Good morning, brothers and sisters. Let’s open up to the book of Joshua. Today we’ll be looking at Joshua 3, starting from the first verse.
Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and they set out from the Acacia Grove and came to the Jordan, he and all the children of Israel; and lodged there before they crossed over.
So it was, after three days, that the officers went through the camp; and they commanded the people, saying, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it.
Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure. Do not come near it, that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before.”
And Joshua said to the people, “Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”
Then Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant and cross over before the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.
And the Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.
You shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, saying, ‘When you have come to the edge of the water of the Jordan, you shall stand in the Jordan.’”
So Joshua said to the children of Israel, “Come here, and hear the words of the Lord your God.”
And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites.
Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over before you into the Jordan.
Now therefore, take for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man from every tribe.
And it shall come to pass, as soon as the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, that the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off—the waters that come down from upstream—and they shall stand as a heap.”
So it was, when the people set out from 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 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 into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed and were cut off; and the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
Then the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan; and all Israel crossed over on dry ground, until all the people had crossed completely over the Jordan.
Then I’d like to read a couple of verses from the New Testament, both in the Gospel of Matthew.
In Matthew 16, starting with verse 24, Jesus is talking to His disciples:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
Then go back to Matthew 11:29:
“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Let’s pray.
Father, we want to thank You this morning again for the Savior You have given us, Who has come down from heaven and has saved us. He brought us back to You. We praise Him.
We thank You for the blood He spilled, for the life He lived, for the death He died, and for His being raised from the dead and now seated at Your right hand. He is worthy to be there. We praise Him.
Lord, we bring Your Word to You, Lord—the Word that is that old Word from times ancient until now. We bring this Word to You and ask that You would take it and breathe life into it, that it would become the very Word that we need for today. We are asking this for Your help in the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Okay. As you know from last week, I started talking about Joshua. I don’t know, since I talked last week, how much review do you need?
All I talked about was Joshua not just being about the man Joshua, but Joshua being a generation that was coming into the will of God. That’s what the book is about, and that’s what the message is to us as followers of the Lord. We’re that generation in this day.
Remember, we made a big thing about this. When we talk about a generation, it’s not an exclusive thing—like the younger people are their generation, my generation is my generation, and some of you older people, like Jerry, are a whole different generation. Whoever is alive is in this generation. It’s all-inclusive.
A whole generation is going into the will of God. We mentioned the simplicity of the will of God: coming into that place in our lives as individuals, that place in the whole generation, and seeing that it is wider even than the generation—that the whole earth and the whole creation confess that Jesus is Lord.
Jesus is Lord of me, and Jesus is Lord of all. He is Lord of all, but He has to be Lord of me. This is not a generic “Lord of all.” This is not a generic thing, one size fits all. It has to start off being fitted on you as an individual. As it is fitted on us as individuals, it fits the generation. Then it is going to fit the whole world and the whole creation, because everything will be brought under His feet.
The second part of that is that Jesus is not just Lord of all and Lord of me, but He is my Savior. He is my Savior, and He is the Savior of the world for those who will have it.
Notice I said, “for those who will have it.” Those who do not want it will not have it. They will see Jesus as Lord, because all knees will bow to Him as Lord, but they will not see Him as Savior. They will see Him as Judge. That is a serious matter. It is an eternal matter, for you will face all eternity under that judgment.
We talked about the idea that you have been given a Savior if you want Him. If you want Him to be your Savior, You have been given Him. It is your choice. Now it is on your plate: “Do I want this or not?”
Will you be like the people in Revelation who, when they saw the Lord, said to the rocks and the mountains, “Fall on us; cover us,” so they would not have to face the wrath of the Lamb? Or will we be those who are rejoicing in what is ours in Christ, the salvation that is ours?
Last time, we looked at the people being on the precipice of coming into what God wants for them. You can look at Joshua in the book of Joshua in three ways, and it is meant to be in three ways.
You can see him as Joshua, the servant of Moses. He is like us. He is just one of us, except he is in a higher position.
