The Promise Land: Meaning and Significance
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them” Deuteronomy 7: 1, 2.
God promised to “give” the land of Canaan to the Israelites.
But the truth is, they had to fight for it.
Promise Land Meaning: Dispossess in Order to Possess
After all, the land was already inhabited. And they had to dispossess it before they could possess it. To read the passage for context, click here.
When God said He was “giving” them the land, this didn’t mean they could just move in without any effort or struggle.
It meant God would honor their effort and struggle. And give them success. If they were careful to do it the way He instructed them.
But to be clear, God giving them the land didn’t mean they didn’t have to work or fight for it.
It meant their work or fighting wouldn’t be futile, or to no avail, or fruitless.
We Need to Fight for Spiritual Gifts
And I believe this is exactly how it is today, with all spiritual gifts.
Christ died to give us these things. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a part to play. Or that it’s not going to cost us anything.
I’ve been confused by this in the past. Because on the one hand salvation, and all other spiritual gifts are free by grace. On the other hand, I’ve learned by experience that if I don’t do anything, if I’m passive and inactive, I don’t get the blessing.
I’ve discovered the hard way that the gift of the Spirit does cost something.
The Oil Had to be Purchased
Jesus tells the parable of the five foolish virgins who ran out of oil as a cautionary tale (Mathew 25: 1-12). The oil, which represents the Holy Spirit, wasn’t free. It had to be purchased.
The promise land can represent a few things. But I think one thing it can symbolize is fullness of the Holy Spirit. By that I mean power and glory and miracles. I’m talking about Book of Acts kind of living.
Every true Christian longs for this. And Jesus promises to “give” us the Holy Spirit (John 14: 15-17).
I think what this really means is He promises to honor our efforts and struggles against the enemies that are preventing us from entering into the fullness God has for us.
I believe these enemies represent sin.
The devil can’t touch us if we walk in love. And neither can any person.
It’s sin that opens the door to the devil. And our earthly enemies too.
So, our real enemy isn’t the devil, or people, or even ourselves.
Our Only Real Enemy
Our only real enemy is sin.
We, as Christians, want the fullness of the Spirit that God has promised. And because of the sacrifice of Jesus for us on the cross, we have a right to it.
But, in order to get it, we have to overcome our sin which inhabits the land of us. To do this, we must “consider ourselves dead to sin” (Romans 6: 11). And be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2: 20).
The Holy Spirit is not going to inhabit us in fullness if we’re not dealing a death blow to sin.
That’s why our passage tells us we must not only defeat our enemies, but destroy them completely (v 2).
The Promise Land A Metaphor
The promise land is a metaphor for the glory we can live in if we crucify our old nature. And our old nature is symbolized by the giants.
The Israelites who defeated and dispossessed these giants in order to possess the promise land are an illustration of the fullness of the Holy Spirit: Power, glory, miracles, Book of Acts living.
This promise land can be in us if we first dispossess it.
In order to get this fullness of God, we must first dispossess the land of its enemies. These enemies are our sin.
As long as unrepentant sin inhabits the land, the Holy Spirit won’t. So, we have to defeat and completely destroy our sin in order to inhabit our promise land.
Make no mistake. The gift of the Holy Spirit is just that. A free gift. But we have to consider ourselves dead to sin and be crucified with Christ to get it in fullness.
A Price to Pay for Fullness
If we want to inhabit that land of fullness, there’s a price to pay. God will honor our effort and struggle with promise land living.
When the Lord says “I will give you the fullness of my Spirit” (Acts 1: 8), what He’s really saying is, I will grant you success in your struggle against sin. If you do it My way.
God promised to give the promised land to the Israelites. But the truth is they had to remove the old occupants before they could possess it.
In other words, they had to fight for it.
If we want the fullness of the Spirit, we’ll have to fight for it too. It won’t be easy, but it will be so worth it.
To read another post related to The Promise Land: Meaning and Significance, see Wilderness in the Bible: To Do You Good in the End.
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