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| Jordan River |
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| Written by Dell Young | |
| Wednesday, 31 December 1969 23:59 | |
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You and I, collectively and individually, have spent a great deal of time in church worship down through the years. We have learned to recognize certain teachings from the Bible. We've looked at these...
You and I, collectively and individually, have spent a great deal of time in church worship down through the years. We have learned to recognize certain teachings from the Bible. We?ve looked at these teachings for education, comfort, solace, and confirmation of the faith that we have. We continue to look at these truths and each time that we do, there is something else there that will catch our attention and make us even more convinced that the God that had spoken to the world when introducing His Son, in the reading we have for this study, is speaking unto us. He is asking that we learn more of His blessed Son and live more like him through the knowledge that we gain. We?ll introduce this study with a rather lengthy reading: the entire third chapter of the book of Matthew. ?In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea. And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophey Isaiah, saying, ?The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ?Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.? And the same John had his raiment of camel?s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, ?O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.? Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying, ?I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?? And Jesus answering said unto him, ?Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all rightesousness.? Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, ?This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.?? In almost all of the church buildings we have around the country, there is a scene shown in a painting over the baptistry that represents something to us: not necessarily the act of baptism, so much as the Jordan River, which we read about in the passages above and the fact that God Almighty chose this place to baptize His Son and make His introduction to the world. Down through the years, God has intermittently, but with great care, drawn our attention to this place. It began back in Genesis 13, when the strife arose between the herdmen of Lot?s cattle and the herdmen of Abram?s cattle. The land had become too small for these two rich men. ?And Abram said unto Lot, ?Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.? And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom.? And so, the Jordan River is introduced to the world from the Word of God. It is also mentioned in other passages: in 2 Kings 5: the Syrian captain is told by Elisha to wash himself seven times in Jordan and ?thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.?; in 2 Kings 2: when God was going to call Elijah to his heavenly home. He and a younger prophet, Elisha, journeyed across the land of Israel and needed to cross the Jordan River, so Elijah took off his mantle, rolled it up, and smote the waters. They were divided hither and thither and these two men crossed it on dry ground. Later, Elisha took the mantle that had fallen from Elijah when he was taken up by a whirlwind into heaven, and being granted a double portion of Elijah?s spirit because he saw him taken up, also smote the waters and they divided hither and thither. Elisha went over again on dry ground; in 2 Kings 6: The sons of the prophets were living in a place they outgrown and wanted to cut down trees by the riverside to expand. As one was chopping, the ax head slipped off its handle, fell into the river and sank. He cried to Elisha saying, ?Alas, master! for it was borrowed.? Elisha cut down a stick and cast it into the river. The ax head floated and they retrieved it. God wasn?t worried about an ax head; He wasn?t worried about two prophets getting their feet wet; He wasn?t worried about the captain with leprosy; and He wasn?t worried about Lot using the river as a landmark as he pitched his tent toward Sodom. But He continued to bring our attention to this river down through the years. And finally, would baptize His own Son in it. Now, the whole world would look at it and would hear His voice. So, our eyes get tuned in on this scene and we wonder about this river. The Jordan River is certainly not as long as the Nile because it?s only about 150 miles long. It is not as large as the Amazon because it?s only about 40 to 50 feet wide at the widest places. It is not as deep as the Mississippi because the average depth is only 4 to 5 feet. So, it doesn?t compare in majesty with any other river in the world. But, it has two unique characteristics that no other river has. Here is a river that begins in the snows of the Herman mountain range which has an elevation of 9100 feet; tributaries feed into a stream that pools at Lake Huleh, which is only 7 feet above the level of the Mediterranean Sea; from there, Jordan flows south into the Sea of Galilee, which is 680 feet below sea level, 13 miles long and 8 miles broad, and one of the purest fresh water lakes in the world, abundant with fish, where some of the apostles fished prior to their calling and where some make their living fishing today; and just a short distance from there is the Dead Sea, over 1300 feet below sea level. Around the turn of the century, this country, in an effort to cement a good relationship they had with Israel, sent some engineers to check out the feasibility of building a canal from the Jordan river valley to the waters of the Red Sea so fruits, wheat, barley, and rye from the fertile valley could be taken up the canal to the ports of the world and made into a market for a people who were still very poor at that day in age. These men stayed a little while then packed up their equipment and came back home. They told the people who had sent them, ?You really don?t want to do that.? They had found that the area where the canal was designated to be, at the mouth of the Jordan River near the waters of the Dead Sea, was as mentioned before over 1300 feet below sea level. If they had cut a canal from there to the Mediterranean Sea, they would have flooded that valley a quarter of a mile deep and destroyed what they were trying to create a market for. So, it has the distinction of being the lowest river in the world. It?s not the longest, widest or deepest, but it is the lowest. This is the first