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Bible Reading Notes
June 2011
Tuesday, June 28th - Joshua 4: 1-3
This fourth chapter of Joshua is all about the construction of an enduring testimony to the saving power that the Lord exerted for His people. Our God performs a full work of redemption for us. He not only accomplishes what His people need for their salvation, but He also provides for them and their future generations sufficient and credible testimony so that they might not forget but ever recall for their edification His saving work accomplished for them. All of God’s Word is not only teaching us doctrine but also testifying to what God has done to fulfill His great and precious promises to those who believe in Him. The Bible is not only about redemption but also about the necessity and importance of our remembering the facts about our salvation (Lk. 24:6; 2 Tim. 2:8).
Wednesday, June 29th – Joshua 4: 1-3
The things we are told to remember in God’s Word are not fables but facts. Our Lord knows how frail we are and how inclined we can be to forget His marvelous works or to regard them as exaggerations. Therefore, this chapter about testimony and our edifying recollection of the divine testimony begins with a statement of the fact that the nation of Israel crossed the Jordan through the merciful and mighty provision of the Lord. Our salvation may seem to us at times too good to be true, but in fact it is too good not to be true and should never be forgotten.
Thursday, June 30th - Joshua 4: 1-3
It was by the prevailing power of God that all the nation of Israel had entered into the divided waters of the Jordan River and safely crossed to the opposite bank, which was the border of the land of Canaan. However, such a crossing was far more than a matter of the Lord exerting His almighty power. Therefore, the Lord gave instruction that His people should cross not as a crowd but rather as an orderly procession. The Lord also gave instruction that His servants should take appropriate steps to preserve the memory of this merciful and mighty provision. The crossing itself was vital provision for the generation of Israel that Joshua led into the Promised Land. The memorial to that crossing would prove to be of vital significance to all future believers. Those believers would come to know of this great and gracious work of God through the testimony of the memorial stones as seen by many generations with their eyes and eventually by all later generations through the words recorded in Scripture. In this way, God proves to be the loving Savior of believers and their descendants.
Friday, July 1st - Joshua 4: 1-3
In the economy of our God, there are some who are blessed through their seeing and believing, as Thomas was when he beheld his resurrected Lord. But there are others—and far more of them—who are blessed through their faithful heeding the testimony of God’s Word (Jn. 20:29). Our Lord loves and deals most effectively with both classes of believers, and we should regard His Word of testimony to be no less effectual in our lives than were His miraculous works effectual in the lives of those who personally experienced them.
Saturday, July 2nd - Joshua 4: 1-3
There are two marvels memorialized in Israel’s crossing of the Jordan. The first is the marvel of the Lord’s merciful and mighty provision for His people. The word of command spoken by His month was backed up by the power of His almighty hand. Such divine mercy and might displayed in this marvel are features of our Lord’s dealings with all of His people in all ages, and He would have us all profit from the comfort and assurance our recalling and faithful consideration of this demonstrated fact provides for us.
Sunday, July 3rd - Joshua 4: 1-3
The other marvel memorialized in this chapter is that of the resolute and unreserved trust the people of Israel had in the Lord. That trust was demonstrated by their obedience to His Word, especially when the divine command ran counter to all natural human reasoning. God’s people believed and obeyed their Lord, and their faithful obedience resulted not in their deaths but in their felicitous crossing of the Jordan and their safe arrival in the Promised Land. The Lord would have His people in all ages to profit from their faithful consideration of this sweet fruit that issues whenever believers in any age and any circumstances trust in and obey their Lord with all their hearts (Prov. 3:5,6).
Monday, July 4th - Joshua 4: 1-3
God does not memorialize a myth. It is only after the miraculous parting and the faithful crossing of the Jordan were accomplished that God gave to Joshua instructions to erect a memorial to these blessed events. What God had begun 40 years previously, leading His people out of their bondage in Egypt, He here completes, leading them all safely into the Promised Land. None of His chosen people were lost in their crossing through the miraculous opening God made in the Jordan. Strong and weak, men, women, and children all arrived in the land that God had promised them for their blessing and for His glory. The work that His goodness begins, the arm of His strength always completes.
