I can remember several years ago now, my oldest daughter's 20, when she was about five years old, I decided that we should go to Disney World, just me and her. And we got on a plane Thanksgiving morning. Thanksgiving is tough to travel the day before. Thanksgiving morning is not a soul in the airport. We get on a plane Thanksgiving morning, we go to Disney World, we rent a car in Orlando, we drive to the park, and I tell her, you have one responsibility. And only one, remember where we parked. At that time, everybody was driving a blue Neon. You don't see those anymore, but if you rented a car, you were renting a blue Neon. That's just what you got, a blue Dodge Neon. We went to the park all day. We had fun. We rode the dumbo ride over and over and over. When we came back, guess what? She didn't remember. When you go park at Disney World, they actually letter the rows, and by character, and I could remember if we were on AA or AC or what it was, and she didn't remember. You know, we are, in a sense, by our very natures, quite forgetful. I one time showed up to a class I was teaching at Kingwood College, it's now Lone Star College, I had a math class there in the mornings, I had a class of 35 people. I showed up. There wasn't a soul there. I thought they had all dropped. It was like the second week of class. I thought everyone had dropped the glass. And I was thinking about it. Wait a second. There was something about setting the clocks. They were there. They were just there the hour earlier. I showed up at nine o'clock for the eight o'clock class. I know I'm not the only one. Some of you at some point have come to church and wondered why that the preacher was closing the service when you got there and thought he should be opening the service. That's just what happens. You've forgotten and I have. Birthdays, I have some excuse. I have six kids trying to keep up with their birthdays. They'll usually remind me. Anniversaries, you should be careful about that. Be careful. Feeding the animals. How many times has my wife come home and said, did you feed the little girls? It's like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. They didn't say they were hungry. Yeah, that has not worked so far, but no. I have a password for at least 30 different accounts. And now some of them say, well, it's got to have 16 letters, and it's got to have like an exclamation mark or some other symbol and some numbers. And so I have all these passwords swimming around in my head, in addition to the PIN numbers. Did you turn off the stove before you left? You went to a friend's house. Did you say thank you at the end of the dinner? So many things to remember. Life is fast, and time flies by, and the details sometimes are just moving, moving, moving, and they get lost, I think, in the mix. By nature, we're somewhat self-centered. We're not naturally grateful. We're thankful. We receive God's blessings sometimes as stepping stones for our achievements, and we don't stop and turn to God and thank Him appropriately. We can sometimes have a sort of entitlement attitude to the blessings of God, and in the mix, we're just forgetful. We might notice in the moment, and then at the next moment we're forgetful. And what we need, frankly, are reminders. We need reminders to thank God for the blessings in our lives, and to give credit where credit is due. The book of Joshua is going to talk about reminders, what it's going to call memorials, so that people will remember. We do well to ask ourselves, is it really that big a deal? And so I wanted to read you something from Romans chapter 1. because I want you to get hold of this. The lesson is not a hard lesson, but I cannot overstate its importance of gratitude, of thankfulness, and Romans chapter 1 makes it about as plain as I think the Word of God could possibly make it. If you turn there for a moment, and we'll start in verse 18 of Romans 1, this is what it says. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." Most of us when we read these words we're like, I don't do that, and I don't do that, and I don't do that. You're in the list. You will eventually get to you in the list. Verse 19, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has showed it unto them. God has put light of revelation within us, and the creation says He exists. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. No one ever will spend eternity apart from God for lack of evidence of His being present, of His being powerful. But what I wanted you really to focus in on is this verse 21. That's the key. Because I want you to see how one walks away from God. It's interesting what the first steps are of our departing God. And as believers, we can become practical atheists in our lives as we walk away from God. The first step is an easy step because it seems like such a very short one. It's right here in verse 21. Because when they knew God, They glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful. There it is. You would have thought that the first big sin that stepped away from God was murder, some sensual sin. It's not. Lack of thankfulness. Neither were they thankful. They forget that everything they have did not come from their own hands. In reality, although God may bless our labors, every good gift comes from the Father of Lights, James says. Every good gift issues from the hand of God to us. And we can find it very easy to forget. So what happens in Joshua? To teach us, by example, this issue of being thankful, of remembering the hand of God in our lives, is that He brings Joshua and the people of God over the river of impossibility, the river they could never cross on their own. God could have brought them on during the early time of the year when the water was three feet deep. He didn't. He waited until the water was at the flood stage. It was twelve feet deep and the current was