Joshua 3 and 4 - Remember When We Crossed that River?

The Promise to Abraham and the Land of Canaan

Join us at Recast Church in Matalon as Don brings us a sermon series entitled Joshua Land of Promise.

Well, good morning to everybody. How's everybody doing? Good, great. Well, welcome to Recast Church. I'm glad that you're here. I recognize that we've got a couple of visitors with us. A special welcome to you.

And I'm glad that you've taken the time to come and join us here on your Sunday morning. I recognize that you guys are coming from all kinds of weeks, right? All kinds of stuff going on and busyness and all of that.

So it's great for us to take the chance at the end of the week, beginning of another week, to come together and worship God. I want to encourage you to just make yourself comfortable. Feel free at any time during the message to get up and get coffee, get some more donuts, whatever.

But with the intention of trying to keep your focus on God's Word, which is really the point of the next half an hour or so as we move forward. I'm going to jump right in. We're going to be looking at a text this morning that is a very significant point in God's history.

We've got to set the stage a little bit, and I recognize that you haven't been here for the entire sermon series, but the entire book of Joshua serves the purpose of a fulfillment of a prophecy that was made centuries before Joshua was even born.

Centuries before he even came on the scene. Where God took this guy who lived in what's modern-day Iraq. We're talking ancient, ancient history. This guy named Abraham. In the place where Abraham was born, they built statues out of wood and stone and gold and silver, and then they bowed to these statues and they offered worship to statues.

God called this man, audible voice, whether he appeared to him, whatever, Yahweh appeared to him and said, come out from all of that. If you will follow me, if you will follow my instructions and do what I ask of you, then I will be your God and I will make you a great nation.

I will give you a great land, and out of your nation, out of your descendants, will come one who will bless all the world. Who we know to be the Messiah, Jesus Christ himself. So that was a promise that was made.

And we see that a portion of that fulfillment, particularly the land portion of it, the land of Canaan that God promised to Abraham centuries before Joshua was born, is this book of Joshua. That's what we're seeing here is the fulfillment of that prophecy to Abraham.

That's going to be important as we look at the significance of watching people cross a river. That's something that's significant. We cross rivers most days in our car, going to and from work or whatever.

So why is this crossing of a river extremely significant? It's because it's a fulfillment of a promise that we're going to see that ultimately the text today proves that God is faithful to that promise that he made to a man centuries before.

That God is showing himself to be faithful. And we have a ton of ground to cover. So I want you to open your Bibles please to Joshua chapter 3. And we're going to be actually covering two whole chapters today.

But don't worry, we're going to keep it down to about the same amount of time as normal. Joshua 3 through 4, that's page 154 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you, 154. And I'm not going to read the entirety of these two chapters, but I want you to keep your Bible open during this message.

I'm going to be referencing a lot of things. I'm going to be jumping around within these two chapters. So I just want you to see that the flow is there. So I want you to be able to look at that. I am still going to read a pretty large chunk of this, however, on all of chapter 3.

So follow along as I read. You may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before. Then Joshua said to the people, Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

And Joshua said to the priests, Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people. So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people. The Lord said to Joshua, Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

And as for you, command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, when you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan. And Joshua said to the people of Israel, Come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God.

And Joshua said, Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites.

Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan. Now therefore take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, from each tribe a man. And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap.

So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water, now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest, the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan.

And those flowing down towards the sea of Arabah, the salt sea, were completely cut off, and the people passed over opposite Jericho. Now the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan.

We'll go ahead and skip down to verse 8 of chapter 4. And the people of Israel did just as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, just as the Lord told Joshua.

And they carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the priest bearing the ark of the covenant had stood, and they are there to this day.

For the priest bearing the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan until everything was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to tell the people according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. Skip down to verse 19.

The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and they encamped at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones which they took out of the Jordan Joshua set up at Gilgal.

And he said to the people of Israel, When your children ask their fathers in times to come, what do these stones mean? Then you shall let your children know, Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.

For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over. So that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Let's pray.

Father, as we come to this text, it looks like a historical account, looks like a historical event. We can sit here in 2010 and say some people crossed a river. Amazing, awesome, what does this have to do with us?

So Father, I ask that you would make this text come alive to us, that we would understand what a model, what an example the people are here for us, as well as what we ought to know more about you as a result of coming in contact with your word.

Father, I ask that as we think about the preparation, we think about the event itself, and then we think about memorializing events. Father, that we would understand how that applies to us as individuals as well as us as a church.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. There's so many things that are going on in this passage, right? Were you guys able to follow the flow of it? Were you able to kind of figure it out as I was reading?

