We are actually precisely three months into our give attention to the phrase keep in mind in Scripture, and with 9 months remaining, we flip to mankind. Sure, there we now have seen that God remembers as properly. He remembers his phrase, his actions, and his individuals. He’s devoted to recollect.
We, alternatively, should not.
Immediately, we are going to start a number of weeks of simply that—our tendency to neglect. We neglect God, we neglect what he’s performed for us, and we neglect his Phrase. We’re a forgetful individuals, due to our sinful nature. As we glance this week and subsequent at Israel’s forgetfulness, we now have classes to be taught quite than fingers to level.
It’s straightforward to neglect what we have no idea.
Two passages within the e-book of Judges will assist to set the stage of this portion in our Friday Focus. First, it’s useful to grasp what was taking place within the time of the judges. The individuals have been within the land and Joshua had died. Chapter two is a good abstract of all the e-book.
That complete era was additionally gathered to their ancestors. After them one other era rose up who didn’t know the Lord or the works he had performed for Israel. The Israelites did what was evil within the Lord’s sight. They worshiped the Baals and deserted the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had introduced them out of Egypt. (Judges 2:10-12 CSB)
Why did they not know the Lord? How might they be taught if their dad and mom and elders didn’t move right down to them the teachings of the Lord and the Torah? Their forgetfulness would result in sin, and their sin of idol worship would result in the prophesied oppression by different peoples.
The Israelites did what was evil within the Lord’s sight; they forgot the Lord their God and worshiped the Baals and the Asherahs. The Lord’s anger burned in opposition to Israel, and he bought them to King Cushan-rishathaim of Aram-naharaim, and the Israelites served him eight years. (Judges 3:7-8, emphasis added)
Time and again, the individuals would neglect, endure the results, cry out to the Lord, be saved by a righteous choose, after which neglect once more. After the demise of 1 such choose, Gideon, we see their tendencies stand up.
When Gideon died, the Israelites turned and prostituted themselves by worshiping the Baals and made Baal-berith their god. The Israelites didn’t keep in mind the Lord their God who had rescued them from the hand of the enemies round them. They didn’t present kindness to the home of Jerubbaal (that’s, Gideon) for all the great he had performed for Israel. (Judges 8:33-35, emphasis added)
Thus the e-book ends with this apparent assertion:
In these days there was no king in Israel; everybody did no matter appeared proper to him. (Judges 21:25)
Once we neglect God, we do what we expect finest, which doesn’t normally end up properly.
Keep in mind now earlier than it’s too late.
The following assortment of verses will all come from the Psalms. Forgetting the Lord on this life is disastrous, as there isn’t any second probability.
Flip, Lord! Rescue me; save me due to your devoted love. For there isn’t any remembrance of you in demise; who can thanks in Sheol? (Psalm 6:4-5)
Asaph wrote a psalm of God’s judgment. He’s righteous in all he does and has each proper to serve a drastic sentence upon those that neglect.
“Perceive this, you who neglect God, or I’ll tear you aside, and there might be nobody to rescue you. Whoever presents a thanksgiving sacrifice honors me, and whoever orders his conduct, I’ll present him the salvation of God.” (Psalm 50:22-23, emphasis added)
Sure, he is aware of our weak point, our tendency to neglect, however that doesn’t make it proper. How might Israel so simply neglect all of the Lord had performed? How can we? Asaph once more, shares it so powerfully:
But he was compassionate; he atoned for his or her iniquity and didn’t destroy them. He typically turned his anger apart and didn’t unleash all his wrath. He remembered that they have been solely flesh, a wind that passes and doesn’t return. How typically they rebelled in opposition to him within the wilderness and grieved him within the desert. They continuously examined God and provoked the Holy One in every of Israel. They didn’t keep in mind his energy proven on the day he redeemed them from the foe, when he carried out his miraculous indicators in Egypt and his wonders within the territory of Zoan. (Psalm 78:38-43, emphasis added)
He might have simply destroyed Israel for his or her sin:
At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped the forged steel picture. They exchanged their glory for the picture of a grass-eating ox. They forgot God their Savior, who did nice issues in Egypt, wondrous works within the land of Ham, awe-inspiring acts on the Pink Sea. So he mentioned he would have destroyed them—if Moses his chosen one had not stood earlier than him within the breach to show his wrath away from destroying them. (Psalm 106:19-23, emphasis added)
What highly effective issues, what wonders has the Lord performed in your life? How has he proven his protecting hand on you? How has he led you thru storms and wildernesses? Have you ever forgotten him just like the Israelites did?
The value of forgetting.
The forgetfulness of God’s individuals led them into exile. In the event that they needed to comply with the gods of the peoples residing close to them, now they’d get the prospect to know what that regarded like on a grand scale, as they entered into the pagan land of Babylon. Psalm 137 is their track of lament. Too little—too late. Now they’d declare they might always remember, not their God, however their particular metropolis—Jerusalem. It’s a brief psalm, however I feel it’s necessary to incorporate all of it right here.
By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and wept after we remembered Zion. There we hung up our lyres on the poplar timber, for our captors there requested us for songs, and our tormentors, for rejoicing: “Sing us one of many songs of Zion.”
How can we sing the Lord’s track on overseas soil? If I neglect you, Jerusalem, could my proper hand neglect its talent. Could my tongue follow the roof of my mouth if I don’t keep in mind you, if I don’t exalt Jerusalem as my best pleasure!
Keep in mind, Lord, what the Edomites mentioned that day at Jerusalem: “Destroy it! Destroy it right down to its foundations!” Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, completely happy is the one who pays you again what you may have performed to us. Pleased is he who takes your little ones and dashes them in opposition to the rocks. (Psalm 137)
In gentle of our subject, I discover this psalm very unhappy. If solely God’s individuals had realized that the rationale they have been in exile was as a result of they’d forgotten him. We’re going to see what the prophets needed to say about this in our subsequent submit, however for in the present day, take into consideration what you’re mourning, what you swear to always remember. Is it a metropolis? An individual? A time when issues have been good?
Simply because the Israelites missed the purpose, watch out to not miss mine right here. It’s God alone who ought to by no means be forgotten. Keep in mind him, return to him, worship him alone, earlier than it’s too late.
Grace and Peace
If you happen to missed the final Friday Focus submit, click on HERE, or begin from the Starting.
