Joshua 9
Education of the Next Generation – 4:1-5:1
For all intents and purposes, remember we are still in the section of
crossing
This is something you are going to have to be alert to when you read the
history of Scripture, mainly that the men arranged the material out of
chronological order, it’s not always in chronological order. If you think the Bible’s history is in
chronological sequence, you’re going to be wrong and you’re going to open
yourself up to an attack by the liberals because they can show you it’s not and
then say ha-ha, contradiction. But the
Scriptures are not meant to be in chronological order. To the Jewish mind the logical order is the
key, not the chronological order, so that an author will describe for you
certain topics. He’ll go through the
sequence.
For example, you might visualize a sequence of it’s raining outside and
your family stays in the church while you go out for the car and you bring it
around to the door. The chronological
event is that your family stays here and you run out to the car, you start the
car up, and then you come back and then your wife can’t find all her things and
the kids can’t find their things, etc. and it goes on. So this is the chronological sequence but if
you are to describe the sequence the way many of the Hebrew authors would, they
would work with one of those topics. For
example, they’d take you when you went to the car from the time the service was
out, you’d go out to the car and bring the car back. That would be all one sequence. And then they might add after this, “and,”
just a simple “and” in many of the texts, “and” and then they’d go back to what
your wife and children were doing. And
if you think this is in chronological order you’re wrong because later on they
might have when you left the door your wife did something and when you came
back your wife did something but it wouldn’t [can’t understand word]
chronologically. But the point is that
you recognize that what has happened is that first he took the whole movement
of the man going out to the car and bringing it back, then they’d stop, went
back to this and started describing the same thing.
This is the technique of Hebrew history writing and it is done so to
present a divine viewpoint framework if the event. Now this section of Joshua deals with these
four units. If you look at 3:7 which we
did last time, you’ll see it begins with what the Lord says to Joshua. In 4:1, the beginning of the second section,
it’s what the Lord said to Joshua. In
Now if you’re alert to this immediately that teaches you a lesson. It tells you what is on the mind of the Holy
Spirit as He has brought the canon of Scripture into existence. His obvious point here is that the Holy
Spirit is emphasizing Joshua’s obedience, and it turns out, lo and behold, that
is the theme of the book, because if you turn back to chapter 1, remember how
the book started? Verse 8, “This book of
the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day
and night, that thou may observe to do according to all that is written
therein; for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have
good success.” That’s the framework of
this piece of literature. And this piece
of literature has been given to us that only inspired in its words but inspired
in its grammar and inspired in its structure.
So if you understand structure the Holy Spirit can communicate a well of
information to you.
So please take cognizance of the structure of these sequence of events
because they’re the very way the author tells the story is the fact he’s trying
to put his finger on something, say look, look as you read this thing; look
what I’m trying to show you. And what
he’s trying to show us throughout this whole thing is that you have a structure
of command; Jehovah gives His orders to Joshua, Joshua passes on the orders
verbatim to the people, and it’s fulfilled.
So this cycle repeats itself.
Last time we finished chapter 3 and dealt with the first cycle, the
revelation to the present generation. In
other words, the magnitude of this fantastic miracle of crossing
So they crossed Jordan and just as the priests move in, remember they
had to establish a perimeter of a thousand yards and so they had this perimeter
established and the priests had to step into the Jordan and immediately when
they stepped in God, some 15 miles north of this location, cut the water off,
and it heaped up into a big gigantic heap, and was observable to both believer
and unbeliever, both positive volition and negative volition. Both people observed this, this was an
objective event open to all, no matter what their persuasion was, they all saw
the water heap up.
So immediately, here’s the sequence: Joshua was told to do this and we
said last time how stupid Joshua would have looked having the high priest say
would you take this ark and just kind of trot along in the Jordan with this thing,
and you could just see the party of priests carrying this box, it looked like a
coffin, walking in the thing, and the trip and stumble and the thing goes
floating down stream and they’re drowning and they have to send out the life
guards. Well that wouldn’t be much of a
testimony to God’s program and His promises.
So Joshua was running a risk because that might happen. He is running a risk because at that point he
didn’t know for sure; he had certainty based on his knowledge of God’s
character. But there is a certain
tension as there always is a tension when you rely upon God in the middle of
your situation: will He come through?
There’s no guarantee.
So Joshua said, based on what I know of God’s character, I’m going to
trust Him in this situation. And of
course you might say on theoretical grounds there was no chance that God
wouldn’t do it but when you’re involved in a concrete situation, sometimes the
[can’t understand word] and the actual event have a little distance between
them. So it worked out and the miracle was performed.
Now we come to 4:1. Remember that
chapter 3 dealt with the miracle itself, and chapter 4 deals with the
preservation of the memory of this miracle.
You’re going to be introduced to something in chapter 4 that is fundamental
in understanding history. This principle
has been observed by God from Adam on, and that is that He does not perform
miracles in every generation. All this
business about we’re going to reduplicate the
God performed miracles… if you took a graph paper, it would be a good
exercise to do sometime, take a graph paper, go through the Bible, on the
bottom of your graph paper mark off time in history. Start with 2000 BC in the time of Abraham and
go down to the time of Jesus Christ. Let
that be your one [can’t understand word] on your graph paper and the next one,
let this one be your frequency or the number of miracles. Then go through and plot the number of
miracles and after you get through, you’ll find you have a few in Abraham’s
day, etc. and then in Moses day your graph peaks up and then it dies down, and
then in Elijah’s day it peaks up again.
You do not get an even plot. God
concentrates His miracles over certain eras of history, and then it depends
upon transferring that knowledge, that historical memory of this kind of crisis
on to the future generations. It must be
transferred, there must be a historical memory; if there isn’t a historical
memory there isn’t any basis for faith.
