Joshua 3:11-13 | Episode #1229

July 2, 2026

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

Joshua 3:11-13

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 to today, in

the name of Jesus. Amen. We are in Joshua, chapter 3, verses 11 through 13. This is one of those passages where. Well, I mean, I guess the best way to describe it is God calls his shots. And God really does that? Well, he calls his shots. Well, he tells us what's going to happen and then it happens. And you go, well, does that really happen in our lives? Yeah, a lot of times you do. You'll get a sense of things before they actually happen. The Holy Spirit definitely is preparing you, getting you ready for the things that are going on around you. And oftentimes you'll have a sense as to what direction you should go in or where you should head in preparing for. For the life ahead of you. And then all of a sudden, boom, there you are and God has got you exactly where he wants you to be. And so when we see this in the Old Testament, we see it over and over and over and over again. And why is it important? Well, it's important on a. Just a macro level, meaning, you know, worldwide level. Christianity is the only religion. And I know I've said this probably 10 times over the time we've been doing this Bible study, but it is a. It is a really, really good piece for us to have. Christianity is the only religion, or Judaism and Christianity are the only world religions that have the authentication, I guess that's the best way to describe it, the authentication of God coming in and saying, I'm going to do this down the road tomorrow. I'm going to do it. A year from now, I'm going to do it 100 years from now. And in some cases, I'm going to do it thousands of years from now. And it comes about, it is verifiable. God says, this is what's going to happen. Prepare to do it. Then he does it. And then what he's doing is he is authenticating himself. He's proving that he's God and that he's in control. And those things are important ideas for us when we're studying scripture because no other religion, no other religion, no religious writings of any sort in the world relies on prophecy. And the Bible relies on prophecy pretty heavily. You have prophecy in the Pentateuch, in the five books of the Old Testament that were written by Moses. We've been through some of those. You have prophecies that are in the psalms, even in songs that are sung. We've studied those. You have, obviously the major and minor prophets of the Old Testament. And then you come to the New Testament and you have whole discourses by Jesus which are prophetic. In fact, many times Jesus tells them exactly what's going to happen, especially about his death, burial, and resurrection. And then we have what's called the Olivet discourse in Matthew 25, 26, 27, I think may start in 24, where Jesus describes the end times. Jesus himself describes the end times. Then obviously, you've got first and second Thessalonians, you've got the book of the Revelation. You've got throughout. The Bible is replete with prophecy. It is just. It's a hallmark of Scripture. It's one of the things that scripture has. And so when God says something's about to happen, and it does, what he is proving to you is that he is omnipresent. Okay? And when I say he's omnipresent, you think, well, that means he's everywhere at all. Everywhere in the world at the same time. No, that's not what omnipresent means. Omnipresent means he's everywhere in the world all the time, meaning he exists in all time and all places. The best way for me to say it, even though it's not real, it's not really a good way to say it is he's omnipresent all the time. He's everywhere in all times at the same time for him, which time is not something that holds him back. And so when we're studying this and when we're thinking about this, it's important that you kind of see that God is timeless. He's beyond space and time. And so he says here, behold the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over before you into the Jordan. He's saying, the Ark's going to go ahead of you into the Jordan, which means my presence is going to lead out. And by the way, that's the way God does all the time. And it's a shepherding. It's a shepherding methodology. Remember, he's the good shepherd. He leads us in to where we're going. He doesn't drive us to the place he wants us to be. He leads us into it. And that's why he's a shepherd. If we were cattle, we'd have to be driven. If we were almost any other form of livestock, we would have to be driven. But we're not driven by Jesus. We're led. And so he lead us by the still waters, as David was saying the Psalms. He leads us. And so he says, behold, the Ark of the Covenant is going to go before you into the Jordan. He says, now therefore, take for yourselves 12 men from the tribes of Israel, one man from every tribe. That's a. You know, God's always into taking a group that represents the whole. You always have those pictures of a few individuals representing the whole group. In fact, you had 12 that went into the promised land to scout it out the very first time. And so 12 going into the promised Land to scout it out is, you know, that's pretty common. He says, and it shall come to pass as soon as the soles of your feet of the priest who bear the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth shall rest in the waters of the Jordan. That the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off and that the waters coming down from upstream and they shall stand up in a heap. And we're not sure whether it was a giant wall of water or whether God held it back and caused it to create, I guess, what you would call a giant lake. Until the children of Israel passed by. It's irrelevant. To be able to stop a river from flowing without a huge amount of earthworks is a miracle. It's miraculous. It is something that requires a lot of energy and a lot of power. And God said, that's what's gonna happen. You prepare to cross over the Jordan. I'm going to allow the priest to go ahead of you, and 12 men who represent you are going to go with the priest. When they get in the water, I'm going to hold the water back. Now, we're going to get into that tomorrow. Pretty heavy. And talk about the soles of the priest feet and the importance of making steps of faith to live in the promised land. We're going to talk about that. But the most important part about today is that God's telling them what's going to happen. He is leading them. He's not leading them blindly. He's telling them what he's going to do. He tells them how he does it. And I think it's really cool that we have a God that not only leads us into the good things and the big things that are his, but we can trust Him. We can trust him that he's already there. Wherever we're going and whatever time frame that is, God's already there. He's already there and he knows what's going to happen. And he provides us the information, the necessary information for our lives. He provides us the information that would be required by us to follow Him. Not more oftentimes, definitely not more but not less. Also because He's a good, good God. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.