Tuesday, July 5th - Joshua 4: 1-3
The specific instructions that the Lord gave to Joshua for the construction of the memorial are detailed and highly significant. The Lord begins by telling Joshua to select twelve men, one from each tribe. This communication had been given to Joshua prior to the nation’s crossing of the river (Josh. 3:12), and the selection presumably had been made at that time. Now, after the crossing had been accomplished, the Lord’s purpose for this selection is revealed. The twelve men clearly represent each of the twelve tribes of Israel. The chosen men are tokens of the entire chosen nation, signifying that by the trust and obedience of the living stones of the Church of God, the people of Israel serve to glorify the name of the Lord their Savior. The parting of the Jordan was not so much a commemoration of a performance of God’s omnipotence as it was a memorial to the power of the Lord having been wielded lovingly for the saving of His people, the living trophies of His glorious grace.
Wednesday, July 6th - Joshua 4: 1-3
The twelve men representing the whole nation of Israel are instructed each to take a stone from the miraculously dried riverbed and deposit them on the Canaan side of the Jordan. These stones were trophies carried by men who were themselves living stones and trophies of God’s grace and power—men who represented all of the living stones of the household of God (1 Pet. 2:4-10). The trophies were carried out of the place that, apart from the merciful might of their God, could have been their watery grave. Accordingly, these stones served as enduring tokens that the Lord saves His people from death and makes them to be more than conquerors over all things through life and death (Rom. 8:35-39).
Thursday, July 7th - Joshua 4: 1-3
The stones removed from the dried bed of the Jordan were not rare jewels or beautiful gems. They were common stones, remarkable only because they had been retrieved from a place that would have barred Israel from entrance to the Promised Land had God not miraculously opened a way for them through that watery barrier. Because those stones had been lifted from such a place by these men of Israel, no stones, no gems, no jewels on earth could have been more precious in all that they signified to the people of God about their saving Lord and about the blessing He had showered and would ever shower upon them.
Friday, July 8th - Joshua 4: 1-3
The stones were to be set down in the place where Israel would lodge for a time. A memorial would be erected from those stones at the place where the covenant people would spend their first night in the Promised Land. This memorial would serve not only as an enduring testimony to the mercy and saving power of the Lord, but also as a pledge of Israel’s ownership of all the land that God had promised to Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 15:13-21), and that God had now restored to His people by the demonstration of His almighty power and sovereign authority. The God whose will the river obeyed because He was sovereign over it, here pledges that He will see to it that Canaan’s inhabitants would melt before His people and yield the land to its rightful owners.
Saturday, July 9th - Joshua 4: 4-7
These verses tell us how Joshua, having received his instructions from the Lord, conveyed the divine directives to the chosen twelve. Accordingly, the plans and purposes of God for His glory and for the good of His people progress toward their fulfillment. Our God is not the God of plans and promises only. He is supremely the God of saving accomplishment. Stones would soon be selected and erected in the chosen place where they would cry out to the glory of God and for the good of His people. Even at this point, the obedience of Joshua and the twelve representatives of Israel shows us the living stones of God’s household, by their faithful obedience to their Lord in a mundane but highly significant matter, living and serving to glorify and enjoy their gracious God.
Sunday, July 10th - Joshua 4: 4-7
The sight of the memorial stones would bear testimony to all who had eyes to see and illuminated minds to understand their significance. Yet, God makes provision not only for the spiritually astute but also for those of His children whose apprehension of the memorial and its significance would have been weak, either by reason of their own mental limitations or by reason of their distance from this event through time’s passage. Therefore, Joshua adds the verbal teaching from the living stones of Israel to the mute testimony of the stones taken from the Jordan. To what children may partly apprehend as a curiosity, people of understanding and experience are hereby directed to add the truth they know and treasure about their God and His works so that all of the covenant people might grow together in the grace and knowledge of the Lord (Col. 1:24-29).
