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Bible Reading Notes
Saturday, May 28th – Joshua 3: 3, 4
The Lord’s people are told to keep their distance from the ark specifically because the Lord would be leading them in a new way. The prescribed distance would enable all of the people to see the ark and know from its location the way by which they should go. Significantly, the people are told, for you have not passed this way before. This refers to more than their topographical ignorance. These people were about to be led dry-shod through the parted Jordan River and for several circuits around Jericho before their blowing of horns would signal (not cause) its walls to fall. Our God leads us by His Word, ordinances, and Spirit in ways we would never experience or imagine were we to lean on our own understanding instead of trusting in the Him with all our hearts.
Sunday, May 29th - Joshua 3: 5
In addition to the command the officers gave to the people regarding how they were to follow the ark as the Levitical priests carried it, Joshua himself commands the people to consecrate themselves as an essential part of their preparation to cross the Jordan. The ordinances of the Lord are potent means of His grace but they must be personally and vitally applied by those partaking of them as they exercise their faith, mortify their sin, and seek to be sanctified and grow in that holiness without which they could not see their Lord. Only a consecrated people are worthy and willing to see and follow the wondrous ways of God.
Monday, May 30th - Joshua 3: 5
As the redeemed and beloved children of the Lord we should seek to live consecrated lives at all times. However, there are times such as when we prepare to partake of the Lord’s Supper, when we should take special pains to mortify our sins and devote ourselves in holy love to our Lord. In today’s verse, Joshua specifies what may seem to us a curious reason for the people to consecrate themselves. He says that on the next day the Lord would do wonders among them. The connection between this call and the reason given is that unless we are filled with holy love for our God and humble gratitude for His saving work, we can grow proud and presumptuous when we are made recipients of His almighty deeds of mercy and lavish kindness.
Tuesday, May 31st - Joshua 3: 6
Joshua’s final words are to the priests, He tells them to take up the ark and cross the Jordan ahead of the people who would follow. Here we are reminded that the Lord’s priests (and now His pastors) are to lead God’s people in consecration, in knowing and following the ways of the Lord, and in the victory in which the Lord always leads His people (1 Cor. 15:57).
Wednesday, June 1st - Joshua 3: 7, 8
Joshua’s words in vv.5,6 concerning the Lord’s wonders and the priests taking up the ark to lead the people across the Jordan, were not spoken from Joshua’s own logic or hopes or guessing. We learn in vv.7-13 that the Lord had given to Joshua specific information and instruction regarding how Israel would cross the Jordan. The sense of the imperfect tense of the verb to speak in v.7 is that Joshua spoke as he did to the officers (v.2), people (v.5), and priests (v.6) because the Lord was speaking to Him, telling him of the wonders He would accomplish for His people. When our minds are informed by the Word of God our feet will never stumble as we walk in His way.
Thursday, June 2nd - Joshua 3: 7, 8
The Lord not only tells Joshua what to command the priests, but He also informs His servant why He determined to lead His people in such a wondrous way across the Jordan. The Lord, who does all things to manifest the glory of His name, would perform the wonder of parting the Jordan in accordance with Joshua’s declaration so that Joshua would be exalted in Israel’s sight. The glory of the Lord always entails the highest good of His people and especially of His servants whom He chooses to lead His people. This wonder would be but the beginning of God’s exalting His servant so that His people then would be trained to trust in the servant He had chosen to lead them in the way of their salvation. Similarly, God granted Jesus, our Joshua, miraculous power so that He would be exalted in our sight and evoke our confidence in Him who is our Savior.
Friday, June 3rd - Joshua 3: 7, 8
The Lord would have His people, at this critical time in their history and through all ages, to perceive the connection between His servants Moses and Joshua. Just as Moses was God’s chosen instrument to lead the people of God out of their bondage and oppression in Egypt, so Joshua was God’s chosen servant to lead the people into the full and positive blessedness of the Promised Land. Both servants were used by God to lead His people through miraculously divided waters: Moses having divided the Red Sea and Joshua dividing the Jordan River. Both servants were providers of vital access through impassable barriers. What these men and the passages they provided signify is the access Christ has made for us out of our sins and into the unspeakable glories of His heavenly kingdom (Heb. 9:11-15; 10:19-25).
