Lesson 3: “Memorials of Grace”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
What do you know about the Israelites’ crossing into the Promised Land? Why did the priests carrying the ark of the covenant go first into the Jordan River and stand in the middle? Who led the people into Canaan? Why was this crossing important—and what are we supposed to understand from this account?
This third Sabbath School lesson of the fourth quarter’s series through the book of Joshua is entitled “Memorials of Grace”; it emphasizes that “modern Israel” is supposed to reject all idols and remember how God has led them in the past so they don’t miss God’s interventions.
It’s Not About Us
The underlying perspective of this Sabbath School lesson is that Israel’s crossing into Canaan is a lesson for Adventists. In fact, Friday’s lesson ends with two quotations by Ellen White. The second one, from Testimonies of the Church, vol. 1, p. 609, says this:
“Modern Israel are in greater danger of forgetting God and being led into idolatry than were His ancient people. Many idols are worshiped, even by professed Sabbathkeepers. God especially charged His ancient people to guard against idolatry, for if they should be led away from serving the living God, His curse would rest upon them, while if they would love Him with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their might, He would abundantly bless them in basket and in store, and would remove sickness from the midst of them.”
This one paragraph summarizes the focus of the whole week. The story of Israel moving, after 40 years of desert wandering while God disciplined the nation for its unbelief and prepared the second generation to go into the land, is somehow intended to remind Adventists to remember how God has led them. The readers are exhorted to prevent “spiritual forgetfulness, both as individuals or as a church”. Then, in the discussion questions at the end of Friday’s lesson, the readers are asked:
How do you think the Sabbath can, on the one hand, help us remember God’s interventions in our lives and, on the other, give us a foretaste of the promised rest in His kingdom? How does the Sabbath point not only to what we are supposed to remember but to what we can hope for in the future?
It’s no surprise that the Sabbath School lesson would work its way from the miraculous move into the Promised Land to the guilt-inducing drum-beat of remembering God through Sabbath-keeping. It’s utterly typical that this lesson would ignore the miraculous covenant-keeping Yahweh who demonstrated publicly that He alone had the right to own and assign the habitation of the land while establishing His nation as the only nation whose God was sovereign.
Once again, this unique account of God’s power is diminished to a moral example meant to remind Adventists to keep the Sabbath and to remember—what? We’re never told exactly what the reader is supposed to remember except how God has intervened in the past, but in the context of Adventism, this “remembering” always includes the stories of the Adventist pioneers and the readers’ special status as God’s “modern Israel”.
What really happened?
This week’s lessons are based on Joshua 3 and 4. These chapters tell of Joshua’s rallying the nation to cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The river was at flood stage, wide, swift and overflowing its banks. Yet God established the way they were to enter the land.
This moment, echoing the crossing of the Red Sea a generation earlier, would include a water miracle: the Jordan River would part, and Israel would pass over in a single day on dry land.
This time, however, two details were new. Moses was dead, replaced by Joshua as the new leader, and Israel now had a formal covenant with God and a priesthood. This water crossing would be led not by a pillar of cloud and fire but by the ark of the covenant carried by priests. Here is what Joshua 3:7–13 tells us:
Then Yahweh said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to magnify you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. “Moreover, you shall command the priests who are carrying the ark of the covenant, saying, ‘When you come to the edge of the waters of the Jordan, you shall stand [still] in the Jordan.'” Then Joshua said to the sons of Israel, “Come near, and hear the words of Yahweh your God.” And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will assuredly dispossess from before you the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Hivite, the Perizzite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, and the Jebusite. “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over ahead of you into the Jordan. “So now, take for yourselves twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man for each tribe. “And it will be that when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of Yahweh, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be cut off, [and] the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap.”—Joshua 3:7–13 LSB
Let’s notice the specific things that God said about this event. First, He was magnifying Joshua in the eyes of the people. By having Joshua take leadership of Israel as they finally entered the Promised Land, and by having the flooded river part for the nation as the Red Sea had parted to free them from Egypt, God was giving Joshua authority in Israel’s eyes. They would now see him as a leader as powerful as Moses, and they would respect him. God was establishing Joshua’s authority by granting him leadership over the nation as they experienced this miracle reminiscent of Moses.
Second, just as Yahweh had led Israel into the Red Sea by a pillar of cloud, now the ark of the covenant—the most holy item in the sanctuary and the seat of the actual covenant document between the nation and God—the place where God placed His presence and glory—carried by the levitical priests, would lead the nation across the Jordan.
