Joshua 4:15-24

Coming Up Out of Jordan

Jos 4:15-24

THE Canaanites might reasonably have looked upon the Jordan as one of their natural defences. This it was at all times, but it was to all human appearance more so at this season than at other periods of the year. Springing among the spurs of the Lebanon, at a great height above the level of the sea, becoming first Lake Merom, and then expanding into the Lake Tiberias, so large and important that it was called the Sea of Galilee, its impetuous course terminated in the Dead Sea. It would seem to have been made to roll just where it did that it might be a natural protection or defence for the people upon the side of the Canaanites. The time of this history was April or May. We know from another passage that it was the harvest of flax and barley; all the snow upon Hermon had melted, and was pouring down into the valley through which the swollen torrent plunged and roared on its way to the Dead Sea. The time of the year is thus worth noticing; it was a time at which the Jordan was in the very pride of its fulness and strength. It has been pointed out as a striking contrast that "when the Goths, in the fifth century, nearly a million of people, crossed the Danube to seek a home in the south of Europe, they had a fleet of vessels at their command; yet the crossing of the Goths occupied many days, and many lives were lost in the passage." Be it observed, then, that the writers make no doubt as to the reality of this miracle. Fifty days later the wheat harvest would have set in, and at the time of the wheat harvest Jordan had considerably subsided. Sceptical critics might therefore have said that the Israelites crossed at low water; there were many shallow places in the channel, and no doubt they took advantage of the subsidence of the river in order to cross. But the sacred historian makes it very clear that the Jordan was at its height: there was no mistake about its fulness and urgency; so we have to deal with the facts as we find them stated in the record. There is happily confirmatory evidence as to the time at which the Israelites passed, and that evidence tends to show that the river must have been at its fullest. Nature only apparently protects doomed men. We can imagine the Canaanites on their side of the river thinking that nature was in their interest, that nature was concerned for them, and had provided a defence inviolable; but nature is never on the side of the doomed man; certainly nature is never on the side of the bad man; even if apparently so, it is in appearance only, and not in reality; there is not a stone in the field that is not at enmity with him; there is not a beast browsing on any hill that does not count him a foe. This is the deep interpretation of things. Appearances notwithstanding, let us set it down as a very clear line in our book of serious reflection that the whole earth casts out the bad man, and would not give him accommodation or offer him hospitality, and at best would consent to the humiliation of providing him a grave. The strongest defences are worthless if our character be not sound and righteous in the sight of God; inroads can be made upon all securities, and will be made; and we shall be overthrown just in proportion to our guilt and corruptness. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree." There is no doubt about the appearance; the security was to all human vision ample and complete, but when God is against a man what wall can build him out? When character is wrong and judgment is coming, what hand dare hold itself up to keep back the lightning of just penalty? It is in the time of fancied security that we are often overthrown. God delights to stain the pride of all glory. He would seem almost in his providence to wait until we have reached the very culmination of our strength; and when we say, Now we are safely lodged within walls which cannot be shaken or burned! then he shows the greatness of his strength, and puts forth his arm to find us in our hidden securities. We cannot build out the lightning; we cannot build out God when he comes in judgment We may withhold our consent when he makes propositions; we may reject his mercy and slay his Son; but in the time of judgment we have no will, no power, no answer to the infinite challenges of God.

Why dwell upon the merely local incidents connected with this narration when we know that there are crossings in life which our power did not accomplish? Strip the record of everything that appears to be romantic or unduly excited all that touches what we may believe to be the incredible; yet there remains in our own history the fact that we have accomplished transitions and passages which we never completed in our own strength or by our own wisdom. We cannot tell how the difficulty was crossed, but that it is crossed we know well. Did we cross it in our sleep? Was it a dream-bridge that spanned the chasm? How did we get upon this side, where all is fertility and hopefulness and contentment? How did we come into this estate? We remember confusedly opposition, battle, natural difficulty the natural difficulty being the worst of all: the disadvantage of birth, early life, a thousand oppositions that crowded upon us far, far back in the. morning of memory; yet here we are this day in a fruitful place, under a blue sky, and the morning comes without threatening, and the whole heaven seems to make way for the sun that he may show his splendours in unusual fulness. How was this transference completed? We cannot tell the process in detail, but that we are here is the supreme fact in our life. Why, then, send the memory back upon some critical but fruitless errand, to find fault with the process, to ask questions about the detail? Better and wiser to begin our life from this conscious deliverance, and date everything from this side the river. Thus the past may chasten the present: from the long-gone years there may come some voice of warning; but all our dating of experience and vowing and service is from this side the river is from the stones which memorialise the deliverance. This is called the religious life and the religious construction of life; and this delivers us from memories which become tumultuous and confounding when not barred back by the boundary of definite consciousness of divine deliverance.

