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Guest (Male): Too often we only glance where we're to focus. Here's Pastor Thom Keller to explain.

Pastor Thom Keller: Isn't that how we are in life? We gaze at our problems and we glance at God. Our focus is our problems, and once in a while we kind of glance at God but our focus is on our problems.

And we're to be just the opposite. Our focus is to be on God, and we're to glance at our problems if we even have to glance. But our focus is to be on God, because He is bigger than any problem we will ever have.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Study the Word with Thom Keller. Thom is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Lebanon. And today picks up where we left off in Joshua.

In chapter 3 we find the people of God camped at the Jordan River. They know they're called to cross it, but it's deep and dangerous, and there is no apparent means by which they can safely cross. In other words, it's a huge problem.

But it's not one God can't handle. In fact, there's no problem He can't handle. With more on this comforting truth, once again, here's Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: We are in Joshua chapter 3. Joshua chapter 3:1-5 we're going to start. Early the next morning Joshua and all the Israelites left Acacia and arrived at the banks of the Jordan River where they camped before crossing.

Three days later the Israelite leaders went through the camp, giving these instructions to the people. When you see the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, follow them. Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you.

Stay about a half mile behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the Ark. Make sure that you don't come any closer. Then Joshua told the people, "Purify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do great wonders among you."

And again just to give some background here, if you remember Moses led the children of Israel, God using Moses out of Egypt and for 40 years they wandered through the wilderness. A very difficult 40 years because of their obstinance and rebellion and stubbornness. At the end of that 40 years Moses dies and he appoints Joshua to be the one now who's actually going to lead them into the Promised Land.

In Joshua chapter 1 and 2 the spies went into Jericho and spied out the city, and we made a case and I think a strong case can be made primarily showing God's concern for just one woman, Rahab the prostitute, who these spies went in and through their going in she was saved from that city and is a beautiful picture of God's salvation and concern for even just one.

Now at this point what's going to take place today is going to take place right here at the Jordan River, right at that crossing. Now note in verse 15, just looking ahead a bit, it says now it was harvest time, harvest season, and the Jordan was overflowing its banks. This is probably about March or April of the year and the Jordan is just completely overflowing its banks. It's swollen and it's high.

In its normal state in this area it is about 90 to 100 feet wide and typically about 3 to 10 feet deep. That's in the normal flow of the river. But in the harvest season in the spring of the year it gets much wider and gets a little wild. It's said that at the south end of the Jordan River it's much more like rapids in this area. So the water was high, fast, swollen, and probably something like rapids.

So they get to the river and Joshua says we're going to wait three days here before we cross. Remember they're about 3 to 5 million people. All we know for sure is there were 600,000 fighting men over the age of 20.

So from there you can do some math: 600,000 men married, 1.2 million, four children, now you're up to a lot of people. Four to five million people maybe there at the river waiting to cross. And seven and a half miles away is Jericho and they're terrified of the Israelites. We learned that in the last two chapters. They know they're coming.

And they know that this God who parted the Red Sea and did all these miracles before Pharaoh is with them. And so the people in Jericho are trembling in fear. We learned that in chapter 1 and 2, we're going to see that as we go into the actual where the walls of Jericho come tumbling down.

So for three days they're at the river. Do you think they talked about how they're going to get across that river? Do you think they had those discussions like "Man, what is he doing? What's he planning?" Or was there some level of faith by this time where they thought "You know, God can do this."

Do you know this is where the canoe was first invented? Well, not really the canoe, but the term "canoe." Because it was heard throughout the camp, "I canoe swim across that river." Yeah, okay. Thank you. That's as good as it gets. I promise that's the last one for now.

But you know looking at that river and it's so true. Can you picture the people just staring at that river? Three days. They get up in the morning if maybe it went down, maybe God's going to take the river down. It didn't go down. You know the same problem each day they get up and look at that river and they started focusing on that river.

And isn't that how we are in life? We gaze at our problems and we glance at God. Our focus is our problems and once in a while we kind of glance at God but our focus is on our problems. And we're to be just the opposite. Our focus is to be on God and we're to glance at our problems if we even have to glance.