God was emphasizing that He Himself was leading Israel into Canaan. He would take the land, and He would demonstrate that He had the authority to drive out the inhabitants and appropriate it for Israel. Furthermore, He was demonstrating to Israel that He was “the living God” and was among them. He was keeping His promise that He would give them the land.
It’s important to realize that God is keeping His covenant promise with Abraham here. He had told Abraham in Genesis 15 that after his descendants had been in slavery for 400 years, He would bring them back to the land He promised to Abraham. Now He was fulfilling that promise. Not only was He bringing them to Canaan, but He Himself would drive out the people. Israel would always know—and the nations would always know—that Israel got the land because their God fought for them. He would drive out the Canaanites and let the Israelites in.
Another important thing was taking place as God led Israel over the parted Jordan River and into the land of Canaan. The lesson itself does not mention this revelation, although the Teachers Comments talk about it in a discussion of Old Testament theology. Yet this aspect of the Jordan crossing is of central importance.
Yahweh More Powerful Than Baal
There are two foundational issues at stake in this event. First, who is the true and mighty God? The God of Israel, or the god of the Canaanites? Baal, the god of the Canaanites, was generally known as the king among the gods because he had supposedly triumphed over the sea-god. All the Canaanite nations considered Baal the god-king, and he was considered the god over water. Yahweh, by opening the Jordan River at flood-tide and making a dry-land path for the Israelites from the desert into Canaan, would prove that He was the God with the true authority over the waters. Here in Canaanite territory He would repeat His powerful demonstration that He is Lord over the waters—just as He also demonstrated at the Red Sea 40 years before. Not only did He show He was God over the waters at Jordan and the Red Sea, but He also demonstrated His authority over the waters at the flood and at creation! In other words, Yahweh alone could establish His own order in creation.
Secondly, He alone had sovereign power over the world and all things in the world. By controlling the Jordan River and opening a pathway, He was also able to dislodge the inhabitants of the Canaanite cities and kingdoms and make a place for Abraham’s descendants to live. By opening a path for Israel into Canaan, Yahweh was demonstrating the rightness of His claim to have authority and control over the land.
In the ancient Near East, it was common to establish guilt among people by use of a “water ordeal”. Usually a suspect was thrown into a river; if the man drowned, he was proven guilty. If he survived, he was considered innocent. Here, Yahweh instructed the priests carrying the ark to enter the Jordan. It would part when their feet touched the water, and they were to stand in the middle of the Jordan River bed until all the Israelites had passed over. Only then would they, also, complete their crossing with the ark, and the water would return to its flooded place in its normal channel.
The NASB95 text notes say this:
Significantly, the Lord would enter the Jordan first and then remain there until His whole army had crossed safely over. Thus His claim to the land was vindicated before the eyes of all who heard about it. And it was His claim, not Israel’s; she came through the Jordan only with Him and as His army, “baptized” to His service.
While the Teachers Comments present this ancient idea of Yahweh demonstrating His superiority over the pagan gods by showing supremacy over water, the author misses the power of the Lord God not merely demonstrating His creative authority but also keeping His covenant promises. God was publicly presenting Himself not only to Israel as a God they could trust but to all the pagan nations around as well. He was revealing Himself to them, showing them that they had no power over Him or His purposes. He alone had the right to the land, and He alone had the authority to assign it to Israel and to drive out the Canaanites who were deeply corrupted by idolatry.
Israel’s and Yahweh’s reputations were intertwined, and the Lord’s power over the nations, over the water, and over the land preceded them. Just as Rahab had heard about Yahweh bringing Israel through the Red Sea, so the Canaanites knew Yahweh was on the move—and they could not escape Him. He was keeping His covenant promises and revealing Himself as the God of creation. The pagan gods were pretenders. They had no power over Him.
Memorial Stones
God instructed Joshea that, when the waters had parted, he was to appoint a man from each of the twelve tribes to go into the center of the river bed and pick up a stone. They were to carry the stones to the other side of the Jordan, and, when all the Israelites had crossed over, Joshua was to command the priests to carry the ark to the other side as well. As soon as the soles of the priests’ feet touch the far bank, the Jordan waters “returned to their place, and went over all its banks as before” (Joshua 4:18).
Joshua 4 ends with a summary of the day’s events this way:
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
Again, notice what we learn from the passage. First, Joshua built a monument at Gilgal out of those twelve stones. They were to be a generational reminder of God’s sovereign power over the river and over the land. Future generations were intended to ask their parents what those stones meant and they were to tell the story of God drying up the river and the Red Sea.
