Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of the command word of our King of Kings. Joshua 5. And it came to pass when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel until we were passed over. That their heart melted, neither was their spirit in them anymore, because of the children of Israel.

At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, “Make these sharp knives and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time.” And Joshua made him sharp knives and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins. And this is the cause why Joshua did circumcise. All the people that came out of Egypt that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness, by the way, after they came out of Egypt.

Now, all the people that came out were circumcised. But all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way, as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised. For the children of Israel walked 40 years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord unto whom the Lord swore that he would not show them the land which the Lord swear unto their fathers that he would give us, a land that floweth with milk and honey, and their children whom he raised up in their stead.

Them Joshua circumcized, for they were uncircumcised, because they had not circumcised them by the way. And it came to pass, when they had done circumcising all the people, that they abode in their places in the camp till they were whole. And the Lord said unto Joshua, “This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.” And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month, at even in the plains of Jericho.

And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn in the same day. And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? And he said, “Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, “What saith my lord unto his servant?” And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy.” And Joshua did so.

We thank God for his word and pray that he would illumine it to us. I’m probably going to get in trouble right away here at the beginning of this sermon, but I’m going to try to do this anyway. And if I fail, I fail. Political correctness is a big deal these days, and to have a job and tenure at most major universities or colleges, you have to be politically correct in your terminology, have the right political views, etc.

And if you’re not, you’re fired or gotten rid of or in some other way forced out of the system. It’s a tremendous—I guess it’s called—I would call it a soft tyranny that exists in our country today relative to political correctness. And I thought of that as I was reading through this chapter: what we have here in contradistinction from the world and its attempt to force people into political correctness is cultic correctness.

And I—this is where I’m going to get in trouble—because when you use the word cult these days, people normally think of bad cults, but that’s not really the definition of the word. Cult simply comes from a shortened form of the word “to cultivate,” to nurture along, to attend to something, and has the implication of religious devotion to a particular thing. When you read about cultic elements, what that means are simply things that are particular to a particular religion, peculiar to a particular religion, and so characterize that religion in its worshiping attitude or atmosphere primarily.

So cults aren’t bad. We think of cults all the time in terms of false anti-Christian cults, but the word cult itself doesn’t have that connotation to it. And frequently you’ll come across—if you read many commentaries about the Old Testament and the nation of Israel, particularly as a worshiping community—you’ll read about the cultic aspects of the nation. That doesn’t mean the bad aspects. When you read that, you might think that, but what it means is those aspects that characterize the nation religiously as a group of people. Okay?

And really this chapter could be summed up as a chapter that emphasizes cultic correctness in the sense of worship. There is a stress here upon worship. Now this morning I received a call from Jerry Meyer and they had a baby boy at 12:17 in the middle of the night just as the day was dawning. Good biblical imagery of coming into the new day right after midnight. And that boy’s name is Timothy Preston, and they will, by the way, be seeing visitors between 3 and 6 as long as there aren’t a lot of people there, at Providence Hospital. And I bring that up now, and I’ll make an announcement later at the communion time as well.

But I bring it up now because the name Timothy Preston means honoring God and dwelling in the priest’s place. And they wanted me to be sure I announced that along with the announcement of what his name means. By the way, he was 8 lb 5 oz and 20 and 12 in long. Well, honoring God, dwelling in the priest’s place has cultic aspects to it. That’s why—if you think about the word—it stresses the worship relationship. Dwelling in the priest’s place, of course, the priest is part of the cultic composition of the nation of Israel, the religious worshiping community.

And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today in Joshua 5 as we look at three or four. I originally characterize it as four separate incidents, but now I’m going to characterize—and I have in your outline—as three separate occurrences. First, the circumcision. Secondly, Passover and the ceasing of manna in the nation of Israel. And then third, the encounter with the captain of the Lord’s host.

Really, I think the incarnate Lord himself, or the theophany rather—an appearance, rather, not an incarnation, but an appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. As Hebrews tells us that God has appeared to us in the form of Jesus Christ. That member of the Trinity is the one who makes his appearances in the Old Testament. And so that third aspect—the holy ground being declared by the angel, the Lord’s host, to Joshua—these are really cultic things. They relate to worship, and the first two specifically to the formal worship of the church.

