All right, and Bonnie, did you
change it to this microphone? Is it on? Testing one, there we go. You can open your Bibles to the
third chapter of Joshua. Joshua chapter 3. Heavenly Father,
bless us for the sake of your Son. See us through him that
we might appear acceptable in your sight. In Christ's name
we pray, amen. We'll begin reading at verse
9 and read the remainder of the chapter, Joshua said to the Israelites,
come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God. This is
how you will know that the living God is among you and that he
will certainly drive out before you the Canaanites, Hittites,
Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. See, the ark of the covenant
of the Lord of all the earth will go into the Jordan ahead
of you. Now then, choose 12 men from
the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. As soon as the priests
who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, set
foot in Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and
stand up in a heap. So when the people broke camp
to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant
went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage
all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who
carried the Ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's
edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up
in a heap a great distance away at a town called Adam in the
vicinity of Zarephan, while the water flowing down to the sea
of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, was completely cut off. So the
people crossed over opposite Jericho. The priests who carried
the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground
in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel passed by until the
whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground. Now, this event happens about
40 years and one month after the Israelites left the land
of Egypt. And they had the promise that
they would enter this promised land and that the Lord would
drive out enemies before them and give it to them. Through
unbelief, one generation forfeited their ability to enter in to
this land of promise. And so a generation of time,
which normally was considered about 40 years. That was roughly
how it got divided up. But long enough for that generation,
all those aged 20 and up, they all passed away. And now all
that remains are those who were under 20 years old at the time
of the rebellion. they are going to enter the land
not under the leadership of Moses, the lawgiver, but under the leadership
of Joshua, whose name is Jesus, pointing to our Savior the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we cannot enter God's rest
under the leadership of Moses, we enter it under the leadership
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the subject of today's lesson
is assurance. Assurance. Because Joshua said
this, this, in verse 10, this is how you will know that the
living God is among you. Now, to make sure that we're
all on the same page in our understanding of what we mean by assurance,
there are two kinds of assurance. there is what we might call objective
assurance. Everyone who trusts the Lord
Jesus Christ is assured by the integrity of God, the promise
of God, his oath, his power, by all the characteristics of
God. He is assured by God that he shall at the appointed time
appear in his presence faultless and full of joy. But then there's what we might
call subjective assurance, and that is when we feel certain. When we go from, I don't know
how to put it, trust, That is, you can trust something and still
wonder whether or not it will deliver you safe or do for you
what you trusted it to do. Because trust is not so much
an emotion. Trust is not so much an intellectual
state of mind. Trust is an action. an act of
the will, so to speak, where you simply entrust something
to someone else. And so there are some, probably
most, and I would say all believers at varying times in their life,
they have times they are trusting God. They have committed the
care of their souls unto the Lord Jesus Christ, but they still
doubt. Now, the simple reason for this
is that faith is a spiritual thing. That is, it arises within
the spirit of a person who has been born again by the work of
the Holy Spirit. But we are not only spirit. We are also flesh, and flesh
is what we were Everything we were when we came into this world,
born of our natural parents, that's flesh. And the grace of God that brings
salvation has not yet done anything to our flesh. It is the same
thing it was when we were born. And the flesh is entirely, that
is the flesh in its present state, is entirely unable to understand
and believe the gospel of Christ. So the believer is this curious
combination all the time of belief and unbelief. And that conflict
between flesh and spirit on this matter concerning the gospel
is what creates doubt, which by very definition is the absence
of complete assurance. Today's subject is the second
form of that assurance, the subjective version of it. How can we live,
as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, how can we live in that
state of complete confidence that all is well with our souls,
and that we are safe throughout our lives, and then when we die,
we're just as safe, for all the promises of God can be trusted,
and we have nothing to fear. How can we live that way? John Newton, wrote these words,
and I imagine everybody here will be able to identify with
them somewhat. Now John Newton is also the one who wrote the
hymn Amazing Grace. He wrote many other good hymns,
but here's one he wrote. It says, "'Tis a point I long
to know, and oft it gives me anxious thought. Do I love the
Lord, or no? Am I his, or am I not? If I love, why am I this? Why this dull and lifeless frame? Hardly sure can they be worse
who have never heard His name. Could my heart so hard remain,
prayer a task and burden prove? Every trifle give me pain, if
I knew a Savior's love. When I turn my eyes within, all
is dark and vain and wild. Filled with unbelief and sin,
can I deem myself a child? If I pray or hear or read, sin
is mixed with all I do. You that love the Lord indeed,
tell me, is it thus with you? Yet I mourn my stubborn will,
find my sin a grief and thrall. Should I grieve for what I feel
if I did not love at all? Could I joy his saints to meet,
choose the ways I once abhorred? find at times the promise sweet,
if I did not love the Lord. Lord, decide the doubtful case."
