Please turn to the book of Joshua. We will read one of our theme verses, Joshua 1:11.
Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, saying, “Prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you are to cross this Jordan, to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is giving you, to possess it.”
Yesterday evening, our brother Jerry took huge chunks out of my notes, so we will start in chapter 1, verse 11.
Please turn back to the original promise in Genesis 15, beginning in verse 5.
And He took him outside—him being Abram, or Abraham—and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.”
And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.”
And he said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I shall possess it?”
And He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, and a three-year-old female goat, and a three-year-old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds.
And God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.
But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.
As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.
Then in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
And it came about when the sun had set, that it was very dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land.”
Please turn to Hebrews 10. There are two verses about promises: Hebrews 10:23 and Hebrews 10:36.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
For you have need of endurance, so that, when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
The last portion I would like to walk us through is the story that our brother already covered yesterday evening. Please turn to Numbers 13. I apologize for a little more reading this morning, but I think it will give us the needed context.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel. You shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, everyone a leader among them.”
So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.
In Numbers 13:17, Moses instructed the spies:
“Go up into the Negev; then go up into the hill country.
See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.
How is the land in which they live? Is it good or bad?
How are the cities in which they live? Are they like open camps, or with fortifications?
How is the land? Is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not?
Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.”
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it.”
But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.”
So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone in spying it out is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.
There also we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim; and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
In Numbers 14:6, Joshua and Caleb responded:
And Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes.
And they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, “The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land.
If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey.
Only do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they shall be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.”
Finally, please turn to Joshua 14:6. Thirty-eight years later, when they came back:
Then the sons of Judah drew near to Joshua in Gilgal, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know the word which the Lord spoke to Moses the man of God concerning you and me in Kadesh-barnea.”
Lord, we thank You this morning that we can gather together in Your presence. We thank You, Lord, for all the things that You have already spoken. Lord, we pray this morning that You would continue to speak.
Lord, we pray that You would guard us against all the things of the flesh—our own stubbornness and our own weakness. We sang the words of the song that the battle belongs to You, and You must have the victory. So, Lord, this morning, we pray that You might have the victory among Your people.
Lord, please guard Your word as we share it, and may Your Spirit speak to our hearts. Lord, glory to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, by this point, I think we are familiar with the theme verses and with the messages that the Lord has already spoken: that He is at work to recover us to Himself and to recover us so that we might possess all the things that He has for us.
The charge that the brothers gave to me was to share what this might mean to us in our daily lives and in our regular comings and goings.
I found this measuring tape in my bag when we got here, and I decided I am going to measure fourteen inches from my brain to my heart. It is fourteen inches for all of us, filled with booby traps and obstacles.
For such a precious topic, the enemy would have no greater desire than for everything that we hear—from what our brothers have shared and what the Lord will continue to share—to remain dormant in every recess of our mind.
The charge to us is this: how can what we hear and read in the Bible of the deeper things become real in our hearts, in our beating hearts, so that they become a part of who we are, alive and growing every day?
These things are important not only for ourselves. They are important because this is the instrument by which the Lord has chosen, in His mercy and in His wisdom, to accomplish what He is hoping to accomplish.
The challenge of these fourteen inches is an ancient challenge. For so long, there are things that may remain in our minds from what we have heard, but they do not actually become planted in the soil of our hearts.
In our theme verse in Joshua 1, there is a classic picture of possession. The Lord is charging Joshua to take possession of the land, that wherever their feet will fall will now belong to the people of God.
We shared on the original promise, when the Lord first put this into the minds of His people in Genesis 15. But as we read there, even Abram, at the time he received the promise, was unsure.
The Lord brought him outside to look up into the stars and said, “If you can count the stars, that will be the number of your descendants.” Abram knew fully at the time that he had no offspring. How could it be that an old man with no offspring could have descendants like the stars of the sky?
Then the Lord told him that not only would he have offspring, but they would occupy this land. “I have taken you from your homeland and brought you to this land. This land will be your new home. It will be for you and for your descendants.”
So Abram, in that moment, asked the Lord, “How am I going to possess this land? How do I know that it will happen?” It is one thing for You to tell it to me, and for it to lodge in my mind. But how does it go from my mind into my heart, so that I can fully believe what You are going to do and live my life according to that promise?
Brothers and sisters, what Abram was asking is so alive today. How do we know that we are able to possess what the Lord has put before us as a possession? He has won it for us. He has given it to us. But He puts it there, right in front of us, and we, by faith, need to step forward and claim it.
