Image by Vicki's Pics via Flickr

The book of Joshua presents to us a major event in the life of the people of God. Here we see the children of Israel about to enter the promised land, their inheritance, and we note that it is Joshua and not Moses who leads them in. From this point on it is Joshua, Joshua all the way, and we know that Joshua means Jesus, the Saviour of His people. Let us therefore study the book carefully to ensure we know the meaning and interpretation of it.

We must first interpret the setting of the book. The land into which Joshua leads the people is not heaven, for the instruction to Joshua is to be strong and very courageous, and this because of the enemies who inhabited the land. Now this we know of Jesus, at least, that He comes from the Father and returned again to the Father. He is the Lord from heaven, and all His enemies are upon the earth. Furthermore, we would be confused if we imagined that after we too have gone to heaven to be with the Lord we had endless battles to fight. No, no! The inheritance of the people of God into which Joshua will lead them cannot be taken to represent heaven, however dearly we may hold that interpretation, neither is Jordan the place of bodily death, physical death, whether or not we sing it thus in our hymnbooks. Except we rightly interpret the scene and setting of our book of Joshua we will make nonsense of the scriptures and confuse the people of God. Jordan is not bodily death, and the inheritance is not the heaven of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. What is it then? If we are led by Jesus, our Saviour and Lord, where and when do we enter into this inheritance? The book of Joshua is the final answer and explanation of that question, and any other interpretation must of necessity totally disregard the entire book of Joshua. In Exodus, we have seen our salvation, our release from the bondage and thralldom of Egypt, and how God by Christ Jesus accomplished that miracle. Leviticus is our call to a new way of life, the pathway of holiness. In Numbers, we saw distinctly our wanderings in the wilderness, until by grace our doubts and fears died out eventually, and we were ready at last to enjoy the promise of the land before us. We recall that it was our unbelief that prevented us from reaching this point earlier in our Christian experience. Therefore, the land into which Joshua led the people of God is symbolic of a new sphere of living into which we dared not enter before; it is symbolic of a goal in this life towards which God by His Holy Spirit would lead and direct us. The land is that elevated position of spiritual experience for which our souls have longed all this while. Hitherto our unbelief has kept us out, kept us wandering around in circles in a wilderness of joyless experience, except that we did indeed recognize that God was leading us in the pillar of fire and smoke. Yes we were Christians; yes we were God’s people Israel; yes we were saved, baptized, and we took communion; yes we were led of God; yes our lives tended to holiness; yes we had the tabernacle and yes we had Moses to lead us in his role of mediator; yes we enjoyed the fellowship of the people of God, and yes we had the gospel and many New Testament truths.

Do not misunderstand or misinterpret the matter. We were indeed Christians as our fathers were. We were properly saved, and then baptized, and then in communion. We had the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, we had a measure of the Holy Spirit as all God’s people have, for none can claim Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and we were indeed led of God. Our lives tended to holiness, and if some fell by the wayside it served only to warn us not to follow their evil example. Yet our pathway was in a wilderness, a barren land, for we had turned our backs resolutely on the pleasures of Egypt (we followed Moses, remember) and yet we had not entered into the joy of our inheritance. Our spiritual experience was marked by crisis after crisis, and we hungered, we thirsted, and grew weary of the way at times. It was not till we read Deuteronomy that we understood it all at last, for there God told us, “I have suffered you to hunger and thirst” that He might try us and humble us, and know us. But we followed diligently on in spite of everything, till in time all our doubts were laid to rest and our fears died out of us. We then received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the brooks of Arnon, and we entered into peace and love in what had been the exclusive provinces of the Amorites. We were still this side of Jordan, but we had come a long way. We had not reached full maturity, perhaps, but we were no longer babes in Christ. To many of us it seemed we had arrived, at last, and there was nothing else to strive for. Two and a half tribes chose to settle on the wilderness side of the Jordan, and caused the first division in the people of Israel since we all came out of Egypt.

So what is our inheritance? It is a sphere of Christian living, an elevation spiritual, a realm in this life into which only Jesus can lead us. We have seen Christ as the Passover Lamb whose blood was shed for us to save us from Egyptian death. We have seen Moses portray Christ for us as the Risen Lord who daily maketh intercession for us. We have been content to follow Christ as He interpreted for us the will of a Holy God. But now suddenly we are faced with Joshua, with Jesus as our Leader, Commander and Lord. We could not look closely on Moses because of the shining of his face, and he was veiled from our sight. But Joshua wears no veil. Here we may look, and come to know Jesus intimately. He will be now our Friend, our closest Companion, our elder Brother, our Champion, our intimate Guide, our All in All. We will get to know Jesus without a veil, without a covering over His still shining face. We may boldly look. It is not now the mystical mysterious Christ of our previous experience, but a Person as close as any member of our earthly family, a Brother nearer to us than any of our brethren in Christ. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to direct us to Christ, from the time when in Egypt we saw the wonders of God’s love and the clear picture of Christ our Passover, right through the wilderness journey to the promised land. It was Jesus who said, He shall take of My things and show them unto you. It is the Holy Spirit’s purpose and joy to reveal unto us Jesus. Do not doubt it. It is the revealed will of God for each of us. It is the ultimate goal of Christian experience to know Jesus intimately as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying…..” We have known this Joshua all along, obviously, but he has been overshadowed by the presentation of Moses the servant of the Lord. This too is the will of God. Many who claim intimate and joyous acquaintanceship with Jesus in our day have never learned the great lessons of Christ, which Moses portrayed. Before we enter into a shallow and superficial relationship with the Man from Galilee let us be sure it is the will of God for us. God would have us know Christ as the Man of the Cross, the Man of Sorrows, the Son of Man on earth, the Passover Lamb, God’s first fruit, the great Leader of God’s people, the Exalted One, the One who was called alone to reveal the will of God to the people of God. Moses is called here the servant of the Lord, for Christ is shown as the only One who ever did the whole will of God, and the only One who on Calvary finished the work. Ministers and preachers sometimes speak disparagingly of Noah, because he was drunken, of Jacob because he disguised himself, of Moses because he smote the rock, but let us remember that there were friends of God Himself, and God is no more pleased to hear ill of a friend than you or I would be. Let those who claim such friendship with the Man of Galilee remember that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, and by their holy lives acknowledge that God is a Holy God. We do not step straight out of Egypt into the promised land, beloved, for the book after Exodus is not Joshua but Leviticus.

“Moses my servant is dead.” Before setting us on intimate terms with Jesus, the Holy Spirit will fix our eyes on Calvary. It is not the Risen Christ God reveals first to us, but the Christ who died for us. Except we see that Christ died, except we look long at Calvary, except we fix our minds and hearts on the Cross of Christ, we may not come to know Joshua at all. There are pleasures to be found in Egypt still, but friendship with the world reveals us as false friends of God. True friends of God have left Egypt, have plowed across the wilderness, and have come to their inheritance. These, and these only, are Joshua’s friends. Only a false and spurious gospel presents Jesus as a Friend of all. It was the world that crucified Him. It is the world that denies Him. It is the world that hates Him still. Jesus did not come as a Friend of the world, He came to die for it. “Moses my servant is dead” is the introduction to Joshua.

