Joshua Series - Part 3

Lesson Transcript

I'm going to be continuing on in our in my Joshua series, and this is the third sermon in that series. And we are finding at this point the children of Israel just camped right opposite of Jericho along the Jordan River on the east side and getting ready to cross over. So that map there helps give you a little bit of context. The Jordan River is an approximately 156-mile-long river in the Middle East that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and onto the Dead Sea.

Because of its great length and central location, the Jordan River is mentioned in the Bible over 185 times. From the first time we have it mentioned in Genesis when Lot chose the area around the Jordan because it was a fertile area, well watered. And we know that whole that that story there where Abraham gave Lot the first choice and Lot chose the area around the Jordan.

To the famous baptism in its muddy waters of a Syrian general, to it being the place where John the Baptist called people to repentance, the Jordan River has been at the center through much of Israel's history. An interesting fact that I just learned is that one of the main sources of this river is Mount Hermon, which reminds us of Psalm 132 where David compares brothers dwelling together in unity to the dew running down from Mount Hermon, which is very likely referring to the Jordan River.

It is here that Joshua, the son of Nun, leaves 40 years of wilderness behind and is exalted by God in the eyes of all the people and his leadership solidified. And it is also here many years later that Jesus, the Son of God, is exalted by his father after his baptism in the same river and then faces his own 40-day struggle of temptation in the wilderness. Typically in the Bible, water represents life. So a river would represent a source of life. But in our story today, the Jordan will represent more than that.

It will represent a major turning point in the history of Israel, freedom from the wilderness and a way to the promised land. But most of all, for Joshua and the people of Israel, it represents the beginning of a new life. So with that introduction, let's get into our story. But first, a little context and background. We're at time-wise the end of the 15th century BCE, or about 1400 years before Christ. Moses is dead, the great leader. Joshua is the new leader of Israel after years of assisting Moses.

And I highlight that because I think it's good for us to understand that Joshua didn't become a leader by accident. He had spent years assisting Moses, serving the people and building his character. And when it was time for Moses to have a successor, Joshua was the man for the job. 40 years after the exodus out of Egypt, the people of Israel are camped on the east side of the Jordan River, poised to enter the land of Canaan, the promised land.

After a successful scouting trip into Jericho, the first city on the other side of the Jordan that the Israelites will encounter, and this was in our our last sermon, the children of Israel have not only made a convert, a prostitute named Rahab, they have also learned that all the people of that land cower in fear because of the Israelites. So there's a lot of confidence here. There's a lot of hope. There's a lot of anticipation that that they're ready.

Not like not like the first time spies went into the land of Canaan and came back with this awful, scary report. And all the people said, "Let's go back to Egypt. We can't do this." Joshua has a group of people who are eager to get into the promised land, eager to claim their inheritance. So let's go ahead and read Joshua chapter three and four. We're going to read two chapters. And hopefully my voice holds out. Joshua chapter three, verse one.

Then Joshua rose early in the morning and departed from Acazia Grove, and he came to the Jordan and lodged there before crossing over. After three days, it came to pass that the scribes went through the camp and commanded the people, saying, "When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord our God and our priests and Levites who carry it, then you shall depart from your places and you shall go after it. But there shall be a distance between you and it.

You shall stand as much as 2000 cubits from it and do not come near it that you may understand the way you are to go, for you have not gone this way before." Joshua then said to the people, "Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, because tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you." Joshua also said to the priest, "Take up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and go before the people." So the priest took up the ark of the covenant of the Lord and went before the people.

Then the Lord said to Joshua, "Today I shall begin to exalt you in the sight of all the children of Israel, so they will know that I shall be with you as I was with Moses." And this verse should ring a bell. If you think about our Sunday school lesson this morning, we might have time to comment on that later.

Therefore now, command the priests who carry the ark of the covenant, saying, "As soon as you enter a part of the water of the Jordan, then you shall stand in the Jordan." Joshua then said to the children of Israel, "Come here and hear the word of the Lord our God. Hereby you shall know that the living God is among you and will utterly destroy before our face the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing the Jordan. Choose for yourselves 12 men from the sons of Israel, one from each tribe.

Then it shall come to pass that when the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth rest in the water of the Jordan, the water of the Jordan will cease to flow, for the upstream water will stand still." So the people left their tents to cross over the Jordan, and the priests carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord before the people.

Now, when the priests who carried the ark of the covenant came to the Jordan and the feet of the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord dipped in part of the water of the Jordan, now the Jordan overflowed all its banks about this time, about the time of wheat harvest. Then the upstream water stopped flowing downstream, and a solid wall of water formed over a very great distance as far as the region of Adam.

The lower part came down to the Sea of Araba, the salt sea, until it came to a complete stop, and the people stood opposite Jericho. So the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all the children of Israel crossed on dry ground until all the people crossed the Jordan. He notes here that this river overflowed its banks at this time.

