I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the in-between hymns.
Today’s song is The Lord Has Given a Land of Good Things.
I don’t know who wrote this one or even the precise date of publication. I remember singing it in the early 1980s. It probably emerged in the 1970s charismatic movement.
Some might be a little disturbed by the military analogies. But that’s all they are – analogies. In the Old Testament, God sent Israel to judge the wicked Canaanites. If some guy told me that God told him to form an army to wipe out a wicked group of people, I’d refuse. How could I be sure that God really told him anything?
And if God appeared to me and told me to do it, I might worry that it was a hallucination. But what if God manifested Himself in a very public and obvious way, as He did in the early chapters of the Book of Exodus and commanded us to invade a land? Would I say, “I’m sorry God, I don’t agree with you”? That would be putting myself above God 😀.
The New Testament church were never commanded to spread the gospel by military means. In later centuries when whole nations became nominally “Christian”, the nation might go to war. And powerful church structures such as the medieval church sometimes launched crusades against dissident Christians and other religions. But after the reformation, the more spiritually-minded groups tended to want to separate church and state. And nowadays, I would think that this is what most people in multi-cultural Western nations want to stick with.
But this song is about spiritual warfare. The promised land that it speaks of isn’t a physical land. You can think of it as heaven or as living a life of joy and victory down here. And we battle to accomplish that together.
With the high praises of God in our mouth
And a two-edged sword in our hand,
We"e'll march right on to the victory side,
Right into Canaan's land.
So, to get there, we fight all that’s sinful within, we resist external bad influences on us, and we fight the devil and his forces, through things like faith, knowledge of Scripture, and prayer.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Ephesians 6:13-18
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
Here are some other hymns that use Canaan, Zion or Jerusalem as an analogy for moving into a place where God’s presence to bless is manifested, which is heaven ultimately, but which can be experienced here on earth to some degree.
And here are some other versions of today’s hymn:
Hibernia Gospel 