And so what we’re going to talk about today are these particular events in that context. And the first of these things that occur is circumcision. And this breaks off very nicely—the first nine verses really—and the bulk of the chapter is about the circumcision of the people that had not been circumcised in the wilderness.

Now, this is kind of a pretty descriptive set of verses here. Remember I told you last week that Gilgal, which becomes the base of operations, has its name given to it in that chapter—really the name is referred to—but the name is actually given to that name of their encampment here in this chapter. And the reason being that they were circumcised at Gilgal and God rolled away the reproach of the Egyptians from off them at Gilgal.

There is probably here a reference to the act of circumcision itself where the foreskin is rolled back, and Gilgal refers to that rolling away of the reproach of the sin of Egypt. And additionally we’re told here that they were circumcised—verse three tells us—at the hill of the foreskins. This is very graphic language, I realize, but that’s what the scriptures use. You know, the scriptures are a strange book by any reading. They have existed for thousands of years. And I was thinking of this a lot this week: that we read this book and we think of it totally in our Western American culture normally.

Yet this book has been read and used by God to bring people to him, to worship him correctly, for thousands of years throughout lots of different cultures. And it’s not the kind of book that we would have written for sure. And it has things in it that we wouldn’t have thought appropriate, but that God certainly says are appropriate and necessary for us to understand what this God of the scriptures is all about and what he requires of us.

Well, in this account of circumcision, there are some interesting aspects to it that I want to touch on as we go through here. And the first thing that you’ll notice is that there was a requirement here for this circumcision to take place. This is kind of a mass circumcision that goes on here. And the question arises: why is this? Why are all these people uncircumcised? Why have they been uncircumcised during the wilderness wanderings?

Matthew Henry in his commentary says that so great an omission—that is the omission of circumcising the children—could not be general but by divine direction given. And I think he’s right. I think that it wasn’t simply that it was not—at all that the people just forgot to or somehow omitted to circumcise their children. Apparently God didn’t want them circumcising their children during those 40 years in the wilderness.

Why is that? Well, if we take the language here that is given to us, the emphasis throughout these nine verses on circumcision is that it goes to great lengths to explain why this was necessary for these particular people. And it says in twice here—in these nine verses—that the children of Israel walked in the wilderness till the people which were men of war were consumed. It talks about the old generation being killed off and the new generation replacing them.

And so it relates back to this curse when they had to wander in the wilderness. Now in Numbers 14:29-34 we read of God cursing the nation of Israel for their failure to enter into the land in obedience to him and their lack of faith. I’ll read in verses 29 and following from Numbers 14. He says, “Your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness and all that were numbered of you according to your whole number from 20 years old and upward which have murmured against me.” Okay, so the people that died off in the wilderness were those that were 20 years of age and older, the men of war. Those are the ones that God insisted die off in the wilderness, except for two: Joshua and Caleb.

Now, there were people from 0 to 20, or one year old to 20 years old, old men who had been circumcised. And so some of them had been circumcised. This doesn’t mean that they all get circumcised, but it means that anybody born in the last 40 years in the wilderness—all the boys, that is—were not circumcised. But it goes on to say in Numbers 14, “Doubtless you shall not come into the land concerning which I swear to make you dwell therein, save Caleb and Joshua. But your little ones, which you said should be a prey, then will I bring in, and they shall know the land which ye have despised. But as for you, your carcasses, they shall fall in the wilderness, and your children shall wander in the wilderness 40 years and bear your whoredoms until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness.”

And then he says, “the number of years shall be 40 years, one year for every day of their iniquities.” And he—oh, I should continue the reading of that verse 34. “After the number of the days in which you searched the land, even 40 days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even 40 years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.”

What God did was he abrogated his covenant to the fathers who were going to die off in the wilderness. They were cut off, so to speak. They were in one sense of the term excommunicated. They didn’t have Passover either during those 40 years. And they—their children were not circumcised. Circumcision is a sign of several things, but among other things, of course, it’s the sign and seal of the covenant in the Old Testament. And it is also a promise—as it was given to Abraham—of the land. It’s linked to the promise of the land, and it is explicitly a covenant sign.

