Joshua was up early and on his way from Shittim with all the People of Israel with him. He arrived at the Jordan and camped before crossing over. After three days, leaders went through the camp and gave out orders to the people: “When you see the Covenant-Chest of God, your God, carried by the Levitical priests, start moving. Follow it. Make sure you keep a proper distance between you and it, about half a mile—be sure now to keep your distance!—and you’ll see clearly the route to take. You’ve never been on this road before.”Then Joshua addressed the people: “Sanctify yourselves. Tomorrow God will work miracle-wonders among you.”
Joshua instructed the priests, “Take up the Chest of the Covenant and step out before the people.” So they took it up and processed before the people.
God said to Joshua, “This very day I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all Israel. They’ll see for themselves that I’m with you in the same way that I was with Moses. You will command the priests who are carrying the Chest of the Covenant: ‘When you come to the edge of the Jordan’s waters, stand there on the river bank.’”
Then Joshua addressed the People of Israel: “Attention! Listen to what God, your God, has to say. This is how you’ll know that God is alive among you—he will completely dispossess before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. Look at what’s before you: the Chest of the Covenant. Think of it—the Master of the entire earth is crossing the Jordan as you watch. Now take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the Chest of God, Master of all the earth, touch the Jordan’s water, the flow of water will be stopped—the water coming from upstream will pile up in a heap.”
And that’s what happened. The people left their tents to cross the Jordan, led by the priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant. When the priests got to the Jordan and their feet touched the water at the edge (the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest), the flow of water stopped. It piled up in a heap—a long way off—at Adam, which is near Zarethan. The river went dry all the way down to the Arabah Sea (the Salt Sea). And the people crossed, facing Jericho.
And there they stood; those priests carrying the Chest of the Covenant stood firmly planted on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground. Finally the whole nation was across the Jordan, and not one wet foot.
WOW. Can you imagine if that happened today? However I wonder if God would be glorified in it amongst the headline news, the helicopter flyovers and of course the inevitable law suits for loss of water that would follow!
More importantly do we have the faith to imagine that God could do that today?
The phrase Sanctify yourselves. Tomorrow God will work miracle-wonders among you. keeps coming to me…are we ready for God to work wonders or are we in need of sanctifying…sadly I know the answer for myself!
The thing that I find amazing is that we are called to carry the same power and authority of God’s presence into the places we go and with the people we meet.
It was only with the obedience of the priests going where they were to go and doing what God commanded them to do that his awesome power was able to be revealed and He was able to lead them towards the promised land. I do sometimes wonder if the church (and by that I mean me and us) would rather sometimes discuss the merits and consequences of causing a national water shortage and set up a commitee to examine all aspects of this, rather than doing what we are clearly being called to do. Jesus commandment is ‘Go’ so how come we often manage to do something completely different.
I see God being put first and because of that they would be sanctified. Now that’s a challenge!
“When you see the Covenant-Chest of GOD, your God, carried by the Levitical priests, start moving. Follow it. Make sure you keep a proper distance between you and it, about half a mile—be sure now to keep your distance!—and you’ll see clearly the route to take. You’ve never been on this road before.”Then Joshua addressed the people: “Sanctify yourselves. Tomorrow GOD will work miracle-wonders among you.”
Maybe sometimes we need to distance ourselves in order to get a better perspective on things, to gauge the bigger picture more clearly etc and it can help us to discern the route to take more clearly, especially when, like the Isralites it is a journey which is going to take us along a road we have never been on or travelled along before. Pretty good advice for those engaged in more pioneering ministry I guess!
Maybe that is why we have to sanctify ourselves as the road may be rocky, the journey ahead is probably bumpy, with lots of unexpected twists and turns, not to mention the opposition that may come as much from within as from without, even from those who we are we are hoping may accompany us on the new journey/adventure.
Fascinating stuff!