THROUGH THE BIBLE - Joshua 5..

Very good, brother, sister, dear friend. As I said to you, we're going to be reading together Joshua chapter 5, and we're going to be addressing the topic of the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord. The covenantal faithfulness of the Lord. When I speak of the faithfulness of the Lord, I refer to the fact that whatever God has promised on behalf of His people, He will accomplish, that He is faithful. When I say the covenantal faithfulness, I'm speaking about that faithfulness that is directed and specific for the people of God.

That which pertains to the covenantal promises that God has given, not only to the people of the Old Testament, but also to the people of the New Testament. And we're going to be addressing that topic of the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord, of course, from chapter five. And the way that we're going to do it is that we're going to go through four of the sections of this chapter that I'm going to introduce to you so that we will make our reading fruitful. This chapter is going to have four different sections of four different stages. The first one is in verse one, in which we are going to read about the fearfulness that the kings of the Amorites and the kings of the Canaanites had in their hearts because of the fact that the Israelites had crossed the river in a miraculous and powerful way.

They had known of the crossing through the river in that miraculous way that the Lord opened the waters and the people of Israel crossed. And because of that, the hearts of the kings of the Amorites and the Canaanites were filled with fear. The second section of this text is in relation to circumcision, the second circumcision of the people of Israel. Once they had made it into the Promised Land, once they had crossed the Jordan River, they are going to be circumcised as a community for a second time. Now, the third section of this book of this chapter here is in relation to the Passover or better the Feasts of the Lord.

And once again, I need your attention here so that we can go through the sound in the background. The third section, my dear brother, and sister is in relation to the feasts of the Lord. And as we're going to read it, the author of Joshua just calls that as the Passover. But it's more than the Passover. It's also the unleavened bread and the first fruits that we're going to see in the celebration of the first Passover as they make it into the promised land, which is going to be celebrated in the first fruits with the first fruits of the land of the Canaanites, because they were just very recent getting into the land.

And then finally, we have the section of the commander of the army of the Lord, in which Joshua, now that is very close to Jericho, is going to have a vision or an encounter better with the commander of the army of the Lord. And the commander of the army of the Lord is going to make Joshua aware that he is not on his side, not on the side of the enemies, because he is the commander of the army of the Lord. And the battle is not the battle of Joshua, but the battle is the battle of the Lord. And the Lord has sent his army to destroy all the Canaanites and the Amorites. And those are the four sections that we are going to see in light of the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord.

So, my dear brethren, having said those things, now let us read those 15 verses and let us get the details off these four sections that we have announced now in Chapter five. Let us read together by faith, paying careful attention to each one of the words. This is Joshua Chapter five. As soon as 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 that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted and there was no longer any spirit in them because of the people of Israel. At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives and circumcise the sons of Israel a second time.

So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeah, Haralaoth. And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. All the males of the people who came out of Egypt, all the men of war had died in the wilderness on the way after they had come out of Egypt. Though all the people who came out had been circumcised, yet all the people who were born on the way in the wilderness after they had come out of Egypt had not been circumcised. For the people of Israel worked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, perished, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord, The Lord swore to them that He would not let them see the land that the Lord had sworn to their fathers to give to us, a land flowing with milk and honey.

So it was their children whom He raised up in their place that Joshua circumcised. For they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. When the circumcising of the whole nation was finished, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. And the Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.

While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month, in the evening, on the plains of Jericho. And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, 11 cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. When Joshua was by or close to Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand.

And Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for adversaries? And he said, No, but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant? And the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.

And Joshua did so. Amen. This is the reading of the word of the Lord. And my dear brother, my dear sister, as I said to you, I want to speak to your heart and I hope by the help and the guiding and the illumination of the Holy Spirit about the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord. The covenantal faithfulness of the Lord in the fulfillment of the promise of the land.

We have seen how the people of Israel who were in the wilderness now have crossed the Jordan River and they have made it into the land. And that is the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord in keeping the promise that He had given to the people of Israel, that He was going to give them the land. But this was a promise that was not given only to Joshua or a promise that was given to Moses. But rather, this promise goes back all the way to who? Abraham, brethren, this promise was initially given to Abraham.

