Reading: 2 Kings
2:19-22; Romans 8:20-25, 1-2, 6.
While Elisha tarried at
Jericho the men of the city came to him concerning the
state of the waters, and the effect of that state upon
all the fruit of the land, in that it fell before its
time, and never came to perfection.
It is necessary for us,
in order to get the full significance and value of this
incident, to pass our eye over the history of Jericho in
relation to the Lord's people up to this time. We
remember the first encounter with Jericho on the part of
the people of God, when the possession of the land was
before them, and with our knowledge of that history, and
of its details, we are able without any delay to gather
it all up, and to recognize exactly what it all
represents.
1.
The Inclusive Representation of Calvary's Victory
Over the Power of Satan Working Through the Flesh
The word
"inclusive" is intended to bring us back to the
recognition of the fact that everything which followed in
the land was represented in Jericho. Jericho was, so to
speak, the sign and token of everything. It gathered into
itself the complete conquest of the land. The giving of
Jericho, and the manner of the giving, to the people was
God's token that He gave the whole land. We may call
Jericho the firstfruits of the resurrection; and in the
firstfruits the whole harvest is always gathered up
representatively.
Seeing, then, that
Jericho was the first issue of the crossing of Jordan,
that is, the firstfruits of resurrection, you have
everything that the Lord intends for His people, and
which He has provided for them represented by Jericho.
Thus Jericho is the inclusive representation of Calvary's
victory, but of that victory as over the power of Satan
operating through the flesh. For Jericho represents the
strength of the flesh as energized by spiritual forces.
In studying Christ as
the Inheritance of His people, the counterpart of the
land of promise, we see that we only come into our
heavenly position through conflict and conquest. The
Ephesian position "in the heavenlies" is in
relation to "principalities and powers, and world
rulers of this darkness, and spiritual hosts of
wickedness," and the fullness of Christ is only
reached and maintained by warfare therewith. We know
quite well that the instrument, the means of the forces
of evil is the flesh as energized by them, and that
Jordan most definitely represents, not merely victory
over the enemy as the enemy, but victory over the enemy
by the removal of his ground of advantage in the putting
away of the body of the flesh. If it had been only a
spiritual conflict, then it would have taken place
altogether outside of the human realm, and man as such
would not have been drawn into it. The incarnation,
therefore, would have been without meaning. The spiritual
forces of heaven could have met the spiritual forces of
hell, and it would have been purely a spiritual conflict.
But the fact that God was manifest in the flesh, to
destroy the works of the devil, carries the battle into
another realm, and shows that it is because the enemy has
his power, and his advantage, through the flesh, that he
must be destroyed in the flesh. The Lord Jesus took
flesh, in order to destroy the works of the devil in
flesh. So that Calvary's victory is over the power of
Satan working through the flesh, and that is what Jericho
represents.
Jericho
(a)
Something Too Strong for Man
Here is something which
is altogether beyond the power of man to deal with. When
the spies went out in the first instance, the majority
report was that the task was quite beyond their power.
They saw cities great and walled up to heaven, and
giants. Their report was that this was more than flesh
and blood could contend with, an impossible proposition.
And they were quite right, as far as they went. The
trouble with them was that they did not leave room for
the Lord.
The flesh is always
that, and you have a parallel in the Letter to the
Romans; for when you read chapter 7, before you reach
chapter 8, you know that you are up against
Satanically-energized flesh, and every attempt of man to
deal with that leads to the cry: "O wretched man
that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this
death?" The whole of chapter 7 is a prolonged groan
in the utter inability to deal with the flesh - "But
I see another law in my members, warring against the law
of my mind"; "The good that I would I do not:
but the evil which I would not, that I do." That is
flesh, not in the passive sense, but energized by an
active law of sin and death, governed, of course, by the
intelligent forces of evil. There is always that extra
factor, and that extra factor is clearly recognized,
inasmuch as the flesh has an uncanny way of trapping us
just at the moment when we do not want it to, when it is
least of all convenient for us to be caught by it. The
whole thing is timed and planned with an intelligence
that is uncanny, subtle, and watchful and is all related
to other issues which are Divine, to frustrate them. It
is not flesh that is just working automatically. It is a
flesh that is energized by an intelligence. Jericho,
then, speaks of Calvary's all-inclusive victory over the
power of Satan operating through the flesh; something
more than man can deal with.
