A Time of Remembrance

Message Info:

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

⟦Transcript⟧ As I’ve thought about what I would say on the occasion of our anniversary, this passage in Joshua came to mind. If you’re here normally on Sundays, we’re not studying Luke today. We’re going to detour to Joshua. And I thought about this passage where God, as the Israelites are coming over the Jordan River into the promised land after 40 years of wandering, and God tells Joshua to have the people gather up stones. And I wanted to gather up some stones as well, and I had the perfect person for the job.

If you know my Abigail, our youngest, three years old, She always comes home with pockets full of gravel and rocks that she’s collected. And yesterday, before the celebration started, I told her, we’re going to go outside and we’re going to find 12 rocks, not gravel, not stuff that’s been trucked in, but stuff that actually came from here. And we’re going to find 12 stones. And she said, why? And I said, because it’s here to help us remember. It’s here to help us.

This is what God told his people to do in ancient times, to gather up stones. And I’m assuming their stones were much bigger than this, but I really didn’t want to carry 12 big boulders in here, nor did I want to try to buy a glass jar big enough for them. But what we’re going to look at today is an instance of God telling His people, gather up these stones to remember. Earlier in Joshua 24, before what we’re going to look at today, God had told Joshua, as the priests stand there in the middle of the Jordan River, holding the Ark of the Covenant. I’m going to cut off the flow of the river. The Israelites are going to be able to walk into the promised land on dry land.

And while the priests are standing out there, I want you to gather up 12 stones to represent the 12 tribes. I want you to gather them from the middle of the river, and I want you to bring them to the river bank, and I want you to set up these stones to remind the people of what I’ve done. And so Joshua goes back and conveys that message to the people, and that’s where we pick up in Joshua chapter 4. And once you’ve turned there, If you’ll stand with me this morning, we’re going to look at just a few verses. I told Tommy we’d try to have a short message today. So we’re going to look at a few verses here, starting in verse 19.

And it says, Now the people came up from Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. Those twelve stones which they had taken from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. And he said to the sons of Israel, When your children asked their fathers in time to come, saying, What are these stones? Then you shall inform your children, saying, Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea, which he dried up before us until we had crossed. That all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

And you may be seated. Just a few thoughts I want to share with you from this passage, as it applies to our anniversary. This is a time of remembrance. This is a time that, you know, a hundred years, we stop and we can’t help but think about where we’ve been and where we’re going. We do it on much lesser occasions. I don’t know about you, but every year, the new year rolls around as expected, and I think about what did I accomplish the year before?

Did I accomplish as much as I hoped to? Did my plans go in a completely different direction? It’s we take stock of where things stand. And at a hundred years, we can’t help but do that. And think about where we have been and where we’re going. This was one of those moments for them.

God’s people experience turning points on their journey with him. We can’t help it. For each of us, there are going to be moments in our spiritual walk where it’s a threshold moment and everything that happens is either before or after. I believe this will be a moment for us where we think about where we were before the anniversary, and because of the thought of everything that God’s done and the thought that we’ve put into who we are as a congregation, things may be different on the other side. As we walk forward with a greater resolve to serve Him and be faithful to Him. But we all have those moments individually.

For my family, just coming to this church five years ago was one of those threshold moments that God saw exactly what we needed and exactly where we needed to be and where we would fit, and He brought us here. And it’s like, I barely remember what life was like, but I barely remember a time before being here. It’s not to say that my memory has been wiped, but it just feels like we’ve been here our whole lives. So for us, just coming to this church was one of those threshold moments where God changed everything, and everything on one side was different. But we have those moments. This, for Israel, was one of those moments in verse 19, where they came up from the Jordan and they camped at Gilgal.

This crossing of the Jordan, it was a threshold experience because they weren’t just crossing a border. They weren’t just crossing a river. This was them crossing from everything, from God’s promises into the promised land. Once they crossed this river, what God had promised was no longer promises He was making. It was promises He had delivered on.

After 40 years of their wandering, after 400 years in slavery, God delivered. and everything was different as a result, this was a turning point for them. I don’t want to trivialize their experience by saying this is just the same thing for us. It’s not exactly the same as 400 years of slavery, 40 years of wandering, and then finally grabbing hold of the promises. But it is the same in the sense that it’s one of those moments where we stop and think about what the Lord has done. We have those opportunities.

