Joshua 10
The nation Circumcised – 5:2-9
Turn to Joshua chapter 5. Tonight
we start with 5:2. As you recall from last
week that he’s gotten the armies of
So we come to Joshua 5, we come to the last section of the first
grouping of the book of Joshua. The
first five chapters deal with the entrance into the land. This is analogous in the New Testament to
salvation for the believer, in that we enter into this position in Jesus
Christ. If you can keep this in mind as
we proceed, when we go into the top circle at the point of salvation, we enter
our legal possessions; if you want a concrete illustration of this you have it
right here in history. The entrance of
the nation
Let’s read the chapter. [2] “At
that time the LORD said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise
again the children of
I think you have the general drift, the topic is circumcision. We’re starting in verse 2 because 5:1 deals
with the last part of chapter 4, so the second verse of this chapter actually
is the beginning verse. So verse 2 is
the start of a new section. The
background, and the reason why the King James put their chapter division here
is because they felt verse 1 would give you the background for something that’s
going to happen here. Actually in the
Hebrew it’s not true; verse 2 is the traditional in the original Hebrew text,
this is where the rabbis broke it.
You can tell this because when you read the Hebrew you can read line
after line of characters and you’ll get to a break and the rabbis had two ways
of indicating a break. They’d put a
sameck or a putz there, one of these two symbols. And when you see this in the text, this is
where they broke it, so when they read they read to one of these points and
stopped reading. And we can tell from
our Hebrew text where, in most portions of the Word of God, they made their
traditional breaks. And when I exegete
the Word of God I usually give preference to these rabbinic breaks and the
break is at the end of verse 1.
Verse 2 “At that time the LORD said unto Joshua,” now God is going to
order Joshua to do something here that violates the principle of war. And it’s very interesting because I want you
to notice this, one of the concepts of divine viewpoint, over and against human
viewpoint; that Joshua is in a situation where he does a most asinine thing
militarily. This is the worst thing he
could possibly have done. Look at the
situation tactically. Here he is, with
the Jordan River closed behind him; he has no way of retreat, none
whatever. His army is here and up here
you have the Canaanite forces, in higher land.
Here he is out on the plain, east of Jericho, trapped between the enemy
and the high elevation and behind him is Jordan, completely closed off. And at this point he immobilizes his army for
a period of over 72 hours.
From the human point of view this is the most absurd thing he could ever
have done. He is essentially making his
army an unprotected situation here, he only has… only two out of every three
men are circumcised, one-third of the men, we can tell from population
statistics, are the older men who survived, and so on, they were the children
who came up out of Egypt. But he has
reduced his fighting force to one-third of its strength in a situation where
there can be no retreat. If the
Canaanites attack any time during these 72 hours his army will be annihilated,
completely overwhelmed. So this is why
in the thinking of the King James translators they put verse 1 here in this
chapter, because when you read verse 1 you see that the fear of God had been
put upon these nations, they were immobilized mentally from moving in.
Now this is an abnormal procedure for Joshua because as I taught in
chapter 1, we can take the principles of war and see how Joshua is a great
general. For example, one principle of
war is that you always have a measurable objective. By this we mean that the military commander
has an objective that he knows about and can measure whether he wins or
not. In other words, he has an objective
criteria. Sometimes a commander will be
given an order; secure, say, all the ground up to the Rhine River, something
like this. And he knows, he has been
given an objective so when he reaches the Rhine River he knows at that point he
has reached his objective.
Joshua, similarly, has been given an objective, the boundaries of the
land of Israel. We’d say he follows the
principles of an objective. We also
know, very much so, that Joshua is very security conscious. One reason we know, back in chapter 1 he left
a rear guard in Transjordania of some, I think it was five divisions, the
equivalent of five military divisions over here to guard his supplies. Remember there was a cattle raising country
over here and this is where he got the steaks to feed his army. So all of this food and logistics was guarded
by five divisions. So he was sensitive
to security, and he wouldn’t have done a foolish thing like this had it not
been for divine viewpoint.
A second illustration about how sensitive Joshua was to preserve
security was carefully sending spies across the Jordan River to research
Jericho, find its defenses, etc. Joshua
was a military commander that gave credence to the reports of intelligence teams;
he was very sensitive to security problems for his army. And we know he followed the principle of war
known as the principle of concentration because as we are going to see in
subsequent chapters, every time Joshua attacks he follows the principle in our
won historical times made famous by Claire Chenault of
The Flying Tigers before World War II.
Claire Chenault was outnumbered; he had the P-40 which was an outmoded
plane in 1940 and 39 and 38 and he was fighting with very obsolete equipment. But Claire Chenault had some of the greatest
pilots that America has ever produced.
And he fought against the Japanese Zero, which was completely superior
to the P-40 aircraft. But what Chenault
used was the principle of concentration and the orders to his pilots were
this. Get the Zeros out of the flock and
whenever you attack a Japanese Zero make sure there are three P-40s on its
tail, so at the point of conflict there would be one Japanese Zero and three
P-40s coming in on it.
And this is the principle that he always used. He never allowed his pilots to move into a
situation where they would be outnumbered.
He couldn’t outnumber the Japanese in total but when there was a
confrontation, at that point of confrontation Claire Chenault drove it into his
men to follow the principle of concentration of power, i.e. at that point of
concentration you locally, at that point, outnumber your opponent. And that was how Chenault, as I recall
something like one to ten, for every ten Japanese Zeros down he lost one; so he
chalked up a fantastic record with obsolete equipment, with practically no
resources, no logistics, etc. Chenault
ran a tremendous operation because he was one of the great epitomes in modern
history of the principle of concentration of power.
