Last  Friday was a very significant day.  Huge.  Friday was the 30th anniversary of what?  The release of Star Wars.  May 25, 1977.  Its hard to imagine that 30 years have blown by.

How many of you can remember where you were when you saw Star Wars for the first time?  I was in Hot Springs, Arkansas - the first time.

There are events we remember - as we’re moving through life - going from where we were to where we're going - there are moments in time we remember.  That have significance for us.  Yes?

Many of these are transition points in our lives.  Where we made decisions - events that took place - where things changed.  The future direction of our lives is changed.  How we thought about things changed.  Our approach to life changed.  Points of transition from which are lives are not the same.

Sakura Terakawa, age 63, describes her four decades of married life as a gradual transition from wife to mother to servant.  Communication with her husband started with love letters and devolved over time into mostly demands for his evening meals and nitpicking over the quality of her housework.  When he came home three years ago and announced he was ready to retire, Terakawa despaired.

That’s a transition.  Isn’t it?  The husband retires - a major life change moment. 

Terakawa said, “It was bad enough that I had to wait on him when he came home from work.  But having him around the house all the time was more than I could possibly bear.”

Several months after her husband retired, Terakawa developed stomach ulcers, her speech began to slur, and rashes broke out around her eyes.  When doctors discovered polyps in her throat but could find no medical reason for her ailments, she was referred to a psychiatrist who diagnosed stress-related RHS - Retired Husband Syndrome.

Right now there are a number of wives - right here - who are saying to themselves, “I knew it.”  This is real.  In 1991 The Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine identified Retired Husband Syndrome as a legitimate condition. (1) 

As we’ve been looking at the Book of Joshua, we’ve been seeing that the account of Joshua is about real people facing enormous challenges and learning to trust God along the way.  Coming to chapter three - what we’re coming to is a major transition moment in the life of God’s people.  A transition point that is going to challenge their faith in God.

Joshua 3 - starting at verse 1:  Then Joshua rose early in the morning; and he and all the sons of Israel set out from Shittim and came to the Jordan, and they lodged there before they crossed.

Let’s pause there and make sure we’re together on what’s happening.

Over the last two Sundays - looking at Joshua - we’ve seen that God requires His people to trust Him - to have faith in Him.  God has given directions to Joshua.  Not all the details.  But enough for Joshua to know what the next step is.  “Cross the Jordan River and conquer the land I’m giving you.”

With that command God has promised to be with Joshua and His people.  God has provided His word so His people will know how to live - how to be obedient - how to be His people as He moves them forward to take the land.

In chapter two we met Rahab and the two spies - spying out Jericho - who come back with a favorable report.  “The Lord has given us the land and the people are really really afraid of us.”  Remember this?  Great words of encouragement - faith building - on the eve of moving forward.

All that is contained in the word “then.”  “Then” after all these things - Joshua gets up in the morning.  He and the whole nation go down to the Jordan River and camp there.

If you look at the map - you’ll see that they’ve moved from Shittim - where they were camped - packed up - taken what is about a 10 mile journey - and are now camped on the banks of the Jordan River.  Where they’re waiting for the next set of instructions.

Verse 2:  At the end of three days

Don’t miss the importance of the pause.  Remember that its spring.  The Jordan River - which is normally a small stream - during the Spring the river collects rain water and the snow melt off of Mount Hermon.  In Spring the little stream becomes a mile wide torrent of death.  God’s people - who’ve spent 40 years in the dessert - which is a pretty dry place - this group of - probably non-swimmers - camps next to this raging torrent of death for three days.  For three days they can feel the moisture.  The can hear the roaring.

They have yet to be told how they’re going to cross the river.  Just that they will cross.  Behind them is what’s familiar.  Before them is the promised land.  Between all that is the raging torrent of death.  There are no boats - no bridges - no convenient fords - especially for 2 million people.  At some point they may have wondered what was going to happen.

Verse 2:  At the end of three days - after the people had three days to contemplate the river - the officers went through the midst of the camp; and they commanded the people, saying, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God with the Levitical priests carrying it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it.  However, there shall be between you and it a distance of about 2,000 cubits - about 3,000 feet - by measure.  Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you shall go, for you have not passed this way before.”

There are two instructions here.

First - FOLLOW THE ARK.  Say that with me,  “Follow the ark.”  What are they to follow?  “The ark.”  Wherever the ark goes - you go.

When the people were in the wilderness - after they’d left Egypt God led them by using a pillar of fire and cloud.  Fire at night.  Cloud during the day.  Where the pillar went the people went.  Same with the cloud.  The pillar and cloud represented the presence of God.

The ark contained the law of God and the manna.  Within the ark  was the reminder of God’s holiness - His expectations of His people - His provision for their lives.  Over the ark was the mercy seat - the place where the sin of the people and God’s pardon met.

Entering the promised land there is no pillar - no cloud.  But, there’s the ark of the covenant - symbolic of God’s presence and His relationship with His people. 

Point:  Following the ark means following God.  Our God goes before us.  Where the ark goes we go.  Follow the… Ark.

The second instruction is to STAY BACK.  Say that with me, “Stay back.”  3,000 feet - a little over one half mile.

There are probably two reason for this.  One is reverence.

The ark represents the holy almighty sovereign God of the universe.  The God who defeated Egypt - led Moses - and leads Joshua.  Respect the ark.  Respect God.

The second reason is logistics.  I was waiting in line the other day and this adult - not some kid - an adult just cuts in front of me in line.  Not even an excuse me.  Didn’t even seem to think there was anything wrong.  Ever have someone do that?

Close 2 million people are going to be following that ark.  To follow the ark means staying behind it.  Staying in line.  Keeping our place in the procession.  If enough people cut ahead of the ark it could actually get lost in the crowd.  To get ahead of God is not good.

Ever do that?  “God I need You to lead me.  I need your guidance.”  And when He does, “Okay, I see where you’re going.  I can take it from here.”

The commanders remind the people, “You haven’t been this way before.”  Entering the promised land is a new experience.  Stay with your travel buddies.  Follow the ark.  When moving by faith we need to follow God.

Notice also - Joshua still hasn’t told the people how they’re crossing the river. 

Verse 5:  Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”  And Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant and cross over ahead of the people.”  So they took up the ark of the covenant and went ahead of the people.

Still no clue as to how they’re going to cross.  Notice two things here.

First the command for the people to consecrate themselves.

Consecration is not taking a shower with our raincoat on.  Getting clean - but only on the outside.  Consecration is turning our hearts towards God - in faith and trust in His promise.  Putting away anything that’s not of God.  Giving ourselves unreservedly to God - to be used in His work.  Yielding ourselves to Him as willing instruments in His hand.

God is about to do “wonders.”  Miraculous displays of His omnipotence.  Demonstrations of His faithfulness and relationship with His people.  He’s going to fulfill the promise He made to Abraham over 600 years ago.

Grab this - this is a holy war waged by the holy God.  His people are His instruments in that war.  To follow the ark - to be His holy people - means consecration - nothing of ourselves held back from God.  That’s putting ourselves where God chooses work in us and through us so that we get blessed and God is glorified.

An example of that consecration in action is what comes second.  Notice the obedience of the priests.

Did you notice what wasn’t in Joshua’s command?  He still hasn’t told them how they’re going to cross the river.  Joshua says move - and they move.  That’s faith in action.  Lives with nothing held back from God.

Verse 7: Now the Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you.  You shall, moreover, command the priests who are carrying the ark of the covenant, saying, “When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan.”

The similarities are intentional.  Orchestrated by God.  Remember the Red Sea?  God commands His people to camp on a piece of land that backs up on the Red Sea.  Gives them no conceivable means of retreat.  Strategically a big opps.  Pharaoh comes with all his chariots and God’s people start whining.  “Is it because there wasn’t enough room to bury people in Egypt that you brought us out here to get slaughtered?”

Moses’ position as God’s man before God’s people is questioned.

God commands Moses to lift up his staff.  God sends a wind that sweeps the sea back.  The people cross on dry land.  Pharaoh and his chariots do the dead man’s float.  God confirms that Moses is His man.  Exalts Moses in the eyes of the people.  Are we together?

On the banks of the Jordan - same deal.  The people - 2 million strong are now on the march towards the Jordan - follow the ark - into the river.  God’s promise to Joshua.  “What I did for Moses I’ll do for you.”

