Deuteronomy 3

In Deuteronomy 2, Moses spoke to the people concerning the land of Sihon. The victories east of the Jordan River may have helped the Israelites in their faith. We may guess at the human reasons as to why these events took place, but the Lord will not allow our horizontal explanations to be the last word here. Above all the affairs of nations, the Lord is God.

That story continues now with a second king, Og of Bashan. The Lord said to Moses, “Do not fear him, for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you shall do to him as you did to Sihon the king of the Amorites.”

The conquest generation gained a taste of the Lord's provision for them through victory in battle even before they entered Canaan. The justice of God against the nations had begun.

Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh had already experienced the power of God in conquest. The battle for Canaan itself was still to come for all the tribes, but the people of these two and a half tribes were finding peace in their inheritance.

These early experiences of conquest had a point that Moses pressed upon Joshua: “Your eyes have seen all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings. So will the Lord do to all the kingdoms into which you are crossing. You shall not fear them, for it is the Lord your God who fights for you.”

Moses was eager for the later stages of true conquest in the land of Canaan. He wanted to stay on earth to be with Israel in victory, but the Lord would not listen to him, though He did allow Moses to see the land from afar.

What lessons can we learn from this account of Israel's early steps toward the promised land?

Our New Testament mission began in such a different way with the power of Christ's suffering love and the death of the cross. Even today that worldwide mission of the church continues in the way that Jesus led. We do not go forth to kill, but to suffer and die for His Name. This could only be a victorious plan by the power of God. The Lord is just as committed to win through the cross today as he was in a very different age to bring a much smaller victory through the conquest of Canaan. Our “promised land” is heaven. While we are already there because of our union with Jesus Christ, there is also a sense in which we have not yet arrived. Yet the Lord is giving us a generous taste of our new home even now by His gift of the Holy Spirit.

We die daily. We offer up our bodies as living sacrifices in the Name of Christ. But we also rise again every morning to newness of life in the joy of the Lord. We are engaged in serious warfare, but we battle not against flesh and blood. We are called to put to death our sinful nature. Our flesh insists that the cross and the resurrection is the wrong way for us, but this way of Christ is the way of true power. It is the way that our Redeemer leads His church.

We live and die according to God's decree. When the time comes for our earthly labors to end, God takes us to higher ground, and we can view the story of the victory of the Lamb from a more beneficial vantage point. Until that day, we can trust Him with the timing of our journey, and with the future that He has for us beyond our earthly days.