And it came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, that were beyond the Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, that were by the sea, heard how that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel.
At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee knives of flint, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. And Joshua made him knives of flint, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise: all the people that came forth out of Egypt, that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way, after they came forth out of Egypt. For all the people that came out were circumcised; but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, they had not circumcised.
For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the nation, even the men of war that came forth out of Egypt, were consumed, because they hearkened not unto the voice of the Lord: unto whom the Lord sware that he would not let them see the land which the Lord sware unto their fathers that he would give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, them did Joshua circumcise: for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them by the way. And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the nation, that they abode in their places in the camp, till they were whole. And the Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away thereproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of that place was called Gilgal (which means “rolling”), unto this day.
And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal; and they kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the produce of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes and parched grain, in the selfsame day. And the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the produce of the land; neither had the children of Israel manna any more; but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.
And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as prince of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant? And the prince of the Lord’s hosts said unto Joshua, Put off thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so. Joshua 5.
It is very essential that we understand this passage because we are to celebrate the same kind of Passover as was kept that year on the plains of the Jordan before Jericho.
The time came for the Israelites to be circumcised, to cut away the old reproach of Egypt. I do not know how God is going to bring judgment, but I believe we will find judgment hitting everywhere. Everything has indicated it. Everything is pointing toward it. The sign of judgment is upon all the people.
The best thing for all of us to do is to let the Lord deal with our hearts and have our hearts circumcised before the Lord. God is teaching us right now that he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision an outward thing, for it is of the heart (Romans 2:28). We are going to be the Israel of God, circumcised in our hearts. God will have to roll away the reproach of Egypt from us.
Over forty years had gone by, and the Israelites still had Egypt in their flesh even though another generation had been born on the way. Everyone who came out of Egypt was already circumcised, but these were the ones who had been born along the way. They could be forty years old, but they had never been circumcised and prepared for what God wanted them to be.
Circumcision was always a mark indicating one was under the covenant of Abraham. God had given that sign to Abraham when he was yet uncircumcised, and it became a sign to his seed after him.
God is doing the same thing for us now. He is circumcising our hearts to get rid of the things from Egypt and Babylon that are still in our spirits. We cannot think like we used to think. We cannot feel like we used to feel. We cannot have the same kind of emotions and reactions we used to have.
You may say, “Well, I’m a Christian now.” That’s fine. But there are a lot of Christians of whom we could say, “We got them out of the world, but we didn’t get the world out of them.” They still cling to a legalism of do’s and don’ts. They have to be restrained because the reproach of Egypt and the reproach of Babylon is still in their hearts. I am always a little suspicious of the austerity the flesh takes on under legalism. I have found that the ministers in legalism and the people in legalism are sometimes the most carnal, the most fleshly of all. In their legalistic efforts they try to deny what should be admitted and should be submitted to God so that He can cut it away once and for all.
When the Israelites had all been circumcised, they kept the Passover. Then a strange thing happened: the manna ceased on the morrow. Did you notice that? On the morrow after the Passover the manna ceased.
What a lesson we see there. When they were in the wilderness, still in an undeveloped spiritual state, God kept feeding them and taking care of them.
They finally reached that place spiritually where the Lord could say, “All right. Today you are men. You want to eat? It’s that away, up there where the giants are watching their vineyards and their granaries. If you want to eat you’ll have to take it.
I have promised it to you; now you have to take it.” That Passover marked the beginning of a new kind of warfare.
The Israelites either had to go into the warfare or they had to go hungry. No more were they told to open their mouths like babes for milk, no more could they walk out and pick up the manna. No more could they drink from the river that followed them in the wilderness.
Now they had to kill a few Philistines to get to the well, or they would continue being thirsty. If they wanted to eat and drink, they had to go in and possess the land the Lord said was theirs.
This Passover opened up a contradictory situation, the same as we are in now, where God says it is yours, and you either believe it or you say, “Lord, I don’t believe You. I don’t believe You because the devil is hindering me. I don’t believe it because I am being battled on it. I don’t believe I have divine health because I’ve had all kinds of afflictions for the last few months. I can’t believe what God said. It isn’t true.” Sure, you are being battled.
Don’t you know where you are? You are in the plains of the Jordan. There will not be any miracle that will let you go back across the Jordan, and if the Jordan should part and you could get back over on the east side, then you would really be hungry, for there is nothing in the wilderness to feed you now. The manna has ceased.
You have crossed your Jordan. Now there can be no turning back. You will have to come to grips with your moods. Get your heart circumcised. You must do it. You cannot be a baby any more. You will not be able to make it that way, for God is demanding more of you.
What is maturity? It is a relative term, for what would be considered maturity in one would not be maturity in another. However, one can become mature because demands are made of him which he has to fulfill. Some of our greatest men were self-made men. They are eager to tell the story of their life: “I went to work when I was nine years old. I worked hard and earned twenty-five cents a day. By the time I was twenty-one I had a million dollars.” They became mature because it was demanded of them.
A little boy standing over his father’s grave or listening to his mother weeping in the bedroom because daddy has forsaken the family is frightened as he faces the fact that there is no father. He becomes a man overnight because it is demanded of him.
When a mother is taken from the family because of illness, big sister very carefully puts her dolls away in a drawer and puts on her apron ready to care for the younger children. That day she becomes a woman.
God is saying, “Come on, nursery time is over. Manna has ceased. Today we go to work.” As we keep the Passover, we remember the blood that delivered the Israelites from slavery and the strength of the lamb that filled their stomachs as they stumbled across the wilderness to be God’s free people.
Now we partake of that same lamb, but not just to leave bondage behind. We are called to be more than free men and women wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. Now the purpose of our liberation comes forth.
