Set Up Memorial Stones in Gilgal
15Yahweh spoke to Joshua, saying, 16“Command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony, that they come up out of the Jordan.” 17Joshua therefore commanded the priests, saying, “Come up out of the Jordan!” 18When the priests who bore the ark of Yahweh’s covenant had come up out of the middle of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests’ feet had been lifted up to the dry ground, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, and went over all its banks, as before. 19The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, on the east border of Jericho. 20Joshua set up those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, in Gilgal. 21He spoke to the children of Israel, saying, “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 22Then you shall let your children know, saying, ‘Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. 23For Yahweh your God dried up the waters of the Jordan from before you, until you had crossed over, as Yahweh your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we had crossed over; 24that all the peoples of the earth may know that Yahweh’s hand is mighty; that you may fear Yahweh your God forever.’”
5. Stephen Held in the Arms of the Lord
To grow a year older is to have come safely through one day after another. Since a life is made of days gathered together, if you want to know someone, watch how they live a single day. You will see how their life is likely to unfold and what they are pursuing.
Job lost his children, his wealth, and everything he owned in a single day. He had built up all he had by living faithfully day after day, and once that wealth and those beloved children were gone in one day, the day that followed was wretched and full of sorrow. That is how much a day matters. Days gather into years, and when we look at the marks those years have left on a person, we weigh them up: we come to respect some, to trust some, and to distrust others.
When the young make mistakes or fail, it is right to forgive them, embrace them, and give them another chance rather than mock them, because youth still holds the chance to begin again. With the old it is different. Their lives have already shown which road they have walked and when, where, and what they have done, so even a small mistake can destroy the trust they have built. And because so much has already taken shape over the years, even when they long to make a new path, it is hard for them to choose one. That is why the old look back on the past with so many regrets: if only I had not done that then, if only I had chosen better, if only I had said this instead of that. They regret, and yet they find it hard to turn onto a new road. So some leave a record of themselves in an autobiography, and some dress up their lives with lies. Just as we judge other people’s lives by the marks they leave behind, others may judge you by the marks you leave. Let us remember this and live each day well.
God, too, leaves marks behind so that his chosen people may know what he has done. Just as Jesus left the cross as the mark of his atoning work, God has left a record of when and where he worked each miracle. He has also recorded how the faithful obeyed him. God did all this so that later generations, seeing his marks, would be brought to realize that he is the living God.
To hand down to their descendants the miracle of Israel crossing the Jordan into Canaan, God commanded them to set up a memorial. He told Joshua to choose twelve men, one from each tribe, and to have them take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests who bore the ark of the covenant had stood, and carry them on their shoulders into Canaan. These stones marked the day the waters of the Jordan were cut off, and God had them carried out so that they would be a memorial to the children of Israel forever.
As God had commanded, Israel set up the twelve stones in Gilgal as a memorial. When their children ask in time to come what these stones were set up to commemorate, the parents must teach them what God did when Israel crossed the Jordan. Pointing to the stones, they will be able to tell how their ancestors obeyed in faith. And just as twelve stones were carried to Gilgal, God told them to set up twelve more in the middle of the Jordan, where the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood. Sadly, those stones were swallowed up, because the waters of the Jordan flowed again the moment the priests went up onto the land of Canaan.
The twenty-four stones are marks left behind so that later generations would not forget how the waters parted before the ark of God. When the people told of God’s mighty work and his great grace, these stones would bear out that it truly happened. They themselves had felt the wonder of setting up these stones, and they had seen the astonishing miracle by which God made the river flow again the moment their feet touched Canaan. So they would be able to tell it just as it happened.
Yet why did God use stones rather than people as the sign to commemorate the crossing of the Jordan? Had he kept raising up people, as he raised up the judges, they could have proclaimed his work again and again. Still, God chose stones. Joshua, the priests, and the Gadites, the Reubenites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who crossed the Jordan ahead of the rest, saw this event with their own eyes. All Israel crossed over together as well, and they were well able to pass it on to their children. So I have pondered why God went out of his way to raise a memorial of stone. Of course, if we take twelve as the number of completeness and the stones as Jesus, it would mean that we are to remember Jesus, who worked in perfect completeness. This is because God’s work always commemorates the victory of Jesus.
Today, however, I want to set the changeable human heart beside the unchanging stone.
Before he died, Moses passed on God’s law and his mighty works once more to the new generation that would enter the land of Canaan, and that record is the book of Deuteronomy. To an Israel whose faith had gone astray even after the miracles of the Exodus, Moses proclaimed the word in this way: because the covenant God made does not change, they would be blessed if only they kept his word.
