Build a Memorial

• Memorial Day is a public legal holiday in the United States of America and among its armed forces worldwide. It honors U.S. citizens who have died in war fighting for the freedom that we now enjoy. This day was originally set aside to honor those who died in the Civil War and then later on it was expanded to include all those U.S. citizens who have died in any war defending our great country. National observance is marked officially by the placing of a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
  • The purpose of this holiday is said to be this: It is for the purpose of remembering and of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in the defense of our country. It is a holiday for us to simply remember the price that was paid for our freedom.

Memorial Day

• I wonder though how many of us remembered what the holiday was for. I wonder if any of us took the time on Memorial Day to think about those who gave their lives for our freedom. I wonder if us parents gathered our children around and explained to them the reason for the holiday.
• In Washington D.C. there stands a stately monument called the Lincoln Memorial. It honors President Abraham Lincoln and the virtues of tolerance, honesty, and faithfulness in the human spirit. It was designed by Henry Bacon on a plan similar to that of the Parthenon in Athens. The structure includes 36 columns, each 44 feet high, made of Colorado marble. They surround the building one for each state that comprised the Union in Lincoln’s time. Inside, there sits a colossal 19foot seated statue of Lincoln that is made out of Georgia white marble. It sits on a pedestal of Tennessee marble and was designed by Daniel Chester French and carved by the Piccirilli brothers of New York. The statue dominates the interior and looks eastward across a reflecting pool at the Washington Monument and Capital. On the south wall is inscribed Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and on the north wall is his second Inaugural Address. Above are two paintings by Jules Guerin representing first “Reunion and Progress” and second “The Emancipation of a Race.” The cornerstone was laid in 1915 and it was completed and dedicated on Memorial Day in 1922.
• We have the Lincoln Memorial to help us remember what a great man President Lincoln was and to help us remember the things that he accomplished while he was alive.
• A memorial helps us keep a memory of something significant that has happened alive in our hearts and minds.
• All throughout the Bible God has ordained that there would be memorials. He has instituted the practice of building and having memorials in our life. It is beneficial for us to remember the things that Jesus has done in each of our lives.
  • In a Biblical sense a memorial is a sacrifice, a monument or an event that brings us into remembrance of something that God has done. The word memorial in scripture comes from a word that means to prick, to pierce, or to penetrate the memory.
  • The Bible says that the memory of the righteous is a blessing and it says of the wicked that his memory perishes from the earth.
  • So memorials are to aid man’s memory in preserving what he cherishes the most.
  • The very first Passover was to be a memorial to the Jewish people forever. It would serve to remind them how God spared their firstborn and how He delivered them from Egyptian bondage.

Exodus 12:12-14
12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.
13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
14 And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.

• Every Passover that goes by should be a reminder to the Jewish people that it could have been their firstborn that died in the land of Egypt. Every Passover that goes by should remind the Jewish people of how God delivered them from bondage with a mighty hand.
• The Israelites when they were in the wilderness were commanded to take a pot and fill it with manna. They were instructed to do that so they would not forget how God had provided for them.

Exodus 16:32-35
32 And Moses said, This is the thing which the LORD commandeth, Fill an omer of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt.
33 And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept for your generations.
34 As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept.
35 And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.

• God provided food for them to eat all of the years that they were in the wilderness.
• Then they came to the Jordan River and this is what we read about in our scripture text this evening. Joshua commanded twelve stones to be taken out of the Jordan River and be set up as a memorial of how God cut off the waters of the Jordan and allowed them to pass over on dry ground. He also set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan River to be a memorial as well of the mighty hand of God.
• He did this to keep it in their memory.
• (Give illustration of Jewish father and son going by the two memorials. – Then dad God could help us out of this problem couldn’t he?)
• We must also build memorials in our life as well. It is something that keeps a memory alive as a lasting evidence of something notable.
  • Has God ever healed your body? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God ever delivered you from alcohol? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God delivered you from drugs? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God filled you with the Holy Ghost? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God pulled you out of the deep miry clay and set your feet on the solid rock? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God ever met a financial need for you? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
  • Has God ever blessed you? BUILD A MEMORIAL!
• Build a memorial of the great things that God has done for you in your life. He has been good to us. He has blessed us beyond measure. When we didn’t deserve it God was good to us

Three reasons to build memorials:

1. To increase your own faith.

• To many times we forget the things that God has done for us in the past so we have no faith for the future.

2. To increase the faith of others.

• Build so that it will encourage others to have faith.
• God parted the Jordan for me and he can do it for you.

3. To give you victory over the devil.

• The devil will tell you that nothing happened.
• You can point him back to your memorial and tell him God changed me here. ( my campmeeting experience)
• Calvary is our memorial
  • Jacob fighting the Angel of the Lord at Peniel – Genesis 32
    • Sent everything he had over to the other side of the brook
    • Wrestled the angel of the Lord until the breaking of the day
    • Let me go for the day breaketh
  • The day is getting ready to break. You may have been wrestling all night long but it’s almost daybreak.
    • God blessed Jacob there and changed his name to Israel and said as a prince thou hast power with God and with man and hast prevailed.
    • No longer am I deceiver but now I am Israel – favor and power with God and with man
  • Today you might have an Esau waiting for you but first you can have a memorial experience tonight.