Looking Back
Notes
Transcript
Going Through the Motions
Looking Back
Joshua 4:1-24
Open your Bible to Joshua chapter 4.
Here we are with our last week of crossing the Jordan. We’ve been following Joshua and the Israelites as they made their way across the Jordan River. We’ve been trying to learn what it takes for us to get out of being in a rut, for us to quit going through the motions.
The first week we learned that we need to prepare – that we need to accept godly leaders, we need to be ready to follow, and to consecrate ourselves, to make ourselves holy because He is holy. We need to be ready because God is going to do amazing things among us but we need to be ready for it.
Last week we looked at how we needed to come and listen to the word of God that we will know that he is among us, that he goes before us, and how he stands firm for us. When we know those things, we will be able to cross our Jordan no matter how hard it may look.
We ended last week with the people beginning their crossing on dry ground. God waited until the first person took the first step before He shut the waters off and dried the ground. God waited for them to step out in faith and obedience before He acted.
This week we are going to be looking at Joshua chapter 4. We are going to see what happens after we take that first step of obedience. I want you to see what God wanted the people to do because I think it is just as important for us today as it was for them.
I want to read the whole chapter but before we do, let’s pray.
Pray!
When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua,
“Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe a man,
and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests’ feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’ ”
Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe.
And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel,
that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’
then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”
And the people of Israel did just as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, just as the Lord told Joshua. And they carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there.
And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are there to this day.
For the priests bearing the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan until everything was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to tell the people, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. The people passed over in haste.
And when all the people had finished passing over, the ark of the Lord and the priests passed over before the people.
The sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh passed over armed before the people of Israel, as Moses had told them.
About 40,000 ready for war passed over before the Lord for battle, to the plains of Jericho.
On that day the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they stood in awe of him just as they had stood in awe of Moses, all the days of his life.
And the Lord said to Joshua,
“Command the priests bearing the ark of the testimony to come up out of the Jordan.”
So Joshua commanded the priests, “Come up out of the Jordan.”
And when the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the Lord came up from the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet were lifted up on dry ground, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks, as before.
The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they encamped at Gilgal on the east border of Jericho.
And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal.
And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’
then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’
For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over,
so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”
The first thing that we learn here is:
We should honor the past
We should honor the past
God wanted 12 men to take 12 stones out of the riverbed. One man from each tribe was told to go into the dried-up riverbed and get stones. Joshua told them to get a stone and carry it on their shoulder. They probably were pretty good-sized rocks, not little ones. I can picture the twelve men trying to find the biggest rock that they could. Guys are like that. My rock is bigger than your rock. Mine is heavier.
They take the rocks and set them up in their camp. Rock memorials were pretty common. They were pretty common in marking significant events. Jacob used rocks to mark where things happened. After Moses had told people the Ten Commandments and other ordinances of the Lord, the people responded as one that “All the words which the LORD has spoken we will do.”
And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.
We still make memorials out of rock.
If you have ever been to Washington D.C. then you have seen some very large ones. The Washington Monument is probably the tallest. You have the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial. They were constructed to honor past presidents.
Then there are the war memorials – the World War II memorial, the Korean War memorial with its ghostly figures in combat gear walking through a garden of juniper bushes and strips of granite, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with the names of 58,286 military personnel who gave their lives during Vietnam.
God wants His people to make a memorial to commemorate something incredible, something amazing that He has done. He doesn’t want them to forget. He doesn’t want us to forget either.
He has done amazing things and you know what? He’s still doing them. He hasn’t stopped. Every morning the sun comes up. Every single day, God gives us the opportunity to be part of his plan.
If we are going to honor the past then:
We should remember the past
We should remember the past
Those monuments, those memorials, they give us an opportunity to explain the past and how it has affected the present. Joshua says that those stones are to serve as a sign among you. And when your children ask you, “What do these stones mean?”
They are to tell them that because they were obedient to the command of God, the Jordan River stopped flowing and they crossed on dry ground. God did that for them. It didn’t look possible for us to do it, but for God nothing is impossible. And I love what verse 24 says,
24 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”
The miracle wasn’t just for you. It was so that all the people in the world would know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, it is powerful, and so that you would always fear God. Not in the way that you fear spiders or snakes. It means to give God and God alone all of your worship and allegiance. Nothing should take the place of that.
Why is it important for us to remember the past?
Maybe you have heard the expression, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
If we don’t honor the past and remember it, we will repeat the same mistakes.
When God’s people started drifting from him it wasn’t because He wasn’t with them. It was because they decided that they didn’t need to know what God had done in the past. They didn’t look to see what God had said in the past. They didn’t consider his word important because it was written in the past.