And that promise that we see now being fulfilled in the people of Israel entering into the land is not so much the faithfulness of the Lord in fulfilling what he said to Moses and to Joshua. Of course it is. But beyond that is the promise fulfilled of what he had said to Abraham. If you want to read it more specifically in Genesis chapter 12, in Genesis chapter 15, and in Genesis chapter 17. That promise was given to the father Abraham and that promise was a promise that your offspring is going to receive the land, the land in which you are now, your offspring is going to receive it.

Now, there are many elements in the promise that God gave to Abraham in Genesis 12, in Genesis 15 and in Genesis 17. There are three important elements that will help us understand Joshua chapter 5 of that promise that was given to Abraham in those chapters that I have mentioned. Who is going to receive the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham? The answer to that is the offspring of Abraham is going to receive the land. It was the offspring of Abraham who was going to receive the land.

How was the offspring of Abraham going to receive the land? The offspring of Abraham was going to receive the land through liberation. If you read Genesis chapter 15, the Lord says to Abraham that his offspring is going to be captive for 400 years. And the fulfillment of the promise to the offspring of Abraham was going to be through liberation. And thirdly, the process of that fulfillment of that promise, giving the land to the people of Israel, was going to be through and unto judgment.

Who was going to receive the land? The land was for the offspring of Abraham. How they were going to receive that land? They were going to receive it through liberation. Of course, we know that is the liberation from Egypt, right?

That they were captive there. And what was the method or process? It was through judgment and unto judgment. Keep those things in your mind because now the question is, who are the offspring of Abraham? And Genesis chapter 17 answers that question very clearly.

The offspring of Abraham are not only those who are born from Abraham, but are those who are circumcised. Because those who are circumcised are those who receive the sign of the covenant that God gave to Abraham. You remember Ishmael went away and the promise was not for him, but it was through Isaac. Now the people of Israel in Abraham were going to be those who were circumcised. Who was going to receive the land according to the promise given in Genesis chapter 15?

The offspring of Abraham. And who are the offspring of Abraham? Only the covenantal people of Abraham. And who are the covenantal people of Abraham, brethren? Are those who received the circumcision.

The circumcision was so important for the fulfillment of this promise that the world in the eyes of God were divided in two categories, the circumcised and the uncircumcised. The circumcised were the people of God, those who come from Abraham, and the uncircumcised were they Gentiles. So when fulfillment of the promise of the land was going to be only for those who are the offspring of the Lord. Hence, we are told here in Joshua chapter five, that when the second generation who came or the wilderness generation enters into the promised land, there is a need for circumcision. The need of the circumcision is explained here.

The first generation that came out of Egypt, they were circumcised. But because of their disobedience, they perished in the wilderness. And those males who were born in the wilderness during those 40 years, they have not been circumcised. And now that they have crossed the Jordan River and they are in the land, they are to be circumcised. Why?

Because the promise is supposed to be fulfilled for the offspring of Abraham. And the offspring of Abraham are those who belong to his covenant, namely those who have received the sign of circumcision. Everyone who is not circumcised is a Gentile. Everyone who is circumcised belongs to the people of God. You can read Genesis chapter 17 and you can see the intensity of the Lord in the requirement of circumcision.

There is one important detail. that these generations who were through the wilderness all the time were uncircumcised, of course. And the way that they enter into the land, brethren, the way that the people of Israel enter into the land, crossing the Jordan River, was in the condition of a Gentile. Because they crossed the Jordan River in the favor of the Lord, uncircumcised. And once they made it into the land, the Lord comes and gives them the sign of the covenant with Abraham in Genesis chapter 17.

And they are considered now to be the people of God. Brethren, if we would understand as Gentiles the intensity of the importance of being circumcised for God, we will see the favor and the grace of the Lord in not destroying this generation who remain for many, many years in the condition of uncircumcision and who receive the favor of the Lord in crossing the Jordan, the miracle of opening the Jordan and entering into the land as uncircumcised people. I know you can see here also very clearly how the concept of circumcision for the Lord is not only an individual matter, but it's a covenantal matter because it was the male who was supposed to be circumcised. But when all the males are circumcised in the eyes of the Lord, the whole people of Israel are considered to be circumcised and now they are covenantally able or worthy to receive and to perform all the duties. In fact, my dear brother and my dear sister, the second thing or the third thing that we see with the Passover is contingent upon the circumcision that have taken place.