Now you begin to see why we have emphasized over and over how necessary it is
to have a framework for history. And
why, when our schools present this jazz in high school, after I took a history
course in high school that turned me off of history the rest of my life until I
got into the Word of God. And all you
learn is a pile of facts and we’re going to have an exam on Friday and so you
memorize your list and all the facts and dates, etc. and vomit it back on the
exam and that’s all. After you get
through this thing you don’t have any memory of what went on. History means nothing, it’s just a pile of
facts. But God never intended people to
approach history this way. And today
we’re going to see a beautiful illustration of this.
Verse 1, “And it came to pass, when all the people were completely
passed over the Jordan, that the LORD spoke unto Joshua, saying, [2] Take you
twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man. [3] And command ye
them, saying, Take here out of the midst of the Jordan, out of the place where
the priests’ feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with
you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night.” By the way, this is all on the “when” clause;
the “when” in verse 1 refers to verses 1, 2 and 3. “When all the people had passed over,” and
when “the LORD had spoken all this to Joshua,” then verse 4, “Then Joshua
called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of
every tribe a man,” now to show you that God’s Word is quoted in verses 1-3 do
not occur then but earlier, turn back to 3:12 you see where it was that God had
called those twelve men. So my point
here is that God evidently commanded Joshua all at one time and didn’t do it
three times. All these times are is just
simply excerpts from that one time.
Now in 4:4 you’ll notice that Joshua does this out of every tribe. There
are twelve tribes and there will be twelve men.
Why? Because each tribe is to
participate in the historical memory of God’s miracle. Verse 5, “And Joshua said unto them, Pass
over in front of the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan,”
keep in mind what we’ve done here, they are going across Jordan, they have this
perimeter, the people cross over here but they can’t get within that
perimeter. But these men are authorized
to break into the perimeter, they’re across, and he said look, I want twelve
men, you go back out there and go in front of that ark, and you are authorized
permission to enter the perimeter. And
so these men were authorized to move in and you go over, “in front of the ark
of the LORD your God into the middle of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you
a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the
children of Israel.”
Now you didn’t pick pebbles out of Jordan. This thing they’re building is a monolith, it
is a pile of great stones, and these men were strong men. They probably must have been picked on the
basis of their physical strength, to lift a good sized rock and Joshua is going
to mount this in the form of a pillar.
This is a famous way in the ancient world of commemorating an
event. And these aren’t pebbles; these
are heavy rocks that these men are lifting out of here.
Now verse 6 we have a reason for this; “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 ye shall answer them, That the waters of the
Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed
over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall
be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever. [8] And the children of
Israel did so, as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst
of the Jordan,” etc. What’s the point
here? The point is that Joshua preserved
a historical memory of a miraculous act of God.
This is the first indication, or the archetype, of a Christian testimony
for Christ. Here is what a testimony
means; this is your Biblical precedent for a testimony. A testimony is perpetuating the historical
memory of a real objective act of God.
This is why, before you give testimonies, make sure that you’re talking
about what God has done in your life, and not what you have done for Him. Even though that is oftentimes a valid point
and it is not worthless, what you have done for God is not worthless, you’ll be
rewarded for it, so if you’re being rewarded for it’s not worthless. But the point is that you’re giving testimony
to God. To give testimony to God is
narrowing and defining your testimony down to specifically what God has done in
your life. Now here what he is giving is
what God has done in the history, at that particular point.
The exciting thing to me about this memorial in verses 6-7 is this:
today the attack against the Bible goes like this. Remember Mahatma Gandhi’s statement, when he
said if Jesus didn’t live and if He didn’t die I’d still believe the Sermon on
the Mount. The liberal theologian and
the people who are attacking Scripture tell us something like this: they say
what really matters is the idea of the resurrection, but not necessarily the
facts of the resurrection. Do you see
what they’ve done? All that matters is
the idea, the idea that Christ has risen from the dead, that’s all that counts,
not whether He actually in fact did physically rise. So similarly if you would approach this from
the liberal point of view in chapter 4 you would say well, it really doesn’t
matter whether the Jordan was miraculously stopped, all that matters is that
somehow they somehow got a confidence in their God to go on. In other words it’s just a psychological
effect but not the historical reality, or the cause that underlies the
thing. There’s no foundation for
it. And the liberal would approach this
and say, why, this is thrilling; and he might be able to give a very pious
devotional out of this and even trick some Christians. Because the Christians say oh yes, brilliant
idea that you get out of here, really motivating spiritually. But the liberal would then add, though he
might not publicly admit it to you, it doesn’t really matter whether it
happened or not.
But please notice in contrast to that liberal mentality verses 6 and 7
set you up. Here do you think it matters
to Israel whether it happened or not? Of
course, that’s the whole point of why you have the monument at a point in space
and time. A monument there, so that
later generations that are driving down along the Jordan on Sunday they would
see this little monument, and the child would ask what’s that monument
for? Well, that is the location of a
miracle of God. Do you see the point, it
was historical there. It’s not just the
idea of it that counts. Now you listen
and carry this forward because we’ll see this.
If you keep your eyes and ears alert you’ll see this coming out all over
the place in our culture. It’s just that
you just have to look at it carefully, and you come back to Scripture and you
so much more appreciate God’s Word having seen the distortion that’s happening
in our day, you come back to verses 6 and 7 and you realize that everything
depended in their mentality on whether it actually happened at that particular
location. And it was so important that
it actually happened, they set a monument right there. Don’t you see, it’s not the idea of it at
all; it’s whether it really in fact happened, that’s the point. And so it is so much of an issue on the
mentality of these people that they’ve got monuments.
And it is also crucial to these people that this be perpetuated in
history, that there be a historical memory, that there be a sense and a flow of
history. Now you can’t appreciate the
flow of history until you look at how the people understood history. I’m going to give you some references. Go back to Exodus 12:26. Now if you want to make this real in your own
thinking as you listen to this, so this doesn’t become an abstraction to you,
try to compare your sense of history as an American. What I’d like you to do as I take you through
this verse chain is do the following experiment. As I take you through this verse chain I’m
going to show you how God developed a historical memory in His people. As you read this is consciously think whether
you have that memory equal to this, not about Israel but about America and
about the historical events that have happened in this country, more particularly
about your ancestors, particularly those of you who have had your
great-grandfathers and your great-great-grandfathers have been American, and
you’re not one or two generations removed from coming from Europe or some other
country, but you’re more or less native Americans over a long time span. In other words, your family has lived in this
North American continent over many generations and your family should have
accumulated in your thinking some historical memories. Do you have this kind of memory as we go
through Exodus 12? Exodus 12:26. Here is the famous night of the Passover,
when the angel of death is going through Egypt, killing and destroying, killing
the firstborn of the Egyptians, and saving the Jewish people as they put blood
on their door.
In verse 26 notice in the middle of this night of catastrophe, in the
middle of the night of death, “And it shall come to pass, when your children
shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? [27] Then ye shall say, It is
the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the
children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our
houses. And the people bowed the head and worshiped.”
Exodus 13:14, again speaking of the Passover, speaking of this event,
notice, right in the middle of the event, right in the middle of all of the
crisis, etc. there’s always time out.
It’s almost as though you are in the middle of a football game and the
whistle blows and there’s a time out for measuring, whether there’s a first
down. Well, it’s the same thing here. Here they’re in the middle… remember, we’re
crossing Jordan, this is no little miracle, you’ve got one or two million
people going across, animals, everything else, a menagerie is crossing here. You can imagine yelling kids running around
with their parents and this whole thing is going on for a whole day. And in the middle of this confusion of these
millions of people you have this little spectacle: Joshua says to twelve men,
come here, I want you t get those rocks out of there and put them out for a monument. You can see Joshua would be concerned how
many people are dropping things in the middle of Jordan, would you pick up your
[can’t understand word] please, etc. and all the rest of it, and all this is
going on, complete bedlam as they crossed.
And in the middle of it it’s just like the whistle blows and he says
wait a minute, we’ve got to have a memorial of this.
It’s the same thing here in Exodus 13, right in the middle of a night of
death, people are dying all over the place, there’s screams, there’s yelling,
there’s a night of catastrophe and judgment and right in the middle of this
it’s just as though the empire blows his whistle and says hold it, hold the
action, we’ve got to have a memorial. So
in verse 14, “And it shall be when thy son asks thee in time to come, saying,
What is this? That you shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the LORD brought
us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage. [15] And it shall come to pass,
when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the LORD slew all the first-born in
the land of Egypt, both the first-born of man, and the first-born of beast:
therefore I sacrifice to the LOD all that opens the womb, being males; but all
the first-born of my children I redeem,” etc.
Deut. 6:20, again, please notice the careful concern of the Holy Spirit
to develop in the children a historical memory. “And when thy son asks thee in
time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the
ordinances, which the LORD our God has commanded you? [21] Then you shall say
unto your son, W e were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, and the LORD brought us out
of Egypt with a might hand, [22] And the LORD showed us signs and wonders,
great and sever, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before
our eyes.” Verse 25, “And it shall be
our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD
our God, as He has commanded us.”
There again, don’t you see, concern over perpetuating this thing into
the next generation so that it never becomes a meaningless ritual. They were very concerned, they used ritual,
and here is why you have to use ritual.
Ritual is authorized by God to commemorate and opt out historical events. We have ritual in the form of communion. It’s an authorized ritual, because we are
acting out and repeating and dramatizing before all of us a historic act of
God. We are generating a historical
memory.
Turn to Psalms, Psalm 44, you see the same thrust. “We have heard with our ears, O God,” and by
the way, this is a Psalm that indicates the process war reasonably successful,
because remember this is a Psalm that is of worship, and the worship is the
generation that later came. These are
the children who are worshiping, and the basis of their worship is their
historical memory, what they have learned from their fathers. So Psalm 44:1 says, “We have heard with our
ears, O God; our fathers have told us what work thou did in their days, in
times of old. [2] How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and
planted them; how thou did afflict the people, and cast them out. [3] For they
got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm
save them, but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance,
because thou hadst a favor unto them. [4] Thou art my King, O God; command
deliverances for Jacob.”
Don’t you see, the point is, don’t you notice in verse 1, how did they
learn this? Not, NOT, repeat negative,
NOT by direct experience, they learned this through the father telling his son,
father son, father son, father son, father son, father son, they learned it by
studying their history. Please notice
this. As a result, verse 4, “Thou art my
King, O God;” and you have worship begin.
The worship is response to the historical record. God did not do this in their generation
because the author of verse 1 says “in their days,” not our days, back then,
their days. “In the times of old” you
did this, O God but today You’re our king.
So it’s all grounded on the historical memories.
Psalm 78:1-8, you’ll see the same thing, worship grounded on historical
memories. Ask yourself as you go through
this, suppose America was Israel. Do you
have any knowledge of the acts in American history, the prominent ones? Do you have dates, do you know what
happened? Do you know how this applies
to the overall thrust of our history?
Sure, it’s secular history but do you know the content of it? I would
have to say most of us don’t, because then it shows you how as Gentiles we have
a very sloppy historical memory. It’s
characteristic of Gentiles. And most of
us in this congregation are from Gentile backgrounds. The Gentile mind is anti-historical. They’re always generating myths about
history, but it’s very anti-historical.
So in Psalm 78:1-8 you find the same thing. “Give ear, O my people, to my law; incline
your ears to the words of my mouth. [2] I will open my mouth in a parable,”
etc. [3] “Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. [4] We
will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the
praise of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he has done.
[5] For he has established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel,
which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their
children.” Look at that, that’s a
mandate for Bible education; it’s a mandate for passing on a divine viewpoint
framework from father to son, father to son, father to son. This is a very strong… and this was how
worship was conducted and survived as long as it did in Israel. There you have a command. “That the generation,” verse 6, the result
“That the generation to come might know them, even the children who should be
born, who should arise and declare them to their children, [7] That they might
set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His
commandments.” Notice the word “not
forget.” The greatest thing that the Jew
feared in the Old Testament was extinction from the memory of history. Don’t you remember the curse of the
Amalekites? What does God curse? [can’t understand words] of all that they
could think of in their day, the curse of the Amalekite was his memory shall be
blotted out from history; that was the curse because that was the worst thing
that could ever have happened. They were
so historically conscious that’s the worst thing that could happen would be an
[can’t understand word]. That’s the
worst thing that could ever have happened to the ancient person with this
mentality, to be extinct from history, to destroy my place in history.
So you have this whole flow in the Old Testament and I want to comment
on this word “forget” in verse 7, “That they might … not forget” for if they
forget what God has done in history, the next thing that happens automatically,
as day follows night, they will not worship.
Turn to Psalm 106 and you’ll see what happens when people forget
history. I might say, to maybe make it
more at home with you, think of church history, the history of our brothers and
sisters in Christ down through the generations.
We’re not the only people that have ever lived for Jesus Christ. What about the men who lived before you, who
were responsible in a large degree for your salvation? What about their history? Did they learn anything in their
generation? Do you think Martin Luther
and John Calvin learned any lessons in their generation that might help you
out? Do you think Augustine in his
generation, back in the 4th and 5th centuries learned
something that might help us out? Of
course they did. Church history should
be a subject for all Christians because we benefit from the mistakes that our
brothers and sisters have made in past generations.
But in Psalm 106:4 we have the plight; notice what happens, this is a
lament, there’s a very sad tone in this Psalm. “Remember me, O LORD, with the
favor that thou bearest unto thy people; oh, visit me with thy salvation, [5]
That I may see the good of thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of
thy nation, that I may glory with thine inheritance. [6] We have sinned with
our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. [7] Our fathers
understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy
mercies, but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red Sea. [8] Nevertheless, He
saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make His mighty power to be
known.” But don’t you see, they’re
testing God because they forgot what God had done for them. Their historical memory was destroyed.
Let’s come over to the New Testament lest you think this is sheer Old
Testament. Turn to Matt. 16, this is a
principle that carries over into the church age; it’s not in a dispensation
locked out of our experience, it carries over.
In Matt. 16:5 we have Jesus Christ administering a sharp rebuke to His
generation for doing the same thing, losing their historical memory. It’s a matter of concern to our Lord that the
people with whom He spoke had an alive, active historical memory. “And when His disciples were come to the
other side, they had forgotten to take bread. [6] Then Jesus said unto them,
Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. [7] And they reasoned among themselves, saying,
It is because we have taken no bread.” Get the picture now. He’s just fed thousands of people but the
boys goofed a little bit, forgot to bring their sandwiches. So they crossed this thing and then Jesus
starts talking about bread. Do you know
why He’s doing this? Because bread is on
their mind, and He uses something that’s on their mind to communicate spiritual
truth. And so He begins to talk about
this and He’s talking about something utterly different than physical bread
here. He’s talking about the doctrine of
the Pharisees and so on.
In verse 8, in verse 7 obviously they begin to question, wait a minute,
what’s He talking about now. Then in
verse 8, “Which, when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith,
why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? [9] Do ye not
yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how
many baskets ye took up? [10] Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand,
and how many baskets ye took up?” He’s
saying look, I say don’t worry about where you are getting your sandwiches
from, I got through distributing four thousand of them and I distributed some
more on another occasion, have you forgotten.
And notice a word pair, an exciting thing here. Notice the word pair in verse 9, it’s the
same word pair in Psalm 106, “understand” and “remember.” Understand and remember, those two verbs go
together in Scripture. This business
that you can’t put down in word what you know just doesn’t hack it with
Scripture. If you don’t remember you
don’t understand it; that’s just the way it is in Scripture.
The point here is that the two go together almost as synonyms throughout
Scripture. And Jesus you can see is
obviously attacking His generation. He’s
saying what is wrong with you; you can’t remember from one moment to the next
what I have done. So this lays it pretty
clear for us as Christians, that we must have a historical memory. And the only tragedy is we’re living in a
generation that has no historical memory; none whatever. We have people playing with history; we have
people miswriting history. Bonnie and
Clyde, the movie, is one illustration.
Do you think that has anything to do with the real Bonnie and Clyde; nonsense,
it’s a complete figment of the imagination of producers; any correspondence to
the movie Bonnie and Clyde and the facts are purely coincidental.
But the point is that today you can get away by presenting your own
fantasy as history. This is what’s wrong
with historical novels. I don’t like
historical novels. Historical novels
also represent the tendency to distort history and present the author’s own
ideas under the cloak of history and make you believe it. People don’t know what to believe about
history any more. We’ve had too many historical novels that are wrong.
1 Cor. 11:24, another point about historical memory that’s [can’t
understand word] directly to the church of Jesus Christ. You’ve heard me say these words, probably to
the point where they just go into one ear and out the other and never
register. But tonight let them
register. This is communion and this is
what Paul says Jesus Christ told him to do at communion. “And when He had given thanks, He broke it,
and said, Take, eat; this is My body, which is broken for you: this do in
remembrance of Me.” Don’t you see, Jesus
Christ has laid out communion as one way of at least preserving the historical
memory of what He did on the cross. You
don’t even have to be able to read to remember what Christ did on the cross, because
you can eat, you can participate at the table of communion. You don’t even have to read. You see, if God made historical memories
contingent on literacy, many of us would be dead; most people in this
congregation can’t even read the bulletin, let alone the Bible. So literacy as a prerequisite would knock out
a lot, just cut a big swathe through the church. So God doesn’t make historical memories
depend on whether you can read the bulletin or not. What He does is make it contingent on just
simply participating in a ritual that you understand: communion. And that’s why communion is a very, VERY
important ritual. On the one hand we
have certain denominations that go to an extreme sacramental form of communion
but I fear many times in our circles we do not give communion its proper place. Communion is God’s divinely authorized means
of inculcating a historical memory. And
that’s why Jesus says “do this in remembrance of Me.”
Verse 25, “After the same manner also He took the cup, when He had
supped, saying, This cup is the New Testament in My blood; this do, as often as
ye drink it, in remembrance of Me.” Do
it over and over He says, as often as you do it, just do it, do it, do it, do
it, so that you will remember, remember, remember, inculcating a historical
memory.
Now turn back to Psalm 114 for another way in which a historical memory
was inculcated in the nation Israel. It
was inculcated through memory of song, and music became a means for
perpetuating the historical memories because the content of their music
centered upon the historical acts of God.
You just have to look at some of the stuff that you sing and you’ll see
that it’s how I feel about Christ, how I did this for Christ, and oh, I feel
great joy in my heart because of Christ, and all the rest of it. Well, that may be true, but that’s not the
point. Look at Psalm 114, here’s an
example of a real hymn. Here’s an
example of what we should be singing:
Psalm 114: 1, “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a
people of strange language, [2] Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his
dominion. [3] The sea saw it, and fled, the Jordan was driven back. [4] The
mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. [5] What ailed
thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? [6]
Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams, and ye little hills, like lambs? [7]
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of
Jacob. [8] Who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain
of waters.”
What the man has done here, whoever put together Psalm 114, which we
don’t know, but what this man has done is combined Exodus and the Red Sea
incident, he has combined Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law, he has
combined the forty years of wilderness wanderings, he has combined the crossing
of Jordan; all of these in one song. He
connects these together as one great event in which God redeemed His people,
and there’s that historical memory that’s generated because every people… read
verse 1, this Psalm is a very neat Psalm to exegete because it is in verse
pairs, there are four parts to this Psalm.
Verses 1 and 2 is one part; verses 3 and 4 are the second part; verses 5
and 6 are the third part, and verses 7 and 8 is the fourth part. So you have four parts to this Psalm, neatly
divided, two verses each. And when you
get to verses 1 and 2, the first part of this song, notice it’s talking about
history. When, at a point in time, “When
Israel went out of Egypt,” there’s your point in time, it’s located for you in
time and space, at a particular point in time, “when” and in space, “out of
Egypt, the house of Jacob.”
So this is not talking about a subjective feeling, this is talking about
a historical event and the people are singing praises about this concrete
historical event. “Judah,” it says in
your King James, “was,” but in the Hebrew it means became, and it’s an exciting
statement made here in verse 2, you’ll miss it unless you notice this verb. “Judah became his sanctuary,” his refers back
to God and it means then that at this point in time and space history we have
God coming to indwell a national culture.
This is something unknown, when the framer [can’t understand word] to
point out the astounding events that sent ripples throughout the ancient world. When this nation, of all nations, claimed
that this nation, the God of heaven and earth had come to make this culture,
this nation, this institution, His favorite dwelling place.
And then in verse 3 and 4, you can just see it, very poetic here, very
forceful. This is what I see as the
Christian artist function. He takes a
historical event, notice it’s grounded on historical fact. Those of you who are budding artists,
musicians, etc. take notice of how the Holy Spirit guided these men in their
great works of art. It starts out with a
historical act, verses 1-2. The rest of
this is your poetic form. It develops
the historic act and makes it exciting and catching. So you build on the truth, you have the core,
the very miracle that God did, and then around this you build your poetic form
or your art or something else, whatever you want to express. Maybe you’re a dramatist and want to write a
play about it. But you have the freedom
to develop your poetic expressions around it, but at the core you have this
historical act. And so the rest of it’s
in a dialogue and it’s a very exciting way to read. “The sea saw it, and fled,” the sea is
personified and I’m going to show you why, there’s a theological reason for
doing this. But it’s like the sea has
eyes, and it sees this group of people coming toward it, and that group of
people are now the sanctuary or dwelling place of God in history. Not a mythical thing but a real thing. God is really there, the pillar of fire, and
it’s as the sea sees it and it flees away.
It’s just like a person turning and running, and it foods, “the Jordan
was driven back.” Notice how the Red Sea
incident of Exodus and the Jordan incident which we are in in the book of
Joshua are tied together in verse 3, it’s one event, all tied together because
they are very intimately related.
Verse 4, “The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like
lambs.” See, there’s your poetry; the
fact is that the gigantic earthquakes developed all during this forty year
period out in the wilderness, shook the whole Sinai Peninsula, and there were
tremendous earth upheavals all over the place.
And so you have geological catastrophes occurring during this point in
history, and so poetically he expresses, “the mountains skipped like rams, and
the little hills like lambs.” And then
verse 5 it turns into the form of a poetic dialogue with the sea, and it says,
“What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan, that thou wast
driven back?” See how powerful the use of the poetic form, the author under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit is able to really put a nice edge so it cuts
into you, and you really can’t help but detect a tone of mocking, ha-ha, isn’t
that a sea, why are you afraid. And it
really comes across really solid when you have this kind of poetic expression
of Bible doctrine. And then verse 7, the
terrifying final conclusion of Psalm 114, “Tremble,” at our God, and this is
how this doctrine, a simply act of history is transformed through poetry into a
tremendous piece, a tremendous piece here.
But I want to show you something, there’s a reason why the sea is
personified in verse 5, and why the earth is mocked in verse 7, the reason is
theological because the people against whose culture Israel was fighting, the
people that worshipped Baal, had already personified the sea. They had already personified the earth, they
used to give sacrifices to the earth and archeology shows where they dug holes
in the earth, and they had these big ceremonies where they’d take these vats of
wine and they’d come to the hole in the earth and they’d pour the wine down,
and these were called earth libations, or offering to the earth to be more
fruitful, fertility, etc. And so they
had personified the sea, the sea was one god, the earth was another god, the
mountains were other gods, you had the whole universe filled with gods. And then along comes the man who wrote Psalm
114 and he says what I’m going to do is I’m going to take the historical revelation
of God and I’m going to attack the apostasy of my culture, and I’m going to do
it through the medium of Psalm. So what
he does, he takes this historical event, and note in the way he expresses it,
he says ha-ha gods, ha-ha all of you the gods-yam, it’s called the sea-god in
the ancient world, and yam you can find anywhere, you go to Egypt, you go to
the Ugaritic gods, you go to Mesopotamia, you always find yam, yam, the
sea-god. And you find these gods and
people were afraid of these gods but Israel had one God, monotheistic, and so what
this man did, very cleverly in this Psalm, is take this one God and pit Him
against the others, and then ridicule it and say ha-ha, ha-ha. This is a far cry from what Christians are
doing in the medium of song today. It’s
tragic, but I have to say that the Christians are being influenced by the
musical and cultural forms instead of turning around and influencing them. And this is a key incident, right here in
Psalm 114.
There’s nothing wrong with culture; there’s nothing wrong with music or
poetry or art. But when it’s done
consecrated to Jesus Christ, and done in the power of the Holy Spirit, then you
begin to influence the other people. But
until it’s done the way it’s done in the Bible you become just a sponge. And many of the Christian artists, I look at
the Sunday School material, I look at all this stuff, Christian artists are
just mimicking the spirit of their own age.
You don’t see anything different about Christian music, frankly I don’t,
than the music that is out there. It’s
just the same thing, they’ve absorbed the same form, same everything. There’s no clash, no contest and the result
is look what we face as a church. The
result is we are as believers impoverished.
When I want to have a musical worship service I have to go back to a
hymnal, most of the songs which were written two or three hundred years ago,
for their day, or I have to choose the so-called contemporary music that’s just
woeful, it doesn’t have any heart to it.
So what do I do? We’re sitting
here trying to praise God in music and how can we because we don’t have any
music to [can’t understand word]. That’s an example of how impoverished we are
as Christians in our generation and we are desperately in need of Christian
artists and musicians to do something for us, because we sit back and we just
have nothing; we have nothing to do except sing some subjective little ditty
about joy, joy, joy and all the rest of the nonsense.
Back to Joshua. As a result of
all this Joshua set up this memorial to perpetuate this historical memory. They had their songs and they had memorials
like this one, verse 9, “And Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the
Jordan,” he also put one out there, there are two memorials here, there’s one
at Gilgal, you have one monument here on land and you have one in the river
Jordan. And one is buried, and one is
rocks that were buried that are not taken out; I’ll catch the significance of
this in a moment. [9, “And Joshua set up
twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the
priests who bore the ark of the covenant stood; and they are there unto this
day. [10] For the priests who bore the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan,
until everything was finished that the LORD commanded Joshua to speak unto the
people, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua; and the people hastened
and passed over. [11] And it came to pass, when all the people were completely
passed over, that the ark of the LORD passed over, and the priests, in the
presence of the people. [12] And the children of Reuben, and the children of
Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, passed over armed before the children of
Israel, as Moses spoke unto them: [13]
About forty thousand prepared for war passed over before the LORD unto battle,
to the plains of Jericho.”]
Now the result, verse 14, “On that day the LORD magnified Joshua in the
sight of all Israel; and they feared him, as they feared Moses, all the days of
his life.” Why? Because a prophet in the Old Testament earned
his reputation. How did a prophet in the
Old Testament earn his reputation? He
earned it by prophesying and having his prophesy come true. In that way a prophet earned his status in
the nation Israel. There was no such
thing as a prophet that just dropped in one day and said hey, I’ve got a
prophecy. Oh no, he had to establish his
own credentials and his credentials were fulfilled prophecy. Joshua had established this because he had
predicted… he said God told him the waters are going to part. Did the waters part yet? Yes.
Was it observed by all the people? Yes.
How many people? Two million people.
So he had his credentials, and crossing the Jordan gave to the people
the credentials of Joshua.
Now verses 15 through 5:1, the second cycle. This is the revelation to the nation; same
thing, starts out verses 15-16, what God had commanded Joshua, verse 17, Joshua
turns around and commands the priests.
[15, “And the LORD spoke unto Joshua, saying, [16] Command the priests
who bear the ark of the testimony, that they come up out of the Jordan. [17]
Joshua therefore commanded the priests, saying, Come ye up out of the Jordan.
