GILGAL
GILGAL
GWH You were saying that Moses stood for the authority of God. What would you say about Joshua?
JT He represents Christ as the spiritual Leader. In the main Moses is Christ leading the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness, where authority is always needed, and Joshua is Christ leading them into Canaan. .
WB What is the thought of resurrection in this chapter?
JT My thought was to show how we are made to correspond with the truth of resurrection. There are certain exercises that follow upon the light of chapter 3, and I think circumcision and the passover are necessary to these exercises. Chapter 4 shows, in the stones in the bed of the river and those on the bank, our identification with the Lord in death, that we have been into death with Him, and also that we have come out of death with Him. Chapter 3 makes prominent the thought of the ark; the Lord in His own power going into death. It is important that He should be distinctly held before our souls in that light. Whilst it is on the experimental side, yet it is the Lord’s personal distinctness as grappling with death, as seen in Gethsemane. The Lord was there face to face with the enemy, who brought to bear upon His spirit, death in all its significance.
RSS What is the difference between the twelve stones placed in the bed of the river and the twelve on the bank?
JT The stones in the river are the testimony that Christ has been into death and we in Him; those at Gilgal set forth that He has come out of death and the saints with Him. I think both testimonies are in His Person.
AHT [p. 109] Is there any connection between the passover which is celebrated in the land and His death?
JT Circumcision and the passover have reference to certain exercises which the believer goes through consequent upon the light of chapter 3, but he is not really yet in the land properly. These chapters are preparatory to privilege. The passover is connected with three positions; the first in Egypt, the second in the wilderness, the third at Gilgal, as in this chapter. It refers to the saints accepting the judgment which the Lord has been subjected to on account of sin in the three positions which we occupy, our deliverance from Egypt, as related to the testimony in the wilderness, and as related to our privilege in Canaan. Circumcision has reference to our disallowance of the flesh as a means or instrument of activity. The flesh is not to be used; it is of no use at all in divine things.
WJN Would you say that is the point of the warning in the epistle to the Colossians, the intrusion of the flesh in divine things?
JT Yes, certainly, the putting off of the body of the flesh, which means the totality of it, in the circumcision of Christ; the believer now seeing that it is worse than useless. That was the point in the institution of circumcision. “I am the Almighty God; walk before me and be thou perfect”. Then He gave Abraham the covenant, and the covenant meant that Abraham and his seed, as born after the flesh, had to go in death. The promises did not refer at all to him as in the flesh.
Ques Is the truth of baptism in any way introduced in this chapter?
JT I think baptism is the Red Sea. The Red Sea and Jordan are brought together in Colossians. Baptism has reference to what is outside of us, [p. 110] circumcision to whatis inside.
ARS Why is it that circumcision comes after Jordan?
JT Because when you see that you are risen with Christ you discover that the flesh and everything that is attached to it, the reproach of Egypt, must go, for the flesh and Egypt are found in the Christian. The light comes to you as you are prepared for it. Circumcision and flesh are introduced here because the people are prepared for it. The flesh is wholly unsuitable to the scene here. “We are the circumcision who worship God by the Spirit and have no confidence in the flesh”. That is what this leads to, that the believer has no confidence in the flesh. He is entitled to put it off because God has set it aside in the death of Christ. The flesh was the only power we had before the death of Christ, but now we are entitled to put it off. In Abraham it was all objective because quickening was not there; and circumcision agrees with the truth of the Almighty God. The truth of the Almighty God means, in Christianity, that we have the Spirit, and that involves circumcision. The Spirit in us corresponds with the truth of the Almighty God; and if we have the Spirit we can afford to abandon the flesh.
WB You mean in the way of power?
JT Yes, we have power for it; there was no circumcision in the wilderness. It is not until you come into Canaan that it becomes evident how incongruous the flesh is. It is wholly unsuitable to the scene, and hence circumcision is brought in.
RSS What are the three aspects of the passover to which you alluded?
