Joshua 3:1 | Episode#1221

June 22, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Joshua 3:1

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Hope Alive, where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Foreign. We're in a passage of scriptures, Joshua chapter three and they are getting ready to cross the Jordan river and there is some things about this that I, I, I'm, I. It's very difficult for me to explain this in a 10, 15 minute Bible study and explain it well enough to, to allow you to have a full understanding of what God's doing in the context of all of scripture. Because the Spirit filled Christian life is the ultimate life that God desires for us to have. And the pictures that we're given in Joshua of how we attain to that are beautiful, they're powerful. Maybe I'll be able to flesh them out as we have Bible study over and over and over again and you'll be able to get an idea, get an understanding. But the truth is that this understanding of, of what you know, I'm just going to, I call it the Spirit filled Christian life. Meaning that the Holy Spirit is leading you and you are walking in the fullness of your spiritual new birth and you are functioning in the fullness of your spiritual gifting and you are getting the very, very best of the kingdom of God. Now it doesn't matter what your theological persuasion are. There is, there is somewhat of an understanding of this in some theological backgrounds, some Christian backgrounds, denominational backgrounds, it's a little bit more murky. Other ones are very aggressive about it. And when I say aggressive about it, they just come out and they say you must do this. In fact, if you don't walk in the Spirit filled Christian life, there's a likelihood that you're not born again. And so there's a huge struggle with this understanding. And it goes all the way back to the Old Testament, because the Old Testament gives us the pictures of those. And the best picture of this is in the book of Joshua, how to do it. But the best person that embodies it is probably King David, who is the primary, other than Moses in the Old Testament, is the primary type of Christ, meaning he's the one whose life as a whole, if you just took his life, would be a picture of Christ. Moses even more of a picture of the Christian life than David, but David also a picture of the Christian life. Why? Because the life of Christ is the life that we should live out in our own lives. And so the fullness of the Christian life, when it's done well, it should at some point in time have a look like the Christian life of Jesus, the life of Christ, because we are Christians, okay? And so those things are logical, but as you think through them. And so when David took on his position as king, which is taking on what God made him to be the king. And by the way, we're priests and kings also. And so Moses is the priestly class. He's the one that received God's word. He's the one that received God's plan for building the tabernacle, Tabernacle and having God's presence be among us. And then David's picture of the king, the kingly class, when we put those two together, we are priests and kings before him, and we receive God's word and we speak God's word, which makes us prophets, because we relate spiritual truths, spiritual understandings from God's revelation to us when he gives us those things. And so we quite literally operate in the three, the three offices of the Old Testament prophet, priest and king. But why? Because they come from the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And once we're born again, we have a body and a soul and a spirit. Notice though, all those things work together. And if you'll begin to think about them working together and how they relate to each other and how God's moving, you begin to understand that the thing that's missing is the power of God, the eternality of God. When you're not born again, when you are born again, it's present, but it's got to be activated, it's got to be, it's got to be, it's got to be used, and everything else going to heaven, the sacrificial price that's paid to have a relationship With God, to actually have the ability to be born again, to be redeemed. All those things are handled. But the, but the salvific process, the process of actually beginning to engage what God has given me and beginning to walk in it and begin to have the fullness of the Christian life. That process is the one aspect of the Christian life, the one aspect of God's plan where God literally invites human beings to join him in it, to trust him, to walk in his will and his way, to glorify him by proving he can take these broken things and not only make them whole, but make them powerful, make them godlike, godly, like God, like him. And so the crossing over the Jordan river or having the Spirit filled Christian life is very, very. It's very important for the glorification of God for the purpose you were made for. You were made to glorify God. You were made full relationship with God, and you were made to glorify God. Made for relationship with God, made and made to glorify God. Well, the way we do that is by our own choice, our own innate choice to once we're born again and God's provided the