Joshua 8
Crossing the
Since tonight we begin a new section in Joshua I would like to review
the passages we have done; I would like to bring you up to date on how we have
been moving through this book. Joshua
sets out with the first nine verses of the book dedicated to the commission
that God has given to Joshua. This forms
the basis of the entire book. Joshua has
a verbal commission from God, and therefore Joshua will be held responsible for
carrying out and fulfilling this commission in detail.
The second section or the first major section of the book goes from
And in this case we have these ten days.
The first day is arbitrary because we don’t know whether that commission
was a week, one day before, or some time but I just arbitrarily let it be the
first day. Days 2, 3, 4 and 5 we dealt
with in chapter 2. Tonight we come to
chapter 3 and we are on the 6th day and the 7th, 8th,
9th and 10th. So
all of this starts, and we pick up and go back to
So there’s a good tight logical order to this; it has been rearranged in
this book and I will show you in chapter 3 and 4, we come to another time when
the author or authors of this book have rearranged their material to bring out
a spiritual principle. This is a
peculiarity of Old Testament history writing.
Old Testament historians write topically, not necessarily
chronologically. They don’t just
categorize events one after another.
They’ll go for a while and then they’ll hop back and pull up another
topic, etc. In chapters 3 and 4 which
form the next unit, from 3:1 to 5:1 we have the next block under this large
section of the book of Joshua. This
block deals with a whole incident, just as chapter 2 dealt with a whole
incident.
Now in this block the author or authors have used a very interesting
literary device. In the first 6 verses,
that’s introductory material, beginning in 3:7 and running through the end of
chapter 3, through
Notice how it begins, 3:7, “And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day will
I begin to magnify thee,” etc. verse 8 is also the Lord saying, but then in
verse 9, “And Joshua said” unto the children of
The same cycle starts in 4:1, “And it came to pass, when all the people
were completely passed over the Jordan, that the LORD spoke unto Joshua,
saying,” “Take you…,” verse 2, “Command them” verse 3. So for the first four verses we have God
doing the speaking. Verse 4, “Joshua
called,” verse 5, “Joshua said unto them,” etc.
So verses 4-7 we have Joshua passing on God’s message to the
people. Then verses 8-14 we have the
fulfillment of this thing, that’s the end of it; that’s the fulfillment of what
God told Joshua to do.
Now the same cycle starts in
So you see again and again in this book you have the author, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit giving us the way Joshua obeyed and carried out
the challenge of 1:9. Remember the
commission that God had given them? “Let
not this word leave your mouth,” or your heart.
In other words there’s a strong, strong emphasis in this book on Joshua
fulfilling what is known in the Bible as the role of a prophet, God’s
spokesman. He doesn’t originate the
message; the message comes by verbal revelation. The prophet passes it on and
God’s prophesy is actually fulfilled in history. This cycle is repeated three times.
But there’s more to this three part cycle than just the fact that he
wants to stress Joshua in the role of a prophet. The main thing that he wants to stress is
that each one of these cycles is directed toward a particular group of
people. The first cycle, 3:7-14 is
directed toward the present generation, the generation that was present at the
crossing of
In 4:1-14 we have something else.
Here we have the revelation to the future generations. The previous cycle dealt with revealing God
and proving his activity in history to that present generation; in 4:1-14 we
now have it passed on from father to son, down into the stream of history. So in 4:6 for example, “That this may be a
sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come,
saying, What mean ye by these stones? [7] Then you shall answer them, That the
waters of the
In 5:15 and following, the third cycle, we again have revelation but
this time it’s not directed toward the present generation or the future
generation, this time the revelation is directed toward the Gentiles of the
land, for in verse 24 we read, “That all the people of the earth might know the
hand of the LORD, that it is mighty, that ye might fear the LORD your God
forever.” And then 5:1 should be in
chapter 4, why on earth they made the chapter division here I do not know. Chapter divisions are not inspired and this
is evidence of it right here, they split up a beautiful thought. Verse 24 leaves you hanging, and 5:1 shows you,
“And it came to pass,” fulfilling verse 24.
So you see that each one of these cycles has an objective in mind, that
God has revealed Himself to the present generation, to the future generation
and to the Canaanites, to the Gentiles of the land. So you might say that already in chapters 3-4
you’ve got the big picture if you’ve got this; namely, this is revelational;
this is an act of God in history, it is to serve as evidence for faith. These
people are going to have to trust the Lord under many adverse circumstances but
the basis of their faith will be these evidences. God is giving evidences and this is one theme
that runs through it all. So let’s go
back to chapter 3 and deal with the introductory material of verses 1-6 and
then from verses 7-14 we’ll deal with this first cycle.
First the introductory material, verses 1-6. “And Joshua rose early in the morning; and
they removed from Shittim, and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of
Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.” Now “rose up early” means the 6th
day, going back to our chart, it means day number 6. The spies have come back, the spy operation
is over, they report back to Joshua.
What do they report back? 2:24 is what they report back, “the Lord has
delivered into our hands.” This is the
past tense in the Hebrew, it is completed action. And even though this is not actually
historically completed action, in the mind of God it is completed action. And these people have already received
empirical evidence that this is from who?
