The Receiving End
Joshua 18:2-3
There remained among the people of Israel seven tribes whose inheritance had not yet been apportioned. So Joshua said to the people of Israel, “How long will you put off going in to take possession of the land, which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you?”
Sometimes our protestant theology, while steering clear of any hint of self-merited grace, minimizes the condition of our God-given will in the life of faith. The story in Numbers 21, where Moses sets up a bronze serpent on a tree to heal any sick person who simply looks up, is a good picture of faith, yes. As Paul clearly writes in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; … so that no one may boast.” We should write that truth in ink or in blood, on parchment or flame, for salvation is definitionally a gift of God. The ‘but’ isn’t about the nature of the gift, but about the condition of our reception of it.
Think of what the Apostle James write in his Epistle, when he clarifies that faith isn’t merely a cognitive belief but an active, willful practice. For some, such faith will mean banishment from family and inheritance. For others, it will mean public humiliation, even torture, or the loss of an income or a career or a spouse. For many more, it will mean the loss of sleep and the loss of health and perhaps even the loss of sanity (as was the case with John the Baptizer before his beheading). We should never forget that to receive the cross of Christ is to wear it in like manner, for He clearly says in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him … take up his cross daily and follow me."
These seven tribes of Joshua 18 provide a widened picture of a pilgrim’s reception of God’s grace. Here they are, in the Promised Land, all their enemies now subdued, the rolling hillsides of divine favor open before them, but they need to claim it. To take the hike through the terrain and map it out. To place boundary stones on all four corners, whether they be at the top of mountains or the bed of rivers. To survey and forest, and sow and reap, because faith isn’t so much a deed to be signed but a frontier to be stewarded.
Prayer Point