Gilgal: “The Old Corn of the Land.”
“And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same day” (Josh. 5:1111And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the selfsame day. (Joshua 5:11)). Here another characteristic of Gilgal is seen. A circumcised people are feeding upon this heavenly food. This points to a glorified Christ, as the manna does to a bumbled, lowly one. In the desert the heart is cheered and sustained by feeding on Him as the lowly Jesus; the “bread of God,” who came down from heaven to give life to the world. We have received life out of His death. He has given us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink. We lay in death and ruin, and He entered the scene in holy love. He died and ended our whole moral being as sinners in the sight of God. “He that eateth me,” He says, “shall live by me.” But in feeding upon Him, we feed on One who has ended our history as children of Adam—so that we do not live by Adam at all, but by Christ, who has borne the judgment which stood registered against us.
As poor sinners we came first and ate His flesh and drank His blood. That is, we appropriated by faith that death as meeting our state and accomplishing the redemption by which we have left forever our whole condition, and thus, out of His death we have received life. Then we live because of, and on account of Him. “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me (the One who had died and risen), even he shall live by me” (John 6:5757As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. (John 6:57)). Is there diligence of heart, beloved, in feeding upon this humbled, dead and risen Son of God? It is the characteristic of eternal life in us, which we possess in Him, that it lives by Him as its object. “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me (not merely died for me, or put away my sins, but, “who loved me”), and gave himself for me” —yes, gave Himself for me, and loved me when I was a sinner and nothing else. Blessed Son of God—Son of the Father, who has told out His Father’s love, and bade me read it in Himself; to whom I cling and in whom I trust, to whom I can unburden my poor wretched heart when it has turned aside and fed upon things for which He had to suffer and die. Pardon and cleanse the wandering hearts of those whom Thou lowest, Blessed Lord; draw them to Thyself, and unfold Thyself to our souls, and occupy our hearts with Thine own sufficiency!
In the desert we learn the need of feeding upon this Humbled One. Reproach is bitter, but He bore it Himself— “The reproaches of them that reproached thee, are fallen upon me.” And when we are privileged to bear the reproach, what sweetens it, but that it is “the reproach of Christ?” How faultily too are we able to interpret these trials and sufferings for His name, in their true value. What may seem deserved by us, and what thus may lead us to judge ourselves, may, after all, when weighed and appraised according to the balances of the sanctuary, be the reproach of Christ.
How could Moses tell when he forsook the court of Pharaoh, and fled when he had slain the Egyptian, that God would characterize his act as He does in Hebrews 11:2626Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. (Hebrews 11:26)? Oh, what marvels of divine grace, and what weighings of actions that none can read but God Himself, will be manifested in that day when “every man shall have praise of God!” Actions which we blushed to recall; poor, faltering blunders, fears and turnings of our eyes to the right hand and to the left; but God, who has treasured them as the productions of His grace in us, will then read all that His grace wrought in us, in the daylight of heaven, and they will receive a name that will make us only wonder awl adore. Many a fine action too, which has won the applause of men, will then be found to have had its meed in that applause; only worthy too, it may be, of a place in the forgotten past, and unworthy of a name in the then recounted annals of the wilderness way!
But it is the manna which feeds the soul in that journey, and it is appreciable only by those who tread in the path where such food is found. It is not found amongst the great things, or the great ones of this earth. His was a lowly, unknown track, but one which left a path of heavenly light behind it in the eyes of God!
When consciously in wilderness circumstances, we need another food. We need that which grows and ripens and fructifies in the land of glory. So we read that they ate the old corn of the land, on the selfsame day on which they kept the passover on the plains of Jericho. A heavenly Christ now unfolds Himself, and feeds our souls, “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor. 5:1616Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. (2 Corinthians 5:16)). How bold does Paul grow in his glowing words in this Scripture. His life seemed to be made up of two alternatives; “Beside himself,” when his heart entered upon those things that eye of man had not seen, but which are revealed unto us by the Spirit; but “sober” when he thought on others (v. 13). The love of Christ constrained his heart—impelled him onward in its mighty swellings, because of man’s condition— “dead”—proved by His “dying for all,” to beseech men. But that once-dead One, now lived; He had died, and had risen, and entered on that scene of glory. In Him God would make all things new. That vista of the new creation opens before his heart—he sees the One whom some may have known as the Messiah walking here in lowly love. He would know no man after the flesh; but his heart glows, and grows bolder as he proceeds, “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh,” as He was on earth, “yet now henceforth know we him,” he says, no more.” He had entered the glory as a Man. As Man He occupied the throne of God—object of the adoration of the Hosts in glory; there he knew Him now—as the “old corn” of that land. If he needed Him (as he ever did) in the wilderness way, it was as One whom now we understand in measure, whom He was as He traversed the world— “the bread of God” which came down from heaven—who died, and rose, and went on high.
We never feed at the same moment on Christ, in these two conditions. As we are in the double place of being on high, and traversing this world’s deserts, so we need Him to feed and sustain our souls in both conditions. In one we need to see and know Him in His downward path from the glory to the cross, as the Humbled One—the true manna—whose “mind” is to be in us, enabling us to bring God down in the circumstances, so as to act divinely in them every moment. This we learn in Phil. 2 In the other the eye, once blinded by His glory, grows stronger by His Spirit as it gazes on Him who had displaced the whole moral being of His servant, and his body thus filled with light from that glory, seeks only to “know him,” and to “win Christ” as it runs onward to the goal of complete assimilation to the One on whom it feeds in heavenly glory on high. This is the “old corn” which fed Paul in Phil. 3.
Oh, what preparations of heart for the people of God! What lessons for those who would fight “not in uncertainty” for the possessions which they seek to realize. But they must learn too that only as “unleavened cakes” can this heavenly Christ be used and enjoyed. How could the joys of earth—of human relationships, be allowable in such food? Impossible. The fruit of the land must be eaten by those who are circumcised in the unleavened perfection of that nature which is capable of feeding on such food. What can those who are feeding upon the “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” know of this old corn of the land? They are riming after the vanities of this life, the follies of this world. They need to go to Gilgal! Egypt’s chains are still there. Egypt’s “reproach” still clings to them. And though they may be truly trusting in Him whom they profess to love; though they may be dead and risen with Christ, they need to visit Gilgal that they may be circumcised, ere they can either need or appreciate this heavenly food.
Let us test our hearts, beloved. Are they feeding with diligence on a heavenly Christ, or upon those things which shut Him out? Is Christ precious to us as hidden treasure? Is the “beauty of the Lord” sufficient to fill our hearts, so that our soul are filled with marrow and fatness, and we are able, in a dry and thirsty land, to praise Him with joyful lips.