Joshua led the children of Israel into their inheritance. If we want to do the same, what kind of people should we be?
26. The Joshua generation will start to be known and get public attention.
Before the revival we experienced here in 2011, virtually no-one outside of North Devon knew we even existed. Suddenly, because of what God began to do here, all kinds of people noticed us, from all over the country, and began to look to build relationship with us.
And some of the other things which have happened since – not least Ian Clayton coming here, and then mentioning us wherever he went – have made us known in countries all over the world. This blog gets hits from the UK and Europe, but also from Africa, America, Australia, Russia and the Far East. Hundreds worldwide have joined our Engaging God programme, and thousands subscribe to the YouTube channel.
Who would have expected that? It certainly was not of our own devising. God has a reason for it. He wants us to help other people come into the revelation we have received, and He wants us to equip and enable them to enter into their own inheritance.
So the LORD was with Joshua, and his fame was in all the land (Joshua 6:27).
Now, ultimately none of this is really about our fame – it is about God’s fame. We are here to make God known in all the earth. But we will have public recognition along the way, and that will bring public battles. Those battles will happen because what we are bringing will cause a reaction both in the spiritual realm and in this one.
All sorts of criticism and all sorts of accusations will be made because of what we are doing. A lot of people do not understand, yet. They will say we are doing things by New Age or occult power. They said that about Jesus, too, and we need to be ready for it. We need to be confident in our identity and in the revelation God has given us. We will be in the public eye, one way or another. So we have to make sure there is absolutely no pride in what we do. We need to be humble. It is about what God is doing, not about what we are doing. It is all about Him, but he uses us. Therefore we must rule our house, and deal with anything of sin or iniquity in us, deal with any stumbling blocks in our own lives.
If we have a need for affirmation or recognition from men, we are going to have to deal with that, because it is affirmation from God that we really need. And if we do receive affirmation and recognition from people, let us receive it with thanks, but then go and trade with it on the trading floors of heaven. Go and cast your crowns before Him.
27. The Joshua generation will take a radical stand against sin.
Sin is going to get exposed. It is already happening, always has. But the whole angelic realm are going to become active in exposing sin.
“Rise up! Consecrate the people and say, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, for thus the LORD, the God of Israel, has said, “There are things under the ban in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the things under the ban from your midst.”’ … It shall be that the one who is taken with the things under the ban shall be burned with fire, he and all that belongs to him, because he has transgressed the covenant of the LORD, and because he has committed a disgraceful thing in Israel” (Joshua 7:13, 15).
We cannot have things in our midst which stop us standing in victory against the enemy. We need to see those things removed. That is part of the function of those gathering angels, who are removing stumbling blocks from among us. Purification, refining: the heat of God’s furnace is being turned up, in order to bring all the impurities in the gold to the surface. Then, when they are skimmed off, the surface of gold is an absolute mirror which is reflecting the glory of God. That is what our lives are there to do: to reflect the glory of God – to reflect what is in heaven – on earth.
We are coming into a time when the story of Ananias and Sapphira is going to become very important to understand. They lied to the Holy Spirit and dropped down dead. When we start to enter into these things which God is revealing, suddenly the levels of responsibility go up. And with more responsibility, certainly there is more authority and power – but the level of purity and holiness required to operate in that dimension also is greatly increased.
I am responsible to enter into the fire of God myself. And I am putting it out there for you too, but it is up to you what you do with it. I have discharged my responsibility, you must decide how you will respond. Are you going to enter the fire? Either way, the consequences are yours.
28 The Joshua generation will be careful to always seek counsel from God before making decisions.
It is dangerous for us to do things here on earth (going to and fro) without first having been in heaven. We must not do it.
So the men of Israel took some of their provisions, and did not ask for the counsel of the LORD. Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them, to let them live; and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them (Joshua 9:14-15).
They made a covenant with a people who tricked them, who pretended not to be inhabitants of the land, but to have come from a long way off. And Joshua did not lift up his eyes into the heavens to see. This covenant with the Gibeonites was a problem for Israel for generations to come. They made a covenant with the enemy, because they did not seek God first.
We must not make decisions based on what looks right. Looks can be deceiving. We cannot trust our natural eyes: we need to see in the realms of the spirit if we are to make right decisions. Getting our strategy direct from heaven is the only course that will keep us safe.
29. The Joshua generation will put the enemy under their feet.
The enemy here is not people. We do not put people under our feet. We do not tread all over people. We do not tread people down. We honour and respect people. We bring people from captivity into freedom. That means we do cast out demons, we do demolish strongholds, we deal with a spiritual reality which is beyond what we see in the natural. We need to see the giants defeated, and the dragons, and all the other principalities and powers and rulers in those dark realms. So we have to put the enemy under our feet.
In this passage, the kings represent those rulers in the heavenly realms:
When they brought these kings out to Joshua, Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with him, “Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings.” So they came near and put their feet on their necks. Joshua then said to them, “Do not fear or be dismayed! Be strong and courageous, for thus the LORD will do to all your enemies with whom you fight” (Joshua 10:24-25).
Through the power and victory of the cross, Jesus made a public spectacle of all the demonic realms, and they are no longer in authority. We have authority over them. We may not yet have taken proper hold of that authority, but we are beginning to do so.
We have to rule over them, and put the rulers in those realms under our feet.
30. The Joshua generation will operate in great signs and wonders.
Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “O sun, stand still at Gibeon, And O moon in the valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? (Joshua 10:12-13a).
A supernatural event: time stood still. It gave them opportunity to defeat their enemy.
(The book of Jashar mentioned here, by the way, was excluded from the canon of scripture by the Nicene Council, operating under the authority of the Emperor Constantine. He did not want any of this stuff to be known, because he did not want ordinary believers to know they could rule. He wanted to rule, through the pastors in the church whom he paid; and that gave rise to the institutional structure that we still have to see dismantled today. Get the CD, as Ian Clayton says – he did a whole session on that. They tried and failed to get 1 and 2 Peter thrown out too, and the book of Jude (which says some very interesting things you don’t find elsewhere in scripture). Those books talk about entering these realms, about operating in authority and power in the heavenlies. But there are a whole lot of books that used to be regarded as scripture which did not make it into our canon because the enemy did not want them there).
And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. There was no day like that before it or after it, when the LORD listened to the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel (Joshua 10:13b-14).