Catechism in Stone
Introduction: The Sin of Amnesia
We live in a culture that is desperate to forget. It is a culture of historical vandalism, tearing down monuments and renaming streets in a frantic attempt to escape the past. The modern secular man believes that freedom is found in cutting himself off from his roots, in becoming an autonomous individual with no debts to the generations that came before him. He wants to be a self-made man, which is to say, a man made out of nothing. But a man who does not know where he came from cannot possibly know where he is going. A people who forget their history are a people with no future.
The Bible teaches the exact opposite. Our identity is not found by forgetting, but by remembering. Specifically, we are to remember the mighty acts of God. The entire life of faith is structured around memorials, remembrances, and retellings of God's great salvation story. From the Passover meal to the Lord's Supper, from the Sabbath rest to the Sunday worship, God commands His people to structure their lives around remembering what He has done. He knows that we are leaky vessels. He knows that we are prone to wander and quick to forget.
In our text today, Joshua is commanded to build a memorial for a very specific reason. It is not to be a dusty relic in a museum. It is to be a teaching tool. It is a pile of rocks intended to provoke questions from children so that fathers can give answers. This is the biblical pattern of education. It is covenantal succession in action. God is establishing His people in the land, and the very first thing He has them do after crossing the Jordan is to set up a permanent, outdoor classroom. This is a lesson in how to build a civilization that lasts. You build it on the history of God's faithfulness, and you diligently teach that history to your children.
The Text
Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. And those twelve stones which they had taken from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal. Then he said to the sons of Israel, "When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall make your children know, saying, 'Israel crossed this Jordan on dry land.' For Yahweh your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as Yahweh your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of Yahweh is strong, so that you may fear Yahweh your God forever."
(Joshua 4:19-24 LSB)
Sacred Time, Sacred Place (v. 19-20)
We begin with the setting, which is packed with theological significance.
"Now the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth of the first month and camped at Gilgal on the eastern edge of Jericho. And those twelve stones which they had taken from the Jordan, Joshua set up at Gilgal." (Joshua 4:19-20)
The timing is not accidental. The "tenth of the first month" should ring a loud bell for any student of Scripture. This was the very day that the Israelites were commanded to select their Passover lambs, four days before the exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:3). Now, forty years later, on that exact anniversary, God brings them into the Promised Land. This is a new exodus. It is a new beginning. The generation that perished in the wilderness for their unbelief is gone. A new generation has come through the waters of judgment, not of the Red Sea, but of the Jordan, and they are entering their inheritance. This is a picture of baptism, of passing from death to life.
They camp at a place called Gilgal, which means "circle" or "rolling." This location will become their initial headquarters, their base of operations for the conquest of Canaan. It is at Gilgal that the reproach of their long wandering in Egypt will be "rolled away" (Joshua 5:9). God is not just saving them abstractly; He is planting them in a real place, on a real date. Our faith is not a set of disembodied ideas; it is rooted in history, in geography, in the grit and soil of the real world.
And here, in this new place, Joshua erects the twelve stones taken from the middle of the riverbed. God commands a physical sign to commemorate a spiritual reality. We are not Gnostics who believe the spiritual is good and the physical is bad. God made us as embodied souls, and He communicates His covenant promises to us through tangible things: water, bread, wine, and in this case, a pile of ordinary river stones. These stones are not magical. Their power is not in what they are, but in what they signify. They are sermon-stones, designed to preach a message for generations to come.
A Pedagogy of Piles (v. 21-22)
The central purpose of this monument is revealed in the next verses.
"Then he said to the sons of Israel, 'When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall make your children know, saying, 'Israel crossed this Jordan on dry land.'" (Joshua 4:21-22 LSB)
This is the divine curriculum. Notice the structure. The education begins with the child's curiosity. God wants children to ask questions. A good father cultivates an environment where his children are free to ask, "Dad, why do we do this? What does this mean?" The stones are intentionally odd. A pile of twelve large stones in the middle of a camp is meant to stand out. It is a conversation starter, built to last for generations.
