CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 3:1. In the morning] The morning after the addresses and reply recorded in chap. Joshua 1:10-18. From Shittim to Jordan] Josephus (v.
1. 1) gives the distance as sixty stadia, or furlongs, being nearly eight English miles. Lodged there] i.e., rested there till the return of the spies, and till the completion of the time named in chap. Joshua 1:11. There is nothing in the verse which requires the misleading conjecture that they lodged here only one night.
Joshua 3:2. After three days] According to chap. Joshua 4:19, the people crossed the Jordan on the tenth of Abib, which it may be well to remember is not called “Nisan” in the Scriptures till more than nine hundred years later (cf. Esther 3:7). “Three days” before crossing the river, i. e., on the seventh of Abib, the time of the passage was foretold (chap. Joshua 1:11). Early on the morning of the eighth, the preparations began for the movement of the camp from Shittim (chap. Joshua 3:1), the raising of the tents, the march of the vast host for eight miles, and their temporary re-encampment before Jordan, probably occupying them till the close of the eighth (Hebrew) day of the month. On the evening which introduced the ninth of Abib they would begin to lodge before Jordan, resting there over the following day, and throughout the night which commenced the tenth of the month. The spending of two nights and one clear day before Jordan seems in no may contradictory to chap. Joshua 3:1.
The spies probably left Shittim in the morning, or as early as mid-day on the sixth of Abib, walked eight miles to the Jordan, and about seven more from Jordan to Jericho, reaching the latter place considerably before sunset (chap. 5). Reckoning inclusively, they would be in the mountains “three days,” i. e., on nearly all the seventh, the whole of the eighth, and from sundown till say four o’clock on the morning of the ninth, when two hours’ walk in the darkness would bring them to the Jordan, swimming the overflowing waters of which they would rejoin the camp now pitched on the eastern side of the river. Thus understood, the spies left Shittim one day before the army; this agrees with the margin, “had sent,” of chap. Joshua 2:1, coincides with each of the four verses given in the three Chapter s, and is in harmony with the view of Josephus.
Joshua 3:3. The Priests the Levites bearing it] The duty of bearing the ark on ordinary occasions belonged to the sons of Kohath, who were Levites, but not priests (cf. Numbers 4:15); on solemn occasions it was customary for priests to undertake this duty.
Joshua 3:4. Come not near unto it] The distance of about one thousand yards was probably to be observed, not only in the short march to the river, but also when crossing; the people were to pass the Jordan at this distance below the ark.
Joshua 3:5. Sanctify yourselves] There seems no sufficient reason for the very general supposition that the formal rites of sanctification were dispensed with for want of time. The phrase “for to-morrow” shews that there would be as much time for washing the garments, etc., as in the instance given in chap. Joshua 7:13.
Joshua 3:10. Drive out] “One of several incidential confirmations of the view that many of the Canaanites were expelled, and not slain” (Groser).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 3:7-13
DIVINE AND CHRISTIAN HONOURS
Honour is one of the rewards of life which Christian men have sometimes failed to honour. In the ordinary conscience and judgment it has often been confused with petty pride and paltry ambition. The world has tried to dignify mere position or possessions by the name of “honourable,” till even good men are not quite certain that coming to honour does not mean, at least partially, coming to something wicked. Society tells us that “the king is the fountain of honour,” and that is supposed to hold good even when the fountain has no better repute than Richard III., Henry VIII., or one of the Charleses Stuart. A member of Parliament is always “The Honourable Member,” whether he has any honour or not, and if he happen to be in the Privy Council, then he is “Right Honourable,” though in mind and character he may be neither the one nor the other. Irrespective of what a lady may be, she has only to be attached to the household of the Queen to be a “Maid of Honour,” and even transactions so nefarious as the traffic through Penn for the liberty of the Taunton school girls has been supposed to leave the “honour” quite unimpaired. A man need only be the younger son of an earl, the son of a viscount or a baron, or possess some equally adventitious claim, and forthwith society dubs him “honourable.” Thus it has come to pass that we have had honourable outlaws and honourable debtors, whose only thought has been how to avoid payment of that which they owed; all sorts of honourable people, with hardly enough character to keep blushes out of the face of a respectable tramp or of a decent beggar. So perhaps it is not wonderful that Christian men have been found to think small things of honour, and to treat even the fame of a noble life with scant courtesy, as if it were only some more respectable rendering of worldliness and sin. Our great poet had other thoughts when he said—
“If it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.”
