Joshua 5:9
“Now all these things happened unto them (Israel) for types: and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.” (1 Cor. 10:11).
The book of Exodus begins with Israel in bondage under Pharaoh King of Egypt. God’s purpose is unfolded in chapter 6:6-8.
“I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will bring you in unto the land.”
Their slavery pictures the slavery of men who are trying with great anxiety to deliver themselves from the power of sin (Rom. 7:7-25).
Being quickened, they desire the good, but the evil in them is stronger. They have not yet seen that the Lord Jesus on the cross finished the work, and satisfied God about the question of sin and sins.
The lamb in Exodus 12 typifies Christ the Lamb of God, who in the end of the age of law, was offered up as a sacrifice for sin. He offered Himself, through the eternal Spirit to God (Heb. 9:14). He was the Lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:9), foreordained before the foundation of the world.
How simple the type! The man took a little bunch of hyssop and sprinkled the blood on the side posts, and on the lintel of the door, and God said, “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” They fed on the lamb roast with fire inside the house. The blood marked them out as Jehovah’s people.
The little bunch of hyssop was the man saying, “I am nothing. It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.” (Lev. 17:11).
The houses of all who sprinkled the blood were protected from the judgment of the slaying of the first-born.
That was not all; they started their journey out of Egypt that night. There was no singing; they left in haste, and Jehovah came down in a pillar of cloud, between them and the Egyptians who followed them, so that they could not come near them; and the Israelites could not go back even if they wished to.
At Pi-hahiroth (the opening of liberty) there was another miracle. The Lord divided the Red Sea. “By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.” Thus the Lord saved Israel. They saw the Egyptians dead on the sea shore, and the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and His servant Moses. Then they sang,
“The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation.” Afterward they took upon themselves to keep His law. But it was mixed with mercy in the Tabernacle God ordered them to build, His habitation in their midst.
In Leviticus the Lord speaks out of the Tabernacle, and ordered everything suitable to His presence among them.
In Numbers we have their journeying and camping, and there we have their failures, and the Lord’s faithful provision despite all their murmurings. The glory cloud and the trumpets guided them (chaps. 9 and 10). The living priest maintained them by sacrifice (ch. 17). The red heifer burnt to ashes, which was kept to cleanse their defilements (ch. 19). The wicked prophet Balaam was compelled to tell
God’s purposes of blessing which could not be altered.
Deuteronomy rehearses the Lord’s dealings with them, and gives instructions to them for when they were to be in the Land. Moses could not bring them in, the law could not do it. But Joshua (the Saviour) is charged to bring them in, and that is what the book of Joshua gives us.
It begins with the Lord charging Joshua to bring them in to their inheritance. It is not a place for rest and peace, for the enemies of God possess it. These must be met and overcome in the strength of the Lord, and this lesson must be taught them before they are in a condition to fight His battles. The whole land is given them, but they must claim it (1:3). There is every encouragement to Joshua to obedience and victory in chapter 1. The two spies bring encouraging news to Joshua (2:24), and Rahab receives the promise of deliverance for all her relatives by faith.
In chapters 3 and 4 is another type of the death of Christ, and our death with Him. The Ark borne by the priests, goes down into the bed of the river. The water is cut off; on the one side it rose up on a heap, on the other, the bed of the river went dry, and the people passed over two thousand cubits away from the Ark.
Twelve men, one of each tribe, took a stone out of the bed of the river, and they put the twelve stones in Gilgal (4:20). Then Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan where the feet of the priests, which carried the Ark, stood; and when the priests brought the Ark unto the dry land, the waters flowed down as before. It was full up to the top of its banks at that time of year (3:15).
Here we see the death of Christ to sin, and so our death with Him. Our old man is gone under the waters of the Jordan, and the twelve stones at Gilgal are the memorial of Christ’s death.
Exodus 12. We are sheltered from judgment by the atoning blood (14, 15); we are saved and brought to God, and all our sins are forever gone. Here we are now seen as dead with Christ, buried with Christ, and risen with Christ (Col. 2:11, 12). We must believe it.
Then comes in circumcision, and that is applying death, the death of Christ, to ourselves. We have put off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; we are now to mortify our members which are upon the earth (Col. 3:8).
In the Red Sea we had Christ’s death for us. That took us out of Egypt, and from under the power of the enemy. In the Jordan, we are dead, with Christ, so we are entering into the land, but before we begin the conflict with the enemy, we must realize that the flesh profiteth nothing. Naturally speaking, this circumcision unfitted them for fighting for a time. Nature’s strength is not to be used in fighting God’s battles.
Gilgal is the place of self-judgment; it rolls away the reproach of Egypt. They are now to go in the strength of the Lord. We go on with our wilderness journey, and for that we have armor (also 1 Thess. 5:8), with faith, love and hope, more or less active in us as we seek faithfulness; but this is a spiritual warfare for the enjoyment of the promises, and of heavenly privileges, as men already dead and risen, refusing Satan’s power, as those not of the world, though in it still.
We need to put on the armor of Ephesians 6:10-18 to be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. Circumcision is therefore the putting into the practical effect, which the stones put in the river, taught us—that we are dead with Christ; and those on the banks at Gilgal, that we have a new life as risen with Him. We are to reckon ourselves dead unto sin. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.” We are to camp there, and from there to fight God’s battles.
They fed on the Passover there also. The remembrance of the Lord in His death, is ever precious; and the manna, and the old corn of the land all have their place. The manna is our wilderness food still. Here it ceases the next day; for in our heavenly life, we feed upon the glorified Christ. As another writes,
“We feed on heavenly things, on Christ humbled and dying, indeed as a sweet remembrance, but as Christ living as the present power of life and grace. We feed on the remembrance of Christ on the cross; this is the passover. But we keep the feast with a Christ who is the center of heavenly things, and feed upon them all (Col. 3:1, 2). It is the old corn of the land into which we have entered, for He belongs to heaven.
In this heavenly warfare, we, as they, need to learn that our blessed Lord is our Captain and Guide. In the taking of Jericho, nothing was left to themselves; the orders were given for march and for action, and the Lord gave them the victory.
“The almighty power of God is with the church with its warfare. But His infinite holiness is there also, and He will not make good His power in their conflicts, if His holiness is compromised by the defilement, the negligence, the heedless levity, of His people; or by their failure in those feelings and affections, which become the presence of God, for it is God Himself who is there.”