Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
bless this time together. As we look into the scriptures
and from them, find the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. Send
your spirit among us to testify of those things of Christ. For
apart from his presence, our meeting is in vain. We pray this
in the name of Christ, amen. Now just one more note about
circumcision and we'll move on. And where we are here in the
history of Joshua is they have just crossed the Jordan River
into the promised land. And four things happened after they
crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. Now that crossing of the
Jordan River is not a picture of our personal experience of
death. It is a picture or illustration
of the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and
our death and resurrection in Him. He goes first, so to speak, and
that was pictured by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant
there into the Jordan River, and that caused the Jordan River
to stop. In fact, it stopped about 20
miles upstream. And then all the people passed
through as that Ark of the Covenant was there in the riverbed. And then, of course, they came
out the other side. Now, after this has happened,
there are four things that are done to, or for, or by the Jews. And all these things are done
as a result of them having just come through the Jordan, picturing
our salvation in Christ. We pass from death unto life
in Him. And four things happen. And the
first one, and we've spent some time on this because it's such
an important, it was such an important ceremony
within the Jewish economy and speaks of so much within the
covenant of the gospel. And that's the issue of circumcision.
And from the time that they, 38 years previous, had rebelled
at the Jordan River, and in unbelief, did not enter the land. For that
whole time, up until now, when they do enter the land, the rite
of circumcision had not been performed, even though it was
part of the law that was given to them, and even more so. It
was actually a ceremony that was associated with the
covenant of promise made to Abraham, but they had not done that. And
so nearly all the men at that time were uncircumcised, so they
circumcised them. And the primary issue that was
dealt with or illustrated in that circumcision it says that
God had rolled the reproach of Egypt off of them. In other words,
everything that had to do with their former slavery and bondage,
humiliation, everything that had to do with them being, in
a sense, well, cut off from the promise and all that, all that
was gone. Now, the final point I want to
make about this And this is in respect of how baptism, how it's
practiced and on who it is to be practiced. Now, under the
old covenant, when a male child was born on the eighth day, he
was to be circumcised. And some have believed that baptism
is the, that is baptism within the church is the, equal or the replacement, as
it were, for the right of circumcision, and therefore when an infant
is born into a church, they believe that that infant should be baptized
or sprinkled, you know, and thus brought into the covenant. And
when I came here as the pastor, and of course these people have
been practicing what we call believer's baptism, the official
The theological term for it is credo-baptism, but that's because
the Latin word for believe is credo. So still, believer's baptism. And that's what we practice here. And of course, we've been questioned
about that. Why do you do it that way? Seeing
that when we came here, and we were just talking about this
before the class, you know, it was 1987. There wasn't a single
church in town that practiced baptism the way we do. That is,
that a person is immersed in water, but not until they have
believed the gospel. And people ask, why? I remember one of the women in
our church, when she was going to be baptized, I don't remember
if it was friends or family, asked her, says, well, does that
church require all of you to be rebaptized? And she said,
I thought she gave a good answer. She said, well, first of all,
it's not a requirement. It's something we want to do.
We're not being forced into this. It's something we want to do.
And she said, secondly, it's not re-baptism because what was
done to us as infants is not baptism. I mean, the word baptizo,
its essential meaning is to immerse. and that can't be accomplished
by sprinkling. However, the covenant theology that is
part and parcel of the Reformed faith, and by Reformed faith
here, I'm not just speaking about sovereign grace. You know, there
are Baptist churches that call themselves Reformed Baptist,
and really that's a bit of an oxymoron, because reform, the
word reformed entails more than simply believing the five points
of Calvinism. We believe what are commonly
referred to as the five points of Calvinism. But Reformed has
within it this concept of covenant theology, and they take the pattern
of the old covenant and put it on to the new covenant expression
in the church. And therefore they say since
infants were circumcised, then infants should be baptized. And
I've been asked, why don't you baptize infants? And I think
I came up with an answer that explains the issue quite well.
If they believe our view of things, I said, well, actually we do.