Now, we’re dealing here with circumcision and Passover. That’s the two things that happen in this chapter. And those things, of course, correlate to our church today and to the New Testament church to baptism and the Lord’s supper. Now, Hebrews tells us that there were a number of Old Testament signs and seals, but they were all under two basic categories. The first category were cleansing ordinances. The second category were food and drink, or meal ordinances.

Okay? Circumcision is the preeminent cleansing ordinance, and this rolling away of the foreskins, the rolling away of the reproach and the defilement of Egypt, is a picture of that cleansing just as baptism is a picture of the cleansing of the child by heavenly waters from above. There were other cleansings as well. The whole cultic system—and again you’ll understand how I’m using that term in a positive sense—the whole cultic system of the Old Testament had many cleansings, but the preeminent one was circumcision.

All those cleansings now correlate today to baptism, and all the food and drink ordinances—of which there were many in the sacrificial system and other places in the Old Testament—they all correlate today to the Lord’s supper, which we do on a weekly basis. And that’s why we do, because you see these combined throughout the scriptures.

Now, I just mentioned here, by the way, that’s why this church baptizes infants and allows children to partake of Passover, or the Lord’s Supper, the new Passover, as it were. The reason for that is that if there is continuity, the covenant sign is applied not to those who make profession of faith alone, but also to their children. And the circumcision was what a child born into a covenant household would receive in the Old Testament.

It did not mean that they were Christians. It did not mean they were believers. They were true members of the true Israel in the Old Testament. It simply meant they were in the visible covenant community and presumably they were within the elect community as well covenantally. But there was no—there was no promise of that. There was nothing—no regeneration of the child. He did not receive a new heart as he was circumcised.

In fact, God over and over again told him in the Old Testament, “Circumcise your hearts.” I think that has application to us today as well in terms of our baptism. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But in any event, so these two things correlate to the New Testament. And so all these things that we find out about circumcision and from the text and related text to it, and Passover, relate very specifically to our cultic activities in the New Testament church and also what those things signify for us today.

So circumcision was a sign of the covenant, and the reason—I think the primary reason—why the children in the wilderness did not receive the sign of circumcision was that God had abrogated his promise to their fathers. And if the fathers are cut off, the children are not to be circumcised. Then we don’t circumcise children, or we don’t baptize, rather, children of non-believing parents in the New Testament church. There’s no warrant to do that. And so these people were in unbelief and they were going to die in their unbelief. And as a result, their children did not receive the sign of circumcision as a demonstration to them that their fathers were cut off.

They bore the reproach. They bore the whoredoms—in the words of Numbers 14—of their fathers in the wilderness. And they were consigned, as their fathers were, to wander in that wilderness until God in his grace would bring them in. And that bringing them in is now what they’re about to partake of. They have now come into the land, and they’re going to enter into the fullness of God’s salvation here. And that’s the second aspect that circumcision signified in the Old Testament: was the promise of the land given to the covenant people.

And while that promise was cut off to the fathers and the land was inaccessible for 40 years, as a result, the children then were not circumcised. But now everything is changing. Now what we have here in essence then is a renewal of the covenant, a retaking of the covenant with a new covenant people. It’s interesting in this text—and I won’t bother to point out the verses where it occurs—but it talks about how their fathers, that they are taking the place of—now the fathers, the disobedient ones, were a people and they became a nation, a goy in the Hebrew. And you’ve probably heard of Jewish people talk about the goyim, the Gentiles. And frequently the word goy is used—a nation—in a derogatory sense, although it can be a positive sense.

But the text makes it clear in the Hebrew words that the people of God who came out of Egypt were delivered by him, became a nation in opposition to God in the wilderness. The children were originally a goy of the nation in the wilderness and they become a people now as they enter into covenant relationship through the sign of circumcision and taking of Passover. There’s a very interesting play on words here that God very visually demonstrates to us through the language that there is a transition now happening to the children of those that had died off in the wilderness.

So these new generation then that take the place of their fathers—and that’s very explicitly said in verse 7: “their children whom he raised up in their stead them Joshua circumcised”—and so in terms of the covenantal representation here you can see the father dying and the child taking the place. And by the way, we talked last week about the covenantal language of the whole scripture where the 12 men take 12 stones, each representing a tribe of Israel. But here you have the covenantal representation of all of Israel through the men.

