I Chronicles 16:12, Nehemiah 4:14, Psalm 89:47a-48, Acts 20:35, I Peter 1:18-21
No video recording was made because this was an outdoor service
I Peter 1:18-21
All right, so we’re going to think about five reminders on this Memorial Day, and there are certain events that happen in our lives, at least in my life, that they’re so dramatic or traumatic that you remember where you were when that event happened. I don’t know if you can recall some of those things in your life. Let me just mention a couple of them.
November 22nd, 1963. Anybody know what happened on that date? What was that? Yeah, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. I remember where I was when that happened.
I was in elementary school. I remember my dad picking me up from school and telling me the news that the President of the United States had been shot. Of course, later on he died.
I remember where I was when that happened. How about this one? January 28th, 1986. Anybody remember that? I heard somebody say something.
The Challenger explosion. It was January 28th, 1986. I remember I was in my church office, and I remember one of our church members, Joyce Hall, called me up and said, hey, have you heard what happened to the Challenger shuttle? Seven people died, including the first teacher in space, Krista McAuliffe, in that tragic accident.
Of course, this one, September 11th, 2001. It was a Tuesday morning, wasn’t it? We all remember where we were, if you were alive during that time, when that happened. And so, we remember these things.
Now, in the Bible, memorials are all through Scripture, because God knows our tendency to forget, and so he wants us to remember some things. Crossing near the Jordan River into the Promised Land, and God made that way happen, but he said, hey, take 12 stones out of the middle of the Jordan River and set them up as a memorial so you can remember what God has done on this day. Think of the Passover, the Passover that the Jews still celebrate today, what, as the deliverance from Egypt.
It’s their 4th of July. After 400 years of Egyptian bondage, God made a way for the Israelites to be released. Well, this morning I want to think about five reminders from Scripture, and we’ll try to go through them very quickly here, and if you have your bulletin, they should be on the insert here.
i. Never forget… what God has done
So, let’s think about five things that God wants us to remember on this Memorial Day weekend, and here’s the first one. Never forget what God has done. Never forget what God has done.
Let me read to you 1 Chronicles chapter 16, and the context of this is the Ark of the Covenant being brought back to Jerusalem. It had been captured by the Philistines, the Israelites recaptured the Ark of the Covenant, and then for a long time it was in a house, and then they transported it back to Jerusalem, and finally the Ark of the Covenant is back where it needs to be. It symbolizes the presence of the God in Jerusalem, and now they’re celebrating what God has done.
And here’s what, how they’re praising God. David, King David appointed Asaph and his associates to give praise to God in this manner. Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name, make known among nations what he has done, sing to him, sing praise to him, tell of all of his wonderful acts, glory in his holy name, let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice, look to the Lord in his strength, seek his face always, here it is, remember the wonders he has done, his miracles and the judgments he pronounced.
And so, the Scripture tells us never forget what God has done in the past. And if we’re here this morning, if God has done nothing else than rescued you and saved you through his Son Jesus, through his Son paying the sin debt on the cross for our sins, we can be and should be grateful to him. And so never ever forget what God has done.
Psalm 77 verses 11 through 13, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds.
Your ways, God, are holy. What God is as great as our God. So, the first thing we want to remember is what God has done, not only in our lives, but as you read through Scripture and the Old Testament, remember his miracles and the faithfulness of God.
ii. Never forget… who God is
We need to never ever forget what God has done. There’s a second thing we need to remember, and the Bible encourages us to remember, and it’s not only what God has done, but it’s to remember who God is, to remember the character of God. And for that, we’re going to look at a verse from Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 14.
There’s Nehemiah. It’s always embarrassing when the pastor can’t find the passage, but finally found it. Nehemiah 4:14. Here’s the context.
Remember, they’re back in Jerusalem. They’re going to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and Nehemiah was the leader in that, and they’re facing some opposition. That’s a principle in Scripture that whenever you get serious about serving God or doing something for God, guess what you should expect? Opposition.
And so, they’re trying to do something for God. They’re going to rebuild these walls, and walls were so important in those days because that was their protection against the enemy. But they had some opposition.
They had some fellows that had some unusual names, Sanballat and Tobiah, and they’re giving them all sorts of problems, and they’re ridiculing them, and they’re opposing their work. And so, Nehemiah gathers the Jews that are working on rebuilding the walls. By the way, they finished it in 52 days.
Remarkable task that they finished in 52 days. And he’s trying to encourage them because they’re being opposed. So, here’s Nehemiah 4:14. After I looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, don’t be afraid of them.
Remember the Lord. Here’s who God is. He is great and awesome.
And fight for your families, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and their homes. And so, Nehemiah, when they’re facing opposition, when they’re getting discouraged, he says, don’t look at your circumstances. I want you to remember who God is.
And that’s a good reminder for when we might be discouraged, or perhaps when we’re facing difficulties in opposition, to remember who God is. A.W. Pink wrote a book entitled The Attributes of God, and every chapter takes a different character trait of who God is. And I just went through the table of contents just to remind us to remember who God is.
God is sovereign. That means nothing happens in your life that he doesn’t permissively allow. The old saying is, nothing can happen to me today, nothing good, nothing bad, without passing through the Father’s hand.
