
Now there is something more I want to say about this. This is all yours. You will not find it outside, of course. You will not find a single blessing that is eternal outside of Christ. You will only ever get a transient emotion. You may think it was a blessing, but it will pass very quickly.
In Christ, you will get a blessing that remains with you forever, and they are without number. All this fullness—I hear people speak about fullness, and they are so excited they can hardly sit, hardly stand; they are nearly off the ground. But come back in a year’s time, and they are entirely drained out. It seems as if something just swept through them in a moment and left them as dry, arid, barren, and defeated as ever.
We do not want that kind of thing. We want a fullness in which we are made complete. We come to maturity. We come to fullness. We come to full growth. That is the kind of blessing we want.
All this God has provided in the Lord Jesus for you. These are your possessions. This is your inheritance. This is all that God has given you. It cost Him everything to give His Son, and it cost the Lord Jesus everything to provide it for you; but the work has been done. It is yours, given by God.
There is one other marvellous thing: all the enemies that could stop you from entering in and possessing what is yours are defeated already. The Passover Lamb has sealed their fate. It was not the people’s goodness, zeal, or devotion. Only their obedience was required.
On the basis of that Passover Lamb, all the various enemies—Jebusites, Hivites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Amorites, all of them—an almost endless list. The Lord did not say, “The angel of My presence will go in and I will drive out the Hittites, but the Hivites are another matter. They are very tough. Unless you are very, very good, I will not be able to repeat it.”
He just said, “The angel of My presence will go before you and drive out all these enemies. Not one of them will be able to face you. You shall only see their backs. They shall turn their backs to you and flee. I will send the hornet before you and drive them out, so that terror comes upon them.”
What a promise this is! It reminds me of the wonderful promise in Ephesians 4, where it says, “He led captivity captive.” All the captivity of the people of God.
How many believers, with so much knowledge of the things of God, are bound, so they cannot worship the Lord freely? They cannot embark upon prayer warfare. They do not even know how to open their mouths in a place of prayer. They do not know how to participate in a meeting of the family of God. They do not know how to take their place. They are in straitjackets.
Although their captivity has been led captive, they are still in their captivity. How is it possible that it says, “He led captivity captive,” when so many of us have still got fetters around our wrists that stop us from lifting up hands to God in worship and prayer, or fetters around our feet that stop us from running in the ways of God to do His will and fulfil His purpose?
How is it that we are so bound when the Bible says that the prince of this world has been cast out? When the Bible says that through death He has brought to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil? When the Bible says that He has stripped principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, triumphing over them through His cross?
If the Bible says, “If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed,” how is it that so many of us are fettered and bound, still in dungeons, still in prison houses, still in prison garb?
All the enemies have been defeated by the work of Jesus—the finished work of the Lamb. When the Lord Jesus died on the cross, that work He finished has sufficient power to destroy every work of Satan throughout history to the end of time.
There is not a fetter that is not broken by the efficacy, by the power, of that finished work of our Lord Jesus.
Now I want to move on to a second thing about this picture we have in the Old Testament: it is a land to be possessed by faith. Everything is given by God. This land, with its clearly defined borders, is given by God freely; yet it must be possessed by faith.
Listen very carefully, lest you misunderstand. It is just here that so many of us have made a tragic mistake.
Joshua 1:3:
Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it.
Now that seems to contradict what He said earlier: “Go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, into the land which I do give them.” Then there is the angel of the Lord’s presence going before them and driving out all the enemies, and the hornet of the Lord going before and discomfiting them. How come now He says, “Every place that the sole of your foot treads upon, that will I give unto you”?
It is repeated again in Deuteronomy 11. If you read carefully verses 23, 24, and 25, you have exactly the same thing again: “Every place that the sole of your foot treads upon, that will I give to you.”
Here we find a very, very important truth: only what you take and enter by faith is yours.
If the children of Israel go down to the river Jordan in full flood—and remember, “every place that the sole of your foot treads upon”—and they put the soles of their feet down into the river Jordan, onto the riverbed, instantly God dries up the river, and the whole nation goes across as on dry ground.
When they come to Jericho, they do not have to fight in the first instance. All they have to do is put the soles of their feet down upon the perimeter of that city according to God’s command, and at the right time, the right hour, God gives them the city.
Wherever they went in that land and put the soles of their feet down, that they got. Caleb said, “Give me this mountain,” and he got that mountain. That mountain was Hebron. He said, “Give it to me.”
Others saw chariots of iron, and they were so afraid of the chariots of iron that they said, “We cannot take them. There are chariots of iron in the valleys,” so they did not take the valleys. The Midianites and the Philistines remained entrenched wherever they left them.