Which of course surprises him. I said, the church is made up
of all who have been born into the family of God. They've been
born again. And we baptize all infants in
Christ. And see, that's one of the things
that covenant theology, as I understand it, and I'll admit, I went to
a Baptist Bible school, so they didn't talk a whole lot about
covenant theology. I really didn't even know what
it meant until I got here. But in trying to bring over the principles
of the old covenant into the new covenant, there's one thing
they fail to do and to realize that the Old Covenant is called
the carnal commandment. It involves things in the flesh,
that is, in a natural person. And it involves things, you know,
sin is defined as what one does outwardly. And therefore, If a person was
naturally born as a natural descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
they were under that covenant. Now, this may surprise people.
No one but the Jews have ever been under that covenant. When God gave the law on Mount
Sinai, He began with the words, Hear, O Israel. He didn't say,
Hear, O world. said, Hear O Israel, Jehovah
your God is one Jehovah, and went on and gave his and that
covenant by which that nation was to operate. Now, the Jews
are simply an illustration, I mean there's other things that the
Jews were for, but in this respect, they picture the church of the
Lord Jesus Christ. But whereas the old covenant
national people of God was a fleshly body, with fleshly natural genealogy,
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a spiritual body. Being born of Christian parents
does not make a person a Christian, because being a Christian is
a spiritual thing, not a natural thing. Now, God's household is made up of those who have
been spiritually reborn. And those who have been reborn,
or born again, by the sovereign work of the Spirit of God. How
is that new birth expressed? What is the first expression
of new birth? Believing the gospel. People say, well, how do you
know you've been, how can you prove you've been born again? Well,
actually we can't prove it. But here's the only evidence
of it. A person believes. Faith is the
essential expression of a living spiritual human. If he's only
flesh, he doesn't believe. That is, he doesn't believe God.
But one who's been born again, now he can perceive the Kingdom
of God. He understands the Gospel and
he believes it. If a person listens, having heard
the gospel preached, says, I believe that, now we take their word
for it. Because we really can't see the heart, but we take their
word for it. And that's why you find in all the apostolic records
that people believed and were then baptized. You can't find
anywhere in the New Testament that says they were baptized
and sometime later believed. And this is expressed, as it
were, in this crossing the Jordan and then
being circumcised. That sign of the covenant was
not upon them until after. They were already in the promised
land. All right, let's look, and we
can do these other three. They won't take that long. I
said there were four things. We took two weeks and a little
piece on the first one, but I think we can do these other three more
quickly. Now, in verse 10 of Joshua chapter five, on the evening
of the 14th day of the month, while camped at Gilgal on the
plains of Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Passover. Now, the Passover, as a historical
reality, happened 40 years previous, when God had visited Egypt with
all those plagues, all those demonstrations of his sovereign
power, and the last one was this, God pronounced judgment over
the entire land of Egypt. Now. It's important to notice. We're
not going to turn to that, but in the story of the Passover,
God did not pass judgment on the Egyptians. He passed judgment
on the land of Egypt. Who was in the land of Egypt? Well, the Egyptians, of course,
also the Jews. And here's something that may
surprise you. There were not that many of the Jews who were
worshiping the God of their fathers. Most of them had taken up the
gods of the Egyptians. So when Moses came to them and
pronounced the word of God to them, To many of the Jews, they were
being presented with a God they hardly knew anything about. But
judgment had passed on the Jewish people as well as on the Egyptian
people. The judgment was for the whole
land of Egypt, and the judgment was this. On such a night, God
would pass through Egypt and he would kill the firstborn in
every household of humans, of cattle, everything. And that meant that God was going
to pass through Egypt and kill the firstborn of every Jewish
household, along with all the Egyptian households. However,
there was a message given to the Jewish people, and I don't
think any of the Egyptians ever got the message. Or if they did,
they simply didn't believe it and didn't practice it. But here
was the message. God said, you kill a lamb, and
you take some of the blood, and you put it on the doorpost and
across the lintel of your doors, and then you get inside that
house. And they would eat the flesh of that lamb. And they
were to do that prepared, ready to leave. And God said then to
them, when I pass through Egypt, when I see the blood, I will
pass over you. Now notice this, he did not say,
when I see your circumcision, I'll pass over you. Good chance
they weren't practicing circumcision in Egypt either. But if they