The Lord responds to Abram in a wonderful way. For reference, please turn to Jeremiah 34:18, an example of this human tradition.
“I will give the men who have transgressed My covenant, who have not fulfilled the words of the covenant which they made before Me, when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts—the officials of Judah and the officials of Jerusalem, the court officers and the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf—I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. And their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth.”
This is a picture of the tradition in which men would make their highest covenant to God. They would take an offering, cut it in half, separate the two halves, and walk between the offerings as a promise to the Lord: “This is what we are going to do.”
If they did not do it, the consequence was that they would become like the offering; they would die.
So, when Abram asked the Lord, “How am I going to possess what You have given me to possess?” the Lord did something amazing. He took a human tradition, and He lowered Himself so that we might understand the fullness of His promise to us.
He said, “You prepare these offerings and separate them.” Abram did so. Then, in the night, a smoking oven appeared and a flaming torch. The smoke and the fire passed between the offerings.
The Lord was saying, “I am coming down to you, and I am letting you know that not only have I given you this to possess, and not only have I promised it, but I am promising you that I will empower you and prepare you to possess it.”
It is His promise to us. He made a double promise: “I will restore, and I will enable you to possess.”
When Abram did not know what to do, just like us, the Lord showed him that possession is directly linked to His promise. You are not in this alone.
God says that if He does not help us, He is committed to the same outcome as would result if men failed in the covenant. This is the level of His dedication to us, that we might be able to possess what He has put before us to possess.
Possession is linked to promise.
Now, there are eight thousand or more promises in the Bible, or so Google tells us. They are all important. There are personal promises, corporate promises, and daily promises. There are promises for moments when we are in trouble, and they are all precious.
I believe, brothers and sisters, that every promise is unto possession. But there are five to ten gravitational promises. They are promises of such weight that they absorb into themselves all the promises. They span history.
When we put them in order and look at them, we are able to see a direction, a roadmap, and a means toward the purpose that is in His heart. The promises that we are to possess shine a light deep into His heart. They are important not only to us; they are matters important to Him.
The first promise is the promise we have just read to Abram: “You need to leave your homeland. You need to come to this new land. In this new land, your descendants will become a nation. They will occupy this land that I have prepared for them, and they will become My people.”
This promise was so substantial that it spans from Genesis throughout the entire Old Testament and into the New Testament. The land, which had no name to Abram at that time, became forever known as the Promised Land. It was defined by promise.
A second promise was made to David the king, because David had a heart for God to be among His people. The promise was that there would always be a Son of David, a Lion of Judah, eternally on the throne.
We see this promise from the Old Testament all the way to the last book of the Bible—in fact, the last chapter of the Bible. It is a promise that spans throughout history, and its fulfillment will define His people.
A third gravitational promise is found in John 3:16:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
It is a promise by which all of us have laid claim, and it is each one of our hope.
In John 14:16-17, there is the promise of the Holy Spirit:
For He lives with you and will be in you.
He will lead us into all of these things.
A fifth promise is found in Matthew 16. The Lord said, “I will build My church.” It is a gravitational promise.
Finally, a sixth promise—and there are more—is found in Acts 1 and John 14, when the Lord said, “I will come again.”
Brothers and sisters, these promises are like boulders: weight-bearing, foundational promises that trace a path through the Bible from beginning to end.
When the Lord told Abram that he would possess the promise, He was showing us the weight and importance of this possession. We need to understand not only His faithfulness to fulfill His promises to us individually, but also that He will fulfill His promises to us corporately as a church.
The promises are not only for us; the promises are for Him.
How does this help us in our need to know what it is to possess and to recover? The two verses in Hebrews 10 help us approach eternal things and understand how we ought to live according to them.
The first is Hebrews 10:23:
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
The first point is that He who promises is faithful. The knowledge of the One who has promised is so important to us: to know Him, that He is the One who has promised.
The second is Hebrews 10:36:
For you have need of endurance, so that, when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.
We see here that we ought not only to know the will of God, but to do the will of God. If we are to do the will of God, then we will receive what is promised.
To illustrate this, I would like to use the two Old Testament promises we have mentioned. The first concerns Abraham and the possession of the land. The second, which will be my second message, concerns David and the King on the throne.
In the theme verse from Isaiah 11, the Lord brings to mind that He will restore a remnant. Then He speaks particularly of restoring two tribes: Judah and Ephraim. They will stop butting heads.