Monday, July 11th - Joshua 4: 8
With this verse we are brought to the record of the accomplishment of the Lord’s instructions to Joshua and through Joshua to His people. The people of God here work out their salvation according to the words of the God who has done great things for them and in them. This obedience of the faithful manifests something distinct but not separate from the testimony of the memorial stones. Here we behold the marvel of the trusting faith and diligent obedience of the living stones of God’s household. God has not only done a work in the river Jordan, He has also done a wonderful work in the hearts of His redeemed people. The testimony of the Jordan’s stones endured for a time, but the loving devotion and grateful obedience of the people of God serve to erect a memorial to the gracious love and saving power of the Lord that endures through time and eternity.
Tuesday, July 12th - Joshua 4: 9
This verse briefly describes how Joshua erected a stone monument in the middle of the Jordan. This was a monument in addition to the one that was erected on the Canaan bank of the Jordan. Some question whether Joshua was in this work going beyond the Word of God, since there is no mention in Scripture of the Lord instructing him to raise up this second memorial. But as Joshua has shown himself to be scrupulously careful to do all, and only all, of what God had spoken to him, and as Scripture nowhere condemns Joshua but rather commends him for all he did in his leading of Israel (Josh. 4:14), we may reasonably assume that Joshua here completes a confirmed testimony composed of the witness of two piles of stone, one in the Jordan mirroring the one made from stones out of the Jordan and raised up on the river’s bank. The waters of Jordan can be rightly seen as a barrier of separation between believers and their blessed reward. The way of God for His people lay through those waters that without His saving power would have encompassed them in death. Therefore, these two memorials testify to us that our God saves us in death (the people entered safely into the Jordan) and through death (they emerged to live permanently on Canaan’s side.
Wednesday, July 13th - Joshua 4: 10, 11
The opening word, for, in v.10 indicates to us that although the Lord was the ultimate source for the miraculous parting of the Jordan, He blessed the means of His grace with instrumental power. God wrought His power through the men and religious features, such as the ark, of His choosing and instituting. As long as the priests and ark of the Lord remained in the Jordan, the barrier to the Promised Land was held open and the power of death was held back from the children of Israel. This arrangement foreshadows the blessed truth that because Jesus, our great high priest, has entered and passed through death, He has rendered that dreadful last enemy to be now the portal through which we enter safely and joyfully into the glory of heaven (Heb. 2:14-18; 4:14-16).
Thursday, July 14th - Joshua 4: 10, 11
The priests stood their ground firmly in the dry passage that God had opened before them. While the priests stood there, the waters were held back and the people were safe. Yet, we do not read that the people flocked around and stayed with the priests. Instead, we read that they hastened to cross because they rejoiced to obey the Lord’s will that they should dwell securely in the Promised Land and not tarry in the miraculous way God had opened for them to enter that land. Likewise, although it is gain for us to live on in this world by Christ’s grace and for His glory, for us to die and enter into the eternal joy of the glorious kingdom of our Redeemer is greatest gain. That is why the Spirit and the bride of Christ ask Him to come quickly and usher in the consummation of our salvation (Rev. 22: 17,20).
Friday, July 15th - Joshua 4: 10, 11
The people did not presume on the Lord’s miraculous provision but hastened through the Jordan to the place promised to them and appointed for them by God. All of the people safely crossed. Some hastened, no doubt, due to their weak faith and wavering trust that God could hold back the waters for as long as they needed Him to do so. Some hastened in strong faith to make the crossing and be where God had called them to be. Not one hesitated; not one refused to cross. Not one that our heavenly Joshua calls to Himself for salvation will ever be lost (Jn. 10:11,27-29).
