Heavy Things (Part B)

When they take these stones out and the kids say, what are these? The parents were supposed to say, God Yahweh is real. He's real to me.

I saw this happen. Now I'm trying to get you to understand so he can be real to you. What are you going to do with this? And there is where we meet with a lot of struggle, but we are to be faithful in the struggles that come our way. All of them as faithful as we can. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Joshua.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Joshua chapter four as he continues his message called Heavy Things. I've been out of the workplace for a while, but I always had this attitude in preaching Christ that I was ready to fist fight the guy. Now I wasn't, but I had it in my head nonetheless. I knew it was wrong.

It's not a confession. I never had never came to that and I wouldn't have let it. I would have just suffered, you know. I don't know what I would have done, but I don't think I would have done that.

I don't even know why I told you this. I think I just had this attitude. I wasn't going to take their nonsense. And when I worked in the construction industry, if I did, they would never have listened to me. I would have been the, you know, the spineless one.

And they knew that if they pulled on my cape, they were going to get it. And I would humiliate some of them. What do you know about the Bible?

All you know about the Bible is you don't have one. I'd say things like that. And then they'd shut up. And later on, they'd come over wanting to be my buddy.

So what church do you go to? Now I wouldn't get fresh after that. You know, what do you care? I'd go with it. But there were many times like that because, you know, you go to different jobs. You meet new people all the time and you'd have these opportunities. But you know, I'd have this chip on my shoulder, a righteous chip. It was a righteous chip. I wasn't looking for trouble. But I wasn't going to put up with nonsense. And I didn't even have it that well thought out. I just looked back and I see it. I said, boy, you're an arrogant little thing, weren't you? No, I was not.

I was just firm. Anyway, this ownership that we're looking at to put under water one of them and one outside where everyone could see in the land that they were to till and they were to sow and they were to harvest and they were to enjoy. The Christian life should be that way.

It's not going to go uncontested, of course. And to this day, Israel's presence there in the land is still contested and we move forward. Verse 6, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying, what do these stones mean to you? Well, put a pile of stones up like this in an odd way and it appeals to the curiosity of a child and they're going to ask.

And we ought to be ready with the who, what, where, why, and how is very important. Our pulpit curriculum here in this church, it is set up on such a teaching as this. We are in Sundays we are a chapter ahead or a space ahead, a paragraph ahead of where the kids will be next week. So the parents have a head start. So if the child, they pick the child up and on the way home they say, what did you study today? Well, it will be what the parent got last week so be fresh in their head and they could more easily dialogue. I don't know of another place that does this. I know that when we established our children's ministry here, God put this on my heart to do it this way and it seems to be working.

On topical messages the teachers are free to go, now this is not the little ones, these are the ones that are a little older, older classes, but on topicals the teachers are free to come up with something else if they'd like and they're free to come up to me also and ask for suggestions and ideas. That's just how it should be I think. Anyway, in these stones, these unseen stones, I see other things and just putting them there, this does announce the inheritance, but I see the church and the ones that they're putting into the riverbed that will be covered over when the waters are released by the hand of the Lord. Well, twelve stones, twelve apostles, we catch that connection, it's followed through all the way till the book of Revelation and the gates of New Jerusalem for example, the foundations, the names of the apostles, it's carried over. So, when you come to that number twelve, when it's in association with the twelve tribes, we begin to look for what's the New Testament value to this?

Well, when those waters flood over those stones, you won't be able to see them. The Jews couldn't see the church coming, there's nothing in the Old Testament that announces the church. It was no need to tell them and when it was time for the church, it was not an easy fit. Paul was of course the trailblazer and he had to fight for it and he would go into synagogues, he would announce Messiah and they would kick him out and reject him, he'd go off and preach to Gentiles until finally the Gentiles began to outnumber the Jews in Christianity and establish their own places of worship. They were not permitted to have church buildings in those early days, so they had to meet in people's homes.

That's a tough way to go. If you've ever had Bible study in your home and it begins to grow, you realize it's very difficult and sort of counterproductive at a certain point because no one can concentrate with people tearing your house apart or going into your refrigerator, things like that. So, an assembly hall is a good idea and that's why Paul spent almost two years in the school of Tyrannus because it worked out well, he was able to effectively teach with reduced distractions. Well, this crossing into their inheritance, well that's what believers do, the Gentiles when they come to Christ, they crossed over into an inheritance that was prepared for them. God did mention the salvation of Gentiles in the Old Testament, but not the church, not the assembly under the crucified, risen and present Messiah, as we know, as the Son of God, Jesus Christ. These things were veiled.

They were veiled because collectively people couldn't handle it and we learned that when in the days of Christ they had a very difficult time making that transition from Old Testament to New Testament, which is why Paul had to grapple with them in Romans and Corinthians and Galatians and every letter. He said, listen, there's no problem eating a burger that was dedicated to an idol. An idol is nothing. The burger, the burger, think of the burger. And that's how he overcame it and then he put, but, but if you get around Christians that just can't handle this, you're going to have to skip the burger. And that's why we should be ready to fight.

