JOSHUA 3
The people now move with Joshua, and they are called to lodge three days before they go over Jordan, which suggests a preparatory exercise in connection with important spiritual movements. I do not think God would have His people act, as it were, on the spur of the moment; He would have us consider what we are doing, especially in relation to spiritual movements, so that we do not act on sudden impulses. We act with consideration and conviction.
As we see in chapter 1, three days were allotted for the preparation of victuals. “Prepare yourselves victuals, for in three days ye shall pass over”, it suggests that food is an important element in connection with that spiritual movement which is set forth in the crossing of the Jordan. It is a spiritually nourished people, not a starving people, that go over Jordan. Then the three days suggest the preparation of their hearts, the preparation of our hearts, to understand what the crossing of Jordan really means. The Lord spoke of three days: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”, and He spoke of being three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. “Three days” is an important period. When the light of heaven shone into Paul’s heart there were three days of preparatory exercise; there were three days in which he could not see and in which he did not eat or drink. There must have been deep exercises going on in his soul, but that was a necessary preparation for the new movement that he was about to make. I do not mean to say that in his case it was going over Jordan, but it was preparation for a great spiritual movement; he was about to move entirely out of the region of the flesh into the region of the Spirit. No doubt the deep exercise of the three days was needed in order that he might fully appreciate what he was going to move out of and what he was going to move into. I think the three days were always present to the mind of the Lord. At the beginning of His ministry in John 2 He speaks of “after three days”, showing that the thought of passing over to the resurrection side was much before Him at the very beginning of His ministry.
At the end of three days it is suggested that the people are prepared to fix their eyes on “the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God”. They are prepared to consider Christ personally, and to “remove from your place and go after it”. This spiritual movement all depends on the place Christ secures in our hearts as the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, because it is a question of following Him — “go after it”.
I think John 1 of the gospel of John is very suggestive in connection with this. The Lord Jesus is first seen as the Lamb of God, the Taker-away of the sin of the world — that is the sacrificial question which had to be settled first, and then comes the personal question. The second time John speaks he says, “Behold the Lamb of God” — it is the Person, and they follow Jesus; He is walking. It seems to me that the Spirit of God would suggest in that chapter that the Son of God is moving from what is sacrificial, what is connected with the dealing with sin, to the region of what is spiritual and eternal, so I think it directly answers to the crossings of the Jordan. He is moving over to the other side. The sacrificial side is on this side — that is finished — and He moves over and the disciples hear John speak and they go after Him. They follow the ark.
We have to take account of the fact that the people had had the ark in their midst and leading them for thirty-eight years. God’s intention is to make Christ as the ark of the covenant very precious to us. That is what He has been about with us from the first moment when a ray of gospel light shone into our souls. We were thinking of our salvation, forgiveness and blessing, but what God was thinking about was connecting our affections with that Person who brought salvation, forgiveness and blessing to us. He is the ark of the covenant; all is secured in Him and presented to us in Him so that we might learn to value and love that Person, and be deeply interested in His movements.
Then there is the wonderful presentation of Christ in the epistle to the Hebrews. It is to move us in our affections to the place where Christ is, to move us from earth to heaven. We may listen to ministry for long, but that does not set us in movement. We have often been reminded of that wonderful discourse in Luke 24 to which the two disciples listened, the most wonderful ministry that any one had ever heard. The whole of Scripture was opened to them by the Son of God, but it never turned their feet round. The ministry and exposition of Scripture did not move them, but when they had a sight of the Person, that moved them. He was leading [p. 16] them along a road which ended in the revelation of Himself in resurrection; He brought them to a point when they only needed one other touch: that their eyes might be opened and they might know Him. Many of us need that other touch. They saw the ark then. Nothing else will give us to understand what Jordan is but appreciation of Christ. We should ponder the gospels more; it would have a great effect on us if we pondered them in the only place they can be pondered, that is, in the holiest. There is no other place in which to read the gospels but in the holiest. If we want to read them spiritually according to the divine mind they must be contemplated in the holiest of all, because the gospels present the ark to us.
