Stones of Remembrance
Having trouble with the video? CLICK HERE!
“So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, ‘Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.’” Joshua 4:4-7 (NIV)
If you’re anything like me, you may find yourself too often forgetting the things you should remember and remembering the things you should forget. I think it’s just part of our fallen nature and Satan will use it to his advantage if we’re not careful. God didn’t want Israel to forget the miracle at the Jordan River, so He gave them a unique way to remember it. I call them “stones of remembrance.” God told Joshua to set up two heaps of stones as memorials of Israel’s crossing the Jordan River – twelve stones would be set up at Gilgal on the other side of the river where they would make a base camp in the Promised Land and another twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan River where the Priests held the Ark of the Covenant as the people passed by on dry ground with a wall of water on one side of them!
The Jordan River ran from North to South while Israel would cross it from East to West. Yesterday we saw in Joshua 3:15 (NLT) that “It was harvest season, and the Jordan was overflowing its banks. …” The Jordan River flows from the mountains of Lebanon in the North all the way down to the Dead Sea in the South. “Yardon” or “Jordan” means “descent.” It follows a winding descending path for 156 miles through the Sea of Galilee and drops rapidly in a 47-mile run. What compounds the miracle of the waters parting for Israel to cross over on dry ground was that God chose the time when the river was at its highest to demonstrate His power! If you haven’t discovered it yet, God will often use our impossibilities to demonstrate that all things are possible with Him! Can you imagine what the children of Israel must have been thinking as they crossed the Jordan and looked to one side to see a wall of water standing straight up and the Ark of the Covenant being held on the shoulders of the Priests on the other side of them? If I had been one of the Priests, I think I may have asked them to hurry up!
Before the Priests left the river, Joshua instructed twelve strong men to lift stones from the middle of the Jordan and set them up as a witness that God honors faith and works on behalf of those who trust Him. God did not want Israel to hastily move from this experience. When we encounter God, we need to recognize the miracle He has done on our behalf. God had just performed a miracle wonder and before Israel would conquer the land they were entering to possess, they needed to set up these stones of remembrance. Each step of faith we take requires us to look back and remember what God has done for us in the past. This fortifies our faith for the challenges we will face ahead of us! Have you set up any memorials to God’s power in your own life? If not, perhaps this is the day God may have you pause from too much activity and shift your focus on Him and His miracle wonders in your own life. Some people I know do that by carrying a small pebble with them in their pocket that reminds them of what God has done in their behalf. It is their “stone of remembrance.” Others record His mighty acts in a journal, a miracle book, that they keep so as not to forget what God has done. In days of doubt or fear, they review their journal as a reminder that God is faithful.
Memorials like that are helpful so long as they don’t become idols that turn our hearts away from God or link us so much to the past that we fail to serve God in the present. In fact, Joshua told the people that the point of these stones of remembrance was to teach the next generation the mighty works of God. These memorials would be visual reminders of what God has done in their history and would strengthen their faith drawing each generation closer to the Lord. It would keep them from forgetting what they should always remember, especially for those who would come after them that were not there when it happened.
As you record your own stones of remembrance, I want to encourage you to share those miracle wonders with your children and your children’s children. These are some of the greatest demonstrations for the existence of God, His power, and the intimate relationship He seeks to have with each of us.