Real Life Selkirk
**November 8** A Legacy of Remembrance (Joshua 4:1-11)

  • Sermon

    Key Passage

    Joshua 4:1–11 NIV
    When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.” 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.” So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day. Now the priests who carried the ark remained standing in the middle of the Jordan until everything the Lord had commanded Joshua was done by the people, just as Moses had directed Joshua. The people hurried over, and as soon as all of them had crossed, the ark of the Lord and the priests came to the other side while the people watched.
    Joshua 4:15–24 NIV
    Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Command the priests carrying the ark of the covenant law to come up out of the Jordan.” So Joshua commanded the priests, “Come up out of the Jordan.” And the priests came up out of the river carrying the ark of the covenant of the Lord. No sooner had they set their feet on the dry ground than the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and ran at flood stage as before. On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He 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.”

    Series Introduction

    Building a Legacy series
    Building campaign
    We are connected to a much larger legacy than many of you realize
    Post Falls 25 years ago
    We are a plant from them (be clear that we are independent)
    Commitment Cards
    Next week is Commitment Sunday
    You should have received your Commitment Cards. Please prayerfully consider what part you can play. We will be collecting those cards next week and once again, celebrating God guiding us through this next step and into our building project.
    Legacy!

    Sermon Introduction

    In this series we have followed the track of the Israelites as they came to the Jordan River.
    We have looked at what they experienced and drew application points for ourselves as believers, and also as a church looking to take a massive step of faith.
    We have tied this all together under the theme of “Legacy”
    A legacy is something that we have to intentionally pass on to another generation.
    We will not accidentally do this, we must be intentional about what we pass on to the next generation.
    A legacy is not something someone else does.
    A legacy is what someone else does because it was passed on to them
    Discipleship is a legacy. It is the legacy we have strived to create and preserve for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
    Following Jesus
    Changed by Jesus
    Obedient to Jesus’ mission to be fishers of men
    If I do these things, that is good. It is what we are called to be
    If, because of my life and investment in others, other people follow Jesus, my testimony becomes a legacy.
    Because of that, we have discussed:
    Building a Legacy of Faith
    Legacy of Alignment— God consecrated them and aligned them under His leadership
    Legacy of Obedience— God instructed them to step into the raging river. Faith becomes obedience.
    And today, we are going to talk about the legacy of remembrance.
    Context of Story
    Israel in slavery
    Came to the Jordan once (Numbers 13-14).
    Wandered for 40 years
    Returned and now they were ready to cross.
    Last week, we saw how God opened up the Jordan River and the entire nation was able to cross over on dry ground.
    Rather than picking up their swords, they stopped to make a mark of remembrance of what God had done.
    This is an amazing event that just happened.
    God stopped the flow of the Jordan River at flood-stage. This was miraculous. This was a step of God preparing the way for them as they stepped out in obedience.
    However, rather than telling them to prepare for battle, God wanted them to do something first.
    God being God, knew that they would need to have mile-markers on their path to remind them of who He is.
    I want you to key in on this point, “when your children ask you...”
    Was this a mile-stone for them? No. It was for their children.
    God was creating the mechanism for them to pass on from one generation to the next what God had done at this place.
    I want to diagram this out for a moment
    God had created the world
    The world had sinned and people die as a result of sin
    God is eternal, holy, powerful and infinite.
    He has chosen to reveal Himself and His purposes for mankind throughout the Scriptures.
    However, once human beings see God at work, they have a tendency to die after a couple of decades, then another generation grows up that doesn’t know God.
    The word “Remember” shows up over 100 times in the Bible for good reason. God wants us to remember who He is and how He has revealed Himself.
    Remember=legacy of God’s work and nature in our lives.
    As we saw last week, there was a giant pile of water flooding the area around a town named Adam.
    God instructed Joshua, then Joshua instructed the priests to come out of the dry riverbed.
    Everyone had crossed over and were safely on the other side. The last ones out of the riverbed were also the first ones who entered the riverbed- the priests carrying the ark of the covenant.
    Now the supernatural dam that was holding the water back let loose and all of the water returned to flowing like it did before.
    As soon as they set up camp, Joshua directed the people to take the 12 stones and set them up as a memorial to what God had done.
    Joshua told the people exactly what God had told him. This is for you and the next generations to remember what I have done here.
    God had done an incredible act here. It was this miracle that allowed His chosen people to set their feet on the land He had promised
    It was a moment that fulfilled over 500 years of promise to Abraham and his descendants.
    God established among them the legacy of remembrance. A topic that I believe we must embrace as a church.
    I would like to take a look at what God did here to establish this legacy of remembrance.

