Joshua 3

VERSES 1-17.-The old idea of this chapter, as we have already noticed, is true, that no one can enter Canaan, but through death-that no one can be in heaven but through the grave; but the question is, Is there any other way* in which we can die? Whilst it remains true that no one can get in but through death, is there any way by which we can morally die? This is, I believe, the teaching of the third of Joshua, or as we get it worded in Colossians, "Dead with Christ."
The great thing then is, how are we to die? Or rather what is the experience of those who have died with Christ?
Often people think that something has to be settled by their own death, but if so, it is clear that Christ's death has not been sufficient. His death has set me perfectly free. Whilst saints think that their own death has something to do with it, they never can get the sense that they are as dead in God's sight now as ever they will be. Death will not put me one bit more satisfactorily in the sight of God than I am now. In the Red Sea, everything is cleared away between me and God, but to see this accomplished in myself is an immense relief; and this is Jordan; the first is Christ's death; the second mine-my entering into His. So the old commentators were literally correct. I must lose. Man is morally dead, and I say, I have done with man-with the weak thing; it is gone. Thus, a person on a death-bed is perfectly happy; he is going to a new scene, and he has so entered into it, that he is morally superior to everything in this one; as to circumstances, he is in death; but, as to life, he has already resurrection life.
Literally, the Red Sea is the death of your enemies, and the Jordan the death of yourself. In the former, the Egyptian-all that is hostile-is gone. But, when the people come to Jordan, they cannot go up to possess the land; there is the water to be passed through. Thus, says God, you must drop that weak thing, and, if you do, you will be found in divine power.
We cannot get righteousness apart from resurrection. That is the Red Sea.
However, it is the greatest comfort to the believer to be able to say, Well, I have got them all, whatever my experience may be; for there is only one death of Christ, whatever the different aspects in which it may be presented to us. There are these three aspects of that one death, the lamb slain in Egypt, the Red Sea, and. the Jordan; but if, you have His death, you have them all as to fact; as to experience, we have it parceled out, so to say, into three, as we often find in the Old Testament.
To enter into death, then, without entering into the grave, can only be effected by my contemplating Christ in His death. I am to see the ark of the covenant go down into Jordan. And what do I see in this death? I see two things: I see Christ, the One who was everything That was lovely in this world, gone in death; but I also see that in death He was the One who was everything that was pleasing to God. So I have seen the end of everything that is beautiful on earth, and also of that which is perfectly well-pleasing to God. Let any one lose in death one much loved, and see what an effect it will have on him; the nearer the dead was to you, the more you enter into that death.
Christ's death is not merely the end of man; but when you see that in it everything that was lovely on earth, in the eye of God, is gone, why it is the end of everything humanly. At the same time it is everything that is lovely to God; it is the ark of the covenant going down into the waters. And, as you see it, you are made sensible that death is gone for you, and that you are occupied with the One who has met the eye of God in that scene where you were lost. I see Him there. I might find out that I am set in perfect righteousness in the presence of God, and yet discover that I am not dead, as in the Red Sea; but in Jordan it is more what you have to travel through yourself in order to find yourself in Canaan. And, having done it, I find that the weak thing is gone-the thing that Satan could - lay hold of. A monk tries to do this himself; he tries to die-tries to be happy, by getting rid of everything that is most annoying to him in the flesh; but do what you will, after all your efforts you will find you are still uncommonly alive.
In the Lord's supper, I contemplate His death when He is alive. I am in association with Him as the living One, so I can contemplate Him as the dead One. I have fellowship with the blood of Christ-I have fellowship with the death of Christ. The Corinthians were allowing their flesh to run riot in every way, so he says to them: You have not contemplated the death of Christ at all.
Think what the death of Christ was to the disciples! The Lord "gave thanks." He was entitled to everything as man, and He says, As I break the bread I can give thanks. And now we can echo His thanks and say, I, too, have nothing here.
I do not think that souls get the sense of this -this contemplation of Christ's death showing them, on the one hand, that everything beautiful is gone; a. sense of death upon everything, as when a dear friend is gone. And, on the other hand, even in this. sense, we are rescued from everything; so that not only are hopes gone, but fears are gone too. I ask you, Have you any prospects? You answer, No, I have none. Well then, have you any fears? Oh, I have fears enough! Then you are not quite dead yet.
However, everything is satisfactory on the side of God, though my experience of it may be small; and the thing that is before me is not death, but the One who has accomplished all for me. I know all is clear; that He has entered into the whole thing, and that there is no water. In the Red Sea the waters rose to their highest: " They were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left; " so the old commentators say they went through in single file; each one felt the water on either side of him. But at the Jordan it was five miles broad, from the city Adam right down to the Dead Sea " the waters failed and were cut off," and the old writers say they all went across abreast. So in actual death of the body, Stephen could say, " I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God," and, in the power of that glory, rise above all the circumstances in which he was found. And a step still farther we get in Paul, who says, I am longing to depart; to be with Christ is "far better." I am in the joy of the One who has met all that was against me, and He opens out to me all the riches of light and glory.
