We Possess the Good Land by Dealing with the Flesh, Exalting Christ, and Enjoying Him

In order for us to possess the good land, we need to deal with the flesh, enjoy the Lord’s table, enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, see a vision of Christ as our Captain, and exalt Christ according to God’s instruction. Amen!

The Lord in His mercy and grace is bringing us on with Him; we are no longer merely eating Christ and drinking Him as the rich produce of the land, but we are also advancing with the Lord to enjoy a solid Christ, a Christ who is the material for the building up of His house.

The good land is not only a land of water-brooks, springs, fountains, wheat, barley, fig trees, pomegranates, and milk and honey, but also a land with mountains, stones, iron, copper, and bronze.

May we all advance in our enjoyment and experience of Christ from the beginning of Christ to the word of righteousness; may we all advance to experience the more solid Christ, the Christ who is the material for the building of His house.

We need to experience Christ as the stones, the iron, the mountains, and the copper, which are things used for the building of God and for the battle.

How can we build the house of God with foodstuffs such as fig trees, bread, and grapes?

The house of God can be built only with Christ as the living stone; He is working Himself into us and He is transforming us from clay-men into stone-men, those who are living stones just like Him for God’s building.

On one hand He is transforming us by working His stone-element into our being for us to become living stones.

On the other hand, He is calling us to Himself in resurrection and ascension to experience Him in His ascension, so that we may enter into the spiritual warfare by being one with Him in His victory to proclaim the destruction of the enemy.

Amen, Christ has already won the victory, and we are called by Him to wear soft armor, enjoying the victory of Christ, enjoying all the reality of what the Triune God is, by living in ascension with Him!

May we experience Christ as a land whose stones are iron for authority, and as a land from whose mountains we can mine copper. Amen!

As we advance in our enjoyment and experience of Christ, we are brought with Him in ascension to fight the spiritual warfare and also build up the church.

Fighting the battle and building up the church goes hand in hand, for whenever we are stirred up by the Lord by seeing His need for a building, the enemy is present, ready to devour us and to attack the church.

May we allow the Lord to work Himself into us as the stone element for God’s building, and may we live with Him in resurrection and ascension for fighting the spiritual warfare!

To Possess the Good Land we need to Deal with the Flesh, Enjoy Christ, and see Him as our Captain

In Josh. 5:2-15 we see a few principles that apply to our Christian experience as we are about to possess the good land. First, the children of Israel were circumcised at Gilgal, then they kept the Passover, they started to eat the produce of the good land, and Joshua met the Lord as the Captain of God’s army.

For us to possess the good land, we need to deal with the flesh (the reality of circumcision), enjoy the Lord’s table (the reality of the Passover), enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the produce of the good land, and see a vision of Christ as our Captain.

The circumcision at Gilgal of the second generation of the children of Israel who were about to enter into the good land signifies the application of the Lord’s death to our flesh (Josh. 5:2-9).

They already experienced death and resurrection when they crossed the river Jordan, but that was something objective and positional. Now dispositionally they had to apply the cross to their being.

On one hand we were baptized together with Christ and we died to our old man; on the other hand we need to daily apply the cross of Christ to our flesh.

We need to have the daily experience of the real circumcision – which is not of the flesh but of the spirit (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:24). For us to possess the good land we need to have the continual application of the death of Christ to our flesh.

The fact that Israel kept the Passover typifies that we as believers in Christ need to keep the Lord’s table to remember the Lord as our Redeemer and Savior (Josh. 5:10; Matt. 26:26-28; 1 Cor. 5:7).

The Passover was to remind the children of Israel of their mighty Savior who brought them and saved them out of Egypt with its tyranny.

When we come to the Lord’s table, we are not here to perform any ritual or routine but to praise the Lord for His deliverance, for His saving us from sin, the old man, and the world.

It is not a small thing to partake of the Lord’s table; here we can come to open our mouth to praise the Lord for the great salvation He has given us! Hallelujah!

After the children of Israel entered into the good land, the manna stopped; they started to eat the produce of the land (Josh. 5:11-12).

For us to possess the good land, we need to enjoy Christ as the consummated God-given food to the believers, requiring our labor on Him.

The children of Israel enjoyed the manna – the unconsummated food – for forty years; now, right the day after they crossed over, the manna stopped, and they began to eat the produce of the land, which requires labor.

We also need to labor on Christ, cooperating with God by laboring on the all-inclusive Christ to enjoy Him as the rich produce of the land.

In Josh 5:13-15 Joshua saw a vision of the Captain of the army of Jehovah, which is Christ; whereas Joshua was the visible captain, Christ was the invisible Captain of God’s army. Amen!

For us to possess the good land we need to see a vision of the Captain of God’s army, which is Christ Himself! Hallelujah, Christ is the captain of Jehovah’s hosts!

We have a captain, an invisible leader that leads us onward! We do not follow a man or someone we can see – we enter into the possession of the good land under the leadership of our captain, Christ!

Lord Jesus, we want to advance with You until we possess the good land. May we have a daily application of the death of Christ to our being so that we may live in the reality of the circumcision and enter into the possession of the good land. Amen, Lord Jesus, we want to remember You by enjoying You for the great salvation You have given us; we remember You especially at Your Table! Lord, You are the rich produce of the good land for us to enjoy and partake of, and by eating You as the consummated God-given food we can possess the good land! Hallelujah, our Christ is the Captain of Jehovah’s army, and we follow Him into the full enjoyment of the good land!