We can also see Joshua as a type of Christ. He is the one who leads us into the Promised Land. He is the one who divides it up. He is the one who brings us victory. But again, he is just a type. It says in Hebrews that Joshua did not give us rest; it is Christ Who gives us rest.
This morning, I’m going to look at Joshua 3. Now, I know I’m not doing a Bible study on Joshua, okay? You can say, “What happened in Joshua 2? Why did you start at Joshua 3?” Because I skipped it.
There is some good stuff in Joshua 2, because it talks about the spies. Can I digress for just a minute?
When you think about the spies going in, there are two ways of looking at them. In Joshua, it talks about them as spies. If you read about this in James 2, James calls them messengers.
I think that is a wonderful way of looking at it, because they went out to check it out. They did not go out to check the riches of the land. They had already checked out the riches of the land thirty-eight years ago. They had seen the grapes and everything like that. They had seen the walled cities, the giants, and all that type of thing.
When Joshua sent them out this time, they did not go out to spy out the land. They were to look at a certain part—look at the land, and especially Jericho. They came back, and two things happened.
Number one, they met Rahab. There is a wonderful story about Rahab, and maybe I will bring that up. The other thing is that they came back with a message, and it was a prophetic word to the children of Israel. That prophetic word was, “Their hearts are melting. They are ours. As we go into the land, they are ours.”
Even as we start in Joshua 3, you could say that the people of Israel, this generation, should have been strengthened by this word: they are ready to fall. All these things are ours once we cross over the Jordan.
But that was the whole catch: once we cross over the Jordan.
This chapter is about the crossing over of the Jordan, because there is no coming into everything that the Lord wants for us—Jesus being Lord and such—if you do not cross over Jordan.
There were some who did not stay in the land after they crossed over. It was not that all the people said, “I want to go over there.” There were two and a half tribes who said, “Once we finish over there helping you out, we’re coming back on this side.” That is a whole other story that we will get into some other time.
Here we are facing this crossing over of the Jordan. In looking at this chapter, I want to bring up four things:
I’m sorry, I don’t alliterate like Kenny does. Kenny has those three Ps, or those three whatever they are, and here I have O-O-G-R: “ogre,” or “uger.” But that is okay. It does not have to alliterate.
We want to look at these things as the people come into the land. We can read all these things, but we do not want to just read things in and say, “Well, this is what this means,” and then just set it there. We want to say, “Lord, what are You trying to show me in this generation that is going over?”
What was their first obstacle? Their first obstacle was the River Jordan. It was not just a river; it was the river at flood stage.
You would think that God would have said, “I’ll wait until a later time, when it is easier to cross over, and then we’ll do it all together.” But no. The obstacle, in our minds, was the timing. What kind of timing is this? And it was the river.
If we read hymns, you guys are familiar with hymns, right? Every time they talk about crossing the Jordan, what are they talking about? Not just heaven, but what? Yeah, you are going to die.
That does not seem like a great hymn, though—that you are dying. Oh, but you are going to Canaan, but you are dying. A lot of people do not like that, but it is kind of a wonderful thing. It is always about dying. Even if you read Pilgrim’s Progress, when he goes through the river at the end, that is kind of a symbol of the Jordan River, but it is his dying.
In this, we are not just talking about physical death, but there must be a dying. There has to be a death to go over. You are going over something; you are going to go through a death.
We are not going to talk about physical death. We want to talk about something spiritual. Actually, it is something that has to die so that you can be spiritual.
Most commentators say that the Jordan River represents self-life. The self-life has to go through death.
Now, again, these are things that a lot of us know. When you say these things, we agree with them, but then we pass them all by because we have heard them before. So let’s put death to self in a nutshell. Make it as simple as possible.
The idea of self that has to die is simply this: “I will be a Christian, but on my own terms.”
We might say, “Oh, that is so wrong,” but how many of us live that? How many of us live Christianity—live our Christian life, our Christian discipleship—on our own terms?
The Lord is saying at this point that this must die. You could even say that those two and a half tribes were going to go over and do battle for seven years, and when the seven years were over, they were going to go back to the other side of the Jordan because they liked it better when they ran things.
