At the very end of the longest chapter of the Bible, 176 verses about God’s word, comes this stout declaration, “I do not forget your commandments.” “I do not forget your commandments.”
That is a tall order, to promise that you will not forget. How can you promise that you will not forget? That’s more than most of us can live up to. We do forget things, regularly and frequently. We forget appointments, we forget to do chores, we forget other people’s names – I can look out among you right now and see folks whom I have known quite a few years, and if you were to ask me at just the wrong moment, I’d forget your name. If you don’t think that’s true of me, just ask my wife “Martha”!
What causes forgetfulness? I hear this happens in old age. When I get there I’ll let you know about it, if I can remember where you are. I know it happens with young people who forget to do their homework on lovely spring days. There is also such a thing as selective memory, which allows us to block out painful things. What causes forgetfulness?
Amnesia is a disorder in which the brain just goes on “hold” and won’t work, and the person who suffers with amnesia forgets all sorts of things and lives out in nowhere. Amnesia means that you do have some basic skills – you can walk and talk and do things that you learned early in life, but everything else is hazy. Most of what you need to know in order to function is hidden. It must be tough to have amnesia and not remember anything useful.
There is spiritual amnesia, too, you know. There is spiritual amnesia, not remembering what it is to live in God’s presence, forgetting what God has done, failing to “get it” when God is calling you. Spiritual amnesia is forgetting the ultimate things of life – not remembering who you are and whose you are; forgetting how to communicate with your creator; losing the way when you want to move ahead with life issues. The Psalmist declared, “I do not forget your commandments.” How could he make that promise? How could he guarantee that he would avoid spiritual amnesia?
At a nursing home where I used to visit, there was a lady who had left her native Russia when she was about nine years old. She had learned English and had stopped using her first language completely. Her daughter told me that before her mother came to the nursing home she had forgotten her Russian. The daughter said, “When I asked my mom if she could teach me a few words and phrases in Russian, she couldn’t do it. She had forgotten it entirely.” But in these late years of her life, in the nursing home, amnesia had set in, and she couldn’t remember her name, she couldn’t remember her daughter, and she couldn’t remember her English.” Amnesia. But guess what came back to her? The Russian language! And so she lived in her private world, speaking a language she had not used for more than eighty years.
Doesn’t that tell us something? Doesn’t that tell us that even if we get a bad case of amnesia, the things our minds have absorbed, early on, are going to stay with us? Doesn’t that suggest that what is put into our minds, early and often, is critical? How could the Psalmist avoid spiritual amnesia? How could he promise the Lord, “I do not forget your commandments?” If you were to read the entire 119th Psalm, you would find that over and over again the Psalmist speaks of reading God’s word, meditating on God’s precepts, taking delight in God’s commandments, knowing God’s decrees. The Psalmist’s secret for avoiding spiritual amnesia is that he was a disciple. He was a learner. He repeatedly exposed himself to God’s truth, so that he would know it, live by it, and never forget it.
Ours is to be a disciple-making church. A critical part of our work is to teach the Bible. To whom do we teach it? Not just to children, but to all persons, all ages. How do we teach the Bible? We teach it not just as an academic exercise, where you ask, “So what’s in the Bible?”, but as a guide to life, where you ask, “So what do I do with the Bible?” Our task is to make the precepts of the Bible as lively on the playground as they are in the classroom and as vibrant in the workplace as they are in the sanctuary. Ours is to be a disciple-making church.
I invite you to probe into the Psalmist’s experiences and find out precisely what he did not forget. What resources came to him because he had engaged God’s word, so that he could avoid spiritual amnesia?
I
For one thing, the Psalmist, by spending time in God’s word, learned that there is a resource to which he could go when he lost his way. If somebody had not helped him learn, he would not have remembered that when he got into a mess, there was a way out. He said it this way:
“Let my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding according to your word.”
“Let my cry come before you.” I don’t think anyone will quarrel with me if I say that life is complicated, infinitely more complicated now than when the Psalm was written three thousand years ago. Without the guidance of the Scriptures, we will get even more lost today than the author dreamed of in his day. We need the Bible to help us with critical decisions, or we will lose our way. We will get spiritual amnesia without this guide.
