The Great Escape - Week 3

When I started playing tennis a long time ago, I played with a group of men each of whom was over 80 years old. They wouldn't let me call them "Senior Citizens". If I even hinted that they were aging, they would proceed to whip the socks off me in tennis.y

But, among themselves, they told some of the best "getting older" jokes I've ever heard and most of them had to do with losing memory. I would always laugh so hard and I was sure I would never forget any of them. But, as I tried to think of them this week, I couldn't remember even one. And as I went out into the church office to ask whether anyone knew any memory jokes, everyone said they had heard some great ones. But when it came down to telling me one, no one could remember a single joke.

That's how we think of "remembering" in our society. It's a mental exercise that grows weaker as we grow older. And that understanding of the word causes us to misunderstand the Bible repeatedly. The Bible talks a lot about remembering. It talks about God remembering. What comes to our minds is: "How can that be? Does God forget?"

The Hebrew word for "remembering" is "zakar." It's used twice in the passage in Exodus we've been studying. The first is Exodus 2:24: God heard the groaning of his people and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. This was the beginning point of God's initiative to rescue his people from slavery. God "remembered" and then acted.

The second is in Exodus 3:15. When Moses asked to know God's name, God replied, "The LORD... This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation."

If we will practice the presence of God, we must learn to remember that God remembers. Remembering (the way the Bible speaks of remembering) will change our lives. And, in our services, to help us forgetful people remember to trust God, we will do what Jesus told us to do when we gather. We will receive communion together. Do you remember Jesus words?

To His Glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor