Barry Metz 01/22/17
Wonders Among Us
Joshua 3
As we come to Joshua 3 this morning and Joshua 4 next week, we finally come to the moment when the people of Israel will enter the Promised Land. It’s going to happen in Joshua 3; it’s going to feel like it happens again in Joshua 4 next week. More on that unusual thought in a minute.
After centuries of waiting—we’re talking over 500 years— the Israelites would finally enter the land promised to Abraham their ancestor. The people of Israel would finally pass over (the) Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that Yahweh (their) God (was) giving (them) to possess.[1] This was the special day when they would begin to inherit the land that (God) swore to their fathers to give to them.[2]
God had been faithful to bring them to this place. God had been faithful to fulfill his promises to his beloved people.
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It might be too early to make application to that thought, but let’s do it anyway….
To us, God has promised that he will never leave (us) nor forsake (us)[3]
To us, God has promised that for those who love God all things work together for good…[4]
To us, God has promised that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory to be revealed to us.[5]
To us, God has promised that in (Christ), we have obtained an inheritance.[6]
To us, God has promised that we’ve been born again to that inheritance….and it’s an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.[7]
To us, God has promised that we were sealed with the….Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.[8]
To us, God has promised that at a certain trumpet sound…the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.
To us, God has promised a day when ‘death will be swallowed up in victory.’[9]
We could go on and on couldn’t we? We’ve been given many precious promises from God haven’t we? And God will be faithful to fulfill them.
Just as God was faithful to fulfill his promises to Abraham for the sake of his people, you and I can be certain that God will be faithful to fulfill his promises to us.
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I mentioned in my opening sentences that the ‘passing over the Jordan’ event actually occurs in Joshua 3 today. I also said it’s going to feel like it happens again in Joshua 4[10] when Justin leads us through that chapter next week. Technically I suppose we could say that Joshua 3 is about the ‘passing over the Jordan’ event itself and Joshua 4 is about memorializing the ‘passing over the Jordan’ event. But again, when we get to Joshua 4 we’re going to feel like we’re passing over the Jordan again so much so that one scholarly journal article is titled ‘Why Do Joshua’s Readers Keep Crossing the River (in Joshua 3-4)?’[11]
Here’s a key point. The author of the book of Joshua is wild about this ‘passing over the Jordan’ event. ‘Passing over the Jordan’ is a big deal, it’s such a big deal—it’s ‘a thing to be astounded at’[12] in fact—and the author of Joshua wants his readers to experience the event deeply in their soul, to marinate in it , to to be immersed in it, to be pickled in it so that it lodges in their memory like an anniversary of sorts.
{It just so happens, and we find this out in chapter 4, that the people ‘passed over the Jordan’ on the 10th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar[13]. Now you might say, “So what!” or you might ask, “Why is that important?”…. Ask me would you?…. “Why is that important?” Well it happens to be the day when a family was to begin preparations for the Passover[14]…in fact one author suggests that this event in Joshua 3 happens to be the 40 year anniversary of the special day when the people of Israel prepared for the very first Passover in Egypt.[15] And then it was on the 14th day of Nissan at twilight, that the Passover commenced when the lamb was slain at twilight. And we’ll see in Joshua 5, that the people of Israel celebrate their first Passover in the Promised Land on the 14th day of Nissan. So again why is this important? At a minimum we could say that ‘the transition from wandering in the wilderness to arriving in the land was a kind of ‘second exodus’[16] }
You see the day when the people of Israel passed over the Jordan (and I’m using the term passed over instead of crossed over because the ESV uses those words repeatedly in chapter 3 and 4, some 22 times[17])…the day when the people of Israel passed over the Jordan was to be—and remain for all times—a very special day for them. It was to be an anniversary of sorts—something to look back on for the rest of their lives.
Well with that introduction let’s dive into Joshua chapter 3. Follow along as I read the first six verses….Joshua 3:1-6…
3Then Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Shittim. And they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. 2At the end of three days the officers went through the camp 3and commanded the people, “As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. 4Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.” 5Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” 6And Joshua said to the priests, “Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.
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As you may remember at the end of chapter 2, the spies returned with the best news imaginable—God was fighting for his people behind enemy lines.
So Joshua arose and the people set out from Shittim and they came to the Jordan and lodged there.
Shittim, 6 miles east of the Jordan, is noted on the map. The people of Israel had been parked there a long time. So Joshua moved the people 6 miles west and closer to the river where it seems that they remained three days, verse 2. At the end of three days, the officers went through the camp.
Now in our first Joshua message I made the comment that it appears that the phrase ‘three days’ in the Old Testament (not the New Testament)…the phrase ‘three days’ in the Old Testament could be shorthand for ‘a little while’.[18] I didn’t sense a shudder move through the audience when I said that but it may have: “You mean three days isn’t three days?” It turns out, that though it may be true that three days in several Old Testament instances may be shorthand for ‘a little while’, it doesn’t have to be true here in Joshua.
In other words there is a plausible way to explain the use of the phrase ‘three days’ in Joshua chapters 1, 2, and 3. And there’s actually an ‘aha’ that comes at the end of this explanation if we follow it to the end.
