Joshua 8

Chapter 8. Kiriath Sepher, or the Mind of ChristAnd Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the man who attacks and captures Kiriath Sepher.” Othniel son of Kenaz, Calebs brother, took it; so Caleb gave his daughter Acsah to him in marriage.One day when she came to Othniel, she urged him to ask her father for another field. When she got off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What can I do for you?“She replied, “Do me a special favor. Since you have given me land in the Negev, give me also springs of water.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs. (Joshua 15:16-19)The conquest of Hebron by Caleb was followed a few days afterwards by the capture of Kiriath Sepher, also known as Debir. For its capture Caleb offered as a prize the hand of his daughter Acsah; and Othniel, Caleb’s own nephew, took up the challenge and won both the city and the maiden. She brought her husband not only her fair self, but a still richer dowry from her father, who gave her, at her request, not only the splendid inheritance looking toward the south, but also the upper and the lower springs. All this is full of holy suggestiveness and sacred teaching in connection with our higher inheritance in Christ. Kiriath Sepher Kiriath Sepher and Debir suggest the victory of faith over the natural mind and the wisdom of the world. Kiriath Sepher means “the city of the oracle, or the book,” and Debir means “the speaker.” One is the fitting symbol of the natural mind, and the other of its most powerful instrument and expression, the tongue, and both together represent the hardest victory of the spiritual life, the conquest of our thoughts and our words. Human nature is threefold, and consists of the spirit, soul and body. We have not only a spiritual nature, but we have an intellectual being, the seat of reason, mind and intelligence. The Carnal Mind This has been blighted by the fall, and requires to be renewed through the blood and Spirit of Christ just as much as any other part of our being. Our mind influences our whole character and life. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7), and intelligence without character is the most dangerous of created powers. Satan himself is just a great unholy intelligence. In one of the versions of the Bible his name is translated “the knowing one.” He is a being of transcendent brightness, but utterly without any right principle, his whole moral and spiritual being perverted and corrupted. Like the serpent—his scriptural image—his life is all centered in his head. You cannot kill a serpent until you strike its head. You may bruise its whole body, but if you leave the head intact it still lives. Hence the first promise of redemption was “he will crush your head” (Genesis 3:15). He came to our first parents’ intelligence. There was one tree in the garden that was prohibited to them. Everything else that could constitute happiness was theirs. All possible delights were given to them without stint. But there was one little bit of knowledge they must not claim, one single tree whose fruit they must not taste, one secret that must remain unknown; and it was with this that he tempted them, and with this that he destroyed them. He lured them on to enter the forbidden precincts. He attracted them by the dazzling promise of divine wisdom. He covered the forbidden prize with the glamor of his false light until everything else seemed eclipsed by its delusive brightness, and they reached forward over the precipice to grasp it. When they claimed it, they found it was but an empty bubble—but it had cost them an eternity of ruin for all their race. And so still the tree of forbidden knowledge is the mystery with which he lures men and women on until they venture beyond God’s holy prohibitions and sink into the depths of ruin. Our Thoughts Temptations still assail us chiefly through our thoughts. In speaking of the depths of corruption in the days of Noah, God said, “Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). It is through imagination that sin approaches. Floating like a beautiful vision through the mind, the evil thought at first seems harmless, but if entertained and allowed to lodge, it becomes the seed that springs up into a living plant of unholy desire, which quickly bursts into blossoms of unwholesome fragrance, and if they are permitted to fertilize and linger, the fruit of evil choice—sinful yielding and actual transgression—follows with awful certainty and rapidity. We must meet temptation, therefore, in our thoughts. We are so constituted that if we dwell on an evil thought it creates its own character within our spirit. The man of old who looked on the Gorgon’s head was instantly turned into stone, and the soul that complacently and willingly indulges the thought of evil absorbs the evil into his own nature. Walk down the street and let your eyes be fixed for a moment on a picture of obscenity, and you will immediately find your whole soul clouded by spiritual darkness and defilement. Although your spirit may revolt from it, still you will be conscious of a horrible fascination, and if you allow it to linger it will overpower your better feeling and change your nature into that of another man. Even your very body will be affected, and you will be conscious of being benumbed with the draught from the fountains of the pit. The inventive genius of modern literature has given us the picture of a man who, by a certain draught, could be changed from one man into another of higher, nobler character. But he would immediately fall back from the nobler man into the lower ideal the moment he thought of it, feared it and recognized it. There is a strange truth here. The consciousness of evil creates evil, the thought of good becomes the fertile soil of good. Christian Science, which is itself one of Satan’s false and unholy thoughts, has one truth in it, as all lies have. That truth is that the thought of evil creates evil, and the thought of good has a tendency to produce good. The Mind of Christ Not only do we need to correct our thoughts, but we must go farther and actually crucify the old natural mind and receive an entirely new mind in Christ. The sanctification of the spirit is not the improvement of the old natural spirit, but the renouncing of it and the receiving of God’s Holy Spirit instead. So the sanctification of our mind must be just as radical. We must recognize that our natural mind is wrong and must be laid wholly down, and