Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

God loves the word “impossible” Joshua 3 Promised Land Living in Problematic World Sermon #5 “The difficult we will do immediately; the impossible may take us a while  longer!” That’s the slogan of the Seabees, that group of over 300,000  courageous, hardworking men first called up during World War II who followed combat units into newly conquered territory. From the island hopping of World War II to the cold of Korea, to the jungles of Vietnam, to the mountains of Bosnia, and now to the desert of Afghanistan, the Seabees have built entire bases, bulldozed and paved thousands of miles of roadway and airstrips, built bridges and military bases and have accomplished a myriad of construction projects vital for military success. “The difficult we will do immediately; the impossible may take us a while  longer!”   What do you consider impossible? Slavery? Booker T. Washington was born into slavery. Deafness? Thomas Edison was basically deaf. Poor home? Abraham Lincoln was born to illiterate parents. Physical handicaps? Lord Byron had a club foot. Robert Louis Stevenson had tuberculosis. Alexander Pope was a hunchback. Admiral Nelson had only one eye. Julius Caesar was an epileptic. Louis Pasteur, was so near‑sighted that he had a difficult time finding his way around his laboratory without glasses. Helen Keller, could not hear or see, but  graduated with honors from Radcliffe. An expert said of famous football coach Vince Lombardi: “He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.” Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was advised by her family to find work as a servant or seamstress. The teacher of famous opera singer Enrico Caruso said Caruso had no voice at all and could not sing. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper for lacking ideas. He also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. Those individuals made history, not because of their handicaps, but in spite of them!   I don’t know how many of them were believers but I do know that many of them accomplished the impossible in their own human strength. If they could do it, shouldn’t the child of God be able to do the impossible in God’s strength. Our God loves the word “impossible.”   Joshua 3 is about doing the impossible. Twenty-one times in this account of crossing Jordan (Joshua 3:1-5:1) we find the word abar which means to “cross over” or to “pass over” repeated. The word indicates something is taking place with tremendous epic significance. Crossing over Jordan for an entire nation at this time, when it was at flood stage, was humanly impossible!   This verb abar implies crossing over a boundary, whether physical like a river valley, political like a nation’s border, or moral, as to enter into a covenant. Crossing over Jordan meant entering a new kind of life. This crossing marked a decisive transition from the slavery of Egypt and the wilderness wandering to the entering into the inheritance, the Promised Land.   But to enter the Promised Land, you have to first cross Jordan! Sometimes crossing Jordan seems impossible. As J. Oswald Sanders writes, “There is a Jordan to be crossed in the life of every Christian.” Israel only had to cross Jordan once. Some of us will have several Jordans to cross in a lifetime.   What’s your Jordan? Are you on the brink of the Promised Land? You can see it, smell it and can almost taste it. BUT then you come up against the impossible waters of a Jordan. Perhaps you were you moving along with excitement and expectation like the nation of Israel? Look at Joshua 2:23-3:1. They’re rallied, psyched up – ready to take the land. The whole nation moves, ready and rearing to go, then they come to the Jordan. Screech. Can you hear the brakes, smell the burning rubber as the whole plan comes to a dead halt?    God’s people in Joshua 3 face a tremendous obstacle. They are at the end of their resources. Usually, Jordan could be crossed. It’s typically not much more than a small stream but right now it’s at flood stage. It’s overflowing and a torrential stream. There are no boats, no bridge. Yet God had promised that His people were going to cross over this obstacle and reach the other side...but how? Humanly, it is impossible.   What’s your Jordan this morning? Is it a serious or terminal illness? Too much month left at the end of the pay check? Just can’t seem to make it? Is your Jordan a wayward child? A marriage headed for the rocks? Maybe an unbearable work situation? Perhaps you’re a teen and every day at school is torture? You’re picked on, the butt of all the jokes? Maybe Jordan for you is a valley of depression, loneliness or despair? Perhaps you feel your world is caving in? Then, Joshua 3 is for you! God loves to take us across our Jordans. God loves the word “impossible!!”  