From the lone saved prostitute, by herself coming to a knowledge of Jesus
Christ in the city of Jericho, this woman has done nothing to act as a traitor
to her city.
This is interesting because liberals love to get in Joshua 2 and say
aha, this is just another one of these myths we have in the ancient world about
a prostitute betraying her city. This
isn’t Rahab betraying her city; she hasn’t done a thing to betray her city, all
she has done is give evidence to the spies that God has already captured the
city, by the evidence of the fact that the people are disheartened. So Rahab has done nothing directly at all to
betray her city; all she has done is bear testimony to the testimony of God’s
Word. That’s all this woman has done. And this is the report the spies bring back.
Again please notice, Joshua has received divine guidance in
generalities. He has been told to go
into the land; that’s verses 1-9, but please notice human responsibility. Joshua doesn’t sit back and say well God’s
going to do it all. Joshua undertakes to
fulfill his role in the bargain and that is that he is considered a responsible
creature before God with a brain, and therefore he is to use his brain and he
is to investigate and discover data upon which he can make an intelligent
choice. Application to us as Christians:
God tells us in generalities to do certain things but we must explore all the
areas with out minds and find out and come up with a plan that will fit the
generality that He has given us. This
does not excuse us from using our brains; divine guidance is not an excuse for
not thinking. So this is a classic
example of that.
Now in chapter 3:1 where it says “and they removed,” or they broke camp
and they moved down to the banks of the Jordan, this is a six or seven mile
jaunt. Moses was the one that got them
to Shittim; this is significant because this is the first physical movement of
the nation under Joshua’s command.
Joshua hasn’t given any command until this point. Moses has brought them to Shittim and left
them; and this is the first time you actually see Joshua moving the people.
Now remember that in 1:10, “Then Joshua commanded the officers of the
people,” now during this time… this is why on this chart I have chapter 1:10
down to the end of the chapter in this same three day interval that chapter 3
is because in 1:10-11 you remember “Joshua commanded the officers of the
people, saying, [11] Pass through the host and command the people, saying,
Prepare food supplies; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan,”
now his point is, several things, first they are going to have to wait and they
are going to have to look at that Jordan River for three days. They’re going to get into position, they’re
going to gather their food, and then they’re going to sit down and look at the
river.
Now this is the first incident that you have of a trend in this whole 3rd
and 4th chapter. And I want
you to notice this very carefully. When
God pulls something off in history He demands that people pay attention. And so you find in 3:2, “…after three days”
they are told to do something. But for
three days they are asked to sit down and look, just wait. Now what are they looking at? They are looking at the Jordan River in
flood. Look at 3:15, it’s specifically
noted that this is the spring time, you have the winter rain runoff, and the
Jordan River at this time you can’t wade across it. The only way you can get
across the Jordan River when it’s flooding is to swim and that takes a lot of
strength because there are a lot of rapids in it, etc. So it’s not an easy method. The spies probably swam across but you’re not
going to have women, children and dogs and everybody else in this menagerie
swimming across the Jordan River when it’s overflowing. It’s impossible. So they can’t do it this way; no human way of
doing it.
But in their area of human responsibility they do one thing and that is
they gather their food together and they get in traveling shape. But that’s all they can do. And I hit this again, the balance between
letting God do what He can do and us fulfilling our area of
responsibility. These people for three
days sat and looked, and they could have panicked; they could have looked at
this obstacle to their lives and said this obstacle is too great for the Lord;
I don’t believe the Lord is going to do this, I don’t believe that God is going
to provide a way through this problem. So to impress upon the people’s minds
that this was a grave problem, God put it in front of their face in three
days.
Now this is akin to a principle that God often uses in our Christian
life, namely before He solves a problem on our behalf He holds it in front of
our face to make sure we understand and appreciate the problem, because if He
prematurely solved the problem then we wouldn’t have the respect for His
solution. So He lets us sit with it for
a while, maybe even lets us try our own solutions out until we exhaust them;
until we realize that there is no human solution to this particular
problem. And until we realize that God
isn’t going to do anything. So He’ll just sit and wait and everybody sits and
waits and people fuss and scream and yell because they haven’t got a solution
to their problem. Well God just wants
you to see that your problem is a problem and it’s a tremendous problem, bigger
than anything you can ever face, anything that you can ever solve on your own
energy, so therefore we sit and we wait. [3:1, “And Joshua rose early in the
morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to the Jordan, he and all the
children of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over.”]
This is what the people did in chapter 3; they waited, so that when God
pulled it off it would be clear what God was doing. Then in 3:2 we read that the officers, the
same shoterim mentioned in chapter
1:10, moved through the camp and told them to do something. [“And it came to
pass after three days, that the officers went through the host. [3] And they
commanded the people saying, When…”] Now
verses 3-4 is a long extended order. The
order begins with the word “when.”
“When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the
priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go
after it. [4] Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand
cubits by measure; come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye
must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.”