The different titles of the ark which we find in these two chapters answer to the gospels. In verse 11 of this chapter it is “the ark of the covenant of the Lord of the whole earth”. No doubt that answers to the gospel of Matthew, where the nations are in view; it is the ark of [p. 18] the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. We have the universal rights of Christ in Matthew. Then chapter 4: 15 reads, “And Jehovah spoke to Joshua saying, Command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony that they come up out of Jordan”. The ark of the testimony answers to Mark, where we see the testimony of God presented to man in His Servant-Son. Then chapter 3:5 reads, “When ye see the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God”. I think that answers to Luke, where we see the marvellous presentation of the grace in which God can be known to man in His covenant. There is the full expression of the grace of God to man in Luke, which answers to the ark of the covenant. Then chapter 4: 11 reads, “When all the people had completely gone over, the ark of Jehovah went over”. The ark of Jehovah answers to John’s gospel. I think one would expect that there should be space made in the type for every aspect of the ark. Every aspect that Christ fills is presented in the four gospels, the complete presentation of all that is secured for God and man in Him as the ark. And, as I was saying, the proper place to contemplate it is in the holiest; that is where we can see the ark of the covenant. We have an advantage over Israel. The types do not give the completeness of the divine thought; they are only shadows, not the image. The children of Israel in the wilderness never could enter the holiest. The difference between them and us is that all the time we are in the wilderness the privilege is open to each of [p. 17] us individually at any time to enter the holiest. What to do? To contemplate the ark. That was the only thing seen in the holiest — the ark and the mercy seat (which was the cover of the ark). If we go in, there is nothing else to see but the ark. Inside the ark were the covenant and the testimony: that is, there is a perfect setting forth in the Person of Christ of all that God is in grace manward.
Luke presents the grace of God manward. Everything has been secured in a Man; God can present it to men as secured. If He says, “Thy sins be forgiven thee” — why did He say it? He would have been a blasphemer if it had not been secured. It is secured in the rights of His Person. So with every blessing — man is not only set up in forgiveness, but in power, satisfaction, divine complacency and complete fitness for paradise. Christ is the ark of the covenant, and all is secured in His Person; so it all comes, not as demand, but as supply. It makes one love Him. You go into the holiest and contemplate Him and you love Him; and as you love Him you are prepared to follow Him wherever He moves. If he goes through Jordan you want to go too. Nobody will ever go through Jordan until their affections are indissolubly bound up with the ark of the covenant; no other power can take us through Jordan.
The immediate gain of the covenant in Hebrews is that it sets us free to enter the holiest. He tells us in the covenant, “Giving my laws into their hearts I will write them also in their understandings; and their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more ... Having therefore brethren, boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus ..”. The first effect of the new covenant is that we approach in Christ; we have boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter the holiest. It does not say anything about coming out; the object of the Spirit is to move us to go in. The holiest is open to us individually; but, if we all assembled as having been in the holiest individually, what wonderful meetings we should have!
We do not want these things to be mere notions that we have gathered up from the Bible: we want to know the verity and reality of them. God has been working with many of us for many years, and all the time He has been imparting to our souls some sense of the preciousness of Christ as the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth. He has been showing us that all rights belong to Christ, the kingly rights and all rights of proprietorship. We have been learning slowly that every divine right is vested in Christ, and the kingdom of this world is soon to be His. We have learned too that Christ is the ark of the testimony; everything that God has presented to men in witness He has presented in Christ — He is the complete testimony. Then the grace of God, the full measure of it, is set forth in Christ in Luke’s gospel. It is perfectly wonderful — one could contemplate it for a thousand years and not see all the glory of it. Then John answers to the ark of Jehovah; it is God Himself in His own nature telling Himself out in His beloved Son. It is not now the rights of Christ, or the testimony, or the grace of God in Christ, but it is God Himself declared and made known in His beloved Son. As we contemplate that, our affections are bound up with Christ as the ark, so that, as He moves, and moves through Jordan, we are prepared to follow Him; there is no other way of going over.