JT The first is in Egypt. The people are in the presence of satanic power in the world, and what are they to do? They are no better than Pharaoh or the Egyptians, hence the passover lamb roast with fire was needed. God was shut out as a Judge by the blood of the lamb. But the lamb [p. 111] itself was subjected to the fire, meaning that God’s holy judgment was seen there. That referred to the Israelites as much as to the Egyptians; but the Israelites accepted it by eating the roast lamb, so that in Egypt it is connected with their deliverance from Satan’s power in the world; they judged themselves by appropriating Christ as the sacrifice roast with fire, subjected to God’s holy judgment, as a sacrifice for sin.
RSS What is the aspect of the passover in the wilderness?
JT The point there is that we are to be associated with God’s testimony, and that must be as by judging sin; so the passover has to be accepted. In Corinthians we read: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us”, so that we “keep the feast ... with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”. Then in this chapter it is to be maintained in connection with privilege. How can we enter into divine privilege unless the judgment of sin is maintained in our souls?
WB We need that whatever position we occupy.
JT Yes, we are down here, and these types refer to us as down here; they refer mainly to the history of God’s people during the absence of Christ; and while that remains we have to maintain the passover.
RSS So that the passover is just as great an obligation for the Christian as it was for the Israelite?
JT Clearly. “Christ our passover”, says Paul, “is sacrificed for us”.
RSS And if we do not keep the feast we shall not be able truly to observe the Lord’s supper?
JT Just so. It really comes before the supper. There are other elements connected with the passover. There is the feast of unleavened bread, which continued seven days. The passover was killed on the fourteenth day, and the feast, continued for seven [p. 112] days. There is only one killing of the passover, but there has to be sufficient bread to sustain us during the whole seven days.
WB That answers to our whole course here?
JT I think so.
WB I should like to ask if there is any connection between circumcision and the passover, and why is it that the one should precede the other?
JT I think what is more immediately in the mind of the Spirit is the flesh in the Christian, as in Colossians. The flesh intrudes, and hence the Spirit says, we are to make sharp knives, as though the difficulty is very real. And it is a very real difficulty with Christians, because, after all, we like somehow to retain the flesh as if there was something good in it, as we see in the epistle to the Colossians.
WB And 2 Corinthians shows how severe the Corinthians were with themselves in what they judged.
JT I think they used the “sharp knives”. Circumcision meant a clean cut. It was to be a total cutting off. That is the significance of the word sharp. But the passover refers to sin as such; circumcision has to do with the flesh.
WB Is that the same as in Colossians: “Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth”?
JT Yes, it is the same in principle. What you might call objective truth in regard to circumcision is the circumcision of Christ. It is on that ground you circumcise. I believe that every subjective truth has a corresponding objective truth.
JNH The circumcision of Christ was accomplished in His death; here they were to encamp at Gilgal, and they were to return to Gilgal after going out to fight the Lord’s battles and having had success. That is where the flesh would come in.
JT That emphasises what we have [p. 113] been saying.
that we are to maintain the disallowance of the flesh.
WJN What we have here would set forth the soul coming to it for the first time; that is, to the putting off of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; but the returning to Gilgal after each battle would answer more to the maintenance of it. It has to be maintained.
JT I think so. After a victory the flesh is always ready to assert itself, as if it had had something to do with it.
WJN That is self-confidence.
JT Yes, just as we see in the Israelites. They said that a few of them could take Ai, that many need not go up. That was confidence in the flesh. But what the believer sees is the power of God, and God would have him to rely on that power and on no other power. Circumcision corresponds with the revelation of God as the Almighty. What marked the people was that God was among them. There was the shout of a king among them. In a general way what marked them was the presence of a divine Person. So that the psalmist raises the question: “What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest?” Again, “Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord”. It was God known in the camp of Israel. When the host approached the sea, it fled. It was not God apart from the people. The sea fled at the presence of the people, because God was in the midst of the people. So this chapter begins with the terror that filled the inhabitants of Canaan, “because of the children of Israel”.