I’m going to run a little experiment. We’re going to read responsively
chapter 3 beginning at verse 3 and I want to emphasize something to you. What
is the central point of this chapter? So
therefore I’m going to ask Dean, as the congregation reads responsively I want
him to count the number of times that the Ark of the Covenant is either
directly mentioned or indirectly mentioned; it’s very obvious when it refers to
it. I want you to count the number of
times in this chapter you see it.
Verse 3, “And they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of
the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests, the Levites bearing it,
then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it. [4] Yet there shall be a
space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure; come not near
unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed
this way heretofore. [5] And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves;
for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you. [6] And Joshua spoke unto the
priests, saying, Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over the
people. And they took up the ark of the
covenant, and went before the people. [7] And the LORD said unto Joshua, This
day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know
that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. [8] And thou shalt command
the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, saying, When ye are come to the brink
of the water of the Jordan, ye shall stand still in the Jordan. [9] And Joshua
said unto the children of Israel, Come here, and hear the words of the LORD
your God. [10] And Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know that the living God is
among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the
Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Hivites, and the Perizzites, and the
Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites. [11] Behold, the ark of the
covenant of the Lord of all the earth passes over before you into the
Jordan. [12] “Now, therefore, take you
twelve men out of the tribes of Israel, out of every tribe a man.”
[13] “And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the
priests who bear the ark of the LORD, in the Lord of all the earth, shall rest
in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off
from the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand in one heap.
[14] And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents to pass over
the Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people,
[15] And, as they that bear the ark were come unto the Jordan and the feet of
the priests who bore the ark were dipped in the brim of the water (for the
Jordan overflowed all its banks all the time of harvest), [16] That the waters
which came down from above stood and rose up in one heap very far from the city
Adam, that is beside Zarethan; and those that came down toward the sea oaf the
Arabah, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people passed over
right against Jericho. [17] And the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of
the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all the
Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed
completely over the Jordan.”
How many times did you get Dean? [Reply: I got ten times, can’t hear
rest] So we have at least ten times that
it at least is explicitly mentioned plus the implications. So you can get the obvious point out of 17
verses the ark is mentioned ten times. I
did this because in the flow of the narrative all our eyes are on the water
instead of on the ark but actually the whole point is the ark. What was the ark doing? Let’s go back to verse 3 and we’ll see the
order that was given to the people.
“When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God,” and this
next thing should actually be in parenthesis, “(and the priests, the Levites
bearing it), then you shall remove from your place, and go after it. [4] And
there shall yet be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits,”
that’s about a thousand yards, “by measure; come not near unto it, that ye may
know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.”
That was the order that was given and there are some significant things
about it. First of all, the ark itself;
the ark is a picture of Jesus Christ.
The ark inside has a testimony, the tablets of testimony. So inside you have the Law, it fulfilled
absolute righteousness. The ark was made
of wood which speaks of humanity. It was
overlaid of gold which speaks of deity; always has, throughout the entire
Scriptural history. You have the mercy
seat on the top and you have the cherubim looking down on this mercy seat. And you have the people, the high priests
putting the blood down on the mercy seat with these cherubs, whatever they
looked like, looking down. The cherubs
are the angels in God’s presence, special angels, there are only four in the
universe that bear this designation. And
they look down and they signify God’s satisfaction with the sacrifice.
Now the ark, therefore, was considered to be the dwelling place of
God. It took place of the incarnate
Jesus Christ in the Old Testament so that the ark itself then becomes a picture
of Jesus Christ. Notice and get the
picture what happens here. Here you have
Jordan is flooding from north to south.
You have a flood of water. The
ark goes first. There’s a parallel
between what’s going to happen in this chapter and what happened at the Red Sea
incident, but there you will remember God went forward and with a natural east
wind, the pillar of fire, etc., none of that here. There’s no natural forces used in this
miracle; it is a so-called direct miracle.
And the ark moved forward. Notice
that they took special precaution, as you will see again and again in this
chapter, to make sure that the miraculous stands out clearly. You can’t miss it; you may be a slow reader
or a fast reader or a sloppy reader but you can’t miss the miraculous element
of this chapter.
I point this out to you because a principle that we find again and again
in God’s Word is the fact that the Jewish people are skeptics and they take
special precautions to detect a miracle when it occurs. And here is one of them. The ark moved ahead one thousand yards, ahead
of the people into the river, so that nobody can say well, it was somehow the
people did it. Nobody did it, the ark
did it. And as the ark moved in the priests, the very sole of their feet
touches the water, boom, the water’s part.
So you have a precisely timed miracle.
This is not some sort of a slop operation where it just kind of
statistically washes out. This is an
exact timing. As the soles of the feet
of the priests go into the water, the water splits, and there’s nobody near
them, within a thousand yards, so nobody can say that somebody pulled something
off or they dug a drainage ditch, etc.
The people are removed a thousand yards in back so nobody is near this
thing except the ark and the priests; everyone’s eyes on it. Apparently this thousand yard was a thousand
yard perimeter, so that the ark would move into a position halfway through and
then there would be a thousand yard perimeter drawn around it so that the
people that would pass downstream from this, or conceivably could pass upstream
from the ark, but they were not to go within a thousand yards of this ark.
