March 30

The older I get, the more often I have what are euphemistically called “senior moments”. Those are the times when I just can’t remember someone’s name, even though I know them very well. (Please forgive me, if I have done this to you.) Or I forget an appointment, like I did a week ago with a couple I was doing pre-marital counseling for. Or I can’t come up with the word I want in the middle of a sentence. As I say, these experiences are called “senior moments”, but they are really an indication that I am losing my mind.

I’m having more and more of these moments, which may be why Psalm 106[1] jumped out at me a few weeks ago, as I was reading it before church one Sunday. As I was reading through the psalm, I suddenly realized that I was seeing the words “remember” and “forgot” a lot. So this past week, I had a chance to go back and study the psalm some more, and discovered that it has quite a bit to say about the importance of remembering.

After an introductory stanza, the psalmist begins his theme, that the Israelites have been unfaithful to God, largely because they forgot His great works on their behalf.

Ps 106:7, “When our fathers were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles; they did not remember your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea.” What were the many kindnesses they might have remembered at that point? Most of the plagues fell only on the Egyptians and spared the Israelites. That was especially true when the angel of death killed all the first born sons in the land, except for the Israelites. Then, as they were leaving Egypt, God told them to ask their neighbors for jewelry, and the Egyptians gave it to them willingly and generously (Ex 11:2,3).

So there they were, suddenly free from their slavery after 400 years, thanks to the kindness and power of God! But when their backs were up against the Red Sea, and the Egyptian army was bearing down on them, they forgot all that, and panicked. Exodus 14:11, “They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?’”

Then God in His mercy, and in order to demonstrate His mighty power, opened a way for them right through the middle of the sea, and they crossed it on dry ground; but God swallowed up the Egyptian army.

OK, so now, the Israelites have seen God’s many kindnesses getting them out of Egypt; and they have seen a dramatic demonstration of His power on their behalf in opening up the Sea for them to walk through; and they saw God deliver them from the Egyptian army. But…

B. Complaints about God’s provision Psalm 106:13-15; cf. Exodus 15:22-25; 16; 17:1-7; Numbers 11

Ps 106:13, “But they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait for his counsel. [14] In the desert they gave in to their craving; in the wasteland they put God to the test. [15] So he gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them.”

They grumbled about food and water. At one point they had been traveling without water for three days, and then when they found water, it was bitter and they couldn’t drink it. So they turned against Moses and demanded, “What are we going to drink?” God told Moses to put a tree branch in the water, and that made it pure (Exodus 15:22-25).

Then they complained that they had no food, so God sent them manna; but they wouldn’t follow His counsel - His directions to only pick up as much as they needed for one day.

Then they weren’t satisfied with the manna; they complained that they missed the food they had had in Egypt. So God gave them quail to eat—but because of their demanding, ungrateful attitude, He struck them with a severe plague (Num 11).

Later on during their time in the wilderness, some of them became jealous of the special positions that Moses and Aaron had.

Ps 106:16, “In the camp they grew envious of Moses and of Aaron, who was consecrated to the Lord.”

Three men, along with 250 others who were their followers, came to Moses and Aaron and said, Numbers 16:3, "You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord's assembly?" If only they could have seen Moses, when the Lord appeared to him in the burning bush and called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt—he was backpedaling so fast, he nearly fell over himself. He tried five separate ways to get out of the assignment. If ever there was a reluctant leader, it was Moses. So it was particularly painful to him to have these people come and charge him with “setting himself above” everyone else.

But that’s what happens when we get our eyes off the Lord. In our complaining, negative, critical mindset, we feel powerless, helpless, out of control. Then it is easy to point the finger at those who are in control (on the human level) and conclude that they are power-hungry. This is really a reflection of our own need to control the situation we are in. We want to control it, and can’t, so we blame the leaders for wanting to control it, whether that is their motivation or not. If you ever find yourself feeling those feelings, or thinking those thoughts about a human leader, it might be good to check to see if you have forgotten the great things of God in the past, and have therefore lost confidence that He is still in control of your situation.

Notice that all of these complaints from the people, though they had different content, were all complaints about the leaders God had put over them. When we forget the great things God has done for us, it often leads to a negative, critical, complaining spirit, often directed toward the leaders God has given us.[2]

Ps 106:24, “Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe his promise.” Because they forgot what He had done to take them out of Egypt, they concluded that He was unable to take them into Canaan. So they basically said, No thanks, to God’s promised gift of the land. They didn’t believe He could do it, so they rejected it.

