Sermons

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The Unknown and the Known
March 17, 2002
Tenth in a series on “Walking By Faith”
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

We’ve been following the people Israel, out of Egypt…Journeying to the Promised Land, journeying towards an intimate knowledge of God … helping US learn to journey by faith. Today’s story comes from the book of Joshua, chapter 3 verse 14. Turn with me there.

Joshua 3:14-4:3

A year ago, I went snorkeling for the first time in my life. We were in a different part of the world…a really warm part, with warm water. I have to tell you, I’m not a strong swimmer…I can swim, but it’s not a strong suit. And so snorkeling was a little scary. We rented gear, and went out to a protected little cove and got ready. I saw other people snorkeling, but I really wasn’t sure about it. Did the equipment really work? Could you breathe when your face was under water? And what’s with these flippers?

I walked out into the water, and then put my face down towards the water. I just crouched there for a minute, realizing that I’d just have to shove off and see what happened. What happened, of course, is what most of you have experienced before.

With my heart pounding, I headed away from shore. After a few feet, I realized I actually COULD breathe. And after a couple of kicks with the fins, I headed off the ledge that was close to shore…and out into this absolute underwater wonderland of exotic fish, and filtered sunlight. I had this rush as the bottom dropped away beneath me, almost a spiritual experience…like I was watching some underwater National Geographic special. There comes a time when you just have to shove off, and see what happens.

We’ve been walking with these Israelites for 9 weeks now. We’ve been learning with them, about what it means to walk by faith. We’ve found that it means things like walking in God’s freedom, trusting His provision, taking time to rest, to walk slowly, to celebrate. Today, the tenth week, is a challenge that seems to me to sort of sum them all up.

Moses and Aaron have died, and their entire generation is now gone … still the Israelites are not in the Promised Land. The word of God comes now to Joshua, Moses’ old assistant who is the new leader. And God says to Joshua, and to the people, “Move out…Believe the promise…go and take the town of Jericho.” They had to be excited! It’s been such a long time, longer than a generation even (note: God’s timetable is often different from ours…even into next generation). Finally, poised on the edge of the Promised Land, God tells them, “It’s time. Head into Jericho.”

Just one problem. There’s a river in the way. The Jordan River. It’s not a big river, but it is the flood season, so the river has swelled to many times its normal size. Sigh. One more obstacle. Will they never end?! And this one is so…real. So wet. So swift. I don’t know about you, but it’s sometimes easier for me to believe a theological promise…than a physical one. I mean, there’s a RIVER in the way! A FLOODING RIVER! And this time there’s no Moses, no staff parting the sea.

God’s word to Joshua gives instructions for the priests who carry the ark of the covenant. The ark was, of course, the sacred box which Israel carried with it…at different times we’re told that box held the tablets of the Ten Commandments…Aaron’s miracle rod…and some manna, reminding them of how God provided for them. But more than that, the ark represented the very presence of God. The ark was to go first…and so we have this great picture of the presence of God leading Israel into the Promised Land. But the instructions for the priests were NOT to go to the edge of the river and wait to see what God would do. No, the priests were to go get their feet wet. They were to shove off, to step into the river…and see what happened. They were, in other words…instructed to walk by faith. To move ahead into the UNKNOWN.

There could have been a pretty silly ending to the story. “So all the thousands and thousands of Israelites went down to the swollen river, the presence of God represented in the ark went first, the priests walked into the water, up to their ankles, AND…nothing happened, and they turned around and went back to camp, disappointed.” That could easily have happened, and it undoubtedly went through the mind of those Israelites. I bet it goes through your mind as well, when you believe God has called you to do something, and you can’t quite logically and rationally figure out why, but you feel like you need to. Maybe you have felt the nudge to throw out a question in a conversation, so you do, and there’s a shocked silence from the other person and you immediately think “Oh, why did I do that? They’ll think I’m weird or aggressive or rude…I must’ve heard wrong.” Why did I walk out into that water? Why did I risk venturing into the UNKNOWN?

It could’ve been a silly, silent moment there at the banks of the river. But it wasn’t. As the “soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the edge of the water,” the water began to recede. Less and less water came from upstream…and everything roared away downstream. And it got lower and lower until you could see dry ground. Amazing. Now, several times throughout history, a landslide upstream from this place has blocked the Jordan…even as recently as 1927. But isn’t it amazing that it happened here…just when Israel had been told to get their feet wet?

And this isn’t the end of the need to walk by faith. The Israelites head out into the dry riverbed. And there are a LOT of them to get across. I wonder if they kept looking upstream. The scripture says that they “went in haste.” They were wondering how long the river would be dammed up. Wondering if it would hold long enough for them all to get across. They had to trust not just for the initial entrance…but for each one of them to get across. And when they realized that it was holding, what was happening…they grabbed some of the stones out of the middle of the river, to serve as markers of what God had done there, a memorial of the time God started them walking into UNKNOWN water…then moved their feet onto dry ground. And off they went towards Jericho.

