Our Scripture text this morning comes from Joshua chapter 4, and as you make your way to the fourth chapter of Joshua, let’s ask for the Lord’s help.
Father in heaven, we come once again, not merely because we think this is how sermons start but because we would be remiss if we did not ask for Your help. I need Your help that I may preach Your Word faithfully, humbly, boldly, carefully , by Your Spirit, and Your people need Your help that they might listen, not simply to a man but to Your very voice speaking to them. Do a mighty work in our midst through Your Word we pray. Amen.
Joshua chapter 4, beginning at verse 1. This is the passage that goes along with Joshua chapter 3. There the focus was on the ark as God’s people, after all those decades of waiting and centuries of waiting, were ready to cross over the Jordan and enter into the Promised Land. Now the companion chapter, chapter 4, we get the Lord’s instructions on how they are to commemorate this occasion.
“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.”
Just a parentheses here. Remember that these are the two and a half tribes that asked for an inheritance on the east side of the Jordan and so the author wants us to know they sent armed troops, some of them stayed back, they had settlements there, but they sent 40,000 over to fight the battle in the Promised Land. So that’s not the total number but those are the number who came from these Trans-Jordan, that is the tribes on the east side.
Verse 14: “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.””
I taught in my Sunday school class this morning, church history Sunday school class, about Thomas Cranmer. Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII and then under his son, Edward VI. Henry VIII was pretty tepid about the Protestant Reformation. He had Catholic sensibilities but he allowed Cranmer to do some things to advance the Reformation in England, but his son, Edward VI, was very sympathetic to the Protestant cause.
Now it helped that he was only 9 years old when he became king, so he had other people who were around him, no doubt encouraging him and making decisions for him, but it allowed for a short period of time a lot of Reformation measures to come into play in England. But sadly Edward VI did not live very long. He died as just a teenager. When he died, after some commotion, the throne passed to his half-sister Mary, whom we know as Bloody Mary.
As I said in the class, that’s probably not what they called her when she was born, but in particular Protestants have remembered her as Bloody Mary because she was a staunch Catholic and she brought about all of the Catholic tradition back to England, undid the reforms that Cranmer had done under Edward VI, and she went about persecuting, often violently so, those who had supported the efforts.
There were three men in particular that she and the Catholic church had their sights set on to make an example of. These were the three big fish to fry – Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester; Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London; and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those three were arrested in March 1554. They were transferred from the Tower of London; today it’s just a nice tourist place that you can go to and you can buy some nice knickknacks in the gift shop. I even have one of those Russian nesting dolls of Henry VIII with all of his wives inside. It’s in my office, just up the way.
But it was not such a friendly place when they were put there. Then in March 1554 transferred to the Bocardo prison in Oxford. Mary probably wanted to make an example of them and not kill them right away, but hopefully it would trickle out and the sheep would be scattered without their shepherds and people would capitulate. They languished in prison for 17 months before they were brought to trial. All three, not surprisingly, were condemned as heretics and sentenced to death.
The first two to be put death were Latimer and Ridley. On October 16 they were paraded through Oxford, they were led outside the city gate, today it’s just part of the city but then outside the city gate, to Broad Street and there was a stake in front of Baliol College. Cranmer was in his cell in Oxford and he was brought out that he might witness the execution of his friends, and it had a traumatizing effect on Cranmer. They were burned at the stake. Ridley’s death in the flames was long and painful. His friends tried to add fuel to the fire so that the flame would burn hotter and he would die more quickly, but it just doused the flames and it went longer and more excruciating.
Latimer went relatively quickly, but not before he uttered these words, which are some of the most famous, dare I say inspiring, words in the English language in the last 500 years. Here’s what he said: “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.” The candle, of course, were their own bodies.
Over the next month, Catholic officials tried with all of their might to break Thomas Cranmer. He was the great prize, the Archbishop, the chief architect of the Reformation cause under Edward. He started to crack and then broke and then absolutely crumbled. All told in those months, he signed six recantations, each more pitiful than the next, until finally he was pleading and begging that he might be restored and once again would be the good subject of Rome. He had renounced everything that he had believed and taught and had done.
It was not enough to get clemency for his life; Mary had too much of a grudge against him. So he was given one last occasion on the last day of his life, March 21, 1556, as he was brought to St. Mary’s Church where he might speak there from the very place where his trial took place and he might give one more recantation. He had a prepared statement. He started in this statement to ask God to forgive his sins; that made sense. He paid homage to the king and queen, he would be their loyal subject. He recited the Apostles’ Creed and then he said there was one thing more than any other that was grieving his conscience.
