40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Joshua 3:1-4:24 (Episode 184)

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

Israel finally crosses the Jordan. God ensures that the people know He is with Joshua in the same way He was with Moses. What is significate about something taking three days? Chad and Daniel have a lot to say about the Jordan River and the role it plays in scripture. All this and more is discussed. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conference Chad in Oregon  Great Freedom Conference Hamburg, Germany Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. you can go over to 1517.org slash podcast check out all the other podcasts that are part of that big family also while you're over at 1517 you can go to the events page you can find the here we still stand link we're only about we're exactly from the time this releases we're three weeks out three weeks we'll be in san diego there's a handful and i mean just a few tickets left might not even be there by this point but if they are you'll go ahead and grab them up especially if you're local in california you want to be you want to be one of the last ones in you can do that

also speaking of events we got an exciting event that we're going to be a part of the registration just opened and since i know because i've seen the data that we have listeners all over europe germany specifically we're going to be in germany me chad eric scott keys a whole bunch of other people uh that we're excited to meet we're going to be at the great freedom conference in hamburg Germany you can I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go to the website you can register hey if you're in Germany or if you're in traveling distance to Germany I know how this works over there in Europe I know that you can get from Ireland to Germany or Scotland to Germany that's just like me going down to Texas to visit Chad it's even less than that I think yeah probably is

this is a small area that you guys are living in come see us we're going to be at the Great freedom conference that's in may of next year yeah it's gonna be cool i can't wait yeah it's gonna be a good time chad uh what else is going on well speaking of travel i'm uh uh heading up to damascus oregon right outside portland this weekend if you're in that area come join us uh i'm be kind of last minute if you don't know about it already but i'll be at christ divine lutheran church in damascus uh i think we're starting around nine o'clock ten o'clock on saturday morning anyway all the information is is on the 1570 website or you can check out my my facebook page i've got a link posted there for the details so yeah if you're in that area the country then

come out and join us we'll be talking about something that evidently you're interested in because you're listening to this podcast talk about uh the scandalous grace of god in in the lives of some old testament characters so if you're free saturday come see us yeah i'll put a link to to the event page on 1317 in the show notes too so you can just click on that if you want to know where it is and all that yeah good deal

alright so we are we've made it to chapter 3 of Joshua so far we've done one chapter per episode we'll see if we can pick up the pace a little bit yeah I think we're going to try to today we're going to try to cover two chapters because Joshua 3 and 4 are one big unit

I guess they divided the chapter because if they If they hadn't have, it would have been like a super long chapter. I'm not sure, but that could be the only reason because there really is no break in the narrative. It goes from the kind of preparation period for crossing the Jordan River until they actually crossed the Jordan River and finally set foot in the promised land. Of course, along with that, we have a lot of emphasis upon the Ark of the Covenant and these stones these actually two sets of 12 stones that are part of the i guess you might call the

iconography of the event the image that's associated with it so there's actually there's a lot that's going on in this particular story because it in many ways is the counterpart to the crossing the red sea and we'll we'll unpack that a little bit as we get into the narrative but anyway it is all one one enclosed story between joshua 3 1 and joshua 4 24 it's a lot of good stuff you got chad you should never try to figure out why they did the chapter divisions the way they did i have i've given up on this because i find that there is some chapters that you have no idea like why like why did you make this chat both these chapters so short why isn't this just one thing uh then you have other issues where they're like absolutely repeat and they'll have

a super long long long chapter and then you have something like this where like they probably just should have let it go and they didn't so i i don't know what the what the madness behind this method was but i've i've given up trying to figure out what exactly they're doing well you know that uh things were not going to be perfect when they can't even get the very first chapter of the bible right right i mean right like so the creation account does not end at the end of genesis 1 it ends at the fourth verse of chapter 2 i mean it's obvious i mean you don't even get to the sabbath day in genesis 1 so they can't even get the first chapter of the bible divided rightly as far as the narrative as a whole i it's i'm sure it's a it's it's nothing but a legend but uh it actually