Joshua followed the same thing because instead of allowing the tribes to
gain their foothold, and then say okay Judah, you conquered your land, sit down
and relax; Benjamin and Manasseh, you come over here and get your land. No, he didn’t do that; he kept all twelve
tribes moving, moving, moving, so that they’d come upon a Canaanite city and
the Canaanites didn’t learn the lesson; the Canaanites tried to fight a
defensive war and you win wars fighting defensively. So what would happen was that the Canaanites got
into fortified citadels, like Jericho, and they had the defensive concept of
warfare where they would retreat and pull their forces inside the wall. But the trouble was the Canaanites never got
it, so they’d have a city here and a city here, a city here. And instead of coming out of the city and
taking Israel on the field, what they did was retreat back behind the walls so
that what they had here was a defensive war.
So what Joshua did, very cleverly, was assemble all his twelve tribes
and he hit, all twelve tribes hit one city and then they’d move on, and several
miles later, boom, all twelve tribes would hit one city; then they’d move on
further, all twelve tribes would hit one city.
He’d always outnumber the Canaanites locally. So Joshua followed the principle of
concentration of power.
We find Joshua also following another principle of war, the principle of
cooperation. Joshua very cleverly made
it a point of having one camp. At the
center of the camp they had the ark, and he maintained the focal point of unity
as the Lord. The Lord Himself was the
focal point; so that they had unity and cooperation among all the tribes. And lastly, Joshua followed the principle of
logistics. He is going to set up a place,
Gilgal; Gilgal is going to be his supply point.
At Gilgal he has established this.
Here is the Jordan River, the north end of the Dead Sea, Gilgal is
located here, Jericho to the west.
Gilgal is his supply base. It is
a supply base because logistically it is close to Transjordania, that’s where
he’s going to get his beef, and his food and his farmlands are over here, and
his five divisions that he’s left over here to hold and act as a rear guard are
going to transfer all of this supply back to Gilgal. So Joshua has raids; he’ll move his army out
here and conduct a raid and then move back.
He has a raid down here, he moves his army out, conducts a raid, and
then moves back. So Gilgal is going to
be his base of operation. And tactically
Gilgal plays a significant role in the area of communications.
But one thing Gilgal lacks is security; it’s bad from the standpoint of
security is because what this means is that Joshua’s armies are at a tactical
disadvantage. Again the terrain; we have
the Jordan River here, Gilgal here, Jericho here. Mountains start in right here; that means
that he faces Amorite and Canaanites hostile forces occupying these
ridges. And they can swoop down on the
plain and hit Gilgal at any time. So he
has one very bad thing about selecting a base camp at this particular point in
the terrain, it is liable to overrunning from higher elevations. What they did was out in this plain they were
open to attack, but Joshua was commanded in 5:2 to make sharp knives or
actually stone knives and circumcise his army.
So he would reduce his fighting force 66%. This would be really stupid; from the human
viewpoint Joshua is violating one of the cardinal principles of military
warfare.
This should tell you something about operating on divine viewpoint in
your own life. There will come times in
your life as a believer where God will ask you to do something, step out into a
situation where to do so violates what we would call common sense. This isn’t always and this is not an excuse
to be an eccentric. But there will come
times when God asks you to do things that violate your good sense; you just
violate it.
Turn to 1 Cor. 2 and you’ll see this in operation. In verses 7-8, the two kinds of wisdom, human
viewpoint wisdom and divine viewpoint wisdom; wisdom centering on some aspect
of creation versus wisdom centering on the Triune God. Verse 7, “But we speak the wisdom of God in a
mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our
glory,” notice verse 8, “Which none of the princes of this world knew,” that is
referring not only to earthly rulers, that is referring to the demonic forces
that control history, Eph. 2:2, other passages, “which none of the princes of
this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord
of glory.”
The cross was a tactical blunder of Satan. God had so worked it out, and remember, Satan
is not omniscient. What Satan wanted to
do was to get Jesus Christ out of the way and this is why Satan wanted to get
in Judas Iscariot’s heart and why he wanted to employ Judas Iscariot as his
betrayer, to remove Jesus Christ from the scene where Jesus Christ could not
harm him as the god of this world. But
as always with God’s sovereignty as a master chess player with a novice, the
master chess player always lets the novice lose by having the novice play into
his hands. So similarly God, in the flow
of history, always works it out so it’s head He wins, tales you lose. That’s just the way history is made, and that
applies to Satan. As far as the
rebellious element in the universe it’s a “heads he wins, tails they lose”
situation, so no matter what happens they always come out the loser. This is an illustration of this.
World wisdom or human viewpoint, human viewpoint is always centered on
some aspect of the creation or the creature as Romans 1 says; you isolate
something as your idol and you try to build around it just like with divine
viewpoint and you try to build up categories and try to organize everything
around an idol. That may be a scientific
principle, it may be something else, but that is human viewpoint as
distinguished from divine viewpoint where you take God and around Him you have
special revelation of Him, Bible doctrine, and around Him you organize all
areas of thought, history, philosophy, art, music, literature, etc. all the
personal relationships. This is the
divine viewpoint framework. These are
the two kinds of competing world and life views that men have, either the
divine viewpoint framework or the human viewpoint framework.
