A Day To Be Remembered

A Day to be Remembered

It’s not hard to loose the significance in our world with regard to past experiences, events, and people. Cultures have designated special days, monuments, and customs to commemorate their experiences. The reason certain cultures do this is to serve as a reminder for future generations of the struggles, victories, and inventions that may have been contributing factors to the enhancement or development of their civilization. The peoples who designate these customs, traditions, holidays, and monuments do it primarily because they don’t want their posterity to ever forget.

Memorial Day is such a day. Originally called Decoration Day, Major General John A. Logan, leader of an organization of Union veterans called Grand Army of the Republic, declared that graves of fallen Civil War soldiers should be decorated. May 30, was chosen because it was believed that flowers would be in bloom throughout the whole country. Here we have a perfect example of a day set aside to commemorate not just our dead who have fallen in American wars, but the principle for which they were fighting—our freedom. Many have taken Memorial Day and used it to honor departed loved ones. Decorating graves, remembering the dead, what a very melancholic experience, yet we are able to celebrate the departed by remembering their lives, their sacrifices, and their love.

You know God has a Memorial Day. His Memorial Day is not so melancholic. As a matter of fact he called it honorable and a delight. And He not only said that it was His memorial but He did not want us to ever forget it. It was a day to be remembered. People often remember the people associated with the event but not the event itself, or the event and not the people. God understands this about us. He knows we are creatures subject to forgetting. That is why He has given us the Sabbath.

[Give Title & Pray]

Turn with me into your Bibles to the book of Psalms 135:13. We shall begin our study of God’s Memorial Day:

Thy name, O Lord, endureth for ever; and Thy memorial, O Lord, throughout all generations.

God gave us a memorial to remember His name forever. People do a lot of things to get their names remembered. Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks in West Dallas to get their names remembered. Charles Manson is known for his “Helter Skelter” acts of murdering the innocent. I know of girls in high school who have earned a name for themselves for their promiscuous behavior with the boys’ athletic teams. People have done some terrible things to get their names remembered. And on the converse we have people who have not tried to do anything but better society and mankind and their names are enshrined in the pages of history. Columbus was going to reach India sailing west and ended up in Cuba and is credited for having discovered the Americas. Galileo pointed his telescope into the heavens and said that the earth was not the center of the universe but was one of billions of planetary objects. Einstein couldn’t be taught in school but discovered the basic structure of matter and schooled us on the theory of relativity, but what about God? What has he done to get his name remembered?

It baffles me beloved how we are able to take a day that has been designated as a memorial of a person or event and not celebrate either on that particular day. MLK Day is not always on his birthday but it is celebrated. Juneteenth is only celebrated in Texas, 2 and a half years after the formal Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln. When God gave us the Sabbath, he did not intend on us moving it around like these other holidays that we observe. It is consistent. It occurs every week. It serves as a reminder of what He has done for us. People like Juneteenth would have you believe that the Sabbath is for Jews only. Although Juneteenth is for slaves in Texas, the Sabbath was given to Adam first which is a man and Jesus recalls this in Mark 2:27,

And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath:

The Sabbath was made for man. That means white men, black men, Hispanic men, Asian men, African men, European men. The Sabbath was not just made for the Jews and furthermore Adam wasn’t a Jew he was a man. In fact beloved the Sabbath was given 2000 years before the first Jew. Abraham was the first Jew. Why did God setup the Sabbath as His memorial? God gave us the Sabbath to remind us of Him first of all. Second to remember His authority and that He alone is the one true God, and finally to remind us that He is the one that sanctifies us through the regeneration or recreation of our lives.