Hebrews 3:15 “Today, if  you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

At two different times in Israel’s history, two groups stood at the banks of the Jordan river facing the west. Both groups had the exact same promise from God. Forty years of time separated the groups. Both were Hebrews. But each group possessed different attitudes about the promise God had given them. The promise was that the land on the other side of the Jordan belonged to them. God was giving it to them.

Of the first group God had this to say…1 Corinthians 10:1-11 “Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.“

That first group was the generation that God delivered out of Egypt through the faithful hand of Moses. They were the group that saw the miraculous signs of God’s favor, protection and provision. (Read the book of Exodus to see what these were.) God said, through His servant Moses, that He had given them the land of Canaan, a land of milk and honey, a land of abundance. All they had to do was go in and take it and occupy it. It was already theirs. He promised it to them.

Twelve spies, one from each tribe, went into the land to check things out. Two said “we can do it.” They agreed with what God said. Ten said, “we cannot, we are like grasshoppers in the sight of the people in the land.” They refused to believe and spread that thinking to the rest of the group. They discouraged the people from faith.

Hebrews 3:16-19 “For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter HIs rest, but to those who did not obey? Se we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.”

And so they refused to believe; they were stuck. They were not ready to engage in the battle to take their promised land. They had no faith for it and they stayed on the east side of the Jordan for forty more years.

Fast-forward 40 years later, the people from that group had all died out except for Caleb and Joshua, who became the leaders of the new group. The new group was the children of the first group. They had a different attitude. 

It is my belief that for that 40 years, it is most likely that Moses, Joshua, and Caleb spent this “waiting time” teaching them the ways of God and the word of God that they had, which included the promise God had made about their destiny to inherit the Promised Land. The leaders taught this group about God’s goodness, how to believe the promises, how to discard negative thinking and how to keep God’s word in their mouths so they could see those promises come to pass in their lives. (Remember Joshua 1:6 where Joshua was instructed to keep God’s word in his mouth and meditate on it day and night.) This group then did cross the Jordan river and act on those promises. God told them exactly how to conquer the city of Jericho. And they did. The next city they went to take was Ai which they lost because someone in the group had disobeyed instructions. This caused their loss at Ai. But after dealing with that sin, they went on to conquer Ai.

The children of Israel won the battle at Jericho because of their faith. Who marches silently around a city for seven days expecting to conquer it? No one. But God had revealed to them how to win that battle. It must have been some kind of psy-op on the Canaanites, because we know that the people of Jericho were deathly afraid of them. The young woman Rahab of Jericho who helped conceal the spies from the authorities and helped them escape, had revealed as much. Joshua 2:8-11. The people of Jericho had heard of the miraculous things their God had done for them. So when Israel marched around Jericho, the citizens must have been terrorized and demoralized. (And the young woman Rahab ended up entering into the lineage of Jesus Christ because of her faith and her response.)

“And the walls came tumbling down,” as the song says.

This group of Hebrews obtained their “Promised Land” because of their faith and obedience.

So what is our “Promised Land”? Many think it is entering Heaven. And yes, that is a type of it. But what about this life where we are today? Can we have some of Heaven here? I believe we can and we should! There are promises that God has for us to “obtain.” But, like Israel, it will take some actions of faith to obtain them. We must contend for God‘s promises to come to pass in our own lives. How did you obtain salvation? Did it just “land” on you? I don’t think so. Like salvation, in order for us to obtain it, first we must BELIEVE.

Most people are passive. I have heard people say, if God wants me to have something, He will give it to me. That might work here and there, because we all have secret prayers we whisper to God, but it may not be a consistent thing. God wants us to “exercise” our faith. Just as with physical exercise, where your muscles won’t be strong unless you put some some effort, some movement, or force to it, exercising your faith works in the same manner. As we put faith in God’s promises and see things change, our faith grows too. It becomes stronger. And it becomes easier to believe God’s promises as we consistently exercise faith in His word and see those promises come to pass in our lives.

Believe God’s promises today and experience the abundant life Jesus promised! John 10:10.