distinction. It took us, smart as we are, over 5000 years to find any kind of life in the Dead Sea. It was called that from the very beginning because we didn?t think there was life in it but finally we built a microscope big enough to see a minute form of life in that briny basin. But it?s not good for anything. You can?t eat it, you can?t replant it and raise some more, you can?t even see it without that huge microscope. When the water from the Jordan River goes into the Dead Sea, it doesn?t flow anywhere else. Now, there is no salt coming down that mountain. Everything coming down that 150 miles is the freshest kind of water in the world. But there is so much salt in the Dead Sea, it doesn?t allow any desirable living thing to survive in it. That salt is just there and always has been. That salt comes out of there everyday going to the markets of the world and has for years and years. But it doesn?t ever diminish. No matter how much is hauled out, it replenishes itself. That is the second distinction. When the children of Israel left the land of Egypt, they made 2 water crossings. The first one was at the Gulf of Suez off of the Red Sea. Exodus 14: 21-28 ?And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. And the Egyptians pursued, and went in after them to the midst of the sea, even all Pharaoh?s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. And it came to pass, that in the morning watch the Lord looked unto the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyptians, and took off their chariot wheels, so they drove them heavily: so that the Egyptians said, ?Let us flee from the face of Israel; for the Lord fighteth for them against the Egyptians.? And the Lord said unto Moses, ?Stretch out thine hand over the sea, that the waters may come again upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and upon their horsemen. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to his strength when the morning appeared; and the Egyptians fled against it; and the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharoah that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them.? This, as Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 10:2, was a form of baptism. He said of Israel, ?And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea...? They wondered thru the wilderness for 40 years, then ganged up again against a wall of water in the plains of Moab on the east side of Jordan. Moses was taken by God himself, led up on top of old Mount Nebo to the highest peak of Pisgah, and was allowed to look over a land that did indeed, at that time, flow with milk and honey. God told Moses that this was as far as he would go. He would let him see it, but he couldn?t go over because of what had happened at the waters of Meraba. There, when the people had run completely out of water for the second time and were trying to rebel against Moses, God told Moses to speak to the rock and it would bring forth water to the people and all of their cattle. The time before, He had told Moses to smite the rock, so Moses, whether in a moment of self glory or in frustration, walked up to the rock, smote it and said, ?Ye rebels, must we fetch you water out of a rock?? Now, Moses couldn?t get any water out of a rock. God could. That doesn?t seem like a big crime to us in the world today, but it kept Moses out of the land of Canaan. Now, off the subject and onto another of faith for a moment. The next picture we have, is of Moses dying and God burying him. Now, we have had some fine funerals in our lifetime. Of all of the pomp and pagentry and all of the people that gather together and lay our famous folks to rest - we have had some fine funerals down through the years. But, what a funeral this must have been - just God and that one hundred and twenty year old faithful servant laying dead with a host of angels to sing... After this, God turned Moses position of leadership over to his lieutenant, Joshua. In the first and even into the second chapters of the book of Joshua, he is told ?Be thou strong and of very good courage.? After a few more words, he is told ?Be thou strong and courageous.? Again, after a few more words, he is told ?You must be strong and of very good courage.? God was telling this man in three days he and his lieutenant were going to take these folks across the Jordan River and he needed to be brave. Now, a river that is only five foot deep doesn?t seem to present much of an obstacle. A river that is less than 50 foot wide doesn?t seem to present much of an obstacle. But, I want us to look at some of the logistics of this river and understand Joshua?s plight. We haven?t been told exactly how many people were here. For example: they were numbered twice, the second time in the plains of Moab, and counted twelve of the thirteen tribes counting only the men that were of war age, twenty years and upward and there were 603,550. Now, use a formula that we have today: the average American family has 2 1/2 children. Now, with a mother that makes 3 1/2, multiplied by 603,550 and that?s gets to be a big number. And then, there?s another tribe that hasn?t even been numbered, but they were counted one time and there was over 60,000 of them! So, you take these numbers and put them together and come up with somewhere over 2 million people. Now, that is the logistics of this situation. We went to Appamattox, Virginia one time. This is where the Civil War ended and Robert E. Lee surrended his few, ragged remaining Southern troops to Ullyses S. Grant. History tells us that Lee was camped about five miles out of town at a place on the river and having concluded the details of the discussion of his surrender with Grant, sent word to his leaders to bring his troops up in columns of four to surrender. They were to come in, lay down their arms, sign an oath of allegiance to the United States, and be given a silver dollar and a mule, if they wanted it, and they could go on their way. Now, 17,000 people marching four abreast took all day and part of the night to march five miles. Stop and think about this and it makes sense. Marching the way soldiers do, you take 4 people line them up side by side, tell the remaining 16,996 to fall in, and you have soldiers nearly twenty miles from the town! Logistics take a long time. Think about it. The old people. The little people. The sheep, cattle, and camels... Going across that Red Sea, whether they were 4 abreast or 4000 abreast, logistics take a long time. And now, basically the same number of people as were numbered earlier, are standing here at the Ford of Jerico and God tells Joshua that in 3 days, they