And notice who is assigned the task of answering. "When your children ask their fathers." The primary responsibility for the spiritual instruction of children is given to fathers. Not to the state, not to the professional clergy, not even primarily to the mother, but to the fathers. The modern church has largely outsourced this duty, and the results are all around us. We have generations of young people who are biblically illiterate because their fathers have been spiritually absent. A man who does not catechize his children is in dereliction of his most basic covenantal duty.
And what is the content of the lesson? It is not a list of abstract moral principles. It is a story. "You shall make your children know, saying, 'Israel crossed this Jordan on dry land.'" We teach our children what God has done. Christian education is fundamentally historical. We are telling the story of God's mighty acts of salvation. We are passing down the family history, the story of our redemption.
Connecting the Dots of Redemption (v. 23)
The story the fathers are to tell connects their present experience to their foundational past.
"For Yahweh your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as Yahweh your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed," (Joshua 4:23 LSB)
This is the key to a multi-generational faith. Joshua explicitly links the Jordan crossing to the Red Sea crossing. He is teaching the people to see the pattern of God's work. The God who miraculously saved our fathers from Pharaoh is the same God who miraculously brought us into this land. He is not a distant, historical deity. He is the living God who acts in our generation just as He did in the past.
Notice the corporate solidarity in the language. Joshua says God dried up the Red Sea "before us," even though most of the men he was speaking to were children at the time or not yet born. They were "in the loins" of their fathers. They were part of the same covenant people. This is how we must think. We were not personally at the cross, but we can say that Christ died for "us." We were not at the empty tomb, but we can say that He was raised for "us." We are part of a people, a body, that stretches across time. By remembering these past acts, we are strengthened in our present faith. If God did that then, He can certainly handle whatever we are facing now.
For the World and For Our Homes (v. 24)
The final verse gives the ultimate, two-fold purpose for this memorial and for all of God's mighty acts.
"that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of Yahweh is strong, so that you may fear Yahweh your God forever." (Joshua 4:24 LSB)
First, there is a missionary purpose. This miracle was a public demonstration. It was done "that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of Yahweh is strong." God's salvation is not a secret. He performs His mighty acts on the stage of human history for the world to see. He parted the Jordan at flood stage so that the pagan inhabitants of Jericho and the surrounding nations would hear the report and their hearts would melt with fear (Joshua 2:9-11). This is a direct challenge to all other gods and all other lords. Our God is the one with the "strong hand." This is an evangelistic enterprise. Our obedience, our worship, and the stories we tell are meant to be a witness to the nations.
Second, there is a covenantal purpose. The internal goal is "so that you may fear Yahweh your God forever." The end game of remembering God's work is worship. The "fear of Yahweh" is not a cowering dread; it is a joyful, reverent, all-encompassing awe that leads to glad-hearted obedience. It is the beginning of all wisdom and the foundation of a godly culture. We teach our children the stories of God's power, not to make them arrogant, but to make them humble. We show them the strength of God's hand so that they will gladly place their little hands in His and trust Him for all of their days.
Our Stones of Remembrance
We are not commanded to pile up stones from the local river. But we have been given memorials that are far greater. The Jordan crossing was a type, a shadow of a greater reality. It was a picture of passing through the waters of judgment and death into the promised inheritance.
Our memorial is the cross of Jesus Christ. Our Jordan was His death. The waters of God's wrath, which should have consumed us, were parted when they fell upon Him. He went down into the depths of death and judgment for us. And just as the Israelites came up out of the Jordan onto dry land, so Christ came up out of the tomb on the third day, securing our inheritance forever.
We have two great "stones" that preach this to us. The first is baptism, where we are buried and raised with Christ, publicly identifying with His death and resurrection. The second is the Lord's Supper. It is our memorial meal.
And so, fathers, when your children see the water of baptism, or when they see the bread and the wine, and they ask you, "What do these things mean?" you have your answer ready. You are to make your children know. You tell them the story. You tell them that just as God brought Israel through the waters on dry land, He has brought us through death itself by the power of His Son. You tell them that the hand of Yahweh is strong, strong enough to defeat sin and death and the devil. You tell them this story, over and over again, so that all the peoples of the earth may know, and so that you, and your children, and your children's children, may fear Yahweh your God forever.