They were afraid; anxiety and worry and fear are the symptoms—the indications—that we lack faith regarding the future. One day, Jesus and His disciples were traveling by boat across the Sea of Galilee, and He said to them, Look out for the yeast of the Pharisees. They didn’t know what He meant, but they somehow came to the conclusion that He was talking about the fact that they only had one loaf of bread with them in the boat, and maybe He was telling them this was a problem. Jesus replied, Matthew 16:8-11, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? [9] Do you still not understand? Don't you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? [10] Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? [11] How is it you don't understand that I was not talking to you about bread?" If Jesus could feed 5,000 people in one setting, and 4,000 in another, both times from just a very small amount of food, they really did not need to worry about the fact that they didn’t have enough bread along! They needed to remember what He had done—it had only been a short time before, but they had forgotten it already. Failure to remember His great goodness to us in the past leads to anxiety for the future. But if we will remind ourselves frequently of what He has done, that will help build our confidence, even when the way looks dark ahead.

Ps 106:25, “They grumbled in their tents.” It’s a lack of contentment, and it is epidemic in our culture. Billions of dollars are spent every year by the marketing people, all designed to create a feeling of being discontented with what we have, so that we will buy the product being offered. Surely you’re not still watching regular DVDs are you? You need a High Definition TV and DVD player.

But the discontentment of our age is not limited to material things. We’re not content with our looks; we’re not content with our friends; we’re not content with our job; we’re not content with our spouse; we’re just not content. Things aren’t perfect, and we are grumbling in our tents, just like the ancient Israelites.

1 Tim. 6:6, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” The key to being content in any and every situation is to trust God. And the key to trusting God is remembering His great deeds in the past. Look back through the Scriptures; examine your own life. What has God done for His people, and for you, personally? That will give you plenty of reason to trust Him for the present, and to be content with your life.

And, of course, if we are so unhappy with our leaders and the circumstances of our lives, the chances are we will try to change those things ourselves, which often leads us into disobedience.

If you are not happy with the way things are going, and you don’t remember the great things God has done for you in the past, then you are going to assume that He is not working on your behalf in the present, so you’ll just take things into your own hands. That’s what the Israelites did. Ps 106:25, “They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Lord…[34] They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord had commanded them, [35] but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs.”

· “God’s not giving me the maximum pleasure my culture tells me is my right, so I’m going to indulge myself in (check one): q pornography; q overeating; q media consumption like TV, movies, internet, etc.; q clothes shopping binge; q alcohol; q sex; q whatever.”

· “I don’t see my spouse changing the way I want them to, so I’m going to nag / badger / abuse / yell / threaten them until they do.”

These, and so many other poor responses, are the disobedient results of our not remembering all the ways God has taken care of us in the past. So we think He’s not taking care of us now, and we have to do something about it ourselves.

Ps 106:19, “At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. [20] They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. [21] They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt …[28] They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods; …[36] They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. [37] They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.”

We are designed with a spiritual core. There is something about us that inevitably seeks something to worship, a higher power, something or someone who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. If we forget that this someone is God, then we will predictably substitute something else in His place. The people of Israel forgot—so quickly!—that it was Yahweh who had brought them out of Egypt, and they soon began to attribute their deliverance to a golden calf, and it wasn’t long after that that they adopted the practices of the Canaanites and sacrificed their children to idols.

What does this idolatry look like for us? Certainly not child sacrifice or golden calves. I think most of the time, we substitute our own intelligence, our skills and expertise, our cleverness, our hard work—we substitute ourselves for God. We forget what God has done for us in the past, and we begin to believe the lie that we are responsible for the good things that have come our way. That’s idolatry as surely as it was in ancient Israel.

Because God loves us, and wants us to remember Him and trust Him, when we fall into disobedience and idolatry, He disciplines and punishes us.

Ps 106:40, “Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. [41] He handed them over to the nations, and their foes ruled over them. [42] Their enemies oppressed them and subjected them to their power.” The Israelites were harassed by the Philistines for decades during the time of the judges; later, they were oppressed and conquered by foreign powers like the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And the Psalmist traces all of that back to the fact that they forgot God. They forgot the great things He had done for them in the past. This is not trivial, folks. There are serious consequences when we forget. It is imperative that we remember.

To begin with, we should remember the things God has done for His people all through history, as recorded in the Bible. What if you just kept a running record as you read your Bible each day, of things God did for His people? You can be studying whatever else you want, but as you go, keep this list. Almost every page of Scripture is a record of God’s mighty deeds on behalf of those He loves. And then refer to it often, to remind yourself that God is not a distant, impersonal God; He is intimately involved in the lives of His people—both individually, and as the nation of Israel, and now as the Church.

Last Sunday we celebrated the most astonishing work of God in all of history—the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. How many of us lived this past week in conscious awareness of that earth-shaking event? How many of us simply forgot it? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. The resurrection of Jesus should make a difference in how we live almost every moment. It should certainly bring a lift to our hearts, and a smile to our lips, even when we are engaged in something else. And it can—if we remember.

What has God done for us since we were saved? In Ephesians 2, Paul reminds his readers that formerly as Gentiles, they were, “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, …without hope and without God in the world.” But now, he says, now that you have come to Christ, you are united with all of God’s people, you have access to God the Father, you are reconciled to God through the cross, etc.

