FBC Daily Devotional – July 21, 2021

Joshua’s Memorial Stones at the Jordan

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. I already made it to the middle of the week. Hope you're having a good week. Well today we read in Joshua chapters 3 4 and it's the account of the children of Israel crossing the Jordan River and entering into the land of Canaan and before they actually enter, before they actually cross the river, the Lord tells them, I'm gonna do something for you today that will be incredibly powerful and memorable and he tells them I'm gonna you're gonna walk across this river on dry ground.

And then he says, he gives this instruction to Joshua. He says, I want you to take one liter from each of the twelve tribes and to have that liter pick up a stone out of the middle of the Jordan Riverbed.

That's gonna be a dry riverbed. Pick up a stone and it probably had to be a pretty good sized stone. And carry it out of the riverbed. I want those twelve guys to carry those twelve stones out of the riverbed.

Okay.

So we'll do that. Why are we gonna do that? The Lord says, what I want you to do is when you get through, you cross, everybody's crossed over, those twelve liters with their twelve stones, this is gonna be near Gilgal, not far from Jericho.

He says, I want those twelve liters with their twelve stones to erect a monument with those stones. This isn't gonna be an altar. It's gonna be a monument. It's gonna be something that the people of Israel could look to frequently throughout their history.

Anytime they pass by that way, anybody passing by that way, they would be able to see that large monument of stones. And the Lord explains why. Here's why I want you to do this, He says. And listen carefully in Joshua 19.

He says, He spoke to the children of Israel, verse 21, when your children shall ask in their fathers in time to come saying, What are these stones? Why this pile of rocks here? Then you shall let your children know saying, Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land, for the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea when he dried up before us until we had crossed over, that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Do you get the point? The Lord says, I want you to build this monument, this heap of stones, and I want it to stay there, and stay there through the generations, so that when the children and the generations to come, come by and they ask you, What are these stones here for?

That it will remind, you will remind them, you will tell them the story, and it'll be a reminder of God's power, and it will be an encouragement to the generations to come, to put their confidence in the God who split the seas, and brought the people into the land, and gave them this land.

It will give them the confidence that they would need, and the confidence that the immediate generations to come, next couple of generations to come, would need to be confident that the Lord is actually going to rid the land of the pagan inhabitants.

He says, I want you to do this, that you may always fear the Lord, reverence Him, respect Him. Now this got me thinking about monuments in my life. What, what monuments do I have to look back upon, and.

Reflect,.

Looking at that thing that causes me to think about. My God's a powerful God. My God is a faithful God. My God is a merciful God. My God is long-suffering. My God is patient.

He is.

Gracious and compassionate. He provides for his own. What monuments do I have to remind me of that? As I reflected, I thought of a few. I thought of a few. I think I've shared with the audience before that several years ago our family was between ministries, and I didn't have income that was going to be suitable to meet all our bills.

And yet the Lord used many different people, many different situations to provide. And we have a calendar. Still have it. And this was, and this event happened, let's see, 8, 10, almost 29 years ago. 29 years ago.

That's incredible to me to think about that. But we still have this calendar from 29 years ago where on that calendar we wrote down amounts of money that the Lord sent to us through different individuals.

And it just astounded us at the time, because we never asked for anything. We never asked for anything. And yet the Lord just laid it on people's hearts, and he provided. And that calendar serves as a monument.

What monuments do you have? What do you have? Father, I pray that you would help us to remember and even to have some very tangible reminders that you are a powerful God, a faithful God, a God who provides for your people, a God who is saved and.

Who has.

Who is spared, and a God who has met the needs of your people. May we never forget. This we pray in Jesus name. All right. Well, I hope you'll have a good rest of your middle of the week. May God bless you in it.