Reading: Joshua 5:13-15; 6:12-20; Rom. 8:22
To some the Holy Spirit in the life may seem a difficult and
almost unacceptable experience. To others it may seem important
and desirable and yet marked by a good deal of strain and
perplexity and effort. To the apostle Paul it meant Romans 8, and
if you know your Bible at all, there is no need to say any more.
Triumph all the way, blessing and glory. No more groaning,
complaining, striving or worrying. "In all these things, whatever
these things may be, we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us." That is the life in the Spirit, and together we have
been seeing that once the Spirit of God is within us, the full
realisation of the glory of God depends upon Him having His own
way. That is not a capricious way, nor is it a way that need be
unduly mysterious to us, for it is a way of a law, and we have
been looking at the threefold law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
Jesus which provides us with the key to His having His full way,
and bringing glory into us and bringing us to glory. The first of
those laws, we said, was resurrection, the cross working in us the
death of Christ that the life also of Jesus might be enjoyed by us
and manifested in us. The second is, to use the language of
Ezekiel, the throne. It is the exaltation of Christ. The Holy
Spirit always leads us towards the great fact that Jesus Christ
has ascended to the highest heaven and is enthroned. Of course,
these laws interrelate, the resurrection and the ascension join
together. The apostles only heard about the Holy Spirit before the
resurrection. After that the Lord could make it seem more than a
matter of promise, and He breathed upon them and said, "Receive ye
the Holy Spirit." They were coming a lot nearer, so near that He
could describe that symbolic act in terms of history by telling
them "not many days hence"; not yet, but the resurrection had
assured it. Then He ascended up on high to the throne which
provided the occasion for that great fulness which we think of at
Pentecost or Whitsun, the great day when the Holy Spirit came in
fulness to the church.
Life is always dependent upon those two facts. When Nicodemus
came to the Lord Jesus, the Lord told him that he needed to be
born again. Nicodemus had not come to discuss his own personal
soul's need with Christ. He was not thinking of that; he had come
to discuss a far bigger matter, the matter of the divine purpose
in the kingdom, but the Lord Jesus unerringly put His finger on
the secret. This is the secret of the divine purpose for you,
whether your name is Nicodemus, or whatever it is. This is the way
to that kingdom of full glory of which the Word speaks in promise:
"Ye must be born again". It is by the Holy Spirit being in you,
born of the Spirit. Now, if Nicodemus had taken that word wrongly
he would immediately have begun to be exercised inwardly about
himself, by trying to be born again. But the Lord Jesus did not
finish the discourse with that, although we often do. He went on
speaking in language which Nicodemus was well able to understand,
Old Testament pictorial language. In the wilderness there were men
who, in the purpose of God, were chosen for glory. So far as the
divine calling was concerned they were meant to be in the kingdom,
and yet there they were, lying around and groaning in death and
agonies. Sin had done its work; the curse was in them. What hope
of the glory of God? What hope of survival even, let alone of the
realisation of the divine purpose? Well might they also cry, "Oh,
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of
death?" Well might they cry also, "I thank my God through Jesus
Christ", for the cry went forth, "Look not at yourself, not at one
another, not at man at all, look on the serpent lifted up", and as
soon as they looked they lived.
What is the relationship between
the objective vision of a serpent lifted up and the inward
experience of life? Well, it is a picture of how the Spirit comes
into our hearts and how we are born again. You are never born
again by trying to be born again. The law of the Spirit, from the
first moment and right through to the end, operates in the measure
in which I look, not at myself to see if I am alive, or to see if
I am growing spiritually, or if I am a little better than I was
last week. That will soon produce the law of sin and death. I in
myself am back in Romans 7 as soon as I come down on to that
ground. No, not what I am at all, but the lifted-up Son of God. In
the first place lifted up to die, for the serpent spoke of the
crucified Christ, but we know it is the crucified One who is on
the throne. The Lamb is in the midst of the throne.