Was it kind of making sense? You're kind of getting the gist of it a little bit. The centerpiece of the text is a miraculous crossing of the river, the River Jordan. Now we need to remember that telling events that happen simultaneously or writing events that happen simultaneously, we have to use different kinds of words.

And what we see the author doing here is actually kind of a cyclical telling of the story. So if you were to read all straight through 3 to the end of 4, you would see kind of like, I thought they got to the other side, and now they're back in the water again, or back in the middle of the river, and then they're back to the other side, and then we're going to see even later on in chapter 4, he talks about, oh, and by the way, some armed guys went in the lead of this whole thing, and it's kind of like he keeps going and backtracking a little bit.

That's kind of the nature of the way that the story is told. So you have later in verse 4, well, they went across quickly, and the tribes that we talked about in a sermon a couple of weeks ago where, remember, Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh had already inherited land east of the Jordan, and they were told all of their soldiers were to march in front of the people crossing the Jordan River.

They actually do it. They keep their promise. So we see that here in our text. All different kinds of things that are going on. So there can be some confusion about the timing of these events. I've literally had somebody ask me within the last year, how many times did the Israelites cross the Jordan?

Because it appears in the text as though they crossed it two or three times. Like an actual confusion that's there. So that's the nature of the chronology of this text. It can be confusing without understanding that there's a little bit of a cyclical way that it's taught or told.

But what we're going to look at is we're going to look at three basic movements in the text that are pretty clear. The first is before the crossing, that is the preparation for the crossing. Then we're going to be looking at the event itself.

And then we're going to be looking at the remembrance of the crossing, the way that they memorialized it. So starting with the preparation before the crossing. Now there's some significant preparation that the people of Israel undergo in order to get across this river.

The first, and we see it right away in verse 1, is then Joshua arose early in the morning and they set out from Shittim. Shittim is the encampment east of the Jordan River about seven miles. So they had to take a seven-mile journey just to get down to the water's edge.

So we see that the first thing is an actual geographical shift. Now what happens in verse 1, we know began all the way back in Joshua 1 .10, where Joshua told and commanded the officers of the people to go throughout the camp and tell them, three days from now you're going to cross this river.

Start picking up your tents. Start making provisions. Start getting ready because we're going on the move. So do you guys remember that? Back in Joshua, one of the very first commands that Joshua issues to the people is through his officers saying, get ready.

So that's something that was a preparation that's been going on for a couple of days. But the second thing that they do is they consecrate themselves. Look at verse 5. Then Joshua said to the people, consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.

How many of you would guess that probably within the last week you've used the word consecrate? Maybe within the last month? Maybe within the last year? No, I don't think so. Maybe, maybe. The word consecrate is just not a word that we use in English very often, is it?

So maybe a better word for it would be sanctify.

Does that help?

The word sanctify, does that help at all? Let me explain this. The word sanctify, the word consecrate are very related words. They're related to the word holy. We sang the word holy a couple of times.

All of those are interrelated words. Consecrate, sanctify, or to be holy. A theology professor that really brought this down home to where I could understand what these words, what the root of these words are.

He said when he was growing up, his mother liked to sew things and put things together and she had a holy or sanctified set of scissors. Does anybody know what that means now? You're getting the gist of this?

These scissors were for cutting cloth. They were not for cutting fish, fishing line. They were not for cutting paper, construction paper. They were for cutting cloth. They were sanctified. They were consecrated scissors.

Does that make sense? Now do you understand? The words holy, sanctified, consecrated means set apart for a specific reason. And the people here are to consecrate themselves, to set themselves apart for something.

Well, what are they going to be set apart for? They are going to be set apart for seeing the work of God, for encountering the power and the wonder of their God. So they are to be setting themselves aside.

So what we have is 600 ,000 people that are being commanded to reflect on the character of God, to begin a process in their heart of expecting great things from Him. Even some external things happen in consecration.

Here in our text, they're going down to a river. That's helpful in the consecration process because we can see from Old Testament law that there have been cleansing rituals and things like that involved in this concept of consecration, of setting themselves apart.

And as verse 5 indicates, they are not just going to encounter God, but they are going to see Him work a miracle, do something amazing. He's going to do something extraordinary. Can you imagine being in the camp?

Okay, you're going to take this seven-mile trip down to the river, and you've been commanded to consecrate yourself because God's going to do something amazing. Would that be exciting? What's God going to do?

What if we knew definitively, what if you knew in your personal history God was going to do a miracle for you tomorrow? How would the anticipation be? Hi, thank you for answering that. Absolutely. It would be a high level of anticipation.

