“Monuments of Mercy- Remembering What God Has Done“
Monuments of Mercy-Remembering What God Has Done
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
July 27, 1958
We have been tracing over the past weeks the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel about guiding Israel, leading them, going before them, sending an angel before them to lead them in.
Tonight, I want to read from 3, 4, and 5 of Joshua, select passages, verse 17 of chapter 3. And the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground until all the people were passed clean over Jordan. I talked this morning about the old-fashioned idiom, and here we have another one. I’d hate to see anybody try to say this, and if he didn’t know the English idiom, they passed clean over Jordan.
And it came to pass when all the people were clean passed over on dry ground, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, and command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priest’s feet stood firm, twelve stones.
You shall carry them over with you and leave them in the lodging place where ye shall lodge this night. And Joshua called the twelve men whom he had prepared of the children of Israel out of every tribe a man. Joshua said unto them, pass over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel.
One from each tribe had to go first. That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, what mean ye by these stones, ye shall answer them, that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever.
The children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded. They took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them into the place where they lodged, and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bear the ark of the covenant stood, and they are there unto this day.
Then people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and encamped in Gilgal in the border of Jericho. And these twelve stones which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children, For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did through the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over, that all the people of the earth might know, that the hand of the Lord, the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.
Then he had said, I will send my fear before thee and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and so on, back in our original text in the twenty-third of Exodus. So came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel until we were passed over, that their hearts melted. Neither was their spirit in them anymore, because of the children of Israel, just exactly as God said it should be.
Now, Joshua 3:17 shows how they got across into the land. They got clean over. I want you to get that. There was a sharp line that they had crossed. A crisis had been reached and passed. An event had occurred. That is the way God works.
There was a time when there was no creation, and then God created the heaven and the earth. An event had taken place. A crisis had passed. The heaven and the earth were created. They were there. Man was created, and man sinned and fell. There was a time when he was not fallen, then he fell in a sharp crisis of degeneration.
It is the same with birth, same with death, same with conversion, same with the Spirit’s anointing. And you can go through the Scriptures and find the sharp, clear lines of demarcation, where a thing was not, then there was an occurrence, and it was. It was this way, then there was an event, and it was different. Specific and clear, they passed clean over it. It was sharp and definitive. Now, this is the way God works.
Then, after the event, there can be growth and development and conquest after the event. But unless the event has taken place, there cannot be growth. If there has been no birth, there can be no growth. If there has been no crossing over the river, there can be no conquest of the land beyond. Always, it must be after the event. Now, let’s get that clear and go on from there.
Then comes that monument, that strange thing, that monument. God said to Joshua, Joshua said to the people, the people obeyed, that they should have a monument set up, and that they were to get the stones out of the bed of the river. They literally were to take it right up out of the experience itself.
They got the stones, they were evidently round ones, usually stones found in rivers do not have sharp edges on them, and they took those stones large enough that they carried them on their shoulders. They were not simply fist size, but evidently large enough that they needed to carry them on their shoulders, and they brought them up out of the bed of the river, and they took them over just beyond and put them down there, formed them into shape. It was obvious that they did not simply dump them there, but they formed them into some kind of a permanent monument.
And if anybody said, why do you have it here? Why, God said, you tell them that this is a memorial to an event. This symbolizes something that took place, a crisis that was passed, an event that occurred, and it will be for you to remember and look upon sometimes, and it will be for all the generations that follow.
Now, there is too much unclear Christianity. I believe the difference between revival and that half-dead state that most of us find ourselves in can be attributed to the clarity and the sharpness of experience, the definitive crisis experience that some people have and that numbers of people have as the revival mounts. There is a target to shoot at, something to expect. The fellow that you knew, that lived beside you or across the street, wasn’t a Christian.
Then there was an event and he was a Christian, or he was a dead kind of a Christian. Then something happened to him in the fullness of the Holy Ghost and he became a live, spiritual Christian, an event, a crisis. That is revival, and I believe that this is our difficulty now. There is an unclearness about it. We are so eager to get people in that we take them on their own terms. And the result is that they come in, but they’ve never been anywhere.