And so what I was saying in the previous chapter merges into this
message. It is according to the crucified, risen, and now exalted
Lord and in relation to Him that the Spirit works. And so, while it
is necessary to talk about ourselves in order to allow the Lord to
search us, the Holy Spirit is free to do His work and will do it
in the measure in which we do not pay undue attention to
ourselves, but co-operate with Him by looking away unto Jesus.
Look through the book of the Acts to find the secret of that great
day. You do not find that Peter and the others said, "Men and
brethren, this is the result of ten days of prayer. We have been
praying - that is why this has happened." They did not say, "Men
and brethren, we have studied the Word of God, and we have
realised and understood all the theories and doctrine of the Holy
Spirit, and that is why this has happened." No, they had a simpler
explanation than that: "Jesus Christ is on the throne - that is
why this has happened. God has highly exalted Him. This same Jesus
whom ye crucified God has made Him both Lord and Christ". And so
if we gather together to study the Lord's Word from time to time,
to seek to gain new light upon the truths concerning the Holy
Spirit, we never will fall into this danger of imagining that when
we know all about it we shall have it, for that is an error. When
we know Him we shall have the Holy Spirit, and in the
measure in which we increase in the knowledge of Him, so
shall we find the Spirit continuing His blessed work in us.
Now we are going on to talk of matters that relate particularly
to the Christian, but I would be lacking in my responsibility if I
did not mention at this point that you know whether you are
thanking God through Jesus Christ, or whether you are saying, "Oh,
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" You know; none of
us know. You can have a smile on your face and be cheerful while
you are inwardly groaning about your sin, but you know in your own
heart whether you are thanking God for Jesus Christ or whether,
like those Israelites in the wilderness, you have been bitten by
the serpent. You too are constitutionally unable to do the will of
God, for you are in yourself, as we all are; wanting it perhaps,
but not doing it. Well, if this is your state I have only one word
to say to you, but if you can receive it, it will be everything.
The only word that a poor stammering, unprepared local preacher
could say, when a young man called Spurgeon, went into a Methodist
church one Sunday morning, was, "Look unto Me and be ye saved".
Look to the Lord crucified for your sins, raised for your
justification, look to Him. You won't have to bring about the new
birth, it will happen, and you too may go on with us in this life
which we veritably believe will find us in the very throne to
which our Lord has gone before for us. That is the purpose of God
in convicting you of your sin, in bringing you here and making you
concerned about spiritual things; not only to relieve your
conscience, but that one day the exalted Christ in the throne of
God, when He has His redeemed with Him, shall also have you and
me.
The Exaltation of Christ
Now we turn more specifically to this matter of the Spirit's law
concerning the exaltation of Christ, for these great matters are
not merely the prelude to the experience or merely the condition
of knowing the Spirit, they are the constant abiding laws of the
Spirit. We begin at the cross, although the Spirit will see to it
that we keep to the cross all the way to glory. We begin with the
exalted Christ, recognising and bowing to His Lordship, but if we
want to go on, we shall find that the Holy Spirit will keep us
checked up all the time on this matter. It is a law, and it is a
law that we have to obey in order to provide Him with the
co-operation that He needs. When we were considering the cross and
resurrection and the need for faith, we had before us as a great
exemplar, a living type: Abraham, a man of the Spirit. Now we have
another man, most notably a man of the Spirit, and it is Joshua. I
think perhaps Joshua may help us to understand how it is that the
Holy Spirit will always keep us to this law, the law of the risen
Christ. As the cross and resurrection demand faith, illustrated by
Abraham, so the exaltation and ascendant position in the throne of
the Lord Jesus requires submission. That is our side; not of
course without faith's submission, the obedience of faith.
