Last study, we saw the priest
go before the people of Israel into the Jordan River, carrying
the Ark of the Covenant, which so beautifully pictures the Lord
Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus went before his
people in death, and he alone satisfied the judgment and the
justice of God's holy law. He is holy, holy, holy, holy. Holy the Father, holy the Son,
holy the Spirit, God in three persons. And he satisfied the
judgment and justice of God's law so that his people might
pass over into life everlasting. That's what crossing the Jordan
represents in pictures. Now, just a word about water.
Last time we saw how God stayed the water and the people walked
across on dry ground, just as he did at the Red Sea. And water,
like our hearts, is unstable. It always flows in a downward
direction. The imaginations of the thoughts
of our hearts are, the scripture says, deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked, only evil and only evil continually.
And water, as water always follows the path of least resistance,
it always conforms to the container that it's in. So it is with our wicked hearts,
unstable, always flowing in a downward path of least resistance. We find it easy to sin. That's
something we find very easy to do. We drink iniquity like water. But before God intervened and
gave us new hearts, our hearts were always conforming to sin,
fulfilling the desires and the lust of the flesh. But when the child of God, by
God's grace, is made to see Christ, the heart, just as Jordan's waters,
is stopped And God changes our heart's direction just as he
did the waters of Jordan by the sovereign power of his might.
And that's what this picture is. And it's on dry ground, the
dry ground of Christ's righteousness. that the child of God passes
from death unto life and enters into the divine rest of his land
of promise. And I'm so thankful that God
is merciful and gracious to us. And that's what we see happening
here in Joshua chapter four. Here we have an account of the
people of Israel leaving the wilderness. Leaving it behind,
can you imagine? I think about this often, how
they must have felt. 40 years and a month almost,
they had wandered in the wilderness. And now the time has come for
them to pass over Jordan into the land of promise. Do you remember that day for
you? You remember the day the Lord
enabled you to Passover, the Jordan, what a glorious day it
was. And the priest carried the Ark
of the Covenant into the Jordan River before the people. We saw
that in chapter 3, verse 3, and also in verse 11 of chapter 3. And the Lord caused the waters
of the river to be cut off, and as I said, a dry pathway to be
formed for the children to cross. Then in Joshua chapter 4, let's
read this chapter together, verse 1. And it came to pass, when
all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake
unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people,
out of every tribe a man, and command you them, saying, Take
you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where
the priest's feet stood firm, twelve stones, and you shall
carry them over with you and lead them in the lodging place
where you shall lodge this night.' Then Joshua called the 12 men
whom he had prepared of the children of Israel out of every tribe
a man. And Joshua said unto them, pass over before the ark of the
Lord your God in the midst of Jordan and take ye up every man
of you a stone upon his shoulder according to the number of the
tribes of the children of Israel. that this may be a sign among
you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to
come, saying, what mean ye by these stones? Then you shall
answer them that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the
ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over Jordan, the
waters of Jordan were cut off and these stones shall be for
a memorial unto the children of Israel forever. And the children
of Israel did so as Joshua commanded and took up 12 stones out of
the midst of Jordan as the Lord spake unto Joshua according to
the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried
them over with them into the place where they lodged and laid
them down there. And Joshua set up 12 stones in
the midst of Jordan in a place where the feet of the priest
which bear the ark of the covenant stood and they are there unto
this day. For the priest which bear the
ark stood in the midst of Jordan until everything was finished
that the Lord commanded Joshua to speak unto the people according
to all that Moses commanded Joshua and the people hasted and passed
over. And it came to pass when all
the people were clean, passed over that the ark of the Lord
passed over and the priest in the midst, in the presence of
the people and the children of Reuben and the children of Gad
and the half the tribe of Manasseh passed over armed before the
children of Israel as Moses spake unto them. About 40,000 prepared
for war passed over before the Lord unto battle to the plains
of Jericho. And on that day, the Lord magnified
Joshua in the sight of all Israel. And they feared him, they reverenced
him, as they feared Moses all the days of his life. And the
Lord spake unto Joshua saying, command the priests that bear
the ark of the testimony that they come up out of Jordan. And
Joshua therefore commanded the priest saying, come ye up out
of Jordan. And it came to pass when the
priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord will
come up out of the midst of Jordan and the soles of the priest's
feet were lifted up into the dry land that the waters of Jordan
returned into their place and flowed over all his banks as
they did before. And the people came up out of
Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and encamped in Gilgal
in the east border of Jericho. And those twelve stones which
they took out of Jordan did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake
unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall
ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these
stones? Then you shall let your children
know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For
the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before
you until ye were passed over as the Lord your God did to the
