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So God instructed His people to gather stones from the riverbed and set them as a sign to remember. As Andy and I walked away from one another late that evening I felt it was our trek through the waters. In that moment, when things seemed impossible, He made a way. God parted the seas, stop the flowing waters and showed us the path across the dry riverbed. Leaving a life of wandering and stepping into a promised land, a promised future. We were tired and weary.
It had been a season of confusion, darkness and deep valleys. Addiction had a hold and our marriage was nearly over. But that night He made a way.
Memories from a moment I never thought I would see… just like the stones in the riverbed. Stones impossible to see without faith. Our photograph, he kissed the babies goodbye with faith to return changed. That night, I walked away, hardest thing ever. Collapsing at His feet, I grasped a stone as He picked me up and placed it deep in my heart. This was the moment I laid it all down.
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Sharing this story, another stone from that riverbed. A part of our past made possible through God.
Our marriage, a stone to daily remind us to have faith and stand firm. Our stories are important, by sharing them we lay stones of remembrance. There is vehement action around, but the cause of it all is in absolute repose.
God moves all things, Himself unmoved. His activity implies no effort, and is followed by no exhaustion. The ark is still, while it holds back a swollen river for hours. The centre of the swiftest revolution is a point of rest. The form of the miracle was a condescension to weak faith, to which help was ministered by giving sense something to grasp. The ark was no more the cause of the miracle than were its carriers; but, just as Jesus helped one blind man by laying moistened earth on his eyes, and another by sending him to Siloam to wash, so God did here. Children learn best when they have something to look at.
Sight is sometimes the servant of faith. We need not dwell on the summary, beginning with Joshua 4: The triple division appears again. First God commands Joshua, who then transmits the command to the people, who, in turn, then obey. The word comes at last, and is immediately obeyed. May we not learn the lesson to stand fixed and patient wherever God sets us, as long as He does not call us thence? They reach the bank, marching as steadily with their sacred burden as might be over so rough and slippery a road.
The one point made prominent is the instantaneous rush back of the impatient torrent as soon as the curb was taken off.
How the people would gaze as the hurrying stream covered up their path, and would look across to the further shore, almost doubting if they had really stood there that morning! Retreat was impossible now. A new page in their history was turned. The desert was as unreachable as Egypt, The passage of the Jordan rounded off the epoch which the passage of the Bed Sea introduced, and began a new era.
That parallelism of the two crossings is suggested by the notice of date in Joshua 4: It was a short march from the point of crossing, and a still shorter from Jericho. It would have been easy to fall upon the invaders as they straggled across the river, but no attempt was made to dispute the passage, though, no doubt, many a keen pair of eyes watched it from the neighbouring hills.
In the beginning of the next chapter we are told why there was this singular supineness. If we add this result to those mentioned in chapter in. Given the importance of Israel as the depositaries of revelation, there is nothing unreasonable in a miracle which so powerfully contributed to their conquest of Canaan, and we have yet to learn that there is anything unreasonable in the belief that they were the depositaries of revelation.
The fundamental postulate of the Old Testament is a supernatural revelation, and that opens the door for any miracle needful for its accomplishment. It is folly to seek to conciliate by minimising the miraculous element. However much may be thrown out to the wolves, they will not cease to pursue and show their teeth. We should be very slow to pronounce on what is worthy of God; but any man who believes in a divine revelation, given to the world through Israel, may well believe in such a miracle as this at such a moment of their history.
Gilgal, the first encampment, lay defenceless in the open plain, and the first thing to be done would be to throw up some earthwork round the camp. It seems to have been the resting-place of the ark and probably of the non-combatants, during the conquest, and to have derived thence a sacredness which long clung to it, and finally led, singularly enough, to its becoming a centre of idolatrous worship. The rude circle of unhewn stones without inscription was, no doubt, exactly like the many prehistoric monuments found all over the world, which forgotten races have raised to keep in everlasting remembrance forgotten fights and heroes.
These grey stones preached at once the duty of remembering, and the danger of forgetting, the past mercies of God. When they were reared, they would seem needless; but the deepest impressions get filled up by degrees, as the river of time deposits its sands on them.
We do not forget pain so quickly as joy, and most men have a longer and keener remembrance of their injurers than of their benefactors, human or divine. The stones were set up because Israel remembered, but also lest Israel should forget. Notwithstanding all differences in means of obtaining knowledge, the old law remains in full force, that the parent is the natural and most powerful instructor in the ways of God.
The Jewish father was not to send his child to some Levite or other to get his question answered, but was to answer it himself.
Blessed that, needing it, we have the need so tenderly met, and that He does not disdain to accept loving memories which slumber till stirred by such poor reminders of His unspeakable love! Benson Commentary Joshua 4: Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan — These stones are not the same with those mentioned Joshua 4: They were undoubtedly very much larger, and probably appeared above the surface of the water, when it was low; or, if not, might be seen in it, either from the shore, the river not being broad, or in crossing it by boats, the waters of Jordan being generally very clear.
At least they were so placed as to show that they were some monument of art, and erected there when the channel of the river was dry. They are there unto this day — That is, unto the time when this history was written, which might not be till many years after the facts were done, recorded in it.
Or, it might be added by Joshua himself in his old age, or by some other holy and divinely-inspired man, who inserted this and some such passages, both in this book and in the writings of Moses. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary 4: God gave orders for preparing this memorial. Barnes' Notes on the Bible Another set of stones is intended than that before mentioned.