All they had to do was go down, put the soles of their feet down, and say, “Now the angel of the Lord’s presence is going to drive out these chariots of iron.” The Lord would have caused their wheels to come off, or they would have got bogged down in some sudden thunderstorm, as they did in Deborah’s day. Do you remember? It would all have happened earlier, but they did not do it. They went by sight, not by God’s Word.
“Every place that the sole of your foot…” Does that explain why your life is defeated? Does that explain why you believe so much and experience so little? You profess so much. You understand quite a lot, but you do not experience it. Somewhere there has not been a placing of the sole of your foot upon that matter in the name of the Lord.
You know, there are Jordans to be crossed. The only way you can get into this union with Christ is through a Jordan which has to be crossed. The only way you can cross that Jordan is not by zeal, devotion, knowledge, much weeping, or much yearning, but through living faith—called obedience to God’s Word.
In the moment you put your feet down upon the riverbed, in that moment it is yours. You have got to get your feet wet.
You see, some people edge down to the river Jordan and expect it to ebb before them. They expect that, as they get nearer, it will just edge away; then they will say, “Ah, the Lord is with us. The Lord is with us. How gracious He is! As we come down here, the river will go away, and as we move slowly in, the river will slowly part.”
Never. Do you know what it says? The river was in harvest flood. Now, when the river is in harvest flood, it means it is three or four times its normal size. How like the Lord, just to bring them to a place where it was impossible.
He could have left it as the river normally is in the middle of the summer, quite a little stream. At least that would have encouraged their faith, would it not? They would have come there and said, “Well, I think we could almost swim across this. The children will have a problem, mothers and babies will have a problem, but I think we can do it.”
But not the Lord. He allowed it to be harvest flood. I have no doubt that, as the word went to the priests, “Bear the ark of the covenant down,” that water flowed out toward them. A little wave came down and actually came out to meet them.
They could have said, “Oh, this is nonsense. We are just going to look fools. We are going to get our feet wet, stand in this river, and nothing will happen.”
But God said, “I do give this land unto you and to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot treads upon, that will I give you.”
In the moment that the soles of their feet went down, it was no work on their part. It was entirely a heavenly work. It was a divine work. But God required the soles of their feet. Once the soles of their feet went down, in that moment it was theirs.
Ah, I wonder whether many of you have got a Jordan that you have never crossed. You have been waiting on the wrong side of the river Jordan for quite a few years. You have been singing hymns about all the fullness on the other side, about all the provision on the other side. You have been listening to marvellous messages, but you have been on the wrong side of the river Jordan.
It looks to me as if you are going to stay there—singing hymns, listening to Bible studies, listening to marvellous messages about this—but you are still on the wilderness side of the river Jordan.
Listen, you will never get across if you are waiting for angels to transport you, or if you are waiting for some miraculous parting of the river in front of your eyes. You might even be deceived in the middle of summer, when the river becomes quite small. You might think, “Ah, this is it.”
No, no, no. You just put your feet down there in the name of the Lord Jesus. Say, “This river Jordan is passable in the name of the Lord Jesus. I am going over by the finished work of the Lamb.” And you will be over before you know where you are. You will be over into the land. Isn’t that marvellous?
Now, there may be a Jericho some of you have. River Jordan may have been all in a moment, as it were. It all happened as soon as their feet went down. It was all done in a moment. But Jericho was another matter.
When they got to Jericho, for seven days they had to go round, and on the seventh day seven times. Can’t you hear some of the children starting to say, “What is wrong with Joshua? Is he lacking in faith? I mean, the first time, we just put our feet down there and it happened. Can’t he believe that if we put our feet down, shout a great shout, and blow the trumpets, the walls of Jericho will fall down?”
Many of you would say the same thing, believe me, because we all love techniques. We all love methods. We do not follow the Lord; we like a method—a method for healing, a method for deliverance, a method for baptism in the Spirit, a method for fullness, a method for union. Methods, methods, methods—techniques galore.
Christian circles are full of steps. They have all the wrong ones sometimes. Instead of being steps of real faith, there are steps of technique, stages in a technique to get you into a blessing. It cannot happen this way.
Supposing we said, “Right, it is faith. You put the soles of your feet down in the water and, in that instant, the river is parted.” So we come to Jericho. There are the great big walls of Jericho, and all the armed men looking at us down there. “That is all right, we are not worried. We are going to have a worship meeting down here. All we are going to do is put our feet down and say, ‘Lord, hear us. We take Jericho.’ We will blow the trumpet and shout, and the walls will come down.”
