Covenant

This week we are continuing our study in the third episode of Joshua, which is the crossing of the Jordan River. We learned last week that this third episode has three parts. The first part was the crossing of the Jordan itself, with the Ark of the Covenant going before the people. The second piece was God’s command to set up the memorial stones. Now this week we come to the third of the incidents that are connected with the crossing, and this concerns the consecration of the people once they had passed over into the land and had set up their memorial.

It was bad enough to know that these thousands of Jewish invaders were there in the desert on the far side of the Jordan; but then suddenly, the waters were stopped and the masses passed over. At that point these kings knew it would only be a short time before the city of Jericho and all the other cities of the land would be attacked.

Now it’s worth thinking about these two acts of consecration. Circumcision was the sacrament that had been given to Abraham so many years before. It was the mark of being a member of the covenant people, and it was accompanied by the promises of God. In this particular covenant, it was a case of God establishing the terms by which He would be the God of the Jews and the Jews would be His people.

You see the difference: circumcision is identifying with God in the covenant and receiving by faith the promises of what God will do. The Passover is a looking back and a remembering of what God had done. What God had done in the case of the Passover, of course, was to deliver the people out of Egypt.

So in the sacrament of circumcision we find its parallel in the matter of our baptism. And when we look at the Passover, we find its parallel in our Communion service which looks back to the death of Christ. The Lord’s Supper has the elements of the broken bread and the wine, which signify Christ’s broken body and poured out blood. We see that we are to consecrate ourselves as well, because the God who operated with His people in the past is operating with us today.