God does not want you and I to dwell on the “other side.” That’s the point of this narrative. He has called us to be “crossover” people. Every life has some crossover times, times when you come up to a seemingly incrossable obstacle like a flooded river. These obstacles are frustrating, sometimes frightening. As God called His people to cross over, so He is calling us to crossover into the Promised Land. Sometimes God calls us individually to crossover, sometimes He calls a community of believers, a local church, to a crossover point.   In the Christian life you’re either an overcomer or you’re overcome. You’re a victor or a victim. As Israel could not do it in their own resources, we cannot do it in our own strength. What’s impossible for us is only possible for our God. We need to tatoo Luke 1:37 on our souls, “For nothing is impossible with God.” As we face our own Jordan Rivers, what ramifications does this wonderful story have for us? 1. God’s impossible work requires active faith. Because the completion of our salvation is future, frequently there is a misconception that faith is passive. While there is a passive aspect, faith is primarily active. John Wesley said, “My brother Charles, amid the difficulties of our early ministry, used to say, “If the Lord would give me wings I would fly.” I used to answer him, “If the Lord bid me fly, I should trust Him for the wings.” That’s active faith.   Joshua was a man of active faith. After hearing the two spies’ report he begins immediate preparations to cross Jordan to invade Canaan. But this is not a sound military action, Jordan is impassable at this time of year. It wasn’t a logical choice. Phillip Yancey has defined faith as ““Believing in advance in something that will only seem logical when seen in reverse.” Joshua’s active faith corresponds with that definition. This was not a prudent move.   Joshua has no idea of how two million people; men, women, children, livestock and just a little bit of baggage (40 years of accumulation) were going to cross this torrential, swollen river. But he believed that God was going to make it possible. So, he moves the entire nation, the whole kit and caboodle  seven miles from their present location to the banks of the Jordan.   The more logical move would have been to request an extension of time from Yahweh until the Jordan’s waters subsided or at least to have requested an alternative route. Perhaps he should have formed a committee. It might have been dubbed “The Crisis Committee for Crossing Uncrossable Rivers.” But he doesn’t, he just picks up camp, and steps out on faith. It was not logical nor was it conservative.  The way of faith is rarely the conservative way.   Believers tend to be resistant to change and err on the side of being too conservative. Yet no one listed in the Hall of Faith (Hebrews 11) is there because they were conservative. Most of us also like the familiar. The way of faith is never the way of the familiar. Instead, it’s the way of great risk. It’s not the way of safety and comfort.    God wants us to be a people of active faith. To do so He must break us free from our own chains of anti-change conservativeness. He wants us to grow, to  be a crossover people. But because living by faith is so uncomfortable, too often we’d rather live on the other side of Jordan, periodically gazing over into the Promised Land...but never stepping foot there! God wants to make us into people who are willing to grow, expand, change, claim new territory and the inheritance that He has waiting for us. Before the nation was going to see God do the impossible, they had to take Three Important Steps. Are you ready? You sure you’re ready? Are you waiting for the next point? Well, that’s the next point...   a) They had to wait, v. 1-2. Why the delay? Probably there were some needed preparations and organizations made in anticipation of the crossing. But three days? We must learn that God works even in the waiting.   Abraham waited twenty years for a son. David waited nearly that long for God to give him the kingdom.  Mary and Martha waited for several days for Jesus to come, three of them after Lazarus had been buried.   God brings us to the banks of our Jordan and has us wait. He brings us to the bridgeless, boatless, fordless, flooded river and has us wait. Why? He wants us to realize there is no possible way to cross our Jordan...without Him. He brings us to the edge of our Jordan to make us aware that Jordan is uncrossable in our own resources.   How many times do you think that the people came down to the edge of Jordan and wondered how they were ever going to get across that raging torrent? Don’t you think that there was some questioning of Joshua’s leadership? “Moses would have never led us into this.”   I love the words of G. Campbell Morgan, “Waiting for God is not laziness. Waiting for God is not going to sleep. Waiting for God is not the abandonment of effort. Waiting for God means, first, activity under command; second, readiness for any new command that may come; third, the ability to do nothing until the command is given.” A vital step of active faith is waiting.   