WB We get the same thing in Acts 5. There was great fear upon every one. The power of God was there. Sin was judged; evil was kept out.
JT I think that answers in the New Testament to this. Circumcision was the sign in every male in Israel that the first order of man was discarded. Although they did not understand it, that was the [p. 114] testimony that God placed in Israel. That man was discarded in the presence of the revelation of God as the Almighty.
RSS That which answers in another way to circumcision is the gift of the Spirit now. They were marked in the Old Testament in their flesh, in their bodies, as God’s people. Now God gives the Spirit, and it is that which really set the flesh aside.
JT In whom is the flesh set aside but in the man who has the Spirit? You may be baptised, but you can only be in the truth of circumcision by the Spirit. So Paul says: “we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God ... and do not trust in flesh”, Philippians 3: 3.
Ques Is it self-judgment,?
JT It is self-judgment, and more; the man who is in the truth of circumcision has no confidence in the flesh at all. It includes all the exercises of the flesh, everything that marks Egypt goes with it.
Ques Circumcised the eighth day. What is the significance of that?
JT It was a new departure. It indicated that the first man had seven days to prove what he was. Seven days being the perfect time of testing he had opportunity to prove what he was, and therefore he is set aside. I think it refers also to the Lord’s death. The period of the Lord’s sojourn here was brought to an end.
RSS In Christianity it corresponds with the first day?
JT Yes. So that applying it in a spiritual way it refers to Christianity. We come into the eighth day. We are the really circumcised ones. In Christianity it marks a new departure, a new order of man. The number eight is very interesting. It is the first number after seven. Seven appears in Genesis 2, and indicates God’s order of creation. The eighth day recognises that order and is connected [p. 115] with it, but it is a new departure in it, tantamount to the first day in another order of things. The next number in Scripture is twelve, which shows that in the new order there is administration. The number eight is seen in Noah. He was one of eight; 2 Peter 2:5. There was a new order of things introduced in Noah. The old creation was recognised, but a new order was introduced in it. Then, consequent upon that, in the family of Abraham you have twelve, which signifies that God’s system is marked by administration. The next number after twelve, I think, is ten. That is seen in the commandments, putting man under responsibility.
AFM What about seventy? The seventy leaders and the seventy sent forth by the Lord?
JT I think it is multiplication of blessing or power, but connected with human responsibility; the seventy palm trees, the seventy elders, and the seventy witnesses of Christ. It is ten times seven. It refers to multiplication of spiritual power as distinct from twelve, which is ordered administration. If we do not take account of the things that are mentioned in Scripture we shall never understand the “age to come”. Every divine thought is taken up there. The things there all allude to previous testimonies.
ARS I notice that Stephen, as dying, sees Jesus in heaven. You would connect that with the eighth day?
JT Yes; and then you have all the new order of things in Paul’s ministry opened up consequent upon that.
WB The passover dealt with things negatively. The food and the conquests that follow are positive. You get the old corn of the land and the leader of the Lord’s host.
JT Yes. But I think we ought not to omit, before going on to that, the effect of the testimony — [p. 116] the passage of Jordan — upon the inhabitants of Canaan. The Canaanites in their terror connected it with the people of Israel. It says, “because of the children of Israel”. And following on that you get the “sharp knives”. God said to them, as it were, ‘It is not you as in flesh that causes all this terror; it is not your power; it is my power’. God will not support the flesh. The truth of circumcision is introduced in the presence of God as the Almighty. God Almighty and circumcision go together. I think the wilderness experience discovers the flesh to us. Circumcision here involves that it has been already discovered. The new surroundings involve that the flesh can no longer be tolerated.
Rem When the children of Israel maintained the truth of circumcision the power of God came out; it was manifested to be the power of God.
JT When they returned to Gilgal the power was there.
WB The serpent of brass was its condemnation, but does not circumcision here set forth a further part of the truth, as to the subtleties of the flesh?
