As believers in Christ, we are being built up into the organic Body of Christ to fight for the carrying out of God’s economy, and we are being made ready to take the good land and fight under the blessing of God in His Divine Trinity.
The history of the children of Israel is a type of our spiritual history with the Lord; after passing through the wilderness, they arrived at the good land, and they were formed into an army to take the land.
As believers in Christ we are being formed, constituted, disciplined, trained, and qualified, and we are being made ready to enter into the good land to possess it and enjoy it.
God has given us the land – He has allotted to us a rich portion of the all-inclusive Christ, and all we have to do is go out and take the land, possess it, and enjoy it. We need to be willing, ready, and be in one accord both with God and also with the saints, so that together we may enter into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ.
Amen, the Lord wants to prepare us corporately so that we may enter into the enjoyment of the good land; He wants all His believers to enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, be filled with Him, and be constituted with Him, so that they may build up the church as the house of God for His expression and as the city of God for His representation.
For this purpose, the Lord is forming us into an army, a corporate Joshua to fight the battle and take the land, so that we may enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as our inheritance.
None of us is Joshua himself – we all are being built together and prepared to be an army to fight the battle. We were called, redeemed, and saved, and now we are being trained, prepared, and qualified by God, ready to go on with God as one to take the land – the all-inclusive Christ! Amen!
Amen, Lord, make us all willing to be trained, prepared, and qualified to enter into the good land! Keep us enjoying the blessing of God in His Divine Trinity in the church life, and build us up into Your organic Body to fight under the blessing of God for the carrying out of God’s economy!
Being Built up into the Body of Christ to Fight under the Blessing of God in His Divine Trinity
In order for the children of Israel to fight for God’s interest and take the land, they were formed into an army under the leading of Joshua; we can say that they were formed into a corporate Joshua.
The formation of the children of Israel into an army to fight for God typifies the New Testament believers’ being built up into the organic Body of Christ to fight under the blessing of God for the carrying out of His economy (see Eph. 4:16; 6:12).
According to His purpose, God wants to work Himself into His chosen people so that He may be mingled with them to produce the church as the Body of Christ.
We as believers in Christ are being built up into the Body of Christ for the carrying out, in our service to God, of God’s eternal economy.
Just as the children of Israel were formed into an army to fight for the protection of God’s testimony (the Ark in the tabernacle), so the church today is fighting for the protection of the incarnated God.
God in His embodiment needs to be protected by the fighting of the church. This matter of fighting for the kingdom of God is not a small or shallow matter; rather, for us to do this, we need to be a Nazarite, one who overcomes natural affection, earthly pleasure, rebellion, and unexpected death.
As a corporate Joshua, a formed army, we are being prepared and made ready to take the good land under the blessing of God in His Divine Trinity.
The children of Israel were prepared and made ready as a corporate Joshua to take the good land under the blessing of God and under the blessing of Moses, the man of God (Num. 6:22-27).
The blessing of Moses on the children of Israel in Num. 6 is an eternal blessing, and it is the blessing with the Triune God. This is confirmed by Paul in 2 Cor. 13:14, where we see that the Triune God is dispensing Himself in His Divine Trinity into His chosen people as their blessing.
Apart from being Triune, God could not dispense Himself into His people to be their blessing. The real blessing is God Himself dispensed into His chosen people.
The unique blessing in the whole universe is God Himself; anything besides God is vanity, but God Himself is the unique blessing. The universe is a miracle, and it was created by God; however, without God as the essence and blessing, the universe is vanity.
Apart from God, everything is just vanity of vanities (Eccl. 1:2). Only God is real; only He Himself is the real One, the real blessing. If we gain the whole world and even the whole universe, yet we miss God, we would be the most pitiful persons.
If we read history we see many examples of people who gained many riches, many material things, and had much authority on earth, but who realize that, without God, everything was vanity of vanities.
In Eph. 1 we see a record of how the Triune God blesses us, His chosen, redeemed, and transformed people; He blesses us in His Divine Trinity. The Triune God blesses us in the Father (vv. 3-6), in the Son (vv. 9-12), and in the Spirit (vv. 13-14).
The issue of such a blessing to God’s chosen people is the church as the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all (vv. 22-23). The church as the Body of Christ is the total issue of the Divine Trinity as a flow to dispense all that God is into us, His chosen people.
Today we are being built up into the Body of Christ to fight under the blessing of God in His Divine Trinity so that we may protect God’s interests and take the land as our inheritance for our enjoyment.
Today in the church life we thank the Lord that we are under the blessing of the Triune God in His Divine Trinity to encourage us to go forward, press on, and possess the land.