Saturday, July 16th - Joshua 4: 10, 11
Not only the position of the priests in the Jordan is noted in these verses, but also the timing and positioning of their movement out of the Jordan is observed. The priests and the ark of the Lord had been first into the Jordan. They remained in the middle of the riverbed until all the covenant nation had crossed into Canaan. Then they left their position and came out of the Jordan, passed by the gathered people of Israel and took up once more the lead position. In this way the people of God were shown the comforting truth that the Lord their God was with them and surrounded them in all their walk by faith. When our Savior says that He will never leave or forsake us, He means that He and His blessing go before us, stand guard behind us, and abide with us in all circumstances.
Sunday, July 17th - Joshua 4: 12, 13
Special notice is taken of the performance of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh. We are told how they faithfully kept their promise. They who had already received their inheritance of territories east of the Jordan and had settled their families there (Josh. 1:12-18) not only crossed over with the rest of Israel, but they led their brethren to face their fighting responsibilities clad in their battle armor and carrying their weapons. Those first blessed by the Lord should be first to show their gratitude through their diligent and even dangerous and sacrificial service for the glory of their Lord and for the good of their brethren (Phil. 2:1-4).
Monday, July 18th - Joshua 4: 14
On the day when Israel completed her miraculous, orderly, and highly significant crossing of the Jordan, the Lord raised up His servant Joshua in the estimation of all members of the covenant nation. In the exaltation of His servant, God was keeping His promise to Joshua (Josh. 3:7) and showering His good blessing upon His people. Through this man of proven fidelity to God and humble compassion for the people of God, Israel was guided, protected, and provided for by a servant who was like his heavenly Master, whose infallible wisdom, holy love, enlightening truth, and almighty power caused all things to work together for their good.
Tuesday, July 19th - Joshua 4: 4: 14
The Lord exalted Joshua not by His conferring upon His servant empty honors but rather by His infusing within him quickening, strengthening, and edifying grace. It was therefore not by divine order but by the people’s grateful observation of the competent and compassionate leadership of the Lord’s servant that they held Joshua in highest esteem and gave to him greatest respect. In this they did not idolize him, giving to him that worship that belongs to God alone, but rather they saw his light so shining that they gave glory to the God who had exalted Joshua for their highest blessing. Joshua had honored and exalted God by his faithful obedience, and those who honor God will always be honored by God. Our highest place will always be found when we lie low at the feet of our divine Redeemer who stooped to serve us and to lift us from our guilty bondage to the heights of His glorious kingdom.
Wednesday, July 20th - Joshua 4: 15-18
These verses give us a flashback in order to make clear to us that the priests’ marching orders into and out of the Jordan came from the Lord through Joshua rather than from Joshua himself. By the ordaining of God, the priests were to be the first into and the last out of the place that would have been a watery tomb to them apart from the preserving power of the Lord. The priests were not prompted to leave their stand in the middle of the Jordan by their own reasoning, they judging that when their eyes saw the last of the Israelites safely across the Jordan their job was finished. Instead they waited for the word of command from God through Joshua before they joined their brethren on the Canaan bank of the river. So our Jesus is the supremely faithful high priest who did all things necessary for our salvation not according to His own initiative but according to the will and authority of His Father (Jn. 5:30).
Thursday, July 21st - Joshua 4: 15-18
The sovereign hand of the Lord is seen in every feature of this redemptive drama. The waters of the Jordan do not return to their normal course according to the natural forces that usually governed them. It was only when the feet of Israel’s priests stood on the bank of the Promised Land that the river’s waters returned to their flood-stage fullness from their state of divided suspension. The hand of the Lord was the ultimate cause of the dividing of these waters, but the feet of His priests were the instrumental cause. The Lord still makes His ordinances (the ark then, His Word now) and His servants (priests then, pastors now) to be instrumental in providing His people with holy comforts, strong security, and effectual access to His blessings great and small.
