The Corner Pulpit
Walk This Way
The Jordan was at flood stage when the priests waded in — before the water moved. Obedience came first. Click here to read the sermon “Walk This Way” Joshua 3:1–4; 3:14–16; 4:18–24 It's such a treat to be back with you. My name is Rob Stone. If we haven't met yet, it's so good to be with you. This is my second of what will be three weeks preaching for you here at Yates Baptist Church. And we are in a series we started last week called Onward: Moving Toward the Uncharted. Onward, moving toward the uncharted. And of course we're walking through the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is one of my favorite books of the Bible, because Joshua finds a people in the middle of a dramatic change, a dramatic shift. The people of Israel, if you follow from the book of Exodus, have been set free from their captivity, from their slavery in Egypt, but they have spent the better part of the last forty years wandering in the wilderness. They essentially lose a generation in the wilderness. But God is raising up a generation that's going to lead them into the promised land. So after the death of Moses, Joshua finds himself tasked with leading the people of Israel into the promised land. They're going to cross the Jordan River and make their way into Israel. I'm very excited about where we are today, because last week we discovered the what. Last week, we discovered the what: that God has called Joshua to lead the people into the promised land, and He made a lot of promises. We saw that Joshua will only inherit what he inhabits — Joshua will only inherit what he inhabits, which is another way of saying God's promise to Joshua is that every place the sole of his foot treads, God has given to him (cf. Josh 1:3, HCSB) [see "A New Dawn, A New Day," July 12, 2026]. And we talked about last week how that can be a promise, but it's not just a promise — it's a principle. And a principle is a promise that is user dependent. It's a promise that depends on whether or not you live it out, because God's promise to Joshua is a promise that depends on Joshua's action. Joshua has to take steps of obedience in order to receive the blessing that comes with God's promise. But if Joshua keeps his feet planted exactly as they are, if Joshua is not willing to be obedient, then the promise becomes a curse for him. Joshua has to take action. Joshua has to take steps of obedience. And I believe that is what God has called us to as well, because as we talked about last week, I believe God has not brought us this far just to bring us this far. There is more to go. There is further to go. And I believe, by God's power, that the best is yet to come. So before we jump into the second week of the series — looking not just at the what, but the how — because the what is great, but a what without a how leaves us all feeling a little confused. It leaves us lacking clarity, especially if we don't know how to get where we're going. Now, we live in 2026, and I have my phone right here — it has some points of the sermon that I'm going to cover. How many of you have your phones with you? Raise your hand if you have your phone, lift it up high. There we go. We are a smartphone people. Okay, let's try it this way — just for my own interest: if you're an iPhone user, raise your hand. Okay. If you use anything else, raise your hand. [ Laughter. ] Look at you. Come on now — a bunch of green dots showing up in the group texts. "So-and-so reacted to a photo." We can see it now, all you green-dot people, you non-iPhone users in the room. But here's why I mention it: a smartphone is beautiful, especially if you are lost. And really, with a smartphone, how could you ever truly be lost? But I want you to journey with me back to 2001 — December of 2001. I'm a college student at the University of Central Florida. I'm from Florida, by the way — I don't know if there are any other Floridians in the room. Come on, Sunshine State, look how far we've made it. I was a junior at the University of Central Florida, working with a campus ministry called Campus Crusade for Christ that now goes by Cru. Cru has Christmas Conference every year — our big regional conference. Because I was a student in the Southeast, Christmas Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia. And there are lots of things to love about Atlanta, Georgia — Waffle House, Chick-fil-A, it's all wonderful, I appreciate it. But here's the thing I can't stand about Atlanta: driving in Atlanta is awful. Amen? Around the city of Atlanta is a circle, the perimeter, if you will, and it is a ten-lane highway that just forms a circle all around the city. And depending on where you get on this circle, the directions you're following make no sense, because there's an inner circle and an outer circle. Here I am in Atlanta before the invention of the iPhone. I want you to remember back in the days of a road atlas — you're pulling it out, maybe you've got it hidden in a map somewhere, and you pull that map out and try to figure out, as you're driving, where you're going. None of it is safe. We're going to our service project — how many of our youth went to Passport, by the way? Raise your hand if you were at Passport last week. Come on, vámonos , I love it, great job. So here's the thing: we're doing our service project as part of this conference, and we're headed into a place in Atlanta, and my friend who lives in Atlanta is like, "I know exactly how to get there." And then he proceeded to tell me — and if you don't live in a city, someone telling you the roads and the various points along the way isn't really helpful. So I do what dumb young men do: I go, "Got it. Gotcha. Totally see you there." And I take off, and I'm getting on I-285, this giant thing that goes around the city. I hop on I-285, and I know I need to go two exits west of where we are on the northern part of this highway. So I follow the sign that says west. But the west sign takes me in the opposite direction, because it's telling me where I'm ultimately trying to end up — not where I'm immediately going. Again, a highway that makes no sense. The fine folks of Atlanta, Georgia need to get their stuff figured out. But I turn the wrong way, and now I spend the next hour just looping around the city, seeing all the sights all the way around Atlanta. Finally, someone in my car has a cell phone — I don't own a cell phone yet, this is 2001, this is pre–cell phone days for me. Someone in the car has a cell phone: "Where are you all at?" "We're still on 285, looking for the exit." We eventually make our way there. This time, as we're going back to the hotel from the service