    Teaching points

    The first thing that I want us to observe here is that God made them stop
    Joshua 4:1–3 NIV
    When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”
    God did not lead them directly to an attack. He didn’t guide them immediately to walk around the walls of Jericho.
    Chapter 4 is here to give us a massive truth for us to embrace as we follow God.
    Our next passage is about worship. It may be a little different than we are used to when we talk about worship, but it is something that we must know.
    We will be tempted to move directly to worship.
    This would be shortsighted and momentary. We don’t move from chapter 3-crossing the Jordan to chapter 5 worship.
    God wanted us to see chapter 4. Remember.
    A Legacy of Remembrance:
    STOP
    I want to talk about the word, “Stop” for a second.
    As a small child, the word “stop” is not something you want to hear.
    As a full grown adult, the word, “stop” is not something I want to hear.
    But how many stupid things in my life could have been avoided if someone had said, “Stop”
    How many reckless words?
    How many stupid actions?
    How many stages of my life that I have burned myself out?
    When I think about it, the word stop is one of the most disliked blessings in my life.
    It’s always a blessing, not a welcome blessing, but a blessing none the less.
    The story in the Bible includes chapter 4 for a very important purpose. They had to stop and be instructed to remember.
    Let’s play this out if chapter 4 didn’t exist:
    The people cross over the Jordan and everyone celebrates in worship to God.
    God has done an amazing thing! How great is our God!!!
    Then, they pack up their gear and move on to Jericho. By the time they are walking around Jericho, they have completely forgotten about the Jordan River.
    You know how it goes. God does something amazing, then when the next problem comes up, we forget everything He has done and worry about the next problem.
    God expressly tells them to STOP RIGHT HERE.
    Then God instructs them to gather stones from the river and bring them into the camp.
    I want to look at this through the lens of our own lives.
    If my life looks anything like yours, I’m pretty busy.
    In fact, I read this a while back, “Busy is the new ‘good’”.
    When I take the time to pray for the circumstances in my life, I feel like I’ve done the right thing.
    And I have!
    But on most days, if you were to ask me what I prayed about last week, I wouldn’t remember because I have a whole new raft of problems to bring before God.
    I never stop to observe and realize He has done an amazing thing in my life.
    What does it look like to stop?
    I know on the times that I do stop, I can start to think of dozens of things God has done.
    God has brought friends into my life
    God has given me salvation
    God has worked in the lives of my family in some very specific ways.
    I only realize these things when I stop.
    In fact for me, I don’t remember much until I stop.
    I want you to think about what life was like when your kids were little.
    Some of you have little kids. You are there right now.
    But for some of us with some grey on our heads, stop and remember.
    Remember their laugh? Remember their smile? Remember when they looked at you like you were the whole world and everything you said was true and the best thing?
    Remember loading them in the car? The french fries on the seats?
    Stopping takes our head out of where we are and allows us to think about other things.
    Remembering our kids is warm. Good.
    But so often we are so consumed with our struggles and issues that we are kicked into perpetual “action mode”.
    Maybe it’s survival mode.
    In fact, in my life, I’ve found that stopping does two things:
    1) it helps me rest from the weary journey I’ve been running
    2) it helps me remember that God is with me and He is faithful.
    We cannot create a habit of remembering in our lives.
    If we are going to remember anything in our lives, we need to prepare ourselves to remember.
    And how we prepare ourselves to remember is that we first have to be willing to stop.
    Think about that. If we do not prepare to remember, we will never remember what God has done in our lives.
    We must stop and prepare ourselves to remember, or we will forget what God has done
    Psalm 46:7–10 NIV
    The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
    All of Psalm 46 is a powerful Psalm. But here is what I want you to see.
    The author of the Psalm identifies that God is mighty and He is our fortress.
    Then the author says, “See what the Lord has done”
    Observe His activity on this earth.
