CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 3:15. Jordan overfloweth] Owing to the melting of the snow on the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains. “The swellings of Jordan” seems to have driven the wild beasts from their usual lairs (cf. Jeremiah 49:19).
Joshua 3:16. The City Adam] The site is unknown; probably it was several miles to the north; the back-flow of the accumulated waters was apparent as far up the river as this city.
Joshua 3:17. All the people] All excepting the women and children of the two and a half tribes, with the 70,000 armed men left to guard them (chap. Joshua 4:12-13).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 3:14-17
MAN’S FIRM FAITH AND JEHOVAH’S MIGHTY WORKS
Three events, each of imposing magnitude, are recorded in Scripture history as having taken place within a few miles of each other in that reach of the river Jordan which is opposite to Jericho. First, here is the passage of the Israelites through the miraculously divided river, when, without counting the families of the eastern tribes, some two and a quarter millions of people went over into Canaan. Five hundred and fifty years later, near to this same place, Jordan was divided again. As if to throw into prominence the significant symbolism in which the crossing of this river illustrates death, and to re-affirm in a marked manner that dying has no actual death to the children of God, Elijah, just before his ascent to the heavenly inheritance, smites the waters with his mantle, when they again part, that this ransomed servant of the Lord may also pass over. Elijah is seen to cross Jordan immediately before going up into heaven, as though designedly to connect the river with death, and to throw over the latter, as is so vividly seen with the former, the beautiful assurance of the sufficiency of Divine love and power to bring the believing traveller safely into rest. Elisha returns from accompanying Elijah, and the waters part again; thus twice in one day is Jordan divided, not far from Jericho, over against which all Israel had crossed more than five centuries before. Somewhere in this neighbourhood the more important event of the Saviour’s baptism also took place. The Lord’s people had gone repeatedly into a river which through His power opened to make a way for their feet; the Lord Himself enters, and Him the waters overwhelm in a most significant baptism, the full meaning of which cannot be reached till the Saviour endures that other baptism, of which He cries, “How am I straitened till it be accomplished!” The waters of death overwhelm Deity, that redeemed humanity may pass through them, unharmed, into the richer life that lies beyond. Near the place where the typical people pass safely into the land, notwithstanding the roughest “swellings of the river,” there Christ is consecrated to a work which offers the only ford to death, and at which point all of us must pass into life, if such life is really to be ours. Thus here, too, does this greater JOSHUA “begin to be magnified” in a glory which shall endure for ever. Here, then, are three imposing events, each of which seems mysteriously connected with the other in the idea of death, which is common to them all; and each of which lies centuries apart from the others, as though, by the very breadth of the time which they cover, they were to lay stress on the unchanging and stately purpose of God to bring safely through the grave into life that great multitude which no man can number. While we might well shrink back even in pain from the irreverence of a merely fanciful exposition, it would be almost like “taking away from the things of this book” to resist the impressions which fairly come from so suggestive a sequence and method in the Divine working. Bearing these thoughts in mind, there are three principal features in the narrative which claim attention:—
I. Entrance into the Promised Land is through the wonderful working of God.
1. Think of the glory of God which is shewn in the salvation of His people. (a) It knows no dimness whatever. No physical difficulty throws the slightest shade upon the majesty of His power; no lack of patience, or forbearance, or forgiveness so much as suggests any imperfection in His grace and love. The many sins of the wilderness are all cast behind His back; now that His people are to be brought into their inheritance, He remembers their transgressions no more than as if they had never been. Even the recent guilt on the plains of Moab seems as far removed from His children as the east is from the west. But though the glory of Divine mercy is so beautiful in this passage of the Jordan, it is the perfection of God’s power which is forced most prominently on our attention. Think of the shock which throbs through the whole river the moment it is touched by the feet of the priests; of that half of the flood which hastes away, as if affrighted, from the presence of Jehovah; of the ever accumulating waters in which the other half of the “deep utters its voice, and lifts up its hands on high,” as in very awe, nor dares to pass the presence of its God. Oh what perfection of power is this, in which the fierce torrent of the flooded river is thus in its full sweep shocked in twain, and made to stand up in an heap till the ransomed of the Lord shall have passed over! And all this is done with no effort, and with no machinery, saving that of the ordinary ark, with which all Israel had become familiar. “Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty!” “Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, even for salvation with Thine anointed.” The stars are obscured by the glory of the day, even the sun has its spots, but no one has ever yet seen even the beginning of shade on the perfect and awful brightness of Divine majesty. Not even the mightiest obstacles ever shew so much as the beginnings of difficulty to Him who is “Lord of all the earth.” Shall we remember that when we are tempted, as many often are, to think salvation possible only in proportion as it seems free from hindrance? Some seem to want all the road paved, and the rivers bridged, in order to make their heaven accessible; they forget that nothing hinders God even for a moment. (b) God’s glory is never for mere display. Men speak of God sometimes as though He sought to make known His glory merely for the honour of His own name. God’s glory ever reveals itself in connection with His people’s good. It is when Israel is in need that the sea divides, the manna falls, the Jordan parts asunder. When we speak of an “economy of power” in the Saviour’s miracles, we are only saying in another form that God never does mighty works for the sake of Himself. Whenever, then, we behold any wonderful work of the Lord, let us look for its human occasion. (c) The same glory that encourages those who believe, is a terror to all who walk after “other gods.” All the men on one side of the parted waters find a song in the mighty work of the Lord, which even for centuries afterwards animates the hearts of their children; all the people on the other side are appalled,—fear and pain take hold on them. How do we feel amid the more manifest works of God? To answer that enquiry faithfully may give us a clue to the state of our own hearts. Divine power to the three men on the plains of Dura was a trust and a joy, to Nebuchadnezzar it became a terror; to Paul it was a never-failing theme for song, it made Herod the Sadducee fear lest John the Baptist was risen from the dead; to the jailor of Philippi the earthquake was a thing of terror, but Paul and Silas sang praises to God.