fast and He brought them through. And he tells that story in chapter 3. Last week, we got the people across the river. Let's go take Jericho. No. Let's back up and tell the story two more times. God, why don't you tell it just one time? Because I don't want you to forget. So I'm going to tell you two more times. And that's what chapter 4 is. He's going to, in a sense, retell the story from two different perspectives. One from the perspective of being on the first side of the river. within the camp of Israel, and one kind of from the perspective of those on the other side of the river who would see the camp moving toward them. But God repeats this story because of forgetfulness. And I want to talk about three real truths that we'll find in Joshua chapter four about gratefulness. The first one will glean from the first seven verses of Joshua four. It says, it came to pass When all the people were clean, passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man. Recall that there were twelve tribes, and so from each tribe Joshua would designate a man for a special task. 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, and you shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place where you shall lodge this night." Now, he doesn't tell them where they're going to camp this night, but you'll learn as the story goes on. It's a city called Gilgal. Gilgal is basically just a campsite. It's not a real city. We've not discovered the ruins, but it's a couple of miles outside of Jericho. So those people in Jericho are waiting. They don't know what all is going to happen, but they know that this camp is just a mile and a half or two miles from them. This big army, this big group of people in their camp there. Then Joshua called the twelve men whom he had prepared, or the children of Israel, out of every tribe of man. And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan. and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder according unto the number of tribes the children of Israel." The book is not being chronological here, they all crossed the river last week. Now we are back in a dry river, the priest are standing out there in the middle of the river with the Ark of the Covenant, they are holding it for many, many hours as perhaps a couple of million people cross the river in possibility. And Joshua is to send these twelve men to where the priests are standing and get rocks from that very location, stones, don't imagine little pebbles, big heavy stones but such that a man could carry it, and they put them on their shoulder and they bring them out of what is now the dried-out Jordan River. And then verse 6, 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? The word ye in King James is in Texan yaw. It's the plural of you. It's very personal. He says, What do these stones mean to you personally? That's what the question is. When your children will ask you, What do the stones mean? Verse 7, Then you 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. You can imagine why having a memorial is important. The generation that was there to walk through the river might quickly forget. You would think, well, how could you forget that? I'll show you in a bit. We'll go back in time. They had a time before where they had to pass through some water. And it took them a couple of days to forget. Very, very short memories that we have. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But the children, the next generation, In a sense, there's a sequel in the Bible to the book of Joshua. We call it the book of Judges. You read the book of Judges. It's a spiral downhill because what? They forgot. See, it's implanted. So this remembering is important. And this is what I want to say about these first seven verses, which is this. First of all, gratefulness, thankfulness is a learned thing. It is not something that comes natural to us. In fact, just the opposite. And I would say this, we're not always naturally thankful. Let me tell you why. Remember Jesus in John chapter six. There's a miracle there, we sometimes call the feeding of the 5,000. If you read it very closely, there's sometimes little words you can pass over. But when Jesus decides to feed them and he does kind of a lesson for Philip and Andrew and just to show them that there's really not enough food to feed all these people. There's a young lad that has a few barley loaves and a few fish. Jesus takes the little bit that's there and the first thing he does is he thanks God for it. then he multiplies it. We take the little bit that's there and complain about the part that's not. That's what comes natural to us. And so we see this example throughout the life of Christ of a constant gratefulness for what he has and not for what he doesn't. Because what we say with our heart in terms of gratefulness, when we say, God, let me tell you why I don't have enough, God, you're not sufficient for me. God, this person you put in my life is not enough. God, the money, the car, the house, everything, it's not enough. God says, my grace is sufficient for you. See, and so this heart of thankfulness is critical because if we get off kilter where we want to look at nothing but the river of impossibility and not the way God's provided, we're not going to be very happy people. We're not. And Jesus exemplified it, and all I'm saying is it doesn't come natural. Anyone who has kids knows this. They figure out within the first week of them coming home as little babies that when they cry enough, the one with the long hair comes in and takes them out of the crib. And if they cry a little longer, the short-haired person comes in there and does something for them. And within a couple of weeks, you're working for them. It's all changed around. I thought we were getting someone in to help us with the chores. No, it's the other way around. Why? They figured