In the men’s cohort that I lead (there’s 4 of us that meet weekly for lunch), we are going through the book of Joshua, extracting principles of leadership from the life of Joshua, and ultimately seeing the Gospel through this man’s biography. One thing I’ve noticed so far, and the other men have picked up as well, is the use of the phrase “three days”. I’ll give you some examples, and then talk about what it refers to.
Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people, “Prepare your provisions, for within three days you are to pass over this Jordan to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.”
- Joshua 1:11
This is at the very beginning of the chapter, when God is giving instructions to Joshua, the newly elected commander of the people of God. After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, God tells Joshua to tell the people this: “What we’ve been praying, hoping, and waiting for will start to realize. Everything changes in 3 days.” Immediately after this pronouncement, in the very next chapter, Joshua sends scouts to Jericho, and it is there we see the timeframe given again:
And she (Rahab) said to them (the scouts), “Go into the hills, or the pursuers will encounter you, and hide there for three days until the pursuers have returned. Then afterward, you may go your way.”
-Joshua 2:16
Here’s the amazing thing: Rahab, the whore of Jericho, tells the Hebrew scouts to wait for three days before leading the Hebrew people across the great Jordan river…without knowing that it is the same timeframe God had given Jericho. She tells the scouts to wait for three days in order to protect them. Joshua is to lead the people across the river in three days. It seems as if God is orchestrating both parties, both Rahab and Joshua, according to His will. In fact, it seems as if this timeframe is somewhat special to God, choosing it as the time-frame between the death of the Prophet Moses (Joshua 1:1) and the entering of the people into the promised blessings of God, the land of Canaan.
The guys instantly picked up on this foreshadowing, and I hope you have as well. This frame between the death of Moses and the entering of Canaan is really just a shadow of the true Three Days that really matters: the three days between the death of the Prophet Jesus and the entering of the Church into the promised land of Resurrection. Jesus’ Resurrection starts our new life, indeed.
It’s amazing to think that a three day span in 1st century Palestine has dictated the entirety of human history. But it has. And I, for one, am grateful.