had been, that was not what separated them from the Egyptians in that
day. He didn't say, when I see that you're inside your house,
I will pass over you. The only thing that answers to
the justice of God is blood. That's why God said, when I see
the blood, I'll pass over you. Of course, that lamb and its
blood is a picture of Christ and Him crucified. And that house
is a picture, as it were, of the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Each house among the Jewish people was a picture of
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are all in Christ
and Him crucified. They are behind the blood. And
the blood stands as a testimony to God. Judgment has already
come here. And justice never punishes twice. Augustus Toplady, the fellow
that wrote Rock of Ages, cleft for me. He wrote another hymn
which contained the words, justice will not payment twice
demand first at my bleeding surety's hand and then again at mine that's
one of the reasons we don't believe that the Lord Jesus Christ made
an atonement a redemption for everyone in the world that is
every individual why if he did nobody would go to hell because
God will not punish the Lord Jesus Christ for the sins of
a person, and then at some later time punish that person for those
very same sins. That would be unjust, wouldn't
it? So anyway, the reality of the
historic Passover had been 40 years previous to this, and it
was a picture of God's redemption of them from slavery, but now
that they get into the promised land. They have this, they begin
to celebrate it again. Even though the law had told
them they were supposed to be doing this every year, evidently
they hadn't been. This reminds us again, they did
not enter the promised land as law keepers. They were uncircumcised,
they were not following the worship pattern that God had set up,
nothing. When they went across the Jordan, there was not a mark
or a memory about them that would distinguish them from the kinds
of people they were going in to displace. It wasn't until
after they were in the land that the differences were made. They
celebrated the Passover, and the Passover was a Feast of remembrance,
because the Lord had said, when your children ask you, why are
we celebrating the Passover? You are to tell them, because
some time passed. God did this for us. Now, of
course, the Passover became, was used as the pattern of our
celebration of the Lord's table. And once again, it's one of those
things that we believe is for believers. Now, we don't do as
some churches do and, quote, fence the table. That is, have
people that examine and judge whether someone has a right to
participate. That's why the Scriptures say,
so let a man examine himself regarding these matters. Put
the elements together, we pass them around. Anyone who is a
believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is free to participate whether
during the last week of what some churches say should be a
week of examination to see if you're worthy to participate. Now, it might be that the night
before you were being just awful. But here you've come to meet
with the saints of God. You are one of the saints of
God despite the fact you don't live right and do right. That
bread and that wine is not something you make yourself worthy of. It is a demonstration we're not
worthy of the goodness of God. And it's only because of the
broken body and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that
we are accepted in His presence at all. When Paul said that there were those who participated
in the Lord's table unworthily, he was talking not about whether
or not they were worthy to celebrate it, they were doing it in an
unworthy manner. And what they were doing, what was unworthy in the manner
they were doing it, is the rich people were separating themselves
from the poor people, and they'd be having their fancy food over
here at the feast, while the poor people, some of them didn't
have anything. And they had divided the body of Christ, and they
said you drink condemnation on yourself, not having discerned
the body of Christ. And it didn't mean by that that
you did not discern the body of Christ in the elements. He
said you didn't understand that all of you, rich and poor, male
and female, young and old, all you believers, your one body
you don't separate. They had denied the truth of
the grace of God in separating themselves from others as though
they were more worthy than others. This Passover is a remembrance
of what God had done for them. There is good for us, positive good for
us to remember as often as we can what God did for us in Christ
on Calvary. That's why we always preach Christ
in Him crucified. Even if we're not celebrating
the table, we're preaching the same message. The table, the
Lord's table, which is, shall we say, the church's version
of the Passover. It's declaring the same kind of message, but
it is simply a symbolic sermon. That's what it is. A visual,
symbolic sermon. And even on those weeks where
we don't practice the symbolic sermon, we always preach a sermon
of Christ and Him crucified. Why? If we forget that, It will
lead us one of two ways. It will lead us to self-righteousness,
because that's as natural in our flesh as anything. You don't
have to teach people to be self-righteous. We come into the world that way.