ability for it to actually happen, for us to choose to walk with him. Okay. And that's why you'll get a lot of preaching about. You gotta choose to do, you know, to do, you gotta choose to be saved, do God's will. If you're not doing it, you're, you're not, you're probably not going to heaven. That's the thought is, and the understanding is, and very rudimentary way of saying that. But that's the essence of that, that preaching thought is that if you're, if you're not walking with Christ, there's no reason to believe. You're, you're, you're born again. And the truth is, I mean, that's true. There's not. That's true. Now, you might be, you might be, you know, the prodigal son. You might be born again and not have heard the Holy Spirit to the point where your heart repents and turns to him. And that might be very early in your walk with God. There are time periods that we could talk about and discuss and go through. But the main thing is the big things is that I'm born again, which means I'm justified with God, I'm right with God. The redemptive work of God has been completed in the Holy Spirit making a new Spirit in me. Then I walk with God in salvation, which is a process that I Join him in. And then in the end, he glorifies me and he brings me into his eternal presence. And so knowing that, that's the game plan, that's the roadmap of Christianity, understanding that that's how that works, it becomes very, very important that we, we kind of understand how that worked out in Moses's life, which we've already studied. And we're going to study David's life. Very soon after we get through Ruth, we're going to be in the first Samuel, and into First Samuel, you get David. And then we get the picture of David's walk with God. And that is the kingly walk. We've already had Moses and the priestly walk. And so we begin to. We get that understanding of, of. Of who, who. Who we are in Christ. Well, David was anointed king three times. And that's really, really important. He was anointed king before he ever took office. You know, Samuel comes and anoints him king, and then the second time he's anointed king. He was anointed king after Saul passed away. And he's anointed king of the two southern tribes, the southern kingdom. And so he actually takes the office of king. But the full office of king doesn't happen until after Saul's family is subdued. And then all the tribes of Israel anoint him king. So he's anointed three times. And that's. Remember, anointing is a picture of the work of the Holy Spirit, okay? And in the New Testament, we tend, rather than using the anointing of God, we use the baptism, the picture of baptism. And by the way, Jesus went through three baptisms. He went through the water of, of his mother's womb, which for us would be the picture of being born. Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb. And when he was born, it would be kind of like us being born again because we didn't have a. When we were born, we didn't have a spirit. Now, there may be a few that did, but we didn't have a spirit. So when the Holy Spirit gave us a new spirit, we were born again back the way we ought to be. Well, Jesus wasn't at any point in time, not God. He was totally the way he ought to be from the moment woman who's conceived in Mary's womb. And so that picture of baptism that we do when we go and go into the water and submerged and come back, that's a picture in Jesus's terms, it would be a picture of him actually being born. It's a picture of us being born again. Then the second baptism that Jesus had was a baptism in the Jordan River. By the way, that's the whole point of this crossing, is that they're crossing at the point where Jesus goes and gets baptized. All these play together. The crossing of the Jordan river takes place if the exact place that Jesus goes and is baptized by John the Baptist. And remember, Jesus said. Jesus said that. That when John said, I can't baptize you, Jesus said, you, you must, because we got to fulfill all righteousness. And remember, righteousness comes by faith, meaning to trust God. God, Jesus is following his heavenly Father and following the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and he's going to do what the Holy Spirit tells him to do. He says, I don't do my will. I do my Father's will. And so he says, I've got to be baptized here as part of my walk of faith, my walk out so that believers can understand how to walk out the Christian life. I've got to be baptized here. That's what Pentecostals call the baptism of the Holy Spirit or the second baptism. What. It's what maybe mainline denominations call the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. And it's correlated with Pentecost, okay? And so at Pentecost, you have that picture of God told Jesus told them to tarry in Jerusalem, and 500 were told to tarry, and only 120 tarried. Only 120 did the obedience by faith. That faith that Jesus was talking about was necessary for his baptism. They, they, they, they only did only 220. And they, the Bible says they received the Holy Spirit. They already had the Holy Spirit because Jesus breathed on them in the upper room. They received the power of the Holy Spirit, okay? By, by faith. That's the fullness