SERIES: Joshua: Victory through Faith
Got Any Rivers You Think Are Uncrossable?
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: Please turn with me to Joshua, chapter 3:
“Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over. After three days the officers went throughout the camp, giving orders to the people: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it.”
Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you.”
Joshua said to the priests, “Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on ahead of the people.” So they took it up and went ahead of them.
And the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.'”
Joshua said to the Israelites, “Come here and listen to the words of the LORD your God. This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites. See, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth will go into the Jordan ahead of you. Now then, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the LORD‑‑the Lord of all the earth‑‑set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap.”
So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea ) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.”
Kathryn Kuhlman wrote a book some years ago entitled, God Can Do It Again. The point of her book was this: if God could perform miracles in biblical times—stop the Jordan, give sight to the blind, cast out demons, turn water into wine—then He can do it today. And we should expect Him to do it today. And in fact, Kuhlman claimed, He was doing it in her evangelistic crusades.
Many of us, if we are really honest, aren’t so sure. Oh, we’re fairly well convinced that God can do it again, but we’re not at all sure that He is doing so. A lot of Christians, to put it bluntly, have lost faith in miracles—not so much the biblical miracles, but in miracles today. We no longer expect them to happen, and when an event occurs which might make some claim to miracle status, we hesitate, wondering if there isn’t some natural explanation. Talk concerning miracles makes us nervous.
In Joshua 3 a stupendous miracle is recorded. What should we do with it? Some would call it a myth, but that option is not open to us who are people of the Book. We take the Bible as history, i.e., it is the record of that which actually happened. God really did perform a miracle; He parted the waters of the Jordan River at flood stage and allowed a couple million Israelites to cross on dry land. But is it just history? What is the meaning of the events of this chapter for those of us living in the highly sophisticated, highly scientific last decade of the second millennium?
I thought about preaching this chapter as the historical truth I believe it to be and then concluding with something like this: “And the same God who parted the waters of the Jordan is alive today, and just as His great power was available then, so it is available now.” But is that honest if we don’t really expect to see any actual rivers parted in the 20th century?
I think that before we jump into Joshua 3 we need to analyze the whole concept of biblical miracles. The problem is that for many of us the very word “miracle” conjures up certain preconceived notions that may actually prevent us from seeing the evidence of God’s power working in our lives.
A preliminary analysis of biblical miracles
The possibility of miracles. Not everyone, of course, believes in miracles. In fact, some people strongly disbelieve in them. Ever since philosopher David Hume wrote a famous essay against miracles in the early 1800’s, there have been those who have adopted his view that miracles are not only unlikely, but downright impossible, since natural law is uniform and absolute. Hume held that experience tells us that the law of gravity, for example, always functions the same. We’ve never thrown an object up that failed to come down. Since the experience is uniform and since uniform experience amounts to a proof, we cannot accept any testimony which claims a violation of the law of gravity, such, for example, as the claim that Jesus ascended into Heaven. This same basic criticism he applied to all miracles.
The foundation of Hume’s argument is the uniformity of natural law. But, of course, he begs the question, for how can one know that natural law is absolutely uniform if one automatically discounts any testimony to the contrary? We as biblical Christians accept the testimony of those biblical writers who claimed, sometimes at the risk of their very lives, that God has intervened in human history and has done things that were contrary to all their past experience.
Philosophically, we would argue against Hume that only God is absolute and He created natural law. He is under no obligation to submit to His own creation. We can think of God’s creation as a kind of giant computer. God programmed the computer to work according to natural law. And it will, without fail, unless God Himself loads a new program into the computer. If He is the Creator, no philosophical machinations by pseudo-intellectuals can eliminate the possibility of miracles occurring in His creation.
But it’s one thing to admit the abstract possibility of miracles and quite another to acknowledge their probability, or to claim that God actually has loaded new programs from time to time into the computer.
