We Have Never Been This Way Before

Joshua 3:1 says: “Joshua rose early in the morning; and he and all the children of Israel set out from Shittim and came to the Jordan, and they rested there before crossing over. And after three days, the officers went through the camp and commanded the people, saying: When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the Levitical priests carrying it, you shall set out from your place and follow it, so that you may know the way by which you must go; for you have never passed this way before. But there shall be a distance of about two thousand cubits between you and it; do not come near it. And Joshua said to the people: Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you. And Joshua spoke to the priests, saying: Take up the ark of the covenant and pass on before the people. And they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.”

Then the LORD said to Joshua: From this day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may understand that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. You, therefore, shall command the priests who bear the ark of the covenant, saying: When you have come to the edge of the water of the Jordan, you shall stand still in the Jordan. And Joshua said to the children of Israel: Come near, and hear the words of the LORD your God. And Joshua added: By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will drive out from before you the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Hivite, the Perizzite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, and the Jebusite. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth will pass before you into the midst of the Jordan. Now therefore, take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe. And when the soles of the feet of the priests who bear the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be divided; for the waters coming down from upstream shall stand in a heap.”

And it came to pass, when the people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan, with the priests before the people bearing the ark of the covenant, when those who bore the ark entered the Jordan and the feet of the priests who bore the ark were dipped at the water’s edge (for the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest), that the waters coming down from upstream stood still in a heap very far away, by the city of Adam, which is beside Zaretan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were cut off and divided; and the people crossed over toward Jericho.”

“But the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan until all the people had finished crossing the Jordan, and all Israel crossed over on dry ground.” May the Lord bless His holy Word.

“We have never passed this way before.” About four or five days ago, I began to meditate and ask the Lord for direction concerning the sermon I was going to preach this morning, and once again, as sometimes happens to me, those words from the Bible came clearly into my spirit and my mind: “for you have never passed this way before.” I did not hear it exactly word for word, but judging by its content, it was a Bible verse, and that was what I was receiving. So I began searching the Scriptures and found the passage, and since then I have been ruminating and meditating on exactly what the Lord wanted to say to us through these words.

As sometimes happens to me with such a brief passage, I always wonder, well, how can I put flesh on it, how can I develop that message? Does it truly come from the Lord as something prophetic, or is it simply something that sounds good? Because I have never preached on this passage—ever; I have never gone through that passage before in my life.

I had never preached on that expression, “you have never passed this way before.” And I have heard that expression before; generally, it is Christian groups that are somewhat more liberal, talking as though God were bringing the Church into a time of letting go of some things from the past, some of the moral ideas of the past, and entering a new era of viewing the Bible in a different way. That is the only context in which I had ever heard it, although I later came to understand that it is a very well-known passage.

Thank you for editing a few little things there (laughs). No, perfect—you said it much better than I did. That is why I love it when Gregory translates for me (laughter); he is my alter ego, as I always say. He is Obama’s interpreter, but in a different way—in reverse (laughter).

Actually, when I began to meditate on that passage, I clearly felt that the Lord was giving us—and giving me—an evidently prophetic Word for us. And I must confess that there has been a struggle within me, because what God is telling us can only be expressed in prophetic terms. I have great respect for prophetic declarations, and this one in particular terrifies me in terms of its possible application to our Church.

The fact is that those of us who have such great respect for the prophetic Word must be very careful when we make New Year’s declarations and promises and tell people: Everything is fine, and God has beautiful things for you, and so on. We say it in a prophetic tone, but I believe that sometimes we are a little irresponsible in simply promising people blessings without any kind of complexities. Do you understand what I mean? So my fear about using the prophetic Word does not come from not believing in the prophetic Word, but rather from believing in it so deeply that I want to use it very responsibly. I feel that sometimes we presume too much and declare things too simplistically, without taking into account the Lord’s complexity and His sometimes unexpected way of blessing us. So what I want to say now is this: the reason I am afraid to speak in a specifically prophetic tone is not that I fear what the content of that prophecy might express.

This particular message says that “you have never passed this way before.” I do not fear the unknown; on the contrary, I like adventure, plunging headfirst into the Lord’s new waters, and experiencing the adventures He has for us—especially if I am convinced that the Lord is in it. What I do fear is suppressing what God might want to do or say among us and thereby grieving the Holy Spirit. That I do fear. So I confess to you that I am in the midst of that struggle, you know? I am opening my heart to you.