God puts them in front of us, and it’s wise for us to take those opportunities to stop and remember what He’s done. We should pause to remember His faithfulness at every stage. That’s what He talks to them about in verses 20 through 23. When He talks about setting up those 12 stones, why did we do this? So when your children ask their fathers in time to come, what are these stones? When Abigail asks, why are we gathering rocks out here?

It’s to remind us to stop and think about what God has done in our church. For them, what is this big pile of stones? What does it represent? It represents what God has done in taking care of the nation of Israel. They were prepared to make sure that they remembered how God miraculously enabled them to cross the Jordan. The way they crossed the river was miraculous.

The priests are going to step out with the Ark of the Covenant, and the water is going to stop so you can cross on dry ground. The way they crossed was miraculous, but even just the fact of the crossing. The fact that God didn’t destroy them with their whining and complaining in the desert. The fact that God didn’t forget them during their time of slavery. The fact that God had been faithful to them for generation to generation to generation up to this point and had finally fulfilled what he had been telling them he was going to do. It was miraculous.

And this was a time for them to remember this. They did this a lot where they would pause to remember God’s faithfulness. They paused before they entered the promised land. They paused later in the book of Joshua 24, when they renewed their covenant with God at the end of his life. When I say pause, I mean they stopped and remembered what God had done. You see throughout the Old Testament, there’s this habit that they had of making lists of the things that God had done for them as a nation.

We’ve talked about that recently in our study of the book of Luke, about the importance of remembering what God has done for us as a people and what God has done for us individually. It’ll strengthen our faith if we stop and look at the circumstances of life and how God has taken care of us in every season. They did that before they renewed the covenant with God when Joshua was about to die. When Samuel was about to hand the reins over to King Saul, the nation paused and remembered what God had done. When Nehemiah came and they set out to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after they’d been destroyed. The people stopped and remembered what God had done.

But it’s not just an Old Testament thing. It happened in the New Testament as well. When we get to Acts chapter 2, the day of Pentecost, Peter gives a little bit of an assessment of here’s what God has done for the nation of Israel up to this point, up to and including bringing the Messiah. He says, of course, you rejected the Messiah, but I’m here to tell you about him so that maybe you’ll accept him. Right before Stephen was martyred in Acts chapter 7, he stops and remembers what God had done. even when you get to Hebrews chapter 11 and what we call the hall of faith there’s this remembrance from the writers of the writer of Hebrews about everything that God had done and even though we are not the nation of Israel we’re central Baptist church I think we can learn from their experience and take this as an opportunity to pause and I think that’s what we’ve done over this weekend and in preparation for it is to remember what God has done in our midst And I think everybody in this room has some stories about how God has worked in their lives through this church To draw them closer to his will. I think as a congregation We have stories about how God has worked in our midst. We pause to remember those things and in the final part of this this chapter Joshua gives us two reasons why we do this The first is that remembering is an opportunity to glorify God when we stop and remember God’s faithfulness, when we stop and recount for ourselves and for our children all the ways that God has taken care of us, whether we do that individually, whether we talk about how He has taken care of us as a family, whether we talk about how He has taken care of us as a church, when we pause and remember God’s faithfulness, it’s an opportunity to glorify Him.

In one of the justifications He gives when you tell your children about why these stones are here, verse 24 says that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty. When Israel stopped and remembered, when Israel stopped and remembered, we didn’t bring ourselves into this promised land. We didn’t set this promised land up for ourselves. God did all of this. God set a place up for us. God made the plan of how we were going to come into it.

God carried out the plan step by step of how we were going to come into it. All we had to do is step out in obedience. All we had to do is step out in faith, God did all of this. Anytime they pause to remember, they couldn’t help but give God glory. And when we stop and remember the things that God has done, when we stop and realize it’s not us, any part we had to play in anything that’s happened was just us stepping out and believing God and walking in obedience. But He’s the one that did all of it.

When we stop and ponder what has been done, when we ponder what has been built, when we ponder the lives that have been changed. We can’t help but glorify God for that. And that’s been the common thread in everything that we’ve discussed this weekend. What a wonderful place this is. What wonderful people these are. And it’s all because of God.