They were to understand what God had done and to reverence Him. In fact, they were to understand that “all the peoples of the earth” were to know that Yahweh is strong. The nations were to know that Yahweh brought Israel into the land miraculously, and Yahweh demonstrated His authority over all other gods. Future generations of Israelites were to “fear Yahweh [their] God forever”.
The lesson, though, takes this story and applies it to Adventism. Appropriating their assumed identity as “modern Israel”, as we saw in the earlier quotation from Ellen White, Wednesday’s lesson says this:
Even today, if we want to maintain our identity as a people with a peculiar calling and mission, we will have to create occasions for refreshing both our individual and corporate spiritual memory in order to keep in focus where we are coming from, who we are, and what we are here for…
Ellen G. White clearly understood that without constantly guiding ourselves in the light of God’s past acts and revelation, we will surely lose the motivation to carry out our mission in the future: “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”—Ellen G. White, Life Sketches, p. 196
That sentence above, that “we have nothing to fear for the future except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history”, is one of EGWs quotes often used to rally the Adventist troops. Adventism has an increasingly embarrassing legacy. Originally formed because the founders believed that Jesus was coming soon, and those who wanted to be ready to meet him needed to embrace the seventh-day Sabbath, the more years pass from the 1863 organization of the Seventh-day Adventists, the more they have to find ways to energize the members to continue to proselytize.
Remembering how “the Lord has led us” since 1863 is hardly comforting to an organization that continues to fail to realize its purpose: to hasten the coming of the Lord by becoming a people who keep the law with increasing perfection. Yet in this quote from Wednesday’s lesson we see that the organization continues to guilt its members into “remembering” and keeping their original purpose alive. They are to continue to carry out their mission of preaching the Sabbath and the health message and of bringing people into Adventism.
This week, the story of God’s establishing Joshua as the leader of Israel with the power and authority from God that reflected the power and authority of Moses is completely lost. The universal demonstration of Yahweh as the God of gods, the God over the water and the over the land—and also over the nations—is lost. The reality of God’s fulfilling His promises to Abraham that his descendants would come out of slavery into the Promised Land is completely missed.
Furthermore, the implication of God’s demonstrated authority over the land, over the nations, and over Israel is also suppressed. God’s covenant with Abraham is eternal, and what God promised, God will not change. He will still bring Israel into the Land He promised them, because God’s word cannot change. He does what He says He will do.
Adventist Appropriation
Once again Adventism appropriates a seminal biblical account and uses it for its own purposes. It claims to be modern Israel and attempts to stir up Adventists to remember their own cultic past and stay loyal to the organization.
It’s appalling to see how this story of God’s public international demonstration of His sovereign creative authority is suppressed by Adventism’s need to use this account to shore up Adventist loyalty.
Adventism is not “modern Israel”. Furthermore, Adventism is not part of the church. Adventism has a false prophet who taught a false worldview and who teaches a false gospel including the necessity of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath if one wishes to be saved. It is illegitimate for Adventism to take this historic account of God’s sovereignty over His nation Israel and over the nations around them and to use it as a moral lesson for Adventists to remember to keep the Sabbath!
Joshua, whose name is the Hebrew form of Jesus, was God’s chosen man to bring Israel into the Promised Land. The foreshadowing there is unmistakable. Yet the reality that the Lord Jesus is the One who ultimately leads us to our Sabbath rest through trusting in His finished work is never mentioned.
Hebrews 4 even shows us that Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land—and yet they did not receive their Sabbath rest because of their unbelief. Yet now, Today, if we hear the Lord Jesus’s voice, we are to believe today and enter His rest.
For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall into the same example of disobedience.—Hebrews 4:8–11 LSB
Joshua was God’s man whom the Lord chose to do His will with the nation He chose and preserved. God miraculously took them into Canaan, showing His sovereignty over the waters and over the land. We are to remember that story not as an example for us to hang onto our traditions and practices but to KNOW that our God has the last word. Our God is the God of time, and His will and word cannot fail.
Today it is not the Sabbath we are to remember but our Lord God, our Savior Jesus. He has come—in yet another fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, bringing blessing not only to Abraham’s physical descendants but to the world, as we gentile descendants come to faith and are counted as children of Abraham.
Today, if you have never admitted that you are by nature dead in sin and need a Savior, come to Jesus. See Him taking your sin into Himself and enduring God’s wrath in your place. See Him hanging on that cross and dying your death, being buried, and then rising on the third day because He satisfied God’s requirement of death for sin. He broke your curse by shedding His blood and shattering death!
Trust Jesus, the true Joshua who leads us into God’s rest when we believe and trust His finished work. Come to Jesus and believe that what He declares is true:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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