So in Joshua 5 where he would have to be in collision with another
military commander, say for example you have to men. Let me illustrate it this way. Suppose we have Joshua and we have somebody
else over here, say David, not the David of Scripture, just David, and we have
these two men, Joshua and David. Now
suppose David is a Hebrew man who operates on human viewpoint principles. He follows all the principles of war, all the principles of war are followed
here. And he, like Joshua, was careful
with security, careful for concentration, careful for communication, logistics,
cooperation, objective, etc. And along
comes Joshua. Joshua operates on divine
viewpoint, all of them up to this point would agree they all have taken the same
precautions given the same men, the same situation; both of these generals
would have operated exactly the same way.
But now we come to a situation where the man who operates on divine
viewpoint must operate against the person with human viewpoint and so at this
point, here west of Jordan, Joshua is going to do it one way and this
theoretical other general would say you’re crazy Joshua, I wouldn’t ever do
this to my men involved in a military situation, it’s stupid, it violates every
principle of war and it’s ridiculous.
Now this is the conflict that’s developing in 5:2-3. Please see this for
what it is; this is a tremendous attestation of Joshua’s trust that Jehovah
would protect. Verse 1 of chapter 5
gives you one of the reasons. I want to
show you something about this. Be
careful; Joshua is not selecting divine viewpoint just to be a nut; he has
reasons for doing this. One of the
reason is he believes in the sovereignty of God in history. He remembers the essence of God, that God is
sovereign, that God is omnipotent. At
least he remembers those two attributes, and this is a practical application.
At this point that tips the balance. At
this point the sovereignty of God and the omnipotence of God tip the balances
in Joshua’s favor over against the human viewpoint general because the Lord of
history has instructed him to do this in this situation. God essentially is saying you let me worry
about the security; I’ll take care of that.
So in verse 1 we have an attestation that God is taking care of it, He
is immobilizing their mental attitude so the enemy is too scared to attack.
It’s very ironic, and this shows you our position as believers over the
powers of darkness, that the powers of darkness are often more afraid of you
than you are of them. It’s a very ironic
thing but the powers of darkness have been defeated by Jesus Christ and nobody
in this congregation who is a believer in Jesus Christ need ever fear the
attack of Satan or any of his demonic forces.
These forces have been defeated and they’re like these people walled
away in Jericho.
For example, to show you what’s happening all the while, meantime back
at the ranch kind of thing, turn to 5:11, “And they did eat of the old corn of
the land on the next day after the Passover.” That’s a technical word in the
Hebrew and that “old corn” means harvested grain. And it means that this hit at harvest time,
this is the spring harvest, and what happened here was that these people, and
you look in 6:1, you see what it says, “Jericho was securely shut up because of
the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.” All these people in Jericho, the Canaanites,
had walled themselves behind the wall, the king of Jericho had seen what was
happening and he ordered all his people… think of a huge castle and all the
peons and the peasants on their farms around this futile castle, and the man,
the knight who was in charge of the castle calls all of the… there’s going to
be an attack, a war, and so he calls all the peasants in from the farmland back
into his castle to become soldiers. This
is how the medieval knights got a lot of their soldiers was through the
peasants, the farmers around; they had a two-fold role, they were farmers and
soldiers. And so he called all his
people in but what happened? They had
already begun to harvest and out here they had the granaries, and Israel would
say we need some food, so they just went in and took it all. Very interesting, it’s rather amusing how God
provided. He let Israel eat the produce of their enemies. This was a humiliation against the forces
that would attack Israel.
So God actually fed his people with all the hard work of those Canaanite
farmers; all that season they planted, maybe irrigated, did everything they
could to raise that crop and guess who ate it?
Israel ate it; thank you very much!
This is how God provides for His children and this is one illustration
how they ate off of the produce of their enemies.
Now back to 5:4, we are introduced here to the problem of the wilderness
wandering, and there’s a phrase in here that should alert you to a
problem. Verse 4-5, “And this is the
cause why Joshua did circumcise: all the people who came out of Egypt, who were
males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way,” not “after”
but during the time that “they came out of Egypt.” During the time they came out of Egypt! [5] “Now all the people who came out were
circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness by the way as
they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised.” If you know your
Bible history, do you notice there’s something peculiar about that phrase? There’s something very peculiar about that
phrase. Go back to your geography for a
moment. Here’s the eastern end of the
Mediterranean with the Nile Delta, Egypt over here. Israel moved across somewhere like this, at
a point in time, within 24 hours she crossed the Red Sea, the northern
extension of the Red Sea. It couldn’t
have taken them more than 24 hours to do this.
But for 40 years they moved around here, stayed at a place called
Kadesh-barnea, etc. moved back and forth in this wilderness.
And then after 40 years they tried an eastern penetration, like where we
are now in the book of Joshua. Now isn’t
it interesting that in verses 4-5 it’s talking about the whole forty years, not
the 24 hours crossing the Red Sea. And
it refers to this entire 40 year period as “coming out of Egypt.” If you were going to be precise you’d say
wait a minute, it didn’t take them 40 years to come out of Egypt. Didn’t they get out of Egypt in 24 hours;
what’s this jazz about taking 40 years to get out of Egypt. This is one of those things that unless you
are a careful student of the text you miss a tremendous point that God the Holy
Spirit is making. And that is that from
God’s viewpoint these people are still unredeemed, they are not fully redeemed
people, and you have a40 years of transition, so that from God’s viewpoint He
sees them in the unsaved state in Egypt.
He sees them passing through this period of 40 years and then He sees
them liberated in His land, but it takes them 40 years to become redeemed.
Now why does it take them 40 years to become redeemed? What Scripture
can we give to show what happened here?
We have to go back to Numbers 14.
