Crossing the Jordan

Joshua 3: 5-17

 

 

          If it seems like I’ve been talking a lot about leadership lately, it’s probably because I’ve been talking a lot about leadership lately. I can’t seem to get away from it. Today’s Scripture is no exception. One of the first lines starts with God talking to Joshua and he says “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they (the people of Israel) may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” It’s curious that although the word leadership is never used in the Bible, it is nevertheless a subject which receives quite a bit of treatment. 

          The occasion is the crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It is about 1406…B.C. After forty years of wandering, forty years of purging the old and preparing a new generation for God, the time has finally come. The land flowing with milk and honey awaits, but it is not without its hardships. Ahead lies the land of Canaan and it is already populated with many tribes. This land may be promised, but the promise must be claimed.

          It had been a long time in the making. Moses had died. The greatest leader of the nation of Israel was gone. A whole generation of disobedient grumblers had gone the way of all flesh. Joshua and Caleb, always faithful, were almost eighty years old. A new generation had sprung up. Children born into the Exodus were forty.  Imagine their anticipation to stand at the gates to the Promised Land, the land promised so many years ago. The book of Numbers tells us in Chapter 26 that a census was taken of those men twenty years of age and older in order to know who was able to go to war. They numbered 601, 730. Add to that younger males, women and children and it is estimated that between 2.5 and 3.5 million people stood at the banks of the Jordan River. A mighty event was about to happen.

            The first time I stood in front of a congregation to deliver the message, I remember saying out loud, “What am I doing here?” It was too awesome, too incredible, to think that I could be God’s messenger, to think that he had a message for me to deliver.  How must Joshua have felt! He had the word of God himself that he would be exalted, that the people would be able to see that he was God’s messenger. But in spite of even the reassurance of God, Joshua had to lead. He had to stand in front of God’s people, deliver the message and then live it. Thank God for us, that’s exactly what Joshua did.

           Joshua gathered the people and the first thing he said was “Consecrate yourselves.”  Consecrate: to set apart, to prepare. The first thing Joshua said to the people of Israel as this great and miraculous event was about to unfold was “Get ready. You each have a personal responsibility here. You have your own cleansing to do in order to be ready for what God has in store for you.” Then, Joshua said to the people: “for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” Listen to that. “For tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” Joshua was telling his people to expect a miracle…not just to hope for it.

          The Ark of the Covenant was to go before the people. This was the equivalent of the person, the promise, even the presence of God. The crossing of the Jordan was nothing less than a religious procession. The priests carried the Ark on a mission led by God. The people were not asked to go first. God would do that for them. The people were asked to follow.  

          God, through Joshua, asked the people of Israel to do a great thing. Not only were they about to cross a river which was overflowing its banks, but they were to be prepared to follow God against nation after nation as they entered the Promised Land. The people of Israel were not warriors. They were barely removed from four hundred years of slavery.  And yet, God did not ask Joshua to lead alone, nor did God ask the people to go alone. He only asked that they follow him. He asked them to go where he would lead them. So Joshua says to the people: “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you…” Don’t miss it. God wants us to know who he is. He is the living God.

          You know the rest of the story. The priests touched the water and it stopped flowing. They walked out to the middle of the riverbed and stood on dry land. About a half mile upstream, the people of Israel, millions in number, stepped into the river and began their participation on yet another of those mighty acts that tell us something about our Creator. In order to participate in that miracle, they had to believe. They had to have faith. They had to trust God that not only would the waters of the Jordan cease to flow, but that those waters would continue to be held until all had safely forded the river.

          It must have taken a long time for so many to cross, but cross they did. They crossed not only to get away from the desert where they had wandered for so long, but also to go forward in faith to an unknown future. They were in the hands of God. It was God’s presence that sustained God’s people. Whatever life brings our way, we can focus on God’s presence and rest in him. He will sustain us just as he did the people of Israel at the Jordan River.

          Joshua, chosen by God to lead his people, would have his moments. He was far from perfect, as events in the near future would prove, but he followed God. Such was the essence of his leadership. He followed God. When it comes to Christianity, our leadership emanates from our example. We evangelize as much with our hands and feet as we do with our words. Joshua followed God and his people followed him. It is God who does the exalting, not us.

          The great apostle Paul writing to his beloved church in Corinth, had this to say about ministry. “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all…Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but the Spirit.”

          What can we take from this crossing? There is more to this story than a miracle from God, as wonderful and awesome as that is. We should first notice that leadership comes not from inner power nor from outer strength. Leadership comes from washing feet and following the living God. Leaders serve. Servants lead. That’s the way of God. As minister and religious writer Hampton Keathley once said, the authority of leaders among God’s people needs to be Scripture rather than their personality, charisma, or whatever happens to be appealing to people at the time. Secondly, we should keep in mind that each of us must come prepared. We must consecrate ourselves to the Lord or our witness will not work. Next, we must step out on faith, but we will never be in front, for God always goes before us and prepares the way. It is only when we are willing to take that step of faith that we will be able to see that God has opened that door for us.

          It took a lot of courage to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. It was also the Unknown Land. It also took a lot of faith. Perhaps it was that faith which endowed God’s people with the courage they needed. But God was there then and he is here now. Christians today have their own Jordans to cross. For us to do God’s will, sometimes we will have to enter into spiritual warfare much as the nation of Israel had to take on the Canaanites. It will not be our human effort that sustains us, but rather our faith in and our obedience to the living God. We must step out in faith. We must follow the living God. We must be ministers of that new covenant to which Paul referred…the new covenant of grace…the grace of Jesus Christ and the life given us in the Spirit.

          The only leadership that really matters is that which directs us to God. If that is our beacon, then the Lord will do wonders among us, too!