It would be like, what are you going to do? And imagine that conversation that's going on as they're traveling down to the river and they're consecrating themselves. My question is, what about our consecration?

What about us, Recast? I think it's something that we can tend to be a little bit weak on here, setting ourselves apart. I want us to consider just some thoughts here. Consider how well you prepare for Sunday morning when you come to worship.

How prepared are our hearts to gather together with God's people, to gather together to worship Him, to interact with one another? Is there any preparation that goes on there? Now, we kind of dress a little casual here, right?

Would you agree with that? A little bit casual at Recast. And we do that intentionally. That is literally on purpose. Because we believe that God doesn't look at the outside. Now, there is, I think historically, people have dressed up for church out of a desire for consecration.

But I think things begin to shift to become expectations. And they can tend to cease to become intentional. And the same could be true for us. Here, we could dress casually out of habit and not out of intention to demonstrate that God is available to all people.

Regardless of what you wear.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Is that making sense? So we can fall into the same traps as those who dress up and wear suits on Sunday morning. We have the potential to slide in either direction. And it's trying to stay in balance as much as possible, looking at consecrating our hearts, not just our clothes, not just setting those apart, but setting aside our hearts.

You see, we are casual here because we don't believe that we can grab God's attention anymore by formality.

We allow...

I love that buzz, that talking, that interaction that happens at the beginning of the service. Do you know that in many churches around the world this morning, the standard is that you walk in silently,.

Meditatively.

You sit down in your chair, which is probably the same chair you've sat in for 20 years. You sit in that chair. You quietly meditate. You reflect. There might be a text of Scripture to read on the screen.

And then the music starts, and you go into the service. Very little interaction with other people. And we believe that God is a God of relationship.

Is there room for that?

Am I criticizing the way that other people do? Absolutely not. There's all different kinds of ways and methods of bringing our hearts around to God. But we believe that God is a God of relationship, that he delights when we are interacting with each other.

So there's intentionality in the things that we do regarding consecration. Consecration is not about what we wear, about the external behaviors, about the habits we fall into, again, as much as it's an issue of the heart.

So the question is, do you consciously consider, on Sunday morning, I am going to meet and worship God this morning. I am going to meet together with his people this morning. Consider this. What does your Saturday night look like leading up to Sunday morning?

Does your Saturday night look like Sunday matters? Is that making sense? Does Saturday night to you look like Sunday is an important day or not? But before I go too far down this road of sanctifying Sunday so much, maybe a better habit would be a morning consecration of sorts, where every day we are consecrated.

Every day is sanctified to the Lord. Now there is something special about Sunday, isn't there? Where we gather together with God's people to worship him corporately. Does that negate the fact that we should be worshiping him on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?

By no means. We should be setting aside every day in essence. Now there is nothing magical about early morning. How many of you are early morning risers? How many of you are naturally early morning risers?

Okay, a handful. I saw a lot of hands go down. That would be the same for me. I've learned to get up early in the morning. It would not have been my nature. So there is nothing magical about the early morning.

But I do find that the sooner I get that time alone with God, where I get some time that is quiet. And if you have children, you know that you have to have some time set aside for peace in your day, where there is just some quiet and there is an opportunity for just you to spend time with God.

That time is very valuable to me. I find that what that leads to in my life is a very key word. If you are taking notes, I want you to write this word down. Because I think consecration, holiness being set apart, ties into this word, expectancy.

Do you go and enter tomorrow? Did you enter today with expectancy that God is going to do something? He is going to provide opportunities. He is in charge of your day and you are looking for those chances.

Do you get it?

Are you connecting with God in the morning in such a way that you expect Him to do something? Not expect Him in a sense of He owes it to me. Expecting as in He is going to do these things and I just have to have my eyes open to see what He is going to do.

Expectancy in our days. I could handle a lot more of that to be honest. But I think that you will find that if you enter your days with expectancy, meeting with God, talking with Him, consecrating, setting aside those days each and every day for God, that you are going to find more opportunities to bring honor to Him.

Because your eyes are going to be open to the chances that He is already providing you. The third thing that prepare the people is this idea that they have significant chunks of listening. If you read through this text, I encourage you to read through it again this next week, you are going to see everybody is talking to everybody.

Joshua is listening to God. The officers are listening to Joshua. The priests listen to Joshua. The people are listening to Joshua. Joshua tells the priest to pick up the ark. He says head for the river.

When they arrive at the banks they are to step in. Joshua told the people to consecrate themselves. They have to listen to that. There are all kinds of listening that is going on. God tells Joshua that He is going to be exalted among the people by the end of the day.