That is the big thing. Do not think that we as Christians do not do that.
We love coming through death and having our sin defeated. That is what the Red Sea represents. We come through the defeat of sin and death. We are brought out of the slavery of sin and death, and we come out. We love that. That is a wonderful thing. Now we are free.
But Romans talks about our freedom not being to live for ourselves. Our freedom is to give back to the Lord. “Lord, You set me free. For what purpose have You set me free?” The Lord set me free to serve Him. How do I serve Him? I give myself back to Him to serve.
It is not just the idea that, “Okay, man, I go to church. This is great. Genuflect, sign the cross, go to confession—but after Sunday, it is my life. Lord, I will give You Sunday.”
We are great tithers. “Lord, I will give You ten percent of my time.” There are 168 hours in a week. Ten percent is almost seventeen hours. “Well, gee, we got here at about nine-thirty. We have two hours out of the way. It is already eleven-thirty. My time is almost up, and then the rest is mine.”
But that is how many Christians look at their Christian life. We want to have Christianity on our terms.
“Yeah, Lord, I’ll have my devotions. I’ll have these things, but do not tell me how to live my life. I have my other things.” It is almost like we compartmentalize our lives. We have our religious space, and then we have our other spaces. We carve it all out, and the religious space usually gets moved to the back.
The Lord says, “That must die.” In order for you to get to the place, the first step we are taking is the death to self. It is the fatal blow.
When I say “fatal blow,” that means it is going to be defeated forever. But as we go to the fatal blow, it is like the first punch: you hit the guy and he is woozy. You have got him, but it might take a few other punches until he is on the ground, knocked out.
This is the knockout punch that the Lord is saying: “I am leading you to this place in your life where you give Me your life.”
Let me give you a little object lesson, or a little testimony. When I was a young man, I did not know what the Lord wanted. Please do not think I am saying we just do this because it is a willful thing. Some of it is because we just do not know any other way to live. We have always lived this way, and we have to find out that the Lord wants to be Lord.
When I first started following the Lord, I had an opportunity to play on a basketball tour. I played for a team called the California Chiefs. I remember talking to Floyd: “Should I go?” He said, “Don’t ask me. Ask the Lord.”
So I did, but I was not hearing anything. What did I think? “I’ll do what I want.” I wanted to play basketball. My eligibility had gone from college, but basketball was not out of me. So I went.
It was the worst thing that could happen for my Christian life, in this sense: I grew a lot in that time, because I was alone and the Lord met me in wonderful ways. But there was no fellowship for me. There was so much of the world around that was just tugging you, ready for you to go into it.
I remember I got into New Zealand. We were in New Zealand, and I was thinking, “Lord, I am so far away from You. I can never get back. Please help me.”
The Lord led me to read a book, and all of a sudden it felt like the Lord was right next to me. It was wonderful.
But on that tour, we were taking a flight from New Zealand to Australia. On that flight, the Lord spoke into my heart. You could say I was in the heavenlies because I was on an airplane. But the Lord just said, “You’re Mine now.”
Do you understand? I am not saying these are word for word, but this is what He was saying: “You’re Mine now. Do you understand that? You’re Mine. I have things I want, but the big thing that I want is you. That is what I want. More than anything, I died for you. Give yourself back to Me.”
That was the thing the Lord spoke to me. To me, I say that was my calling. It was not a calling to ministry or anything like that. It was just the Lord saying, “You’re Mine. Give yourself.”
I could not even say, “Lord, I give myself to You,” because I had already failed Him in so many ways. But I could say, “Lord, okay. Make me Yours. Just take me and make me Yours, because I cannot do it on my own.”
That is the thing. The Lord is bringing us to the place and saying, “You’re Mine.” If you are going to cross over, you are crossing over into the place where you are Mine. You are going to find out that you are totally Mine, because you are going to give yourself to Me place by place by place.
The second thing we have is an object, and the object is the ark.
