Please e-mail me with any comments or if you use any part of this at your church at Mail4ChrisR@aol.com. I would love to hear about it. God Bless! - Chris
Consider this:
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Walt also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as “both unable and unwilling to learn.”
Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, did not make his high school basketball team his sophomore year.
Beethoven’s teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He did not become Prime Minister until he was 62. His greatest contributions came when he was a “senior citizen.”
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
In our passage today we see the results of persistence. It must have been an exciting day for the Israelites to finally see what had been promised to them through their fathers generations before. All that they had suffered in the dessert and wilderness. All that they had been through in Egypt and the exile led by Moses. And finally the day had come when Joshua with the help of God, was going to lead them into the Promise Land. Finally going to move out of the desert and across the river Jordan into Canaan. They had been discouraged. But they had been waiting for this day for a long, long time.
Joshua had been waiting longer than most, he was around 80 years old. And the Jewish anticipation of this moment must have been tremendous. God had made that covenant with Abraham 500 years earlier. Imagine making a deal now and thinking that the results would not come for 500 years. Imagine how Moses must have felt being able to see the Promise Land and everything he had worked for but knowing that God was not going to allow him to cross that river. Seems a bit discouraging to me. And the Israelites had since rejected God several times. But they always came back to be faithful to Him through good leadership and loyalty. And now, finally, success.
Here in Joshua chapter 3 we see that God is keeping His end of the deal. God sees that the people had been loyal and have been courageous and daring to come as far as they had come. But first Joshua tells the people to get prepared. A couple weeks back we talked about how we get prepared. We put on the full armor of God. We get prepared to do what God has called us to do.
Look at verse 5: Joshua told the people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you."
You see before we can do what God has called us to do we should be assured. We should consecrate ourselves. For the Hebrews this meant that they would wash their clothes and fast from sexual activity – washing and fasting. To prepare for God’s calling we should clean our bodies and our minds from the filth and dirt that we have accumulated over the years. And we should pray and fast. All of this is about assurance. We must know for sure that we have heard God’s voice. We must know for sure that God is the one giving us direction and guidance.
And when we are prepared and ready to step out for God we can also be sure that God will do amazing things among us. Just as He did for Joshua and the Israelites. And when we do step out for God it is exciting. It is amazing. It can be the most joyous, wonderful thing that you have ever done. The joy in going out on a limb for Christ.
One of the joys of going out on a limb for Christ is that it magnifies faith.
Look at verse 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.
We will be exalted. Our faith will be magnified. Another way to translate this passage is to replace the word exalt with the word magnify. “Today I will being to magnify you.” Going out on a limb causes our faith to be held in a greater respect. By whom? Perhaps by other. Perhaps others will see how you step out for Christ and they will respect you for it. But more importantly when going out on a limb for God, it will make your faith grow – for yourself. It increases the significance of your faith to you.
When taking a risk for God you show Him trust and loyalty. And He will give you praise for what you have done, as promised in 1 Corinthians 4.
Remember the story of the blind man in John chapter 9. Jesus spit in the dirt, made mud and put it on the blind man’s eyes. He tells him to go wash it off in the pool of Siloam. This man could have just wiped of the mud. He was blind and no one wanted anything to do with him, I can’t imagine it was easy to go all the way to some distant pool. It would have been easier just to get some water right there and wash it off. But He did what he was told. He stepped out on a limb. And the result was that he could see. But that’s not the only result. By stepping out on faith – even when his faith was ridiculed and persecuted – his faith was magnified. And there was joy in going out on a limb for the blind man.
So going out on a limb magnifies faith. It also calls people to a common vision.
Look at verse 9: Joshua said to the Israelites, "Come here and listen to the words of the LORD your God.
We should have a common vision. For the Israelites it was to come and listen to the words of the Lord your God. It brought them to a common mission. They knew that they had to listen for instruction and follow it, together. In their community they would be judged as a group and they all agreed on this common vision.
Today we have to understand that going out on a limb brings us to a common vision.
Leave your finger in Joshua, but turn you Bible to 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 and look at verse 12. Paul in his letter to the church of Corinth is concerned about the people there having a common vision:
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.