And from what I could find, when at this time of year, when the when the children of Israel were here ready to cross over, the river had overflowed its banks like normal. And at that point where they were crossing, it would have been about a mile wide. So this isn't just a small little stream that they're crossing. This is a big river that's flowing fast, muddy. If you can just imagine that a mile wide, that's a large distance. Chapter four.

Now, when all the people finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying, "Take men from the people, one from each tribe, and command them, saying, 'Take 12 prepared stones from the midst of the Jordan and carry these together with you. Put them in your encampment where you will set up camp tonight.'" So among the sons of Israel, Joshua called 12 men of high repute, one from each tribe.

He said to them, "Draw near in front of me in the Lord's presence into the midst of the Jordan, and let each take up a stone and carry it on his shoulders according to the number of the 12 tribes of Israel.

So these might be an appointed sign for you continually that when your son asks you tomorrow, saying, 'What are these stones to you?' that you will declare to your son, saying, 'The Jordan River dried up before the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth when it crossed over, and these stones shall be a memorial for you, for the sons of Israel forever.'" So the sons of Israel did as the Lord commanded Joshua, and they took 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan as the Lord directed Joshua.

When the children of Israel had completely crossed over and carried these stones with them into the encampment and set them there, then Joshua also set another 12 stones in the Jordan itself, in the place walked on by the feet of the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord. They are there to this day. The priests who carried the ark of the covenant stood in the Jordan until Joshua had completed all the Lord commanded him to proclaim to the people, and the people hastened and crossed over.

Then it came to pass when all the people finished crossing over that the ark of the covenant of the Lord crossed over and the stones before them. The sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh also crossed over well armed before the sons of Israel as Moses commanded them. 40,000 men armed for war crossed before the Lord for battle against the city of Jericho. On that day, the Lord magnified Joshua before all the nation of Israel, and they feared him as long as he lived, as they did Moses.

Then the Lord spoke to Joshua, saying, "Command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant of the testimony of the Lord to come up from the Jordan." So Joshua commanded the priests, saying, "Go out from the Jordan." Then it came to pass when the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stepped out from the Jordan and set their feet on land. The waters of the Jordan returned to its place and went as before over all its banks.

Now the people went up from the Jordan on the 10th day of the first month, and the children of Israel camped at Gilgal in the region eastward from Jericho.

Then Joshua set up at Gilgal the 12 stones he took from the Jordan, saying, "When your children ask you, 'What are these stones?' then tell your children that Israel crossed the Jordan on dry land, that the Lord our God dried up the water of the Jordan from before them until they all crossed over, as the Lord our God did to the Red Sea, which the Lord our God dried up before us until we crossed over, that all the nations of the land might know the power of the Lord is mighty and that you might worship the Lord your

God in every age." Then it came to pass when the kings of the Amorites on the other side of the Jordan and the kings of the Phoenicians near the sea heard that the Lord God had dried up the Jordan River before the children of Israel when they crossed over.

Their minds fainted. They were panic-stricken, and there was no more sense left in them because of the presence of the children of Israel crossing the Jordan. So here we are finally at the point of going in to take possession of the land of Canaan. And nothing stands in the way of Joshua and the Israelites except this big, old, muddy, flowing river. Like I said, it's a mile wide, flowing fast, and that posed a problem.

The Bible doesn't give us specifics, but it's estimated that there could have been around 2 million people in total who needed to cross that river. We do know that there were 600,000 fighting men, which would have been men between the ages of 20 and 50. So I'll let you do the math. It could have been actually over 2 million people. In other words, Joshua wasn't just trying to get a small group of people across the river. He was trying to get a nation across the river.

This was a nation, a lot of people, and with possessions and whatever else, animals. I don't know what all they had to get into the land of Canaan, but they all had to get in there. Joshua lays out the requirements, or God laid out the requirements to Joshua. The first requirement was, "Follow the ark of the covenant. Don't come near it. Just stay behind it and watch where it goes. Follow it. Keep your eyes on it because you don't know the way." The second requirement was they needed to sanctify themselves.

"Choose from among you 12 men, one from each tribe, and then leave your tents behind." I don't know if that was a requirement. I might have come up with that one. The ark of the covenant. I do not understand everything that's involved around the ark of the covenant, so don't think that I do. But the ark of the covenant stayed in the center of the river until all of the people had crossed over. I think that's very significant.

Whatever this ark all meant for the children of Israel, we know it had a lot of meaning, a lot of significance to it. God's presence was here. Some of the early Christians said that it represents the body of Christ, which was pure within and without, just like the ark was overlaid with gold within and without, pure. This was the center of their worship, the place of the mercy seat. Inside the ark were the golden pot with the manna, and this manna never went stale, never went old.