I do not know why it is called an ark. I was looking that up. The only thing I can think of is that Noah’s ark was a big box—except it was a much bigger box, because it held a lot of stuff in it. This is a box. That is what it is.
There is a typology that the ark is Christ, and we follow Christ. That is good. But sometimes we hear, “The ark is Christ,” and it means nothing to us.
I listened to a sermon by Ed Miller, and he was talking about the ark. He said, “You know what the ark is? It is a throne.”
The ark is only about two and a half feet high, two and a half feet wide, and about four and a quarter feet long. On the top of it is what? A seat. Then you have the cherubim’s wings as a canopy. Remember, the Lord said, “I’ll meet you there.”
The ark brings us to the throne of God. How can this be, knowing ourselves? The first thing on the throne is the mercy seat. What makes it a mercy seat? It was sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. That is what makes it a mercy seat.
When the priests are asked to get the ark, it is to bring the throne of God. In other words, “I want you to get to God. I want you to be before the throne.”
You have to see the Lord as the King. How can you bow the knee if you do not see Him as King? You cannot. You have to recognize Him as King.
Not only do you see Him as King, but you have to see that you should not even be able to stand before Him. What makes me able to stand before this throne? Mercy. Mercy.
Some of us have not seen the need for mercy. Remember when you were young Christians in the Jesus generation? Did you like testimony meetings? Sometimes testimony meetings were great because people had horrendous stories. They came out of this and that, and they would ask, “Well, Jim, what is your testimony?”
“Well, the guy came from across the street and shared Jesus with me, and I accepted Him.” That was it. What a testimony, right?
We can feel that we have not seen the need for mercy. But there is a time in every one of our lives when we will see that we fall short of the glory of God—that God is not satisfied with us as people, as a man or as a woman, or whatever. When we see that, we see that we are under judgment.
What do we do? We seek mercy. And the wonderful thing is, when we seek mercy, we find mercy.
That is Rahab, if I can digress to Joshua 2. Rahab saw the judgment of God coming. She saw it coming when she said, “We have heard about how you crossed the Red Sea. We heard what you did to Sihon and Og. We are afraid. This spells the end for us. Judgment is coming.”
Then she asked for mercy.
Is it not a wonderful thing that the Canaanites were supposed to be done away with, yet she found mercy? A lot of people get really upset with Christianity. They say, “You are limiting everything. Why can’t it be through Buddha? Why can’t it be through everything?”
But when Rahab was there saying, “I need mercy,” they said, “If you get you and your family into this house, you will find mercy.”
I do not know how big the house was, but compared to the whole land of Canaan—or even just compared to Jericho—do you think she said, “Well, why does it have to be here? Can it be down at Joe’s Inn, where at least we could have some good food?”
No. There was no complaint with her. She said, “If this is where mercy is, this is where I am going. This is what I am taking. I will be here in this place.”
As we go through Joshua 6 and Joshua 7, we find out that mercy was given to her. It was not just talked about. Mercy was distributed to her and all those who were in the house. It is a wonderful thing.
Now, why do we have to see this throne and everything? Why is this different? Because you have not gone this way before.
What led these people all the time? A pillar of cloud and fire. Where was the ark during this time? It was in the tent, and the tent was in the center of the camp.
Any time the Lord was going to move, the pillar of fire went up and left, and they marched in their orders. That is gone. So what do you follow?
This is a new thing. This is the new and living way. You have a King Who is going to go before us.
We know that Christ went before us. But when we think, “Jesus is not here anymore, so how can Christ go before us?” that is a good question. Even the disciples, after Jesus rose from the dead and had those forty days with them, and then ascended into heaven—what did they do now? How were they led?
The Lord had to become their King, but in a way that they had to learn.
The ark is going to lead us through. But the ark is not on wheels, is it? How does the ark move? Priests.
Here is our group: a group of priests. We want to look at priests in a very simple way. We are not talking about Levitical priests and all that kind of thing. We are talking about priests. So what is a priest?
When I was raised Catholic, I looked at my priest and said, “What does he have that I do not have?” Number one, he wore that funky collar. I did not have that, but I could do that. But the other thing I found out was that he had access to God, and I did not.