In both of these stories, the Lord takes Judah and Ephraim, brings them together, and makes them more than either could be alone. It is a wonderful story about faithfulness, oneness, and seeing one another together.
This is one of the key points the Lord is making to us: when we understand possession, this is a corporate promise, and it requires a corporate response.
For those who do not understand all our Christian lingo, what it really means is that it is not just a promise for one person. It is a promise for each of us that cannot be fulfilled alone. It can only be fulfilled together.
Today, we would like to look at the promise of the land and how we might engage in its possession. We will focus on Hebrews 10:23: “He who promised is faithful.”
It is the story of the One who promises, upon whom we can lean in order to fully experience possession.
Our brother yesterday evening already went through this, but I would like to review it. Abram left his family home in Ur of the Chaldeans and was brought to the land of Canaan, where a promise was made to him. He was a stranger in a strange land.
The Lord brought him outside, and Abram looked at the sky and saw all the stars. The Lord said, “So shall your descendants be.” In the impossibility of that promise, Isaac was born. Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob had twelve sons.
Those twelve sons would eventually become the twelve tribes. But before that could happen, the Lord had to find a safe place to nurture and grow the nation.
In all His wisdom and outside-the-box thinking, the Lord had Joseph, the second youngest, sent off to Egypt. Through a series of miracles, Joseph became prime minister. Through visions, he knew that a famine was coming.
For seven years, they prepared and collected grain. When the famine came, Egypt became the richest country on the face of the planet.
The sons of Jacob heard that there was food in Egypt, and in a variety of ways, they all ended up there. They settled in Goshen, the place where the Egyptians did not want to be because they did not like shepherds. So the Lord protected them by casting them out.
They stayed there and grew. In the grace of God and in the sunshine of His life, they became a nation.
At the proper time, after the exact number of years the Lord had prophesied to Abram, Moses came forward and told Pharaoh, “Let My people go.” Through a series of miracles, they left.
Their first journey was two hundred miles. If you walk about ten miles a day—which sounds like a lot, but you can do it—it would be a three-week journey. They took two years, but that is excusable.
They stopped at Mount Sinai. They received the Ten Commandments, which became the backbone for thousands of years of morality. They learned how to build a tabernacle, a mobile dwelling place that would allow God’s presence to be among them.
They learned how to build an ark. The ark was the ultimate seat of holiness. It was upon this ark that the presence of God would come to be close to His people, whom He loved so much.
In those two years, they learned about Him. There were many stumblings and many faithfulnesses. They came to the border of the Promised Land at Kadesh-barnea.
There, on the cusp of where they were supposed to land, they sent out twelve spies. These twelve spies were leaders of their respective tribes. They went in for forty days after receiving instruction from Moses.
Moses told them, “Go into the land. Look at the land. Look at the fruit. Look at the people and the cities. Are they fortified? What is it going to be like?”
You can see in Moses’ heart a little trepidation, because he was not sure what was to come. They went into the land and saw all its fullness. They saw its riches, flowing with milk and honey.
They saw grapes so large that they had to put them on poles and carry them between them. After forty days, they came back.
You can imagine everyone sitting there, waiting. Then, on the horizon, coming down over the hill country, they saw the spies they had sent out. Everyone stood up with some degree of anticipation.
When the spies came, they told them, “The land is exactly as we heard. It is so full. It is so rich.” Then they began to describe all the impossibilities, all the obstacles, and how large the people were.
The report, in the end, was: “We cannot take it.”
This is where the lessons begin. It is where the tribes of Judah and Ephraim came together, because the leaders of those tribes were Caleb and Joshua.
This is where some lessons begin about what might prevent us from possession and what might enable us to possess. They speak of the One who promised and is faithful. Without knowledge of that One, possession becomes very impossible.
The little mnemonic is this: The Lord Jesus suffered for the youth. I say it because it is true, but today it will be suffer—S-U-F-F-R—and on Saturday morning it will be youth—Y-O-U-T. I could not fit the H in. To be honest, there is no E in “suffer” either, but it is close.
The first point is S: See.
To know the One who promises is to know that He sees differently than we see.
When we were coming here, we stopped for our layover in Colorado. I was walking to the restroom, and I saw an older gentleman who looked so tired, sitting in a wheelchair.
I did not think much of it and continued walking. Then I saw his wife standing next to him. She leaned over and began to comb his hair with her hand.