(b)
Fullness as Represented by "Seven"
The Lord commanded that
the people should go round Jericho once a day for six
days, and that on the seventh day they should go round
seven times. "Seven" is always the number of
completeness, comprehensiveness, spiritual perfection, so
that in the very going round seven times is the Lord's
illustrative way of saying that this thing represents the
fullness and the conclusiveness of conquest.
(c)
Achan
Further, the Achan
factor is significant. There were two things connected
with Achan's sin, or which were the forms of expression
which that sin took. There was the wedge of gold, and the
Babylonish garment.
The wedge of gold
incidentally is of interest, inasmuch as it has been
discovered that wedges of gold, not coins, formed the
currency of that part of the world at that time. Business
was transacted, and payments were made in this way, and,
in a word, credit hung upon these wedges of gold. It was
one of those wedges of gold representing the commercial
values of this world which Achan took.
The Babylonish garment,
on the other hand, is a foreign element, which has proved
to have been a link with a religious system, the
Babylonish religious system; for that Babylonish garment
was nothing other than something connected with the
system of worship in Babylon. It might have been a
garment of a priestess.
The gold was claimed by
Jehovah. When the city was taken it was commanded that
the gold should be devoted to the Lord for His purposes;
that is, the Lord laid claim to the gold, and all the
gold was the Lord's property, the Lord's by right. Achan,
therefore, appropriated what belonged to the Lord, and
sought to turn it to his own account. That is what the
flesh always does. The flesh always takes to itself the
glory that belongs to the Lord. The flesh is always
taking God's rights from Him. The flesh is always putting
itself in the place of the Lord.
As to the Babylonish
garment: that was a part of the whole system of things
which was to be utterly destroyed from the Lord, and it
represented a spiritual order which was in antagonism to
God, a worship which was energized by the god of this
world, his religious system, in usurping God's place as
God; and that whole system, with every accompaniment,
every feature, was to be utterly destroyed. But Achan
preserved something which was a representation of a
spiritual antagonism to God as the only God, so that
Achan's sin was a very deep sin.
You see how inclusive
Jericho was, in that its every feature foreshadowed, or
represented, what the conquest of the land was to be. The
judgment of Achan's sin showed that God had first rights,
and the flesh must not appropriate what belongs to God,
must not take God's place. It showed that the land
represents a false spiritual system which had to be
blotted out, and not one fragment of it left to survive.
When Achan took the Babylonish garment he was violating a
law which had to govern the conquest of the land, and he
became the enemy's instrument of breaking into the Divine
order, so that Jericho gathered up everything through the
whole land. We are told in the Book of the Acts that the
Lord cast out seven nations greater than Israel. The
"seven" of Jericho is symbolic of the seven
nations which are to be destroyed, and they are virtually
destroyed in Jericho.
Thus you have the flesh
as energized by Satan, and Calvary's inclusive victory
over the whole. That is what Jericho speaks of to begin
with.
2.
The Omnipotence of Faith in the Power of the Cross
It was all the work of
faith. The going round once a day was a work of faith, so
that day by day this march took place, and nothing seemed
to be accomplished, no day seemed to close any nearer the
ultimate issue than it commenced. At the end of six days,
so far as any kind of human judgment could tell, nothing
had been accomplished at all; they were no nearer
conquest than they were when they started six days
before. And then on the seventh day round they went,
once, twice, thrice, four times, five times, six times,
and no sign of anything happening. Faith is being drawn
out to finality, to fullness of the seventh degree, the
spiritual perfection of faith. And then, when faith has
reached that point of completeness, it has to be
expressed, has to be given a voice and a shout in the
presence of a very great deal that would argue that it is
all nonsense, all in vain, all foolishness. It would seem
that there had been built up a tremendous amount of
evidence that this whole thing is futile. And then in the
presence of all that evidence, faith is called upon to
shout victory. Faith is drawn out, extended, faith in the
infinite value of the work of the Cross over all the
power of the enemy. When faith reaches that point God
comes in and vindicates Calvary. It is the omnipotence of
faith in the power of the Cross that is represented by
Jericho.
3.
The Curse Resting Upon All the Satan-Energized Works of
Achan
Joshua cursed Jericho,
and Jericho became the representation of the curse
resting upon all the Satan-energized works of man. It is
very important to see that a curse rests upon all the
Satan-energized works of man. That takes us right back to
the Garden, and holds good through history. The features
of that curse are two-fold:
(a)
Death
Here you have an
illustration of what spiritual death is. So far from
being a ceasing to exist, it is something which goes on
with tremendous activity. Spiritual death has many works,
many activities, many energies put forth, and yet is
lacking a vital something which justifies all those
activities in the long run. The waters of Jericho lacked
that essential element. Men labored, men spent themselves
in the field; they cultivated, they tended, they watched
over. They were successful up to a point. The result of
their labors was seen up to a degree, and then everything
stopped, and from that point there was no further
progress, it failed.