b) They had to follow, v. 3-4. The Ark of the Covenant is mentioned 17 times in this account. The writer wants to be certain we don’t lose sigh of it.  As you know, the Ark of the Covenant was a simple box four feet long, two and a half feet high and two and a half feet wide. The movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, portrayed it pretty accurately. It contained the tablets of stone upon which the finger of God had written the Ten Commandments. It also had a pot of manna which witnessed to God’s gracious provision during the forty years in the wilderness and Aaron’s high priestly rod. The Ark was topped with a gold plate called the Mercy Seat over which the two statues of cherubim knelt.    Everything about the Ark exuded the presence of God. God is the center of this story. Nothing was going to happen at Jordan if He wasn’t there. When God asks us to cross Jordan, He always leads us. It’s all His doing as symbolized by the ark. It’s a God-thing!   Though God goes before us, it is imperative that we follow. It’s only by following God that we “will know which way to go, since [we] have never been this way.” That reminds me a little of the phrase from Star Trek, “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” That’s the way of faith, to go where you have never been, to follow God by faith into the great unknown.   They were also instructed to “keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it.” That would be a little over half a mile, a Sabbath day’s journey. One reason for the distance is that God is holy. He’s not our Buddy or the “Man Upstairs.” He’s the awesome God.   More importantly, this distance enabled the most people to see what God was going to do. If they had been crowded around the Ark, only the ones at the front would have seen God’s work. As they lined Jordan’s banks, they all had a front row seat to see God’s work and power.   Do you think that there would have been a miracle if they had not followed? Possibly, that’s why we don’t see God work more. We’re not following. Faith is not a step in the dark, it’s a reasonable trust in the God who goes before us and leads us. What an encouragement to know that God always goes before us when He leads us into new territory. If God is leading you across Jordan, into new turf, you are not alone.  A vital step of active faith is following.   c) They had to prepare, v. 5. This is the first command given directly from Joshua. They were to prepare, they were to prepare their souls. Spiritual preparation is essential if God is going to do the impossible. Most military leaders would have said, “Sharpen your swords and polish your shields.” Joshua instructs them though to clean their souls.   Military preparation was important but spiritual preparation is the priority. It was a command to examine the soul, confess known sin and be in right relationship to the One Who was going to lead them across Jordan.     As J. Oswald Sanders wrote, “God’s tomorrow of wonder depends on our today of sanctification. It is only on man’s side that the windows of blessing are bolted. Our consecration withdraws the restricting bolts, and the showers are released.” Friend, are you prepared for God to work? Did you prepare your soul before you came this morning to public worship?   When a person becomes a believer, they usually undergo some radical life changes, especially if they’ve had a rough background. Through the first steps of spiritual growth and self‑denial, they discard lots of the large, obvious sins. Sad to say, many believers stop there. They don’t go on to eliminate the little sins that clutter the landscape of their lives.   Gordon MacDonald, in his book, Ordering Your Private World, told of an experience in his own life that illustrates this truth. “Some years ago, when Gail and I bought the old abandoned New Hampshire farm we now call Peace Ledge, we found the site where we wished to build our country home strewn with rocks and boulders. It was going to take a lot of hard work to clear it all out. The first phase of the clearing process was easy. The big boulders went fast. And when they were gone, we began to see that there were a lot of smaller rocks that had to go too. But when we had cleared the site of the boulders and the rocks, we noticed all of the stones and pebbles we had not seen before. This was much harder, more tedious work. But we stuck to it, and there came the day when the soil was ready for planting grass.”   God’s power flows freely over those who sanctify themselves for Him, who eliminate the “little sins” too. For God to work, we must prepare spiritually. 