When I saw that, I realized she had a different vantage point of her husband than I did. Even though, with my eyeballs, we were seeing the same thing, she saw him differently. She loved him with a different love.
I knew he was tired, but hers was a different connection.
When the spies went into the land, all twelve objectively saw the same thing. Whether you were from Naphtali, Judah, or Ephraim, you would have said the same thing. The objective view was the same.
They could describe the grapes, the cities, and the sons of Anak. They measured the same things objectively. But the Lord sees things differently.
Joshua and Caleb, for a moment, were able to glimpse with the eyes of the Lord. They saw it differently.
To the other ten, it became a cost-benefit analysis. The cost was this: “We were like grasshoppers in our own sight.” They looked at the giants and thought, “They are so huge.” They became grasshoppers in their own sight, and that is who they became.
They saw all the riches, the milk, and the honey, but they saw the benefit only as the blessing to themselves. The cost was that they would get creamed by these guys. The benefit was that they would have blessing.
So they compared it to another cost-benefit analysis: “If we return to Egypt, we become slaves again. But the benefit is that we will have meat, food, and we will not die.” In that analysis, they chose the latter. Some said, “Why do we not choose a new leader and go back to Egypt?”
But Joshua and Caleb saw differently. They said, “Their protection is gone. They are going to become our food.”
The benefit was not only blessing to them. It was that the Lord God would receive what He desired: a people who are His possession. They saw the cost-benefit analysis differently because they saw it corporately. They saw what the Lord wanted in the church.
Many years later, the Lord Jesus would say in His last prayer before going to the cross, “That they might be with Me where I am.” This was in His heart. Joshua and Caleb, in some miraculous way, saw it.
In the cost-benefit analysis, they could say, “This is what He wants,” because what they saw was the love of God.
When we see the fullness of the love of God, we begin to see that His purpose is entirely occupied and driven by something that we cannot know unless we have seen that love.
To see the challenge of possession through His eyes, to see how much He truly loves us, and to see that the objective is unto His purpose—this is so important.
When the momentum built among the other ten, Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes and begged the people not to go forward with what they were saying.
The people picked up stones to stone them. It was an epic failure. They could not see. The land of promise had become for them the land of curse.
If we do not see, brothers and sisters, no matter how good our intentions may be, if we do not see as the Lord sees, the moment is lost.
The first matter we have to understand about possession is that we have to see as the Lord sees. That requires a revealing.
You cannot merely read a book. Even if you hear the exact words in a message, it takes an earnest heart to understand. We must ask, “Lord, help me to see the land as You see the land. Help me to see what You have for us to possess as You see it.”
Without that, brothers and sisters, there is not even a first step.
The second point is U: the unit of promise. It speaks of the object of His affection.
There are promises made to each one of us, and I hold them very tightly. Some promises made to me have carried me through many hard times: that He will never leave me nor forsake me. They are never to be forgotten.
But there are some promises made to a different unit. They are made to something bigger than us. They are not made for each of us alone.
There are promises made to His church that are not made to us as individuals. They do not apply individually. I know that sounds a little heavy, but it is simply the truth.
These are the gravitational promises made to us corporately. If we do not receive them that way, they are not understood in the way the Lord intended them.
What ended up happening at Kadesh-barnea was an epic failure. The result was that no one older than twenty years would be able to enter the land; they would all die in the coming journey.
After Joshua and Caleb tore their clothes, the people had to set out backward. They were heading in the wrong direction.
Could not the Lord have spared the tribes of Judah and Ephraim? The Bible tells us that Judah was seventy-five thousand people and Ephraim was forty thousand five hundred people. Together, that is over one hundred fifteen thousand people who set out in reverse.
Could the Lord not have built a people for Himself from over one hundred thousand people?
But as far as we can tell, when they were heading out in the wrong direction, there was no suggestion by Joshua, Caleb, or any of the people: “Lord, we really want to go in as two tribes. According to Your grace, can we do it?”
“We have seen it. We know how precious it is, and we know how precious we are to You.” That would be a logical conclusion if we looked at it from a selfish point of view.
But they did not do that, because they saw something of immense importance: the unit of possession is the church.
She is precious to Him. In His design, all will be made ready, all will be prepared, and all will enter as one, so that there is no separation.
He is waiting for us.
Joshua and Caleb would have seen that the ark went backward. The ark was going with His people.
It is the greatest testimony of corporate possession that the ark stayed with the people to go backward. He would not abandon them. He would have to correct them and change the generation, but He was not going to separate, because the church is possessed as one.
