A Word in Season: Memory Stones (Joshua 4:6)

The Problem of Spiritual Forgetfulness

How's your memory? Perhaps it's not quite as sharp as you would like it to be. Perhaps you remember it being sharp. You can remember being able to remember. You can remember having to remember things like phone numbers before they were all stored in phones and other devices.

You can remember even that you need to remember something, but you can't quite remember what it is. It's not just with regard to relatively ordinary things like where your car keys are or particular birthdays or anniversaries.

Israel’s Memorial Stones in Joshua 4

The tragedy is that we can forget even some of God's most gracious and glorious dealings with our souls. And the Lord knows that our forgetfulness is an enemy to our faithfulness. That's why when he brought Israel into the Promised Land, as it's recorded in Joshua and chapter 4, he established a memorial for them.

He told Joshua that as the people passed through the riverbed, when he turned back the waters, the priests with the ark standing there in the center, one man from each of the tribes of Israel was to take up a stone on his shoulder, so quite a substantial stone, and to carry it out, and they were to set them up as a memorial.

And Joshua was told that they were going to do this so that there would be a sign among them, when your children ask in time to come, saying what did these stones mean to you? Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.

When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever. It's good for us to remember God's mighty acts. It's right that we should remember those great deliverances of God.

It's notable that this was to be memorialized because there was something distinct about it. These particular favors, these divine displays of unusual power did not occur every week, but from time to time, and here is one that is notable enough that the people of Israel need to set up some kind of monument to make sure that they don't lose sight of it.

And they're to pass that on. There's to be something there that is a ongoing testimony so that their children can say, what's happening? Why are you doing this? What do these stones mean? And it will summon back the memory of God's gracious and merciful dealings with the Israelites, his great deeds.

And they'll be able to tell the story over again. The history will pass down through the generations and then further down the line. Another child would say to his father or mother, what did these stones mean?

And they'll be able to say, well, my father or my grandfather told me this. There was a day when God turned back the waters of the Jordan and the people passed through on dry land. We need such memorials, some of them we might need to craft for ourselves.

Perhaps it's a journal or perhaps it's a particular place. We may not have a monument as the people of Israel did, but it's good for us to be able to say to those who know us and perhaps especially to our own children.

Christian Memorials in Worship and Testimony

This is where God dealt with me. This is where God blessed me. This is where God saved me. This is where I heard this particular sermon. God himself has also provided memorials for us. There's a sense in which every Lord's Day is a memorial, a reminder of the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.

We have to the Lord's table, that regular gathering where in the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine, we are reminded of the fact that the Lord Christ has delivered us from our sins by his own great sacrifice.

And these things cannot and must not be forgotten. There are things that we need to establish and there are stories, histories, facts, truths that we need to tell to others and to our children, perhaps in particular, that they might know how God has acted.

We have histories which are memorializing what God has done. The aim is not to draw attention to a particular man. This was not Joshua's idea to describe how he had brought the people into the land. This was God's appointment to demonstrate over and over down through the ages how he had delivered his people and brought them into the land of promise.

So let us not overlook our memorials. Let us not forget God's dealings. Let us remember to tell the story of who God is and how God has acted toward us in mercy and in grace that this good news may echo down the generations.