CRITICAL NOTES.
Joshua 4:12. Before the children of Israel] The usual order of marching was thus broken, that their promise, given in Numbers 32:17, might be faithfully observed.
Joshua 4:13. About forty thousand] This left about seventy thousand men fit to bear arms, besides women and children, who did not pass over. The total number of the two and a half tribes who remained behind probably amounted to between three and four hundred thousand.
Joshua 4:19. Gilgal] According to Josephus (Antiq. v. 1. 4), Gilgal was fifty furlongs from Jordan, and ten from Jericho.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 4:10-19
THE REWARDS OF SERVICE AND THE PENALTIES OF SIN
I. He who begins with God will need God to the end. Joshua 4:10-11. It was not “until everything was finished,” and “all the people were clean passed over,” that the Ark left the river. Having begun to cross under the help of God, His presence was needed till the last man was in Canaan. It is ever thus with God’s people now. There is no single step which they can afford to take without Him. The moment He left them, the pent-up floods would sweep them away. He who is thus needed by His people graciously abides with them. They who follow Christ may presently say, “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”
II. He who is faithful before God will be rewarded with God’s approval. Joshua 4:12-13. Our promises to each other are not hidden from the Lord. When they are kept, He makes record of our faithfulness. Not less does He behold us if they are broken.
III. He who honours God will be honoured by God. Joshua had honoured God by his obedience to the Divine commands, and not less by the spirit which he had manifested throughout. Joshua, in turn, was magnified
(1) in his exalted communion with God,
(2) in his abiding influence over the people, and
(3) in his inheritance of the dignity and power, as well as the place, of Moses, his great predecessor.
IV. He who waits in obedience to God will not be forgotten of God. Joshua 4:15-17. The priests must have stood in this position of seeming danger, bearing the Ark for several hours. When we where wait God bids us or places us:—
1. We wait in perfect safety.
2. We never wait in vain. Such waiting is useful (a) to ourselves, (b) and useful to others.
3. We shall not have to wait a moment after our work is done. None need think, in his trial, that God has forgotten him.
V. He who trusts God will assuredly find cause to bless God. Joshua 4:18. The people had been walking by faith; the priests had waited in faith. Reason, and intelligence, and thought on the laws of nature, could make nothing of these upstanding waters. It was only as they remembered God that the priests dared to stand in the river, or that the people dared to cross. Each ventured because of the presence of God, symbolised as it was in the Ark. They feared as they crossed, and they “hasted and passed over.” How their fears must have been rebuked and their faith confirmed by the closing scene of the miracle! No sooner did the Ark leave Jordan, than the waters burst forth, and rushed on their way. The people must have felt more than ever, “This thing was all of God.”
1. Using our faith, we shall soon have reason to bless God for the increase of faith. The end of His ways confirms our ventures into confidence.
2. Using our faith, we shall presently come, almost before we are aware of it, into the full fruition of all our hope. They who ventured and went on in haste, and trusted as best they could, presently found themselves in the promised land. It had been long looked for, long desired; then, through some fear, and some confusion, and the best trust they could command, they suddenly find themselves in Canaan. What a picture it is of many a life and many an ending of life! Still we have to say, “So He bringeth them unto their desired haven.”
