Get Your Feet Wet

THIS WEEK I finished the last of the first five books of the Old Testament, Deuteronomy. The end of the old Jewish Law. Spoiler alert: God chose for Moses to die before Israel crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land, and about the beginning of the next book his successor and the title character, Joshua, led the people through the river. Not around. Not over. They walked through it. This is really neat to me - just as God parted the Red Sea for Israel to escape from Egypt and begin their journey, He parted the Jordan River to end their journey and bring them to the land they would conquer for their settlement. Joshua 3:5 "And Joshua said to the people, 'Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.'" The way God did this tells me something about us today. He told the people to let the priests carrying the ark of the covenant - the symbol of His Presence and His promise to Israel - approach the river first. Everybody stand back. The Lord is going to be the one to retrain the water while they walk through. What God didn't do is draw the water back slowly, as they got closer, so that when they got there it would already be parted for them. He didn't even do it when they stood right on the edge of the river. He said He would part the water for them to cross once the priests had gotten their feet wet. One step into the water, and the water will stop in a "heap," He told them, and flood the banks of the river upstream. v. 14-16 "So it was, when the people stepped out fom their camp to cross over the Jordan, with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as those who bore the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down to the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho." It seems that God was telling His people two things: first, that He is able to make the way for them despite any obstacle; and second, that to see Him make a way, sometimes they will have to step out in expectation that He will do as He said He would do. The word says that this was the time of year when the Jordan was overflowing its banks. Can you imagine approaching this river, already deep and wide, insurmountable, at the time when it has deepened and widened to its maximum? Approaching with many thousands of individuals and families behind you, who are waiting for the Promised Land they've waited for? What does a heap of water even look like? I can't picture that. They just had to know that He had done it before to set their fathers free, and He was able to do it again to complete their journey. All He asked of them was to get their feet wet. Get their feet wet, and proclaim that their faith was in the Lord their God, whose Presence went along with the ark they carried. Get their feet wet, and declare that the Lord's power is with the obedient as they look down and watch the water drain out from between their toes. See the river shrink and feel the dry soil and they continued marching with restrained water beside them. Stand in the middle of a live river bed while the Lord holds open the way for thousands of the children of Israel to walk around them to the other side in victory. To see His glory, sometimes God asks us to get our feet wet and see if He won't hold back the river. Sometimes that can be the simple but bold act of asking. It means putting our hope in God and His goodness. Jesus has been impressing on me the impact of simply asking. These words of His kept showing up for me this week: Luke 11:9-10 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." If we want to see him move, sometimes He wants us to just have enough faith to ask. Or sometimes He just wants us to go, and let Him supply to place and the people once we have set our hearts to follow his command. Sometimes it will be to speak or to pray or to preach, something that takes a little faith, because He will always honor the one whose faith turns to obedient action, and whose expectation turns to movement. We act on faith, and He moves mountains: isn't that something we see a lot? It's even how our salvation is designed. Have faith in the Son of God, and He will trade His stainless record for our ruined condition. He will make the way for us to come to the Father. He'll hold the water back. The people couldn't cross over until their priests had made that declaration by a single footstep - Your people trust You. The men of Israel took twelve stones with them as they crossed the river and piled them up on the other side, as a memorial to the way God moved for them that day. As a result, all the people on that side of the Jordan were terrified of Israel, because the Lord was with them. The enemy doesn't know what to do when there is a people approaching that lives by faith in the one true God. That's a people who has victory.