Printer Friendly VersionWe are a people who need to be convinced. We need evidence.
We need confirmation. We need solid data. That’s just how things tend
to work in our world.
I don’t think it starts out that way. I think we start
out as people who are generally very willing to believe, willing to trust.
But gradually life chips away at that simple trust and we soon trade faith
for facts. We stop living so much out of what could be and settle for what
is.
Just this week our phone rang late one evening. As I talked
on the phone, Stuart (our four-year-old) was listening. He apparently sensed
the conversation was serious, and when I hung up he wanted to know what it
was about.
I told him someone had a very sick family member and they had
asked me to go and pray with them. He said, “What are you going pray
for?” I said, “Well, first I’m going to pray that they will
trust Jesus most of all. Then I’m going to pray that God will help them
feel better.” And very matter-of-factly Stuart said, “God is powerful;
He can do anything.”
I stopped short. Here I was trying to convince myself I really
did have something to offer to a dying soul and yet my four-year-old was already
convinced.
I don’t know that Stuart is aware of having ever witnessed
a miracle. Yet he doesn’t have to be convinced of God’s power.
He is just sure God is able to do amazing things. How is it we learn to be
so suspicious and doubtful?
We know what we believe about God and what we confess about
His power and love for us, yet we want assurances, we want signs, we want
writing on the wall.
We’re like the little girl whose mother was teaching her
how to pray the Lord’s Prayer. For several evenings at bedtime the mom
would have her daughter repeat the phrases after her.
One night the little girl said she was ready to go solo. The mom said, “I
listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word, right up to the
end of the prayer.”
“Lead us not into temptation,” she prayed, “But
deliver us some e-mail.” I don’t know about you but my computer
mailbox hasn’t received any messages from God lately. Yet that’s
kind of what we want, sometimes, isn’t it?
Let me ask you, “What is the most convincing evidence
you’ve ever received that God is real and that He cares for you?”
What signs of God’s power have you seen? What miracles have you witnessed?
One of the encouraging things to me about the Scriptures is the people we
encounter are not really very different from you and me.
All through the Bible it becomes pretty obvious these folks
needed to have signs and evidences of God’s power and presence in their
lives. And what is more, God seemed to understand the fact that they needed
those signs. And He was willing to give them.
Now sometimes God gives us those powerful signs when we aren’t
even asking for them. Sometimes, when we aren’t even looking, God in
His grace and mercy shows himself to us in some way. But more often, I think
the way God shows us signs of His power and presence follows the pattern of
the story we’re considering together from Joshua 3.
We know God had promised these people a new land. We also know
they spent a long time failing to enter into that new land because of their
disobedience and their fear. But God was doing a new thing, He had given them
a new leader, they seemed to have new determination and new focus. They were
ready to cross over, and yet there were still a lot of unanswered questions.
So, as we heard, the Lord was going to give them a sign. He
was going to demonstrate His power to them once again by stopping the flow
of the swollen Jordan River and allowing them to cross on dry land.
What I want us to notice this morning is the reason the Lord
was going to do this miraculous thing in their midst. The reason is given
in two different ways. First the Lord said to Joshua, “I’m going
to perform these amazing signs so the people will know that I am with you
as I was with Moses.”
And then Joshua said to the people, “The Lord is going
to do this so you will know that the living God is among you.” God was
going to be gracious to give them a miraculous sign in order to convince them
He could be trusted to give the land they were so afraid to claim.
You see, what they were really afraid of was not so much crossing
the river, as ominous as that was. What had them terrified were the strong
people who occupied the land: the Canaanites, the Hittites, and so forth.
“There’s a certain logic behind God’s assurance.
If God can tame a raging river, he can also repel attacking Amorites. If he
can stop up the Jordan, he can put down a Girgashite. If he can get you to
the land, surely he can give you the land.”
One success builds upon another. That’s why God is gracious
to give us signs and evidences of His power and presence. It’s to build
our faith. It’s to help us launch out in confidence to the new things
He wants to do in our lives. This is the reasoning of faith Israel had failed
to use earlier. They should have realized the God who delivered them from
Egypt would not let go of them in the wilderness.