You can read it in your own time in Exodus chapter 12 and Exodus chapter 13. The Lord had promised that once you make it into the promised land, you are to celebrate the Passover. But the Lord had also been very clear that you can only celebrate the Passover if you have been circumcised. That is, consecrate the male, the firstborn of Israel. And once there's the consecration of the male or the firstborn of Israel, then you celebrate the Passover.

If you are not consecrated unto the Lord, if you're not circumcised, if you're a foreigner, if you're a Gentile, you cannot celebrate the Feast of the Lord. Here we see that these people, that covenantally speaking, had been Gentiles in the eyes of the Lord. Under the judgment of the Lord, they cross by the grace and by the favor of the Lord. The Jordan River that is open to them, uncircumcised Gentiles in a sense. Once they make it into the land, once they have received the land, now they are circumcised.

And not only that, but they receive and their participation in the feast of the Lord that reminded them of their liberation that they had experienced from the land of Egypt. Because now when they are partaking of the Passover and the unleavened bread and the first fruits in those feasts that the Lord had given them, this was a reminder that the way that these people had been given or are given this promise, the fulfillment of this promise is through according to the words that God had given to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. Now brethren, I know that there's a lot of details in all of that, but brethren, this is actually very, very powerful. Because there were hundreds of years between Abraham and this moment in Joshua chapter 5, in which the people of God are going into the land. And what we see here is the faithfulness of the Lord, not only for Abraham, not only for Moses, and not only for Joshua and the people who are alive.

But this is the faithfulness of the Lord for all the Israelites through the generations who had heard that Father Abraham received the promise of a land, that Father Abraham had received the promise that, yes, we're going to be captive 400 years in a foreign land, but we're going to be mightily liberated from it. And once we make it into the promised land, we are. acknowledged from the divine court as the sons of Abraham in whom the promise is fulfilled. Not only the sons or the offspring of Abraham in the circumcision, but also through the reminder, my dear brethren, of their liberation from the bondage that they had in Egypt in their celebration there of the Passover. But also, my dear brethren, This fulfillment of the promise was not only through the judgment of the Egyptians, but was also unto judgment.

Because what we see here is a ceremonial preparation of the people of Israel to carry on or to bring about, or whatever, to execute the judgment of God upon the Amorites and upon the Canaanites that had been prophesied from Genesis chapter 15. When you have your time and you read Genesis chapter 15, you will see, my dear brethren, that in the promise that God gives to Abraham, it's not only that a land is going to be given to your offspring, but also that there will be judgment upon the Amorites and upon the Canaanites. They are treasuring up wrath. They're accumulating the inequity of the Amorites, so that when the consummation, the fulfillment of the inequity, the unrighteousness and the sins of the Amorites and the Canaanites comes to a point, then the people of Israel will make it into the promised land and the fulfillment of that promise given to Abraham, Many years afterwards will be not only for the demonstration of the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord, but also to bring about the judgment of God upon the wicked nations that were in that land. The Canaanites and the Amorites were not righteous people.

They were sinners and righteous people who were treasuring up wrath for the Day of Wrath. And the day that the people of God crossed the Jordan River was the day in which that judgment began. But this judgment was not going to be carried about or bring about by the Israelites. This was the judgment of God. Hence, when the commander of the army of the Lord has an encounter with Joshua, Joshua is asking, Are you on our side or your adversaries or enemy side?

He says, No, I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Because what is going to take place now is not only the fulfillment of God's promise unto and for his people, but as God fulfills his promise for the people of Israel, he is going to bring about the judgment that he has prophesied through Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. I don't know about you, my dear brother and sister, but for me, this is fearful. Fearful, not only the judgment of God that comes upon the Amorites by the ways of the Lord, Because the people of Israel for hundreds of years have been forming themselves as a nation, going through tribulations and difficulties and this and that. But at the same time, in this foreign land that was distant to them, there was a nation that was accumulating unto themselves wrath and sin and wickedness.

And for the appointed time, in the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord, He will give the faithfulness to the people of God, and He will bring judgment for those who deserve it. That's why in Joshua chapter 6, the first thing that we see is the destruction of Jericho. And the destruction of Jericho does not happen by the might or by the power of the muscle of the soldiers of Israel. It happens apart from them. It's God himself, the commander of the army of the Lord, the one who brings destruction to Jericho.

