Covenant Renewal and Conquering the Land

There’s an interesting progression in Joshua 5-6. The new generation are circumcised. Now that the old generation, who grumbled after coming out of Egypt, have died off, the reproach of God’s people has been taken away and this generation is given the sign and seal of the covenant. The people then eat the covenant meal, the Passover, a remembrance of God’s saving work, and immediately after eat the firstfruits of their inheritance in Canaan. It’s a guarantee, a pledge, that God is keeping his promises and the rest of the inheritance will follow. Following this, the commander of the Lord’s army meets with Joshua (who like Moses at the burning bush has to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground, indicating to me the identity of this commander as God himself in the person of the preincarnate Son), and the Lord’s people trust the Lord’s promises (cf Hebrews 11.30) and march around Jericho, blowing their trumpets, and on the seventh day they shout and the walls fall flat and the city is devoted to destruction and its treasures set apart for the Lord, apart from Rahab and her household who seek refuge in the house with the scarlet cord and are saved alive.

I wonder if there are any lessons here for the church’s mission. I suggest something along these lines. We as Christians are baptised (the New Covenant sign and seal) into a people to whom God has promised an inheritance in the new creation. However, our mission flows from covenant renewal with God. We eat the covenant meal, the Lord’s Supper, which is the memorial of our redemption by Christ on the cross, and is also the firstfruits of the banquet in which we will share in the age to come. It’s possible that Hebrews 6.4-5, tasting the heavenly gift, the goodness of the powers of the age to come, might be related in part to this experience of the church. It’s the pledge of our future inheritance. Out of that, along with God’s word of course, we go out in faith, having the assurance of things hoped for but not yet seen, and in obedience to the Lord’s often strange ways (strange to the eye of human reason, anyway) preach the word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and the pagan nations of the world die as they are baptised into Christ’s death and become living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord, and the riches of the world become his. This new creation we thus see breaking into this world now in the church, an inheritance in which Christians share, to the consummation of which at the end of time we look forward. Of course, at the end of time, those who persist in idolatry will be judged, but God promises escape to believers <i>and their households</i>, and it is those who accept this promise and take refuge in Christ and his death on the cross who will be ’saved alive’.

I suggest that what we do on the Lord’s Day ought to be seen to have much greater significance for the mission of the church on the other days of the week, and that this narrative highlights the importance of corporate worship being characterised by the whole baptised company gathering together around the Lord’s table and his word.

Joshua 5 and 6

The author of this article is a scary-looking man, but I like his biblical theology.

http://www.beginningwithmoses.org/briefings/joshua5.htm