are going to cross that river. The next kicker was that Jordan had flowed out of all of its banks, as it did in time of harvest. It was no longer a little meandering stream trickling down through that country, but it is a flooded and ravaged torrent of water. We know that because it is dropping from an elevation of 9100 feet to 1300 feet below sea level. Now, a water line, or any kind of a gravity flow line, drops one inch in a hundred feet. Look what Jordan is doing in 150 miles! It is falling over 10,000 feet, so it falls quick and comes down hard. I can just see some of us if we had been there and heard what the Lord tell Joshua: ?Now, Lord, we have been running around out here for 40 years. What is 3 more days? Let that river go down. What?s the rush?? The Lord had one last and great lesson that He wanted to teach these people before He turned them loose. He wanted the priests bearing the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord God to stand in front and let the rest of the people line up 100 meters behind them and they were going to walk across the Jordan River. As the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant touched the top of that water, it was if the great hand of God came down and touched it. The waters piled up high on the high side and ran off on the low side down into the Dead Sea. Now, there?s much to be said for and against the conduct of the priesthood of the children of Israel through the previous 40 years. They had their problems because they listened to the people more than they listened to God. They made demands on the people when God made demands on them. They were just men and made mistakes, but what conviction they must have had to carry a wooden box that had been plated over with gold off into that river and stand with their backs to that great wall of water while this hord of people went across. When the priests finally came across, we can imagine what a great rush there must have been when that wall of water came down! What we are looking for here is: what is God trying to tell us that is so sobering that he would draw our attention to the place again and again? The region round about Jordan; the land of Judaea, where John began preaching and baptizing; Jesus, himself, came and was baptized; He began to preach and to say, ?Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,? baptizing His converts, too, for the remission of sins and expectation of the coming kingdom; everything was going on right here where they came into the land of Canaan in the beginning. There are other things. Shadowy things, but things we need to know. These people were going west into the setting sun. That meant something was being completed. If we were able to walk with the children of Israel and wonder around with them some of those 40 years to the point where we could feel the sand between our toes, hear the blating of the sheep and feel the heat of that semi-desert country, we would start to feel some empathy for these folks and the lesson that God tried to teach them. They had been trying for 40 years to get right here. Their parents had died trying to get here. Their leader, himself, had died trying to get here. They have a new leader that has had the experience of being a lieutenant of Moses for 40 years and is telling them what to do and they can trust him to lead them. This is what they set out to do, so maybe these people are different that you and I. They may have been running and shouting and looking forward to getting into that land that flowed with milk and honey instead of fretting about the crossing. They did get into Jordan, and the twelve stones carried out of the river by each of the twelve tribes were made into an altar unto God and the next day they observed the Passover which had been established 40 years earlier to the very day. As another side note, let?s look at a piece of history of several of these folks: Cora, Nathan, Abiram, and 150 men of reknown who, at one time, stood up in the face of Moses and told him they didn?t need him to lead them into the land of Canaan. They didn?t need God to lead them there. They were going to go in there with or without them. Why do we never hear of these folks again? The earth opened up and swallowed them and everything they had. It closed back up again and became as though they never existed because they rebelled against God. What would have happened if they had stepped off out into that raging water without God? One of the songs I can remember as long as I can remember church singing is about the Jordan River. ?On Jordan?s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye...? We have sang that old song for, I know, 50 years and the song is older than that. We, in singing that song, liken that river to the river of death. We have always, through the years, tried to define death. We have amazing capabilities today in various areas, including the medical field. In some instances, people go in such a deep coma, it is as though they are dead. Some have come out of these comas and imagined things that have happened to them. In the twenties, doctors claimed a man had been dead for five minutes and they brought him back to life. This man got rich telling what he saw in the world of the dead. He said of death itself, ?It?s like falling into a deep, dark chasm turning this way and that way and coming up on the shores of I know not where.? That?s a good description...if a man is dying without the Lord. But, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. That?s not a miserable thing. The world of the dead wasn?t miserable to Abraham. The world of the dead wasn?t miserable to Lazarus. Christians don?t die as those who have no hope. It is not a miserable passing. It?s as it were on dry land. But, if we tried to go over without him, then we would toss and turn as a person would in that river. And, eventually, we would wind up in the waters of the Dead Sea where there is a form of life, but it?s not good for anything. If we cross the river of death without God, on judgment day, we are going to wind up in a place called hell where the fire is not quenched and the worm dieth not. There will be a form of life there, but it will be a miserable one. And that pain and misery is not something that will ever diminish. If we had someone down there hauling that misery out, it would replenish itself. Try crossing that river without God. Hit that chasm that was created by God alone. Wind up in those waters that were created by God alone. God made the Jordan River unique for a purpose and has used it to teach us a lesson.
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