Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

“Gilgal”: the Passover on the Plains of Jericho.

In the Passover on the plains of Jericho we find the third feature which Gilgal presents to us. Circumcision gave it its character, and the stones out of the river of death had been set up there. Encamped at this wonderful spot, the circumcised Host of the Lord celebrate redemption once more. They can look back to the first moment of their history as a people of God, when God as a Righteous Judge was not smiting those whom blood had sheltered from His holy eye. What different feelings fill their hearts as in the plains of Jericho they now can gaze around them, and look back on the cross in peace! It speaks to our souls of the occupation of heaven by and by, when praising the Lamb who has redeemed us to God by His blood, and thus we shall be looking back to the cross even from the glory. But then it will be from the Father’s house, not the Canaan in which we now are in Christ, from which Satan is not yet expelled.

In looking around from Gilgal, we find how the horizon of our souls has enlarged since the day God at first took us up as sinners. The walls of the houses of Israel were their horizon on that solemn night of judgment. There they stood, with girded loins and sandalled feet, ready to depart from the land of slavery: but outside the houses, destruction and death were doing their solemn work. God was judging; and woe betide the sinner who was not within a bloodstained lintel on that night.

Then came the day when they stood at Pi-hahiroth, before they crossed over to the other side of the sea. There the horizon enlarged itself, and instead of knowing Him only as a Judge passing over them, a Deliverer God unfolded His great salvation before their eyes, and they passed across the sea, with death as a wall on either side, and the glory of God sheltering them and leading them into the wilderness. Still the horizon is enlarging each step of the way until the desert solitudes are around them. There God teaches them another lesson. He teaches them what His resources are in the desert, where the eye has not one vestige of anything to rest upon to cheer and support the heart, or to supply the daily need of His people as they traverse its wastes. They are forced to look up to God. There He teaches them the boundlessness of His resources, and proves that He is superior to the desert and its momentary need. If the manna failed but for one day, what would become of that mighty Host? But it did not fail; nor did His hand fail who rose up early to spread the daily supply upon each drop of dew which surrounded the objects of His care!

How the heart is taught to wonder and adore Him for the unexpected ways in which He comes in with His resources for those who trust Him, where they never dreamed they were. But He “suffers them to hunger” that He may feed them. He suffered Paul to be cast down, but why? that He might comfort him and teach his heart those deep, rich consolations of Christ which he never otherwise could have known, so that he can rejoice in the Lord always. He can rejoice when the wells are full of water, and he can rejoice in Him when the wells are dry. “Because thou hast been my help (not that the help came, but because God was his help), therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.” Because God’s loving kindness is better than life, his lips shall praise Him. There is no blessing to be compared with it to the heart that has tasted His loving kindness. It is better than all the favours He can bestow, great and wonderful as they are. Thus the soul is filled with marrow and fatness, and the mouth can praise Him with joyful lips, even in a dry and thirsty land.

But the soul’s horizon has widened each step of the way, until at Gilgal we can survey the scene where there is neither length, nor breadth, nor depth, nor height. God Himself is the horizon, and that is infinite; a boundless field of glory. There the soul can rest and look back in peace and remember the way; it can survey the past, from the night of the blood-stained lintel, through the walls of the Dead Sea, and the wastes of the desert; until now, on the other side of Jordan, from the place of strength, it can survey the basis of it all — God’s glory, and its own blessing, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. “And the children of Israel encamped at Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month, at even, in the plains of Jericho” (Joshua 5:10). God spreads a table for them in the presence of their enemies; setting them down to celebrate redemption, and think of the cross, in the heavenlies in Christ.