actually makes sense that was it steven langton is he the is he the one that made these divisions anyway whoever did it the story i heard was that sometimes he uh he made these divisions in the text when he was like riding a horse and the horse would like stumble here i put the put the division to the wrong place well it's probably a legend but actually it makes sense when you look at some of these weird and irrational chapter divisions we have in the bible oh i did it anyway there's some that are um it's so weird when this isn't a new testament too we were actually just experienced this where you know besides the chapter division sometimes you'll have like chapter headings and then you have other headings within the chapter and a chapter will end uh in the new testament

like a pauline epistle will end and then like the next chapter will start and be one a chapter heading with one verse and then another heading because that verse is completing the thought of the previous chapter and you're like okay you literally started this chapter one verse too early yeah yeah it is one of those i don't know if i pointed out this out in the podcast or not i know i have in classes that i've taught but the the book that we hold in our hands i know people hold their phone in their hands now but uh stick with me here the book we hold in our hands uh which is just an English translation of the Bible, is already interpreted in multitudes of ways. The translation is part interpretation, and the division is also part of the interpretation.

Because, of course, how it's divided up in not only chapters, but also even verses, that affects the way that we perceive the story, and thus affects our interpretation of it. So, it's already like several stages into interpretation by the time you're actually holding the Bible. Yeah, my rule is if a chapter starts with the word therefore, you done messed up. Right, yeah. You know it's building on something. Okay, well, that's a little foray into some of the history of the Bible, I suppose. all right so let's let's jump in here and see what we got coming up so this is the the whole thing is about the crossing of the Jordan and I've divided I've debated exactly how to how to

tackle this I guess we'll just read the first first few verses just to kind of get us in it gets into the story and then we might skip around a little bit because this is one of those narratives where there's several times where verses or ideas or actions are repeated, and you have multiple themes that are voiced multiple times. So we'll get into the story, and then we might jump around a little bit. So let me read the first few verses. Then Joshua rose early in the morning. He and all the sons of Israel set out from Shittim and came to the Jordan, and they lodged there before they crossed. And it came about at the end of three days that the officers went through the midst of the camp. And they commanded the people saying, when you see the Ark of the

Covenant of the Lord your God with the Levitical priest carrying it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. However, there shall be between you and it a distance of about 2,000 cubits by measure. Do not come near it that you may know the way by which 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 spoke to the priest saying take up the ark of the covenant and cross over ahead of the people so they took up the ark of the covenant and went ahead of the people

now the lord said to joshua this day i will begin to exalt you in the sight of all israel that they may know that just as i have been with Moses, I will be with you. You shall moreover command the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant, saying, when you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan. Okay, that takes us through the first eight verses. We'll stop there for a minute and talk about a few of the details that have emerged so far. One of the things that first jumped out to me, and maybe this is because I was checking out these verses in the original in hebrew is that there's a lot of language here that is uh kind of like this neon language it's

just like glowing it's like catching your attention and drawing that attention to earlier narratives because if you look at the the hebrew of just like verse one about rising early in the morning and this language of uh coming to a body of water and lodging and crossing all of all of this particular language, whether it's a verb or whether it's a noun, is hearkening back to a lot of previous narratives. Everything from all the times that the Israelites set out, which literally in the Hebrew is pull up stakes. I guess we still use that metaphor, not often, but sometimes in English about, you know, you're moving from one place to another, so you're pulling up stakes. Well, literally in the Hebrew, that's what the verb is for set out. And with them, it's not so

much a metaphor is a reality you're living in tents the tents are staked down so you pull up the stakes in order to move from one location to another so they pull up stakes they they come to a body of water we've encountered that before and we'll we'll talk about that more as we go through the narrative and we have this language of lodging as well and of course that is what the israelites have been doing for a very very long time we'll be in a place for a while they'll pull up stakes they'll move somewhere else they'll lodge there for a while they'll pull up stakes they'll move somewhere else so the reason i bring this out is because what you see happening in joshua three and four is kind of a pulling together of a whole lot of different themes that we have

