Receiving God’s Healing Series

If God has ever placed a calling on your heart to serve Him, then He is inviting you to enter a spiritual Promised Land. He’s calling you to possess the land, just as He called the Israelites to possess Canaan; but before you can begin possessing the land you need to make sure your heart is right before God. Maybe you have been pursuing for quite some time, and you haven’t yet experienced a fulfillment of that calling. This could be the result of sin getting you off track. Perhaps, much of your journey has been difficult and filled with spiritual heartache and pain, and you may be wounded. If so, then you need to receive spiritual healing from the Lord.

In Exodus 19:4, the Lord told His people, “I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.” The wings of God represented the Lord’s shelter and healing for the people of Israel as they made their journey to the Promised Land. David said, “The children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings . . . for with You is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:7b, 9a); and the Lord declared in Malachi, “To you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” (4:2). It’s important to take some time to dwell under the shelter of God’s wings, for within His wings is healing for your weary heart and soul.

Restoration of the Covenant (vv. 2-7)

2 At that time the LORD said to Joshua, “Make flint knives for yourself, and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time.” 3 So Joshua made flint knives for himself, and circumcised the sons of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. 4 And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: All the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way, after they had come out of Egypt. 5 For all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness, on the way as they came out of Egypt, had not been circumcised. 6 For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people who were men of war, who came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they did not obey the voice of the LORD – to whom the LORD swore that He would not show them the land which the LORD had sworn to their fathers that He would give us, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” 7 Then Joshua circumcised their sons whom He raised up in their place; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way.

Here we read how Joshua instructed the Israelites to be circumcised a “second time” (v. 2). The Scripture explains what is meant by a second circumcision. The people who were now standing in Canaan were the offspring of the Israelites who had departed from Egypt.

In Numbers chapter 13, the Lord commanded Moses to send twelve spies to scope out the land of Canaan, and they were to report back on its bounty and inhabitants. The land was everything God had promised and more; however, the people felt inadequate to battle the inhabitants and they turned back in fear. As punishment for refusing to possess Canaan, the Lord made them wander in the wilderness for forty years. In Numbers chapter 14 the Lord admonished them, “The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness . . . But your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised” (Numbers 14:29a, 31).

Here, in Joshua chapter 5, we see that the Lord had fulfilled His promise, for the little ones had been brought in, and were now standing in the exact same place as their parents, overlooking the land and preparing for conquest. Verses 5 and 7 explain how all the children who were born in the wilderness had not yet been circumcised; so, they were instructed at this moment to undergo circumcision. This re-circumcision was not an individual matter, but a communal affair. The entire group needed to be circumcised, representing a second circumcision as a nation.

In Genesis chapter 17, the Lord instituted circumcision for Abraham as a sign of His covenant, or promise. God said that He would make of Abraham a great and blessed nation, and give his people the land of Canaan (Genesis 17:6-8). The Lord sought to keep His promise, until that moment in which Israel refused to possess Canaan, and fled in fear and disobedience. The New Bible Dictionary says, “While the nation walked in the wilderness under God’s displeasure, the covenant was, as it were, in suspended animation, and circumcision lapsed.”(1) In the wilderness the covenant was on hold, and the people temporarily lost the promise of blessing, as they had chosen to forfeit their calling.