Notes on Joshua: Chapter 4
By J.G. Bellet
Joshua 6-8.
Having entered the land and assumed their circumcision, that order of sanctification which suited the inheritance, and the presence of the God of Israel, the subjugation of the land begins.
The Lord now puts Himself at the head of the army, that He may order the battles, as Israel's Captain, as through the wilderness in the cloudy pillar He had put Himself at the head of the camp, that He might order their journeys as Israel's Guide.
Here, however, I would look around me for a few minutes.
The Lord stood as a soldier under the walls of Jericho, and in the presence of Joshua. But Joshua did not discover Him. This was like Gideon afterwards in judges 6, and like Manoah in judges 13. Joshua had to enquire after Him as they had to do in their day. But it bed not been thus with Abraham in Gen. 18. He discovered the Lord at once, and bowed before Him, treating Him as the Lord. But Joshua has to challenge Him and to ask Him as One who did not know who He was, "Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?"
But this will never do. Christ cannot go on with those who have depreciating thoughts of Him. It was thus with Martha in John 11. She said, "Whatsoever Thou askest of God, God will give it thee." This would not do. And Jesus lets her know at once that it will not do. "Thy brother shall rise again," He says to her in reply. Not in answer to His asking of God should Lazarus rise, as Martha's words suggested, but on His own personal authority, as in the exercise of His own proper rights, He pledges this, that Lazarus her brother should rise again. And so, when in the darkness of her own thoughts she spoke again and said, "I know that he shall rise at the last day," the Lord, again resenting her, says "I am the resurrection and the life." He would have Martha's mind right towards His glory. And so here with Joshua. "Art thou for us or for our adversaries?" says Israel's leader. "Nay," says Christ, "but as Captain of the Lord's host am I now come." He resents Joshua's thought respecting Him, a thought which regarded Him as possibly on the side of Israel, but knew Him not as the head and in the front of Israel. He must have a right mind in Joshua as in Martha, touching His glory. Yea, in all of us, beloved. And surely we may each of us pray '' "May we ever apprehend it without a cloud, and confess it without a falter."
And happy it is to see how quickly the mind of Joshua gains its right place. He worships the Stranger whom just before he had challenged. He is now the Captain of salvation in his eyes, and He is trusted as the One that would lead the sons of Israel to victory. We may need instruction in the various glories of the Son of God, and wait to have them unfolded to us, but every saint carries a mind prepared for them, and at once, or instinctively is quick to rejoice in them.
But this, as we pass on. The battle being now the Lord's, it mattered not what the weapons of war were. An ox-goad, a sling and a stone, lamps and pitchers, or jaw-bone of an ass would do. And so the shout of the soldiers and the blast of a trumpet of ram's horn shall now prove sufficient; the walls of Jericho fall, and that city, as the first-fruits of the land, is taken. Faith did it and not force (Heb. 11. 30) '' faith which brings God in, and bringing God in, faith, if need be, cannot only pull down walls, but remove mountains. But the world must be judged. The kingdom must be cleared of all that offends and does iniquity, ere it can be taken and ruled by Christ. Jericho is devoted to the sword. It stood forth as the sample of that which was to be judged, and all that were in it, or that belonged to it, except the household of faith which was under the shelter of the scarlet line, were to be cut off. That household, but that alone, was redeemed in this day of judgment in Canaan, as the house of Israel themselves had been in an earlier day of judgment in Egypt (Ex. 12).