developed in the in the torah and that are now coming to their to their fulfillment everything from the travel to the crossing to what god is going to do miraculously at this body of water Of course, we have the Ark of the Covenant, as well as the priesthood active here. So this beginning of the narrative is already by the use of the language that's describing what's happening with Israelites, already linking us back to earlier narratives as a way of winking at us about the connection between these two things. And we also have, throw this out there, this is verse 2, this language of three days. You know, in the Gospels, it perplexes people sometimes because there'll be this language of three days in connection with Christ's death and resurrection, and it'll say, this happened, these three days, in fulfillment of the Scriptures. and what what the reason it's perplexing is because if you look if you look in the old

testament for like some messianic prophecy that says the messiah will rise again in three days well you're you're going to be looking a long time because it's not there there is no like explicit prophecy in the old testament of some three-day interval between the death and the resurrection of jesus at not at least not in that particular language but what you do the reason it says this happens in fulfillment of the scriptures is because you have the theme of three days as a description of the period of time for waiting for God to do something big. You have that all over the Old Testament. I mean, whether it's a three days journey, for instance, that Abraham takes with Isaac to Mount Moriah, where the sacrifice is going to take place, or whether

it's the there's a three days reference back in exodus chapter it's either 19 or 20 when the israelites are waiting for the theophany it's going to happen at mount sinai or the language of hosea about god reviving us on the third day i mean there's there's a whole long list of these it just go to some go to like bible hub sometime and type in three days search that or type in third day, search that, and it's going to come up over and over in the Old Testament. What happens is this becomes the Old Testament's way of designating the period of time in which you're waiting for God to accomplish some big thing, to do some great wonder, or even to have some kind of unexpected reversal take place, as you see in the case of Genesis 22 and Abraham and Isaac.

so here too when we have this language of three days about they're supposed to wait for three days that's part of this this very vast use in the old testament of the three-day imagery and that is if you ever wonder okay what's this according to the scriptures that the new testament talks about in connection with the resurrection of christ and and the period of time well that's it that's the old testament background of that that particular time period sometimes gotta go to extremes to make you wait three days like having you sit around in the belly of a great fish yeah that's another one exactly yeah so i mean that's and that that of course uh fits with that that whole theme right yeah you're you're waiting uh you're doing you're doing nothing but waiting

you're doing nothing nobody i mean there's not not all that you can do uh when you're when your belly but fish so whether you know whether you're like there underwater or you're at the foot of a mountain, or as in Joshua, you're at the bank of a river, you're waiting. And you know, when you think about it, that is typically the way that God works. You know, it's pretty rare to get kind of a microwavable divine action. It doesn't happen fast. Usually you're just kind of waiting for God to do something. I mean, we have all experienced that. In fact, it seems like it's taking god forever to do certain things but he rarely gets in a hurry we get in a hurry all the time especially these days but god really does he uh he bides his time but this is one of the

reasons why when jesus over and over and over says like uh i'm gonna go i'm gonna be killed and then uh on the third day i'll rise again he's talking to a bunch of hebrews The disciples are exclusively Jewish. And this shouldn't be like some crazy, you know, third day. Never heard that before. Right. You know, they should know this. I mean, it makes total sense.

He's like, I'm going to die. But then after you're waiting for three days, I'm going to be alive again. And this should make sense. And it is interesting how the women do go to the tomb on the third day, but not really expecting anything. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah, I guess they were just so bewildered. If they'd have been if they'd have been thinking about the Torah, then, yeah, they might have had some or just actually listened to what Jesus has said. That I have a very good idea of what was going to happen that third. Yeah. I mean, it's still sort of like maybe it's just like ingrained in there in the DNA.