He tells us more distinctly what he means, when he writes—
“Mine Honour is my Life; both grow in one;
Take Honour from me, and my Life is done.”
Men have done themselves wrong—we cannot say how much wrong—by allowing themselves to be driven from the desire for a just fame before the eyes of their fellows. God, who also knows human weaknesses, has not dealt with them in a manner so indiscriminate. He says to Joshua, “I will magnify thee, I will magnify thee before the people; this day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel.”
I. The honour which God loves to put upon His servants. God would magnify Joshua as He had magnified Moses. He would give him a large place in the minds of the people; He would do this by a miracle. God tells His servant this before it comes to pass; He fills him with thought about it, and sets his mind and desire on this matter. Honour and desire for honour cannot all be sinful, when the Holy God does this. We are not altogether to shut ourselves out from the wish and hope that others may think well of us. There is a certain place in the public mind which we may earnestly desire to fill; we may yearn to shew men that God is with us, with us in our character and work, with us for the sake of others.
1. God’s delight in honouring His faithful servants is shewn throughout the Bible and all through human history. Take the case of Elijah; the long drought, the miracle on Carmel, the prayer and the answering rain, the fulfilment of the predictions concerning the death of Ahab. The preservation of Daniel in the den of lions was God’s distinguishing honour set upon the life of the man who was found faithful both in his business and his religion. Think of Paul foretelling the disaster in the Adriatic Sea, and of his being able to speak to those about him of the angel of God who had stood by him to reveal the future, an impression presently deepened by the marvellous incident at Malta, in which the bite of the viper from the fire brings no harm. God loved to exalt the man who had so exalted the Saviour. All through profane history it has been the same: there are great names which tower up above all other names, just because God has honoured the men who bore them. How human all this makes God seem; how human in His sympathies! This is how we feel about our children. Who would not see his son honoured? It seems to bring God so near, that He should think about His children as we so naturally and ardently think concerning ours. Do not, then, let us worship a great abstraction of omnipotence and majesty; this is a Father who waits to magnify His children, just as we might wish to worthily exalt ours. When we draw near to adore God, let us also learn to love.
2. How is it that more of His children are not magnified by God? He could honour us all, if He would; why are so few made prominent? Well, if God were to magnify everybody in this way, the world would all become pious in order to get its celestial decoration—a kind of blue ribbon from above—and thus religion would become the most selfish and vain and sinful condition of human life. But we need not contemplate the evil which would arise in this direction. There is another reason which intercepts that by a long way. So very few of us could bear to be magnified. Most men would shew their honours, and find in them an occasion for pride. Honour, such as Joshua’s, would ruin most of us; so God withholds this source of harm. By-and-by, when we can bear it, He is going to make us all kings—kings and priests unto Himself; but we cannot endure that till we become like Him, and see Him as He is. How human this is also; it is thus that we feel in our holiest longings for our children. If it were not for the temptation, and the mischief, and the curse, few would think any honour too great for his own son. Were we to consult only our hearts, where should we come to the limit at which we would stay the honour and the joy of our children? And if it were only a question of God’s heart how we, as His children, should be magnified even on earth, nothing would be too large for God’s love, only the honours would harm us, curse us, destroy us; so just as we should desire to place limits on our children, our heavenly Father limits us.