There are many parts but one body. All of us: Jew/Greek; slave/free; rich/poor; democrat/republican; black/white or otherwise; American/Arab/Mexican/Chinese/Indian on and on. As long as we are united in Jesus Christ we are one part of the same body of believers.
After September 11 this country came together with a common vision. We wanted our nation to step out on a limb for justice. When the polls first came out over 90 percent of Americans supported the war efforts. You see we had a common vision.
As a church, big “C,” the church universal, as Christians we must have a common vision. Proverbs 29 verse 18 warns us “Where there is no vision, people perish.” There is a price to pay if we don’t have a common vision.
And hopefully we come here every Sunday morning to hear and listen to the word of the Lord our God and to hold each other accountable to the vision we believe in. The vision of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
Going out on a limb also demonstrates God’s presence. Look at verses 10 and 11 of Joshua 3: 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.
Joshua says “this is how you will know that the living God is among you.” Just having heard their orders from their leader and knowing this is a command from God, they trusted. And they knew. They knew that with God all things are possible.
They believed that their God was bigger and better and more powerful than any of the other gods. Mightier than the god of the Canaanites, Bail. For the Canaanites, Bail was believed to be the greatest among the gods because he had defeated the sea-gods. But Yahweh the God of the Israelites and our God, the father of Jesus Christ, would display his power over the waters by controlling the Jordan River and setting up His kingdom in their land. This would show both the Canaanites and Israel who was the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The Israelites also were confident to do this because they had the Ark of the Covenant and they knew that it was going before them. God directed that the 12 priests would lead the way by carrying the ark into the Jordan. God, himself, went before them. You see the Ark was God’s throne and it symbolized God’s sovereignty, holiness, justice, and mercy.
The covering of the Ark was called the “Mercy Seat.” Because it was there once a year on the Day of Atonement that the high priest sprinkled the blood that had been shed moments before for the sin of the people. In Jewish custom, the sin of the people was confessed over the head of the animal, the animal was then killed in place of the people whose sin merited death and then the blood was carried into the holiest part of the tabernacle and was sprinkled on the Mercy Seat between the presence of God and the law which the people had broken.
This whole idea should sound familiar. The cross became the Mercy seat for all of our sins. Jesus Christ stood in place of our sins, much the way the animal did. And His blood was shed and spread out and carried into our temples. As God resided in that Ark – which was placed in a temple wherever Israel sent up camp, Jesus resides in us when we ask for him. He lives in our temples. He lives in our hearts. And we can pray that God will go before us wherever we go or wherever we decide to set up camp.
Now look at verse 17: 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.
God is in the middle of this chaos. He stayed in the way of danger to protect his followers until everyone had crossed.
In this same way Jesus protects us. He is in the middle of danger and chaos when we go out on a limb for him. In our hearts, the ark in our temples, God is there with us in this world we live in that is contrary and hostile and in out and out rebellion against God and His word.
And finally the joy of going out on a limb for God is that it gets us out of complacency.
After hearing God’s word the people of Israel could have laughed at God. They could have once again turned their backs and said this mission is impossible. This promise is 500 years old and now we are supposed to believe that God is going to keep his word. They could have said that and stayed right where they were.
But they believed. They knew that doing this would magnify their faith before God, that it was their common vision, and that God would be with them and was way better than those other false idols. So instead of moaping around and pondering whether or not this was true, they just did it.
Look at verse 14: So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them.
They broke camp, they tore down their tents, they uprooted their lives to follow God. They went out on a limb. And they finally received what they were praying for. God did amazing things that day.
Soren Kierkegard, the 19th century Danish religious philosopher, tells a story about a town where only ducks live. Every Sunday the ducks would waddle out of their houses and waddle down Main Street to their church. They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their proper pews. The duck choir waddles in and takes its place, then the duck minister comes forward and opens the duck Bible. He reads to them “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fence can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds. All the ducks shouted “AMEN!” and they all waddled home.
God has offered us all we need. But are we complacent? Do we have a common vision? Has God called us to something great? Has he called us to fly? But do we choose to waddle?
Like Henry Ford, Beethoven, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, the Israelites and others have we been discouraged – shot down from time to time? Did that put us into a life of complacency?
Well God is with us if we believe. He has given us wings to fly. No walls can confine us. And there is Joy in taking risks, in being daring. There is joy in using those wings. There is joy in going out on a limb for God.