But I am going to speak with fear and trembling about this text, and specifically, I am going to point out what I believe God is saying to us as a Congregation for this coming year, these coming months, or the years to come. If I am mistaken about the specific part of this text, there is at least good spiritual counsel in general terms that will greatly help us as we look toward the coming year. There are principles for life that will bring us great blessing in the coming year. Although I believe it is a message through which the Lord blesses us in general and gives us general revelation, I believe it is a kairos message, a message specifically for us today, at this time.

We know the story of this text well. Joshua and the Hebrew people are on the other side of the Jordan, ready to cross it and enter in to possess the land that God had promised them for centuries, even while they were still in Egypt.

Incidentally, as an aside, it occurs to me that the presence of our Korean brothers and sisters here today as part of the Lion of Judah family is no coincidence, and that God wants our entire family to hear these solemn words that I want to share with you.

So we understand this well: the Hebrews have been wandering around the wilderness for forty years, and finally the moment they have awaited for so long arrives, the moment that will define their identity as a nation. The prophetic Word had come to Abraham hundreds and hundreds of years earlier, saying that God was going to give him the land, and He commanded him to walk throughout that land prophetically. The very existence of God’s people was bound up, as it were, with their entering and possessing the land God had ordained would belong exclusively to them for all eternity. There was a mystical union between the people of God and the specific land of Canaan; it was not a coincidence. The people of the Middle East understand the connection between a people and the land, and that is why there is controversy to this very day, and why it was so important for the people of Israel to enter and dwell there. That is why political negotiations over the land are so complex, because in a very real sense the land is a legacy from God, an inheritance from the Lord. It belongs to no one but the Lord, and He is the One who grants it.

Now, the wilderness had been the Hebrews’ place of testing, the place of training, the place of humiliation and trial runs. In a certain sense, we too, as the Lion of Judah Congregation, have spent years wandering through a wilderness season, with the Lord moving us, dealing with us, training us, and preparing us for the promises He has made to us; but we have not yet entered into the fullness of the promises He has made to us.

And it is not that I am ungrateful for or do not appreciate everything God has allowed us to accomplish in these thirty-five years of ministry. But in my personal life, I confess to you that I do not take seriously—and I say this cautiously—anything we have accomplished up to this point, because my eyes are fixed on other things that I believe God has ordained for us as a family and as a Congregation.

And this sermon is somewhat autobiographical, because I confess to you that these last few months as well—I am going to share it with him too—have been months of great inner agony in my spirit, because I feel a terrible restlessness. It is like a mother who has been pregnant for nine months and is already sick and tired of being pregnant and wants to give birth, and she is experiencing the most extreme discomfort.

The only thing I can compare it to is what happened a little over thirty years ago, precisely when I was pursuing my graduate studies. The Lord was doing a work of revival in my life and was consecrating me and calling me out of all the things I had experienced before, outside the Lord. I went through such a period of surrender and struggle while the Lord was doing things in my life, and I had to take a year away from my graduate studies. I went into the wilderness, to Lawrence, and there the Lord did certain things. When I returned, that was when the Lord began to activate the pastoral work that we then began to do a few months later.

And it has always been that way. I believe that when He wants to bring us into something—at least in my life it has always been this way—when God wants to bring us into something, He makes us uncomfortable and causes the place where we live to become somewhat hostile and clearly uncomfortable.

And this is what I believe: we are on the verge of something. I cannot explain it exactly, but I know that it is something that goes far beyond what we have achieved thus far as a Congregation and as a ministry. And, incidentally, I am sorry to make the sermon a little longer. I think this is so important that I ask you to give me the time to develop it properly. It is not only important but fundamental, so it has to take time.

I would say that all that time the people of Israel spent wandering in the wilderness—and before that, being prepared in slavery—was preparation, and now they are ready to enter into the reality. What they had experienced before was like prophecy, something meant to prepare them for the reality God had prepared for them.

Consider, for example, the manna in the wilderness. Manna was an extremely simple, monotonous food. They ate it for forty years because there was no vegetation and no food in the wilderness. Now, when they enter the Promised Land, they begin to eat real food, the food of that land which the Lord had said flowed with milk and honey and every kind of abundance.