They would not have come down. Then we would have said, “Oh, what is wrong?” What was wrong was that the only way you can ever take anything is under direction.
The principle was right—the soles of their feet—but this time it was six days, once a day, silently. Very important. On the seventh day, six times silently. Very important. And the seventh time, at the end of it, a great shout and the trumpet, and the wall came down.
I wonder if some of you have got Jericho. You see, you must have faith and patience. Sometimes we can go across without too much patience; praise the Lord for that. They went across the river Jordan, and there was no need for patience because the Lord never kept them waiting. They were across.
But Jericho needed patience. And, oh, the obedience of faith. No talking.
Generally speaking, we do not encourage one another in an operation like this, do we? You can just imagine walking round in the heat of the day, with all those great stones and those armed men up there, all of them bending over and saying, “What are you all—tourists from Egypt?”
“What are you doing going round these walls? These walls will never come down. Look at them. Anyway, if they are going to come down, why did they not come down at the beginning? Why do we have to walk round like this, wearing ourselves out? Isn’t it all grace? Isn’t it all grace? Isn’t it all the work of the Lord? Why should we have to walk round once a day?”
“It is not as if we are shaking the walls. If we were getting hold of the walls and putting battering rams in, easing them, causing cracks in them, or whatever, we might be getting somewhere. All we are doing is walking. But if it is faith, why not in a moment?”
Do not ask me. I mean that—do not ask me. The Lord alone knows why sometimes He says, “This will take a month. This will take a year. This will take seven years. This will happen instantly.” I do not know why.
There are people who were healed in the New Testament when the Lord just said, “Receive your sight,” and they received. In another place, He bathed their eyes with spittle and clay and put it on. We understand that there is a meaning in all this and instruction in it, but the Lord had many different ways of doing it.
Some people began to get better from the moment He said the word, and other people were instantly healed. I do not know why the Lord has all these different ways. All I know is this: follow Him.
Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.
That is the simple law of overcoming. Whatsoever He says, do it.
Now, I find this very interesting, because some of you may have Jerichos right at the beginning. You got over the river Jordan. You had a real experience of union with Christ. You saw what it is to be crucified with Christ. You saw what it is to be filled with the Spirit. For the first time, you began to discover the Lord Jesus, and then almost immediately there emerged a huge fortress.
You thought, “This is going to come down. I know how to deal with this.” So you went and stood there and said, “In the name of the Lord, I take this.” It did not fall down.
Then you got so despondent, and the devil came to you and said, “Sin. There is sin in your life.” Then you began to think, “Oh, there must be sin in my life.”
Then the enemy came to you and said, “You see, you are just an insignificant nobody. Do you think God is going to blow down the walls of this great fortress because you say, ‘In the name of the Lord, I take it’? Who do you think you are anyway? You are a nothing.”
Now, the answer is yes. That is the answer. The enemy can never get any further with you once you say, “You are quite right. I am a nothing.”
But you are more than just a nothing. You are a nothing who is under the direction of Somebody. That Somebody has a plan for that fortress. If you will only hear, you will find that fortress will completely come down within God’s time, providing you take it in the name of the Lord.
Maybe some of you have found chariots of iron in valleys where your inheritance lies. Shall I tell you something? Some of the choicest valleys have the greatest number of iron chariots.
You do not realise that if the enemy knows there is something very precious in your life, in which you have to participate in the work of God, in the household of faith, he will fill that valley with chariots of iron. As you come and see all those great monstrous things locked into position, you will think, “I will never do it. I will never do it.”
Listen, you never will. But your Lord will. He said it. The angel of His presence and the hornet will go. Just put your feet down. Take it.
Maybe you will have to stay there for a while, but God will give you the victory if you only have faith and patience. Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
What about Jerusalem? They came to Jerusalem, the tribe of Benjamin, and when they saw Jerusalem—it was then called Jebus, the capital city of the Jebusites—they said, “It is impossible.”
Do you know how many years it remained an impossibility? Four hundred.
Until one day David said to his men, “Go up the watercourse.” Instantly the condition was fulfilled. They put their feet down within the perimeter of Jerusalem, and in the moment they put their feet down, the city fell and it became the city of David, the stronghold of Zion.
Four hundred years it held out. Oh, I wonder if there is a Jerusalem in your life. Have you come to the church? Have you come to an understanding of the house of God? Have you come to an understanding of what it is to be in the body of Christ? Maybe that is what the enemy is holding out in your life, entrenched, as it were, with Jebusites that seem to make it impossible.
The land has to be possessed. If you have that grain-of-mustard-seed faith, you can say to these iron chariots, “You are defeated. You are undone in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Those Jerichos you can take in the name of the Lord. That Jerusalem you can capture, take, and possess in the name of the Lord. It is a land to be possessed by faith.
