Who Goes First

I remember bridge jumping during one spring break in college. It was an incredibly dumb thing to do, I know. Many levels of dumb involved.

But I remember the anxious waiting beforehand, wondering who would jump first. A lot of personal danger might be avoided if someone else proved the possibility first. I went second, and was quite grateful for the first guy.

I was reading Joshua 3 during my lunch break, when I came across this paragraph:

So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, and as soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water (now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest), the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite Jericho. Now the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan. (vs 14-17)

I've noticed the passage before, and thought how beautiful it was that God's presence went before them.  He entered the river and stopped it, that Israel might go through.  I thought it was a good image of how the Lord saves us.  But reading it again (while eating homemade stir-fry, by the way), I noticed some nuances.

The hymn writer Samuel Stennett wrote the hymn "On Jordan's Stormy Banks", singing of the promises that await God's people in heaven. They look across the Jordan, stormy and full in its harvest-time, and long for the culmination of the work of God in their hearts.  Sickness, sorrow, pain and death will be felt no more.  We shall see the Father's face, and in His bosom rest. The yearning depicted there is nearly tangible.

Stennett's hymn understands the Jordan as a symbol of death, a river flooded with the harvest of men. It keeps the people of God from life in His promised paradise, an unfordable barrier to our hope. If we understand the river Jordan as such, what hope does scripture give to our position, on this side of death?

I think, in Joshua 3, we see the priests as our hope, the priests who carry the ark of the covenant (which holds the two stone tablets, the ten commandments). The priests literally bear the weight of the law perfectly, and enter into the stormy waters first. The priests' presence, with the Lord's presence, holds back the tide of water until all Israel is through.

It struck me as I was reading, that Jesus is the priest who fulfills the law perfectly, who bears its demands without fault, and yet enters into death for us, that we might pass through it without the sting of separation from Him. He carries the weight of the law into death, that we might live. Jesus is the ark-bearing priest.

I think that makes the story of Israel crossing the Jordan even more compelling. It draws me to worship. He went first, accomplishing what we could not, so that we could follow Him into what we otherwise would never reach.