It was at this point that he was supposed to denounce his own writings. People must have thought that the thing that had most grieved his own conscience was what he had said about the Pope or about Catholic doctrine. But Cranmer said he had written one thing “contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart.” It was not his books, but he went on to say that thing which most grieved his heart that he had written “were all the papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation.”
Everyone knew what he was doing. He was recanting his recantation. He said the worst thing that I’ve done, that grieves me more than anything else, are all of those six papers I signed or was forced to sign of my recantation.
The church exploded in pandemonium, as you can imagine. He was quickly seized. He was dragged from the pulpit. He was brought to the very spot in a ditch outside the city where six months earlier his friends Latimer and Ridley had been burned at the stake and there was prepared for him this same pyre that he might be executed as a heretic.
As the flames grew hotter and the fire was stoked, Cranmer had one more promise to make good on, because when he was in the church just a few moment ago in the midst of the commotion, he shouted one other thing. He had said, “For as much as my hand offended writing contrary to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefore.” So in view of everyone to see, he stuck his right hand which had signed those six recantations, and he put it in the flames to be burned. As long as he had breath, he was heard to mutter over and over, “This hand hath offended. My offensive right hand that had signed those recantations.”
He finally died in the flames and prayed that the Lord Jesus would receive his spirit. And what Mary had meant to be the final triumph of her reign turned out to be the worst thing she could have done. It would have been much smarter to have left the old man to die in prison.
Today, at the intersection of St. Giles, Magdalen Street and Beaumont Street, there is the Martyrs Memorial in Oxford, commemorating the deaths of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. I suspect, I’ve been there a couple of times, that most people who go by the monument have no idea what it’s there for. It kind of looks like an ornate gothic church steeple sticking out of the ground and some wisecrackers have tried to say to people that there’s like a secret underground church but you have to pay an entry fee and they’ll lead you into it, so there’s got to be a better way to make a buck.
People sit on the steps and they have their lunch, you pass by and it looks like just another old, gray, churchy-looking thing in a city full of old, gray, churchy-looking things. And if you want to find the exact spot, you have to venture out into the street to find a martyr’s cross there on the ground marking the very spot of their death. But if you’re even in Oxford, you ought to see it.
The cross and the monument were put there for a reason. Now they weren’t put there until the 1800s, but they were there that people might remember what happened. That they might recount the story of their courage, that they might retell their famous words “play the man, my offending right hand,” that they might tell the dramatic story, and most of all, that perhaps there would be an opportunity to speak to one another about the Gospel that these men believed in and lived and died for.
Memorials are more important than we might think. We see this anytime there’s commotion about statues being torn down. Now it’s true, sometimes you realize, well, that statue doesn’t commemorate something, that was a mistake, but you can understand why it’s such a commotion, because it’s more than just stones or bricks and mortar. They represent something that a people has in times past seen fit to commemorate.
Walk around almost any city, especially an old city or a capital or a university or a sports stadium, and you will find memorials. I walked past many times into the Breslin Center at Michigan State University. Who would you expect to be there in bronze relief? Magic Johnson, of course, the most famous basketball player. Your stadiums have all the same.
You can go to the Smithsonian and you can see the Star Spangled Banner flag from the War of 1812, “and our flag was still there.” You can go to Philadelphia and see the Liberty Bell. You can walk the Freedom Trail in Boston or the Civil Rights Heritage Trail in Birmingham. You can go through Charlotte and read, as I’m sure you don’t, the many numerous plaques commemorating various events from the Revolutionary War. You can also go a few more blocks, as some of you probably have, and see the wonderful memorials to NASCAR. You can drive 10 more minutes and see the memorial to Billy Graham at the Billy Graham Library.
You can drive around our city and streets that just become street names, tell you something about the history of Charlotte. Have you noticed how many streets have the word “church” in them? Or even names like “Lebanon,” “Carmel,” “Sharon.” These are all biblical places. Providence, that’s a big road. That’s a biblical name.
Memorials remind us who we are, what we’re supposed to be about. Sometimes people forget their memorials, renounce their memorials.
We have here in this passage in Joshua chapter 4 a striking example of how important it can be to God’s people to remember. Now it can be a complicating passage. I read the whole thing and it cuts back and forth between the action, you’re over here and then you’re over there, and it gets a little confusing. Where are the priests? Where are the stones?