No, that would be bad. So anyway, here we have this joining of the Old Testament and the New Testament. That's what I see in the stones taken out, the stones put in, the inheritance, the claim of ownership, the exchange, the 12 stones, the 12 apostles. I see that, but it's not one that I can take you fully to other scripture verses and say that is the type, but I can say it is a parallel. Types of parallels too, but they go a little bit further. But we'll come to some others. Verse seven, then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of Yahweh when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off and these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever. These are the land stones, of course, taken from the river.

We haven't gotten to the ones being brought in. So he says, tell them what happened and that it happened and that you saw it. You were there. You saw the water roll back. You saw the priest stand there.

You saw the tribal representatives pick the stones out of the river and take them on the land. You tell them that you saw that. It's called witnessing. And then he says, it's not written here in your Bibles, it's in mine.

Make sure you go to seminary so you can know how to tell people about Christ. No, that's a cheap shot. It's not a cheap shot. It's a shot.

It's not cheap one. I have to say that because Christians get this mindset that they have to have some higher education to be effective in sharing their faith. You have to have a holy education, not a higher education.

Holy is higher, you could say that for sure. But it doesn't have to be a formal environment. And you'll find any formal education demands practice anyway. Well, you can skip the student loan payment and just go right to the Bible. God homeschools.

I mean, he does. So, if you want to be homeschooled by your father, you just open the Bible and find those men who are men of the word and God uses them. They being dead, they still speak. Although the number of useful... I get, you know, all sorts of solicitations from Bible software, one particular Bible software company. And it's new book out, new everywhere. And it's always books written by men who do nothing but write books about other books and they just read each other books and no one else reads these books. Anyway, so every now and then the title will strike my attention.

Most of the time I go, oh, another one. But sometimes I'll look up the author and they hide the authors. They don't say on a new book release, you have to go digging to find out who wrote this thing, which makes me, it creeps me out. It makes me say, why are they hiding this? Anyway, so one recently, I don't recall, so I looked, I googled the author of Wikipedia, whatever, and I found out this guy is creepy. Who would know this? I mean, you're looking for a book on the Bible.

The title sounds very inviting. I don't remember what it was, something about how the church dealt with paganism. Well, the author is a pagan. I mean, he's raised by the Jesuits and he's just got the, you know, these credentials. He teaches at this seminary and some people may be wowed by that. And it continues that he endorses homosexuality, these relationships. And so if you're not careful, you buy these books, you stock yourself and they're not cheap either.

You load them on your computer or whatever is the case. So I'm looking for new authors who really are into the word, like Harry Ironside or J. Vernon McGee's or just so many others that are gone and no more. And I can't find them.

They've all got something that is over the top. Well, that's fine because there's enough information already in existence where I don't need any new ones. I just need to get better at what I already have.

And at my age now, I'm at a place where I'm now more interested in what I'm saying than what my teachers were saying to me because they've got me to this place. But that's a person who has time to study and prepare that I do. You, who do not have, you don't have the time to do that or the resources or the calling. What do you do?

Well, you have to have the definite article. You've got to stay in the scripture. You've got to keep your personal devotion time up. And then you find if there are those in your life who you respect, you ask them about the books and be ready for them to say, Anathema!

That's a joke! Be ready for that and be ready for them to say, that's a good one. Go for it. And be ready for them to say, I'm not familiar with that one. Maybe I'll look and see if I can find something out.

Otherwise, you're going to fly by the seat of your pants and just be careful because there are a lot of them out there. They'll throw out a scripture verse and instead of telling you what the verse means, they will tell you what they mean and try to get the verse to back them up. Okay, well, I've spent a lot of time there because I really don't have anything else to say. Well, coming back to this, Samuel, that great man of God. And if you just read the life of Samuel, you get so much from this dynamo, this giant in the faith. Well, after a great victory to recover the Ark of the Covenant that the Philistines captured from, you know, those goofballs of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, they lost and God got involved and struck the Philistines physically and persuaded them to bring the Ark back. And when Samuel gets the Ark, he sets up a monument to remember this great victory.

We pick it up in 1 Samuel 7. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name, Ebenezer, saying, Thus Yahweh has helped us. We know it as Ebenezer. We sing it, you know, Here I lay my Ebenezer, and by thy help I come.

But it is closer in pronunciation to Ebenezer in the Hebrew. Anyway, it's this, he taking a lesson from the school of Joshua said, I'm going to put this here because I want us to remember that God bailed us out. We messed up and he got involved and he rescued us.

He helped us. And the Philistines, so long as Samuel was judge over the Jews, we never again read about them messing with the Jews. And of course, Saul becomes king and all that changes. So, you know, you want to study characters and find out what makes people tick. Just line up the life of Saul, King Saul. It irritates you all the way through.

What a character study, rich in education on people. Verse eight, and the children of Israel did so just as Joshua commanded and took up 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan and Yahweh had spoken to Joshua according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them to the place where they lodged and laid them down there. So again, wanting to preserve the testimony. Does God do this anymore?

Absolutely. We have two ordinances in the church and only two that we are to perpetuate, to continue to use and to hold up in front of people. Without shame, this is what we do. We're believers.

