We are going at this time to be
in the seventh chapter of the Book of Joshua, which chapter, as
you will know, contains the story of Israel's defeat at Ai, but
before we go on with that I want to refresh your memories with
words from the Letter to the Ephesians:
"Finally, be strong
in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. Put on
the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the
wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and
blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (6:10-12).
We leave that there for a few
minutes while we move toward this message in Joshua 7. I
confess to you that I find this message perhaps the most
difficult to explain. The story of Ai is quite a simple one, but
to explain its spiritual meaning is not at all easy. All I can do
is to set forth the principles that are here and leave the Lord
to make you understand.
As we are coming to the close
of these meditations, I think it is important that we should
understand why they are written. They are not just for general
Christian purposes, nor just to give Bible teaching. The special
purpose of these messages is to help Christians in relation to
the full purpose of their calling. I underline and
emphasize that word 'full'. The Lord's people are called in
relation to the fullness of His purpose. We have been
emphasizing the changes which take place in the position of the
Lord's people and, not only in the position, but the changes in
the Lord's people themselves. In the Old Testament we see this
illustrated in the three different positions of the people of
God.
Firstly, Israel's position in
Egypt. The Lord has a people in this world. It is said in the New
Testament that He visited the nations "to take out of them a
people for his name" (Acts 15:14). So in the nations there
is a people known to God whom He is going to take out of the
nations, just as He took Israel out from among the nations. The
Lord has been doing this for the last two thousand years, and He
is still doing it today. It may not be very long before He has
completed that people. That is the first position.
The second position is that
represented by Israel in the wilderness. There, by the power of
God and the virtue of the blood of the lamb, they were taken out
to be God's people. Their position was that of people redeemed
unto God and separated from the world. That was a Divine step
forward in the life of the people of God.
The third position is that
represented by the people in the land of promise - and let me say
at once that that does not represent our going to heaven after
this life. So many of our hymns speak about Jordan as being
between this life and the next. Of course, you will go on singing
those hymns, all about when the time comes to pass over Jordan,
but that is not the teaching of the Bible. Jordan is in the life
of the Lord's people now, and the promised land is our
life now with the Lord Jesus in heavenly places. It is the
difference between the Letter to the Romans and the Letter to the
Ephesians - but we are going to speak about that later on.
Well, here are three positions
of the Lord's people, and they represent three different levels
of spiritual life. The lowest level is in the world; the next
level upward is in the wilderness; and the top level is in the
land. The spiritual history of the Lord's people is one of going
up.
Now note this other thing: the
Lord deals with His people according to the position in which
they are. If you are in Egypt, that is, in the world, all His
dealings with you will be to get you out of Egypt. If your
position is in the wilderness, that is, if you have come out to
be the Lord's people, the precious Blood of the Lamb of the
Passover having redeemed you from the world, the Lord will be
dealing with you according to that position. There we have the
whole history of the Lord's dealings with His people in the
wilderness. He adjusted His dealings with them according to the
position in which they were, but all His dealings with them were
always with something in view. Of course, what I have just said
wants a lot of time spent on it - all the way in which the Lord
dealt with His people in that place between the world and the
fullness of His purpose.
What I am saying is this: God
deals with us according to the position in which we are
spiritually, and I want you to notice that the more the people of
God come toward His full purpose, the more exact He is. That is
the message of Ai, but I must go back for the sake of the young
Christians.
If we are only newly out of the
world and have become the Lord's, He will deal with us according
to that position. In a sense, He will come down to our position.
He will be dealing with us as with children, and not as with
full-grown men; and yet, a father always deals with his children
with the idea of making them full-grown men or women. As we go on
with the Lord, He will be dealing with us in different ways. He
will be changing His ways with us. We shall find that things
which we were once able to do, we are no longer able to do. That
is, the Lord once allowed us to do some things, but now He is not
allowing us to do them. The situation is changing, and the
methods of God with us are changing. We shall find, as we go on
with the Lord, that He is disciplining us, and the discipline
will be the greater difficulties which arise in the way.
When we first come to the Lord
what a good time we have! Everything seems so wonderful and so
good; but as we go on with the Lord, it is not that He becomes
different. We had such a happy time in those early days, but now
Father says: 'The time has come for you to go to school.' Perhaps
we say: 'Oh, can I not stay at home from school?', and we get
afraid of the prospect of school life. We know that we are going
to have a Schoolmaster who will say: 'You have got to learn this
lesson!' Our position is changed, and our experience is changed.