So let us go on. The Jordan lies before us. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Reckon yourselves dead.” It is not baptism, for that was the Red Sea. It is not physical death, for at the last trump the living are caught up to meet the Lord in the air and if the way into heaven were by physical death the living must be excluded. No, this Jordan is the point in our experience where we are prepared to follow the Lord’s example and die to this world. We are found to be crucified with Christ. We cross spiritually as it were a last barrier into our inheritance in Christ. The whole teaching regarding Jordan is found in Paul’s epistles, and the crossing is a definite step forward in our spiritual experience.

Now Joshua is a man. He is a man called of God both to lead the ancient people Israel into the land Canaan and to portray for us an experience in Christ that Joshua was not even aware of. He is a man. His role is to portray Christ to our hearts, but Joshua is not Christ. He is a man. The word of God to him is to be strong and of a good courage, and this word we can each of us apply to ourselves as though God spoke to us personally. The step we are contemplating is not for the weak-kneed. It is a step taken in courage and faith, a step in response to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is a final step, an irrevocable step, a long step. Our Lord set His face as a flint to go to Jerusalem; He was steadfast, immoveable, fixed in that purpose. It mattered little now that the Samaritans would not receive Him, let us go on to another village, His face is towards Jerusalem and three days and nights in the tomb. The shadow of the Cross suddenly has taken on a third dimension, an ominous looming nearer and nearer that keeps the disciples silent, afraid to ask. There is about the man Jesus a new quality, a brazen steadfastness they had not seen before. It is not stoicism, nor the death wish of a fanatic. It is courage, C-O-U-R-A-G-E, the quality of brass, the ice-cold silent strength of One who has counted all the cost and is going ahead nevertheless, compared to which the bravery of the impetuous Peter is seen as a weak thing. It is at this point more than any other that Christ Jesus stands out clearly head and shoulders about all brave men, for none ever faced before or since what He faced all alone.

Now the word to the people is, Prepare yourselves. “Prepare you victuals,” Joshua commands. Before we take this step let us fully count the cost, let us prepare ourselves, and above all let us prepare our victuals. We should go back to Scripture and read it again. Are we sure of what we do? Can we get the meat we need to sustain us? When faced with scorn or open doubt can we find the answer quickly in the word of God? Are we resolute with the resoluteness of Christ at Jerusalem? Have we set our face as a flint? Will we be steadfast? It is little use to reckon ourselves dead today only to find tomorrow we are still in the wilderness, perhaps still hankering after Egypt in our hearts. There are giants ahead of us, and will we be afraid? There are seven nations greater than we to overcome, and only Joshua to lead us. Will our spirits fail? “Prepare you victuals.” Look well to your meat. We are forging ahead, we are moving on, we are taking the final step in the life of faith. What we will need is courage, the inner resolution and determination of an iron will, the unshakeable fixity of purpose that we saw in our Lord. He went alone, but we are not alone, for the word to our hearts is, “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Christ was forsaken, but we will not be. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, we only die with Him. His was the awful first, ours only to follow after. And this step taken in faith leads to a new and more intimate knowledge of Jesus the original Overcomer, in whom and by whom we may overcome all things. We will find a new appreciation of Him on the other side of Jordan.

“And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to half the tribe of Manassah, spake Joshua, saying…..” There are those of our brethren who do not desire to go forward into the full inheritance of the people of God. They cause a clear division between the tribes that were once so united, and this division is at Jordan. They have found all they seek for of peace and joy this side Jordan, and they have asked to be allowed to dwell here. The difficulty is that they may discourage others from crossing the Jordan. Therefore the word to them from Joshua is to go with us, in the sense that they that are not against us are with us. They are to encourage, not discourage, their brethren who go over this Jordan. How sad it is to find that when once we have come to the point of taking a step forward in faith and are prepared to meet scorn, doubt and disavowal, it is our own brethren who hold us back, and would discourage us most. They are absolutely wrong to do so. They are expressly taught to go along with us, to fight our battles side by side in full harmony and sympathy with us, even when they themselves have no desire to share our inheritance. This commandment is from our only leader, the Lord Jesus Himself, because He is their Commander as well as ours. For those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord and who share our present peace and joy, to rebuke us when we attempt to go forward into the full inheritance that God has in store for us, is surely “the unkindest cut of all,” and is contrary to the clear teaching of the first chapter of Joshua.

“And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho.” Joshua is still referred to in this chapter as Joshua the son of Nun because he is not yet fully into his role of portraying Jesus the Saviour of God’s people. We know from earlier books that Moses made the ark of testimony and all from Shittim wood because shittim wood was peculiar to the Cross of Christ, and Joshua here sends out his two spies from Shittim. It is from the Cross of Calvary therefore that the two spies go out to view the land. Jesus on the Cross is lifting up His eyes to look beyond death, to see beyond this Jordan to the inheritance of the people of God. “Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there.” What was the view from the Cross on the hill of Calvary? Was it not Jerusalem, the harlot’s house? But our Lord is seeing beyond death, past the three day journey into death, seeing the scarlet line in the window of the harlot’s house, knowing that His blood is the scarlet line that runs throughout all scripture, and knowing that the harlot has accepted that sign. Let the city fall, the harlot and all her house has accepted Him. Now Rahab means a whore for a very long time.

“And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, there came men in hither tonight of the children of Israel to search out the country.” Darkness has fallen over the land, and still the two spies are lodged in the harlot’s house. They cannot view the land any longer, but there they have lodged, there they are fixed in the darkness, while the scarlet line grows longer. Men came to the Cross to put out the spies, but the Man of Sorrows was dead already and the spies were hidden in the flax of the rooftop. They came to dispel that deep fixed gaze, but they found no gaze, for the dead body hid it, the flax covered it, and they were forced to return. And they set a watch for three days yet they found no gaze, no steadfast spies, nor did they ever see that gaze again. But in the window of Rahab’s house appeared the scarlet line of our salvation, and the spies have informed the Overcomer that the inheritance is ours.

Thus we are to view the land also. We are to fix our gaze earnestly on the inheritance, searching out its strongholds before we enter in. We go in, so to speak, with our eyes open, being resolved to claim the land of promise as our own, but in no way blind to the forces opposing us. Yet God will give us the victory, for we follow Jesus all the way, and indeed if we be crucified with Him our spies will confirm what He first learned—“Truly the Lord hath delivered into our hand al the land.” Let us view the land from His own standpoint, let us see it from the hill Calvary, and the Jordan will be dry ground under our feet, and all the inhabitants of that country will faint because of us.

“And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.” We must notice the order of this verse. The resurrection is put before the tomb, lest we be confused in our minds. “Joshua rose early in the morning”—Jesus is risen, He is alive, for we do not follow a dead Lord but a risen Saviour, the Overcomer, who was once crucified for our offences but is risen again for our justification.

