To Encourage You

Joshua 3:15-16 “As soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water (now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest),  the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off.”

There are so many things in the Bible that can be missed at first blush (or second, third, and fourth for that matter).  I came upon one of those things this morning. It’s from the passage above from the book of Joshua in the account of Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land.  It was forty years earlier in their history that they had passed through the Red Sea.  It was in that crossing that they passed from what had been a life of slavery in Egypt to that of freedom, and it is in that crossing that we have a shadow of the freedom that comes to everyone who puts their faith in Christ, as they have been freed from the ultimate slavery in which they had been up to that point, i.e., the lifelong slavery to sin (Romans 6:20) and the fear of death as a result (Hebrews 2:15).  It’s a wonderful truth, but it’s not the whole story, for salvation is more than a delivery FROM something. It is also a delivery TO something else.  

We see a shadow of this in the history of Israel as they wandered throughout the wilderness for 40 years.  You see, God had not only promised to deliver them from their slavery in Egypt; He had also promised to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey.  However, to enter that land they had to believe what God had told them – but sadly, they did not.  Except for Caleb and Joshua, the entire nation doubted God, and as a result, their life of freedom from Egypt ended up with a wandering that came short of the Promised Land.  And that’s how they died.  They fell short of the great promises that God had for them.  They were “saved” but it was a salvation by the skin of their teeth.  

But then after 40 years, God brought the next generation to another crossing. This time it was the crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  It was a time of flooding of the Jordan, and to cross it in that condition was to be passage into certain death.  So God sent the priests with the ark of the covenant before them – a LONG WAY before them, 2,000 cubits (or roughly,  3,000 feet).  The ark represented the presence of God. They could say it symbolized “God with us”.  And so, we see a type of Immanuel, which means “God with us,” i.e., Jesus, the Son of God. Likewise, it was Jesus that went before us into the waters of death, and it was Jesus who passed through those waters on our behalf to enter as our precursor into the promised eternal life.  That’s what God would have for us – not just deliverance from sin and death – as in the shadow of the Red Sea crossing – but deliverance to a life of righteousness to His glory – as in the shadow of the crossing of the Jordan River.  

But notice one small but very significant detail in that crossing. In the passage above we see that as the ark entered the Jordan, the flooding waters of the river “stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off.”  This is what particularly caught my attention this morning. You see, just as the deadly waters of the Jordan were rolled back the whole way to the city of Adam as the ark entered the river, so as Jesus entered into death for us, the effects of sin and death were “rolled back” the whole way to where they began, that is, to the first Adam and his sin. Isn’t that a wonderful picture of what our Savior has done for us?  And remember when Jesus was baptized in the Jordan? It was just another reminder of this wonderful truth that “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). 

So do you realize this if you are a Christian? Do you realize that our Savior not only delivered us from the slavery to sin and death, he also delivered us to live in newness of life – so that we would no longer live to sin, but to live to the glory of God?  That’s what God would have for us. That’s the life that He would have us live. What a wonderful shadow is the crossing of the Jordan – a shadow of the crossing into the promises of a life wholeheartedly yielded to the Savior by Whom we have passed from death to life.