He is Faithful

This morning, I was reading Joshua 5, and crazily enough, verse 7 stuck out to me: “So he raised up their sons in their place, and these were the ones Joshua circumcised.  They were still uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way.”  I know it is such a strange verse, but I couldn’t help wondering why these men had not been circumcised.  In Genesis 17, God gave Abraham the command to treat circumcision as a sign of a covenant between himself and his people (much the way we see baptism today).  God specifically stipulated that circumcision should occur when a baby was eight days old.  It was so serious that God told Abraham that any male who had not been circumcised should be cut off from his people.  It was a practice that God’s people took seriously and one that they even continued while in exile in Egypt (see Joshua 5:5).  But then, in this journey to the Promised Land, they stopped practicing their part of the covenant God made with them.  They stopped following his command. 

But here is what struck me. God never left them.  He went before them into every journey and battle.  He sent them manna to eat.  He led them through the Jordan in Chapter 4 – parting the waters so they could walk on dry land.   He showed them his great power, and finally, under Joshua’s leadership, they acknowledged it.  I love Joshua 4:24 which says about the parting of the Jordan, “He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”  He parted the waters to show his power – to all the nations, but also, certainly, to the Israelites.  In this one act, he reminded them again that he is God – that he is powerful and trustworthy.  That he is who he says he is.

Immediately after crossing the Jordan, God commands Joshua to circumcise all the men as none of them had been circumcised (except, of course, Joshua and Caleb who were the only male survivors from Egypt).  After everyone was circumcised and healed, God says to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (Joshua 5:9).  Most commentaries seemed to agree that the “reproach of Egypt” was the shame of being uncircumcised.  Once God declares the reproach has been rolled away, the people celebrate Passover and the manna stops arriving.

Ok, that is a lot of information, but it is about to get exciting, so let’s recap:

1. The people cross the Jordan – an amazing display of the power of God.

2. The men are circumcised (they had been disobedient in not being circumcised prior to this point).  Circumcision now shows they belong to the Lord.

3. God declares he has taken away their shame.

4. They celebrate Passover.

Doesn’t this sequence of events sound just like the gospel?  Think about it!  Without Jesus, we are like an uncircumcised people wandering in a dessert.  God is there – he is sending us manna and protecting us and frankly, all around us, but we are so lost.  We don’t know where we are going and there is nothing to celebrate.  But the beautiful part is that as God never wavered in his faithfulness to the Israelites in the desert, he has not wavered in his faithfulness to us today.  In an amazing display of his power, he sent Jesus.  He sent his only son to die on a cross for our sins – to take away our shame.  And just as the Israelites set up stones from the Jordan to remind them of God’s faithfulness, the cross continuously reminds us of God’s faithfulness.  Even when we were lost, he was there.  He was protecting and providing and making a way to him – and that way was (and is) Jesus.

In Acts 17, Paul is trying to get the Athenians to understand that the world is not made up of many gods, but directed by one true God. He says to them, “Then God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.  For in him we live and move and have our being.”  According to Paul, God is so close.  He is close to us in the same way he was always close to the Israelites in the desert, but Paul also says that the time has come to acknowledge God.  In verse 30 he says, “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” 

God is faithful and close and good, but there comes a time when it is our turn to do our part and acknowledge him.  If the Israelites wanted to move out of their desert wandering, they had to eventually be circumcised – they had to become God’s people again.  They could not experience God’s best and also remain in their rebellion.  God is patient, but there comes a time for each of us to stop walking around our own deserts. 

It gets ridiculous anyway, doesn’t it?  In the desert, the people didn’t know where they were going.  Sometimes they walked in circles.  They knew they were being fed, but they didn’t know if there would be food for tomorrow.  Does that sound familiar?  Things are fine.  We keep moving on, but we don’t really know if we are moving forward.  Sometimes we see the same road again and again.  We are making it, but we don’t know if we will still be making it tomorrow.  There isn’t much hope in that. 

But there is hope in the cross.  In the cross, we know whose we are.  We know this earth is not our home.  We know we have the hope of heaven one day, and we know that even on this planet all things are working together for our good – even when we don’t quite know how.  In the cross, we are claimed by God, just as in circumcision the Israelites found a place to belong.  The cross marks us as a people set apart by God as circumcision marked those dessert wanderers.

And once we are set apart, the good stuff begins.  Don’t you love that the Israelites celebrated Passover after they were circumcised?  Passover was a meal that symbolized God’s absolute faithfulness.  It reminded them of God’s provision for them in Egypt when the angel of death spared their children because a lamb had been sacrificed instead (Exodus 12).  Jesus redefined Passover for us when he ate it the night before his death with his disciples and told them that in the future they would remember him when taking Passover.  On that night, what was Passover became what we know as communion, and Jesus became the Passover lamb – the sacrifice for sins that spared us from death.  When we take communion, we remember God’s faithfulness to us when he sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, we acknowledge the ways God is blessing us now, and we look forward to the day when Jesus comes again.  We belong, and we celebrate a meal that shows us just how much we belong.

The manna had nothing on Passover.  The manna was God’s faithfulness in the day to day to a people who barely acknowledged he existed.  The celebration of Passover brought together a God who had never been unfaithful with a people willing to remember and engage.  Communion does the same today.

God is so consistent.  He pursues us and shows us his power, and when we bow before him and acknowledge him as Lord, he takes away our shame and invites us to engage with him.  I love his faithfulness.  It could not be more beautiful – yesterday, today, and tomorrow.