The first one, of course, is the water baptism that is given to us to commemorate the victory of Christ, not only in our personal walk in lives, but every time a believer gets baptized and we witness it, we are looking at that Ebenezer, the monument, the stones that Joshua put up. It's the same idea. And it is wonderful when we have our water baptisms that believers who've been baptized themselves love to come out and just watch.

It's support. That's what we're supposed to do. We're into this.

This is family. This is the church, the body of Christ, Romans chapter. Now these types now are types. They have scriptural support that, sign them over to that category in Bible study. They are events in the Old Testament that spoke of coming events in the New Testament that were prophetic and are educational and beneficial to us. Romans 6-3, many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death. So this water baptism, this being immersed, that's what baptized means, to be immersed in Christ is symbolic, an ordinance given to the church. And as I mentioned, it is something that we do to this day.

It has never been canceled out. It has no terminus in this lifetime as a rite of the church. We have died to the world. That's what the water baptism symbolizes.

Sin in the flesh, we are against it. We identify now with Jesus Christ. And there's this image of the person being baptized, being buried under the water, and then coming up resurrected in Christ, a new creation. Not without war, but it's symbolic.

It's where we stand now. As those priests stood firm in the Jordan, there was no question about what they were doing and who told them to do it, and so it is to be with us. He says here in verse 8, and laid them down there. That's the stone. Well, stones and foundations, of course, there's a connection there. The foundation of my old life is buried.

It's gone. It's put where no one can see, at the bottom of the river, and I've crossed into my inheritance. The other ordinance that the church has is the communion table.

It is the same, it is a memorial. We remember. Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. When we come to the table, we are saying we believe these things about you.

We believe what you told us. We cannot tell you, God, who you are. That is idolatry. But we can receive from you lessons about who you are, and that, of course, is true religion, true faith. And we gather around the broken bread and the cup that represent his body and his precious blood, and we remember that Christ died for us, that he rose again, that he said it would happen this way, telling us this was no accident, he was not a crime victim, though it was a crime committed.

This was prophetic. It was planned and executed by the Lord, using sinners to do it according to their self-will. The sovereignty of God. The communion table speaks of the return of Christ, the presence of Christ.

It is every bit of a necessary memorial, and if it was taken away from us, we'd notice it, we'd miss it, we'd want it. These two rites, they complement each other. In fact, in chapter two of the book of Acts, when Peter is leading people to Christ, he says, come and be baptized, repent and be baptized. And then, after that paragraph closes, the next words are, and they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship and prayer and communion, the breaking of bread. And this breaking of bread is the connection that we have with a risen Christ. He's real to us.

And so when they take these stones out and the kids say, what are these? The parents were supposed to say, God, Yahweh, is real. He's real to me.

I saw this happen. Now I'm trying to get you to understand so He can be real to you. What are you going to do with this? And there is where we meet with a lot of struggle, but we are to be faithful in the struggles that come our way, all of them as faithful as we can. Well, Romans chapter 10, we share our faith and we look to invite the, when you share your faith, we're after the soul. We're not trying to win the argument. We're not trying to lose it either.

But that's not where it is. We're not getting sucked into the argument. We're after the soul. And when a person is listening to what we're saying about they being a sinner and capable of getting rid of their sins and capable of being perfect, but there is a God who will receive them and He died in their place that the wrath of God would not be upon them, but the mercy of God would be upon them. No longer am I under God's judgment.

I'm under His grace instead. And then when they, when we say, do you believe that? If they say yes, then we need to lead them in prayer and say, do you want to receive Christ as your savior? Because you can say that.

They say yes. You say, well, make this prayer with me. I tell you, open your Bibles when you do this to them to Romans 10, 9 and 10, Romans 10 verses 9 and 10. I'll read it to you. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart, one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. It's okay to do that. In my earlier years, I didn't know to do that. I just thought, well, I got them. They're agreeing with me. They're believing. And I had to learn that, you know what? I need to just take them in.

I need to cross this Jordan and make it official because we need that. And so this, of course, this grace does not mean that we are careless about our sin. Romans 6 verse 14, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. That has multiple meanings, but this is the main meaning that I love about that verse. Sin can think it has dominion over me because I struggle with it. But in the end, the dust will settle and I'll be in heaven because it did not have dominion over me. God has dominion over me. The weakness of our flesh will be pushed aside and what will be received is the strength of our will to follow Jesus. That's what will count. And so he says, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus the Lord because I can't be alive to him in my own self.

I can only do it through him. This is basic gospel teaching and we don't want to lose sight of it reaching for the more difficult passages of scripture. We always want to stay fresh when it comes to the basics of what we believe. Verse 9, then Joshua set up 12 stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the priests who bore the ark of the covenant stood and they are there to this day. So the commandment recorded that they were to do this, again returning back to the priests and standing will come I think to them one more time. That will be mentioned because it is that beautiful.

It is a romantic picture. But we have no word of them, of God commanding Joshua to take the stones out of the river and put them on land. But we have no rebuke either and we are left to believe that this was part of the commandment. It just didn't make it into print, which is not uncommon in scripture. Detective work is necessary quite often to get closer to what was going on.