Let us think about the tabernacle, which was a structure assembled as the Hebrews traveled through the wilderness and was eminently portable, simple, and lightweight. But it was a foretaste of the permanent temple that God wanted them to build once they were in the Promised Land, and which Solomon would eventually build.

So the first thing I believe God is telling us is that He is about to unleash and pour out upon us that true identity for which we have merely been rehearsing and making symbolic efforts, until God gives us what He has truly destined us to be and to have. What I believe is that what God has for us in the future—and I am not going to say whether it will be months or how much time—but what God has for us in the future is something we have never seen or experienced before. I declare this prophetic Word with fear and trembling, but I do so by faith, in obedience, knowing that the declaration itself has power.

I felt that what Sister Anita shared earlier was confirmation that no Word of God will fail, as we discussed last week; everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord will not return to Him empty—it will have its power, it will have its effect.

What I want first of all is for us to have clearly in our minds this idea of rehearsals, foregleams, and premonitions that the Lord is now preparing to turn into something real and true—a fulfillment of what God has had in store for us.

“And they came to the Jordan, and rested there for three days before crossing it, and after three days the officers broke camp and commanded the people to do what they had to do.” The idea of three days of rest before entering into something of great magnitude was as though the Lord gave them a time of rest, a time pregnant with anticipation, so that they might rest and meditate on everything they had done up to that point, to prepare them for everything that was to come. The Lord was telling them: Strengthen yourselves; something very intense awaits you now, an extremely long journey; wars await you, trials await you, great confrontations with nations much more powerful than you, great spiritual trials, and you need to take time to meditate, to think about everything that has happened to you during these years, and to prepare yourselves for what lies ahead.

Let me also tell you something very personal here at this moment. That is why I tell you this: in this time, after completing twenty years of construction on these buildings—I have been here for thirty-three years; my wife and I have spent thirty-three years pastoring this congregation. I did not even talk to Meche or tell her that I was going to say this this morning. I would like to share something that came out of a very prophetic conversation with Sister Anita this week and that I have been talking to you about because, in truth, throughout all these years, more than three decades of pastoring, I have never taken a sabbatical; I have never taken an extended period of rest.

In those thirty-five years, we have gone through trials, difficulties, shocks, terrors, a great deal of financial anxiety because of all the construction projects, and a great many other things, and I have never really taken a time of true rest so that my system could absorb rest as it should. We have gone through many traumatic and difficult moments, and I am not looking for pity at all, but merely sharing things that have happened over these years: many struggles, things that have happened in the family and in the church, and I have kept moving forward without taking time to refresh my mind and spirit in His Presence.

God has placed a concern in Sister Anita’s heart. She has been insisting to me: “Pastor, God is clearly telling me that you have to take time to rest and to heal your system; you need a time of…” I do not know what word she used. So I believe that God is telling me, brothers and sisters, that I have to trust in the Lord, because I have never taken that time, out of fear of somehow stepping away and taking my hands off things. But that is what a Sabbath is: a Sabbath is when you believe that God is powerful enough to take care of things, and you honor Him and trust in His ability.

And before entering into that time God has for us, that time that is there waiting for us, I have, like the Hebrews, to take some time to meditate on the path along which God has brought us and has brought me before entering into that moment, and this requires time. And what I am asking the Lord is that—I believe what I would be content with and what would be good would be to take about three months; I have to discuss that with the deacons and the staff and all of that—of partial retreat. I will still be involved; I will still be present for some things, but I will indeed have the freedom to choose whatever time I want without feeling guilty or feeling that I have to prove anything to anyone. People will simply know: this is a sacred time, and I need to take my time, because I am my own worst critic.

I am simply putting it out there. At some point we will talk more about it, but I feel that this is from God. So that was a second thing I wanted to mention. And afterward, in fact, I refer you to Deuteronomy chapter 8, where the Lord speaks to the Hebrews about reflecting on the path along which God has brought them before entering the Promised Land.

We have traveled a great deal as a congregation, haven’t we? We have traveled from being a traditional congregation to being a Pentecostal, charismatic congregation. We have traveled from being a church in Cambridge to being a church here in this part of the city. We have traveled from being a more inward-looking, more closed church to being a more outward-looking church with all our social and evangelistic ministries. We have traveled from being a solely Latino church to being a multiethnic, bilingual, and diverse church. We have traveled a great deal, and we have to take time to meditate on that, to think about it and about what it means. And why has God placed us in a strategic location in a strategic city, in a strategic country, at a strategic moment in history? God has a purpose for us; we have to meditate on that.

