“Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you…,” “There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life.” Joshua 1:3,5
There were two great events, two interventions of God, in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and her entrance into Canaan, the land of promise. The first was the deliverance at the Red Sea, when the nation, directed by God, was called upon to traverse it. Israel had been brought to a very specific point by the direction of the Lord, led by Moses. She was “hemmed in” by Pharaoh’s army behind her, and the vastness of the Red Sea before her. God had testified to her numerous times of His working by the plagues He sent upon Egypt, and the means by which He was guiding the nation, a cloudy pillar by day, and a pillar of fire by night. But now, she was faced with a choice in the face of that which was humanly impossible, being pressured by the enemy she was fleeing to escape. It was at this point, when Moses was crying out to God for His intervention, that God said to Moses: “Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.” (Ex. 14:15) The moment had come, similar in principle to that which would occur approximately forty years later at the Jordan River, when Israel would be called upon to follow God into that which was impossible to men. At the Red Sea, the command came to go forward. The time had come for God’s intervention, the news of which would resound throughout the then known world. Again, this is substantiated by Rahab’s words to the spies, sent by Joshua forty years later. Her people had heard how the Lord dried up the Red Sea, delivered Israel, and now had brought Israel to Jericho’s doorstep. Why is this deliverance at the Red Sea so very important? It is a picture of what God does to deliver, or save, the individual from the grasp of Satan, and the world. When Israel, forty years later, comes to the edge of the Jordan River, which at that time overflowed its banks, she was called upon also to go forward, this time, after the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant, had put their feet into the river. With a greater knowledge of the covenant keeping God who would save them entirely, they are brought miraculously through the Jordan River on dry land, to be saved from “themselves,” that terrible and godless alternative which only results in suffering and death. When they put their feet on Canaan’s land, their hearts are set to follow God, Christ, the very Rock which has always followed them through the Red Sea, the wilderness for forty years, and now into Canaan, the place where His promises become vibrantly real and essential. Canaan becomes a place where Israel can truly know their God, living victoriously over their enemies, and as Paul would write long afterwards, “…reigning in life by One, Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17) What then is to be the stand of faith today with regard to these truths, and those parallels so powerfully unveiled to us in the New Testament?
The victorious life of Christ, the exchanged life, begins to be discovered in the life of the believer the moment he or she is born again. That moment is a Red Sea moment, when the slavery to sin and Satan, and the world, is broken, and the soul set free. The Jordan River moment is that realization of the further work of the cross, where the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus dominates, rules over, and eclipses, the uselessness, and failure of the old nature to accomplish anything good or of God. Christ is revealed as the Life of the believer. His presence is discovered to be not only the goal, but the path and the power to accomplish it. The stand is taking Christ to be our all.
Dear Father, Strengthen us to apprehend Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.