“Y’hoshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, because tomorrow Adonai is going to work wonders among you. ‘Then Y’hoshua said to the cohanim, “Take the ark for the covenant, and go on ahead of the people.’ They took the ark for the covenant and went ahead of the people.”-Joshua 3:5
In verse 5, we encounter a somewhat perplexing instruction from Adonai.
The Lord tells the people they are to consecrate themselves.
Other Bible translations will say “sanctify yourselves”.
What does this mean though?
This simply means the people are to make themselves holy before God.
But this is confusing, isn’t it?
Does this mean that Israel can now make themselves holy?
Or that by performing some rituals or their own “works” they can achieve salvation?
Well, not by a long shot, especially if you go by what is written in Genesis 15:5
“Avraham believed in Adonai,
and he credited it to him
as righteousness.”
Here’s the thing.
The children of Israel NEVER merited their redemption.
And the same goes for us today.
We are not saved based on any merits of our own.
And obedience to the Law is also not about meriting salvation.
So what’s going on here?
This is all about how one responds to being saved.
For example, when the Lord draws someone towards Messiah Yeshua, there is an act of God involved but there is also an act on our part involved.
Hashem may draw us to Him but we still have to accept His love towards us by making a decision on our part.
Or think back to the Exodus.
The Lord rescued Israel from Egypt, but then, as a result, Israel had obligations.
And what were those obligations?
The answer is obedience to the Lord’s commands or “sanctified behavior” as another way to put it.
So that’s what’s happening here.
The people are to do some sacred observances to outwardly demonstrate their inner faithfulness to Hashem.
To be more specific, this particular act of self-consecration was actually a typical Levitical purification ritual that we were introduced to in the Torah.
The people are to first immerse themselves in water and then they are to immerse their clothing in water.
And it has to be “living water” meaning a running spring or river connected to a larger body of water.
That’s why the people had to move from Shittim where there wasn’t a lot of water to the Jordan River which was large enough for the population of about 3 million people.
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