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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Siegfried Roeske

What Mean Ye These Stones?

It's a privilege this beautiful Sabbath morning to be in this place called Advent Hope for some very obvious reasons.

My text this morning is found in Joshua 4, 21 through 24.

And I notice our Sabbath school lesson has spring our hearts and minds for what I'm going to share this morning from God's word.

All right, everyone have it in your Bibles.

And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come saying what mean these stones then you shall let your children know saying Israel came over this Jordan on dry land for the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you until you were passed over as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea which he dried up from before us until we were gone over.

That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord that is mighty, that ye might fear the Lord your God forever.

In 1970, my wife, Carol, and I took our 2 little boys, Ryan and Rich, over to Germany to my fatherland.

The high point of our three-week visit was a little cemetery behind the Lutheran church where my father's buried.

My children have never seen their granddad.

So I took them to the graveside, a very sacred place.

And there at the head of the grave is a fieldstone, kind of flat, 2 and a half feet high, on which my uncle, my father's brother, had chiseled my father's name, Leon Roeske, German.

Born March 3, 1896 he'd be 101 this year died September 9 1948 lived a short time only 51 years In the resurrection he had 6 boys, 7 men will be lined up, and the father will be the youngest.

Because I'm the youngest son, and I'm past 51.

When my little boy stood there, quite seriously, I took a picture, he was very sober, and it was kind of a serious, sober, sacred experience because we prayed there and thanked God for my father.

And I thanked God for the God of my father and challenged my little son to be a child of my father's God and never forget what God had done for my father.

My father was a very committed, dedicated, enthusiastic Christians And I could tell you many experiences that had shown that to me, impressed me, not excluding the 1 coming home from town with a bag of apples after the war, when we were still going through garbage cans trying to find food.

And the farmer had given my dad a whole bag of apples.

On the way home was evening, was dark, moon was shining, country road, no traffic.

He pulled me aside and said, Zeke, let's thank God.

My niece was fall of the year, shorts, back then, and knelt in the sand that the water had washed to the side.

Under the stars, he sang the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for supplying those apples.

God became real to me that night under those stars.

That stone was a memorial of all the commitment, the love, the sacrifice, and the kindness of my father.

And I want to be like my father in every good respect that he had in his character and I want my son and both of my sons to reflect that kind of commitment to the living God.

And so we read here in the Bible and we can also read about it in Deuteronomy 6, a very similar picture.

The Bible records that as the children of Israel were crossing Jordan, the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant stood on the dry bed of the river there, Jordan.

And as all the people marched by finally they came also with the Ark of the Covenant each tribe was to choose 1 man out of that tribe 12 of them all together going back into the river bed and everyone picking out a stone which would become a memorial, an altar, a memorial altar of the greatness and the goodness and the power and the might and the mercy of the living God.

And I used to think they just left it there in the river, but I think they took it with them because it said later on they took it wherever they went and they remembered the God of Abraham and what he had done.

And here it starts out to remember what God did in Jordan.

It was usually flood time, it mentions something about flood time and the water was overrunning Jordan.

I was there to look at it 5, 6 years ago.

Much water, and God stopped the water, and they marched through on dry ground.

And then it said at the end of the text, just like he did at the Red Sea.

We talked about it this morning in Sabbath school a little bit.

The whole Exodus experience was memorialized by these stones.

The Lord with a mighty hand reached down in Egypt and saw his son in Israel and Egypt.

Their brown backs were beaten with leather straps while they were building their pyramids in Egypt.

Egypt represents Satan and the power of evil.

It was no light thing, the Bible says, for God to reach down there.

I see the Lord bearing his arm and sleep going up and the hair was showing while he started reaching down there and then Pharaoh took the arrows and shot them in the hand of God and it hurt and was bleeding.

I saw pictures of this oozing out of his hand and he raised the hand, shook off the arrows and blood dripping to the ground and God sent in a plague the air force and another plague and another plague and Pharaoh hardened his heart and you remember day after day and week after week went on and finally Pharaoh's power was broken by the power of the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts of Israel's encampment but in Egypt there was a mourning.

God smote the firstborn of every creature, animal, families.

God let Israel out of its might and power into the wilderness to worship the living God.

But they didn't go very far and they came to the Red Sea.

Mountains on each side, the Red Sea before them, and the enemy behind them.

And do you remember how God took the cloud, divided the enemy from his people to protect them?

It wasn't enough to see those 10 plagues.

You think they would have been impressed with the power of God?

But you were mentioning this morning, miracles do not last, the effect of miracles do not last long We need the daily walk with God and see God in the details of life a miracle here miracle there Soon lose the effect upon the human heart So that forgotten about God then we cry to Moses you take us out here you know to be killed by Pharaoh's army and then of course you remember Moses took the rod God said put your rod over the sea and the sea parted I want to tell you that this must have been a Fantastic experience the children and the moms and dad said they saw the water part of 2 great walls on each side and dry ground And as they got to the middle of the sea they noticed that Pharaoh also saw the sea being potted and his army and of course their chariots with swords on the side They were had vicious armaments by which they would destroy the enemy and they could just see the shining Swords on those wheels coming down into the water, too And then God has also sense of humor even difficult times.

Let's reduce the speed a little bit of this army you know the soldiers there and They had to drag the chariots on the bottom without wheels.

So they kept going, the horses had power, it was sandy bottom, but it slowed them down considerably.

And then when Israel was all through on the other side, Moses was commanded to raise his rod again and the water flowed in and drowned all Egyptian the proud Egyptian army But 1 was lost 1 was saved and I was reminded It's not what God did and Noah's day he saved Noah by water and he saved Israel with water and he will save you and me by water of baptism according to 1st Peter and the story.

In the wilderness there was no food in Exodus 16.

And food came down, balanced food that brought strength and health to the bones.

I guess they had taken some water with them.

I'm sure they did in containers and so on and the water supply ran low and they knew that there was trouble coming the desert was hot and They're all they complained to Moses Moses did you take us out here where the cemetery is not good enough for us over there in Egypt why you take us out here and and they just lost a cruel totally and complained by complaining to Moses they were complaining to God Not much has changed the last 4, 000 years.

So the Lord brought them to a rock and water came out of the rock, living water came out of the rock.

The rock of ages, didn't forget about them.

The same food, health giving, life giving, balanced diet, oh we are tired of this food.

They remembered the cucumbers and the garlic, the onions and the fish And on all the meat that they had in Egypt We want some real food And guess what God in his mercy caused the wind to come and blow in some food they wanted.

Would you do that if you were a heavenly parent?

I would say, you rascals, why are you complaining?

You think maybe 1 day of meat should be enough.

I mean, it must have been, you know, they talk about the omas and all that.

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What Mean Ye These Stones?

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