Gilgal: The Passover on the Plans of Jericho.
In the Passover on the plains of Jericho we find the third feature which Gilgal presents to us. Circumcision gave it its character, and the stones out of the river of death had been set up there. Encamped at this wonderful spot, the circumcised Host of the Lord celebrate redemption once more. They can look back to the first moment of their history as a people of God, when God as a Righteous Judge was not smiting those whom blood had sheltered from His holy eye. What different feelings fill their hearts as in the plains of Jericho they now can gaze around them, and look back on the cross in peace! It speaks to our souls of the occupation of heaven by and by, when praising the Lamb who has redeemed us to God by His blood, and thus we shall be looking back to the cross even from the glory. But then it will be from the Father’s house, not the Canaan in which we now are in Christ, from which Satan is not yet expelled.
In looking around from Gilgal, we find how the horizon of our souls has enlarged since the day God at first took us up as sinners. The walls of the houses of Israel were their horizon on that solemn night of judgment. There they stood, with girded loins and sandaled feet, ready to depart from the land of slavery: but outside the houses, destruction and death were doing their solemn work. God was judging; and woe betide the sinner who was not within a bloodstained lintel on that night.
Then came the day when they stood at Pi-hahiroth, before they crossed over to the other side of the sea. There the horizon enlarged itself, and instead of knowing Him only as a Judge passing over them, a Deliverer God unfolded His great salvation before their eyes, and they passed across the sea, with death as a wall on either side, and the glory of God sheltering them and leading them into the wilderness. Still the horizon is enlarging each step of the way until the desert solitudes are around them. There God teaches them another lesson. He teaches them what His resources are in the desert, where the eye has not one vestige of anything to rest upon to cheer and support the heart, or to supply the daily need of His people as they traverse its wastes. They are forced to look up to God. There He teaches them the boundlessness of His resources, and proves that He is superior to the desert and its momentary need. If the manna failed but for one day, what would become of that mighty Host? But it did not fail; nor did His hand fail who rose up early to spread the daily supply upon each drop of dew which surrounded the objects of His care!
How the heart is taught to wonder and adore Him for the unexpected ways in which He comes in with His resources for those who trust Him, where they never dreamed they were. But He “suffers them to hunger” that He may feed them. He suffered Paul to be cast down, but why? that He might comfort him and teach his heart those deep, rich consolations of Christ which he never otherwise could have known, so that He can rejoice in the Lord always. He can rejoice when the wells are full of water, and he can rejoice in Him when the wells are dry. “Because thou halt been my help (not that the help came, but because God was his help), therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.” Because God’s loving kindness is better than life, his lips shall praise Him. There is no blessing to be compared with it to the heart that has tasted His loving kindness. It is better than all the favors He can bestow, great and wonderful as they are. Thus the soul is filled with marrow and fatness, and the mouth can praise Him with joyful lips, even in a dry and thirsty land.
But the soul’s horizon has widened each step of the way, until at Gilgal we can survey the scene where there is neither length, nor breadth, nor depth, nor height. God Himself is the horizon, and that is infinite; a boundless field of glory. There the soul can rest and look back in peace and remember the way it can survey the past, from the night of the blood-stained lintel, through the walls of the Dead Sea, and the wastes of the desert; until now, on the other side of Jordan, from the place of strength, it can survey the basis of it all—God’s glory, and its own blessing, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. “And the children of Israel encamped at Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, at even, in the plains of Jericho” (Josh. 5:1010And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. (Joshua 5:10)). God spreads a table for them in the presence of their enemies; setting them clown to celebrate redemption, and think of the cross, in the heavenlies in Christ.
The Character of The Epistle To The Philippians. Chapter 1
The Epistle to the Philippians has a peculiar character, rather distinct from the other Epistles. There are, indeed, traces of the same in Timothy. Taking it characteristically, it is the epistle of Christian experience. We do not find much doctrinal teaching in it, but rather the experience of Christian walk; not the experience of one who is going wrong, but of one who is going right—the experience which the Spirit of God gives. The apostle is perfectly clear as to his position, yet here he accounts himself not to have attained, he is on the road to the glory; he has not yet reached it; but Christ had laid hold on him for it (3:12).
When I speak of my place in Christ, as in Ephesians, it is in heavenly places, but as to matter of fact, we are here on earth, going through it—a place full of temptation and snares. Philippians gives us, not, of course, failure, but the path of the Christian, salvation being looked at throughout, as at the end of the wilderness. Paul had no doubt that Christ had laid hold on him for the blessedness, but he had not got there. Salvation is always looked at as at the end of the journey.
It makes it so much the more remarkable as to the Christian path, that you never find sin, mentioned from beginning to end of the Epistle. The thorn in the flesh was needed when Paul came down from Paradise, so it was not that the flesh had got any better. The thorn was something to hinder sin, something that made him outwardly contemptible in his ministry. Everyone would probably have a different thorn, according to his need. There is no change in the flesh, but the power of the Spirit of God is such that the flesh is kept down. “Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus” would not be necessary if the flesh were any better. It is not that there is any uncertainty as to salvation or acceptance, but that we should so walk through the wilderness, that the flesh should be shut up, as it were.
God looks at us as dead with Christ, and we are called on to reckon ourselves dead. I have a title to do it, because Christ has died, and I am crucified with Him. It is not only that we are born of God, but we have died with Christ.
In Col. 3 you find God seeing us dead. In Rom. 6 I reckon myself dead. In 2 Cor. 4 it is “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” This is going very far indeed. Death to Paul was so realized that the life of Christ only worked in him.