A priest is one who has access to God. That is why you go to the priest for everything.
Now, brothers and sisters, as Christians, we are all priests. This is God’s desire for all His people.
“And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”
— Exodus 19:6
“But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.”
— 1 Peter 2:9
Revelation 1:5-6 says that He has made us a kingdom of priests. This has been God’s desire all the time: for man to be priests. In other words, we have access to Him.
But access is no good to you unless you access the access. You understand what I mean? Are you computer geeks? You have to have access to what you have access to.
It is not just that you have access. Are you taking that access? Are you coming into what you are supposed to have? Are you realizing that access? Are you laying hold of that access? Are you coming in and finding out Who God is because you have access to Him?
This is not just some kind of positional thing. This is a reality. This is something we are all called to.
When our Forerunner, our Priest, Jesus Christ—Who came after the priesthood of Melchizedek—what does He do? He leads us into the holiest. As a Forerunner, He brings us in there, and then we have the same access as He has, because we are in the same place that He is.
He has brought us into the throne room of God, where He makes intercession. We are right there with Him. We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We are with Him. We have the same access.
Think of that: we have the same access as the risen Lord Jesus Christ has. That is something you have to think about for a while. Have you ever said, “Lord, if this is true, I want to know it in my experience. I want to know this access. I want to have it”?
Here we have priests who are going to carry the ark. It says “priests”; it does not say “priest.” How many guys carry the ark? One guy? Do you know how much the ark weighed?
I have heard all kinds of answers, anywhere from 183 pounds to someone who said 4,000 pounds. I think it was a little heavy. Someone said 480-something pounds, if you count the gold and the wood and everything that made up the ark. Depending on who you read or what pictures you Google, some show four guys, some show eight, and Alan Redpath and someone else said there were twelve.
Why were there so many? Because there was weight to it. Brothers and sisters, there is weight to the ark. It is not just an ephemeral thing. Our testimony, which is carrying the ark, has weight to it. It carries weight wherever it goes.
They were to take up the throne and the weight of the ark. It is not just the old dudes. When I first got saved, you would ask, “Who are all the preachers?” They were old dudes.
But if you look at the priests, their service was anywhere from thirty to fifty. Do not think the younger part of the generation cannot bear the weight of the ark. And do not think the older part of the generation is too feeble to carry the weight of the ark.
It is all done in unison with one another. But each one of us, as a priest, has our own ark to carry.
Jesus has to be King enough. We have to carry that. We have to carry Him as King in our hearts.
Notice, I said we carry Him. There is weight to carrying Him. I am not saying that is a bad thing, like we are weighed down. But if we are worldly people, we are weighed down because it stops us from what we are doing. If we are finding out that we are denying ourselves and taking up that place, we find out that His burden is not heavy. We are yoked with Him.
The ark has weight. First of all, it has the throne. We are carrying His throne. But what is inside the ark? The tablets of the law, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the manna.
For some of us, that might just seem like religious stuff. But if this is Christ, and we are carrying the testimony of Christ, what does that mean?
We have the law. “But I thought the law was bad.” It is not an outer law, because it is on the inside of the ark. It is a law written on the heart.
When the law is written on the heart, we find out, like Jesus, that the testimony is:
“Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of Me:
I delight to do Thy will, O my God;
Yea, Thy law is within My heart.”
— Psalm 40:7-8
There is a delight to do the will of God. Second, the manna is food. Do you remember what Jesus said His food was? To do the will of God. “That is My food.” I do the will of God, and I find myself strengthened.
Jesus had a life that Adam did not have. He took on human form, but He did not take on Adam’s soul and spirit. He had a life that came from elsewhere.
When we are carrying the ark, this becomes the testimony that we carry: that we delight to do the will of God. We are doing the will of God not by being forced to do it, but there is an inward law and an inward life in us that urges us on to do the will of God as He shows it to us.
When I was raised, I went to Catholic school, at least for first grade. In every classroom, they had the Ten Commandments up, and you felt compulsion. You were under compulsion that you had better obey these things.
