And God spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am Jehovah.
Israel's load had just got heavier. Moses had complained that God had done nothing to rescue His people. The answer he gets is not an explanation. It is a name.
The demand made to Pharaoh had made life harder, not easier.
But the first effect of this move was to increase the slavery and misery of the people... Even the faith of Moses shook under the strain. He turned to God with a complaint that sounded like a reproach... How often this happens. When God begins to deal with a soul in grace, the enemy stirs at once and works harder. So for a time, at least, things get worse instead of better.
Instead of defending His methods, God gives Moses His own name and character to rest on.
It is not only in what He does that He would have the heart find comfort, but in Himself — in His very name and character. This is full, divine, everlasting blessing. The heart may find its sweet relief in God Himself. It may run into the strong tower His name provides. It may find in His character a perfect answer to all its need. When it does, it is lifted far above the level of created things.
In the ESV, "the LORD" stands for the name Jehovah. Scripture itself gives its sense.
Jehovah is the name whose inspired translation is given in Exodus 3 — "I am." Revelation opens it out to its full meaning as, "him who is and who was and who is to come." So, unchanging in His own existence, He follows the changes of created life, holding up the creature with the strength of eternity.
So what is new here? Commentators point to the footing God now puts His people on.
The names themselves were familiar enough before. But God had not given the name by His own authority as a title of relationship to count on. That happened when He revealed Himself first as El-Shaddai to the fathers of Israel, and then as Jehovah to their sons. By it the true pilgrim fathers were assured of His unfailing protection, weak as they were, among the corrupt nations they were to displace. And through Moses the sons were to know Him as their unchanging Governor.
Elohim, Jehovah and El-Shaddai are not rival gods.
Here we have Elohim, Jehovah and El-Shaddai, all spoken of as different names of the one supreme God. Then the Lord declares, exactly as Genesis has it, that to the fathers He had revealed Himself as El-Shaddai.
God reveals Himself to fit what His people are going through.
In Exodus 6 the Lord publishes His Name. It is a Name suited to the condition Israel was then in. They were groaning in Egypt. Slave drivers and brick-kilns were oppressing them. The Lord lets them learn Him in faithfulness, grace and strength, exactly suited to such a condition... They were oppressed, and He was a Redeemer — that was all — that was the Name He was publishing, because that was the Name they needed.
The name is not left as an idea. It carries a chain of promises.
So, tied to His name "Jehovah," He makes three statements about what He has done: (1) "I also established my covenant"; (2) "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel"; (3) "I have remembered my covenant" (vv. 3-5). Then come seven "I wills." Because He is Jehovah, He says, (1) "I will bring you out"; (2) "I will deliver you"; (3) "I will redeem you"; (4) "I will take you to be my people"; (5) "I will be your God"; (6) "I will bring you in"; (7) "I will give it (the land) to you" (vv. 6-8). He ends as He began: "I am the LORD."
Dennett argues that this name belongs to Israel, and that Christians are brought nearer still.
He truly was Jehovah among Israel, and as such He forgave their sins and healed their diseases (Ps. 103:3). But He is never Jehovah for Christians. He has been pleased to bring them into a closer relationship; as indeed He revealed to Mary, and to His disciples through her, when He said, "Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." (John 20:17)
- Timing. God gives the name when things have grown worse, not better. The enemy often stirs just as God begins to act.
- Content. The name means "I am" — the One who is, was, and is to come, unchanging while everything else changes.
- Relationship. The fathers knew Him as El-Shaddai, their protector as they wandered. The nation now receives Jehovah, a covenant name to count on.
- Fitness. God publishes the name His people need. Oppressed slaves get a Redeemer.
- Result. Three things He has done and seven things He will do all hang on this one name.
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as the Almighty God; but by my name Jehovah I was not made known to them.
Pharaoh had just made Israel's work heavier, and Moses was discouraged. God answered him with a name, and it raises an obvious question: had Abraham never heard it?
Most English Bibles print that name as "the LORD"; the writers quoted here use the older form, Jehovah. Was the word itself new to Moses? One writer answers by pointing to what happened when Christ came and made the Father known.
