Crossing Points - Joshua 3

Well, church, we all experience crossing points in our life. times where we look to the future because what's about to happen is going to change our life dramatically. We take stock of the past and we look to where we have been. I love this time of year as an educator when we have graduation. On Friday, I got to drive down to Springfield and watch my oldest daughter graduate from Missouri State University. She walked across the stage, that crossing point looking back to what she had been doing for four years, looking forward to what the future holds. The week before that, we had graduation at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeing all the students walking across the stage, across a crossing point, wondering, what have I been doing for the last three or four years? What am I going to be doing next? If you notice in the lobby, we have all of our high school seniors And if you get a chance, go and write a note to one of them. If you recognize the face, write a note, drop it in the box. They're wondering, whathat am I doing next? Just in a few weeks, I'll walk across to the crossing point of a stage, and they'll put behind that chapter of their life, move into the next chapter of their life. There are parents in this room whose kids are going to walk across that stage, and they're at a crossing point. These times times where we take stock of our life, and we're meant to pause and say, okay, God, what have I been doing? What am I going to be doing?? I imagine in this room, there are a lot of other crossing points, people who are thinking of taking a new job. Maybe some of you are engaged and you have a marriage coming up as a date on a calendar where you go, there's a crossing point where life won't be the same Maybe you're moving to a new city, or you've moved here from a different city. I imagine some of you in this room, you have found yourself not looking forward to a crossing point, but in a crossing point where a loved one has passed away. You have hadn't planned for it, you hadn't thought about it, and yet here you are at this moment of life where the future is unknown and uncertain, and you're wondering what it's going to be like, and you know that the past you had isn't going to be the same anymore. And we wonder, what does God have to say to us at these crossing points in life? In our message today, if you get one idea, if you can walk away with one thought, it would be this, Trust God to leads you through the crossing points of life, Whether that's a graduation, a marriage, a new job the loss of a loved one, these changing points in life, trust God to lead you through the crossing points of life. If you have your Bible, turn to Joshua chapter 3. We're going to see one of the most significant crossing points in the life of the nation of Israel. While they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised land. As you're turning there, a bit of a background, we started the Book of Joshuahua three weeks ago, and we're following along in the story of the nation of Israel. About 40 years before the event that we're going to read today, the nation of Israel had come out of Egypt with Moseses leading them. They had been in Egypt for some 400 years and they're now leaving the land of Egypt. They cross the Red Sea, and they find themselves in the Sinai Peninsula heading to the Promised Land. When they get to this land, not many days after crossing, Moses sends 12 spies into the land to say, "Figure out what it's like. There were ten spies that we hear from the other tribes, and then a guy named Caleb, and a guy named Joshua. These two spies, Caleb and Joshua come back with the other ten, and they give a report that says this, "God's with us, we can have this land. He's promised it to us." The other ten spies said, Look, we've looked. These people are really tall. They're way bigger than this. We're like grassesshoppers in their eyes. There's no way we're gonna defeat these people. We should turn back. In the nation of Israel, hundreds of thousands strong side with the ten over the two, and they spend 40 years wandering in the Sinai Peninsula. Joshua's with them. Joshua is Moses is second hand man and he watches all the miracles that happen. He watches how Moses leads a stiffiff necked people, who often rebel, who often on obedient. Moses has now died. He has handed the title of leader over to Joshua. He says it. He also says,JJoshua, you know how the spirit that was on me, God's spirit that was empowering Moses is giving to Joshua. But now Joshua has the wheel. and he's standing on the east side of the Jordan. On the west side of the Jordan is the land that God had promised Abraham some 500 years before. He says, "This land will be the land of my people." 500 years ago, there was a promise. 40 years ago Joshua had been in that land and said, "We can take it. And for 40 years, he wandered in the wilderness, and now his mentor, his leader Moses is dead, and he's standing on the cusp of a crossing point. And when in God, what are you going to do? Read with me in Joshua chapter 3, verses 1 to 6, and the first thing we see is that we need to prepare ourselves to follow God at the crossing point. Listen to what Joshua says. Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and they set out from Sheetham, and they came to the Jordan, he and all the people of Israel, and lodged there before they passed over. At the end of three days, the officers went through the camp and commanded the people As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord, your God, being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. Yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go for you have not passed this way before. Then Joshua said to the people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow, the Lord will do wonders among you." And Joshua said to the priest, "Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people." So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people. Prepare yourselves to follow God at the crossinging point. So here's the scene, the nation of Israel is on the west side of the Jordan River, and they've camped there, and now they're ready to go into the promised land. And Joshua says, "Here's what you need to do. When you see the ark of the covenant moving out, follow it. But keep a distance of 2,000 cubits. Now, if you have your phone with you, you could do the trick translation. A cubit is about the length of a forearm, so about 18 inches. Turns out to be about half a mile. If you're thinking of how far that is so, a half a mile away, keep that kind of distance between you and the ark. Now, what is the ark of the covenant? Moses had this built. When Moses came out of Egypt, when he was at Mount Sion, I God gave Moses the plans of the tabernacle. This was the place where God said, "I'm going to dwell here. Now, we know God dwells everywhere. He's omnipresent, so he's everywhere, but he also is in certain places in m intense ways. He says, "Yes, I'm everywhere, but here is where you're going to meet with me in this tabernacle, this tense structure that Moses built that God gave him the plans for. Inside that structure, there were different rooms. The whole Holy of Holies, the inner room had the Ark of the Covenant. It was a golden box that had two angels with their wings covering the box on top. This was a representation of God's presence. It was the place where once a year, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, and he would offer the blood of an animal that had been sacrificed, and he would sprinkle it on the Ark of the Covenant. If you ever watched Indiana, Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, you've seen at least a image of the Ark of the Covenant. They would have carried this for 40 years in the wilderness. So the high priest would have gone in, and whenever the nation would have moved, because they were nomads during this 40 years, they would have a camp, and when God said time to move, they would take up their camp, and the ark would move, and when it moved to a new place, they would set everything up, and they then God's presence would come to dwell. And so the ark represented God's presence to the nation of Israel. And so he says, "When you see the ark being carried, follow it." That means follow God, but keep a distance of about half a mile. Why should they keep a half a mile distance? One is because of God's holy. And there is a sense where you go, "Don't come too close to God." But Joshua tells us explicitly, "YYou need to keep enough distance so you know where the ark is, because he's gonna show you where to go and you haven't been this way before. I think what he's saying is, you may be excited to go through this crossing point, but you need to wait. Let God lead the way. Keep your eye on the arc that's out there, about a half a mile distance and then follow it when it leads, 'cause you need to prepare your yourselves to follow God. So the ark represents God's presence, and they're to follow that. But he also tells them, consecrate yourselves. For tomorrow, the Lord will do wonders among you. What does this word " consecrate mean?" It's this idea of preparing yourself for something special. Every day, the Jewish people were instructed through their law to focus on God, to pay attention to God, that it wasn't something where it just once a week, they would say, okay, I'm going to think about God this week. We should be thinking about God in interacting with God every day of our lives. But there are most moments where we should pause and say,This is about to be a different kind of encounter. When God was instructing Moses, when he first gave him the law, some 40 years years prior to this event. He told the people, "Consecrate yourselves, " tomorrow, I'm going to come down on this mountain, mount Sinai. I'm going to give you my law, and I'm going to meet with Moses." This is going to be a different kind of encounterter than you've had before. Now, in the Old Testament, in the Book of Exodus, we learned, how would they consecrate themselves? One of the things they would do is he said, "All if you take a bath and wash your clothes, which we take for granted. I imagine, you know, you may have taken two baths yesterday. If you went to the roller skate party, if you took one in the morning, you probably took one you got home. Says, I'm sweating too much in the roller rink And we wash our clothes regularly. We don't live in a dusty, dirty environment, but they did. They would have been dirty most of the time. And they weren't washing their clothes every day. So we said, there's a moment where you just pause and cleanse yourself outwardly. He would tell them to, "You need to repent and confess. They would offer sacrifices to prepare themselves for this. God told them to abstain from sexual relations, not that they're bad, but it's a sense of saying, there's these good things in life that we put aside for a while in order to focus on something that's even better. And so the nation is to consecrate themselves. Joshua says, "P, what's about to happen tomorrow is