The seven nations of Canaan were not God’s chosen people, so God told Israel to drive them out and to make no covenant with them. The Israelites were not to show them mercy, nor were they to intermarry with them. If they married Canaanites, they would end up serving the idols those nations served, and in the end they would betray God. Knowing this, God commanded them to drive out all the peoples of the land. Solomon was dearly loved by God, yet he took in every idol his thousand wives worshiped and in the end turned away from God. His story shows plainly why God told Israel not to mingle with those nations.
Knowing the faith of Israel, a people who had grumbled even after seeing miracles with their own eyes, Moses earnestly pleaded with them: when you enter Canaan, break down their altars with a sanctified heart, dash their pillars in pieces, and burn every idol. The Israelites who heard his earnest words had also seen the Jordan part, and as they set up the stones as a sign, they were full of faith. They must have thought that people who had seen the Jordan part before their eyes could never betray God. They would also have found it hard to understand why God worried that they, who had seen his power for themselves, might marry Canaanite women. At that moment their faith was full. However good life in Canaan might be and however beautiful its women, they could not imagine marrying those women and serving idols, because they could not forget the wondrous grace of the almighty God, who had shown them so many miracles and led them with the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud.
Is that not true of you as well? When you were full of the word, you could not understand church members who stayed away from worship, and you grieved over those who would not give to God the things that are God’s. Watching people grumble and doubt instead of serving God in faith, you may at times have felt frustrated, wondering why they could not believe that God is alive and why they could not live by his word.
That is just how Israel felt then, because they were full of the faith that they would serve God alone and never betray him, whatever happened. Once they entered Canaan, they resolved, they would show its people no mercy, they would strive to keep the command not to intermarry, and they would never compromise with the Canaanites. Watching God have stones taken up for a memorial, they may even have said that they could not see why God bothered with a monument of stone when they could simply teach their children well. It would be only natural for them to think this way, since at that moment they loved God with all their lives.
But when the book of Joshua ends and we turn to Judges, we soon hear the voice of God rebuking them in Judges 2:2: he had told them to make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land and to break down their altars, but they had not listened to his voice, and he asks why they have done this. Moses had pleaded with them so earnestly, yet they did not obey. Until then they had lived on nothing but the manna God sent down, and when they saw fruit so large that two men had to carry it on their shoulders, and grain in abundance, the resolve they had made was badly shaken. When they saw the Canaanites living at ease on fertile land, they thought that if they lived alongside them, they could enjoy riches and envy no one. For that, they had to marry Canaanite women. They defied the command to show those nations no mercy. They compromised with them, married them, and bore and raised children with them, and then they could no longer serve God wholeheartedly. This is human weakness.
Because God knew that people always act for their own convenience, he even raised a memorial of unchanging stone and told them to remember. Still they cast aside his word and served foreign gods. Every one of them ended up betraying him. He knew that once they entered Canaan and saw how well people lived there, they would fall away, and again and again he urged them, yet Israel collapsed. Knowing what their faith was like, God set up the memorial in stone rather than in people.
When the people who had entered Canaan married the women of that land, bowed before its altars, and served idols, God was angry. This shows that salvation is not accomplished by people’s faith. It was possible only because God himself made a promise in order to save souls, and then kept that promise. Had God not given us grace, we too would not have been saved. We waver to the right and to the left, yet he rebuked us, commended us, and led us, and because he did, we can now call God our Father. We were in the darkness of sin, but God called us, the Holy Spirit kept us, and he led us into the light. That is why we can bear the name of saints and worship him.
The blessing of salvation we have received does not come from our own effort or from a sudden decision on God’s part. It is heaven’s grace, given through the love and sacrifice of the almighty Creator and through his work from everlasting to everlasting. It is a miracle no human being could ever produce, a heavenly blessing that cannot pass from just anyone to anyone. Yet Israel, chosen by this almighty God, betrayed him. They knew how great a blessing from heaven they had received. Even so, Israel could not give up the lure of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil before their eyes, and they betrayed God. Sadly, they threw away an everlasting blessing and made a foolish choice.
Joshua 4:14
14On that day, Yahweh magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel; and they feared him, as they feared Moses, all the days of his life.
God is a personal God who keeps his promises. He kept his promise to Joshua that he would make the people revere him as they had revered Moses. Seeing him give such astonishing grace, we too, if we simply trust his promises and obey, will be able to live under his protection forever and experience the Jordan parting before us.
