Allan Ellershaw looks at Joshua 18 and the question posed to the people of Israel – “How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has given you?”
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I have a question !!! … (and do hope this discussion board is a good place to raise it)…
I guess similar questions have cropped up in my mind before during messages or whilst reading books where a specific promise to the Israelites is transposed into general promises for Christians today.
We sometimes used to sing about this one an old Graham Kendrick song…”into our hands He will give the ground we claim”.
My question, for want of much better phrasing, is “what is it in scripture that allows us to assume that God has ‘given us land’ and in what sense is that ‘possession’ meant today?” (I accept the verse might be used in a prophetic context but I am thinking more generally here).
I think my tendancy, without having had the benefit of hearing this message, would have been to place this verse in an evangelistic setting whereby the ‘giving of land’ to the Israelites was an outworking of God’s grace and similarly what we have in Christ today is an even greater (the greatest ever) outworking of God’s grace to which the “how long will you wait to take possession of….” question might go out to people who are considering what the Cross means for them.
Whether my latter interpretation is particularly accurate or correct I am sure is open to much debate!
Any opinions or feedback welcomed!
It’s a great question Andy, and here’s as good a place to discuss it as anywhere.
Sometime (often) in the Christian world we use phrases without it being too clear about what we mean by them. Speaking as someone who works in the IT industry I’m not criticising in any way here for fear of being declared a hypocrite. It’s something that we do and need to hold our hands up for it.
Within the Joshua passage it’s clear what the meaning of ‘take possession’ was obviously quite clear and meant as something physical for people to do. I don’t think that’s the interpretation any of us would put on it today, so the meaning is clearly in some ways a metaphor for something. Which I think it where you are coming from, in our context what does ‘take possession’ really mean?
Once you’ve listened to the talk you’ll realise that Allan goes some way to explaining what he means, but I still think it’s a useful conversation.
At a physical level how many of actually visit our local neighbourhood other than in our metal boxes (cars)? In what way can we be said to ‘possess’ a community we only travel through.
In what ways are we really involved in the lives of our region (town, city, county, country, etc.) to bring about the ‘Kingdom of God’. Are we involved in works of transformation that would bring about great freedom, justice, hope, etc?
There are lots of people who are physically existing in a place, but aren’t really present. You only have to look at most teenagers to know that. In what ways are we ‘present’ in order to ‘possess’.
Thanks Graham, that’s some helpful thoughts, especially your distinction between ‘existing’ and ‘possessing’.
(I did actually listen to the talk which I took to focus on what it means for us to ‘possess land’ on a number of levels but I think I was more pondering about the present day application of the other side of the verse – ‘God giving us land’).
Anyway, food for thought!