In Phil. 1 you find the position and practical life of a Christian in this scene. In chap. 2 you have the pattern of Christ come down; in chap. 3, the energy that carries the Christian through this world, all things being counted but dross and clung, that he may win Christ (here Christ is looked at as One who is to be had as his gain in the glory). In chap. 4 you get the Christian’s superiority to all circumstances. We have in this epistle the whole character of Christian life, and that assumes that our place in Christ is settled.
Assuming that Christ has borne our sins, and that we are dead with Him, we find on that foundation the unfolding of the path of the Christian, the manifestation of this life, which we have from God (a thing that John looks at abstractedly in itself. “He that is born of God doth not commit sin.”) The Christian is to manifest the life of Christ, and nothing else. “Ye are (not “ought to be”) the epistle of Christ.” Let Christ be read in you, as plainly as the law in the tables of stone. As Christ represents us before God, so you appear in the presence of the world for Christ It is a great thing to say that my heart is full of Christ, that nothing but Christ appears. If I am in lowliness of heart before Him, “living by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” I shall manifest Christ.
The moment a Christian looks at himself in Christ, there are no “ifs,” but when he looks at himself in the wilderness there are “ifs”; not that there is the smallest uncertainty, but to keep us in dependence. “We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,” no doubt here, but in dependence. “If ye hold fast the beginning of your confidence steadfast to the end”—if I hold fast. I am not to be trusted—it’s positive dependence. Every moment I learn that. The mischief of the state of the heart is that, as to will, man has become independent. The great thing for us is to be absolutely dependent on infallible faithfulness, on unwearied love, to carry us through. The heart is brought back to blessed dependence—the dependence is blessed; but the sense of His faithful love is unfailing joy and rest. It is not that the “if” is not true, but the Father’s hand will never let go His child. We have grace to help in every time of need. Without Him we can do nothing; with him, in a certain sense, everything. Thus we learn that we can never excuse ourselves, if we let the flesh act. The existence of the flesh does not give a bad conscience, otherwise we should never have a good one.
The question for you, as Christians, is—are you walking in the light, as God is in the light—God is light and love—His essential names? You are brought to God without a veil, and there is light on everything you do. God had brought us to know Christ, “This is my beloved Son.” That is what I delight in. The more you look at Him, the more you see, that is the place God has brought us to. If heaven opened on Him, it opens on us. If God owns Him as Son, He owns us as sons. Now we have to learn Christ. Has Christ had such a place in your hearts today, that the things which spring from Christ, spring from you? Have you understood that Christ has bought you to Himself? Now especially it is important that Christians should be Christians. What He was before God was perfection itself reproduced before man, and all to please His Father. Are you learning Christ, beloved friends? When I look at Christ, I see God manifested in a man in this world, the expression and pattern of what God delighted in. I am not before God on the ground of what I have done, or what I am, but on the ground of what Christ has done, and what He is. There is for us this continually learning Christ. God has been revealed to us; we have seen what He is—seen it in a light to love it. It is not an effort that I may become more like Christ, but that, according to the knowledge of Him I have received, there should be nothing contrary to that knowledge. I do not expect a babe to be a man: when we see a babe delighted in its mother, and obedient, it is just as delightful in its way as to see a man saying, “That in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be my life or death” —in all that he came across, Christ would be glorified in his body.
The Christian, having his eye on Christ, knows no standard but Christ in glory. We are to be “conformed to the image of his Son.” This is the blessed hope of the Christian, and nothing short of it. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” There is no doubt, no uncertainty of our having it, or of what it is. Christ is the firstborn amongst many brethren—they like Him. Christ shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. I see Christ up there. I get this unspeakably simple truth, that when I was a poor sinner, another man stepped in, and set me free. “Let these go their way,” Christ said of His disciples. He takes the whole thing on Himself, and He is to be the judge. The perfect good of God, and the perfect evil of man, met at the cross—everything was settled there. The new heavens and the new earth depend on the cross. The man who was there made sin, is now sitting on the right hand of God in glory. The Holy Ghost comes down: lets me know that my place is settled before God. A sinner cannot have confidence, if sin is not put away. There HE is, the pattern of what I am to be—our forerunner. I am going to bear the image of the heavenly; I want to attain that—to win Christ, to be like Him forever. The treasure is indeed in the earthen vessel, but I have the treasure. I never rest till I am like Christ in glory. Christ is my life; that life lives on Christ as its object. I am going to be like Him; I shall never be satisfied till then. The Spirit of God enables us to realize this in our hearts in power.
How perfectly is the Apostle’s heart at rest! He says (v. 15, &c.), “Some preach Christ even of envy and strife.” Never mind, if Christ is preached! What peace of heart he had! He had been in prison four years, in the most trying circumstances. All this, he says, shall turn to my salvation.
Verse 23. “To depart and he with Christ is far better, nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you,” so completely happy, so completely settled, that he does not know what to choose; self is gone. It would be worthwhile to stay, because I can labor for Christ—Christ loves the Church—then I shall stay. With him it was laboring for Christ or living with Christ. Christ had such a place that the power of circumstances disappears. How near he lives to Christ! There was not perfection—not yet—but he had Christ completely as his object—he was living up to Christ in the measure in which he had attained.
We may have learned a blessed truth, as Peter did, revealed by the Father, a real revelation—I do not question that—but the flesh may not be broken down, up to the measure of what we have been taught. Peter was doing Satan’s work, and Christ said to him, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Would not Christ have to call you “Satan” in something? If we are not bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus, our condition of soul is not up to the measure in which we have been taught.
Have you the true desire to be this? Is there a chamber locked up in your heart? Christ will open it someday. Search me thoroughly, O God, and know my heart, and lead me into the way that is everlasting. The Lord grant us wisdom to understand His love!