The Power of His Resurrection # 11

The Waters of Jericho (continued)

(a) Something too Strong for Man

Here is something which is altogether beyond the power of man to deal with. When the spies went out in the first instance, the majority report was that the task was quite beyond their power. They saw cities great and walled up to heaven, and giants. Their report was that this was more than flesh and blood could contend with, an impossible proposition. And they were quite right, as far as they went. The trouble with them was that they did not leave room for the Lord.

The flesh is always that, and you have a parallel in the Letter to the Romans; for when you read chapter 7, before you reach chapter 8, you know that you are up against satanically-energized flesh, and every attempt of man to deal with that leads to the cry: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The whole chapter 7 is a prolonged groan in the utter inability to deal with the flesh - "But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind"; "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." That is flesh, not in the passive sense, but energized by an active law of sin and death, governed, of course, by the intelligent forces of evil. There is always that extra factor, and that extra factor is clearly recognized, inasmuch as the flesh has an uncanny way of trapping us just at the moment when we do not want it to, when it is least of all convenient for us to be caught by it. The whole thing is timed and planned with an intelligence that is uncanny, subtle, and watchful and is all related to other issues which are Divine, to frustrate them. It is not flesh that is just working automatically. It is flesh that is energized by an intelligence. Jericho, then, speaks of Calvary's all-inclusive victory over the power of satan operating through the flesh; something more than man can deal with.

(b) Fullness as Represented by "Seven"

The Lord commanded that the people should go round Jericho once a day for six days, and that on the seventh day they should go round seven times. "Seven" is always the number of completeness, comprehensiveness, spiritual perfection, so that in the very going round seven times is the Lord's illustrative way of saying that this thing represents the fullness and the conclusiveness of conquest.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with #12 - " (c) Achan")