Friday Afternoon at Fort Pocahontas: Pastor Joe Morecraft’s Message on Landmarks and Memorials
In what Doug Phillips described as one of the greatest speeches ever delivered for a Jamestown celebration, Dr. Joe Morecraft presented the reasons to remember God’s providence and to preserve this memory for future generations with a memorial. He delivered this message shortly before the dedication of the Jamestown Children’s Memorial.
Here are my notes:
King David was a student of God’s history. He wrote Psalms about God’s victory in the life of His people. He wanted His people to honor God and advance His Kingdom. We are gathered here today to fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 145: One generation praising His works to another (vs. 4), making known his mighty acts and the glorious majesty of his kingdom (vs. 12).
Never has God’s undeserved mercy been on display more than at Jamestown. Deuteronomy 19:14 and 27:17, as well as Proverbs 22:28 and 23:10, say not to remove the ancient landmarks. God had subdivided the land of Israel for the various tribes; the boundary markers were sacred because the land was to remain in families. Hosea 5:10 applies these laws to a situation in Judah: The princes were like those who moved the boundary. The political leadership of Judah was breaking down the antithesis between right and wrong, Jehovah and Baal. Our culture is busy tearing down the ancient landmarks, ignoring and reinterpreting what God did in our history. The purpose of this revisionism is to convince children that history is on the side of humanists, not God’s people.
Today’s western culture has broken down the barriers, like Hosea’s long ago, between right and wrong, our true God and false gods. Our culture is murdering western civilization. The removal of ancient landmarks has been the goal of humanistic education and politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. The landmarks are seen as relativistic, so there is no fixed standard anymore. The texts in Scripture call us not only to resist the removal of the old landmarks, but also to work diligently to preserve them in our generation. We must preserve them as a foundation on which posterity can build. We are declaring for generations the greatness of God in the founding of Jamestown.
Monuments are crucial for the advancement of Christian civilization. When God tested Abraham’s faith in Genesis 22 and provided a ram in the place of Isaac, Abraham called the place Jehovah-Jireh, “God will provide.” God confirmed His promise to Abraham that he would be greatly blessed and given many descendants; his seed would possess the gate of its enemies. Abraham was commemorating the great deliverance and provision God gave for his son. This commemoration preserved the memory generations after him. God would continue to provide, and this chiefly pointed to the provision of salvation in Christ. The whole world would be blessed in the seed of Abraham. Abraham preached the Gospel of Christ to generations after his death when he used that name Jehovah-Jireh.
Jacob named the place where he encountered God Peniel, the face of God.
God parted the Jordan River as an unmistakable sign of His presence and faithfulness. The people had been unfaithful, but He was faithful; His mercy did not wear thin or grow old. Joshua 4 says that God told Joshua to erect four memorial stones at a place called Gilgal. What was the significance of the pile of stones and landmarks in general? 1) To transmit the memory of what was begun by our fathers and mothers to our covenant children, and 2) to tell the world’s nations that Jehovah is uniquely different from all other gods. He is the almighty, sovereign God who governs the world and guarantees his promises to his people; all the people of the world would know the providential hand of God and would fear Him. This promise looks beyond the land of Canaan and ethnic Hebrews to a time when men of all nations and backgrounds would fear God.
I Samuel 7 is another incident of raising a historical marker celebrating God’s goodness to His people. The marker did not contain the names of the heroic dead, but of the living God. It was called Ebenezer, the Stone of the Living God. The phrase “Thus far, God has helped us” (vs. 12) implies an unbroken succession of divine interventions and deliverances in the history of Israel, linking the present events to the past. When considering the immediate circumstances -- devastation at Shiloh -- how could Samuel say this? Because God was helping them; He was causing them to see the bitter fruit of their sin. He had called them to keep alive the worship of the one true God.
With all the apparent defeats and setbacks we have faced in the 20th and 21st centuries, we call still say, “Thus far has God helped us,” for our God does not change.