Because the judgment of the Canaanites and the Amorites had already started. My dear brother, my dear sister, when the God of the Bible, when our Lord speaks that He is going to bring about something, He indeed will bring it to completion. And just as it was this covenantal faithfulness manifested in the old covenant, is equally manifested in the new covenant. And what is the promise that He has given to the Lord Jesus Christ? The promise is that none of those who have been given to you will perish.

that everyone who is given to the Lord Jesus Christ will make it until the end, that all of those who have been set and united and chosen in Christ will make it into the promised land. And until that moment arrives, everything that happens in this world is for the purpose of the fulfillment of the faithfulness of the Lord in bringing to completion that promise. And also, my dear brother and sister, for the treasuring up of wrath, of those who are not in that divine purpose of the Lord, the treasuring up of wrath of those outside of Christ for the day of judgment. When you see and you open your eyes and you see the unrighteousness of this world and the chaos of this world and words and rumors of words and conflicts and lies and governments doing this and doing that. When we open our eyes and we see this world going in the way of darkness, Not only all of that is under the sovereign control of the Lord, but all of that has a purpose.

God is not an expectator that is just simply seeing how things develop, and then I'm just simply going to try to see how I save my people. Absolutely everything that takes place has a purpose under the sovereign control of the Lord. For those who by grace through faith come to the Lord Jesus Christ is for glory, is for forgiveness, is for redemption, is for making it into the eternal promised land. And until the last one of the chosen in Christ come to him, there's going to be a day and a night when the last one of those who have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world comes to Genuine faithfulness or genuine faith in Lord Jesus Christ. That is the end.

But until that does not happen, there's going to be more days and more nights, and there's going to be more time going and going and going. And everything that we witness is none more than the sovereign control of the Lord. That just with the Amorites, he was just simply providing a theater for them just to accumulate and to treasure up the wrath until the day of their judgment. and the salvation, or better, the fulfillment of the promise for the people of Israel, same it is for the church. My dear brother, my dear sister, at times, the people of God are tempted to set their minds on the things of the world and the things that are taking place, and to move their hearts and deviate their hearts from the simple principle that God is faithful.

And what He has said that He will do, He will accomplish. Not only for the people of Israel, not only for the people of Zion, but for the people of the New Covenant, of course, but for every single member of the New Covenant. Everything that he has said that he will accomplish, he will accomplish. And just as only the presence of the Lord made the land of the Canaanites holy. Did you pay attention to what the commander of the Lord said there?

That is a manifestation, a condescension of God coming down and showing himself to Joshua. It says, take off your shoes. For the land in which you stand is holy." Holy? The land of the Canaanites?

The land of the Amorites? The land of all of these hidden who have done all of these horrendous and wicked practices? Holy? Well, he has condescended to enter into the land of the wicked with his people and just the presence of the Lord make the land now holy. bringing this land in fulfillment to the people of Israel, for them now just to go in the faithfulness and in the power of the Lord, under the guidance of the commander of the army of the Lord.

By might? By power? No, by faith, simply believing what the Lord says, commanding and destroying. And it is only by faith, brethren, that we will understand the silliness, according to the world, of men shouting and screaming to walls and them collapsing. It is only by that faith that we will understand the silliness or even the violence of men being instructed to go and utterly destroy cities and places.

It is only by faith that we can understand that the purpose of the Lord was not only to bring the fulfillment of His promise for the people of God, a promise that had been given to Abraham, but also to bring about the judgment that the people of the Canaanites and the Amorites deserved. Because then in the end, my dear brother and sister, as Paul says, I wouldn't be able just to conclude it without the words of Paul. It was not unto them that the promise will be completely given. I said to you, I wanted to speak to you about the covenantal faithfulness of the Lord. But here this promise is just simply a type, a shadow of something else that was going to come.

Because it was not to the offsprings of Abraham that God gave the promise, but it was to the offspring of Abraham that the promise was given. And that is to the person of Jesus Christ. So that in the person of Jesus Christ, those who are in Him will be completely circumcised. It will be in the person of Jesus Christ that all who are in Him by faith who will be partakers of the Passover. It will be in the person of Jesus Christ by faith that we will be inserted into the commander of the army of the Lord.

And it will be by faith in the person of Jesus Christ that we will make it into the promised land, not to leave any Amorite or Canaanite alive, but to remove them all and to bring about the fullness of new heavens, new earth, when righteousness dwells. Amen.