Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2039
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, August 12, 1888
“Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host and command the people, saying, Prepare you victuals. For within three days you shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God gives you to possess it.” Joshua 1:10,11.
THE story of the passage of the Jordan might instructively be used in many ways. It was a very wonderful event. It occurred on the tenth day of the first month—on the same day of the year as the passage of the Red Sea. Of that glorious miracle it was the fortieth anniversary and you may very properly join the dividing of the Red Sea to that of the Jordan, for so the Holy Spirit has done in the one hundred and fourteenth Psalm—“The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back.”
I am going to use the passage of the Jordan as our forefathers used to employ it, namely, as a type of our passage out of this world into the place appointed for our rest. Canaan is only measurably a type of that better land, for the Canaan-ite was still in the land and Israel had to fight many a battle to obtain possession of the country. In our more perfect Canaan there are no enemies to encounter, no sins to struggle with, and no powers of darkness to conquer. Still, I think the type, if imperfect, has been so long established in the Christian Church and has yielded so much of edification to godly people, that I may safely use it.
We cannot afford to give up such a hymn as—
“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.” Nor can we cease to sing with Watts—
“Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand dressed in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood
While Jordan rolled between.”
The Israelites, before they crossed the Jordan, had notice given them. The officers went through the host with the message, “Prepare you victuals. For within three days you shall pass over this Jordan.” The Lord often favors His people with notice that the time of their departure is at hand. He has fixed the hour of our entrance into rest and it can neither be postponed by skill of physician nor hastened by malice of foe. No Satanic force can hurl us to the grave before our time—
“Plagues and death around us fly, Till He bids we cannot die.”
In due time there comes a whisper in the ear of the Believer, “Rise up and come away.” Mr. Bunyan describes the pilgrims as tarrying on the shore of that river which parted them from the celestial country until a post came to one and another, announcing that the silver cord must be loosed and the golden bowl be broken. Father Honest and Mr. Ready-to-Halt and Christiana and the rest of them received each one a call from the hill country and passed over the black water to the golden strand—where the shining ones stood to meet them.
Perhaps some of us may get no such summons. For we may be taken away on a sudden. Many good people daily pray against sudden death and there are legitimate reasons for so doing. But to a child of God it is of small consequence, for death will never find him unprepared if he is living in communion with God. If we walk in the light, as He is in the light,
an abundant entrance will be ministered to us into eternal glory even if we should fall dead in a moment. The change would simply mean going from the lower room of our Father’s house into an upper chamber more bright and beauti-ful—but still a part of the same house.
A few Sunday evenings ago, when I was unable to preach to you, my beloved and esteemed friend, Mr. Newman Hall, most generously occupied this pulpit and his sermon touched upon Heaven and the joyous entrance of the saints into the immortal state. One of our sisters was greatly rejoiced by that sermon. She went home and in going into her bedroom she fell down and entered in a second into rest. Possibly that sermon was to her a stray note from the harps of angels to call her Home. We, too, may have such a speedy summons. Or we may have months of waiting. What matters? Let the angelic convoy appear when our best Beloved shall see fit—it shall be no question of preference with us whether the Master shall call us today, tomorrow, or in twenty years.
Let Him call us at cockcrowing, or at midnight, or midday, we will answer Him, “Here am I. For You did call me.” We will enter into the joy of our Lord and be forever with Him. When God’s children have their candle lighted for them and they know that it is time to go upstairs, they feel glad to end their pilgrimage and rest in Jesus. We are all of us much nearer Home than we think. It will be greatly wise to talk with our last hours and to anticipate that time when the message shall come, “Within three days you shall pass over this Jordan.”