So today we are called together as Joshua, thousands of years ago, summoned together the tribes and elders of the Israelites to review the past and look to the future (cf. Joshua 24). After many years of wandering, of doubts, of wickedness and also, after many years of God’s forgiveness and faithfulness, they finally arrive at Canaan, the promised land. And Joshua takes them back through the years. They are called upon to remember their lowly beginning. Their forefathers were idolaters before the flood. Joshua bade them remember that, by the Word of the Lord, God had destroyed these idolaters. Now God would use His chosen people to continue their destruction: they had entered into the inheritance, the promised land, and it was filled with idolaters. Terah, the father of Abraham, was an idolater and perhaps, Abraham also, before God called him. In other words, Joshua is saying to these Israelites, as the prophet Isaiah would say many years later to their children: “Look to the rock from whence you were hewn, and the hole of the pit from which you were dug” (51:1). Thus, Joshua calls to their remembrance that they were not always great, that they were not always religious, but God had shown His marvelous grace in choosing this people. He made a promise to Abraham: he and his seed would inherit the promised land, a land described many times as flowing with milk and honey (cf. Ex. 3:8, 17). Thus, God leads His people up from the bondage of Egypt with a strong hand; the sea is nothing to Him; the wilderness is nothing; the Jordan River is nothing; fortified cities are nothing. God leads His people where He will. He keeps them as the apple of His eye. He does this year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. He tests them and tries them; He brings them trials and troubles; He rebukes them and chastises them; He forgives them; He gives them the promised land: “And I have given you a land for which you did not labor, and cities which you did not build, and you dwell in them; and you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13).

Then, as this great earthly leader is about to die, Joshua assembles the tribes for whom God had so long and so blessedly carried and says, “Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (24:15). There is only one thing to say before love like that: “God forbid that we should forsake Jehovah to serve other gods” (24:16). This answer from the Israelites is very similar to the words of the apostle Peter who similarly experienced such mercy and love: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68).

Thus, we see God’s people safe in the promised land. The very same land, in which so many years before, father Abraham had been a sojourner, a pilgrim, a stranger, is inherited by his seed as it had been promised to Abraham. The people are asked to remember their past, to humble themselves, and to renew their faith in God for the better things in the future.

We, too, are called upon to review the past and, with renewed and strengthened faith, are called to look forward to the future. Today Israel, the chosen people of God, His elect, continue on this earth in the church of Jesus Christ. Like Israel, the true church today is those delivered by a mighty and outstretched arm from the bondage or slavery of sin and, by grace, have been chosen as a peculiar and special people (cf. 1 Pet. 2:9). The true church today is like Israel wandering about as strangers and pilgrims in a strange or foreign land, heading for the promised land, the land of rest. And like Abraham, the true church has been promised that the land in which they sojourn will one day be inherited by them. Think about that! The church of Christ will one day inherit the earth on which today we are sojourners or pilgrims, and we have no less than God’s Word on that!

In Gen. 1:28–30 (cf. Ps. 8) we have the original inheritance stated: “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food,’ and it was so.” This was given to man. Satan and sin entered and corrupted this inheritance and it departed from Adam. This possession was lost to the devil, and to sinful men, who are but instruments in the hands of Satan. This world became occupied by the enemy. It is marred and spoiled, often raped and exploited for sinful man’s selfish gain. The apostle Paul describes it thus: “For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:22).

Those whom God has chosen as His own are now pilgrims and strangers in this sinful, fallen world and have been alienated from this earth. But God promised that His people would not always be pilgrims and strangers. We see this in the promise to Abraham that his seed would inherit the land in which he was once a stranger and sojourner. We see this when the Israelites came to Canaan, the promised land, and they destroyed all the people living in this land. Why? Wasn’t this cruel and beastly? Not at all. The Israelites were purging the land; they were taking it back from Satan and his followers. It was their inheritance from the beginning of the world. God had promised they would again inherit it, and these sinful people living in this land had no rightful claim to it whatsoever.