Verse 9:  Then Joshua said to the sons of Israel, “Come here, and hear the words of the Lord your God.”  Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will assuredly dispossess from before you the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Hivite, the Perizzite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, and the Jebusite.”

There are seven nations to be destroyed.  Why?  Three reasons.

First:  They’d been warned.  All these nations were descendants of Ham.  Which means they weren’t kosher.  No - strike that.  They all descended from Ham who was a son of who?  Noah.   The flood was a big time warning against evil.

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah - to the south - were wiped out by God because of sin.  These people should have paid attention.

2 Peter 2:6:  He - God - condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives.  (also:  Genesis 18:20,25; Matthew 10:15)

They’d been warned.

Second:  Their sinfulness had reached the limit of what God would allow.   God has His timing.  There are limits that He sets.  According to His justice He brings about punishment.  (Genesis 15:13-16)

Third:  Their destruction at the hand of Israel was to be a warning to Israel.

God could have wiped all these people out with some kind of plague or pestilence.  Had them swallowed up by a massive earthquake.  But He chose to use His people as the instrument of His punishment.  Gave them a visual tactile demonstration of His judgment of sin.

Those sins.  Don’t go there.  Look what happened to the Canaanites.  Live consecrated.

The point of this?  Joshua says it, “So that you will know that the living God is among you.”  Not some god where you go out and chop down a tree - use part of it to build a camp fire - carve the rest into some kind of idol - put gold on it - bow down and worship it.  But the true one and only living God

That’s Godly leadership.  Joshua could have said, “Today God will exalt me.”  But the goal of Godly leadership is to point people to God.

Bottom line:  This isn’t about Joshua.  It isn’t about Israel.  Its about God and what God is doing.  We’re to be consecrated instruments of the living God.

Verse 11:  “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over ahead of you into the Jordan.  Now then, take for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man for each tribe.  It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap.”

Put yourselves in the place of the priests.  3 days they’ve been feeling and hearing that river wondering what the plan is.  Now Joshua calmly commands them to walk into the river.   

“That’s the plan?  Just walk into the river.  Maybe the 3,000 feet is so the people have enough time to stop while we’re getting swept downstream.”

We need to hang onto this.  To cross the river is impossible.  If the river doesn’t stop - dry up - the Canaanites - who’ve heard about the Red Sea parting and what happened to the Egyptians - are gonna breathe one huge sigh of relief and go on sinning and laughing at God.  If God doesn’t intervene the priests are toast - soggy toast.  God’s people are going to cease being God’s people.  The whole promised land thing is history.  And Joshua - Joshua is gonna look like a dweeb.  Forget being the leader of Israel.

Verse 14:  So when the people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan with the priests carrying the ark of the covenant before the people, and when those who carried the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests carrying the ark were dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of harvest), the waters which were flowing down from above stood and rose up in one heap, a great distance away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan; and those which were flowing down toward the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea - or Dead Sea - were completely cut off.  So the people crossed opposite Jericho.  And the priest who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan.

Close to 2 million people cross the river - 600,000 of them are men ready for war.  The people are passing at least 1/2 mile on either side of the priests - 3,000 feet.  The river is dried up for miles.  That’s hard to get our minds around.

Notice two things. 

First - TIMING. 

There’s a point about 15 miles north of Jericho where the Jordan River flows through clay banks about 40 feet high.  In 1927 there was an earthquake that caused these banks to collapse and so damned up the river that no water flowed past them for 21 hours.

What Scripture describes is something like this.  The water upstream is cut off.  The water below the cut off point flows downstream into the Dead Sea.  In between is a place for the people to cross.  God may have done things that way.

Joshua tells the priests, “When your feet are in the water God will turn off the river.”

However and wherever God did what He did - what is amazing is that He timed it so that cause upstream had the desired effect at the right time downstream.  One minute the river is a raging torrent.  The next its a dry river bed.  When the priests stepped into the water the river dried up. 

There’s a lesson to be learned there.  God doesn’t ask the priests to wade into the deep end of a raging river.  When we step forward in faith God isn’t trying to wipe us out - or ask the impossible of us.  Just step into the shallows.  Just step forward and trust Him.  He’ll take care of the river - in His time - at just the right time.

Second - notice THE GROUND.