Remember all those horrible things that happened to Job? The curtain gets drawn back in Job chapter 1, and that only happened because God allowed it to. And so, God is sovereign. He’s in control, and when our life seems to be out of control, we need to remember God knows.
And God’s in control, and we can trust Him. God’s immutable. He doesn’t change.
That’s Malachi 3, verse 16. I am the Lord God, I change not. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.
We sang about this one, the holiness of God. God is holy. Remember Moses, he’s there in the burning bush, and it’s God in that bush.
And the instruction to Moses is, take off your shoes because you’re standing on holy ground. And so, God is holy. God is faithful.
God is good. God is patient and long-suffering. God is full of grace.
He’s full of mercy. God is a God of love. And so don’t forget what God has done, and don’t forget the character of God, who God is.
iii. Never forget… how fleeting life is
Here’s a third reminder that we need on this Memorial Day weekend to not forget, and it’s from Psalm 89, verses 47 and 48. Never forget how fleeting life is, how quickly life passes. Never forget how fleeting life is.
This is Psalm 89, verse 47. The psalmist writes, remember how fleeting my life is. Verse 48, who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave? And the answer to that is no one.
Remember how fleeting life is. It was a week ago, Saturday, and the very patterned life that I live, and I do the same routine every morning. And one of the things I do is I try to watch at least the first 10 minutes of the Today Show news and just catch up on the news.
But sometimes on Saturday, I don’t get to watch the news. And this particular Saturday, I didn’t. Remember, it was right after we had all those tornadoes, I think on Thursday.
This was like 10 days ago. But then there was also tornadoes south of us the next day, horrific tornadoes, Pulaski County, Kentucky, the next county over. And some of you remember Doug and Stephanie Volz came here for a while, and they’re relocated down to Kentucky.
And I stay in touch with Doug and Stephanie pretty regularly. And so, Saturday morning, I look at my phone, and I get a text from Doug pretty early. And he says, just want to let you know we’re okay.
Like, oh, man, you must have had some bad tornadoes in Kentucky and turn on the news. And Doug says, the text said, we have nine people in our county that have died. And that count went up to like 20 in their county that died.
So, I called Doug and asked him, you know, how’d you guys survive? Because they’re kind of living on a camper on some property. And they went over to their neighbors and huddled down in their neighbor’s house, and thankfully they were okay. But many people didn’t survive.
Life is fleeting. Life goes by so quickly. And so, Psalm 90, the next Psalm over, Psalm 90 verse 5, Moses writes, you sweep people away in the sleep of death.
They are like the new grass of the morning. Verse 10, our days may come to 70 years or 80 if our strength endures. The Psalmist is talking about how quickly life passes.
Now that particular verse has taken on new meaning for me. Our days may come to 70 years or 80 because Diane and I were both born in 1955. So, you could do the math.
So, in August and November, it was going to be a big birthday. And it’s like, how did that happen? How did life pass so quickly? And all my friends from high school and college that were kind of the same age on social media, and I was always the youngest one in my high school class at least, so I’m the youngest one. They’re all turning 70 and I’m reading on Facebook and social media like, I can’t believe I’m 70 years old.
And it goes by so very, very quickly. And so, here’s the application of Psalm 90 verse 12, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Someone paraphrased that to say, help us to count our days so we can make our days count.
And that’s a good encouragement for all of us because life goes by so very, very quickly. So, here’s what Solomon writes in the book of Ecclesiastes. And if somebody can turn the wind down, I would appreciate it.
We’re going to wrap this up soon. Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. So, Solomon writes, remember God while you’re young.
And then the rest of the chapter, and I’m not going to read it, but it’s a picture of aging. Read Ecclesiastes 12, the next few verses, just I’ll read a little bit of it here. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark.
Let’s talk about our vision getting worse. Where the keepers of the house tremble, you begin to shake, the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few. You get to lose your teeth.
And he paints this picture of, remember God now while you are young and you can serve him. And so again, I came across on social media, this website, octopusminds.com. I should have never looked at it, but the title caught my attention. Permanent body changes after you turn 70.
Like, well, I’m going to read that one. Your hearing fades into the background. Your vision takes a back seat.
The elasticity of your skin wavers. Your bone strength takes a hit. Your muscle mass shrinks away.
Your hair becomes your silvery crown, if you can keep it. Your digestive system puts on the brakes. Your heart works overtime, and I’ll stop right there.
Doesn’t sound very encouraging, does it? And what’s this God tell us? Hey, remember how fleeting life is. Remember God while you’re young. I’ve shared this with a couple of people.
My dad was the oldest of four boys. He has one younger brother left. Three boys were all born, bang, bang, bang.
And then there was a long pause and youngest boy, my uncle Jerry, was born like 13 years after his brother was born. So, all three of those brothers, my dad included three years ago, died within a year of each other. Uncle Jerry lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
I think he’s 78, 79. His wife, my Aunt Nedra, was facing some pretty serious heart surgery. I look back at my text.
