As Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land, they paused at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal to enact, as commanded by Moses, an interesting object lesson:

When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are to possess, you must pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 11:29 NET).

Mount Gerizim was the location where Abraham camped and built his first altar in Canaan (Genesis 12:6, 7). Jacob settled at Shechem, which was near the two mountains, and dug a well from which Jesus later asked the Samaritan woman for a drink (Genesis 33:18–20; John 4:5–7).

Mount Gerizim was fertile, and Ebal was comparatively barren. Thus, Gerizim represented life and harmony with God, whereas Ebal represented death and disconnection from God.

As they entered the Promised Land, the twelve tribes were divided: six tribes descended from Rachel and Leah gathered before Mount Gerizim, while the remaining tribes—those descended from the handmaidens, along with Leah’s youngest son Zebulun and Reuben, who had defiled his father’s bed—assembled before Mount Ebal.

The priests carrying the ark of the covenant stood between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, while half the tribes stood before each mountain. Joshua then built an altar on Mount Ebal, offered sacrifices to the Lord, and inscribed the law on stones. He afterward read aloud all the words of the law—the blessings and the cursings—as Moses had commanded.

What did all of this represent?

The Object Lesson Explained

Blessings, life, and health come from living in harmony with God’s design laws for life. We cannot experience health while violating the laws of health. Conversely, we cannot avoid healthy results from harmonizing with the laws of health. God’s laws are the laws that the Creator has built reality and life to operate upon. Break them and we naturally injure ourselves, thereby experiencing the curse of sickness, disease, decay, and death. This curse of sickness and death is the one all humanity is suffering under because of Adam’s sin, because Adam broke God’s design law for life and corrupted himself with fear and selfishness. 

Every human being since Adam is born infected with sin, with a spirit of fear and selfishness, and is dead in trespass and sin (Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:1)). We are born with a terminal sin condition that we did not choose and for which we are not guilty, but that condition, without remedy, will still cause us suffering and death. This is like a child born HIV-infected because both parents are HIV positive; the child did nothing wrong but still has a condition that, without remedy, will cause symptoms and death.

We cannot cure, heal, cleanse, or save ourselves because eternal life requires a sinless spirit/life which we do not possess; we cannot do any work that will provide us with a new life, a new sinless spirit of love and trust. We can be saved from the curse of sin only by the sacrifice of Jesus, who took our sin-infected, corrupt, and terminal humanity upon Himself, merged it with His sinless life, and, at the cross, purged the death-causing principle, destroyed the infection of fear and selfishness, and arose in a cleansed and purified humanity to become the second Adam, the new head of humanity.

Jesus became a real human, partaking of the life descended from Adam down the generations through David (Romans 1:3), was really tempted in all ways like us but was without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and chose with human abilities to say no to every temptation, destroyed and purged the infection of fear and selfishness, and arose in a sinless humanity, becoming our Savior (Hebrews 5:8, 9); He then took humanity redeemed, purified, and perfected back to heaven and presented Himself, in His humanity, to His Father as the supreme gift of love. I can hear Him saying to His Father upon His return, “Father, I have finished the work you gave me to do. I have saved humanity. I have brought the one lost sheep home to you!”

Because of Jesus, the species human was put right (justified) with God—and humanity will now live forever. And Jesus now reigns over God’s creation, not only as the Son of God, but as the Son of man!

And through what Jesus accomplished, He made it possible for every other member of the human family, every single human sinner, to receive a new sinless life—His life—through faith, through trust. We can be reborn with a new spirit, a new life, a new animating energy of love and trust (John 3:3), which is the very life of Christ. We can become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) and exchange our natural, fear-driven terminal life of sin for His sinless life of love and trust, and then, like Paul, we can say it is no longer “I that live but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). As Paul also wrote,

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature [fear and selfishness] but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ (Romans 8:9 NIV84).

As Paul told Timothy,

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV).

God did not give us a spirit of fear. No! That came from Adam. That is our natural, carnal, fallen animating motivation. God, through Christ, destroyed that fear-based, me-first life and restored in the human species His Spirit of perfect love and trust, and we can have that life restored in us as our motivation to action when we trust Him and open our hearts to Him. This is being reborn, recreated, renewed. This is dying to self. This is healing of our heart and mind.

We can leave the dead life behind and join Jesus and the living saints (elders on thrones in heaven, see Revelation 4:4) by partaking of Jesus through faith. We can move from our natural terminal, fear-based, sin-sick state of living to a faith-filled, love, truth, and freedom state of living, which is symbolized by moving from Ebal to Gerizim.

But the only way to do this is through trusting in Jesus and partaking of the new life He provides. If we reject Jesus, if we refuse to trust Him, if we turn away from Him, then we reap what our natural state causes: pain, suffering, and death—the curses of sin.