None of us—none of us—can He be without.
The hope that we have in possession is together. He sees us as one. He sees the church as precious.
This is hard for us because over time we begin to see with our human eyes that all of us, even all of our heroes, are flawed. We see it in one another, and we see it in ourselves.
Our flesh is everywhere. It creates all these stumbling places, and we are so full of pride that we have no way to be released from those things.
But I remember sitting and listening to our brother Stephen share about this. He had such hope. It was remarkable. He would speak about all the things that were happening, yet he had so much hope.
What it really is, is that we see the magnitude of the love that He has for the church—this enduring love, this never letting go. The ark will go backward, and the ark will go forward.
To understand possession is first to understand that we are not individuals; we are one church.
To see the Bible through those eyes opens the Bible to us. It changes the way we think of one another. It enlarges our capacity for patience, love, and endurance.
It is so critical that without that, there is nothing else. The unit of possession is the church.
Whatever threat would come against her, or against one of us, we are all there together. We have to see this in order to move forward: that she is worth enduring for, because we are one.
A third lesson is F: follow fully.
In Numbers 32:11-12, the Lord says:
“None of the men who came up from Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; for they did not follow Me fully, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have followed the Lord fully.”
This is the Lord’s own testimony of Joshua and Caleb: they followed the Lord fully.
There are a variety of ways to consider our positioning before the Lord. Our position speaks of where the Lord is and where we are.
The first position is that the Lord follows me. Let us just be honest. This has been much of my life. I choose where I go. I choose daily what I do. Sometimes that choosing leads me into trouble.
It is probably, for many of us, the most common positioning between ourselves and the Lord.
I remember in 2011, there was a moment when I felt so lost. I remembered that the Lord shook my life, and then I turned around, and He was right there.
It was a moment when I realized that He had been following me all that time. In all my misdirection, He never left. He was right there. He was close.
There is a second positioning: rather than the Lord following me, I follow Him. Hopefully, the distance remains the same. But it is a question of direction, brothers and sisters: who is determining the direction?
Even in this positioning, we will come up to a line. In the story before us, the line was Kadesh-barnea.
Our own loyalty and dedication always have a limit. We will walk up to that line, and we will not be able to cross it.
The ten tribes had good leaders. We often think of them as cowards or failures, but perhaps they were looking with their own eyes and thinking, “Is it worth it for us? Will our elderly die? Will our children die? Will our families die at the hands of these giants?”
We do not necessarily know the full extent of what all ten of them were thinking. They may have been afraid, and probably were. But the point is that our loyalty and dedication will carry us only to a point.
To step over that line, to follow fully, there is something else.
Up to that point, we tend to follow others. We tend to make Christianity a lifestyle, or a creed, or a tradition. At times, maybe it is for the reward of recognition.
Those things may bring us to the line, but to step over the line, there is really only one thing: we have to know the Promiser.
We have to know the Lord Jesus. Nothing artificial is going to do it. Everything in us that is not genuine will be exposed.
If we stand in the light of the Lord, we will know in each of our hearts that there is so much that is not authentic. It cannot be made more authentic by trying harder with our own flesh.
There is a secret relationship that begins to build for all of us. As our brother Kenny shared, the Bible becomes what it really is: a testimony about a Person.
It is as much our intention to obey that Person as it is our reluctance to be separated from Him that will allow us to step over the line.
To follow fully, brothers and sisters, is to follow a Person fully. As the Lord testified, “They followed Me fully.”
This becomes one of the key criteria of being able to possess.
I learned this from my children: children would rather be with their mom in danger than without their mom in safety. I did not say their dad. But I know for sure that they would rather be with their mom in danger than without their mom in safety.
It tells us something about a childlike heart. To be near to Him and to know Him will allow us to follow fully. Nothing replaces that. We cannot make it up.
The other great challenge to following fully is the self-life. As our brother mentioned yesterday evening in Luke 9, there is a self-life in us that almost by definition cannot step over that line.
That self-life is pulling us in the backward direction. Until we can say no to that life—truly, in secret, when no one is watching but the Lord Jesus—it will be a barrier to following Him.
That is why the Lord gives us the instrument of His cross, that we can learn to die to that self.
To follow fully is to follow Him and deny ourselves.
The last point is R: remember what He promised to us.
