JOSHUA 6
How important it is that the walls of Jericho should really come down for us! It is of the deepest importance that we should have a spiritual estimate of things. If we do not judge the Jericho system it will dominate us; we need to see the real truth of the position.
[p. 32] Jericho stands on divine territory; it represents the power of the enemy in the spiritual sphere. Egypt represents the world system in connection with its resources, its wisdom, and its ability to manage its own affairs. It has wonderful resources. We read about the wisdom of the Egyptians, men very wise in the conduct of their affairs, as the Lord says, “The children of this world are wiser than the children of light”. Wisdom and resource in regard to the affairs of men are one thing, but to set up a power in what one might call divine territory is another thing. The powers in the land of Canaan are powers holding divine territory that belongs to God, and holding it in insubjection to God. The walls of Jericho are the defence of a system that exists to keep people from being in subjection to God. All through the history of the people of God there has been a power hostile to God and that power must come down; it is bound to come down. All the strength and the defence of it, its greatness and pride — it may be walled up to heaven — must come down. Here God means it to come down by faith; it will come down at the appearing of Christ. If it does not come down before, it certainly will then, but God’s thought is that it should come down by faith. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell, having been encircled for seven days”, Hebrews 11: 30. It is a question of faith; and what answers to this chapter is a certain triumph of faith to be effected in our souls at the present moment. The whole secret of the power lay in the people being identified with the ark and moving with the ark. All the power was the power of the ark; as far as the people were concerned they did not strike a blow. The priests in this chapter are of more importance than the soldiers. The ark is of all importance; neither priests nor soldiers would have been of any use without the ark, so they had this remarkable week of spiritual education.
In the Acts of the Apostles we see how every power that existed had to come down, and every power that held the Jericho system was shaking. Peter, John, James, Stephen, Phillip, and Paul were all men of faith, and they were priests. They were good soldiers too, but it takes something more than a soldier to bring walls down; it needs a priest, and all those men were priests. The priest is a consecrated man, a man wholly for God; the holy anointing is upon him. The thought of holiness is suggested at the end of the previous chapter — if the Lord comes in as captain of Jehovah’s army, what must [p. 33] characterise the people, looked upon as led by the Spirit of Christ, is holiness. There must be an entire absence of neutrality; Joshua had no thought of neutrality. “Art thou for us or for our enemies” — there is no neutral position. Then he takes his shoes off because the place is holy. There is uncompromising decision on the one hand, and personal holiness of intense character on the other. A man in that spiritual condition is qualified to hear the voice of Jehovah. We cannot hear the voice of Jehovah merely by reading the Bible; many think they can get God’s mind and direction by reading the Bible, but they will only get it by being spiritual. Of course the Scriptures are our great safeguard, but I am pressing that a man might read the Bible and never get a ray of spiritual light. Many an unconverted man spends his life reading the Bible and studying it. Many of these unconverted doctors of divinity know more about the Bible than we do; they know every verse of Scripture and have studied it in the original, but they have no light; they are as dark as midnight. There must be spiritual conditions. The Lord says repeatedly, “He that hath an ear let him hear” — there must be conditions in the hearer; there was condition in Joshua. The Spirit of God says through John, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”. If I think I can hear what the Spirit says without regard to my spiritual condition, I deceive myself. I must have an ear first; that is the spirit of obedience. The Scriptures will not do me any good without the spirit of obedience in my soul. The ear is the characteristic feature in a man’s body. Man thinks about his hand, his feet and his brain, but what God delights in is his ear. The Lord came into this world saying, “Ears hast thou prepared me”, Psalm 40: 6. The basis of what is spiritual is the spirit of obedience. We need to be very much exercised about our state; that is largely the subject of Joshua 5. We have the army in training in Joshua 5, and the army in the field in Joshua 6. There are certain spiritual features that must have their place in the people of God as preparatory to going into action.
We see what the falling of the walls of Jericho means when we consider what went on in the soul of Paul. In the soul of Paul the walls of Jericho were down. There are seven priests with trumpets, they go on before the ark, and they are able to give a certain sound, a loud, clear, penetrating sound. Speaking [p. 34] typically, every note of the sounding out of those seven trumpets spoke of the glory and power of the ark. They went before the ark and sounded out the glory and power of the ark for all Israel to hear. I do not think it was for the people of Jericho to hear. There are two instances in the chapter, and in both cases it was for the people of God to hear. This is a question of battle — “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for war?” 1 Corinthians 14:8. The trumpet has to do with war.
Here it is a question of the Jericho system being fully estimated. We have to go round it, and keep on going round it seven days, and then seven times in one day. They had to estimate the strength of every bulwark, tower and gate all round; every part of the city was taken account of, but they did it in relation to the ark; they went round it in company with the ark. I believe God would have us go round Jericho and take stock of the whole strength of the Jericho system; He would have us to estimate it all, but to estimate it from the standpoint of being in company with the ark, in company with the Person before whom it will all come down. All must come down before the ark — it is a spiritual education.