2. God’s impossible work brings honor to the faithful, v. 7-9. Several millennia later, we have difficulty comprehending why this stamp of approval on Joshua’s leadership was so significant. This is Joshua’s first big move. Remember too what a beloved and honored leader Moses had been, leading the nation for forty years. Joshua had big sandals to fill. If the nation was going to follow Joshua as they claimed the land, they had to trust him.   Joshua’s claim to power does not rest on what he has accomplished. It rests on what God has accomplished. The most fascinating part of all of this is what Joshua does not tell the people. God promised to honor him but Joshua goes to the nation and doesn’t utter a word, not a subtle hint about his newly magnified position. He is truly a humble man. Godly leaders wear His honor with great humility.   In the 1859 revival in Wales great things were happening under the preaching of David Morgan. One service in particular, at Devil’s Bridge near Aberystwyth, was memorable. An old minister wrote of that service: “The evening service was [powerful]. So near was the Revivalist to his God, that his face shone like that of an angel, so that none could gaze steadfastly at him. On the way home I dared not break the silence for miles. Towards midnight I ventured to say, ‘Didn’t we have blessed meetings, Mr Morgan?’ ‘Yes’, he replied; and after a pause, added, ‘The Lord would give us great things if He could only trust us.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘If he could trust us not to steal the glory for ourselves.’ Then the midnight air rang with his cry, at the top of his voice, ‘Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory’.”   There is nothing more tragic than for God’s people to miss out on so much blessing because God cannot trust us with his gifts. We need to take a page out of the life of Joshua and be careful to give God all of the honor and all of the glory because it is all His work!   3. God’s impossible present work produces greater future faith, v. 9-10. The basis of trusting God in the future is what He has done in the past. Dale Davis calls this “Theo-logic.” The One who drives back the water, will also drive out their enemies. In God’s mind the victory was a done deal. They just had to claim the Land. The dividing of Jordan was a foretaste of what He was going to do as he drove out these wicked nations before them. Even the term “living God” is a direct contrast to the “dead gods” of their enemies.   My closest friend is Jane’s brother-in-law, Fred Froman. I know if I faced a horrible crisis today, if something tragic happened in our family, I could call Fred and he’d be there for me. If need be, he’d come here. Why? Because Fred has always been there for me in our twenty-five year friendship.   If I can count on Fred based on the fact that he’s been faithful over the years, can’t you and I count on God? He’s been faithful since the beginning! God’s doing the impossible is our motivation to trust Him to do it again. If God got you across the Red Sea yesterday, why are you doubting that He will get you across little Jordan today? God hasn’t changed. If anything our faith should be stronger. We’ve already seen Him work in the past, can’t we trust Him to work in the present and future? That’s the point here. God’s impossible work in the present produces greater faith for His work in the future! 4. God’s impossible work requires the first steps of faith, v. 13. A cartoon in a Christian periodical depicts four priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant and approaching the Jordan River. One of them turns to his fellow and, with a look of fear, asks, “Did you stop to think of how silly we’re going to look if Joshua is wrong?” Someone has dubbed this “the feat of feet.”   What’s going on here? To see God work you’ve got to get your feet wet. This is one of the great truths of living by faith. We will not see anything happen unless we dip our toes in the water. Focusing and following the Ark was good. Sanctifying ourselves is also good. They’re both essential. But little will come of these things unless we take those first, initial steps of faith. And if we don’t, we’ll be stuck on the wrong side of Jordan.   This act also took more faith than the Red Sea crossing. Moses stretched out his rod and God sent a wind to blow all night, dividing the Red Sea, (Ex. 14:21). No demands were made on the nation’s faith. It was all on Moses.   This time though they had to get their feet wet. It would also have to be an instantaneous division. To see God do the impossible, we have to first step out on faith. The people of Israel were to expect God to do a miracle. Perhaps God does so little for us is because we expect so little. 5. God’s impossible work requires the more impossible task, “Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest” (3:15). Like the author of a good mystery or the director of an intense film, the sacred writer builds the tension in the text. What we have here is a nail biter scene.   