CROSS OVER

Joshua 3:10 “This is how you will know that the living God is among you…”

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say; and a little deeper than that, the desire to accomplish something important, the need to protect something valuable: that can motivate you, even when the obstacles are great.

I expect most of us have had the experience of facing an insurmountable barrier to something we wanted to do. Probably you’ve had those times in your life when you wanted to get on with it, but everything seemed to be stacked against you: too much work to do, too many conflicts in the family, too many bills to pay, too much to do all at once. Do you know what that feels like? I expect it feels something like drowning. You just feel engulfed, taken over, by all kinds of things. Too much! "Stop the world, I want to get off!" And you think you will just about drown.

Imagine, then, how Joshua felt when he and the people of Israel got to the River Jordan, which they had to cross in order to get to the land of promise. The people had been traveling through the wilderness for a generation; under the leadership of Moses they had endured hunger and thirst, heat and cold, rebellions and recriminations.

They were tired. They were just plain tired. They were exhausted. Too long, too much, too hard, too frustrating. And now, one more river to cross. The River Jordan, standing between them and the land of promise. I can hear them now sighing and groaning and looking at all that water: one more river to cross. How do we get over? And I’m sure their leader, Joshua, felt the same way.

There’s something about that River Jordan, however, that you would not guess just from reading the text of the Scriptures. There is a little secret about that river. It’s shallow and narrow. It’s not a deep river; it’s a dinky little stream. It is no mighty Mississippi, no powerful Potomac. It is just a minor stream which does on occasion overflow its banks, but which is normally pretty unimpressive.

And yet to Israel it might as well have been the Amazon. It looked uncrossable. It Iooked as though it was a tidal wave of water no human being could expect to get over. On the other side there was the land which God had promised. How would they get over? It looked like too much. You see, the truth is that any obstacle looks bad when you are running. Any barrier looks insurmountable when you have done nothing all your life but fret about things that are under God’s care. If you don’t know or you can’t see that the same God who has brought you this far has a plan for this problem too …well, then, you dissolve into despair. Just one more river to cross. How are we going to get over?

How do we get over? We get over because Jesus Christ makes a way. Jesus Christ, standing at the River Jordan, facing his own life and subsequent death, carries in himself the hopes and dreams of all who will trust in him. We get over because Jesus Christ makes a way. How do we get over? We get over because Jesus Christ wades into the murky waters of our sin and our helplessness, and cleanses us from all sin. For whoever believes and trusts in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. We get over because Jesus Christ makes a way.

Go ahead and cross the river. Grace is greater than all our sin. Go ahead and cross the river; Jesus paid it all. Go ahead and cross the river. It’s taken care of. That’s how we get over.