“And Joshua rose early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to Jordan.” We follow a risen Lord, yet we come by the same route that He took, we walk in His footsteps, we are crucified with Him and we go into death with Him. The body is taken down from the Cross, placed in the tomb—“removed from Shittim and came to Jordan.” “He and all the children of Israel”—clearly we are all meant to come this way—“and lodged there”—for how long?—“before they passed over.” “And it came to pass after three days, that the officers went through the host, and they commanded the people, saying…” There is no word for the people for three days, for obvious reasons. But God is careful to word His Scriptures so that we cannot go wrong, we cannot escape from His plain truth. The account of the crossing of the Jordan clearly begins with the stark statement, “And Joshua rose early in the morning.” Jesus is risen! It is paramount, it is clearly stated, it is necessary for us to see that. We are following a risen Saviour into death! We do not follow a dead Lord, we do not conform to the death of One who died centuries ago. No, no! We are taking the route of the Overcomer, we are following a risen Saviour into death. Jesus is risen, He is alive to die no more, the victory is already won, Jordan is dry ground, and we merely follow in His footsteps. “If Christ be not risen, your faith is vain,” says Paul, “ye are yet in your sins.” We are not interested, humanly speaking, in Joshua’s bedtime habits, but God recorded the fact that Joshua rose early in the morning so that we might see the truth as it is in Christ.

“And they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore.” For we have not passed this way heretofore—this is why we must be careful to get it right. No such instruction is given at the crossing of the Red Sea, but let us be sure we know what we do when we cross the Jordan. We are to go into the inheritance intelligently, with our eyes open, and not blind to the forces that will oppose us, and we are to watch well at the crossing of the Jordan to make sure we get it right, for we have not passed this way heretofore.

The sign given to us to follow is the Ark of the Covenant going before us. Now in this context the ark is symbolic of the body of Christ. We have seen the Crucifixion, and in a previous verse we have seen the body of the Lord taken down from the Cross—removed from Shittim to Jordan. Now as we follow Him we are taught by the Spirit to concentrate all our attention on His burial. With our spiritual eyes we are to see the Lord in burial, we are to focus our attention on that great fact. We may not lightly pass over this Jordan. The priests, the Levites, have gone before us bearing the ark—the gospel writers, the apostles, the church fathers, and particularly in our day the Roman Catholic church—all support the fact that the Lord lay in the tomb for three days and nights. We are no nearer than (about) two thousand years from the event, yet we are to closely observe all that happened to the ark, and take our cue from it. Paul told us that they died daily—for the Jordan “overflows his banks all the time of harvest,” and in proclaiming the death of Christ, death lapped at their feet. Those who put Christ to death were still in power when the apostles testified to the death of Jesus, yet it is still true to the end of the harvest that the world that crucified Christ would gladly put to death all those who remind them of their ghastly deed. The body in burial is “the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth,” for the angels could say, “Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” Those few today who are still faithfully bearing the ark, openly testifying in public that it is the wickedness of man which has caused the death of Jesus, if they dare to lay the charge of murder on this generation will feel again the waters of Jordan lapping at their feet, and this should be part of the work of the priests, the Levites. For the rest of us, the people of God, it is enough to follow the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, into Jordan, but death does not lap at our feet, nor are we in daily danger here, for our part is not seen of men. We go over Jordan dry shod, as long as the priests stand firm. “And the priests that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.” All the people were passed clean over Jordan—we are all meant to go this way, to enter the inheritance, and to leave at last our doubts and fears buried in the wilderness, for if we go this way we will never doubt again the greatness of the love of God for us.

Finally, let us look at the waters. “The waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.” The waters are divided, and yet not quite in the same way as the waters of the Red Sea. The Red Sea waters formed two walls of water between which the Israelites passed on dry ground. At the Jordan, the water above stood and rose up upon an heap, while the water below failed and was cut off. At Calvary, Christ is seen in the midst of the water, all thy waves and thy billows came over My head, but in death the picture changes. Now the water which came down from above is piled up upon an heap, it has ceased to come down and has begun to pile up, showing that the judgment of God from that moment on has begun to pile up waiting for the day of reckoning, while the water which formerly came down has failed and been cut off, showing that during the day of grace there is no judgment for sinners on earth any more since Christ died, but all may be forgiven even as we have been forgiven and all may freely partake of the mercy of God. It is the death of our Lord that has caused the difference, just as the picture shows clearly it is the ark going into Jordan that has divided the waters. While the day of grace lasts there is mercy and pardon for the worst sinners on earth if they turn to God by Jesus Christ, and just as clearly there is piled up wrath against the day of wrath in store for all who here rejected the dearly-bought salvation offered to them in Christ.

“The waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan.” To those in the place of Adam these heaped up waters seem very far away, far-fetched fancies indeed, but the place of Adam is beside Zaretan, it is close to Sodom, it is nigh to being burned. Zaretan means destruction and sudden death, and those in the place of Adam are very close to destruction and sudden death, even though to them the piled-up waters seem very far away. On the other hand the waters that failed, and were cut off, were “those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea.” The salt sea in the plain is a picture of all who have accepted Christ, they whom He said were the salt of the earth, and our Lord’s death is the division of the waters, so that all wrath and judgment is cut off from these entirely. Whenever we look at Jordan let us remember that the Lord in going into death has divided the waters—on the one hand wrath is piling up for sinners till the day of judgment, and for us on the other hand there is now no condemnation, the waters are failed and cut off. On the Cross He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, He died, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God, He was the Lamb of God bearing the sins of the whole world, He was our sacrifice, our propitiation, our Saviour. And now we see that it was in the Jordan He divided forever the waters from the waters, so that the wrath of God cannot fall on us who believe in Him. But let us close chapter three by reminding ourselves of its own opening sentence, “And Joshua rose early in the morning.” Thank God for our great Overcomer. How great Thou art!

“And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: and they are there unto this day.” Did not the Lord Jesus tell them plainly, “Ye have not chosen Me; I have chosen you.”? Now when we ourselves come to cross this Jordan we should be able to see for ourselves that that is still the position of the twelve stones—they are there to this day. The New Testament has undergone many new translations, but the position of the stones has not altered at all. Why? Because Jesus set them up Himself, in the place where the priests’ feet stood firm.

“On that day the Lord magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they feared him, as they feared Moses, all the days of his life.” Joshua has now fully stepped into the role that Moses had, and as we saw Moses portray Christ, so we can begin to see Joshua portray Jesus, and thus we acknowledge Jesus to be Christ, and the Christ of God to be Jesus. And the day will come when all God’s people have passed over Jordan that our great Commander will command at last the priests to come up out of Jordan, and Jordan will again overflow all his banks as he did before. But until that day let the priests stand firm, let the memorial remain, and let all of God’s people hasten to enjoy the inheritance, “That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty; that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.” Amen. This is one more reason why all of God’s people should seek to cross this Jordan now.