When I became a Christian in my junior year of high school, I had been up to that point a straight-C student; I had hardly any friends, and I had missed a lot of school every year because I was sick so much. Several years later, as I was thinking back over my life and how it had changed after I met Christ, I realized that from that point on, my grades improved to A’s and B’s; I began running with the sharpest kids in the school; and I only missed a couple of days a year with sickness. I thought, Wow! That’s amazing! Since then, I can see that God has directed my life so clearly in every major life decision, He gave me the most wonderful wife in the world, He’s blessed me with two great children who are walking with Christ and are married to godly people. I made a long list this past week of all the things God has done in my life, and it was really encouraging—looking back over all that really helped me get over some anxiety that I was feeling about the future.

I want to challenge you to do the same. Maybe you are feeling a bit discouraged, or discontented; maybe you are feeling negative about your life, or your parents, or your teachers, or your boss or your spouse. Maybe your health is failing, or your finances are failing. You need to take the time to remember, and to write down everything you can think of that God has done for you. Go all the way back to your first memories of walking with Him, and make a record of that.

And by the way, parents and grandparents, it would be a great thing for you to share that list with your children and grandchildren. They need to hear of the great works of God in your life. Put it in some permanent form, so they can refer to it when they are feeling under the pile of life.

Sometimes, when bad things come our way, they can make us so disappointed with God that we are tempted to reject Him, to turn away from Him. We come to the conclusion that He is not in control of our lives; we begin to doubt His love or His power, and we drift from Him.

So Hebrews warns us, 2:1-3, “We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. [2] For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, [3] how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” When times are bad, we can’t afford to forget God. Then is when we have to pay more careful attention to who He is and what He has done for us. Don’t let that disappointment with God sever your mooring line from Him. If you do, you’ll drift. That’s the time to remember all that God has done for us in the past.

When would you say you have grown the most spiritually—when things were going well, or when you were in some desperate need? When would you say you have been most conscious of God—in the good times, or the hard times? I think most of us would say, the hard times were the best times in terms of our awareness of God, our spiritual growth, etc.[3]

So it is all the more important to remember God in the good times. Because when we’re doing well, when we are prospering, we don’t need God as much. It is all too easy to forget who is responsible for things going well, and to assume it’s due to our hard work, our cleverness, our skill, our good decisions, etc.

In fact, God warned His people about that very thing, before they went in to conquer Canaan. Deut. 8:11-14, “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. [12] Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, [13] and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, [14] then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. …17-18 You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ [18] But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…”

So whether things are good, or things are bad, remember God and all that He has done.

When Jesus transformed the Passover meal into the Lord’s Supper, He said, 1 Cor 11:23, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." …[25]… "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

It is so important for us to remember the death of Christ in communion, because it is a safeguard against pride. It reminds us of our sin and rebellious nature, and of how completely dependent we are on God for our salvation. And it is another opportunity to praise and thank Him again, so we do not become ungrateful. The Israelites forgot what great things God had done in their deliverance from Egypt, and it was the ruin of them. We must not forget. Jesus specifically commands us to remember. So we need the periodic reminder that we were lost, and Jesus found us; we were slaves to sin, and Jesus freed us; we were doomed, and Jesus saved us. We celebrate communion the first Sunday of every even numbered month—make a special effort to be here for that time of remembrance.

Psalm 103:2, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.“ And then the psalmist goes on and lists some of the benefits of knowing God that come immediately to his mind: Psalm 103:3-5, “who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, [4] who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, [5] who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.”

Did you know that you are not limited to Sunday morning worship as the only time when you can praise and sing and thank God for His goodness? Every time you get alone with God, you should rehearse for yourself some of the good things God has done for you and for His people. There’s an old, kind of cheesy, song that expresses a powerful truth: If you know this, sing it with me:

It just might surprise you, if you make a list, how many things God has done for you, and that can be just the thing to turn your head and heart around.

And then, finally, because God has not stopped doing good things for us, we can be on the lookout for what He is still doing every day. At the dinner table, or when you go to bed, is a great time to reflect on the day, and remember—where did we see God show up today? Did you have any God sightings today? I saw Him in the wonderful conversation I had with a friend. I saw Him in the first crocus of the season. I saw Him when He protected me from an accident. What did you see?

Let’s practice this right now: Take a moment, turn to a few people right around you, and share with them some of the ways you have seen God at work in the past week. Let’s have lots of reports of God-sightings.

[1] Compare and contrast Ps 106, the unfaithfulness of Israel due to their forgetfulness, with Ps 105, which is all about the faithfulness of God during the time of the Exodus, and note especially Psalm 105:42, “For he remembered his holy promise given to his servant Abraham.”

[2] cf. Heb 13:17 and 1 Thess 5:12,13 for how we are to act and feel toward them.

[3] The psalmist said it this way, Psalm 42:6, “My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you…”