For what purpose were we freed? To become God’s people, to possess the land, to do what God called us to do. We were delivered so that everything could be made new.
This is the time when we must have a new revelation of the Lord. We must see Him with a drawn sword in His hand. Joshua should have known the Lord when he saw Him. When the cloud came down and God’s glory filled the tabernacle, Moses would come and go, but we read of Joshua that he abode continually in the tabernacle and went not out. “Joshua, you learned to put your trust in the Lord. You learned what the glory was. You followed it for forty years in the wilderness. You had great faith. Don’t you know who that is over there?”
“No, I don’t know who He is.”
“You don’t know the Lord when you see Him?”
“He never came to me like that before.”
We have difficulty with every revelation because the Lord has so many aspects to His being. We feel like saying, “Lord, You’ve changed. You didn’t look like that to me before.” Joshua did not know what to make of the situation. He said, “Are You for us or for our adversaries over there? Whose side are You on, Lord? You look so fierce, so grim. Are You going to use that sword on me or on the people of Jericho?”
Get ready for a new revelation of the Lord because you are going to learn things about Him that you never knew before. He will appear to you in aspects you have never known. You are going to see a different side of the Lord.
You will find that He is getting ready to bring judgment upon the earth. He has been patient and longsuffering with some of you as if you were in a nursery, but that is all over with now. You will have a hard time adjusting. You will hardly recognize the dealings of the Lord. You will come and say, “I want you to pray for me, brethren.”
“What shall we pray for?”
“Well, I don’t really know. I’m going through something.”
“Is it a spiritual battle with the devil?”
“I don’t know whether it’s God or the devil, but something is happening to me. I don’t know whether to blame it on the Lord or to blame it on the devil.”
The Lord is standing with a drawn sword in His hand. You have kept the Passover. The blood of the Lamb is on your newly circumcised heart. You have fed upon His life and His fullness, but for what purpose?
There are no spas or resorts in Jericho Valley. All we hear is the rattle of swords and sabers, and the roars of giants. What do you want?
For six months Queen Esther was anointed with myrrh (an herb used to anoint the dead), and for six months she was anointed with sweet spices. When the king saw her, he loved her so dearly. She had been prepared. God is preparing you. Have you had your six months of myrrh? anointed to death? Would you like to have the sweet spices now? Do you want God to do something special for you? Have you come to the place where you want to move out? Are you saying, “I’d rather sacrifice; I’d rather do anything in the world than to remain where I am, spiritually.”
God is going to lay His hand on some of you worthless ones and give you some worth. You idle ones—He is going to come with His drawn sword in His hand, and if you turn your back on it, you will get that sword right where you should. New pastors will be commissioned; new schedules will be set before us; new demands will be made of us; new churches are going to come forth.
All of this could be likened to the beautiful story of Jesus keeping the Passover. He took the cup of wine that was filled for Elijah, and He gave it significance when He made the statement, “I am not going to drink this wine again with you until I drink it with you anew in My Father’s Kingdom” (Matthew 26:29).
We are living in the days of the Kingdom. I like to believe that we are going to drink it with Him now. We do not say, “Lord, search my heart because I hunger for righteousness.” Instead we look up and say, “O God, Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
At this particular time we are not as interested in the program and all the projects the Lord has set before us as we are interested (though we say it unselfishly) in ourselves. We want to be prepared for what is coming. We want to get ready for the new steps.
What a tragedy it would be to be an old wineskin when the Lord is passing out the new wine of the Kingdom. May the Lord prepare our hearts and help us to be diligent in our efforts to seek Him, for all is in vain unless we are the servants and handmaidens of the Lord, filled with His Spirit and filled with the word of the Lord.
We open our hearts for something new. Everything is going to be made new: a new walk with the Lord, a new diet, new enemies, a new revelation of the Lord to lead us, new battles. We must be ready for it. We must want a change, to move into the next step with all our hearts. We must want to do the will of the Lord with everything that is within us. That means new demands. I think we are ready to say amen to them.
We are at the plains of Jericho, and we will start on our conquest. This walk that God has brought forth has every ingredient necessary to become a world-wide move of God’s Spirit within the course of a very short time. It could go so fast that there would be no chance to even build churches. This could mean a time of such dedication that people will not even stop to think about the comforts of life or anything else, as they give themselves wholly to this walk with God.
Say goodbye to the wilderness. Say goodbye to the manna. Get ready to take the Canaanites. Possess the promises of the Lord. Ye shall not view them afar off, but ye shall walk among your enemies and subdue them. Ye shall believe the Lord that all He hath spoken shall come to pass. Glorify the Lord for everything that He hath wrought within thee, but prepare your heart for something more.
“Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old, for the Lord shall do a new thing in this hour. Thou shalt not gauge the wonder and the marvel of the thing which the Lord thy God shall bring forth in thy midst by that which thou hast known in the past. Consider not the lash of the taskmaster’s whip which has been upon thee. Consider not the seasons of sore bondage which thou hast endured, but know in thy heart that this shall be an hour of release. The Lord shall bring forth new things from this hour, even hidden things which thou hast not known. They are created now and not from of old; before this day thou knewest them not. Yea, expect great things. Prophesy great things. Believe for changes and transformations that shall even devastate thee in this hour, in the name of the Lord.”
“Surely the Lord doth make all things new in this hour. He doth create within thee a new spirit, a new mind, a new heart, and a new body; for surely that which was sufficient for yesterday and even for today is no longer sufficient for the hour which thou shalt walk in from this time forth.
Thou shalt go forth in the full anointing of the Lord. He shall bless thee and anoint thee. Thou shalt be His people, and He shall truly be called thy God in this hour.”