Saturday, June 4th - Joshua 3: 9
Joshua and the people of Israel are camped on the eastern bank of the Jordan River. They are there in readiness to cross the river, attack the fortified city of Jericho, and conquer all of Canaan. In preparation for such a massive military and logistical task, they are told by Joshua to do only two things: consecrate themselves (v.5), and hear the words of the Lord their God (v.9). Our natural inclination is to turn our hands to obvious practical necessities, but our new, spiritual inclination should be to turn our ears to hear God’s Word and our hearts to obey that Word.
Sunday, June 5th - Joshua 3: 9
Personal preparation increases one’s right perception of God’s Word. It was after the people had consecrated themselves (v.5) that they were called to hear the Word of the Lord. Our knowing rightly the ways and will of our Lord increases when we reverently prepare ourselves to enjoy holy and loving communion with Him as He speaks to us from His Word.
Monday, June 6th - Joshua 3: 7-9
Before the Lord spoke to His people through Joshua, He spoke to Joshua directly, as He had done with Moses. This special intimacy with the lord would be one aspect of Joshua’s growing exaltation in the eyes of all Israel. It may seem as though Joshua hardly needed to be exalted in the sight of Israel. The people already respected him and heard and obeyed him as their leader. But that day their respect would take a great and ever growing leap, as they would see him as God’s chosen instrument for their blessing. Through Joshua’s intimacy with the Lord and his speaking God’s words to Israel, the people would be drawn into a closer and more effectual walk with their God. Only God can raise up or cast down a person in His sight as well as the sight of others. God would exalt Joshua among His people and for His people’s growth in true and exalting godliness.
Tuesday, June 7th - Joshua 3: 9, 10
Joshua would be exalted by God (v.7) for a gracious and godly purpose that pertained to the sons of Israel. The Lord would work wonders to validate Joshua’s leadership, but also to give assurance to the people that the living God was dwelling among them and doing great things for them. Therefore, the servant of God destined to be exalted in the sight of all Israel delivers news to the people that would immediately lift their hopes and encourage them with the assurance that their God would empower them to vanquish all of their enemies. The indwelling nearness of our God to us is our supreme good (Ps. 73:28). If this God is for us, who or what can ultimately prevail against us (Rom. 8:31ff)?
Wednesday, June 8th - Joshua 3: 9, 10
The precise way in which the Lord would exalt Joshua was by His informing His chosen servant of His gracious purposes for His people, and having Joshua declare to Israel the divine purposes that would in turn be fulfilled by the almighty arm of the Lord. Joshua would be exalted by his nearness to God, and he would, in turn, be God’s instrument of exalting Israel by his declaring to them the Lord’s Word. Consequently, the people would come humbly but with confident assurance to expect that they would experience the Lord’s gracious and almighty compassions. Accordingly, their trust in and devotion to their God would not diminish but would increase. We can be assured of the loving nearness of our God and of our security and triumphant exaltation in Him through faith in our exalted Jesus, the living Word of God (Jn. 1:1ff) and the beloved Son and servant of God who has accomplished our redemption (Col. 3:1-4).
Thursday, June 9th - Joshua 3: 10
Joshua declares to the people of Israel the manifold magnitude of their enemies. He specifies a seven-fold army of foes waiting for them and arrayed against them across the Jordan. Although such a challenge was great, Joshua encourages the people to know and rely upon the greater God who was among them and who would fight for them. Faith sees all things in their true perspective. The prophet’s eyes beheld the Syrian army sent to arrest him as did the eyes of his servant, but Elisha also beheld the unseen and prevailingly greater hosts of the Lord (2 Ki. 6:8-17). Abraham was not blind to the aged weakness of his own body and the deadness of Sarah’s womb, but he grew strong in faith and believed in the God who promised him a son (Rom. 4:1-3, 18-22). We who have faith in our gracious and almighty God, who in Christ is for us, need not fear any persons or powers in all of creation who may stand against us (Rom. 8:31-39).
Friday, June 10th - Joshua 3: 10-13
Our supreme security, honor, and exaltation are found in our God being among and for us as His beloved people. His love commits Him to us and His power secures us from all of our enemies. Therefore, the people of Israel are here told to consecrate themselves to this God, to hear His Word through His servant, Joshua, and to believe that their God would work wonders for them beyond what they could ask or think. Consecration to and communion with this God takes place before the people take a step to cross the Jordan. We learn from this that piety should ever precede practical endeavor. Otherwise, we will rely on our own understanding and frail power rather than trust in our wise and almighty Lord with all of our hearts (Prov. 3:5,6).
