Psalms No.10 A Question you Can't avoid

If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustest they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? Here is a question which you cannot avoid. I wonder when we were singing that hymn, were you just moved emotionally because you liked the tune, or did you really enter into the sentiments of the author when you sang about, when I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside, death of death and hell's destruction, land me safe on Canaan's side? Did you know what you were talking about? When you were mouthing these sentiments, did you realise that in effect you were turning to this verse of Scripture in the prophecy of Jeremiah, and you were attending to this question, how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? You say you don't understand? Give me a few minutes, and I promise you that you will. The allusion in the hymn writer, or of the hymn writer, and also the reference in this verse, is to the literal river Jordan, which flows, as you know, through Palestine.

Now, when the Israelites were many years in the land of bondage in Egypt, they prayed to the Lord for a deliverer, and he gave them Moses. And they spent many more years in the wilderness of Sinai, pushing their way towards the promised land. And ultimately, as they were about to enter into Canaan itself, there was just one obstacle, one last problem for them to overcome.

In a word, it was the river Jordan. Now, if you know your Bibles well, you will appreciate that when the Israelites, when the Hebrews, were face to face with the Jordan River, it was at the time of harvest, and the Jordan was swollen with water. The third chapter of Joshua, in chapter 15, tells us this, that when they, the priests that bear the ark, were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bear the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest.

Then the waters which came down from above stood, and rose up upon an heap very far from the city. What is the reference to? Well, I've described it for you. It's the Israelites, it's the Hebrews, entering back into the land of promise, and there's the obstacle, the fording of the Jordan, that is necessary before they can go into Israel itself, before they can go into Palestine.

Now, sometimes in hymnology, in hymnody, the entry into Palestine, and the fording of the river Jordan, is likened to the end of your life and of my life, and the entry into heaven itself. We're all going through a journey, the journey of life, and heaven, I say, is sometimes described as corresponding to the Jewish inheritance of the promised land. In Palestine was the site of Jerusalem, the holy city.

In Palestine was to be inaugurated, was to be set up the throne of David. And though the Hebrews didn't realize all the blessings that were there in that land, which had milk and honey flowing through it, they were excited at the very thought of reaching Palestine, of returning to the land of promise. And forgive us who are Christians for being sentimental, but, you know, we look forward to being with God in heaven, and we can say that without being melancholy at all.

We realize that in heaven there is the new Jerusalem, that in heaven there is that place which God has prepared for those who love Jesus Christ, ironed since the foundation of the world. And so we're looking forward to being taken across the swollen Jordan River, of going across the river of death and entering into Emmanuel's land. So will you take this morning the swelling of Jordan to represent the time of death? And if you will accept this scenario, this background to my text, then the question will come to you with a tremendous forcefulness.

How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan when that tremendous hour comes and you leave this scene of time and you're ushered into the unknown tomorrow? How will you do? How wilt thou do in the swelling of the Jordan? Let me say this. My question is a precise question, a precise question. How wilt thou do? It's personal.

There's not one of you here, whether you're young or old, whether you're initiated in Christianity or whether you're completely outside a knowledge of biblical truth that can in any way exclude yourself from the force of this particular inquiry. How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? You see, you've got to come to the banks of this river. Every man, every woman who has been born, with only a couple of exceptions, and perhaps I'll refer to them in a moment or two, have come to the Jordan itself.

And I want to ask you, in that tremendous hour, how will you do? Will you be afraid? Maybe you'll arrive at that time, and here I speak spiritually, though my reference is to the literal flowing of the Jordan. Will you arrive at that time when the Jordan has burst its banks, as it does twice a year in Palestine? Will you be terrified? When that tremendous hour comes, when your heart stops beating and your spirit, which is indestructible, and will go to God, your Maker, will you be afraid? I say you can't in any way duck this question. It's put before you as a personal question.

Forget about your mother, forget about your father, your wife, your closest friend. There's a Negro spiritual that says this. It's not my father, not my mother, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

Now, I want to use that particular Negro spiritual and say, as far as my text is concerned, here, when you stand by the banks of the Jordan, it'll not be your father nor your mother, your sister nor your brother. It will be a question of you and the way that you've lived your life up to that point, and whether or not you have put your faith, your confidence in Jesus Christ, which shall determine whether in that hour you'll be afraid or whether with delight you'll put your toes in the water and then your feet and then your legs and then your waist and then your whole body. Your faith in Jesus Christ will determine whether you will sink or whether you will swim, whether you'll flounder or whether you will, with an expertise, cross that swollen river and enter into Emmanuel's land.