they're like, well, when do you want to go? I don't know. Maybe we'll wait three days and we'll go. Yeah. Right. So we, we see in these opening couple of verses, whether it's getting up early in the morning or setting out, pulling up stakes or the three days, there's, there's a, there's a lot of, of language here that, or phrases here that we're going to see repeated throughout, throughout the rest of the scriptures. So here's, here's basically the command, uh, after these three days here's what's going to happen you're going to see the priest take up the ark of the covenant and they're going to march ahead of you and joshua says that what you need to do is first of all be ready uh that's basically what he's saying about as far as like consecrate yourselves

that is to say don't don't do anything during those three days in some way is going to make you ritually impure and unable to participate fully in what's about about to happen so get ready be prepared because here's what god is about is about to do so the priest will take up the ark and you're going to follow behind but not like close behind you're going to be uh two thousand two thousand cubits which i guess is like close to half a mile or something like that it's a significant distance anyway between you and the ark so they don't there's there's always this is part of what we've seen with the ark before there's always a distance between the ark of the covenant and everybody else even even the highest echelon i mean even the high priest

only gets close really close to the ark once a year in fact the priests carrying the ark of covenant here probably get just about as close as any person possibly can to the ark itself because there there's as you remember when the ark was constructed it was constructed with rings on either side of it four rings i guess on the four corners and poles were inserted into these and so that's the way that that's the way the ark was was transported so there's always a distance at least between most of israel and in the ark of the covenant so uh they take the ark and everybody follows behind it because they don't know for sure which way they're supposed to go and so the ark is going to lead the way so this is actually nothing new i mean in some ways it is

but the image of the ark leading israel is something that we've seen multiple times because it was the Ark that led them to the point where they now are. Over and over, when it was time for them to pull up stakes and to move from one place to another, the whole tabernacle had to be unassembled, packed up, all of the utensils had to be prepared for the travel, and the Ark itself would have led the way. In fact, since we're talking about that, let me go back here to to Numbers chapter 10, and read you three or four verses here. So this is Numbers 10, 33 through 36. It says, thus they set out from the mount of the Lord three days journey. So this is when they're finally, this is after, so they go to Sinai after leaving Egypt, they go to Sinai,

they stay there for a long, long time, over a year, and now they're finally leaving. So they're pulling up stakes, they're journeying, and here's how it's described. They set out for the mount of the Lord, three days journey, there's that three days again, with the ark of the covenant of the Lord journeying in front of them for the three days to seek out a resting place for them. Now That's impregnant language there, because what we see happening in Numbers 10.33 is now finally going to be brought to its conclusion in the book of Joshua. Notice it says it's seeking out a resting place for them. Well, in some ways, it did find that. It did find places to rest along the way.

But the true resting place was going to be when they entered, of course, into the Holy Land. so the ark of god is journeying ahead of the israelites to find a resting place for them and it finally does here in joshua chapter three and four let me read on and the cloud of the lord was over them by day when they set out from the camp then it came about when the ark set out that moses said and we have a little bit of poetry here so i'm assuming this was some sort of chant anthem that was sung by the Israelites, now listen to the language. This is critical for understanding what's happening in Joshua. They say, rise up, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered and let those who hate you flee before you. And when the ark came to rest, he said, return, O Lord,

to the myriad thousands of Israel. Now that verse 35 is significant. It says, rise up. This is when the ark is setting out rise up oh lord let your enemies be scattered and let those who hate you flee before you so the ark is connected with not only the presence of god and journeying but also with the conquest of enemies which of course is what's about to happen in the rest of the book of joshua so the ark isn't there just as a guide nor is it there just as an emblem of a visible emblem of the invisible presence of God. It's also there as sort of the, I don't know what you'd call it, sort of like the emblem of upcoming victory over enemies. I mean, something like that. So it's signaling not only the presence of God, but also has sort of this military significance.

Like it's the true army, if you will. It's scattering the enemies of Israel before them. those who hate them are fleeing before fleeing before the ark so what is talked about way back in numbers chapter 10 about the ark leading them and the ark uh guiding them into a new place a resting place and scattering the enemies that that that kind of language which which was applicable back in numbers 10 is truly applicable here in in joshua 3 and 4 this is when it's actually going to be seen most apparently. Okay, so they take up the ark, and then we have verse 7. We have one of the verses that says expressly why God is doing what he's doing. That is the question that you have to ask here, because presumably, even though the waters were

deep, they could have found a place to ford the river at this time of year. So this isn't just for practicality purposes in other words god is it just like making it easy for them to get across the jordan river we do know the waters were deep because this was the springtime this was during barley harvest and every year what happens is that the snows that that mount that melt rather at the at the very beginning of the jordan river they as those as those snows melt then flow down the jordan there's a lot of flooding a lot of flooding that happens so it was time of year and so the waters were deeper than normal but presumably there would have been some way that israel could have gotten across the river so but this isn't done just to to help them get across

