Word of Salvation – Vol.19 No.05 – November 1972
Crossing Over
Advent Sermon by Rev. J. J. C. Westera on Joshua 3:11
Scripture Reading: Joshua 3:7 4:7
Psalter Hymnal: 407; 81:1,3 (law); 306:1 (faith); 463; 460; 488
“Behold” is the first word of our text.
There is something here for us to see this morning and we have to pay close attention to it. For you know that it is possible to see things and yet NOT to see them. That is what the bible says anyhow.
Isaiah warns us too: “You shall indeed hear but never understand and you shall indeed see but NEVER perceive.”
Great are the things which we have to see this morning. We see the people of Israel crossing the river Jordan. We see the priests holding the Ark in the midst of the river, now dry, while the people finish going across. That is great because we believe that these things indeed happened and they still have a message for us today. The people of Israel are always seen as an example, ‘a type’ of the church. The people of God of the Old Testament are a shadow of the people of God of the New Testament. Well, let us try to understand the message that this particular story has for us.
Israel is about to cross the river Jordan. They will go from the one world they have lived in, into the other. They have lived and travelled in the desert and they are going to settle down in the Promised Land which God had chosen for them. This is the first thing which we must see. There are two worlds indeed – and we have to go from the one into the other. There is the world of our sin and death in which we live and dwell and there is the world of mercy and of life in which we have to enter and where we have to live. Israel has the desert behind them where they lived for forty years because of their unbelief and their rebellion against God. That life in the desert has always been ‘a type’ of life for God’s people in this world. We have always been seen as travelling people, as pilgrims, who are on their way home, on their way to the Promised Land. It is beyond all doubt that we have to travel and that we have to be pilgrims. We can’t stay here. If we want to stay here and if we don’t want to be pilgrims we will perish – because this world is vanishing away and we with it if we don’t move from this world into the other. We have to, so to say, make up our mind and to make our choice NOW! We have to know where we are going. The direction of our life is very important because on that direction depends where we will end up. We must realise that there are two worlds and we must ask ourselves where we are going. Do we still live in the land of our own, without knowing of the land of God?
We know in what kind of world we live. It is full of misery, death, sin, immorality, and despair. It seems we have no other escape than drugs, suicide, drink and some fun for today, for tomorrow we die. People don’t have much hope in this world. For most people’s lives are dark and grim. We know this world pretty well. We know what is happening round about us. How people live in Vietnam and how they die. We know how people are starving in undeveloped countries. We know how people are tyrannised, persecuted, oppressed and tortured in countries such as Russia, Hungary, China and Africa. We know enough of this world. But what about the other? And are we on our way to that country? Do we know that we have to go from the one into the other and that we can’t stay here?
Over against that world of ours is the world of God. It is the world of true happiness and of great joy. There is no darkness and no death. It is world of eternal life where the fellowship with God is our strength and light. This is not a world which we have to wait for, as if it is a matter of the future only. Nor is this the world of a fairy tale which is made up by us to have some comfort and some illusion. Some dream in this poor and cold world. No, it is the world of God which is very real because it has come to us in Jesus Christ the Son of God who has brought this world of God to this earth and has ESTABLISHED this world here on earth. It might be a spiritual world but is nevertheless a very real and true one. As a matter of fact it it the ONLY real and true thing here on earth. All other things pass away but this world of God will not. It is eternal and constant. Do we know it? God has given it to us and we receive it only out of His hands. It is the world which can only be seen by faith in God and then when we are guided by His Word and by His Holy Spirit. Do we have eyes to see and hearts to understand? “Behold” is the first word of our text and we have to ask ourselves whether we see or not.
And when we see we have to ask ourselves how do we go there, how do we come from the one world into the other? There is a river in between and we can’t cross it. Can we? This river tells us that the one world is not a continuation of the other. A miracle must take place whereby we are able to cross. Think of Israel standing before the river, they could see the Promised Land but how could they reach it?
God takes care of that as well. For them and for us…! Behold, He said to Joshua, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is to pass over before you into the Jordan. The ark was a symbol of God’s presence – of God Himself being in the midst of his people. It was a box of acacia wood: a very light but firm wood very suitable for timber. In Ex.25 the Lord had commanded to make it and to overlay it with pure gold within and without, with a moulding of gold round about it.
In Ex.25 it is called the Ark of the Testimony because the law of God was put into it, to prove that God is a holy God and that we can’t stand before Him, were it not that this same law in its condemnation was covered by the mercy seat which was upon the ark, with the two cherubim on the two ends of the mercy seat. God’s presence in the midst of His people is a matter of mercy otherwise this is impossible. God cannot be with us but in mercy, in the forgiveness of sins. “From above the mercy seat,” God said to Moses, “from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you.” Therefore it is often said in the Bible that God is enthroned upon the cherubim. Only in that way He can have fellowship with His people and they with Him.
Here in Joshua the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant. That covenant that God made with the forefathers of Israel, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. To them he had promised this land of Canaan of which the Israelites are about to take possession. God is the God of His covenant which he made with us and with our children. It means that God is our ally, our helper. We depend on Him and we must trust in Him and in Him alone when we are about to cross the river which is between the one and the other world. The Ark was in the midst of the river for as soon as the priests, carrying the Ark, touched the edge of the river the waters were held back and stood and rose up in a heap far off at the city of Adam and those flowing down toward the sea of the Arabah, the salt sea, were wholly cut off. That is how the people of Israel crossed the river.