Native Wisconsinites remember the “Ice Bowl” of December 31, 1967. That was the playoff game when Green Bay defeated Dallas, 21-17. It was 13 below zero with a horrific wind chill of 46 below. With just thirteen  seconds left in the game, Bart Starr pulled off a quarterback sneak. The Packers scored and won the game. It was a nail-biter until the last whistle blew.   That’s the type of tension building in Joshua 3. It’s not enough that the nation is crossing Jordan. They are crossing Jordan at the absolute worst time of year. It was an impossible quest. The river is not a stream. It’s a good one hundred feet across, ten feet plus deep, rushing by at around ten miles an hour. It’s not a quiet stream. It’s a raging torrent. It’s an impossible crossing. But remember, God loves to do the impossible. Can’t you imagine the entire nation watching, holding their breath, as the priests bearing the Ark neared the edge? As their feet touch the water, the waters begin to roll back.   Everyone there that day knew that God had done it, v. 16-17. Not only did the water pull back, but the people crossed over on dry land, not some mucky river bottom. And the water divided for about thirty miles, the distance from here to Milwaukee. With this huge division, it probably only took the entire nation about an hour to go across.   Amazingly, liberal scholars will acknowledge that it happened but that it wasn’t a miracle. What happened, according to them, was the water was dammed up by an earthquake.   Sometimes you have to really work to doubt the Bible.  a) God had promised it was going to happen. b)It happened on cue, as the priests’ feet hit the water. How do you schedule an earthquake to strike on cue? The waters stacked up for some thirty miles. c) It also happened while the Jordan was at flood stage. It was the most improbable time for a crossing.  Remember the Mississippi River’s flooding of a few years ago? It’s impossible to hold back flood waters. d) The river bottom became like dry ground. If anything, that alone demonstrates the miraculous of this scene. Just think of the thick mud if this had not truly been a miracle. Two million people walking through a muddy river bottom.  e) Finally, the waters flowed back to their original place as soon as the priests came out of the water.   It was a miracle. It was impossible. The greater the impossibility, the greater the manifestation of God’s power! Conclusion: Remember the old song by Oscar Eliason, “Got any rivers you think are uncrossable? Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through? God specializes in things thought impossible; And He can do what no other one can do.”   We all stand on the bank of some Jordan River, and the Promised Land is over there. But, oh, the things that hold us back, our own weaknesses, our own temperament, our own human nature. Look to Him as Israel looked to the Ark, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). He loves to do what we consider impossible. Let Him provide a way for you to crossover that difficulty. Go to the edge of that difficulty: go as far as you can, do your best, leave the impossible to God. He has almighty power and infinite wisdom. Nothing is too hard for Him. He can do anything that He pleases. He controls the storm and He divides the sea and makes uncrossable rivers, crossable. This is God’s provision for you, whatever your Jordan experience may be. Come to it in faith, in confidence. Trust the Father and cross your Jordan.   Gladys Aylward, missionary to China more than fifty years ago, was forced to flee when the Japanese invaded Yangcheng. But she could not leave her work behind. With only one assistant, she led more than a hundred orphans over the mountains toward Free China. In their book, The Hidden Price of Greatness, Ray Besson and Ranelda Mack Hunsicker tell what happened:       "During Glady’s harrowing journey out of war‑torn Yangcheng...she grappled with despair as never before. After passing a sleepless night, she faced the morning with no hope of reaching safety. A 13‑year‑old girl in the group reminded her of their much‑loved story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. "But I am not Moses," Gladys cried in desperation. "Of course you aren’t," the girl said, "but Jehovah is still God."   When Gladys and the orphans made it through, they proved once again that no matter how inadequate we feel, God is still God, and we can trust in him.    When the situation seems impossible or the river seems uncrossable, just remember to have a personal confidence in God, practice obedience to God, and understand that God has a purpose in all the experiences we have with Him.   Our God loves to do the impossible and He loves to do it through us but we must trust Him. Will you trust Him? Will you stick your toes in? Are you willing to trust God and get your feet wet?