Carefully remember that this does not mean the word "Jehovah" was unknown. As a word it appears often in Genesis, which shows it was in use from the beginning. What then is the true meaning? That God now takes this name as the revealed character in which He was going to act openly for the children of Israel. Notice an illustration of what is meant here: when our Lord came, Scripture says He declared the Father. How absurd it would be to conclude that the word "Father" had never been known before! … In Genesis 22, when Isaac was released from the sentence of death, Abraham calls the place "Jehovah-Jireh." So the word must have been well enough known.
The patriarchs knew God as El Shaddai, "God Almighty". What do those two words mean?
The word El is said to mean strength, or unlimited power. Some think Shaddai means the same thing; others prefer to translate it all-sufficient, or self-sufficient. Either way, the two words together carry divine attributes, since unlimited power and all-sufficiency are found only in God.
That name matched the life Abraham was called to live:
God revealed Himself to Abraham as "the Almighty" (El Shaddai). Abraham was called to be a pilgrim, with none but God to look to, so God reveals Himself to him as the "All Powerful One."
So if Abraham already used the word, what was still missing? The answer lies in what the name itself says about God.
Abraham did not know God by that name. The real meaning of the name Jehovah never dawned on him, because the circumstances that called for such a revelation had not arisen. But now the moment had come to unfold it. The Almighty One stood forth, pledged to Israel, as the I AM — the self-existent and therefore unchanging One, always true and faithful to His word. Israel's history proved this again and again. At the end of the Old Testament God said, "For I the LORD [that is, Jehovah] do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed."
Chapter 5 ended in failure and despair. That collapse was not an accident of timing.
He had seemingly shut them up into Pharaoh's hand, and by this produced in them a conviction of the hopelessness of their condition. This is always His method. He never presents Himself as a Saviour until men know that they are guilty and ruined. The Lord Jesus said, "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." As soon as men are willing to admit that they are lost, the Saviour stands before their souls.
The message God then sends to Israel is built on that name.
First it gives the name He has taken, Jehovah — "I am Jehovah." Then it declares redemption: they will be set free and redeemed, they will be brought into relationship with Himself, they will be His people, and He will be their God… Everything is made to depend on what He is, and the whole message ends by repeating the announcement, "I am Jehovah." He is both the Yes and the Amen, the Alpha and Omega, of their redemption. All that He is guarantees both the start and the finish of the redemption of His people.
Each name fits the people who received it — and the line runs on to us.
The wandering fathers needed an almighty friend. The nation was about to enter a history of more change than any other people has known. It was called to be the witness of an unchanging God — Him who is, and who was, and who is to come. Was there a fresh and equally striking revelation of His love to the Church? Yes, we have it in the Father's name, declared by Him who said, "Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
- Known, not new. The word Jehovah appears all through Genesis. What was new was God taking it as the name of His public dealings with Israel.
- Almighty for pilgrims. El Shaddai means strength and all-sufficiency. It fitted Abraham, who had nothing to lean on but God.
- Jehovah for a nation. Jehovah means the self-existent, unchanging One. That is why the children of Jacob are not consumed, and why their whole rescue rests on what He is.
- Revealed at the end of hope. The name came when Israel and Moses were in despair. God never presents Himself as Saviour until people know they are lost.
- Names fitting need, ending in Father. Wanderers needed an almighty friend. A changing nation needed an unchanging God. To us, the same God is declared as Father.
And I established also my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were sojourners.
Before God tells Moses what He will do, He points back to what He has already committed Himself to. One writer notes that the covenant is not simply remembered as a memory but treated as the legal basis on which God now moves.
He has now entered into a formal relationship with the children of Israel. So He recalls the covenant, with its terms, which He had established with their fathers (v. 4; compare Genesis 17:7-8). Then He states plainly that it is because of His covenant — for He is faithful — that He has heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in slavery (v. 5). It is on this foundation that He will deliver: on what He is for them as Jehovah in the covenant He made with their fathers.
The covenant here came long before the law, and one writer shows why that order matters.
In verse 4 He mentions the covenant of promise, under which He was going to act. Under it He would deliver them from Egypt and bring them into the land He had purposed for them. Their redemption from Egypt and their settlement in Canaan — the land of their pilgrimage, where they had been only strangers — all of it came under that covenant. And God made that covenant 430 years before the covenant of the law. Galatians 3:17 tells us this, and also that the law could not cancel the promise He had made. Of course it could not, for Jehovah had made it, though Abraham did not know all that this great name meant. God is true to what He is in Himself, no matter what we may know Him to be.
