Journal Through the Bible: Week 31 Tuesday

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Joshua 3:1-4:24

Does God issue any commands in this passage?

• The officers went through the host of people and told them what God had said about following the ark of the covenant at a respectable distance when they proceeded to cross into territory where they had never traveled before.
• God commanded Joshua to tell the priests to walk to the brink of the Jordan River and step into it.
• The people were commanded to gather 12 stones, one for each tribe, as a memorial to the Jordan River crossing. These stones were to be placed where they camped that night in Gilgal. (Joshua also took 12 stones and set them up as a memorial pillar in the dry pathway across the Jordan River that could be seen even after the waters returned to the riverbed.
• After the people were safely over, God commanded the priests to come out of the riverbed and onto the bank. When they did the waters returned to their course.

Does God make any promises?

• God promised Joshua that He would prove to the people that He was with Joshua just as He had been with Moses so that the people would know that they were to follow Joshua just as they had Moses.
• Through Joshua God promised the people that the waters of the Jordan River would stand up to allow the people to pass through just as the Red Sea had done almost 40 years earlier.

Does this passage teach anything about Jesus?

• Just as the stones were a memorial to the people of what God had done for them at the Jordan River crossing, so is Jesus a memorial testimony of what God has done for us.

Does this passage teach anything about yet-future events?

• Nothing that I noticed.