And then the Lord gives them very clear instructions. He says: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the priests carrying it, you shall leave your place and march after it.” The Lord tells them clearly: Look, now you are going to begin moving, and here the ark begins to play an extremely important role.

And He tells them: When the priests and Levites begin carrying this ark, and when you—the different tribes who are in your geographical positions along the way—see that ark begin to move, you will rise from your rest; and whenever the ark passes in front of one of the tribes, in front of any group, you stand up with your belongings and join the procession, following that ark, which is half a mile ahead of you.

The ark plays an important and symbolic role in this process. It was the symbol of Jehovah’s living Presence among His people; the ark is an instrument of power and spiritual energy. The ark signified the active Presence of God at every moment, giving them directions and activating the Power of God for the battle the people had to fight. The ark contained the tablets Moses had received; it contained manna that they had been eating in the wilderness; it contained Joshua’s staff that had blossomed—all of them reminders of acts of God’s Power and of divine intervention that they had to memorize and remember.

By faithfully following it, the people of God showed that they would allow themselves to be led and guided by the divine Will, that they would depend on the Power of God and not on their own reasoning to determine the things they were to do and the places they were to visit.

And if we are going to undertake great things as a church, we have to be a people who desperately seek divine Power and direction. We cannot do any of the great things God wants us to do if the Power and instruction of God do not go with us.

Moses had a moment of crisis when he told the Lord: “Lord, if You are not going with us, do not bring us up from here.” And Moses asked Him: “Lord, give me a demonstration of Your Power; show me that You are truly with us; give manifestations of Your affirmation.” And he asked Him: “Let me have an encounter with Your face; let me have an encounter with Your Power.” And in Exodus chapter 33, God told Moses: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

The Lord is guiding us, and I feel the importance of committing ourselves to seek the Presence of God, to allow ourselves to be guided by Him, and to trust in Him rather than in our planning. Let it be the Will of God, even if it is spontaneous; whatever God says, we will do.

That is why I tell the brothers and sisters in the worship group: we have to learn to flow in the Spirit. Especially in worship, right? The Presence of God and worship—the worship team learning to flow in the Holy Spirit, to be guided by Him so that He is the One who determines what will happen in our services, and so that we flow in the Spirit, free always to be guided by Him.

These priests, these Levites, lead the worship of the Lord; they are at the center, they lead the way, they go before the congregation, and those Levites, those priests, have to exemplify the highest values of that people led by the Lord. And that is why we need warriors; we need battle-hardened people, people filled with the Spirit, sacrificial people, devoted people, people who give the best of themselves, people who do not put a limit on the Lord’s time or separate the Lord’s time from their personal time. This has to be something complete. If we are to be directed and led, the people who direct and lead have to be like these priests and these Levites: directed by the Holy Spirit and totally consecrated to the Will of the Lord.

The Lord clearly tells me that if we are going to be the congregation He wants us to be, many of the ways in which we lead our church have to change, because form has to conform to essence. Form does not define essence; essence defines form. Do you understand?

That is a principle for any institution in general: the vision, heart, destiny, and purpose of any institution have to shape it. Its essence, form, and structures have to conform to the essence of the vision and the spirit within the organization, and not the other way around.

The Lord tells them: Follow the ark; leave your place. You see? Because there is a time to rest, there is a time for what is familiar, but then there is also a time to launch out and leave comfort behind, leave the place of rest, leave the place of the familiar, and launch out in pursuit of the destiny God has shown us lies ahead. If you truly want to be used by the Lord in this coming year, you have to enter into things that will frighten you, that will terrify you, because they are new things you have never done before.

As we see in the paradigm of Abraham, you have to leave your land and your kindred, everything familiar, and go to the land that I will show you. You have to trust that the Lord will guide you even though you do not know the way. And let me tell you in passing: I have an idea of where God wants to take us; I have had it for many, many decades, but perhaps that is for another time. You have heard me speak a little about it here and there, but it is clear that God has something there—a very complex land before us—and it is something we have not even conceived of or imagined as lying ahead of us.