This is operation panic button, in Num. 14:1, when everybody fell
apart. This is when all the men and the
woman and everybody else screamed all night, when Joshua almost went to the
funny farm. He and Caleb were the only
men who were able to make it and they probably were very angry, because if you
take a million people that are cry babying and whining and griping, screaming
and yelling etc. all night, can you imagine trying to sleep with a million
people doing all this. A million women
is enough to want to make you go somewhere else and then add a million men
doing the same thing. That’s the kind of
mess you have here in 14:1.
The people have moved up to a place called Kadesh-barnea and they
suddenly discover that there must be some obstacles to the Christian life and
like so many believers they fell apart.
Oh, do you mean there are obstacles to the Christian life, there’s going
to be problems living for Jesus Christ, good night, what kind of a deal have I
gotten into. That’s what these people
were wondering, what kind of a deal they got into, so they screamed all night
at the first major problem they faced.
Of course, this text doesn’t refer you to the fact that for days, all
the way down into the Sinai Peninsula, every need of them was taken care of. God had provided every need and God would
have provided for this need but for some reason at this point their eyes are
not on the Lord, their eyes are on circumstances. So this is the result, operation panic.
“And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried: and the
people wept that night. [2] And all the children of Israel murmured against
Moses and against Aaron: and the whole congregation said unto them,” and notice
what they say, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would God
that we had died in this wilderness!”
It’s the same old story, oh what a wonderful life I had before I trusted
in Christ and what misery I’ve had and I wish I were dead. See, this is the give-up-itis, I wish I were
dead and I can’t help it, God can’t help me, etc. So verse 4, they have their own little
rebellious human viewpoint solution, “Let us make a captain, and let us return
into Egypt.” The grass is always greener
on the other side of the fence.
Now at this point they are in treason because I have taken pains to show
you in Deuteronomy and here the Law of Moses actually is a treaty. So what you have is twelve tribes controlled
by a treaty and above this treaty stands Yahweh or Jehovah. He is the King of the nation. Israel at this time does not have a human
king, but they do have King; a kingdom must have a King. And the King is Jehovah and when they say
this in verse 4 that is an act of treason.
They are saying we will overthrow the King and establish a king of our
own. [5] “Then Moses and Aaron fell on
their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of
Israel.” And in verse 11 we have God’s
reaction to this treason, “And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this
people provoke Me? And how long will it
be before they believe Me, for all the signs which I have shown among
them?” There are several things to
notice about verse 11. One is that God
always gives you sufficient evidence to believe. But the other thing is, if you don’t believe
after receiving the evidences, you have very much of a dangerous situation that
you have to face. God gives you enough
evidence to believe. God becomes
intensely angry when men do not accept the evidences that He has given.
So in verse 12 we have an anthropomorphism. An anthropomorphism has been maligned by
professors who are ignorant of Scripture, and we have anthropomorphisms
referring to what they call the primitive strata of Scripture, mainly referring
back to that ancient time when men conceived of God anthropomorphically. But now we don’t think of God
anthropomorphically, we don’t have those naďve views of God, etc. Anthropomorphisms, as has been recently
pointed out by Edwin Yamauchi is the fact that anthropomorphisms reveal a
crucial fact of God and they are not primitive.
Anthropomorphisms reveal that God is personal and He reacts to
history. Now it’s hard for us to see
this because on the one hand God is sovereign, He is transcendent, He’s above
history, He controls history. At the
other hand, God is immanent and He is immanently and personally involved with
each moment of history. And the
anthropomorphisms of Scripture are there to show you that God is not
indifferent to what you do and what goes on in history in general. God is not indifferent; it touches His heart
very deeply.
A very poignant illustration of this is John 11 where Jesus Christ goes
to the tomb of Lazarus and He cries, and you wonder why He cried. Here’s God Himself; why does Jesus Christ go
to the tomb of a dead man whom He loved and cry? He cried because even though He is sovereign,
that man represents the suffering that resulted from the fall. And so man is responsible, and so God weeps
when He sees men suffering. This shows
you that God is not an indifferent old man sitting on a throne somewhere and
completely indifferent to human suffering. That is not the picture of God, and
these anthropomorphisms, particularly in the Old Testament, are crucial to
balance your theological thinking at this point. You must have anthropomorphisms or you do not
have this….
In fact, I’ll go this far; if you don’t have anthropomorphisms you can’t
have prayer because prayer, the whole assumption of prayer is that God’s going
to change His mind, that God is going to react to my prayer, and if I’m not
sure that He’s personal enough to change His mind, so to speak, then what good
does it do to pray. Does it really make
a difference to pray? If you’ve got a
computer God, then why bother to pray?
Prayer doesn’t make any difference; He would have done the same thing
anyway, had you prayed or had you not prayed.
But we believe in a personal God.
This is why we believe in the Trinity, you can’t have a personal God
without a Trinity, and so we believe in a personal God who answers prayer. It does make a difference whether you pray or
not, or talk to Him.
And you’re going to see a startling example of this in Num. 14. In verse 12 God is hacked, “I will smite them
with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of you a greater nation
and mightier than they.” Now verse 13
and following is the priestly function; this is what Moses responds to God; he
is the priest now. This is why the Bible
says Moses is the most humble of all men.
Do you see the challenge that’s made in verse 12: Moses, you stand up
here and I’m going to make of you a greater nation, and all these other clods
down there, let me hit them with lightning.
Now that’s God’s anger, that’s His hatred, and it’s presented to him in
very personal terms. God is an angry
God, and this is a picture you have to see if you’re going to have a true
picture of the God of the universe, that He’s not an IBM machine on Galaxy
number 8 or some place. He is a person,
He sits on a throne and becomes angry at things we do.