How will you do in the swelling of Jordan? It's a precise question, but hear me further, it's a practical question. Now, listen to the intonation in my voice. Unless you can't get this from Scripture, you can only read Scripture, but sometimes just where you place your emphasis determines the point that is behind the text.

Now, listen to how I believe the Spirit of God would have me put this arrow into my bow and fire it from the pulpit at you. How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan? Not just a personal question, but a practical question. The verb is an active one, and the object of that verb is something difficult.

It's fording the banks of a swollen river or fording the river itself, not just the banks. And the subject of the question is yourself. Now, how will you do? Let me say three things.

Let me tell you what you can't do. Let me tell you what you shouldn't do. And then let me tell you under this heading what you must do.

What you can't do is retreat. There have only been two people I made reference and said I would touch upon it later. There have only been two people who did not have to ford this river.

They were exceptional. One was Enoch, and the other was Elijah. But everyone else, including Lazarus, including Hezekiah, including the Lord Jesus Christ, has had to ford this river Jordan, this river of death.

Oh, I know, as far as Hezekiah and Lazarus were concerned, they put their toes, as it were, in the waters, and then they were called back just for a while. But Hezekiah, 15 years later, was returned to the spot, the bank of the Jordan, and he had to ford, he had to cross the river. And Lazarus was right in the middle when the Lord Jesus said, Come back, Lazarus, you've got a little while longer on this side of eternity.

But as far as you and I are concerned, with those exceptions, you can't avoid it. You can't retreat. What you shouldn't do is this.

You shouldn't panic. Peter, admittedly, in a different context, panicked when he was in a situation where water was constituting a problem. You remember I'm referring to the Lord Jesus Christ walking on the water, and Peter is with the disciples in the boat, and there's a gale blowing.

The waves are high. The wind has whipped down the Syrian mountains, and Jesus says to Peter, or rather, Peter says, Lord, if it's you, tell me to get out of this boat and start to walk towards you. Full marks for Peter.

He moved at the prompting of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then after a little while, he realized just what he was doing, defying the lords of gravity. And faith which had been Peter's charm, faith which had been his life belt, faith which had kept him up, suddenly was lost as the wind took it away, and Peter started to sink, and he panicked, and he said, Lord, save me, for I perish. Now, as far as fording this river is concerned, you can't retreat from it.

And what you shouldn't do is panic. Rather, in that tremendous hour of death, remember that the Lord Jesus Christ gives precious promises, as Charles Spurgeon says, as pillows to put under the head of those who know that they're about to die, casting all your cares upon him, for he careth for you. Trust in the Lord, and lean not unto your own understanding.

In death's dark veil, remember that you have no need to fear ill, for the Lord Jesus Christ can be alongside you. What you can't do, retreat. What you shouldn't do, panic.

What you must do, commit yourself to Jesus Christ, and recognize that if he is alongside, then you've no need to have any fears at all, that even though the Jordan River is breaking its banks, it's a swollen river, when you are there with the Lord Jesus Christ alongside, then there is no need for you whatsoever to be afraid. Come back to my question. I must again put it in my bow and shoot it out.

How will you do in the swelling of Jordan? It's a precise question. I say it's a practical question. It finds you and me out.

And what is more, it's a provocative question. In what way do I say it's provocative? Well, in two ways. First of all, it makes us look back upon our lifestyle, the way that we've lived our life thus far, until this question shook us, perhaps this morning, to the roots of our being.

And what is more, it is provocative inasmuch as it compels us to examine other people, to see how they lived their lives, to see how they coped when they forded the River Jordan. A provocative question. I said, first of all, because it compels you to examine your own lifestyle.

You know, if the fool who featured in the parable that the Lord Jesus Christ told realized that that night his soul had been required of him, he would have lived differently during the last 24 hours. But this is the rather frustrating thing about being on the banks of the Jordan. You never know when you're going to arrive.

You may say that you've got another decade, you may say that you've got another five years, but the Scripture doesn't even guarantee you five minutes. You're only one heartbeat from the Jordan. And men have been taken there in the prime of their lives.

And indeed, the little laddie to whom I made reference in my prayer is almost at the banks at this moment, unless God in his grace calls him back. Examine your lifestyle. There's not one of you who, if you knew before the end of this service, and I say this not to frighten you, but to be true to the Word of God, that you were to be called into his presence, would not want to make some adjustments.

And if this was the last week of your life, or the last month, or if this is the last year, and you knew full well that when the clock struck midnight on the last day of December, you were going to be in the presence of God, then you would live these final few months in a completely different fashion than the careless way I dare suggest you will leave the precincts of this sanctuary. How foolish we are. We believe that somehow we're immunized from this thing, death, and then, yes, it's in the future, we have to recognize that, but it's so far hence that at the moment we've no need to consider it.