the river there's a far more important reason or reasons that god is doing what he's doing and one of these is is as i said in verse seven god says to joshua this day i will begin to exalt you in the side of all Israel, that they may know that just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. So just like at the crossing of the Red Sea, we saw that the people not only believed in God, but they believed in Moses. So they trusted in him as their divinely appointed leader. So now this is going to be God's occasion to do the exact same thing for Joshua. This is going to be the uh the way in which god elevates joshua as the new moses as the one who is going to stand in the shoes of moses and take over take over the leadership of the nation so this is a way this

is god's way of putting his emperor mater very visibly and very unforgettably upon abad and joshua yeah if you think about it it's you think about it it's got to be a freaky thing for them to have Moses actually die. I mean, they're rebellious and stiff-necked people or whatever, but when Moses dies, that does have to be freaky because when push came to shove, he was sort of the instrument used to bring about deliverance and provision.

I mean, he's the one that's saying, hey, stuff's going to come out of the sky for you to eat. He's the one that's there for the Red Sea thing. he's the one that is like smacking the rock or speaking to the rock or whatever he's doing to the rock he's the one throwing branches in the water and making it sweet so i mean when he's gone you might be like well i'm not thrilled about this 40 years in the wilderness thing that he's been taking us on but i'm really freaked out that he's not around because like we'd all be dead right now if he wasn't he hadn't been around yeah i mean he he's a

known quantity, right? Yeah. People know Moses and he's the only, the only leader that they've, that they've ever known. I mean, this is, this is by far a perfect analogy, but just imagine if you're, uh, how old you're, you're 20 or you're 40 years old, whatever. And you've only known one president. I mean, your whole life, there's only been one, you know, of course it wouldn't be like that in the United States, but just suppose you've only known one president. Well, you know, yeah, you're going to know him pretty well. You can always strengthen his weaknesses and he's very much a known quantity, but all of a sudden, if he, if he dies and somebody, somebody news coming along, it's like, well, what in the world is this going to be like, you know, everything that we've

known is now going to be different. You know, is he going to be able to, to do the exact same things that the previous leader did uh he's going to be strong enough what's going to be like so there's a so you have that but you also have psychologically just all of the you know the change that's about to take place everything's going to be different for the israelites now so i'm sure that you know they're stressed out they're nervous so they're also excited at the same time and having something new like a new leader thrown in there just uh is going to make things even more kind of perplexing for a while yeah anytime you have like sort of this mono leader thing it's freaky i mean israel will experience this over and over again with kings but uh yeah

if you have a king and that guy dies and he's been the king for however long you're totally freaked out because the next guy is probably gonna who knows how long he's gonna be there it's not like they have elections and they are they have term limits so you're like i don't know if this is gonna be good every every time every time one if a good king dies you're like i don't know man like what what if this other what is this new guy you know what if his son is a total you know a total freak like this would be bad and it's gonna be bad for a while yeah it was like that with solomon solomon was was a good king in many ways but he was also also taxed the hell out of people yeah so i'm sure there were a lot of you know and made him

work all these huge building projects so he's making his citizens work and so yeah i mean there were a lot of good things but a lot of bad things too and then his son comes along rebel and everyone's like what's gonna be like with him maybe we should ask him to lower our taxes be a little nicer than solomon and red bomb comes along he's like oh you thought it's about under my dad well i'll show you this uh youthful arrogance going on and ends up splitting israel into two different kingdoms so yeah you just you never know what's gonna yeah this is this is before they're like well we'll only have to put up with it for four years and we'll just vote them out yeah yeah they're like we last time we tried to raise an insurrection against the leader of the

