Into the Promise

Beloved People of God,

It’s been a strange year of weather, from famine to feast, in regards to the rain. One minute our commonwealth was in a drought, and the next we were neck-deep in downpour. In the ups and downs, some of our older, imposing trees lost a few massive limbs because the wood within was too dry and brittle. When the wind tore through, the outer body and bark couldn’t withstand the force (there’s a metaphor here somewhere, Matthew 7.24-27). Candidly, there were times this summer when I thought the garden would only be a sustained, dull green. But then, the flowers burst forth with breathtaking effect, radiating bright gold as they reached toward the heavens.

This mirrors the book of Joshua. We see terrifyingly tall trees and simple, slow-blooming flowers. God’s people were led into an established land—a forest of imposing peoples, towering like trees. God’s people, though, were like transplanted flowers in a field, completely in the hands of the One planting them. In this Promised Land, a garden from which the Lord’s kingdom of priests would bear  witness to God’s blessing for all nations, we see two worldviews collide: one which turns toward God, and the other which turns toward self. The peoples in the land had four hundred years to turn toward God. Instead, they chose their own way (Genesis 15.16, 18-21). As a testimony to His sovereignty over all nations, in the last forty years of those four hundred, He made His power and presence even more pronounced. All the peoples in the land heard of the Lord God who led His people on dry ground through the Red Sea and the Jordan (Exodus 14.1-15.21; Joshua 3.8-13, 17). God's presence with His people was unmistakably evident (Joshua 2.9-11). Yet where did they choose to turn?

I would like to say the wood rot which led to the downfall of Jericho was exclusive to the nations, but Joshua reveals even we flowers in God’s field can become top heavy and imbalanced when we do what’s right in our own eyes (Joshua 7). Yesterday’s bloom does not secure tomorrow’s promise. Joshua and Achan both crossed through the Jordan on dry ground, but where they went from there led them to two very different outcomes.

For Christ the King, 

Brett