Joshua 3:1-17

The late American church leader John Wimber used to say that Christians are like people who go down to the quayside, expecting to board a ship that will take them on a luxury cruise, only to find when they get there that their ship is gunmetal grey in colour. It’s a battleship.

He used to recall how, when he first found faith from a background as a rock musician (he was the keyboard player for the Righteous Brothers), he would go to church and hear all the Bible readings about Jesus and the apostles performing great miracles of healing. And he would say to the other church members, “Great! When do we do this?”

To which they would reply, “Oh no, we just talk about it.”

At some point for Christians, the rubber has to hit the road. We’re good at talking, planning, and preparing. But actually ‘doing the stuff’? Hmm, that’s a bit radical.

What I’ve said so far in my three previous sermons about New Beginnings was potentially challenging, but it could just be treated as preparation. Israel still had to take that final step of entering the Promised Land. We have to take that final step from theory to practice.

So yes – we must not live in the past but look to what God wants to do today. Yes – we must live by faith in what God says he wants to do, and not be constrained by fears based on our human limitations. And yes – we need courage and obedience to the Scriptures, all nourished by the promise of God’s presence.

We have to do something new. ‘You have never been this way before,’ say the Israelite officers to the people (verse 4). But that’s no excuse for staying put. This goes way beyond just singing an unfamiliar hymn! It means getting out of our comfortable space in church fellowship and taking God’s redeeming love in Christ into the world in both our deeds and our words.

Here are four things that Joshua 3 teaches us we need in order to live out our calling in the world.

Firstly, follow God’s lead.

“When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the Levitical priests carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. ⁴ Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about two thousand cubits between you and the ark; do not go near it.”

The ark of the covenant is the portable presence of God with Israel, especially in the centuries before the Temple is built at Jerusalem. For the ark to go ahead of Israel is to signify that God goes ahead of them. Their calling is to follow God’s lead. God will lead them forward into the land.

The Christian call is also to follow God’s lead. He leads and directs the mission to which he calls us. We don’t invent things and just do what we fancy. We seek God’s lead and we respond.

That is built right into all Christian theology in one way or another. In the Methodist tradition, we talk of God’s ‘prevenient grace’, which means that God acts graciously before we ever do anything.

There are some similarities in the way Christians widely talk about mission today. We say that Christian mission is the mission of God, not our mission. We are called to find out what God is doing, and join in.

But how do we do that? Well, there is no getting around the need to practise what Wesley called ‘The means of grace’ and which modern Christians ecumenically call ‘The spiritual disciplines.’ It means actively seeking to be in tune with God. That requires a serious commitment to prayer and to meditating on Scripture. It’s no good thinking that we can just tick those off as done on Sunday mornings in the service, these need to be daily personal habits.

There are many ways to practise these disciplines, and we shall vary according to our personalities and gifts how we do them. I don’t have time to list different options now, but speak with me if you want some ideas.

What is certain is that the church sinks without them.

Secondly, imitate God’s character.

⁵ Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.”

To consecrate oneself is to dedicate oneself to God’s service. It is to be set aside for holy work. It is not just for the priests (or modern-day ministers, for that matter!) but for all of God’s people.

God’s mission is not something that merely requires a certain amount of religious competence. It needs character, too: God’s character. God’s mission is to make all things new, and that includes our character. If we are to be in harmony with God’s purposes, we need to grow in his likeness and utterly dedicated to his cause.

If you want an engineer or a plumber, character may not matter, only their competence. But not with the mission of God. It requires a people who are growing in Christlikeness.

So we are called to consecrate ourselves before God does amazing things among us.

Joshua does not tell us here how the people did this, but we may have a clue from a similar event. When they had arrived at Mount Sinai after leaving Egypt, Israel had been called to be consecrated at the foot of the mountain while Moses climbed up to meet with God. How did they do it then? By various forms of fasting. Not simply fasting from food, but married couples also abstained from marital relations.

Fasting takes various forms. We can fast from food, from marital relations, from TV, from gadgets, and so on. In each case we are giving up something good for a season to concentrate on something far better and much more important. That’s why when we fast we also pray.