ground opened up and ate a bunch of us all right yeah not a good idea don't want that happening again so what happens next uh we i guess we gotta keep moving if we're gonna finish this so i'm gonna i'm gonna start summarizing a little bit of the story here and we'll pick up some of the uh some of the details so they uh joshua tells him here's what's gonna happen so the priests had the ark and when they get to the edge of the jordan when their when their feet go into the water, then we're going to have the Red Sea, part two, happen. But instead of the waters just kind of forming a wall on either side of them, it's going to be a little bit different because the waters are actually going to form a heap a lot further up. I can't remember the mileage here,

but there's a place called Adam or Adam, spelled exactly the same as the Adam we know from the opening chapters of genesis there's a place called that and the waters formed a heap way up there so this is this isn't just like 50 yards or 100 yards or even a mile from where israel crossed the jordan river this is way upstream and of course it's different too because when you have when you're crossing the red sea you're crossing a sea and so you got walls of water on either side of you. It's not like that. So there's like a divine dam, if you will, that forms much further up the river that blocks these waters. And when that happens, Israel is going to cross over the Jordan River. And it says they did this in a hurry. They weren't just kind of lollygagging around. They got

over the river in a hurry, but that wasn't all that was going to take place. Joshua also says that he's going to take one guy from each of the tribes of Israel, and each guy is going to take a rock, presumably a pretty big rock, I'm guessing one, you know, just as big as he could carry, and they're going to take this out of the Jordan and carry it with them on the other side, and they're going to set these up as a memorial to visually document what happened at the crossing of the jordan so this is referred to probably three or four times in these two chapters about this is going to take place and then this does take place and this is why it takes place but then we're also surprised because after all of this talk about these 12 guys taking these 12

stones out of the jordan setting them up on the other side of the jordan all of a sudden we realize that joshua is going to do his own thing too because this is in chapter four um i can't find the verse right now oh verse nine yeah so joshua has kind of his own thing that's going to do so he takes 12 stones just him and he sets them up in the middle of the river so this is kind of confusing when you're first reading through the story you're like wait wait are the 12 stones in the river are the 12 stones like taken out of the river and taken to the other side well yes you got two piles of stones. So 12 guys take two stones, set them up as a memorial on the Holy Land side of the Jordan. And then Joshua takes 12 stones and sets them up in the

middle of the Jordan as sort of a, I guess, a monument or a memorial right there in the river itself as a memory of what happened at the crossing. So after the priests stand there, they cross over on dry ground they do the whole stone thing all israel goes through then the priest walk out of the jordan river and the waters are released and the waters return to their to their ordinary ordinary levels so that's that's kind of the story if you're not familiar with it or if it's been a while since you since you read it that's that's everything that that happens there. Now, let's kind of delve a little bit in the time that we have left into kind of the theological significance of some of this. I love to refer to the crossing of the Jordan

when it comes time to talk about the baptism of Jesus, and not only to link these two stories, but also to pull in some other narratives as well, because here's the way I think that we should think of the Jordan. First of all, it's typical Old Testament stuff to talk about the theological significance of geography. So you see this throughout the Old Testament where geography is theology. We've seen this multiple times already, whether it's Egypt, whether it's wilderness, whether it's the Red Sea, Mount Sinai, all these various locations where different things happen, like Marah and Meravah, these places of trying and testing. So as one author I read somewhere put it, that Israel puts its sin on the map. It not only puts its sin on

the map, though, it also puts God's salvation on the map, so that geography always has this theological message that's connected with it when it comes to the scriptures. Well, what's the theological message of the Jordan? Well, if I were to summarize it, it'd be this, that the Jordan is the place where the old gives way to the new. So the Jordan is like this liminal space, this place where there's going to be a transition between what was and what now is. You certainly see this in Joshua 3 and 4. So here you have the sons of Israel. They had been promised the Holy land. They've been waiting. And now finally, they leave behind that old. They leave behind the promise, and they come into reality. They leave behind the waiting, and they come into the

fulfillment. But this is the only story we have that happening. You've also had this happening in the case of Naaman. Remember, the Syrian general who has leprosy? He comes to seek out healing, and the prophet tells him, we'll go wash in the Jordan. And of course, he doesn't want to it first, but he finally does. And what happens? His skin is restored like that of a little child. And so, and then he not only, he's not just healed, but then he goes on to confess that Yahweh is the only true God of heaven and earth. So Naaman leaves behind the old, leaves behind leprosy, leaves behind paganism, and enters into cleansing, into healing, and into the confession to the one true God. Same thing happens with Elijah and Elisha. When Elijah is about to be