Now, that shows you, you know, man wrote Amazing Grace, and
what confidence we get singing that song, but now he's talking
about himself and his own experience. Doubtful. Lord, decide the doubtful
case. Thou who art thy people's son,
shine upon thy work of grace, if it be indeed begun. Let me love thee more and more. If I love at all, I pray. But if I have not loved before,
help me to begin today. I don't know about you, but that's
quite accurate expression of my own heart and how I live on
a regular basis. If I look within, all is dark. All I see are reasons to seriously doubt if I know
God at all. And yet, on the other hand, I can't think of any place I'd
rather be right now than here, or any other people I'd rather
be with than you. Well, would that be true if I
didn't love the Lord? So we've got these competing
things within us, and how is the case to be decided? Well,
I wish I could get this thing to stay in one spot. Maybe I
need to take the advice of Red Green, if you know who that is,
and duct tape this to my face. Anyway, the difficulty of having assurance
is that it is much easier to see what we are naturally than
to see what we are spiritually, because seeing is a natural thing. Therefore, it sees natural things
very easily. Not only that, another difficulty
is God never intended that we should experience a sense of
assurance by looking at ourselves. And I think a good picture of
why we don't have assurance is found here in verse 15. Now the Jordan is at
flood stage all during the harvest. So there on the east side of
Jericho, they can see across it, and right across that river
is the land of promise. Now, I think most of the time,
the Jordan River doesn't have much of a flow. It's not, I mean,
you can walk across it. Your feet'll get wet, but unless
you're in a particularly deep spot where something's been dug
out, not a problem. The river that flowed behind
my house was kind of the same, the Guyandot River. During the
summer, it might be that deep. But this was flood stage. And
I remember the Guyana River, every spring would rise about
20 feet or so. And so that's what they were
looking at. They were looking at a river flowing by that no
man would dare to cross. If you tried to walk across the
Jordan River at this time, you would be swept downstream, period. And we look, and remember we
have noted that the Jordan represents death within the framework of
the gospel. It's not our death when we come
to the end of the natural life that's being spoken of here.
It's being spoken of Christ's death. Because the ark went ahead
of the people, and that ark is a picture of Christ. And he goes
through the Jordan, and the Jordan opens up that we can pass through
safely. Nonetheless, here we are, and
we think, you know, naturally, we're on the east side of Jordan,
and we can see the blessings of God. We can see the things
that are promised, but between where we are and what we see,
naturally speaking, there flows this river that no man dare cross. And we know the issues are very
important, and the more important an issue is, the more prone we
are to doubt the outcome. Because after all, if it's pretty
much an insignificant matter, even if you're wrong, it's not
going to make a big difference. But when it's serious, you've
been diagnosed with an illness. There are several ways. that
different doctors deal with this illness. And if whatever way
your doctor uses is not effective, you're going to die. And so these
various ways are presented to you. And so you say, well, now,
which one should I choose? Well, you choose one. And you
go with such and such a doctor, and he begins the treatments
the whole time. Yeah, you've entrusted yourself to that doctor's
care, but you're wondering, Is this really the right way? And
it'll trouble you because if you're wrong on that matter, it means death. So it was with
these Jews here, and so it is with us regarding entering in
to the fullness of the blessings of God and escaping the wrath
of God. So these are serious things.