People get hung up at circumcision because it was only administered to male children. Of course, it only could be referring to that part of the body. But the point here is that they represented the whole nation. Women are represented through men. And that’s why in language, for instance, we use masculine pronouns to refer to whole peoples. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Okay.

So in any event, these children now are raised up in the place of their father. There is an almost a picture here then of death to resurrection. And indeed, circumcision is equated ideally—when it truly is circumcision of the heart—it is equated throughout scripture with a new creation. And it’s interesting here that these people heal up for 3 days. And the specific Hebrew word used here is that in verse 8, “it came to pass when they had done circumcising all the people that they abode in their places in the camp till they were whole. Till they were whole.”

The word whole here means alive. And it—you can, again, because of the specific Hebrew word here used—there is a death to resurrection that is pictured through this process of the circumcision and then the being made whole by God. In the Old Testament when you were sick you were kind of not quite all alive. That’s kind of the language that it used. It’s a very vivid language. And so here the circumcision means that a person becomes whole, a person becomes alive.

Now so we have here first of all the statement of the rejection of the fathers, the replacement of the fathers with the children. And these children now enter into covenant through the grace of God through the imposition of the sign of circumcision. So circumcision was necessary for that reason, and that’s why it happens here.

Now secondly though—I mentioned the relationship between circumcision and covenant and land and that being the need to circumcise these young ones now, or these ones that had not been circumcised in the wilderness. But secondly circumcision is also related to the law. When a person became circumcised, they were placed into the covenant, which is a gracious gift of God, but they then had obligations to walk in obedience to the laws of that covenant.

And so it has a relationship to the law. Now, remember that here in terms of the context of the conquest of the land, the Lord had promised Joshua victory under the condition that he do what? That he obey, that he cleave to the word, that he meditate upon it, that he do it. And throughout these chapters—these first five chapters—and again, particularly in this one, in the last few verses, we see Joshua obeying, obeying. The Lord speaks, Joshua obeys. The Lord speaks, Joshua obeys.

Here in the circumcision element, the Lord says, “Make flint and I circumcise the children of Israel that y’all are going to be circumcised.” And Joshua immediately makes flint knives and circumcises them. So obedience to the law is required if they’re going to enter into success in the conquest of the land. And so Joshua also—that’s another reason why the circumcision is performed now because they are now going to be ushered into completion of obedience to the law.

Interesting though here that circumcision is performed post-entrance into the land. The same way that the law was given at Sinai after the people were redeemed out of the hand of Pharaoh. God saves his people, brings them into victory and then reminds them of their obligation to keep law. Law is never given as a means for salvation. But always throughout the scriptures, law is given on the basis of salvation, of deliverance.

And so here the people are ushered across the Jordan and then the sign of law-keeping, circumcision, is placed upon them after they’ve seen the mighty hand of God and are certainly willing at that point to walk in obedience to his word. So throughout the scriptures, it’s very important that we see that grace always precedes responsibility. The gift always comes first, and the responsibilities of that gift accompany it but follow it after. And so it is with the gospel.

Very important we remind ourselves of that in this church particularly since we’ve come again to love God’s law and see the appropriateness of it. It’s very important that we understand the gospel is first blessing, and only in promise, and only second is a responsibility.

Okay. So circumcision is given here as a reminder to the nation how to keep law and to begin them on that process of keeping the law. It’s interesting here, by the way, before we get on to the next point, that circumcision is done here with stone knives, and that’s pointed out very explicitly in verse two: the Lord said, “Make sharp knives,” which really means—it’s a better translation would be stone knives or flint knives. And Joshua then made flint knives.

Now, it’s interesting here as to the reason for this. We’re not exactly sure. The Old Testament people, the Jews, thought it was very important. The Septuagint, which you remember is a Greek translation of the Old Testament done around the time of our Lord—the Septuagint renders in addition to the text. In the final verses of the book of Joshua, we read later, and we’ll come to it eventually, at the end of this book of Joshua’s burial, the Septuagint added to that verse of Joshua’s burial the fact that they also buried the knives of flint that Joshua used to circumcise the children of Israel. That was a big deal to them, and they suffered a lot of significance to this.

