Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

The Walk to Remember Joshua 4 Promised Land Living in Problematic World Sermon #6 Some of you know that I’m part of a local scholarship committee that gives awards for graduating seniors going to religious colleges. Part of my responsibility includes attending high school awards’ ceremonies to present the scholarships. It’s exciting at these ceremonies to see many of these students rewarded for their hard work during their high school years.   Perhaps you’ve had my experience, you’ve visited someone’s home and they have award after award. It nearly takes a room to hold all their trophies. Many of those awards and trophies were won during the high school years.   Now I don’t own a trophy case. I don’t even have a trophy shelf, but as the youngest of five, I did feel the pressure growing up. My oldest brother, Mike, excelled in track, my next brother, Mark, was a champion wrestler. My sister, Ina, is a brain. She had a scholarship to one of the top college prep schools in the Atlanta area and was the Salutatorian of her class. My sister, Suellen, was on the Homecoming court and one year was the State Champion in Georgia’s State Spelling Bee. Those were hard acts to follow. I made an impression in high school, I often helped the curve. I played a few sports but I was probably more of a source of comic relief than a serious contender.   During my Academic years I only won one award, the College Freshman Speech Contest. Because I attended Maranatha for two years of high school prior to attending college there, I knew how competitive and prestigious the Freshman Speech Contest was. I wanted to win it in the worst way. It had to be an original manuscript, 5-7 minutes long on the subject of freedom. I loved history so I wrote about great historical episodes from history and tied it all together. I made the first cut and was one of the seven semi-finalists. We all gave our speeches before the entire school. Then, I made the three finalists. We had to give our speeches again at those final days before graduation as part of the commencement festivities. Finally, at the Graduation Ceremony they would announce the winner and gave out the awards.   I can still see it like it happened yesterday. I can almost picture exactly where I was sitting in the crowd that day when they announced my name. I crawled down through the bleachers and made my way to the platform. The President of the college, Dr. Cedarholm, shook my hand and congratulated me. It wasn’t a big medal, basically a big oversized coin. But I was proud of it. It was one of those wonderful memories that you reflect on for years to come.   Memories are important. Men have always made symbols of their memories, emblems of their triumphs and achievements. Every city has monuments or memorials dedicated to victories, achievements or fallen heroes. All of these are designed to remind successive generations of past historical events and great human accomplishments. Why? Because of our tendency to forget.   But in spite of all of our memorials, we still tend to be forgetful. The recent release of the “U.S. History Report Card” a few weeks ago (5-10-02) revealed that nearly 60% of the nation’s high school seniors lack a basic knowledge of U.S. History. Man has a short attention span. We human beings are an absent-minded species.   Perhaps last week you forgot something important. All of us do at some time or another. According to Karen Bolla, a Johns Hopkins researcher, these are the things people most often forget: Names- 83%; Where something is-60%; Telephone numbers-57%; Words-53%; What was said-49%; Faces-42%. If you can’t remember whether you’ve just done something, you’re joined by  38% of the population. We struggle to remember the basic details of life, things that we want to remember. McCall’s Magazine says that nearly half of its readers, 45%, of its readers worry that they are losing their memory.   Yet what’s true for us with history or the normal details of life, is even more true of spiritual memories. When it comes to the spiritual, Satan wants to help us be amnesiacs. The greatest enemy of faith may be forgetfulness.   The miracle at Jordan with its flood waters rolled back some thirty miles was fantastic. But that was just the beginning. God also wanted them to remember what He had done for them. This walk across Jordan’s dry river bottom was to be The Walk to Remember. The twelve stones were to be “a memorial to the people of Israel forever” (v. 7). The superstructure of our faith is built upon the foundation of our faith memories. It is this past foundation of spiritual memories that enables us to withstand future times of trials. Without them our faith can easily crumble like a house of cards. Our relationship with God has some of the same problems which we face in a marriage. The real threat in most marriages is not adultery, it’s amnesia. Marriages deteriorate under the slow erosion of forgetfulness and a gradual failure to remember the preciousness of the other person.   