They had an amazing history of God’s intervention and
power in their lives, but they forgot to use it for confidence for the present
challenge. We forget that too. God has done amazing things in our lives and
yet as soon as we are presented with a new challenge, we want a new sign.
We want Him to prove it again. It’s like we say to God, “What
have you done for me lately?”
Well, it’s instructive to me that these people would not
receive the confirming sign of God’s presence until they stepped out
in obedience to cross over. Did you see that? God wasn’t going to dry
up the river first and then let them cross. He said, “You go stick your
feet in there and then see what happens. Take a step, move out in faith, trust
me, and I’ll show you what you need.”
Now do you know what I think is really interesting about this story? All God
ever said to Joshua was, “Tell the priests to take the ark of the covenant
and go stand in the river.” That’s it.
God never said anything about stopping up the river. He just said, “Go
stand in it.” It’s only later (down in v. 13) when Joshua was
telling the people what they were going to do that he said, “As soon
as the priests step into the Jordan, the raging waters will be stopped up.”
Do you see what he did? He was willing to take the direction
God had given and step out in faith, believing the God who had been faithful
to them so far would be faithful to them again.
Now I have to ask how Joshua could make that conclusion when
God didn’t say anything about stopping up the waters? I think he was
simply going back to what he had learned in the past. In all those years of
following Moses around in the desert, he learned when it seems most hopeless,
God makes a way. He learned when you’re nearly at the end of your strength
God gives a sign of presence.
And based on that, Joshua had faith for the future. Perhaps
he said to himself, “If God can get us through the Red Sea and away
from Pharaoh’s attacking army, He can probably get us across this river.”
The apostle Paul uses a very similar logic when in Romans 8
he says, “If God did not hold back but gave up his own Son for us, if
he went that far, can we not then rest assured that he will do anything to
save us and bless us?” The mighty acts of God are meant to assure us
that the God who so mightily handles great emergencies is surely adequate
for every crisis and anxiety that besets us.
But sometimes, perhaps most often, you don’t get the sign
until you put your feet into the river. In the moment of obedience, God will
give you what you need. In the act of faith, God will show you the way.
Now you have to be careful because this is a truth that can
easily be twisted. Satan tried to do that with Jesus in the wilderness. Remember
when the devil said to Jesus, “Listen, why don’t you throw yourself
off the top of the temple and prove God is real?”
Well that’s silly. That’s testing God from unbelief,
not from faith. Don’t do something stupid and impulsive just to try
and get God to show himself to you. If you go jumping off rooftops you’ll
probably hit the ground. But when God has spoken, when He has led you to a
point of decision and obedience, you can trust Him at that point to show you
His power and presence.
As Joshua said, “God does these things so that you will
know the living God is among you.” He is the living God who works and
intervenes and comes and saves and rescues and counsels His people in all
their perplexities.
So what signs have we received to assure us of God’s presence
and power? The most important and powerful sign of all is the Cross. The death
and resurrection of Jesus is the living sign to us that God is with us, no
matter what comes.
But even beyond that, we have been blessed with some wonderful
signs of God’s power and presence. We have seen sick bodies healed,
we have seen broken relationships restored, and we have seen God make abundant
provision where we anticipated only lack.
We have been blessed with amazing signs of God’s power
and presence. But the truth is, signs and wonders can be overrated. You see,
Israel had them all. They had plagues and parting seas. They had manna and
pillars of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night to assure them of God’s
presence. They had miraculous signs we’ve never seen before. Yet they
still struggled to believe God.
Which reminds us that ultimately it comes down to decision.
It comes down to a choice I make to place my trust in a God who says, “Step
into the river. Cross over and you will see my power.” And then, “You
will know that the living God is among you.”
Do you need a convincing evidence from God? Are you needing a sign of His
presence and power in your life? Do you need to be assured today that He will
make a way for you even in circumstances that seem impossible?
Then get up and go put your feet in the river. Take a step. Move out in obedience. Cross over into the new thing God is wanting to do in your life. When you do, God will demonstrate to you in ways you cannot now imagine that His power and presence is more than enough to enter into the new land.
