Building on Faith:
Past the Point of No Return
Joshua 3
Interview with Ron Jones about the moment in the take-off pattern that a pilot must make a decision to commit to take-off or abort the flight.
This “crossover principle” finds an arresting illustration in the lives of God’s Old Testament people. God intended the Exodus from Egypt to act as a prelude to the entry into the Promised Land. In the most famous period of procrastination of human history, that brief prelude became a 40-year-long detour in the desert. An entire generation of Israelites disappeared into the sands until the moment came to cross over. Joshua 3 finds God’s people waiting for that moment after a preparation of 40 years. They could no longer evade, avoid, step over or step around the crisis of their history. It was time commit to take-off or abort the mission.
Our congregation has taken a journey of preparation. It began quietly and inwardly among leaders. It has grown outwardly and obviously to include every age and stage of life in this church. We have organized, prayed, testified, visited, mailed, and preached. Yet all of this is only anticipation; we are now at the moment of decision. Unfinished symphonies, half-written books, uncompleted canvases, and incomplete buildings abound. How many have started what they could not finish or have begun what they could not complete? In the Cotswold section of England near the village of Broadway, there stands in the open country a stark tower on a barren hill. For miles around it signals the beginning of something that was never completed. It is the monument to a fancy that never became reality.
This lack of completeness must not be so in the journey of our congregation. We have come to the day of crossing over. Humans procrastinate but God always completes. Did you ever see a sunset and remark, “That is only half a sunset?” Did you ever see a seascape and ask, “Why did God not complete the sea?” You never saw half a snowflake or half a mountain. What God begins God completes: “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it” (Philippians 1:6).
This truth must be self-evident: After the weeks of preparation, we now face the challenge of crossing over.
When God’s people cross over, they need a certain indication of God’s leadership: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it” (Joshua 3:3). The twelve Hebrew tribes had camped on the far side of the Jordan in anticipation of crossing over. For thousands of people to plunge into the overflowing river required a singular certainty of God’s direction. The Hebrews had been desert-bound slaves. They had no experience with flooding rivers. They had not been that way before.
No biblical image has captured the imagination of our generation as much as the ark of the covenant. Harrison Ford epitomized the mystique of the ark as Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” More recently other real-life searchers have traced the ark to a supposed final destination in Ethiopia. What accounts for our fascination with this ancient biblical object? The ark stands for the presence and leadership of God. The origin of the ark rests in the cloud-shrouded time Moses spent with God atop Mt. Sinai. A secular world that knows little of that ultimate reality has fastened its attention to the ark as a manifestation of that presence. Yet the ark was no magical totem; its leadership belonged to those willing to move forward in faith.
We no longer follow a gold-encrusted box as the emblem of God’s presence. Believers have the written Word of God and the unseen, but nevertheless real, Holy Spirit of God. In the presence of these realities we should have an even greater sense of God’s guidance in our lives. The Holy Spirit blows like a wind upon us, glows like a fire within us, and flows like a river through us. Mighty acts for God take place because of the certainty of that unseen but nevertheless real leadership.
Martin Luther was the leader of the Protestant Reformation, which forever changed the Christian world. He revolted against the Roman Catholic Church of Europe. He was excommunicated by this church and banned by the Holy Roman Empire. He knew that leadership would reject him when he challenged the entire world order for the sake of the Gospel. When the moment came to cross over and nail his Thesis to the door, certainty led him.
John Wesley was the founder of the Methodist movement which has become the Methodist Church. He felt his heart strangely warmed as he heard the Preface to Luther’s “Commentary on Romans” read in a meeting at Aldersgate Street in London. Wesley moved forward with a certainty that shook England. He crossed over to the beginning of the Evangelical Awakening.
William Franklin Graham spent a sleepless night on the empty fairway of a golf course stretched out in prayer that God would give him certainty about God’s message. The next morning he stood up ready to cross over. Billy Graham marched off that golf course and into destiny.
Our crossing over in this day of decision may not seem as dramatic as these giants of Christian history, but it is just as real and just as significant for God’s work in this place. After weeks of preparation, we stand on the brink of our own Jordan. The decision we make in this hour will determine much about God’s work in this place for the years to come.
We need God’s leadership not only as a certain indication, but we also need God’s leadership because of the unfamiliar future. “You have not passed this way before” (v. 4). The Israelites had never seen what rested before them. Not only did they face the Jordan at flood stage, but on the other side they faced walled cities of fierce Canaanite fighters. They did not know what the future held, but they knew who held the future.
As each family of our congregation makes its decision about a pledge to fulfill our vision, none of us knows what rests on the other side. Nationally, economically, medically, vocationally, and in our families—we cannot know the future. Only God knows.