The Hebrew word for “dry ground” is “harabah.”  It doesn’t mean powdery dry - absolutely no moisture.  It does mean that the ground was no longer covered with water.  It was sufficiently dry for the people to cross.  No more.  No less.

In my younger days we’d play football on a wet field.  Every down was in the same place.  So after a few plays we were playing in mud pit.  That was awesome.  Getting pounded into the mud.  Sliding around.  Drenched in muddy water.  Tide gets out the dirt kids get into.  Remember that?

Have you ever walked on wet ground?  After may be 20 people have walked by?  What about after 500,000 people have walked on the same wet ground?  1 million?  The ground gets pretty chewed up.  People are slipping and sliding.  Carts are getting stuck.  The whole procession gets bogged down.

There’s none of that here.  When God calls us to step forward in faith He makes the way possible - provides exactly what’s needed for us to move forward trusting Him.

Transition.  The wilderness wanderers - the nomads - move to take possession of their land.  The nation of slaves becomes the nation of warriors.  A people that once came to the Jordan and turned back now moves forward to where no one has gone before.

Follow the ark.  Cross the river.  Say that with me, “Follow the ark.  Cross the river.”

Think with me about OUR TRANSITION AS A CONGREGATION.

Like Israel in the wilderness God has been at work in us and through us.  Teaching us to trust Him.  Providing for our needs.  Teaching us to work together.

Together we’ve reached a time of transition.  For years we’ve been tenants in someone else's building.  Now, God has given us a building of our own.  God is taking us where we’ve never been before. 

Ahead of us is the promised land - the greater Merced metroplex.  Interesting comparison.  Broken homes.  Gangs.  Drugs.  Violence.  Hurting - wounded - struggling people.  People with questions and no answers.  People indifferent to God.  People who desperately need Jesus. 

This building is like the river.  Formidable and tempting to focus on.  Easy to get bogged down on and miss the promised land beyond.  God calls us to follow Him forward through the river to the land beyond.

It would be easy to think of this building as a field of dreams.  “If you build it they will come.”  “If we build it God will fill it.”

But we need to step forward.  That’s a point of transition.  Will we allow God to take us where we’ve never been before?  Building a building is easy.  Becoming God’s people - making a serious spiritual impact on this community.  That takes everything we are. 

To follow the ark means consecration.  Consecrating ourselves so that our hearts are turned towards God.  Focused in faith and trust in His promises and direction.  Giving ourselves unreservedly to God - to be used in His work.  Yielding ourselves to Him as willing instruments in His hand.

Putting away anything that’s not of God - all the things that keep us away from here on Sundays - the things that chew up our time so that we have very little left to serve God.  What we devote our finances to that serve us and not God.  What we allow our  minds to be captivated by. 

To cross the river means stepping into the water.  We have go outward.  Not just the staff.  Or a few of us.  But all of us.  We need to be the ones passing out tracks and flyers and entering into conversations - engaging people - sharing our lives with others - inviting them to Jesus.

To cross the river means we cannot do church like we’ve done church. 

Not long ago someone suggested that we should offer a tutoring program - after school for kids who need help.  Maybe over at the Creekside Apartments - or at the Swiss Colony.  That’s crossing the river.  If you let your mind think about it there are a tremendous number of possibilities for engaging people where they have needs.

When we have outreach events - concerts - luncheons - drama - sports - it should be the desire of every person who calls this congregation home - to come - to invite - to participate.  There are so many opportunities to serve here - with children and youth and adults.  Behind the scenes and up front.

Doing that may be terrifying.  Its much easier to sit here on comfy teal chairs and expect people to show up.  But that’s not what this church is about.  We are on the brink of the miraculous.  God has called us to follow Him and to cross the river.

One more thought.  OUR TRANSITION AS GOD’S PEOPLE.

God brings nations to transition events.  Brings congregations.  He brings us as individuals to moments of transition - where we face raging torrents in our lives - marriages that struggle - families that struggle - financial issues - stuff at work - calls to greater stewardship - greater service - opportunities in ministry.  You can hear the river.  You can feel the moisture.

God calls us to follow Him and move forward where we’ve never gone before.  The miraculous is before you.  Trust Him.

Say this with me.  “Follow the ark.  Cross the river.”

_______________

1. The Modesto Bee.  10.18. 2005, Section A