No wonder we're concerned about them. And no wonder it can expose
us to doubts. Now, some consider assurance
to be a presumption, as though no one should ever be assured
or have a sense of assurance that when they die, all will
be well. And you know something? prove to others or to yourself
that you are saved and assured of it, then your assurance is
a presumption. Because you see, salvation and
the grace of God and the faith that arises from it, there is no evidence for it. There is nothing about you that
can be brought forward and shown to others to convince them that
you indeed are a child of God. And the same thing is true of
you within your own conscience. In this life, there will never
be anything about you that you can look at and say, OK, because
of that, I know I'm a child of God. And if you can find something
in you that convinces you that you're a child of God, your conviction
is false. or it's built on sand, and when
the storm of judgment comes, your house is going to collapse. Assurance, a real, bona fide, legitimate cause of assurance
does not arise from anything we see about us. If it does, we're in trouble. According to Joshua, let's see
what this assurance is. He says, verse nine, come here
and listen to the words of the Lord your God. Now, I'm glad
that Joshua said that. Why? Well, that lets us know
Joshua is not just giving us his opinion of the matter. He
wasn't giving the Jews his opinion of the matter. He says, listen
to what the Lord says. You want confidence? You want
assurance? You want boldness? Here's how
you get, here's how God says to get it. Verse 10, this is
how you will know that the living God is among you and he'll certainly
drive out all these enemies. Verse 11, see, behold. the ark of the covenant of the
Lord of all the earth will go in the Jordan ahead of you." Now, how can we, as believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have been given many precious
promises, according to the Apostle Peter, how can we be certain
that we shall indeed someday possess the fullness of them? Behold, the ark of Jehovah, the
Lord of heaven and the earth, goes before you into the Jordan."
What is that ark? It is a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ. We've pointed this out in the
lessons, but I'm going to repeat it. That ark was considered the
throne of God. For it says, Jehovah is enthroned
between the cherubim. And then that ark was where the
mercy seat was, where the blood of atonement was poured out. Mercy and grace were obtained
there by the pouring out of the blood of the sacrifice of atonement. Well, Jesus Christ is our sacrifice
of atonement. He is the priest that brought
it into the presence of God, poured it out there on the altars,
on the Ark of the Covenant, so to speak, the real Ark of the
Covenant, if you want to say that, in the presence of God. So all these things are brought
together, the throne of God, justice, power, authority, the
blood of Christ, justifying God in treating me with grace. And he said, that's what will
go ahead of you. So there's Christ. It's in Christ
that these things are all bound together. Justice and mercy have
kissed. Righteousness and peace, they're
together in Christ. And so here was how the day was
going to go. Joshua says, here's how it's
going to work out. The priests are going to take the ark according
to the rules laid out for them in the law of God. They bear
the ark. And they're going to approach
the Jordan River. And as soon as their feet the
sole of their feet, the very bottom of it, as soon as it touches
that water. He said, the waters are going
to pile up upstream and flow away downstream. And they shall
bear the ark, and they'll stand right in the middle of Jordan
on dry ground. He said, this is how you know
that the Lord will drive out your enemies. Now what does that mean to you
and me? After all, we're not looking for anything in this
life. We don't consider the promise
of God as pertaining to natural things. I'm not saying that,
I mean, I know we trust God throughout this life, we trust Him for our
daily food and all that, but the spiritual promises the promise
of the forgiveness of sin, the promise of eternal life, the
promise of being made like Christ, and the promise of being with
Christ. These things are not experienced here. What certainty can we have that
we shall experience them in days to come? Where do we look? We
look to Christ and Him crucified. that crossed his crossing of
the Jordan. He entered in by his own blood
into the very presence of God. And that Jordan representing
death, he entered into it, and such was the dignity of his person. And the righteousness of his
life and nature and the completeness of his death, that his place in that death
stopped the flood of wrath. Now, if I were to have approached
that river with no ark to look at, I don't think I would have
put my foot in there. I remember in the spring of 1967,
that river behind our house, that's the biggest it ever flooded,
and probably, I think there was a flood in 37. And the Mississippi,
and the Ohio, and then the Gyandot River, all of them backed up.
And people that went through that flood in that area still
talk about it, you know. But this one was pretty big.
If it had come up another six feet, it would have been in our
house. But I remember this fellow, two or three years older than
me, lived down the road from me. He had a little boat, and
he was out in the area that the flood had entered. It wasn't the normal channel
of the river. I mean, you could see water everywhere,
but nearly all the current was farther out there in the middle.
And he was putting it around that little boat, and it was
just a little john boat with a little outboard on the back
of it. And he says, you want to take a ride? And I said, sure.
