Joshua: What marks God’s people if we’re moving into victory? Part 6!
There are two things God commands His people to do here if they want victory. We saw one last week (chs3&4): keep your mind soaked in how God brought you through where the judgment waters should have been; focus your life on that, and that you’re therefore dead now to your old existence. Now the second, ch5 this week, is…
GET CIRCUMCISED NOW!!… ?!…
So God says, Men, hack a slice off your genitals, do it now, and you’re on the way to victory. Very simple, very straightforward… A very painful step of obedience!!
(I remember putting that up on the screen in my church and wondering how many of the men present were shifting uneasily in their seats…!)
But — what if we meet this in our Bible reading? It’s Joshua’s second main lesson, essential for victory – what is this circumcision command about, for new testament people?
Obviously it’s not literal. Paul couldn’t say that more clearly than he does in Galatians 5: `Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all!` (See also Acts 15:1-2.) So we’re talking about spiritual circumcision. And this is how it so often works: the old testament pictures for us in physical terms the deeper, spiritual realities revealed in the new…
First then, and most obviously, it was willingness for a painful step of obedience. (Very painful, from what I hear of men who for medical reasons have been circumcised as adults.) And it was a big step of faith too. The Israelite soldiers wouldn’t have forgotten the ugly story in Genesis 34 of how Simeon and Levi persuaded the Hivites to get circumcised and then attacked and massacred them while they were still hurting. Exactly the same could happen to Israel here…. So victory comes from obeying God totally (1:7), even if it hurts and is a bit dangerous…
But then also: circumcision was the outward sign God ordained of having (already)
been born into His old testament people. (As such it parallels baptism for us today, the outward sign of having (already) been `born again’ into God’s NT people.) Getting into the land didn’t depend on circumcision, but once you were there, God commanded it. And, it was an amputation. Here’s the link to last week: we saw how the Jordan crossing paralleled the Red Sea, which Paul says symbolizes baptism, and how Romans 6 says victory comes as we get hold, deeply, of the issues of baptism, what it means to be `baptised into his death`(v3): that we are `united with Him in His death`(v5), making that death the central imaginative reality by which we live, that our old life is now drowned, buried (amputated if you like), with Jesus, and that we’ll live by total commitment to our totally new life… Victory as baptism, expressing total identification, submergence, in Christ, at the cost of drowning (baptism language) our entire old sinful nature, our old ways – or, in circumcision language, amputating them…
And this spiritual amputation is the way to victory spelled out in Colossians 2: `In Him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the flesh` (victory through the deliberate amputation of the sinful nature – that choice of repentance that’s basic to conversion); `not with a circumcision done by the hands of men, but with the circumcision done by Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism…’ So the lesson for us is: for victory, we learn to `remember` deeply what baptism means, the cross, but we also learn to live it out – a life totally identified/submerged into Christ’s death and resurrection, expressed in deliberately drowning (baptism), or amputating (circumcision), the flesh/our sinful old nature and its misdeeds… It reminds me of what Jesus says about spiritual amputation, `If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away`… And the challenge for us here in Joshua ch.5, if we want victory, is indeed: get spiritually circumcised – listen for the Spirit’s reminders of what’s of the old nature, and amputate it! Be conscious and deliberate, Paul says elsewhere: `Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature [=flesh]’, and he specifies putting to death (here’s a good checklist for reflection) `lust, evil desires, greed… anger, malice, slander…’ (Col 3:5-9)… Specific, conscious, and an essential preparation for oncoming conflict…
But there’s another verse where Paul spells out what spiritual circumcision means for new testament people: `We are the circumcision, who — worship by the Spirit of God — glory in Christ Jesus — and put no confidence in the flesh!’ (Phil 3:3). If getting spiritually circumcised is God’s second key command for victory, here are three things it means. First, live your whole life filled by the Spirit (that is, live out 24/7 worship); because the Spirit is in direct, powerful opposition to the flesh/sinful nature that we’re amputating (compare Gal 5:16-25). (This is the lesson of Romans 7&8: the way to win, to `put to death` the deeds of the sinful nature, is not just effort, but to live more and more by, be controlled by, the Spirit!) Then secondly: boast in Jesus! (do I? when?); not in yourself…
And that’s totally linked to the third component: `put no confidence in the flesh`… Just as, when the Israelite soldiers lay in serious pain after their circumcision, they could have no confidence at all in their ability to fight off an attack, they had to rely totally on God for that… So we too must learn not to put any confidence in our own flesh, even its apparent strengths, if we want to be victorious in spiritual conflict: `Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses`, says Paul, `so that Christ’s power may rest on me! That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses… For when I am weak, then I am strong!’ (2 Cor 12:10)
Preparation for victory is nearly complete if these circumcision lessons are mastered! And next chapter, the apparently weird strategy of marching silently round Jericho day after day will prove that God’s way works! No confidence in the flesh – certainty however about the power of God…!
(But next time we’ll look also at just two verses, one (to me) one of the most powerful in the whole old testament…)
