“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” (1 Peter 1:3)
Christian hope is not founded on human strength or ability but on God’s power. The book of Joshua recounts the Israelite invasion of the Promised Land. Was this just a match between two human teams? Could victory be guaranteed? Rahab, the Canaanite, was already convinced Israel would win. In Canaanite mythology, the god who controlled the waters, was the supreme god. She had already heard of the crossing of the Red Sea and concluded that the LORD their God was with them (Joshua 2:9-10). But God did it again. He dried up the river Jordan, so that Israel could cross into Canaan. This gave Israel a confident hope. It confirmed to Rahab that her decision to side with the Israelites was the right one.
As Christians, we look not to the promised land, but to eternal life. Not to victory over others, but death. How can we have a confident hope? We look to Jesus, who crossed from death into resurrected life. We trust not in human power, but in the God who has power over the waters and over death.
Israel’s Faith (Joshua 2-3)
How do you prepare for success?
Life is full of challenges to overcome and little victories to win. But how do we prepare to be successful? Perhaps you are aware of an upcoming challenge in your own life, or an ongoing challenge you are struggling with. Are you confident of success? If so why? If not, why not?
What might you need to have in place to bring about success in the face of that challenge?
England may not have won the World Cup, but they did achieve a measure of success by reaching the semi-finals. What did they put in place to help them achieve what they did?
More importantly, as Andy Burnham takes on the role of Prime Minister on Monday. What does he need to have in place to bring about success, not just for him, but us as a country?
How do we prepare for success?
Crossing the Jordan
In our reading today, Israel cross the river Jordan into the Promised Land. God had promised Abraham, their ancestor that one day they would have the land. He had rescued their parent’s generation from slavery in Egypt, miraculously bringing them through the Red Sea on dry land. When they had first considered entering the promised land, they had been too afraid of its inhabitants and failed to trust in God. So, they had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, where God had provided for them, but also taught them to trust and obey him. Now, the new generation was in charge. The old leader Moses had died and his protégé, Joshua, now led the nation.
So, they are on the edge of the River Jordan, a major river that is the border of the Promised Land God had promised to them. This is an important moment. It is the end of their wilderness wanderings, but also the beginning of the conquest of the land. It both shows that they are now prepared for success but also gives them the last bit of preparation they need to give them success.
But how are the thousands of Israelites going to cross the River Jordan? It is a river, which is normally 100 feet wide and up to 10 feet deep, but in flood – which it was at this time- it’s width can expand to almost half a mile. There were no bridges or boats. Israel had no way across.
So, God provided a miracle. He stopped the waters at Adam, a site about 15 miles north of Jericho, where the banks of the river are high. Occasionally, in modern times, earthquakes and mudslides have been known to cause a blockage here and stop the waters for up to 72 hours.
That explains physically what might have happened here, but of course the miracle is in the timing! God stops the waters at just the moment Israel needed to cross into the Promised Land.
God’s Encouragement
The miracle is first and foremost, the encouragement that Israel needs from God as they start out on the challenge of conquering the Promised Land. It is the last stage in preparing them for success.
Encouragement is really important. I was talking to a friend from chess club earlier this week and we were reflecting on our early lives. He hadn’t done very well at school, but when he finished school, his mum encouraged him to join the RAF, which turned out to be just the right thing for him.
I also reflected, that I was successful at school and went on to university, but that success was in large part down to the encouragement of my parents. We all need encouragement from others, if we are to face the challenges of life.
But what is even more important is the encouragement of God.
The way the story is told in these two chapters at first sight seems very longwinded and convoluted. The events could easily be told in 10 verses not over 40 verses but the writer is more concerned to communicate what this miracle meant than simply what happened.
He shows that it was an act of God designed to encourage Israel:
“This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites.” (Joshua 3:10)
It is also designed to show that God was with Joshua, the new leader of Israel, as he had been with Moses:
“That day the LORD exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they revered him all the days of his life, just as they had revered Moses.” (Joshua 4:14)
It also helped to show that God was the one who had the real power. That he was the living God, in the face of all the false gods of the nations. The Canaanites followed Baal as their chief god. In their mythology, Baal is considered as chief, because he had conquered the god of sea and water. In chapter 2, Rahab had been persuaded to fear Israel’s god, partly because she had heard about him drying up the Red Sea, but now the Canaanites witness him repeating the miracle right on their doorstop.
No wonder, Joshua can say,
“He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful…” (Joshua 4:24)
What is more in the very next verse we are told:
“Now when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the LORD had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until we had crossed over, their hearts sank and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites.” (Joshua 5:1)
Remembering God’s Encouragement
This demonstration of God’s power is a crucial encouragement for Israel as they prepare for the challenge of conquering the land. But Joshua sees it as an encouragement that needs to be remembered by future generations. So, one of the features of the story is that twelve stones are taken from the dried upriver bed and piled together to form a memorial to the event. So, that Israel will not forget what God has done.
