Sermon Tone Analysis

Strong and Courageous

I’ll remind you that we are in a series from the book of Joshua that we’ve titled Strong and Courageous.

When Moses died, God told Joshua to step up and lead His people.

And God told in

Josh 1:9

Just be strong and courageous.

Let’s be honest for just a minute, shall we?

There are many things in this world that are frightening.

It seems as if there could be riots or wars any moment in many areas.

The economy seems to be balanced on the head of a pin.

There are those who want to silence the message of Jesus Christ at all costs.

But here’s thing, as frightening as this world can be, we need to remember God’s call to Joshua.

The call to be strong and courageous as Joshua obediently led the nation of Israel to conquer the Promised Land.

So far in this series, we have seen A Call to Obedience, A Call to Faith, and A Call to Action.

Last week, in the Call to Action, we saw God do a mighty miracle to clear the way for the nation to enter and begin to conquer the land.

In the lesser known parting of the water, God opened up a 19-mile gap in the Jordan River when it was at flood stage so the nation of Israel could pass through on dry ground.

Now, let me tell you a little shared fact about preaching.

There are times when we have to limit how much of a story we preach because time simply will not allow us to unfold the full story.

And this is one of those times.

You see, Joshua chapters 3 and 4 are really just one long narrative.

Chapter 3 focuses on the nation getting ready and crossing the Jordan.

Chapter 4 describes the way the nation memorialized what God had done in chapter 3. Or, to put it more succinctly, Chapter 4 is a Call to Remember the Call to Action in chapter 3. Just like last week, instead of reading the whole passage and then picking it apart, I’m going to read a bit and comment a bit and I’ll bring it all together at the end.

So, to get started on this Call to Remember, let’s read

Josh 4:

A Call to Remember - Commanded

The first thing you need to notice is that in the middle of a miracle, while the Jordan was still piled up in a heap by Adam, God commands Joshua to tell others to get the memorial stones.

God is in the middle of doing this tremendous miracle and commands Joshua to have the people prepare to build a memorial about the event.

This is not years later.

This is during the miracle.

God commands the nation to remember.

Let’s read on

Josh 4:4

A Call to Remember - Explained

When Joshua passes on God’s command to the people, he tells them why it is important to set up these memorial stones.

You see, it is not enough to just see a pile of stones and think something special happened here.

Let me give you an example.

I went to high school in a town just a few miles down the road from Gettysburg, PA.

There were Civil War memorials set up all over the place in Gettysburg.

It was almost mind-numbing reading them all.

But the Gettysburg Battlefield Museum had a presentation where they explained the way that blood battle was fought.

They showed on a map the way the Union and Confederate troops lined up in battle.

And they showed how the Union broke through the Confederate line and won the battle.

After watching that presentation, we went back out and looked at all those memorials, but now they had meaning.

Now I knew which side this memorial represented.

Now I knew how many men had died on that day.

Now I knew so much more about it, the memorials had more meaning.

This is what Joshua tells the people.

He tells them to set up a memorial so they can tell the whole story of what God did here.

Not just a snippet, but the whole story.

How God stopped the waters of the Jordan.

How the people passed over on dry ground.

Tell it to your kids.

Tell it to everyone who asks about the stones piled together.

May the memorial remind you to tell the story.

Let’s read on

Josh 4:8-

A Call to Remember - Obeyed

It wasn’t the memorial itself that the people thought was important.

Because God told to take one set of 12 and set it up on shore.

The people went beyond that and put one pile in the middle of the Jordan River where the priests had stood.

They not only wanted to remember WHAT God had done, they wanted to remember exactly WHERE He did it!

You may ask why I think that is so important.

Well, let me put it in a way that will make sense to many of you.

Last week, I talked about the 2011 floods.

And I know, it’s a bad memory, I need to let it go.

But I heard about a church that owned property that was very hilly not suitable to build on until it had been graded.

The Army Corps of Engineers decided the dirt and sand in those hills on that church’s property would be good for rebuilding the dikes that had been compromised by the flood.

And that church got their land graded so the dikes could be rebuilt.

Now, some of you are snickering because you know the whole story.

It sounds like a neat story doesn’t it?

And if it happened to some church somewhere it would be sweet and a nice smile.

Most of you know, but let me spell it out anyway.

That church was Heartland Community Baptist Church and that land is the land you are currently sitting on.

This building is a sort of memorial to not only WHAT God did but also WHERE He did it.

Do you see how much more meaningful it is when you know the location?

That is what the Israelites did.

Let’s read on

Josh 4:10-

A Call to Remember

Now Joshua recalls for us the whole story.

Now, I want to call attention to verse 13 for just a second.

Last week, I made a big deal that there were 2 million some odd people crossing over the Jordan River.

And some astute scholar out here is waiting to challenge me with this verse that says it was only 40,000 people.

You may remember that the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh had decided to take their inheritance from the west side of the Jordan.

So, the 40,000 is from those 3 groups, not the whole nation.

And those 40,000 joined the other 10.5 tribes to cross the river.

I’ll stand by my original estimate of 2 million or so people given the 600,000 census number from .

But notice the story.

They passed over in haste and the Lord exalted Joshua that day.

The people stood in awe of him like they had Moses.

And then God tells Joshua to call the priests up out of the riverbed.

And as the priests step out of the river, the water comes right back to where it was at the beginning.

This is just as much a part of the miracle as making the water stand up in a heap upstream.

The precise timing of the priests lifting their feet from where the water had been and then it was there again!

God has performed a miracle!

So they set up stones to remember, just like God said to do.

And then Joshua reminds them to teach their children about this second dividing of the waters.

Folks, God showed the people of Israel that Moses was His chosen man by many signs and wonders including dividing the Red Sea.

And here, God shows the next generation that Joshua is His man by stopping the Jordan River.

In both cases, however, the men who are the leaders, Moses and Joshua, give all the credit to God for the miracle He has performed.