This monument was not Joshua’s idea, it was God’s. God commanded them to make a memory because He knows how vital remembering is for our spiritual health. Our tendency is to forget the great works He has done in our lives. We have to work to remember that which will make a difference in our lives, memories of God’s faithfulness, spiritual memories. It’s crucial that Israel remember what He has done for them and it’s vital we remember all that He has done for us. Joshua 4 is about making a memory. Most of us need some spiritual post-it notes to remind us to make spiritual memories. What are some post-it notes that we can post on the walls of our hearts that we learn from Israel’s Walk to Remember? Post-it note #1: Spiritual Memorials help us remember God’s work on our behalf. Most of us have great memories when it comes to bad memories. Some remember every wrong, every slight, every single time  we felt that we were mistreated in full, living color. We’re filled with bitter memories like old Jacob was as he neared the end of his life, “The years of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty; few and unpleasant have been the years of my life” (Gen. 47:9, NASV). Yet when we try to remember God’s work in our lives and His blessings, we are absent-minded.    Joshua had previously chosen twelve men, one from each tribe, according to Yahweh’s earlier instructions, (3:12). We’re not sure if he knew why God had told him to pick these twelve men, but now new instructions come, 4:2-3. These men go back down into the river bed, pick twelve boulders, pry them out of the bottom, lift them up on their shoulders and carry them the eight miles to Gilgal where they make camp that evening.    Verse 19 reminds us that forty years before, to the day, they had selected the lamb in preparation for the Passover and the exodus out of Egypt, (Exodus 12:3). That day had marked the beginning of their redemption, this day marked the completion of it. What Yahweh began, He brought to completion. Yahweh had written His faithfulness across another date on their calendars! Israel had been a slave; now Israel was an heir!   But there’s a second memorial erected. It’s not as clear in the NIV. The NASV renders verse 9, “Then Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan at the place where the feet of the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing, and they are there to this day.” We don’t know why Joshua did this, he was not instructed to. I can’t help but believe that he was so awed by the power of God, he was so grateful, that this second monument is his own private act of worship.   Joshua was a humble man. His monument would be inconspicuous. It would only be seen when Jordan’s waters were low enough. Now he and Caleb are the only ones of that generation who had walked out of Egypt who had now walked into the Promised Land. He’s finally home and worships his God by setting up this monument on Jordan’s floor, at the very place where the Ark of the Covenant had stood. Once the monument is set up in the river’s bed, the priests carrying the Ark walk out of Jordan and the waters come rushing back.    As they set up those twelve stones that night when they camped at Gilgal, can’t you just picture the celebration? Most of them danced and sang around their fires long into the night. What a miracle they had seen that day! Perhaps they would periodically look over at that monument of twelve stones and just breathe a quiet sigh of gratitude and worship. Forty years before their parents had left Egypt, hundreds of years before that God had promised this land to their forefather, Abraham. Those stones were the first monument set up in the Land. God had done it! Again and again they ran the mental tapes of what had taken place earlier that day! The stones at Gilgal would remind them of what had happened, the stones in Jordan marked where it had happened!   A memorial in the Hebrew mind was much more than calling something to mind. It involves remembering with concern; it implies loving reflection and then action. The Israelites were to look at those twelve stones and recall that they did not walk across Jordan on their own ability. It was all of God. Realizing this, they were to conduct all of life accordingly, whether it be family life, business, or warfare. Those stones were a constant reminder of what God had done and that they were God’s people.   These stones were not Joshua’s idea, nor one of the priests, or any other man’s. God commanded them to do this because He knows how important remembering His works is for our spiritual health. Just as God had given them the Passover, now He has them set up these stones of remembrance so that they would not forget what He had done for them.   Like ancient Israel, we too need stones of remembrance. We find it so easy to forget the goodness of God. Our’s is the hurried generation. When we’re rushed or stressed, caught up in the madness of too much to do with too little time to do it in, we become spiritual amnesiacs. Remembering takes time for reflection. If your life is a rush hour, you probably have difficulty remembering the goodness of God.   