It was heavenly manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablet of the Ten Commandments, the covenant, which all speak of Christ. And we could definitely take more time to go into that, and I won't. But for sure, you wanted to be where the ark was, whether it was going into battle, whether it was crossing the Jordan here in this case. You wanted to be where the ark was. You wanted to be in the presence of God. Christ and his body need to be at the center of our worship until we are completely delivered.

Just like the ark of the covenant stayed in the center of that river until everyone had crossed over. Does this remind you of communion? I'll let you draw your conclusion on that. Sanctify yourselves was the call to the people before this event. This applies to us very much. Daily self-examination and consecration to God, separating ourselves from sin and sinful desires, self-denial, put off the works of the flesh and put on the armor of God we are called to do. It's not about just putting off and getting rid of.

It's about putting something on. The whole sanctification process is just as much about what we put on as what we take off. Be prepared for action. And Joshua told them, he said, "You need to sanctify yourselves because tomorrow the Lord is going to do wonders. Something great is going to happen. Be prepared." Now, there's probably a whole theology behind this, and I definitely believe that God does a huge part in sanctifying us in our sanctification. But we have a big part to play in this.

And if you look at the verses in Scripture, it's very clear that we have a big part to play in this separating ourselves and just a daily consecration and examining our hearts, our lives.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, "For this is the will of God, your sanctification," and he doesn't stop there, "that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor." And I didn't get it in here, but Romans chapter 1, or Romans chapter 12, the first verse talks about that we need to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. That's sanctification. That's giving ourselves, separating ourselves unto God to be holy.

The other requirement was to choose 12 men from among you to carry out 12 stones, and we're going to come back to this one later. All right, leave your tents behind. So I don't know if this is supposed to have any other significance. It says there in the verse that the people left their tents behind and followed after the ark and went across the river. Maybe that doesn't mean anything other than the fact that the people at the point of crossing over into the promised land didn't need their tents anymore.

And it kind of was a new thought to me when I stopped and thought about it. I was like, "That's true. They were going in to inherit a permanent dwelling. They were going in to inherit their own land. They didn't need these tents anymore. They were probably sick and tired of tents. They were now going to live in permanent dwellings." Tents could represent something temporary that we leave behind. For sure, any accommodation, any tent for me is very temporary. I don't get along with tents very well.

Paul refers to his earthly body as a tent in 2 Corinthians 5, "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation, which is from heaven. If indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked.

For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed that mortality may be swallowed up by life." That's a big thought. But the idea that we do, we will at some point leave our earthly bodies behind. We will leave these tents behind for something so much better, something not made with hands, something that a permanent dwelling that at this point, I don't think we quite understand what that's going to be or look like.

Or we could just, this could represent the thought that we should view our lives here as temporary. The things that we have are temporary, and we look forward to something eternal, something lasting. And then the miracle happened. Joshua and the people followed the requirements. They obeyed everything that God had commanded them. The priests carrying the ark stepped into the river just like they were told to do. And at that instant, the Jordan stopped flowing, and all the people crossed over on dry ground.

That was a miracle. That was a supernatural work of God. So what does this event represent for us? Do we still see miracles like this today? I'm going to argue that yes, we do, maybe even on a daily basis. We definitely had one here a couple Sundays ago when we witnessed a baptism. That was a miracle. Baptism is a miracle in which we do our part, and then God performs a supernatural work. We can't do it without God's help, and God won't do it without our cooperation.

And that's what happened here with the people crossing the Jordan. It's very possible that this mainly represents baptism since this was a generation that hadn't gone through the Red Sea, which also represents baptism when the people came out of Egypt and went through the Red Sea. This generation was another generation. They hadn't gone through that. They hadn't seen that. Possibly a few of them had. But I think that maybe there's a greater truth to be learned here.

And definitely, I would view this as a type of baptism. God changes laws of nature in order to bring about our salvation. Like we've already mentioned, this is conditional. The people, before they went into the Jordan, before the river opened up like that and the water stopped flowing, they had requirements. They had conditions that they had to obey. So this is conditional.

But when you have the creator of the universe with his divine energy and wisdom, and you combine that with our faith and obedience, what follows is supernatural. This was the case under the old covenant, and it is still true today under the new covenant. We still deal with the supernatural. Life is full of dual realities. We have the physical reality and a spiritual reality. We have the physical reality and a spiritual reality, which we can kind of separate, but we kind of can't. They're together.

We have the seen and the unseen. We have a present reality and a future reality. I think that we are confronted with the supernatural way more than we often admit or recognize. And unfortunately, in much of Christianity today, so many parts of our Christian life have been just made into symbolic things that it's just a symbol. Baptism's a symbol. Communion's a symbol. And I've been trying really hard to just get the word symbol out of my language.