taken up into heaven, it's like we have Joshua 3 repeated again, because Elijah and Elisha go to the Jordan, and Elijah strikes the Jordan River with his cloak, the waters split, and they cross over on dry ground. And then after that, Elijah, of course, is taken up into heaven. So it's a transition from an earthly life to a heavenly life for Elijah. And there's a transition between Elijah being the prophet of Israel to Elisha being the prophet of Israel. So with all that kind of as a background, when you get to the gospels and the baptism of Jesus, you understand that there's really one and only one place in the land of Israel where the Messiah can be baptized. It's got to be at the Jordan because the whole Old Testament history has set us up for that

to happen. Because it's here where John gives away to Jesus, where it happens there on the border between the wilderness and the promised land. And so this is the way in which God is bringing about a new Israel in fulfillment of his promise through the Messiah. This is where Christ begins to take on our sin by putting himself into the water, fulfilling all righteousness. So the Jordan is not just like one option among many where Jesus could have been baptized. There's a reason John went to the Jordan River to baptize instead of anywhere else, not just because there was a lot of water there, but because this is where he was standing as the prophet between the old and the new. He was standing in this wet liminal space because this

was where Israel would now, through baptism in preparation for the Messiah, enter into the promise of the Messiah that's about to be fulfilled. So the Jordan becomes this theological weighty place already beginning with Joshua and then continuing on with the rest of these Old Testament stories. Yeah, I mean John showing up in the Jordan baptizing

another thing that's interesting about that by the way, if you want to take the academy class I do start with the last two verses of the Old Testament which are I will send you Elijah now of course

Jesus says this is John if you're willing to accept it this is John the Baptist and again you have this thing where John shows up in the Jordan that Elijah throw his cloak down and then gets sucked into heaven and the reason

people are even thinking like oh well maybe someday Elijah will come back people wonder if he was Elijah because he doesn't die so when a guy doesn't die you assume he might return and then all of a sudden here comes this guy and he's in the Jordan that's where he shows up he's like he shows up into jordan and so there's all kinds of crazy stuff that goes on at the

jordan yeah yeah yeah it really is i mean it's it's super significant and it just to to reiterate one more time it's it's why paying attention to where things happen is so important in the scriptures i don't i think that's just the reason i stress that is because i don't think it's something that we think about as much today i mean we associate certain things happening in certain places but in the scriptures not only do you have that happening like important things happening in certain places but usually those important things at those specific places repeat themselves or they're connected in some way with a previous event or a future a future event and just to kind of finish it up there that that is really what happens here with the crossing of the

jordan this is the crossing of the sea for this new generation of israelites except this time they don't have an enemy army hot on their heels they're not scared they're not like crying out oh we're gonna die why'd you bring us out in the wilderness you know god must hate us so they're none none of that's going on instead it's a very different atmosphere because now they're about to cross over into the land of their enemies and they're not doing so in fear they're actually crossing over to conquer so it's it's very different it's not a bunch of recently escaped slaves cowering in fear, thinking they're about to die, and then God all of a sudden parts the Red Sea and they cross over, it's very different. Now you have a different generation. They're

ready to do what God tells them to do. They're led by a new man, and they're entering into finally the land of promise. So it's similar to the crossing the Red Sea. That's explicit in 4 chapter 4 verse 23 they are connected but this is a very different kind of crossing it's a crossing no longer out of fear but actually out of hope and faith into what awaits them well this is the difference between uh crossing the red the red sea with moses and crossing the jordan with joshua and these are very different things because you might know that crossing the red sea with the law is different than crossing the jordan with jesus at the perfect way to end there it is all right guys uh thanks for listening podcast has been helpful to you you can go over to 1517.org

go to the donate page you can become a contributor it is people like you that make it possible thank you so much to those of you who support it chad i will see you next week all right see you here We'll be right back.