What then is our part? “At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.” God is about to renew His covenant with us, and our part is to pledge ourselves anew to God. In the wilderness we did every man what was right in his own eyes. In the inheritance the call is to godliness. “At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives.” The word of God in scripture is spoken of as the sword of the Spirit. We saw in Numbers the shortened version of the sword, the dagger, which is an abridgement of the sword, a chapter, a paragraph, a verse, perhaps, which a priest may use to destroy some evil among us. But here the Lord is going to hand us a knife with which to circumcise ourselves. It may be only a sentence, a command we previously neglected, a word in season—but it will be sharp and the exercise of it will be painful to our flesh. We are to receive the sharp knife from the Lord Himself as our personal leader and we are to circumcise our own flesh with it. Perhaps we always previously prayed with our arms folded—the sharp knife might be, “I would that men pray—lifting holy hands unto God,” and we suddenly pale to realize that if we do that next Sunday in church we will find everyone staring at us. “No, Lord,” we cry, “I couldn’t do it.” Why? Because it will be painful to the flesh! But that is what circumcision is all about, is it not? Here is a knife, sharpened for you by the Lord Himself, to use on your own flesh. We are pledging ourselves anew unto God, remember, and if God is going to dwell with us we had better circumcise ourselves again immediately.

We cannot presume to take Jericho which lies directly in our path until we are able to circumcise ourselves. We cannot go on to destroy seven nations greater and mightier than we until we are circumcised the second time. God’s call is to personal  circumcision, cutting off the flesh. Yes, it is always a painfully embarrassing procedure, but make no doubt of it God will not destroy Jericho for you until this is done. So you are stuck, you see! There is no way back across the Jordan, and Jericho lies across our path ahead of us. Feel the knife which the Lord has handed to you—it gets sharper every day! Ah, but the personal pain, the embarrassment of circumcision! Who but God would take our manly pride and command us to cut at mutilate it and cause our flesh such pain? Christian, you are not alone! Come with us to the hill of foreskins and see for yourself how many of God’s people have done the thing which God commanded. Once you have circumcised yourself the Lord will have no difficulty destroying the Amorite and the Canaanite from before your face. The hill of foreskins grows greater every day, and will you alone hold back? There are many of us who have each suffered his own painful and embarrassing circumcision, and it is sorer by far for mature Christians than for the babes in Christ. Come to Jesus and boldly say, “Lord, hand me also your sharp knife, and by it I will renew the covenant between God and me in this place.” And do not pray for a local anaesthetic—there is no such thing in the procedure of circumcision, except to consider Him who endured all things, yea the Cross of Shame, to give you the inheritance.

“And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the people, that they abode in their places in the camp, till they were whole. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.” Perhaps you may think there is a way around circumcision: you could leave your district or your job or your church and so avoid embarrassment. But you must do as God’s people did—they abode in their places—till you have got over it. If we do not circumcise ourselves the reproach of Egypt lies heavily upon us. When we are again circumcised and abide in one place till we are whole, we will find that the name of that place will be Gilgal for ever after. “And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.” You will feel again as you felt when you ate the first Passover in Egypt—God is about to save you, not now from Egypt, but from the forces opposing you, and give you the longed-for inheritance. “And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover.” How will you know you are in the inheritance? When you with us partake of the old corn of that land. “And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land: neither had the children of Israel manna any more: but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.” No more light bread for us, beloved, but the original corn of our God-given inheritance and all the fruits of the promised land. Is it not worth suffering for?

“Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel.” As we go with Joshua, as our Lord Jesus leads us on to our next objective, all is quiet in our lives. Jericho is there, but it is silent, its customary bustle stilled by our approach. There is no enemy to be seen, no roar of battle preparations, no view of a host arrayed against us, no sign of trouble. Only a massive blockade in our path, a feeling that the pathway to further blessing is somehow blocked, that we cannot see any further ahead of us, that something is wrong in our lives. Yes, we have the Lord Jesus, yes, God is with us, yes, the Holy Spirit sings sweetly within us, but there is a blockage somehow that prevents us from going on with our invasion of the inheritance. We are in the land, we eat the old corn of the land every day, yet we make no further progress and we begin to wonder why.

“And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho.” So we turn to the Lord Jesus and we fix our eyes on Him, and we wait upon Him, for He is now our Leader, the great Overcomer, and it is to Him we must look. He obviously knows what to do, for God hides nothing from Him, and all our times are in His hand. And God tells Joshua in our chapter exactly what God wants His people to do, and what the result will be. “And Joshua the son of Nun called the priests…” In this instance we are seeing what Joshua the man does, but for the remainder of the chapter we told only what Joshua the Overcomer does, if we can see that distinction. “And it came to pass, when Joshua had spoken unto the people…” The result is the same, the priests with the trumpets marched out with the ark of the covenant behind them, and the people fell into place also, the men armed for battle going ahead of the ark and the others following, bringing up the rear. The object is to march around Jericho, and this they do every day for six days. And this we do also. We cannot overcome the blockage in our path, and all that the Lord leads us to do is to walk around it every day. How puzzled we become! Why are we going round in circles, why cannot we by-pass this blockage, what is happening to us? The answer of course is Jericho, but unless we know this we can get very frustrated at our own seeming futility, even when we follow after Jesus. For many of us it is a time when we throw up our hands and say, “This I do not believe!”

But God knows what is happening, and we are only asked to follow our Leader in simple faith and obey Him. In the land of promise, in the inheritance, Jesus is very near to us and all we have to do is turn to Him and fix our eyes on Him and wait. If we feel we are going round in circles yet we can keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus. There is a mighty purpose in our going around in circles which shall shortly be revealed to us. Our way ahead is blocked, and the Lord would lead us to circle around the blockage, and to view it from every side. It is Jericho of the massive walls, the impregnable fortress, the towering citadel, the stronghold!

Now we see from scripture that Israel cannot overcome Jericho by any means then available to them. Jericho can withstand a protracted siege, and Israel would need to build mighty battering rams to make a dent in those colossal walls. Much equipment and many engines of war would be required if Jericho were to be overcome by military force alone. Israel lacks all these things. Therefore God must intervene if His people are to make any further progress, for Israel is not now relying on the strength of the people but on the arm of the Lord God of Israel. Yet the way of the Lord is not our way, not His thoughts our thoughts. Would any army march daily round about such solid walls for six consecutive days, and seven times on the seventh day, blowing rams’ horns and bearing the ark of the covenant, and expect the walls to collapse? Nonsense! It is laughable, pitiable, weak, childish faith in a force outside of themselves, unseen, unknown, invisible—but great!

What happens today in our churches when progress seems in danger of being blocked? Do we not introduce man-made schemes, from “Bingo” to “Stewardship,” to help with the finances? We bring in entertainment, we turn to advertising, to increase our membership. We appoint committees and directors to liven things up, and turn to wandering minstrels to keep the children from crying. And instead of making progress we drive our own mighty men to flee from us and go elsewhere. Yet this we do in Christ’s name, and swear we are followers of the God of Israel. But God has clearly said, As high as the heaven above the earth, so high is My way above your way, and My thoughts above your thoughts. To our way of thinking, God’s plan is foolish, unworkable, tedious and a waste of time. How much better to stick with the well-tried and proven ways of Egypt that we all have learned! Thus in any situation of crisis among God’s people, or even of want of progress, we run to Egypt for ideas and turn away once more from God who leads us. What hope would we have then against Jericho? Would we not be better on the other side of Jordan where at least we could act responsibly and sanely? Barren as the wilderness might be, it was never so wild as this wild scheme to overcome the blockage in our path! But in the wilderness every man does what is right in his own eyes, and in the inheritance the call is to godliness and to following Jesus. So to Jesus we must look, for our own strength is of no use to us here, and His strength can only be made perfect in our weakness. God is now with us, for it is “we” who passed over Jordan, and the Overcomer Himself will lead us in the way that we must go.