And so we find that there are more than one person who deserves the title fool in their attitude to life and in their lifestyle. Said one of the men who was engaged in the abortive plot to overthrow Hitler in 1944 and suffered the consequence of his deed, from your youth on, remember that you must die. Prepare yourself constantly for this moment.

There's no guarantee of tomorrow. We all know full well that when God summons us, we will have to stand by the banks of the swelling Jordan River, and it well behoves us to prepare for that moment, even now. No one is too young, and no one has left it, thank God, at present too late.

But not only do you have to examine your own lifestyle, and that's part of the provocative nature of my question, it compels you to inquire into how other people coped. Thank God for the record of Scripture. I mean, here we have the illustration of Stephen, a man probably younger than myself who is engaging as an evangelist for the Lord Jesus Christ at Jerusalem at pains of his life.

He knows what he's doing. He's mature, he's sensible, he knows what the stakes are. Those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, and Stephen's an example of this.

Now watch him as he's pushed in front of the equivalent to the old Bailey, he stands before the Jewish Sanhedrin, he gives testimony to his faith in Jesus, and these Jewish rabbis are so angry with what he has to say that they propel him from the old Bailey and they push him down the narrow cobbled streets of Jerusalem and outside the wall city, and they pick up their stones and they do him to death. And see how he copes in that tremendous hour as he mouths the very words of Jesus and he says, Father, forgive them. And look on his eyes as he picks up not just the sight of the Jordan but what lies beyond the Jordan.

He sees the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is a man who comes to the very brink of fording the river, and he stands as a Christian, and he dies like a Christian. What about the Apostle Paul? He has more years than Stephen.

And the time comes when he knows, because again he's a sensible man and he has spiritual discernment, he knows he's about to have his life plundered, taken from him, the hands of Caesar. And he says, I am ready to be offered up and the time of my departure is at hand. In death's dark veil I fear no ill, for thou, dear Lord, art beside me.

Look at Jesus Christ. How you say he was terrified of the Jordan? Watch him in the Garden of Gethsemane. See those bloody spotlets on his forehead dropping down onto the ground.

He's terrified of the Jordan? No, not a bit. The only thing that terrified, that caused fear to come into the heart of Jesus Christ was the concept of him for one moment in his life being stripped of his relationship with God the Father. But you remember in those last hours on the cross when an atonement had been made for the sins of the world, when the darkness lifted, the voice was heard coming from without the darkness.

It is finished. Father, into your hands. I commend my spirit.

There's no fear in the being of the Lord Jesus Christ at that last moment of his earthly life. And there needs no be, there needs to be no fear in the experience of any Christian. As Beecher says, it is hard to die when the time is not ripe, but when it is ripe, it shall be easy.

For the Christian, tell me again, my friend, and from the depths of my being, I address this to you once more. How will you do? In the swelling of the Jordan, it's a precise question. It's addressed to you.

It's a question that could be defined in terms of a practical one because it's asking what your reaction is to it. It's a provocative question. Let me close down on this heading.

It's a pregnant question. Now, I don't use that word just to clinch the homiletics to show you that I can think of four words that all start with P-R. It's a pregnant question inasmuch as it gives birth to something else.

It causes one, the person who is a Christian, to reflect upon all that is beyond, all that is in the future. I don't think that anyone here would accuse me, those of you who come along to the tabernacle and know me as being a melancholic individual. But, you know, I often reflect upon the time of my passing from this earth, and I don't do it in any morbid fashion.

One thinks about that last day, sitting down by the last milestone and looking at the river in front and realizing that just a few more hours and one will be with one's Lord. One will be in Beulah Land. One will be with one's loved ones who've gone on before.

One will take up residence in the city whose maker and whose builder is God. One shall enter into a society where there shall be no more cause of sorrow or distress, for tears shall be taken away. And, you know, when I take the words of the Apostle John and say, even so, come, Lord Jesus, either come physically and take your church home or come spiritually and take me home, I mean precisely that.

For for the Christian, death is no fear. Death is just the fording of the Jordan and the entry into Emmanuel's land to be with him forever. I'm not preaching for effect.

I believe this with every fiber of my being. My security is guaranteed by Jesus. He has gone to prepare a place for me.

So when I sit down at the last milestone, forgive me if there are no tears within my eyes. The tears at parting for the Christian are only on the part of those who remain behind, and they're natural enough for one regrets the absence of a loved one. But for the one who goes on and has only the swelling of the Jordan to ford them, there can be no tears.