Now I wonder what you are going
to say to this next thing! As you look back upon your school
life, are you prepared to say: 'Well, this idea of education was
a bad invention! The person who first thought of this school
business ought to be put in prison!' Some of you may feel like
that, but would it be a good thing for everyone in this world to
be just an ignorant child? No, there is a real value about
education. It may represent many difficulties, but on the whole
we are glad we went to school. We had to find that our changed
position needed a changed dealing with us, and in the end it
works out for good.
When we come over Jordan into
the land we find that we have come into an altogether new
position, and it is a position where we have very largely
graduated from school. That does not mean that we have ceased to
learn. We have not finished schooling because we have graduated
from school. All that has been only now serves the purpose of a
new kind of education.
All that leads us up to Ai, and
as we go on you will see the meaning of what I have been saying.
I used to think that the story of Ai was of something not quite
so big as anything else. Of course, the conquest of Jericho was a
big thing, and from there you go on to Ai, which is not so big.
You just read the story, and then you go on further. However, the
more I have thought about Ai the more I have seen what a
tremendous thing it is. You see, Ai stands for this: whether all
that God means in the new position is going to be or not going to
be. Ai therefore relates to the whole of this new position.
Everyone knows the difference
between the Letters to the Romans and Corinthians and the Letter
to the Ephesians! Romans and Corinthians have to do with
beginnings and foundations, and with formation. They see the
Lord's people in the position that Israel occupied in the
wilderness, where they were being formed for the future. When you
come to the Letter to the Ephesians, while you carry over the
lessons of the past, you are in an altogether different realm. If
you sit down and read the Letter to the Romans, then the Letter
to the Corinthians, and then the Letter to the Ephesians, you
would feel, as you read Ephesians, that you are breathing an
altogether different atmosphere. Romans and Corinthians are like
being down here on the earth, and Ephesians is like being in the
heavenlies. Indeed, that is the word of Ephesians. This is a new
position for the people of God. Here they are represented as
having passed over Jordan. In Ephesians the people are
represented as 'seated together with Christ in the heavenlies.'
That is a spiritual and not a literal position. They are
represented as walking here in a heavenly life, and most of all
they are represented as being engaged in spiritual warfare. In
Corinthians the people were wrestling with flesh and blood, and
that is why the divisions at Corinth are referred to. One party
was in opposition to the other party, and there was conflict
between the different groups of the Lord's people. They were
going to law against one another, and they were doing many other
things that men on this earth and in this world do. That was an
earthly Christianity, but when you get into the Letter to the
Ephesians you have left all that, and Paul says: 'Here our
wrestling is not with flesh and blood. It is not with men and
women, nor in sects and denominations, nor with the divisions and
parties of the Lord's people. When we get into this position our
wrestling is with principalities and powers, and with the
world-rulers of this darkness' - and if you have the idea that
that refers to Caesar, or the Caesars, the Apostle will correct
you by saying: 'with hosts of wicked spirits.' That is the kind
of warfare that we have when we move into this new position with
the Lord. In the highest position of the spiritual life we come
more intimately into touch with the evil spiritual forces.
Now, if that sounds very
terrible, do not worry about it. There is no need for fear,
because Jericho lies behind, and Jericho, as we have seen, is the
type of the complete spiritual victory of the Lord Jesus over all
the powers in the land. So complete was His victory that the
people had to do nothing about it; all they needed was to have
faith. And so it says: "By faith the walls of Jericho fell
down" (Hebrews 11:30). The mighty ark of the testimony of
the greatness and glory of Jesus Christ was triumphant at
Jericho, and He who was represented by the ark triumphed over the
whole range of Satan's power in His Cross. So we need not have
any fear as to whether the enemy is going to triumph in the end,
but we must realise that we are in a warfare, that we must be
girded with 'the whole armour of God', and that we must be very
watchful. This new realm, then, is one in which we enter a
special kind of spiritual conflict.
Now let us come to Ai for our
lessons. After the great victory at Jericho the people were
completely defeated at Ai. I wish that all the details in the
seventh chapter of Joshua were fresh in your minds! If you are
not familiar with them, I advise you to read the chapter again,
and then what I am saying will come back to you.