The verse before this one sets it up. God Almighty was the name the fathers knew. Jehovah is the name for what comes next, and the two names fit two different situations.
He had put Himself in relation with the fathers under the name of God Almighty. That was what they needed, and this was His glory during their pilgrimage. Now He takes a name in relationship with His people, a name that implies constant relationship with them. In that name, established with Him who is the same yesterday, today and forever, He carries out in faithfulness what He began in grace and promise.
Another writer names what each generation gained from these two names: protection for the wanderers, government for the nation.
The name assured the true pilgrim fathers of His unfailing protection, weak as they might be, among the corrupt nations they were destined to replace. The sons, through Moses, were to know Him as their unchanging Governor. He made them a people belonging to Himself through all ages, He that was and is and is to come.
The verse calls Canaan both the land God promised them and the land where they lived as strangers. Abraham's one purchase there shows how real that was.
It is quite wrong to say that God did afterwards give Abraham a possession in Canaan — the piece of land he bought from Ephron as a burial place, Genesis 23:17. The gift of God is absolute and still to come. For who that owned this land, or any other, would think of buying his own possession? There he lays his dead in land so plainly not his own that he has to buy it for the purpose. The purchase is the pledge to faith that he will have the land another day.
Nothing in the verse rests on Israel's condition or performance. God binds Himself, and the name He takes is the measure of what follows.
"JEHOVAH" is the title which He takes as the Deliverer of His people, on the ground of His covenant of pure and sovereign grace. He reveals Himself as the great self-existing Source of redeeming love. He establishes His counsels, fulfils His promises, and delivers His chosen people from every enemy and every evil.
Israel did later live in the land. But one writer says that this never matched the terms of the promise.
We now see one point clearly, and it is of the greatest importance. The people have never yet held the land, or the blessings promised to the fathers, on the unconditional terms promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God has still to fulfil and carry out those promises in grace.
- Covenant first. God's rescue does not start with Israel's cry. It starts with the covenant He had already made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is the foundation He acts on.
- Covenant older than law. God gave that promise 430 years before the law, and the law could not cancel it.
- Covenant carried by a name. God Almighty was the name for pilgrims who had only His power to lean on. Jehovah is the name for a people who need Him constant and unchanging.
- Covenant held by strangers. Canaan was theirs by promise while they owned nothing in it — Abraham had to buy a grave in the land God had given him.
- Covenant still open. Israel has never held the land on the unconditional terms God gave, so that promise still waits for grace to make it good.
And I have heard also the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians have forced to serve, and I have remembered my covenant.
God's answer to Moses in Exodus 6 starts with what He has already done, and this verse is the third item on that list. So why does God move now, when Moses' first try has only made things worse?
The verse ties a cry heard to a promise remembered. One writer puts the covenant first: God hears because He is faithful to it.
He recalls the covenant, with its terms, which He had established with their fathers. Then He states plainly that it is because of His covenant — for He is faithful — that He has "heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves." He will deliver on that foundation: on what He is for them as Jehovah in the covenant which He made with their fathers.
The covenant God remembers here is older than the law, and the gap between them matters.
Their redemption from Egypt and their settling in Canaan were both to be under that covenant. Canaan had been the land of their pilgrimage, where they were only strangers. God made that covenant 430 years before the covenant of the law. Galatians 3:17 tells us this. It also tells us that the law could not annul the promise God had already made. Of course it could not, for Jehovah had made it, though the full meaning of that great name was not known to Abraham. God is true to what He is in Himself, whatever we may know Him to be.
God gives His name at the same moment He speaks of their groaning. The name matched their trouble.
In Exodus 6 the Lord publishes His Name. It is a Name suited to Israel's condition at that moment. They were groaning in Egypt. Slave-drivers and brick-kilns were crushing them. The Lord lets them learn who He is: faithful, gracious and strong — exactly what their condition needed. He tells them that He remembered them and heard their sorrows. He had kept His promises to their fathers in mind, and He was about to rise up and deliver them. They were oppressed, and He was a Redeemer. That was all. That was the Name He was publishing, because that was the Name they needed.