Red Sea, which he dried up before us until we were gone forever. Gone over, excuse me. That all
the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord. that it is mighty, and that you
might fear the Lord your God forever. Now in verse two, we
see that the Lord instructs Joshua to take 12 men out from the people,
one man for every tribe, to gather a stone, and each one of them
carry it on their shoulders, according to verse five. And
the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant at this point
are still in the Jordan River. And these twelve stones were
to be gathered from the midst of the river where the priests
stand bearing the Ark. And these stones were to be placed
as a memorial at the location of their first night's stay in
the land of promise. Verses 3 and verse 8. Then we
see in verse 9 that Joshua has twelve stones 12 other stones,
I might add, placed in the midst of Jordan, right where the feet
of the priest had stood. Before the priest come out of
the midst of Jordan with the ark, Joshua chooses these men
to go back into the Jordan with 12 more stones. And it was then
that God allowed the waters to return. Now these stones, both
those in the river, And those on the shores of the land of
promise were placed to cause future generations to ask of
their purpose. Daddy, what are these stones
for? Granddad, what are these stones
all about? What mean ye by these stones? That's the title of my message
tonight. It was that they might be told
of the wondrous works of the Lord. The stones proclaimed certain
realities. They declared God's power of
deliverance when he delivered them out of the wilderness into
that land that God had given them, verses six and seven. And
since Israel would soon go to war, We find the tribes of Reuben
and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh joined with them in
their crossing. As you remember, they stayed
on the other side of Jordan, the side opposite of where they
had just crossed. And I'm sure you remember that
this was their promise for inheriting the land on the wilderness side
of Jordan. And when all of Israel was safely
in the land of promise, the ark came behind the people. And when
the priests and the ark were in Canaan, the waters returned
into their place, as we just read. I was thinking today the
first act of every believing child of God is the recognition
of what God has done for them in Christ. When God reveals to
a sinner what he's done for them in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's,
they love to talk about it. I'd love to talk about what the
Lord has done for sinners, don't you? May God make us conscious
to teach our children, our grandchildren, the mighty work of deliverance
accomplished for the redemption and resurrection and ascension
of our Lord Jesus. That's what this is teaching
us. What mean ye by these stones? Now, as we always do, let us
strive again tonight to see what the spiritual significance of
these things are and what can we learn from this fourth chapter
of Joshua. He clearly pitches one thing
and one thing only. This picture's the salvation
wrought by the wisdom and the power of God through the ark,
the Lord Jesus Christ, as all scripture does. That's what all
the scriptures declare. The memorials of the stones,
both in the river and on the land, are symbolic, really, of
the two memorial ordinances given to the church in the confessing
of the death of Christ, baptism and the Lord's table. They're
both ordinances that show forth the Lord's death until He come.
And I'm going to say it again. I never grow tired of saying
it, and I never grow tired of hearing it. And maybe if we keep
preaching it and hearing it, we'll believe it one day as we
ought. This deliverance from death by the death of Christ
is a complete and finished work. I don't suppose, I've said, made
that statement more in the last couple of years. I mean, I just
can't, I can't count the times that I've said it. It's just
become so obvious to me in the studying of scriptures that that's
what salvation is. It's the finished work of Christ.
It's not us doing something to be saved, but resting in the
finished work that he's done for us. Now according to verse
1, Israel was clean passed over. Verse 10 says, until everything
was finished that the Lord commanded. Again in verse 11 it says, and
it came to pass that the people were clean passed over. Everything
involved in the people's salvation was finished. Everything that's
involved in our salvation is finished. And every one of them,
without exception, had clean passed over. One day when God's
gonna wrap the four corners of this world up, when all his people
are saved. And until then, things will continue
as they are. God's still in the saving business,
and sinners are still being saved. And here we find even the two
and one half tribes who had opted to live on the other side of
Jordan, those who lived only just a small stone throw away
from the promised land, they too passed over. And though these
two and a half tribes made a terrible choice, they were still a part
of this journey. Salvation's not based on men
and women's good or bad choices. Aren't you glad? Man, I sure
am. But it's based on God's choice
according to his free and sovereign grace. I'm so thankful for that. Sin being what we are, we make
bad choices, but God is merciful and he's gracious to us. And
what this, our salvation based solely on Christ dying in the
room instead of His people. And with that, the religious
rule declares that there has to be more to it. Now there just
has to be more to it than that. What could be more to the fact
that God Himself, God Himself died to save His people from
their sin? And there be any more to it than
that? The crossing of Jordan pictures the death of Christ
on Calvary's cross, and how clearly this is seen in the first 12
verses by the movement and the positioning of the ark, which,
as I said, pictures the Lord Jesus. What mean ye by these
stones? You think about that. These stones
were buried and raised. They were a monument of God's
great power. The hand of man is capable of
great achievements, no doubt, but men and women cannot give
themselves life. They're nothing but dead stones.
