Stones of witness – Crossing the River Jordan

So they pressed forward, a concourse of two million people, marching irresistibly in the strength of Jehovah, after nearly four centuries of serfdom. Now they were glori­ously free—a nation born in a day. Dark­ness and despair spread over Egypt through the judgments of God for their iniquity, but the nation that God had chosen to become the channel of his purpose and from which Immanuel should spring were full of hope and rejoicing on that great Passover night. The exodus of the ages had started.

“A nation born in a day”—baptized in­to Moses and the cloud. Well has the poet of modern times paraphrased that song of deliverance and victory that filled the wilderness:

“Sound the loud timbrel, over Egypt’s dark sea, Jehovah has triumphed, His people are free Sing for the power of the tyrant is broken, His chariot and horsemen, all splendid and brave, How vain was their boasting; the Lord hath but spoken, And chariot and horsemen are flung in the wave.

Sound the loud timbrel, O’er Egypt’s dark sea, Jehovah Hath triumphed, His people are free.

For forty long years Israel trekked through the wilderness. What a commentary on human nature! God declared, “I was pro­voked with that generation, they have not known my ways. I swore in my wrath they shall never enter into my rest” (Heb. 3, A.R.V.). Neither did they—that genera­tion perished! The purpose of God was with the new generation, born in the wilderness.

The day had arrived, the hour had struck, and the Jordan—like a great dividing range —lay between those things that had been and those things which lay in the future. On one side slavery and oppression, on the other freedom, deliverance and the Prom­ised Land.

So Jordan has become the symbol of the ages: mortality with all its limitations, and that promise of life with all its joys and per­fections; the former represented by things “this side of Jordan” and the latter by “the other side of Jordan”. Thank God we shall not always be “this side of Jordan”. Our lives, like a passage across Jordan with the restraining providence of God holding back the heaped-up waters, tell of a journey being completed, and we shall enter in due course into the Promised Land—the King­dom of God.

At times we feel almost engulfed in the seas and storms of life, but the Psalmist beautifully expressed it: “He reached from on high, He took me, He drew me out of many waters” (Psalm 1. 8, A.R.V.).

It was fitting that some memorial should be set up to commemorate this great historic event of Israel, after forty years of exile and wandering, entering the Promised Land to be constituted a nation—having received a law and constitution—God’s own chosen people. The form of memorial was a heap of large stones, twelve in number, each carried by an Israelite who was the repre­sentative of his tribe. The record states, “These stones shall be to the people of Israel for a memorial for ever”. They were dug up from the bed of the river exactly where the priests’ feet had trod and the sacred ark of the Lord (which was the manifested presence of God) had passed. Every detail had a great significance, which we cannot stop to consider now, but let it suffice to say that the way of life and salva­tion is sanctified by the direction and pres­ence of God and its anti-typical expression in Christ, of whom it is written, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me”.

These twelve memorial stones became the inarticulate witness of the ages. In the Orient, literature and language is rich in figure, symbol and parable. The Hebrew race, being a pastoral people and tillers of the land, reflected the things of nature and the phenomenon of the universe in their language and literature. Life itself and mankind’s reaction to life also was used fre­quently as the basis of their figurative and parabolic expression. Whilst words become obsolete and often do not express their original meaning, figures of speech are uni­versal, common to all languages as regards their interpretation.

A “stone” is used throughout the Bible to represent firmness, strength and perman­ence. These twelve stones were to represent the twelve tribes of Israel in their relation to God. What a witness! When we grasp all that is signfied and comprehended in that wonderful name Is Ra El, we realise these stones were a great memorial indeed. The people, chosen of God, are represented as “lively stones, built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone”, the whole edifice being the temple of the living God.

Finally, the Psalmist exclaims, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone; this is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes” (Psalm 118,A. R. V. ).