Verse 13, “And here God is angry, and Moses says, LORD, Then the
Egyptians shall hear it (for you broughtest up this people in Thy might from
among them), [14] And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land; for
they have heard that thou, LORD, art among this people, that thou, LORD, art
seen face to face,” and by the way, I didn’t know this when I had studied Rahab
but verse 14 gives you a clue as to how much information was available to
Rahab. If you want to add it to your
notes on Rahab in Joshua 2, and how that harlot knew what she knew, here’s a
very good illustration; Moses tells you how much information was disseminated
throughout the ancient world of his time.
Notice what they knew, “that the LORD, Yahweh, is among the people,” and
another exciting thing “that Jehovah is seen face to face,” this is something
that no other god could assume.
When we study ancient Near Eastern history and we go into the gods of
Egypt and the gods of Canaan you’re going to see this becomes very apparent,
the tremendous contrast between Israel and these other nations. These other
nations all worship some nature deity, but Israel and Israel alone worships a
God who claims supremacy over the whole pantheon. A God who assumes supremacy over the whole
universe of natural forces and at the same time a God who can be approached
face to face. Do you know the Hebrew
preposition for before? It’s very
interesting how this developed. When you
stand before someone you don’t say that in Hebrew. In Hebrew you say I stand to his face. The Hebrew emphasizes over and over face,
face, face, because to the Hebrew the face is the center of the
personality. This is why often times you
read in the text, and if you translate it literally you see this very
forcefully, they look and they watch what happens to a person’s face when they
talk, and they say his face fell, or his countenance was changed. Start reading your Old Testament with the
idea of “face” in mind you’ll see how often this comes; they’re very close
observers of face. In fact, the Hebrew
word to be angry means the nose gets red.
So you can see how intimately they observe the physiological changes in
your facial structure as a result of your reaction to what they said.
So when it says that God is “seen face to face” it means in a deep
personal relationship, “and that thy cloud stands over them, and that thou goes
before them, daytime in a pillar of a cloud, and in a pillar of fire by
night.” See, all the nations knew this. And then Moses in verse 15 says, “Now if you
shall kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the
fame of thee will speak, saying, [16] Because the LORD was not able to bring
this people into the land which He swore to give unto them, therefore He hath
slain them in the wilderness. [17] And
now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast
spoken, saying, [18] The LORD is long-suffering, and of great mercy,” and he
quotes a promise in verse 18. Moses uses
the Word of God in his prayer.
But notice this, how Moses reasons with God. God is a person with whom you can
reason. This is the most exciting
titanic thing about Christianity today.
Think of it; how many philosophies, how many religions have you ever
heard that offer you a focal point for the total view, that is, a God at the
center of everything with whom you can carry on a conversation and reason. Every other philosophy I know in the 20th
century makes us all into a machine; you can’t reason with a machine, it just sits
there and spits lights at you. You don’t
reason with a computer, you program the thing and once it’s programmed that’s
it. The only thing you can do is pull
the plug and that’s the only thing you can do, there’s no personal action.
But look at this, he reasons with God.
And now watch what happens. Verse
19, he pleads with God, please “Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this
people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven
this people, from Egypt even until now.”
And he goes on and on, and finally the Lord says, [20, “And the LORD
said,] I have pardoned according to thy word. [21] But truly as I live, all the
earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD. [22] Because all those men
who have seen My glory, and My miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the
wilderness, and have put Me to the test now these ten times, and have not
hearkened to My voice, [23] Surely they shall not see the land which I swore to
give unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked Me see it,”
but Caleb and Joshua, etc. Now God at
this points pardon the nation because of Moses’ prayer. Had Moses not prayed this prayer God would
have destroyed the nation. There’s no
ifs here, there’s no ifs. Had Moses not
stepped into the role immediately as a priest on behalf of his people and said
God, you can’t do this, and worked with God in prayer, God would have destroyed
the nation.
Now, what does this say to us?
First of all it says something to me; it says to me that history, the
process of history itself is altered by my conversations with God. Here history would have been totally
different had Moses not had personal prayer with God. This is one of the exciting things about
Biblical Christianity; it gives you a tap on the dynamic of history
itself. The flow of history is altered
and changed by your personal relationship with God, a fantastic thing! History does not go on like the Marxist tells
you, economically determined by the laws of history and society. It goes on determined by the sovereign God
with whom you can carry on a reasoned conversation and He changes and alters
things in history in reaction to your prayer.
So history can be tampered with; put it that way, history can be tampered
with through prayer.
Now the other thing, if you look in verse 33, God makes a statement, the
meaning of which doesn’t become clear until we come back to Joshua. In verse 33, God in explaining what He’s
going to do to Moses says this, you almost overlook it unless you look at verse
33 carefully. “And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years,
and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the
wilderness.” That little phrase, “bear
your whoredoms,” refers to their rebellious apostasy against Him. It means that your children, notice in verse
33 there are two groups, the children and you, “you” refers to the first
generation, “children” refers to the second generation. Who is it that’s going to die, verse 33, the
first generation or the second generation?
The first generation! They’re
going to die, but what’s going to happen while they are dying, with their
children? The children must “bear their
whoredoms,” the children then must carry upon them a mark of spiritual
adultery.
What is the mark of spiritual adultery?
No circumcision. And this is why the people did not circumcise for forty
years. They were commanded by God to
stop the ordinance, you have no right to wear the uniform of Abraham; you have
no rights and you have no right to circumcise.
And therefore circumcision is not restored until the nation is fully
redeemed through Jordan.