it out. They're not naturally grateful. They're just not. In fact, they come to expect their parents will provide for them and rarely return thanks. It's a natural thing for children. As parents, we have to teach them gratefulness. One of the things that, you know, I have this problem. Some people can say no to the two little girls in our family, I cannot. So I take them and I may go as a treat, take them to the toy store and buy something. I did this a couple of weeks ago after a Wednesday night service. But in order to remind them to say thank you, because they won't usually naturally do it, I said, thank you for those little dollies you bought me. Oh, thanks, Dad. Thanks, Dad. That's how it is. We know that. We like to think that we come into the world really, really good, and maybe something happens along the way that changes that. It's not so. We come into the world needing godly parents to shape us, and that's what we have to do. So it is learned, and you see that here in this verse, because he says, you put these stones out, And the children will eventually out of sheer curiosity in verse 6 say, what mean you buy these stones? It's a teaching moment. The stones are going to be set out in the town of Gilgal or the camp of Gilgal so that when they asked, someone would answer. You shall answer them. that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. That's the first time, I think, in the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant, the testimony is ever mentioned. That's a reference to all the promises of God. What did He promise them way back in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15? That they'd get the land. The very first place they pitch their tent in the land, they put a memorial. And when the children say, what are these rocks organized? Probably in a circle. The word Gilgal means circle. They probably organized these big rocks in a circle of 12 rocks. And the children say, what are these here for? It says, because God dried up the river, and he brought us here. It's a way of putting into our collective memories the moving hand of God, because we have to teach the children. It's been rightly said that blessed are the benefactors who never remember what they gave you, and blessed are the recipients who never forget what they received. We have a tendency though to easily, easily forget, and I'm just saying as children, They don't naturally know it. And by the way, neither do we. Now what happens if we don't teach the children to be grateful? Well, we get ungrateful adults. People who always think that they are owed something. And then they find out by the by that the boss at work isn't at all like mom and dad. He doesn't think he owes them anything, right? It's not reality. More than that, though, we can raise children who believe that the blessings of God are really just things they've accomplished by their own effort. You think back on the book of Daniel. God uses throughout much of the book of Daniel a very bad person named Nebuchadnezzar. He is the first king, really, of a new empire called the Babylonians. He is used to defeat Israel at that time as a judgment. He's looking out over the kingdom he has built, as he would perceive it, and he looks at the castles and the houses and all these things, and he had built what are considered ancient world marvels, some of the ancient wonders of the world. And he looks out at it all and he says, look what I did. You know what he ends up doing? For seven years, he ends up in a crazy state, eating grass, having people cover for him to keep him from being assassinated, until he comes to the conclusion that he should have known all along, that I only have what God gave me. So that elsewhere in the Bible God calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant. And when he comes to that realization in that moment that this great kingdom was actually built by the God of the Israelites, really the God of the world, then his sanity comes back to him. Jesus would be challenged by one named Pontius Pilate. because there were folks saying that Jesus was claiming to be a king and that sort of thing. And Jesus basically said, nobody has any authority except that which God gave them. See, we start to look at ourselves. That's the problem with not being grateful. We decide that it's all me, me, me. And God's saying, really, it never was, because your next heartbeat is in my hand. Your next breath is in my hand. This isn't just for believers, for everybody. And God says, take that for granted. Okay, don't take that for granted. There is something else here and we will look in verses 8 to 14 and that is that God actually deserves our gratefulness, our thankfulness. In verse 8, the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded and they took up the twelve stones out of the midst of the Jordan as the Lord spake unto Joshua according to the number of tribes of the children of Israel and they carried them over. with them unto the place where they lodged, and they laid them down there, and as I suggested, that'll be Gilgal, who'll give us the name of the camp later. Joshua set up 12 stones in the midst of the Jordan. You're like, what happened here? There's like a parenthesis for verse nine. They went out in the river, except there's no water there at the time, because the ark's in the middle and the priest, and they get these 12 heavy stones to take them to Gilgal to make a memorial. That's what God commanded. Joshua, it would seem, as a parenthetical, wants to also have a memorial left in the place in the river. When it's at its flood stages, the water would rush over the rocks, you'd never see them. But Joshua will leave 12 rocks in the river. Perhaps when the waters are low, you'll be able to see them. It'll produce a sort of, you know, the water will rush over the top and you'll see it, you know, like