15 SEPTEMBER (1878)

Jesus

‘And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.’ Matthew 1:21
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Hebrews 4:1–16

Jesus and Joshua are the same word; Joshua is the Hebrew form and Jesus the Greek form. There was one of old who bore this famous name and who was a type of our Jesus. What did Joshua do? When Moses could not lead the people into Canaan, Joshua did it; and so our Jesus accomplishes what the law could never have done. Joshua overcame the enemies of God’s people: though they were very many and very strong, and had cities walled to heaven and chariots of iron, yet in the name of Jehovah, as captain of the Lord’s host, Joshua smote them. Even so does our glorious Joshua smite our sins and all the powers of darkness, and utterly destroys our spiritual enemies. Before him Amalek is smitten, Jericho falls and Canaanites are put to rout, while he gives us triumph in every place.

Moreover Joshua conquered an inheritance for Israel, took them across the Jordan, settled them in a land that flowed with milk and honey, and placed each tribe and each man in the lot which God had ordained for him. Precisely this is what our Jesus does, only our inheritance is more divine, and on each of us it is more surely entailed. Joshua could not give the people the heavenly Sabbatismos, or rest of the highest kind, yet he gave them rest most pleasant, so that every man sat ‘under his vine and under his fig tree’, none making him afraid; but our glorious Joshua has given us infinite, eternal rest, for ‘he is our peace’, and they that know him have entered into rest. Joshua, the son of Nun, caused the people to serve the Lord all his days, but he could not save the nation from their sins, for after his death they grievously went astray: our Joshua preserves to himself a ‘people, zealous of good works’, for ‘he ever liveth’ and ‘is able to keep’ them ‘from falling’.

FOR MEDITATION: (Our Own Hymn Book no.331 v.3—Charles Wesley, 1749)
‘Jesus the prisoner’s fetters breaks,
And bruises Satan’s head;
Power into strengthless souls it speaks,
And life into the dead.’


C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 269.