Before this speech, Moses had tried and failed, and the people despaired. That collapse was not an accident.
The Lord gives him his commission again. Once more He declares His purposes of grace and mercy, and announces His unchanging faithfulness to His covenant. He had already done two things. He had taught both Moses and the people what their oppressor was like, and what their slavery really was. He had seemed to shut them up in Pharaoh's hand, and by that convinced them that their condition was hopeless. This is always His method. He never presents Himself as a Saviour until men know they are guilty and undone.
This verse is the last of three completed actions God lists before He turns to the future.
Along with His name "Jehovah," He makes three statements about what He has done: (1) "I have also established My covenant"; (2) "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel"; (3) "I have remembered My covenant" (vv. 3-5). Then come seven "I wills." Because He is Jehovah, He says: (1) "I will bring you out"; (2) "I will rescue you"; (3) "I will redeem you"; (4) "I will take you to Me"; (5) "I will be to you a God"; (6) "I will bring you in"; (7) "I will give it (the land) to you" (vv. 6-8). He ends as He began: "I am the Lord."
The promises reached the groaning people, and they did not respond.
The next thing we find in this picture is the promises of God. (Read Exodus 6:1-9.) Do read them. Could God give more precious promises? No. Did the promises deliver? Not in the least: "they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery." And you have tried to take hold of the promises. Have they delivered you? No. You say, "They do not comfort me." Why? "I am such a sinner, such a slave." And this makes you miserable beyond words.
- Heard — God hears the groaning of slaves in Egypt. He says so before He says one word about what He will do.
- Remembered — He hears because He is faithful to a covenant made with the fathers. That covenant stood 430 years before the law, and the law could not cancel it.
- Named — He publishes the name Jehovah to fit their exact trouble. They were oppressed, and He was a Redeemer.
- Timed — the message comes only after chapter 5 shuts them up in Pharaoh's hand. God never presents Himself as Saviour until people know they are undone.
- Promised — three things done ("I have") open into seven things pledged ("I will"). The whole speech is framed at both ends by "I am the Lord." Even so, the promises alone did not deliver them.
Therefore say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their service, and I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm, and with great judgments.
Slavery has worn Israel down, and Moses' first approach to Pharaoh only made the work harder. God's answer does not start with the people's condition but with His own name. From that name comes a chain of promises: He will bring them out, free them, and redeem them.
God gives His name before He gives His promises. One writer explains what that name says about the God who takes it.
"JEHOVAH" is the title He takes as the Deliverer of His people. He takes it on the ground of His covenant of pure and sovereign grace. He shows Himself as the great self-existing Source of redeeming love. He sets up His purposes, keeps His promises, and rescues His chosen people from every enemy and every evil. Israel's privilege was to stay always under the safe cover of that meaningful title. It is a title that shows God acting for His own glory, taking up His oppressed people to display that glory in them.
The promise does not stop with this verse. It runs to the end of verse 8, and one writer counts what God pledges there.
Note the seven "I wills." Seven in Scripture is always the number of spiritual completeness... It begins with, "I am the LORD," and it closes with, "I am the LORD." His "I will" never fails, and faith always rests on God's Word. I recommend you take God's seven "I wills" to your heart. I can hear you saying, "I have had a good many doubts." You will never have any more if you hold on to those "I wills." God will not fail His word. He always carries out His purpose. Your redemption and mine does not depend upon what we are, it depends upon God.
Every promise here is something God will do. The verse asks nothing of Israel in return.
God knew all about us — He knew the very worst of us, when He showed His love to us in the gift of His Son. He knew what we needed, and He provided it. He knew what was due, and He paid it. He knew what had to be done, and He did it. His own requirements had to be met, and He met them. It is all His own work. So He says to Israel: "I will bring you out." "I will bring you in." "I will take you to me." "I will give you the land." "I am Jehovah." It was all what He could do, and it rested on what He was.
The word "redeem" in this verse is not limited to pardon. It describes God breaking a power that held His people.
By redemption I do not mean here the forgiveness of sins by blood. I mean the word as used for God's power at work in freeing Israel from Egypt. That involves the blood-shedding and the forgiveness, but went much further. It was the carrying out of the statement to Moses (Ex. 6:6-7), when God's judgment destroyed Pharaoh's power and title, as it destroyed Satan's for us.