such a big deal that we need to prepare for it. It's not just another day. We are at a crossing point, and we need to prepare ourselves to follow God into that crossing point. But he doesn't stop there if you're looking verses 7 to 13, we see that God promises to be with us at the crossing point. When I was young in elementary school, I would have to walk to school, and there was a road that was busy. How many of you growing up had the joy of having a crossing guard who helped you get across the road? Anybody Not many, not many in the first service. So a crossing guard was very easy. All the kids would walk to the corner. There's this busy road, and the crossing guard just walks out in the road with a stop sign and a vest on and puts up the stop sign, and all the cars stop. And then he waves. He says, come on, kids, and all the kids walk across, and when all the kids are across, he walks back to the side of the road, and all the cars can keep flowing again. And so there was this road that I had to wait for the crossing guard to be in the middle of the road before I could cross the road. We see here, God doing the same thing. Look what it says. The Lord said to Joshua, "Today, I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel that they may know that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. Imagine this. Let's pause for a second,'cause we can read so fast through scripture that we forget to think these are real people in a real time, in a real place. Joshua f 40 years has followed Moses. That was his mentor, that was his leader. This was the man who was having manna come down from heaven, who was making water come out of a rock, who parted the Red Sea. This Moses, like he's on the Mount Rushmore of biblical figures, and Joshua's taking over for him. Imagine that. Imagine the nervousousness that Joshua may have felt. He heard Moses say, "You're the guy, I'm handing off my leadership to you." He heard Moses say, "You're gonna have the same spirit of God that empowered me, is now going to empower you." But now he's leading the people, people who regularly rebelled against Moses And God says to him, "What I'm about to do is going to exalt you in their eyes so that they know you're the one who's going to lead them. That's not saying Joshua's God. She's just saying, "Joshua, I'm going to work through you, and what's about to happen is going to convince the people that I'm with you like I was with Moseses. I think now, it doesn't say it in the text, but I think Joshua may have been a little nervous. may have been a little nervous about what's about to happen. 40 years ago, he said, "We could win this battle. God's with us." 40 years later, he's standing at the edge of the Jordan River, about to go into that unknown land and deal with the people that live there. These highly immoral people, 400 years before, God, had said, The people haven't built up enough sinfulness. They're not so bad that I'm ready to kick them out of the land." And he says, "Now, 400 years later, they are." I think Joshua's nervous, and Gus says, "I'm going to exalt you." And as for you," is what he tells Joshua, verse 8, "Command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant and you'll see this ark of the covenant repeatedly in this chapter, to keep our eyes on God the whole time, who bear the ark of the covenant. When you come to the brink of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan, just right on the edge. When you come to the edge, just stop. And Joshua said to the people of Israel, "Come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God." And Joshua said, "Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will outfail, drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Peasites, the Gergosites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites, all of these different peoples that lived in the land Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan. Now, therefore, take 12 men from the tribes of Israel, from each tribe a man. We're going to learn more about these 12 men next week, so come back next week to see why he had to choose 12 men. And when the souls of the feet of the priest bearing the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth shall rest in the waters of the Jordan. The waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap. Now, again, picture what's happening here. God has told Joshua, this is what's going to happen. When the priest's feet touch the Jordan River, it's going to stop flowing. Joshua would have remembered Moses. He'd have remembered the water partying and the people going across. He was part of that. But imagine hundreds of thousands of people standing there, and Joshua says, he's what's going to happen. When these priests touch the edge of the Jordan River, the water's going to stop flowing. What happens if it doesn't? What happens if he goes they touch it and just stays there? What's Joshua gonna do? I think somewhere in his mind, he's human, like we're human. And even when we have faith, we may go, "I trust you, God, I'm gonna do what you've asked." Okay, keep your word. Keep your word, God. God promises to be with us at the crossing point. It's interesting some of the language that God uses. He calls himself the living God. In that day and age, the Jewish people would have recognized that all the other nations and tribes had their gods, and they were territorial gods Here, he said, he's called the living God, and he's the God or the Lord of all the earth." They would have said, "Well, there's a god of this mountain, there's