project, I didn't just listen to what my friend told me when he told me how to get back. I said, "You go first, and I will follow you." We got back to the hotel in about five minutes. Now, there are wives in the room being very sweet about not elbowing your husbands right now — I appreciate that, I'm grateful for that — because if I had been married at that point, my wife would have said, "Hey, you don't know where you're going. How about you follow someone who does?" You don't know how to get there — why don't you follow someone who knows how to get there? I knew the what. I knew what we were going to do. I just didn't know how to get there, and I thought I could just figure it out. And of course I didn't, because you can't just figure out everything. Sometimes the only way to learn is to watch someone who knows what they're doing, who knows how to do it. And so here we are in week two of the sermon series Onward, with a message I have titled "Walk This Way." Because just like Joshua and the people of Israel, and just like us today, we need to know not just where we're going — we need to know how to get there. And so this is what we find as we open up Joshua chapter three and Joshua chapter four. We're not going to read the entirety of the two chapters — we're going to read some selections of Scripture from these two chapters. But beginning in Joshua chapter three, verse one — this is Joshua 3:1–4: Joshua started early the next morning and left the Acacia Grove with all the Israelites. They went as far as the Jordan and stayed there before crossing. After three days the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, "When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God carried by the Levitical priests, you must break camp and follow it. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between yourselves and the ark. Don't go near it, so that you can see the way to go, for you haven't traveled this way before." (Josh 3:1–4, HCSB) I love how practical this section of Scripture is. It's this beautiful thing — it's Joshua saying, "Hey, we're going to follow the ark. We're going to follow God. We're going to follow God where He is leading us, but we're going to let God lead the way. We're not going to jump ahead of God," because sometimes in our lives we try to jump ahead of God's will, and we find ourselves not in the place we wanted to be. Amen? Sometimes we go, "I know what God wants for me," and we find ourselves in a place we never thought we would be — in a circumstance we never imagined we would be in. And here's Joshua, and he's saying, "Come on, we're all going to be ready. You're going to get ready to follow." And the reason you're going to follow is because you don't know where we're going — you've never been there before. There's a French philosopher who said these beautiful words: "If we want to reach new lands, we must be willing to lose sight of the shore.” 1 I don't know how many of you have maybe been out on a cruise ship — have you been out on the water? There's something terrifying that happens when you get out in the ocean, and suddenly you look around, three hundred sixty degrees, everywhere you look all you see is horizon. That's a scary spot to be, because if all you have is horizon, you don't really know where you are, you don't really know where you're going. For Joshua, he's saying, look, so much of our wandering, so much of the place we've been stuck in for the last forty years, is because we didn't know how to get out of it. We didn't know how to take the next step. We didn't know how to move forward. And here's Joshua saying: we're going to follow God, and God is going to lead us into a new place. But in order for God to lead us to a new place, we're going to have to walk in a brand-new way. We're going to have to go to a place we have never been before. To put it another way: if we want to reach new lands, we must follow a new path. Church, I want you to hear me when I say this. If we want to reach new lands, if we want to be in a new place, if we want to go where we have not been before, then we're going to have to take a brand-new path to get there. Because all the paths that are familiar to us, all the ways that are known to us, all the directions we are comfortable with, just lead us to the places we've already been. If we want to reach new lands, we've got to follow a brand-new path. We've got to be willing to do some new things and move in a new direction. And if we're honest — new is scary. New is scary, and let's be real: I'm in my forties now, I have three kids, I have teenagers at home. New isn't just scary — new feels sometimes a little irresponsible, because I've got people who are counting on me, I've got kids I'm trying to pay for college for. The older I get, new feels like more and more of a risk. So the older we get, new seems to be a bridge just too far. But God didn't bring us this far just to take us this far — which means it's time for us to get used to new. It's time to get comfortable with new. It's time to get comfortable with the risks that come with new, because we want to reach new lands, and you only reach new lands by following a new path. We're going to skip ahead to verse fourteen — this is Joshua 3:14–16: When the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carried the ark of the covenant ahead of the people. Now the Jordan overflows its banks throughout the harvest season. But as soon as the priests carrying the ark reached the Jordan, their feet touched the water at its edge and the water flowing downstream stood still, rising up in a mass that extended as far as Adam, a city next to Zarethan. (Josh 3:14–16, HCSB) I want you to track what's happening here. There has been a command from Joshua to the officers for what all the people are going to do: hey, we're going to follow a new path, we're going to go a new direction. And the people are being obedient — the people are saying, "I'm ready, we are ready." They have broken camp. The people are leading. The priests carrying the ark step their feet in the water, and the water stops. Now, here's something to know: the Jordan River is not a large river. If you look at pictures of the Jordan, through most of the year it's about the width of this stage — so crossing it through most of the year is not really a huge deal, especially this far south, because once you get this far south, this is the lowest-lying region on planet Earth. The Dead Sea is just south of here. But it's flood season, so we're not talking about just crossing the stage — we're talking about a flood. In October 2024 (sic) [Hurricane Helene's catastrophic inland flooding in