When Caleb and Joshua came back after thirty-eight years, they were the only two left. Caleb said something to Joshua that is really precious. He basically said, “Remember what He promised to us. I remember it, and you remember it. I have never forgotten it.”
It was a promise made to them.
Caleb and Joshua grew old, but the remembrance of the promise made them grow young. We will share more about that on Saturday—the “Y” for young.
They grew young together because they remembered what was promised to them.
Caleb watched as Joshua became a leader. Joshua was called to replace a legend in Moses. The Bible is relatively silent about whether Caleb and Joshua regularly met, but it would be logical to think that they had a bond if they could see one another.
They were the last two of their generation. They were the last two who had seen the land.
When they came into the land, Caleb came to Joshua and said, “I want Hebron.”
Now, this was where all the giants in the land were. The sons of Anak were there. This was the place that had caused everyone to fear.
But it was precisely the land Caleb wanted. He came to Joshua and said, “I know you remember it. You remember it, and I remember it. I want this land.”
And it was granted to him.
Within the land Caleb wanted was the cave of Machpelah, where all the patriarchs were buried. Abraham had purchased the lot for Sarah, and they were all there.
Geographically, it was the core of all the promises. All the promises were represented there.
It was also meaningful to God for what was to come. Caleb probably had some sense of that—not all the details of what it would mean in the coming centuries—but he knew it was a precious land to the Lord.
He knew that the Lord had a plan and a purpose for it. It represented all the promises. After all, this was the Promised Land.
So Caleb came and asked for it. Joshua knew why Caleb asked, because they had seen with the eyes of God.
They were bound together by a promise that was made to them. It was more than a promise made to one person. It was a promise made to them.
I remember the first time I came to the CFC. When I went home, I was telling my wife about it. I said, “You know, there are these responsible brothers.”
I said, “One of them, when he makes announcements, I cannot tell whether he is insulting or making a joke about the other three or four. I just cannot tell. They are all different from each other. They are really funny.”
But they are connected. It is not just them. There is a whole group of them who have been on some version of a journey together since the year I was born—or, I think. It has been a long time.
What I was telling my wife was that it is really something else because they are bound together by a promise that was made to them.
It is different. It draws us out of ourselves and causes us to think on a higher plane. It slays the flesh in us for something better and something bigger.
To be honest with you, brothers and sisters, I am so thankful because I have that too. There are some brothers whom the Lord put in my life, and we have been on the journey together.
I do not have to talk to them for six months, and when I talk to them, it is like we never missed a beat. Something was promised to us together.
It is like a bond that cannot be broken, because you cannot live the same once you have seen the promise.
It allows you to erase impatience and judgment. Discernment changes. Everything changes.
One of the things that changed my life was when I heard my brother share that we have to see the Lord Jesus standing among the lampstands.
What it means is that we have to see Him among His church, and see how He sees us.
It is one thing that saves us to see Him with us, and that is so precious. In so many ways, that is always the first step.
But at some point, He brings us along to understand why and for what He is possessing. To see that changes, even fundamentally, what our salvation means.
In John 3:30, John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” What John was saying was, in his own mind’s eye, “I was standing next to the Bridegroom, the Groom, and I heard Him speak to the bride.”
He must increase, but I must decrease.
It changes us to hear Him speak to us. There is a different perspective and a larger holding on to something larger.
To hear Him together and to see Him together binds us. Then the small things that separate us begin to fade out. It allows us to forgive and to love, because it is a promise made to His people.
It was in that context that old Judah, Caleb, came to old Ephraim, Joshua, and said, “Give me the land that He promised to us. I know you remember. I know you understand why I want it.”
Brothers and sisters, recovery and possession are linked to His promises. His promises are not just for us; they are for Him.
They are new forever to each generation. I mean that almost from the dictionary definition of generation. Every group of us finds them new and real. It is a calling to possess for everyone.
He knows exactly who we are, exactly how we are wired, what the world is like, and what technology is like. He is not suggesting that Gen Z has to become like Gen X and then possess. No.
There is a possession for every one of us that binds us together and makes us one.
May we see as the Promiser sees. May we understand that His unit of possession is the church. May we know Him so that we can follow fully. May we remember what He has promised to us as the church.
May these things draw us into the land.
Lord, we thank You for how faithful You are: He who promised is faithful.
Lord, we ask that You might continue to show us more of who You are in our lives, and not only in our lives, but in the whole spectrum of the amazing things that You are doing.
Lord, change our lives for You. We thank You, Lord. All glory to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.