And I got in that boat, and he headed out for that moving water. Scared me to death. I didn't
even want to be in there in a boat, much less would I have tried
to walk across the Guyandot River. And I wouldn't walk across the
Jordan at flood stage. And even if I were inclined to
try fording the Guyandot River in a boat, well, there were no
boats made available to the Jews on that day. How would they ever
get across? How could they ever have any
confidence? Well, the ark went in ahead of them. And when the
ark went in, the waters stopped. And they could see it. They walk
across the Jordan River on dry ground. I used to picture this scene
as a relatively narrow channel across the Jordan River, or at
least the water's piled up on one side, and that it wasn't
very far away. And so I'd imagine them crossing
and Kind of looking at that wall of water, wondering, is this
going to give way any time? Looking again at verse 16. The water from upstream stopped
flowing. It piled up in a heap a great
distance away at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarephan. Well, I'd never I know I've read
all the Bible, but I don't even remember any reference to the
city of Adam before. So I had to look it up. It was
about 20 miles upstream from where Jericho was right across
the river. That's where the Jews were. They
were across the Jordan River from Jericho. The city of Adam,
I mean, they've not positively identified it, but it said it's
in the region of Zarethan, and they know where that is. 20 miles
upstream. And I think it's very interesting
that God had some people who did not know anything about him. They were pagans, and they established
a city and named it Adam. And that's where the wrath of
God stopped flowing for the time that the ark was in there. What does Paul call our Lord
Jesus Christ, the last Adam. The last Adam. And he called him that because
the first Adam stood as a head of the entire human race, the
representative of the entire human race, and whatever he did
was accounted or imputed to all of us. And even though we did
not actively participate in Adam's sin, all of us are held accountable
for it. Now, it's not as though we've
lived innocent lives otherwise. I'm just saying that's the way
that our guilt is assigned to us, and that's where our spiritual
death has come from. And that's what leads us on to
an inevitable second death apart from Christ. But Jesus Christ
is another Adam, another man who stands at the head of a race.
And what he has done is accounted, credited to, assigned to everyone
who's in him. So here's the picture. The ark
goes in and 20 miles up, way back in
yonder eternity. stood the last Adam, and when
the wrath of God got to him, it stopped. And we, who by the
grace of God are made to be the people represented by that Adam,
we go across death, watery, dangerous, flooding death on dry ground. No danger whatsoever. No current to pull us under. No water to fill our lungs. No pressure to wash us away. And the second atom, 20 miles,
or the last Adam, 20 miles upstream. Even in eternity, he's called
the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. God's just wrath stopped when
it got to him. He holds it back by burying it
for his people. And in time, he comes, like that
Ark of Covenant, here into the world where humans can see him. Even though they didn't understand
Him, there He was. But given spiritual understanding, now
we look upon our Lord Jesus Christ with the eyes of faith, and we
see in Him everything accomplished to ensure our safe passage into
the land of rest and promise. And so with confidence, we enter. So long as we're looking at the
ark, Even if we could see 20 miles upstream, so long as we're
looking at the ark, we don't even see that wrath anymore.
We don't see any reason to fear and tremble and doubt. But if we look upstream, and
if we can see all the way, and I don't know whether you could
or not, that'd be a pretty far way to look. But even if we sent
out scouts, we'll go back there and find out where the Jordan
stops. If that's what we think about,
or if we look at ourselves and the weakness, and I'm speaking
in terms now of the illustration, not the reality, but imagine,
you know, by this time, there's people that would have been considered
quite old for that day. Those that were 20 years old,
now about another 40 years have passed. If they looked at their
age and the feebleness that comes with it, they might have wondered
if they'd make it across the Jordan. There were the young who might
think they're too stupid, though the young are not prone to thinking
that. But they might think, what if I get separated from my parents?
I get lost? No. You look at the ark. You look at the free and sovereign
grace of God in Christ Jesus, and with boldness you just walk
through. And your sandals will not even
get wet. And isn't it true that so long
as we behold Christ, all is well in our souls. The moment we look
elsewhere, as John Newton said, all is darkness within. So if anyone ever tells you,
well, in order to get assurance of your salvation, you've got
to see if your character has improved. Your conduct is better
than before. Or if anybody ever tries to,
if you're a believer in Christ, if anybody ever tries to make
accusation against you that you're not a child of God because you
did this, that, and the other, or didn't experience this, or
something else, you tell them, I quit looking at me a long time
ago. You're bringing up things Well,
they sound pretty bad, but I know enough about me, I could tell
you about things that are a whole lot worse than that. But my eyes
are on the ark, and when I see it, I see nothing but dry ground
and safe passage between me and the presence of God. Well, we'll
quit there.