There is an analogy in many of the results of the passage of the Red Sea and Jordan, which deserve attention; though one was deliverance out of Egypt into the wilderness, the other entrance into Canaan. After deliverance by the Sea (the death and resurrection of Christ) death is found—to drink the waters of Marah—but they are made sweet. Only here it was imposed, i.e., had to be drunk, though it was turned to sweetness, as it ever is. So after passing Jordan they are circumcised; but here, as it is death and resurrection with Christ, it is mortifying—they apply the power of death to flesh, for they are dead.
In the wilderness you have Christ as manna, the bread come down from heaven, suited to the—wilderness—Christ humbling Himself; after Jordan, Christ as the old corn of the land, the heavenly Christ, He who is of heaven (the Lord from heaven), in nature and character—not that He is not a man, but His origin and being is of heaven itself.
After the Red Sea, they were coming out under the personal power of the Passover, so to speak, saved from judgment then by it; in Canaan it is the sweet remembrance of long known deliverance. They eat it with unleavened bread of the corn of the land within the place where resurrection has brought them; out of the Red Sea, in the wilderness, they find shade and refreshment, which God has provided. In the land, Christ appears as Captain in conflict spiritually, and looking for holiness for it, as in His presence in the bush for redemption. All this, and especially the difference of the last-mentioned, is extremely interesting, and instructive as to the way we receive and know Christ, as brought into the wilderness by redemption, or into heavenly places as risen with Christ.