The picture is clear. Only by God’s wonderful power the Israelites entered the Promised Land. So it was and so it is. If we want to go from the one world into the other we must realise that there is only one way. It is the way of God’s wonderful power. The Ark is a symbol of Jesus Christ. The mercy seat upon the ark proclaims the mercy of God in Jesus Christ who with His blood covers all our sins against the law of God. God does not speak to us from above the cherubim any more but from the cross where Jesus Christ bore our sins and carried them away. In Christ God is with us!
How true this is. In Christ we cross the river that is in between our own world and the world of God. Let us never think that we can cross this river in our own power and wisdom. Our good works will not bring us there. It is not a matter of progress or of improvement or of evolution. In that way we will not go from this world into a better one as is still the hope of many. It may take years, ages they say, but we will make it they say. But they are greatly mistaken. There is only one way to peace and to happiness and it is the way of Jesus Christ. As the ark was in the midst of the river and held the waters back so Jesus Christ has been in the midst of the waters. They went over Him, as He Himself said already in Psalm 42, “All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me.” How true it is. Jesus Christ is our substitute. He was forsaken by God that we never would be forsaken. On Him was the wrath of God and the punishment of our sins that we might be saved. There is indeed a river, a separation between God’s world and ours, and the only pass is in Christ! When you have seen the one world and the other, when you have come to stand before the crossing, you know that there is no other salvation but in the cross of Jesus Christ. And you gladly go! You gratefully accept and praise God for His wonderful power and His unbelievable grace!
We know how hopeless the situation is. We can’t cross that river in between God’s world and ours, between God Himself and us. Impossible! But behold. . . the Ark is there in the midst of the river. It passes over before you into the Jordan! Have you seen it? What a sight it must have been for the Israelites! They could not believe their eyes. And not only that but THEY HAD TO GO now! They had to trust the Lord. I can imagine that they looked at the waters and that they saw them held back and flow away. Would they not see them come back? Would they safely reach the other side? They had to do only one thing. They had to look at the ark and at the priests but more at the ark then at the priests. For not the priests but the ark kept the waters back! Don’t we as people of God of the New Testament have to do the same? We see Christ on the cross. We see Him suffer for us and undergo for us the darkness and misery of our world and we see him arise from the grave and from death and from hell…. would it be sufficient? Will they not come back? And still take us and destroy us? Drag us into hell? They are very real and they have no mercy. They are merciless! You can’t close your eyes as if, when you don’t see them, they don’t see you. Little children may do that but you are too old for that, you know!
Our sins are very real and the results of our sins are very real too. Death is real and so is the devil. It would be foolish to deny that or to ridicule it. But as real as they are Christ is just as real. A Christ – as an idea – does not help me but His cross is very real and his empty tomb is very real. He has overcome death and hell. What we have to do is to look at Him and to trust in Him. He is God’s way to us and our way to God, God’s way to earth and to heaven, God’s way to our world of sin and death and the way to God’s world of happiness and life. How do we come there? Just by faith, by simple faith in Jesus Christ!
That’s what God teaches us and what we have to teach our children. Later on we are told that 12 stones had to be erected in the river and on the bank of the river in Gilgal so that when the children of the Israelites after many years would ask what are these stones, then the parents have to tell them what wonderful things God did, in order that they too would believe in God and might live! This message of God doesn’t change. It is still the same. And as the priests carried the ark so we have to carry that same testimony of God’s salvation in Christ. We preach Him and Him alone. That’s the Great Commission of all ministers who preach the gospel but is also the great mission of all Christians. They are witnesses in this dark world. They are standing there in the midst of this world with that one message of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world. Here they say is the crossing. Come and have faith in Jesus! He will bring you to the other side safely!’
Nothing else, nobody else can stop the waters, the floods of unbelief and of wickedness. We live in a world where God is declared to be dead… where the Christian faith has become a myth. We have lost sight of both worlds. We don’t know what sin is and we don’t know what mercy is. We think in terms of evolution and hope in vain for a better world. There is one thing in our text that tells me that we are wrong when we look for a better world without God. There is said in our text, “Behold the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD OF ALL THE EARTH is to pass over before you into the Jordan.” God is not the God of one people, one nation, but of all. God is not the God of heaven but of heaven and earth. We wonder when our pilgrimage will be finished. The pilgrimage of us as Christians, of us as Christendom, of us as church, of us as mankind. We have crossed many rivers, climbed many mountains, gone through countless valleys but one day all this will come to an end. The last river will be crossed, the last enemy overcome and that world will be there when there is no war, no misery, no sickness and no sin. Jesus has promised that he will come back and that he will establish the new earth and the new heaven. The promised country of Canaan was only a shadow of the world to come. God is the God of all the earth. That means also that we will not conquer this earth by violence, nor by science. We may discover and explore. We may subject to research all the regions of this earth so that we know all the secrets of God’s universe. That does not mean that we will overcome it and will take possession of it. No we will lose it, even though we become as powerful as God in the BEAST of the world whose number is 666 – nearly 7 – the number of God! Only by faith in God Who is the Lord of all the earth we will conquer. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that over- comes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1John 5:4,5)
One day we will cross the last river. The end of man’s history, of men’s world, will be there and the world of God will come, the new heaven and the new earth. There is only one way to go there. The way of Jesus Christ the Son of God who became man and went before us into the river that is between God and us, God’s world and ours. Behold, God says, the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord OF ALL THE EARTH is to pass over before you into the Jordan. Have we really seen it and did we go the way of Jesus Christ? He will lead us to the other side. He will bring us home.
Amen.