Well, I think part of the thing we can see here is—and we’ll get to this in a little bit, in a more full sense—the correlation between Joshua and Moses with the appearance of the Lord to them. But there is a correlation here as well. You remember that Moses, before he could become the deliverer of God’s people, he had to circumcise his children. And Zipporah, his wife, actually does the job for him. God was seeking to put Moses to death apparently for failing to circumcise his children. And Zipporah actually takes a knife of flint, a stone knife, in Exodus 4:25 and does the job instead.

So we have the same type of knife being used here as was used in Exodus 4:25. And so there’s a correlation drawn in the text itself—again between the incident with Joshua circumcising the people and Moses circumcising his own family members. Additionally, we could probably say that symbolically the rock is a picture of God’s work upon men, and God is the rock. We’ve seen that last week. We talked about the memorial rocks, etc. God is the stone, and it is that stone really that is at work even while the people themselves, or Joshua and his attendants, are circumcising the children of Israel. It’s God’s work at work in them.

It’s interesting as well—I’ll mention this again during my communion talk—that there are three different references: Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 27, and Joshua 8, that talk about the prohibition of using metal knives on altars. And I’ll talk about maybe some correlations to that a little bit at communion time. Metal knives were not to be used in the construction of altars.

Okay. So Joshua took the stone knives and he was at the hill of the foreskins and they named this place Gilgal, rolling, because it rolled away the reproach of Egypt. Some people think that reproach was the taunts that Egypt would put upon Israel. Remember Moses, when he appealed to God in the wilderness said, “Well, those people in Egypt are going to taunt us. So you just brought us out in the wilderness to die, so out there to be delivered out of the wilderness. That reproach is rolled away.” That’s probably part of it.

But I think that really, in its ultimate sense here, the reproach of Egypt has to do with the uncleanness of the people who are in rebellion because of their slave mentality still to the command of God to go forward 38 years prior and take responsibility and walk in terms of obedience to God’s law. I think that’s the reproach of Egypt. That sinful heart attitude. And that’s what’s being symbolically here cut away from the children of Israel and rolled off from them as the foreskin is rolled off and cut off and then discarded in what becomes another little hill.

Remember, Gilgal is the place where this stone pillar is. And you’ve got another little mound here, the mound of foreskins, to remind them of the need to see themselves as circumcised, consecrated to God, and the necessity of obeying his law. And particularly here laws that refer first and foremost to worship.

There is of course in all of this a picture of no confidence in the flesh. That’s what cutting off of the foreskin was all about. There’s no confidence in man’s ability to have godly seed. All confidence in the flesh is cut off, so to speak, and very literally in the sense of circumcision. And as they are about to go into warfare here against the enemies of God for his purposes, they are told very emphatically to have no confidence in the arm of flesh either, but rather in the arm of God.

Additionally, we can see here a picture—probably as people heal up from this circumcision as they go forward to conquer here round the walls of Jericho in the next chapter—while the text doesn’t say this, we can imagine that they were probably limping still from this operation. And God always, when he brings us into victory, somehow humbles us and keeps us aware of the fact that we’re dependent upon him. We always walk into the sunrise as Israel did, after wrestling with God all night, into victory. The sun’s rising, and not setting, but it’s always with a limp. It’s always with an understanding of our inability in and of ourselves to do anything good or right, and that we’re only going to conquer in the power of Almighty God.

So they go off that way. Okay. So after this circumcision occurs, we then see Passover celebrated. And of course, one of the reasons why it’s circumcision first and Passover second is the scriptures are very clear that one has to be circumcised in order to partake of the Passover. And somewhere I have that reference. Too many pieces of paper. Well, we’ll get to it. Oh, here it is. Well, it wasn’t it. Okay.

Well, in any event, you’re just going to have to take my word for it for now, and I’ll come across the verse here in a couple of minutes where we’re told quite explicitly in the law that in order to partake of Passover, if you had strangers in the land with you, that you had them circumcised before they could partake of Passover. So the people of God—we’ve talked about this a lot in terms of the Lord’s supper. In order to take the Lord’s supper, you have to be baptized.

Baptism is the sign of covenant initiation and covenant renewal with God. And then the ongoing—the once-for-all act and the ongoing sign of the covenant in our day and age—Lord’s supper in the day and age of the Israelite nation in that particular manifestation. We had the Passover as well as other meals. This was the sign of covenant continuance. And so you had to get ushered into covenant relationship to God and all that meant before you could partake of the sign of sustenance in the covenant which the Passover was.