It will lead us, and denominations do this, individuals do it, individual
churches do it. If they do not consistently preach
the reality of the Passover, the people eventually become
focused on how they're living, that becomes the issue. And when
that becomes the issue, it's going to lead to self-righteousness
in some people thinking that they're living right, or it leads
to despair, because some will realize they're not living right,
and they won't know what to do about it. But if your eyes are
always turned to Christ, and Him crucified, it will testify
to the heart none of us are doing right, not one of us. But it
keeps us from despair because it shows us how sinners like
us can be accepted by a holy, pure, completely righteous God. So they celebrated the Passover.
And then after the Passover, they observed the Feast of Unleavened
Bread. They observed it by making bread with the grain that was
available to them in the land. Now notice that. The feast of unleavened bread.
Where did the bread come from? It came from the land of promise.
Now it's called unleavened bread because leaven in the scriptures
is almost, if not entirely, or completely used as a picture
of sin, and in particular, the sin of self-righteousness. Because
the Lord talked about, he warned the disciples about the leaven
of the Pharisees. Well, what were the Pharisees
known for? Remember the prayer of the Pharisee at the temple?
Father, I thank you I'm not like other men. I do this, I do that, and I do
thus and so, but I certainly don't do that, and I'm certainly
not like that publican over there, that filthy, stinking tax collector. That is the worst leaven of all.
And you know, Paul, when they tried to bring the law the rite
of circumcision into the church, there in the book of Galatians,
he said this, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. You know,
you make bread, you don't, you put leaven anywhere in that dough,
it'll eventually spread throughout the dough. And that circumcision
that some were insisting be practiced, saying you cannot be saved apart
from circumcision, You let the least bit of a legal
requirement enter into gospel preaching, before long, it'll
infect everything and everyone. I think I've mentioned this before,
but you know, every church that Paul wrote to, they had problems.
They had problems. And you know, in the letters
to the seven churches in Asia, In the book of Revelation, all
seven churches had some problems. But Paul, in his letters to the
churches, dealing with the problems, you know, when he get to that
part, he never questioned whether or not they were legitimate churches,
except in Galatia. And all they were doing, as Brother
Henry Mahan used to say, is all they were doing was being too
good. in the sense that they had added
to the requirements of the Gospel. They had said, yes, salvation,
you need Christ, but Christ is not enough. You need to add something
of your own, even if it's only this ceremonial observance. And
Paul said of them, wondering, did I waste my efforts
on you? That's the only church on which
he put a question mark as to whether the people in it were
really believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was not
because they were running wild with all kinds of transgressions.
It's because they sought to bring in works of their own. Self-righteousness
is the most damning sin of all. And then the last thing. The
last, the fourth thing was that the manna stopped falling. All through the wilderness, the
Lord provided for those people by a miraculous rain of manna
every day. And all the way across the wilderness,
they lived on manna. And do you know, and here's an
interesting thing to consider, if that wilderness represents
the life of one of God's elect before he comes to a knowledge
of the gospel, God was providing for him all during that time. God was not sitting in the promised
land waiting for the Jews to get there. He was caring for
his chosen even while they were in utter rebellion against him,
living in ignorance and transgression, a miraculous outpouring. But once they got on the promised
land, the manna stopped. Why? All that they needed was
already there. The wilderness, it's a desert.
No water, no food. had special, as it were, special
food sent to them. When they get in the Promised
Land, everything they needed was there. Peter says, we have,
through the knowledge of him, meaning the knowledge of Christ,
we have, through the knowledge of him, all we need for life
and godliness. Once by the work of the Spirit
of God, we are made aware of the truth, we are brought not
only by the decree of God, but through our own experience, we
are brought into the promised land, the land of rest. All the
food we need is already there. Why do we gather like this? to hear about the food. Now,
I can't serve you the food. Only the Lord can do that. But
I tell you about it, it's Christ. Just like that bread, you know,
the Lord said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. And
that grain that was already in the promised land, that also
pictured Him. He's here. All we need for life
and godliness, it's in Christ. Well, now we can move on from
that part of Joshua 5. As I've told you, I'm using Brother
Tim James' commentary as kind of a guide, along with some of
my own studies. Everything I've been teaching
now for the last four or five weeks, he had it in one lesson,
but I use more words than Tim does. But now we can move on. You are dismissed.