2. Think of the method of God in working for the salvation of His people. The incident lays much stress on one feature which we are all prone to overlook—in the salvation of men it is not so much God’s way to remove our hindrances as to help us to overcome them. The Israelites were brought to this river at the worst possible season of the year. The caverns of the mountains, filled by the latter rain, were emptying themselves, the snow was melting under the great heat by which those rains were followed, and thus Jordan overflowed “all his banks.” God, who overlooks nothing, and times carefully the ways of His providence, selects these very days of the flooded river for the passage. What is this but His more ancient way of saying, “Through much tribulation ye must enter into the kingdom”? What is it but a clear revelation of the fact that trial is not arbitrary, but an occasion for helping His children, and of bringing terror and discomfiture to their enemies? It stands back here in the nursery volume written for the infant Church like a pictorial rendering of God’s early and easy answer to man’s grave and troubled and ever-recurring complaint—“He hath fenced up my way, that I cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths.” The fence is put about us, that we may learn to trust the love and power which will presently remove it; the darkness is in our paths, that we may learn to say in the moment when His presence appears through the departing gloom. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
II. Entrance into the Promised Land can only be through the faith of men. Even the mighty power of God would carry no man, woman, or child over the river, and none would walk over but those who believed that the mass of water which gathered above them would be held back from sweeping them to destruction.
1. The first steps of faith are often the most difficult to take. When the waters were cut off, it would be comparatively easy for the priests to go on; it would need more courage to dip their feet boldly into “the brim of the water” which only began to yield as they began to tread onward seemingly into the depths. (a) It is so in the first steps of an unsaved man towards his God. It is hard to resolve, hard to decide, hard for men to commit themselves before the eyes of some one else to any decidedly Christian act. It is hard for a young man to begin prayer before godless companions who share his chamber. It was a trial to the Prodigal Son to take the first steps homeward; it would be comparatively easy, after the Father’s embrace and kiss and welcome, to go onward in the new life. (b) Not less the first steps are the hardest to Christians who undertake special work for God. The first tract that is given; the first personal exhortation; the first effort to preach Jesus Christ to perishing men; Müller’s first orphan house.
2. Faith is salvation, even when it has fear. Those who walked tremblingly across would be as safe as those who went confidently; those who had just faith enough to commit their way unto the Lord, although terror accompanied every step, would also, and equally with their bolder companions, enter into Canaan. It was thus on the night of the passover; if the father of the family had only sufficient faith to kill the lamb, and sprinkle the door-posts as directed, he might tremble, and even cry out like the Egyptians, as the destroying angel passed by, but he would be as safe as though he sang praises to God. Salvation is not in our freedom from trembling, but in Christ; if our faith only lead us to Him, He is the life.
3. The faith of each is helped by the faith of all. Shrieking priests would have made shrieking people; one trembling Israelite would have inflicted his fear on his neighbour. The firmness of the priests is confidence to the host, and the boldness of each courageous individual in the host was help and strength to all around him. “No man liveth unto himself.” Our faith will help the faith of others; our doubt will not only dishonour God, but injure men. One of the difficulties at which infidels cavil in the doctrine of the resurrection is the distribution of the bodies of the dead into other life. Plants take up the elements of the bodies into vegetable life, and animal life takes up the same elements in consuming the plants. The same process is going on in the spiritual world; our personality overruns, and each man is taking up something of the being of his companions. Though God may not suffer our fear to destroy us, it may be ruinous to others.