There's a reality to all these things, and we're going to talk about that a little bit. There's a supernatural reality that confronts us. We often don't know how to deal with it, so we either explain it away or ignore it. And I think the problem is that our human minds can just barely understand the supernatural, so it's easier to ignore it or come up with our own meanings. So I'm going to stretch your minds a little bit. Let's look at a few examples of the dual realities that we live with on a daily basis.

And I want you to be thinking about how these examples are working for our salvation. It's God in the supernatural working for our salvation through something that we do. Like I said, life is full of dual realities. Ephesians 3:20 says, "Now to him who is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us." What does that mean? What does that mean? The body and the soul, two realities, separate and yet together. Marriage, two and yet one.

I mean, we've all been at weddings, right? And we see two people, and we see them get married, and we still see two people, and we see two personalities, and yet they come together, and God said they become one. We kind of see that, but we don't see that. We still see the two, but God said they become one. There's a supernatural act that happens that we don't necessarily see or understand, but God does it.

Baptism, we already mentioned this, a physical act with physical objects, but the result is a new birth and sins forgiven. We see the water. We see the person go under the water or the water being poured on top of them. We do all that. We see that. And yet, on the other hand, there's another reality. God washes sins away. He creates a new heart. Two realities: communion, bread and wine, and yet the body and blood of Christ. Way more than a symbol. The word of God, written letters and yet living and powerful.

Prayer, words that we speak and yet communication with our Father in heaven. There's something powerful about prayer that I definitely don't at all understand. Fasting, self-denial and yet spiritual gain. Giving, meeting a present need and yet storing up future treasures. Two realities. I wonder how many of us believe that. Jesus said that that's what happens when we give. Head covering, a piece of fabric and yet a sign of authority.

The church, a group of people and yet an embassy of the kingdom of God, the body of Christ. Two realities. In all these examples, we see God uses natural and ordinary objects and our obedience as agents or means to work by supernatural ways in order to bring about our salvation. That's the point I'm trying to get across, that there's just a part of this we can't do. There's a part of this all that we can't do. We couldn't deliver ourselves from sin. We couldn't save ourselves. We can't forgive ourselves of sin.

There's just things that we can't do, but God has asked us to do certain things, and then he does the supernatural and works through those agents, those means. Just like he did here for the children of Israel crossing the river. There was no way they could get across this river. A whole nation crossing a mile-wide muddy river, they couldn't do it. And God does the supernatural, and they walk through it. Maybe this is oversimplified, but to me, it makes sense.

And we don't need to understand the supernatural part, and we probably weren't meant to. But sometimes it's good to just go ahead and obey what we are told to do, even if it doesn't make sense. That's faith. And without faith, it's impossible to please him. All right, let's go on to the 12 memorial stones. 12 men were chosen to carry out 12 memorial stones from the middle of the riverbed. The middle, okay, remember that? They needed to do it from the middle of the river.

He said, "In the midst of the river, carry these out." These stones of remembrance would serve as a permanent national reminder and a memorial to future generations of the miraculous river crossing. And they came out of the middle of the river, just a confirmation that they had walked through this river the whole way. What do these 12 memorial stones represent for us? I'm sure it could be different things. And maybe we could come up with 12 stones, if you will, that we can remember. But here's my thought on it.

Jesus, the new Joshua, and remember, their names are the same. If you were speaking Greek, Jesus and Joshua is the same name. I can't remember how to say it in Greek anymore, but it's all the same. We just happen to have now translations that say Joshua and Jesus, but it's the same name. So if you were living back in the early church, they would have just said Jesus. Jesus, the new Joshua, also chose 12 stones or apostles.

He chose them to represent him and his kingdom, and he entrusted to them his teachings and also gave them authority to baptize the nations and to establish the church. These rocks, these stones have stood the test of time, and we can go back to them again and again in order to connect ourselves with the faith once delivered to the saints through these very men. Jesus knew what he was doing when he chose those 12 stones, those 12 men, those 12 apostles.

He knew that these were men who were going to be faithful, who were going to that he could entrust them with his teaching and entrust them to pass that on to others, to other faithful men. That, to me, is what the 12 stones represent. It tells us that on that day, Joshua was magnified, and the people feared him as long as he lived. And I think this is a testimony to the kind of character and leadership that Joshua displayed up to this point.

I think that Joshua already definitely had large credibility with the people and that his character was probably almost flawless, and he had great leadership abilities. But something about this time, this place, crossing that river, and Joshua leading the people through that, God magnified him. We could say manifested him. He made it obvious who Joshua was and how great of a leader and a person he was. And he was feared. He was respected and honored for the rest of his life.

But if the nation of Israel feared the type, how much more should we fear the one who fulfilled the type, the one who gave himself to deliver us from Satan and the power of sin? Joshua, the son of Nun, eventually died, but Jesus, the Son of God, our risen Lord, lives among us forever.