And the little colored girl said that you couldn’t lose anything that you didn’t have any more than you can come back from some place where you ain’t been. And there are lots of people who can’t come back because they’ve not been there. There’s nothing clear about it. But this is a definite experience. And I believe that the true Christian is born, he’s definitely born, and he knows it. He’s had an experience.
If the Christian faith has not produced an inward spiritual experience, then that man is not in the Christian faith. He is only a camp follower and not a true Christian. You know that I borrowed and used, and use quite frequently, not really frequently, but occasionally, a definition of experience which I got somewhere, and I think it is very, very clear, and I would like to use it just now, that an experience is a conscious awareness of something by somebody, a person, a somebody, that’s the subject, somebody, there’s your man, somebody.
Now the next is some thing. And the next is an awareness of that thing by that body. And then the conscious awareness of that thing by that body. We have those four thoughts. Let’s say somebody going home tonight gets drenched. I trust you won’t, won’t hurt you, but I trust you won’t.
But if you do, you will be consciously aware of something. You will have had an experience which is definitive and which you can identify. You can put it down and say it was on that particular night, about this time in the evening, that I got drenched. You are aware of being drenched, that’s the something. You are the somebody, and you’re consciously aware of it.
I don’t believe in unconscious Christianity. That’s why I don’t believe that it does any good to baptize a baby. I don’t argue with people. It certainly doesn’t hurt a baby to baptize it, unless it is true, as the French philosopher said, that infant baptism was vaccination against the new birth. If that should be true, then of course it does hurt them. But if they are taught that they have to be born again, then I suppose it doesn’t.
But I do not believe that anything that you get from God comes to you subconsciously in the realm of redemption. Nobody goes to bed and wakes in the morning and finds he’s a Christian. You must be consciously aware of somebody or something. And the Christian is consciously aware that God is there and has forgiven his sin, and God has spoken to his heart. That’s a conscious awareness.
Now, the reasonable conclusion that I gather here is that as the children of Israel passed clean over Jordan, they all knew that they’d passed clean over Jordan. They were aware of it. It was a dramatic and colorful experience that they went through. They passed clean over, sharply over Jordan, knew when they were in the river, knew when they got out, knew when they’d gotten over the other side, knew that it was now time and place to put up that monument. And they marked it as a sign of a clear spiritual event that had taken place in their lives. The reasonable conclusion is that if we do not know we’ve crossed, we haven’t crossed.
Now, is there anybody that would argue against that? I said that one time in a camp meeting, a missionary convention out in Pennsylvania, and a missionary woman followed me around for days trying to argue me out of this. She said it wasn’t true, it wasn’t so at all, but it is so, and I won’t be even argued out of it by a missionary, much as I regard missionaries as highly. It’s a simple fact that if passing clean over Jordan is a definitive experience, and an experience means a conscious awareness, and you are not consciously aware that the experience took place, then I may reasonably conclude that it didn’t take place. That sounds reasonable to me.
I can’t, if I’ve never been to, say, Miami, and then I go there, and I come back, I know when I arrived, I know when I left, I remember some of the events, and if I haven’t any conscious awareness of ever having been there, then I may reasonably conclude that I never have been, unless, of course, I have forgotten it. But these things I’m talking about, you don’t forget, my brother.
They passed over from the wilderness, across the river, into the land, and you can’t forget that because you’ve changed location. You’ve had an experience, and nobody lets you forget it, because they know about it. Now, if we don’t know when we have, then we haven’t. That’s another conclusion that I draw. This stirred some people.
One man, as I told you, wrote me a long letter, and then wrote me a second one, insisted that I reply, because I had said that if you weren’t, if you didn’t know you’d been filled with the Spirit, you hadn’t been filled with the Spirit. And if you didn’t know when you’d been filled with the Spirit, you hadn’t been filled with the Spirit.
And that is so reasonable. All the symbols, and the types, and illustrations, the history of Israel, and the analogies, and parallels, and figures of the Old Testament teach this so plainly that I can’t see how we can possibly escape it.
Now, with consecration, nobody is consecrated unless he knows that he is consecrated, and nobody’s consecrated unless there has been an experience of consecration. Here is a soldier, and he’s out fighting an enemy, and one day he finds himself surrounded. Machine guns are trained on him, and men stand there with the weapons turned in his direction, and they yell for him to surrender. He drops his gun, raises both hands. He has surrendered, and he knows that he has surrendered, and he knows when he surrendered. And as long as he retains his memory, he’ll know when he surrendered.
