Joshua 4: Don't Forget to Remember

Moses has left the stage and Joshua has been asked to step forward. Joshua was born a slave. Now, he takes charge of an invading army. He has been tasked by no less than the King of the Universe with the job of taking back his people’s rightful land from pagan inhabitants. It sounds like an upcoming summer blockbuster, only this story really happened.

Joshua was almost 80 years old when he took charge of Israel’s army. The book of Joshua chronicles his 30 year campaign to fulfill the promises God made to his people over 400 years ago. In the first chapter, God tells Joshua to “be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (1:9). At the end of his journey, Joshua says, “Not one of the good promises which the Lord had made to the house of Israel failed; all came to pass.” (21:45). In between are many great adventures and lessons for Christians today to learn and grow from.

Let’s take this journey together.

Detailed Outline of Joshua:

• Preparation of the Conquest (Joshua 1-5)
• Conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua 6-12)
• Division of the Promised Land (Joshua 13-21)
• Assignment of land to the tribes (Joshua 13-19)
• Assignment of specific cities (Joshua 20-21)
• Settlement of the Promised Land (Joshua 22-24)
• Eastern tribe settlement (Joshua 22)
• Western tribe settlement (Joshua 23)
• Covenant and farewell (Joshua 24)

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Daily Bible Focus
• 0:59 Community, Reviews, and Resources
• 2:29 Promises as Partnership, Not Passes
• 4:16 Crossing the Jordan: Stones of Memory
• 7:21 Leadership, Warriors, and Gilgal
• 9:10 Why Memorials Matter for Future Faith
• 11:22 Practicing Gratitude and Building Remembrance
• 13:08 Prayer and Promise: Courage for Tomorrow