I texted her on January 18th and said, hey, we’re going to be praying for your surgery. And I really don’t know the details of what that surgery entailed, other than I knew they were doing some repairs and there were some complications. And my Aunt Nedra, who stands about this tall and maybe weighed 95 pounds, never was able to get off the ventilator.
She was on that ventilator for a week or 10 days, and then they had to do the tracheotomy. Then they did the external ventilator. She spent 120 days fighting in the hospital, trying to get off that ventilator.
I got the text on Friday morning from my cousin, and they said, pray for us today because we’re taking her off the ventilator. They did that at one o’clock and at 11 o’clock Friday night, she went into the presence of the Lord. Her 54th anniversary was the day before, and I think maybe they waited until that occasion.
I don’t know. But life goes by quickly. We need to remember God while we’re young.
iv. never forget… that it is more blessed to give than to receive
All right, number four here, and I need to check our time here. I said we’d be done in an hour. We will be.
Good. And never forget, and we mentioned this last week, that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and that’s the words of Jesus that the Apostle Paul quotes in Acts chapter 20, verse 35. The context of that is he’s having a reunion with the Ephesian leaders of the Ephesian church, and they meet somewhere, and they’re saying their farewells.
They’re saying their goodbye. Paul says, I know I’m never going to see these folks again, and so he gives them some instructions to help them in the future, and one of the things that he does is he quotes from the words of Jesus, it is more blessed to give than to receive. And it’s not just the gift of our treasure or finances, but it’s the gift of our time and our talent and our treasure.
I hope you’ve discovered that there’s great joy in giving, and Jesus says when you give, there’s like a boomerang effect. Guess who gets blessed the most? Years ago, I used to turn people down when they offered to help or offered to do something for me, and finally I realized that God said to me, hey, you know how good you feel when you can help somebody? Let somebody help you. Let them get the blessing of giving, and so we always need to remember that there is great, great blessing in giving.
v. Never forget… the price that was paid for our salvation
Never forget that it is more blessed to give than to receive. All right, we’ve reached number five, and here’s the fifth one. Never forget the price that was paid for our redemption, for our salvation.
Never forget the price that was paid for our redemption. That’s 1 Peter chapter 1. Let me read beginning in verse 18. For you know it was not with perishable things like silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. So, Peter’s writing to these persecuted believers is reminding them of the cost of our salvation, and what did it cost? It cost God his most precious son, and it wasn’t bought with gold or silver, but Jesus paid the ultimate price, death on the cross, and that was so important for us to remember that God instituted an ordinance.
It’s called the Lord’s Table Communion, and there in the upper room just a few days before he went to the cross, he gave new meaning to the Passover meal. He says, this is my body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. This cup represents my blood that’s going to be shed for you.
I want you to do this in remembrance of me, and so in our tradition and schedules every other month, we observe the Lord’s Table, and God told us to do this. He doesn’t tell us how often to do it. He just says, hey, I want you to never ever forget the ultimate price that was paid.
I remember years ago, my dad was pastoring in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Westwood Baptist Church, and I haven’t told this story in a long time, but my younger brother walked into a store that was being robbed, and he was he was shot, and shot three times, and the one shot that hit him in the arm, I mean if it would have been over a couple inches, he would not be around today. And I remember my dad talking about the feeling of coming this close to losing a son, and saying, I wonder, I think maybe now I understand a little bit what God the Father must have felt like when he sacrificed his son, when he had to turn his back on him actually, because the sin of the world was on him, and Jesus cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so, we need to never forget the price that was paid for our salvation. Micah chapter 7 verse 19 says, you will again have compassion on us, you will tread our sins underfoot, and hurl our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
So that’s not a literal statement, that’s a picturesque, that God has forgiven us, he’ll remember our sins no more, doesn’t mean that he forgets them, he’s omniscient, it means he won’t hold them against us anymore, and he says they’re buried in the depths of the sea. I did a little research on that, the deepest section of the ocean on the planet is called the Mariana Trench, located in the western Pacific Ocean, it’s the deepest oceanic trench on earth, measures 1,500 miles long in length, 43 miles wide, the maximum depth at its deepest part is 6.5 miles deep, 36,000 feet deep, the average depth of the world’s oceans is about 12,000 feet, the Mariana Trench is 36,000 feet deep, six miles deep in the ocean. And God says, I’m going to hurl your sins into the ocean, and then we need to put a sign over there that says no fishing, those are gone, they are paid for, they are forgiven, God will remember them no more.
And so, praise God for that. There’s a little chorus, and we’re going to sing it as we close here in just a second. I used to sing it as a kid growing up, the words are going to be in your bulletin, we’re going to try to do it acapella, but here’s the words, gone, gone, gone, gone, yes my sins are gone, now my soul is free and in my heart’s a song, buried in the deepest sea, yes that’s good enough for me, I shall live eternally, praise God, my sins are gone.
And so, if there’s one thing that I want you to remember, those five things that we talked about this morning, is to remember the price that was paid so that we could have the gift of eternal life. If you follow Dave Ramsey, the financial guru, and when he leads people out of financial debt, he has them on his radio show yell, I’m debt free. And when you come to know Jesus as your savior, you can stand up and shout, I’m debt free, because we’re forgiven.