MOSES MY SERVANT IS DEAD - PART 2

This second message in the series explores how Joshua is a picture of Jesus Christ our Savior.  His ministry truly is a beautiful representation of Christ's ministry to the church.  It also addresses the importance of faith in securing God's promises, and the meaning of the Promised Land.

Joshua is a picture of the Savior.  His name in the Greek is literally translated "Jesus," and means "Jehovah is salvation."  Joshua had actually been to the promised land and seen its beauty and riches.  He had returned and testified to his people of what he had seen saying, "If the LORD delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.  Only rebel not ye against the LORD."  (Numbers 14:8,9).  The Israelites would not believe Joshua's report, however, and were condemned to wandering for 40 years and dying in the desert rather than entering into the land immediately.   

I hope the allegory is quite clear to you.  We must be dead to the law before Christ can fulfill God's promises in us.  As long as we are depending on the law to change us into righteous people we are going to be frustrated, and locked out of the promises God has made in Christ.  "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace."  (Galatians 5:4).  God testified against Moses' generation saying, "Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known My ways.  So I sware in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest."  (Hebrews 3:10,11).  Once Moses (the law) is dead, though, we are free to enter into the promises by the hand of our Savior, and the Captain of the Host.  We can only become partakers of Christ's nature if we steadfastly maintain the same faith that we had when we were first converted until the end.  Christians can, at some point, become hard-hearted, and through unbelief cease to follow Christ to pursue their own ways.  (Hebrews 3:12-14).  Our ways are not His ways, Beloved, and our thoughts are not His thoughts.  Our ways often seem right to us; but, in the end, they produce spiritual death, not life.

Many suppose that the Promised Land of scripture represents heaven, our eternal resting place.  In thinking this, however, they miss the broader, more relevant picture of what God would have us understand.  In the Old Testament, the Promised Land was a place that God intended for His people to enjoy in this life.  It was a place flowing with milk and honey, a place where every need would be supplied in abundance.  There is such a place that God has promised to His people that we can enjoy in this life, too.  It is referred to in many ways in scripture such as  "the hiding place," "the secret place of the Most High," "God's sabbath," and "the rest."  It is, specifically, being "in Christ."  "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him."  (Ephesians 1:10).  Christ in us, and we in Him, is our only hope of glory and ultimate salvation.  It is not just about receiving Christ, though.  It is about walking in Him day by day.  Millions have received Him and then taken back the reins of their lives, and followed their own paths.  Christ is seeking disciples only.  There are not different classes of Christians: those who merely warm the pews but do as they please, and those who take the call seriously and seek to be transformed by the renewing of their hearts and minds. God intends all to offer their lives to Him so that He may direct them as He pleases.  Don't be deceived.  God isn't mocked.  Many are called, but few are chosen.

Unfortunately, just as the people did not trust Joshua's belief that they could, "go up at once, and possess it [the land]; for we are well able to overcome it," many today have rejected Christ by refusing to believe all the victory that He has secured for them.  Jesus came from heaven to testify of its glory.  He's the only One Who has been there and come to tell us.  He also is able to testify about the life lived in God.  He said "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."  (John 5:19).  This abundant life that God has promised us is something that Jesus experienced, and now, through Him, we can also.  Paul said he wanted to "Be found in Him [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith."  (Philippians 3:9).  Even some who have accepted Christ as their Savior have failed to understand that they must now walk in Him and trust Him for victory over their sins.  It grieves me to say that many "Christians" today are worse sinners than they were before they were saved.  Worse because they now add hypocrisy to their sin by trying to hide what they do and appear "holy" outwardly.  What profit is there in Christ if our lives are not being transformed?  What good are the promises of God if we haven't got the faith to follow our Savior into their fulfillment?