Remember what God has done in the past to fear him in the future.

Today’s sermon is a little different than usual. It’s the end of the year and this is always a great opportunity to reflect on what God has done in the past as we look forward to what he will do in the future. I happen to love history. I particularly enjoy church history and reading about what God did in his church throughout the centuries. And as a part of this church, I think understanding our church’s own history is extremely important. So to prepare for this message, with the help of Carla and Angela, I pulled out all the boxes of old church history and went through everything in them. I read the minutes from every single business meeting dating back to 1922. Before that I could find very little.

Before we get to our text, let me share with you some of the fun stuff that I discovered. This will be old news for some of you, but perhaps new to a few.

This church was established as Ashdown Missionary Baptist Church in August of 1894, just two years after Ashdown itself was incorporated in 1892. This makes our church the oldest of any religious organization in Ashdown. Originally the church did not have a building and met in homes both here and in Pine Prairie, until the first building was established in 1899. Since then we have had 27 pastors serve of whom I am the 28th. Brother Butch Riddle was far and away the longest tenured pastor here at 31 years. The previous longest tenure was Brother Ross Ward serving 12 years in the 50’s and 60’s. The shortest tenure was a gentleman named Finch who served about 6 months. The growth of the church was rapid. Within 30 years the church already had over 350 members and an average Sunday School attendance of over 100.

There were interesting things to glean from the business meeting notes. One of my favorites was the line item in the 1945 budget for a “motion picture projector” followed by a vote in July 1946 to watch “century of romance” on said motion picture projector. I tried hard to discover what this film was, but could not uncover anything. Certainly sounds interesting though. There were some other historic firsts in the life of the church in the 1940’s. In 1945 the first telephone was installed in the church, in 1947 the first water fountain, and in 1948 at the recommendation of the deacons the church bought its first vacuum cleaner.

In the times following there were secretaries, youth and music ministers, and custodians that came and went. The things you see around you like the bell in the front, the book of memorials in the hallway, and even the wood that I’m standing on all of a history in this church. Why am I bringing any of this up and what is the point of talking about it on a Sunday morning?

I’m going to argue that how we view the past will determine how we approach the future. Or more directly, I’m going to challenge you to…

Main Point - Remember what God has done in the past to fear him in the future.

Text - Joshua 4:19-24 (page 169 in pew Bible)

Here we have a story where the people of God are specifically commanded to set up a memorial so that they can remember their past. Before I read our passage let me provide some context.

God had promised Abraham that he would give him land and a great people and he would become a blessing to the whole world. While Abraham’s family quickly grew, they were cast out of the land promised and enslaved in the land of Egypt for 400 years. You remember the story of Moses how God delivered them from Egypt with plagues and a miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. However, because the people failed to trust God they did not re-enter the promised land immediately, but they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Just before they were to be led into the promised land, Moses dies and his apprentice Joshua becomes the new leader.

Here’s where the story picks up in Joshua 3. God commands Joshua to bring the people to the Jordan River where he would miraculously part the waters again so that the Israelites could cross the river on dry land. As they are crossing Joshua commands 12 men to take large stones out of the river bed and set them up as a monument to remember what God had done. Again, he wants them to remember what God has done in the past so that they will fear him in the future. Look for this as we read Joshua 4:19-24.

READ Joshua 4:19-24

Prayer

There are two simple parts to the message today. Remember what God has done in the past. And fear him in the future. Let’s start with the first…

Point 1 - Remember what God has done in the past (vs. 21-23)

So here the people are moving forward. They have an incredible mission ahead of them. If you know the story, they are going to enter the promised land of Canaan but there are many wicked nations whom they would go to war with first. Jericho is mentioned in our text and it was considered to be a major military stronghold. You’d think that preparations to attack the city would involve perhaps training the people in war or reviewing siege strategies. But instead they prepare by building a stone monument. Before they go any farther, they are asked to pause and remember.

Remembering what God has done in the past is a crucial part of the Christian life. Obviously, these memorials are an example of that, but we see more examples of this throughout the Bible. The Passover feast was to be celebrated every year as a way to remember how God delivered them from Egypt. They even had a feast called the feast of booths where they were commanded to live temporarily in tents to remember when they lived in tents in the wilderness. Later in 1 Samuel 7, Samuel builds a small stone monument called an Ebenezer which means Stone of Help to remember as he says “till now the Lord has helped us”.