There are some principles in this: one thing is that this ark is going
to depict God’s grace. Remember the ark
pictures Jesus Christ. Waters throughout
Scripture picture judgment. And in this
historical physical event you have mirrored for you the work of Jesus Christ on
the cross. Jesus Christ steps into the
waters of judgment for you and the waters of judgment are stopped. In other words, when Jesus Christ died on the
cross, God’s judgment came down on the cross; the fact that Jesus Christ went
to the cross means that He was the lightning rod; He took the judgment in your
place. He stopped the judgment from
getting to you. Jesus Christ stands
between God’s holiness and you personally.
It’s the same thing with the ark, these people moved across and what
stopped the waters which symbolized judgment was the ark and nothing else. It was God’s work; it was grace all the way. It was God’s work, they didn’t do
anything. The people only walked
across. God had removed all the
obstacles, God had done all the work, it was wholly of Him. It was God’s work! So please remember this analogy as it
portrays over to the cross. Jesus Christ
stands between you and God’s wrath.
The second thing to notice about it is human responsibility. It would do the people no good unless they
themselves put left right, left right, left right, left right and walked
across. So there’s your human
responsibility; they had to walk across but they walked across under the shadow
of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
And so this ark had stopped the waters of judgment and all the people
had to do was walk across; nothing meritorious about it, they had fat people
and thin people, they had well-educated people and idiots; they had men and
women, etc. and they went on across the Jordan River. There was no merit because somebody else
walked across, etc. they had babies, babies were carried across, there was
absolutely no work of merit involved in this; they exercised simple human
responsibility and it was left right, left right, left right all across and
nobody could say I walked better than you did and therefore I didn’t get my
feet wet. Nobody could make that remark
because Jesus Christ in the ark stopped the water. So who stopped the judgment? It was God.
Here you have the work of grace, walking across you have human
responsibility. So with the cross, Jesus Christ has taken the rap for you but
you have to come and walk underneath the shadow of the cross by faith.
So in verse 4, when we read, “there shall be a space between you of one
thousand yards by exact measure,” we don’t know how this happened, conceivably
the priests actually measured this out, whether it was paced off or something,
they established a thousand yard perimeter and they were under strict orders
not to break into this perimeter, “that ye may know the say by which ye must
go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.” Your eyes should be alert to the end of verse
4, and you should look at that as mature believers and say there’s something
wrong, something unusual about that last phrase. Certainly they know how to cross the river,
why do they need to be separated from the ark by a thousand yards and how are
they going to cross this river. What’s
so difficult about crossing a stream, particularly when the waters are cut
off? What’s the problem? And there’s no reason why people have to stay
a thousand yards away from an ark to find their ay across the river. They certainly don’t need to find their
footing because it’s all dry.
So what do they do? What is the
problem? The problem is “that ye may
know the way by which you must go” does not refer to the physical crossing of
the Jordan. It refers to the quality of
crossing, i.e. it is a miraculous way and if they are to conquer the land from
no on they must be trained to have their eyes on the finished work of Jesus
Christ. And therefore as an object
lesson to dramatize it Joshua… actually the Lord through Joshua, has them keep
this thousand yard perimeter, so they have to negotiate this thing. They walk across and they are constantly
looking at the ark, constantly looking at the ark, and way, way away, about
13-15 miles upstream these waters have stopped in a heap and this has been
relayed down by messengers; they had some sort of a messenger system that they
were able to time the stopping of this water, and we’ll see later on how they
exactly timed it, apparently by runners, but they time the way these waters
stopped 13-15 miles upstream.
So the water stopped; they walk across. And we have here a
training. Notice the verb “to know” in
verse 4, please notice this verb. It’s
repeated again and again in this context; know, k-n-o-w! The objective is that the believer might
KNOW. Know what? How you have to walk, you have to walk by
grace, and this is the principle they are learning the grace principle, that
you have to walk and the obstacles that you can’t penetrate in the energy of
the flesh, and yet those obstacles which God places in your path and demands
you walk through them have to be removed by His grace. And you have to sit there, maybe it’s three
days, four days, five days, maybe it’s year or two years but if this is the
kind of problem that can’t be solved in any other way except by God’s grace and
He hasn’t given you any other directive except that He promises to solve the
problem, then you have to sit there and wait it out. And when He solves the problem then you walk;
that’s the way you must go, a supernatural mode of walk, you must walk by faith
utilizing the grace principle.
Now in verses 5-6 we have two more items to mention. In verse 5 we have this peculiar phrase that
occurs again and again in the Old Testament.
“And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves; for tomorrow the
Lord will do wonders among you.” The
word “sanctify” means to set apart and the principle of verse 5 is that since
God is going to do a work, and since this work depends upon the people actually
observing this thing happen, it requires some physical and mental preparation.