Are there not opportunities for crossing all rivers? And are not those opportunities of very brief duration? It is wonderful to mark how the door of opportunity swings back in life: it is even more wonderful to notice how it swings back again, as if to declare that mercy is not to be trifled with, and the hospitality of God is not an indiscriminate beneficence or munificence. Have not the poets told us that "there is a tide in the affairs of men"? Whilst we are reading words which we declare to be inspired and sacred, these very words are confirmed by experiences within our own knowledge, and they do but express in sacred colour what we ourselves have known to be true in daily life. The Gospel is itself a great opportunity; written upon it are the words, "Now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation." Who can utter that word "Now" with tone sufficient in expressiveness and pathos? When is "now"? -always a dying term, always a new projection; a time limited by a moment, and yet true of every moment coming. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near." These words define periods of time, exactness of opportunity; and we know them to be true by the broad facts and the daily experiences of life.

Reading of this passage of the river we find one great omission. The omission was purposed. There was no way of retreat provided. The river did not stand back until the Israelites saw what they could do with Jericho; no sooner were they over than the river came down as before, and Israel was locked up to his work. Thus God brings us into face-to-face conflicts; thus divine providence drives us into close quarters with the enemy. It is supposable that a host advancing to conquer a walled and ancient city might have had to bear the pressure of some sudden terror and might have desired to retire; but the river was rolling on to the Dead Sea, and there was no promise made that it should be cut in two again for the accommodation of timid or cowardly men. Some of us must be forced up to our work. We do not know what is in us or what we can do until there is no escape battle, or death; battle, or victory. Let us bless God, I would again say, that we are sometimes scourged up to our work. To retreat is to be drowned: to advance is to achieve at least possible victory. There must be no going back again. We are bound to this holy work taking the devil's citadel. There can be no reconstruction as to the terms of service and loyalty. We are committed to the overthrow of this city or kingdom, this evil or corruption, as the case may be. If we do not advance we shall be slain; if we try to run away we shall be drowned. "Quit you like men." Better fight and die honourably than run away and be as drowned dogs in the sullen stream. We are men who are committed, and cannot go back.

"And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho" ( Jos 4:19 ).