The probability of miracles. I want to submit to you that miracles are not only possible in our world but should actually be expected. Why? Because the God of the Bible is not the God of the Deists who supposedly created the world and then took His hands off to let it run by itself without interference. He is a God who sustains this world He has created, and who has frequently interfered with its affairs. He has interfered in judgment; He has interfered in grace; and He will yet interfere in the future when he brings history to a close. And whenever God interferes in the affairs of this world, the result is some kind of miracle. In fact, in one sense the entire universe is a continual miracle. And that brings us to a third point, namely that there are …
Different kinds of miracles. All miracles are not equal. In fact, I’d like to suggest that there are at least four classes of miracles. Now before I give you these, I want to make it clear that these classifications are classifications of convenience, and they are not explicitly taught in Scripture. Still, I believe they are helpful and theologically legitimate. The classifications I use are simply A, B, C, and D, and we’ll begin with the lowest classification, Class D miracles.
1. Class D miracles are ordinary natural occurrences. The sun comes up in the east every morning, trees leaf out every Spring, voices come over a telephone wire. All of these things are explainable by natural law; all are predictable; all can be proven by the scientific method. Why then do I call them Class D miracles? Because natural law is not really natural at all. It is supernatural. It operates as it does because God created things that way and upholds all things by the Word of His power. If for one second He were to remove His hand from this universe, there would be instant chaos. The fact that something is common, ordinary and predictable should make it no less marvelous to us.
Now I’m not really suggesting that we start claiming we are miracle workers because when we throw a ball into the air it happens to come down. It would be quite confusing were we to start using the term “miracle” for such ordinary events. But I am suggesting that we acknowledge more readily than we do the infinite power of God behind all of life, and not just when we visit the majestic Rockies or view a violent thunderstorm. Wheat fields are Class D miracles. And so are sunsets. And babies.
2. Class C miracles are providential acts, where highly unlikely circumstances are brought together by God, often in response to prayer. The world calls these things luck. For example, you have a financial need. You pray about it. Later that day you make your biggest commission sale of the year. Now you can’t prove that a miracle occurred because, after all, the purchaser was going to buy from someone. And yet God in His providence allowed you to be the one.
Or let’s suppose you’re scheduled for a plane flight; you change your plans at the last moment and stay home; the plane goes down and everyone on board is killed or seriously injured. A miracle? Not for the guy who was flying standby and got your seat, but for you a very providential thing. And a Christian should have no hesitancy in attributing such an act in his behalf to God. I call it a class C miracle—an unusual event, often coming in response to prayer.
3. Class B miracles are unique acts of providence which do not necessarily violate natural law themselves but whose timing is completely unexplainable without appealing to the supernatural. Most prophetic events fit into this category. Micah prophesied that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem Ephrathah in Judea. Now there’s nothing particularly miraculous about a baby being born in Bethlehem, but there is something miraculous about it being announced 600 years ahead of time! Daniel prophesied four great world empires and described them in great detail, centuries before they emerged. These are Class B miracles. The event itself may not be miraculous, but the timing is.
A modern-day example of a Class B miracle is provided in a well-documented story about John G. Paton, a 19th century missionary to the New Hebrides Islands. Hostile natives surrounded his mission headquarters one night, intent on burning out the Patons and killing them. John and his wife prayed all during that terror-filled night that God would deliver them. When daylight came, they were amazed to see the attackers unaccountably leave.
A year later, the chief of the tribe was converted to Christianity, and Paton, remembering what had happened, asked the chief what had kept him and his men from burning down the house and killing them. The chief replied in surprise, “Who were all those men you had there with you?” The missionary answered, “There were no men there; just my wife and I.” The chief argued that they had seen many men standing guard—hundreds of big men in shining garments with drawn swords in their hands. They seemed to circle the mission station, so the natives were afraid to attack. Only then did the Rev. Paton realize that God had opened their eyes to see His protective angels.
This event may not have violated any laws of nature, for I happen to believe God’s angels are around us all the time. But the fact that God opened those pagan eyes to see the spiritual dimension at just that moment was a miracle of timing.
4. Class A miracles are unique events without precedent and without any possible natural explanation. There are, of course, many examples in the Bible: the crossings of the Red Sea and the Jordan River, the Virgin Birth, the changing of water to wine, the resurrection, the ascension.
Now let’s review for a moment. We’ve tried to establish the fact that miracles are certainly possible philosophically. Not only that, but they are also extremely probable given the God we worship. But not all miracles are alike. There is little question in my mind but that Class A miracles have been generally reserved by God for specific times in human history, especially when He desired to lend attestation to the prophets and apostles who were revealing His Word to man. Did you notice what it says in Joshua 3:7? “And the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses.’” One of the specific purposes of the miracle about to be performed was the attestation of Joshua’s place as a prophet of God.