Western North Carolina occurred primarily September 26–28] , Hurricane Helene came through Western Carolina and dumped an amount of rain the region had not seen in nearly a hundred years. What happened to all the rivers there? They immediately flooded. The problem is, in any mountainous terrain, you build roads next to rivers, because rivers do what water often does — they follow the path of least resistance. If you're engineering roads, you also want to follow the path of least resistance; otherwise, you're going to spend tons of time, energy, and resources cutting roads into a mountain. So when these rivers flooded, it didn't just flood the rivers — it flooded the roads, it flooded the homes, it flooded the businesses. Suddenly you have this whole area of Western North Carolina destroyed essentially by rain, by floodwaters overflowing these rivers, and you become acutely aware of how powerful floodwaters can be. So we get this detail — this is what the Jordan River was like as they're getting ready to cross. Now again, we've got to be comfortable with new, we've got to get comfortable with the risk associated with new, because let's be honest — if any of us was part of the team with Joshua that day, wouldn't we go, "You know, Joshua, if we could just chill here for another three months, this crossing would be much easier. Joshua, you've picked the worst time to do this — these are flooding rivers. We've waited forty years to do this; another two weeks ain't gonna kill us." That's what, let's be honest, that's what we would say if we were with Joshua that day. But we get this detail, and the reason we get this detail is to understand the power of what comes next: "But as soon as the priests carrying the ark reached the Jordan, their feet touched the water at its edge, and the water flowing downstream stood still." Now, what does this immediately remind you of? [ A member of the congregation responds. ] Q: And what's your name? A: Gail. Y'all give it up for Gail — Gail had the right answer, come on, that's right. This is the same group of people who, forty years earlier, was fleeing Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, and they get to the Red Sea, and what happens when they get to the water (cf. Exod 14:21–22)? Here they are — an entire race of people, an entire ethnicity of people, fleeing their enslavers, and they get to a body of water they cannot cross. It looks like it's over. It looks like this is the end of the story. Surely the people in that moment are terrified for their lives. But God tells Moses to stand up, and what happens to the waters? They part. Now here we are, forty years later, Joshua leading the people to cross the river — a much smaller body of water, but still a significant body of water in flood season — and the priests are carrying the ark, and their feet hit the water, and when their feet hit the water, a wall of water stands. I don't know about you, but when I am afraid, nothing comforts me faster than remembering how God has rescued me before. The older we get, the harder new becomes. But the older we get, the more testimony we have in our rearview mirror. The older we get, the more we have seen, time and time again: "I didn't think there was a way out. I didn't think there was any hope in this situation, and God came through." How many of us — the greatest testimony of our life is something we would have never asked for, something we would have dreaded if someone said it was coming, and yet we can look back on that season and go, "God, thank You. Thank You for bringing me to it, and thank You for bringing me through it. God, thank You, because now I know what You're capable of." There's this beautiful thing that happens before the people step into a new land, before they take this new path to their new destination, to their new future: before any of that happens, God reminds them of His past faithfulness. Church, we need our memories of God's past faithfulness. We need our memories of God's past faithfulness. We need that. [ Addressing the media team. ] This is the time for that slide to move on — thank you. We need our memories of God's past faithfulness. We need it. Every one of those stories you have — those stories we call your testimony — every one of those stories of God's past faithfulness, we need them. We need every one. We need the stories from the previous generations of God's faithfulness. If you were lucky enough to grow up with a mother and a father who worship the Lord, then you have generations of past faithfulness to talk about. Some of you in this room know what it's like to have generations and generations go before you, and you can tell the story of God's past faithfulness to those generations. And when you hear the stories of God's past faithfulness, it should not lead you to be afraid. It should not leave you suddenly more conservative in your decision-making. The more you are aware of God's past faithfulness, the more boldness you should have to take steps down a new path to a brand-new destination — because God has proven it time and time again, in your own story, in the story of your family before you, in the story of the generations that have gone before. God has been faithful time and time again, and He's not about to quit right now. He's not about to stop! This should be so encouraging for us, church, because seeing this story is the reminder that God is always true to His promise — He is faithful yesterday, today, and forever. So church, when we find ourselves at a crossroads where we've got to pick — hey, are we going to do the same thing we've always done and end up in the same place we've always been, or are we going to do something brand new? Are we going to have enough faith to take a new path to a new destination? If you're struggling with that today, if you're like me, if you're someone who — the older you get, the more you struggle with that kind of decision — I want to encourage you to take a moment today and just remember God's past faithfulness. I want you to remember the ways God showed up time and time again when people were willing to trust Him enough to follow a new path to a new destination. Joshua and the people of Israel, the twelve tribes of Israel, make their way across the river. Historians disagree on the predicted size of the nation of Israel at this time, but somewhere between eighty thousand and two hundred fifty thousand people is what we're talking about, and they have made the journey across the river. Now, moving across a river, especially when it's dry because the water has stopped, doesn't take forever — but when you've got that many people, it takes a while. It takes