Well over a thousand years later, another group is approaching Jericho, enroute to Jerusalem. It’s a much smaller group, a group following a rabbi named Jesus. And as they move towards Jericho on the road, Jesus takes his twelve closest followers, and tells them what is about happen [from Mark 10:32-34]: “I will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn me to death. I will be handed over, mocked, spit upon, flogged and killed. And after three days I will rise again.”

Jesus, you see, is NOT walking into the unknown. Not at all. It’s a point we often overlook in reading the gospels, but it’s a very important one. Jesus KNEW exactly what he was walking into, and it wasn’t very pretty. He was walking into the KNOWN. We tend to think that Jesus’ death was some sort of cosmic accident, or something totally unanticipated by God, almost as though God had to figure out at the last second how to respond to the evil that humans did. We can be drawn to Jesus out of sheer sympathy for what was done to him. But the fact is, Jesus KNEW and COULD HAVE AVOIDED what was to come. Time and again, in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John…in fact, conservatively, 41 times in the four gospels…Jesus talks about what will happen to him…that he will be arrested, condemned and killed. For Jesus, the huge risk was not in the unknown, but in the known. Would he stay the course? Could he follow through?

A number of years ago, there was a film made of Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel "The Last Temptation of Christ." Perhaps you remember it for the controversy it created. For a number of reasons, some parts of Christianity were outraged by some of the speculative jumps it made concerning Jesus’ life. But one of the more intriguing parts in it was the final section that gave the book its name. Kazantzakis portrayed Jesus’ final temptation as the temptation to see the cross ahead of him…and run away. And so, in a dream, Jesus sees himself married, with children and settled down into a routine domestic life…until the last pages, when his mind clears…he is on the cross, having not succumbed to the temptation of running away from it.

It gives me comfort to know that Jesus did not just respond to things that happened to him. There was intentionality in what he did. And he did not shirk the difficulty of what he KNEW would happen. And the reason he did not…has everything to do with you and me. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians [8:9], “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.” For your sake. For my sake…Jesus walked into the KNOWN.

And so there are these two groups moving towards Jericho. The Israelites who find themselves asked to walk into the unknown, and then to use the rocks as a memorial, a reminder of how God met them there, a memorial to explain God to the generations after them. And then Jesus, who walked into the known, and left us with the cross as a reminder of how much God cares, a memorial to explain to our children that God continues to be present.

Where do these stories connect with our journey of faith? It seems to me that they are intimately connected. It is because Jesus said YES to what he KNEW was coming…we can say YES to what is still UNKNOWN. Because Jesus went knowingly to the cross…we are invited to live without fear of death. Invited to live within a perspective of eternity. Invited to live knowing that we have been, are and will be loved by a God who is crazy-in-love with us. Invited to live under the umbrella of grace rather than the fear of failure. And we’re reminded that not all of the journey of faith is under our control.

About 1991 I started to journal fairly regularly as a spiritual discipline in my own times with the Lord. I’ve never tried to structure that journaling too much. Sometimes I just write about things happening in my life. Sometimes I write down thoughts or ideas. Sometimes my journal entry is just one long prayer…it just depends on the day. This week I went back and read through a journal that stretched from part of 1996 into 1999. That included part of our time in New Jersey, going to school…our decision and move to go to Minneapolis as a pastor, and the decision to come here, and the very first months here at Bethany.

It was so interesting to go back and read what I had written about those years when there was just a LOT going on in our lives. And I was amazed at how much angst was recorded there about the future, the unknown. What would happen after school? Would I get through ordination exams? Where was God calling us? Could it really be Minnesota? Lots and lots of angst about the unknown, and frustration over the lack of control I had over it all. I was busy fretting over the unknown. I wish I’d been more aware of the known…of how God meets us in the uncertainties, sometimes because of the uncertainties. And each time I doubt that, seeing the stone marker, the cross to remind me that I can relax, and be with a God who has dealt with the worst that life can offer us.

One of my favorite professors, James Loder, died this past fall. They had a memorial service for him there on the Princeton campus where he had worked for over 30 years. As I read through some of the eulogies spoken at that service, I was struck by what one of his own daughters had to say about him. Though her name was Tamara, Dr. Loder always called her “Charlie,” or “Charles.” And what she talked about at that memorial service was how her dad had been such an encourager to her. “If I was ever concerned about whether I had made a correct choice or decision, he would always look at me and say, 'You can’t make a mistake, Charles.' What he meant was that, in the Lord, God works everything for good for those who love him. What a blessing that was to hear [from her dad], and how much in line with God’s grace that statement was.”

It’s not to say, of course, that we never miss what God has for us, whether through disobedience or carelessness or whatever. Only that God has taken care of it already in Jesus Christ, and as we come into contact with HIM…we are able to live the adventure that Jesus calls “the abundant life,” we can move joyfully into the unknown.

I don’t know where you find yourself this morning. I don’t know if your angst might come from decisions facing you, financial uncertainty, a job situation, an illness, a failure…or a success. Perhaps you are standing at the banks of the Jordan, but God is asking you to get your feet wet. And it scares you. It’s a scary place to be. So the word to us this morning is focus first on what is KNOWN…the incredible love of God that willingly walked to a cross to ensure that we could be in relationship with God.

And when our eyes are focused there…we are free to shove off…and see what happens in the unknown…in the Promised Land.