Now come back to Joshua 5, it makes clear in Joshua 5 why at the end of
this section, in verse 9, “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.” Gilal is the Hebrew word to roll off,
Gilgal is the place from which this is named.
What does that mean, that reproach?
The reproach is that they have been officially now accepted. Later in Joshua Joshua is going to institute
the treaty which we studied in Deuteronomy.
Remember all that we studied in Deuteronomy, all of that hasn’t even been
activated yet. That has not been
activated and will not be activated until Joshua puts that treaty in
force. The treaty is not yet enforced,
so all that we studied in Deuteronomy still is not operating yet. And it won’t until the treaty is put into
force and the treaty will not be put into force until first the burden of the
reproach of Israel is rolled away, namely that their adulterous status is
removed, and it is removed through circumcision.
Now one further point on this wilderness wandering. What happened during
the forty years? We know why it was
forty years, because the spies at Kadesh-barnea took forty days to spy out the
land and God said okay, punishment is going to be this. Every day those spies spent spying the land
you are sentenced to a year in this desert.
Now we know why, but what was it that was being accomplished during the
forty years. God never disciplines
without having a corrective discipline.
When God disciplines his family and he disciplines and chastens us, it’s
not just anger; it is always for our benefit, Heb. 12. So when God disciplines He’s teaching us
something.
Turn back to Deut. 8:2-5 you’ll see what it was that God was teaching
during these forty years. I’m going to begin with verse 5, then we’ll do
2-4. In verse 5, “Thou shall also
consider in thine heart, that, as a man chastens his son, so the LORD thy God
chastens you.” Now the word “chasten,” yatsar in the Hebrew is a word that
means to train by tough experience; boot camp would be an illustration, train
by touch experience. God didn’t sit down
and give lectures to the children of Israel on His omnipotence, and He didn’t
sit on Mount Sinai and say well, today folks, we are going to learn
omnipresence, and tomorrow we are going to learn omnipotence. He had already taught them this but it didn’t
take. So God says since you didn’t learn
that the first time, now what I’m going to do is I’m going to put you through a
training program that you will never forget.
So for 38 years He is going to drill into their minds what He means by
omnipotence, etc.
So verses 2-4, “And you shall remember,” Moses says, you will certainly
remember, “all the way which the LORD thy God led these forty years in the
wilderness, to humble you, and to test you, to know what was in your heart,
whether thou would keep His commandments, or not. [3] And He humbled you, and
He suffered you to hunger, and He fed you with manna, which you knew not,
neither did thy fathers know; that He might make you to know that man does not
live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the
LORD does man live.” Notice the verb,
“that you might know.”
What does this imply about you and about me as believers in spiritual
truth? What that implies is that lecture is not enough. This implies that there are some lessons
which we have to learn the hard way. We
have sin natures, all of us, and some of us have areas of weakness in one area,
some of have areas of weakness in another area, and in those areas of weakness
we are going to have to be put through the wringer. And it means there is going to come suffering
into your life as a believer that answers to this concept, and God is humbling
you. What he’s talking about in verse 3
is He deliberately kept them away food supplies; millions of people, here their
kids are out there with no food; what are they going to do? God supernaturally supplies manna, that they
had never seen.
What is the point? The point is
that God removes the normal sources of sustenance for you, financial, food, you
name it, the things that you depend on for your sustenance every 24 hours; the
things that you normally and legitimately depend upon. And God removes them, and then He supplies
you in such a way that you know that He is the One that is supplying you
directly. It’s the same lesson here as
the manna. And the reason for that kind
of a lesson is that “He might make you to know,” and might make Me to know,
that we “do not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the
mouth of God.” That lesson in verse 3 is
repeated in every generation of believers.
There’s not a believer here if you’re honest with yourself who can say
that somewhere in your life, if it hasn’t it’s unusual, but usually someone
could say easily that there is some place in your life that you know that God
has taken the props our from under, there was something that you depended on,
something that you have used as a source, legitimate, very legitimate, it’s not
illegitimate to eat. These people were
eating three meals a day but God took the food away and he replaced with a
supernaturally provided manna. Why? To teach, to teach, to teach, and that lesson
had to be taught the hard way.
Verse 4, “Thy clothing waxed not old upon you, neither did your foot
swell all these forty years.” They
didn’t have athlete’s foot out in the desert, no foot troubles. You can imagine what would have happened if
they had had foot troubles; here they are marching, prancing across the hot
sand in the Sinai Peninsula and somebody’s got sore feet. How many people can you tolerate with sore
feet and start moving; you can’t. So God
supernaturally suppressed, they didn’t have a podiatrist out there running
taking care of people’s feet, etc. they had this all provided
supernaturally. And the clothing, they
didn’t have to worry about clothing sales, the clothing did not wax old, they
couldn’t drop by some place and get clothing, it wasn’t out there in the Sinai
desert. All this was provided by God.
But I want you to notice that is called “chastening” in verse 5. The reason for this is that some lessons cannot
be communicated just verbally, they have to be lived in—they have to believer
lived in, and after you’ve lived in it, you know it. That’s all we can say, this is how God
teaches. All right, so that is the
reason for the wilderness wanderings; they are wandering as bastards, they are
out of the relationship with God, they are considered as adulterous children
and yet God is graciously preparing that generation, growing up there in the
dusty hot sands of that Sinai Peninsula, those people, those children are being
trained to one day be accepted as the covenant nation again, and forty years
after Moses prayer it is answered in Joshua 5.