4. Faith, though weak in many, might well be firm in us all. We look too much to the gathered heap of the waters, and at the time which it will take us to cross, and too little at the covenanted presence of God. McCheyne used to say, “For one lock at self, take ten looks at Christ.” We endure best, not as seeing ourselves, but “as seeing Him who is invisible,” and of whose presence the death of the Saviour should give us sufficient assurance. This sublime scene of an open way quite across the Jordan is a true picture of the results of the work of Christ: there are no obstacles to our entrance into heaven, but such as are in our own hearts.
III. Entrance into the Promised Land under the Old Covenant forcibly and perhaps designedly illustrates our entrance into that New Covenant life which is through and beyond death. (Cf. outline on Joshua 3:8.) Pulsford has said, “If the approach of Death awaken fear in you, tell Death that you are bringing the Lord Jesus along with you, and Death, like Jordan before the Ark, will put back, and a free passage will open before you into eternal life. ‘What ailest thou, O sea, that thou fleest; and thou Jordan, that thou art driven back?’ But hide Christ in thee indeed; for it will not serve to say, ‘Lord, Lord.’ The devils will leap upon thee, and prevail over thee, if the Lord Jesus be only on thy tongue, and not present, by His Holy Spirit, in thy soul. If He be in thee, who is the Light of Life, very Light and very Life, then, when the candle-light of thy body’s life goes out, the Sun-light of thy soul’s life shall be bright about thee.” Let no one fear, whose trust is in the Saviour; He who has been bread for us and water of life to us through the desert, who has given us “honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock,” will not suffer us at last to be overwhelmed in Jordan.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 3:14. DEVELOPMENTS IN DIVINE TEACHING.
The Pillar of Cloud had here given place to the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark becomes the one visible symbol of God’s presence for the next four hundred and fifty years, and excepting at the end of that time, when it once more appears, as if in holy blessing of the new arrangements, the Cloud is seen no more in the days of the Old Covenant. (Cf. 1 Kings 8:10-11, etc.) In the days of the New Covenant it most significantly reappears on the Mount of Transfiguration, and at this time, also, seems present to consecrate, or rather to recognise before men as consecrated, a fresh development in the Divine plan of teaching and guiding the Church of the living God. The Cloud overshadows Moses, and in him the Law; Elijah, and in him the prophets; and presently departing, leaves visible to the representatives of the Church “Jesus only.” Yet once again in the New Covenant, as if to put the Divine mark on that period in which men should see Him no more, it is the Cloud which receives the ascending Saviour out of sight, till that time when He shall reappear, still coming “in the clouds of heaven,” and coming then with power and great glory. Thus the Pillar of Cloud is seen as the first manifestation of God’s presence with His people, the Cloud gives place to the Ark, the Ark becomes absorbed in the Temple, of which Jesus said, “My Father’s house,” and the Temple, in its turn, makes way for the Church of the Cross. The Cloud which inaugurates all these forms of teaching reappears to bless them all, and receives the ascending Saviour up into glory; and although the Cloud now is not visible in its old form, Isaiah prophesied of these days of the Saviour’s kingdom, “The Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence.” These changes in the outward form of God’s plan of teaching or guiding His people, of which the removal of the Cloud is the first, naturally lead us to look for their reason and cause. Why should God reveal Himself differently to different ages, guiding some men by one form of manifestation, and some by another?
I. Developments in God’s plan of teaching are a necessary accompaniment of human growth. The books that are good for the boy of eight years of age are of little use to the youth of fifteen; yet it is with the elementary books that the child must begin.
1. The Divine plan never shews over-teaching. God has infinite pity for us in all the forms of our weakness, and His pity is not less when the weakness is in our understanding than when we are feeble in some other manner. The Divine gentleness begins with these liberated slaves, by shewing God in the imposing Pillar of Fire and Cloud, which is light in the darkness, and refreshing shade in the day; and when they are able to go on to something further, the same gentle care changes the form of communication. Jesus Christ shews us that the plan is still the same. He taught His apostles three years by mighty miracles, and by wonderful words from His own lips; then, as He was about to depart, He added, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now.” Christ taught men, not as keeping in view His power to impart knowledge, but as ever having regard to their power to learn. So God has ever taught the world; He begins with it in its weakness, and raises the measure of its after lessons into fitness with its increasing powers of acquirement.