3. The life which God is prepared to honour is the life which is willing to give itself for God and for men. Joshua puts all his honour back again on God; he gives his life, and the influence which comes from his magnified name, not to win a possession for himself, but to bring his brethren into their inheritance. When all the fighting and labour are over, Joshua asks for himself only a poor and insignificant estate, which we only hear of as his own name makes it conspicuous (cf. chap. Joshua 19:49-50). Joshua sought to bless men, and desired to magnify the name of Jehovah. God is just as willing to magnify any one of us, if we were only able to bear it, for there are no prejudices with Him. But what about all our self-seeking, self-love, self-adoration? what of this constant turning of our thoughts to ourselves, as if the chief good of the universe began and ended there? When we are ready to give ourselves for others, God will be ready to set us on high before men. “If any man serve ME, him will My Father honour.”
II. The honour in which a true servant loves to proclaim his God.
1. The true servant refers all gracious words to their Author. “Hear the words of the Lord.” There is no spirit of plagiarism; all the grace is referred back at once to God. It reads like an early edition of Paul—“God forbid that I should glory, save,” etc. This anticipates the song of “Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name be the glory.” Joshua says never a word about his own magnified name; he simply says, “Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord your God.”
2. The true servant thinks the words of his Lord worthy to be heard. Joshua is anxious to bless men and encourage them, and he knows that these Divine words will be helpful. Oh for a larger measure of enthusiasm in the Scriptures, and a faith which will believe that they are the power of God unto salvation!
3. The true servant, even in his incidental expressions, shews that he thinks there is none like unto God. “Hereby … the living God,” etc. The people had left a country of dead and polluted gods, and the gods of the Canaanites were no better than those of the Egyptians. The very manner in which this is said shews how incidentally the thought of the contrast came to the speaker’s lips. If we love God indeed, our love will make itself seen in a multitude of forms.
4. The true servant shews that he thinks nothing too hard for the Lord (Joshua 3:10). Our life also has to meet with opposition from men, and with natural obstacles, but through Jesus Christ we should feel and know that we may be “more than conquerors.”
5. The true servant confirms his proclamation of God by pointing his fellows to the visible link in which God is seen connecting Himself with the interests of men. “Behold the ark,” etc. The superstition around us is a great evil; we have need to be even more filled with concern at the way in which men seek to obliterate from the earth all visible tokens and traces of Deity. The materialist does this on principle, as a theory; the pleasure-seeker and the careless do it in practice; the true servant of Jehovah points to the tokens of Divine presence, and says, “God is there, and there, and there.” With which class do we take our position? Are we with the superstitious who obscure the Lord’s presence? with the men whose lives proclaim that they are “without God in the world”? or can we take our stand with this man, who, looking at to-morrow’s difficulties, says, with a holy faith, “Behold the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you”?
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 3:7. THE SPIRIT AND TENDENCIES OF WORLDLY AND DIVINE HONOURS.
I. Worldly honours often have no relation to character, while the honour which comes from God is usually more within a man than upon him. The dignity in one case is often accidental and foreign; in the other case it is through and because of nobility of spirit.
II. Worldly honours lead to pride, while the honour which is of God has humility. “As the lark that soars the highest, builds her nest the lowest; the nightingale that sings the sweetest, sings in the shade when all things rest; the branches that are most laden with ripe fruit, bend lowest; and the ship with the heaviest cargo sinks deepest in the water,—so the holiest Christians are the humblest” (Mason). It has frequently been pointed out that soon after his conversion Paul said he was “unworthy to be called an apostle.” Nearly thirty years later this experienced Christian of much grace and many works wrote to the Ephesians, speaking of himself as “less than the least of all saints.” Just before his martyrdom when his course was finished and his good fight fought, he wrote to Timothy, “sinners, of whom I am chief.” Thus, too, Joshua goes away to the Israelites, forgetting to say anything about his own magnified name. How often when worldly honours come to a worldly spirit, they soon get to be the only thing about the possessor for which even the world has any respect. The spirit which is really noble wears with increasing humility both the applause of men and the favours of God.
