We will be reading Joshua 5:1–15. Now it came about when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard how the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel until they had crossed, that their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer, because of the sons of Israel.
At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make for yourself flint knives and circumcise again the sons of Israel the second time.” So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth. And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: all the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, died in the wilderness along the way, after they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.
For the sons of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, that is, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished because they did not listen to the voice of the Lord, to whom the Lord had sworn that He would not let them see the land which the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. And their children whom He raised up in their place, Joshua circumcised; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them along the way.
Now it came about when they had finished circumcising all the nation, that they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the name of that place is called Gilgal (that means “rolling”) to this day.
It is called Gilgal to this day because He rolled away the reproach of Egypt from them in this great circumcision that took place in the whole nation as they were ready to enter into the land of Canaan.
While the sons of Israel camped at Gilgal, they observed the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month on the desert plains of Jericho. This is one of the great texts in the Bible that talks about the observance of the Passover.
Before the fall of Jericho, they were keeping the Passover. After they kept the Passover in Egypt, they were immediately thrust out into the wilderness. After they kept the Passover on the plains of Jericho, they immediately went in to take Jericho and the other cities. The Passover precipitates action. Whenever the people come to a place where there is once more an application of the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Jesus Christ upon their hearts, they humble themselves before the Lord, bringing themselves under the mercies of God into immunity from judgment. Immediately action follows. You cannot visit the Lord in the Passover and be confronted by Him, without something immediately happening to your life.
And on the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land, so that the sons of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate some of the yield of the land of Canaan during that year.
It is important for us to grasp this. The Passover is associated first with a deep circumcision of the heart. They had to prepare their hearts. The reproach of Egypt had to be rolled off. It is true, they had left Egypt forty years before, but it is one thing to get people out of Egypt and quite another thing to get Egypt out of them. We can get some people out of the old-order Babylon, but how do we get all of Babylon out of their hearts? That is the problem.
The time comes that we are going in to possess God’s land, but we cannot go with the reproach of Egypt in our hearts. There must be a Gilgal experience, a time when we roll off the reproach of Egypt. We have to get rid of the conditioning of our hearts that has prepared us to think like Egyptians. We say we are Israelites, but we think like Egyptians. We think like the world thinks. We are conditioned to respond as they respond to circumstances and to the things that happen to them. This is not the will of the Lord. We will have to think in another way.
The purpose of circumcision of heart is that we determine, “Lord, I don’t want to think like the world; I want to think like You think. Tell me, Lord, what to think.” The world could never understand the growing demand in the hearts of the people for the prophets and the apostles to come forth. God’s people want to know the will of the Lord. They want us to give them the Word of the Lord, to tell them what to think and how to believe. They want to continue in the apostles’ doctrine. That places a great responsibility on all of us to carefully seek the mind of the Lord, because we must think the way God thinks.
People of the world have their ways of doing things, and they become very upset if you do not want to follow them. They die differently. Because they do not want to face death, they dress up a corpse to make it look quiet and peaceful, as though it is asleep. Who do they think they are fooling? They do not want to face death, and they do not want to face life. But God is saying, “Come on; we’re going to face things.”
In America today people do not want to face the problems of the economy and the monetary system. They are saying, in effect, “If we close our eyes, maybe it will go away.”
God is bringing a circumcision of heart and saying, “Come, I want you to think the way men are going to think in the Kingdom. I want you to think the way the Lord thinks. I want you to react the way the Lord reacts.” We say, “Tell us, Lord, what You feel about this age, and that is what we shall feel about it.” And the Lord says, “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). We are not going to look back and be turned into a pillar of salt, good for nothing for centuries to come except to be licked by a cow. That is not my idea of a future ministry!
We have come to Gilgal. It is time to roll off the reproach of Egypt and get our hearts free from everything that is going to oppress us. Then after we are circumcised, we will keep the Passover, and find that we are in new territory.
The first Passover put the Israelites in the wilderness where God supplied the manna. But the day after they kept the Passover in Canaan, the manna ceased—the very next day. Do not ever get the idea that the first Passover is an irrevocable pattern of being thrust out, going through the Red Sea, and wandering in the wilderness. You keep a Passover also when you are ready to go in and take the land of promise that God wants you to have. The next day you eat of the old corn of the land, and then God makes obsolete all things you learned about manna during the past forty years. We keep the Passover and the manna ceases.
Picture in your mind an imaginary situation. A man is writing his doctor’s thesis on manna, in order to record for posterity everything he can learn about this amazing phenomenon. He has been researching the nutritional aspects of manna, its mineral and vitamin content. He has also been studying the taste of manna and the probability of its origin. Now he can conduct lectures on manna from one tribe to another. After the Passover he goes out to gather his daily portion of manna—and no manna. How alarming! For forty years the manna has never failed them. It was a phenomenon that fell with the dew each night, probably about three or four o’clock in the morning. And suddenly—no manna! It is hard on old wineskins when the manna stops. They do not like it that well, but they are accustomed to it.
“What will we eat now?” Well, a large granary filled with old corn up there is available, but a giant is guarding it. All right, this morning we shall go up there and have the breakfast food of giants. But we had better be prepared, because those giants do not want to lose their breakfast food.
There comes a time when you are not going to be spoon-fed any longer, but you are going to fight for every truth God gives you. With every advance that you make into the things of God, you are going to be struggling with all your heart. That is why you have to be circumcised. The life of sin, the thinking that has coexisted, must be cut away. The manna—life has coexisted with the flesh-life of Egypt. We have to get rid of that. The flesh-life of Egypt has to disappear.
After these men had been circumcised, they had to heal before they could fight a war. It is an uncomfortable experience for us, too, when God cuts deep, right down to the heart. Then we ask the Lord to heal us because there is a battle to be fought.
Joshua stood there wondering about the next step. …he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?”
In this walk with God we sometimes wonder whose side the Lord is on. Many times I have prayed, “Lord, are You for this church, or are You against it? Are You trying to build this church, or are You for our adversaries?”
Joshua saw the Lord with a drawn sword in His hand. The Lord was saying to Joshua, “You encounter Me before you are going to encounter Jericho.”
And he said, “No, rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” And the captain of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. Joshua 5:13–15.
We ask the Lord, “Just what is the picture?” And the Lord says, “I am here to be the leader. I am the captain. This is where you resign and step down. I am taking over.”
Throughout all the land, brothers will be rising up, and there will be only one leader, the Lord Himself. No man is to be glorified. There will be no popes in a walk with God. There will be no general superintendents or archbishops. All it will be is a people under the Captain of the host of the Lord, moving out as the Spirit leads us, “Here, this is the way.”
At this point, there must be a new awareness that the Lord is the leader. I do not think He is going to make this a difficult matter of revelation. We are going to know that He is the leader! When the Lord sets something before us, we are going to do it, because the Lord leads to do it. We will not have a program originating from human thinking.
We will do some things that may not look very plausible or very intelligent, such as wandering around the city for seven days, but if the Captain of the host of the Lord says that is what we are to do, then that is what we will do.
Beyond any doubt or any question in our mind, we know that from this Passover, we shall move into a new way of life, a new diet, a new environment, a new type of struggle, a new awareness of our Leader.