Now, the last thing I want to say this evening is also important. Please listen very carefully to it. It is a land that has to be revealed.
You might wonder what on earth I am talking about, but I am talking about the spies.
In Numbers 13, the Lord said to them, “Send out twelve men, one for every one of the tribes, representing the whole nation. Let them go into the land which I will give you, and let them see it from end to end.”
Now, just wait. Why? I do not know whether you ever ask questions about some of these things. Why, if God is going to give this land to them, if the angel of His presence is going to go before them and drive out the enemies, if He is going to discomfit them with that hornet that will go before them, if it is going to be a question of the soles of their feet, why send spies in beforehand? Isn’t it best not to say too much to them?
Do you understand my reasoning? Actually, I have come to this quite practically. When God told me to go back to my own people and to the land of Israel, I followed.
Afterwards, my sister came to me with her husband. This was a year or so afterwards, and they said, “God has spoken to us.” I was very, very surprised, and I did everything to put them off. I thought it would be far too hard for them to come.
Finally, I said, “All right, come first,” because my sister hates flying. If she can get out of flying, she will go by ship anywhere, by train anywhere; she hates flying. I said, “If you are going, you must come first and spy out the land.”
My sister said to me—and this is what set me thinking; I do not think she would mind my telling you—“What is the point of our coming to spy out the land when the Lord has already told us to go? What is the point of looking at the problems? We are going to get them anyway. So isn’t it best for us to go?”
I thought for a while, and then I went back to them and said, “You know, what about the spies?” And that clinched it.
That is how I first began to think about it. I thought it was a marvellous answer from my sister, frankly. She is a very sophisticated person, and I thought it was a tremendous step: suddenly taking your family out to a land subject to war and strife all the time, with the highest inflation rate in the world, and then having this attitude of faith: “If God has said we go, we go. If there are problems, there are problems.”
Didn’t God know that ten of them would be put off? Yes.
Now we come to the heart of the matter. It is a vital principle. The land has to be seen. You can never take something by faith unless first it has been revealed. In other words, you have to see it first; then you have to exercise faith, and then you enter into the possession.
Let me put it another way: seeing the land reveals what spirit you have. Did you hear that? Seeing the land reveals what spirit you have—whether it is the spirit of faith or unbelief, whether it is the spirit of obedience or the spirit of disobedience.
Now we have come to the issue. That means that if you are living a defeated life, and you know very well what is yours in the Lord Jesus that you are not moving in, it is not that you have not seen it. It is that you have seen something, and you are disobeying. You are saying, “The land is true, but difficult.”
Here is an interesting thing. I hope I am not boring you to death, or that it does not mean anything to you. Let me put it this way: those twelve spies who went in—it was not Joshua and Caleb who came back bearing that great bunch of grapes. It was two of those who did not believe they could take the land.
They all came back. They said, “It is a marvellous land. It is absolutely exactly as the Lord has said. It is flowing with rivers. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. Look at the food that is in the land.” They brought that huge great bunch of grapes from the valley of Eshcol.
But then they said, “We cannot go up and take it. We must wait. We have not got enough confidence yet. We must wait a little longer in the wilderness until we are more prepared, until we are ready, until we have more faith, until somehow we are in a position where we can go over into the land and take it.”
“Listen, there are giants in the land—giants nine feet tall, Anakim—and the cities are walled and fortified up to heaven.”
I wonder whether that finds an echo in many of your hearts, and in my heart. Maybe this is exactly what we say when we see these things in the Bible. “Well,” we say, “it is all right for Lance, it is all right for Stephen, it is all right for so-and-so, but it is not all right for me. No, no, no. There are giants in this land as far as I am concerned.”
“I agree there is the fruit, all the Lord has said, but it is an ideal as far as I am concerned. I am not ready for it. I could not do it. It will destroy me.”
It will not. The wilderness will destroy you. The wilderness will destroy you. Unbelief is the thing that will destroy you.
You say, “But there are fortified cities. I cannot do it. I have not got a weapon. I do not know how to fight.” Ah, that is just the point. What did the Lord say about that land? He said, “The angel of My presence will go before you. There will not be an enemy able to stand before you all the days of your life. You will only see their backs, if only you will put down the soles of your feet upon that land.”
There are therefore only three things that obstruct you from possessing what is yours in the Lord Jesus, from experiencing what is yours in the Lord Jesus.
The first is ignorance. You may never have known that there was so great a salvation to experience. If you are ignorant, how can you possess something you are ignorant of? You do not even know it is there.