a god of this valley, there's a god of this river. There'd have been all these different gods. There was a god of Egypt. And yet God, the one true God, is teaching his people. One, all these other gods are not real. They're not living. I'm the only living God. And two, I'm the God of all the earth. I'm not just the God of one piece of ground He was the god of the east side of the Jordan, where the Israelites were. He was the god of the Sinai, where they had wandered for 40 years. He is the god of Egypt, where they had come from. He's the god of the Jordan they're about to stand in, and he's the god of the land on the other side of Jordan, that they're about to go into. He says, "I have all of this. All of this is mine. Where you've come from, the crossing point that you're at, and where you're going, says, "All of it is mine. Know that. And when the priest put their feet in the water, you are going to see this come true. But Joshua did have to tell the priest pick up the ark and go stand in the Jordan to see that promise happen. If he hadn't obeyed God in that moment, God wasn't going to to stop the Jordan Joshua had to put the priests out there with all of the tension, all of the pressure, all of the uncertainty that that would have brought to Joshua. And probably a lot of the people watching going, "I don't know. I like Moses sometimes, but Joshua, you know Moses will'll see what happens. And Joshua is no Moses, and that's okay, because the God who empowered Moses is empowering Joshua, Joshua doesn't have to be Moses. But God had promised that he was going to be with them at the crossing point. And then we look at verses 14 to 7, 17, what we see is promomises made, promises kept, and promises yet to come. Look what happens. In the writer of this book, he piles up the tension. Sometimes we read so fast that we miss it, but listen to how he kind of builds up the tension until the promise actually happens. Says this. So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priest bearing the ar ark of the covenant before the people, and as soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, so as the people got up, they started moving, the priests were moving, and as soon as the priests get to the Jordan, and the feet of the priest bearing the ark, were dipped in the brink of the water So it says, they've come to the water. And then the priest just barely dipped their feet right at the edge, and then he pauses for a second. Look what he says. Now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest. If you ever get the privilege of going to Israel and going to the Jordan River, we got to go a few years ago, it's underwhelming now. They have put a dam up at the Sea of Galilee, and so the Jordan River is, at least when we were there, it was no wider than these first two aisles, and pretty stagnant. In the time that this happened, it would have been normally about 90 to 100 feet wide and flood stage anywhere from 200 to half a mile wide. So, a fairly large river, larger than the Missouri down at English landing. The depth would have been anywhere from 3 to 10 feet. The Missouri at English landing, I looked it up, is around 10 feet deep. So it's a pretty substantial river at this point. They come just to the edge, just dippinging their feet in at a river that may have been up to half a mile wide, but maybe 200 feet. Still, almost a football field wide is how wide this river was. And they just dipped their feet. The waterers coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap, very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarathathan. So what's happening here? We believe this city. We're not sure exactly this location. We believe it's about 15 to 20 miles north of where they were crossing. So the priest step in the water, and God doesn't kind of stop the water right there. He stops at 20 miles upstream, which means all the water that was in the river has to flow past initially, and then it stops. So it wasn't instant in the same way with Moses. It says it took all night for the Red Sea to park. So they have to stand there. The priests are standing in the water. And I'm sure Joshu was going, I sure hope that thing is that happened up there that you promised has happened." And it slowly comes down. And then it says this, that the waters went all the way down, and those flowing down toward the sea of the Aa, that's the salt sea, the Dead Sea. So if you go, if you look on a map of Israel, in the north is the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River is in a valley. It looks like a meat cleaver just kind of smacked right into the ground Sea of Galilee up here, where Jesus spent a lot of his minister.ry. The Jordan River trickles down to the Dead Sea, or the salt Sea, the lowest place on the earth. So the water is always flowing. So it gets cut off about 20 miles north, all that water flows down. It's says into the Salt Sea." And they were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite Jericho. Now the priest, bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord, stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan. And all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan. So here's the scene. They had put their feet just in the edge, the priest said, and they stopped, and they had to wait for 20 miles worth of river to pass them. They then walked out to the middle of the river. There was in flood stage, and yet the ground is dry, and so the Ark of the Covenant stands in the middle, and hundreds of thousands of people cross at this