God never forsakes those who are faithful to him. For those who give themselves to him in faith, he arranges their circumstances so that they can live lives without shame, and he works so that others will honor them. As God is holy, he makes holy those who love him. As God is eternal, he helps his own gain eternal life. This is the love God pours out without holding back on everyone who simply believes in him.
Yet people fail to obey God’s commands. They would rather trust in their own ability and righteousness than in a God they cannot see, and for that reason their resolve does not last long. When Jesus gave the new commandment that they love one another as he had loved them, Peter, his foremost disciple, asked the Lord where he was going. Jesus answered that Peter could not follow him now where he was going, but would follow afterward. Peter then declared with confidence that he would lay down his life for the Lord. But Jesus knew all too well what human beings are. Peter spoke as boldly as if he would die for him, but Jesus knew that Peter could never lay down his life. So he asked Peter whether he would really lay down his life for him, and told him most certainly that before the rooster crowed he would deny him three times.
People answer with confidence, as though they would truly die as martyrs, but God does not trust the confidence they manufacture. That is because he knows that Satan is at work, exploiting the human heart at its frailest and most wicked, so that without the fullness of the Holy Spirit, people cannot take up the work of God by their own reasoning.
Just as the Lord had said, Peter met the eyes of Jesus, who was being whipped and was bleeding, and still he denied him, saying he did not know the man. This is the true face of human beings who trust in themselves. I hope that you, too, will be slow to say things like “In my opinion,” “What I say is always right,” “I’m sure,” “I swear,” “I…”—all the ways we have of saying “I can do it.” The reason is this: God could not trust an Israel that changed with every time and place, and he set up twelve unchanging stones, yet the people looked at those very stones and still sinned by betraying him.
The twelve stones must still lie on the bed of the flowing Jordan. They could not be seen with the naked eye, but whenever the Israelites looked at the Jordan, they would have thought of the twelve stones set beneath its waters and remembered the grace of God. The God who split the river and made Israel walk on dry ground is giving you still greater promises even now, and he is keeping them. So the very fact that God himself keeps his promises is a blessing to us.
In the middle of the torrent of sin, which rushes on as though it could never be cut off, stands the cross of Jesus. Yet just as no one can see the stones on the bed of the flowing Jordan, many people cannot see the cross of Jesus or grasp what it means. But there are Christians whose sin has been cut off by the holy sacrifice of the cross and who have been saved, and in their hearts remains the beautiful mark of atonement, the holy work Christ, the white stone, accomplished for them. God is still at work for salvation, still laboring through many events so that people will be saved, and his children must make that love known to the world.
The Israelites lost their faith when they saw how well the inhabitants of Canaan lived. We, however, must not lose our hearts to the world. We must fear God and proclaim the gospel boldly and without hesitation. God set up the twelve stones to show Israel how much he loved them. It was his care for them, given to help them fear him.
The cross is the love of God, left behind to help us boldly proclaim repentance to all humanity. God left the marks of his work so that we would not have to fight alone. And like the ark of the covenant that crossed the Jordan ahead of the people, the Holy Spirit goes before you, preparing your way and protecting you, so that you will not have to cross the world alone.
Israel received and enjoyed such astonishing love from God, and yet they betrayed him. Enemies as huge as the sons of Anak stood before them, but such enemies were already no match for Israel, the children of the almighty God. To you, the world may look as huge as the sons of Anak. It may look like a giant Goliath you could never defeat or get past. But already they cannot be your enemies, because the God who created the world has made a promise, and that promise has already been fulfilled.
May you trust the God who judged a world full of sin, as Israel trusted him when they crossed the Jordan by faith, and may you live your life by that trust and tell people that God is worthy of reverence, a Father overflowing with love and grace. That confession will be heard in Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth, and the salvation of souls that Jesus so longed for will come about through the word you proclaim.
The work of salvation goes on, always and unchanging. Just as the twelve stones set up at Gilgal testify that God’s work really happened, I hope you will bear witness that the atonement and resurrection of Jesus, his ascension and his return, are true. Like Peter, you too must answer that you will not betray Jesus. And when your eyes meet the eyes of Jesus in his suffering, may you make your unwavering confession, like the twelve unchanging stones: “Here I am.”
We must believe that God is living and almighty, and serve him with the faith that says, “If I perish, I perish.” Then the power of God, who parted the Jordan and brought down the walls of Jericho, will help you live to see many miracles. As you grow more like God and live a holy life of faith, God will see the lamp you hold high in the darkness and become a fence around you, so that neither the evil one nor evil spirits can touch you.
May you, like those twelve stones, always make the grace of God known. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.