Saturday, June 11th - Joshua 3: 10-13
In v.10, Joshua emphatically assures Israel that theirs was a faith not in mere religious notions but rather in the one true and living God. Joshua declares that this God would certainly dispossess the numerous indigenous peoples of the Promised Land. But the Lord’s servant makes clear that God would do this before His people, meaning that Israel would not only witness the wonders of God but they would participate in those wonders. The people of Israel would do the crossing of the river, the marching and fighting, but all in the wake of the prevailing power of their God. The Lord would be the ultimate and effective cause of their victories, while the people would be instrumental participators in His triumphs. Similarly, we who are in Christ are called to work out our salvation, knowing that it is the living God who is at work in us to will and do His good pleasure (Phil 2:12,13).
Sunday, June 12th - Joshua 3: 10-13
The foundation of and first step toward Israel’s conquest of Canaan was their pious waiting upon the Lord as they consecrated themselves and heard and believed His Word through Joshua. The first practical step that was to issue from their piety was for them to move toward and martially close with their enemies. But there was the considerable challenge of the Jordan River that had to be crossed before the armed people of God could engage with their enemies. The way that God reveals that He would lead His people across the Jordan is infinitely removed from the ways of men. There would be no boats, no bridges, but priests would lead the people into the waters of the Jordan. Those priests would carry the ark of the covenant that would seem a pressing burden to men who needed buoyancy to keep from drowning in those waters. Their feet would stand in the waters, not walk over them on a bridge or pass over them in a boat. God’s ways seem foolish and suicidal to faithless people. It would seem that God wanted to drown His people rather than dispossess their enemies. But ways of apparent death are the ways of the God of life. To all of these strange instructions that seemed designed to lead God’s people to their deaths, there is one word of promise given by God that would vindicate the divine counsel and the faith of the people who trusted in the Lord and obeyed His Word. God promised that the waters would be parted by His hand, just as had occurred with Moses and Israel at the Red Sea. The way of God to life and victory leads always through many deaths to sense and self.
Monday, June 13th - Joshua 3: 10-13
Clearly, neither the steps of the priests nor the ark they carried were causative forces of the river’s parting. However, all that the priests and people would do in obedience to God’s instructions would be demonstrative of their faith in the living God who had created all waters and divided them by land and determined their boundaries according to His will (Gen. 1:9,10; Ps. 104:5-9). The people without God could not divide such waters, so they would never have considered attempting to do so. God without the people could divide and had divided such waters for the sake of His glory and His people’s good. Without Jesus, we can do nothing (Jn. 15:5), but with Him we can do all things, even those far beyond our imagining (Phil. 4:13).
Tuesday, June 14th - Joshua 3: 10-13
These words of divine revelation through Joshua are all confounding to human sense and logic. Each instruction is understandable in itself and could be easily done by the priests and the people. The priests were simply to carry the ark and the people were to follow. However, when these words are considered in the context of Israel’s need to cross the Jordan, they make no natural sense. Nothing the priests or people did in obedience to their God-given instructions could accomplish their goal. The efficacy of the crossing depended entirely upon the almighty power of God working in fulfillment of His promise and doing so through the apparent weakness and folly of His people’s believing and walking as if God would do the incredible deed. There is nothing God’s Word to convince a man rationally to commit himself to the weakness and folly of the promises of a Man crucified thousands of years ago. Only the demonstrated power of God to raise such a Man from the dead and to change the lives of all who believe in Him can lead one to trust in and rely upon such weakness. Only the fidelity of God to keep His promises vindicates the wisdom of His employing such apparent foolishness to accomplish His glorious and gracious will.
Wednesday, June 15th - Joshua 3: 10-13
Among these revealing and instructive words—all of them confounding to human logic—the Lord tells His people to elect twelve men, one from each tribe. The Lord’s purpose in this is not stipulated at this point, but becomes clear and is seen to be vital for the future welfare of the Church in every age. Through their work, there would be enduring evidence that the Lord’s people, in the course of their trusting and walking in the way of their God, experience the almighty arm of the Lord making a way miraculously for them through the Jordan. These twelve would serve to erect an enduring testimony to the gracious and almighty works of God so that their descendants would be blessed not by their seeing with their own eyes, but by their believing with their hearts that God makes possible ways of blessing that are impossible for men to effect.
