Crossing The Rivers in Life.
Introduction: Many of us want God to do great things in our life, but we never take the step of obedience
Patricia Agnes of Jacksonville, Florida hired a taxi at 1 dollar per mile to travel 10,000 miles to Alaska.
(Ripley’s Believe it or not.)
Some people will do anything to travel from one place to another.
You: How much would it cost you to get where you want to go?
Look: This morning we are looking at the miraculous story of how the Israelites crossed the Jordan River.
Do: God did a miracle in their life and God will do great things in your life if you¡¦re willing to pay the price of obedience and commitment.
Look with me at:
Passage: Joshua 3:1-6
1Early the next morning Joshua and all the Israelites left Acacia„T and arrived at the banks of the Jordan River, where they camped before crossing. 2Three days later, the Israelite leaders went through the camp 3giving these instructions to the people: ¡§When you see the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD your God, follow them. 4Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you. Stay about a half mile„T behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the Ark. Make sure you don¡¦t come any closer.¡¨
5Then Joshua told the people, ¡§Purify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do great wonders among you.¡¨
6In the morning Joshua said to the priests, ¡§Lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river.¡¨ And so they started out.
Prayer
1. Background
a. The spies return: Joshua 2:22-24
After leaving Rahab, the spies state three days in the hill country. The king¡¦s men who¡¦d been hiding them gave up their search and came home.
They came to Joshua and gave their report. And they said, (verse 24)
24¡§The LORD will certainly give us the whole land, for all the people in the land are terrified of us.¡¨
So the next day Joshua assembled all of the Israelites and they arrived at the bakes of the mighty Jordan River.
For over 200 miles the Jordan River flows from more than 2000 feet above sea level at the Sea of Galilee to 1300 feet below sea level at the Dead Sea. The difference is twice the height of the Empire State building.
The water runs fast and strong.
The Jordan River was also at flood stage and overflowing its banks. This made the Jordan River impossible to cross with an entire army.
But , that night the Israelites camped next to the river.
2. Commands and Application
As the Israelites prepared to cross the Jordan River, Joshua began to give them instructions. He was giving specific instructions for how they should cross this great barrier. God had not told him anything about what would happen next. Joshua was planning by principle. Joshua had seen enough about God to know to trust him.
In your life we encounter rivers and obstacles that block our progress for doing what God wants us to do. Many can times we come to that block that obstacle and we stop. We don¡¦t know what else to do when the obstacle is too great. The river is too wide and the river is too fast. We begin to trust in ourselves and we fear the obstacle itself.
You want to be great for God. And you want God to do great things through you. But hear you sit at an obstacle. The obstacle of past rejection, or past failure, or fear of failure, or fear of commitment, or just plain laziness has been put in front of you and you are paralyzed.
As we look at how Joshua instructed the Israelites, according to principle, we can learn how to overcome those obstacles in our lives.
Joshua¡¦s first instruction is that they are to follow the priests.
Verse 3 and 4:
3giving these instructions to the people: ¡§When you see the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD your God, follow them. 4Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you. Stay about a half mile„T behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the Ark. Make sure you don¡¦t come any closer.¡¨
Joshua says to follow the priests. ¡§When they pick up the Ark of the Covenant, which represents God¡¦s leadership and presence¡Xfollow them.¡¨
I particular like to look at verse four, which says follow the priests because you have not traveled this way before. What is amusing about this to me is that the priests have not traveled that way either. And this is where you grab hold of the principle.
Joshua trusts so much in the Lord¡¦s protection and promise that he knows that the Lord will lead. Joshua simply tells the people, ¡§When God tells the priest and move--you move¡Xand let God handle the rest. ¡§
And that is exactly what you need to do in your life. You need to know that the Lord has promised to be there with you. You need to trust in him. Complete trust. When the Lord reveals something in scripture to you, you need to trust it. And you need to follow it.
You may not know were it will end up. Joshua had no idea what was going to happen. But Joshua trusted anyway. And He obediently follows through with Faith.
Joshua¡¦s next instruction was one of purification.