There’s one particularly confusing element. Look at verse 9 for just a moment: “And Joshua set up 12 stones in the midst of the Jordan.” This has confused commentators for a long time. It sounds like, on the face of it, that there were two memorials. Clearly, there was one on the western side of the Jordan where they established camp on the east of Jericho, but here it looks like right in the middle of the river there were more stones. Well, it’d be a little strange to have a second memorial in the river that’s just about to get flooded and no one will see it again.
So you see in the ESV there’s a little footnote, “or Joshua had set up.” Most people figure that alternate reading, which is also grammatically possible, is maybe a better way to read the text. So, “Joshua had set up 12 stones.” In other words, verse 9 is giving a little parentheses that as a part of this process Joshua had gathered the stones, or the people had put these stones at his feet, and now the 12 men are coming down one by one to take the stones that Joshua had arranged in the dry river bed and now they’re going to put them.
There’s no indication at the end that there are two memorials that people are asking questions about. It seems there’s only one memorial. The priests come, it says they carried them on their shoulder. So these are not little pebbles, these are good, man-sized stones that you have to carry up out of the Jordan River, and you pile them in a heap. That’s what this passage is about. It’s really quite simple. God instructs the people to commemorate the miracle. 12 stones for the 12 tribes of Israel. They all did it, they all participated in it, and it’s supposed to be there as a memorial to remind them of what God had done.
Here’s the outline for our time remaining, and I know that was a long introduction. I want us to note, quickly, three groups who were supposed to learn from the memorial, two assumptions explaining the reason for the memorial, and then one closing exhortation. Three groups, two assumptions, one exhortation.
So the three groups. First of all, this sign was for the generation currently living in Israel. Look at the end, or look at the beginning of verse 6: That this may be a sign for you.
So most obviously they could see these 12 boulders piled up in a heap. The people then living, as maybe the rest of the people had to pass on, it would take a long time to break camp over several days and go, maybe they would see it, traveling back, if they visited family in the Trans-Jordanian tribes, or maybe it would be a reminder during the conquest when things got difficult. But whenever they passed that part of the Jordan, those men and women living then could see and recall that God worked this miracle for us. So that’s the first group.
The second group we see emphasized is it’s not only for them, but it’s for their children. This is important. This is why we have museums and why naming things is important, and statues can be important. Because it’s not just you who were there and saw it and did it, but you want to pass on something. You’re trying to communicate something about what happened and what matters and what’s important.
Look at verse 7, or really the beginning of verse 6: When your children ask in time to come, “What do these stones mean?”.
Children, ask your parents questions. Ask them questions that they may not know the answer to. Ask them your Bible questions. Ask them your history questions. If they don’t know, they can always Google it. They can help and try to understand.
So they anticipate that in times to come they would see very strange on the banks of the Jordan 12 big boulders and the children would say, “Mom, Dad, what’s that all about?” and they would explain to them the waters of the Jordan were cut off. Remember, they piled up in a heap some 19 miles up the river at the city of Adam.
Notice this language. It’s repeated twice in verse 7 – the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and then later when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. This is covenant language. Cut a covenant, because the covenant of circumcision involved the physical cutting of the foreskin. Or you might cut a covenant by cutting animals and putting them in piles and walking through them as a self-maledictory oath. You cut a covenant. We still have this same kind of language. You cut somebody a deal. This is covenant language, from circumcision.
They were, you might say, baptized into the Jordan River. We have some rationale for speaking that way because 1 Corinthians 2:10 says that the people were baptized into Moses into the Red Sea. It’s actually one of the verses that tells us there that baptism doesn’t always literally mean immersion. It can mean participation, identification. They identified with Moses into the Red Sea. They actually didn’t get wet; that was the miracle in passing through the Red Sea. But it was a kind of baptism because it was a proof of God’s covenant fidelity. So similar language. Not the cutting off of the foreskin but the cutting off of the Jordan River.
The emphasis in verse 7 is upon the cutting off of the water. Now turn over to 21 and 23, because we have the same thing a second time, and it’s a little different language. Verse 21, “he said to the people, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ you shall tell your children, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’”
So the first time it’s an emphasis on the cutting off of the waters, here it is an emphasis on the passing through on dry ground. Obviously related but slightly different explanations.
So this was meant for them and for their children.
Now there’s one other connection which you may not have noticed. Look at the end here in verse 19 – the people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month. You have to think why are we getting a calendar marker? The tenth day of the first month. They have entered the Promised Land on the tenth day of the first month.
