Unexpected Expectations...

As a church, we began the new year looking at a story in the Bible that records the story of the Jewish people as they began the process of restarting their lives as individuals and as a nation. And in Joshua chapter 3, as the Jewish people prepare to cross the Jordan River, we discover another timeless principle that enables us to restart our lives in a way that we would move to a place in our lives where we are living in the relationship with God and one another in a way that God has created and called us to be:

At the end of three days 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 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." Joshua 3:2-4

After coming to the edge of the Jordan River, the Jewish people remained for three days as the people prepared. Now a natural question that arises here is why didn’t they just cross the Jordan as soon as they got there? I mean why wait?

After three days, Joshua’s leadership team passes through the camp and informs that Jewish people how they will cross the Jordan. The Jewish people were to be led into the Promised Land by the Ark of the Covenant. Now the Ark of the Covenant was where the Jewish people kept the two tablets of stone that the Ten Commandments were written on. And more importantly, the Ark of the Covenant was the place where the presence of the Lord dwelt among the Jewish people.

The levitical priests were responsible to carry to ark of the covenant and lead the Jewish people across the Jordan and into the promised land. And the Jewish nation that would be following the ark were commanded to give 2,000 cubits of space between the Ark of the Covenant and the people. To give you some perspective, 2,000 cubits is the equivalent of 3,000 feet, which would be ten football fields in distance between the ark and the Jewish people. The reason they needed to follow the priests and the ark at that distance was because, for the first time in forty years, they were going to travel somewhere new.

Instead of wandering in circles in the desert, they were beginning to take the first steps of restarting their lives as a nation, and to do that they would need to follow God’s leading through what was the unfamiliar. Joshua then provides some additional instructions to the nation, which we read about in verse 5-6:

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.

Joshua commands the Jewish people to consecrate themselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. To consecrate yourself would mean to set apart or to dedicate yourself to something, in this case being the Lord God. The reason they were to consecrate themselves was because the Lord was going to do wonders among the Jewish people.

If Joshua was giving this command to us today, this command would probably sound like this; “prepare yourself and get ready, because God is going to show up tomorrow in an amazing way and do the miraculous”. And for this generation of Jewish people, who had seen so little evidence of God’s supernatural and transformational activity as they wandered in the desert for forty years, this would have caused a sense of expectation and anticipation. This generation probable had little or no memory of God’s supernatural activity, except about what they may have heard in stories. They had spent that vast majority of their lives living a mundane existence of walking in circles. Now, however, it was time to restart. And as the Ark began to move forward, the anticipation and the expectation built.

Imagine yourself in this story. Can you imagine what that anticipation and expectation would feel like? We see God then give Joshua some encouragement and some final instructions in the verses that follow:

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 Lord encourages Joshua by explaining that today will be the day that the Jewish people will look back on as the day that Joshua became firmly established as their leader. God wanted the Jewish people to clearly understand that Joshua was the leader of the nation and representative for God just as Moses was the leader of the nation and representative of God in times past.

However, how God would establish Joshua as the leader of the Jewish people would be remarkably different. Instead of God miraculously parting the waters of the Jordan first, and then having the Jewish people walk across the river like He did when the Jewish nation crossed the Red Sea, the priests, who would be carrying the Ark of the Covenant where God’s presence resided, would first have to step into the Jordan River before God would miraculously part the river so the Jewish nation could cross. Joshua then communicates his marching orders from God to the Jewish people, as the story continues in 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. "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 of the Jordan will be cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap."

Joshua, as God’s chosen leader, communicates to the Jewish nation God’s command and plan. And by following God’s command and plan, the Jewish people will be made unmistakably clear of two things. First the Jewish people will be made unmistakably clear that God is present among them as they restart their lives as a nation. And second, the Jewish people will be made unmistakably clear that God will keep the promise that He had made to them as a nation. And God’s command and His plan seem simple enough: all they needed to do was follow the priests as they stepped into the Jordan River, and God would part the Jordan River so that they could cross on dry land. While that seems relatively simple; I mean obviously it would be a miracle for God to part the Jordan, but all they had to do was follow the priests after they waded into the Jordan. I mean that does not seem like too much to ask, does it?

But to really understand what God was expecting of the Jewish people, we first need one additional piece of information, which we will see tomorrow.