Deuteronomy chapter 28 contains a long list of curses that God will bring upon the people if they break their covenant with Him. However, when people read the Bible through the lie that God’s law functions like human law, imposed rules that are enforced through the infliction of external punishments, then they falsely conclude that God uses His power to inflict those curses.

But when people return to worshiping God as Creator and realize the truth that all God’s laws are design laws, the protocols He built into the operations of reality, and that breaking them severs our connection with God, life, and health, and causes pain, suffering, and death, they then realize that God actually uses power to protect, to heal, to save—and it is only when God stops using power that people begin suffering the curses of sin, which are inevitable without divine intervention. Right in Deuteronomy 28:20, God describes the cause of the curses:

The LORD will send you curses, confusion, and punishment in everything you do. You will be destroyed and suddenly ruined because you did wrong when you left him (NCV, emphasis mine).

The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him (NIV84, emphasis mine).

The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me (NKJV, emphasis mine).

The LORD will send against you curses, confusion, and rebuke in everything you do until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the wickedness of your actions in abandoning Me (HCSB, emphasis mine).

Our natural state inherited from Adam is terminal in sin, or as the Bible says, “dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1 NIV84). Again, we are like the baby born HIV-infected—without healing, there is only sickness, suffering, and death. We can receive blessings, health, and life only by partaking of the free remedy procured by Jesus. If we reject that remedy, if we abandon, forsake, turn away from God, then the natural result is to reap the curse of sin. As Paul wrote,

The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction (Galatians 6:8 NIV84).

Or as James wrote,

Sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death (James 1:15 NKJV).

Jesus proved this in His sacrificial, substitutionary death. Note what He experienced when He became sin for us even though He knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), and, thereby, took the curse of sin upon Himself:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Galatians 3:13 NIV84).

What did the Father actually do to His Son at the cross? He abandoned Him, let Him go, pulled back His divine power that had been protecting Jesus throughout His earthly life. The Father did not inflict injury, pain, or death upon Jesus, but as Jesus Himself testified:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46 NIV84).

If we do not trust Jesus and partake of the remedy He freely provides to us, then the only possible outcome is to reap the curses that sin brings. The only way to get from Ebal (curses) to Gerizim (blessings) is by partaking of Jesus, which is symbolized by the ark of the covenant. The gospel covenant must be experienced by the sinner. The sinner must be restored to unity, at-one-ment, with God. And this is possible only by partaking of Christ and being reborn.

Again, this was all symbolized by the ark of the covenant.

The Ark and Jesus

Remember that three objects were placed inside the ark: manna, the Ten Commandments, and Aaron’s rod that budded—in that order. And this represents the covenant and how we participate in it.

The manna represents the bread that came down from heaven, the living Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14); He told us that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood if we are to be saved (John 6:53). Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). In order for us to leave the barren wasteland of Ebal—this world of sin—we must first partake of the truth embodied, revealed, and fulfilled in Jesus. This truth destroys the lies and wins us to trust.

Then, as we choose to trust and open our hearts to God, the Holy Spirit enters our hearts and we receive a new life, the life of Christ, which is the fulfillment of God’s living law, symbolized by the placing of the Ten Commandments into the ark. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law (Matthew 5:17). We have the law written upon our hearts and minds when we receive this new life (life of Christ) through faith (Hebrews 8:10). This is also symbolically taught in the communion service by the partaking of the wine. The bread in the communion service represents the truth, just as the manna does, while the wine represents the blood of Christ, which represents His sinless life. As Leviticus tells us, the life is in the blood (17:11).

Thus, in theater and in symbol, we are taught the way we move from death (Ebal) to life (Gerizim), in reality, in fact, is by receiving the life of Christ via the indwelling Holy Spirit.

And then, we who were dead in trespass and sin are reborn with a new life, and from that new life (Christ living in us), we bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness, the fruits of a righteous character. And this is symbolized by Aaron’s dead rod that came to life, budded, and produced fruit.

The events recorded in Joshua as the children of Israel entered Canaan are not only historical, they are also theater, object lessons, acted-out drama depicting the reality of what God has done through Jesus to redeem humanity from sin and how we can participate through faith in the free gift of salvation.

God is calling each of us to internalize the truth, to open our hearts in trust, to receive through faith the indwelling Holy Spirit, and to be reborn with the life of Christ, as Paul wrote:

Anyone who is joined to Christ is a new being; the old is gone, the new has come. All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends and gave us the task of making others his friends also. Our message is that God was in Christ making the whole human race his friends. God did not keep an account of their sins, and he has given us the message which tells how he makes them his friends. Here we are, then, speaking for Christ, as though God himself were making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf: let God change you from enemies into his friends! (2 Corinthians 5:17–20 GNT).