We are not here occupied with our responsible history, our sins. The sacrificial side of the death of Christ deals with that. God has been glorified about all I have done, and all that I am; the man of offences has been removed in the death of Christ — that is the sacrificial side. But there is something further. It is a question of entering into an entirely new position and new state that never belonged to man, neither to man in innocence nor to man fallen. It is a new state and position which never had any existence until Christ rose from the dead. The death of Christ was necessary for that. No man could ever have entered that new state, so as to live in it for the pleasure of divine love, if Christ had not died. That is the aspect of the death of Christ set forth in the Jordan, and no one will ever learn death in Jordan character except from the gospels. I do not think that the epistles will in themselves ever teach us the Jordan aspect of the death of Christ; we must learn that from the gospels.
The wonderful thing is that it was in the days of harvest when the ark went into Jordan: that is, the full power of death was never known or could be known until the time came for God to give fruition to all the thoughts of His own love. God has in view the securing of the fruition of all that is in His own purpose of love for man, but that is brought to light [p. 19] through the power of death as it was never known before. The power of death was never fully known until the Son of God went into death. The days of harvest and the Jordan overflowing all its banks go together. What a sense the disciples must have had when they realised after Pentecost, as they never did before, the power of death as they had learned it in Christ! What should we think if we walked in company with a Man who could speak the word and raise the dead! If we walked in company three and a half years with a Man who only had to touch the bier and speak the word and the dead were raised, what should we have thought if we had seen that Man go into death? Nothing in heaven or earth could give us such a sense of the power of death! That is Jordan overflowing all its banks. It gives us another thought of death altogether. Man dreads death. Why does he dread death? The reason for it is simply this, that every man realises, though he may not put it into words, that death is the end of the action of his own will. Death is the final termination of the action of creature will — that is why man dreads it.
When we come over Jordan we have another thought. That is, there is a region which faith can contemplate where there is nothing but the will of God, where there is all the delightful product of God’s love, a region filled with the things which divine love has prepared for those that love God. What a blessed thing to contemplate! The way into that region is only through death. So death in the light of Christ’s death is not simply the termination of creature will, but entry into all the blessedness of God’s will for man. The ark goes that way. What a sense the people must have had of the power of the ark! It had accompanied them in their movements in the Wilderness; they had been typically learning the blessedness of it; but now they come in view of the full power of death. Can the ark deal with that! They had to learn that the moment the feet of the priests touched the water the whole presence of the power of death is removed. You will find if you look on the map that the waters stood in a heap twenty miles away; they did not see a drop of water. We have to realise what was there in His Person; we could not bear to contemplate the power of death if we did not realise the greatness of Christ.
I have often wondered why it was that, in all the questions [p. 20] the disciples asked the Lord when He was here, they never once asked Him about the power of death. It just shows that man who is not specially taught of God does not realise the power of death. You may depend on it that, if the disciples had realised it, they would have asked Him; but the thought in the disciples’ minds was that He only had to take His rights and His place and reign in Zion gloriously. His title was all right, and He had power enough to do it, and had come from God to do it. What about Jordan? It never came into their thoughts. It is a solemn thing that the necessity for death comes very little into our thoughts. I believe we do not realise the solemnity of it. It would greatly intensify our affection for the Lord if we contemplated more the greatness of that power which was set forth in the Jordan overflowing all its banks. If we did so we should come to the Lord’s supper with reverent and chastened spirits; there would be a tone about the morning meeting that would be indescribable. But we do not realise the greatness of the power that the Lord met, and our affections are often feeble and superficial.
The priests were the first to go in and the last to come out. They set forth the holiness in which the thoughts of God are carried out, the priestly character in which Christ entered into death. They are necessary in the type to present the glory of Christ in this character. The Spirit of God makes the ark very prominent, and also puts two thousand cubits between the ark and the people. Association of the people with the ark comes in after. The first thought presented here is that there should be two thousand cubits distance between the ark and the people. It is Christ personally and the way He has gone in priestly holiness, and the distance between Him and the people is not to make Him obscure, but that there may be a clear view of Him. There was to be a certain space by which they saw the way so that they went over with a clearer view. If we consider John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1, we find the two thousand cubits between the ark and the people. We see Christ in His pre-eminence, in His solitary and unique grandeur, in His ability to meet all the power of death. We see all that glory in Him, and there is no question of the saints being in any way connected with that. It is His glory alone, but after that the people can go over.