Crossing the Jordan, Part 3 - Twelve men and twelve stones
Joshua 4v1-9
9th October 2015
Remember that Joshua instructed the people to choose 12 men, back in Joshua 3v12? We weren't told then why those men would be needed. But now we read this:
Joshua 4v1-6a
When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua,
"Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe,
and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and
carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."
So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe,
and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take
up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites,
to serve as a sign among you."
I've read different opinions of why the Bible mentions these 12 men once in chapter 3 and once in chapter 4. My opinion is this:
Surely the reason why Joshua told the Israelites to choose 12 men in Joshua 3v12 is simply because God told him to. God wanted the people to choose 12 responsible men for an unspecified task. Joshua appointed the 12 men that the people had chosen. When God revealed the nature of the task He had in mind He asked Joshua to choose 12 men. Joshua stuck with the 12 men that he'd already appointed. This says to me that:
- God knows what He'll wants before He wants it
- Sometimes, the people are better than their leaders at discerning who is ready to take responsibility
- When you've already picked a team, don't change it
In contrast we, who should know better, fall in the trap of imagining:
- We need to tell God what He needs to do (as if He needs our advice)
- The leader needs to make all the decisions
- Loyalty is not as important as expediency
May God grant us better understanding.
Joshua stuck with the 12 men the people had chosen. They had an important task. Each of them was to go back into the River Jordan, while it was still prevented from flowing, and pick up a stone. God was going to use the 12 stones as a memorial of what had happened, as Joshua explained to them:
Joshua 4v6b-7
"In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?'
tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the
Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
These 12 men, one from each tribe, represented the whole nation of Israel. They went back into the Jordan, and collected one stone each:
Joshua 4v8-9
So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to
the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their
camp, where they put them down.
Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who
carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.
God wanted His people to remember hat He'd done for them. And He wants us to remember what He's done for us. That's one reason why so many people wear a cross, and so many church buildings have a cross on the wall. It would be a disgraceful thing for a Christian to somehow forget that Jesus Christ died for us, so we could enter into God's rest.
There was once an uncrossable river separating us from the kingdom of God. It was too deep and too wide for us, but we crossed it in the face of our enemies. We're now safe. And we must never forget that it was God, not us, who made it possible.
We must remember the cross every day, and give thanks to God.