opening that has taken place. And they move to the west side. They go through the crossing point, standing firmly on dry ground. It wasn't just that he cut the waters off. said he cut the waters off, and he made the path they were walking on front firm to stand on. I mean, what a crossing point. Thousands and thousands of years ago, Joshua experienced this. He heard God tell him a promise, he saw God keep his promise, and we're going to keep working through the book of Joshua and see how God is going to fulfill the promise that, "Hey, I'm going to bring you through this Jordan River, and that's going to be the thing that lets everyone know you're going to win over here, that I'm going to be with you as you move into the promised land. That was thousands of years ago, right? I wasn't there, you weren't there. It wasn't our crossing point. It was the nation of Israelel's crossing point at that time. So what do we do with this? How do we trust God to lead us through the crossing points of life, given this story? It could just be a good story, right? Man, God, you did an amazing thing. You've done that before. I'm sure you'll do things like that again as a song we just sang says. But I think there's a deeper connection that connects us more closely to this crossing when we understand that Jesus is the greater Joshua. Just for starters, they have the same name. Our English translations have done us a disservice. So the Hebrews, the underlying language of the Old Testament, Greek is the New Testament, so the Hebrew name Joshua means Yahweh saves. Jesus has the same name. We just in English have created two different names, but it's the same name in both Hebrew and Greek. So they have the same name. That could just be a coincidence, but it does mean that Yahweh saves, God saves. So Jesus shows up and he's going to save his people, like Joshua saved his people, same name. Joshua brought his people from the wilderness into the promised land. What's thiss interesting is that God told Joshua, I need you to put the Ark of the Covenant in the middle of the Jordan Have the people follow that now. Remember, I told you, the Ark represented God's prayer presence among the people. The Ark wasn't God. In fact, the Old Testament tells us in other places that when the Ark would sit in the temple that God was on his throne in the heaven, and that his feet were like on the ark. It was his footstool. But it's where God said, "This is where I'm at. This is where you'll meet me." And the ark represented his presence. Jesus, though, is different than that. John, in his first gospel says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God If you jump down to verse 14, he says, "And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled. That's the same word that the Old Testament tabernacle is used among us. The ark represents God's presence. Jesus is God's presence. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, Jesus says. So when Jesus is on the earth it's not that he represents God. He is God, on the earth, as he goes about his mission. And what was his mission? What was his goal? Jesus leads us in a new exodus, not out of the land of Egypt of physical slavery, as Joshua did the Israelites, but out of the land of sin and death into a new heavens and new earth. When Jesus was on the mountain of Transfiguration a little bit before his crucifixion, says, "Moses and Elijah showed up. Peter, James and John, his disciples were there, and Moses and Elijah showed up, and they were talking with Jesus about his exodus. His coming moved to move out of a place and into a new place. Jesus came so that we could be set free, not just from the physical struggles of life, not just from being a slave in Egypt, as the Israelites were, but from being a slave to sin and death. The rite of Hebrews in chapter 4 says it this way, for if Jesus Joshua had given them rest God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God. The actual rest that God wants to get us. The Israelites coming into the promised land that we're reading in Joshua was part of God's plan to bring his son into the world and then Jesus parts a different river, so to speak. He stands in the river of death and stops it and says, "Come across everyone who has faith in him, everyone who trusts him, he says, "Come across. He's like the ark of the covenant that is representing God's presence, but he is God's presence, that Jesus is the greater Joshua. And when we're connected to Jesus, when we're empowered with his spirit, the same spirit that empowered Joshua, we can know that he's with us at our crossing points. No, we don't have the Ark of the Covenant. We have something much better. We have God God H himself, the Spirit dwelling in us, through Jesus' death and sacrifice, so that today, when we think, what do I do as I'm approaching these crossing points? Maybe you're at one of those moments, you know, in the coming weeks, maybe a few months from now there's coming a time where life's going to change. If you're not approaching one of those, there will come a time where life's going to change. God may move you you to a new job. You may find that special someone and go from dating to engage to married. You may have a kid, we had baby dedication, this moment where you went, "Okay, here's a crossing point, I'm crossing from not being a parent to being a parent." Maybe you're in a crossing point now and you weren't prepared for it, but you're in it. You went, "What can I do? Three pieces of advice. One, keep your eyes on Jesus in the crossing." When I was an