Part 3
1 “… the LORD spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, … 6 “Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them … 4 all the land of the Hittites.” ”
The book of Joshua opens up in mentioning twice, in the first two verses, the death of Moses, the very last person to die in the wilderness. The transition, finally getting to leave the four decades of desert wandering, is now allowed to come to pass with Moses’ death. He had misrepresented the very character of the LORD by misrepresenting true holiness in the sight of the people, by using his own rod of judgment to strike the rock – Christ (I Cor. 10:4) – instead of holding up Aaron’s almond rod, which had the blossoms and buds and fruit, and just speaking to the rock in order for water to come out to refresh the thirsty people (Num. 20:2-12). (I will write of this at length in another upcoming newsletter). The LORD’s heart was to demonstrate mercy and grace in the eyes of the complaining people, drawing them to repentance by His kindness and the washing of the water of the word instead of by fear through vocalized judgment. (Pastor J. Prince asked the LORD what “striking the rock/Christ” meant for us today, and the Father told him that the body of Christ today is the church , and that words of judgment [often preached in harsh tones] are a striking of the rock – Christ / the body of Christ – a second time instead of bringing up before us as a body the completion of our judgment, the first striking of the rock, in the finished work of the cross of Christ.)
A young man who is a son to me recently brought back to my remembrance that Joshua’s name was initially “Hoshea”, and it was Moses who added the LORD’s Hebrew name to the front of Hoshea, literally full-filling his name of “Liberty/Salvation” to “YHVH is Liberty/Salvation” (Numbers 13:8,16). Joshua was the young man who had spent time in the Tent of Meeting in which Moses had been having intimate communion (private conversation) with YHVH, lingering in that tent in the presence of the LORD after Moses would leave and go back out to the people (Ex. 33:11). Joshua had been learning the living voice of the LORD, still being faithful to keep the Law, but learning to be lead not so much by once spoken now stone engraved words, but more by the living voice of the LORD. His generation had chosen the former, trying to keep the words of the Law by their own strength … and never getting to come into their promised inheritance. Almighty God, the LORD, knew the people would never be able to keep their end of the covenant (See Deut. 5:28-29).
The words of the LORD to Joshua in the opening chapter of the book of Joshua are powerful, strong, yet also intensely personal to the heart of Joshua. God the Father was literally imparting His own strength and grace into Joshua through all that He speaks to him, with the goal of getting the people into the realized fulfillment of the promise He had made to them while their parents were still slaves in Egypt (Ex. 6:8). Though God had provided manna for the people through all the forty years in the desert, and had kept their shoes and their clothes from wearing out, it had never been His intention for them to have dwelt so long in the wilderness. His intention had always been to fulfill His promise to Abraham and to Abraham’s seed, this present generation, even to the generation who perished over the long four decades in the Arabian desert peninsula. God’s heart, Beloved, is to indeed bring us into promised inheritance (Col. 1:12). Yet He knew that inheritance was to prophetically come through Him being the people’s salvation and liberty … it had to come through a YHVH-shua/Joshua/Jesus, not through a leader of the Law, not through one who had peered into grace and still carried the Law (to let grace, grace glory, fade) (Ex. 34; II Cor. 3:7-13).
Joshua is told by the LORD to keep the Law in front of him, in his eyes and ears, day AND night, so that he might observe to do the Law, in order to have success and prosper in his moving forward and leading the people into their inheritance (Josh. 1:8). You must see this command and its fulfillment in Jesus our LORD, Beloved. It was for Jesus to utterly keep every jot and tittle of the Law, not us. Our inheritance, our success and prosperity in moving ahead, is in seeing that our Joshua had wholly met the demands of the Law all the way through to His death (Mat. 5:17 ; Phil 2:8; Heb. 10:7) … THUS MAKING US, WE WHO HAVE BELIEVED INTO HIM, FULFILL-ERS OF THE LAW IN CHRIST! (Rom. 8:4).
Another nugget from the opening scripture: In Joshua 3:10 Joshua mentions the seven nations who are the giants whose land is about to become their own. But in verse 4 of chapter 1, YHVH only mentions one of the nations by name, the Hittites. It is quite poignant that this particular name, in the plural form (Heth is the singular – the father of the nation that became the Hittites [Gen. 10:15 et al]) is spoken by the LORD. The word, in plural form, means “fears/terrors”. This was the reason the fathers of this present generation lost courage to believe so great a God, that He could indeed give to them the land (Num. 13:25-29, 31-33). The size and numbers of fears and terrors overwhelmed ten leaders of the twelve who had gone in to spy out the land. “Fear” was the root cause of the people not entering into God’s promised inheritance. Only Caleb and Joshua had bulldog faith to believe that YHVH would give them Liberty/Salvation to let them inherit. And it was these two, with Joshua in the lead, who took in the next generation.
We walk into our inheritance, Beloved, by walking through our transition out of the old, out of the mixture of Grace and Law, out of the wilderness of dry, desert wandering, by following our Risen Jesus, by recognizing Him in His resurrection glory, by letting Him, through His Holy Spirit inside of us, give us warm baths in the revelation of Him in what all the finished work of the cross has utterly, has WHOLLY accomplished for us, in stripping the giants of fears and terrors, to give us our inheritance, even so very many promises we’ve held fast to for so long, and so very many promises we have not even dared let ourselves hear that is ours in Christ for this life.
Moses is dead! The Law, even the righteousness of the Law, the beyond-our-ability requirements of the Law, have been fulfilled in us in the death of our LORD Jesus two thousand years ago on Golgatha’s hill. It is a New Year, Beloved, a year of entering into our inheritances, letting our LORD Jesus lead us, each and every one, by His indwelling Holy Spirit who makes known to us the things freely given to us.
“He (the Spirit of truth) shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.” John 16:14-15 (NASB)
- “Things which eye has not seen And ear has not heard And which have not entered the heart of man ALL that God has prepared for those who love Him.” I Corinthians 2:9 (NASB)
You are so loved, Beloved.
Mark Dingemans
kairos – (Kahee-ros’) – Strong’s concordance defines this word: “an occasion, I.e. set or proper time.” The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible (NASB) defines this word; “season, time, but not merely as a succession of moments, which is chronos,” [from which we derive the English word ‘chronology’]. “Kairos, however, implies not the convenience of the season, but the necessity of the task at hand, whether the time provides a good, convenient opportunity or not.” This must be understood. Strategic times of the Lord do not necessarily imply good or convenient times. We are in Kairos times. Maybe not good or convenient times, but definitely strategic, opportune times because of the season we are in. We must have “ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches,” (Rev. 2:29), so as to respond correctly to the Kairos time.
* Some Scripture for this letter is taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, (c) 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Other references translated from Grk. Txt as presented in T. Newberry’s Englishman’s Greek New Testament, Zondervan Publishing – 1982- originally published in London, Eng. 1877