Where do we find Joshua begins, so far as the Word of God is
concerned? You remember after Israel emerged from Egypt and began
their life with God, one or two incidents took place, and then in
a place called Rephidim they had their first battle. Amalek came
out to fight them, and you will equally remember that the secret
in that struggle was not the skill, the effort, or the endurance of
those who were in the plain, but the sustained hands of Moses, who
in the mount held up his hands to God in faith. We have often been
helped in intercession and prayer by realising that the conflict
among people and things that are visible is really decided in the
invisible realm of the unseen. The experience at Rephidim was not
meant to teach Moses a lesson, though we can learn the lesson, it
was meant to teach Joshua a lesson. Joshua now appears as
the one placed at the head of the fighting host in the plain. When
in the end the victory was won, the enemy defeated, the Lord said
to Moses, "Write this for a memorial in a book and rehearse it in
the ears of Joshua" (Ex. 17:14). He is the man that needs to learn
the lesson. He learns that his conflict, his struggle here in the
realm of things seen is really decided in the realm of the unseen.
Thank God, though Moses may get tired, we have an untiring
Intercessor at the right hand of God. Write it in a book, the Lord
says, let Joshua learn this lesson; it is the first lesson and it
is fundamental. Joshua is the man of the Spirit. Joshua is the man
who sets before us the life in the energies of the power of God.
This is a law of the Spirit. The Spirit is working mightily in the
man down here on earth because up there in the glory the authority
of God is sustained by His chosen Representative. Actually, it did
not depend upon Joshua's apprehension of the fact, but on the fact
itself. In our case the fact does not change. The battle with him
ebbed and flowed in the measure in which the hands were upheld or
flagged.
With us there is no flagging in the glory, but the battle down
here depends upon our faith's apprehension of that. We have a
deeper lesson to learn than Joshua. Our lesson is this: not by
might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit of
the Lord depends upon the exalted Christ. The more we see Him,
keep Him well in view, the more we shall be like Joshua,
conquering in the name of the Lord. The Lordship of Christ is a
law of the Spirit. We have to keep that in view, not as a mere
matter of doctrine, but as a practical exercise of faith. You may
be grappling with a foe. Joshua, you may be struggling, striving
and thinking that it depends upon you, when really it does not
depend upon you at all, but upon the man in the mountain. We, too,
may struggle and grapple because we forget that the Lord is there.
We spiritually take our eyes off Him, and then for us it is as
though the hands flagged; then we find we are getting the worst of
it. There are many servants of the Lord who have had great
experiences of the power of the Spirit, who come up against
situations which are too much for them, and they are getting the
worst of it. They wonder why the Lord is not with them. Why is
this too much for them? Why haven't they the power they used to
have? Because they have their eyes on the conflict or on
themselves or even on the Holy Spirit when they should have their
eyes on the risen, exalted Christ. He is the secret.
Examples in the Old Testament
Well, we must look briefly at these Old Testament stories. There
came another experience to Joshua which is of great importance.
You know, we have a wonderful sense of the Lordship of the Lord and
the tremendous position and authority that that gives to us. We
grasp something of the secret of the risen Christ in His power and
authority, and then so often we are betrayed into an attitude of
mind which makes us feel we have something in ourselves, as though
we were somebody. One of the lessons that Joshua had to learn,
which the Spirit will take good care that we learn, is that this
ascendency is all of grace. When God was providing such wonderful
things for His people while Moses was in the mount - those very
people brought out of Egypt and treated so graciously, the object
of such love on the part of God - sinned grievously. They sinned
against the light, they sinned against love (and there is no
greater sin than that) and they knew they had sinned. Moses came
down to them and challenged them about their sin and had to tell
them that they could go on with their journey. God would lead them
into the land, but it would have to be by the hand of an angel,
He would not go with them; and conviction came to their hearts.
They had sinned away the love of God. They had grieved away the
very presence of the Lord, and they were in very great distress.
The pillar of cloud had been with them, but now the Lord said no
more. They had been led and guided, but the Lord said no more. The
Lord said "I will send an angel, but I am not going to be
with you".
