Entering God’s Rest Requires a Fight
“So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war” Joshua 11: 23.
This passage is referring to the literal promise land God gave to the ancient Israelites (Joshua 11).
Entering God’s Rest Requires Warfare
But figuratively, the promise land is that place of rest that God has promised all Christians (Hebrews 4: 1-13). But in order to rest, we first have to go to war. We must fight against all revealed sin and conquer it so we can inherit and inhabit our promise land. And rest.
Unless we go to war we will never rest. We cannot inhabit our promise land unless we remove the current inhabitants. Once we’ve done our work and gone to war against all known sin, and defeated it, we will enter that promised rest.
The Price of God’s Promises
God has promised us many glorious things. But they all have conditions that must be fulfilled first.
- Obedience produces maturity (Hebrews 5: 8, 9)
- The fear of God produces wisdom (Proverbs 9: 10)
- Humility leads to exaltation (Luke 14: 11)
- Losing our life leads to finding it (Mathew 10: 39)
- The narrow path leads to life (Mathew &: 13, 14)
- Suffering leads to glory (Romans 8: 17)
- If we resist temptation, it will flee (James 4: 7)
- A wilderness experience is required to get to the promise land (Deuteronomy 8: 16)
- Warfare is required to enter rest (Hebrew 4: 11)
And the good news is He will give us the strength by the Holy Spirit to fulfill the conditions!
To read another post related to Entering God’s Requires a Fight, see Many Afflictions of the Righteous and Sorrow of the Wicked.