'Remember', and 'Do Not Remember'
Our present plight, if we are not diligent and careful, will blind us to all previous, current, and promised blessings. How are we to, both at once, 'remember', and 'not remember'?
Perhaps when you return to the past, all there’s to remember is sorrow upon sorrow, much bitterness and frustration, and many disappointments. I would risk telling you that it was with God’s help that you bore all these distresses, otherwise you would never have come so far. All these troubles are worth remembering, if only for God’s faithfulness that carried us through them. In C. S. Lewis’s fifth Narnia story The Horse and his Boy, Shasta has known so much trouble in his life; he is an orphan overworked by his foster father Arsheesh, and he escapes just moments before Arsheesh sells him off to a Tarkaan who drops at their house and demands hospitality for the night. The journey of his escape, though an adventure, isn’t all so rosy and always to be envied. When, on his way, Shasta meets the lion Aslan (he doesn’t know him yet), Aslan will tell him so:
“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gasped with an open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receiver you.”
I would like to take for granted that very few people (or, a little more accurately, Christians) indeed would not know what Isaiah 43:18 says. Pause for a moment here and see whether or not you can recite the verse. Alright. This is how it reads: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?...” Isaiah 43:18-19 ESV. This verse is oft quoted, and it has seemed to me that it shows up in many sermons and has worked so well as a theme for the year in several Churches and Christian organizations. For good reason. It is a both a command and encouragement not to dwell in the dreariness and disappointments of the past, but to look forward in expectation and hope for what God will do, how gloriously he will act, and the miraculous things he will cause to be, that is, including, making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, the portion that I left out in my quotation above.
But if Isaiah 43:18 asks us not to remember the former things, nor to consider things of old, Isaiah 46:9 asks us to remember them: “remember the former things of old; for I am God and there’s no other, and there’s none like me.” Isaiah 46:9 ESV. Seriously? Remember not, and then, almost immediately, remember? What will God have us do? Both? These are the kind of texts that though they may at first imply a contradiction of sorts, a patient inspection and quiet pondering soon lays things to rest. It turns out remember, and do not remember are not mutually exclusive as it might at first seem. The Lord who said “do not remember” has also said “remember”. And as he does not ask of us the impossible (he does not tell Jacob to seek him in vain) we must heed; we must not remember, and we must remember. Enough, I think and hope, has been said already of ‘not remembering’, of Isaiah 43:18. In a few more sentences, I would like to turn focus and exhort us all to ‘remember’, hoping that Isaiah 46:9 too will perhaps rise up to eminence just as its counterpart.
When God says remember, he is in other words telling us: “do not forget”. Maybe that’s too obvious a claim, and therefore, it might feel, unnecessary. Let’s see the scripture in its context: “Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors, remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I shall accomplish all my purpose’,...” Isaiah 46:8-10 ESV. I will try to get help from other places in the Bible. I would have quoted only Psalm 103:2, but I have felt it would be better to look at the entire passage. It is David’s Psalm:
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquities,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Psalm 103:1-5 ESV
David names the benefits in the present tense, but they are, likely, testimonies about what God had done already, which he is assured, it seems to me, he goes on doing, and will do again. He rejoices in God, and tells his soul not to forget these things.
Also, as Moses is in the business of handing over leadership to Joshua, God, knowing how that the Israelites will turn away from Him after He has led them into the promised land, instructs Moses: “Now therefore, write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel. For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to give to their fathers, and they have eaten and are full and have grown fat, they will turn to other gods and serve them, and despise me and break my covenant...” Deuteronomy 31:19-20 ESV. The Song of Moses, which follows in Deuteronomy 32, recounts all that God did for Israel, and is to be taught to them so that they remember His love, mercy, and faithfulness, and so that it will be a witness against them when they forget the Lord and he brings evil upon them. You might have noticed that when in Isaiah 46:8-9 God says “remember”, and “recall it to mind”, he addresses the command to, well, “transgressors”: “Remember this and stand firm, recall it to mind, you transgressors”(v8), and little later on, he says, “Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from righteousness...” (v12).
It is so easy to, and very often indeed do we forget God, and all that he has done. The troubles of the moment sometimes loom so large, and God’s faithfulness in the past recedes from our minds so that we fret, get anxious, and complain that we’ve been forsaken and left alone in so great a trouble. The Israelites, hungry and thirsty, forgot that God had parted the Red Sea for them, and they cried saying how he’d brought them into the wilderness to kill them. In Egypt they had food in plenty, so their claim ran. It is precisely because it is in the nature of present trials and adversity to seem so glum and dreary that they deceive our hearts to doubt and complain, that the Lord bids us to remember. Though in this world they would have many tribulations, Jesus told his disciples, they were to take heart, for he had overcome the world (John 16:33). We are never to forget, but to remember his goodness and faithfulness, and trust God in all seasons.
And how are we to remember? Think the Song of Moses. We remember, first, by ever keeping God’s Word before us. It is the sum of the testimony of how God dealt with our fathers, and what he finally did for us in giving us his only son Jesus to die on the cross for us. To the Romans Paul writes, “For whatever was written in the former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of Scriptures we might have hope.” Romans 15:4 ESV. The Bible affirms, and reminds us of God’s love, mercy, justice, and faithfulness. In it we read of how much we’ve been forgiven, and how God will never leave us nor forsake us. In it we see the cross, so that we too with Paul ask, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Romans 8:32 ESV. And, “...But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end...” Lamentations 3:21-22 ESV.
Secondly, we remember by, as we say, counting our blessings:
When upon life’s billows
you are tempest tossed,
When you are discouraged,
thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings
name them one by one,
And it will surprise you
what the Lord hath done.
Count your blessings,
name them one by one;
Count your blessings,
see what God hath done;
Count your blessings,
name them one by one,
And it will surprise you
what the Lord hath done.
What has God done? Maybe it isn’t so easy to start the list, but once you have, so many things will come to mind. It’s not dwelling in the past as some would charge us. Our God inhabits eternity, with him there is no past, present, or future, but an eternal NOW— he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). We must always be counting all those trees that God has given us for food, or the serpent will draw our attention to that one tree, only one, of which God said, “from the fruit of this tree in the middle of the garden you shall not eat, or even touch it, lest you die.” Our present plight, if we are not diligent and careful to remember, will blind us to all previous, current, and promised blessings.
In conclusion, true, there’s much new and glorious things that God will do, wonderful things which in their time he will hasten, he will make rivers in the desert, and streams in the wilderness, but then, he has done all these things in the past already, so that that it is in fact good evidence of his doing them again, and so we must remember this past faithfulness even while not remembering it. We must remind ourselves that if we have made it so far, it is because God has always been in the story, that he now is, and that he always will be. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” Clearly, Aslan had always been in Shasta’s story, though Shasta knew it not. Us too. God has always been in our story, and we knew it not. Now we do, and would we so easily forget all his benefits? I hope not.