III. Worldly honours are unsatisfying, and tend to promote selfishness, while the honour which is from God is filled with peace and benevolence. Any man who gives himself up in a worldly spirit to delight in fame, even though it should be fame for fame’s sake coming through spiritual work, gets to live in a world which is daily narrowing down to himself; and when life comes to be bounded all round by his own small individuality, no wonder that life is soon found to be mean and insignificant. The man who wears his honours with a godly mind gets to live every day in a larger and more beautiful world, while the mere creature of fame is like a prisoner in the cell, the iron sides of which drew gradually closer each week, till the miserable victim was presently crushed to death.
IV. Worldly honours are temporary and perishing, while the honour which comes from God abides for ever. Time has done nothing to obscure the names of Abraham, and Moses, and Joshua, and Samuel, and Paul; they are as great before men to-day as when they were first magnified by the Lord. Even poor Byron, looking at the world’s glories, could only write,—
“Thy fanes, thy temples, to the surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
So perish monuments of mortal birth,
So perish all in turn, save well-recorded Worth.”
Thus while all material honours, and everything which might be great, but which is made worldly by being received in a worldly spirit, perishes and vanishes away, the glory of the Lord, like His mercy, endureth for ever and ever.
It is thought by some that at the place where the Israelites crossed the river our Lord was afterwards baptized by John. The best MSS. call the place named in John 1:28, Bethany, not Bethabara. Origen, it is thought by Dr. Clarke and others, altered the reading to Bethabara, which means “the house of passage.” The name Bethabara seems to have given rise to the conjecture that the Saviour was baptized at the spot where the Israelites went over; some maintain that the baptism was administered at the very place where the priests supported the Ark in the midst of the river. If this were so, it is deeply interesting, nor could it be justly treated as any mere coincidence. It would be most significant to think that in the spot where Israel was baptized unto faith in Joshua (as their fathers, in the Red Sea, were said to have been baptized unto Moses), Christ, the Joshua of the New Covenant, was consecrated to the service in which He also sought the faith of a mighty multitude, that He might win for them an abiding inheritance. It would be temptingly suggestive for homiletical purposes if we could believe that God’s people entered into that Canaan which is a type of heaven at the very place where Jesus was afterwards set apart as a Saviour for His people. What a picture it would be of the Lord’s own word, “I am the way.” The evidence, however, for the fact is insufficient, and perhaps the very interest attaching to the idea should make us receive it cautiously. No amount of spiritual significance in teaching could possibly compensate for an untruth, or for carelessness respecting truth. Rahab might save the spies in her own way, and Rebekah might seek to make the covenant to Jacob sure by similar methods; God’s truth is never so much adorned by us as when we make it manifest that it has taught us truthfulness.
Joshua 3:8. “I WILL FEAR NO EVIL, FOR THOU ART WITH ME;” or, THE SWOLLEN RIVER, THE VISIBLE ARK, AND THE UNDISMAYED PILGRIMS.
This passage has no direct teaching about death, and it would seem a wrong use of Scripture to suggest that it has. Let it be granted freely that Canaan may be a type of heaven, and Jordan a symbol of death, still we have no authority to make the parables “stand on all-fours.” If this were otherwise, the heaped up waters, their back-flow to Adam, their on-flow to the Dead Sea, the double valley of the river; the very drops of the water, and the different trees of the land might, no doubt, all be found to be “instructive.” While, however, God does not here give us direct teaching about death, there is no reason why this beautiful illustration of a believer’s confidence during the passage of those last deep waters should be passed fruitlessly by.
I. We are reminded that death, like the Jordan, is sometimes calm and peaceful, and sometimes turbulent. Ordinarily the river was narrow, and easily fordable; but it was in the time of “the swellings of Jordan” that the Israelites had to cross over.