And as we show God just how serious we are about his will by abstaining from something good in order to find extra time for prayer, so he will respond to a commitment like that by forming us more like his Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit in us.

It is no good being recklessly unholy when God turns up in power to do amazing things. If we are, either his power will burn us or in his mercy he will not act powerfully at all.

But if we long for God to act in power, we need to consecrate ourselves.

Thirdly, grow in faith.

⁸ Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’”

Have you noticed the similarities and differences in this passage with the account of Israel crossing the Red Sea out of Egypt into the wilderness? Here at the end of their wilderness wanderings, they are again faced by a mass of water, and the waters divide.

Only this time, Joshua’s command differs from that of Moses. At the Red Sea in Exodus 14, Moses told the frightened people that all they needed to do was stand still and they would see the deliverance of their God. But here, the command is not to stand still at the water’s edge.

On this occasion, however, they don’t get to wait on dry land. Or at least, the priests are going to need some towels afterwards, because they have to go and stand in the river before God divides the water this time. They were called to do something more by faith before God enacted his promise.

Faith, like love, is something that needs to grow. If I still loved Debbie the same amount today as I did on our wedding day, our marriage would be long over. If I still had the same faith that I had on the day I was confirmed and received into Methodist membership at the age of sixteen then my faith would have collapsed years ago. It is for good reason that God calls us to grow in faith.

In my first circuit as a minister, I got involved in some youth ministry that worked across most of the churches in the town. We began by holding Sunday night youth services, but they became a bit cheesy, and in order to challenge ourselves in a more difficult situation, we then hired a vacant shop in the town. We couldn’t use as much gear, and so we did what we called ‘Worship Unplugged.’ If any of you remember the MTV Unplugged shows from the 1990s, you’ll have an idea of what we did.

But we had too many numbers to cram into the shop, and so we moved to the church hall at the URC. Again, that was fine for a time, until the numbers made that venue too uncomfortable. There was only one venue in the town that would hold us, but it required a step of faith. It was the local nightclub.

One of our team, a Christian businessman, approached the nightclub owner, and he said he was willing to take our booking for one Sunday night a month. He would provide bar staff who would only sell non-alcoholic drinks on those occasions.

There was just one thing: the fee he wanted went beyond our existing budget.

This was the time which we identified as our ‘put your feet in the water’ moment. God wanted us to go further than we had before. We agreed to the terms for the nightclub without having the money.

But when we did, another Christian businessman in the town stepped forward and underwrote the project.

If you want to go forward in faith (and why wouldn’t you?), then is it time for you to get your feet wet, metaphorically speaking?

Fourthly and finally, remember God’s deeds.

¹² Now then, choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. 

What’s that about, then? The twelve men get mentioned but then Joshua goes back to talking about the priests.

We find the answer in chapter 4, which we didn’t read. These men take stones from the river and create a memorial to the miracle God does here.

Why? This is no monument or museum. This is no living in the past. This is about learning from the past. It is easy to forget what God has done. In later Old Testament times, tragically the prophets record that Israel had forgotten her God. Not that she forgot God existed, but she forgot what God had done for her. And when she did, she went off the rails spiritually.

We need to do something similar, because it stirs our faith to believe again in a God who does mighty things. The supreme memorial for Christians is of course Holy Communion, when we remember what God did for us in Christ at the Cross.

But we need to create smaller memorials too, by recording things God has done individually for each of us. Here’s how I have found that to be important.

Like many ministers, I have on more than one occasion become discouraged and considered resigning. If that shocks you, then you would be even more shocked to know the substantial percentage of ministers who have felt like that.

But when I have been down in the depths, on some occasions Debbie has said to me, how can you consider such a course of action when you look back at all the ways in which God guided you into this calling? My metaphorical memorial stones brought me back – even if reluctantly at times!

What are your memorial stones? If you don’t have a heap of them, then perhaps now is the time to start collecting them.

Because it’s time to set out on that new beginning to which God has called us, following his lead, living in his ways, stretching our faith, and being sustained by remembering his mighty deeds.