God's outstretched arm works for Israel and against Egypt. But Israel had sinned too. One writer explains what made it right for a holy God to take their side.
God is holy, so He had to be against His people while they were sinners in Egypt. Now, because of the blood of the lamb, He could be for them without going against anything He is. And the blood of the lamb, under which they sheltered, was the only ground of all His later acting for them.
Nine chapters later, Israel sings at the Red Sea. One writer traces that song straight back to this promise.
Jehovah, in the character of Redeemer, had now displayed Himself. What He promised Israel in Exodus 6:6 had come about. On the first morning of their deliverance His redeemed people announced it: "You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed" (15:13). What redemption was — redemption by power — they now understood, and began to enjoy it. God had worked in Egypt for them. He had sheltered them there from His judgment. He had redeemed them with an outstretched arm at the Red Sea.
- Name first. "I am the LORD" opens and closes the promise. That is the title God takes as Deliverer, so the guarantee rests on who He is, not on who Israel was.
- Seven pledges. Verses 6 to 8 hold seven "I wills" — a complete chain. Out of the burdens, out of the slavery, redeemed, taken as His people, given a God, brought in, given the land.
- All His work. The verse asks nothing of the slaves. What was due, He paid; what needed doing, He did.
- Redemption is power. "Redeem" here means more than forgiveness. It means God breaking the power that held His people captive.
- Sung, not just said. God promised in Egypt; Israel sang at the Red Sea. There the rescued people understood redemption and began to enjoy it.
And I will take you to me for a people, and will be your God; and ye shall know that I, Jehovah your God, am he who bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
Israel is still under Egyptian slavery, and God answers with a chain of promises. This verse sits at the heart of it: rescue is not the goal — belonging to God is.
The verse is not a stray promise. It is part of a sequence, held together at both ends by God's own name.
Linked with His name "Jehovah," He makes three statements about what He has done: "I have also established My covenant"; "I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel"; "I have remembered My covenant" (vv. 3-5). Then come seven "I wills." Because He is Jehovah, He says, "I will bring you out"; "I will rescue you"; "I will redeem you"; "I will take you to Me"; "I will be to you a God"; "I will bring you in"; "I will give it (the land) to you" (vv. 6-8). He concludes as He had begun, "I am the Lord."
Earlier God had promised to bring them out and bring them in. This verse adds something more.
Jehovah told Moses that He would bring Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3:8) and bring them into the land of Canaan. He was not just releasing them. He had a definite purpose and place in view for the redeemed nation. Chapter 6:7 adds to this, "I will take you to be my people." That goes beyond the earlier promise, which meant only a move from one place to another. It announces that they were to be Jehovah's own portion and people. No earthly blessing could be higher. For us it is in still higher measure as predestined "for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ" (Eph. 1:5), and "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself" (2 Cor. 5:18).
Israel brought nothing to this rescue. The reason for it lies entirely in God.
All this speaks the purest, freest, richest grace. Jehovah presents Himself to the hearts of His people as the One who would act in them, for them, and with them, to display His own glory. They were ruined and helpless, yet He had come down to show His glory, to display His grace, and to give a sample of His power in their full deliverance. His glory and their salvation could not be separated.
The verse ties knowing God to one act: He brought them out of Egypt.
Long ago, God asked the Jews to know Him as God on this very ground. He claimed their worship as the one and only God, because He had shown Himself to be their Redeemer. "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." In this action He had made Himself known as God, full of grace and power for captive sinners; and if we do not know Him like this, we do not truly know Him. Any thought about God that clashes with this is only a darkened creature busy with its own idolatry. The true God is the One who reveals Himself in redeeming grace and power. And here is a blessed truth: to know God is to know myself a sinner saved by grace.
Belonging to God carries a consequence. Israel's later history shows how seriously He held them to it.
You see separation clearly in the call of Israel out from among the nations of the earth to be "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex. 19:6). And when this people failed to stay separate from evil in the wilderness, God judged them twice in the clearest way… So, when they worshipped the golden calf, God removed His dwelling place from their midst to the tent pitched by Moses outside the camp (Ex. 33:7-10). How solemn it is to see God withdrawing His presence from the defiled camp of Israel, and that because they were His people, and He could not approve what they were willing to allow.
