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River bank alters.
We’ve all had them, those moments where God has interceded in our lives in significant ways, but why do we so easily forget or even miss them? The Bible has a lot to say about faithfulness, allegiance, and covenant commitments and if you’re a parent, you understand the unconditional love that is unchanging for a child regardless of reciprocity. God’s heart for humanity is beyond the best creative articulation, but for now, I will use the word relentless, but at the same time never forceful in generating a response from us.
The nation of Israel, even today, grabs the attention of the entire world, and there is no other nation that is discussed more throughout the Bible. They had been chosen, hand-picked by God, to represent him and his kingdom to the nations. “You must be holy because I, the LORD, am holy. I have set you apart from all other people to be my very own.” Leviticus 20:26.
God is a relational God and is relentless is his pursuit of us continuing to offer humanity roles as divine representatives of his kingdom here on Earth. We don’t have to search far for purpose in our lives even today. The design has always been to live according to God’s good order and to display his intrinsic wisdom and love to the world. The Bible begins with a story of God stretching out his hand in relationship to Adam and Eve, handing over the keys of the Kingdom to them, seeking for simple reciprocity. Give back what has been given.
It wasn’t too long before their faithfulness to Yahweh fell short; however, God’s heart to share this opportunity with humanity didn’t change, and the nation of Israel was the next people group that the Lord sought to partner with, albeit their lives looked nothing like kingdom provision when God interceded for them. A famine drove this nation to seek provisions from Egypt. The Nile River runs through Egypt, and the saturation from this body of water gave the land enough nutrients for crops to be produced, and the people of Israel sought refuge.
The Book of Exodus begins with the beginning of a shift in the lives of the Israelites, and as they sought after food and shelter, concern for the amount of people coming into his land and possibly taking over, Pharaoh sought to get a handle on the situation by making slaves out of the people. Exodus 1:10. “We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”
This enslavement was the story of this Israelite people group for 400 years, and as they sought rescue from the Lord, the Lord sought to rescue them from the oppression that surrounded them. In the Bible, this is what’s called the Exodus story. God came and met this nation, and for those who sought after him, they would find ultimate freedom. God reveals himself to Pharaoh and the entire polytheistic nation of Egypt as the one true God and rescues his people Israel, delivering them out of slavery and ultimately into the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
“‘Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. But I said to you, ‘You will possess their land; I will give it to you as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey.’ I am the Lord your God, who has set you apart from the nations.” Leviticus 20:22-24
The beauty and provisions of God’s kingdom are greater than we are aware of and always consistent. When we trust in him, when we are faithful not just in belief but in our actions, his wisdom will be revealed to others. God’s wisdom cannot be self-generated but can only be revealed from the inside out, and often we don’t see its effects until we look back. Again, the design was that Adam and Eve lived out God’s wisdom through their lives and their covenant commitment to him. This relationship was severed, and now the Israelites had this same opportunity.
The time in the wilderness after being set free from Egypt wasn’t an easy season as the hearts of the Israelites wavered, thus making life much more challenging than it ever needed to be. After Moses and all the first generation of Israelites had passed away, God had prepared Joshua to blaze the trail into this new land, and the last part of the journey before entering was across the Jordan. Upon arrival at the other side of these riverbanks, Joshua knew something was different and that God had delivered them into a life that would not have been theirs had he not interceded. Joshua knew newness was in their midst, but he also knew reciprocity meant gratitude and awareness. Covenant relationships are very much circular, and as God was delivering this nation into something greater than they could imagine, Joshua knew that receiving this land was only due to God’s mighty hand, and not only did he want the people he was leading to remember what God had done, but he wanted the generations who followed them to know not only what God had done, but truly who God is. This is his statement in Joshua 4.
“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.’” Joshua 4:1-4 (niv)
This sets the stage for honor, submission, and reverence to God. Joshua held tight to his trust in God.
And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.’”
Joshua 4:20-24 (nlt)
As the story unfolds, this opportunity offered to the Israelites gets squandered. Over time, they lose sight of God. He interceded in powerful ways beyond their own understanding, yet selfishness, fear, and pride led them astray from God. This has been the story of our relationship with God as well as it has for so many generations before us; yet even unbelievers have a riverbank in their life where God has shown his hand of deliverance and provision in their life. How much more for those of us who believe?
The Israelite nation was not better or more sought after by the Lord, they were simply the first nation to be offered the incredible opportunity of Kingdom representation to.
Today, that gift is offered to anyone who will receive.
Today marks a 9-year anniversary of the death of my father. Before his passing, there were no health concerns or any awareness that he would soon die. It just simply happened. These unexpected events in our lives offer us a choice. We can offer our questions, our fears, our anger, our pain, and our grief to our own understanding, or we can place all of those on an altar to the Lord and allow them to burn as an offering to the Lord as a sign of trust and allegiance to him. What God can do with the hardest or worst times in our lives will be beyond what’s imaginable. My own life at the time couldn’t have looked more disastrous, yet I had known him as a redeemer just enough to trust him in this process; in fact, I didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t have much left in life to rely on.
I don’t have time to share the miracles that have taken place since that week after his passing. They are beyond numbers. Although we are still praying for redemption of some of the brokenness of the past, seeing what has transpired leaves me in awe. I believe Joshua wanted to lead the Israelites to a place in their own hearts where they could see how incredible God had been in rescuing, redeeming, and providing for them. It’s worth remembering what God has done and offering him worship for these moments knowing that we have been brought to a land that we didn’t know existed and was established without any of our own doing.
Rivers are significant in the Bible. Before the time of Noah, when rain came upon the earth for the first time, rivers were the source of saturation and nutrients for the land. They were a source of life, and the same river that God parted as a final step into a new land for the Israelites into the promised land is, by no irony, the same River Jordan that Jesus was baptized in.
Our life, given to the Lord, coming out of the river from our own understanding, from the oppression that has sought to hold us down, that has enslaved us, that has kept us searching and seeking, will provide for us a life of purpose, meaning, and complete fulfillment. The banks of the water we step out of will always be a significant part of life and are worth remembering. It is worth building an altar along the shores of these rivers. It is worth sitting to remember, to worship, to sit in gratitude, and to march forward strengthened in faith to live as a representative of God’s goodness.
Wherever you are at, I’m praying your riverbanks become moments of worship and reverence. I pray you set up moments to glorify God in such a way that generations after you will know of what God has done. The Bible is a story of the Exodus, and maybe yet you haven’t entered into a land flowing with milk and honey, but it’s often the steps of the process that can be the most significant if we can allow ourselves to see them and acknowledge them as the mighty hand of an incredibly patient and gracious God. Although this was a story of a specific people group in a land far away from here, it's themes are often eerily familiar to us and God is still the same redeemer and restorer that he was to Israel.
Set your stones up today, wherever that last riverbank was, and allow the remembrance of that moment to strengthen you to a deeper level of reverence for God today. This world is desperate for you to live out your faith in God!