We Win the Victory by Exalting Christ and by Bearing the Testimony of God according to God’s instruction

In Josh. 6:1-27 we see how Israel followed God’s word of instruction and won the victory at Jericho, the first great city in the good land.

The victory of Israel over Jericho was not won by their fighting; rather, it was won by their blowing the trumpets and by bearing the Ark, having faith in God’s word of instruction.

This kind of fighting is both wonderful and mysterious, for it points to the principle of our spiritual warfare. In spiritual warfare we don’t fight for victory; rather, the first thing we do is we exalt Christ!

Just as the children of Israel only blew their trumpets and bore the Ark as they marched around the city of Jericho, so we today need to bear Christ as our testimony and exalt Christ!

The blowing of the trumpets signifies the exalting of Christ. The silence of the people signifies them being one with God to carry out the battle according to the Lord’s way; they didn’t express any thought, opinion, or feeling (Josh. 6:10).

Everyone in the people was quiet; all they did was blow the trumpet, and at the end they shouted for victory.

Today as we fight the spiritual warfare to possess the good land all we have to do is to exalt Christ; it is not us who fight – it is God who does the fighting, and we simply shout praises to the Lord, we proclaim Him, and we testify of Him!

We may have our opinion or feeling – but we put these aside, we enjoy the Lord, we exalt Christ, and we carry out the spiritual warfare in the Lord’s way without the expression of any thought, opinion, or feeling.

Israel marched around the city with the Ark, a type of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God, on the shoulders of the priests; the spiritual significance of this scene is that it is a picture of the corporate God-man – God and man, man and God, walking together as one person.

This is what God wants to do today; He wants to walk with us, He wants us to be one with Him, so that we and Him, Him and us, together as a corporate God-man would enter into the good land. However, there was also a warning:

In Josh. 7:1-5 the children of Israel were defeated Ai because they were not one with God but rather, they cared only for themselves.

Because Acan sought some enjoyment and pleasure in the world for himself, he caused the entire army of God to suffer defeat. In our cooperation with the Lord, we should never seek anything for ourselves; rather, we need to learn to be one with God in whatever we do.

May we learn to be one with God, caring only for His interest, and not seeking pleasure or enjoyment for ourselves!

Even more, may we take our position as a wife before the Lord and check with Him about everything, so that the subtle enemy would not deceive us and lure us away from Christ.

The children of Israel were deceived by the Gibeonites because they were like a wife who forgot her husband; what they did in Joshua 9 was exactly the same as what Eve did in Genesis 3.

The Gibbeonites tricked the children of Israel when they approached them dressed in old clothes having old and stale food and saying that they come from a far away land for they heard what God did for His people…and the people of Israel did not enquire of Jehovah or ask for His counsel before they believed these ones and made a covenant with them.

We need to be warned not to be deceived by the enemy in his subtlety, but always check with the Lord and be one with Him.

Furthermore, the record in Josh. 22:10-34 about the building of another altar shows that we must avoid division and that to experience and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ we must be one people, one Body, one universal church (1 Cor. 12:12-13).

We cannot enjoy Christ as the good land without the Body; for us to possess the good land, fight for the land, and share our portion of the land, we must be one with the Body (Num. 32:1-32; Josh. 22:1-9).

The good land cannot be taken individually – it has to be done corporately! So we should not do anything that causes the Body to suffer; we need to move in one accord, honoring the Body.

Amen, may we all know what the recovery is, where the recovery is, and what kind of person we need to be to go on with the Lord in His recovery and take the recovery on.

We today are on a battlefield, and we should be today’s Joshua and Caleb, those fighting in the Body against Satan’s aerial forces so that we can gain more of Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ, setting up and spreading the kingdom of God so that Christ can come back to inherit the earth.

Lord Jesus, we want to just exalt Christ and be one with Him in fighting the spiritual warfare, not expressing any thought, opinion, or feeling! We do not care for our own personal enjoyment and pleasure: we care for God and His people, and we want to enter together to possess the good land! Amen, Lord, we stand in the Body, we are one with the Body, and we want to enter into the land to possess it together with all the saints in the Body! Make us the Joshua and Caleb of today, those who fight against Satan’s aerial forces so that all the saints may gain more of Christ for the building up of the body of Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Joshua, msgs. 6-9, 14 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Deuteronomy, week 4, The Goodness of the Land – Its Minerals.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – O Jesus! You’re God’s good land / For me to labor on! / I’ll bit by bit possess You / Until the whole is won! / With Canaan is God’s purpose, / The labor He will bless; / Lord Jesus, here I gain Yourself, / Your Person to possess. (Hymns #1168)
  – We look unto our Captain, / Our Leader and our Way; / We know Him, show strength, and / Take action right away! / We execute His triumph, / Subdue each foe we meet; / Dominion He gives us / To crush them ’neath our feet! (Song on, The good land has been given)
  – God has cleared the way before us / Through the victory of His Son; / Raised the Victor’s banner o’er us, / All the battles He has won. / All that’s left for us to do / Is by faith to follow through. (Hymns #1166)