At the beginning there was a clear sounding of trumpets. Sounding the trumpets is a priestly work, not the work of soldiers. It says in Numbers 10, “The priests, the sons of Aaron, shall blow with trumpets”; it is priestly work. They are consecrated men; they have the garments and the anointing on them. We are often content with what we have in us; we are conscious that we have the Spirit, but the fact that we have the Spirit in us is not our qualification for service Qualification for service is the anointing; that is something poured on you. If you look on the priest on the day of his consecration you will see the oil on him. As a matter of fact it ran down to the skirts of his garments; everybody could see that he was an anointed man. The anointing is external; it is what people can take account of. They cannot take account of the Spirit in my heart, but they can of the anointing, that I am moving, and speaking, and serving in a holy power in which there is no admixture of anything of mine. Can people take account of our service like that? The Lord could say in Luke 4, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me”. If we read Luke and look at the Lord externally, we shall see the grace of His movements and of His words; even [p. 35] those who did not know Him had to marvel at His gracious words. Why? Because He was in the power of the anointing. “God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power; who went through all quarters doing good, and healing all that were under the power of the devil, because God was with him”, Acts 10:38. There was the grace of the anointing. A priest typically is a consecrated and anointed man, and what you see externally is the evidence that there is a power and grace there that is not of man. Stephen’s very countenance was luminous with celestial light, really the light of the anointing. At the end of Luke the Lord speaks to the disciples and says, “Remain in the city till ye be clothed with power from on high”. He does not say, Stay there until you are given the Spirit to be in your heart — that is internal — but He says, “till ye be clothed” — it is external. The internal is important, but the internal alone will not qualify for service.
There is a sounding out here, God provides seven priests and seven trumpets. There is a perfect sounding-out in a clear and definite way of the power of Christ as the ark, before which all the strength and defences and glory of the Jericho system must come down. God would march His people round the city until they had faith; it took seven days to bring the people to the faith of what God was about to do. God did not bring the walls down by the action of His own power; He waited until there was the power of faith in His people to bring them down. God could have brought the walls down the first day, the moment there was the sounding of the first trumpet; but that was not God’s object. His object was to educate the people into this by bringing their souls into the faith of it. So He says, “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down”. It was not alone by the power of God or by the ark, but by faith. God has great pleasure in faith, because faith always says, “Glory all belongs to God”, and faith makes everything of the ark.
Jericho is an imposing city, and we are all naturally influenced by the imposing character of it. Jericho represents the mind of man at work in the sphere of spiritual things. It is a great thing to keep where the Spirit of God can sound out through spiritual men, through priests, the glory and the power of the ark. If we are in company with those seven priests we can go round Jericho day after day; and on the seventh day we can go round seven times, and survey everything that is great and [p. 36] pretentious in the mind of man, and we can look at it all in the light of the power and authority of the ark. It is all coming down.
The ark here sets forth the power of Christ entirely to set aside every working of the natural mind, even in relation to spiritual things. There is one aspect of things connected with fleshly lusts — all those things which work on the line of self-indulgence or self-exaltation in connection with natural things. That is like Sihon and Og, self-indulgence and self-display. We have to get the victory over them on the east side of Jordan. But when we come into the land we find the exaltation of man in connection with the moral and religious sphere, and Christendom is full of it. In Acts we see the walls all down; we see what answers to Joshua, the priests, and the trumpets going round the city, and the effect is that every power that influenced men morally is brought down. But it was not very long before Jericho began to be rebuilt, and there cannot be any result for God in the building up of Jericho; so this man who built the city hundreds of years after left no posterity for God. He laid the foundations in his first-born — he lost his first-born, and he sets up the gates in his youngest — he lost his youngest when he finished it. He cut off his own posterity for God; that is the effect of building up Jericho. Everyone who does it cuts off his own posterity; there is no abiding result, no fruit for God, there is only the setting up again of that which is accursed.
We see how the mind of man is glorified today. One of the most magnificent buildings in England carries the inscription, “There is nothing great on earth but man”. If you go round to the other side you read, “There is nothing great in man but mind”. That is the walls of Jericho. Have they come down for us, so that man and his mind is utterly discounted? Nothing is of value, nothing has glory or power in our estimation but the ark of the covenant, nothing but Christ. Before Christ all is seen to be contemptible and offensive that belongs to man; it is utterly judged in the cross of Christ — the walls have all come down. Am I impressed with the great mental ability of man, by the wonderful knowledge he has, even of Scripture? All that has to come down; there is to be nothing but Christ.
It is important to see that there was that in Jericho which belonged to God. The silver, gold and copper all belonged to God, but they had been incorporated in the Jericho system, and had to be rescued from the system in which the devil had [p. 37] incorporated them: they had to be restored to their proper place in the treasury of the house of Jehovah. There are things in the Jericho system that belong to God; every right conception that man has is of God, but they have the conception connected with the wrong man. Every conception that has moral or spiritual value is of God wherever we find it. We find men preaching wonderful moral conceptions, and perhaps even spiritual thoughts — all these things belong to God, but in the Jericho system all is linked on with the wrong man, and utilised to give distinction and glory and honour to the wrong man, not to Christ. Now God is going to rescue every thought that has divine value from the Jericho system. God is going to bring down that system, but He does not forget that there is gold, silver and copper that has divine value, and He is going to rescue all that and put it in His treasury. It is blessed to know that all these thoughts that in Christendom are connected with the man after the flesh are going to be rescued by the power of God and connected with Christ. When the walls come down and the city is devoted to destruction, all these elements that are of God are rescued and put into the treasury of God.
Rahab is a beautiful expression of what one would call the moral victory of God. He could go to Jericho and secure a household for Himself; He could separate a woman and her household altogether from the system which He was going to overthrow; and He could give her a door which spoke of faith and a window which spoke of works. The greatest victory that divine power wrought in Canaan was not over the seven nations but over Rahab’s heart; that is why she is put in the forefront of this book. God places her, a Gentile woman of base character morally, in the inheritance in the genealogy of Christ, and makes her the most distinguished mother in Israel. It shows the magnificence of the sovereignty of mercy. We cannot mix the types, but we see in Rahab the wonderful character of divine victory; she is not content to be blessed herself, but she would have every member of her household blessed, so God secures a household of faith in the strongest part of Jericho, on the wall of the city. In the very stronghold of the enemy’s power God secures His own witness of what He is doing today. The walls of Jericho have not actually come down yet, but they will come down, and when they do God will take the household of faith clean out of Jericho.