March 8, 2024
The Israelite tribes of Reuben and Gad had a lot of livestock, and when it came time to enter the Promised Land, they requested to stay on the east side of the Jordan River because it had good pastureland. Moses wasn’t impressed. “Shall. Your brothers go to war while you sit here?” he asked. They worked out a solution, but the question sticks in my mind.
It’s easy to deceive myself into thinking that being given the promises of God means that all I have to do is open my arms and receive them. The land was promised, but Israel had to fight for it. So do we.
We enter God’s Promised Land by the miracle of the parting of the waters, pointing for the Christian, to baptism. I may be in God’s land of Promise, but my heart is still filled with the enemies of God who do not give up their possession easily. When we read in Joshua, we learn that God’s enemies resort to deceit as well as all-out assault. I cannot sit here while there is a spiritual war going on.
The worst part is that I am usually complicit in their defense of their territory. My heart is deceitful and wicked, and readily lays down its arms to the old inhabitants of greed, lust, pride, and either ambition or sloth. That old hymn is true:
“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
prone to leave the God I love.”
The remedy to a deceitful wandering heart follows:
“Here’s my heart,
O take and seal it,
Seal if for thy courts above.
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