In the New Testament Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper as an ordinance. It is specifically designed as a tool for remembrance. What does it say after he offers the bread and the cup? “Do this in remembrance of me.” The church went on to invent many ways to remember important aspects of its faith. Worship was moved, from the Jewish Sabbath - Saturday to a Christian Sabbath - Sunday, as a way of remembering Christ’s resurrection which took place on a Sunday. Holidays such as Good Friday, Easter, and Christmas are celebrated as means of remembering Christ’s birth, his death, and his resurrection.

Now these are ways that Christianity as a whole has remembered Christ, but what about more personally. What do we do as individuals to remember what God has done in our hearts through Christ? One means of remembering is the sharing of your personal testimony. In sharing your testimony, you are recounting how Christ saved you. You are remembering a specific moment in your own history where you were running from Christ as an enemy, but he gave you life and turned you around, gave you life, and you became his child.

Now an important note on your testimony, let me remind you that your testimony is not merely what occurred on that one day you first prayed to God and asked for salvation. That is an extremely crucial part of the story, but the birth of a person is not the whole story of the person. Your testimony should include how God has continued to work in your heart since that moment. What has he done to shape you? From what sin has he freed you? What fruit is he growing in your life? What obstacles and trials has he carried you through? In what ways even do you look for God to change you in the future? These are all part of God’s saving you and continuing to save you.

I want to challenge you as you leave today to ask someone to share with you their testimony. Share it in the hallway or in your pew, or share it in the car ride home, or maybe you need to make a phone call, but find ways to remember with others what God has done personally. This is a means of remembering what God has done in the past.

But what about corporately as a church? How much time should we spend remembering the specifics of FBC Ashdown’s past? We have our Hall of History. Is that good? Is it bad? Should we be celebrating things like our church’s birthday every year on August 29? Should we bring back things from our past and make them more prominent?

Answers to these questions are important but cannot be given as a simple yes or no. That’s because it depends on the purpose of remembering. And the purpose of remembering is the second part of our passage.

Point 2 - Fear him in the future (24)

I love how Joshua sets up this hypothetical discussion in our passage. He says, “Look, someday you all are going to have children of your own and those children will have children and they will have children. And eventually one of those children will turn to his dad and say, ‘What’s the point of this big pile of rocks?’” And the father’s responsibility here (and the mother’s responsibility too) is to tell them the story of what God did.

You’ll notice how the Lord your God is the subject of the history, not the people. They don’t do anything significant. The people are only part of the story to highlight how great God’s works are. It says, “The Lord your God dried up the Jordan river just as the Lord your God dried up the Red Sea.” He’s recounting specifically what God did.

And what is the purpose here? Why is it important to remember? There’s two reasons Verse 24 - SO THAT - First, all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty. And second, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

Let’s address the first of those purposes - that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty. I have to ask. How does a pile of 12 rocks show the whole world that God is mighty? Well, it could simply be what the rocks represent, but I think it’s more. The rocks are actually irrefutable evidence of God’s power. Look back with me earlier in this passage to Chapter 4 verse 2 -

Read Joshua 4:2-5

So two things we notice there. One is that the stones were taken out of the middle of the river. And two, that these stones were big enough that they had to be carried on their shoulders. We’re not talking about little golf ball stones, we’re talking about stones the size of a large watermelon. Now if the river is still flowing, how can you get a watermelon size stone from the bottom? How could you get twelve watermelon sized stones from the bottom? You can’t!

Go ahead, I challenge you to drive down to Red River and attempt to get a 150lb stone from the bottom. The Jordan river was likely about 10 feet deep and Red River is comparable in places. You would have to use some modern technology to get a rock that size off the bottom. Now, you’d also have the increased risk of having to dodge gators in Red River, but that’s another story.

So here with these 12 large stones from the middle of the bottom of the Jordan river, we have irrefutable evidence that God did something miraculous to make access to them possible. He stopped up the waters of the Jordan. So when people  “all the peoples of the earth” see this monument, they will, as it says, “know that the hand of the Lord is mighty”. The monument is there as proof of God’s power.

But there’s a second purpose for the monument and this is the crucial point for us today.

It says in verse 24, “that you may fear the Lord your God forever”. Joshua wants the people to remember the past, so that they will fear the Lord in the future. Remembering should result in confidence in God's power for the present and for the future.