JT What the serpent of brass represented was sin in the flesh — sinful flesh. But the believer might reason that that does not refer to his mind, his intellect, nor to that flesh which establishes religious ceremonies. That was the state of things at Colosse. They were not troubled with sin in the flesh, but with the mind of the flesh; man’s mind working out philosophy and the like. I believe that is what is alluded to here; that that cannot be tolerated in the Christian circle.
WB But was not the temple worship all arranged by God to produce religious feelings in man? There were men-singers, women-singers, and ritual.
RSS Here we get God completely setting aside the flesh, but later, in the history of the [p. 117] children of Israel God institutes a service which seems to recognise it.
JT Yes. But that service must be regarded simply as a type. It refers to the service that is now established in Christ in a spiritual way. He is the great choir leader. The epistle to the Hebrews shows that there is a wholly new system established in Christ, but the flesh is not recognised in it at all.
RSS In the service of the Israelites in Solomon’s day there was a recognition of man after the flesh.
JT Certainly. That is what I have been saying. Circumcision was there as the testimony that man was set aside in God’s mind, and yet God was still going on with him historically, because another Man had not yet appeared. The new man had not come in yet.
RSS And God was giving the man after the flesh everything to help him — music, etc.
JT Quite so. So that the period before circumcision, the wilderness, included in type the ministry of Christ; there was the complete testing of man. But Christianity is the eighth day. Christianity introduces circumcision in its true spiritual meaning.
WB The majority of Christians today are connected with what we might call temple-worship, the development of that particular religious flesh which can be wrought upon by music, singing and ritual.
JT Quite so. Therefore Christendom is apostate in principle. It has gone back; it has receded from the position in which God established Christianity — a spiritual position. It has gone back to a religion of the flesh.
Ques Would that answer to the “concision”? Philippians 3: 2.
JT I think it does. Concision involves a partial sort of thing, not a complete cutting [p. 118] off.
WB It is not complete. There are marks, but not a cutting off.
RSS But God did not utterly ignore the flesh until after the death of Christ. Man did not prove his utter inability to please God until the death of Christ.
JT So that circumcision in its spiritual significance is in the death of Christ. We do not reach the truth of circumcision until we are in the eighth day.
RSS So that what we get in this chapter, actual circumcision of the flesh, is really a testimony on God’s part.
JT It was a testimony placed there for us, hundreds of years before the truth of it came out.
RSS All these things happened unto them as types.
AFM Whatever was taken up in the Old Testament has been carried into the New, and in a spiritual way maintained in the assembly, so we may find in the assembly what answers spiritually to the temple, the music, priesthood, and so on. Do you not think so?
JT Certainly. What God had before Him was a spiritual order of things. That is now inaugurated. So the Lord says, in resurrection, “In the midst of the assembly will I sing thy praises”. There you have the true Priest, and the true worship of God established.
WB In the first two of Israel’s kings we get the principle illustrated, Saul represented the flesh, and he was superseded by David, the man after the Spirit.
JT Saul was helped by God. If there ever was a man who had God’s support it was Saul, yet he proved an utter failure. But David was no afterthought with God. It was not that God had to resort to David, because David is introduced in [p. 119] the Scriptures before Saul. We have the genealogy of David before ever Saul is heard of. Christ was no afterthought with God in any sense, even as Man, In forming Adam God knew perfectly what would happen. God began with Christ. One of the greatest thoughts in the book of Revelation, as to both God and Christ, is that They are the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. God began with Christ and He ends with Christ. I think that the Alpha and the Omega conveys the thought that God was the first Speaker, and He the last Speaker, because the figure is taken from language, and the first and the last would have reference to Christ. He was personally the first One before God as well as the last. The beginning and the end show that He was in view in all God’s operations, and the great comfort of it is that the end must agree with the beginning. If God is the Alpha and the Omega the end must agree with the beginning. So that all the operations that go on between the beginning and the end are simply to reach the end.
AFM God could not entrust anything to man. That is what was proved, and everything lay in the Son becoming Man.
JT God knew perfectly that it would be so. Nothing is perfect until the Son appears, and then you have everything in permanency.
