Joshua 4

VERSES 1-3.-As we have seen already there are twelve stones left in the bed of the river, and twelve placed where they lodged that night-their first lodging place in the land. The number takes up the number of the tribes of Israel. There was a difference between the twelve in Jordan and the twelve in the first place of halting, the first place of rest. I think the twelve on the bank were more the memorial of the accomplishment of the thing; they were in the land; whilst the twelve in the bed of the river are where you contemplate-where you go back to revive to your heart-the spot where Christ was for you. You recall to yourself that you are-over it. If I carry it out in the Lord's supper it is not simply memorial, it is fellowship.
Cor. 10. and 11., give us an illustration of it. You have to get into association with His death; you have to stand on the bank and say, He was there for me. You stand and look at it now from the other side, from the heavenly side. Nothing, perhaps, fills the soul with a deeper sense of what Christ is, than my contemplating Him where He was for my sake. In Revelation they cast their crowns before Him and say, We ascribe it all to the Lamb slain.
What God had promised to Moses in Exod. was not accomplished till now; but now they can speak of the fact; the twelve stones are in the land. I have got into fellowship now as I look at Him where He was-as I contemplate all that He wrought for me in that place. A person who eats the Lord's supper only looking for the means of grace in it, has never got to this. In Ex. 12, though feeding on the Lamb, they are not across; neither is it remembrance. With all due respect, I do not believe that any in the Establishment get farther than this; they remember how God has freed them from the judgment, and that is in Egypt; you only get the sprinkled blood there, and you do not get that anywhere else. As to brethren, they, as a whole, are very much in the wilderness; they just remember the Lord's death in connection with victory. But when we get to the twelve stones in Jordan we commemorate the consummation of the work, and we then eat the old corn of the land. Morally, with the saint, the first day across the Red Sea ought to be your first day in Canaan.
It is a wonderful moment for the soul when it gets to these twelve stones. Everything collective is individual, because you must enjoy things individually. This, of course, belongs to our standing; there is no mistaking the sense of it. But people so often allow the standing-say you must accept it; but as to fact you never really get possession of the standing without enjoying it. A person perhaps might not be able to speak very distinctly of what he was enjoying in the land, but I tell you what he will know; he will know in coming back to this scene, that it is a wonderful contrast to what he knows in that. Like Moses who " Wist not," but all the time " his face shone."
Verses 6, 7.-" A memorial " you see. And it is very interesting to mark that it is where they lodge. Your first stand upon the ground is the memorial. In Corinthians the Lord makes it the center for everything. It is only one loaf with us, twelve stones with them, because it is unity with us. They were one nation one people; but we are the body - of Christ " members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones," nourished and cherished by Him. So every command is now " If ye love me," and this does not make a command one bit less binding. Where there is much affection subsisting between any two, there the command is inoperative.
I feel that when the sufferings of Christ are brought prominently forward, souls lose the 'weight of what the Lord's supper is. It is not His sufferings; it is not what He went through; it is not what the atonement was; it is that He is dead. This would not be without His sufferings; but the great thing before our mind would be, that He had gone down to the very lowest place on earth. If you have not already got redemption through His sufferings, you have no right to look at Him there; but, having redemption through His -work, you are contemplating that which He was, in order that you may see the depth and the fullness of His love, and in order that you may be too in the very place that He was in. If you are only occupied with Him in order to get deliverance for yourself, you are not looking at Him from the heavenly side at all.
I do not think any of us have an idea of -what it was for the One who was entitled to everything on the earth-to every bright and beautiful thing that God had here-to say, I give it all up for you. As I look upon Him dead I say, I am shut out here from everything... human, if you like. Every believer knows something about the blood, but very few know anything about the " new and living way." This is not simply Christ's sacrifice, the shedding of His blood, but it is the " new and living way through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." It means that you have left everything connected with man in the flesh outside. It is not Adam dead; every one admits that Adam is dead, but do you admit that Christ is dead? Every one says, I admit that He died for my sins; but I do not mean that; I mean the fact that He Himself is dead. I am not occupied with the sacrifice, I am not occupied with the benefits that God has conferred upon me when I am at the Lord's table; but I am in the benefits, I am in light and glory, and, knowing Him in light and glory, I look at him where He was when He was gaining it all for me.
The wonderful thing is that He gave up everything for me. I do not mean that you can lose sight of the fact that He suffered; but what is before our mind is the love that brought Him there. I do not mean that you will lose sight of His atoning sufferings; but this I do say, that, if you are occupied with them alone, you will soon bring the table to that low state which eventually brought it down to the Mass. And it is not that; it is not that I am seeking to remember something which will quiet my soul. I hold that a person is not really at the Lord's table until he can remember the Lord. It is possible to look at Him to relieve the soul without remembering Him. The believer, surely, has everything in the death of Christ, but he cannot enjoy the Lord's supper unless he be on Canaan ground.
You ask, Then would you not admit a person until he is on Canaan ground? Not at all. Every soul that has got hold of Christ has all the benefits of His- death, and I can receive all such; but I say, that when a soul recurs only to the sufferings of Christ, he is more occupied with His sacrificial work than with the love that brought Him into it. And more: I find a person can be occupied with the sacrificial sufferings of Christ, and still go on with the world; but if he once sees that Christ is dead, he cannot possibly go on with it. I defy you to do it. Nothing ever weakens your hold on this world like- seeing that Christ died to every beautiful thing in it. When you see Him dead, is it not an easy thing for you to say: "This world is a wilderness wide, I have nothing to seek or to choose; I've no thought in the waste to abide; I've naught to regret nor to lose."
This is the practical experience that ought to ow from the Lord's supper. I think it is quite possible to speak of the sufferings of Christ and not to lose sight of His death; but the point is not to limit them to the sacrificial sufferings; you must carry them beyond the twelfth of Exodus.