“And the armed men went before the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the rearward came after the ark, the priests going on and blowing with the trumpets. And Joshua had commanded the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I bid you shout; then shall ye shout.” We are only required at this time to walk around in circles every day and the command is to silence. Now those who are watching us will think this is very odd behaviour indeed. Should we not at least be speaking, should we not be shouting for victory? Clearly not. As long as this blockage continues in our lives we are to remain silent, and this command is from the Lord Himself. For Jericho must be overcome, and there is only one way to do that. We must be subject unto our Leader, lest we spoil His plan, rather than to take upon ourselves the conquest alone. If the Lord specifically calls us to be silent, let us be silent, and ignore the bewildered looks on every side. When He says shout, then we will shout! How seldom has it ever occurred to any one of us that there may be a time in our lives when the command is to silence! We talk too much, and in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin. But sin would spoil our hopes of victory, therefore let us for once fall silent and let nothing be heard but the priests blowing the horns in the midst of the people. We need not seek to explain our silence either—“neither shall any word proceed out of your mouth”—for the day is coming when we shall shout, and then the bewildered looks can turn to amazement as all see for themselves that we have gained another victory.

Well then, beloved, what does Jericho represent? It represents that massive barrier in our spiritual lives which blocks our way and impedes all our progress. The harlot’s house is seen to be on the very wall of Jericho, for Jerusalem was the old harlot of the prophecies, and when the Lord reached Jerusalem He had come to the end of His earthly mission. He could go no further. The only way to overcome Jericho is through Jordan. And we follow Him. The thing that impedes all our progress actually lies on the other side of Jordan. We too have to be crucified with Christ, and to go into death with Him, to get at the root of all our powerlessness, all our impediment, all our blockage. It is called Jericho, the city of walls, because it is a massive structure that cannot be overthrown by natural means. So let us see what constitutes the blockage, and how God through Christ enables us to overcome it.

We have been crucified with Christ, remember, and this has nothing to do with our early salvation from Egypt. We have gone with Christ into death—following Him through Jordan—and this again has nothing to do with our early experience of baptism. So now we are coming to the resurrection of Christ, and this has nothing to do with our previous experience as Christians. What is happening to us as we march round Jericho daily is that we are silent, listening to the blowing of the horns in the hands of the priests. We are hearing afresh the trumpet sounds, as the priests tell out continually the notes of the resurrection song, of Christ’s victory over death, and this one thing we must do daily even as we follow Jesus and go round in endless circles.

For how long do we do this? For six days, for whatever period of time it takes for the trumpet sound to fully penetrate into our hearts and minds. Yes, we follow a living Saviour, and yes we are fully aware that He is alive and leading us, but nevertheless there is a blockage of power in our lives and the only way to overcome it is to concentrate our attention on the resurrection of Christ. We must turn back to the apostles and gospel writers and pay attention to all the priests who are blowing the rams’ horns of victory. We need not only to see Christ risen, to see Jesus in our midst, but to experience the resurrection ourselves. We lodge in the camp, we keep silence, we daily go round in circles—but all the time we are paying attention to the resurrection of Christ, we are now concentrating as never before on that one aspect of the gospel. “And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the Lord”—to watch and pay attention to this in now our daily experience for these six days—“and seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually, and blew with the trumpets”—we listen daily to this continued blowing until our very souls have absorbed the sound—“and the armed men went before them”—those of us who have warrior strength will hear the sound as it were behind them, encouraging them forward—“but the rearward came after the ark of the Lord, the priests going on, and blowing with the trumpets”—but the rest of us will be led by the trumpets, we will follow on to listen to the priests, yet whether we go before or whether we follow after the priests we are all in the same position as regards to Jericho.

Now God will keep us here until His seventh day, till we have absorbed the sound and are ready to experience resurrection as a fact in our own lives along with Joshua. “And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did six days.” But let us see what happens when the period is come to an end. “And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day…” Did you see it? THEY rose early. All the people rose about the dawning of the day. With Jesus, we all experience it! The resurrection of Christ is now part of us too. We have been crucified with Christ, we have died with Christ—and now we are alive in Christ Jesus for evermore. It is not the final resurrection of the dead, for there is no mention here of anyone but the living children of Israel, but it is our final experience that gives us too the victory and which will remove forever the last blockage between us and the grapes of Eshcol. Now we see the resurrection from God’s standpoint, we encompass the city seven times. And this time we shout! We shout the great shout of victory as the priests blow a blast on the trumpet which is only exceeded by the angel Gabriel on the last day! This is the victory, which God in Christ has given us. At that great sound the walls of Jericho fall flat, and the way into the inheritance is plain before us. “And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout! For the Lord hath given you the city!” May we all thus experience in our own lives the resurrection victory which Christ Jesus won for us so long ago.

“But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing.” We read in the New Testament of them that said and taught that the resurrection was past already, and they overthrew the faith of some. This is an example of the accursed thing in our midst. After Jericho we go on to Ai, our next conquest, a comparatively simple affair. We will not need all our strength to conquer Ai, and fresh from the overthrow of Jericho we can do it with “about three thousand men”—with the strength of godliness. No, there is nothing now to fear from the Amorites, for our previous desires for peace-and-love in our own lives are almost swallowed up already in our most recent victory over Jericho. It is only a question of taking a firm line and marching on in godliness—thus Ai may be overthrown now at no cost to us, with no expenditure of strength.

But whatever would cast doubts on the truth of resurrection will now be our downfall unless we deal promptly with it. There are still teachers who refuse the truth of Jericho, who for silver and gold and goodly Babylonish garments would sell Israel into the hand of the enemy. These are they who deny us the victory. They may not necessarily deny the resurrection of Christ, but they will deny this truth that we can be raised with Him to walk in newness of life in this world. Now this is the accursed thing, this wicked thing that they take out of Jericho. If we heed them at all, if doubt is allowed to grow and fester in our minds, then once more we may be overthrown at Ai, and what difficulty we will have thereafter conquering again! Our fears will all come flooding back to us, as our hearts melt and turn to water in face of the slightest opposition. God will not go with us, He will not be for us, He will not help us at all, if we allow false teaching to come into our lives at this point. God calls all false teaching about the resurrection “the accursed thing,” and our Lord Himself would warn us not to put our hand to it. The difficulty here is that the man with the accursed thing is one of us, an Israelite of the house of Judah, a godly man who for years has been looked up to as a leader among us. We were not to know that he had the accursed thing hidden in his heart. We have always followed him, agreed with his teaching, assented to his known authority, fought with him in every battle. Now he casts doubts on the truth of Jericho, for his heart is not perfect before God—the accursed thing is hidden “in the midst of his tent.” And if we heed him for a moment we will find we can no longer stand before the Amorites.