2. The Divine plan, thus observed, shews wonderful patience and long suffering. Think of the centuries in which men have contemplated God in each of these several forms of manifestation, and how little they have seemed to learn. Yet God has waited patiently in each case, till men were ready to go on to the next new forms of truth. He has never grown weary, and closed the book of revelation altogether; it is still more glorious that, in His majestic self-control, He has never hurried His dull children from one form of communication till they were ready for the next.
II. The changes which occur in this development of God’s plan of teaching are always FROM THE SENSUOUS TO THE SPIRITUAL. The Ark had less of the supernatural about it than the Cloud. The Cloud was God-made and God-moved; men had made the Ark, and men carried it from place to place. In giving the Ark instead of the Cloud, God was withdrawing Himself gradually from the apprehension of the senses. The direction of this teaching was continually and unalterably the same till Christ came, saying to the woman of Samaria, “God is a Spirit,” and to the woman of Magdala, “Touch me not.” The fathers came “unto the mount that might be touched;” we are come “unto Mount Sion.”
1. All teaching or worship that gives undue prominence to the sensuous is reactionary. It is crossing God’s plan, it is turning back in the way of God’s purposes.
2. All personal trials of faith should be accepted as honours conferred by God, or at least with a devout regard to His patience in the training of men generally. God looks about in the family of His children to see who can best bear the next lessons in walking by faith, and where He selects us for trial He also selects us for honour. Abraham’s trial of faith was honourable, not simply because he proved faithful, but also because God chose him as the man who could best endure, and best lead his fellow-men a step onward in the Divine life. Even if we cannot welcome trial as an honour, we should remember God’s long patience in teaching His people, and willingly and cheerfully take our part in leading men into the knowledge of His ways.
3. The high aim of every Christian should be to trust in God. This is the Divine ideal for the Church: let it be ours personally.
III. No change in the outward form of God’s presence ever indicates less need of God, or shews less efficiency in His power to help His people.
1. The presence of the Lord did not become less actual as it became less manifest. The Cloud might give place to the Ark, the Ark to the Temple, and the Temple to the living Church, but God was not most present when He was most seen. The wilderness was not more blessed with the Divine presence than the Church of the New Testament. Is not this true, also, in the personal experience of Christians? God is not with us least when we least behold Him nigh.
2. The power of the Lord did not become less mighty to save and to help as His presence became less visible to the senses. The dividing of the Jordan seems even more miraculous than the dividing of the Sea; the falling of the walls of Jericho shews an arm as potent to help as the rending of the rock at Horeb; the mighty works of Christ are transcended by nothing in the Old Testament; while the glories of Pentecost, when Christ had ascended up on high, seem absolutely to surpass everything that had gone before. Do not let us think that to have to “worship in the Spirit” means worshipping or waiting in weakness. Help, in the desert, may be more gross and material in its forms; it is not more glorious. Looking on the weak men who were about to forsake Him and flee, Christ said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto my Father.” To that prediction the first fulfilment came in Pentecost.
Joshua 3:14-15. The changes which God makes in His methods of teaching men are not because of any change in God; they are because of our altered circumstances, or different state of heart, or our fresh necessities. Thus is it that men find to guide them, now a Pillar of Cloud, and now an Ark.
The waters that roll between us and our possessions seldom shew signs of making way for us till our feet are “dipped in the brim.” It is not till the twelve apostles bear their few loaves to feed the thousands, that they find how much bread they carry. It is only when the withered arm tries to raise itself in obedience to the Saviour’s bidding, that it finds itself healed of its infirmity. In the kingdom of the Lord, he who never attempts to perform what he cannot do, seldom does that which he might and ought.
God loves to bring us to our difficulties when they are at flood-tide, that we may not attempt to cross them without His help. God delights to help His children in their absolute necessities, that the remembrance of His love and power may be more abiding. Those whom God would largely help He suffers to be much hindered: He brings Israel to Jordan in its heaviest swellings, that nothing may effectually hinder them in the conflicts which are to come.
Joshua 3:16. The passing over “right against Jericho” may teach us two things:—
1. God helps His people over their difficulties, not that they may be out of difficulty, but that they may turn again to Him when difficulty comes next. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death,” and no man need think his foes are all behind him till death also is in the rear.
2. God would have not only His children, but His enemies also, to behold His wonderful works. This is not that He wishes to destroy His enemies: He willeth not the death of any. He makes the hard heart to melt with fear, because fear alone can soften it. If out of fear His enemies will go on to faith, they too shall be received among and become His children, even as Rahab bears witness.