So the next thing that happens in the text is they take the Passover together. Here it is. Exodus 12:48. “When a stranger shall sojourn with thee and will keep the Passover of the Lord, let all his males be circumcised and then let him come near and keep it.” And so today the responsibility is to get baptized first before you can partake of the Lord’s supper. Okay.

Passover is the next incident, verses 10-12. A shorter account. It says, “The children of Israel encamped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month, even in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes, and parched corn the same day. And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.”

But we see here correlation. I was going to treat these separately. Really, they’re one unit. Verses 10-12. After the Passover, there was a feast then that was going to go—that was to be celebrated. And the feast that was celebrated here is partaken of the unleavened bread that is partaken of is made from not the land that they had planted and harvested, but rather the land of the Canaanites, the land of the people that they’re going into.

What has happened, of course, is when they’ve crossed over, the people have gone back within the gates of the city of Jericho and they’ve left all these fields out there unattended because of their fear of the people of God. They then take the produce of the land, and the day after Passover, that is what they eat. Now, it says in God’s law that it says specifically in the book of Numbers that when they go into the land—I’ll read actually Leviticus 23.

Leviticus 23 says, “Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, when you come into the land which I give you and shall reap the harvest thereof, then you shall bring a sheaf for the first fruits of your harvest unto the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you on the morrow after the Sabbath. The priest shall wave it.”

So here, the day after Passover, the sheaf is waved, and the following day then the manna ceases. So we’ve got the Passover. The next day, the whole of the produce of the land is consecrated to the Lord through the sheaf being waved. And then the people begin to eat of the produce of the land. And I think this is all referring to the worship of the people of Israel here who have been ushered into, ushered into full covenant relationship to God.

We see here again a principle that runs throughout scripture. That is that the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. These were not crops that they planted and harvested and had a right to. Rather, it’s the harvest of the sinner that they are now beginning to eat the first fruits of. And throughout the scriptures, we find that principle. The wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.

But more importantly here, I think it’s very important to recognize again that this is a cultic—a worshipful act, a worship activity—that these people are engaging themselves in with the circumcision and now the Passover and then the eating of the first fruits of the land. It’s interesting that in Numbers 14 and 15, don’t turn there now, but those two chapters are correlated one to the other. Chapter 14 of the book of Numbers talks about the nation of Israel being repulsed at Hormah.

Remember? After they couldn’t get into the land, they then said, “Well, we’ll go ahead and go for it now.” And they tried to do it in their own strength, so to speak, and they were defeated. And that’s what happened in Numbers 14. In Numbers 15, we immediately launch into a section in Numbers 15 of “when you enter the land, do these things.” And there’s a bunch of laws of worship and of offerings that are listed there—laws that relate specifically to the worship of God and specifically to offerings.

And that’s what we’re seeing happening here. They had been held in a dance for 38 years. And now when God ushers them forth, they move, so to speak, from Numbers 14 to Numbers 15. They move out of the wilderness into the land. And when they enter into that land, they immediately see the responsibility to walk in relationship to the laws of worship listed for them in Numbers 15 and in other places of the scriptures.

Okay. Now, this is probably one of the most important points I want to make from all these truths that we’ve just read about. And that is that worship comes before weapons training. Worship comes before weapons training.

I said before that there are correlations drawn in the text here between Moses and Joshua. Both had to circumcise—one his family and the second the people of Israel—before taking their place at the head of God’s people. Joshua at his opening of the campaign to take the land and to defeat the enemies of God who were in that land. Immediately instead of seeing military action, we see an act of devotion one after the other. Circumcision, Passover, the eating of the fruit, his then bowing down in worship to the commander of the Lord’s host.

Joshua opens his military campaign with one act of devotion or worship after the other. Matthew Henry commenting on this says that to begin with God, if we begin with God, we shall end with success. And certainly that’s pointed out here. But very specifically, what’s pointed out here, I think, is the preeminence of worship over whatever else we can do as we seek to heavenize a land that God has called us to go in and possess and to throw out or dispossess those who are in rebellion against him.

