Sabbath: Remember, Do Not Forget

Image © Pacific Press

Sabbath Afternoon

Read for This Week’s Study: Genesis 9:8-17; Deuteronomy 4:32-39; Revelation 14:12; Deuteronomy 4:9, Deuteronomy 4:23; Deuteronomy 6:7; Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Ephesians 2:8-13.

Memory Text: “Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD” (Deuteronomy 9:7).

Two words appear all through the Bible: remember and forget. Both refer to something human, something that happens in our minds. Both are verbs, and they are opposites: to remember is not to forget, and to forget is not to remember.

God often tells His people to remember all the things that He has done for them; to remember His grace for them and His goodness toward them. So much of the Old Testament consisted of the prophets’ telling the people, the Hebrew people, not to forget what the Lord had done for them. But also, most important, they were not to forget what their calling in Him was and what kind of people they were to be in response to that calling. “I will remember the works of the LORD; surely I will remember Your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11).

Is it any different for us today, both at a corporate level and, even more so, at a personal one? How easy it is to forget what God has done for us.

This week, as expressed in Deuteronomy, we’ll look at this important principle, that of remembering and not forgetting God’s interaction in our lives.