Remember People; Joshua 4:1-7 Pastor Curtis Emerson
Joshua 4
1Now when all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD spoke to Joshua, saying,
2"Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe,
3and command them, saying, 'Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests' feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight.'"
4So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe;
5and Joshua said to them, "Cross again to the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel.
6"Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, 'What do these stones mean to you?'
7then you shall say to them, 'Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off ' So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever." (NASB)
Ron was a fifteen-year-old teenager, a tenth-grade student at Granger High School. It was game day, and he was the only sophomore suiting up with the varsity team. Excitedly, he invited his mother to attend. It was her very first football game, and she promised to be there with several of her friends.
The game finally ended, and she was waiting outside the locker room to drive Ron home.
"What did you think of the game, Mom? Did you see the three touchdown passes our team made and our tough defense, and the fumble on the kickoff return that we recovered?" he asked.
His mother replied, "Ron, you were magnificent. You have such presence, and I was proud of the pride you took in the way you looked. You pulled up your knee socks eleven times during the game, and I could tell you were perspiring in all those bulky pads because you got eight drinks and splashed water on your face twice.
“I really like how you went out of you way to pat number nineteen, number five and number ninety on the back every time they came off the field."
"Mom, how do you know all that? And how can you say I was magnificent? I didn’t even play in the game."
His mother smiled and hugged him. "Ron, I don’t know anything about football. I didn’t come here to watch the game. I came here to watch you!"
The moral of that story is: PEOPLE COUNT MOST OF ALL!
Here’s another way to look at it:
One time the popular actress Sophia Loren sobbed to her Italian movie director, Vittorio De Sica, over the theft of some of her jewelry. And he said to her, “Listen to me, Sophia. I am much older than you and, if there is one great truth I have learned about life, it is this: NEVER CRY OVER ANYTHING THAT CAN’T CRY OVER YOU!”
Have you learned that lesson in life - People are more important than things!
People are more important than anything else!
Cars, computers, houses, furniture, all material things!
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a time for remembering people who were important in our lives. The purpose is to honor the nation’s military personnel killed in wartime.
The holiday was also called Decoration Day. A lot of meaning is attached to decorating graves.
I remember after I got married, the small rural community my wife was from always has a big event on Memorial Day, they set up an outside service to remember the war dead and they read a list of names from their community that had passed who had fought in the wars. It was also a time to place flowers on the graves of all loved ones and remember them.
Throughout the Scripture, God has had His people remember certain events and people by placing monuments to be left for the future generations, we see that God wants us to remember.
Monuments erected to commemorate events:
• By Jacob, his vision of angels, Gen. 28:18, with Gen. 31:13; 35:14;
• by Moses, the covenant between Jehovah and Israel, Ex. 24:4;
• by Joshua, the passing over Jordan, Josh. 4:1–9, with Deut. 27:2–6; Josh. 8:30;
• at Shechem, Josh. 24:25–27, with Judg. 9:6;
• by Samuel, the defeat of the Philistines, 1 Sam. 7:12;
It’s important for us to remember!
Woodrow Wilson issued a prophetic and ominous warning in a speech made in 1911; "a nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. And we are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about."
After crossing the Jordan River the Jews were instructed to take 12 stones out of the middle of the river bed and placed them as a memorial marker, "… and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever." (Joshua 4:7) their key to success as a nation was to remember that Jehovah was their God and they were his people. To summarize, God was saying, "don't forget who I am, don't forget who you are, and don't forget where you came from. If you do you'll forget who is in charge and you'll lose your way.
Even Karl Marx, the father of modern communism, has been credited to have said, "a people without a heritage are easily persuaded."
Do we remember just events or do we remember people? What is the first thing we should we remember? Let's start at the beginning:
The first thing is what Jesus did when He gave His life for us. Shed His body and Blood for our forgiveness and promise of eternal life. If we have-not come to this point in our lives where we have recognized Jesus Christ as Our savior, that’s the first place to begin.