Then, when we are hurt or feel helpless, we forget God’s goodness. Pain clouds our minds and we forget. The pain is so real that God becomes unreal.   That’s why we need tangible spiritual memories, like those twelve stones. It might be a place where God worked in your life. It might be people that God  used in your life or that you went through some times of great victory with. It might be an experience. Most of us need to write them down, put them in stone so we don’t forget them. God has given the Church the spiritual memorials of Baptism and the Lord’s Table so that we don’t forget Christ’s sacrifice or His work in our lives. Those are times for spiritual reflection.   Friend, do you have some spiritual monuments in your life, stones of remembrance so that you don’t forget the goodness of God? Churches need monuments too. We need to have symbols of God’s goodness. We’ll soon be celebrating our 50th anniversary as a church in 2005. It occurred to me recently we have no symbol of remembrance to a lady who donated the land for our church, Mabel Buttles. I don’t know anything about her but her sacrifice has been such a blessing to this community of believers. Spiritual communities need stones of remembrance so that we don’t forget the goodness of God.   Don’t you think that it was harder for them to wander from God, to become bitter or ungrateful as long as they remembered what those stones were for? Perhaps some of us struggle spiritually because we do not have spiritual memorials in our lives. Post-it note #1: Spiritual Memorials help us remember God’s work on our behalf. Post-it note #2: Spiritual Memorials help us teach our children about Who God is, v. 6-7.  Pierce Harris said, “Memory is a child walking along the seashore. You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” Children are naturally inquisitive and teachable.  During those formative years we can help them store spiritual memorial stones that will bide them well over the long haul of life.   A friend once asked Isidor I. Rabi, a Nobel prize winner in science, how he became a scientist. Rabi replied that every day after school his mother would talk to him about his school day. She wasn’t so much interested in what he had learned that day, but she always inquired, “Did you ask a good question today?” “Asking good questions,” Rabi said, “made me become a scientist.”   Our children are going to ask questions, do we have good answers for them? Too often we are concerned that they get a good education, know how to work, have social and life skills but are we helping them place some spiritual markers in their souls. Let’s not forget, you can have a good education, work ethic, social and life skills yet still go to Hell or be a spiritual zero.   But you have to have spiritual monuments or there will never be a dialogue. Verse 6 says that the children will see the stones and ask, “What do these stones mean?” In some homes, even professing Christian homes, there are not spiritual questions because there is so little spiritual input. Think about the dialogues in your family, are there some spiritual ones?   What do we talk about in our homes? Do we talk about spiritual victories? Please listen very carefully, it would be better to never talk about the spiritual than to talk about the spiritual negatively or in a critical manner. If you are in the habit of criticizing fellow believers or the church in front of your children, stop it! You are poisoning them! In my many years of ministry it has been heartbreaking to see church kids, once they reached adulthood, never darken the doors of the church again. Nearly every time the parents had been critical of the church in front of their kids. Bite your tongue! It is not worth the cost! The price is too high! Young impressionable lives are at stake!   God was telling Israel to be prepared for those “teachable moments. In the future, when a family was on an outing at the Gilgal National Park and a child spotted this pile of stones and asked, “What’s with the pile of rocks?” The parents would have an opportunity to share about the time when, in a seemingly impossible situation, God dried up Jordan and took them across.  Some children, of course, would respond. "Sure. But how do I know you didn't just put those rocks there and make up that story?" Then the parent could say, "No, I didn't make up that story, and to prove it, look out in the middle of the river. Do you see that other pile of rocks? How do you think they got there? Joshua put them out there the day God dried up the flooded Jordan. They are there to this day to remind you that we walked across that river and don't you forget it. God can provide in the most impossible circumstances. Those rocks are proof of that."   Could what God instructed them to do be any clearer? Do you think anyone had a question that they were responsible to instruct their children? The million dollar question, did they do it? No! The Israelites failed to remind their children of what God had done. No sooner had they settled into the land flowing with milk and honey, than their memories began to fade. Even the memorial stones were forgotten by the majority in Israel. One of the most heartbreaking historical statements in Scripture is recorded in Judges 2:7-13.    