What it Means to Come Into Blessing

Barclay F. Buxton was the father of Alfred Buxton, one of C. T. Studd's son-in-laws who went with him to the heart of Africa as a missionary. He was cofounder, with A. Paget Wilkes, of the Japan Evangelistic Band, that remarkable group of missionaries that saw such wonderful works of God in Japan. This is from the book Life's Possibilities:

"'I profess this day unto the Lord thy God that I am come unto the country which the Lord sware unto our fathers for to give us.' (Deut. xxvi. 3.)

"This Israelite knew he was in the inheritance, and wished to thank God for it. The inheritance was the type of the Heavenly Places that we read of in Ephesians, and of the Rest spoken of in Hebrews iv.

"If any one comes into the Heavenly Places to abide there, it means:--

"1. He has reached home, and the Wilderness is past. The wandering life is over. God had brought Israel to their home at last, where they could enjoy their rest and their inheritance. And spiritually it is the same to-day. Full salvation means coming out of the wilderness, and coming to a spiritual rest and home.

"Holiness is not a struggle. If it is so to you, you have not received all the Bible offers. The Bible offers rest and home, where someone else is responsible for you. Holiness is not living in the wilderness, up and down, sinning and repenting, coming near, then going afar; enjoying times with God, and then in darkness. Holiness is leaving the wilderness and coming home, into rest and peace, knowing that Someone else is responsible, 'the government is on His shoulders.'

"2. Then, secondly, it means death and resurrection. That is clearly shown in this story of the Children of Israel coming into the Land. God wanted it to be marked by a clear type of death and resurrection; so in the next chapter we read how twelve men, out of every tribe a man, took twelve great stones out of Jordan, and brought them up into the Land to the place where they lodged the first night. Also they took other twelve stones, and put them in the bed of Jordan. So there were twelve stones in the bed of Jordan. The twelve stones in the Jordan represented the twelve tribes, dead to their past life; the twelve stones on the bank represented the twelve tribes commencing a new life. Thus we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God. The resurrection life of Christ is working in us (Eph. ii. 4-6).

"3. It means, thirdly, that the enemies are cast out. 'Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites' (Joshua iii. 10). Thank God the power of the world, the flesh, and the Devil, may be overcome when the Holy Spirit comes to abide!

"4. And more than that. Coming into the Land means, fourthly, coming into possession. 'Behold the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee; go up and possess it' (Deut. i. 21). The Canaanites are cast out, and God gives to His people the possession of His grace, of His peace, of His joy, so that we are satisfied indeed with His goodness. Thus the people of God possess their possessions (Obad. v. 17). And they know that all things are theirs. (1 Cor. iii. 21).

"5. Fifthly, coming into the Land means coming into abundance. That this was a land of abundance was the great fact that God repeatedly put before the Children of Israel. Deuteronomy viii describes it like this: 'For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.' He is a God Who loves to give, and so He gives generously of all that we need of grace and life and power. He calls us to come right over Jordan, into the Land.

"Such are the spiritual blessings that are to be had now, by fully trusting the Lord. These are not experiences which we are ever to be seeking, and never obtaining. These are to be our 'possessions,' which we 'possess,' and know that we possess them.

"Let us search and try our hearts. If we have not yet experienced this grace, let us come again to the Lord Jesus. He has prepared it all for each one of His redeemed. We may 'come,' and 'enter in,' and 'possess' by faith in Him and His Word.

"He Himself has made the way for us, 'a new and living way' (Heb. x. 20), whereby we may 'enter into the holiest' (verse 19). In the story in Joshua, the ark was to go forward 2,000 cubits before the people. It went forward into the Jordan, and stayed there. Thus it made the way for the Israelites to pass over. The ark represented the Lord Jesus. He has gone this way before us; He went the way of death, by Gethsemene and the Judgment Hall, despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He went all that way to make a way for you and me, that we might come right over Jordan. The waters did not divide before Him. The 69th Psalm gives us one of His prayers, and it reads like this: 'Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.'

"Indeed, it was so for Him; the floods overflowed Him, the deep waters came in over Him, pain and suffering, the burden of sin, of the power of the devil. But He went forward in that dark path that He might make a way for us; and He has made for His people, and for His Church, a new and living way clean over Jordan; right into the Land, into all fullness and into all the blessing. Therefore we may now have boldness to enter into the holiest by the Blood of Jesus.

"Let us draw near in simple faith, for God would indeed bring souls right in. This will not be by your consecration, and--understand what I mean when I say--it is not by your desperate faith, but because the Lord Jesus has made the way for you. He draws near, and takes your hand, to bring you into the Land, into peace instead of distress; into home life instead of a wilderness; to follow Him and lean on Him, instead of trying to find your own way and do your best.

"It is only a step to Jesus, and to the fullness of blessing, because He has prepared the way. It is all ready, it is all yours in Christ; so pass clean [i.e., completely] over Jordan."