What a lot of us fail to realize is that even in biblical times Class A miracles were extremely rare, except for three periods—the time of Moses and Joshua, the period of the major prophets, and the time of Jesus and the Apostles. These just happen to be the three time periods when the vast majority of the Bible was written! There is no indication of Class A miracles in the life and ministry of such great men of faith as Noah, Abraham, Joseph or David. Oh, there are a few Class A miracles scattered elsewhere in Scripture, and there may be a few scattered through history since biblical times. Frankly, I think we can expect there to be many more miracles when God begins to wrap up human history. But we should not feel that God is dead (or that we are dead in our faith) if we are not seeing literal rivers parted in our day through Class A miracles.
At the same time, perhaps we need to be more aware than we often are of evidence of other kinds of miracles in our lives, like miracles of nature (Class D), miracles of circumstance (Class C), and miracles of timing (Class B). They have always been common in God’s world.
Most of the “rivers” we think are uncrossable don’t really demand Class A miracles, but they do demand some kind of divine intervention. If God helps us by means of a Class C miracle, i.e., a miracle of circumstance, rather than a Class A miracle, as He did for Joshua, so what? The idea I would like to communicate to you today is this: “If the God we worship is capable of doing Class A miracles like He did for the Israelites, then He’s great enough to help me cross any of my rivers, and He can do it any way He wants.”
By the way, while the four kinds of miracles we have postulated may be distinguishable to us, we must not lose sight of the fact that they are all very ordinary to God. It takes not one whit more of His power to stop the Jordan River than to cause an acorn to fall off a tree.
Now having done this brief analysis of biblical miracles, I would like to suggest that the first thing we need to do is to survey our rivers.
Surveying our rivers
Let’s suppose there’s some kind of a Jordan River in your life right now, a major hurdle that you feel needs to be crossed. You’ve done everything you know how to do and now, at the end of your rope, you have turned to God for a miracle. (Of course, that’s part of our problem. If we didn’t wait until we were at the end of our rope to turn to God, we might not find ourselves in such big messes so often). But be that as it may, before we ask God to perform a miracle, I think there are three questions we should ask ourselves:
1. Is this river one that really needs to be crossed?
2. Is now the right time?
3. What is the best way to cross it?
First, I would like for us to note how Israel found the answer to these questions in Joshua 3. There was no doubt that the river that lay between Israel’s camp and the land of Canaan was one that had to be crossed, for when God first spoke to Joshua in Josh. 1:2, He said, “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites.”
Nor was there any doubt as to the timing, for Joshua, presumably under instructions from the Lord, said to the people in 1:11: “Go through the camp and tell the people, ‘Get your supplies ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the LORD your God is giving you for your own.'”
Nor was there any doubt about how they were to cross it, for as we have read today in chapter 3, specific instructions were laid down and all the people had to do was to follow the ark of the Covenant. These instructions all came directly from the Lord.
But let’s face it. When we meet obstacles in our lives, there aren’t usually such easy answers available to these questions. But we still need to ask them.
Is the river facing us one that really needs to be crossed? Sometimes the roadblocks in our way aren’t meant by God to be crossed; rather they are meant to be endured or waited out. Sometimes they are God’s way of saying, “Turn back. This way is closed.” An example may be when a loved one is very sick. Before demanding or even expecting a miracle, perhaps we should ask the question, “Is it God’s will for my loved one to recover?” You know, loved ones of believers died even when the prophets were living, even when Jesus and the Apostles were here on earth, even when Class A miracles were fairly common.
Or, maybe you’re struggling financially and you’d really like to become financially independent. This question should be asked: “Is it God’s will for me to become financially secure?” I don’t happen to think that’s God’s will for everyone. There are a lot of people today claiming that God wants every believer to be healthy and wealthy, but that is a serious distortion of biblical truth.