rapids. That's what happens in verse 9. Just a little parenthetical, Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which they bear the ark of the covenant stood, and they are there unto this day. I can't imagine that he always saw them, but I imagine because Gilgal will become the first of three campsites where they will position themselves and their army before taking the various cities, and it's very close to the water. And you can imagine as Joshua does some introspection and some prayer and some thinking, and he goes and just walks a mile or so out of camp to where the riverbank is, and he can see that water kind of rushing over and around the rocks he left there. And he's reminded, right, because that's what we need. We need the reminder that God had pulled that river apart and made it dry for them. So there's a little parenthetical there about a second set of stones. In verse 10, for the priest which bare the ark stood in the midst of the Jordan until everything was finished the Lord commanded Joshua to speak unto the people according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. Moses way back there and we read it in Deuteronomy. He commanded Joshua knowing he would never get to enter the promised land He said Joshua you take them over and that's what he has done. Of course and the people hasted and passed over Now if I've been walking the middle of the river, I would have hasted as well In other words, you're gonna get out there and kind of go this turtle pace just walk slow. I Don't think I would have ran over it But I got across pretty darn quick, because somewhere upstream, there was 12 or 15 foot of water just waiting to break free. And that's what it did. And they needed to get over quickly, because there's four guys out there with big poles on their shoulders holding a solid gold chest that's very, very heavy. And so they get over the river quite quickly. And it says, and it came to pass when all the people were clean passed over the river that the ark of the Lord passed over, and the priest, and the presence of the people. So on the first side of the river outside the land, they're watching the ark in front of them. Then they cross and then they watch the ark come to them. That's the scene that's painted and it says in verse 12, the children of Reuben, the children of Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh passed over, armed before the children of Israel as Moses spake unto them. Remember Moses had a side deal because when they got to the river the land on the east side of the river was pretty good. And these two tribes and the half tribe said, well, we'll just take this land. And Moses said, fine, but here's the deal. You're going to send troops to help your brothers take the land. And that's what they did. So it calls them out and says they obeyed. They did what they told Moses they would do. But really, it was a long time ago, you know, that they had said that, but they do it. And it says about 40,000 of them prepared for war, passed over before the Lord unto battle to the plains of Jericho. A picture of obedience in verse 14, on that day the Lord magnified Joshua in the sight of all Israel, and they feared him as they had feared Moses, all the days of their life. You know, it wasn't Joshua as such. What they recognize is that Joshua was walking with God, and when he said it, it happened because it really was God's words through him. and his direction, his leadership was something given from God. But God did this. They stood on that side of the bank and saw the Ark of the Covenant and the priest out there, and they watched as they came out. And the moment they put their feet on the shore, the waters come rushing through again. Everybody is certain God did it. And here's what I would say to you. Just think about this. Sometimes God's hand is obvious. Sometimes. Let me give you an example. When we had our son born, he should have been born weeks earlier, just by what had happened. And when he was born, there was no amniotic fluid, none of that, and the doctor said he shouldn't be alive. They couldn't explain why he was alive. And you look at that and you say, it's a hand of God thing. When the medical doctor can't tell me why, hand a God thing. I've got that. That's fine. The problem is that between those sort of moments where God makes the river dry up, We tend to think God's not there. We tend to forget in those moments the times when the river dried up, and not necessarily see God's hand in those moments where it's not as big of a thing as the river drying up, if that makes sense. God's hand is in our lives every day, but we don't always see it, and we really should ask why. Each of us can look back in time, and this is why the remembering, this is why the memorials are so important. We need to have these points on the map of our life, and we've all had them, where God's hand really was very, very obvious to us that he was in it. And we need to really plug them in, okay, because when you come along later to other trials, other rivers, you will remember. But also, when you feel like, you know, I'm not seeing the hand of God around me. If you'll remember, you'll come to the realization, no, he's in the details. Not every day is gonna be a parting in the Red Sea. I can remember a good friend of mine who had leukemia as a diagnosis. He's in the hospital. And I guarantee you, and I think I was probably subject to this as well, I prayed for his healing and thought he would be dead soon, as in within two weeks. Everybody did. Two weeks later, he was in the church service. The leukemia was gone. There was no explanation. It wasn't because they had already given up on everything. I'm just telling you that you will have those moments when God parts the sea. But between the parting of the sea moments, what do you do? And when you come to the next moment