Friday, July 22nd - Joshua 4: 19
In this verse we have a note of the date on which Israel first camped in the Promised Land. The date was the 40th anniversary of the Passover they had observed on the eve of their departure from Egypt (Ex. 12:2,3). Within days they would observe their first Passover in the Promised Land (Josh. 5:10). The intervening forty years were filled with times of their initial departure from Egypt, a long period of discipline due to the people’s refusal to enter the land at Kadesh-barnea (Num. 13,14), and approximately a year of their tune-up fighting minor kings prior to Israel’s entrance into Canaan. In all of this, the Lord had shown Himself to be the alpha and omega of His people’s salvation, the beginning and end of their redemption, and the One who used even the dark providence of His discipline to train up one of the most faithful, godly, obedient, and fruitful generations that have ever adorned the Church of God. What our Lord has begun for and in us, He will always bring to perfect completion in His perfect time.
Sunday, July 23rd - Joshua 4: 20-24
These verses tell of how God, through His servant Joshua, made provision to teach future generations by means of tokens of these current demonstrations of divine mercy and might. God does not miraculously part rivers every day, but He has ordained that the testimony of such redemptive feats should be recorded for our instruction and comfort. Such memorials instruct and assure us that for the God who did the parting then, nothing is impossible for Him to accomplish now for our good.
Sunday, July 24th - Joshua 4: 20-24
Joshua set the memorial stones in order at Gilgal. The stones were not heaped up but placed with obvious arrangement that would have indicated intelligent design. Yet, Joshua knew that while the stones, like the burning bush, would draw the attention of people, they would not have effectively communicated their full testimony to any future generations. Therefore, he anticipates the Israelites’ children asking questions from curiosity but receiving answers that are critical and comforting to them and to all believers. The answer is dictated by Joshua to his contemporaries, indicating that the Lord and His faithful spokesmen are necessary and edifying interpreters of divine providence. Human speculation would never imagine the truth that divine testimony reveals.
Monday, July 25th - Joshua 4: 20-24
The stones would testify of something remarkable that had occurred in the river from whence they had been taken. Only the testimony of God’s people would reveal the truth of how those stones had come to be where they were and arranged as they were. The truth is that Israel had trod across the Jordan in a miraculous way that enabled them to gather materials and erect a monument to the glory of God who had graciously and powerfully enabled His people to enter into the Promised Land. When people detect the fruit of the Spirit issuing from our hearts that had been dead in a sea of sin, they, too, may inquire regarding the monument of divine grace in our lives, and when they do so inquire, we should be ready to give an account for the hope that is within us (1 Pet. 3:15).
Tuesday, July 26th - Joshua 4: 20-24
Joshua links together the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea with their crossing of the Jordan to remind the covenant people that what God begins He brings to completion, and that His merciful might by which He began and completed His people’s pilgrimage to the Promised Land had been operative in less spectacular ways throughout their entire pilgrimage. His power does not fail, though His people may die and be succeeded by their children. His mercies endure, though His people wander from Him. His purposes prevail from generation to generation.
Wednesday, July 27th - Joshua 4: 20-24
The testimony of the twelve river stones, augmented by the testimony of the people of God, was to be to the Church and through the Church to the world. That testimony is to the marvel of God’s mercy and might exercised for His people. The Lord divides bodies of water, draws water from rocks, turns bitter waters sweet, turns water into wine, walks on water and enables His people to do so. All of these miracles are tokens that show the Church and the world that the Lord is sovereign over all of creation. The Lord’s inclusion of the actions of His people, in their crossing the Jordan, gathering the stones, and erecting them at Gilgal, testifies to the marvel of the faith they have in the Lord, whereby they serve by the direction of His Word and the empowering of His Spirit and for the sake His glory. As believers reckon God to be mercifully and mightily for them in whatever age or circumstance in which they live, their fears are vanquished and they are emboldened to do feats of faith, walking where no unbeliever ever would dare attempt to walk, and doing things for the glory of God and for the good of all men, especially those of the household of faith. By such service they raise up a monument to the marvel that God loves sinners so much that He has come Himself as our great high priest to take is stand in our place and the flood of death’s waves so that we might pass safely through this life and through death to our eternal home with Him in glory.
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