Moses interceded for them, as perhaps no man had ever interceded
before, with something of the very spirit of Calvary in his
prayer, and no doubt the almighty, gracious God, with His eyes
already on Calvary, undertook to forgive His people. They did not
have a tabernacle in those days, but Moses used to put a tent
outside the camp and go out there and meet with the Lord. The
cloud would come down to the tent, and Moses would talk with the
Lord. Then it says while they were all mourning and stricken in
conscience because of their sin, Moses went up into the tent and
all Israel came to watch. The people rose up and every man stood
at his tent door watching Moses until he had gone into the tent.
What were they looking for? They were looking to see if the cloud
would come down, if, after all, God would have mercy upon them,
miserable sinners that they were. They did not dare to hope that
God would have mercy upon them again, and yet they hoped against
hope. Is it possible that there is a depth of mercy that, in spite
of our sin, God may yet condescend to come? Moses slowly made his
way through that great encampment to the tent, "and it came to pass
when Moses entered into the tent the pillar of cloud descended,
and all the people saw the pillar of cloud stand at the door of
the tent, and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man at
his tent door" (Ex. 33:9,10).
Probably there had never been worship in the camp of Israel like
there was that morning: the worship of pardoned sinners. Now here
is the significant part. It says in the next verse, "Moses turned
again into the camp, but his minister Joshua, the son of Nun, a
young man, departed not out of the tent". All the people
worshipped God for His great grace, but they soon forgot about it.
However, Joshua stayed in the place of grace; Joshua remained in
it. Joshua had a continual awareness that this great commission,
life, and inheritance had almost been forfeited, that they did not
deserve it, that there was no good thing in them, but that the God
who might well have rejected them had in mercy forgiven them. And
this is what made Joshua a man of the Spirit, and men of the
Spirit are like that. They do not easily forget the grace of God;
they abide in the tent. Joshua stayed in the place where the grace
of God in its supreme manifestation had been found.
The Lordship of Christ is never that hard, technical, doctrinal
thing. You know you have met it in people who are terribly strong
about the authority of the name of the Lord. The Holy Spirit is
strong, but when He speaks to our hearts about it, it is always to
remind us what undeserving sinners we are. The grace of God is the
supreme mark. The throne has a rainbow round it for us. We rejoice
in the throne, but we know very well there would be no throne for
us if there were no rainbow, and the Spirit will see to it that we
are always reminded of that. If our apprehension of the exaltation
of Christ is a spiritual one it will never puff us up. We will
never feel what wonderful people we are, how much we know and how
much we can do. We shall always feel, as Joshua must have felt in
that day: how unspeakable the grace of God is, "Depth of mercy,
can it be, mercy still reserved for me?" Yes, thank God, it can
be, and the Holy Spirit will fill our hearts always with His own
joy and peace, with the love of the Lord on that basis.
Then we come to the passage which we read together. Joshua is
captain of the Lord's host and by now he has had forty year's
experience. We often think of Moses being prepared for forty long
years in the desert for his great task before he met the Lord in
the burning bush. Well, that is a true principle. Now Joshua is
going to meet the same Lord, after having had forty years of
experience. He is a man with a sense of responsibility, with a
sense of divine commission, with a sense of a purpose and a
ministry, which is very important, but not without its perils.
Joshua could only think now in terms of people that were for him
or against him. He did not mind if they were against him; even if
they had a drawn sword in their hand, he was ready for them. And
so he came to this one, "Art thou for us or for our adversaries?"
