Joshua 4:1-24


God wants His children to remember all that He has done; not only for the current generation, but for all of the generations to come.  He knows that we have a tendency to forget and that we need reminders that will help us to, not only remember for ourselves, but also help us to tell our children of the work of the Lord.  God has done this type of thing before with the rainbow in the sky being a reminder of God’s promise not to flood the earth again.  He will continue to do this on other occasions in the future.  Today we as a church use bread and grape juice as reminders of the death of Christ on the cross.  Some things are too important to forget and God establishes reminders that will help His people remember what He has done so that we can serve the Lord faithfully.
MEMORIALS SHOULD BE ESTABLISHED: Each tribe was to take one stone from the bottom of the Jordan River and carry it to the camp where they would spend the night.  Joshua then took these stones and piled them up as a memorial of what the Lord had done in drying up the Jordan River as well as opening up the Red Sea.  God did these similar miracles on either end of the journey through the wilderness.  The first time at the Red Sea, God was delivering them from Egypt.  This last time He was delivering the Promised Land to them.  Both God’s past provisions as well as His future promises are important to remember.  As believing families and churches, we should be faithful to establish memorials of God’s workings in our lives so that we will remember to tell our children about the greatness of God in our lives.
MEMORIALS MUST BE EXPLAINED: Memorials are great, but if we are not careful they can also be dangerous.  The purpose of the memorial was to help the people remember as well as to help them teach the future generations about what God has done.  Unfortunately, we have a tendency to build memorials to human accomplishments and end up deifying men instead of glorifying God.  We must be faithful to explain the significance of the memorials in our lives to that each generation will be motivated to worship God and not exalt the accomplishments of men.  If we do not explain memorials correctly; the physical objects used in the memorial can easily become idols.  This is what happened with the bronze snake that Moses made in the wilderness.  We must always be careful to make sure that our memorials raise the name of Christ and not men.

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