Get a good night’s sleep, wash your clothes and so on, and begin to saturate
your mind with Scripture. Sanctification
involves all of those in the Old Testament. The principle is that when God does
a work, He wants the undivided attention of His people. Now I want to contrast this with the tendency
in our own culture. The tendency I see
coming even into Christian circles, unfortunately, is this: that we worship God
by letting go and blurring out reality in some way either through music and we
have people that think they are worshipping God by sitting there and listening
to all this crazy music and what it’s doing it’s just bombing their mentality
to pieces, besides their eardrums. If
you have listened to this music it’ll just ruin your eardrums. The point is that in God’s Word worship
depends upon alertness, not using drugs, music or something else to wipe out
reality.
Hold the place and go to Eph. 5; this is the exact opposite, the exact
opposite of our generation, and Christians who flirt with drugs, who flirt with
music, Christians who flirt with any system that is designed to destroy their
mental alertness are blaspheming against God.
In 5:15-18 is the filling of the Spirit passage and I want you to notice
the contrast. Paul says “look carefully,
see that you walk not as fools but as wise.”
Don’t walk like zombies floating through. Now this has the reputation in some Christian
circles that you’re hyper-spiritual if you float and the more impermeable you
can be to people’s feeling and the more insensitive you can be to problems that
other bear, etc., the more spiritual you are.
And if you can kind of walk through life with kind of a chip on your
shoulder and not let people’s problems bother you, this is spirituality:
insensitivity.
Notice verse 16, “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. [18]
Wherefore, be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord
is.” And then after all that it says
“don’t be drunk with wine,” and in our generation we could say don’t take the
drugs, “but be filled with the Spirit.
In other words, you don’t have to take these things to get real, you are
filled with the Spirit and that’s what gives you the reality. The filling of the Spirit is not some
hyper-emotional thing where you froth at the mouth and go through all this
ecstatics. I played a tape where a boy
was on drugs; I asked him if he had been to one of these so-called tongues
services, and I asked him, did you notice anything significant between the
tongues service and your experience hanging out with your freak friends with
acid and the rest of it. And he said no,
not really… not really. And he’s
perfectly right. What is the difference, because in both cases you have the
complete destruction of the mentality so that people are unable to concentrate
and in order to live the Christian life you have to concentrate. Anything that destroys the capacity of concentration
is satanic.
Back to Joshua; in chapter 3 this “sanctify yourself” means God is going
to do a work, be alert so you can take it in.
This is exactly opposite to the way the skeptics view this thing. They think oh, these naïve idiots, back in
the ancient Near East those poor people, slobs, didn’t know anything about it
and they thought something over there move in the water and they came up with
this big story about Joshua. If you look
at the record you see it’s exactly opposite.
Joshua has to get the people to stop, wait three days, look at the whole
river, check it out, make sure it’s flooding, be sure it’s real, it’s not a
mirage you’re facing it’s a real thing.
And then after you’ve looked at the problem for three days, then spend
twenty-four hours to prepare yourself to observe. That’s all, preparing yourself to
observe. So when this miracle comes off
people are alert mentally and they’re going to report some exciting things.
So the first cycle, verses 7-17, a revelation to the present generation
of Israel. Now there’s something to
notice about this, and that is, how do you suppose the Lord spoke to
Joshua. Joshua did not receive the
direct word from God like Moses did. He
had to go through a man by the name Eleazar, explained for us in Numbers 27, he
was the high priest. And throughout this
book you have the teamwork of Eleazar and Joshua. Please don’t push down the high priest’s work
here. Keep Eleazar and Joshua on an
equal plain, they’re both teamwork: one is a prophet and the other is a priest,
and these two jobs cannot be confused, never are confused. What does the priest do? Definition: the priest comes to God on behalf
of men. The priest is the one who goes
to God on behalf of men; he comes from men to God. You are acting as a priest when you come
before the throne of grace in prayer.
You acting in a priestly function because as a priest you come from this
human situation to the throne of God in prayer, you address the throne. And you come there with your hands clean if
you have used 1 John 1:9. You can come
to the throne with your clothes clean and your hands clean by grace.
Now, the prophet is reverse; the prophet doesn’t come from men to God. The prophet goes from God to men and so the
function of the prophet is to meet with God, get His message and bring it to
men. So you have these two men act as a
team. They replace two men under Moses
generation. Who was the high priest
under Moses? Aaron. So you have always this parallel. So just because the book is called Joshua,
don’t forget that Joshua is only half the team.
The other half is Eleazar, and when Eleazar walks into God’s presence at
the ark, evidently he received verbal communication in this way.
Verses 7-8 is the first part of God’s orders that the author of this
portion of Scripture wants before our minds.
Remember verses 7-8 should be connected logically with 4:1-3 and
4:14. So all this should hang together
as one set of orders, but verses 7-8 is the first part. “And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day will
I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel; that they may know that, as
I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
[8] And thou shalt command the priests who bear the ark of the
covenant,” etc. telling Joshua what to do.
Notice please the word “I will begin.”
In the Hebrew there’s a strong contrast between verses 7 and 8. Verse 7 is “I”, I will do this, I will do
this, I will do this, verse 7 is all the work that God will do. Verse 8 is reversed, for when you get to the
first part of verse 8 reads like this in the Hebrew: “And you, you shall
command,” in other words, “you” is repeated twice; it’s a syntactical break in
the Hebrew, it means the person turns around.