Many years had passed since Israel crossed over Jordan and set up the memorial stones in Gilgal. God had given them victory after victory. After years of bondage and wilderness wanderings they settled into the land and enjoyed the freedom of having a place to live in peace and plenty. But something happened. They forgot and the result was tragic.   How could this be? How could a people who had witnessed the miracles of God ever forget them? I don’t know but we do know that parents in Israel failed to tell their children what God had done for them at Jordan and how He continued to give them victories over their enemies. Gene Getz warns, “When parents cease to reflect God’s values in their home, it only takes one generation for spiritual degeneration to take place.”   What’s happening in our homes? What will our children remember about us? Will they remember a beautiful home, color TVs, the newest car, a lake lot, a boat, an open‑ended allowance–and all the frantic efforts we put forth to accumulate these possessions? God never says that material things are wrong. If they are wrong why would He have given the children of Israel all the things mentioned in Deuteronomy 6 and 8? Both Abraham and Job would be millionaires by today’s standards. Material things are not the issue, our attitude toward the God of heaven is! The children of Israel became materialists. They took the credit for the blessings they had received from God. Eventually they turned away from God to false gods–the gods of a pagan society. In the process they failed to consistently teach their children their sacred history. What about us? Are there memorial stones in our homes that remind us and our children about God’s blessings?                  Post-it note #3: This spiritual memorial has a powerful purpose, v. 24.  After the memorial stones were set up at Gilgal, Joshua explained the significance of the memorial to the people.   A. It is a reminder to the unregenerate of God’s power, “He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful.” As Butler states, “Before Israel has fought a single battle, the entire land is hers for the taking.” Because of God’s power on the behalf of His people, the enemy nations around them were terrified, Joshua 5:1. They were terrified before any military action had taken place. When God’s people trust God and let Him work, it frightens those who do not know God.   B. It is a reminder to Israel of their relationship to Him, “and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.” “Fearing the Lord” is the usual expression in the Old Testament for faith. The fear mentioned here is not slavish dread, but instead the recognition of God’s glory and majesty, resulting in submission and trust to Him. The contemplation of these stones would do something wonderful for them. It would increase their reverential love and trust in Yahweh. The reflection on God’s works elevated their spiritual lives.   There is an implication here which is easy to overlook. If Yahweh insists that Israel remember this day, it implies that this event was unique and that God does not usually work with such visibly raw power. If God split Jordan every other week, it would lose its significance. The point is that this type of miracle would be uncommon and God’s method of retaining His people’s faithfulness was not by repeating miracles but by His people remembering what He had already done.   Some believers have a frustrated spiritual experience because they expect the Christian life to have Jordan splittings on a regular basis. The Bible contains very few miracles. Most of the miracles in Scripture occurred in one of three time intervals: the Moses/Joshua period; Elijah/Elisha period; or Jesus/the early church period. What’s the point? God does periodically supernaturally intervene for us but that is not normative. What is normative is remembering what He has done and trusting Him in the present because of what He has done in the past. That’s where faith comes in.   It doesn’t take much faith to trust God when Jordan is splitting before your eyes. It takes faith to still trust Him ten years after Jordan split and know that you can still count on Him every day. That’s why we need spiritual memorials, to help us remember what God has done in the past, even when we don’t see Him doing anything in the present.   C. It is a reminder to Israel of their relationship to one another. To the symbol oriented Israelites, the significance of the twelve stones was easily understood. They represented the twelve tribes of Israel. But remember two and half tribes were staying on the other side of Jordan. Shouldn’t they have only piled up nine and half stones? This memorial was a reminder of the nation’s unity, though there was a geographical division. The number “twelve” is found seven times in this narrative. It’s a point of emphasis. There were no Lone Rangers or individualists. Their power came in their unity.   