This Do In Remembrance...

Preceding Memorial Day one year, the following item appeared on page one of the Tulsa Tribune: “The Tribune requests that persons who intend to mix liquor with gasoline in Memorial Day celebrations kindly leave typed obituaries and photographs or one-column cuts with the city editor before beginning the day’s observance. This courtesy will be greatly appreciated.”

Joshua 4:1–2 KJV 1900

And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man,

Joshua 4:3 KJV 1900

And command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests’ feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night.

Joshua 4:4 KJV 1900

Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man:

Joshua 4:5 KJV 1900

And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel:

Joshua 4:6 KJV 1900

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?

Joshua 4:7 KJV 1900

Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

Joshua 4:8 KJV 1900

And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there.

We should all take special measures to remember our mercies.

Our misfortunes are at the forefront of what we remember, ways we have been slighted and wronged

mercies of God, kindness from others are usually drown out

When we remember what God has done for us, that is the inspiration when we are weak

We shoud treat our memories as a garden, not permitting anything to grow that would do harm…allow the good and fruitful. Constant weeding....

To this end we should look to special actions - The Lord’s Supper (the less the mood the Christian is in to partake, the more he needs it) - set to jog our memory

It is a duty to report to others as well, as to remember for ourselves, the mercies of God

The stones were a publication to anyone who would pass by later on

“encouragement to pilgrims”

experience may belong to us individually, but the lessons of that experience belong to all who need them

Not called to “hide God’s righteousness in our hearts” but to tell it to the following generations

The passover

Miriam’s Song

Outward like these stones

In a lost world, we cannot be silent with the heavenly hope that we have

He has led us across the Jordan to the rest He promised us…will you be silent when a world needs to hear about Him? What will be your memorial?

Make your memorial as enduring as possible

12 large stones, lasted many generations probably some centuries after the destruction of Jerusalem

Do not set up a memorial of sand or clay which rain can wash away, but of stone

Let our testimony bless those that follow us

That the lessons of the memorial should specially reach our children

in vs. 6, it assumes that the children will be the ones inquiring about the memorial, and the parents are the interpreters

From the steeple of St. Mary’s Church in Cracow, Poland, the bugle has been sounded every day for the last seven hundred years. The last note on the bugle is always muted and broken, as if some disaster had befallen the bugler. This seven hundred-year commemoration is in memory of a heroic trumpeter who one night sounded a blast on his trumpet and summoned the people to defend their city against the hordes of the invading Tartars. As he was sounding the last blast on his trumpet, an arrow from one of the Tartars struck him and killed him. Hence the muffled note at the end.