KEPT FOR A MEMORY
TEXT : JOSHUA
4:10-24
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------KEY VERSE--------
And
he spoke unto the children of Israel saying, when your children shall ask
their fathers in time to come saying, what means these stones? Then ye shall
let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land
(Joshua 4: 21, 22)
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Eighteen-year-old
Hudson Taylor wandered his father’s library and read a gospel tract. He
couldn’t shake off its message. Finally falling to his knees, he accepted
Christ as His Savior.
From our
text, we are told Joshua and the people set out from Shittim until they arrived
at the edge of Jordan River. The people then followed behind the priests who
bore the Ark of the Covenant; and as Priests’ feet dipped into the Jordan, the
water suddenly stopped to create the
passageway of dry ground for them.
After
crossing, the divine voice told Joshua to take twelve stones from the Jordan’s
water and place them in them in the land they had just entered. One large stone
was apportioned for each of the twelve tribes as a memorial for their children.
Additional to this, Joshua directed twelve men to take another twelve large
stones from the new land and place them into the Jordan River.
The
significance of these precious stones was that, they symbolized a memorial for
the coming generation. Tragically, the generation of Israelites that departed
Egypt with Moses angered the Lord so often by their unbelief and disobedience.
This made the lord to abandon almost all of them to continually roam in the
wilderness for 40 years until they died; they never inherited the Promised
Land. The new generation under Joshua made few mistakes but generally pleased
the Lord: they “served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the
elders that over-lived Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived
Joshua and which had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done foe
Israel” (Joshua 24:31).
Think over
the above-mentioned to realize the level of the disparity between the two
generations. It is like the difference between day and night; acceptance or
rejection and life or death. This is no minor matter, but a sharp, radical
difference of revolutionary proportions brought about by deliberate and
concerted effort of teaching the children to fear and the serve the Lord, which
was a precursor of Ezekiel 11: 19; 36: 26 which speak of Israel receiving a new
spirit and new heart, while rebels are purged from her midst (Ezekiel 20:37)
Sow righteousness
today; reap mercy thereafter.
