Are You Ready to Cross the River?

A sermon by Rev. James Pardue
Interim Preacher, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, January 6, 2008 

I want to speak to you this morning form the Book of Joshua, chapter three beginning with verse 14. This is the story of the children of Israel when they went into their land of promise. It had been a long journey for them and how wonderful it is that God now has guided and they’re ready to go.

This is verse 14, “So, when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them.” Now you remember that the Ark of the Covenant is the finely-sculptured piece of wood that has in it the original tablets of the Ten Commandments. So that’s going ahead of them.

“Now, the Jordan is at full stage. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the Arc reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the waters came up and stopped flowing.”

The greatest event in the Old Testament is the rescue of the Jewish people after being slaves for nearly 200 years. It was the event when God came himself, without an army, without a legislative program, but by his power freed the slaves to go to their ancestral home. And as these people then began to go out they began to sense how God works in lives.

Now people had recognized how he worked for all these years because three places in the New Testament people take this passage of scripture and others about the Exodus and begin to describe how God worked then and how God works now. And so let’s see if we can learn how he worked with them and so how he can work with us.

As they came out of the land of promise, you would think that they would go north. Now along the Mediterranean Sea is the second largest road in all of the ancient world. The first is around Rome, the second one is this one that people would use for trade and people would travel along that road. You can go to that road today and if you wanted to you could take the Exodus, you could walk the road. It takes about seven days. Now you would think that if you were going to the land of promise you would turn north. Not so. God said, “Turn south.” South is the Sinai Peninsula and God said, “I want you to take the million and a half to two million people and I want you to walk out into the desert. Because what I want to do is to teach you that when you get to the promised land, you will already understand how I can work within your own life.”

Every one of us needs to understand that that’s the way God works with us. God works with us by not, after we became a Christian, all of a sudden taking us to the Promised Land. What he will do is take us through a period of development, a period of understanding, a period of growth and then he will take you on to a further way. In fact, in the New Testament it says be very careful about taking a person who’s just become a Christian and placing him in places of responsibility. What he needs to, the New Testament said, is he needs to learn and then give him a place of responsibility. One of the biggest mistakes often we make is not understanding that basic biblical truth and we just take new converts, put them in great responsibility and they don’t know how to handle it. Because part of the wilderness experience is the cleansing of the mind, helping people to put pieces away so that they will be able to serve more effectively.

Now, when he took them in that wilderness an immediate problem came to pass. How are they going to eat? You have all of these people, women and children, how are they going to eat. So, what they did is that they cried out to God and they said, “Oh God, how are we going to provide for ourselves?” And God said, “I’ll tell you what you do. You go out in front of your tent every morning and you will see the menu for the day. You will find water.” And for 38 years, a million and a half people went outside and God had delivered their meal at their front door. They were provided for day by day.

Now if that’s the first thing that’s mentioned in the story, what is God trying to tell us? God is trying say to us that the only way you’re ever going to know him is to recognize that he provides for you materially as well as  spiritually. And one of the great lessons that all of us need to learn is that God provides. He meets our need and we can trust and depend on him.

Now think about it for a moment. If God can take care of a million and a half in the middle of a desert, do you think he can take care of you? Of course he can. But isn’t it interesting that when Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, one out of ten of the great principles that are outlined in the Sermon on the Mount, one of them—and the longest one—is how do you relate to material things? I hope that when you begin this new year and a new budget and a new giving process that if you’ve been giving 2%, you’re going to go to four and four to six and then to ten. And then you’re going to become very liberal as God provides to meet the needs of people all around the world. God said, “I will provide for you.”

The second thing he did: He took Moses on top of a mountain and there on Mt. Sinai God began to write the Ten Commandments. And Moses came back down and he said, “Listen, God made the world with laws that governs everything.” So, what God wanted them to know is that He also will provide by law how you are to live the Christian experience. How you relate to God, to your family and how you relate to others. Every one of us as we go through our wilderness experience need to learn how it is that God has outlined how we are to live.

I find it interesting that when you go to that last part of that book of Exodus, the longest part is worse. He said let me build for you a tent—a tabernacle—and in it we’re going to put the box that contains the Ten Commandments and this how you are to worship and this is what you are to do. And every time that my mind goes back to this passage of scripture I think about a worship service like this and I ask myself as you get ready to go out the doors in a moment and if we were there and we would say what happened to you in the last hour? Did you have a sense of praise and adoration to God, a sense of thanksgiving for what he has done? There’s a sense in which I come to a greater understanding of God’s word and I begin to check off all of the things worship ought to be and then I realize that unless we learn that, we’ll never be able to grow in our lives. So, listen to the wilderness experience of God training and developing you is the time in which you come to depend upon him, you come to worship him, you come learn about the laws of his word and when you began to get that, then we go to the last one he said was, “Now I’m ready for you to cross the Jordan River and I’m ready for you to go on to your land of promise.” 

Now let me tell you what I know. While I’m limited by the number of people that I know by face here, I tell you what I do know. I do know that God is working in your life. I don’t have to guess that. I don’t have to wonder if that’s true. I know that God is working in your life. For some of you it’s still a time of learning and developing. Let God do his work in this. I know that God has been opening doors for some of you. Some of you need to move out in certain areas of your Christian life. I know that God has been urging you and pushing you and so now you’ve learned and like these people it’s time for you to move ahead. And I know that God is ready to take you to the next step in your Christian experience. I don’t have to question that in my life. Every time I look at a group like this I know that’s God is doing. Now the question is, after you’ve gone through this wilderness experience, how are you going to relate to these other things? So there were some ways in which God came to the last part. Listen to them as we’re getting ready to close.

