The last battle had been fought, the final obstacle
demolished; the land that was once promised was now land possessed. Joshua
called together all the tribes of Israel and standing upon the foreign ground
of freedom he announced to all the people: "This is what the LORD, the God of
Israel, says: 'Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham
and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods. But I took your
father Abraham from the land beyond the River and led him throughout Canaan and
gave him many descendants... Then I sent Moses and Aaron, and I afflicted the
Egyptians by what I did there, and I brought you out.... You saw with your own
eyes what I did to the Egyptians. Then you lived in the desert for a long
time'" Joshua 24: 2-3,5,7
Goethe once
penned, "What you have as heritage,
take now as task; for thus you will make it your own." Having fought
hard to possess the land God
had promised, the Israelites now stood before Joshua looking forward to the
life God had promised. On this momentous day, they were given instruction from
God in the form of history. The vast majority of the people listening had not
personally lived through the miraculous events in Egypt. As the Red Sea was
parted and the Egyptians swallowed by sea, they were not standing on dry ground
watching with their own eyes as it all happened. And yet, the impact of this
history and the continual (and commanded) retelling of the story made it
possible for the LORD to say it as such: With your own eyes you have seen
almost a millennium of landless slavery redeemed by God's promise, transformed
at God's own hands.
God continued
to speak through Joshua, moving from Israel's early history into days the crowd
would remember first hand: "'Then you crossed the Jordan and
came to Jericho. The citizens of Jericho
fought against you, as did also the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hittites,
Girgashites, Hivites and Jebusites, but I gave them into your hands.... You did
not do it with your own sword and bow. I gave you a land on which you did not
toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards
and olive groves that you did not plant'" 24:11,13).
His words told of current events and familiar scenery, while
warning against forgetting it was God
presently and historically who brought them there. God reminded the battle-weary
Israelites that what happened at the crossing of the Red Sea with Moses was as
imperative to their story as the crossing of the Jordan with Joshua. God's hand throughout their
history was to be God's
assurance of his plans to give them a hope and a future.
Bill, are you just reading this without comprehending what God is saying to you? Are you recongnizing the fact that Jehovah saves even on this day, in every one of your dark valleys, in each trying situation? In doing so, you are remembering the story of God in its entirety. God saved His people from Egypt; from God's hand came each victory across the Jordan. By God's
presence a nation was led into the Promised Land; by the blood of His Beloved
the curse of sin and death was stopped. You are to take capture the thought that your worldview is a historical
memory alive in you in this very moment. That is: today God
saves because yesterday God
saved.
I do remember the words in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life
Together, where he states emphatically, "It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to
Israel, to his Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today....
I find no salvation in my life history but only in the history of Jesus
Christ." When Bonhoeffer was leading the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, he was
moveing by the presence of God
in the history of Israel, the promise of God
in his crucified Son, such
that he chose to believe in God's salvation
even unto death in a concentration camp. Bill, you need to confess of your petty complaint.
You need to firmly get a hold of the fact: it is God's
word to his people on that day of promise, when Joshua declared, "Choose
for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers
served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are
living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
Out of the history of God
with the people of Israel comes a story that instructs my own, a rescuer born
and wounded for my sin. With Isaiah I hear God's plea, "Remember the former
things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no
one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things
not yet done."
Father, God, thank You for the insight into the fact of Your people being led into the Promised Land with a leader whose very name confesses
"Jehovah saves." Also, that it is not coincidental that the same word marks the name of Jesus, who offered
his life that, insignificant me along with the entire world, might be fully led into Your story. Thank You for Bonhoeffer and his life story. Amen
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