of that salvific process. You walking by faith with God. That's the fullness of it. That's how it works. And, and so when we get to the Jordan river here in verse one, it says, then Joshua rose early in the morning. Notice who's doing the work. Joshua's doing the work. Joshua is, is. He's heard from God and he's being obedient to God and he's doing the work. When is he doing it? Early in the morning. Which is a picture of, well, it's a picture of, you know, the redemption of God. Morning is a picture of. Well, it's a picture of resurrection. And so in the, in the midst of him being resurrected, born again, given a new spirit, he rises early to go and take what God has given him, to walk by faith. Okay? And. And they set out from the acacia grove. Now, in some places, it's translated. When you look for it on a map, it should s h I T T I m. But here it's the acacia grove. Remember, the acacia tree was the wood that was used in the tabernacle and in the ark, okay? And that's the human part of the tabernacle in the ark. Remember, God's work's being done by. Done through human beings. And so they are at the place where God's work is going to be done by human beings. That's where they're at on the other side of the Jordan. And they came to the Jordan. Why are they coming to the Jordan? They're coming to Jordan because God told them to do that. God told them to be obedient, and they're being obedient. In the midst of resurrection, they're being obedient, and they are the foundation of what God's work is going to be in the Ark of the covenant, in the tabernacle, and ultimately in the fullness of the Christian life. You can call it the second baptism, but if you're going to call it the second baptism, there is a third baptism, by the way, just like for David, there was a third anointing as the fullness of King. The third baptism Jesus underwent, he said, I've got another baptism I've got to undergo. And that was the cross, okay? So that's dying to yourself and receiving the. And resurrecting himself. So, you know, when you get into these pictures, you gotta make sure you take the pictures to their fullness and think through them before you start making people think about rules rather than think the process and the relationship out. And so when they get to the Jordan river, they've got to be. Wherever your theological background comes from as far as the New Testament, you understand that there's an act of obedience being done that God might empower the human life where the acacia would. That he might empower the human life and that we might walk in obedience with him and he might ignite the gifts of his spirit so that we do things supernaturally in the world. Well, how well I do in explaining this over the next several weeks and maybe months is really important. And I take it as a really solemn task to go through Joshua, because they come and they get ready to cross over. They get ready to enter that same water that Jesus 13, 14, 1500 years later is going to enter into and be baptized. And the Holy Spirit is going to descend on him like a dove and remember what God said. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Well, obviously Jesus would be the beloved Son of God. But why is God pleased with him? Because the Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God. He's pleased with Jesus because Jesus is walking in faith with him. And so if we're going to follow that once we're born again, obviously we're baptized. But the baptism that we receive is pictured in the crossing of the Jordan River. The blood over the doorpost, we're delivered from Egypt, we go through the Jordan River. So when you're talking about actual physical water baptism, you're talking about the crossing of the Red Sea. When you're talking about the Pentecostal term is baptism of the Holy Spirit. When you're talking about the fulfillment of God's plan in your life by the Holy Spirit igniting His giftings in you, you can call it baptism of the Holy Spirit, you can call it the Spirit filled Christian life, you can call it the fullness of the Holy Spirit, you can call it obedience by faith in the Holy Spirit. All these terminologies that we use are pointing to this igniting of God's Holy Spirit in our lives. When that happens because you determine you're going to walk in obedience, you're going to fulfill all righteousness as Jesus did. When you begin to walk in fulfillment of all righteousness, meaning you're walking by faith, you receive a righteousness born of your walk of faith. When you begin to do that, you begin to see God move powerfully in your life. And that's why it doesn't matter what denomination you're in, you run across very powerful Spirit filled Christians. Why? Because it doesn't matter what their theology or their denomination is. That's really irrelevant. What matters is that they've heard God, they believe God and they've walked it out. And he uses His Holy Spirit to empower that. So that being said, we're going to try to walk this journey out and think through it completely so that we might be obedient to his voice, be obedient to His Word, and then walk out our faith among the world so that the world might know him. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.