The officers told the people to remain about a half a mile off from the ark. You see 2 ,000 cubits in our text. The people are told to hang about a half a mile out from the ark. Is that confusing to anybody why that would be?

I think what is most confusing is the text gives a reason that is very different than our natural thought. Those of you who were raised in the church, what is your first gut level? Why are they supposed to stay half a mile away from the ark?

Because it is holy.

It is different.

It is like the presence of God there. You stay away from it. What does the text tell us is the reason. You can follow it because you do not know the way. You need to follow the ark. That is what the text says.

I think that the picture that you have to have here is that 600 ,000 people, what kind of an angle of perspective do you need to have in order for them to see this water part? If everybody is pressed in, three or four people are going to get the benefit of seeing what happens and everybody is going to be like, hey, the river is dried up.

What happened?

As they walk through. So half a mile out provides that perspective and then they give it a half a mile berth as they walk through the water here in just a little bit or actually the dried up river bed.

So Joshua even gives a more direct injunction to listen in verse 9. Look at chapter 3 verse 9. And Joshua said to the people of Israel, come here and listen to the words of the Lord your God. Come and listen.

We are going to hear that song here in just a little bit as we come to communion. Come and listen. Come to the water's edge and listen to the words of God. So a major part in this process of crossing the river is listening, paying attention to God and his leaders who are passing along God's word to the people.

And all of this has immediate ramifications for our lives. Are we listening? Are we taking it? Are we hearing God's words? This entails reading it, meditating on it. The listening here in our text on the part of Israel makes sense of the events that are unfolding, right?

Otherwise, without any listening, without any hearing, they like step up and they're not going to cross this river because it's raging. It's a torrential flow. It's at flood stage we're going to see here in a minute.

Are they going to attempt a crossing? Not at all. They would never attempt that without hearing God say something to them that provides faith that those priests are going to take the first step into the water.

You see, faith comes by hearing the word of God. If they don't hear God's word, there is no opportunity for an exercise of faith. Picture this, if you will. Imagine that some Israelite back in the crowd is jamming to Tears for Fears on his iPod.

I don't know why he used Tears for Fears, it just seemed funny. He's listening, the instructions are coming out, and he's just rocking out, not hearing a word that the leaders are saying, nothing. First of all, he's probably going to get too close to the ark and get fried to begin with, so he's probably just done.

He hasn't been listening, he hasn't been paying attention. But not only that, if he doesn't happen to get too close to the ark and get fried, he misses the opportunity for faith, right? Because now he hasn't heard what God is going to do.

He hasn't heard the promise, I'm going to part this river for you. So now when he gets there, he's like, dude, the water part is sweet. I wonder if there was a mudslide up the river or whatever. How does he have any framework?

There's no anticipation, there's no expectancy that is there. No room for faith because he hasn't heard the words. So hearing is extremely important. And the truth of the matter is, that can be us. You could come to church, you could join lockstep with those around you, watching them carefully and mimicking their behaviors, learning to pray, learning to speak good Christianese.

How many of you know there's a language out there called Christianese, where Christians learn this language that the rest of the world kind of looks at us and goes, what in the world did that sentence mean?

You know, these and thous and all of that kind of stuff. But you could learn all of that and never really have heard God's word. Words in scripture of imminent instruction to us, words like, you must be born again.

How many of you have heard that word born again before? How many of you have heard it used in a derogatory way before? I know my neighbor behind us, where we lived over in Portage, used to use it in a derogatory way all the time.

It was his pejorative term for Christians in general, them born-agains, he'd say. My sister's one of them born-agains, always trying to get me saved, always trying to get me born again. I was like, sweet, so it's not just up to me.

Born again is the implication that a life change happens inside first. We sang from the inside out, not from the outside in, not that I try to conform on the outside, and then God accepts me. But a change that happens inside.

So it's not just trying to join lockstep with others, trying to do it on our own, but faith is vital to it. Or words like, hearing these words and actually doing something about them. Listen to these words.

It is by grace you are saved through faith. In this not of yourselves, it is a gift from God, not by works so that no one can boast. There's a lot of words in there. I'll summarize it for you. You cannot be saved by doing good works.

You can only be saved by putting your faith and trust in what Christ has done for you. You need to hear these things and act upon them. Without listening, what we have is something less than faith. We have wishful thinking.

We have misguided hope, or maybe even just external conformity to those around us. Faith, hearing God's word, believing it, and acting upon it, is what changes our lives. Does that make sense? Everybody tracking with that?

Everybody getting that?

Okay, perfect.