Thank You Lord for blessing us in Your Divine Trinity for us to enter in the good land, possess it, and enjoy it! Amen, Lord build us up together into the organic Body of Christ to fight under the blessing of God for God’s interest, and to enjoy the blessing of God in His Divine Trinity! Praise the Lord, the unique blessing in the universe is the Triune God, and God blesses us with Himself for the fulfilment of His purpose! Thank You Lord, we are under Your blessing, and we are encouraged to go forward, press on, and possess the good land!
In the Lord’s Recovery we’re being Readied as a Corporate Joshua to Fight and Take the Land
We thank the Lord that He has brought us in His recovery, where we are being readied as a corporate Joshua to fight and take the land, the all-inclusive Christ.
In spite of our failures and unfaithfulness, God will be faithful to the end, and eventually He will accomplish His intention that we as His chosen people may enjoy His full blessing.
In spite of the failure of the people of Israel and in spite of their unfaithfulness, God was faithful to them, and they entered into the Holy Land, possessed it, lived in it, and enjoyed it.
This is something that we see in the entire Bible; as believers in Christ, we may have defeats and failures, but God will still enable us to enter into the rich Christ to possess Him, enjoy Him, experience Him, and even live Him (see Phil. 3:7-14; 1:19-21).
When He gains a built-up Body and a prepared Bride for which He can return to marry and bring in the end of this age, God has success, and the boast and glory belongs to none other than Him.
It’s not of us; we are nothing, we are weak, and we lean on Him – He takes us on and into the land, but we cooperate by rising up and saying, Lord, we want to be one with You to be joined to You to enter the good land!
We all need to know what the Lord’s recovery is, where the recovery is, and what kind of persons we need to be to take the recovery on.
We are on a battlefield today, and we should be today’s Joshua and Caleb, fighting against Satan’s aerial forces so that we gain more of Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ.
We need to cooperate with the Lord to be readied as a corporate Joshua to fight under the blessing of God and take the land, to set up and spread the kingdom of God so that Christ can come back to inherit the earth.
The Lord’s recovery is uniquely for the bringing forth of Christ, so that He would be everything to God’s people. This is what we are here for, and this is what the Lord’s recovery is here for.
We are not here to be another Reformation or another Brethren movement; we are here as a little group of people who wants to cooperate with our God to enter into the good land, possess the good land, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as everything to us.
We are not here for a movement but purely for the Lord’s recovery.
We are almost one hundred years later since the Lord started His recovery in this age, and even though brothers Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have passed away, we are still here being readied as a corporate Joshua to fight and take the land.
We are here so that Christ can practically the reality and all to us.
For us to enter the good land we need to be built up together as a corporate Body, for no individuals can take the good land by themselves.
Then, we need to have an exercised spirit, not being afraid of the difficulties from the enemies. We need to believe God in His word, keeping His word and musing on it. Finally, we need to be one with God and have God be one with us. Wherever we go, God is with us.
Our responsibility is fourfold: concerning the sinners, we need to preach the gospel, concerning Satan, we need to realize there’s a spiritual warfare, concerning the church, we need to hold fast what we see today, and concerning Christ, we need to testify of the fact of His preeminence in all things.
We preach the gospel, we defeat Satan, we continue in the church according to what God reveals to us, and we exalt Christ, that He would be our all and in all.
Lord, make us ready as a corporate Body to fight under the blessing of God and take the land and enter into the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ. We do not trust in ourselves, Lord; we are full of failures and unfaithfulness, but we trust in You and in Your faithfulness. We believe in You, Lord, and we rely on You and Your blessing. Grant us to see what kind of people we should be today in the church life for the fulfillment of Your economy. Lord, we are here to gain more Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ, so that the kingdom of God may be spread so that Christ would come back to inherit the earth!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Numbers, pp. 77-78 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Spiritual Warfare of the Church as the New Man (2018 Memorial Day Conference), week 5, The Formation of a Corporate Joshua to Possess the Good Land by Defeating the Satanic Forces.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Jehovah bless you and keep you; / Jehovah make His face shine upon you / And be gracious to you; / Jehovah lift up His countenance upon you / And give you peace. / God the Father’s keeping; / God the Son is shining; / God the Spirit’s countenance / Cheering, uplifting you; / What a Triune blessing; / God Himself dispensing, / For your rich enjoyment / All your days. (Song on, Jehovah bless you and keep you)
# The Spirit’s ours! The Spirit of reality, / He’s independent of the way we feel; / He dwells in us, and teaches us to dwell in Him, / And guides us into everything that’s real. / We have the church! All saints are needed to possess / The fullness of this vast reality; / Together we will gain this all-inclusive Christ, / And He to us our everything will be. (Hymns #1287)
# Now the Lord’s recovery is everywhere proceeding, / All the churches join in one to give the Lord command: / “Speed the day when all the earth will echo with pray-reading / And with hallelujahs for Christ our land.” (Hymns #1236)
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