And the answer he got was like a blow between the eyes. "Is the
Lord on my side? Is the Lord going to deliver by me? Here am I
taking up the work of the Lord. Here am I with my ministry. Here
am I giving myself wholeheartedly to do all His will. I have seen
the vision of the inheritance, I am ready to go in and ready to
lead others in. Is the Lord with me?" The Lord says, "No, you are
not the leader here, I am." What a blow! Not that Joshua
was in a wrong way conceited, but, like us all, he was in danger
of losing sight of the ascended Lord. That is a peril of maturity
as well as immaturity. The Holy Spirit is not content with the
fact that forty years ago Joshua learned a lesson, although it
lasted him a lifetime, and He is not content that so many years
ago, or even months ago, you learned a lesson. You cannot live on
the basis of that lesson. The Holy Spirit brings Joshua back again
to that principle. No, Joshua, it is not whether the Lord is with
you or not, but it is whether you realise that the Lord is going
on, and you can go on with Him. You are not the Captain, He is the
Captain. Well, Joshua was a man of the Spirit, so there was no
argument, but he fell on the ground and worshipped.
Accepting Correction from the Lord
That is all right; that is how I want it to be, but I wonder
whether we are so ready to do that when the Lord meets with us.
The Lord strikes us a blow. We realise that unintentionally we
have taken too much into our own hands. We are leading on the
hosts of the Lord and taking it for granted that the Lord will be
with us because we mean well for Him. The Lord stands across our
path with a drawn sword in His hand. What is our response? Do we
fall on the ground and worship and say, "That is all right, that
is how we want it"? It is the law of spiritual growth. It is the
law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. You remember how that
happened to Peter. It had not been forty years, but quite a few
years since his wonderful experience which had emerged from his
vision of the exalted Christ at Pentecost. When the issue arose of
his going to Caesarea to preach to the Gentiles, he too was
smitten to the ground, and the Lord had to say to him, "Look here,
Peter, I am Lord here, not you. You think you know how to run my
church. You think you know how to interpret My word. You think you
know all about it. I am Lord here, Peter." Peter found it more
difficult than Joshua, but he capitulated. He was a man of the
Spirit and so he obeyed. He went with an old message with new
power to Caesarea, "He is Lord of all, not because we saw it at
Pentecost, but because it has happened to me, and it has happened
to me today". That is when the power of spiritual testimony comes
in: when it is up-to-date, when it is living.
May I revert to Romans 7? The apostle says, "I thank my God
through Jesus Christ". It sounds a very incomplete sentence and a
very incomplete answer to the question, "Who shall deliver me?" He
does not say, "I thank my God Jesus Christ delivered me years ago"
- although I think he could have done and it would have been the
truth. He does not say, "I thank my God Jesus Christ will deliver
me." The Spirit of God is the eternal Spirit, and His time is
today, now, always. And so the apostle Paul says, "Whatever you
can say of yesterday or tomorrow, I know right now, I thank my God
through Jesus Christ. It is an up-to-date, present experience that
the risen Lord is so mighty that He can deliver even me by the
power of His Spirit working in me."
"Take thy shoes from off thy feet." That is exactly what the Lord
said to Moses forty years before. Now He says it to Joshua. I do
not know what it means except that it called for a positive act of
humbling and committal. You see, it is all very well for Moses at
the bush to say it is the Lord; it is all very well for Joshua to
fall on his face and say the Lord is Lord. That is what we do. We
go to a meeting, and it is like the burning bush, and we say, "I
see the Lord is Lord." Or it is like the Captain of the Lord's
host with a drawn sword stopping us on the way, and we say, "Yes,
I see the Lord is Lord", and we go out and we are just the same as
we were before. Now, on each of these occasions the Lord said to
Moses and to Joshua, "Well, if I am Lord, do something about it;
take your shoes off". It may only be a symbolic act, but it was an
act, and the trouble with us is that we have aspirations without
acts. We want a thing to be, but we do not act upon it. So if this
means nothing else, it means that Joshua, recognising the
supremacy of the authority of the Captain of the Lord's host, did
something about it and put himself in the way of true obedience.