“Israel hath sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them,” God says, “for they have even taken of the accursed thing”—brethren, this is a serious matter—“and have also stolen”—the truth of God may be missing from before His eyes—“and dissembled also”—appearing zealous for God whilst denying His truth—“and they have put it even among their own stuff”—the accursed thing is hidden among the truths which they have accumulated and to which they still hold. Be warned, O Israel! The man with the accursed thing has been snared by a sudden impulse, a hidden lust for silver and gold and good clothes, and his heart is not perfect before the Lord his God, however exemplary has been his conduct and leadership up to this point. If we continue to value his leadership, if we follow him still, if we go along with his wrong thinking, God says we have sinned. And the evidence for it will appear in our own lives, for our old desires for peace and love will overcome our godliness, and as we go down we will be smitten by the Amorites. Here too we see a picture of Joshua interceding for the people after the manner of Moses in the wilderness, but with the words, “Get thee up, wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” we see God rejecting such intercession. Israel hath sinned, therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed. “Neither will I be with you any more,” God clearly tells Israel, “except ye destroy the accursed from among you.” Jericho is the end of the line for every one of us, the end of all our ambitions in this life, but if any one among us refuses it, for love of silver and gold and raiment, he may accomplish the downfall of Israel unless we are prepared to deal with him.

How do we deal with the accursed thing, and with him who possesses it? We are shown the way, a slow process of sifting to find who has the accursed thing hidden with him, a process of elimination directed by God, undertaken for us by Jesus, that the accursed thing might be brought to light among us. Our part is to search our hearts and if we are guilty to confess our sin before the Lord. Then the accursed thing may be destroyed from among us in the fire of righteous indignation, and we are to cast ourselves solidly as living stones against him who put his hand to the accursed thing, and raise up over him such a heap of stones, so many living stones, as to bury him and his accursed doctrine under a veritable avalanche of truth. There is no use one stone being thrown against him, but the weight of many stones can destroy him. “And they raised over him a great heap of stones”—let us all fling our weight against him—“unto this day.” The process is the same in our day as in Paul’s day, that the accursed teaching may not continue, but that all may see from the great heap of stones how many were against it. Unto this day we are to follow Jesus, unto this day we are to be strongly set against damnable heresies in the church, unto this day the great heap of stones has been accumulating in the valley of Achor, mute but eloquent testimony to the lives of all those living stones who flung themselves against the possessor of the accursed thing. Christ is risen! It is part of our gospel; the resurrection of the dead is still before us; and God’s people on earth who are found crucified with Christ and buried with Christ are still to be found raised with Christ to walk in newness of life—“unto this day.”

And this we will do, if God permit. The forces against us are the Amorites of Ai, that is, our own human desires for peace in our lives and love from all those about us. Why must we destroy them, these human desires for peace and love? In order to gain more of our inheritance. Jesus has taught us that if a man love father or mother, brother or sister, wife or children more than Him then that man is not worthy of Him. We are taught to destroy our very natural desires for pace at any price and love at all costs—to deny ourselves—in order to gain more of what God has in store for us. These would hold us back, keep us from our full inheritance, retard our progress, and overcome our spiritual desires, as some of us already know. They must be totally overthrown if we are to follow our great Overcomer into the promised land, even Jesus our Lord and Master. Had the children not been caught up in the false teaching concerning the resurrection, the accursed thing out of Jericho, they would have by now overcome these Amorites through simple godliness, with “three thousand men.” But having been snared into doubting, and that by false teachers, the Amorites have been strengthened and the tide of battle changed. Therefore we are shown that in order to accomplish what was earlier an easy task we must now be vary careful, we must see all the forces at our disposal, we must use craftiness to win this battle ahead of us. The way we are shown to do it is to lure our human desires away from their stronghold, to bring them out into the open, and then to destroy their stronghold, using the greater part of our strength to accomplish that objective.

Once we have been cast down at any point it is not enough to go on again in simple godliness. We must then plan our conduct so that we can bring our warrior strength to bear in the most telling way possible. Jesus will show us how to do it if we fix our eyes on Him, and pay attention to Him alone. He will direct us. He will direct the assault on Ai, an assault deliberately aimed at overcoming these Amorites. He will position us in such a way that the next time our desires for peace-at-any-price and love-at-all-costs come out from their city against us we will fall back from before them. Then He will rally our strength in God and with righteous indignation we will burn forever the city of these Amorites and we will fall upon these desires which are then openly exposed to us and exterminate them once and for all. Only the spoil of the city will remain to us—we will have greater peace and love in our lives than ever before as the inheritance once more opens up before us. We can safely leave the plan and the details of the working out of this matter in the hands of our Lord Jesus. He is subject to God; we need only be subject to Him. He is taught of God, we are taught of Jesus. He has already overcome all His foes, and in Him we too will overcome all our foes. Only fear not, neither be dismayed, everything is in His hands, and our part is to burn with righteous indignation and to bring the sword of the Spirit into play at the appropriate moment. Thus we will destroy forever our desires for peace-at-any-price, and with His help we will overcome our innermost desire for love-at-all-costs, so that we might have His peace and the love of God with us.

Let us look for a moment at the life of Christ. At the age of twelve He is found in the temple in Jerusalem, while for three days of distracted care Mary and Joseph seek Him, sorrowing. Where then were His natural desires for peace in the family, for love of human relationships at all costs? Does He apologize? No, He demands to know how it was that they needed to search for Him! Did they not yet understand He must be about His Father’s business? Or again, for His first public sermon in the synagogue, He told the people such a truth that they could not endure it, but took Him out in a headlong rush to throw Him over the brow of a hill. Did He seek peace at any price, or love at all costs there? Listen to Him in the Pharisee’s house answering the scribes and the lawyers. Whited sepulchures, He calls them, hypocrites, blind leaders of the blind. And He was a guest in that house that day! Where in His life do we find a desire for peace at any price? Where in His ministry do we find Him succumbing to His natural desires for love at all costs? They crucified Him because He fought and won every battle for the truth, because they hated Him. And if we go on to the apostles, we find Peter charging the leaders of Israel with the murder of the Lord of Glory, we find Paul turning the world upside down, creating turmoil and animosity wherever he went. But Christ is the Prince of Peace, and it was the apostles who preached the gospel of peace. Christians are not rebels or revolutionaries or violent men—they are preachers of peace who have conquered through Jesus Christ their own natural desires for peace at any price and love at all costs, in order to bring peace and the love of God into a troubled world.

There is in our chapter a picture we would do well to dwell on. “And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until the eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raised thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.” If we are not sure of any point of scripture the Holy Spirit will direct us always to fasten our eyes upon Jesus. If we are ever in any perplexity God turns our eyes back to Calvary. And so here, it is when we see the King of peace and love taken and hanged on a tree, it is when we look at the Cross of Christ in a new light, that we realize that this is indeed the way that Jesus came and we are following in His footsteps. “He that cometh after Me,” said Jesus, “let him take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Then we find another truth here also, that Joshua reiterates and upholds all the law of God given to Moses. We are not under law, but Jesus will guide us lawfully nevertheless. We are not under law, but we see it was at Calvary Christ endured that hill of cursing that all the blessings might come upon us. We not under law, but we understand that not one word spoken by Christ will ever pass away, and His last words before He turned Himself over to God were, “It is finished.” Jesus is our great Overcomer, He who overcame death itself that we might have life. We need to know that it was for our sakes that Jesus voluntarily and of Himself hanged the Prince of peace on a tree outside the gate of the city of peace. “No man taketh My life from me,” He cried, “but I lay it down of Myself.”