RSS Could we have something now about the old corn of the land and the ceasing of the manna?
AFM Would you say that the old corn speaks on the one hand of privilege, and on the other of conflict?
JT Yes. The old corn of the land is Christ ascended. It is one thing to see Christ coming down, it is another thing to see Him going up. The old corn of the land is Christ as ascended. I think that Christ come down refers to our path here. The old [p. 120] corn of the land is more than Christ risen, it is Christ ascended, because it refers to what He is in His own sphere. John 6 is Christ coming down, Christ here on earth, humbled, in flesh, and He is food for the believer. He is food for the world in that light.
WB What do you regard the food in John 6 to be? Is it represented by any type in the Old Testament?
JT I do not know -of any type because it is universal. It is what Christ was. The food and drink that He would give them would be His flesh and His blood. It refers to Christ as in flesh here and dying, and it takes account of us as we are. The result of eating is eternal life, but the food itself is Christ in death, His flesh and His blood, and it is universal; it is for the world. The Jew was tested by the presentation of Christ in that way. If they did not appropriate a dead Christ they had no life in themselves. Eating and drinking are the strongest expression of appropriation so that in appropriating a dead Christ you accept your own death.
RSS It is affection that appropriates, is it not?
JT We see in the disciples how it works: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life”. That is, they were attached to Christ, and hence they would not leave Him, whereas the mass did leave Him. I think that John 6 always contemplates the Lord as dying. Even if He is in resurrection He is the One who died. But the old corn of the land refers to Christ as entirely heavenly, not simply as the One who died. The old corn grew in the land.
WHO Do we not feed on Him in a sphere where we never die? “He that eateth toe, even he shall live by me”.
JT John 6 is life in a scene of death you do not die because you feed on Christ, though everybody [p. 121] else dies. When you come to the old corn you are outside the sphere of death.
AFM That answers more to John 20.
JT I think it does; Christ going up.
Rem The manna was food, so is the old corn of the land.
JT The manna sustains you in the wilderness, where you carry out God’s will, but the old corn of the land sustains you in Canaan. You require that kind of food there, otherwise, your constitution would not be equal to the surroundings.
WJN And the manna refers really to what Christ was as a Man here; not as dying, but as living, carrying out God’s will down here.
JLJ So you do not get the manna in John 6 at all.
JT Only in the way of contrast. “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died”. But the old corn of the land is Christ as belonging to heaven personally, because the corn grew in Canaan; it was indigenous to Canaan. “Stored” corn is the word, the corn of the year before, showing the plentifulness in the land.
RSS Old corn of the land would be in John 3: “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but ... the Son of man which is in heaven”, and John 6: “What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?”
JT Yes, the Person belongs to heaven. And again in chapter 20, “I have not yet ascended to my Father”. He was ascending to His Father.
APM What about Corinthians: “As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly”?
JT That shows the order of man. It is a wonderful thought that we are called to fill a place in heaven. We must be built up for that. In other words, we must feed on the heavenly Man, we must [p. 122] appropriate the Man who is at home there, who belongs to that scene, otherwise we are not fit for it.
RSS Now we are getting our education for what is coming, for what we shall be in the midst of actually, before long.
JT Quite so. How is the city formed? It comes down from God out of heaven. There is nothing incongruous about it. It is at home there. But how? By its acquaintance with Christ. The assembly is made to know Christ so intimately as the heavenly One that she is perfectly at home in the heavenlies.
WHC Eating His flesh and drinking His blood, is that the appropriation of death, and the negative side; and “He that eateth me, even he shall live by me”, is that the positive side?
JT That is present and continuous. “Unless ye shall have eaten (it is a different tense) ye have no life”. We have definitely at a given period to appropriate the death of Christ, and there has to be continuance, so “he also who eats me”; that is continuous — it is a further thing, for continuous sustenance of life.
WHC Is that in the sphere of life? Is not the manna what we eat in the wilderness, in the sphere where we die, and “He that eateth me, even he shall live by me”, that is in a sphere where we do not die?