[18] And it came to pass, when the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of
the LORD, were come up out of the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the
priests’ feet were lifted up unto the dry land, that the waters of the Jordan
returned unto their place, and flowed over all its banks, as they did before.”]
And then in verse 19 is a historical note; this is very crucial this
historical note. You read this over real
quick and again because you’ve come out of a Gentile background you just go on
sixty miles an hour never even noticing what the historical modus is. This should be a flag, a red flag that’s
waved in front of your eyes. When
there’s a date here it’s important. “The
people came out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal,
in the east border of Jericho.” Do you
know what is significant about the tenth day?
Turn to Exodus 12:2, the tenth day of the first month. I’ll show you how neatly God arranges
historical dates. This is at the time of the Exodus, at the time of the
Passover. “This month shall be unto you
the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. [3]
Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this
month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their
fathers, a lamb for an house.”
Now turn back to Joshua and I’ll show you how this works together. Joshua 5:10, “And the children of Israel
encamped in Gilgal,” this is after they’ve crossed, they set up their camp at
Gilgal, “and they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at
evening in the plains of Jericho.” Now I
want you to notice what’s happened here.
On the tenth day what had to happen, according to the Law of Moses? They had to get their lamb, which speaks of
Jesus Christ. The lamb had to be secured
on the tenth day, not the eleventh, the tenth day, in order to be prepared for
Passover on the fourteenth day. Isn’t it
interesting that God got them across Jordan exactly on the day that they had to
take their lamb and had to get it prepared for the Passover which they would
then celebrate after having crossed the Jordan.
Now there’s something more remarkable than this. It’s not just the case of the fact that it
was beautiful timing, but what does the Passover speak of? The Passover speaks of Jesus Christ dying on
the cross; it speaks of the fact that Jesus Christ has borne our sins, took our
sins upon Himself on the cross with the result that He was judged for our sins
with the result then that we can approach God’s presence if we place our trust
in Jesus Christ. Now this means
something exciting; it means that what we have got here at the crossing of the
Jordan is actually a type of the work of Jesus Christ down in the future
corridors of history, because this thing that happened at Jordan becomes part
and parcel, demonstration of the work of Christ on the cross.
These stones that we’re going to see here, we’ve seen them take stones
out and we’ve seen them put stones under the water, are symptomatic of our
death and resurrection with Jesus Christ.
To see this let’s turn to Romans 6:3-4; this is the basis for the
practicality for Christianity in the every day life. “Know you not that, as
many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?” or
identified with His death. [4]
“Therefore, we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that as Christ was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk
in newness of life. [5] For if we have
been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the
likeness of His resurrection.”
And here you have these two monuments.
You have the monument inside the waters of Jordan that is buried and
that speaks of our death with Jesus Christ; you have the monument… where were
those rocks taken from? They were taken
out from under the place of death, and that speaks of resurrection. And so there’s a typology that’s operating
here at the crossing of the Jordan, the death and resurrection, those twelve
stones… now does it make sense to you?
Why did they say twelve instead of eleven stones? Because there’s a stone for each tribe; there
is now a new nation that has been taken out of the depths of death. The depths of death, from underneath the waters
of Jordan, they have taken twelve stones that symbolize the twelve tribes so
now, starting into the land all afresh we have a new resurrected, as it were,
nation. And that speaks of our
resurrection, that’s the parallel with us today, because the Exodus, I said the
Exodus event and the crossing of the Jordan are two sides of the same
coin. Typologically the Exodus speaks of
our death with Christ as our sin-bearer; Jesus Christ on the cross took our sin
upon Himself with the result that He freed us from the kingdom of Satan, just
as Israel was freed from the kingdom of Pharaoh.
The crossing of Jordan again looks at the cross of Christ but from the
standpoint of the Christian life. The
first one, Phase one, the standpoint of Christian salvation; the second one,
phase two or the Christian life, and here we have the crossing of the Jordan as
the basis, showing the work of Christ on the cross as the basis for our
Christian life. How is this the basis of
the Christian life? Well, for one thing,
when we are dead with Christ, Romans 6 says that this has happened. You say wait a minute, I’m not dead. No. In
verses 4-5 we have certain present death.
Now if this is present and yet it isn’t there physically, it must obviously
be in the spirit. So we find today even
though we have not our resurrection bodies, we do have a resurrected spirit, or
regenerated spirit.
So what we do as Christians is that we, today, can share in the
resurrection of Christ. This is where
you get a little more insight to what this top circle is. In the top circle we share certain things of
Christ, two of which, we share His death and His resurrection. Right now, if you have personally trusted in
Jesus Christ, at the time you accepted Christ, God the Holy Spirit put you in
union with Christ. Christ has gone
through, as it were, Jordan. He’s been
the rock that was buried and is resurrected.
You, therefore, in identity with Him, you share this. You share it insofar as your human spirit is
now regenerated or resurrected and so you have a basis in reality of living
forth a new life in Christ. This is the source
of your energy. Christianity is not a
moral code, not a set of taboos, you do this, you don’t do this to be a
Christian. If you’re a Christian you
already have a regenerated human spirit, eternal life, and therefore you have a
means for living out what Jesus Christ expects you to do. This is the grace provision that God has made
for us.
Now a second carry over between the crossing of the Jordan and a
believer is not just the fact that we are buried and resurrected with Christ,
the second carry over is with baptism itself.
In Romans 6 it talks about baptism but this baptism is Holy Spirit
baptism, it occurs at the moment of salvation.
Now to show you how close this correlates with baptism, turn to 1 Cor.