(b)
Vanity
That is the nature of
spiritual death. It is what Paul calls:
"Vanity." It is work, labor, energy, but never
going through to the fullness, to the finality, which God
intended it to reach. Death and vanity! Vanity is the
work of spiritual death. That is inevitably the nature of
all works of the flesh, even though they be ostensibly
for God. There will seem to be success up to a point, but
no going beyond that; from that point no development.
Yes, it is even possible in the flesh to produce
something, to reach a certain point, and to have a
certain measure of success, but if it is the activity of
the flesh it gets just so far, and then fades out. It is
the mark of a good deal that has been done in the Lord's
Name. A great many activities have been entered into, a
great deal of energy has been put into the work of God, a
great deal of organized effort, and it looked as though
there was a great result, and numbers have been noted,
totals made, and reports given. And then years after, you
come to look for the fruit, and where is it? A great
measure of it has come to naught. The work was for God;
it was with the best of motives, but it was produced by
man. It got so far, but it never went through. It is
always so, and it is as important for the Lord's people
to recognize that as it is for men out of Christ to know
it. There is no possibility whatever of getting through
on the level of the old creation. "The
creation," Paul says, "was subjected to
vanity." You cannot get away from that.
That is Jericho as you
have it in the beginning. All that is carried over to
Elisha. That history of Jericho is brought over to
Elisha's day. It becomes necessary, therefore, for us to
remind ourselves of what Elisha represents, and how he
deals with this situation.
Elisha represents the
power of resurrection. It is therefore significant that
he has so much to do with death, and that the very first
public thing that comes his way is his dealing with death
along this line. He comes in in relation to the ascended
Lord on resurrection ground.
Elisha's
Roots Are in Jordan
All his beginnings were
there. He stands, as it were, basically in Calvary, and
that gives the main significance to his life and his
ministry. He proved the power of victory over death when
he took the mantle of Elijah, and smote the waters of the
Jordan, and said: "Where is the Lord God of
Elijah?" and the waters parted hither and thither,
and he passed over. He proved the power of his risen Lord
in the waters of Jordan, and it was in that power that he
proceeded. His roots were in Jordan. In other words, the
very foundation of his life was the power of the Cross.
If Paul is
pre-eminently the New Testament example of that, it is
equally clear that Paul had his roots in the Cross. If
there is one Apostle who knows more than any other
Apostle about the power of the Cross, it is Paul. He has
seen this universal, mighty victory in every realm, and
therefore he is the Apostle of resurrection life in a
peculiar way.
Elisha's
Power Is in Resurrection
Let us point out one
meaning of that in particular. His power in resurrection
was of this nature, that because of resurrection position
he stood entirely outside of, and superior to the
situation with which he had to deal. Resurrection always
means that we are outside of the world. After His
resurrection the Lord Jesus never again appeared to the
world. He never manifested Himself personally to the
world after His resurrection. The resurrection means that
He had passed, in that sense, out from the world and
stood apart, and His power over the world was His
apartness from it. His ability to deal with the situation
is because He is no longer involved in the situation.
Resurrection life means that we are outside of the world
spiritually, and in a superior position.
Elisha, therefore,
could move in scenes of death without in any way being
overcome by them, but being superior to them all the
time, and handling them with absolute authority because
he was in no way a part of them. His power lay in that.
We have to learn how to
live by the power of Christ's resurrection, so that the
death around us is not able so to impinge upon us as to
bring us into its grip. Resurrection union with the Lord
Jesus means that we are not involved in the death that is
all around us. We can move in scenes of death and not be
touched by death. This is a very important lesson to
learn, how to be in life in the midst of death.
Elisha's
Authority Is in Anointing
He had received the
Spirit. We know that there is something unique about
Elisha. He was the only prophet who was ever anointed.
Kings were anointed; priests were anointed; prophets were
not anointed. But Elisha is unique, alone. The Lord told
Elijah to anoint Elisha to take his place. That carries
its own meaning, because Elisha is a successor. That
means that Elijah and Elisha are one man in two parts.