The Israelites were to purify themselves.
Verse five
5Then Joshua told the people, ¡§Purify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do great wonders among you.¡¨
Because Joshua trusted that the Lord would be doing great things, Joshua commanded the people to purify themselves. They had been given the law reported in Leviticus and they were to purify themselves according to that law.
But the point of the purification is to remove sin from their lives.
And if God is going to do something powerful in your life, you to must get rid of the sin in your life.
God hates sin.
And in order for us to be used by Him, We must get rid of the sin in our lives.
Yes, we will continue to sin. However, we need to get rid of the habits of sin.
If you have a bad temper, take steps to calm down.
If you have a habit of gossiping, keep your mouth shut.
If you have a habit of being immodest, be modest.
If you have a habit of using filthy language, clean it up.
We need to take step to get rid of all the sin in our lives and surrender ourselves to Christ.
God can do marvelous thing with people who are surrendered to Him.
And Joshua¡¦s third instruction is to left up the Ark and Go. It is a message of commitment and following through.
Verse 6
6In the morning Joshua said to the priests, ¡§Lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river.¡¨ And so they started out.
Many times we begin to trust in the Lord and then we purify ourselves, but then we fade away. We don¡¦t anything with it. We come right to the point we have all this opportunity but that we just stop.
We have a problem with commitment. All of us have become so self-centered that we do not want to commit to anything that will interrupt our schedule.
Let me give you a hint: If you schedule conflicts with God¡¦s schedule. Adjust your schedule.
Over the next couple months we are going to be working with the nominating committee for position in the church. We try very hard to not overload family time and work time. Both of these are important to me as they are to you.
But God has placed in front of all of us tasks for which we are to do. And if we want God to bless our church, and us we must commit ourselves to do it.
For some of you that means joining the church.
For some of you that means volunteering to do a specific job.
For some of you, that may mean saying no to some jobs so that you can focus on what God has called you to do.
In the Fall, I am going to be teaching about four people how we are going to be using Evangelism in the Sunday School; God may be calling you to be one of those four.
We have to take the next step and commit ourselves to serving the Lord.
And Joshua was teaching us that we don¡¦t just trust the Lord and remove sin from ourselves just to sit back and waste away. God wants to use us powerful way but we must first get up and go.
3. God does a great thing in the lives of the Israelites because they are obedient and follow him.
The Lord then told Joshua: verse 7-8
Joshua 3:7-17
7The LORD told Joshua, ¡§Today I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all the Israelites. Now they will know that I am with you, just as I was with Moses. 8Give these instructions to the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant: ¡¥When you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop.¡¦¡¨
It was here that the Lord told Joshua what was going to happen. Joshua trusted in the Lord and the God rescued Joshua. Not, the other way around.
9So Joshua told the Israelites, ¡§Come and listen to what the LORD your God says. 10Today you will know that the living God is among you. He will surely drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. 11Think of it! The Ark of the Covenant, which belongs to the Lord of the whole earth, will lead you across the Jordan River! 12Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. 13The priests will be carrying the Ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth. When their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will pile up there in one heap.¡¨
The Lord did exactly what he said he would do.
When the people set out to cross the Jordan, the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant went first.
As soon as the feet of the priests touched the water at the river¡¦s edge, 16the water began piling up at a town called Adam and rest of the water flowed to the Dead Sea until the ground was dry. And everybody crossed over.
As they crossed the priest stood in the middle of the riverbed as everyone passed by on dry ground.
And God will do great thing in your life as well. We must each trust in him, purify ourselves from the sin in our lives, and commit to the task.
But God begins to do great things through you when you trust in Him for salvation.
God loves us and wants to be close to us, but we are sinners and that separates us from Him. Sin separates us so much that it ends in death.
But God does love us and have provided his son to be the payment for our sin, to pay that payment of death in our place.
Have you accepted this payment for your sin this morning?
Each Sunday morning I stand here at the front during the next hymn. I wait for those who may want to declare their commitments to Him.
You can come this morning.
This is you chance to begin to allow God to do great things through you this morning.