10:1-2, one of the baptisms of Scripture and please notice it’s dry which shows
you that baptism does not immerse; it means to identify. “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye
should be ignorant, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed
through the sea, [2] And all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea.” Now the only people that got wet
in the Dead Sea were Pharaoh and they were killed, Pharaoh and the boys.
So the unbelievers are the ones that got wet in that baptism. The baptism here is dry and here’s one of the
key proof texts in the New Testament to show you that the word baptize does not
mean get wet; it means to identify. And
secondarily it does mean get wet, but primarily it means to identify and here
is the case. Nobody got wet in verse 2;
this is talking about a real baptism of God. There are real baptisms and there
are ritual baptisms, this is a real baptism.
And our baptism with Jesus Christ is a real baptism which we later
picture by a ritual called water baptism.
But water baptism doesn’t do a thing for you except get you a little
cleaner than you were when you went down, that’s all; water baptism doesn’t do
anything for you except picture what should have already happened.
I want to go to two more references in the New Testament with regard to
baptism, for every time someone mentions baptism, sooner or later John the
Baptist gets involved, who was not the first Baptist. John 1:28, I want you to notice a peculiar
thing on top of the baptism and I want to tie the crossing of the Jordan into
the New Testament, I’ve given you one cross switch, the death and resurrection
of the believer with Christ, parallel with baptism. Please notice in John 1:28 where John is
baptizing when he baptizes Jesus. Notice
what it says in verse 28, “These things were done at Bethabara,” that is the
place of the crossing of Jordan. You may
never have appreciated this from your reading of the Gospels, but the exact
location of the crossing of the Jordan in the 14th century before
Christ was the exact location that Jesus Christ, 14 centuries later would stand
in those waters and be baptized by John.
He would stand at the exact point Israel crossed Jordan.
Jesus Christ would begin his ministry where the nation should have begun
theirs. That nation as a holy nation that
should by a holy war have possessed their possessions and it failed. Jesus Christ comes back 14 centuries to the
exact place and moves from there.
There’s even a hint in the Bible that the monument was still there in
Jesus day. Now we don’t mean to suggest
the same monument they did, but we do mean to suggest that there was some form
of a monument to that location. John the
Baptist knows, when he walked along Jordan, he could point out to you where the
spot was because it was marked. How do I
know this? By a little comment that was
made in Matthew 3:9, He has a confrontation with the Sadducees. By the way, this passage, verse 8 please
notice, John baptized people after they were converted, “Bring forth,
therefore, fruits meet for repentance,” and he refused to baptize any person
that could not give an adequate justification for their salvation. In verse 9 he says, “And think not to say
within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father; for I say unto you that God
is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” And I suggest there was more than just the
stones in Jordan. I suggest that there
was a memorial right there at the edge of the River Jordan, and when John
raised his hands to these Pharisees he was pointing to the very monument that
in typology spoke of the resurrected Israel.
And He says “God is able of these stones to raise up” a new nation. And the Pharisees would have got the point. Their minds, having the historical memory,
would have gone back to the passage in Joshua 4 and they would have looked at
those stones and say what did those stones speak of? Joshua took those out of the bottom of
Jordan, with the result is that they knew what John was saying, “God is able
out of these stones,” he is saying God is able to bring by resurrection a new
nation alive, so don’t think you’re so smart and so great because you are of
the lineage of Abraham.
We’re going to conclude by way of Eph. 6:13 and then we’ll go back to
Joshua. The third parallel with the
Christian life. The crossing of Jordan
parallels our death and resurrection with Christ, it parallels our baptism with
Christ and the other thing that the crossing of Jordan does is that it is the
basis of our victory over the powers of darkness. In Eph. 6:13 we have two reasons for taking
the armor of God upon us; one, that we may be able to withstand or able to
resist in the evil day. The evil day is
when the satanic pressure is down upon you; sometime in your Christian life
when it looks like the ceiling falls in, everything goes wrong, Satan is
putting the pressure on but if you have the armor of God you are able to
resist. Therefore if you are serious
about verse 13 you can never say I just couldn’t help it. Of course you can help it; if you can’t,
verse 13 is wrong because it says you are to help it, “you are able to stand in
the evil day, and having done all,” that means putting on the armor, “you are
able to hold your ground,” literally.
And what this is talking about, using the diagram of the top and bottom
circle, it means that from the time we receive Christ, He puts us into union
with Him there, we have this circle called the will of God for our life. At any given moment you are either in
fellowship or out of fellowship; either in the bottom circle or out of the
bottom circle. Now, what Satan tries to
do, since he knows what your ground is, this is your ground, your bottom
circle, the sphere of God’s will for your life.
Now what Satan tries to do is push you off that ground, and he tries to
take over with areas of responsibility in your life that God has said that’s
your business, Satan tries to move in and take your ground. So we constantly have to fight a strong
defensive warfare against Satan from encroaching on our ground. The Holy Spirit gives us growth and our
bottom circle expands but Satan but Satan is always interested in coming in and
taking ground out from under our feet.
Now when we become Christians and we are baptized with Jesus Christ
spiritually, when we believe on Jesus Christ, at that point we begin this
battle of Eph. 6. We didn’t have that
battle before, but it starts now. The
one thing that we’ve got to fall back on is that Jesus Christ has obtained
victory. Turn to Col. 2, here is the
basis, even though it may seem discouraging to be in a holy war with Satan and
his demonic powers, remember Col. 2:15, “Having spoiled principalities and
powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” And the point Paul is making there is Jesus
Christ has smashed the authority of the powers of darkness at the cross.
Let’s conclude by turning back to the last verse of our passage, Joshua
5:1. Here is the result of crossing