that you need God to part the sea, and it's a lot easier coming to the second river of impossibility having recognized God's movement in your life at the first one. And that's the idea. And I think these memorials, they're reminders to us of that. They help peg down our faith around certain key events. And we all know there are key events in our lives. There's those handful of events that affected all of us where you can remember exactly where you were at that moment. I remember exactly where I was in the eighth grade when the first shuttle blew up. We know these things. My father remembers exactly what he was doing when the president was shot in 1963. There's those moments, but in our spiritual lives, we need those moments where we remember the details. A lot of people will remember, and they should, exactly the way and the moment when they came to the Lord. They don't necessarily remember the precise date. They might. They might have written it down. But you remember, because it was a big deal. You remember that that moment. For me, I remember that. I remember being in a small Baptist church, and I remember what I thought was the name of the man that had led me to the Lord, but it's there. We need those moments, those sorts of signposts that remind us the hand of God in our lives. We need to be able to look back at those times when God was so powerful in our lives. There's a number of memorials we have today. We could set up rocks, and frankly, there's nothing wrong with that. For example, to be real concrete about it, I had went to a church several years ago, eight or ten years ago, and it was for a basketball game, but they had built a gym and they allowed the league to use it, and they had a memorial out in front of the gym. And all it said was that God gave us this gym on this day and year, a memorial, a reminder of the hand of God. I've also seen this happen. There was a memorial out in front of a very nice auditorium of a very large church in the Houston metropolitan area that had the name of the pastor and all the people on the building committee. And when there were some church trouble, somebody went up there that was for the pastor and actually took that 1,500 pound memorial and put it in the back of his truck and drove off with it. Yeah, whose name goes on it? So we realize, though, the importance that we're not putting our name on the memorial, the memorial's to God. This is what he did in that moment. Sometimes God will do those things through people around you, and it's worthwhile, and it's right to remember that God used a friend, a neighbor, a family member to issue this blessing to you in that moment. But the memorials are for God, and in a very real way, we can do that. We do a memorial every Sunday. We have a day of the year that some people call Easter, I call it Resurrection Sunday, but I would suggest to you there's a reason we go to church on Sundays and not Saturdays, and it's biblical. In the apostolic practice in the first century, on the Lord's Day, that's a word used in Revelation chapter 1, We gather for worship. Why? We're making a memorial to a living Savior. Right? That's our memorial and it's one of the things we do. And we gather on that day. The cross is a symbol. through many, many centuries of Christianity, and some others. Sometimes a little fish symbol is an early church symbol. It becomes a sort of memorial, the cross does, of the fact that God died for sinners. The Lord's Supper, of course, one of what we call the ordinances, one of the things that Jesus had commanded. What did he say? This you'll do in remembrance, right? In remembrance, because we need to be reminded And he wasn't really saying just to look back with great sadness at the cross, that wasn't it. To look back at the victory he achieved for us and look forward to his returning memorial. And then, of course, we have special services. I mean, at Christmas you will normally hear a lesson on the birth of Christ. We look back at that and we memorialize that event. When God breaks into human history, with the ultimate revelation of God, much bigger than parting any river, than parting any Red Sea, was God breaking into human history in His Son. So we have these memorials and they're meaningful. The problem is that gratefulness is often and easily lost. Let's look at verse 15 through the end of the chapter. The Lord spake unto Joshua in verse 15, saying, and by the way, this is what I would call the second retelling of the story, He got him across the river in chapter 3, and then we saw him across the river in chapter 4 up to verse 14. Now we're going to see him go across the river one more time. And you have to say, why? Well, because we're prone to forget, and the first half of chapter 4 is kind of from the view of being inside the camp. And this one's more kind of from the view of being on the other side. And you'll see the focus as it comes to the end of it. But God tells the story a little again, but with a little different perspective. Command the priest that bear the ark of the testimony that they come up out of Jordan. Joshua therefore commanded the priest saying, come yet up out of Jordan. So they're not going in, they're coming out. They're on the other side. And it came to pass, when the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord will come up out of the midst of Jordan and the soles of the priest's feet were lifted up onto the dry land, that means the shore, that the waters of Jordan returned unto their place and flowed over all his banks as they did before." And right there in the witness of everybody who would see it. I do wonder how many people just one generation later would say, that never happened. You've seen it. You've seen it in our lives, how people will deny that which happened not that much long ago. Verse 19 says, came up out of Jordan on the 10th day of the first month and encamped in Gilgal in the east border of Jericho." We finally learn where they camp. The 10th day of the first month is important, but we'll see it more next time. But that's the day when you pick the lamb for the Passover. And next time they will actually celebrate the Passover. And those 12 stones in verse 20, which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal? 