Monday, November
6, 2017
So Joshua called together the twelve men he had chosen—one
from each of the tribes of Israel. He
told them, “Go into the middle of the Jordan, in front of the Ark of the Lord your
God. Each of you must pick up one stone
and carry it out on your shoulder—twelve stones in all, one for each of the
twelve tribes of Israel. We will use
these stones to build a memorial. In the
future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that
the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went
across.’ These stones will stand as a
memorial among the people of Israel forever.”
Joshua 4:4-7(NLT)
Remarkable
events demand to be remembered. Moses had
walked into Pharaoh’s palace and uttered the words God had given him at the
burning bush, let my people go.
Months later, after 10 plagues and God breaking the stubbornness of Egypt, the
Israelites picked up the bones of Joseph and shook 400 years of slavery’s dust
off their feet, and headed for Sinai. Their
target was crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land.
And
now the moment was at hand. As they’d
left Egypt, with God dividing the waters of the Red Sea, and His people walking
on dry land into the wilderness, they now left the wilderness as God moved back
the waters of Jordan. Only this time God
instructed Moses to build a memorial with the stones of Jordan. The express purpose of this memorial was like
any other – to remember and re-tell the story.
The LORD wanted this passage from slavery into freedom told faithfully to
all generations.
If
you’ve ever had the privilege of parenting you have definitely heard that question, “WHY?” Inquiring minds want to know the significance
of why they’re being
forced to go to Grandma’s house, or to school, or made to do anything at
all. Why? And if you’ve
ever run out of patience and been tempted to say, because I said so…don’t do it!
Why? I’m glad you asked; because every time a
child utters that word there is a teachable moment at hand. Here’s Paul’s answer to the age old question,
WHY:
These things
happened to them as examples for us. 1
Corinthians 10:11a(NLT)
The old
saying isn’t strained here; one picture
is worth a thousand words. The
freedom memorial built of twelve uncut river stones was a monument to the faith
of a people willing to struggle through the wilderness – both a physical
wilderness through which they stumbled in a 40 year detour, and the wilderness
of faith storms building them into a nation ready to be the descendants of
Abraham, and the inhabitants of God’s chosen center of the universe.
Becoming
God’s person or nation; THAT is
a story well-worth the telling, and hearing!
For You
Today
Do
you have a story of faith worth telling?
If you’ve been to the crossroad where you had to choose to follow Christ
or live your life in selfishness, you’ve got a pile of stones raised up in a
river of faith to talk about. You can
help someone else know WHY!