We understand the challenge, and this is really only the
beginning of the message, though for the moment it will have to be
the end. The book of Joshua is a book of war, and yet it is a book
of the fulness of the Holy Spirit. It is the book of the exalted,
almighty Lord, and yet it is a book of conflict. Read the book of
the Acts and you get the explanation of that. Yes, get a real
vision of the exalted Lord and you find you are in a conflict. The
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus delivers me from all
that inner conflict which is such a disgrace to the name of the
Lord, and which mars the testimony of so many Christians. Don't
think of conflict in the realm of Romans 7, that question, "Do I
love the Lord; am I His or am I not?" That is not the conflict,
that is a disgraceful experience of Romans 7 from which the
apostle begged to be delivered once for all, and he found the
secret of deliverance through Jesus Christ. It is the law of the
Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. So do not think you are in the
conflict, if that is where you are, you are in the mud. The Lord
can lift you out. Believe that if you will look away to the risen
Lord, that is the secret of victory for you, and it is also the
secret of this other victory. Romans 8 is heaven. It is bliss,
glory, but not heaven in an armchair; it is heaven in a battle,
heaven in your soul, while everything is the opposite round about.
"In all these things", not when we get out of all these
things. That will be a wonderful day when "in all these things we
are more than conquerors".
The Lordship of the Lord
That is the story of Joshua. Of course, the trouble came when
among them there was something which was a contradiction to the
Lordship of the Lord. The Lord said concerning Jericho that
everything was to be for Him, wholly devoted to Him, but Achan
wanted just a little bit for himself. That was a blatant
contradiction of the Lordship of the Lord and brought defeat. That
was a lie to the Holy Spirit. You remember in Acts that Ananias
and Sapphira lied to the Holy Spirit. It is always a lie to the
Holy Spirit when we dispute the Lordship of the Lord, because He
is always insisting that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Everything
is for Him, and as soon as we claim a little bit for ourselves we
lie to the Holy Spirit and the victory is turned to defeat. Apart
from that with Achan, and when that was purged away, it is one
long story of triumph. Jericho was only the beginning of a great
experience of what God can do.
Now notice about Jericho that they did not have to go round
looking for it. It stood right across their pathway. Spiritual
conflict is not the exercise of those who have nothing better to
do, so they go and look for something to make a spiritual matter
for warring or working up a row with the devil. No, that is not
spiritual conflict, but if you go on as they went on and face the
purpose of God over Jordan, with Christ in view, in full
authority, you will find that right across the path is the
concentrated expression of Satan's resistance. Later on the Lord
explained to Joshua why this was. Only one lot of people made
peace with them. The rest never tried to. The Israelites did not
have to look for the enemies; the enemies came looking for them,
and the Lord meant it like that so that they should be defeated
and Israel be victorious. The book is a book of triumph, not
because they were clever, but because the Lord fought their
battles. Jericho, if it is a concentrated expression of the
devil's power, is also a concentrated expression of what God can
do. They did nothing but go round and round asserting that the
Lord is Lord. There was nothing to show for it, but He is Lord.
Nothing seems to be happening, but He is Lord. The Lord in His
time will overthrow it. Seven days they went round. One of those
must have been a Sabbath, the Jews say the seventh day, for on
that day they went round seven times, and the day which speaks of
rest from man's labour - no fighting, no effort on their part -
was the day on which God put forth His mighty power and overthrew
the power of the enemy.
Well, what is this Romans 8 business? What is this life like?
That is what it is like. You have to go seven days, and you may
feel rather a fool while you are doing it, and you may look a fool
to other people, but when God's time comes even Jericho falls and
you march straight in. It is the law of the Spirit of Life in
Christ Jesus, but you must keep the law, and the law is Christ
exalted. He is the leader; bow to Him and take your shoes from off
your feet. It was where the battle of Jericho was actually won
when Joshua capitulated to the Lord. And your battle will be won,
and the church's battle will be won on this basis of the
capitulation of men of the Spirit to the absolute Lordship of the
Lord.