1. Death is always a trial. No man ever becomes familiar enough with death to do away with its ordeal and solemnity. We may have seen it often in others, but it will be new to us. Concerning some loved ones who have passed its cold waters before us, we may have only thoughts of gladness. We may think of them and sing in the soft and rich strains of T. K. Hervey—
“I know thou hast gone to the home of thy rest,
Then why should my soul be so sad?
I know thou hast gone where the weary are blest,
And the mourner looks up and is glad;
“Where Love has put off, in the land of its birth,
The stains it had gathered in this;
And Hope, the sweet singer that gladdened the earth,
Lies asleep on the bosom of Bliss.
“I know thou hast gone where thy forehead is starred
With the beauty that dwelt in thy soul;
Where the light of thy loveliness cannot be marred,
Nor the heart be flung back from its goal.
“I know thou hast drunk of the Lethe that flows
Through a land where they do not forget,
That sheds over memory only repose,
And takes from it only regret.”
So brightly and peacefully may we be able to think of some who have fathomed the depths before us. With all this to cheer us, death will still be new when we come to it for ourselves, and not without its solemnity. But those who can contemplate death like this, find that not even its strangeness and awe can destroy the calm given by its attendant hopes.
2. Sometimes death is made harder by physical suffering. Many, doubtless, suffer more severely in life than when passing from life, but with others these conditions may be reversed. Terrible accidents or fearful diseases may make death as the swellings of Jordan.
3. Great social trials sometimes make death a severer ordeal. For a father to die, and leave a family in poverty, or for a widow to pass into eternity, and leave several children unprovided for and orphans, must aggravate very terribly the pains of dying.
4. But the pain before which all others seem to sink to peace, must be that of dying “without hope.” May God deliver us from such turbulence as the river must shew to souls who come to it like this.
II. We are reminded here that even when the attendant circumstances of death are very aggravated, the believer may pass through fearing no evil. The priests in their faith could “stand still in Jordan,” and the believing hosts of the people could tread the bed of the river in confidence. Faith gives death also a very different appearance from that which it presents to men in unbelief.
1. The natural view of death has fear and even terror. (a) Look at the world’s literature. A modern writer tells us that the foremost men of Greece and Rome applied more than thirty epithets to death, “all indicative of the deepest dejection and dread.” To them death was an “iron sleep,” “an eternal night,” “gloomy,” “merciless,” and “inexorable.” Our great English poet, whom for many years the world has delighted to honour, wrote—
“Death is a fearful thing:
To die and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
‘Tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loaded worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.”
This is a dull, hard strain, and these are but a few of many dreary lines which the brilliant mind that catered so long and ably for the world’s joy poured forth on this dread subject. Another wrote: “Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.” Byron said—
“How clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay!”
And Dryden—
“O that I less could fear to lose this being,
Which, like a snowball in my coward hand,
The more ’tis grasped, the faster melts away.”
(b) What, too, are the world’s unwritten thoughts on death? Think of the myriad thoughts like these which no one ever sets down. Think of the stolen glances, and the quick turning away; of the deeper darkness which so often, to some, seems to lie hidden away within the folds of each returning night. If the speech be so sad, what are the feelings themselves?
2. The view of death given to faith is not like this. Look at Christian literature, and commune with the thoughts of the children of the cross, One says, “I am now ready to be offered,” etc.; “Having a desire to depart, and be with Christ, which is far better;” “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Nor is this spirit of triumph an exceptional heritage of apostles. The whole history of the Church is harmonious with the songs of its dying sons and daughters.
III. We are reminded that the only sufficient encouragement for faith to contemplate, when we come to death, will be the presence of God through the covenant. The Ark was at once the sign of safety and the occasion of confidence. If we are to lose the fear of death both now and when we come near to it, it must be through Him who came to deliver us from this “bondage.” The cross of Christ does not bridge the river, but it stands up well out of its cold waters, that we may keep it in sight; and seeing it we are to behold not merely a cross, but the covenant of His presence who is “able to save to the uttermost.” It is knowing this that we shall “stand firm in Jordan,” saying, “I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.”
