The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, vol. 79
December 9, 1902
“A New Way” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 79, 49.
E. J. Waggoner
With the story of the crossing of the Jordan every reader the Bible is familiar: with the lessons to be learned from it there is far less acquaintance. Yet it was written, not purely to excite our wonder, nor to satisfy our curiosity, but for our learning. If, enough contemplation of the Scripture narratives, we lived far more with the events which they describe, we would experience the power of God in our daily lives to an extent far beyond what we now do. We must understand that the Bible is not the record of an age which is antiquated, and can never be paralleled, but of the acts of the living God, who is our God. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.1
“When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back” (Psalm 114:1-3); or as picturesquely put in the Danish, “Jordan turned, and ran back,” as if abashed at the presence of the Lord. The crossing of the Jordan is coupled with the crossing of the Red Sea, and is fully as wonderful an event. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.2
There was an exhibition of sublime faith on the part of a vast host, and an example of how to meet obstacles that confront us in the way that the Lord has told us to go. It was the time of harvest, when “Jordan overfloweth all his banks,” and the river was not fordable. The Lord could have timed Israel’s arrival so that they would have cross and could have crossed with comparative ease. But God delights in difficulties, that is, in what to us are difficulties; for with Him there is no such thing. He deliberately chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and foolish things to confound the wise; and things that are not, to bring to naught things that are. 1 Corinthians 1:27, 28. This is not for vain boasting, but in order to strengthen the faith of His people, and to induce men to trust in His salvation. If Israel had always gone forward in the power that took them through the sea and through Jordan, no enemy would ever have stood before them; and if we in this day would continually trust in God as the God who always does just such wonderful things, we should be invincible. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.3
When the officers were preparing the people for the great movement that was to take them into the promised land, they said to them: “When ye see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure; come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go; for ye have not passed this way heretofore.” Joshua 3:3, 4. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.4
That is the secret of Christian progress: always treading a new way, a path hitherto untrodden. We must never assume that past experience is sufficient to carry us through any work without special, divine guidance, however familiar with the affair we may consider ourselves. “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps,” no matter how often he has passed over a road. “The steps of a man are ordered by the Lord,” and only the Lord can keep him from falling in the plainest path. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.5
So each day’s task, though it may be but the repetition of the same thing that we have done hundreds of times, must be met as an entirely new thing. In that way continual improvement may be made in our work; and that is what God would have. God promises to show us “new things;” for the work that we best know how to do, He knows how to do far better; and therefore there is always the possibility for not to do far more and far better work than we ever yet have done. With God all things are possible, and therefore in Him even the impossible is possible for us. With our eyes fixed on God, we have but to step boldly into the raging flood that threatens to stop our progress, and God will make the way. “It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.” ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.6
Did you ever stop to think that the apparent danger to the Israelites increased every minute that they were crossing the river? The water below them was running away to the sea; but to their right the wall of water was continually piling higher and higher, as that from above came down. We are so accustomed to think of the fact that they crossed over safely, that we never consider the danger that they were in while crossing. “Ah, no;” you say, “they were not in, danger at all; for God was holding the waters back.” True; and so He is always doing for His people. He measures all the waters of the seas in the hollow of His hand; and this is told us as a reason for quiet confidence in Him at all times. The Israelites were really in as much danger in crossing the Jordan as the disciples were on the Sea of Galilee, or as we ever can be when we are in the path in which God is leading. What we need to do is to dwell in the secret place of God, who inhabits eternity, so that in the midst of present difficulties and threatening dangers, we look at them as already past. That is the secret of strength, and of victory. Our very temptations and dangers and difficulties are made the means of our deliverance, just as Noah and his family are said to have been “saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20) which destroyed the earth. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.7
A WAY THROUGH THE FLESH
It is by “a new and living way” that we draw near to God, though the flesh seems to interpose an impassable barrier. Christ took our sinful flesh, which separates us from God, and veils Him from our sight, and consecrated a way through it, so that we are “made nigh by the blood of Christ.” No flesh is so corrupt, no inherited evil is so strong, that the Lord cannot make a way for us through it, straight to His throne. Yea, He has made a way: He has “condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:3, 4. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.8
With this knowledge we may give thanks to God who “always causeth us to triumph in Christ; and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place.” 2 Corinthians 2:14. The greater the sin in the flesh, with which we have to contend, the more can the sweet fragrance of the knowledge of God be spread in the world, to the praise of the glory of His grace. ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.9
The strength which God displayed in making even the depths which obstructed their passage “a way for the ransomed to pass over,” is the measure of the strength which He gives to us day by day in our march to the promised land; “therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be on their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” ARSH December 9, 1902, page 11.10