But our focus is to be on God because He is bigger than any problem we will ever have. Every problem is bigger when you stare at it. Did you ever notice that? Isn't it true? The more you look at it the bigger it becomes. Does it really? No. It just seems to because it's your focus. And the longer you stare at your problem, the smaller your God becomes. It's true.

Psalm 32:8 says this: God says I will instruct you and teach you in the way you shall go, I will guide you with My eye. I will guide you with My eye. Now is the Bible true? Okay. It says He will guide you with His eye. How's He going to guide you with His eye unless you're looking at Him?

How's that going to work? He's there and you're looking at your problem. He says I'm going to guide you with My eye. I'm not seeing His eye. The only way you can see His eye, He says I'll guide you with My eye, is if you're looking into the face of Jesus. Look Him square in the face. He will guide you with His eye.

What do you think you're going to see when you look into the face of Jesus? When you stare Him right in the eye? Are you going to see any fear in His eyes? Are you going to see any concern that this one's bigger than He can handle? Is there going to be any sense of dread or apprehension in His eye? It's always going to be that same peace.

That peace that will keep you, that peace that will sustain you, that peace that will get you through today. And the Bible says each day has enough trouble on its own. That's why you're to live one day at a time. But He'll see you through today and He'll see you through tomorrow, but you don't need to think about tomorrow. He'll be there tomorrow. He'll take care of tomorrow.

I think about this. I tried to think of an example and this is the best I could come up with. Some of you can come up with a better one, tell me, because I know there are better ones than this. But I tried to picture a scene and I pictured in a city an apartment building on fire.

And there's this two-foot wide plank going from the top of the roof of a building to the top of the roof of the other, but it's not a very strong plank. And a father is up on the building that's not on fire and he's trying to coax his daughter across the place that's on fire. And this is 300 feet off of the ground.

And as he's looking at his daughter, she's on the other side and he knows this is a terrifying prospect of her walking across a two-foot wide plank above 300 feet. And it's too weak for him to go get her, she has to walk it. And can you picture the father saying "Honey, just look in my eyes. Just look in my eyes. Don't look down. Just look at me."

And as you're looking at your daughter, would you look left and right? Would you look down? No, you're just going to look her straight in the eye and you're going to give her every look of confidence and that she can trust you and encouragement, you can make this.

Would God do less? See that's why He wants to guide you with His eye. But you have to be looking in His face. We gaze at our problems, we glance at God. We need to gaze at God and just glance at our problems.

You may have huge problems in your life right now. They may be monstrous. And you may say "You know, you don't even know how big they are." And I don't. But I do know this: that God is bigger than any problem you have. God is bigger. He will guide you with His eye.

Right after that in Psalms the very next verse says this: Don't be like a senseless horse or mule that has to have a bit in its mouth to keep it in line. Let Him guide you with His eye. Don't be contentious.

I shared this before but at about the age of 30 I had a crisis in my life that my whole world just was falling apart. I mean I was in a depression, suicidal, and the whole thing. And I don't need to go into the details except to make this one point.

When I surrendered my life to Christ and that I would go anywhere and do anything He wanted me to do, internally my life changed immediately. Immediately. I mean it was more radical than I'm saying. Immediately I woke up a different person. But my problems didn't change.

They didn't go away. And they didn't go away the first day. They didn't go away the first week. They didn't go away the first month. So when I would pray in the morning and when I would get up before I get up from prayer, I would picture myself with my arm around God's ankle. That's how I pictured myself. God being very tall and this little guy with his arm around his ankle. Can you picture that?

And what I said was this. I said "God, if I am holding onto You and I don't let go of You, the only way they can take me down is if they take You down. And nobody's taking You down." Every morning that comforted me. Every morning that got me through the day.

And you know what? I kept hanging on. I had nobody else to hang onto. Have you ever been there? You ever been where there's no place else to go? You're at the bottom, there is no one else that can do anything. There's no court of appeal, there's no one to turn to, there's no one except Jesus. That is a wonderful place to be. But just hang on. As long as you're holding onto Him they can't take you down because He has to go down with that and it ain't going to happen.