And that is why the Lord tells them: Look, follow the ark, follow behind it, march wherever the ark goes so that you may know the way you are to go, because you have never traveled this way before. And this is the important thing: the Holy Spirit is our GPS; that is what has to guide us all along this road.

And now the last—the final principle I want to point out in all of this—is that there has to be a distance between the ark and the people following it. It might seem like a contradiction, but it is very important, and that distance is more than half a mile. We are talking about the distance from here to that window in the back, multiplied thirty times; it is a long distance. So imagine: God is saying, “Follow it carefully, follow it faithfully, but keep your distance from it.”

Some have said that what the Lord wanted was for the people to be able to see it from very far away, because with a multitude of almost two million people following a small group of people in the distance, if they were too close together, they would simply follow one another, and the idea was: Keep the ark far away so that all the people can see it and follow it. I believe that distance had another important purpose, which was to maintain a reverential distance, because the Presence of Jehovah is dangerous. Sinful people before the Presence of God have to recognize that He is holy; He is to be feared. It is like the Presence on Mount Sinai, which one does not approach, or there in the sanctuary, which one does not approach without a sacrifice. He is holy, and the holiness of Jehovah must always be revered.

And this is something we have to recognize, brothers and sisters, and this is the last point: our church—we—have to prepare ourselves and sanctify ourselves and take this very seriously, because if God is going to move among us, the fearsome Presence of God will be moving among us, and more than ever we have to be clear that this is serious and that we have to be very careful.

Sanctifying ourselves also means concentration. You separate yourself from other things, focus on the Lord, and say: “Lord, I live for You and for You alone.” We have to consecrate ourselves to the Lord, to be a people truly set apart from the world in the sense that we know every part of my life belongs to Him. My time, my money, my life, my marriage, my children, my work—everything is His.

I leave you with this, and then I am done. Verse 5 of chapter 3 says: “Joshua said to the people, ‘Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow Jehovah will do wonders among you.’” And in verse 7 the Lord also tells Joshua: “From this day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may understand that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”

The Lord told Joshua that He had to dignify him with special power so that he would be respected by the people and could fulfill the calling. We as a people have to be anointed with the power of signs and wonders so that the world may see that what is happening here is not of man but of the Holy Spirit. So I am haunted—the Pastor says—by this certainty that in order to fulfill what we have to do, it cannot be done in the human realm. There have to be supernatural signs among us, something sacred for Him, so that it may be known that God is involved.

I see a great deal of fabricated miracles and a great deal of lying within the people of God. If we are honest, many of the miracles within the people of God are miracles that are friendly to people who already believe, aren’t they? But when outsiders analyze them, they see that, well, perhaps it was not a miracle. No, no, no—God does not need our help. We want a genuine move that can withstand the scrutiny of a critical world, so that the world can see that this is a move of the Lord.

I know that many people believe that I am a little cold in that area of miracles. It is quite the opposite: I believe in them so much and respect them so deeply that the only things that fascinate and interest me are authentic manifestations of the Lord. I will not settle for anything less than that.

“Nothing ordinary will satisfy us,” it says. There is a chorus that says that, and I believe we should sing that chorus, speaking of unpredictable things. I do not know whether you know it, Saúl: “Nothing ordinary will please us,” and we are going to sing that chorus as an expression of what we want.

In the Name of Jesus, we declare this Word: with fear and trembling, and with a little embarrassment, I declare this Word. You know my heart, Lord; honor Your Word, Lord. Honor Your Word; bless us, Lord, with the destiny You have for us. We open ourselves, Lord, to Your insemination; we open ourselves, Lord. Impregnate us as You impregnated Mary with that holy life of the Son of God by resting upon her. In the same way, Lord, rest upon this Congregation now; rest upon us, Holy Spirit.

We require an immaculate conception; we require a conception that comes directly from Your Spirit, impregnating Mary, who cannot give birth. But You, Lord, are the One who takes the barren and causes them to dwell in a family. Receive right now God’s pregnancy in your life, the seed of life that Mary received, the supernatural move of God together with the human move that God is not going to disregard, because He needs the human part—our talents, our gifts, our money, our time. The Lord needs all of that.

We declare Your Word, Lord, over this people. Hallelujah, thank You, Lord.