They were living in today.
Christians still do this. We quit fearing the Lord and give our worship and allegiance to the things in and of this world. When we don’t spend time in the word, when we don’t know the word, when we decide what the world says has more importance for our lives than what God did some 2,000 years ago.
God’s word is still valid today. It always has been.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
God’s word is just as true and important as it was in the past. We need to remember the past; we need to share the past. We need to tell others what God has done.
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching; incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.
Do you see how we have a responsibility to the next generation? We have heard and known because our fathers told us. They took that responsibility seriously. The problem may be that we aren’t doing enough to tell the next generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, his might, and the wonders he has done. Churches are declining, growing older because the next generation isn’t coming.
We can’t just say that we are doing our best. We have church three times a week. We’re doing our best. We have Sunday school. We’re doing our best. Our doors are still open. We’re doing our best.
If we don’t commit to tell the next generation, where will this church be in 5 years, 10 years?
We can’t hope that they will come to us. The next generation is the hope of this church. The next generation is the future of this church. The next generation is the hope and future of every church in this nation. But how do we share the good news of Christ with them? If they aren’t here, then we must go to them.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome:
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
The next generation will not hear, believe, or call on Jesus unless someone shares the gospel with them. Paul always went to where the people were. He took the good news to the people. He didn’t just hope the people would come to him.
If we honor the past and we remember the past, there is one last thing:
We should never live in the past
We should never live in the past
When Joshua and the people crossed the Jordan and after they erected their stone monument, what did they do? Did they stay where they were? Were they content to stay on the opposite side of the Jordan? No, they went forward and took possession of the Promised Land. They didn’t stay in one place.
Unfortunately, most of us like the past more than the present. We talk about the good old days. We talk about how great things were in the past. We say things sure aren’t the way they used to be.
I know a lot of people that still talk about their glory days. They talk about how great high school was. They talk about winning the big game. They talk about the great time they had at prom. The sad thing is that they graduated from high school almost 30 years ago. I’m sorry, I’ve had some good things happen since then. I’ve done things since I graduated high school. My life didn’t end after I got that diploma.
The problem is that way too many people think that the best days of their life are behind them and they aren’t!
We have this problem in the church too. We like to think back to how easy it was to get people to come to church. We talk about how we could afford to do this and that. We look back fondly on how high attendance used to be. We talk about all the people that used to come here. We remember how full church used to be, on how high the offerings used to be.
When we do that, we are trying to live in the past. We are trying to live in what used to be. And we cannot live in the past. We cannot live how it used to be. Things change. The world changes but the gospel stays the same. The message stays the same.
The best days of this church are only behind us if we let them be. They are only behind us if we prefer, if we choose to think back on how they used to be instead of saying that the best days of this church are coming up.
The best days of this church are behind us if we refuse to cross the Jordan we are facing, if we choose to stay in one place.
The past needs to be honored, it needs to be remembered, but it can’t be lived in.
Joshua 3:5
5 Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”
And He did. Didn’t he? God led them across the Jordan on dry ground. They just needed to take that first step.
God has done amazing things in the past, but God still wants to do amazing things not only in the present but in the future. He won’t if we are stuck living in the past and holding onto what has happened and what things used to be like.
This morning, I want to challenge you to make a commitment. I want to challenge you to make decision to be obedient to the command of Christ. We all have our own personal Jordan to cross.
This church, this community of believers, has its own Jordan to cross.
Today, I want you to decide to cross your Jordan. I want you to make the decision that you are not willing to stay in the past, that you are not willing to settle for the way things always have been, that you are not willing to stay in a rut or just go through the motions. The past is behind us and God wants us to move forward.
It’s not an easy decision to make. It isn’t easy taking that first step. But when you do, God will do amazing things.
I have a basket of stones here. My challenge to you is to come during the invitation and take one of them. I want you to take it home with you and put it on your nightstand, on your dresser, somewhere that you will see it every day.
Just like the Israelites set up twelve stones after they crossed the Jordan to be a memorial of the day that God dried up the river for them to cross. The stones served them as a reminder of God’s power and his provision. He helped them get out of their forty-year rut. I want you to use it as a reminder that God has done amazing things in the past, but that he also wants to do amazing things in the future.
Every day when you see it, I want you to remind yourself that today is a new day. Yesterday is the past. Today is a brand-new day and we are ready to move forward, ready to be obedient to God. We are going to cross our Jordan. We aren’t going to live in the past any longer. We will not wander aimlessly anymore.