Cowles in his commentary said that what Joshua does here is a most military act in terms of circumcising the children of Israel. A most unmilitary act. Now, get the picture. They’ve come across this river and the nation has gotten frightened. His men undoubtedly are pumped, right? They’ve just been led through the crossing of the water and the curse has been stood off from them by the ark of the covenant. They’ve been ushered into victory. They’ve been told, “You’re going to have the whole thing.” Now, these guys are pumped, and the nations are in dismay and they’re fearful. They go back to the walls.

Now, what would you—what’s the normal thing that you or I would do at this point in time? Well, we’d want—we’d not want to demoralize our men, and we would certainly want to take advantage of the demoralized state of the enemy. We would want to press forward. We’d want to use that adrenaline that was going through these people as they just been delivered to march forward into that fearful group and wipe those guys out.

But no, that’s not what Joshua does. That’s not what God has Joshua do. Joshua suspends all military activity. He gives the enemy time to recover from the fear and dismay that they have fallen into. He halts his army, not only for circumcision and the recovery from circumcision, but then for the Passover, which probably took seven days. So you’ve got at least 10 days going on here in which the enemy can get over his fear, being more and more removed from the act of the parting of the sea for them or the parting of the Jordan River for them. And he also brings his own people into potential demoralization. He has them inflict a really grievous wound upon themselves.

This was now Genesis 34. The Shechem ites were tricked into circumcising themselves because they had taken advantage of Israel’s twelve tribes of Israel. Those guys, their sister Dinah. And the way that they wiped out these Shechemites were to talk them into circumcising themselves. And then while they were laying around in pain, they went in and wiped them all out. Circumcision of males is no easy task. Apparently, it’s quite painful. And so Joshua not only postpones his activity from going into this demoralized troop of fellas and giving them a chance to get their courage back, but he also demoralizes or potentially actually runs the risk of demoralizing his men because he has put upon them this physical operation that is quite painful.

And you know that if you’re not feeling good, you don’t particularly feel very high in morale. Well, and then of course the participation in Passover as well. I think what we’re looking at here is the importance—the great importance—that these narratives teach us about cultic correctness. Now, again, in the proper sense of the word, worship correctness before God is the necessary precursor to his hand of success being upon us as we reconstruct, rebuild, take back, heavenize the portions of our calling that God has called us to.

All three of these narratives stress—again in this proper sense of the word—cultic correctness: the obedience of Israel and her leader as she views the conquest of the land, and specifically obedience to those laws of God which relate to worship. These are worship activities: circumcision, Passover, and then Joshua personally worships God by falling down at his feet when God appears to him.

So we have here a tremendous responsibility on the part of God’s people to see worship coming before weapons training in any conquest.

What this means, I think, is that as we seek to have and participate in a reformation in our land today, that reformation begins with the reformation of the liturgy, the laws of God relative to the word worship, the service of the people. Liturgy comes from two words: people—ergo—work. The work of the people. And in an ultimate sense the work we have to do is worshiping God. And God brings us here once a week to remind us that that is at the core of everything else we do. And that worship, as it conforms itself to the image of worship that God gives us in the scriptures, becomes the basis then for the conquest as we move into our families and try to heavenize them.

As we root out sin in our personal lives, as we go into the business place and try to apply God’s laws of commerce to the business place and try to see that as holy ground before him, and as we go to the political arena, all these things follow out, flow out from the worship of the people. It’s interesting that this worship in circumcision and Passover then results in the eating of this food from the produce of the land. It is linked into what they will do on a regular basis now—that is eating the produce of the land. Manna ceases, produce of the land is now what they’re to involve themselves in.

And so worship, the reformation of worship, is absolutely essential in terms of the reformation of the world that God has called us to participate in.

What does this mean to us? Well, it means that we should try to figure out the links. We should number one try to increasingly, on a regular basis, seek to reform our worship pattern here at Reformation Covenant Church. The formal worship pattern that’s given to us because we see here that it’s extremely linked to success in every area and endeavor of life. So that’s one thing it means. Secondly, it means that we should apply ourselves to the worship of God. He likes to be worshiped. He takes great joy in our worship of him, and he then changes things in the world around us on the basis of how our worship is affected.