If you did not turn in your homework, you had dishonored your parents. Then when you said, “The dog ate it,” you bore false witness. All of a sudden, you were under condemnation.
The Lord never puts us under condemnation when we are carrying the ark. There might be conviction of sin because He is saying, “Yeah, you are stepping out of bounds here,” but there is no condemnation.
We have this new life and this new law that is being carried. It is not just that it is in us individually. We find out that, in an assembly of people, we see people carrying the ark.
It is the people who are carrying the ark that we take notice of. Then we start to follow. If our hearts have that heart to follow the Lord, we see people carrying that ark and say, “That is good. I see good coming out of that.”
I know these people, and I know they are not strong in themselves. But how can these things be? We begin to follow. We want to know more and more about it.
Now comes the application. We have to respond. Remember, response is the counterpart of faith. Call and response. We have a call. We see the ark going forward, and we are called not to sit down, but to go on.
This is where Joshua enters the picture. Joshua gives the word, and he says to the people, “First, sanctify yourselves.”
God has already sanctified us. He has already made us fit in the heavenlies. He has already taken us and put us in a place where He says, “Serve Me.” He has already set us apart for that.
But this is not that type of sanctification. He is saying, “You now sanctify yourself.”
Let me put it another way. When I tried out for basketball in high school, the coach sanctified me. He put me on the team. He set me apart to be on that team. He set me apart from others and put me on that team.
He gave me everything I needed: a basketball, a uniform, a place to buy the tennis shoes—I had to buy them—the type of socks to wear, and all that kind of stuff. I had everything needed.
Now, the only thing I had to do on my side was what? Show up. I had to be at practice. I had to be about the practice. I had to wear the blue blazer. The blue blazer marked you out as the team. Everybody knew on Friday or Tuesday that you were playing the game. You had the blue blazer, and you had better be wearing a tie.
You made sure that you had set aside time for those things. You sanctified yourself. I did things like not having a girlfriend, because basketball was more to me than anything. There were things I set aside because, as far as the goal I wanted, I was following that goal. I sanctified myself for that.
It is the same thing for us. We set ourselves apart. We know the Lord has called us to go into that land where He is Lord. He says, “Now set yourself apart for that. You have to do the things I want you to do as I show them to you, as I give you light.”
Again, you are not putting these things upon yourself. The Lord is showing us.
He says, “Pick up the ark.” Priests, you have to pick up the ark.
That is what Jesus said: deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow the King. As He sets Himself on that throne that you are carrying, deny yourself, take up that cross, and yoke up with Him.
It is not just that you are carrying Him; you are yoked with Him. That is a big thing. You are yoked with Him. You are going together. He is showing you how to go, because His is the life that knows how to deny itself.
He knew how to deny Himself more than any other man in the world. He denied Himself even to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
Then you have to put the sole of your feet into the Jordan at flood stage. Again, you might see yourself saying, “I have got too much garbage in me. I have got stuff like this.” The Lord says, “It is flood stage. I choose flood stage.”
If He does not choose flood stage, how is He going to show you what He can do?
Somebody was talking about Jericho, and Lane was telling me, “You know why they had to march around Jericho for seven days? So they could see how impossible what they were facing was.” They had to have it in their minds how impossible it was.
The Lord chooses flood stage. He says, “I am not going to change the circumstances. I want you to make that decision that you are going to follow Me.”
As you get closer and closer and closer, you may pray, “Lord, remove this. Lord, remove that,” and nothing is being removed. He says, “I want you to put your foot—not your toe.”
You know how you go into a swimming pool: “I am not going in. It is a little too cool for me.” If you just put your toe in, there is a lot that can say, “I am not ready yet. I cannot go in this. It is just too tough.”
He says, “I want you to put the sole of your foot.” It is the sole of your foot—I did not know your foot had a soul! The bottom.
Not only is it to be put in; it is supposed to be planted. Plant the foot in the flood, because it is not moving until you are in. He did not tell you to go up to your waist or your shoulders. He said, “Come in here. Put your foot in, and plant it.” Then things would happen.