You have this when somebody would address somebody over here and they
would turn around and start addressing somebody over there. So God is saying look, I’m going to do this,
I’m going to do all this, but what I want you to do is this. So again we have God’s sovereign grace and
human responsibility together, perfectly balanced.
In verse 7 what is it that God is going to do? He’s going to begin to do things, which
implies a whole series of acts in a continuity.
Notice the familiar verb that occurs again in verse 7, k-n-o-w,
know. “I will begin to magnify you in
the sight of all Israel, that they may know,” in other words, there’s going to
be an empirical demonstration to this whole present generation so their faith
will not be hanging in thin air. They
are going to have empirical demonstration to under gird their faith. God never asks believers to believe into
nothing; He always gives evidence.
To see why this was necessary, turn to 1:17, remember when the people
agreed to follow Joshua they said, “According as we hearkened unto Moses in all
things, so will we hearken unto thee; only the LORD thy God be with thee, as he
was with Moses.” In other words you get
the idea, boy Joshua, we’re really for you, but we hope that God’s going to be
with you like He was with Moses. Now God
fulfills the need of those believers to have evidence, real empirical evidence
before their eyes that He is with them.
So this is why you have 3:7-8, I’m going to do this and I’m going to
magnify you Joshua, that they will have their faith in facts, not in fantasy. What is the nature of the proof? How is it that God is going to magnify
Joshua so that that present generation will know that He is there?
There are two steps in God’s proof.
The first step is as always verbal revelation. God is going to predict an exact kind of
event at a certain point in space at a certain time. Details, He’s going to give a detailed
prediction of something He is going to do.
He is going to pass the word to Joshua, filter it through, chain of
command: God, Joshua, people. So the
people do not get a direct link with God, they have to go through Joshua, he’s
the prophet. So Joshua gives them a
prediction. So we have the prediction.
The second thing in the proof is that the prediction comes off exactly
as predicted, in a way in which all nature is disrupted. So therefore we find the two steps in this
evidence to the people. How is this an
evidence? This is evidence in a negative
way. You remember the true test of the
Bible, Deut. 13 & 18. Deut. 18 says
if a prophet speaks something and it does not come to pass then he is a false
prophet. So therefore you have the
prediction and the fulfillment and this sets up data which human viewpoint
cannot refute. In other words, on the
basis of sheer chance there’s no possibility of explaining this away. It’s like the illustration about the
mathematician who took eight prophesies concerning the coming of Messiah and he
figured out the mathematical probabilities of these eight prophesies coming
true. I forget the exact hype but the
story goes that if you had enough silver dollars to cover all the land of the
state of Texas up to a height of 30 feet, and you marked one of those silver
dollars with a little mark and you put it in the pile and you asked someone to
walk on top of this 30 foot high pile of silver dollars, all the way from the
panhandle to Houston, and pick out the dollar that has the mark on it. The probability of him picking the correct
silver dollar would be equal to the probability of Jesus Christ chance
fulfilling those eight prophesies concerning Himself.
So every time you have these kinds of evidences in God’s Word it
shatters and chips away a skeptic’s position because every time he sees this
material he is forced back two more steps.
He’s constantly is forced backwards and backwards. I remember my professor in Old Testament, Dr.
Waltke, who spoke of an incident that happened at Harvard, when he went to the
study of Mediterranean studies at Harvard a professor and a group of students
were discussing and analyzing the problem of Elijah, and they got up through
all the [can’t hear word] of Elijah and how he had to sacrifice and all the
rest of the argument that went with the prophet of Baal and then after the
whole hour seminar was finished, one of the men got up and said, You know men,
we can explain everything about this but I wonder how Elijah ever pulled it
off? In other words, when you get down
to the data the non-Christian is hurting for an explanation of this kind of
thing and he tries to explain it away by saying the people were mistaken. But I think if you just look at the way these
narratives are constructed you will see the Hebrew mind was alert to details…
details! When you read Noah’s ark you
don’t get a picture what the ark looked like, you get a set of the dimensions
that they used to cut the wood to make the ark and put it together. Detail! This is not the meanderings of some
sort of ancient idiom here; these are acute thinkers, these minds are filled
with the details.
Let’s look at some of these details as this miracle proceeds. Verse 9, “Joshua said unto the children of
Israel, Come here, and hear the words of the LORD your God. [10] And then
Joshua said, Hereby ye shall know,” look at the verb again in verse 10,
k-n-o-w. “…ye shall know” and the nuance
in the Hebrew here is the nuance of capability and it means “by this you can
know,” do you want to know people? Here
is how; here is how you can know. So the
emphasis again is on revelation and knowing, in order that you might have a
certain platform to trust in. Faith in
the Bible is not faith in nothing; it’s faith in fact. “Hereby you shall know that the living God is
among you,” and that He will do these things, “and that He will without fail
drive from before you,” the word “without fail” is a strange construction.