Joshua 3:9. THE INCOMPARABLE WORDS OF THE LORD.
I. Consider the words of the Lord in their claims. They are “the words of the Lord your God.” They come as such to every one in the multitude of the human race. No family privileges or adversities, no dignity, and no poverty, no dislike to them or disbelief of them can in any measure weaken their claims. To every living man, whether atheist, deist, idolater, worldling, or Christian, they come as the words of his Lord and his God.
1. God made us each, and our opinion about that cannot alter His claims upon us. Our view of the origin of the human race can never alter the fact itself.
2. God supports us and provides for us, and our disbelief can never affect the measure of our obligation. Fancy an intelligent Israelite saying, “I know that I had manna every morning, and sometimes quails; I know that I drank of water, which flowed out of a rock, just as I was perishing; I know when the hills were all about me, the Egyptians behind me, and the waters cold and threatening before me, that the sea opened and became as a defending wall on either side, and that while I escaped mine enemies perished from my sight; I know that I have lived for forty years in a desert which did not seem to have supplies enough to support me alone, and that two or three millions of my people have always had enough, and often more than enough; I know that the words of Moses, who professed to be God’s prophet, always came true—that the manna had a way of spoiling or failing when we gathered it contrary to instructions—that the brazen serpent healed me and my bitten children, just as he said it would, and that the man himself often had a moral majesty about him, which brought us back to obedience when we felt most rebellious; I remember feeling almost awed that morning when he came down from the eruption of Mount Sinai—for such, as an intelligent man, I prefer to call it—with his face shining in that strange brightness, and when he dashed down the tables of stone in front of our new calf, and made Aaron and all of us feel as if we had done something very wrong: I cannot forget all these things, but I am wiser than I once was, and now I see clearly that all the events which we used to call miracles were the working of natural causes, that Moses was a shrewd and far-seeing man, and as to his moral majesty, why he was born to command. True, the coincidences between our need and the development of these natural causes, which so often helped us just as we were perishing, leaves something to be explained; but I can understand so much, that I am sure this part may be passed over. Now when you talk to me of the claims of the word of the Lord, don’t you think I am fairly entitled to ask, How do you know that there is any Lord, much less that you have His words?” Oh, how devils might laugh, and how God, if He were less than God, might despair, when men reason like this!
II. Think of the words of the Lord in their purity. The tendencies of them are to make men holier and larger in heart. They stimulate no mean passions, such as vanity and selfishness. The ambition which heaven stirs within us is exaltation through a more exalted spirit. The Lord had told Joshua that the day of his honour was at hand; but Joshua was stirred by the words of the Lord, not to petty ideas of his personal greatness, but to efforts which should secure the inheritance of the land to the people. The tendencies of the Bible are to lead us to
(1) forgetfulness of ourselves,
(2) to a generous interest in men, and
(3) to ardent praise of God.
III. Reflect on the words of the Lord in their distinctiveness.
1. The words of the Lord are the only words which are ever addressed to man’s most serious difficulties. Only Divine words are heard as to the way of crossing into Canaan, and driving out the Canaanites. In man’s greatest necessities it is still the same; only the words of God ever propose to meet them. (a) Law has no suitable words. Think of listening to law in our bereavements, in our need of the pardon of sin, of sanctification, of hope beyond the grave. Law is pitiless, cold, and inexorable. Law never said, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people; speak ye comfortably unto men, and cry unto them that their warfare is accomplished, that their iniquity is pardoned.” Law never proposed for Israel a path through the sea, manna from heaven, water from rocks, or that the Jordan should stand up in a heap till the people had passed over. (b) Men have never had any suitable words for the deeper necessities of their race. The physician accompanies the sick within sight of the grave, but once seeing that open before them, he has nothing more to propose. He has no medicine for death, and not a single cordial is there in the whole of his pharmacopœia which he has ever thought it worth while to prescribe as a cure for bereavement. The engineer has opened no door for us on the other side of the grave, the chemist has failed to bring immortality to light, and the mechanician has never contrived anything to bear the burden of sin. The naturalist, the poet, and the philosopher, as the priests of this world must, have ever passed by, and left the world’s wounded on the other side; or if pity has drawn them to the side of distress, they have discovered no words but those of the old stoic, “You must bear up as bravely as you can.” It is only God who ever speaks to the subject of our keenest miseries and profoundest want. On questions like these, there are no words but the words of the Lord.