What is that to us? These are forgotten dates? No, there is nothing forgotten. Great things took place upon this date long ago, and it ought to be familiar to us. In Exodus 12:5 , the people had been commanded to take them a lamb for an house that they might eat the Passover. When was that? " On the tenth day of the first month." That was exactly to a moment forty years before. Coincidences of time are full of suggestion. History repeats itself in many ways in very subtle colourings and suggestions. So we seem to have been here before, and to have read this discourse, or to have heard this speech somewhere, long ago. Did we dream this scene? Who told us of it? There is a strange and even weird familiarity about the place, the man, the whole vision what is it? It is but the revival of a date; it is but time set in a new relation, the old and the new strangely mingled; for God has always worked upon the plan of continuity, the continuity sometimes apparently lost, but suddenly reappearing and projecting itself through the ages. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord;" "I am the Lord, I change not." Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. To-morrow will bring up the memory of today. The world has lived long enough now to allow its days to double back upon one another, and to take from the impression some of the ink with which ancient history was written. The days are repetitions. Time is full of history. Forty years taken in the passage of the distance between the crossing of the Red Sea and entering into Canaan? Yes! Make of it what we may, here is the fact of the present time, that men are hindered by their wickedness. The Israelites might have been sooner in Canaan but for their rebellion. We, ourselves, know that our sins have kept good things from us. Sin keeps back the millennium. Evil-doing keeps us digging in the earth when we might have been serving in heaven. There are men who are today suffering from what they did forty years ago. Things do not die. "Everlasting punishment" is written upon the whole scroll of life. Punishment has no end, except it be ended by some mysterious but loving action on the part of God. A man sentenced to prison for one day for an evil deed is in prison the remainder of his life; when he has left the jail he has not left the prison. Long ago we got wrong somehow, and we cannot get back into the right line. It was a mistake, or a misadventure, or an evil purpose, or a settled treason; it was a piece of selfishness, or miscalculation, or wrong-doing; we said the wrong word, we were too late by one day, we mistook the right hand for the left something it was; and the consequence is that we have been forty years in doing what might have been accomplished in one. See if this be not so by examining life carefully. It seems impossible to disentangle the knot; it is weary work at the best. We know we might have been so much further on, and yet today we are baffled and hindered and mocked by some spirit of the air which is without shape or name. The interference with the river is nothing compared with the subtle spiritual interferences which are always changing the route of life. We have set out upon a certain course, and said in specific terms, this shall be our route towards the goal. Without any action upon our part which we can recall, and without any conscious relation to the action, the route has been changed, the course has been turned to the right hand or to the left. These interferences with life-routes are taking place every day. The young soul has its plan, and having mapped out the future with a hand that knew no trembling, and with a pencil incapable of feeling, the boy joyfully says: "I will go; and thus I will travel; here halt, and there remain a year, and buy and sell and get gain, and then proceed according to the record." This is the boast of folly. This is the utterance of men who have not the key of tomorrow. The Lord suddenly changes the course, and they who thought they were going westwards at a rapid pace are awakened to the consciousness that they have been hastening eastwards, and knew it not Why will not men consider these things and put facts together, so patiently and inductively as to find a law at the end of them? the law being that it is not in man that liveth to direct his way, and that it is the Lord who presides over the battle and directs the pace of the going of the world, and that there is but one God, reigning over all things and for ever blessed.

Israel might have penetrated into the Land of Promise when they were on the frontier at Kadesh-Barnea in the second year of the exodus. Think of it! they might have been in Canaan long ago a generation since! What happened to prevent this penetration into the Land of Promise? Sin happened. Let us call it commonplace if we are prepared to lose the richest cream of historical instruction; but there is the fact: it was sin that hindered the early penetration into the Land of Promise. Say Edom was obstinate, and the king thereof said: "No, you shall not go through this land; you must find some other way;" the king of Edom did not speak words of his own, the descendant of Esau had a mission from God. Men do not always know whose ministers they are. We speak words that have upon them and around them the texture of eternity, and we say we knew not why we spoke them, but we could not resist the speech: the words flew to our lips and burned upon our tongue, and we must needs utter them. We cannot allow Israel to assume the character of an ill-used traveller, who, having suddenly come upon inhospitable provinces, was put to very serious inconvenience. Israel was not a white-robed saint in the wilderness the pure, the patient, holy traveller; Israel had defied God, and murmured against his captain, and resisted the law; and rebellion must always be punished. It is not always punished in the same way, but punished it always is. Men think they have secured their purpose; they say that this time at all events they have been victorious; and now they will handle life just as they please and behold, their very victory is the cruellest defeat! They may have had their desire granted, but leanness has been sent into their souls. There is only one way of living rightly, and that is living in the sanctuary of God, that is, in obedience to the eternal law which facts, as well as revelation, have established. If you are unwilling to believe that the eternal law has been revealed, and has been written down with pen and ink, and is to be referred to as an ancient document, then take some other course. Let this be your course: call for quietness in the mind; silence all tumult of thought; read history centuries of it at a time; take in breadth and scope enough or you will be the victims of details; seize as with the mental vision great periods of time; and this you will find to be the law of fact, as well as the law of revelation, that only he who falls into the rhythm of the universe, who is part of the great whole, who is so individual as not to lose his sense of responsibility, and yet so social as to know that he is one of a great host only they who have moved rhythmically to the beat of righteousness and the throb of justice have come into ultimate rest, and peace, and dignity. Revelation looks to facts for its commentary. It is willing to rest until history has had its say; and revelation and history are to be one in their final testimony. Observe what has been required in this contention: that sufficient time should be taken within the purview. These arbitraments are not to be settled by what occurred this day, or within the limits of that one hour. We must take in field enough if we could realise all the teaching of historical perspective and colour. So judged, the Bible has nothing to fear; it is a prophecy of facts, the forecasting of what we know ourselves has occurred and is evermore transpiring.

