TAKING TIME TO REMEMBER
Ex. 12:14
We set aside time in America each year to remember some of the important dates of our history. This didn’t start with us, it is a practice that goes back as far as the Bible.
Here we see that God instructs the Jews to have a feast every year to remember His great works He did in Egypt.
Memorial day started many years ago and there are two main versions of how it got started.
1) In April 1863, in Columbus, Mississippi after decorating the graves of her two sons who served during the Civil War as Confederate soldiers, an elderly woman also decorated two mounds at the corner of the cemetery. An observer asked, “What are you doing? Those are the graves of two Union soldiers.” Her reply was, “I know. I also know that somewhere in the North, a mother or a young wife mourns for them as we do for ours.” [This lady and a few others] set in motion what became known as Memorial Day.
2) The custom of placing flowers on the graves of the war began on May 5, 1866 in Waterloo, New York, and Waterloo has been recognized by Congress as the official birthplace of Memorial Day. In 1868, General John A. Logan, then president of the Grand Army of the Republic, declared that May 30 would be a day to “decorate with flowers the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” After World War I the day was set aside to honor all of the American wars, and the custom was extended to pay homage to deceased relatives and friends, both military and civilian.
We set this day aside as a Memorial to remember and honor those who have given their lives in the service of this country. We have freedom today because of brave soldiers who didn’t mind dying for a Country they loved.
We also as Christians have a heritage today of millions who have gone on before us and given their life for the spreading of the Gospel. Today because of the grace of God we have freedom to serve our Lord in this Nation. This too can be lost if taken for granted.
If you are free from sin today it’s because a Man named Jesus became one of us and gave His life so we could have ours spared. If you are saved today you owe it to your Lord to give Him glory and praise for what He did for you. Don’t take for granted the great salvation you have today!
Illus: In the Revolutionary War 33,000 soldiers died; in the War of 1812 7,000 soldiers died; in the Mexican War 13,000 perished; during the Civil War 980,000 men died; in the Spanish-American War 4,000 died; in World War I 320,000 U.S. soldiers gave their lives; in World War II 1,078,000 died; in the Korean War 157,000 soldiers perished; during the Vietnam War 111,000 of our men died; in the Gulf War there were 700; and in the War in Iraq there have been nearly 600 deaths. A total of these figures reveals that there have been an estimated 2,704,300 U.S. soldiers who have died over the past two centuries fighting for our country’s freedom, and this is the reason that they died – for “our” freedom. Jesus said in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
I. MEMORIALS REMIND US OF THE PAST.
1. Here the Lord wanted them to remember until they got to Heaven what He had done for them.
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the
LORD Through out your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for
ever.
2. This is a time to teach the children and remind themselves how great their God is.
3. It’s a shame how we act today like God is dead. We often live as though He’s not worth praising or living for.
4. This is the main reason why the lost have no need for our God.
5. The Israelites began to live as the gentiles and when they began to forget how great their God was then they began serving false gods. Often we do the same.
6. When we come to church we need to remember how lost we were and how the Lord saved us and then it won’t be so hard to praise Him!!!
II. MEMORIALS REWARD US OF THE PRESENT.
1. Without what Jesus did in the past we could have no present.
2. AS we look back on what Jesus has done for us then we gain courage and faith to trust Him for today’s needs.
3. It’s high time that the church of Jesus Christ believes again that we serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, And Jacob tackle this world for Him.
4. Our God isn’t some limp wrist, weakling that can’t come through for us.
5. Our prayer life is the meter that tests how strong we believe our God is.
6. We live so defeated in the present because we fail to remember the past.
7. This ceremony told these Jews once a year to remember how AWESOME their God is and that He can still do it today!!
8. There are too many “Just In Case Christians”. They go to church just in case the preacher is right so they will have something to tell God one day.
9. It’s a privilege to worship and praise and serve our God and the day it becomes a drudge and pain is the day you need to find a God you will serve.
10. DON’T SERVE HIM BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO! SERVE HIM BECAUSE YOU LONG TO.
11. Because of what our Jesus has done in the past it makes our present worth the LIVING.
Deu 6:12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
III. MEMORIALS REASURE US OF THE PROMISE.
Deu 1:30 The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes;
1. Nehemiah in Chapter 9 he is praying about the work of rebuilding the wall and how they are under attack. In his prayer he retells the story to the Lord of how He took them out of Egypt for a purpose. Then he closes his prayer by saying that you did that then and I know you will come through for us now because you gave us a covenant.