JT But I think that the sphere of death is contemplated — there you do not die, while others do. But this chapter in Joshua contemplates a sphere of life.
Ques What bearing on this has the Lord’s answer to Mary Magdalene in John 20?
JT That appropriation of Him is not to be as He was here in flesh. If she is to touch Him it must be in connection with new associations, and as ascended. “Touch me not; for I have not yet [p. 123] ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren”. She finds Him in that circle.
Ques Will you say a few words on the Captain of the Lord’s host?
JT Well, I think the thought there is that now you are prepared for conflict. The old corn of the land is privilege. The book of Joshua is a type, I think, of apostolic labours, and in principle of the whole church-position here upon earth in conflict. These chapters that we have been considering are preparatory for the conflict, so that the saints should be set in the full light and understanding that the power is to be spiritual. It is to be God’s power. And what we see in the Leader is that we are under the military direction of Christ. It is a military scene, so to speak. I think it is of importance that saints should get the idea of Christ as Leader. What comes to light here is that Christ is the military Leader. “As Captain of the host of Jehovah am I now come”. Joshua was not that really.
Rem In the incident in this chapter Joshua is not exactly representative of Christ. The Captain of the Lord’s host is Christ.
JT Yes, Joshua had to take his place as one of the rest; “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot”. The Lord here, I think, asserts His title as the military chief of God’s host.
JNH It reads, “captain of Jehovah’s army” in the New Translation.
JT Yes, Joshua said, “Art thou for us?” But that was not the point at all. The Lord does not say I am for you — but “as captain of the army of Jehovah am I now come”. He is, as it were, saying to Joshua, ‘It is a question as to whether you are with me, not whether I am with you’. It refers to the whole church-position, viewed as militant. We are still militant.
Rem We are exhorted to warfare in 2 [p. 124] Timothy.
JT Yes, warfare, you might say, is a characteristic feature of 2 Timothy. It is warfare right through to the end, and the comfort is that the Lord remains as Captain of Jehovah’s host; hence all will result in complete victory. But, then, the ground is holy.
AAT What is the point there?
JT Well, we are to be holy in warfare. In participating in divine warfare all natural and vindictive thoughts are to be abandoned. We are apt to be vindictive in warfare, but holiness excludes all that.
AFM There is a reference in Ephesians to the armour. That would apply to us. There are the various parts of the armour, so that the Christian using them is proof against all the wiles of the devil. But it is an armour of a peculiar kind, and it is involved in the gospel. It speaks of righteousness, truth, faith, and so on.
JT Just so. The armour is subjective. In other words, it applies to the state of the Christian.
AFM In the gospel, of course, it presents itself objectively, but it is wrought out subjectively in one’s life.
JT When we come to the actual conflict in Joshua, the people are made to feel at the outset, in the greatest victory, that the power is of God. They do not strike a blow in the conquest of Jericho at all. It is a question of carrying the ark round the city and blowing with the trumpets.
JNH But at Ai they were defeated; they struck a blow there.
JT Yes, they attempted to take that city in their own strength.
Rem “The weapons of warfare are not carnal”.
JT I think we ought to have great confidence in the power and beauty of Christ, in the strength of [p. 125] the testimony of Christ, in the sounding of the rams’ horns.
Ques What does the sounding of the rams’ horns refer to?
JT The announcement of the testimony. The ram was the offering for consecration. The ram is a mature animal, a lamb is not. A lamb is diminutive, but a ram has come to maturity. It refers to Christ in the perfection of His manhood giving Himself in devotedness to God in sacrifice; and the rams’ horns would be, as some one has said, the power and beauty of Christ.
WB We get the two beautifully brought out in Genesis 22. “God will provide himself a lamb”, and then there was a ram caught in the thicket by the horns.
WJN The ram was the animal used for consecration of the priests, Revelation 8: 18.
JT Yes; every animal used in sacrifice had a significance; and a ram refers, I think, to maturity in manhood, which is necessary for priesthood.