we receive the mind of Christ instead, to think in us God’s thoughts after God. So that our first experience is not the correcting of our thoughts, but the entire surrender of our mental being to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be crucified with Him. The apostle has said that the wisdom of this world is entirely wrong in its principles and nature. His language is exceedingly strong. He says, “The world through its wisdom did not know him” (1 Corinthians 1:21). Its very wisdom kept it from God. “If anyone of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). David says, “I hate thoughts” (Psalms 119:113); not only vain thoughts, but all thoughts that are human. This is the source of all our unbelief, our anxious care, our doubts and fears, our envies, jealousies, irritations, seditions, strifes, controversies—all have their seat in the strong intellectual life of the human heart; the willfulness of our opinions and the entertaining of thoughts, questionings, evil surmisings and imaginings that disquiet and defile the soul. From all these Christ wants to save us, to give us the mind which “is steadfast” (Isaiah 26:3); “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), and garrisons the thought and the heart through Christ Jesus; the heart so subdued that every evil argument is demolished, and every pretension that sets itself up brought low, and every thought taken captive to make it obedient to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). In the picture given of the works of the flesh in Galatians (Galatians 5:19-21), dissensions, selfish ambition and controversies are spoken of in the same category as sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery. All these things are just as unholy in God’s sight as the things that we call immoral. The Tongue Thus, Kiriath Sepher not only represents the mental source of evil thought, but the outward expression of it, the tongue. The control of the tongue, James says, is the rarest form of practical righteousness, and he adds that he who wins this victory will have little trouble in living a triumphant life in every other direction. “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check” (James 3:2). The awful evils of the tongue are well described by the same apostle in language of terrible strength. “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6). This is the Kiriath Sepher and the Debir that the Lord Jesus Christ is calling on us to smite and take. When we win this citadel of Canaan, we receive in Christ a divine inheritance in the very thing that we have surrendered. Instead of our own mind, we have the mind of Christ. Instead of our foolish and restless thoughts, we have the thoughts of God. Instead of our vain imaginings, we have the vision of His light and glory. Instead of our limited knowledge, the eyes of our understanding are enlightened, and we are able to know the “hope to which he has called [us],… and his incomparably great power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18-19). Instead of the profoundest thoughts of man, we are led into “the deep things of God.” “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-10) God will open His glorious Word to us, and give the revelation and illumination of the Holy Spirit, and “your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches far” (Isaiah 33:17). The tongue that has learned to be silent for self and Satan will become the instrument of God’s messages and the channel of His glorious power. The very symbol of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a cloven tongue. The very member He wants to use most is our voice and our power of utterance, but He will not use it until He has its absolute control and He can stamp it with His own signature and monogram, as His exclusive property and His own living voice. Beloved, is not this a glorious possibility? Is not this a choice possession? Shall we go up and smite Kiriath Sepher and take it, to be henceforth owned and occupied by the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God alone? It will be noticed that Kiriath Sepher comes after Hebron. It is love first, and then light. It is only as we learn the love life of the Lord, and get out of self and all its sensitiveness, that we can do rightly, speak rightly, think rightly and know rightly. We want to get the seat of life centered not in the brain, but in the heart and spirit; in love, and not in truth only. Then we shall understand the meaning of “Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:15). Othniel Othniel is the type of the secret victory over the natural mind. The word Othniel means “the lion of God,” or “the force of God,” as Dr. Young translates it. He represents the power of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in a courageous spirit. Nothing less than omnipotent power can overcome the pride and strength of the carnal mind. It needs the very “force of God.” “But no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). It is a wild and desperate rebel; your own resolution never can control it. But if we will be brave enough to choose to die to it Christ is able to subdue it. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5) We are so glad that God put these words “divine power” or “mighty through God” there. Every one who has tried to still the over-active brain, to subdue the flood of thought, to drive out the burning image from the imagination, to cleanse the foul picture from the chambers of the heart, to think calmly, or better, cease thinking altogether, knows how useless the endeavor in the strength of the human will. But there is a voice that says to the wildest tempest of the heart and brain: “Quiet! Be still!” (Mark 4:39); and lo! there is a great calm! There is a power that can keep every thought, like handmaids and servants, waiting outside the inner chamber to come at call—a troupe of obedient servants, not a horde of wild disturbers—waiting for the call of will and conscience, and utterly controlled by the voice of the Holy Spirit. Oh, this indeed is peace! Happy are they who know it! Thank God, it waits for all who are willing to yield themselves in complete surrender to the mind of Christ and the thoughts of God. Acsah Othniel’s victory was accepted as the price of Caleb’s daughter, the fair Acsah, whose name signifies grace, and who may be regarded as the type of the special grace which Christ will give to victorious souls, and especially to those who