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Guest (Male): The miracle of God's timing. That's next on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller.

People often wonder why God's timing never seems to coincide with their present need. Certainly, the people of God wondered that at the Jordan River. "Why are we here now? It's flood time," they must have thought. Hello, and thanks for joining us for Study the Word with Thom Keller.

Joshua chapter 3 tells of how God parted the Jordan by heaping up the waters miles upstream from where the children of Israel were located. We'll see why that's significant and has huge implications on the way God works in our lives. You see, God will be there for us at just the right time, even if it takes a miracle. From the pulpit of Calvary Chapel Lebanon, here's Pastor Thom.

Pastor Thom Keller: 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, 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. 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.

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 a 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, 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 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 the 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 is 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, "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.

But that doesn't matter because the miracle is not in the event. The miracle is in the timing and how that plays out. Let me prove that. Imagine the Red Sea parting for Moses. Remember that scene? Charlton Heston. You've got the picture. The Red Sea parts and the children of Israel go through.

Let's say that the Red Sea parts and no one's there to see it. No one's there to see it. Is it a miracle? No, it really isn't. It's an anomaly. It's not a miracle. It doesn't impact anybody's life. Let's say that the Red Sea parts and there's somebody five miles away and he sees it part, but it has no impact on him. Is it a miracle?

No. It's an anomaly. It's something odd that happened, but it's not a miracle. It's a miracle when the timing impacts somebody. Miracles are always in the timing because it proves that God has perfect control over the timing of every event in your life.

And know this, that God is always working upstream. He's always working upstream to bring blessings into your life on the basis of what he knows the decisions you're going to make.

I'll give a personal story. Years ago, earlier in our marriage, Sue and I committed to give a certain dollar amount to a particular ministry. It was more than we had, and it was much more than we'd ever given. And it was certainly more than we had.

And I knew for that to happen, it would be a miracle. I mean, I just knew. I sensed we should give this and I knew it would be a miracle. And so I began praying about it. And this was for months, years. I prayed about it.

And as I prayed, I realized the temptation that there would be that as the money came that I would spend it. Do you understand what I'm talking about? The temptation that okay, your motives are right in the beginning, but what happens when you get the money? Are you going to really do what you said?

And so that was a tension within me. But one day as I was praying about it, I realized God kind of put this thought in my mind. He already knew whether I was going to give it or not, didn't he? I didn't, but he did.

And I knew that because he knew I was or wasn't, that as things happened that made it clear that that was going to be able to happen, I could tell that he was doing it out of response to his knowledge that I was going to be faithful to my commitment. God works upstream.

Have you lost a job? God's been working upstream. He's been working. He probably, he started a business 50 years ago, 100 years ago, two years ago, in part because he knew you were going to need a job and that's a place he has you planned to go. He's working upstream.

Has your boyfriend dumped you? He probably wasn't any good anyway. But if he did, God's been working upstream. Even before that happened, he's got somebody better. God doesn't take you backwards. It's been said that God is seldom early but never late.

And that's really true. It's in the timing. How many of you could say there've been events in your life that were timed so perfectly, it was an evidence to you that God was moving in your life? Okay, praise God.

Okay, let's go into chapter 4. When the people were safely across the river, the Lord said to Joshua, "Now choose 12 men, one from each tribe. Tell the men to take 12 stones from where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan and pile them up at a place where you will camp tonight."

So Joshua called the 12 men and told them, "Go into the middle of the Jordan in front of the ark of the Lord your God." So the ark is still down there. He sends them back into where the ark is. "Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it on your shoulders. 12 stones. These are heavy stones. One for each of the 12 tribes.

We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future, your children will ask." Isn't it interesting? He doesn't say "in the future if your children ask." He says, "in the future your children will ask." Did you ever think that God put questions into the minds of your children to ask you so that they learn the truth about God?

It doesn't say if they ask. He says they will ask. Is that hard to believe that God would be so in tune with a little child that he could show them, tell them exactly the question to ask you? In Psalms, it says the little children will praise you perfectly. May their example shame and silence your enemies.

"In the future, your children will ask, 'What do these stones mean to you?' Then you can tell them they remind us that the Jordan stopped flowing when the ark of the Lord's covenant went across. These stones will stand as a permanent memorial to the people of Israel."

So the men did as Joshua told them and they took 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan River, one for each tribe, just as the Lord had commanded Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there.

Just a little aside, as we read through this. If you think of the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—what you hear repeatedly is, "And Moses did just as the Lord commanded." Remember that? You hear that over and over. "And Moses did just as the Lord commanded."

In the book of Joshua, you start hearing, "And the people did just as Joshua commanded." There's a mindset change that is moving from just Moses as a leader to Joshua and the people now obeying.

The Septuagint says that these are 12 stones and each were set on top of one another, so almost like a pillar. It's interesting as we read this, the people now safely cross the river. Jericho knows they're coming seven and a half miles away.

Why do you think the Canaanites, even those from Jericho, didn't come out and start to do battle with them? Well, one reason is it's completely impossible that they would be on that side of the river to do battle. No one would have expected them there.

