Having been delivered from the judgment of God in Egypt, Israel next crossed the Red Sea, and then slowly crossing the desert found themselves on the borders of the land. This they refused to enter, and they were therefore doomed to die in the wilderness, while the next generation was not allowed to enter Canaan otherwise than by passing a second time through the waters of death in the Jordan.
Let us see what meaning all this has for us. We have not only as sinners the judgment of God to face, from which the blood of the Lamb delivers us, but after this we still need deliverance from our three great foes — the world, the flesh and the devil. Nothing now but the death of Christ can deliver us from the power of these, and of this both the Red Sea and the Jordan are remarkable types.
In the waters of the Red Sea the pomp and pride of Egypt were drowned and the strength of Pharaoh was broken, thus answering to the death of Christ which separates us from the world and Satan’s power (Gal. 6:1414But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14); Heb. 2:1414Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; (Hebrews 2:14)). But Romans 6 finds no real counterpart here, for although the Israelites should have left their old unbelieving hearts behind, as a matter of fact they did not. This is clearly seen as they were nearing Canaan. If the flesh had been left behind them as truly as Pharaoh and Egypt were, no Jordan would have been needed. But, alas, it appears this was the hardest lesson of all to learn. They refused to leave it behind them, but, on the contrary, betrayed their confidence in it by putting themselves under law. As a result, they all had to perish in the wilderness, that the flesh (in type) might be destroyed; then, at the Jordan, death was again presented to the generation born in the wilderness, only this time special care was taken that they themselves, represented by twelve stones, should be left at the bottom. And this is the way into Canaan. The death of Christ has not only put away the sins of every believer, not only freed him from the world and Satan’s power, but has also put an end to him, so that his old self is crucified and buried with Christ (in type by baptism), out of which he is risen in the power of a new life and brought into the new and heavenly sphere of Canaan.
If, therefore, we put the Red Sea and the Jordan together, they present to us a full picture of the death of Christ: the former especially typifying what it delivers me from, and in the latter, what it brings me into, or, in other words, death and resurrection. To cross the Jordan and enter Canaan is not the privilege of a few, but it is the effect of the death of Christ for every believer, however few may enter into the meaning or power of it.
A. T. Schofield, adapted