Choices

We find Dear Reader, that the carpenter has left us a choice. It is recorded in the scriptures that the people of God were shown the promised land, and all contained within it. For forty days, representatives of all twelve tribes, were sent to explore and spy out the land. 

(Numbers 13:2ff)
The Lord now said to Moses, 2 “Send out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites. Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes.”

After this time they reported back that the land was full of "milk and honey", a bountiful place. This was of course what God had promised to the people, and he gave them a foretaste of what living in his Kingdom would be like. God showed them that this land was proven to be able to support their every need and desire. Yet with this came a problem, the land was already filled! 

Yet God had decreed its present occupiers were to be destroyed by the people of God, in accordance with the prophecy of God

Gen 15:12-16
"As the sun was going down, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a terrifying darkness came down over him. 13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “You can be sure that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign land, where they will be oppressed as slaves for 400 years. 14 But I will punish the nation that enslaves them, and in the end they will come away with great wealth. 15 (As for you, you will die in peace and be buried at a ripe old age.) 16 After four generations your descendants will return here to this land, for the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction.” "


In Exodus (23:27-29), God tells his people that "I will send my terror ahead of you and create panic among all the people whose lands you invade. I will make all your enemies turn and run. 28 I will send terror* ahead of you to drive out the Hivites, Canaanites, and Hittites. 29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply and threaten you."


These spies, should have been aware that God would enable them to overcome what was waiting for them in the promised land. If they appropriated his promise, the land they had seen for forty days, would be theirs for a life time. Yet Dear Reader they balked.
They become frightened of the people they saw, their size, their fortifications and their numbers.


"But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! "


Instead of stepping into the promises of God, they backed away and a whole generation of men did not enjoy the blessing of God.


Well Dear Reader, Jesus offers the same choice, he shows to us for forty days after his resurrection, the promise of what eternal life will be. 


(Acts 1) In my first book* I told you, Theophilus, about everything Jesus began to do and teach 2 until the day he was taken up to heaven after giving his chosen apostles further instructions through the Holy Spirit. 3 During the forty days after his crucifixion, he appeared to the apostles from time to time, and he proved to them in many ways that he was actually alive. And he talked to them about the Kingdom of God. 


He offers to his Apostles, his new tribal leaders, what the "land" will be like, what life in Christ is all about, and they.....believe. They trust, they act, and they start to reveal the Kingdom of God, in their lives and the lives of others. They pass this trust down to you and I, and we now can see what life in the Kingdom is all about. These Apostles, like us are tasked with clearing the land, by trusting in God. This land is not populated with people but by wrong concepts, thought and actions which are not worthy of the Kingdom of God. We still need to trust in the strength of Jesus to allow these "height of sin" to be removed from our lives.

So Dear Reader the choice is yours, a life in the Kingdom, but knowing the truth that Jesus' leading is needed to bring this about, or fear and turning away from the Shalom that he offers. 

Which will you decide?









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