The Hebrews were about to enter the Promised Land. After three days the leaders commanded the people to watch for the ark of the covenant and to follow it. They did not know where it would go exactly, but they had every [...]]]> “You have not passed this way before” (Josh. 3:4).

The Hebrews were about to enter the Promised Land. After three days the leaders commanded the people to watch for the ark of the covenant and to follow it. They did not know where it would go exactly, but they had every assurance that they were going to follow it across the Jordan River.

God oftentimes directs His beloved to go where he has never been before and to do what he has never done before. God is purposed to build your trust by placing you in positions that require your reliance upon Him.

The distrusting Christian envisions exaggerated giants in the land, swift chariots and savage beasts because he does not want to go into unfamiliar territory. Scores of believers resist trusting wholly in the God of the Bible because they are unaccustomed to holy courage. It is not unusual for those who have victory at their fingertips to refuse the victory though they have tasted of the grapes of Eshcol and seen the mighty clusters with their own eyes. For too many saints, the highway of holiness remains untraveled.

How many Christians do you know who prefer fleeing to Tarshish than walking the streets of their Nineveh? Do you serve your fearful flesh or the spirited Holy Spirit within you? Fear of fording life’s next stream is paralyzing to the individual and ruinous to his society. Fear of Jordan’s stormy banks is foolish when God is on the other side.

Of those in the company of the Hebrews on this momentous day only Joshua and Caleb had witnessed the crossing of the Red Sea. These younger Hebrews were born in the wilderness, not in slavery like Joshua and Caleb. They knew that the Jordan was at flood stage. They had no boats and even at the crossing a walled city was on the other side. It appeared impossible, impregnable and foolhardy.

God’s word consoles His beloved in such a time as this. God told them that He would give them the land from Dan to Beersheba as their inheritance. He told them that He Himself would test them so they would honor Him and avoid sin (Ex. 20:20). Do you not know that the world, the flesh, the devil and God will always challenge genuine faith?

Only by accomplishing the delights of God shall you capture a vision for God’s will for your life. You cannot capture a vision of your tomorrow until you practice obedience today. It will not be well with your soul until it is well with God’s. Christ has no sweeter command than, “Follow Me” (Mk. 1:17).

Commit yourself to battle your distrust and hesitations. Hesitators never venture to see the waters of the seas piled up as a wall. Abandon outcomes to God by crucifying your constant grumble of “How” (I Pe. 4:19). Hush your fearful spirit concerning impossibilities in Christ Jesus because there are none. Yes it will be a narrow way for you, but then Christians know to look for the narrow way (Mt. 7:13f.).

Your God will rarely reveal all that He has in store for you. He opens His hand one finger at a time. Distrust will not allow you to see God arrest the floodwaters of life. Can you imagine the viewpoint of the Hebrews as they traversed the Jordan?

Imagine the people behind and in front watching the water move no more. Breathless and motionless as the water “stood and rose up in the heap” (Josh. 3:16). The Dead Sea was downstream and it was receiving no water from the Jordan. Imagine the amazement of the occupying tribes in the Promised Land when the water was cut off.

The miracle that led Israel into the exodus is repeated in this chapter as they cease their formal wilderness exodus. Nonetheless, this divided Jordon introduced them to war, not peace. Most people refuse to cross life’s Jordans because they are unwilling to sacrifice their present misery for a peace that shall pass all understanding though it will be discovered on the other side of war.

Jesus is the greater Joshua. He takes you to deeper, swifter and more dangerous Jordans as well as larger, better fortified and more savage Jerichos. Yet He goes before you. Accept Jesus’ instruction to Peter: “You follow Me!” (Jn. 21:22).

Fear is the fruit of hesitation. Anxiety is the outgrowth of one who is not committed completely to a work. Apprehension and panic [...]]]> “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9).

Fear is the fruit of hesitation. Anxiety is the outgrowth of one who is not committed completely to a work. Apprehension and panic are the consequences of partial pledges. If you have not earnestly and enthusiastically entrusted your soul to the Lord Jesus Christ, you will experience the full force of fear.

Every man is the servant of his fears. Fear causes boundaries to become blurred. Man begins to be stretched in areas God has not designed for stretching. Why do saints encounter personal fears hostile to their profession of faith? Because they have lost their untarnished fear of God (Ro. 3:18).

Never withhold your full strength from God due to unbelief. You must believe that you can trust God alone with your whole self. Commit to be totally at risk to God’s provisioning regardless of your assessment of the consequences. Be mindful of the words of your elder brother: “the righteous shall live by faith” (Hab. 2:4).

Joshua was abandoned in his commitment to the Lord. He knew your Lord was with His people; therefore he called upon his kinsmen to have no fear of the giants in the land of Canaan (Nu. 14:9). Moses promised the Hebrews saying, “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear, or be dismayed” (Dt. 31:8). The people did not trust Moses or God, Joshua and Caleb did. Joshua and Caleb entered the land of Canaan – their kinsmen did not.

One evening Jesus slept as he sailed with His disciples across the Sea of Galilee. A gale came upon the waters and the disciples thought they were perishing. They cried out to Jesus and He rebuked the wind saying, “Hush, be still” (Mk. 4:39). After every thing calmed down, He turned to His disciples saying, “Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?” (v. 40). The disciples were afraid because they failed to access faith in the One who controls the universe. Fear feeds timidity.

Jesus is always as close as a whisper. He promised He would always be near declaring, “And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20). His nearness should squelch all discouragement and fear: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Ro. 8:31f.).