We meet it oftentimes in the Old Testament and what they did when they’d
want to emphasize something, they’d take a verb, “fail” and they’d take the
mood of the verb; the mood would be indicative, the indicative is the mood of
certainty, I do something, that’s an indicative verb. If you have an imperative it’s the mood of
command. You may have a participle, a
participle can also be considered as a mood in certain forms of syntax, etc.
you have this kind of construction, you have a subjunctive mood, the subjunctive
mood operates in the Greek and operates syntactically in the Hebrew, you have
the subjunctive mood, the mood of probability.
Well whatever the mood is, if they want to intensify the mood, after it
they would put a comma, although they literally didn’t have a comma, and they’d
write “fail” again but in the infinitive form.
They’d put the infinitive after the main verb and that was the signal to
intensify the mood of the verb. So when
you see these two words, “fail fail” then you go back and you check the mood of
the verb; the mood of this verb is indicative so therefore it’s the mood of
reality or certainty and when you add the infinitive it underscores the
certainty.
So this is why the King James “without fail, He will certainly do this,
in other words, He is trustworthy. This
is a concept that underlies Old Testament faith. I want to give this to you because people
have all sorts of ideas of what faith is.
Faith in the Bible has only one object, God. Every other object of faith is spurious. Only God is a worthy object for trust, and
God’s trust-worthiness is proved by His loyalty to His word. So you always have this two step evidence
that leads to faith in the Bible; Prophecy, step P, and step F, Fulfillment. God is faithful to perform that which He has
promised, therefore He is trustworthy.
How do we know He is faithful?
Because He has prophesied at point P, and its fulfilled at P plus some
finite interval. So this is an evidence
that occurs over and over again.
Verse 11, there’s a peculiar label for the ark here. This has caused no end of commentary on what
happened here. But in verse 11 we have a
very unusual phrase; it only occurs here in the Old Testament and this may be a
freak in the text. “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the
earth passes over before you into the Jordan.”
Except the Hebrew doesn’t read that way.
It says “the ark of the covenant,” (comma) “the Lord of all the earth.” You can see what this is saying; it’s making
the ark equivalent to God Himself. Now
some Hebrew grammarians feel that this is a slip but I don’t think so. I think this is a deliberate emphasis on the
fact that this ark is so closely identified with Jehovah that it for all
intents and purposes in that place is coterminous with Jehovah. In other words, it’s just as if Jehovah was
personally present walking through there.
The identity between the ark and the Lord is so close it’s just as
though Jesus Christ was walking through there and stopped it. It’s like you can just see Him walk out in
the middle, just like a policeman, put His hand up and the water stopped and He
walks across. That’s the picture you
have. And the ark is called the Ark of
the Covenant, inside is the treaty that bound God with Israel, and then God has
a funny name here, “the Lord of all the earth, ” the Lord of all the earth. Underline that and turn back to 2:11 a
moment.
Do you see in 2:11 what the Lord is called? “And as soon as we had heard these things, our
hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because
of you; for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth
beneath.” Why do I emphasize that? Because last summer I had the experience of
looking at the text book that your children are getting in high school. I didn’t find one history text, not one, that
was being offered in the state of Texas that said there was monotheism in
Israel at this time. They said that all
Israel did was worship small tribal gods and not until the time of Solomon did
they finally have a strong monotheism.
That’s what the dear fine Christian citizens of the state of Texas are
having your tax dollars spent for—apostasy.
They’re taking money that is forcibly removed from you taxes and you’re
having it used to finance apostates giving an apostate picture of history and
it’s downright false. This isn’t any
tribal deity, there’s no way you can get tribal deity in here.
In 2:11 it’s clearly the God of all the earth, that’s what makes Rahab
afraid, it’s not just that Israel’s God is stronger than hers, or her culture’s
or her country’s gods, it’s that Israel’s God is the one God over all. The same here in chapter 3:11, notice it’s
repeated in verse 13, “the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth.” It couldn’t be stronger; this is not local
tribal deities running around. This is
the God, the monotheistic God. This is the
fact of the case in verses 11 and 13; anything that disagrees with this fact is
apostate.
Verse 13, “And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet
of the priests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall
rest in the waters of the Jordan,” in other words Joshua is giving them a
downright clear prediction. Now you have
to catch the tension of this whole thing.
This thing, if it doesn’t come off the way it’s supposed to come off,
you can see what a debacle it’s going to be.
Can you imagine the hilarious, ridiculous, stupid way this thing is
going to look; here are all the people gathered around, a million people
sitting there looking and here the priests to tromping off with this ark,
splat, right in the middle of the Jordan. And Joshua has just gone on record,
he’s committed himself publicly—when the priest’s feet hit the waters, the
water is going to divide! You can
imagine what’s going to happen if it doesn’t come off, so you can see that
Joshua was the kind of guy that wasn’t ashamed of what God had said. He would face two million people and stake
his reputation on the fact it was going to come off.