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? See how that's familiar? He's telling the story again in a way. But listen to the answer this time. 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 God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up from before us until we were gone over. Let's think about that Red Sea moment, because I think that's helpful for us. I would suggest to you that we can often use the blessings of God, not as a reason to remember His grace in our lives, but merely as a stepping stone to moving forward in our own agenda. And that's not what it's for, but that's a way that we can lose the memory and replace it with whatever we think. We think we've earned it or whatever. And if you don't think it happens quick, let's look at Exodus 15. In Exodus 14, they cross the Red Sea, God parts it for them. But in Exodus 15, in response to having crossed the Red Sea, they sing. We'll see that at the beginning of the chapter. Exodus 15.1, Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord. I won't go through the whole song, but there was reason to sing. He had brought them through the Red Sea, and so they had a church service and started singing. And at the end of the singing, look what happens in verse 22. So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur, and they went three days into the wilderness and found no water. God with the army behind you, a pharaoh, to kill you, with chariots, parted the Red Sea. Moses is standing there with his arms in the air. The sea has parted. It isn't like the river where the water had stopped upstream. You have walls of water on both sides of you. You come through on dry land. You get to the other side. How long do you think it would take for your faith to wane? This answers it, and we can't look down our nose and say, well, I wouldn't have done that. Yeah, you would. You kind of have to put yourself in their sandals for a moment. We have the capacity to do this three days. You know how that works. It's like when a child gets a toy for Christmas and in that first day it's the best thing ever and the next day it's never seen again. That's how sometimes our faith is. It comes out in a momentary outburst and then it just seems like it's gone. And look what happens in verse 23, When they came to Merah, they could not drink of the waters of Merah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Merah. It means bitter. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? Is that what you think of God? That he would bring you so far, not let you get caught by Pharaoh and his troops, through the Red Sea to let you die of lack of water. Lack of water. I mean, really. But that's what they're thinking. So they start murmuring against Moses. I mean, you know, they're going to start what they'll do later in the book, maybe. We wish we'd just stayed as slaves. That was better. Really? He says here, he cried unto the Lord, Moses did, and the Lord showed him a tree. which when he had cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, he tested them. So he gives them water despite their complaining. What do you think they should have done when they got over to the other side? It wasn't complain. If he can split the Red Sea, he can cleanse the water. But that's a faith thing, and so they need to grow, and they really never do. But this next generation does, and they come across, and we don't see the same sort of response. But I'm just telling you, one of the problems is that our gratefulness gets easily and quickly lost. Most of us can easily fail to return thanks simply because we're forgetful. I mean, we're just too busy. Look at Deuteronomy. This is a passage that a lot of you are familiar with, especially in doing children's ministry. But back up to Deuteronomy 6. He's going to talk here about teaching children, but he's got something to say to all of us. And all I'm saying is one of the reasons that we easily lose gratefulness is because we have very short memories. And you can see that it's kind of a cultural problem, but it's a personal problem, and in part because we have so many things going on. Look what he says. Deuteronomy 6.4 says, The Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in your heart." There's a big difference between having them in your head and in your heart. There's a difference between having read the words, even uttered the words, and assimilating them, the way we would assimilate food and take it into our body and it becomes a part of us. He says in verse 7, "...thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children." The thou is everybody, not the youth pastor, by the way. You understand, he's giving a responsibility to a generation of people, and especially, of course, to parents, to diligently, diligently teach. Why? Because it can get lost just in a generation. The generation that goes to the river remembers, and the next generation doesn't, and that's a fact. And you read that in the book of Judges, and it just starts bad, and it gets worse and worse and worse, and it wasn't even that long ago. It wasn't a thousand years ago. it was just a few decades, and it goes like that. Diligently teach unto your children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou settest in thine house. This means it's not on Sunday morning. This means that it becomes what I would call God conversation, that you take the things of God, incorporate them into your heart so that they will be incorporated