Carry that to the New
Testament, and the antitype is Christ as the Head, and
the Church, His Body, under one anointing. The Church is
simply the vessel of Christ on the earth for the carrying
on of His work in the power of the anointing. The value,
the power, of the anointing of Elisha was made good on
the ascension of Elijah to heaven.
Elisha has his
authority by reason of that anointing. Anointing always
implies that God is committing Himself, so that the
authority of God rests where the anointing is.
Look at the little
incident of the ridiculing of Elisha when there came out
(unfortunate translation in our Version) little children
and mocked him, saying: "Go up, thou bald
head." The original has no idea of little children
at all. It is the word that is used for young men, and it
is also used for hooligans. Evidently this was a
considerable band, for forty of them were mauled by the
bears. It was a large company of young men who were out
to mock the Lord's servant in view of the ascension of
Elijah, and were, in effect, saying: "Just as Elijah
went up, you go up!" mocking the rapture. There are
plenty of people who are mocking the thought of the
rapture today. But the point for the moment is this, that
Elisha there and then exercised the authority which was
resting upon him, in a judicial way, and cursed them, and
there came out bears and tore them, so that a large
number suffered under judgment. It was the Divine
authority that was with him that came out there so
distinctly. His authority was from above on the ground of
resurrection and through the anointing.
Elisha's
Vessel Is a New Cruse
None of those things
can be true of the old creation: roots in Jordan; power
in resurrection; authority in anointing. The exercise of
all that, the going forth of all that spiritual life
demands a new cruse. The new cruse is the new creation in
Christ Jesus, which stands in this position, in this
relationship to the Lord, with its foundations in the
Cross, its life in resurrection, its authority by the
Holy Spirit.
Elisha's
Means Is Salt
Salt is a symbol of
that which is incorruptible, and which stands in its
incorruptibility against corruption, against death,
challenging and dominating. That is nothing other than
the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus standing as a
mighty challenge to death, to corruption.
All that is summed up
in Elisha, and all that, as gathered up into this man, is
brought to the waters of Jericho. Is it not very evident
that this man is a type of the power of Christ's
resurrection, of life triumphant over death?
There is the type so
fully, so richly set forth. But what is the spiritual
value and spiritual application for ourselves? We turn to
Romans 8, and see it there quite clearly. In those later
verses, verses 20 to 25, we have the spiritual background
of the life of the whole creation. The Apostle there says
that the creation itself was subjected to vanity. That is
a Divine act. There was a time when, because of certain
things, the creation was deliberately made subject to
vanity; that is, God put upon it a ban which was of this
nature, that the creation should never realize its full
end except on one ground. So that the whole creation is
in the grip of that which means the impossibility of its
reaching the end intended for it save only on one ground.
The Apostle says that in parts of our being we are still
involved in that. Our bodies are still involved in that.
"We groan within ourselves, waiting for our
adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." But
he says that the creation - and ourselves as involved in
the creation - was subjected to vanity IN HOPE.
It is not entirely hopeless, not WITHOUT hope.
But where is the hope? If the Lord Jesus has in His own
representative Person gathered up the whole creation -
for all things were created by Him, and FOR Him
- and this creation, because of its rebellion, has
departed from the purposes for which it was brought into
being; if the Father gave Him that creation, and now it
has failed, will the Father rob Him forever of the gift?
No! He will subject it to vanity in hope. Now the Lord
Jesus takes the creation representatively in His Own
Person, and as man enters vicariously INTO ITS STATE and
goes as far as to have the very curse resting upon it,
made to rest upon Him. The very thorns upon His brow are
symbols of the thorns and the briers which sprang up
immediately when God cursed the earth; and that curse is
made typically to rest upon His Head. Then He dies as
under the curse. The universal death is concentrated upon
Him, and He dies as under a curse. When He is dead, where
is the hope? Looking at Him naturally there is no hope;
but God raised Him from the dead. That is where all the
hope is. Paul says: "...in God which raiseth the
dead." Christ raised from the dead is the hope, and
the Firstfruits of resurrection. The hope is in Christ
risen. The hope is resurrection in Christ.
Read again Paul's great
chapter, the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the
Corinthians, and you have the classic on the subject of
what resurrection means. If the dead rise not, we are of
all men most miserable: our preaching is vain: your faith
is vain: ye are yet in your sins, without God, and
without hope. "But now hath Christ been raised from
the dead, the Firstfruits of them that are asleep,"
and there is the hope.