have overcome the carnal mind. Grace There is a grace that saves the sinful soul; but there is a deeper, richer grace that sanctifies and fills it with all the fullness of God. “We have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Romans 5:2). “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). “Those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17). “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another” (John 1:16), the grace that meets the need of every moment, and supplies the lack of grace in us for every emergency. Do we need the grace of faith, of love, of patience? There is grace for this, grace to supply it in abundance; so that we shall be patient in His patience, gentle in His gentleness, strong in His strength, and loving in His love. This is the grace that Jesus has to give the souls that have become victorious over their own self-will and self-sufficiency, and are content to take Him as their strength and wisdom. Acsah moved her husband to ask great things of her father. And so the grace of God moves us to the highest, mightiest prayers and to take the riches of divine grace and blessing. Acsah, it would seem, moved Othniel to ask even more than Othniel asked for himself. We find her going to her father with a large prayer for him and for herself. And so grace asks for us even more than we ask for ourselves. She brought her husband a rich inheritance, the south land, lying toward the warm sunshine; then she claimed for herself and him an added and double blessing. It is very beautiful to see her getting off her donkey, before she approaches her father with her great request. Grace stoops to plead, and the lower it goes, the more it can ask and recieve. Abraham got on his face when he asked the everlasting covenant from Jehovah. The Syrophoenician woman rose to the very highest faith in the New Testament from the deepest humiliation, accepting even the terrible word the Master spoke about her sin and willing to count herself a “dog” (Matthew 15:27), yet claiming and receiving all the fullness of His infinite grace. And so grace can stoop to the very depths of self-abasement, and yet rise to the heights of glory to claim all the fullness of God. What she asked her father for was springs, and this grace always has for thirsting hearts. The life of works is a life of constant labor and painful effort, and the life of grace is a perpetual spring of spontaneous fullness and freedom. It is so delightful to live and work for God from impulses that carry us beyond ourselves. There is a place in the midstream of human life where the current sweeps us along in the infinite fullness of God. But there is a place where we have to contend with eddies and cross-currents, to row and struggle against the stream and to press our way through the greatest difficulties. Oh, it is so blessed to be carried on the current of His love and fullness and say continually, with an overflowing heart: “All my fountains are in you” (Psalms 87:7). Acsah asked for springs, and her father gave her more than she asked: “So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs” (Joshua 15:19). Fullness of Grace This beautiful figure tells us that the glorious fullness of the grace of God sweeps the whole circle of our being, “holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8). There are upper springs—springs of faith, that keep us trusting in the face of every discouragement; springs of prayer, that come from the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and carry our petitions straight to the throne with a consciousness of acceptance; springs of love that leap up to God, and enable us to say, “For Christ’s love compels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14); springs of joy that burst from the eternal hills, a joy so inexpressible that it is glorious (1 Peter 1:8); springs of hope that reach out to the yet unseen and invisible, anticipating all that shall yet be revealed in our future inheritance; springs of power, that make our service a delight, our testimony a great overflow from a heart that cannot be silent, because it is so full. These are some of the upper springs. But there are lower springs which we value even more. There are springs that flow in the low places of life, in the hard places, in the desert places, in the lone places, in the common places which seem farthest removed from all that is sacred and divine. How blessed it is to drink from the springs of health, and find our strength “renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16), and the life of God flowing into even our physical organs and functions! How delightful it is to have His gladness in the low places of sorrow, and to be able to “rejoice in our sufferings” (Romans 5:3). How precious the springs that flow into the places of temptation, for there is nothing in life so trying as the touch of Satan’s hand and the breath of the destroyer. Oh, how sweet it is even there to find that the light is as deep as the shadow, and heaven is nearest when we are hard by the gates of hell; so that we can “consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2), and say “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). Springs in the Desert There are springs that flow amid the places of toil and secular business. It is possible to be filled amid the common things of life with the conscious presence of God. It is possible to work in the shop and the kitchen with a zest as sweet as that which inspires the preacher in his sublimest flights of thought, the singer in her highest notes of devotion, the saint in his most blessed moment of communion. God loves to cheer those that toil in lowly places, and we can hear the sweet bells of the high priest’s garment within the veil and the echoes of the harps of God even amid the din of the busy streets and the rattle and roar of the 10,000 hammers and the whirling wheels of the factory. The heart that has its spring within can be happy anywhere. The soul that is set to heavenly music can never be out of tune. The light that is kindled from above can shine in darkness, chough “the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:5). Beloved, God has for us these springs, and we need them every day. Let us drink of the living waters. Nay, let us receive them into our very hearts, so that we shall carry the fountain with us wherever we go, that it may be true of us as He said of old, “But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).