Listen to Exodus 12: “This month,” so this is when God’s people are still in Egypt and they’re getting ready for the exodus, to leave, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of the month every man shall take a lamb for his household.” So that first Passover, which was the beginning of their redemption from Egypt, that first Passover, Exodus tells us, was on the tenth day of the first month. Surely this would not have been lost on anyone. It’s like saying, “And when did it happen?” “December 25.” When did this happen? The tenth day of the first month. Do you see the connection?
The beginning and the ending of the exodus happened on the exact same day, 40 years alter. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Mom, Dad, what day? Wasn’t it the tenth day of the first month when we celebrated the first Passover? That’s right. When did we come into the Promised Land? It was 40 years later on the tenth day of the first month.
Forever it was to coincide, the Passover, the first Passover, with the first day in Canaan. So it was a sign for the people. It was a sign for future generations.
And here’s the third group. It was also a sign for the nations. Verse 24 – so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty.
I think I heard it from Carl Trueman that he said you can see what a culture really believes by looking at its public space and its public calendar. What are the public monuments? What are the flags, sometimes literally, that are flown? Who has the calendar?
I would say we live in this in-between time where are public space and our public calendar has lots of vestiges of a Christian past, like December 25, Easter, and there’s new reminders about our present reality, like the whole month of June. Who has the calendar, public time, who manages public space? These are the points of conflict.
Well, this sign, these 12 boulders, were meant to be for all of the Canaanite people who would pass by, that they might ask to one another, “Where did these strange boulders come from? This is obviously not a natural occurrence.” And somebody might say to them, “Well, you know what happened here? When the Israelites came into the land that they now possess, the Lord their God dried up the river.” “Where did they get these stones? They’re out of place here.” “You know where they got them? They got them from the river bed because it was empty because that’s what their God can do.”
The 12 stones was not just a feel-good ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was full of theological significance to instruct God’s people, to instruct their children, and to instruct the peoples of the earth.
So those are the three groups.
Now two assumptions. Two assumptions.
The fact that God instructed this memorial to be built tells us at least two things. Number one, it tells us that this was not ordinary. They’re not commemorating the brushing of their teeth. They are commemorating, which I hope is ordinary for you, they are commemorating a miracle. This is the sort of thing that doesn’t happen all the time. In fact, it only happens in the Bible that we know of twice – the Red Sea and 40 years later the Jordan River that it might be piled up in a heap. This was out of the ordinary. This was not natural; this was supernatural.
So we should not expect that we get miracles all the time. We should not expect that you always have the heroic martyr stories of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. That’s why you commemorate these things. They’re unusual. They’re special.
Notice that this miracle is not in itself self-interpreting. That is, the people have to explain to one another. The children in years later will see the stones and they won’t know what they mean, someone else will have to tell them. They will say, “Here’s what it means – the Lord is mighty and He is to be feared. We got these stones because the river was dry and God did that because He’s mighty and He was for us and He is to be feared and obeyed.”
God was not going to do this every day. Don’t think, we can make the mistake of thinking, well, if I saw miracles, boy, if that happened to me, I would be God’s faithful servant my whole life. Well, how’d that work out for Israel? Remember what Jesus says in Luke 16? If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not believe even if a man is raised from the dead.
There were lots of crowds in Jesus’ day who marveled at His miracles, but they didn’t believe. They were astounded, they were impressed. It was interesting. They did not humble themselves or put faith in Christ. So do not think, “If only I had miracles, if only we could show miracles, everyone would believe and we’d never forget.” No, you would.
Which brings us to the second assumption – we need reminders. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Isn’t that your experience? It’s mine. We’ve talked about the power of remembering. God remembers His covenant. Now we see the profound spiritual danger of forgetting. It happens as you get older. Why did I walk into this room? You just forget things and be absent-minded.
I had a doctor’s appointment this week, thankfully it was just a preliminary normal annual blood work, and it was a short, 15-minute appointment because I was sitting there waiting to get called and just realized I didn’t have my car keys with me. I had this dread feeling but I knew they were about to call me and you do not want to miss your appointment at the doctor. You don’t know when that’s coming back around. So I just wanted until I got back down and walked outside and sure enough, in the parking lot, I had left the car completely running. I just was, I don’t know, listening to a podcast or something and was on my phone, hit done, walked out of the car, closed the door, the whole thing just running. No one wants a 2015 GMC Acadia, I guess. Just there. I thought, “Oh, Lord, this is going to be hard to explain to the insurance provider if this thing is gone.”
