What Mean Ye By These Stones?
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
5/10/2020 PM
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Text:
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Joshua 4:1-24
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Psalters: |
222, 188, 290, 213 |
- The twelve stones.
- God commanded a memorial of twelve stones be set up on the west side of the Jordan.
- The purpose of the stone pile was to be a memorial, i.e., to be a “sign” (6) and a “memorial” (7).
- “Sign” means either “remembrance” or “warning” or “proof,” and “memorial” means “a reminder” or “remembrance.”
- It marked where God (the ark of the covenant) stopped the waters of Jordan so Israel might pass over.
- The memorial was a reminder.
- When we remember the mighty God and His grace with increased awe, then the memorial serves its purpose.
- The greatest cause of apostacy is not false teachers, nor the wicked world, but our forgetting and presuming (Ps. 78:11).
- Our stones of memorial are Scripture, the preaching Scripture, the sacraments and confessions, and history.
- Of what is it a reminder?
- It is a memorial of the sovereignty of God.
- It is a memorial to the undeserved nature of God’s grace.
- It is a memorial to the particular nature of God’s grace.
- It is also a reminder to “all the people of the earth” (24a).
- The memorial serves two purposes: “fear your God (24b) and the occasion to instruct future generations (6-7, 21-24).
- When children ask for the reason and significance of the pile of stones fathers are to take the time to answer and to explain.
- Parents are to make known God’s sovereignty, His grace, His particular grace, His uniting grace.
- God is pleased then as today to use this instruction as the means to their conversion, admonition, and warning.
- In only one generation after Joshua and the elders died did parents fail to instruct (Judges 2:8-10).
- We must be faithful to obey God’s commands ourselves and to instruct our children in Jehovah’s mighty, gracious works.