The story is simple enough. The men of Gibeon, knowing that their overthrow is a certainty, come to the children of Israel as though from a far country to make a league or treaty with them. Such things were common in those days, weaker nations depending for their survival on the leagues they could make with stronger nations. The trickery is that the men of Gibeon appeared to have journeyed from another land entirely, from a place some great distance away, and they produced the most convincing evidence to support their case, so that the people of God were completely taken in by their story and entered into a covenant with them not to fight against them. God is not deceived, but they did not ask God, and as we shall see Joshua is not deceived but he allows the thing to be so, and by a simple trick the people of God have lost another battle.

Now the men of Gibeon are Hivites. “And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof:”—that is, heard of the victories of the children of Israel—“that they gathered themselves together, to fight with Joshua and with Israel, with one accord.” There is no mention here of the Girgashites. The Girgashites are things in ourselves which fight against us, and literally speaking all of these six nations can be seen to be things in ourselves which either singly or in combination will fight against us. As we saw in Deuteronomy, the Hittite represents our life patterns, the Amorite our desires for peace and love in our lives, the Canaanite our spiritual pride, the Perizzite our natural way of thinking, the Hivite our inherent fears and inhibitions, and the Jebusite our wish to quit, our inability to keep on. When these come together with one accord to fight against us they could be put under one heading, “Girgashites,” things in ourselves which are opposed to our conquest of the inheritance. Now our objective ahead of us is clearly Gibeon, the territory of the Hivite, if we are to make any further progress, for our aim is to eventually overcome and destroy all the things within ourselves which are opposed to Jesus and to us as we seek to claim the inheritance. But our own hearts are deceitful, above all things, and dreadfully wicked, and if we trust them we can be tricked into defeat. We dare not trust our own hearts, we must put all our trust in God alone as we follow Jesus our Lord. We will find that our hearts are false, wicked, deceptive creatures that seek our downfall by deceiving us—who can know them indeed?

So we may not assume that we know our own hearts! Only God knoweth the heart, only God is not deceived. The enemy we are called upon to face now is the Hivite, our own heart, with all its deceitfulness. A day will come when we too shall know even as also we are known, but meanwhile we are up against latent fears, inhibitions, and inherent weaknesses in us known only to God. Yet we have just overcome the Amorites at Ai, and we look into our hearts and see no fears there, no apparent weaknesses that we can detect, therefore we are filled with confidence, not realizing that we may deceive ourselves thus. Inside us, hidden from our gaze, are age-old fears that go back to times of superstition, inhibitions that go back to childhood days beyond memory, and inherent weaknesses we never even suspected ourselves of possessing. (Now Jesus can make us whole every whit if we follow Him closely enough, He can save to the uttermost all who rely only on Him.) We look into our hearts and we see no fears there at all, and if we suspect that our hearts deceive us, the fears and inhibitions and weaknesses will appear to us old, as though they were from a land far away. These are the Hivites. They do not seem to us to bear any relevance to our present conquest of the inheritance. “How could that old superstition inherited from a great grandfather be my enemy today?” we think scornfully. “That childhood inhibition is something from my distant past,” we say, “and it is now irrelevant.” “That old fear couldn’t harm me now,” say we, “and that old weakness looks as though it were about to die of old age alone.” Thus the Hivites of Gibeon, disguised as if from a distant land, deceive the children of Israel.

How many of us are as great as Peter? Are we too on the house-top above the cares of this life, absorbed in prayer and meditation and leaving to others the preparation of our daily bread while hunger gnaws our vitals? How splendid an example that great apostle showed us of daily living! Are we greater than he? It was then that God in a vision let down before Peter a great sheet full of all manner of creeping things and commanded him, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” And what did Peter reply? “Not so, Lord.” Not so, Lord, I will not do as you command me! Why? Because of an inhibition he did not know was opposed to God, a tradition he had had since childhood, a Hivite still there from way back. Most of us in Peter’s place would have assumed we were being tempted by Satan, for we have never learned God as the great apostle knew Him, but we must see that we too can be held back from the inheritance by an old fear, an old tradition in our lives, an old inhibition. Now Peter overcame the Hivite as scripture tells us, and the result was the bringing in of the Gentiles, for Peter was the great apostle, the Lord’s right-hand man, God’s greatest agent, but if Peter could be held up by the Hivite for even one hour think how careful we must be in our dealings with this enemy. Do not be deceived by the fact that the Hivite’s things look so old, or that the Hivite seems to come from some land far away. The Hivite is one of our most relevant foes, the Hivite is with us in the land, the Hivite is very loath to be destroyed, and the Hivite is a liar, a deceiver, a cunning and wily opponent of all those who seek to gain the full inheritance of God.

“And the men of Israel took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord; and Joshua made peace with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them.” Let us see this very very clearly and distinctly, beloved. If we are prepared to partake of their musty victuals Jesus will let them live. In any situation in which we are not sure how to act we are meant to turn to God, to ask counsel at the mouth of the Lord, and if we fail to do that we deceive ourselves. It is little use to find out afterwards, and too late, what we have done to bring on our own downfall—we must remember that the heart is deceitful above all things and dreadfully wicked, stubbornly opposed to God, to Jesus, and to us. Yes, our heart! Not the heart of our neighbor, but our heart! If we refuse God’s counsel, and partake still of the hoary old victuals presented to us by the Hivites, the result is our own defeat. If Peter had clung to the traditions of his own upbringing the Gentiles might not have been lost, but Peter would have lost his opportunity to lead them in, and Peter would have been defeated. But we are free men, people of free will, and if we partake of these victuals of the Hivites Jesus will not destroy them. He will let the Hivites live, He will let them alone, He will allow them to dwell peacefully with us. God does not take a sword and rid the inheritance for us, nor does Jesus go before us and destroy all our enemies. No, no! We must fight every battle ourselves but under His leadership, and then with Paul we can say “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The Lord will deliver us, He is the Overcomer, but we as led by Him must fight every enemy to gain the inheritance.

Remember that everything is combined to oppose us. The forces we see individually as the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite are gathered together, to fight with Joshua and with Israel, with one accord. We must keep our eyes fixed on our Leader, we must ask counsel of God. All our help must come from the Lord alone. If we partake of the things of the Hivites and enter into a league with them Jesus will let them live with us for the rest of our lives. They are cursed of God, but the most that our Lord will do is to make them our servants instead of allowing them to overcome us. Joshua makes them hewers of wood and drawers of water to serve even at the altar. If we believe them dead, let us check every detail of our next communion service when we attend church. Is that in the Bible? Or that? Or that? Certainly not, these are Hivites, traditions that appear to us ancient, still alive in Israel. Jesus has allowed them to live, He has allowed them to serve ever for the altar of the Lord, “even unto this day,” because we refused to destroy them, because we found them acceptable, because we are still deceived by them, not realizing they spring from the human heart and were not given to us by God at all. Only know this, O Israel, that at Gibeon we suffered a defeat of catastrophic dimensions. Why was the body of our Lord Jesus Christ not given proper burial? Because of the Sabbath, so we read. Rather than break the Sabbath tradition the body of Jesus must be hastily disposed of in a cave! And today? Rather than break with tradition His death is remembered in haste to this day. Why? Because the Hivite serves “even unto this day” at the altar of the Lord.