Just silly forgetfulness. We forget things.
But of course, much more important than that, are the spiritual things we forget, or the relational things we forget. You notice when good friends get together, or a healthy family gets together, one of the things they love to do is tell stories, and a lot of times the stories get more and more embellished.
We have a pastors’ retreat coming up in a week or so and I’m sure we will tell some stories and we’ll laugh and they’ll get bigger and more dramatic every time we well them. And that’s a wonderful thing when you’re with your friends and you’re telling a story. Now it’s hard if you’re an outsider. For the life of you, you think, “That is not funny at all. Nothing is interesting.” But you were there and you lived it and you shared it and you laugh until your sides hurt because there’s something powerful about remembering together.
One of the things that goes cold in a marriage is when you forget, you forget why you fell in love. You forget that you had lots and lots of good times and good years. You’ve forgotten all the things that other person has done for you and all you can remember are all the ways that person has hurt you. Or children forget what their parents have done for them. Or you forget how you and your friends used to talk and laugh and share everything and then something came between you and it’s awkward and it’s different and you’ve forgotten.
Those are danger signs in any relationship, and especially when we forget what God has done for us. When we pray, pray, pray for healing or direction and then God answers and praise God, next day it’s gone. Remember what God says in Deuteronomy chapter 8 as He’s speaking to the people of Israel and He says, “One day you’re going to be in the Promised Land and you’re going to have houses and vineyards and crops and you’re going to be prosperous, and your family is going to grow. It’s going to be a good life for you. And you know what you’ll do? You’re going to forget and you’re going to look around at all that you have and think, ‘I did that.’”
We’ll all prone to that. Look at what you have or your degrees or what you’ve accomplished, or the things that your proud of. It’s okay to be proud of things. You look at a home or a vacation in life and think, “I’ve made it. I’ve done it.” And we forget that God is the one, whatever blessing, praise God from whom all blessings flow. That was the point of Deuteronomy 8 – don’t forget that God did this for you.
So the fact that He needed to give them a memorial tells us he understands the human predicament, prone to wander, Lord, we feel it, prone to leave the God we love.
Which leads to one final simple exhortation. It is this – do not neglect the memorials in your life. Do not neglect the memorials in your life.
You say, “Well, where are the memorials?” Well, the two most obvious memorials that God has given us right from His Word to the Church are the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism. Every time we come to the table, it is a memorial. Do this in remembrance of Me. Don’t forget something. Your baptism. Now you get baptized once, and then you see a lot of other baptisms.
There’s a wonderful, overlooked paragraph in the Larger Catechism that speaks about improving your baptism. I bet you’ve, most of us, have never read it before. Here’s what it says: “How is our baptism to be improved by us?” Strange language, improve. It says, “The needful but much neglected duty of improving our baptism is to be performed our whole life” and then it gives five things.
How do we improve our baptism? Well, it says for the rest of your life, as you think about your baptism, whether you remember it or not, and as you see others baptized, you improve upon it, one, by a serious and thankful consideration. You say, “Thank You, God, for cleansing me of my sin.”
Two, by being humbled for our continuing sin.
Three, by growing up in assurance of pardon.
Four, by drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ.
And five, by endeavoring to live a life by faith.
It’s much longer than that, but those are the five things that we’re meant to do as we think about the fact that we were baptized, and we improve upon it by saying, “God, don’t let me forget that You’ve cleansed me, that You’ve forgiven me, that you can cleanse me and forgive me again and therefore I want to live for Your sake.”
So the sacraments are the God-given memorials in our life.
But in a more informal way, you may look around and see other places. Some of you may have in your mind very specific place where God did a tremendous work in your life.
I remember several years ago when we were making one of our trips to Michigan and wanted to take my kids on the Kevin DeYoung Memorial Tour, as I’m sure they were eager to do. I wanted to show them where I went to college, because God did so many amazing things for me in college. I wanted to walk into Dimnent Chapel where I heard the word preached and I sat in that pew and I knew God was calling me to be a pastor. Or I went on a walk through this park and stood by this fountain and prayed. Or that’s the house that I lived in for three years and had my powdered donuts and pickles that I made for myself like I was a pregnant woman once I was off the meal plan. And remember in that breakfast nook reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachers and everything in me screamed out, “This is what I want to do with my life.”