Even though they had three days' advance, they never would have expected that they're going to make it across that river. And now I would imagine, seven and a half miles away, they had spies out. They saw the river part and you can picture the people going, "Oh no. People of Jericho, we are in trouble."

It says 12 stones in a pile. And if you remember, God said that when you form a monument, do not chisel the stones. Don't shape them in any manner. And we can gloss over this kind of quickly and think he said go get 12 stones and bring them out and put them in a pile and that's a memorial.

And someday when your children ask, tell them that's a reminder of the time that God delivered us and took us through the swollen Jordan River. But let's stop and just look at it just a little bit. In their culture and the same as ours, that is not how we build memorials, is it?

We build memorials of people, don't we? It wasn't a memorial, a bust of Joshua. It was a reminder of what God had done. When we do memorials, they're all about people, aren't they? When Sue and I were in Russia, you see statues of Lenin and Stalin everywhere, everywhere. And all their war monuments are of people. Every place you go, they're always about people.

And did you ever think that this may be one of the reasons why God says don't ever shape a stone? I don't ever want you to confuse the difference between an instrument and the one holding and using the instrument.

It would be like us honoring Frank Lloyd Wright by putting up a statue of an architect's table. It would be like us honoring Louis Armstrong by putting up a statue of a trumpet, of honoring Bach or Beethoven by putting up a statue of a piano.

They're the instruments, the tools that those men used. It doesn't honor them. They're just instruments. That piano is an instrument. That table is an instrument. That trumpet is an instrument.

Same thing when, if we really have our perspective right and what is happening in the world, all of those statues—forget Lenin and Stalin—but the people that we honor for good things, they were just instruments, weren't they? Wouldn't it be better just to put up a memorial and say, "Hey, what's that all about?"

That was a time that God—the focus should be God, not the human instrument. That's not how it's to work. And it says that they are there to this day. It's believed that Joshua wrote this. Joshua lived 25 more years and so that those stones at least to the time he wrote this were still in place.

Verse 10, the priests who were carrying the ark stood in the middle of the river until all the Lord's instructions, which Moses had given to Joshua, were carried out. Meanwhile, the people hurried across the river. I bet they did. You can have faith, but it's still a raging river.

And when everyone was on the other side, the priests crossed over with the ark of the Lord. The armed warriors from the tribe of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh led the Israelites across the Jordan.

These warriors, about 40,000 strong, were ready for battle and they crossed over to the plains of Jericho in the Lord's presence. That day, the Lord made Joshua great in the eyes of all the Israelites. And for the rest of his life, 25 more years, he died at 110, they revered him as much as they had revered Moses.

The Lord had said to Joshua, "Command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant to come up out of the riverbed." So Joshua gave the command. And as soon as the priests carrying the ark of the covenant came up out of the riverbed, the Jordan River flooded its banks as before. Again, there's that timing.

The people crossed the Jordan on the 10th day of the first month, a month that marked their exodus from Egypt. This is exactly five days short of 40 years. Exactly five days short of the 40 years that they left Egypt.

They camped at Gilgal, east of Jericho. It was there at Gilgal that Joshua piled up the 12 stones taken from the Jordan River. There were two piles of stones, one in the river and one here at Gilgal.

Then Joshua said to the Israelites, "In the future, your children will ask, 'What do these stones mean?' Then you can tell them, 'This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan.' Do you hear Joshua's name in this?

'This is where Israelites crossed the Jordan in dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea where he dried it up until we had all crossed over.'

'He did this so that the nations of the earth might know the power of the Lord and that you might fear the Lord your God forever.'" And again, when they camp at Gilgal, they're now one and a half miles from Jericho. So they're moving closer.

And again, you saw that Jericho is at the foot of the mountains, so they're on a plain. So there are four, five, six million people on an open plain, Jericho on an open plain, and they're waiting for the battle.

I want to close with reading a true story written by a man by the name of Ken Gaub. And this is to deal with the timing, how God controls the timing. Ken Gaub was a counselor and had a program on the radio. He was from Yakima, Washington.

And he's traveling across the country in a motorhome with his family. And as this story is being written, he's in Dayton, Ohio. And he's going to talk about what happened on his journey.

"God, sometimes I wonder if you really know where I am." A melancholy cloud of self-pity enshrouded my mind as I tried to concentrate on driving. "God, even a preacher needs for you to let him know once in a while that you are aware of him," I mentally implored.

"Hey, Dad," they're in their motorhome. "Hey, Dad, let's get some pizza." The voice of my son Dan snapped me out of my self-induced cocoon of despondency. The voices of my wife Barbara and daughter Becky chimed in agreement with Dan. It had been a long day and it was well past time to eat.

"Okay," I yelled back. Exiting from I-75, we turned onto Route 741 just south of Dayton, Ohio. Bright, colorful signs advertised a wide variety of fast-food restaurants as they welcomed us.