Go back to Joshua 5 and let’s look at verse 9 again. Why is it that God rolled away the
reproach. We know that it was an
adulterous nation; we know that it was in status quo discipline. If we want to use our diagram, here we are as
believers in Jesus Christ; at the time of salvation God the Holy Spirit puts us
in union with Christ. Here is our legal
possession. However, we have a sphere of
the will of God for us in time, and we as believers at any given moment in life
are either operating in the will of God or we are out of the will of God. If you, through sin or carnality are out of
the will of God, the way back in is 1 John 1:9.
But the will of God, the bottom circle, it is this bottom circle that
the believers were out of during those forty years. They were out of fellowship and God was disciplining,
disciplining, disciplining, disciplining, and when they came back into
fellowship they knew their lesson.
Now this is why we have this problem of carnality and discipline
etc. This nation, as a national entity,
was out of fellowship for forty years, and they never forgot it. Now we have to deal with circumcision. Why is circumcision used? It goes back to Gen. 17; let’s go back to
Gen. 17. There’s nothing new about
circumcision, the Egyptians used it for years before Israel. Verse 9, the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant,
“And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep My covenant therefore, thou, and
thy seed after thee in their generations. [10] And this is My covenant, which
ye shall keep, between Me and you and thy seed after thee. Every male child among you shall be circumcised.
[11] And you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a
sign of the covenant between Me and you. [12] And he that is eight days old
shall be circumcised….”
Now medically we know why this was on the eighth day, but it’s also a
typological reason. The eighth day of
the child’s life is the beginning of a new cycle, the eighth day. One through seven, that’s the first seven
days of his life. Beginning on the
eighth day you have the first day of a new cycle. So circumcision looks forward to that new
cycle of the covenant. This covenant is
related very intimately to the charge of spiritual adultery. The fact is that no Jewish man could marry a
Gentile woman in the Old Testament without becoming conscious of his own
covenant status, and this would enforce upon him the fact that he has a loyalty
spiritually to Jehovah. He is in one
sense identified totally, so that he can’t engage in adultery without being
fully cognizant of it.
We find though, that this is a ritual, and I want to bring this point in
here that though this is a ritual that Joshua performed, you must distinguish
reality from ritual. As I go on I want to combine circumcision with baptism and
I want to show you the parallels between it.
Both of these are ritual and they are not reality. You say where in the Bible can you show me,
in the Old Testament that circumcision was not just a ritual. Turn to Lev. 26:41, this is all part of the
Mosaic Law, so I’m not taking anything out of context. This will show you that the ceremony isn’t
the thing; it’s the reality behind the ceremony that is the thing. “And that I also have walked contrary unto
them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies;” if you went
through Deuteronomy with me you should know Lev. 26 because Lev. 26 refers to
what? National discipline. This is a program in history by which the
nation will be disciplined. Here’s the
fifth degree of discipline. “…if then
their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment
of their iniquity; [42] Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also
My covenant with Isaac,” the point there is that there is an obvious spiritual
work mirrored outwardly by this act of circumcision.
Turn to Deut. 10:16, distinguishing again between circumcision as a
ritual and real inner spiritual circumcision. What does it say here? “Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your
heart, and be no more stiff-necked.” Is
that ritual or is that reality? It’s
reality. Deut. 30:6, again we come to a
section in Deut. 30:6, “And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and
the heart of thy seed to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul,” etc. Is that ritual or is
that reality. It’s reality.
Therefore the word “circumcise” in the Old Testament has two meanings; one,
ritual, and two, reality. The reality
was whether they were born again. The
ritual was the outer demonstration of this fact. Ritual has nothing to do with
reality. Why? Why can’t we say oh, they were spiritually
circumcised when they were physically circumcised? For one reason they’re too young to believe
but there’s a very obvious thing here in Deut. 30:6, why would it be necessary
for the Lord to circumcise their heart if it was already circumcised. The point is this is addressed to circumcised
people. So therefore you have the ritual
and the reality clearly separated in the pages of the Old Testament.
Now let’s combine this with baptism and go to Col. 2 in the New
Testament. Again we face the
problem. Circumcision is tied by New
Testament authors to baptism. Col.
2:10-13, “And ye are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and
power;” by the way, that should be a sufficient verse for some of you who are
looking for hyper experiences and all sorts of extra additions to your salvation. In verse 10 it says “you are complete in
Him,” so from the time that you trust the Lord you are “complete in Him” and if
you don’t think so it’s because you are ignorant of your own assets. Verse 11, “In whom also ye are circumcised
with the circumcision made without hands,” is that ritual or is that
reality? It’s reality, not ritual, it’s
not made with hands, it’s not a ritualistic observance. And then it’s
amplified, “in putting off the body of the sins of the fleshy by the
circumcision of Christ,” Christ is doing the circumcising at the point we
receive him. Verse 12, “Buried with Him
in baptism, in which also ye are risen with him through the faith of the
operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. [13] And you, being dead
in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He made alive, together
with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.”
There are two things in verses
But now we’re faced with an obvious question. What baptism?
There are basically eight baptisms in Scripture; five are real, three
are ritual. The ritual ones are John’s, Matt. 3; Jesus, Matt. 3, and believers,
the book of Acts; ritual baptisms. How
can they be distinguished? Simple, the
agency is always water and it’s always applied by a person. Then we have five real baptisms. How are these distinguished? The agency is never water and it’s never done
by a human being. The first one is the
baptism of Noah, 1 Pet. 3; the baptism of Noah is not wet, the people who got
wet died, so it has nothing to do with water. The baptism of Noah is the
sealing in the ark of 1 Pet. 3, and who sealed them in the ark? Noah?