The promise runs straight from Egypt to Canaan. One stage of the journey never appears in it.
That was God's purpose, that was what He had come down for… That is out of Egypt into the land of Canaan, and no thought of the wilderness. He tells them He is going to do as He had said.
- Out — the seven "I wills" begin and end with "I am the LORD." The promise rests on who God is, not on what slaves could bring.
- His — leaving Egypt was only the start. "I will take you to be my people" makes them God's own portion. For believers now the place is higher still.
- Free — He acted while they were ruined and helpless. His glory and their salvation stand or fall together.
- Known — God asks His people to know Him as the One who brought them out. To know Him truly is to know Him as Redeemer — and to know yourself as a sinner saved by grace.
- Kept — a people taken to God is a people set apart, and He will not endorse in them what He has redeemed them from.
And I will bring you into the land concerning which I swore to give it unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; and I will give it you for a possession I am Jehovah.
God answers a crushed people and a discouraged Moses with a chain of promises, and this verse is the last of them. Two questions follow: why does God rest it all on His own name, and why is leaving Egypt only the start?
This verse ends a run of promises that starts two verses earlier. Notice how many there are, and how the list opens and closes.
Notice the seven "I wills." Seven in Scripture is always the number of spiritual completeness... And (6) "I will bring you into the land... and (7) I will give it to you for a possession: I am the LORD." It begins with "I am the LORD," and it closes with "I am the LORD." His "I will" never fails, and faith always rests on God's Word... Your redemption and mine does not depend upon what we are, it depends upon God.
The closing words are not a signature added at the end. They are the ground the whole promise stands on. They reach back to an agreement God made centuries before He gave the law at Sinai.
God would redeem them from Egypt and settle them in Canaan, the land where they had lived as pilgrims, only strangers in it. All of it was to be under that covenant, made 430 years before the covenant of the law. Galatians 3:17 tells us this, and also that the law could not cancel the earlier promise. Of course it could not, for Jehovah had made it, though the full meaning of that great name was not known to Abraham. God is true to what He is in Himself, regardless of what we may know Him to be. Great comfort comes to our souls when we grasp this.
God hands the land over as a gift. Nothing in the verse points to Israel's size, strength, or worth, and later Scripture says so plainly.
All this speaks the purest, freest, richest grace. Jehovah shows Himself to the hearts of His people as the One who would act in them, for them, and with them, to display His own glory. Ruined and helpless as they were, He had come down to show forth His glory... His glory and their salvation could not be separated. Later He reminded them of all this... "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set His love on you and chose you... but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers."
One thing is missing from the promise: the desert. When God states His purpose, He jumps straight from the bondage to the inheritance.
The desert forms no part of God's purpose. It is where we go through trials, and where we discover what we are and what God is for us. The desert is a school. Look at Ex. 3:8; Ex. 6:7-8; Ex. 15:16-17, and you will see that the desert is left out when God sets out His purpose. He redeems the Israelites from Egypt to bring them into Canaan; He says nothing about the desert. This is what happened to the thief on the cross. From his conversion he passed into paradise without ever going through the desert.
The gift points beyond ancient land. What God gives, His people must enter and enjoy, not just own on paper.
Israel's inheritance in Canaan is a picture of our inheritance in Christ in the heavenly places. The letter to the Ephesians tells us that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly places. In the same way, Joshua tells us that everything is ours. Everything belongs to the people. God has given it to them, and now they must take possession of their inheritance in the energy of faith.
The message was magnificent, but Israel could not take it in. Their reaction has a familiar shape today.
When Moses brought this message to Israel, however, they were so burdened with anguish that they were not willing to listen (v. 12). In the same way, a painful sense of his own guilt before God can crush someone. He may feel there is no hope for him, even while he hears the gospel.
- Name — The promise opens and closes with "I am the LORD"; everything rests on who God is, not on what Israel was.
- Oath — God swore the land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob under a covenant 430 years older than the law. The law could not cancel it.
- Gift — The land comes in pure grace. God chose them because He loved them and kept His oath, not because they were many.
- Destination — He brings out to bring in. The desert is a school along the way, not part of His stated purpose.
- Possession — Faith still has to enter what God gives, even when pain and bondage make the promise sound unbelievable.