You must make a choice. Will you be held hostage by your fears that are the stock in trade of unbelief? On the other hand, will you annihilate all fears by choosing to place your abiding trust in the God who is?

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ro. 8:38f.).

Moses was Joshua’s Ebenezer – Moses is gone.  When your Ebenezers are removed, you experience an awareness of weakness and aloneness.  During those [...]]]> “Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel” (Josh. 1:2).

Moses was Joshua’s Ebenezer – Moses is gone.  When your Ebenezers are removed, you experience an awareness of weakness and aloneness.  During those seasons you need to hear Jesus say, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (II Cor. 12:9).

Verse two was God’s revelation to Joshua of his overarching purpose in this life.  God assigns specific tasks to His people.  As you prayerfully focus upon the task, God allows greater specificity.  The attractiveness of greater specificity is that it lends itself to your awareness of the likelihood of increased success.  

God commissioned Joshua with two commands:  “arise, cross this Jordan.”  

Moses saw the Promised Land, but he could not get there.  God told Moses he could not cross over into the Promised Land saying, “Because you broke faith with Me in the midst of the sons of Israel… because you did not treat Me as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel” (Dt. 32:51).  God cares about how you treat Him in the presence of other Christians!  

Leaders never make small mistakes. Leadership’s sins are expensive for everyone.

God’s first commissioning command to Joshua was to “arise.”  Joshua was not called to imitate Moses; he was called reveal God.  Joshua had a high regard for Moses. He should have!  Nevertheless, he was to be the Joshua God purposed him to be.  His task was peculiar to him and was different from Moses’ task.  

When the Israelites were defeated at Ai, God reminded Joshua of His command (Josh. 7:10).  Joshua must be the man God equipped him to be.  There would be occasions when he wanted to just lie down and quit.  Nevertheless, he could not allow himself to become discouraged.  His obstacles may have appeared to him greater than those of his predecessor, but his God was the same (Heb. 13:8).

The second command was to “cross this Jordan.”  The Jordan River was in its flood stage (Josh. 3:15).  Joshua would have to secure passage for himself and nearly two million people.  All of them were to enter into “the land which I am giving to them.”  

How would he do it?  Does God always provision what He commands?

“Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts” (Zech. 4:6).

“When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What are these stones?’ then you shall inform your children, saying, ‘Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground.’  For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just [...]]]> Print this devotional

“When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What are these stones?’ then you shall inform your children, saying, ‘Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground.’  For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed; that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Josh. 4:21-24).

God commanded Joshua to command twelve men, one from each tribe, to take twelve stones and place them in the middle of the Jordan River, and twelve stones placed at Gilgal to memorialize the miraculous crossing of the Jordan River by the people of the Hebrews. Your God is the God of signs and wonders as well as memorials to His signs and wonders (Ex. 12:26f.; Dt. 6:20-25; I Sam. 7:12).  God nurtures the art of remembering Him because forgetful minds assure thankless hearts and lives.

God knew that one day the descendants of these original exodusers would ask their fathers for the meaning of the stone monuments.  God wanted the very stones to shout of His glory.  The twelve stones in the Jordan and the twelve stones in the Promised Land preached the gospel of promise and hope.  They bore witness to the past and future, the living and dead, the Church militant and the Church triumphant, and to whom men had been in contrast to whom He wants them to become.

God purposed these twenty-four stones to assist their observers in rehearsing the miracle of worshipping a holy omnipotent God.  God wants you to nurture memories of Him.  He designed you so that your memories will form the culture of your family and society.

Every society has its monuments.  The Arc de Triomphe in Paris memorials the heroism of the French soldiers on various fields of battle.  The challenge is that most monuments glorify man rather than God.  What monuments can you identify bearing witness to the triumphs of God?

Those without memories are without histories and shall drift from their moorings.  The person without family stories is a phantom and his society vanishes.  God says, “So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever.”  These stones served as their Washington Monument – a national memorial to the faithfulness of their God and the obedience of a people who had nowhere else to turn.

Oftentimes memorials have words upon them that newcomers or disbelievers would prefer are absent – “In God We Trust.”   The Lord’s Day is a memorial to the relationship between God and His Church that those within and outside the Church continually attempt to reduce to nothing (Eze. 20:12).

God intended for these grey stones to preach the miracles of a holy God.  He wanted them to provoke a national catechism between the generations that would be recited from generation to generation.  These were to become stones of remembrance whereby every parent took upon himself the responsibility of telling his children the story of the Lord’s deliverances.

These Jordan-Gilgal memorials would serve as stones of stumbling and rocks of offense to those disobedient to the word of God because they would be rejected by destroyers of the new holy society that was supposed to be built in the Promised Land (I Pe. 2:8).  Nonetheless, for those believers and builders of a godly culture, these stones would be choice, precious and costly cornerstones (Isa. 28:16).

Even as the priests stood upon the stones in the Jordan, the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled away the stone that sealed the tomb of Christ and sat upon it (Mt. 28:2).  The guards who saw him shook for fear and became like dead men (Mt. 28:4).  Are you fearful of God’s holy stones or do they bring you joy?  Do you participate in Communion at your church so that the bread and the cup are memorials proclaiming the Lord’s death until He returns? (I Cor. 11:26).

Joshua closes this gospel bearing his name with a warning to the people of God, saying, “Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, lest you deny your God” (Josh. 24:27).

Do the sacred insignia of your holy omnipotent God testify in your favor or are they your most severe critics?  What are your memorials?  What are the signs for your children to look upon?  Can you give evidence to the memorials of your involvement in transformed lives, transformed families, transformed churches and transformed marketplaces?