elementary school kid and I was going to cross the road, there was a place where you just watched the crossing guard, and when he said move,, we would move. And we would walk, didn't have any care in the world, didn't think about all the cars that could be killing us. We would just walk across. And then off they would go. If you were a car, your job was to watch the crossing guard. If you saw the stop sign, just stop. Keep your eyes on Jesus. He's the crossing guard that guides and protects us in the crossings. The way we keep our eyes on Jesus is we know His Word, we pick up the Bible regularly and read it and dig into it. We're discussing it with other people in our life groups, in our Bible studies, and our discipleship groups, and all the ways we can absorb what God wants us to do. We're seeking godly advice from people saying, "I got this thing coming up in my life, this crossing point, and I want to make sure that I honor God in it. Find others who have gone through that crossing point who are keeping their eye on Jesus, and ask them,Hey, how did you do it? Stay connected to a community of faith. It's easy when we have these major changes, and life changes, our routine changes. Everything shifts that we fall away from the community of faith. When people move to a new town, it's hard to find a church. You may find yourself at some point moving to a new town and going, "We need to find a church, but life's busy," and we forget a few weeks, and then you look up and go, "It's been six months. and we haven't found a church yet. We haven't gone like we used to go. You need to prepare before that to think when I get there, I'm going to keep my eye on Jesus. Second, conscioussecrate yourself for the crossing point. When we have these moments coming up, graduations, marriages, kids, we need to say, " I'm want to set time apart, to stop the normal rhythm of my life. Those normal rhythms are good, by the way, if we're always stopping the normal rhythms they're not normal, but most of us live in the normal rhythms of life, Monday through Sunday, Monday through Sunday. But there's a point where we go, "Let's stop for a time. Let's take a day and pause and have a time of prayer about this, have a time to discuss this, have a time of worship, just fall focused on God. How would you have me live in this crossing point? How can I consecrate myself in anticipation of what you're going to do when this moment happens?? What wonders you're going to do at this time? How can I, as Joshua told the Israelites, consecrate ourselves? And then finally, step into the crossing, trying trusting God to be faithful. The priests had to step in the water. If they didn't step in the water, there was going to be no parting of the Jordan. They were at this crossing point, though. And as you see a crossing point coming up, there is a place where you go, "I just have to step into it. Say, "G, I'm going to be faithful to you. Here we go." We got students graduating high school. They're going to head off to whatever that next phase of life is with all of its uncertainty. Maybe they're heading to a new city, to a new school, and they go, "I don't know what the world's gonna look like that first semester. But got them, I'm gonna trust you. What would you have me do That's where you seek that advice. You keep your eyes on Jesus, find that community of faith and say, "I'm gonna do that, God. I don't know how else anything is gonna work out, but these things I will do. And I'm going to trust you when I step in that you will be there for me, that you will put me on solid ground. Matthew, I mean, Jesus says this in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 7,Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that hat, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, in chapter 3, said it this way, "For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus." The Israelites walked across on dry ground as they went into the Jordan, because God had promised him that he would be there. The ark stood in the Jordan, and gave the evidence that God was the one doing this. Jesus himself says, he is the solid ground that we stand on. Everything else around us is sinking sand. One of our worship team come up and lead us in a time of worship, and as they're coming up, I want you to think about crossing points in your life. Maybe you're heading into one. Maybe you're in one, and you feel like this ground around you is sinking, and you just need to say, "Jesus, help me get on the firm rock of who you are. Put people in my life, help me to reach out to people, to ask advice, to find help. Maybe you're heading into this cur crossing point. When you say, God, help us to find time in the coming days to consecrate ourselves, so that we know that we're standing on the solid rock that is Jesus Christ. Maybe you're here and you don't even know Christ, that you're trusting in your own goodness or just hope, or maybe you're not even thinking about what happens when we die. But that crossing point is coming for all of us. And Christ is the one who has defeated death. He rose from the dead. He died because he loves you and wants you to be with him. And if you're here and going, "I want to know this God, as we sing in worship, I'm going to be in the back corner. You can come back and talk to me. You can fill out one of our connect cards and and say, "Hey, reach out to me this week. I would love to talk about what it means to be on the solid rock that is Jesus Christ. Would you stand and join us in worship?

Joshua 3 · chapter mention Joshua 3:1–6