into your speech, they will come out. He says, do these things with your children. Do these things with your family. When thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest dead, and when thou risest up. That's all the time. Now, does that mean you're always carrying a King James Bible around and preaching to people? No, it doesn't. But your conversation should not exclude God. A lot of people's conversation always includes information about the weather and whether or not the Rangers beat the Astros and all those things that we care a lot about and have a lot of enthusiasm for doesn't always include things of God. And this isn't hard to do, it's easy to do. But what comes out all the time is based on what goes in all the time. I can hear what comes out and you can too and you know what goes in. and you know what circulates around in here, because that's what will come out. And he says you need to do this, and listen to why though. He says, teach it diligently, and then in verse eight, thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand and upon thy frontlets between thine eyes. This has been taken literally, if you're not aware of this. If you'll see kind of Orthodox Jews, particularly in Israel, they actually have a little box, and you can buy them, and it's got some leather straps, and it's got a little bit of the Word of God in there, and you put it on your hand here, and wrap the leather around, and you can put one right here on your forehead. Now just think symbolically, why would God have you put a little box on your forehead with a little bitty writing of the Word of God there? Because the Word of God should be in your head. That's why. But it's been taken in a literal sense, and so, In the first century, Jesus talks about this. He points some guys out in the crowd and he says, these guys say that they're really spiritual because their box is bigger than everybody else's. See how easy it becomes to be spiritual? I've got a really big box on my head and on my hand saying the Word of God in it, and he says, you guys are whitewashed tombs, and the inside is nothing but dead men's bones. That wasn't necessarily received very well, but it was the truth. This wasn't meant to be, I think, taken literally, but it has been in practice. He's saying, that your hands should do what the Word of God has commanded, that's obedience. Your feet should be the shoe leather on the Word of God, and your mind should be filled with the Word of God. And here is why, he says in verse 8, Thou shalt write them upon the post of thy house and on thy gates, and it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land, that's Joshua 3. which he sware unto his fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, we give thee great and godly cities, which thou buildest not, houses full of all good things, which thou fillest not, and wells dig, which thou diggest not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantest not. When thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord." And that's what happened. They did it, sure as it's in writing. They came into the land, they remembered, and the next generation forgot. And so there's a breakdown between the generations. And I would say to you, that's happened many times in history. Sometimes it happens in a church or in a family where it's just like the next generation. And I'm not saying it's always mom and dad or their fault or whatever. You can't make decisions for people. But we can be deliberate. about remembering the Word of God and making it part of our conversation, a part of our lives, a part of what comes out in our homes, we should saturate it with the Word of God, and that's what he's talking about there in Deuteronomy 6, because he knows if you don't make it part of your everyday activity, you will forget it. Another way of saying this, if it's part of your activities two days a week, you'll be lucky And I hate to use that word if it's part of the children's activities one day a week. They'll fall further from the tree. That's just a fact. If you make it your way to be at church at least two out of four Sundays, the children may be there one out of four and probably won't be there any. Because you told them by your conduct that it didn't matter. And we do that. And that may sound harsh, but it's a fact. And everyone who's been around a while has seen it. So we can forget very, very quickly, well, We have to be deliberate about thankfulness. I want you to see this in a couple of New Testament verses as we kind of bring this to a close. I don't think it's a hard lesson, but you can't get more fundamental than thankfulness, because as I started off with, it is really the first step of departing from God is to lose a thankfulness in your heart. Let's look at 1 Thessalonians 5.18. We'll read a verse there. First Thessalonians 5.18 says, in everything give thanks. This answers a really simple question, what should I thank God for? Well, we should ask an easier question, what shouldn't you thank God for? But if I'm to give him thanks for everything, should I thank him for the trials? Shall I only thank him for the mountaintops and not the valleys? This isn't as easy as it seems. This is really a tough verse and he says, give thanks. He says in everything for that's the will of God. Wait a second. We kind of talked about this a couple of weeks ago and people struggle with this question. Well, what's the will of God? Often the Bible is so explicit. One of the things that's definitely the will of God for us is that we would be thankful people. Why? If I could say it this way, there's an antidote for not seeing the hand of God in your life, and that is deliberately thanking Him for what you see. As you go through that process of being thankful for everything, you will see a lot of the things that you didn't see before because you