Joshua 3:17. He who trusts God with the beginning of his salvation, may well trust Him for the end. As Bp. Hall has said, “The same hand that hath made the way hard, hath made it sure. He that hath made the wilderness comfortable, will make Jordan dry.” The things which we most fear, our Father knows how to make most helpful. The mighty works of the Lord are not so much to excite our astonishment as to instruct our hearts; they are to teach us to know Him.
Joshua 3:17. THE PRIESTS IN THE MIDST OF JORDAN; OR, MORAL FIRMNESS.
If we look at the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness as illustrating the journey of human life, the narrative before us will supply three facts concerning it:—
1. The future difficulty in life’s journey. The Jews in their journey had surmounted many difficulties, but there was one before them yet—the overflowing Jordan. So it is with us. The Jordan of death is before us all. The passage through it, to us, as to the Jews, is strange, perilous, necessary; we cannot reach Canaan without it.
2. The true guide in life’s journey. God directed Joshua what the people were to do (Joshua 3:7-8). God guided them in two ways: (a) By the external symbol—the ark. (b) By human effort—“the priests.” What the ark and the priests were to these men then, Christianity and true teachers are to humanity now; they are God’s means of guiding us on our journey. A guide must know the way; God alone knows the winding and endless path of souls.
3. The final deliverance in life’s journey. “All the people were passed clean over,” etc. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” But the point to which we would now draw particular attention is the sublime calmness of these priests; they stood firm in the midst of the waters till all passed over. The circumstances suggest two remarks about their firmness.
I. That it was rational in its foundation. What was its foundation? The answer to this question will enable us to see what moral firmness really is.
1. It was not stolid indifference. Some men are lauded for their composure, who ought to be denounced for their stoicism.
2. It was not confidence in their own power to keep back the mountain of water.
3. It was not, of course, faith in the laws of nature. All men have a fixed and practical faith in the laws of nature; the mariner, agriculturist, physician, etc., all trust these. But these men were firm in defiance of the laws of nature. It was the law of nature that the Jordan should roll on and whelm them in destruction. What, then, was the foundation of their firmness? The WORD OF GOD. God had told them, through Joshua, that they were thus to stand, and they would be safe (Joshua 3:8; Joshua 3:13). Now our position is, that it is more rational to trust the word of God than the laws of nature. First: Because His words bind Him to action, the lam of nature do net. He may continue to act according to what are called the “laws of nature,” or He may not.… But His word allows Him no such option. The absolute rectitude of His being binds Him to carry it out. Secondly: Because deviation from His word would be a far more serious thing to the universe, than deviation from the laws of nature. He may reverse every natural law, roll the wheels of nature backward, without infringing any moral principle, or injuring any sentient being. But were He to deviate from His word, what stupendous evils would ensue! Virtue would be at an end, moral government would be disobeyed, and the grand barrier between right and wrong, truth and error, heaven and hell, would be broken down, and anarchy and misery would deluge the moral creation. Thirdly: Because He has departed from the laws of nature, but has never swerved an iota from His word. The history of Moses, Elijah, Christ, furnishes numerous instances of deviation from the laws of nature, but the history of the universe, from its earliest dawn, supplies not a single instance of deviation from His word. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” etc.
Two inferences necessarily flow from the foregoing considerations:
1. That it is more reasonable to walk by faith than by sight. Our senses and our reason deceive us; sense and reason have deceived millions, but the word of God is infallible.
2. That apparent impossibilities can never be pleaded against Divine predictions. There are, especially, two works predicted in the Bible, which sceptical men declare impossible—The entire evangelization of the world, and the resurrection of the dead. But the question is, has God predicted them? If so, the idea of impossibility is an absurdity. With Him “all things are possible.”
The other fact which the circumstances before us suggest in relation to the moral firmness of these priests, is—
II. That it was salutary in its influence. The firmness of these priests in the midst of Jordan, with the billows piled above them, inspired the thousands of Israel to follow. Had one of these priests displayed, in that terrible situation, the least excitement or fear, would it not have struck a panic through all the assembled tribes, so that they would not have ventured to the brink? But seeing the priests standing sublimely calm, they were braced with courage to step into the fearful channel and pursue their way (Joshua 3:17).
This incident suggests two thoughts:—First: The force of human influence. All Israel now follows these men. Men are made to follow their superior brethren. The millions of every age follow the few. Secondly: The philosophy of useful influence. The influence of these priests was useful, because they were following God. Fidelity to God is the spring of useful influence. Brother, the Jordan of death is before thee, cold, dark, and tumultuous. Take courage from the example of the brave men who, trusting in God, have stood firmly in its midst, and crossed it safely. Follow them who ‘through faith and patience inherit the promises.’ ” [Dr. Thomas: Homilist, vol. iii. 334.]