Let me quickly attempt to make sense of the phrase ‘three days’ as it’s used in the first three chapters of Joshua. As you can see on the slide the phrase ‘three days’ is used in Joshua 1:11 Within three days you are to pass over this Jordan..And then in Joshua 2:22 The spies remained there(in the hills west of Jericho) three days…
So the first idea that helps us make sense of these uses of three days is that the three days in 1:11 and 2:22 are the same—the three days that Joshua announces and the three days the spies are gone are the same. So in our passage here in chapter 3, when Joshua wakes up, Joshua 3:1, it’s then Day 4. And Joshua moves the people from Shittim to the Jordan where they end up camping three days. They are in place at the Jordan at the end of Day 4. And then Joshua 3:2 tells us that At the end of three days ( of camping by the Jordan)—that would be a portion of day 4, and then day 5, and then day 6—the officers went through the camp and announced it was time to enter the land and Joshua says in verse 5 Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the LORD (Yahweh) will do wonders among you. And what day would tomorrow be? It would be the seventh day, right? So given this reconstruction, on the seventh day, the people of Israel passed over the Jordan and entered their rest. There’s your ‘aha’ moment; say it with me, “Aha!: That’s a bit intriguing isn’t it? On the seventh day the people of Israel entered their rest.
But what are we to make of this movement to the Jordan River in verse 1? Practically it made a lot of sense to be closer to the Jordan and ready to go when it was time to pass over it. It also would’ve been helpful to be near water when the people began to consecrate themselves. You can see that in verse 5. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. But was there any other value for the people of Israel to camp next to the Jordan as it raged along? (And we do learn that it was a raging river down in verse 15. It’s spring time and the snowmelt from Mt. Hermon had caused the Jordan to overflow it’s bank and rage along. So it just so happens that God chose to lead his people across the Jordan when it was at its highest and fastest state).
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If you were to see the Jordan River today it looks more like a creek. Because water is so precious in that part of the world, “runoff from the hills on either side of the Jordan valley is strategically captured and diverted for agricultural use” [19] ….So a lot of water that used to enter the Jordan no longer does. In the dry summer months, the Jordan might measure ten feet across and be no deeper than two or three feet. But back in Joshua’s time, around March or April, the Jordan was a raging river.
How do we know? Well we have eyewitness testimony from people who encountered the river prior to the modern era when much of the water was being siphoned off for agricultural purposes. And I’ll be sharing a few of their testimonies as we move through the passage.
Here’s the first---There was an American explorer named Lynch in the 19th century (so we are talking the 1800s) who ran the river in a boat of some type. He described his experience with these words: “With it’s tumultuous rush, the river hurried us onward and we knew not what the next moment would bring forth—whether it would dash us on a rock or plunge us down a cataract.”[20] At one time the Jordan was a raging river
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Well let me ask my question again. Was there any other reason that it was valuable for the people of Israel to camp for a few days next to the Jordan River while it raged in flood stage?
I can’t help but thinking that the river got inside their head. I can’t help but thinking that they got to thinking that passing over the Jordan was impossible. They went to bed to the sound of its turbulence. They woke up each day to see it fresh again, to see how powerful it was, to see how it just kept surging by without pause. Perhaps they walked a ways out in it and experienced its power first hand.
In a major league football game when one team is down by three points or less, the opposing team tries to get in field goal range hoping to kick a field goal in the last few seconds to win the game. Often the team on defense, right before the kicker kicks the ball, will call time out—it’s called ‘icing the kicker’…. The whole idea is throwing the kicker off mentally…here he has prepared for the kick and then time out is called and he has to wait. The hope I guess is that he’ll start thinking this field goal is really long. The hope is that any self-confidence will spiral down.
Well I think the three days at the Jordan River ‘iced the people of Israel’. I think they realized that passing over the Jordan was the longest field goal they might ever kick. And having experienced the river close up, it really had to feel impossible. I can’t help but thinking they began to talk among themselves, “How’s this going to happen?....how are we going to get across?....Whose idea was it to cross at this time of year? ”
As I thought about that… I thought about the many bible stories that are written so that the reader is pulled into the impossibility of the circumstances. Take I Samuel 17, for example, the story of David and Goliath. The story begins with the Philistines on one side of the valley of Elah and the people of Israel quaking in their sandals on the other side of the valley. What comes next in the story? The author shows us Goliath up close….all 9 feet of him, his chain mail armor weighing 125 pounds…. The story is written in such a way that we, along ith the Israelites begin to quake in our sandals too and begin to feel “This is impossible….no one could defeat this giant”
Some stories from Jesus’ ministry are like that. How about the woman who had an issue of blood?…for twelve years…who had suffered much under many physicians…. And spent all she had…but she was worse than better. The hopeless description of her situation tumbles from phrase to phrase. Or what about the demon possessed man who lived among the tombs? No one could bind him… not even with a chain…he broke every chain he had been bound with…. No one had strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs, he was always cutting himself with stones and crying out. Phrase after phrase the man’s hopeless situation is painted.