weren't looking for them with that mindset that I need to turn this into praise to God. He says, and everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." That's pretty straightforward. If we fast forward just a couple of books to 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 1, Paul is writing from prison to the young preacher Timothy that he's groomed Timothy will become the pastor of the church in Ephesus, quite possibly the most significant first century church of all of them. And he says to young Timothy, I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men. you need to be grateful for people around you. You know, God will often minister to us, and we don't always get this. He ministers to us through those around us, first and foremost through spouses. We have this idea that, well, you had this happen, go pray for wisdom. but then we don't follow up and say, well, who around me will you maybe use to dispense some wisdom to me? Go ask him, God'll use him. And he's saying, thank people, thank God for the people around you. He says, I exhort therefore, first of all, in other words, this is of prime importance. This isn't a tag on at the end, right up with the start. In your supplications, that's a prayer where you're asking for something, a prayer, an intercession, you're praying for somebody else. giving a thanks for all men. Well, one more, and that's the book of Hebrews. So we fast forward a few more little books, but not very far in your Bible, just a few pages, but we'll go almost to the end here at Hebrews chapter 13. The application portion of the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 15, says something about what worship is in our time. Hebrews 13 verse 15, By Him, therefore, in light of a lot of stuff that the writer has said up to this point, he says, By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. We don't have to sacrifice any animals anymore. Jesus dealt with our sin problem once and for all, and by the power of Jesus Christ by His sacrifice, He says, we can now offer merely the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. That's what praise is. When I think about church music and what is the finest quality of church music, there's a lot of ideas and debates about it nowadays, this verse sums it up. If you read God's hymnal, It's all praising God. It's never, ever, ever me, me, me, like so much music can be. And I'm not suggesting against being against modern music. There's a lot of good stuff out there. There's also always been stuff that fell somewhat short of where it should be and where our worship should be. is right here. We're to offer the praise to God continually, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. To His name means His person and His works. What has God done and who is God? We thank Him as the Creator. We thank Him because He loves us. He's extended His grace to us. We thank Him for what He's done in our lives and the life of this church. All these things, that should be our praise. It seems like And especially in this time of political things going on, you'll hear all kinds of people making speeches and making grand promises. I hope they'll keep every last one of them. I'm not optimistic. We will hear often at the end of the speech, God bless America. And so we should say that. We would hope God would bless this country. I would suggest to you, though, that we're long on God bless America and short on God be thanked. God be blessed for what he's done for us already. And in some sense, I think it's because we really don't want the relationship so much sometimes as a nation as just the blessings. This is a proclamation. of a politician long gone by, and I'll read you part of it, I won't read the whole thing, but you need to hear this. The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved for all nations. Order has been maintained. The laws have been respected and obeyed. No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, has nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as the day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent father who dwelleth in the heavens. October the 3rd, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln. It's been many decades now since we've had a president write in words like that. We're all about the blessings. I didn't read the whole thing, but he also talked about the sins of the nation, the perverseness, he called it, of our nation in his time. There's a big difference. And all I'm telling you is, it's very easy to take for granted the blessing of God and the people around you, and things that sometimes are so easy to take for granted because we don't necessarily see it, it just happens. The air conditioning in this church doesn't come on by magic, it turns out. Neither does the grass get cut by magic. These things have to be done, and people do them. And the kids are taken care of over here, and people are thinking about what we're going to sing. I'm just telling you, a lot of things go into it, and that's just here. And then you've got your kids are at school during the day, and there's a lot of work there going into that. It's easy, easy, easy to take things for granted. So we have to pause sometimes, especially after we've crossed the river, and relive it a couple of times, which is what Joshua 4 does, and be reminded. And sometimes come and relive it each year and be reminded of God's grace in our life. Well, we're going to have a short time of invitation. I hope something in here, God, is just kind of tapping on your heart. If you're interested in praying with me up here, I'd love to pray with you. Where you're at, you can talk to God. He has by His Spirit to enable you to be a more thankful person. It'll never come free of God's working in your life, and that needs to be our earnest prayer. So we'll have a song of invitation.