This past Tuesday I was out for coffee with a friend talking about our latest Bible study on the Book of Joshua. We were talking about how Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River not unlike Moses leading them out of Egypt to cross the Red Sea forty years before that. I was surprised that I didn’t know that God had parted not one but two rather large bodies of water.
We went on talking about the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness after being baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan. I hadn’t realized the significance nor the alignment of the forty years Israel had lived in the wilderness before crossing the Jordan and Jesus’s forty days, some 1400 years later. My friend said Jesus was recognized as the second Israel. In fact, in Matthew 2:15, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” acknowledges this with what was written by the prophet Hosea in the Old Testament in Hosea 11:1, “and out of Egypt I called my son.” Jesus, the faithful Israel, succeeds where the old covenant Israel failed. Like ancient Israel, Jesus came up out of Egypt, passed through the waters, and was tested three times in the wilderness by the devil. One of those tests, in Luke 4:3, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answers, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone” (Luke 4:4), which reflects what Moses speaks to Israel in Deuteronomy 8:3, “nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
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