Before I had fully parked, the kids were clamoring to get out. Barbara stepped to the bottom stair of our home on wheels and stopped. "Aren't you coming, Ken?" she quizzed.

"Nah, I'm not really hungry," I replied. "You just go ahead with the kids. I need to stretch out and unwind a bit." I stepped outside, noticing a Dairy Queen down the street. I thought, I'm really thirsty. I wonder if that's what he was thinking.

After purchasing a soft drink, I strolled slowly back, all the while musing about my feelings of God's apathy towards me. The sudden ringing of a telephone somewhere up the street jarred me out of my doldrums.

It was coming from a phone booth at the service station on the corner. I drew near and paused. I looked about to see if anyone was going to answer the phone. The service station attendant seemed oblivious to the incessant ringing of the nearby phone.

I started to walk past, but curiosity overcame my indifference. Can you picture that? I wonder, what would this be about? I stepped inside the phone booth and picked up the phone. "Hello," I said casually.

The long-distance operator intoned nasally, "Long distance call for Ken Gaub." My eyes widened and I almost choked on the chunk of ice from my Coke. Swallowing hard, I replied in astonishment, "You're crazy."

Realizing my rude remark, I said, "This can't be. I was just walking down the street, not bothering anyone, and this phone was just ringing." The operator ignored my crude explanation and asked once more, "Is Ken Gaub there? I have a long distance call for him."

Searching for a possible explanation, I suddenly had the answer. I know what this is. I'm on Candid Camera, right? They're filming this. I reached up and tried to smooth my hair. I wanted to look my best for all those millions of television viewers watching me.

I stepped outside the phone booth, looking quickly in every direction. I nearly broke the telephone cord as I stretched it to its limit, but I couldn't find a camera anywhere.

Impatiently, the operator interrupted again. "I have a long distance call for Ken Gaub, sir. Is he there?" Flustered, I half-laughingly replied, "As far as I know at this point, I am here."

To avoid any further disasters, I set my Coke down as I heard another voice interject. "Yes, that's him, operator. I believe that's him." I listened dumbfounded to a strange voice identify herself.

The caller blurted, "Ken Gaub, I'm Millie from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You don't know me, but I'm desperate. Please help me." She began weeping. I waited until she had regained control of herself.

She continued, "I'm about to commit suicide. I just finished writing the note. And while I was writing it, I began to pray. I told God I really didn't want to do this. While I was writing the note, I suddenly remembered seeing you on television in Harrisburg. I thought, if I could just talk to you, you could help me.

I knew that was impossible because I didn't know how to reach you and I didn't know anyone else who could help me to find you. While I was writing my note, numbers began to come to my mind and I wrote them down."

While still listening, I began to pray silently for wisdom to help her. She continued, "I looked at the numbers and I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if I had a miracle from God and that he has given me Ken's phone number? I decided to try calling it. I figured it was worth a chance. It's really you. I can't believe I'm talking to you. Are you in your office?"

I replied, "Lady, my office is in Yakima, Washington." A little surprised, she asked, "Oh really? Then where are you?" "Ma'am, you won't believe this, but I'm in a phone booth in Dayton, Ohio."

Knowing this encounter could have been arranged only by God, I seriously began to counsel with the woman. She told me of her despair and frustration. In a matter of moments, she prayed the sinner's prayer and met the only person who could lead her out of her situation and into a new life, Jesus Christ.

I walked away from that telephone booth with an electrifying sense of our Heavenly Father's concern for each of his children. With the millions of phones and innumerable combinations of numbers, only an all-knowing God could have caused that woman to call that number in that phone booth at that precise moment in time.

Nearly bursting with exhilaration, I bound up the steps into the bus. I wondered if my family would believe my story. I simply said, "Barb, you won't believe this, but God knows where I am."

God knows where I am. And you know, God knows where you are and he knows your problems. And he's been working upstream. He's been working upstream, preparing for this moment, this minute for you to give your life to him, to surrender your problems to him. It's all been in the works. If you mean it, if you're sincere, if you'll take that step, it's all been preplanned, preordained. It'll be a miracle.

Guest (Male): God knows right where you are, what you're going through, and is able to get you where you need to be. Put your trust in him now and you'll discover this exciting truth for yourself.

This is Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller of Calvary Chapel Lebanon. We're studying the book of Joshua right now. To hear this message again, simply go to ccleb.com and look under resources. That's ccleb.com. If you'd rather have a CD copy, call 717-507-7862. That's 717-507-7862.

For those that give to the ministry this month, we'll say thanks by sending you Pastor Thom's entire study of Daniel. There are 22 messages in this helpful series and we've put them onto a flash drive. Get the entire study of Daniel for a gift of any amount by calling 717-507-7862 or write Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046.

And if you live close by or will be visiting the area soon, drop on by. For our service times and more information about Calvary Chapel Lebanon, turn to ccleb.com and download our free Android app. Search Calvary Chapel Lebanon in the Google Play Store. We'll get back into Joshua next time on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. And may God richly bless you as you study the word and apply it to your life.