Joshua 3:14-4:10.\u00a0 Some people are skeptical about miracles like the one that happened in these verses.\u00a0 Skeptical scholars like to say the Israelites walked through a marsh when they left Egypt.\u00a0 And I\u2019m sure they are no less critical of this story.\u00a0 The language is very clear though.\u00a0 In fact verses 14-16\u00a0 form only two sentences.\u00a0 In Hebrew the sentence starts out \u201cAnd it happened\u201d 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.\u00a0 Then the sentences returns to the opening thought with four verbs related to the water.\u00a0 What happened to the water is the main idea of verses 4-16.\u00a0 The four verbs are:\u00a0 stood, rose up, completed, and were cut off.\u00a0 As to the last two words it is clear that there wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 This is a done deal.\u00a0 The first two words are impressive too.\u00a0 Stood means to be firmly established in one place and rose up has a similar meaning.\u00a0 When you couple them with heap\u00a0 it means something like \u201cstood up like a wall and stayed put.\u201d\u00a0 Water just doesn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 Then verses 16 ends almost casually with the people going across near Jericho.\u00a0\u00a0 If you\u2019ve ever surfed you might be thinking, \u201cI\u2019ve seen water pile up like a wall before.\u201d\u00a0 Sure me too, in Hawaii, but it didn\u2019t stay put.\u00a0 In that moment before that wall of water came crashing down it was impressive and it wasn\u2019t even a big day.\u00a0 If a wave is impressive how much more impressive is it when God hits the pause button.\u00a0 Can you imagine if a wave was all piling up right in from of you and then God hit the pause button.\u00a0 But you could walk over and touch the water, \u201cgnarley dude.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately the water was piling up about 15-20 miles up stream so they couldn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 But there was something else impressive about this.\u00a0 As you walk over toward the wall of water you notice that the sand is dry, like middle of the desert dry.\u00a0 Twice in verse 17 we are told that the ground was that dry.\u00a0 If you missed the hint in Joshua 2:7 (the Soldiers went to the \u201cfords\u201d, 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.\u00a0 It was harvest season when the river was high, very high, ready to overflow it\u2019s banks.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The river was big from spring rains and snow melting on the mountains to the north.\u00a0 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\u2019s water.<\/p>\n
I hope you\u2019ve gotten the point by now this is 100% major supernatural.\u00a0 It is a total God thing and it started when God\u2019s main men, the priests, stepped into the water with God (God\u2019s presence was represented by the Ark of the Promise).\u00a0 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.).\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it took a lot of time.\u00a0 Verse 10 says the people hurried across.\u00a0 I bet.\u00a0 The water just stops and they are supposed to cross.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if they could see up the river to where the water was but I would suppose the invisible dam of God\u2019s will was just getting fuller and fuller.\u00a0 Now God\u2019s power is limitless but if they could see the heap getting higher I\u2019m sure they would have hurried.<\/p>\n
After they all got across Joshua has one more thing for a few of the people to do.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 I wonder if they hurried too.\u00a0 The rocks were to be put at the place they camped that night as a memorial for all the generations to come.\u00a0 Joshua also had them set up a pile of rocks in the middle of the river as a\u00a0 similar memorial.\u00a0 A pile in the water to remember the pile of water.<\/p>\n
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).\u00a0 They all did what the LORD (Yahweh) had told them to do (v. 10).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s leader for them.\u00a0\u00a0 Now there is a new leader, same God, new man and he gets a similar stamp of approval from God.\u00a0 There is one diference though, at the Red Sea the Israelites were being pursued now they were entering the promised land.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 11:4 we are told that the waters engulfed the Egyptian army.\u00a0 That word means pursued, chased, or persecuted.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was gentle enough that it didn\u2019t take out the monument in the middle of the river (v.9).\u00a0 Hopefully the whole event was a source of peace and confidence as the Israelites now faced Jericho and the rest of the promised land.\u00a0 Could the God who pushed back the water push the inhabitants out of the land?\u00a0 Would the Israelites faithfully step into the new situation God was giving them?\u00a0 Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves.\u00a0 Will we do all God asks us to do and trust Him?\u00a0 God help me trust you.\u00a0 Help me take each step that you show me.\u00a0 Help me not be scared by the waters as they pile up in my life.\u00a0 You held back a sea, you held back a river, and you held back your punishment from me.\u00a0 Thank you for holding back.\u00a0 Give me faith and give me peace.\u00a0 Help me be obedient and do all that you ask.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joshua 3:14-4:10.\u00a0 Some people are skeptical about miracles like the one that happened in these verses.\u00a0 Skeptical scholars like to say the Israelites walked through a marsh when they left Egypt.\u00a0 And I\u2019m sure they are no less critical of this story.\u00a0 The language is very clear though.\u00a0 In fact verses 14-16\u00a0 form only two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}