Los Lunas Cornerstone

    Have you ever gone through a season in life where you’re waiting for God to move? You’re just waiting on His timing? You know He had something coming up around the corner, He’s whispered things to you and promised something. You might even know what it is, but you’re just waiting. Sometimes the waiting might not be very long, sometimes it can take years.
    I’ve felt two significant waiting periods in my life, one in my personal life where it seemed that God was preparing me to start a family, but I was still waiting on the spouse that He would bring to me. That wait was hard, as I’m sure a few of you could affirm.
    It seemed like God spent forever preparing me, stretching me, growing me, having me learn different lessons from different people and different passages in His Word. I watched with pain in my heart as other people married and started their families, and I felt left out. But, when God moved, I was ready.
    The second significant waiting period in my life was during the years when I was waiting to see what God was going to do with my call, with all the years of classes I had been taking to prepare for ministry. I knew that God had called me to pastor, but I was just waiting. I felt useless in the waiting, I felt like I wasn’t being obedient to my call, even though I really was because I was developing that call and waiting on God’s timing. That wait was hard, too.
    The waiting is usually hard. But, it’s important.
    This morning, we’ll look at a waiting period in Joshua. It wasn’t a very long one, but it was still sort of a part of the waiting period of 40 years in the wilderness. This morning we’re looking at Joshua 3 & 4. The Israelites have heard back from the spies who went into Jericho and were helped by Rahab. During Joshua 3 & 4, they’re waiting. They’re waiting on God’s timing, waiting for God to tell them when to go, and how to take Jericho.
    I want us to not only look at this waiting period of the Israelites, but I want us to also look at what the people did during the wait; then I want to look at what God did when the waiting was over and what the people’s response was.
    Let’s look at Joshua 3:1-2, “Then Joshua rose early in the morning; and he and all the sons of Israel set out from Shittim and came to the Jordan, and they lodged there before they crossed. At the end of three days the officers went through the midst of the camp;”
    The people are waiting to cross the Jordan River. They are camped on the east side of the river, with Jericho to the west. They must wait on God’s timing to cross because the Jordan River is uncrossable at this time period.
    It was spring, the time of the first harvest in this area. We know this because in the story of Rahab and the spies that we looked at last week, we learned that the spies hid underneath stalks of flax drying on Rahab’s roof. Flax was harvested in the spring. Because it was spring, we also know that the Jordan River was full to capacity, overflowing the banks because the winter snows from the northern mountains were melting.
    Normally, there would have been places in the Jordan where the people could cross safely, but the melting winter snows had made it impossible without divine intervention. So, the people waited. They waited on God. They waited for only three days here, but this was after waiting for 40 years. Waiting for God to move.
    What do we do when we’re in a holding pattern? What are we supposed to do in the waiting period, when we’re waiting on God to move and to act as He’s said He will?
    Look at Joshua 3:5, “Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” The people consecrated themselves, as they were waiting for God to do wonders among them.
    They didn’t just sit and do nothing. They didn’t just trust, though they certainly did trust God, they knew that trust usually requires action on our part as well.
    What do you do when you’re waiting on God? Trust, yes, absolutely. That’s vital. If God has you in a time of waiting, He wants you to continue to wait on His timing, and He wants you to continue to keep faith and trust that He will put things into place in His timing.
    Trusting includes praying. Praying helps us discern when God is moving us forward. Praying helps us continue to trust God and His Word. Praying gives us peace and patience in the waiting. Praying gives us answers. Praying gives us strength.
    But what else can we do during the waiting? Do we just sit and wait and pray? I would say, “No”.
    Now, I don’t mean that there’s anything we can do to speed up the waiting. It’s always best, if God has us in a waiting period, to wait for His timing. We can’t make Him work faster.
    I also don’t mean to say that trusting God isn’t enough. It is. It always is.
    I just mean to say that during the waiting time, God has something in store for us. He doesn’t just ask us to wait and pray, He tells us to prepare. More often than not, the waiting time is important for us, so He can prepare us for what happens when He does move.