There are many believers who are ignorant. They believe they have just been forgiven of their sins and that is the Christian life. They have just got to live, witness, read their Bible, say prayers, and somehow win others to the Lord. But that is all there is to the Christian life.
When we know that it is a land to be possessed, it makes all the difference. So ignorance messes us up. Now, I do not think you can be ignorant after tonight, so we can forget that one.
Here is the second one: sin. Hidden sin. Did you hear that? Unconfessed and hidden sin.
Achan buried something in his tent, and they could not take Ai. There are many things buried in the tents of believers.
I am amazed as I go round and find the skeletons there are in Christian cupboards: fornication, adultery, stealing, perjury, lying, dishonesty—so many things buried.
Because they are buried does not mean that God does not see. Once those things are brought out into the light and confessed, there is forgiveness and cleansing. But whilst they are unconfessed, you can never go into the land and possess.
The third thing, and the most common thing that stops us from possessing, is unbelief or disobedience. This is not necessarily malicious. It is just that we refuse to trust the Lord.
We are more ready to rely on our own understanding of things. We say, “I cannot do it. I cannot do it. I must have more faith”—all this thing about more faith. So you are going to sit on the wilderness bank of the river Jordan, waiting for more faith?
That is no excuse. You will never get more faith. You must have the obedience of faith.
If God says, “Go round the walls of that city once every day for six days, and seven times on the seventh,” do precisely what He says. If He says, “Remain silent right up to the very last circuit, and only at the end of that circuit let the trumpets blow and the shout of victory,” do exactly what He says. That is the obedience of faith.
May God help you and help me. It says, “Let us therefore fear, lest, having heard the good news, we fail to enter in.” That is not the Old Testament, you know; that is the New Testament.
It says, “Let us give diligence therefore to enter in.” What you and I need is for the Word to be united by faith in us, so that this Word about what is ours in the Lord Jesus—something in us, only the size of a mustard seed—will leap up and unite us to it, unite the Word to us and us to that Word.
In that way, this night, many Jerichos will be taken. Many valleys with chariots of iron will be taken in the name of the Lord. Many a Jerusalem will be possessed for the first time.
It will not be a question of whether we are good, whether we are significant, whether we are zealous enough, or whether we are prayerful or not. It will be a question of the Word of God and the finished work of the Lamb.
Well, go over, and in the name of our Lord, we will take it.
May God help you, too, that this Word may be applied rightly to your life. If there is anyone here with sin in his life or her life, go away and get it put right with God. Just get that thing out into the open with Him, and get it done.
If up to now there has been unbelief and disobedience, be done with it. It will destroy the effectiveness of your life and service. Be done with it. May God help you to use the soles of your feet in His name.
Shall we pray?
Lord, we just simply want to bow in Thy presence tonight. O Lord, there are so many things in all our lives that remain to be possessed. Some of us, Lord, have never got into the land, but are still in the wilderness, wandering around.
Dear Lord, we pray that Thou wouldst bring such to the place where they see with the eye of the heart what is theirs, and enter by faith through the finished work of the Lord Jesus. Holy Spirit, fall upon us in this way, to bring us into what is ours in the Lord Jesus. Make those things real to every one of us, Lord.
Others of us are in the land, but we have come to a Jericho, Lord, and never got beyond it. Help us, Lord, to hear Thy Word as to how that Jericho will be taken. Help us to take it, Lord, according to Thy command, according to Thy Word.
O Holy Spirit, identify the Jerichos in many of our lives for us. Help us to see them, and help us to see how to take them. Captain of the Lord’s host, lead us in.
Others of us, Lord, are in the land. We have got through a Jericho, and even an Ai; but, Lord, Thou knowest, we have come to our inheritance, and there is an entrenchment there that is stopping us from possessing our ministry, functioning as we ought, being what we should be in the family of God.
O Lord, this night help us, in the name of our Lord Jesus, to put our feet down upon that valley and take it in the name of the Lord.
Maybe there are others, Lord, who should be taking some craggy peak here or there that defies climbing, seemingly. O Lord, help us to take that mountain in the name of the Lord. Give us the spirit of Caleb: “Give me this mountain,” I pray.
O Father, maybe many of us have not come to that Jerusalem. Reveal it to us, Lord. Reveal all the wondrous nature of that city of God, that house of God. Dear Lord, help us to possess it.
Whatever it is that frightens us, whatever it is that hinders us, whatever it is that holds us back—O Captain of the Lord’s host, identify it tonight to each one of us, and help us to enter in and possess it in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Hear us, Lord. Do preserve this Word from misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Lord, grant that it may be performed, as Thou dost watch over it in our lives. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.