2. The words of the Lord, even on our deepest necessities, are not vain words. (a) They are practical. We can always use them. They are not mere theory, or poetry, or mysticism; they are never Utopian. Men can read them before any floods or any enemies, and know what to do next. (b) They are thorough and sufficient. They do not buoy men up for a season, and let them sink after all. It is something to say for Christianity, at least, that even its bitterest enemies have never been able to charge its words with being weak and comfortless. (c) They betray no effort. There is as much ease about words that propose to divide a river, to raise the dead, or to save men, as about words which simply give directions concerning our least important duties. The Saviour’s words in calming the sea, feeding the thousands, or raising Lazarus, are as free from hesitation or effort as any of the words in the sermon on the mount.
3. Thus it might be clear to all men that the words of the Lord are the only words of hope. No other words are addressed to our extreme wants; not even enemies can charge them with weakness. Those who lean on them most are most satisfied with them, and they never seem so dear as at the point of death, farther than which we cannot trace their effect. These were the solitary words of hope to Israel at the Jordan; in all our greater need they alone can afford hope and help to us. Let us receive these words, then, with enthusiasm, as did Joshua and the people of Israel. Wherever in our life we come to the words which belong to any present difficulty, let there be no doubt and no distrust till we are found safely on its other side. Let us tell these words to one another, as though there were little else worth telling, crying here and there in life’s way to our perplexed and helpless brethren, “Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord your God.”
Joshua 3:10. “By what do we also recognise the presence of a living God among us?
1. By His word which He still causes to be perpetually published among us.
2. By His deeds which He is still perpetually performing.”
“How should we think of God?
1. Not as a rigid order of nature
2. As the living God and ruler over all the earth—the mightiest Ruler, the best Ruler.” (Lange.)
I. We need new grace for new experiences. Some trial which we have never before endured is to be borne by us. Some duty which we have never before discharged is to be performed by us. Some relationship that is entirely new is to be formed by us, and we know not how we shall bear ourselves. Let us take courage. He who gave these minute directions to His ancient people will not fail us; and though He may not come to us with such specific guidance, He will yet by His providence and Spirit give us the help we need.
II. When we have to cross any river of difficulty, let us put the Ark of the Covenant into the middle of the stream. In simple phrase, when we come to a difficulty, let us see Christ in it, and then we shall be able to surmount it. He turns the water into dry land. He makes our difficulties stepping-stones to glory. We are never really in danger when we can see Him.
III. There are no degrees of difficulty with God. All things are equally easy to omnipotence. Let us not limit the Holy One of Israel by supposing that any of our emergencies are too great for Him to help us through them.” (Dr. William Taylor, New York.)
“The Ark was not a talisman that wrought wonders, as if by some magical charm; for in after years, when Israel’s warriors took it into the battlefield, they were defeated (cf. 1 Samuel 4:5-10). That which is a help to faith when God commands it, becomes a snare when He has not given His sanction to it. There is all the difference in the world between faith and presumption.” (Dr. Wm. Taylor.)
Joshua 3:13. “This seems to have been the first intimation given to the people as to the manner in which they were to cross the river.” (Bush.)
“Joshua telling the people of the miracle that God would now do upon Jordan, laboureth to confirm their faith about the expelling of the heathen before them. When marvellous things are done for us by the Lord, we are hereby taught to build our confidence on His promises touching things to come” (Dr. Mayer, A.D. 1647.)