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Good morning my friends, who are on the journey we call ‘Walking With Jesus”. Today we are in Joshua chapter 4, one of the most exciting chapters in the entire Bible!
Yesterday, in Joshua chapter 3, we joined nearly 2 million people in their crossing of the flooded Jordan river! For 40 years they had anticipated this day. They didn’t build a bridge, nor did they float their belongings & animals across the river on rafts. God did for them, what He had done for their parents, 40 years before. God made a way, where there was no way. . .right THROUGH the flooded Jordan river!
While the priests stood holding the Arc of the Covenant, in the middle of the dry riverbed, God held back the rushing Jordan river…all day long, as the people and their animals and belongings crossed. It was a once in history event!
Joshua 4 opens with this: “When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Choose 12 men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests stood and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.” You’ve heard the phrase, ‘stones of remembrance’…this is where it comes from!
Can you picture it? All day long this flood of people and animals, rushing across the dry Jordan river bed and clamoring up the bank on the other side. Then turning around to bid farewell to the desert, and heading off, at least a few hundred yards, into this new land, to set up camp. Finally, when all who were coming had crossed, Joshua chose 12 leaders and sent them back down into the river to each pick up a rock, as big as they could carry, and bring it up to make a pile on the Western side of the Jordan river, right where they would camp that first night. Why you ask… look ahead, Joshua 4:21-24 “Joshua said, ‘in the future, when your descendants ask their fathers, ‘what do these stones mean’, tell them ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.”
Why is REMEMBERING such a difficult thing for us, especially remembering spiritual truths or spiritual highlights in our life journey’s? Well, phrases like “out of sight, out of mind’, or “live for the moment” may have something to do with our memory loss. In our day, it may also be both the pace of life we live, and the amount of information we process every day.
Have you noticed God is always urging us to both remember significant things of the past, and anticipate the future? Joshua gave clear instructions in vs. 4-7 to 12 selected men, one representing each tribe… even though 2 and 1/2 of the tribes had said “NO, we’re not going into the new land with you.” That’s important friends. God wanted this pile of formerly riverbed rocks, to make several powerful statements to whomever would see them for generations to come.
First… these rocks could only come from under the river, if somehow God did the miraculous and stopped the flow of the river so the rocks, never before seen by human eyes, would become visible as the river dried up temporarily. Is there a spiritual lesson here?
Does God want to periodically do things in our lives, which make visible our attitudes, character traits, deep thoughts which are buried so deep, we don’t even see them in our own lives… yet God wants to work there, in those deeply private places, to bring about change in us, that will enable us, to be more the man or woman HE has designed us to be, for His glory?
Second… these rocks could only get from the mud of the river bottom, to the bank and stand up in a heap, if some men actually went down into the river, trusting the wall of water would wait, and bring those rocks up to the river bank and pile them up. Great faith, courage and strength was needed.
Is it a good picture that often God will invite us to partner with Him in doing something we could never do without God, and God won’t do without people who will follow His instructions, and obeying Him with great faith steps? Have you ever had that privilege? What might be holding you back from such faith steps with God today?
Third… as time passes, people, even generations come and go. God wanted this river crossing point, to be a place that would stir up a God glorifying, mind blowing God-story for centuries, maybe millennia. One generation telling the next…the full account of what took place here, and what it means.
Do you have such God story places in your life journey? Places your grandparents or parents have taken you, to tell you a God story about how God worked in your ancestor’s lives? Have you added some of your own stories, for your children and grandchildren? Oh, what a sad thing when a person has lived their whole life without hearing a powerful God story, which is unique to their family heritage.
Fourth… God wanted that pile of 12 stones to be a picture of the ENTIRE Hebrew nation, ALL the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his 12 sons, even though some had opted out of coming into the new land. God wanted everyone to know, what HE had designed as one nation, under God, indivisible, was not to be forgotten, even thought 2 and 1/2 of those tribes had chosen greener pastures rather than coming into the new land as God had invited.
It’s amazing isn’t it, how often we human beings work so hard to change or reform what God has designed in His majestic, perfect plan. And when we do… oh the painful results we eventually inherit from such unwise pursuits.
My friends, I hope you’ve been imagining yourself in the story of Joshua 4 today… packing up your tent and all your belongings, and with your family, walking to the river bank, looking at those priests standing in the middle of the dry river bed, holding the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders! Then you and your family, scurrying down the bank, into the river bed, passing by those priests and the Ark, then up the other side, and turning around to watch the tsunami of people and animals coming behind you.
Then standing and watching as Joshua sends 12 guys down into the river to pick up 12 big rocks, and seeing the men pile up those rocks right in front of you, on the river bank in the Promised Land. What would you be feeling in this amazing experience? If you had children with you, what would you be telling them?
Joshua 1:15-18 tells us after all had crossed, Joshua invited the priests to come up out of the dry riverbed with the Ark of God. “No sooner had they set their feet on dry ground (of the river bank) than the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and ran at flood stage as before.” Can you hear the rush of water? Suddenly a new reality hits you. . . there is no going back!!
The desert and Egypt are in the past, this river crossing begins a new future. I think, I would have stood there a long time, looking at the flooded river, the pile of stones, the people on the other side who refused to come with us, and then slowly I would have turned, with my back to the desert, and started walking west, into the Promised Land, to set up my tent for a first night in the land of God’s promise.
I doubt I would have slept much that night, how about you? I wonder if I might have even walked back to that pile of stones and in the moonlight, just sat there for a while watching the rushing Jordan, looking at the stones and then across to the other side, and finally up to the star filled night sky to remember God had promised Abraham more descendants than visible stars in the sky (Gen. 15:5). And that they would one day live in this land… what a night!
As you read the last few verses of Joshua 4 take note what day of the month, and what month of the year it is!! God never misses an opportunity to make a point! The 10th day of the first month of the year. Remember Exodus 12?
Also, take note of the name of this place of crossing. . . Gilgal! This place would be a place of great significance for centuries to come with Israel. Future generations and kings would come back to this place to remember and gain a fresh perspective of what God might do in their day.
Finally, may I point out one last thing in what Joshua said to the people that day? “The LORD did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.” This remarkable day at the Jordan was for all of them who experienced it, and everyone they would ever tell. But it was also for the billions who have heard about it, read about it, in languages all over the world, in the generations since!
Watch that… God is always watching to see what He might do here and now, which will impact generations to come, and people all around the world. Please don’t ever underestimate what God might have in His mind for the wider impact of what He is doing in your life my friends… today!
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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