There can be the wave of adieu, of goodbye, and the thought is au revoir, until we meet again. And the very music that comes from Emmanuel's land and wafts across the river, the very incense of heaven which one can detect even on this side of the Jordan, it compels one to want to be there. A pregnant question.

How wilt thou do in the swelling of the Jordan? Is it a long way off? Oh, no. A few more years, a few more bitter tears, we shall be there. Sometimes the way seems long, our comforters all go.

Woe follows after woe, care after care. Tis no uncertain way we tread, for Jesus still leads with unerring skill. Where'er we roam and from the desert wild, soon shall our paths emerge and land us on the verge of our dear home.

How wilt thou do in the swelling of the Jordan? It's a personal question, yes. A practical question. A provocative question.

It's a pregnant question. And, you know, for those who trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, it's a question that often one can meditate upon and get great satisfaction. It's a question in so doing.

You remember John Bunyan. He wrote that wonderful allegory on the Christian's journey through life, the pilgrim's progress. Let me read you a couple of extracts as I conclude my meditation this morning.

Here we come across hopeful and he's standing by the river. And this is what Bunyan has to say of this character. Now I further saw that between them and the gate was a river, but there was no bridge to go over and the river was very deep.

At the sight thereof of this river, the pilgrims, hopeful and Christian, were much stunned, but the men that went with them said, You must go through or you cannot come at the gate, the gate of heaven. The pilgrims then began to enquire if there was no other way to the gate, to which they answered yes, but there hath not any save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, being permitted to tread that path since the foundation of the world, nor shall until the last trumpet shall sound. The pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to despond and look this way and that, but could find no way by which they might escape the river.

Then they asked the men if the waters were all of the same depth. They said no, yet they could not help them in that case, for, said they, you shall find it deeper or shallower as you believe in the king of the place. Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend, hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters, the billows go over my head, all the waves go over me.

Then said the other, be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said Christian, Ah, my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about, I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey. And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him.

Hopeful, therefore, had much ado to keep his brother's head above water, yes, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then ere a while he would rise up again half dead. Hopeful also would endeavour to comfort him, saying, Brother, I see the gate and men standing by to receive us. But Christian would answer, Tis you, tis you they wait for, you have been hopeful ever since I knew you.

And so have you, said he to Christian. Ah, brother, said he, surely if I were right, he would now rise to help me. But for my sins he hath brought me into the snare and hath left me.

Then said Hopeful, My brother, you have quite forgot the text where it is said of the wicked, There are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm. They are not troubled as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. These troubles and distresses that you go through are no sign that God hath forsaken you, but are sent to try you, whether you will call to mind that which heretofore you have received of his goodness.

And live upon him in your distresses. Then I saw in my dream that Christian was in a muse a while, to whom also Hopeful added these words, Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole. And with that Christian break out with a loud voice.

Oh, I see him again, and he tells me, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee. Then they both took courage, and the enemy was after that as still as a stone until they were gone over. Christian therefore presently found ground to stand upon, and so it followed that the rest of the river was but shallow.

Thus they got over. How will you do in the swelling of the Jordan? Listen to Mr. Valiant for truth, as he reaches the river and has to ford it. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river, side into which as he went he said, Death, where is thy sting? And as he went down deeper he said, Grave, where is thy victory? So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

When Mr. Steadfast had thus set things in order, and the time being come for him to haste him away, he also went down to the river. Now there was a great calm at that time in the river, wherefore Mr. Steadfast, when he was about half way in, stood a while and talked to his companions that had waited upon him thither, and he said, This river has been a terror to many. Yea, the thoughts of it have often frightened me.

Now methinks I stand easy. My foot is fixed upon that which on the feet of the priests that bear the Ark of the Covenant stood while Israel went over this Jordan. The waters indeed are to the palate bitter and to the stomach cold.

Yet the thoughts of what I am going to, and of the convoy that wait for me on the other side, lie as a glowing coal at my heart. I see myself now at the end of my journey. My toilsome days are ended.

I am going to see that head which was crowned with thorns and that face which was spit upon for me. I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall live by sight and shall be with him in whose company I delight myself. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth.

There I have coveted to set my foot to. His name has been to me as a civet box, yes, sweeter than all perfumes. His voice to me has been most sweet in his countenance.

I have more desired than they have most desired the light of the sun. His words I did use to gather for my food and for antidotes against my faintings. He has held me and has kept me from mine iniquities.

Yes, my steps have been strengthened in his way. And with that, Mr. Stanfast went across the river and entered into Emmanuel's land. How wilt thou do in the swelling of the Jordan face up to this question? Amen.

And for that astounding fact, our God and Father, we give you praise now and promise you our worship throughout eternity. Amen.