This past Tuesday I had a long day of errands and visits. I had to visit two hospitals and a hospice and I had to pick up purchases for the church at two other locations. That day I really put the miles on the old gray Plymouth you all love to hate! Well, I was afraid I wouldn’t know exactly the shortest routes from place to place, so I got on the Internet, hit Mapquest, and got detailed printouts for every location. I was not going to get lost this day! Except that when I followed what was supposed to be the route to an electrical supply house on Rollins Avenue in Rockville, I found myself at the end of a residential street with nothing but woods in my way, and nary a light bulb to be seen! I tried going around to the other side of the woods, but no Rollins Avenue. I went back to the original spot, drove the entire length of the street – no such number and no such business. I pulled over to figure out what to do next, when it came to me – in the back seat of the car I keep map books. Two Bibles and three map books are the pastor’s essential equipment! So I got into the map book, looked up Rollins Avenue, discovered that there are two Rollins Avenues in Rockville, and made haste to get to the right one and get your light bulbs!
That’s the way life is too. There are a host of dilemmas. There are a good many wrong turns. There are certainly dead ends. There are all kinds of things I wouldn’t know how to find my way out of if I didn’t have the my spiritual map book. I would have spiritual amnesia and would forget how to find my way if I did not have God’s word.
I would not know how to settle disputes if I did not have Matthew 18 to walk me through. I would not know how to give my money for Kingdom causes if I did not have Malachi to remind me to “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse.” I would not remember how to raise my children if did not have Ephesians staring me in the face, “Do not provoke your children to anger.” In hundreds of different ways, if we know the word of God, we do not forget our way through life issues. It is critical that we be a disciple-making church, so that people will remember the way through.
“Let my cry come before you, O Lord; give me understanding according to your word.”
II
But there is more. Notice too that the Psalm writer, if he had not been into God’s word, would have suffered from spiritual amnesia and would have forgotten how to interpret what is happening in his world. There is a way to understand what is going on all around us, but if we do not have the Bible as our resource, we’ll miss it. If we do not know the mind of Christ, we’ll not get it. We’ll have spiritual amnesia. Only the Bible can interpret what we are experiencing, day by day.
A few days ago Margaret (oh, yes, that’s her name!) – Margaret and I looked after the grandchildren. Olivia wanted to see a video; Jackie, just twenty months old, simply wants to do what Olivia does. And so I put the video in the VCR, settled Olivia in a chair, stashed Jackie on my knee, and pushed the remote button. Well, of course the video had not been rewound, and so we had to wait for that to be done. By now I have spent enough time waiting for videos to rewind that I could have written the Great American Novel. Olivia announced that she was ready for the show; Jackie said, in her little deep voice, “Ready show”. I said, “Wait for me”, which I understand to be a frequent phrase among grandfathers! Finally the tape was set and the play button was pressed, and what did we get? Blank leader tape; something from the FBI about how they are watching you if you copy this tape; credits; and after an unforgivable length of time, finally music and the show. At which point Olivia, understanding all this, announced, “It’s happening, it’s happening.” And, like a little echo, but an octave lower, young Jackie, who had had no clue about what we were doing, but now could follow her sister, “Happning, happning.”
Ah, but darling Jackie, you did not understand what was happening! You only said that because your older sister did know what was happening and had gone ahead of you to interpret what was happening. Just as the Psalmist prayed,
“Let my supplication come before you; deliver me according to your promise.”
“According to your promise.” For the Psalmist knew that he needed help from God; and he knew what to expect because somebody had gone ahead of him. He understood what was happening in his life because he had grasped the promises of God. He had a way to interpret his life because somebody had been there before him and had put it all together.
When we make disciples, we help people understand what is going on in their lives. Without their learning what God has done, they will have spiritual amnesia. If I did not have the Bible, I would not understand what is happening in my emotional life. I would not understand why some of the things I have given myself to over the years are now to be given to someone else; without the Bible, I would feel cheated and devalued. But with the Bible to help me interpret what is happening in my life, I can be rejoice in this transition.
Without the Scriptures to teach us that God is at work in all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, I would not understand why tragic things happen to people I care about and why frustration comes to people I love. But because somebody went ahead of me and wrote this word; because somebody went ahead of me and taught me the Bible; because Bible scholars went ahead of me and developed an understanding of this word – because of all of that, I can discern what is happening around me. I can be “delivered according to your promise.” I can avoid spiritual amnesia.