Mark Twain used to say he put a dog and a cat in a cage together as an experiment, to see if they could get along. They did, so he put in a bird, pig and goat. They, too, got along fine after a few adjustments. Then he put in a Baptist, Presbyterian, and Catholic; soon there was not a living thing left.   We do not believe in ecumenicalism, nor are we advocating bringing all religious groups together. There can only be unity where there is the common ground of faith in Jesus Christ. But there does need to be unity among the Body of Christ both within the local church and in the universal Church. Too many believers have theological food fights and divide needlessly.   The twelve stones reminded them of the unity of the nation. They spoke of the twelve tribes that made up the one nation. While it was true that two and a half tribes had their inheritance on the east bank of the Jordan, they still were one people. There were many things in the history of Israel that would divide the people, but God always saw them as a unit and constantly reminded them of this. Centuries later, the nation was divided into two kingdoms;  the Northern Kingdom (ten tribes) and Judah (two tribes), but in 1 Kings 18, when Elijah rebuilt the altar on Carmel, he used twelve stones.   Today there are many things that divide God’s people. Some are trivial and some are serious. We should never minimize the importance of doctrinal differences but even these are not to be allowed to break the unity of those whom Christ has saved with his blood.   The doctrinal rift between John Wesley and George Whitefield was deep and some of Whitefield’s followers began to doubt whether Wesley was truly converted. Arnold Dallimore tells us, “Thus one of them once asked Whitefield if he expected to see Wesley in heaven, to which he replied: “I fear not, for he will be so near the eternal throne and we at such a distance we shall hardly get a sight of him.” More of that generous spirit of Whitefield is needed today to remind us that whatever bank of the Jordan we make our doctrinal home, we are still one people in Jesus Christ. Conclusion:  All of us need to pile up some memorial stones as we go through life. It should become a habitual part of our journey. A primary reason for this is that we so easily forget the good and remember the bad. Slights, injuries, disappointments, misfortunes lodge readily in our memories. Benevolences, kindnesses, satisfactions, even miracles slip easily away. Our Christian duty is to remember, because of the danger, as with Israel, of forgetting. We need to gather stones of remembrance because of what they do for us. They build personal confidence and courage. In 2 Corinthians 1:8- 9 Paul remembers how God delivered him from death when he thought it was all over, and then confidently says, God “...will deliver us, He in whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us.” Stones at Gilgal, these places of remembrances, benefit everyone! Our spouses are strengthened. Our children grow as they ask, “What do these stones mean?” And the Body of Christ takes on new vitality.   Joshua 4 is a call to remember the miracles and graces of God in our lives, and then to share them with our families and our church. Realizing that God commanded Israel to do so at the Jordan justifies forcefully calling us to do so! The question is, how?   We can begin by asking some tough questions:   1) What evidences are there in my home, in my personal life, that God exists and that we are dependent upon Him for life and existence?   2) In what ways do we talk about God? As a living reality? As a household fetish? Someone we talk about because we are supposed to?   3) In what ways can I convey to my children a reverence and respect for God? In what ways can I convey to my children that everything we have comes from Him? What memorial stones are there in my home and family life that are constant reminders of the greatness and power of God?   It takes commitment, it takes work, but having and maintaining spiritual memorials strengthens our faith and provides us with teachable moments for sharing our faith with our children. If not, we could lose it all.   Remember that medal I won in the Freshman Speech Contest that I so highly prized. Let me tell you the rest of the story. A few weeks after winning, I flew to Atlanta for my sister, Suellen’s wedding. I was one of the groomsmen and I had taken that medal along to show to my family. Somehow I had it along with me when I changed into my tux and when I changed back into my street clothes and prepared to leave, I dropped that prized medal. A relative found it, mentioned it to me and was going to give it back. But before they could, their house caught on fire and burned down, and my prized medal was gone forever.   Too often we are excited about a spiritual high in our life but if we do not maintain the memorial, if we’re not careful, we’ll lose it and with it that powerful remembrance of what God did in our lives and that opportunity to share it with the next generation.