There are tables and chairs and houses and pews and moments. You have, I hope, some places like that that you can remember where God specifically did a work in your life.
And even better than those private memorials that mean something to you are the public ones. If I can, as someone who loves history, urge you to also learn and love history. Hebrews 11 reminds us that we need heroes. No human being lives without heroes. It’s true. And if you think you don’t have heroes, you’ve just made yourself an anti-hero, somebody who’s cynical, someone who’s detached, someone who’s too cool for school. Or you’ve replaced one generation of heroes with a new generation of heroes. We are meant to look under God’s providence to people who inspire us.
Maybe there’s a connection. You remember Peter says that we are to be living stones, that the Church is described as living stones. Even better than 12 inert stones is to look around and see a great cathedral of living stones, that God’s people are memorials, and some of you have them in your life. Maybe it’s your own spouse, or it’s a parent or a grandparent, or it’s a missionary hero or someone in your life that’s a living stone for me, a memorial of what God can do and has done.
Or what about the simple existence of the Church that you worship in? Now take this church. And it doesn’t, it’s not a sign that God loves us any more that this happens to be a big church, but it is a memorial to God’s faithfulness that we are meeting in this church. One of our elders, Rob Veerman in the new members class, recently told some of the history of this church and it’s worth knowing. Some 40 years ago the church had grown and then had shrunk to just about four couples and decided whether or not with maybe eight people, or four families, they should just throw in the towel on this church plant, or whether they should keep at it, and they decided by God’s grace to keep at it, though they were meeting in a mobile unit, a double wide, up on Alexander Road. They called Harry and Cindy Reeder and the church grew and grew and grew and who could have imagined, from Harry’s faithful ministry, and Mike Ross and many other pastors and elders and men and women, we’d be in this place?
You should approach, wherever you worship, if you’re visiting and you have a different church, say the fact that we’re here is a living memorial to God’s faithfulness because somebody else gave for this.
Now we actually have some of the people who did give for this, but mostly it’s people that aren’t here, and God used them, and this is a memorial.
Memorials call us to trust and obey. They call us to remember. They call us to faith. They call us to repentance. They’re a street sign to say, “Are you still walking in the right direction? Have you wandered from the path?”
Consider, in this very same region, we don’t know exactly where, but in this very same region by the Jordan River, a millennia later a prophet named John would be there, the very same Jordan River. He would be baptizing people in this Jordan River, calling the same God to forgive them, calling obedience to the same God who had led His people through the Jordan and now John had the audacity to say, “Well, if you want to follow Him, you, too, Israel, have sins to be forgiven. But our God is still mighty to save and He can, as it were, lead us safely to the other side.”
What is our baptism but being swept over, in one sense, by the love of God, the cleansing power of God? It’s also in a minor key to tell us that the judgment of God has been paid for, that the flood of His judgment has been taken upon Himself.
Why did Jesus say it is to fulfill all righteousness that He had to be baptized by John in the Jordan? Jesus had no sins to be forgiven. But it was that He might in our place, that we might identify with Him, that we might see in the Lord Jesus that the flood of judgment passed over Him, that in belonging to Jesus, baptized in Christ, our sins might be forgiven.
You think about that covenant language, the cutting of the covenant, the cutting of the foreskin of the flesh, the cutting off of the waters in the Jordan River, and you think of what Isaiah says about the suffering servant. He was cut off from the land of the living. It’s as if Jesus took upon Himself the waters of judgment that God cut off at Adam, that the people of Israel might pass through, but they proved to be sinners, they proved to be covenant breakers, and the waters that had been cut off and the dry ground that they had passed through, they proved to be deserving of the wrath of God, just as the nations were in the days of Noah.
Yet the Lord Jesus Himself was cut off that we might be received, that we might be accepted, that we might have in the person of God’s Son, God of God and truly man, a living resurrected memorial to remember, as often as you eat and drink of this, do it in remembrance of Me, Jesus said. Better than any stone, we have the cornerstone, the rock of offense, the stone of stumbling, so that we might look upon Christ and remember and repent and rejoice.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that You might make us a remembering people, that we might enjoy the memorials of Your faithfulness. Perhaps we travel to some great site, some will make a trip to Israel or tour the Reformation, or in our own city, but even if we can’t do those things, You have given us the Word and the sacraments and You have given us the Word made flesh. So may we not forget Your kindnesses to us, Your salvation, Your making a way for us to pass through to the Promised Land. We give you praise In Jesus’ name. Amen.