So we've seen a level of preparation. The people have consecrated themselves. They've listened to God's word, which for them has amounted to listening to his instructions for how to cross this river. And now we come to the main event.

And hopefully we can recognize how central faith had to be in this because the priests are going to pick up the Ark of the Covenant and head into the very turbulent water of the flood stage Jordan River.

And they're going to do so trusting that God is going to work a miracle. If you look at verse 13 of chapter 3, you're going to see the words that elicited faith on the part of the priests. What was it that they were trusting in?

This is what God said. He said, okay, God said it. We're going to believe it. We're going to go ahead and we're going to cross this river. Even though if we just keep going, we're going to drown. So if God doesn't intervene here, we're just going to march right off into oblivion and get swept away in the flood.

But we're going to trust because God said it. So we're going to put our trust in him. And now we come to the actual miracle itself, which if you're taking notes, the actual recording of the crossing is chapter 3, verses 14 through 17, and then chapter 4, 10 through 14, and then on a little bit wraps it up.

But we see that the priests step in with the ark. And here we find out for the first time that the text tells us, I've said it a couple of times, but the text tells us for the very first time, oh, by the way, the river's at flood stage.

Now what you need to understand about the river, the Jordan River, is that it ranges from about 90 to 100 feet across. So it's not a huge river, about 3 to 10 feet deep. But now at flood stage, it would have been significantly more.

But what is most important to understand about the river is that it has, even today, an extremely fast flow to it. It runs down the Rift Valley, all the way down. There's this valley that runs all the way down through Africa, runs right up through the Middle East, and runs right down.

And we know where is the lowest place on the earth?

The Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is the lowest place. And where is the Jordan flowing to?

The Dead Sea.

So it's flowing to the lowest place on the planet. It is flowing at a very stiff, downhill pace. So at flood stage, this would have been impassable, especially for a group of people this large. And as the priests step in with the ark, we find out that 19 miles upstream, the river stops flowing and stands up in a heap.

The priests stop in the middle of the river, and 600 ,000 people cross, giving the ark a half a mile berth. Can you imagine seeing this event? Can you imagine visibly witnessing this occurrence? This would just be amazing.

How many of you just fall down on your knees in worship, watching some amazing display like that? It would be awe-inspiring. We see in chapter 4, verse 10, that the people didn't dilly-dally, but they made haste in the crossing, it says.

And then we also see, as I alluded to earlier, in chapter 4, verses 12 -13, we're seeing some of the details that Reuben Gad and Manasseh went in front of the armies of the people, all arrayed in armor, crossing the river.

And just a quick word about this miracle. Sometimes God uses nature, and the miracle is in the timing. And this could be one of those miracles. Just to give you a genuine historical account, I didn't encounter a single commentary on this passage that didn't bring this up, which everybody thought it was pretty significant.

I think, well, one way or the other. Either the water was up there, and you could just kind of reach in and take a drink, and it was stacked up in a heap, and God worked a miracle, I don't know. But there's also the possibility.

Three times in recorded history, the Jordan has completely stopped flowing for a period of time. Three times in recorded history. Obviously, well, I should say four, because I'm not even counting this one.

So three times in modern history. 1267 A .D., the river was dammed by a mudslide not far from the city of Adam. By the way, I think Adam is a great name for a city. That's the name of my firstborn son.

For ten hours, the water stopped flowing. Now, where does the text tell us that the river stopped flowing? Near Adam, and that's where it happened in 1267 A .D. More recently, it happened in 1906, where a mudslide and a rock slide dammed up the river.

And a final time in 1927, and in 1927, it was 21 hours before the water began to flow again. Plenty of time to get the people across the river, if that was... Now, explaining that naturally, does that imply that a person doesn't believe in the power and authority and awesome ability of God?

Not at all. It is like God to use natural means to accomplish His miracles. But what amazing timing. If you were to go over to chapter 4, verse 18, it says that at the exact moment that the priests step out of the river with the ark, the waters begin to flow again.

So, it's either a miracle of timing, or it's just a stellar reversal of physics. Either way, it's a miracle. You guys agree with me on that? So, every time you hear somebody explain a natural cause for a miracle, don't immediately go, oh, they don't believe in God, or they don't believe in the power of God.

Now, sometimes that is the case. Sometimes people are trying to explain it away and use science or something like that. But not every time. This is still extremely miraculous, either way. There's two key features of this actual event that we've got to focus on.

First is really short and brief. Joshua, his officers, the priests, all the people, apparently nobody was listening to their iPod, like I was suggesting earlier. Everything works out. They obey God. They follow His instructions.