Samuel later called the people to national repentance. The sons of Israel removed the Baals and other false gods. Israel abandoned idolatry and the monuments to idolatry; she had become what God called her to be -- a faithful nation in covenant with her Lord.
The Westminster Larger Catechism tells us that we must remove all monuments to idolatry; this is covered and defined under the 2nd Commandment. Monuments dedicated to moral pluralism are to be removed. God alone is God and will not share His glory with another. He demands that we become wholly and only His. Our republic has from the beginning been dedicated to the God of the Bible. If we devote ourselves to another or refuse to give God His due, God will dedicate us to destruction.
Monuments to idolatry remind us (preserve the remembrance) of idolatry, and they move people to turn back to the idolatry of humanism and statism. All monuments commemorating idolatry must be discredited and removed; our God will not share His glory with another. Samuel called all the people to Mizpeh. Four important things happened: 1) The prayer of Samuel that God would return in grace; 2) the drawing and pouring out of water by the people, symbolizing repentance; 3) fasting by Israel; and 4) national confession of sin. After this, Israel defeated the Philistines in a third battle. They were fearful, but they acted out of faith in the Lord. To commemorate this massive defeat of their enemies, Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, naming it Ebenezer. The result was that the Philistines were subdued and did not come anymore into Israel.
May God grant us renewed repentance, victory over our enemies, and destruction of all false gods to the glory of the one true God, beside whom there is no other.
John Tyler was the 10th president from 1841-1844. He was elected to represent Virginia in the Congress of the Confederate States of America. He said in his speech in 1857 that the memory of Jamestown should be kept alive and recounted from generation to generation. If anyone is to be held in remembrance, it is those who settled this country. A small body of men planted here the seed of a mighty empire; it sprung up, had been sickly, but has now grown up so that many are sheltered under it. Tyler mentioned that the monuments could be in ruins eventually, but they would become all the more imposing and significant in spite of the decay and lapse over centuries.
We have come here to commemorate and celebrate the almighty, undeserved, and sovereign grace of the triune God manifested in the settling of Jamestown. This resulted, not from the desert of the sinful men who arrived, but from the sheer grace of God to undeserving sinners. When you read about the settlement and its history, all you will be able to say over and over again is praise God for His mercy, goodness, power, wisdom, and amazing grace.
We praise God that Virginia and New England were settled by English Puritans, not by French and Spanish who were opposed to the Christian faith of our fathers. We praise God for the vision He gave to Richard Hakluyt, which led to establishing the Virginia Company; he said in 1584 that they would plant there and enlarge the glory of the Gospel, etc. We praise God for the Charter and for the Virginia Company’s statement about preaching and baptism in the Gospel. We praise God for Captain John Smith, without whom Jamestown would have died from its birth; he protected them from the Powhatans, obtained food from them, and spent months exploring and mapping the region. In 1612, it was said that justice was his first good; he hated sloth and allowed no more for himself than for his soldiers. He would rather do without than borrow, starve than not pay; he loved actions more than words. His writings are peppered with statements that remind of us Stonewall Jackson’s confidence in God’s sovereignty. We praise God for Pocahontas and John Rolfe. We praise God for the preachers, Hunt (Anglican) and Whitaker (Presbyterian) and others who used the Geneva Bible. We praise God for rescuing Jamestown through De La Ware. We praise God for Thomas Dale, Governor from 1610-1611, and his efforts to establish Jamestown on Puritan principles. We praise God for Edwin Sandys who wished to ground the settlement on the Great Commission, established and perpetuated with families. We thank God for many other providences manifested at Jamestown.
Dabney noted that many lies had been told about the South, but he insisted on persevering in the truth. This should be our attitude about Jamestown in preserving the remembrance of God’s mighty providence. May our battle cry be, “Sic Semper Tyrannis.”
Susanna, Dr. Morecraft, and yours truly.
posted by C.S. Hayden @ 9:09 PM
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