Well verse 4 it says Joshua says "Stay one half mile back." So now these priests are going to carry the Ark of the Covenant into the stream. They're going to carry this into the stream. So the priests go down near the water and he says as the priests carry that down to the water these five, six million people, you follow them but stay a half mile away from them.

And again one of the reasons would have been probably so that they could all see the Ark, so that there's a perspective they're far enough away but also to see what God's going to do with the river. Because they're going to be back far enough to kind of have a panoramic view of the river.

Chapter 3 verse 6 it says in the morning Joshua said to the priests "Lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river." And so they started out. So now it's the third day and now they're heading down. This Ark by the way is about four and a half feet long, about two and a quarter feet wide, and that lid, those angels and the lid is solid gold.

Now you know gold weighs a lot. Back in Exodus 38 it says that the people brought 2,200 pounds of gold for the building of the temple. And a lot of that would have gone into this right here because again the temple, it was a Tabernacle in the desert and it was just tents.

It was just a tent. You've seen the pictures. Just a tent and candle holders and things like that, lamps. But the bulk of that would have been in that. So let's say that that would have weighed say 1,000 pounds, 2,000 pounds.

If you had 16 men, let's say it weighed 1,600 pounds. If you had 16 men, four on each pole, that'd be 100 pounds that each is carrying plus their own weight. Now they're going down into a muddy bank. Can you imagine that scene what that looked like? Overflowed banks and they're going down into the mud. You're carrying this thing that weighs a ton, literally, and you start sinking down into the mud. That's the scene of what's taking place.

So it says in the morning Joshua said to the priests "Lift the Ark of the Covenant, lead the people across the river." So they started out. Verse 7: the Lord told Joshua "Today I will begin to make you great in the eyes of all the Israelites. Now they will know that I'm with you just as I was with Moses. Give these instructions to the priests who are carrying the Ark of the Covenant. When you reach the banks of the Jordan River take a few steps into the river and stop."

It's interesting, do you remember when Moses, God through Moses parted the Red Sea, he got to the Red Sea and the sea parted. Here He says go down and step into the river and stop and wait. So now you have these five, six million people a half mile back watching as these priests go down carrying this thing on these poles, the Ark of the Covenant on the poles, and they go in a few feet into the water and they stop.

What happens? Verse 9: so Joshua told the Israelites "Come and listen to what the Lord your God says. Today you will know that the living God is among you." This is Joshua speaking. "He will surely drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites. Think of it. The Ark of the Covenant which belongs to the Lord of the whole earth will lead you across the Jordan River. Now choose 12 men, one from each tribe." That's for something completely different. We'll talk about that.

Verse 13: "The priests will be carrying the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. When their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream and the river will pile up there in one heap." Now what God says here is that the water is going to be cut off somewhere upstream and it's going to start piling up. The water is going to pile up, the word really means "on a heap." It's going to heap up. And the point of all this, Joshua says, is for the children of Israel to know that the living God is among you. That's the point of all of this.

Every time God intervenes in your life the purpose is the same. To remind you that the living God is with you. And the reason for that is to know that if you can trust Him today you can trust Him tomorrow. And so Joshua is in advance saying that this is going to be a proof that the living God is with you.

Verse 14: when the people set out to cross the Jordan the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them. Now it was a harvest season and the Jordan was overflowing its banks. But as soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river's edge, the water began piling up at a town upstream named Adam, which is near Zarethan, and the waters below that point flowed on to the Dead Sea until the riverbed was dry.

Then all the people crossed over near the city of Jericho. Meanwhile the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Lord's Covenant stood on dry ground in the middle of the river. So the priests continued to hold the Ark of the Covenant in the center of the river as these five or six million people walked by them. They stood on dry ground in the middle of the riverbed as the people passed by them. They waited there until everyone had crossed the Jordan on dry land.