As Christians, we too need to remember what God has done. For us, the greatest miracle is not the crossing of the Jordan, but the crossing of death. Jesus died and rose again. His resurrection was a demonstration of God’s immense power, an encouragement to us, that God will be there to help us through our toughest challenges and especially in our journey through death itself. The death and resurrection of Jesus need to be remembered. So, Jesus, like Joshua set up a memorial. Not a pile of stones, but a simple meal. As we take communion today, remember that it points us to Jesus’ great work of crossing through death for us. In that he demonstrated God’s power for us. We take communion to remember. We take it to be encouraged. It is an important part of how we prepare for success in doing God’s work in this life.
So, this miracle demonstrates God’s encouragement. But it also shows that Israel was prepared for what was ahead, because it demonstrates their faith and obedience and their unity.
Faith & Obedience
It is traditional to criticise football managers, but we need to accept that the England football team, only succeeded as much as they did because they believed in the leadership of Thomas Tuchel and were willing to do what he told them. If they had lacked faith in the manager, or were unwilling to play as he told them, then they would have crashed out of the tournament much earlier. Faith and obedience matter.
God had been teaching Israel faith and obedience for forty years, through their wilderness wanderings. Were they now finally ready? This passage shows us that they were.
When Israel had crossed the Red Sea, they had no choice. The Egyptian army were chasing them down. Going through the Red Sea was their only means of survival.
Crossing the Jordan was different. They were not fleeing from the enemy; they were crossing to meet the enemy. What is more they were approaching a river that was uncrossable. And yet, they trusted God and obeyed his commands, given through their new leader, Joshua.
In particular, the Priests carrying the ark, showed immense faith and obedience. If you read through the whole of chapters 3 and 4, you will notice that it is written in a way that deliberately draws out the tension that the Priests carrying the ark must have felt. We are told in 3:17 that the priests with the ark stopped in the middle of the Jordan, but we are not told that they come up out of the middle of the Jordan until 4:18.
Everyone else we are told hurried across the dry riverbed. Wouldn’t you? Crossing the dry river at all was risky. You had no way of knowing when the water would return. You could be stuck in the middle and drowned. If I was an Israelite I would have gone across quickly! But the Priests with the Ark stood there in the middle, while everyone else passed across. They really had to trust that God would hold the waters back long enough, this was courageous obedience. And they did it. And once they did come to the other side, it says the waters resumed.
Back in chapter 1, God told Joshua,
“Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:7)
One of the key themes of the book is the importance of trusting and obeying God. This is the secret to success in the challenges we face in life. The crossing of the Red Sea showed that Israel had learnt it. They were up for the challenge.
What about us as a church today? Do we see trusting and obeying God, as crucial to our success as a church? Are we willing to obey God, even when others may criticise us for doing so. Even when it feels like we might lose out. Do we trust that God will honour our obedience?
Faith and obedience is crucial for success in the Christian life. As the old chorus goes:
“Trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey.”
But alongside faith and obedience we need unity.
Unity
On Friday, as Andy Burnham took on the leadership of the Labour party, he made a specific call for an end of factionalism. He realises that if the labour party is to be successful in government it needs to be united.
Unity is crucial for success. Israel also knew that and these chapters demonstrate the unity of Israel. It is symbolically demonstrated in the construction of the stone memorial. Although Israel consisted of Twelve Tribes, each with their own specific identity and loyalties, the creation of the memorial involved a man selected from each tribe taking up a stone from the middle of the Jordan and placing it on the pile to make the memorial. It showed the Twelve Tribes working as one.
We also need to note the role of the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh. These tribes already had land to settle in. Israel had already conquered some of the land east of the Jordan and Moses had allowed these tribes to settle there. However, he had insisted that they send their fighting men with the rest of Israel to help conquer the land West of the Jordan for the other tribes. And this is what they did. In fact, they led the way. It says in 4:12-13:
“The men of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh crossed over, armed, in front of the Israelites, as Moses had directed them. About forty thousand armed for battle crossed over before the LORD to the plains of Jericho for war.” (Joshua 4:12-13).
These men left their wives and children almost undefended in the east to help their fellow Israelites win victory in the west. This was a powerful display of unity.
As churches, we similarly need unity today if we are to be successful in doing God’s work. Our vision 2030, is very much about working together in unity to build something better for the future. We are already in a process of merging St. George’s and St. Luke’s PCCs to help achieve this.
Inevitably, though we are still made up of different tribes. Groups that relate well to each other and have shared priorities that may not be in line with the priorities of other tribes. That is true both within our two churches and between our two churches. Nonetheless, if we are to be successful, we need to be united. We need to work together, communicate well with each other and be willing to battle for the wider mission of the two churches for Ramsgate. Divided we fall, united we conquer.
Are you ready for success?
So, are you ready for success? Do you remember the power of God? Are you courageous enough to face the challenges God sets before us with faith and obedience? And will we stand united together, working for the good of all God’s church?
St. Luke's Church Ramsgate 