VI. He who rebels against God will find that God’s penalties are as severe as His threatenings. Joshua 4:19. The forty years were fully accomplished, saving just this margin of five days with which God seems to lay emphasis on the merciful side of His faithfulness. The carcases that were doomed had every one fallen in the wilderness. The spared lives of Joshua and Caleb seem to lay even a severer stress on the faithfulness of Divine threats and the terrible realness of Divine wrath. It is by such incidents as these that we can best contemplate such solemn questions as that of eternal punishment. Those who have almost come to believe that no one will be utterly destroyed, would do well to remember that God has ever been as severe as His word. The history of His judgments is quite as awful as the prophecies which foretold them. Was not the banishment from Eden as awful as the threat? Was the destruction of Sodom less terrible than the terms in which it was revealed to Abraham? Were not the successive struggles which preceded the captivity at Babylon, and was not the captivity itself, fully as dreadful as the warning words of the prophet? True, the Saviour stood and wept over Jerusalem, and said fearful words about wrath coming through the Romans: surely no one can read the heart-rending story of Josephus, and not feel that, stern as was the prophecy, the history is even more awful. God’s threats have never been mere threats. The fulfilment has ever been as terrible as the prediction. None of the Divine threats recorded in the Bible in any measure approximate to the awful words which set forth the final destruction of the wicked. Read these numerous passages how we will, the world has never heard anything like them before. With such a series of threatenings, and with such a history of previous fulfilments of lesser threatenings to expound them, it seems almost idle to speculate as some are speculating on theories of punishment. Of what account are any differences which we can measure and estimate, where all is so incomprehensibly dreadful? As to the merciful character of God, the mercy which would fail so to punish would also have forborne thus to threaten. Some modern views of Divine mercy proceed on the assumption that it is necessary to the perfectness of the Divine character. It seems to be forgotten that where mercy becomes essential it ceases to be mercy, and at that point is a right. Let us look somewhat more steadfastly at the threatenings which have been fulfilled, and remember that “God in history” will better serve for guidance than man in theory.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 4:10-11.—THE WAY OF DIFFICULTY
I. Remembrance of God is the only encouragement through which some parts of life’s way become bearable and passable. What the symbol of God’s presence was to Israel, such is our perception of Him by faith to us. We may have to endure “as seeing Him who is invisible,” but there are not a few places in which this is the only way to endure with hopefulness. Stoicism may be matured till a man, in any trial, can keep just calm enough not to cry out; at such times it is only in the thought of God that we can walk on in the calmness of hope. Happy is he who is not driven to say, “I remembered God, and was troubled.”
II. God’s regard to the greater trials of our life does not call off His attention from details. He not only parted the waters, but He waited in the river, both in power and presence, “until everything was finished.”
III. The general commandments of the Bible are meant to regulate and control the specific acts of our life. “According to all that Moses,” etc. But Moses had never given any commands touching the actual passage of the Jordan. Yet Moses had commanded an implicit reliance on Divine guidance and a careful obedience to Divine requirements. Such general words covered all the particulars of the case. There are many things in the family, in business, in the Church, and in the world, which no specific precept may touch; there is absolutely no place which we can occupy in our daily life which in principle and in spirit is not covered by the Scriptures.
IV. While Divine patience never wearies in giving us necessary help, when God goes before, we should promptly follow. “The people hasted and passed over.” Whatever motive actuated their haste, haste was the right thing for the time. God does not work that we may idly look on. His manifest energy is a call for our marked diligence. Cf. 2 Samuel 5:24.
V. God, who makes way in the van of our difficulties, is no less necessary to secure our rear. Joshua 4:11. Cf. Deuteronomy 25:17-18. Not only that He may see His people, but that He may save them, He besets them “behind and before.” They may say one to another, “The Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rereward.”
Joshua 4:10, last clause. Several reasons have been given by different writers for this haste, each writer usually contending for his own. Probably the majority of the people were moved by fear, but some feelings may have led some of the host to hasten, and other considerations others. I. The haste of fear. This also leads to Canaan. II. The haste of diligence. With so many to cross, and so much to be done, each had need to remember, “the night cometh.” III. The haste of reverent obedience. God does not work mightily and command urgently that men may move slothfully. IV. The haste of compassion. While the people tarried, the priests must wait. No man ever idles without expense and inconvenience to some one else. V. The haste of unconscious influence. The quick movement of a few would communicate itself to all. Our pace times that of our companion, and his that of others. How glorious are life’s privileges; how solemn its responsibilities!
Joshua 4:12-13.—I. They who promise freely should perform faithfully (Numbers 32:17-20). No promise can be broken without injury to him who has pledged his word, however it may be concerning those to whom the promise is made. It is said that the Earl of Chatham promised his son that he should be present at the pulling down of a garden wall. Through forgetfulness, the wall was destroyed in the son’s absence. Feeling, however, the importance of his word, the father had it rebuilt, in order that, according to his promise, his son might witness its demolition. II. They who have already come into the joy of inheritance should be foremost in seeking the same blessing for others. III. They who are best fitted to go to the front should not shrink from it on account of danger. These were chosen men. They had no families with them to hinder their movements. IV. They who take the place of danger in the cause of their brethren must win honour, whether victory is theirs or not.
I. The Lord’s idea of the qualifications necessary in a leader of His people.
1. Natural capacity.
2. Absolute obedience.
3. Lofty courage.
4. Deep humility.
5. Absence of self-seeking.
6. Generous concern for others.
II. The Lord’s idea of the influence necessary to a leader of His people.
1. The gratitude of the people through remembrances of past help.
2. The fear of the people for one with whom the Lord evidently dwells.
3. The confidence of the people in one through whom the Lord manifestly works.
The best way to the highest honour is through obedience to our exalted Lord.