Because the reality is the people have changed over the years. I talked with a couple of couples that I’d never met before yesterday, talked with them yesterday, that said, you know, this church took us in and became a family. And I said, it was the same way for us. These people took us in like we’ve known each other all of our lives. And the crazy thing is, we were here in different decades, and not all of the same people were here. The people have changed.

The church has remained consistent in that, because it’s been God working through us. It’s been the unchanging God. When we came to the very end of December last year, and I said, I don’t know if anybody knows this, but it’s going to be our 100th anniversary this year, and preached on where we got started and where we needed to focus on going. Some of the lines you may have heard in that song that Huey wrote, we’re talking about the Bible being preached and a spirit of love prevailing. That is a quote from some of the original people who founded this church. That was their goal when they prayed and decided to start a church.

They wanted to build a church where the Bible was preached and a spirit of love prevails. And I said, do you realize those are exactly the things we’re known for today? Those are exactly, and that’s not me bragging about, look what we’ve built. Those are exactly the characteristics of this church that caused my family and me to fall in love with this church. I’ve told you this before, you’re probably going to get tired of hearing it. But I told my wife, if this search committee does not call us to Central, it’s going to be awkward because we’re going to church there anyway.

I mean, we’re moving here, we want to go to this church. We want to be a part of this group of people. And it was for those two reasons. the seriousness with which this church treats God’s Word and the way you love people. Over a hundred years, the makeup of this church, the individuals in this church have changed, but the church has not. And it’s because the God we serve has not. And so when we pause and look at everything that’s taken place, we cannot help but give God glory because He’s been behind it all. And that’s our goal.

That’s why Paul says to Him, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and amen in Ephesians 3 21. That’s the goal of our church every day is to remember what God has done and to give him glory for it. But remembering also prepares us for future obedience. We see that in verse 24 as well. It says not only that all peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, but he closes by saying so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Remembering God’s faithfulness emboldened them to go into the promised land. One time before, they had been scared off from going into the promised land. One time before, they had been scared off from doing what God called them to do. This time, what did they do? They paused and they remembered all the ways that God had carried them forward up to this point. In the life of any believer or any group of believers, there are going to be moments where God calls us to step out in faith and do something that’s a little scary for us.

God calls us to do something that is not really comfortable for us. I know this because in preparation for this anniversary twice, I’ve had to step in front of a TV camera. That is not my spiritual gift. But Miss Janie asks and Miss Janie gets, so here we are. But we’re going to be called to do things that are uncomfortable for us. As individual believers, as a church, we’re called on to do things that are uncomfortable.

Things that scare us a little bit. Things that require some faith in God. and we look at people who have exhibited tremendous faith in God and say, how can I have faith like that? Part of it is just looking at what God has already done. It’s not a blind leap in the dark. It’s not blind faith. It’s faith rooted in evidence, the evidence of who God is. And that evidence is all the times that He’s shown up for us before.

And so when we pause and remember how God has been faithful, my goodness, we have a lot to look at over 100 years. When we pause to remember all the times that God has been faithful, All the times that God has carried us through, it strengthens our faith in God. And the next time we’re called to step out and do something that we don’t think we can do, because we can’t, but He can. But we’re called to step out and do one of those things. We’re able to look back and say, God has taken care of this and this and this, and God’s been faithful here and here and here. And we’re more inclined to step out in faith and obey God, because we’ve taken the time to remember His faithfulness in the past.

We remember His work every day. We remember His work every time we gather. Every time we gather, as Miss Christie told the kids, every time we gather, it’s to give Him glory and remember His work. Every time we gather on Sunday, it’s to remember the faithfulness of God. It’s to remember the most compelling evidence of the faithfulness of God.

That God the Son came in human flesh and took responsibility for my sin and for yours. And he was nailed to the cross and shed his blood and died to pay for our sins in full so that we could be forgiven. And then three days later, he rose again to prove it. If God had never done anything else for us, that alone would be worth remembering him forever. And that’s what we do every Sunday. We gather to remember the one who died for us so that we could live forever with him.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Powered by atecplugins.com