Now Adam, the town that they're talking about here, is 18 miles to the north. It's 18 miles upstream. Something happened there that caused the water to stop flowing. From a geological perspective the Jordan River lies at the junction of the tectonic plates in that region. And so it's a place that's prone to earthquakes.

And even in our day there have been earthquakes that have occurred that have caused the Jordan River to cease flowing because of the movement of the land, it blocks the river for a period of time, the water backs up and then it starts coming again. So it really doesn't matter to me how God chose to stop the river from flowing. The miracle, that may have been a natural event, but the miracle's in the timing.

When they stepped into the water the water stopped flowing. This translation reads a little bit like they stepped in the water then the water stopped flowing 18 miles away. Other translations it's not quite as clear.

But if you go to chapter 4 verse 18, just looking ahead, about the other side of this miracle it says "And as soon as the priests carrying the Ark of the Lord's Covenant came up out of the riverbed, the Jordan River flooded its banks as before, as soon as." So 18 miles upstream that water had to be let loose in advance so that just as they came out of the water it was now there.

This passage makes this point that God's timing here is to the minute. When Moses leads them through the Red Sea it was different. That happened immediately. There wasn't a whole lot of timing on the Red Sea event. I mean there was but nothing done in advance.

The flow of water stopped 18 miles upstream many minutes in advance of the priest ever touching the water. And the water began to flow again many minutes in advance of them ever stepping out but timed precisely to their coming up out of the water.

This whole issue of time, as you know God is not relative to time. We are. We live in the present, we remember a little bit of the past, we know nothing of the future. God lives in all of those at present. So He is living in the past, He is living in the present, He is living in the future all at the same time.

So He could let that water go because He sees that in the future at exactly the time, holds it back so that it's timed to them walking across. And He releases it at exactly the time that they come out. Now you say "Well what does that really mean?"

This is a pretty neat point I think. That God acts and moves in advance of faith that you exercise on the basis of what He knows you're going to do. Does that make sense? God will act and move on your behalf in advance, months, years sometimes, in advance of a decision to follow Him that He knows you're going to be making. Let me give you some examples.

You may have been using drugs and your life may be at its bottom and you cry out to Him. And when you cry out this time He knows it's your last time. Not because He predetermined that, He just knows in advance it's your last time. You with me?

And because He knows it's your last time He could have been working a month, a year in advance of that to prepare your pathway for you to bring blessings into your life at exactly that time. In other words, God doesn't have to wait and see what you're going to do and then start bringing blessings. He's working upstream.

He's working upstream to bring the blessings into your life that will coordinate at the time. And so you say "My life is a wreck. I mean my life is a disaster. How can God turn my life around on the dime?" Well He knows if you're committed to changing your life He's known that for a million years and He's been working upstream days, weeks, months, sometimes years in advance of this decision that He knows you're going to make.

And all of the resources and all of that timing is all a part of the miracle that you're going to see. So when people say "Oh, how could God turn my life around?" He's been working on this for a million years. It's incredible. The miracle, we said this before, the miracle is always in the timing. Miracles are always in the timing.

The definition of a miracle is this that I like: a natural or a supernatural event with precise timing that brings glory to God. It can be a natural event, can't it? Or supernatural. How God chooses the event is up to Him. I think it's almost more fun when He does it through the natural. It's the way God works typically.

God rarely uses a supernatural unless it's the only course of action He has available to Him. He normally works in the natural. That's His favorite course. I love in the story of Jesus where Jesus goes out and he's preaching to the multitudes from the shoreline. Remember the story?

The multitudes come in and he's preaching to them and he says to the disciples he says "Hey, bring a boat around in case the people push me off into the water." Come on. This is God. He walked on the water. Remember? He did it. Why does he need a boat? Because he works in the natural. Wherever the natural is not available he will use the supernatural. But he is prone to use the natural.

Guest (Male): Well we hope all of this has served to encourage you to keep looking in faith to our Lord who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. You're listening to Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller and today we've been in the book of Joshua.

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Download our free Android app when you have the opportunity. Search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play store. Our study of Joshua continues next time on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. And until then, let's keep studying the Word.