God does but magnify men that they may better help their fellows, and thus glorify Him in return.
He only will be magnified by God, who longs to bring men into the promised possession.
“Whom God will make great, him He first makes small through wearisome cross, and care, and toil, and danger.” [Cramer.]
Whom God greatly magnifies, men should regard with reverence and fear. Cf. 2 Kings 2:23-25.
Joshua 4:15-17. WAITING ON THE LORD
The priests stood still till they were commanded to leave the river. The waters were heaped above them, the people had all passed over, but even then they waited for the word of the Lord.
I. The character and spirit of our waiting.
1. Waiting on the Lord does not mean the suspension of our own efforts. The priests were still to bear the Ark. Not for a single moment were they to put it down. Our toil may have to go on to very weariness.
2. Waiting on the Lord does mean that no trust is to be placed in our own efforts, but that all our faith is to be in the love and energy of God. Our efforts have often about as much power to work out the results we seek as the holding of this wooden chest in the middle of the river had to keep back the waters.
II. The necessity for our waiting.
1. There is often a necessity in the nature of the case itself. The time taken for so large a host to cross the river could not be other than long. God was willing to work miraculously to make a way for the people, but not to help them over. Our difficulties always present not only a place for Divine help, but a sphere for human effort, and our part generally takes up much time.
2. There is a necessity in the direction of our own discipline. We cannot learn trust and patience as theories, any more than a soldier can learn drill and battle from books. He must go through his task; we must do the same with ours. Carlyle has said, “Experience is an excellent schoolmaster, but he does charge such dreadful wages.” Beecher has somewhere written, “God sends experience to paint men’s portraits. Does some longing youth look at the settled face of a Washington, whose lineaments have been transmitted to us by the artist’s skill, and strive to wear as noble a mien? That look—the winds of the Alleghanies, the trials of the Jersey winter, the sufferings at Cambridge, the conflicts with Congress, wrought it out; and he who would gain it must pass through as stern a school.” Much more must the children of God, who would be “transformed into the image of His Son,” get one by one those Divine lineaments graven into their spirits by doing and bearing the will of God.
“He cannot be a perfect man,
Not being try’d and tutor’d in the world.”
3. The will of God to His children should ever be necessity enough. If we can see no other reason for having to wait, this may well be sufficient. Christ placed the dreadful agony of Gethsemane just on this ground—“Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”
III. Encouragements in our waiting.
1. Many of our difficulties are mainly in the heart, and the very act of trusting in God brings the relief we seek. There are times, as was the case here in Jordan, when difficulties are outward and actual; even then, to wait on God is best. There are other times when our trials come from our own fears and weakness; then “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength” in the very process of trusting Him.
2. At the point where our earthly comforts fail us, heavenly delights begin most to abound. God would not prepare all His mercies for our flesh. This time of weary waiting and physical discomfort to the priests was a time in which with reverent communion and holy joy their spirits might be strengthened in God. Such hours with God make spiritual stamina for a lifetime.
3. Exceeding great and precious promises assure us that “Blessed are all they that wait for Him.” Our waiting is ever in the light of His word, let there be what other darkness there may.
4. “Did ever any trust in God and was confounded?” Our waiting is illuminated with promises before us, and with history behind. “He that believeth shall not make haste.”
“If often the faithful God before our eyes graciously helps others out of need and peril, while we, in cur own thought, are left far behind, still our hour also shall yet come. Let us only await the right time.” [Cramer.]
Joshua 4:18. “So long as Christ, the true mercy-seat, is under us, and His ministers in this unquiet life preach the gospel, we need not fear; the great floods of sin and of the wrath of God must retire, because for them that are in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation.”
“The enemies of the Church can proceed no farther than has been appointed to them.”
“If Christ and His word depart from us, then must we be eternally overwhelmed and perish.” [Cramer.]
1. In the beginning of a believer’s triumph he sees readily that the power and the work are alone of God.
2. Familiarity with the wonderful works of God sometimes finds His people regarding them as natural, and taking them as matter-of-course occurrences.
3. Therefore the end of God’s ways, even more manifestly than the beginning, declares the power to have been all from on high.