GiILGAL STONES
by
Josprel
Joshua 4:1-24
Israel’s forty years of wilderness wanderings were over. In the “very same day” that Israel entered the Promised Land, God commanded Moses to ascend from the plains of Moab into Mount Nebo to die (Deuteronomy 32:48-50). Nebo is the summit peak of Pisgah, part of the rugged Abarim Mountain range in the headland in Jordan. On Mount Nebo, God gave Moses a glimpse of the Land of Canaan - but only a glimpse, “because you trespassed against Me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah Kadesh, in the Wilderness of Zin, because you did not hollow Me in the midst of the children of Israel . . . you shall not go there into the land which I am giving to the children of Israel” (Deuteronomy 32:51-52).
“Then Moses went up . . . to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah . . . and the Lord showed him all the land . . . as far as Dan, all Naphtali . . . Ephraim . . . Manasseh . . . Judah as far as the Western Sea, the South, and the plain of the Valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar . . . And the Lord said to him, ‘ This is the land of which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob . . . I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab . . . And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor; but no one knows his grave to this day . . . Now Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of the Lord, for Moses had laid his hands on him, so the children of Israel heeded him and did as the Lord commanded Moses.” (Deuteronomy 34: 1- 9).
After the death of Moses, the leadership of Israel fell to his protégé, Joshua. It now was time to cross over into Canaan; time to claim the land God already had given to His people; time to trust Him to remove all obstacles to complete victory and, of course, the first obstacle were the waters of the Jordan River that, normally so placid, now were at flood stage, “. . . for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest” (Joshua 3:15).
Undeterred by this seemingly insurmountable obstacle, Joshua gave the command to cross the Jordan. Heading the procession were the priests, bearing the Ark of the Covenant with its Mercy Seat, upon which the Shechinah Cloud - the manifested Presence of Jehovah - was often seen. Visible as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, the Shechinah had faithfully led the children of Israel during their Wilderness wanderings. Though no mention is made of the Shechinah at the crossing of Jordan, the power of God was no less evident. As soon as the feet of the priest who bore the Ark of the Covenant dipped in the edge of the water, the headwaters “which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of Arabah, the Salt Sea, failed and were cut off, and the people crossed over opposite Jericho” (Joshua 3:14-17). The priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant stood on dry ground in the middle of the river until all the people had crossed over (verse 17).
With the people safely on the opposite bank of Jordan, the Lord commanded that twelve stones - one for each of the twelve tribes - be gathered from the riverbed, where the priest still stood. Positioned at Gilgal (also called Geliloth in Joshua 18:17) the location where Israel rested the night of the crossing, the stones were to serve as a memorial to future generations of the miraculous event. Joshua also set up a second memorial of twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, where the feet of the priest who bore the Ark of the Covenant stood. “And they are there to this day.”
Gilgal memorial stones are necessary in our spiritual pilgrimage; they evoke the memory of God’s blessings. An old standard hymn of the Church exhorts us to count our many blessings - to name them one by one. The hymnist informs us that it will surprise us what the Lord has done. When was the last time you counted your blessings?
We shall consider three spiritual Gilgal stones in this article. Of course there are more; perhaps they’ll be commented upon in a future piece. Foremost among our Gilgal stones is the remembrance of the price of our redemption. We are a people prone to forget what God has done for us (Deuteronomy 8:13-14). The Lord Jesus apparently realized this tendency in His followers when He instituted the Communion Supper and exhorted us to “This do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). He desires that we regularly recall the price He paid to redeem us. William L. Pettingill wrote, “The Lord’s Supper is at once a Memorial, a Covenant, a Communion, and a Call to Separation.”
It is this Gilgal stone - reminding us that Jesus shed His blood for our redemption - upon which all other Memorial stones rest. It is the foundation of our approach to God.
A second Gilgal stone is that of the love of God for His people. Among my favorite hymns is “The Love of God,” the last stanza of which was found, more than one hundred years ago, penciled on the wall of a cell in a mental institution. It was claimed that the man who wrote them was insane; the words he composed were discovered after he passed away. Insane or not, he authored poignant lines that always bless me when I read them:
“Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made; Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above, Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.”
I’ve often wondered how the author who penciled those beautiful words came to be institutionalized. Judging by the words he wrote, the memory of God’s love sustained him in his sufferings.
The last Gilgal stone that we consider in this article is that of prayer. Prayer is the believer’s communication line with God. So essential is it that one of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to assist believers in prayer: “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).
Years before the Niagara Falls was harnessed to generate electricity, an American and a visitor from England were viewing the whirlpool rapids.
“Come, I’ll show you the greatest unused power in the world,” the American said to his friend.
Taking him to the foot of Niagara Falls, he proudly exclaimed, “There is the greatest unused power in the world!”
“That’s not so,” the Englishman replied, “The greatest unused power in the world is the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The writer paraphrases that statement by saying, “The Christian’s greatest unused spiritual Gilgal stone is the intercessory prayer power of the Holy Spirit.”
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© Josprel
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