An industrial titan remembered his farm boyhood. It was his chore to go to the barn in the dark to secure the farm animals before the family bedtime. He dreaded what lurked in the shadows on the way to the distant barn. His father gave him unforgettable advice.
The lantern from the farmhouse would cast its light to the yard gate and no further. When he came to the yard gate, the lantern cast its light to the corral fence and no further. When he came to the corral fence, the lantern cast its light to the windmill and no further. When he came to the windmill, the lantern cast its light to the barn door. The wise father reminded the frightened lad that he had only to go as far as the light took him, with the assurance that the light would take him further at the next point of need.
Shortly this congregation will face a moment of destiny. We cannot see all the way, no more than Israel could see the battles and victories before them that day of crossing over the Jordan. But the ark that went before them over the Jordan would go before them to Jericho and every other place, giving the assurance of God’s victory. When we take a pen in our hand and make a pledge to this vision before us, God will lead us that far. From that point God will give us the light to our next destiny.
We can step out in that dependency on the intervention of God. When Israel crossed over, first the leaders (Joshua 3:8) and then the people (v. 17) stepped out into the Jordan. They braved the unfamiliar future with nothing but the spoken promise of God. One can hardly minimize the human drama of the situation. These former slaves had been desert-bound wanderers for 40 years. The sandal-clad feet knew the seething, searing heat of the desert sands. Now at the crest of the Jordan’s annual flood, they step into its waters behind the ark of God. Mothers clutch their babies, wide-eyed children squeeze their fathers’ hands, old men hobble on their staffs and young wives clutch their husbands’ arms. No artifice of cinematic ingenuity could capture the scene. Surely history has seen few such moments—that which God intended to do since the call of Abraham took place when a slave people depended upon God and crossed over.
History has changed shape because of crossings over. When Alexander the Great, the Macedonian, crossed over Hellespont to invade Asia, the face of civilization changed forever. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in his march to Rome, the direction of Roman history moved from Republic to Empire. When the apostle Paul crossed over to Macedonia from Asia, the direction of Christianity moved west rather than east. On July 6, 1944, when the Allied Invasion Force crossed the English Channel, the most decisive invasion in history saved Western civilization.
Our personal lives are a series of crossings over. When first we leave home we cross a line that changes life permanently. I remember when Vanessa and I first left Jackson Parish. For her, it was nothing new, but for me, it was a dramatic change. See, I had spent the first 27 years of my life in that small, rural parish. I knew the people and the people knew me. Now I was moving to Kentucky, 800 miles away, to people I didn’t know, had never seen, and wasn’t sure I would like. But we had the certainty of God, and we made the decision, and our lives forever changed. Now, I go back to Jackson Parish. I still have family there, and it is a nice place, but it is not the same. When we cross over, things change. When we join the armed services, change careers, or move across the country, we may cross lines that shape life permanently thereafter.
Churches also come to the moment of crossing lines. The life and destiny of many
congregations come down to a few critical decisions. Some chose to move forward in dependency on the intervention of God and they know of glorious victory. Others come to the riverbank of their own peculiar Jordan and retreat. Behind them rests an interminable desert of decline, a meaningless movement into mediocrity. The folks in such congregations opt for the safety of ecclesiastical predictability rather than the adventure of crossing over. They never take off and experience the soaring heights to which the grace of God can carry them.
Future generations will look back at this moment as a critical moment in the life of our congregation. The sacrificial provision we prepare to make will mark us either as a people of vision and sacrifice or a people who chose the way of risk-less convenience. We are here because those who went before us sacrificed for us. We must not do less.
Long ago in a deep mountain valley verdant with growth and watered by a crystalline river there lived a tribe. They prospered and grew until the grass was grazed away, the game hunted to extinction, and the river ran dry. A group of young pioneer heroes rose up to say, “We have heard of a wider valley and deeper river over the mountains where no one has gone. Let us be up and going.”
They made their way to the deeper valley with the wider stream and it was as they had heard. They returned with their report to the tribal council. There was, however, a council called “The Old Men Who Know.” They responded that there could be no such place, and even it there were, the tribe could never make the journey.
The young heroes struggled until most of the tribe had died. Finally they made their way over the mountain to the land of the future. There they grew and prospered once again. Finally the day came when the grass in the new valley had been grazed down and the water ran low. A new group of young pioneer heroes arose and claimed that beyond the next mountain there was an even larger valley with more grass and great herds of game.
But the strangest thing had happened. The original young pioneer heroes had in one generation become “The Old Men Who Know.” They complained that no one could risk the journey of crossing over.
Our congregation was built by those heroes—young and old—who always believed we could cross over into God’s tomorrow. Let no one among us say we cannot do so today. The movement is always upward and onward with our God!
P. S.--This sermon is a personal adaptation of a sermon distributed by RSI, a capital fundraising company. As far as I can discern, the material is not copyrighted.