Just think of it, what would do if you’re sitting in the two million
people and this guy tells you, you know when the priest’s feet hit the water
it’s all going to part, and the priests go in and they drown, they fall all
over in the current and then you’d see the ark floating downstream. It’d be ridiculous; it would totally
undermine Joshua’s credibility. Totally
undermine it, so there’s a tremendous point here, that Joshua comes right out
and he states it. I notice, because I
was a prophet of sorts, I was a meteorologist and a meteorologist always hedges
on his weather forecast, as much as possible to satisfy the customers, because
you know that you can’t predict things totally and completely. So you give yourself latitude and it’s
usually when you’re first learning weather prediction, the tendency is to be
over confident and you think you can do better than you do, so maybe the first
time you get a hit; tremendous, so everything looks great and you begin to get
a good reputation until all of a sudden you blow it really good. For example, in one case there was a new
forecaster that had come into our detachment and he made some forecast, and the
commander who was a full Colonel took off on the basis of this forecast and he
got caught upstairs and he couldn’t land.
And it was all because this guy had gone out on a limb. He’s still in the service as far as I know
but I’m sure he never did that again, not with a full Colonel involved because
there were some words exchanged afterwards in various languages. The thing happened because he stuck his neck
out. And Joshua is sticking his neck
out; you couldn’t stick it out any further than verse 13.
Verses 14-17 the narrator of the text gives you the fulfillment, and he
adds a little detail that gives us a tremendous insight into the size of this
miracle. “And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents to pass
over the Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant,” they “bore
the ark” verse 15, as soon as the priests bore the ark, as soon as the soles of
their feet “were dipped in the brim of the water,” that’s the edge of the
water; for emphasis “(for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the time of
harvest),” [16] That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up in
a heap very far from the city of Adam,” now where is the city of Adam? We don’t really know, it’s an archeologist’s
guess, but it’s a pretty good guess, but it’s up near this other city called
Zarethan, a city up here to the west of Jordan, about 15 miles north of
Jericho. They’re crossing at this
point. What this tells you is that this
water heaped up some 15 miles upstream.
In other words, for 15 miles this stream was dry, and gradually the
water receded down and the land dried out.
Now how did they find this out?
We know that there were Hebrew settlements all along the eastern side,
these were the three tribes, the two and a half tribes of Transjordania and it
appears that they must have had some system of observing this river; they must
have had people all along here in every point at the exact time that this
hit. And putting it all together they
found out that as soon as the feet of the priests stepped in the water, 15
miles upstream this thing happened and the waters failed, etc. Then verse 16b, they “were cut off; and the
people passed over right against Jericho.”
That means exactly opposite to Jericho.
And please notice one final remark in verse 17, “And the priests who
bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground,” when I was
translating that that hit me because I missed that part of the translation, I
couldn’t figure out what the word “firm” was in there for. And what that is, it’s deliberately put in there
to tell you something. They’re not
standing on mud; they’re standing on firm ground. And this thing is just so loaded with details
when you begin to work with it, there’s no way under the sun of saying this
thing is just a blasé amplified version of some little thing, somebody dropped
a stone in the river or something and caused it. There’s nothing like this at all, there’s
these fine little deliberate details that the narrative puts in there to show
you that even when the waters parted there was firm ground there. Now if you don’t appreciate this, just
imagine for a moment, of the two million people traipsing across a stream bed,
and you are about the one millionth three hundred thousandth person to do it;
so here you are, probably a one or two mile wide column moving across and
here’s little old you, and your family strung out. You can image walking across after a million
people, [he makes sounds like slip slop slurp], it would be ridiculous, you
just couldn’t do it.
So the Hebrew puts in this little word “firm” to tell you that all the
while the priests and everybody else was on firm ground, no problem. Now this firm ground isn’t just for the
priests, it’s for everybody, the dry ground that everybody walked across.
What are we to conclude to this; turn to Col. 3 for one quick application? First we have seen from chapter 3 a scene
that will recur again and again in this portion of the Old Testament. God is trustworthy. And we have empirical space/time evidence for
His trustworthiness. What is the
evidence? The evidence is His fulfilled
prophecy. This is a legitimate
apologetic for Christianity. No other
religion, no other philosophy, no other system on earth has fulfilled prophecy
as Christianity does. And so this is to
be used, the believer today, YOU should learn how to use fulfilled prophecy to
make the unbeliever come up with an explanation or try to so that he will be
refuted and see the error of his ways.
The second thing we find is the magnitude of God’s power in history on
behalf of believer. The third thing we
find in Col. 3:1-2, “If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are
above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. [2] Set your affections on
things above and not on things on the earth.”
Those people, notice the emphasis, this is why I had Dean count the
number of times the ark was mentioned, so you’d get the point. The point is not the splitting of the waters,
the point is their eyes were on Jesus Christ, their eyes were on the ark,
everything centered on the ark. That’s the whole scene, what the ark did; not
what Israel did, not what the waters did, what the ark did. The waters responded to it.
Next week we’ll go to a song that was written by a man who stood by and
watched this happen and I will give you Psalm 114 as an example of the hymnology
of this nation and how when they stood by one of these great events their
songwriters took this event and molded it into a musical form. Next week we’ll do chapter 4 and Psalm 114.