When You Have Crossed The Jordan…
Sermon, Mountaintop Fellowship of the Silliman University Church, Dumaguete City, 29 March 2011
TEXT: Deuteronomy 27: 1-9
1 Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people: “Keep all these commands that I give you today. 2 When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the LORD your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat them with plaster. 3 Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, a landjlowing-with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4And when you have crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I command you today, and coat them with plaster. 5 Build there an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron tool on them. 6 Build the altar of the LORD your God with fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God. 7Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God. 8And you shall write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you have set up.” 9 Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the LORD your God. 10 Obey the LORD your God and follow his commands and decrees that I give you today.”
LET'S PLEASE PRAY: Give us this day our daily bread, 0 Lord, the bread that satisfies the hunger pangs of our souls, the bread that alone ends all famine of our spirit. For we pray in the name of the Christ your Son, Amen.
We make choices every day. And each choice makes a difference in our future. Some choices may open up but a small bit of new opportunities for us, while some may dramatically open up vast new horizons beyond our expectations. Some choices may dent our life in some small way, while other choices may wreck it entirely and forever.
Whatever choice we make can do or undo our future.
But not when we choose God. Placing ourselves under God's care and authority places us under a divine dynosphere (or power system) of total and absolute security. We become His “Exodus People” who can be freed from the enslavements of human avarice, who can travel through wildernesses of deprivations and calamities, through deserts of poverty and injustice, and readied to eventually – and victoriously – cross over the Jordan into a land of milk and honey.
When we enter into the full encapsulation of God's power, God makes the big choices for us. And even as we fret and often wander into our silly ways, it will be God who will see us through, who will provide us with manna and flowing water from rocks, who will lead us by cloud and fire, and who will set us to cross our Jordan. And always, He will choose for how we can best become His people. When we follow God and cross our Jordan with God, Moses then declares to us as he did the people of Israel before they crossed the Jordan: “Be silent, Israel, and listen! You have now become the people of the Lord your God!” (v. 9)
Indeed, choosing to follow God, to place ourselves under His power, frees us from slavery, frees us from want, and frees us into finally becoming His people, to live in a land of His promise.
But the question for us today is: how do we follow God and place ourselves under His power? Moses tells us:
“Keep all these commands that I give you today. 2 When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the LORD your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat them with plaster. 3 Write on them all the words of this law when you have crossed over to enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4 And when you have crossed the Jordan, set up these stones on Mount Ebal, as I command you today, and coat them with plaster. 5 Build there an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones. Do not use any iron tool on them. 6 Build the altar of the LORD your God with fieldstones and offer burnt offerings on it to the LORD your God. 7Sacrifice fellowship offerings there, eating them and rejoicing in the presence of the LORD your God. 8And you shall write very clearly all the words of this law on these stones you have set up. “
The key to victory, to a life of milk and honey, is to keep God's commands. And God's commands all boil to these: to praise Him, to keep Him always real in our minds and souls, to live out His Words in our world, and to make Him alive in our lives. When we do, we become an altar of God's presence across any river we shall henceforth cross. We become the stones coated with pure white plaster, unmarred by human tools. And we become living fellowship and burnt offerings for all to behold and see the reality of our God.
The tragedy and sad thing about many among us Christians today is that we keep looking at how other Christians are failing to be the living burnt offerings of a victorious crossing of their Jordan. We fail to keep our burnt and fellowship offerings alive in each of us, in the privacy of our souls, and in the public living of our days. We are called to be His people, not other people's people. And so, come high or low, in our weaknesses and strengths, and even as we constantly fall and stumble in our faith, we hold on to one thing: to make our perfect God be our perfect Guide in our imperfect life, to bring us out of our slaveries and wildernesses, keeping us assured that His strength and power will overcome our failures, and His love and grace will fill our emptiness. And as Moses tells us, we listen and keep silent in the deep faith and assurance that we have a God that accompanies us in our loneliness, whose shoulders carry us through difficulties, and who, while we desire to have a perfect life, instead gives us a perfect heart to make us smile through our imperfections.
Let us cross our Jordan, with faith and assurance that our God will see us through. Only in God are we truly safe and secure. Only in God are we truly alive. And, as we cross the rivers of our days, let our faith shine before all and sundry by how we live our lives as fellowship and burnt offerings in altars of fieldstones in the places where we cross.
In the Name of the Christ, Amen.
