BESIDES their complaining’s and discontent, came their rebellions under Borah, Dathan, and Abiram, so that the earth opened its month and swallowed them up. The power of God in government is here against His people, and it is at this point of their history that the witness and earnest of Aaron’s rod of priestly grace which bloomed almonds, is added to the rod of righteous power by Moses, that through intercession (in resurrection) the murmurings might be met, and the iniquity of the sanctuary taken away.
These two rods as representing mediation by power and priesthood in grace bring the people through the wilderness up to the river Jordan, though all that generation which came through the Red Sea were cut off, to show what the flesh was, and that (as in it) they could not walk with God. Moses and Aaron likewise died, and were called to give up the people to Joshua, on this side Jordan; for the Law could not carry them into the land of promise. In the wilderness they were instructed how to make “the Ark of the Covenant,” as the yet further resource (beyond the two rods) by which alone God could establish His people in Canaan, and plant them in the place of His sanctuary. In the leadership of Joshua, this Ark of the Covenant of the “Lord of the whole earth,” takes its place and goes before them as the witness and earnest of their own blessings through death and resurrection. In distinguishing the river Jordan from the Red Sea, it may be sail in brief, that the former fitted the people, and put them into Canaan, just as the latter delivered them from Egypt, and put them into the wilderness. Power and grace are no longer restricted to the rods of Moses and Aaron, but are connected now with the promises and counsels of God, as witnessed by the Ark of the Covenant borne by the priests, and which the people were to follow across the swellings of Jordan as the earnest, too, of all their promised blessings. The flesh, as our fallen nature, which manifested its total incapacity to walk with God in the wilderness, and was condemned not to enter the land of promise, by the cutting off of all that generation except Joshua and Caleb, is now to meet its own judgment and death in the river of Jordan. “Our old man has been crucified with Christ,” that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin. We become thee milted for a heavenly walk, by death to the flesh (the judicial judgment of God upon the old nature) and our resurrection with Christ; not only has Christ died for us, but we are dead and risen. Further, we follow the true Ark of the Covenant (for we have not gone this way heretofore) which stays in Jordan, and keeps back all the strength of the enemy’s power in death, when at its height, till all the people are clean passed over, and until everything was finished that the Lord commanded The twelve stones which were left in the bed of the river, where the priests’ feet stood firm, as well as the twelve atone: which were taken up out of Jordan, am carried across to its banks at Gilgal, and there built as a memorial, prove that the people were out by resurrection, who had previously been down with the Ark in the place of death.