So, the first question to be asked when facing a major hurdle is, “Does God want me to cross it?” A second is this:
Is now the right time? God may very well want you to cross the river and He may be willing to help you cross. But when? In his book, entitled, God Can Make It Happen, Russ Johnston the story about the Maranatha Bible Camp in Nebraska. Maranatha was built as a wilderness retreat, so when the government decided they were going to route Interstate 80 right on the edge of the camp, it looked like a disaster. After all, who’s ever heard of a wilderness camp with a superhighway going by it?
So Christians began to pray and trust God to change the government’s plan. They even hired a former lieutenant-governor of Nebraska to represent them in court on the matter, but nothing helped. The highway was going through. It looked as if God had withheld His grace. But that’s because God’s plan was much better. When the highway was going in, it turned out that the builders needed sand to construct the interchanges, so they worked out an agreement with the Camp Director to get the sand from the campgrounds. And in return, they graded the hole that was left into a beautiful recreational lake that has greatly enhanced the ministry of the camp.
Plus, the highway cut right through a nearby farm in such a way that the farmer no longer had direct access to a part of his land, so he decided to sell it to the camp at a reasonable price. So, besides the free lake, the camp expanded its facilities and increased its ministry. Not a bad return for waiting on God to fulfill His promise. They wanted a camp, and God was willing to help them cross that river, but His timing was far better than theirs.
In the summer of 1956, my family was living in a church parsonage in Webster Groves when my father resigned from the church to assume the presidency of a small Bible college in the city. We needed a place to live but we didn’t have any money. Finally, it seemed that God had provided a way to buy a small house for our family of seven in Brentwood. I remember all of us gathering around my parent’s bed one afternoon and giving God thanks for this house. But then the whole thing fell through and we had to move into a two-bedroom rental house for three months and then another very inadequate rental house on the wrong side of the tracks in north Webster.
We spent two long years in that house. Then one day a man my father had befriended died, and when his will was read, it left his entire estate to the college. Included was the provision that our family was to move into his house. This house was a gorgeous four-bedroom home on a private street in Clayton. The Persian rugs were still on the floor, the silver and crystal were in the buffet, beautiful furniture filled the house, and there was even a TV in the family room—our first.
We wanted an adequate house, and God was willing to help us cross that river, but His timing was far better than ours. A third question we need to ask is this:
What is the best way to cross it? Consider the case of a grave illness facing you. You pray for healing, and you wisely pray that it will happen according to God’s timetable. But how must that healing come? Must it come suddenly with no medical explanation possible? Or might it not come gradually through radiation and radical change of diet? Is the second kind of healing any less a miraculous answer to prayer just because God uses secondary means?
The importance, as I see it, in answering these questions is that it keeps us from expecting miracles in situations where God has no intention of providing one; or expecting a miracle before God is ready; or expecting a certain kind of miracle other than the kind God is ready and willing to perform.
But let’s suppose that we feel confident that a certain river in our life must be crossed, that now is the time, and that the way is clear. Are there certain prerequisites that we must meet, certain guidelines to follow, before we can confidently expect God’s help? I think there are several suggested in Joshua 3, and they have parallels in our lives today.
Preparing to Cross
Divine guidance. In Josh 3:3‑4 the message is given through the officers of the people: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it.”
The Ark of the Covenant was the symbol of the presence of God among His people. It would lead them into the river. They needed to keep their distance (nearly 2/3 of a mile) so that all could see it. The distance speaks also of the fact that there is a gulf between sinful man and a holy God. They were not to become overly familiar with God; they were to remain in awe of Him.
Now the means of divine guidance which Israel experienced is different from ours today. Nevertheless, the fact remains that since they had not passed that way before, they needed divine guidance. When we face new situations, we need it also. We don’t follow an ark and we rarely hear audible voices from heaven, but God has given us His Word, brains, wise counsel from mature Christians, and other ways of determining His leading. What we need most is to be willing to be guided. If we’re just going to barge ahead and do what we want no matter what, then we’d best quit asking for God’s help. A second prerequisite is …
Spiritual preparation. Verse 5 reads, “Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow….” Consecration involves confession of sin and getting right with God. Consecration precedes great experiences of God’s power. If we’re living worldly lives, allowing the world to set our standards, failing to seek God’s face in prayer or allow Him to speak to us through the Scriptures, how can we expect Him to rush to our rescue and bail us out with some kind of unusual display of His power? A third prerequisite is …
There must be practical preparation. The next 6 or 8 verses tell us of the practical preparation the people made in order to cross the Jordan. They had already prepared provisions. Then they had to organize for a quick crossing. They had to appoint 12 men (v. 12) for an important task to be revealed in the next chapter (next Sunday). And, of course, they had to pack their tents and other possessions. Had they not made these practical preparations beforehand, they would never have been able to cross the river in the time God allotted.
