Joshua 3:9 And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the words of the LORD your God
Growing up I heard Bible stories every week and maybe even every day. So, I had some idea of who God is and who He has revealed Himself to be in His own Word. As I have gotten older, I have had occasion to find out who God is, not in some historical setting, but in my own life. There have been times when I have been able to look at my life and say, “Wow, that was God.” When you follow God, you find out who He is. It is kind of hard to know who He is unless you follow Him.
Joshua 3 tells the story of Joshua leading the children of Israel to the land of Canaan. There was a large body of water, the Jordan River, that stood between them and the land God had promised them. Years before, God had brought them across the Red Sea by the hand of Moses and now God was bringing them to the waters of the Jordan River. The Bible says they lodged there before they passed over, and then they were commanded, “When ye see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it.” In essence, they were to follow God. God was leading them into Canaan, and when God led, they were to follow.
The wonderful thing is that they found out things about God they would have not known about Him had they just stayed in their place. When they followed God in obedience, they began to reveal to themselves by their experience who God was.
God revealed Himself to be several things. First, God is the Lord your God, a personal God. Verse 9 says, “And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, Come hither, and hear the words of the LORD your God.” Here is God, the Creator, and it is wonderful to know this Creator as a personal God. He is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the God of you in this day and place. As they followed God, the river parted for them, just as the sea had parted for the people years before. It took God from the abstract to the personal. When you follow God, you find out who He is. He is your God, a personal God.
Second, verse 10 reveals Him to be the living God. It says, “Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you.” That phrase “living God” is used throughout the Bible in the Old and New Testaments and indicates that God is not some historical, static idea, but is a living God. In verse 7 God says, “As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.” In other words, He is taking the past and the future and compressing them into this very moment. He is saying, “I am your God and I am the living God. I did and I will.” I did gives you encouragement as a person that God is able and that God will in the future. God is not done. So, God is your God and the living God.
Third, in verse 11 He is the God of all the earth. Verse 11 says, “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you into Jordan.” In verse 13 He is called the Lord of all the earth. He was the God of Canaan, the God of Egypt, the God of the plagues and the miracles, and the God of provisions. He was the God of Israel and of the entire earth. That is important. In other words, this was not just some abstraction the Jewish people had thought up, one of many gods. He is a singular God, the only God, the Creator, and the God who led them out of Egypt and into Canaan.
God said He would drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, and so on, and would lead them across on dry ground. Verses 16 and 17 say, “And the people passed over right against Jericho…and passed over on dry ground.”
I don’t know how God is leading in your life today, but as you follow God, you will find out who God is. He is your God, the living God, the God of all the earth.