Joshua 3:14-4:10.  Some people are skeptical about miracles like the one that happened in these verses.  Skeptical scholars like to say the Israelites walked through a marsh when they left Egypt.  And I’m sure they are no less critical of this story.  The language is very clear though.  In fact verses 14-16  form only two sentences.  In Hebrew the sentence starts out “And it happened” it is then followed by several clauses which describe leaving the tents and going to the Jordan River where the priests put their feet in the water.  Then the sentences returns to the opening thought with four verbs related to the water.  What happened to the water is the main idea of verses 4-16.  The four verbs are:  stood, rose up, completed, and were cut off.  As to the last two words it is clear that there wasn’t even a trickle of water passing by the word for cut off is used for when a persons head is cut off and the word completed can mean clean or finished.  This is a done deal.  The first two words are impressive too.  Stood means to be firmly established in one place and rose up has a similar meaning.  When you couple them with heap  it means something like “stood up like a wall and stayed put.”  Water just doesn’t do that.  Then verses 16 ends almost casually with the people going across near Jericho.   If you’ve ever surfed you might be thinking, “I’ve seen water pile up like a wall before.”  Sure me too, in Hawaii, but it didn’t stay put.  In that moment before that wall of water came crashing down it was impressive and it wasn’t even a big day.  If a wave is impressive how much more impressive is it when God hits the pause button.  Can you imagine if a wave was all piling up right in from of you and then God hit the pause button.  But you could walk over and touch the water, “gnarley dude.”   Unfortunately the water was piling up about 15-20 miles up stream so they couldn’t do that.  But there was something else impressive about this.  As you walk over toward the wall of water you notice that the sand is dry, like middle of the desert dry.  Twice in verse 17 we are told that the ground was that dry.  If you missed the hint in Joshua 2:7 (the Soldiers went to the “fords”, those were places where you could cross a swollen river more easily so this river was not just a trickle) the author is very clear in these verses that the river was high.  It was harvest season when the river was high, very high, ready to overflow it’s banks.  This is not the same harvest season we think of at the end of summer this is an early harvest at the end of March.  The river was big from spring rains and snow melting on the mountains to the north.  And remember that this is at the lower end of the river just above the Dead Sea so we are talking all of the Jordan River’s water.

I hope you’ve gotten the point by now this is 100% major supernatural.  It is a total God thing and it started when God’s main men, the priests, stepped into the water with God (God’s presence was represented by the Ark of the Promise).  It continued until every last person was across, almost two million (There were more than two million Israelites at this point but remember that the women and children from Reuben and Gad and part of Manasseh were staying on the east side of the river.).  I’m sure it took a lot of time.  Verse 10 says the people hurried across.  I bet.  The water just stops and they are supposed to cross.  I don’t know if they could see up the river to where the water was but I would suppose the invisible dam of God’s will was just getting fuller and fuller.  Now God’s power is limitless but if they could see the heap getting higher I’m sure they would have hurried.

After they all got across Joshua has one more thing for a few of the people to do.  One guy from each tribe has to go back to the middle of the river and grab a big rock from near the feet of the priests (The priests had stopped in the middle of the river with the ark).  I wonder if they hurried too.  The rocks were to be put at the place they camped that night as a memorial for all the generations to come.  Joshua also had them set up a pile of rocks in the middle of the river as a  similar memorial.  A pile in the water to remember the pile of water.

Finally notice in the part we read in chapter 4 that God spoke to Joshua, Joshua spoke to the people, and the people did just what Joshua said (v. 8).  They all did what the LORD (Yahweh) had told them to do (v. 10).  At the very end Moses is mentioned in name but the idea of Moses is in the whole story, not Moses as a man but Moses as the leader.  The whole story echoes Moses bringing the Israelites across the Red Sea (Exodus 15). That event is probably the one, more than any oter, that showed the Israelites tht Moses was God’s leader for them.   Now there is a new leader, same God, new man and he gets a similar stamp of approval from God.  There is one diference though, at the Red Sea the Israelites were being pursued now they were entering the promised land.  In Deuteronomy 11:4 we are told that the waters engulfed the Egyptian army.  That word means pursued, chased, or persecuted.  I wonder if God let the waters rush back down the Jordan from where they had been stopped or if the flow was peaceful as it passed the Israelites.  It was gentle enough that it didn’t take out the monument in the middle of the river (v.9).  Hopefully the whole event was a source of peace and confidence as the Israelites now faced Jericho and the rest of the promised land.  Could the God who pushed back the water push the inhabitants out of the land?  Would the Israelites faithfully step into the new situation God was giving them?  Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves.  Will we do all God asks us to do and trust Him?  God help me trust you.  Help me take each step that you show me.  Help me not be scared by the waters as they pile up in my life.  You held back a sea, you held back a river, and you held back your punishment from me.  Thank you for holding back.  Give me faith and give me peace.  Help me be obedient and do all that you ask.