What, then, was the purpose of this memorialising of the crossing of Jordan? Why these stones? Why this religious consideration? The answer is given in the twenty-fourth verse:

"That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever." ( Jos 4:24 )

Prayer

Oh that we knew where we might find him! We would come even onto his seat and plead with him mightily and long. We bless thee that we need not repeat the words of thy servant of old, for we know where thou art: thou art not a God afar off but nigh at hand. Thou hast, in Christ Jesus thy Son, reconciled the world unto thyself. We meet thee at Bethlehem. We hear thee speaking to us in the wind. We watch thee in all thy daily course of humiliation and pain and redeeming love. We see thee in the Cross of Jesus Christ; we recognise in that Cross the highest revelation of thy righteousness and love. God forbid that we should glory save in the Cross! It touches our life when no other power can come near it; it charms our solitude without intrusion; it speaks to us when we could hear no other voice. It is the hope of the world; it is the way to pardon; it is the gate of heaven. Blessed Cross; infinite Cross; tender Cross! May we ourselves be daily crucified upon it, that, dying daily, we may know daily the power of Christ's resurrection, and become so accustomed to death that when the death of the flesh comes we shall not know it. We thank thee for all Christian hope and confidence, for all spiritual consolation, for all voices which address us from the skies; we need these in dark times, on cloudy days, when the sun is quite shut out; then do we know how great is thy love, how tender thy pity, how precious the dew of thy tears. Thou hast made our life so that no voice can truly speak to it but thine own. Other voices address us in parts, and upon given days, and under special circumstances; but thy voice is the same by night and by day, in winter and in summer; thou comest near us, and our weakness thou dost lift up by thine own almightiness; there is no touch like thine. Other hands hurt us even in their endeavours to help, but thy hands, omnipotent One, are full of mercy; they express thine heart. We thank thee for all love which makes life's burdens sit less heavily upon us; we thank thee for all home delights which make the world more bearable, we thank thee for all spiritual comfort which enables us to overcome material distresses; these are the gifts of God, these are messages from the eternal spheres, these are voices which the soul knows and which the heart lovingly answers. We cannot understand this religious nature with which thou hast endowed us; it is a great pain oftentimes, eager to look into things which are at present sealed, and impetuous in inquiry rather than patient, troubling God with violent addresses rather than waiting patiently for his coming. Yet it is our life's highest life; it enables us to touch heaven, eternity, things infinite; by it we realise thy purpose in making all things that are round about us, so stupendous, so minute, the great heavens, the dying flowers. Thou hast made all these things, and filled them with meaning; if we were wise we could read that meaning easily and lovingly, and be comforted by the tender solaces of unspoken gospels. Anoint our eyes that we may see! Circumcise our ears that we may hear. Give us the understanding heart; and every place shall be the house of God, and every delight shall be as a gate of heaven. We bless thee for a sense of thy nearness: we can whisper to thee; we can call upon thee instantaneously, and thy reply can come before our friend can see we have prayed or have received answers from God. Direct us in all our way: it is sometimes so difficult: we shrink from it: we cannot bear the deep places and the rough; we do not know what may befall us along the perilous line: some ravenous beast may destroy us, some hidden pit may engulf us, some sudden wind may be charged with death. But this is our ignorance: thou wilt pity it and forgive it We would rather say, in our Christian faith Father, let our hand be in thine, then nothing can come but peace and light and heaven. We mourn our sin: it is bitterer to thee than it can be to us; because thou art all holy; but thou hast grappled with this difficulty; thou didst meet sin before sin arose: the Cross is older than the crime, the grace more venerable than the sin. We trust in the living God; we cast ourselves upon Jesus Christ thy Son; we will not reason or understand in words this mystery of love, for who can grasp in his little palm all that is above him? Now we fall into thy hands, and evermore abide there, growing in wisdom, in confidence, in charity, in holiness, knowing Christ more thoroughly, comprehending him by our sympathy where we cannot follow him by our reason; and do thou enable us to die with him that with him we may rise again. Amen.