Hence, it can be said to Joshua, " This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel." There is no place where you get such a sense of the greatness of what Christ is to you as in your death; you get Christ's victory in the Red Sea, all your enemies dead on the sea shore; but in Jordan, in my own death, I get, Christ magnified to my soul. I have to do with the accomplishment in the one; in the other, with the One who accomplished it. In the latter, it is occupation with Christ personally, and souls are not occupied with Christ personally until they have got to deal with Him in their own death. First, I have, in the Red Sea, to learn the death of judgment, like Jonah in the whale's belly; but then when he came up again he had to learn Jordan-that everything is dead: the gourd goes. Paul learned it in Jerusalem. Every one has to learn it some way; generally the way God connects you with death is by touching something very dear to you. Just as with Abraham, it was Isaac that had to be offered, and he must say, It is all gone. So with Jacob, Joseph goes. It is not simply looking at it as a monk or nun might do, but it is standing amidst the death of all here entirely to the satisfaction of God. And this makes heavenly life much more absolute.
I do not think any, person really enjoying God's presence thinks at that moment of anything that suits himself humanly. When you are in His presence you have sufficient. It is not that you lose things, but that you do not think anything necessary to be added to Christ, Now in the body, of course, we know there are certain things that are necessary to us, and it is said, "Your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things;" but when I cross the Jordan I. do not think of any of these things. So the Lord says to His disciples, "Lacked ye anything 2" Do you know when those words were said first? from whom they were quoted by Him? They were said by Solomon in all his glory; so, that, when the Lord had nothing, He had as much as Solomon had when he had everything. And this lack of nothing in His presence makes you all the more dependent on Him when you come out. It is not that God will take things away from you. You may say in the fullness of your heart, I do not want anything; but He says, I know you better than you know yourself. I might, for instance, in a moment of devotedness say, I should like to go to China to serve the Lord. And He says, You are fit to go to the north of Scotland; you may go there. So He sends Me there, and answers thus my prayer to be allowed to serve Him.
If I do not know what God's power can do in my weakest point, how can I be assured of what He will do against my enemies? My weakest point is death, and I can say, From my weakest point He " raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
Just look at the way in which it is put in the Ephesians; it may be a help to us; chap.1:18-20. There is where the power works. It comes down to the weakest point; " He raised him from the dead." In chapter 3: 20, we find this same power is that which works in us. And lastly, in ch. 11:10, the very words of the first chapter are repeated in connection with our working it out. I know the power that worked to raise me. And what now? I have it in me. ' And what now? I am to use it against the enemy.
I do not find any bitterness of death in this chapter. I do not think any one is sorry for dying here. There is no bereavement in this; it is a death entered into without bereavement: I would call it painless death. It is a positive real thing; you are carried into a new sphere where weakness gives place to death.. In the Red Sea they were all afraid; there it was, " Stand still " in tremor and fear; but here it is, Come up and see it is all done.
I doubt not the Lord's supper is the place for us to learn it in, there where for us there is not a single cloud nor a single bitterness, and where the One who wrought for me becomes more intensely known- to my heart. According as there is death there is power. Canaan is a place. of more conflict and of more power than' the wilderness; but difficulties are nothing where there is power to meet them. And there is ever joy connected with service. It is always interesting to me that I do not find joy connected with John 14; there it is the service of Christ for me, and it gives me " peace; " but, in chapter xv. my service for Christ gives me "joy."
There are a great many marks that show when you are in Canaan. The first great mark, but we have not come to it yet, is that you are circumcised. There is a scene in which I am now set that is not an earthly scene, one in which God delights to have me; and the way into that place is through death, and no other way. Death comes in and helps me. The same death that shuts me out from everything here, confines me exclusively to all there. One thing is very plain, that man is over: I am connected with a heavenly scene, and nothing can sustain me in that scene but the Holy Ghost. You will find that if the heavenly standing begins to decline in a soul, the Holy Ghost's power will also decline in it. Nothing proves this to me more than the way in which people now take up dispensational truth; it used to bring those who held it out of the world, but now any one may hold it and yet stay mixed up with the religiousness of it.
There were then, we see, twelve stones to be taken up out of the midst of Jordan and placed in the land. As you know what Christ is to you in your death, you can judge of what His power can do for you in other ways. If His power could raise me up to Himself in heaven from thence,-if it did that-I say it can do anything. He has turned what was most against me into my greatest blessing. And then there are the twelve left in the Jordan. My soul, as I look at them, enters into what His sorrow was when all the waves and the billows went over the One who was entirely well-pleasing to God. Supposing you saw every beautiful thing on earth dead, what sort of feeling would it give you? When you see all that is beautiful thus gone in Christ, you say, Well now I have nothing whatever to hold me here. Those twelve I have to carry me into the remembrance of the One who accomplished all for me; they lie there in the depth for a memorial to my heart.
We were seeing yesterday that we have to keep the law to get into Canaan. You never can get in if you do not keep it. It is the ground on which you get in. And how can you keep it without being a dead man? So " the righteousness of the law " must be " fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit,". God having " condemned sin in the flesh." This righteousness could not come out in the flesh. " What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." So I die in this way; I die according to the eighth of Rom. 1 die here in contemplating Christ's death. I, do not know anything more melancholy than contemplating one's own death, but here I see the One who has gone into it for me, who has raised me out of it by His own power, and I get the sense of that power in myself like to stand on the banks of Jordan and contemplate Him thus: and that is the Lord's supper. No one ever became heavenly by merely wishing to be heavenly.