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us. Let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Joshua chapter four. And if I could give this one a title, it would be Don't Forget to Remember. Don't forget to remember. I don't know about you, but I feel like that life is just moving at a pace that sometimes I forget to look back and remember what God has already done because I'm already on to the next prayer request, the next thing, the next need that I forget sometimes to remember to look back. And that's what we're going to talk about today and the power of remembering the goodness of God. But as always, before we do that, if you wouldn't mind doing me a favor, if you're looking at this on the YouTubes, I would love for you to like, share, and subscribe this. Let other people know that, man, you are reading through the Bible every day and what God is doing in your life because of it. If you were listening to this on the podcast, you are my favorite. And I would love for you to go and leave us a five-star review. Let us know that this is making a difference in your life. And I would love for everybody to go to our Facebook group, the Bible Breakdown Discussion. We've got some folks over there who are doing daily devotions with these, and they are really digging into God's Word, providing some different perspectives on these chapters. And it's really, really helpful. And I would love for you to engage with us as we just create this community that is surrounded with reading God's Word every day. And the reason why we read God's Word is so we can know Him more. Because the more we know Him, the more He leads us in our life. And it's just great things happen. Your life is not going to get worse by reading the Bible. It's only going to get better and better. And so we want to just share what we are learning with other people. And I want to give you a resource really quickly that I don't always do this, but the resource is the Bible Project. I think you can just type in Bibleproject.com and it is really, really helpful with giving us overviews on the books of the Bible and different things. And they do a lot of animated things. And so I just want to highly recommend to you to go to the Bibleproject.com and just see the resources that are there. It just really will add a lot to your Bible reading. Well, speaking of Bible reading, if you want to go and get your Bibles out with me, Joshua chapter 4, we're going to be reading out of the New Living Translation. I want to kind of catch us up with where we are. Joshua is the protege, the guy who took over for Moses. Moses is now dead, and they are now about to go in and take the promised land. And what we've been saying over so far is, you know, the promises of God are for all of us, but many of us don't understand that the promises of God are not just this get out of jail free card. Like when you play Monopoly, you just lay that card down and you're good. A lot of people get frustrated when it comes to their relationship with God because that's what they think the promises of God in his word are. God says, I will do this and I will do that. We think we just sit there and wait on God to do what he's going to do. However, a better way to see God's promises are open doors and God's help. Because if you look at the great promises of God's word, such as I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, that is an amazing promise, Philippians 4.13. But if you look at the verses before that, he talks about how he is going to position himself so that no matter what he goes through, God is going to give him the strength to overcome in every circumstance. And that's why I would say the overall idea of Joshua is God is faithful to fulfill his promises. And he partners with us along the way. And that's what we're seeing through Joshua is God is giving the nation of Israel the promise he has been waiting, they have been waiting for for well over 400 years. But they don't just sit there and wait on it. It is a process where God opens doors and he says, I will be with you, and then they walk through. God wants to partner with us in this thing called life. And that's what we're about to see right now. They're about to get ready to take on their first enemy, but before that, God wants for them to set up places where they can look back and remember his faithfulness. And so let's read this together and let's see what God's Word will say to us. So if you got your Bibles, Joshua 4, verse 1 says this when all the people had crossed the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell them, take twelve stones from the very place where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan, carry them out and pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight. Now remember what happened was the Levitical priests with the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulder march into the Jordan River. And when they marched to the Jordan River, God started about a mile away to stop the water. And it slowly filtered down until all the water was gone, and on dry ground, the nation of Israel marches over, and then once they were done, the priests go back over. But at this moment, they haven't completely left the creek bed, the river bed, they're still there. And Joshua is saying, Go get some of those stones. They're going to look different from all the other ones because they have been in the water for a while, so they're going to be smoothed out and all that. So when you set them over there, they're going to stand out from everything else. And here's the reason why. Verse 4. Joshua called together the twelve men that he had chosen, one from each tribe of Israel. And he told them, Go to the middle of the Jordan in front of the ark of the Lord your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it on your shoulder, twelve stones in all, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future, your children will ask you, What do these stones even mean? Then you will tell them, They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord's covenant went across. These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever. So, first couple things here is number one, I always wonder stuff like this. Now, I don't know if you have the same kind of friends I do, but as a guy, a bunch of my guy friends, we love to compete with one another. So I wonder if maybe, you know, these were just really holy men and they were like, you know, I'm just gonna get a good rock, you know, or if they were like, okay, look, guys, let's pace ourselves. Because if you get that size rock, I'm gonna have to get a bigger rock. And at some point, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna have to drag mine. So can we just can we just make a deal? Because so I wonder if at least one guy was competitive and he looked around and he was like, okay, who's got the biggest rock? I'm gonna get one a little bigger. But whatever it was, they go over there and they he says, I want you to set them so that from now on, when people are walking across the Jordan, then out of nowhere, they see 12 rocks that don't belong. They're gonna say, This is why. So it'll be a memorial, a remembrance of what happened. So verse 8. So the men did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River, one from each tribe, just as the Lord told Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there. Joshua also set up another pile of twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan at the place where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing. And it is there to this day. The priests who were carrying the ark stood in the middle of the river until all the Lord's commands that Moses had given Joshua were carried out. Meanwhile, the people hurried across the riverbed. And when everyone was safely on the other side, the priests crossed over with the ark of the Lord as the people watched. The armed warriors from the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh led the Israelites across the Jordan, just as Moses directed. These armed men were about forty thousand strong and were ready for battle, and the Lord was with them as they crossed over to the plains of Jericho. That day the Lord made Joshua a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites, and for the rest of his life they revered him as much as they had revered Moses. The Lord said to Joshua, Command the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant to come out of the riverbed. Which, pause for a moment. You imagine them guys are like, you know, guys, I'm real glad all of you are over there. You know, I'm I'm really impressed that they carried all those. Can I get out of the water, please? It's almost like they had almost forgotten about those poor Levitical priests. But finally, God says, Hey, hey, Josh, can you tell those guys they can come on in? So the Lord said to Joshua, Command the priests carrying the ark. Come on, guys. Y'all are done. Verse 17. So Joshua gave the command. As soon as the priests carrying the ark of the Lord's covenant came up out of the riverbed and their feet were on high ground, the water of the Jordan returned and overflowed its banks as before. So it wasn't just those guys, but even the water was like, Can we go, please? The people crossed over the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month. Then they camped at Gilgal, just east of Jericho. It was there at Gilgal that Joshua piled up the twelve stones taken from the Jordan River. Then Joshua said to the Israelites, In the future your children will ask, What are these stones doing here? Then you can tell them, This is where the Israelites crossed from the Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and they kept it dry, or he kept it dry, until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea. When he dried it up until he had when he dried it up until you'd all crossed over. When he did this, he did it so that all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord's hand is powerful, and so that you might fear the Lord your God forever. I got a little tongue-tied there because I thought how awesome that must be. And I wonder how many times they would have said, Oh man, I would have loved to have seen that. Or if you have teenagers like I do, they might have looked and said, Ah, I'm not entirely sure that actually happened, you know, whatever that was. So they got a miracle of their own. And I think that's important. Every generation's, every generation needs miracles of their own so that their faith can be in God as well. And so I love that idea. So as we get ready to finish our time together, remember I said the title was to not forget to remember. And I I want to encourage you today to not do what I do. And that is so many times I pray so hard that God will do something. And then when he does something, I'm so thankful and I move on to the next thing. And I seldom look back and just remember God's faithfulness. And you imagine what the nation of Israel is about to get into. They're about to go to war with Jericho, and then they're going to go to war with all these other people. And there's there's intrigue and there's betrayal and all kinds of stuff that's coming up really soon that I can't wait to tell you about. And it would be really easy for even the best of people to forget about what God did because they're on to the next thing, right? And so it was important that God said, I want you to put a marker here so that if you ever ask a question, you can remember what God did. Can I tell you what I've tried to do in my life is I keep a thankfulness journal. And every day I take a moment and I try to write down three things I'm thankful for. One that's just general, just thankful for the world, you know. Second is something recent. I'm thankful for something that happened the past 24 hours. And the third is I try to come up with something new that I'm thankful for. And I try to just constantly have this attitude of thankfulness. And then the trick is, as I love to go back and I love to read those from a month ago, or I'm almost at the place where I can say a year ago. And what's amazing is I look at those things as in the moment it was something I was praying about and that I was really concerned about. But now, with time, I go, oh my goodness, God just answered that prayer. It was no problem for the Lord. He he answered that and he just moved on, no big deal. And it gives me faith to realize that if God can do that, man, what I'm dealing with right now is going to be nothing in the future. And I wonder if that's what would happen with the nation of Israel. When they're looking at Jericho, they can look back at those stones and go, if God can part the Jordan, then He can take care of this. Later on, when intrigue happens and when they're defeated for a little while, they can look back at that pile of rocks and go, if God can part the Jordan, He can do anything. And so my encouragement to you is to not forget to remember. Because if God can do that then, there's no telling what he can do in the future. Let's pray together right now. Father, thank you so much that you are with us and that you are for us. I'm so thankful, God, that nothing stands in your way. My prayer today, God, is that you will help us to remember to remember. Or that you will bring back up to us, Lord, all the million little miracles that we forget or don't know about. And that those remembrances will encourage us. That if you can do that then, then you can take care of anything we're dealing with right now, and you can take care of anything that happens in the future. We celebrate that today and help us to always slow down and be thankful. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Don't forget, this is our prayer for you out of Joshua 21 45 that says, Not a single one of all of the good promises the Lord had given was left unfulfilled. Everything he had spoken came true. Remember, God's promises are his open doors and his help. And together, not one of God's promises are going to be unfulfilled in our lives. I'll see you tomorrow for Joshua chapter five.