The placing of these stones had no architectural beauty, just
12 muddy stones. While Pharaoh in Egypt would
have looked down on this memorial with contempt, they would have
laughed. They were used to building the big, beautiful pyramids and
palaces. But simplicity is divine. The
simplicity of Christ is divine. Our message is not a difficult
one. It's simplicity in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ did for
you and I what we could not do for ourselves. That's a pretty
simple message, yet impossible to believe apart from divine
revelation. The simplicity of this memorial
is no doubt divine. The scripture asks these questions.
Who gathers the waters in the hollow of his hand? Who upholds
all things by the word of his power? Who takes up the isles
is a very little thing. This simple memorial that was
erected on Jordan's bank has a voice for all mankind. Only
some will hear it. But that voice says, God is almighty. God is powerful. God is sovereign. Now, there were two sets of 12
stones here. One set in the bed of the river
buried by its water, and the other 12 raised from the river
and piled upon the banks in the land of promise. And again, I
ask, what mean ye by these stones? Can Israel enter into the promised
land because of their obedience to the law? Nay, but by the law
shall no flesh be justified, and the burying of the 12 stones
declare very plainly that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom to heaven. Can't do it. We can't keep the
law, and we most certainly can't keep it perfectly. And if we
offend in one point, then we're guilty of the whole law. So there's
no hope for a sinner being saved by keeping the law. The justified
sinner must leave the old man behind, and the body of sin must
be destroyed. We must be born again to both
see and enter the kingdom of God. That's what the Lord told
Nicodemus. As the buried stones speak of
death, so the raised stones speak of resurrection. We're not only
buried with Christ, but we're quickened and raised with Him,
and seated with Him in heavenly places. The buried stones picture
our place on the account of sin, and the raised stones declare
our place on the account of Christ's righteousness. And the first
12 stones speak of weakness, But the second 12 speak of power
and might. The first set declare old things
are passed away, and the second set declare all things become
new. The ark preceded the people into
Jordan, and as the people traveled across, the ark was in their
midst. And then after the people were
all safe in Canaan, The ark came up behind them out of Jordan.
Now, what a beautiful picture that is of the death and the
burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Truly, Jesus
Christ is the beginning and the end. Truly, He is the first and
the last. He's Alpha and Omega. He's the author and the finisher
of our faith. He's all and in all. He's everything. When it comes to salvation, Christ
is everything. And as our forerunner, Christ
entered into the presence of God before us, and we entered
in by Him on a sure and solid and dry foundation. Again, Joshua
3 verse 17, it said, and the priests that bear the ark of
the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst
of Jordan. And all the Israelites, every
one of them, every one that God has predetermined, predestinated
to save according to his mercy and grace, passed over on dry
ground until all were passed clean over Jordan. But you know, the type doesn't
stop there. The believer's salvation is particular. Particular. We call it particular
redemption. Not universal, but particular.
And this is seen by the specific number of the stones. One stone
stood for each of the 12 tribes. As you know, there were 12 apostles. There were 12 gates of the holy
city. These stones represent Christ
and his people. Many times in the scripture,
Christ and his people are referred to as stones. Let me give you
three in particular. Psalm 118, 22. The stone which
the builders refused has become the headstone of the corner.
This is the Lord's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. And
it is, isn't it? Acts 14, 11. This is the stone
which was set at naught of you builders, which has become the
head of the corner. And neither is there salvation
in any other, for there is none other name under the heaven given
among men, whereby you must be saved. And then 1 Peter 2, 5
says, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house,
a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable
to God by Jesus Christ. According to Jewish history and
many Jewish scholars, where Israel crossed here at the Jordan River
is the same particular place that where John the Baptist baptized. Now, I don't know if that's so,
but that's what some of the Jewish scholars say. And John told the
Jews, if you remember in Matthew chapter three, verse nine, that
their natural and their physical connection with Abraham did not
make them true children of Abraham or true children of God. He said,
and think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to be as our
father, but I say unto you that God is able to raise these stones
up unto children, unto Abraham. And no one knows for certain,
but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if when he said that, he wasn't
pointing to these very stones. He's able to raise these stones. up in the children of Abraham. And these twelve stones were
placed in the midst of Jordan and covered when the waters returned. And they represent those whom
Christ did raise up as spiritual Jews. And as a memorial, they
speak to the fact that the death of Christ is where the child
of God abides. That's where we abide. That's
where we live. We abide and we rest in His death
and His finished work. And there I said it again. What
mean ye by these stones? They are a memorial. And really,
isn't that what preaching is? Each time we meet together to
declare the wondrous mercy and grace of God in Christ, we proclaim
the wondrous works of a sovereign God concerning the great things
that he's done for undeserving sinners like you and I and Christ. Christ, our chief cornerstone,
should have been cut from the finest gems and most precious
stones, but he made himself of no reputation, friends, and he
was taken, so to speak, from the bottom of a river. He who
was God sitting on the throne of heaven stooped low to the
bottom. Christ made himself of no reputation
in order to raise up the poor out of the dust and lift the
needy up from the dunghill that he might set them among princes.