Notice how he repeatedly says the Lord “YOUR” God? He says in days past the Lord your God parted the Red Sea. Today the Lord Your God has parted the Jordan river. You must fear the Lord your God in the future. It’s the same God. The one who acted in the past, the one who acted today, and the one who will act in the future is YOUR God. It’s always been him. He’s no different. He wasn’t stronger back then, but really weak now. Look at this monument. Remember what God did. And have confidence that he will do it again.

So what type of remembering is valuable? Any remembering that results in a growing confidence in what God will do today.

This type of remembering is significantly different from nostalgia. We all know nostalgia right? Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience to me that years after I graduated high school I would get back together with my high school friends to catch up and we’d talk about all the good times we used to have. We’d remember the glory days when we were energetic and free and had no responsibilities and we’d laugh. It was so much fun to reminisce. But then someone would say, “What are you up to these days?” And that’s when things usually took a turn. “Well, now I’ve got no energy. I’ve got a job that keeps me busy all week. I have bills to pay. And I have a house full of kids. Ho Hum. I guess the glory days are over.” This is nostalgia.

In his sermon called the Weight of Glory, Christian thinker C.S. Lewis describes how when we remember beautiful experiences in our past, it’s not the people, the items, or the events themselves that were beautiful. Because you could assemble those things again and not experience the same beauty you did the first time. You’d simply be remembering that first beauty. And that’s because the beauty of the past isn’t in the things themselves, but rather in the beauty of God that broke into that moment. He being joyful and loving and gentle and exciting allowed you to experience through those things his joy, his love, his gentleness. It’s not the things from the past we want to experience again. It’s the beauty of God that occurred through those things that we long to experience again.

I read one author say, “In nostalgia, one sacrifices the present and the possibility of the future as one squats in the past. Nostalgia implies that God is present in one moment and not another, or more perniciously, that one prefers to be in a previous, unlivable moment more than the one God has brought them to now.” And the danger of nostalgia is particularly highlighted among those of us who are conservative, which I am. Because part of conservatism is the belief that things have been getting worse not better, and that we must slow this at all costs. This is against the belief of progressive that things are always getting better not worse and we should speed them up at all costs.

But what kind of biblical view do we bring to remembrance? In the Bible remembrance highlights God’s strength in such a way that it gives us excitement and confidence in the future. If the God leading us can dry up the Jordan and dry up the Red Sea, then Jericho doesn’t stand a chance! Let’s go storm the city! There’s nothing we can’t do if God goes before us!

So please don’t forget the past! Remember it! Honor it! But most importantly recognize God’s might and goodness in it. Because if his might was evident in your life in the past, then that is irrefutable evidence that he will be strong in your future. If his might was evident in the past 131 years in FBC Ashdown, then that is irrefutable evidence that he will mightily work through us in the future. Christians can live with glorious hope in the future, not a nostalgic despair. Because we remember what God has done in the past so that we will fear him in the future.

It’s fun to remember these things that God did here through our church. We can remember the missions giving that was often nearly 20% of our annual budget. We can remember the planting of Oak Grove Baptist Church in 1948. We can remember the planting of Millwood Baptist Church in 1985. We can remember how God parted the Red Sea and how God parted the Jordan river and how he knocked down the walls of Jericho. But there is one more crucial thing to remember for the Christian than for anything else.

Remember Christ’s death and resurrection to trust him for your future.

Church, every possible glorious aspect of God’s glory was on display in the life of Jesus. In him we see more than just a glimpse of God’s glory; we behold it perfectly. Every ounce of Christ’s love for wretched sinful enemies of God was displayed when he voluntarily gave his life on that cross. Remember that! Think about that!

Your sins had separated you from God. You were dead and useless to him. You were justly sentenced to eternal death and He stepped in your place and took the entirety of that sentence on himself. He drank the cup of God’s wrath all the way to the bottom so that there is nothing less. That’s the type of love he has for you.  Then he rose from the grave proving his power over sin and death and Satan and he lives forever presenting his beautiful sacrifice to God on our behalf. That’s the type of power he has.

What sort of confidence can we have for the future in such a loving God who uses his power on our behalf?

Romans 8:32 summarizes it so perfectly.

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

If he used his great power to die for you, do you think your future is uncertain? If he gave us his son, do you not think we will care for you in your illness? In your financial hardship? In your struggle with anger or with loneliness? If you remember the greatest moment of God’s love and power, it changes the way you view your future.

Never forget your past. Never forget what God has done in Christ for you. It’s entirely because we know what kind of God he was in the past, which gives us confidence for the God he will be in our future.

Prayer