Good morning to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
You have probably moved from one place to another in your lifetime, perhaps several times, right? Do you remember the emotions and the practical challenges of packing all of your belongings, saying goodbye, and leaving behind the place and people which had been ‘home’ for you? What was the hardest part of leaving? And do you remember the challenges of making a new place become ‘home’? Did that happen quickly or take a long time? I wonder what you found to be the most important first steps for getting settled in a new place. Probably finding the right place to live, school for your children, places to purchase the necessities of life like groceries, and perhaps finding a church, right? And that applies no matter where ‘home’ is for you in the world, isn’t that true?
But what was it like for Joshua and more than 1 million Israelites who had just crossed the Jordan river and were now spending their first few days at Gilgal in this new land? They knew Gilgal was simply a first stop. The entire land was before them, but how would they know where to go and how to settle down in this land? And what gave them any right to believe this could be home for them? This huge group of people had not left a place they had called ‘home’. Oh no, on the contrary. The younger of the two generations at Gilgal, those age 40 and under, had all been BORN in the wilderness, during these 4 decades of wandering in the Sinai desert.
The older generation, those between age 40 & 60, had been children or teens when their parents and grandparents rushed out of Egyptian slavery 40 years ago, so they really didn’t have a home either. And there were only two people older than 60, Joshua and Caleb! 1 million homeless people. Think about that!
Now let me ask you another question that puts us into the middle of this remarkable story. Does your family have a ‘homeland’? I don’t mean a country, rather I mean a city or a place which has been considered ‘home’ to several past generations of your family, even if you personally have never lived in that ‘homeland’ place. The ‘homeland’ for my ancestors is a small town nearly 1300 miles from where I live. I was born there, as was my father and my grandfather, but I’ve only lived there a very few years of my life. Still, I’ve heard the stories about this place from three generations who have lived there and when I visit there, I can stand by the tombstones which bear my family name. How about you, do you have such a place?
For Joshua and these more than 1 million people the desert was certainly not their ‘homeland’ even though for most of them that’s all they knew! They’d been born in that hot Sinai desert and up until a few days ago, they’d never been anywhere else in their entire lives! But the desert could never be home. Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt for several generations, but Egypt wasn’t their homeland either. But there was a place, a ‘homeland’ place… this place where they had been camped for a few days after crossing the Jordan river.
What made this place their ‘homeland’? Oh, that’s a very important question. And the answer was simply this: GOD Himself had promised them this entire land, 500 years before, when God made a LAND and NATION Covenant with Abraham who was their ancestor. In fact, they all considered Abraham the father of this entire nation of more than 1 million people!
Now my dear friends, you and I know this land in the middle east, sometimes called Palestine, has been the focus of debate as to ownership for several millennia. Why? Because at that very moment, when the Israelites were camped at Gilgal, there were several other millions of people who also claimed Abraham as their ancestral father and therefore they believed they had as much right to this land as the Israelites! So, who decides who is the rightful heir to this land of God’s promise?
You see, when this huge nation of more than one million people, all descendants from Abraham, crossed the Jordan, they believed with all their hearts that they were coming ‘home’ to their God given, ‘ancestral homeland’. But how is that possible since none of them nor any of their ancestors for about 400 years had ever lived in this land? These with Joshua were for the first time in many, many, many generations, setting foot in this land. May I show you WHY Joshua and these Israelites felt it was their ‘homeland’?
God’s first promise of this land to anyone occurred about 2000bc as God spoke these words to a man known as Abram: “The LORD God appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give THIS land,’ So Abram built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him. (Gen. 12:7) This was land known then as Canaan. A few years before God had first appeared to Abram when he was 75 years old. God challenged Abram to leave his family homeland in Ur, that’s in modern day Iraq, and follow God to a land God would show Abram and give to him as his new family ‘homeland’. (Gen. 12:1-7)
This first promise was made to Abram as he arrived in Canaan. A short while later, God repeated His land covenant with more precision saying this to Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Gen. 15:8) Did you hear that my friends? The long list of peoples who already lived in that land. The southern border was Egypt, the western border the Mediterranean Sea, and the north and eastern border the great Euphrates River. The problem was God had used the word ‘descendants’ in this promise and Abram and his wife Sarai had no children, thus no descendants, and they were well beyond childbearing age!
A few years later Sarai offered her servant girl as a surrogate mother to start building this long-awaited family and Ishmael was born to Abram and Hagar. (Gen. 16) About 12 years later God appeared to Abram again and changed his name to Abraham, meaning the father of many nations. (Gen. 17:1-7) God said to Abraham “I will establish My Covenant as an everlasting Covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”(Gen. 17:7,8)
Then God instructed Abraham to give his son Ishmael, and all future male descendants of Abraham, the irreversible covenant mark of circumcision. (Gen. 17:9-14) Does this help you see why the first thing that happened at Gilgal, the circumcision of an entire generation of adult male Israelites, was so important? (Joshua 5:2-9) Can you see why this actually contributed to the confusion of whose ‘homeland’ this is?
Two years later the miracle for which Abraham and Sarah had prayed finally happened. When Abraham was age 100 and Sarah age 90, she became pregnant by Abraham and gave birth to the miracle son, Isaac, and on his 8th day, Abraham gave Isaac the Covenant circumcision mark! (Gen. 21:1-7) As you may recall envy grew between these two boys Ishmael and Isaac and their mothers, and finally God told Abraham the only solution was to send Ishmael and his mother Hagar away to build a life far away from Abraham. (Gen. 21:8-20) As painful as that was for Abraham, sending his firstborn son away, God’s next test of asking Abraham to sacrifice his only miracle son Isaac was even more painful.
You remember that great event recorded for us in Genesis 22, right? Do you remember it took place on the very hilltop which is under the golden ‘Dome of the Rock’ which stands in Jerusalem today, and not far at all from the hilltop called Golgotha just outside the Damascus gate in the city wall of Jerusalem. I stood in both places only a few weeks ago as I visited Israel. The Temple Mount, as you know, is under Arab Muslim control today because of this millennia old debate as to who can rightfully call this place their ‘homeland’?
So, let’s pause today right here, looking at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jews pray at the ‘wailing wall’ believing very strongly God gave this land to them by His promise to Abraham and his son Isaac who was nearly sacrificed here. Arab Muslims pray on the Temple Mount believing it is their homeland because they are descendants of Abraham and Ishmael, his eldest son, and because they believe their prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven for a visit from this hilltop and taught them that Ishmael was the son taken by Abraham to be sacrificed there. Oh my, what is the solution to this impasse, my friends? Will you join me here tomorrow and we’ll discover it together?
Today’s Scripture is Genesis 17.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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