Last week we looked at the Promise of Wonders. The entire nation of Israel, 2 million people, crosses the mile-wide [flooded Jordan] river - the waters were cut off before the ark, and the people walked across on dry ground! Wonder of wonders!
And Scripture shows us several things to do with wonders. When we find ourselves in a place of awe, we can: 1) Believe. Or not. [John 20:25,27 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” [Later Jesus] said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”] The world, however, unbelieves. The world explains away.
Second thing we can do in a place of awe? 2) We can tell about the wonder [v6][Ps 9.1 - I will tell of all Your wonders…] Tell and believe go hand in hand of course [Luke 18:17 “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.”] [children believe what you tell them]. But tell helps us do a 3rd thing: remember [v7] Which is crucial, cuz we tend to forget. The Promise of Forgetfulness.
[v3] God tells His people to take up stones from the Jordan, and put them down in the place where they camp that first night (not named yet - next time). Why does the Lord command them to do this? He’s trying to help them. Help them not forget. Cuz people forget - it’s what we do. Remember - Moses promised them that they will forget [Deut. 8:12-14 When you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.] Note extent of our brokenness - The more God blesses us, the more likely we are to forget Him. They were already forgetting. Deut. 32:18 “You neglected the Rock who begot you, and forgot the God who gave you birth.] The Promise of Forgetfulness.
[7] So these stones, these "zikkarons" are going to be a memorial to the children of Israel FOREVER [zikkarons help us remember][reminders are often tied to action, remember something and do something in response, i.e. remember to take out trash!]. But these Zikkarons point forgetful people to the God of wonders [Judaism full of them!][Psa. 22:27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will worship before You.]! Zikkarons - like the wonders they recall - elevate our vision, rescue us from the monotonous cycle of the everyday, wash-rinse-repeat. Remember forever, God says. I.e., every day of our life. Today. Tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. Ours is a long remembrance in the same direction. It’s a long journey of remembering the God of wonders. God-willing with some new wonders scattered in? Anyone could be mindful of the God of wonders if you had wonders happening with regularity. But for most of us, and for most of history, the supernormal stands out from the normal not just because it’s super but also because it’s super rare. God does wonders, still today, we ask Him for wonders. But wonders tend to be rather infrequent. AND we tend to forget. The Promise of Forgetfulness. Thus the priority of remembering [221x]. And the need for reminders [24x]. For Zikkarons. Things that help us remember.
[v9] Check out how Joshua himself goes back and builds a second memorial out in the middle of the riverbed. Why does he do this? It’s redundant… I.e. not needed. Not useful. Superfluous, deemed unnecessary. Usually don't we try to avoid being deemed unnecessary? [like saying "unnecessary redundancy"].
But smart engineers often build redundancies into important systems, because on the chance that your primary system fails, you still want the design/mission to succeed. The more vital the mission, the more necessary the redundancy [Apollo missions would have 4 identical computers, with a fifth as an extra backup]. Which of course suggests a wonderful oxymoron: necessary redundancy. Something that is probably unnecessary actually becomes necessary due to the importance of the mission AND the possibility of some kind of failure in the primary system.
So back to Joshua - why this [double zikkaron]? A second memorial might seem redundant - unless you know the vital eternal life-and-death nature of the mission, and the systems in use (people) are highly susceptible to failure. Why was it so important to the Lord, AND to Joshua, to set up these stones? Because yes, our systems of attention and retention are highly flawed. The Promise of Forgetfulness. 9x in Deuteronomy, the Lord warns His people thru Moses, do not forget, do not forget, beware that you don’t forget. But… you’re gonna forget. We humans are extremely prone to forgetting. Out of sight out of mind is a real thing. Wisdom would suggest that we learn to do whatever it takes so that we don’t forget. Because once and if we ever begin to lose sight of the awesome things the Lord has done, we begin to lose our understanding of how awesome He truly is. And we give our hearts to other things. We forget.
[v14] Everything plays out fairly well for Joshua during his life. The people revere Joshua for the rest of his life, just as they revered Moses (of course, we saw how that played out for him). He will come to be called the Eved servant of the Lord. BUT, what happens as soon as Joshua is out of the picture? [Judg. 2:7-11 The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals.]. The sons of Israel forgot. Promise of forgetfulness.
[v18] Forgetting doesn’t come on like flood waters. It’s more of a trickle, little by little. Divine insight says, yes, I will forget, so what can I do so that I DON’T forget? Or to minimize the possibility of that? We need to build zikkarons and redundancies into the systems of our lives to counteract the creep of forgetfulness. What do we do in school when we want to learn and remember the material? We write it down. We take notes! But then what about OUR sons (and daughters), the next generation? What steps are we going to take to help our kids avoid the creep of forgetfulness?
Of course, all our steps, all our remembering - proceeds on the wings of God’s indwelling Spirit. [Apart from Me there is nothing you can do, He reminds us][cuz we forget that truth as well, don't we?] There is no thing you can do, Jesus says. Even this remembering part. We also know that His grace is sufficient - there is no degree of forgetfulness or waywardness from which the Lord cannot bring us (or our kids) back. Tomorrow is a new day, full of new mercies, chances to remember.
BTW, remembering and telling definitely go hand in hand. We remember, we celebrate, and that positions us to tell. We remind one another. We tell those who didn’t experience the wonder first hand. We tell our kids what God has done - and WHY He did it. And the why is super-important, cuz if we forget the why then we’re just going thru the motions. It becomes meaningless repetition - and it will die with the next generation. We need to remember, Why does God do these things/bless us? [Psa. 67:7 God blesses us, that all the ends of the earth may fear Him.]
[vv23-24] Note the reminder of the why behind the wonder - so that ALL the peoples of the earth will know that the hand of the Lord is mighty AND so that you will fear the Lord your God ALL YOUR DAYS. Every one of them. Today. And tomorrow. And however many days you and I have left. Each day is a new opportunity to remember - and celebrate! To trust the Lord, to revere Him, to live in gratitude and dependence, to live in light of the truth that He is a wonder-working God. He is good and He’s working all of this together for good. And to pass this knowledge on to the nations. [Psalm 78:6-8 That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not prepare its heart and whose spirit was not faithful to God.] Let it be so...
Examples of Zikkarons: feasts, festivals, holy days, trumpets, forehead bands, tassels, stones, special clothing, offerings, books,
Examples of Unnecessary Redundancies: ATM machine, PIN number, HIV virus, free gift, new innovation, repeat again, actual fact, toxic poison, huge throng, red in color, advance planning, closed fist, 8am in the morning, basic essentials, one half, old adage, honest truth, wealthy millionaire, postpone until later, past history...
