Breaking Ground in God’s Country
Breaking Ground in God’s Country
Joshua 11:16 So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland …
Mark down Joshua 11:16 in the flyleaf of your Bible because it’s a pivotal moment in that great advance of sinful, believing pilgrims to the Promised Land. This is the day Israel will first break ground on this range of hills at the center of the globe—a small piece of real estate in relation to the vast expanse of earth, yet a focal point for all the world’s enterprise. But what makes this high country holier than all others like it? What makes her pasturelands glisten more than those of West Virginia or Wales or Austria? Because God stamps His name upon them. Because God incarnates into our own flesh and blood here, and faces the onslaught of hell’s legions, and sows through His blood a Tree of Life that draws men of all tribes, tongues, and nations to Himself. That, from this soil, a nation will be born of the Spirit, refined by fire, and will tower as a beacon for all lost and wandering souls, obtaining through the blood of Christ’s Passion a deed of ownership that no Canaanite or Goliath or anti-Christ can steal away.
There is a wondrous and mysterious future yet to come in these hills, friend. This property that Joshua overtakes as his own plays a central role in divine future. Bigger giants and bolder armies and greater foes will one day unite in this region, lusting for more innocent blood, hoping to wipe out the memory of Jehovah once and for all and achieve what these tribal kings in Joshua 11 couldn’t: the obliteration of God’s people and God’s property and God’s promises from ages past. And while this Old Testament Yeshua gets the drama going when he places that flag of triumph into the grassy Israeli hills for the first time, he’s only a prelude to the Yeshua to come. When the final Yeshua steps on these hills again, the victory He’ll win for His people won’t last for a decade or a generation or even a millennium, but forevermore.
What do a chosen flock and a hill country and a Shepherd-King have in common? The greatest story ever told!