And that's exactly what he's done. God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise. God has chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. And
simply said, Christ became what we were so that we might become
what He is. And here in our text, God said,
let this be a sign among you. And what a sign it is. We in
and of ourselves outside of Christ are nothing more than dead stones,
no life in us. Yet we like these stones are
a memorial, memorial of God's love and God's mercy and God's
grace to us. Israel's memorial was to show
that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the
Covenant of the Lord when they passed over Jordan. And friends,
God's wrath and God's judgment against us, represented by the
fast flowing current of Jordan's river in flood season, I might
add, has been cut off where Christ is, where the Ark of the Covenant
is. And therefore we are spared the
wrath and the judgment of God. Now, if you're in Christ, God's
no longer angry with you. If you're outside of Christ,
he's angry with you every day. And He'll see to it that those
of you that are in Christ, He'll see to it that you pass from
death unto life, but it'll be in Him. It'll be in His midst,
Him being in your midst. And those who enter the land
of promise in Christ have been granted safe passage into the
heavenly kingdom of promise. What a testimony to the gospel
this is. When the people had clean passed
over, when everything was finished, it was on that day that the Lord
magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel. The Lord Jesus
is magnified and glorified in the saving of His elect people. And the result was this, Israel
feared and reverenced Joshua because he proved to do exactly
what he told them he would do. And he did exactly what God told
him to do. And is it not the same with the
Lord Jesus Christ? before the foundation of the
world, God gave him a people. And the Lord himself said, all
that the father giveth me shall come to me. And every single
one that comes to him, he redeems and he saves and he gives them
new hearts to one day be glorified with him forever. And the basis
of our love, and trust in Christ is the gospel testimony that
Christ actually did what He came to do. I love to read that verse
over and over. This is a faithful saying, and
it's worthy of all acceptation. Everyone should bow and accept
this as truth from the very lips of God Himself. Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners, and that's exactly what he did.
Our Lord Jesus worked out a perfect righteousness for those who had
no righteousness, whose righteousness was nothing but self-righteousness,
filthy rags righteousness, and he died the just for the unjust,
why? To bring us to God, to enable
us to cross on dry ground into the land of promise. And he brought
us to God by way of his own death. We had no fear of coming short
of God's land of promise because of what Christ has done for us.
Now I have doubts when I look within. I doubt me. I do. But I don't doubt him. Not in what he's done. I have
full confidence and assurance that Christ did. what he came
to do. He died the death that his people
owed God, and he safely delivers all to God's land of promise. Now there's no basis for reverence
and trust where possibilities exist. Just not. Someone can
tell you that they're going to do something for you. And they
may even have good intentions, but if they don't have the ability
to do it, you're not going to find much comfort there, because
you don't know if they can do what they promised or not. But
Christ is the solid rock, and He's a sure foundation, and He's
the dry ground upon which we cross. There's no failing with
Him, none whatsoever. How can we be sure? Because on
that day Christ hung on Calvary's cross, He fulfilled and He finished
in time what God had purposed in eternity. And He said so from
His own mouth. It is finished. And finished it is. Christ the
Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Yes, he was slain
by the wicked hands of mankind, but it was by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God. And he didn't die to make
salvation possible. No. He died to make it certain. That's why the psalmist said,
kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish from the way when
his wrath is kindled, but a little. Blessed are they that put their
trust in Him. Have you put your trust in Him?
That's the only place you can put it. Confidently. Knowing
assuredly that it's in good hands when it's placed there. Those
who have kissed Christ are blessed. For He's enabled us to do just
that, to put our trust in Him. May the Lord make this beautiful
gospel effectual to our hearts.