III
But the Psalmist is not finished yet. He has yet more. The tone of his comments changes now. Once he has told us that he does not forget the commandments because God’s truth helps him through life decisions; and once he has told us that he has no amnesia problems because he knows how to interpret what is happening around him, he changes his tune. He begins to sing. He gets excited. He gets downright happy. Listen to this:
“My lips will pour forth praise, because you teach me your statutes. My tongue will sing of your promise, for all your commandments are right.”
Praises? Song? What’s that all about? What’s that got to do with discipleship and knowing the Bible? Oh, if I do not know God’s word, I will see in this world little more than loss and despair and discouragement. If I do not know God’s word, I will see around me enough misery and pain that I will never survive it. But because I know God’s word -- and more, because I believe God’s word – I can find hope. I can find a reason to sing. “My tongue will sing of your promise, for all your commandments are right.”
May I share some recent examples? Life-threatening illness is not pleasant to see. It is not my idea of recreation to go to a hospital and see a friend thrashing about in restraints because he tried to tear out his support systems. It is not a picnic in the park to enter an ICU and have to ask the nurse to identify someone you love, because the illness has ravaged them beyond recognition. Nor would I choose to make a cheery video about entering a hospice and discovering that someone once tall and strong is reduced now to pencil-thin proportions. There is no pleasure in seeing these things.
There is no pleasure, but I tell you there is hope. There is hope! The hope comes from knowing what God is going to do for us. What God is going to do is so much more than what we might expect or what we deserve. But once you know what God is doing, your lips will pour forth praise and your tongue will sing of His promises. Knowing God’s word brings hope.
A neighbor of ours lost a son – he took his own life a few weeks ago. I told her a story – how back in the spring of 1971, when we had just moved here, 600 miles away from our parents, knowing no one, struggling to start a ministry at the University of Maryland with no base at all – that looked pretty bleak. And for the first two or three weeks of March, 1971, I wondered whether I had done the right thing. Maybe we should never have sold our home and packed up our two little children and taken on a mortgage, all in this bleak and unfriendly place called Washington. I got depressed, and I admit it.
But then – but then God! God made flowers bloom. God brought out the flowering crabapple trees. That wasn’t enough, so God produced the dogwoods. I wasn’t quite there yet, so God pushed up daffodils and crocuses in my heavily mortgaged lawn. Life and color and beauty everywhere! My heart began, like that Psalmist’s heart, to pour forth praises and to sing of His promises. For I knew about this God; I knew that He is the author of life. I had been carefully taught that He makes no mistakes. And so I did not forget His commandments. The winter of my discontent rolled away, and I had hope again.
As I say, I told that story to my friend, who is a believer, and she had hope again after her son’s death. She remembered that sometimes others mean things for evil, but God means them for good. She got that from the Bible. It helped her. I tell that story, ordinary as it is, to families who wait for the inevitable. I tell that little story to you who may have come here today worried about something, fearful, anxious, fretful. If you doubt the goodness of God, when you go outside this place, look at the beauty that is bursting forth, and sing. Praise God. Take heart. If somebody has taught you the word of God, you will not forget the He is the author of every good and perfect gift. For you there will be no more spiritual amnesia. You will remember. You will remember.
And you will remember who you are and whose you are, even though you feel small and guilty and shaky. You will remember, as the Psalmist did:
I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek our your servant.
Oh, yes, men and women, we will go astray without God’s word. We will get spiritual amnesia. For we’ve already seen that we’ll lose our way in life’s decisions. We have learned, further, that we will not know how to interpret what is happening around us. We have learned, even more, that we will lose hope when the losses mount up. We have learned that we will have a very bad case of spiritual amnesia, unless we know the word of God.
So remember now, that if we have grasped God’s word, through it He will seek us out. He will gather us like lost sheep. He will reach out for us and bring us back. If you know God’s word at all, you will know the Word Made Flesh, and you will see Him upon a Cross, torn for you, suffering for you. If you have been taught at all, you will not forget that it was for you and for me He hung and suffered there. And you will remember. You will remember.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, each one, to our own ways, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Do you remember? Of course you do. And do you remember this?
Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
You will remember that He came to seek and to save those who were lost. You will remember that He will neither fail you nor forsake you. You will remember that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. You will remember and never, never have spiritual amnesia.
I do not forget your commandments.