Now let’s apply this principle. Using the example again of a serious illness of a loved one, there are some practical preparations the wise person will make even while praying for a miracle. He will seek the best doctors, take the appropriate medication, and follow the procedures urged by medical science. Several times in the past year, parents who are of the Christian Science or Jehovah’s Witness faiths have been arrested and charged with homicide because their child died due to the refusal of the parents to accept appropriate medical help. I’m sure those parents prayed for healing, but they ignored obvious areas of physical preparation by means of which God might have chosen to heal their child.
Now the fourth prerequisite is …
Faithful leaders. By that I mean leaders who are full of faith. In the crossing of the Jordan River the people of Israel did not fear, because their leaders were the first ones to step into the river and the last ones to leave it. And all the while the people were crossing, the priests stood in the very center of the riverbed, holding the Ark of the Covenant.
Friends, the average young person will show no more faith in the power and providence of God than his parents show. The average layman will show no more than the pastors and elders and S.S. teachers show.
Finally, I want to mention the crossing of the river itself.
Crossing
I think it’s instructive that God didn’t transport the Israelites across the Jordan like he transported Elijah to heaven or the evangelist Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch.
Steps of faith are required. This is the way God almost always works. “Go wash seven times in the Jordan River,” was His message to Naaman the leper. “Fill the jars with water,” is what Jesus told the servants at Cana before He turned the water into wine. “Go wash in the pool of Siloam,” is what He told the lame man before He healed him.
The leaders of Israel had to plant their feet in the waters before God was willing to stop the Jordan. And the people had to follow, crossing through the deepest part of the river, knowing that no earthen dam was holding back the waters. And you know something? They couldn’t see what was holding back the water, for verse 16 tells us “the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam—that’s 20 miles north!” They just had to take it by faith that they would get across before the water started flowing again.
Likewise, when God is ready to act in your behalf, if will often be by asking you to take some step of faith, which He will then honor.
Steps of faith are rooted in history. Steps of faith are not to be viewed as leaps into the dark. Rather they are steps grounded in the way God has acted in the past. The Israelites were reminded again and again that their God was the one who had parted the Red Sea. Therefore, He could be trusted to also part the Jordan.
Friends, that’s a principle we need to dwell upon, too. We need to think back to the ways God has helped us in the past, and based upon those experiences, trust Him also to help us now. When I think about the funds that we need to raise if we are going to build a new worship auditorium within the next two years, frankly that looks like the Jordan at flood stage to me. But then I go back to the faithfulness of God over the past dozen years, and I see how He has met every need and has done exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or even think. And I say, “God can do it again.” One of the really exciting things to me is this third point:
Steps of faith spur further faith. Look at verse 10: “This is how you will know that the living God is among you and that he will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites.” In other words, the action of God in helping them across the Jordan was God’s pledge that He would also help them conquer the land. Trusting him with the one thing should convince them that He can be trusted with the other.
I’m reminded of Rom. 8:32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” This is an argument from the greater to the lesser. If God can do X, then surely He can do Y. If He sacrificed His own Son for our salvation, will He not provide everything we need. If God has already stopped the Jordan, you can trust Him with your rivers, too.
Remember, as you are confronted with challenges that are fraught with difficulty and even potential disaster, that such situations give God greater opportunity to demonstrate his power, his care, his concern, and his activity in your life.
“Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible.
And He can do what no other pow’r can do.”
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the great promise in your Word that “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” We believe that and we trust you. Help us, Lord, not to try to put you into a box, not to demand that you work in our behalf on our terms. Instead open our eyes to see how your fingerprints all around us. Give us eyes of faith to behold your wondrous works. In the strong name of Jesus, amen.
DATE: May 19, 1996
Tags:
Miracles
Faith