What God did first of all was to come to them and say, “I want to know if you will trust and depend on me.” Let me tell you what they found. They decided to cross the river and Bible says it was flood season. And you have to decide whether you’re going to head towards this river that’s just flowing everywhere. Now let me tell you what I have found in my life. What I have found is that God does not work on my schedule. If I say, “Lord, its life or death, I’ve got to have it by Monday.” What I have found, God always has said, “How about Thursday?” Lord, I can’t go Thursday, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to have to happen my way. And so God says, if you’re going to walk to the last of promise, to the land where you can grow in my Christian life, this is what you have got to do. You’ve got to be able to say, “Lord, it may seem like the right thing in the wrong time, but if I trust you, it’s the right time.”

When I moved to the Knoxville area, I went to a meeting of ministers and a man came up to me and introduced himself and he said, “Are you Jim?” and I said, “Yeah.” The next thing I knew he just put a bear hug around me. And I said, “I’m trying to figure out who you are.” And he said, “I’m Earnest.” And I turned to him and I said, “I still am having trouble.” He said, “You and I are friends of Bob.” And he said, “Let me tell you why you are friend of mine - it’s because you are a friend of Bob. I worked in Oakridge. God called me to be a minister and I said to God, 'That sounds wonderful, but I can’t do it. I’m just married, just renting my first house; we’ve got two small kids. I can’t go to school, I can’t be a minister.'" He said about a week later after he gave that prayer to God that my friend Bob came knocking at the door. He said, “I understand you’re called to the ministry.” He said, “Yes, but there’s no way, I don’t have the money.” He said, “I want you to know that four of us have gotten together down at the church and we have decided that we will pay your way if you will go.” And they handed him an envelop with a check in it to pay the first semester of college. And my new friend turned to me and he said, “The reason I hugged you is because you are friend of Bob and I will go to my grave thanking God for what he did through my friend.” And you will understand that he was one of the leaders of Tennessee Baptists for over 30 years. Why? Because God met the need at exactly the right time. If you’re here today saying to me, "well, I know what I ought to do, but I cannot." I want to tell you about a God of all provision who will meet the need in your life at exactly the right time.

The second lesson you need to learn is that the reason that God wanted them to walk towards a river overflowing is that he wanted them to come to a place where they would give totally to him. You see if you’re ever going to make the Promised Land, if you’re ever going to be all that God wants, you’re going to have to come to the place where you’re willing to give all that you have to him.

When I was a young person, we used to drink Borden’s Milk in Louisiana. I did not know the story for a long time that Mr. William Booth was a Christian. Of course, a very wealthy man, he turned to his son who was a high school senior and said, “Son, I don’t want you to come in the milk business because I’m in it. I want you to feel that God wants you to be in it. So I tell you what let’s do. Why don’t you take a year and I’ll pay for you to go anywhere, study the world and then come back and tell me what you want to do with your life.” William Booth, Jr. made the trip came back. His dad said, “Son, what did you learn, what do you want to do?” William Booth, Jr. said, “Dad, I want to be a missionary.” Dad looked at him and said, “Son, you understand  I don’t have a place for a missionary. If that’s what you want to do, though son, I’ll stand behind you.”

William Booth went to Yale. The people who write about him said that there were four people in his freshman class that were Christians. At the end of four years, that senior class only had four people who were not Christians. He felt called to go to the Mid East. He went to Egypt to study the language. Was only there a few months until he got the yellow fever and the word came back to Mom and Dad that he had died. Mom and Dad went to Egypt, got all of his belongings. Mom picked up his Bible one day and she opened it up. This is what she read: “My motto: no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.”

You know, that’s what God wants out of you? God wants you to come to a place where you will give yourself to him. Now if you want to come and just give him part of your life, you’re always going to struggle in your Christian experience. But if you’ve come to the place where you and you alone with God just kneel down and say, “Dear God, I don’t know where it leads and Lord there’s a rolling river right outside. But dear God, what I want to do is I want to serve you.

What they also begin to learn is that there is a price to pay if you say no to surrender.

This isn’t the story of when they first decided to go to the Promised Land, that was 38 years ago. Thirty-eight years ago these adult men and women decided they would not go into the promised land and so, God said, “I’ll tell you what, if you adults will not lead your families into the Promised Land, then what will happen is you’ll go back out in the desert. You will live there until all of you older people die off and the young people will come in and they will lead you into the Promised Land. Thirty-eight years, they never went in. Listen: if you’re not willing to give your life to the Lord, there is a price to pay. The worst thing that can happen in your life is not what you get; it’s what you do not get. When God withholds his blessings from you, when God withholds the open doors from you, God says I’ll get somebody else to take your place. Then you begin to understand the price that is to pay when you say no. So what I have come from Knoxville to ask you are are you ready to say, “Yes?” Are you willing to say, “Lord, wherever you lead, I’ll go.” And I wanted to ask you, if you haven’t done it, if you won’t do it now.

Now notice how it ends. They pick up the box, the Arc of the Covenant and they walk through and the Bible says, “And when their feet touched the river and earthquake took place and part of the river stayed here and part stayed here and they walked across on dry land." Now this part of the story, I don’t particularly like. It said that the priest stood in the middle of the river until everybody got on the other side. Now I don’t like that because I’m a priest and I would be standing in the middle of the river. And you know what I would be saying don’t you? Hurry it up, will ya? Let’s get this thing done here. I mean you know and here’s this big water and I don’t how long it’s going to be there. But what I wanted to do today is come and stand right here and say, “Come on, come on, the river is open, the Promised Land is there, what it’s waiting for is for you to come.”