All of what has been said thus far was true as historical events, but it was and is also a picture of better things to come. Canaan, the promised land, the redeemed possession, the land flowing with milk and honey, a second Eden, so to speak, is meant to point the church to the better and heavenly things, to the better promises just as it did with our fathers. Canaan was a picture of the life and blessings that would eventually come forth upon the whole earth. It was a picture of this earth when it would be restored and blessed, a picture of the resurrected universe. This is what Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, all of whom never got to Canaan, looked for:

“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. . . . These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (Heb. 11:8–10, 13–16).

They looked for the time when they would be resurrected to the perfect world. Another reason why Canaan could only be a picture of the inheritance is the simple fact that it would be far too small for all of Abraham’s seed, which were to be as the stars and sands of the seashore in number (cf. Heb. 11:12).

God promised to send a redeemer, a deliverer, one that would lead the people to the promised land, to their inheritance, a redeemed possession, a restored and purified land. Moses and His successor, Joshua, were these deliverers and, as such, they were types or pictures of Christ: “In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:11–14).

The church, the purchased possession of Christ, purchased by His blood, the continuing true Israel, a chosen generation, a peculiar people (cf. 1 Pet. 2:9), has been promised an inheritance. The Holy Spirit is our earnest or surety that God’s Word is true, that His church is the apple of His eye and that He keeps them year after year and will lead them to their inheritance. This inheritance is something which we will possess from which now we have been alienated; it is an old possession lost to Satan and his hosts and to be reclaimed from the powers of evil which now occupy it.

As the redemption of your person consists in your being rescued from the dominion of Satan, from the power of sin in your soul, and from the reign of death in your body, what can the redemption of the inheritance (as spoken of above) be, but the rescuing of this earth from the manifold ills which, through the instigation of Satan, have come to lodge within it? Would not the redemption of the inheritance mean changing it from being a vale of tears and the place of death, wars, and sickness into a paradise of life and blessing, and restoring to man, who has been redeemed and fitted for honor, the scepter of a real and perfect dominion? In other words, this redemption would be restoring this earth in character and design to what it was on creation’s morn, when God looked upon what He had made and pronounced it good. To do such with this earth would be to redeem the possession which man by disobedience forfeited and lost. Then the enemy would be completely foiled and cast out and man’s proper inheritance restored.

Why may not God do a like work of purification and refinement on this earth, so as to transform and make it into a fit residence for man in glory? Why should not that which has become for fallen man, a house of bondage, the foreign land, the corrupted inheritance, become also for redeemed man the place of peace and the region of pure delight? God can equally change the vile and disordered condition of the world, as it now is, and make it fit to be the house of the glory of His kingdom, a paradise beyond description! Is this a low view of the inheritance in store for the children of God? Not at all. And what are the grounds for such an assertion? First, because of the picture which Israel and Canaan, the promised land, sets before us; secondly, of what we read in 2 Peter 3:13: “Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells”; also, because Christ says in His Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5); lastly, because of what is implied in Acts 3:19–21: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”

If I could choose, out of all creation, the place where my redeemed nature is to find its home, enjoy the Redeemer’s presence, and reap the fruits of His costly purchase, I would prefer none other than this earth renewed and made perfect. If anything would or could give a person a feeling of exaltation and lordship over an inheritance, would it not be that of possessing this inheritance in the very place where we were once slaves of sin and corruption?

So as we begin another year, with Joshua, it is a time to look back and review the past as well as a time to look to the future and to renew and strengthen our resolves. In God’s Word our eyes are lifted to better things to come. As members of Christ’s body, the church, our position or standing is that of a chosen generation, a peculiar people, who now are sojourners in the land of our inheritance, a land which is now occupied by Satan and his hosts. This has been our state this past year and all the years before, and it will be our state this coming year. As Christians, we must begin already in this life to claim our inheritance for the glory of Christ, to bring all things under His Lordship. This we must do until Christ returns when our inheritance will be fully and completely redeemed and we will join in singing a new song: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth” (Rev. 5:9–10).