    Then he says, “Be still”
    STOP
    When you stop, you will see and know that I am God.
    A Legacy of Remembrance:
    STOP
    BUILD
    God instructs the Joshua to build the pile of rocks in Gilgal.
    Joshua 4:19–20 NIV
    On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan.
    God gave the people of Israel the mechanism to remember what He had done.
    On one hand, it was a pile of rocks.
    I’ve visited Israel. There are piles of rocks everywhere. But this pile of rocks had a special value and purpose. It told a story.
    At this point, the Israelites saw the faithful nature of God when he stopped the flow of the Jordan River.
    This would have been great, except if they did not remember, they would not have known God more.
    Remembering gives us the opportunity to stop and discover what God has done in our lives.
    I don’t want you to think that experience is the only way we can know God.
    Watch the order here.
    When they came to the Jordan River, here is what God told Joshua:
    Joshua 1:7–8 NIV
    “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
    God established the baseline of truth. His law.
    This had been given and established within the people of Israel for 40 years in the wilderness.
    Now as God did this amazing thing before them, they had the foundation of the truth of God.
    In the context of that foundation, God confirmed His nature and further defined what they already knew in part.
    Experience does not replace our knowledge of the truth. It validates the truth that we find in the Scriptures.
    When we take the time to remember God, it builds our faith and our knowledge of Him
    What does this mean for us?
    Do we run around building piles of rocks for everything we can think of?
    Certainly not.
    Each of us has a unique relationship with God. We must take the time to stop and remember. When we remember, we must then build a memorial to remind us of God’s faithfulness.
    I’m not going to go in any direction there. God will guide you.
    In our church, God has changed so many lives. You are living piles of rocks. You are the living memorials of God’s faithfulness, His power, and His love.
    Today, we stop. Today, we look at the lives of the people we have around us.
    We celebrate what God has done.
    Forgotten Virtues of Remembrance:
    STOP
    BUILD
    SHARE
    Joshua 4:21 NIV
    He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’
    Joshua 4:24 NIV
    He 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.”
    Did God do this so that a singular person will have a warm fuzzy memory of God?
    No.
    He did this so future generations would know of the faithfulness of God
    Also, so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful.
    Does this mean they were to keep God’s work a secret?
    Absolutely not!
    The word here is “Testimony”
    Define testimony.
    If you go to court, you are asked to share your testimony.
    Don’t make it bigger. Don’t make it smaller. Just tell the truth.
    That is what God asks of us.
    When He does work in our lives, we share the truth of God’s work.
    Declaration of God without experience— Theology
    Declaration of Experience without God— Story-time
    Declaration of the nature of God as revealed through our experience— Testimony
    We are called to share what God has done and who He is.
    We cannot separate the Word of God from the work of God. They point to the same source.
    Our testimony serves a number of purposes
    It teaches us from our experience about the nature of God
    It prepares us for the future by growing our faith
    It proclaims the Almighty God to a lost and dying world.
    We must embrace remembrance to be a light in this world.
    Today, we are going to have some testimonies of what God has done.
    These testimonies show the truth of God and the experience of God as well as what a legacy looks like.
    Chad come forward.

    Conclusion

    God instituted a number of processes to help people remember what He had done.
    Deuteronomy 6:4–9 NIV
    Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
    Do you hear God saying, “Remember”
    Real Life in Action
    Is there a connection between my inability to stop and my ability to see God at work?
    Is there a connection between my lack of faith and my reminders of what God has done?
    Is there a connection between the fear of sharing my faith and my remembrance of what God has done?
    Lead to communion

      • Joshua 4:1–9ESV

      • Joshua 4:21–24ESV

      • Joshua 4:1–3ESV

      • Psalm 46:7–10ESV

      • Joshua 4:9ESV

      • Joshua 4:21–24ESV

      • Deuteronomy 6:4–9ESV

Real Life Selkirk
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