2. Just as Nehemiah remembered that His God kept His word we too can believe the same.
3. We often need a memorial to remind us of the promise of God to never forsake us.
4. Jesus didn’t save us to leave us out to dry!!
5. When you pray and read your Bible let it be a reminder to you of what your God can and will do for you.
6. The only reason you have the reminder of the past, the reward of the present, and the reassurance of the promise is because of what Jesus did for you at Calvary.
Don’t take HIS PAIN FOR GRANTED. SERVE HIM WITH ALL YOU HAVE.
HE IS WORTH SERVING ESPECIALLY AFTER ALL HE HAS DONE FOR YOU!!
Conclusion:
Paul Harvey tells a story that sums up how we should be thankful for what has been done for us.
Paul Harvey said it was gratitude that prompted an old man to visit an old broken pier on the eastern seacoast of Florida. Every Friday night, until his death in 1973, he would return, walking slowly and slightly stooped with a large bucket of shrimp. The sea gulls would flock to this old man, and he would feed them from his bucket. Many years before, in October 1942, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was on a mission in a B-17 to deliver an important message to General Douglas MacArthur in New Guinea. But there was an unexpected detour, which would hurl Captain Eddie into the most harrowing adventure of his life.
Somewhere over the South Pacific the Flying Fortress became lost beyond the reach of radio. Fuel ran dangerously low, so the men ditched their plane in the ocean. For nearly a month Captain Eddie and his companions would fight the water, and the weather, and the scorching sun. They spent many sleepless nights recoiling as giant sharks rammed their rafts. The largest raft was nine by five. The biggest sharks . . . ten feet long.
But of all their enemies at sea, one proved most formidable: starvation. Eight days out, their rations were long gone or destroyed by the salt water. It would take a miracle to sustain them. And a miracle occurred. In Captain Eddie’s own words, “Cherry,” that was the B- 17 pilot, Captain William Cherry, “read the service that afternoon, and we finished with a prayer for deliverance and a hymn of praise. There was some talk, but it tapered off in the oppressive heat. With my hat pulled down over my eyes to keep out some of the glare, I dozed off.”
Now this is still Captain Rickenbacker talking . . . “Something landed on my head. I knew that it was a sea gull. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. Everyone else knew too. No one said a word, but peering out from under my hat brim without moving my head, I could see the expression on their faces. They were staring at that gull. The gull meant food . . . if I could catch it.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Captain Eddie caught the gull. Its flesh was eaten. Its intestines were used for bait to catch fish. The survivors were sustained and their hopes renewed because a lone sea gull, uncharacteristically hundreds of miles from land, offered itself as a sacrifice.
You know that Captain Eddie made it. And now you also know that he never forgot. Because every Friday evening, about sunset, on a lonely stretch along the eastern Florida seacoast, you could see an old man walking . . . white-haired, bushy-eye browed, slightly bent. His bucket was filled with shrimp to feed the gulls, to remember that one, which, on a day long past, gave itself without a struggle.
Just as Eddie Rickenbacker never forgot the gull that gave its life, we should never forget the soldiers of our country who gave up their lives. Because that sea gull gave up its life, Eddie got a second chance at life, and because many brave men and women have died in the armed services fighting for our country’s freedom, we too have a chance at life – a life of freedom. Both freedom and life never come without a price. The blood of many fine soldiers paid for the freedom that we have today, just as the blood of the tiny lamb of the Passover paid for the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelites. A price has to be paid for freedom and life, and that price is the death of another. Someone, or something, has to die in order that we might live.
Our country’s soldiers died that we might have a life of freedom, and Jesus died that we might have life eternal. In the story of the Passover, the blood of a lamb was marked on the doorposts and this caused the destroyer to pass over the households that were marked, thus granting them life. This represented the cross of Jesus Christ upon which the very Lamb of God would give his own life that we might live forever in God’s kingdom. Our soldiers died for our country’s freedom, and Jesus died for our spiritual freedom for he said in John 8:36, “If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed,” and then in John 10:10 Jesus told us, “I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Jesus paid for our spiritual freedom and gave us a crown in heaven when he died on the cross. There is no freedom without the shedding of blood. We should never forget our many soldiers who died for our freedom here in America, and most importantly we must never forget our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave his own life on a cross that we might have eternal life.