Now, when Lee turned over his sword to the northern general, Grant and General handed it back, they both knew that. Lee knew it. There are some people down south who won’t believe it yet, but it’s true nevertheless. It happened, and it’s true. It was a conscious awareness. They were gentlemen. Those men were gentlemen. Lee was a gentleman. Don’t forget that. He was a gentleman, and he clicked his heels and stood there at attention, and then pulled his sword and handed it, handle first, to his conqueror.
Well, of course, as you remember, Grant handed it back, which was a lovely gesture. But the surrender had been made. Lee was consciously aware of it. And if you have not surrendered to the Lord, then you have not surrendered to the Lord. And if you do not know you have surrendered, you have not surrendered. It’s the same as being filled with the Spirit and many other things.
Now, the fifth chapter, the first verse. The fright of the Amorites. Exactly what God had promised. When they’d gotten over and got their monument down and could say, now, this is my rock. This is my testimony. Here’s my rock. The leader representing Judah carried his rock, and he threw it down and said, this is mine. And Reuben brought his, and they all brought theirs and put them down there and said, now, here’s my rock, representing the tribes. And then the people heard about it, and they did just what God had told them some years before that they would do.
It says here, oh, you know, I’d hate to have a newspaper man write this, but it’s so beautiful here. When they were passed over, it came to pass that the enemies, their hearts melted, neither was their spirit in them anymore. Their hearts melted and there wasn’t any spirit in them anymore.
And that’s a good place for a theologian who’s only a theologian and who’s argumentative. It’s a good place for him to say, well, these people weren’t human because it’s the human spirit that makes us human. But you know what they meant. You’ve got an idiom here. They collapsed. We’d say their morale sank. But they said their heart melted, which I think is a much nicer way to say it, their hearts melted.
Now, this happened to them here and the obstacles began to melt and victories began to be won because they had crossed over consciously, put down the stone and said, I’m over. And right then God began to melt the hearts of the people and the spirit that was in them, the morale, the courage to fight started to go out of them when they had not spirit in them anymore.
Now, what I’d like to know tonight is, have I been wasting my time? Are there those who can say, I’ve got the stone, I can bring this stone, I’ve carried on my shoulders, I know what God has done for me. I know that there was an event, that there was a crisis reached, fought out and passed. I know it. I am positive of it. And I can bring my rock and put it down and we’ll have a pyramid, a monument here.
I just wonder, have I been writing poetry in prose or is there such a thing as this happening in human lives? Do people, do human beings walking down here with a social security number and a telephone number and a hat size and a house where he lives and the job he does and paying people, practical work-a-day tax-paying people, can they say, Mr. Tozer, I know, I’m clear and sharp about this.
To me, my conversion was clear. I know when I was converted. I didn’t ooze into it, I was converted. And when I heard that I should surrender my life, I knew that it was take up the cross and follow Christ, I surrendered, and I took up the cross. And that was an event. I know it. Are there such persons or have I been simply talking theory which has no practical support? Is this ivory tower preaching or are there people?
There was a man by the name of, oh, I don’t know, my memories have failed me today. I preached 12 times and flew home, and I can’t think of names, but a man wrote a book called Famous Deeper Experiences–J. Gilchrist Lawson. That’s the name. And I know the man. I have talked with him. He’s dead now, he’s in heaven.
But famous Christians, the deeper experiences of famous Christians, he pinned them down. He wrote short biographies, named them, told dates and said, here’s what happened to this man and here’s what happened to this man and here’s what happened to this man. But every one of them is dead. Are there living people that can say, I know?
Oh, spread the tidings round wherever man is found, wherever human hearts and human woes have bound. Number 74, could we sing a verse and chorus? Sing it reverently now, don’t break the direction we’re going. The Comforter has come, the Comforter has come.
Let every Christian tongue proclaim the joyful sound, the Comforter has come. The Comforter has come, the Comforter has come. The Holy Ghost from heaven, the Father from his bosom, the Comforter has come.
Eliminate all the details you can and boil it down but tell us. Two talks tonight, two testimonies have been to the effect that the result of this was a continual fountain of flowing of praise. All right.