This that happened at Ai
represented a retrogressive movement on the part of Israel. It is
true that what happened was caused by one man only, and that man
was Achan, but the Lord did not say: 'Achan has sinned.' He said:
"Israel hath sinned" (verse 11). Achan's lesson was to
be learned by all Israel - and all the people of God have to
learn this lesson through Achan. Perhaps you say: 'Well, it is
hardly fair that if one man sins all the people have to suffer',
but that is not the situation. We shall see in a minute that all
the people were involved in this. We have said that this was a
movement of retrogression, going back, and it went back a very
long way. It went back over the Jordan again, right back through
the wilderness, right back through the four hundred years in
Egypt - and right back to Adam.
Let us look at this seventh
chapter of Joshua, and we hear Achan making his confession:
"And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Of a truth I have
sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel, and thus and thus
have I done: when I saw among the spoil a goodly Babylonish
mantle, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of
fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them"
(verses 20, 21). Can you hear something coming from the garden of
Eden? 'I saw... I coveted... I took.' The Lord had said to Adam:
"Thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2:17). Adam did eat,
and said, in effect: 'I saw... I coveted... I took.' That is
going back a long way! But where do you put the emphasis?
'I'! 'I saw... I coveted... I
took.' The self-life has taken command, and where did that come
from? Before ever Adam sinned another one had sinned, and that
other one said: "I will ascend into heaven, I
will exalt my throne above the stars of God; ...I
will be like the Most High" (Isaiah 14:13,14). That was the
very spirit and motive of Satan.
Well, poor Achan had become a
victim of Satan, and will God allow that? You see, the very
Jordan itself meant that these people were entirely separated
from the self-life. The ark in the middle of Jordan represented a
division between the self-life of the people and the Lord's life
in them.
I have not the time to speak
about the details - that is, as to the Babylonish garment and the
silver. They represent a link with Satan's kingdom. But I would
remind you of the gold: the Lord claimed it all. Just look at
Joshua 6:18: "And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the
devoted thing, lest when ye have devoted it, ye take of the
devoted thing; so should ye make the camp of Israel accursed, and
trouble it. But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass
and iron, are holy unto the Lord." The gold represented the
glory of God, and Achan, in type, took the glory from God to
himself.
This is a very great lesson for
the people of God. All the glory has to be the Lord's glory.
Later on we shall be glorified together with Him, but now we are
to suffer with Him, and the suffering is having no glory here in
this world. But Achan took the glory to himself, and God says:
"My glory will I not give to another" (Isaiah 42:8). In
this realm of spiritual warfare Satan tries to take the glory to
himself, so are you surprised that there is so much spiritual
defeat amongst the Lord's people? They are always trying to give
glory to man in their Christian work. If they are going to have
some special meetings they will advertise the chairman as being
some very great man - a General or a Field Marshal, or a 'Sir' or
a 'Lord'. Organized Christianity rests upon this principle of
giving glory to man, so you are not surprised that the Lord is so
limited, and, as with Achan, death comes upon so much of our
Christianity.
Go back to the Book of
Deuteronomy, where Moses says to the people: "Beware... lest
when thou hast eaten and art full... and when thy herds and thy
flocks multiply... thou say in thine heart, My power and
the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth"
(8:11-13,17). When the spies which Joshua sent from Jericho to Ai
came back, they said: 'The men of Ai are but few. It is not
necessary for all our men of war to go up against them. Just let
two or three thousand go up and smite them.'
Do you see what has happened? 'We
can do it!' Here is self-sufficiency! And the men of Ai came
out against them and there was a great slaughter amongst Israel
that day. The whole thing was arrested. It was a retrogressive
movement, back to self-sufficiency.
We cannot treat this enemy with
contempt. A very few evil spirits will be more than enough for
our strength, and that is why I underlined those first words in
Ephesians 6:10: "Finally, be strong in the Lord, and
in the strength of his might." We shall be easily
defeated in this heavenly warfare unless our faith is in the
Lord.
I have not mentioned the place
of the ark in Ai, but it was the ark that decided this whole
issue. Do you not agree with me that Ai is a very big issue? All
the past leads up to Ai, and all the future depends upon Ai -
that is, upon whether we learn the lessons of Ai.