The knowledge and strength we gain in the wilderness will make it possible for us to stand when God begins to bring us against the enemies who are in possession of our inheritance, our rest, our land of promise. Every trace of sin, rebellion, and self-seeking must be purged from our personality.

If God were to bring us immediately into spiritual victory, responsibility, and power it is likely we would be tricked into deception by the cunning devices of Satan. The wilderness is not a good land, and Satan does not press us too much as long as we are wandering about in a hot desert wasteland, so to speak, far from the rich treasures of the Lord.

God calls us from our bondages and then promises that He is taking us to a glorious and fruitful land of peace and joy. The land of promise is our inheritance. It is the rest of God, the abiding of God in His people and they in Him. It is the land of fulfilled dreams, the impossible come true, the end of the rainbow.

However, there is a problem with the fulfillment of the glorious dream, with the end of the rainbow. It was a problem for the Hebrews and it is a problem for Christian believers. The difficulty is this: the land of promise is occupied. It is not vacant, ready to be taken over by God's flock. Our land of promise is occupied at this time by God's enemies.

The land of promise of Israel was occupied by savage tribes who practiced devilish idolatries, including the worship of their sexual lusts and the burning of their children in the fire as sacrificial offerings. Their abominable, degrading, demon-possessed patterns of behavior had been intensifying the wrath of God during the time Israel was multiplying in Egypt.

It was God's intention to use Israel as the sword of His judgment against the Philistines, just as it now is God's intention to use the Christians as the Holy Spirit-directed Word of God, the fiery Word of judgment, against the kingdom of Satan. The land of promise, in whatever form it takes, always is occupied by evil spirits until, in God's appointed time, they are driven out by those who are obedient, holy, and anointed with the Spirit of God.

When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: (Deuteronomy 7:1,2)

To be continued.