Think of the crucifixion of Christ for a moment. Why did the Jews not put Him to death? Because it was not customary. Why did Pilate not release Him when he found Christ innocent? Because of his hidden fears of offending Caesar. Why did the Roman soldiers choose to mock Him? Because of their own superstitions. Why was He first scourged? Because that was the custom. Why did His disciples flee from Him? Because of their inherent weakness. Why did Peter deny Him? Because of his own fear. Why was Christ nailed hand and foot to the Cross? Because they had a nameless fear that He could release Himself. Why did the soldiers offer Him vinegar to drink? Because it was part of the ritual of crucifixion. Why were they surprised to find Him dead so soon? Because that was a new thing to them. And why were the bodies taken down from their Crosses that evening? Because of the Sabbath. Yet none of these are logical reasons. The Jews hated Him; they should logically have killed Him. Pilate found Him innocent; he should logically have released Him. The Roman soldiers had no reason to mock Him, still less to scourge Him, as they were about to crucify Him. They did not mock or scourge the two thieves. Peter and the disciples had committed themselves to die with Jesus if He were taken, yet they fled. Christ offered no defense and no resistance, yet they had to nail His hands and His feet to be sure of binding Him to the Cross. We see it is clearly the work of the Hivites, yet it was Joshua who caused the Hivites to hew the wood, and draw the water, and serve the altar of Calvary, “in the place which he should choose.” What a Saviour!

There is first the king of Jerusalem, who is the king of peace, but Amoritish peace, remember, peace-at-any-price. Next there is the king of Hebron, representing religious peace, peace-at-any-price in religion. Then too there is the king of Jarmuth, who is king of love-at-all-costs. The fourth is king of Lachish, who is king of peace-and-love in the sense of leaving undisturbed things as they are. And lastly, there is the king of Eglon, king of human love. These five kings in the name of peace and love come together to make war against Gibeon. Now Gibeon is a royal city, it stands for our traditional Christianity which we got as a result of being deceived by the Hivites rather than as a result of battle. Did we not get our traditions by fighting for them, then? No, beloved, we got them from the Hivites. The religious wars of mankind have never had anything to do with Joshua at all. Was it not Jesus who said, “If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight: but now My kingdom is not of this world.” The battles into which our Lord leads us are spiritual battles, not religious warfare. True, we are to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, but we are here seeking to gain the inheritance, and our battles are the battles of those who strive to possess that promised land.

But why do these Amorites come up against Gibeon? And why does Joshua come suddenly to help the place of the Hivites? And what does it all mean to us today in our own lives? Let us now fix our attention on Jesus and learn of Him, and be instructed. Our Lord has established His church on earth, and although His people have been deceived by the Hivites yet Jesus has allowed the traditions to remain alive among us even unto this day. Further, as we have sworn to uphold these traditions, Jesus will come to their aid if they are attacked. This thing we must see. We learn in Joshua chapter nine that these things are cursed, and we immediately conclude that we should overthrow them. But wait! Why should they be overthrown if Jesus has allowed them to live? Would He not have overthrown and destroyed them long ago if He had so desired? Yes, but surely they are opposed to us, enemies of God, reminding us only of our defeat by the deceitfulness of the Hivites? Clearly so, yet because God’s people have accepted them, have allowed them to remain among us, and are sworn to uphold them, they may not be attacked, for Joshua will come suddenly to their defense. Again, who is it who would seek to overthrow them? Strangely enough, it is not we as spiritual who would seek their downfall, but that Amoritish thing in us which is always fighting for peace-at-any-price and love-at-all costs. There is in each one of us a rooted idea that by strife we can achieve peace. We suffer from a firm deep delusion that we must fight to bring in love. This delusion is seen clearly in the world around us as history records, but it must not be allowed to breathe among God’s people, it must be stamped out of us, destroyed, exterminated completely if we are to possess our inheritance.

Look again at the five kings of the Amorites. The king of Jerusalem is the king of peace. But again our hearts deceive us. To overthrow the traditional things which the people of God have adopted and allowed to live among us would not bring us peace but strife. Next, the king of Hebron is king of religious peace. His idea is to do away with what we have foolishly allowed to remain among us, and his motive is to thus bring in the reign of religious peace for which we now clamour. That always appeals to the religious flesh in each of us, because deep in our deceitful hearts we long for the reign of religious peace, and surely by abolishing Gibeon we could achieve our ends. Then there is the king of Jarmuth, king of love at all costs. If we could only knock down the barriers between us we would have this universal love among us, he cries, and in the name of love he brings his forces against Gibeon. Fourthly, there is the king of Lachish, king of the status quo, yet he is not content to leave things as they are at all but must needs change them to keep abreast of the ever changing times, thus maintaining the status quo. And lastly, there is the king of Eglon who is the king of human love. His ideas are simply human ideas. For the sake of human peace and love he would seek to abolish Gibeon, seek to overthrow all the ancient things which we uphold to this day, because once the natural mind is told that these things are not God-ordered the natural reaction is to destroy them. And the motive? To bring peace and love into our lives. To the natural mind there is no argument, this is clearly the thing to do. Only the spiritual can grasp the message of Joshua. But know of a truth that these kings are all Amorite and Joshua will destroy them every one.

This is the chapter of Joshua’s long day. The battle has raged for centuries, sometimes seemingly won, sometimes seemingly lost. It is going ahead in our day, as the kings of the Amorites renew their attacks in this generation and we appear to be losing some ground. Joshua has fought against every attack in every generation and Gibeon still stands, but darkness threatens ever to turn the tide of battle. Therefore Joshua has called on the sun to stand still, and the moon to stay, and God has heard that plea and ordered it to be so. It is a great sight indeed, for those who have eyes to see. And if we follow the Overcomer we will be found fighting on His side and not against Him. The religious leaders of Peter’s day who wanted peace at any price, love at all costs, were advised by one to be careful “lest haply ye be found to fight against God.” It was good advice then, it is good advice today. It is God alone who gives peace, and the love among the saints is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. Study if you will the great picture in this chapter of the five kings hid in the cave to see where we get our peace and love. “Joshua smote them and slew them, and hanged them on five trees: and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening.” We saw the same picture in chapter eight, but God would enlarge it five-fold to make it abundantly plain that the way of the Cross of Calvary is the way of Joshua and of all who follow the Overcomer. “And it came to pass, at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave where they had been hid, and laid great stones in the cave’s mouth, which remain until this very day.” No matter how men strive to change everything, the gospel of Christ remains unchanged until this very day.