Thursday, June 16th - Joshua 3: 14-17
In these verses, Scripture records for us the outcome of the people of Israel believing and acting on the clear Word of God and relying on His infallible wisdom and on His integrity and power to do what He had promised. The priests and the people put feet to their faith, taking the few simple steps God had directed them to take. Far from their sinking beneath the Jordan’s waters, they saw the gracious and miraculous power of God open a dry crossing for them all. Only our truly consecrated devotion to our living God prepares us rightly and blessedly to perceive and participate in His wondrous works.
Friday, June 17th - Joshua 3: 14
This verse records the unwavering obedience of the people of Israel to the words of their God. They do not hesitate to leave their tents and head for the watery barrier. They do not deviate from any of their instructions. Their faithful walk is the fruit of their believing consecration to their God, and the amazing fruit of that faithful consecration vindicates the Word, wisdom, love, and power of God as well as the people’s trusting and obedient reliance upon their living God and His Word and works on their behalf. How much blessing we gain by our believing obedience to our redeeming Lord! How much blessing and usefulness in His service we forfeit whenever we take counsel from our fears rather than from His Word!
Saturday, June 18th - Joshua 3: 14, 15
The test of the people’s faith was that they were to set out from their tents and prepare to follow the priests into the Jordan before the river had parted as God had promised it would. They passed that test, rightly reckoning that the symbol of God’s redeeming mercy and power, namely the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth (as Joshua referred to it in vv.11,13), indicated that they were trusting and following the living God who had all authority and power to command and control all elements of creation and all men and nations of the world. Accordingly, the covenant people began their walk well, being confident that He who had begun a good work for them would perfect and complete it as He led them safely through the watery barrier into Canaan and enabled them to defeat all of their enemies in the land where they would settle and live no longer in tents but in houses. Vital piety leads to true, abundant, and lasting profit.
Sunday, June 19th - Joshua 3: 14, 15
That the people left their tents to follow the priests to the Jordan was a good start for their walk by faith in the Word and works of God. However, their walking to the river was one thing; their walking through it would be quite another matter. The testing of the faith of both priests and people increased when the priests stepped into the river and found that its water did not initially yield to their advancing strides but covered their feet with the edges of its flooded volume. At this critical point (and at points like it in our lives) when it can seem as through prohibiting challenges will prevail over the purposes and people of God, only faith that adheres to God, though He appear intent on slaying His own people, will overcome the world’s opposition (1 Jn. 5:4).
Monday, June 20th - Joshua 3: 14, 15
The fact that God’s chosen priests were carrying the ark of the Lord’s covenant as they stepped into the waters of the Jordan, indicated to them, to the people of Israel, and to us that God was not commanding His people to go before Him, but rather that the Lord was leading His people in a trail that He blazed by His own infallible wisdom, immeasurable love, and almighty power, and marked by His ordinaces. Our God never directs us to go anywhere except where He has gone before us and where He is with us. The way of our God is a wonderful way (Josh. 3:4) that we can only know and experience when we fix our focus on Him by faith and follow Him wherever he leads.
Tuesday, June 21st - Joshua 3: 16, 17
In vv. 14,15, we read of how the priests and people of Israel set out by faith in their living God and His wondrous promise. In the final two verses of this third chapter we are given a short and simple account of the Lord’s potent performance of His promise. Although the river’s flooding waters initially covered the priest’s feet, those faithful servants of the Lord did not retreat in fear but stood and even advanced by faith. Their faith did not cause the miraculous parting of the Jordan but it did instrumentally lead them to behold and participate in this wonder and practical provision of the Lord. However our faith may be tested, if we stand firm in it and by it, we shall always triumph through the almighty hand of our heavenly Father lovingly working for our good (Eph. 6:10,11; 1 Pet. 1:5; 5:9).