It means we should teach our children the elements of worship and what they signify to us in terms of the rest of life as well. I mentioned that circumcision, right? Circumcise of the children, and then later they would read verses like “circumcise the foreskins of your heart” or “circumcise your ears to the law.” Cut open that stuff that clogs up your ear from hearing God’s word. Well, we should remind our children on a regular basis of their baptisms, of their act of obedience, the obedience of their parents to the worship requirements that the children be presented in sacrifice, as it were, to God.

You know, it’s interesting: circumcision was the eighth day. And in the Old Testament sacrificial system, an animal could not be sacrificed until it was 8 days old. See, we are essentially sacrificing ourselves. And circumcision, of course, is a nice visual picture of that, but baptism is as well. And our children should be reminded of the responsibilities of the baptismal vows their parents undertook for them on a regular basis.

“Wash your—you’ve been baptized. Act like it this week. Don’t treat your brother that way. Hear God’s word. Do this, do that—on the basis of worship. Remember, remember how we did responsive reading yesterday at church, the Psalms. Tell your children: Well, you know, when I give you a word, respond correctly to it. I’m to represent God to you here. Think, you know, think that way to prepare yourselves by worshiping correctly.”

It’s interesting. I’m beginning to read a book by a guy named Von Alman on biblical worship and its implications. And he points out the necessity of really what we’ve talked about here from this book—the need to see as primary the reformation of worship. And he says the church has an intellectual responsibility to train, to teach children the word of God and teach each other. It has a correct catechism approach to it in terms of understanding intellectually the basic elements of the faith. It has an organizational quality to it as the church is organized to go into the world and to serve God in every area of life and thought.

It has a diaconal aspect to it—the church does. We’re supposed to minister to people as we go out from these walls. We’re supposed to help people, help the poor, help the needy, etc. At the end of our communion services, we always say—or I try to remember to say—remember the poor, which is what we see as a constant theme throughout the scriptures.

If you take any one of those elements, however, and stress those and start with those, then you end up with a perversion of what the church is. You can end up with an intellectual perversion, that the church is essentially an intellectual appreciation of God’s word. You can end up with an organizational perversion and think that somehow the church is all about getting things organized correctly under God. Or you can end up with the diaconal perversion and think that the social gospel is where it’s at—helping people.

All these aspects are stressed on a regular basis in terms of our worship on Sunday when we come together. We do get organized, and we do hear things about the faith, and we do receive the grace of God and his kindness and compassion toward us, and then are motivated to do these things as we go out into the world. And worship centers all these activities and many others around the throne of God, around a heart that is geared not toward the implications of the faith right now but right now to the primary implication that is to worship God and to serve him.

You see, it focuses everything around the person of God. And that’s what God does with the nation of Israel here as they’re about to go in and conquer this land. He puts them in a correct perspective of worship around him and getting them ready to do his will in terms of the nation that they were about to conquer.

Now we also see here the maturation of gift and responsibility and the ceasing of manna. We see, as the manna ceases, the people then become responsible. For 38 years they have water in the wilderness and God has fed them with manna. Really easy. Just go out and pick it up. And then on the Lord’s day, the Sabbath day in the Old Testament—the seventh day Sabbath—you had to pick up twice as much the day before that, ’cause it ceased on that day. It wouldn’t come down on the Sabbath.

But now, as people are ushered into increased blessing from God, they’re also ushered into increased responsibility before God because now no more manna, no more supernatural wonders. When God has brought an opportunity—increased maturity. And we should expect that in our lives as we mature, less and less does God manifest supernatural things in our lives. Not because he’s less happy with us, because he’s more happy with us. We’re not children anymore. And when you’re not children, you don’t need that kind of provision from God. You need a different kind of provision, a provision that calls you to increase responsibility because of your increasing maturation.

So we have here the maturation of responsibility that God gives to his people. But even this is slow because, after all, they didn’t plant these crops. They’re beginning to sow out from the land, right? There’s another picture at work here. Besides the preeminence of worship and besides the maturation of responsibility and in relationship to the maturation of gift, we also have here pictured in these verses—and particularly in the Passover section—victory again stressed. When I called it on your outline, heavenly food on earth.

What do I mean by that? Well, this section here in terms of the Passover is the literary climax—as one commentator put it—the literary climax to the entire Exodus wilderness account. The people who celebrated Passover prior to…