No, because Noah was inside the ark; God came and He sealed the outside
of the ark. So God is the applier of
baptism and the agent of baptism was the pitch and the ark.
The second real baptism was the baptism of Moses, described in 1 Cor.
10. Is it wet? No. The people who got wet died; they were
Pharaoh and his troops. The people who
were baptized unto Moses were dry. So water isn’t used here. Baptism of Moses is identification with
Moses, God is the one that parts the waters, God is the one that buries the
people. Agency is the cloud and the fire
of 1 Cor. 10.
The third baptism in the Bible is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, 1 Cor.
10:12-13 and the agency here is the Holy Spirit. The person who does it—Jesus Christ; no man
involved, no water involved. Then we have
the fourth baptism, the baptism of the cross mentioned in Luke and is the
baptism of the cross wet? No. Jesus was very thirsty on the cross, so
therefore the agency is not water, the agency is the cross, and it’s not
basically done by man, although the Roman authorities that did it, because
Jesus said this was the sovereign work of His heavenly Father. Then finally we have the baptism of fire and
that’s very dry, water has nothing to do with that either, and the baptism of
fire is the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, and it’s done by God, not by man,
and water isn’t involved.
So when you talk about baptism, I would have to ask you which of these
eight baptisms are you referring to, the three ritual baptisms or the five real
baptisms. So now we have to come and we
say, well in this Colossians 2 passage, which of the eight are there? The primary thing is that we can identify it
by the fact that it puts us in union with Christ. “Into Christ” becomes the slogan. Which baptism puts us into union with Christ? Obviously you can line it out to believer’s
baptism or water baptism which is ritual, or you can relate it to Holy Spirit
baptism which is dry and real. Which of
the two are engaged here? Is it
legitimate to separate the two? Yes,
because John was saying in his day, “I baptize you with water but there is one
coming after me and He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” So therefore it is distinguished in the pages
of the New Testament.
But where in the New Testament can we find another place where baptism
is used, where it says you are baptized into Christ, and maybe if we could find
a text that could say this, then we would isolate which of these eight baptisms
is meant. Well, there is such a passage,
1 Cor. 12:13 and in 1 Cor. 12:13 it says it is “by the Holy Spirit we are all
baptized into one body,” and the body is identified in context with Christ and
so this proves that it is the Holy Spirit baptism that puts us in union with
Christ and not ritual baptism.
Now, what do we do with the fact that obviously ritual baptism is
important? Ritual baptism is a picture
of what the Holy Spirit does. Ritual
baptism should follow real baptism; baptism of the Holy Spirit is not some
hyper-emotional experience of frothing at the mouth and rolling down the aisle
and seeing lights. That has nothing to do with Holy Spirit baptism. In the baptism of the Holy Spirit we have…
not even an experience, it’s a positional injection, we are injected into the
body of Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to us and from that point on the Holy
Spirit begins His ministry in our lives.
We are identified with Christ because we possess Christ’s spirit. And so the Holy Spirit baptism is basically not
an experience, it’s the basis for later experience, but it occurs at the moment
of salvation.
Now baptism, if this mirrors circumcision in the Old Testament in this
way, and that is a ritual, etc. picturing a reality, let’s look at that
reality. And let’s go back and conclude
by taking one more observation in Joshua 5.
If this ritual that Joshua is performing is a mirroring of a reality of
a spiritual reality that lies behind the ritual, what is that spiritual
reality? Go back to the geography again.
Here’s the
What are some of these possessions you have as a believer in
Christ? Number one, you have a new
nature; you have an inner capacity to fulfill God’s law. Number 2, you have now access before the
throne of grace in prayer; you have the indwelling Holy Spirit, you have, as
Dr. Chafer at Dallas Seminary has logged some 33 different possessions that
accrue to your account at the time you receive Christ. So this is one thing
that it pictures.
Now if you look at the end of chapter 5, something is going to happen at
the end of chapter 5, and this something that happens can’t happen until after
the nation experiences their possession.
They can’t begin their holy war until they are on their possession and
ready to fight and bump off those people who are now presently on their
possession. Who is it that appears in
verse 13? “And it came to pass, when
Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, there
stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went
unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? [14] And he said, Nay, but as captain of the
hose of the LORD am I now come. And
Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What
saith my lord unto his servant? [15] And the captain of the LORD’s host said
unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off your foot; for the place whereon you stand
is holy. And Joshua did so.” That man that he met there is Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ, before He was
incarnate appeared in what we call Christophanies, or Christ-appearances. And this is one of the great points in the
Old Testament where Jesus Christ shows up.
Notice, how does Christ appear?
He appears with a sword in His hand ready to fight the holy war, but He
doesn’t appear until after the nation has been circumcised. In other words, the nation must be on their
possession and ready to fight to remove those who would oppose them in their
area of possessions, and when they are in that position, Jesus Christ is ready
to take command now as their Lord. He is
their Savior, east of Jordan He is their Savior; west of Jordan He becomes
their Lord. He is their Savior because
He has provided for them and on that basis they receive Him. But He is now their Lord who will lead them
in the holy war. And it’s this that we
have to see as Christians, our holy war does not begin until we first become
Christians, then the war begins; then we begin to secure ground and our life as
Christians will duplicate and parallel in many respects the lives of the Jews
in the book of Joshua from this point on.
From chapter 5 onward in the book of Joshua we begin the real holy
war. Here’s where we get to the
nitty-gritty and this is where we begin to get parallels out of this book that
apply to the New Testament. With out
heads bowed.