Now note: Paul says we
have the Firstfruits. Though that is true, there are
still realms in our being that are under this regime of
vanity; our body is still subject to death. We have not
the full redemption yet, but we have the Firstfruits of
the Spirit. We have resurrection life by the Spirit
already in us. That is the Firstfruits of the Spirit, the
ground of hope. And because we have resurrection life
already dwelling within, we have the guarantee that our
bodies also will be raised.
What is the present
good of that? "There is therefore now no
condemnation..." no judgment, no curse, no lying
under the Divine ban. "There is therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free
from the law of sin and of death." In the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus we are delivered from the
curse - that is, from the death which works vanity - and
we have been brought into the place where we can go right
through to the Divine end, the full realization that
vanity no longer rests upon us. We are no longer held up;
no longer in the position that we live and come to a
point and that is the end, and we can go no further. We
can go right on now! The fruit of life can come to
perfection because the power of death in the curse has
been canceled in the power of His resurrection. The
condemnation has been removed.
Apart from the great
condemnation resting upon all men out of Christ, is it
not true that when we allow ourselves to come under a
spirit of condemnation from the enemy there is brought
about an instant arrest, so that we can go no further,
but stop short, and everything in our lives becomes
blighted, and the fruit begins to fall? It is the effect
of condemnation. The enemy is always trying to get
children of God back on to a ground of condemnation in
order to reverse the Testimony of His resurrection, and
to spoil the fruit of union with Him on resurrection
ground. The people who are not absolutely certain and
settled as to their being on the ground of Romans 8:1,
are people who do not make very much progress; they get
just so far, and there they stop, and their fruit falls
before it ripens. That is to say, they are not people who
can affirm with certainty and finality that "there
is... no condemnation to them that are in Christ
Jesus" or, to go further, that "the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law
of sin and of death." We have to live in the joy and
the assurance of that, the certainty and the glory of
that. The power of the enemy to spoil everything is
destroyed when we see, that standing with our roots in
the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and in the power of His
resurrection, united with Him above by the Holy Spirit of
anointing, we are no longer under condemnation, and there
is no longer any reason whatever why we should not go
right through to the fullness of Christ. When we
recognize that, the enemy has lost his power.
We have pointed out
before how great a change takes place between the verses
that mark the close of chapter 7 and the opening of
chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, and the same
change is to be noted in this second chapter of this
second book of the Kings. Romans 7 may be called the
chapter of the waters of Jericho - in death and vanity by
reason of the curse; and it is a painful chapter. No goal
is reached: nothing gets through; everything comes to
arrest - "O wretched man..." Chapter 8 opens
the door to going right through in life. Why? Simply
because chapter 7 is put in at this point by the Apostle
to show the glory of chapter 8 as the outcome of chapter
6. Chapter 6 is Jordan. "For if we have become
united with Him by the likeness of His death, we shall be
also by the likeness of His resurrection";
"...our old man was crucified with Him, that the
body of sin might be done away, that so we should no
longer be in bondage to sin; for he that hath died is
justified from sin. But if we died with Christ... we
shall also live with Him; knowing that Christ being
raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath
dominion over Him." "Even so reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead unto sin." Did Paul write what
is termed chapter 7 at this point, in order to contradict
all that, and to say that it is all theoretically true,
but his own condition a complete denial of it? No! He
writes chapter 7, to show what chapter 6 has dealt with.
Chapter 7 is in fact the condition that has been dealt
with by chapter 6. And then he says: Now you see, that
condition having been dealt with, this is our true
position because of chapter 6. - "There is therefore
now no condemnation..."; "The law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin
and of death." You cannot have chapters 7 and 8
together. For example, "But I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind..." ;
"For the good that I would I do not: but the evil
which I would not, that I do" alongside of
"There is... no condemnation." Paul is simply
saying that chapter 6 is God's way of dealing with what
is found in chapter 7, resulting in chapter 8. It is the
power of His resurrection opening a clear way through, so
that this hedged-up man in the arena, dragging around a
dead body, has got his escape from that no-way-out life,
that no-way-through life, into the open way that leads to
the fullness of Christ, because he is on resurrection
ground.
Christ is the
Firstfruits of them that are asleep, and we have the
Firstfruits. Therefore, we are linked with Christ as the
Firstfruits in resurrection. And the firstfruits are
always taken as a guarantee that the whole harvest will
follow. The whole harvest that is going to follow is
going to be a wonderful harvest, and has as a part of it
the redemption of our bodies.