How many of you have experienced that, where the Lord told you to do something, and you saw something that was just too big for you, and the Lord said, “Trust Me”?
I will tell you one of the first ways the Lord showed me that He was greater than I ever thought He was. I used to smoke. I loved smoking, and I never wanted to quit.
Some people smoke and they are Christians. I am not going to say, “Don’t do this or that.” It is unhealthy, but I loved it. You know you are hooked when the first thing in the morning you reach for your cigarettes—just like some of us, the first thing in the morning, what do we reach for? We know we are hooked, right?
There was no way I wanted to quit. I was twenty-one, and I had been smoking for a number of years, because in the sixties everybody smoked. I loved it.
Then my brother said, “I am quitting smoking. I feel the Lord wants me to do this, and I am doing it.” I said, “Go ahead. Great. Have a good time.”
But then the Lord just put it on my heart: “I want that, Jim. I want to show you that I am Lord.” It came with conviction—not conviction of sin. It was not a sin thing. It was the conviction that He is Lord.
It just came in that way: “I am Lord. What are you going to do? I want this.”
I struggled with it the whole night. I was upset, too. I was really angry. “How can You want this from me?” I was offended.
But I remember I got to the point of saying, “Okay. Okay. If You want it, fine. You have it.” Then I never had the desire to smoke again.
Now, that is not for everybody. I am just saying that this is something where you put your feet in the water. The Lord said, “Give them to Me.” You put your feet in the water and say, “I do not see myself doing this,” and boom—the next morning, I did not reach for them. I was not looking around, “Where are they?” They were gone.
It was a different life that enabled me to do that. It was not mine. I wanted that stuff. But you plant your foot in there, not your toes, because the toes will discourage you. You will think it is too cold.
The last thing is: you hold your place. You hold that place that Christ is giving until everyone crosses over.
I want to end with this one thing. In this time that we live in, we have the ministry of a lot of prophets. By prophets, I mean those who speak the Word of God. Many of us want to be those prophets. We want some type of speaking ministry.
That is not a bad thing. It is fine once the Lord takes your pride from you—and He does it slowly.
But do you know what the Lord is looking for in this situation? He is looking for priests. He wants priests, because it is priests that lead over.
It is not just the prophetic word. It is somebody who has taken that word into their heart, taken the access that Christ has given them through His shed blood, and has started to have His laws written upon their heart. They are starting not just to listen and not just to speak, but to do the will of God.
Other people are starting to say, “My gosh, what has happened to this brother or sister?” They see the life of Christ. They see the ark. They see the ark moving.
That is what the Lord wants for this time, in my estimation. “I want priests. Where are My priests?” Because they are the ones I choose to lead across.
Joshua did not go in front of them in the Jordan River. Is that not amazing? You would think Joshua would have come on some big white horse, pulled out that big sword, had that Joan of Arc banner, waved it, and said, “Let’s go.”
But he did not.
He said, “No, I want you to see Me, but I want you to see Me in other brothers and sisters.” In seeing Him in other brothers and sisters, you are encouraged to walk forward.
I want priests more than prophets for this time. It is a wonderful ministry, and it is open to all. This priesthood is open to all.
The question is: which of us are going to take it up? Which of us are not just going to take it up to lead, to be in the forefront, but which of us are going to take it up even to the point that we stand until everyone has crossed over?
Which is harder? To be the first one in, or to be the one who, after he has gone in, stays and holds the ark—bears that ark—until everyone crosses over?
That is what we are called to. That is what God is calling us to. This generation is supposed to cross over. We need priests to lead us in. God help us.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You that You have all the ways to get us over into Your very will. You have made all provision for it, and Lord, we thank You.
Lord, we ask even for us, for our generation, even here in Richmond, in this assembly, that You would raise up priests. Not priests who are just in a closet kind of ministry, but Lord, show us the priests. Show us the priests so that we can follow in.
Lord, we want to see the priests. We want to see Your priests. We want to see Your priests in the lives of Your people. Lord, we ask this in Jesus’ name.