We also need to remember the people who put together the Mayflower Compact and it states; "… having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia…"
Consider this excerpt from the Constitution of the New England Confederation, May 19, 1643: "whereas we all came to these parts of America with the same end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel thereof with purities and peace, and for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel…"
We need to remember Rev. Jacob Duché, who at the first meeting of the Continental Congress in Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia, on September 7, 1774, was asked to come and open that session with prayer. “He read from the 35th Psalm and prayed for three hours. John Adams wrote his wife about the significance of this day: ‘I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seems as if heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning. After this, Mr. Duché, unexpectedly to everybody, struck out into an extemporary prayer, which filled the bosom of every man present. I must confess, I never heard a better prayer, on one so well pronounced."
We need to remember men like George Washington the first president who kept a prayer journal that he titled "daily sacrifice." Let me share with you what he wrote on one day: "direct my thoughts, words and work wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit... Daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ".
We need to remember people like Patrick Henry who once stated: "bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of free men. It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom." He is also credited to have said, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ."
On the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, knowing that King George III, had placed himself above the law of God and above English law established by the Magna Carta, Sam Adams said, "we have this day restored the sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let his kingdom come". 56 patriots gathered in Philadelphia to tie themselves together as they began to establish this new sovereign nation called the United States of America. They signed a Declaration of Independence which in part says; "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
We need to remember men like Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, a soldier, author and Nobel Prize winner who stated after a week of dealing with perplexing problems… "it does soul rest my soul to come to the house of the Lord and to sing and mean it, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty… (my) great joy and glory that, in occupying an exalted position in the nation, I am enabled, to preach the practical morale a tease of the Bible to my fellow countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world".
We need to remember people like James Long Street who died in 1904. He was a Confederate major general in the Civil War, he was the US minister to Turkey and a diplomat who wrote in the letter: "Replying to your request, I am pleased to say: I believe in God, the father, and in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, our Lord... Knowing myself a sinner, I am greatly relieved by the happy assurance that for such our Savior died, and that under the lowly penitence he will surely forgive and make our acceptance certain, through his holy pleasure."
The U.S. VETERANS.
I have read that on an average day about 750 people will visit the USS Arizona in Hawaii and on Memorial Day weekend about 4,600 people will visit that memorial.
And on an average day some 3,000 people will visit the Vietnam War Memorial and on Memorial Day weekend 7,600 people will visit it.
We need to look back and remember people. We need to remember the people who made an impact on our lives.
The American military through several wars and several centuries have preserved liberty for U.S. citizens and others abroad. Many times there is a great price attached to their service.
Arlington National Cemetery - Each year some 5,000 wreaths decorate the graves in Arlington National cemetery. The wreaths are donated by the Worcester Wreath Co. of Harrington, Maine. The owner, Merrill Worcester, not only provides the wreaths, but covers the trucking expense as well.
There is a poem that is read and held to that goes like this;
Rest easy, sleep well my brothers.
Know the line has held, your job is done.
Rest easy, sleep well.
Others have taken up where you fell, the line has held.
Peace, peace, and farewell.
Have we held the line? Should those who have died rest easy because we are holding to the values that they were willing to give their lives for?
Consider this timeline;
"in 1954 churches began to grow silent;
by 1963 the Bible and prayer were removed from public schools;
by 1965 the sexual revolution was in full force;
by 1973 the Supreme Court found a solution for all the unwanted consequences of the sexual revolution has Roe V. Wade was handed down, and by 1980 the 10 Commandments were removed from the public square.
Since then we have seen a continued teaching of evolution. We are no longer taught that we are fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving Creator God for a divine purpose; we are instead the accidental products of the random evolutionary process with no purpose in life except to get all we can and live for ourselves. It's no wonder that we have seen the explosion of teenage suicides and school shootings over the last generation."
On this Memorial Day we need to remember what people have done for us. They have given their time, energy and for many of them their very lives so that we might enjoy the wonderful grace of God in the land of the living. Let's not forget what it costs to give us this opportunity to live free and to worship the Lord Jesus Christ openly and without fear. God's blessings to you.
Quotes and thoughts taken from;
+ Swanson, James ; Nave, Orville: New Nave's. Oak Harbor : Logos Research Systems, 1994
+America's Christian Heritage, Paul K. Blair, April 2008
+ America's God and Country, encyclopedia of quotations, William J. Federer, Amerisearch, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, 2000
+ Some thoughts taken from; Memorial Day, Remembering People, Bobbie Scobey, Sermon Central