    This is exactly what the Israelites did as they waited for God to give them the go ahead to conquer Jericho. Look at what they were meant to do in verse 5. They were meant to consecrate themselves.
    Consecrate is one of those $100 church words we like to use. It simply means that if we consecrate ourselves, we are completely giving ourselves to God. It means that we have surrendered every part of who we are to God, and we have dedicated our lives to Him.
    Paul speaks about this idea several times.
    Romans 12:1-2 says, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
    In these verses, Paul tells us to give our bodies to God, to worship Him by not allowing the world to control us, but to allow God’s Spirit to transform our minds.
    1 Thessalonians 4:7 says, “For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.” That means that He has asked for us to set apart for Him, because He hasn’t called us to live impure lives.
    Hebrews 12:14 says, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.” That means that without being set apart for Him, without dedicating ourselves to Him, we will not see Him.
    This is what we do in the waiting. We prepare for God to move, we wait for Him to move by dedicating ourselves more to Him. We use the waiting period to draw closer to Him. We ask the Spirit to use that time to make us grow, to bring us into a deeper relationship with Him. We wait, we pray, and we go deeper.
    The waiting periods God brings us to are incredibly important. God can and does use those waiting periods to strengthen us for the tasks He has in store for us. He uses times of waiting to fine-tune our character to look more like Christ. He wants us to press in to Him during times of waiting to teach us important lessons about ourselves and others. Don’t waist the waiting time. It’s good.
    I want to point something else out to you about the waiting time that the Israelites went through. Look at Joshua 3:6, “And Joshua spoke to the priests, saying, “Take up the ark of the covenant and cross over ahead of the people.” So they took up the ark of the covenant and went ahead of the people.”
    In the waiting time, before they crossed the Jordan river, the ark of the covenant went before them. The ark was the golden box with seraphim on the lid of the box. Sometimes it’s called the mercy seat. What’s important about this is that the ark of the covenant represented God’s presence among the people. When God would come and dwell among His people, it would be in the Holy of Holies, where the mercy seat was. So when Joshua told the priests to take the ark ahead of them, he was asking the priests to take the presence of God, and have the presence of God go before them.
    This is what we ought to be praying for in the waiting. We wait, we dedicate ourselves to God more deeply, and we pray for His presence to go before us. We pray for His presence to prepare what is ahead of us, so that when the waiting is over, we can rest assured that God’s Spirit has already gone before us and put things just as He wants them to be for us when we get there.
    In the waiting, we wait, we dedicate ourselves to God more deeply, and we pray for Him to go before us and prepare what is ahead. Many times that means that He is preparing other people, too! When I was waiting on God’s timing to begin a family, He was preparing me during that waiting time, but He was also preparing Jonny during that waiting time.
    We wait, we consecrate, and we pray.
    Then God moves, when it’s His time.
    For the Israelites, He moved by stopping the flow of the waters of the Jordan River. When it was His time, He kept the Jordan River from flowing and Joshua 3:17 says, “And the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan.”
    God moved…and the people were ready because they spent the waiting time praying for God to go before them and make things ready for them, and they dedicated themselves to Him completely. They were ready when God moved.
    Look, if God has you in a waiting time, or if you ever find yourself in a waiting time, you know that eventually, even if it’s years later, He is going to move. Be ready.
    When God did move, and the people crossed over the Jordan River safely, they responded to what God had done. They didn’t just continue on their way.
    They stopped on the other side of the Jordan River and they worshiped God. All of Joshua 4 tells us about how they did this. They made an altar of 12 stones, one for each tribe of Israel. This altar was to worship God, to commemorate what He had done, to remember how mighty a God they served. This altar was to worship God for bringing them through the waiting, for being faithful to His Word.
    They were supposed to tell their children about God’s mighty and faithful deeds as well. They were not meant to keep it to themselves. They were meant to talk about it and share it.
    This is our response. After the waiting, God moves, and we must worship Him when He does. We have to tell others about what He’s done for us, and how faithful He has been to us. Even in the waiting.