Now, as I said, the forty years’ wilderness journey is over, and Moses is about to leave. He went up into Mount Nebo, and “God kissed away his soul and buried him.”
Then Joshua was commanded to take charge of the army. The word of the Lord came to him, saying: “Joshua, arise and go over this Jordan. Moses, my servant, is dead.”
There was no president, no general, no marshal about it. There was no title at all, but just merely: “Joshua, arise and go over this Jordan.” Now, Joshua just obeyed, and here you will find the secret of his wonderful success. He did just what the Lord told him to do. He did not stand, like many people would have done, and say: “I don’t know how I am going to get these people over. Hadn’t you better wait, Lord, until the next day? How am I to get these three million people over this angry flood? Hadn’t we better wait until the waters recede?”
No! Joshua did not say that. He had got his command from God: “Arise and go.” When the Lord gave orders, that was enough. He had got His word, and he brings these children of Israel down in sight of the swollen stream. Faith must be tried. God will not have people whom He can not try.
Joshua brings them there in three days, in sight of the angry flood, with not a word of murmuring. If he had brought them there forty years before, what murmuring there would have been! We will get trained--every one of us.
They had had their faith tried in those forty years in the wilderness, and now they murmured not. There was not a word of complaint. But forty years before they would have asked, when they had got opposite Jericho: “What is He going to do? How are we going to get over? We’ve got to have a bridge or a pontoon. And even if we get over, they will see us and defeat us. They will slay us here on the bank of Jordan. Guess we had better turn around and go back.”
That is about what they would have said, what they would have tried, and what they would have done forty years before. But now Joshua tells the people that the priests are to walk out in front of them, and that the moment the priests touched the water--the moment the soles of their feet touched the water--the water was to be cut off.
There was faith for you! When those seven men took up the ark God was with them, and the moment the soles of their feet touched the water the waters were cut off, and they passed into the middle of the stream and put down the ark.