Wednesday, June 22nd - Joshua 3: 16, 17
The Lord’s chosen way to have His people enter into the Promised Land, strange though it may have seemed, was highly significant. Matthew Henry well observes that …it must be done therefore in such a way as had no precedent but the dividing of the Red Sea: and that miracle is here repeated, to show that God has the same power to finish the salvation of His people that he had to begin it.
Thursday, June 23rd - Joshua 3: 15-17
Why did the Lord choose to have His people cross the Jordan when it was overflowing its banks? An impossible task is made even more difficult by the timing of this crossing. However, our God often ordains that the powers arrayed against Him, His people, and His purposes for His people should take their best shot in their endeavor to frustrate the Lord and discomfit His people. Recall how the Lord told Elijah to drench the altar upon which fire from heaven was to consume the offering laid upon it (1 Ki. 18:30-39). Even when advantages are provided for the evil forces that confront the people of God, it only occasions the Lord magnifying the glory of His wisdom and power and deepens the grateful assurance of His people.
Friday, June 24th - Joshua 3: 15-17
It is significant that the priests’ approach to the Jordan did not coincide with the division of the waters. It was their entrance into those waters (that had seemed initially to defy the word of God’s promise) that was accompanied by the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to divide the Jordan. We do well to run the race set before us according to God’s Word and by the power of faith working itself out in loving obedience to our Lord (Heb. 12:1-3). We do not, cannot, and need not know how or even precisely when the Lord will work to remove those obstacles that stand against His promises, we simply need know that His love will prompt, His wisdom will direct, and His power will always cause all things to work together for our good (Rom. 8:28).
Saturday, June 25th - Joshua 3: 16, 17
We are given a sketch but not an exhaustive explanation of how the way was opened for Israel’s crossing. We are told that the waters rose in a heap indicating that it was not a natural impediment to their flow but rather, contrary to its fluid nature, the water congealed or solidified in obedience to the word of God’s power. We are also told that this miraculous provision extended beyond a narrow corridor through which the people of Israel passed and would have been themselves the only ones to witness. The city of Adam beside Zarethan was approximately fifteen miles north of the crossing point opposite of Jericho. Also, the river’s waters south of the crossing point drained into the Dead Sea, leaving a dry riverbed about five miles in a season when the river usually was and had been in flood volume. Accordingly, this miracle of God’s merciful power was not only used and celebrated by the people of God (Ps. 114), but it was also witnessed by many people of the land who saw how Israel’s God could govern all natural elements. Perhaps some of them, as Rahab had experienced, found their hard hearts melting and going out to God in saving faith.
Sunday, June 26th - Joshua 3: 16,17
The Lord opened a way for His people contrary to the laws of natural phenomena. Our God leads us through many natural ways but He also at times makes ways for us where none before existed. The people of Israel did not hesitate to walk in this way that their living God had opened for them. They were witnesses of the Lord’s wonders but also they were participants, entering into and profiting from the safe and effective access the Lord had opened for them into the Promised Land. All of the covenant people entered through this way, as v.17 makes clear by its reference to all the nation. The people of God profited not only by the ease with which they could cross the river and convey their possessions with them into the land. They profited by the knowledge that although they came out of the river to face Jericho, that great walled city, and had to negotiate the hardest and highest hurdle first, they would be led and held by the hand that had just parted a flooded river for them. As Matthew Henry well observes: If Jordan’s flood cannot keep them out, Canaan’s force cannot turn them out.
Monday, June 27th - Joshua 3: 15-17
Several features of the priests’ actions are recorded in these verses. We are told how without questioning or hesitation they carried the ark and with it entered into the flooding waters of the Jordan. From their entrance, the priests ventured to stand in the middle of the Jordan on ground made dry from the Lord’s having cut off the downward flowing waters. There the priests remained until all of the people had crossed to the west bank near Jericho. These priests and all true pastors of the Church should ever be the first into spiritually challenging but clearly necessary situations, and they should remain at their posts until they are released by God to be the last ones out of such situations. These priests serve as good examples of ones who trust the Lord, have confidence in His Word, and possess a sacrificial love for His people. They are tokens of their God who is ever the vanguard and rear guard of His people, and it is beautiful and edifying for us to read of the people’s faithful following the Lord’s Word and His priestly servants. Here is foreshadowed our safe passage across the Jordan of death into the celestial city through the access, prayers, and example of our sympathetic and saving high priest, Jesus.
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