Remember What God Has Done!

Summer in the Psalms ‘24

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

July 21, 2024

Remember What God Has Done!

Let’s turn together to Psalm 105. Psalm 105 is a Remembrance Psalm.

Remembering is a powerful thing. Clive Wearing has the worst case of amnesia on record. Since a virus attacked his central nervous system 40 years ago he has lived with a memory span of between 7 and 30 seconds. There are only two things he remembers from the past: how to play the piano and his wife Deborah. Other than that, his past is a total void. When his sister comes to visit, within a few seconds of her leaving, he doesn’t remember ever seeing her. He can’t remember the past, and he can’t make new memories. He lives perpetually in the present 30 seconds.

Remembering is a powerful thing. Remembering where we came from is an important part of knowing who we are today. The roots of our identity go deep into the soil of our past. Your family, like mine, probably has stories that you tell and retell (“remember that time when so and so did such and such?”) – when we do that we’re acknowledging and deepening our family roots.

Remembering the past also helps us learn lessons for the present. Past failures can be amazing teachers if we learn from them. Remembering is a powerful thing.

Remembrance psalms are meant to encourage our confidence that God will be faithful by reminding us that God was faithful. Our faith that God will do great things because God has done great things. Remembrance psalms recount history but the goal isn’t simply to inform us, it’s to inspire us. To stir in us a longing: God do it again! God show your power again! Be faithful now as You were faithful then.

105 Oh give thanks to the Lord; call upon his name; make known his deeds among the peoples! ² Sing to him, sing praises to him; tell of all his wondrous works! ³ Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice! ⁴ Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually! ⁵ Remember the wondrous works that he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered, ⁶ O offspring of Abraham, his servant,
children of Jacob, his chosen ones!

⁷ He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. ⁸ He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, ⁹ the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, ¹⁰ which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant, ¹¹ saying, “To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance.”

(PRAY) The Jewish audience would have recognized their history in these verses. How God gave a promise to Abraham to make him a great nation and then (after a long wait) gave him a miracle son, Isaac and then carried that on to Jacob, promising to bring them into a good land, a good inheritance.

That Jewish audience would then read how when Israel was a weak, nomadic people God took care of them and protected them from more powerful nations. How God, knowing He was bringing a famine to the land, provided Joseph who went from being shackled in an Egyptian prison to second in command and warned in a dream provided salvation from the famine not only for Israel but for all the surrounding nations.

They would read about Israel becoming powerful and numerous over 400 years until a Pharoah would out of fear, make them slaves and work them cruelly. Once again God did a great thing by raising up Moses through whom God displayed His power until Pharoah let Israel go and the dread of God fell on all of Egypt.

And then God led this fledgling nation of Israel for 40 years in the wilderness with fire by night and a cloud by day. He provided manna and quail for them to eat, and water in the desert. As the Jewish readers read how God was faithful to His promise then, they would be encouraged in whatever setting they were in to believe that God will be faithful to His promises to them.

What we need to see is we serve the same God. The day we received Jesus Christ as our Savior their history became our history. We who believe in Christ as the offspring of Abraham. Gal. 3:29 says,

if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. Gal. 3:29

Their promises became our promises. Their stories became our stories and part of our testimony.

1. Remember that the God who remembered them remembers us

⁷ He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He remembers his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, ⁹ the covenant that he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, ¹⁰ which he confirmed to Jacob as a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant vv. 7-10

Talking about remembering, God’s got a really good memory. He remembers his covenant forever…for a thousand generations. Now slow down and think about that. If a generation isthirty years, then a thousand generations would be 30,000 years. Abraham lived about four thousand years ago so there’s another 26,000 years left in His memory! Now of course, a thousand generations represents forever, but it underlines that God remembers His people just as much today as He did then. Time doesn’t fade God’s memory and it doesn’t diminish His love.

All the redemptive history that remembrance psalms recount point to the redemptive work of Christ for our salvation. The great things, the wondrous deeds God did are foreshadows of the great, great thing – the wondrous deeds – that God would accomplish on our behalf through the cross and resurrection.

Joseph, rejected by his brothers, became the savior of his people and all the nations – a type of Christ. The Exodus out of Israel – the most common history that remembrance psalms recount – where God delivered His people from slavery to Egypt is the paradigm salvation event in the Old Testament that points ahead to Jesus delivering his people from the bondage of sin by taking our punishment upon himself. No greater power has ever been displayed than Jesus cleansing us of our sins and raising us up in newness of life!

That’s not just their story, that’s our story! That’s your story, that’s my story!

And it’s not just the big moments that speak to our hearts. When Hagar, pregnant with Abraham’s son ran away from Sarah she was alone in the desert and the angel of the Lord came to her and told her to name her son Ishmael which means “God hears”, and then Hagar gave the Lord the name “the God who sees”. God is the God who hears, God is the God who sees, God is the God who remembers us.

There can be times in our life when we feel forgotten by God. This trial has been going on so long God must have abandoned me. It feels like God doesn’t hear my prayers. God doesn’t see me. In times like that, we need to know that God hears, God sees, God remembers us.

And He remembers the covenant He has made with us for a thousand generations. When we take communion we are remembering the covenant God made with us through Jesus. But we also need to be deeply convinced that Jesus remembers his covenant with us forever. He said he wouldn’t drink of the cup again until he drinks it with us in his Father’s kingdom!

The most wondrous work God has done is to save us. Through faith in Christ we have been given eternal life and entrance into Jesus’ eternal kingdom. Nothing in life could be better than that!

Remember that the God who remembered them remembers us.

2. Remembering what God has done helps us believe in what God will do

The history recounted in remembrance psalms is characterized by God helping His people overcome adversity.

Life is full of adversity. Ever notice that? Life has its peaceful times too when everything is going good and we should enjoy those times because they are a blessing from God. But God in His love knows it wouldn’t be good for us to never have challenges, never experience setbacks, never feel the strain of an adversary, never go through hard times.

So God in His love allows adversity to enter our lives because we only grow through adversity. We only grow strong through adversity. We only learn to trust God when trusting God comes hard. An easy life produces a soft person.

In adversity, it’s good to remember how God has helped us in the past. As we read the remembrance psalms we read of God’s power and miracles but God’s power isn’t the only thing these psalms are about, or even the main thing. The remembrance psalms remind us of God’s faithfulness to His people. He doesn’t forget His people. He brings His people through the trial. He provides for His people’s needs. He delivers His people from bondage. He saves His people! Remembering what God has done helps us believe in what God will do.

We can be encouraged as we read of God’s power and faithfulness in the Bible because their story is our story. We have the same God! But we also have our own testimonies of how God has met us in the past and it’s good to remember those stories too because how God helped us in yesterday’s adversity helps us believe that God will help us in today’s adversity.

I pulled out a bunch of my journals, the earliest one dating back 28 years. As I read through them, I read about a lot of adversity. A lot of it I had forgotten about. But if it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

When I say adversity I don’t just mean bad things. I mean those things in life that push against you emotionally or physically or relationally. Which is just about everything. But when you’re at a crossroads in life, adversity can look like fear and indecision and uncertainty. When you’re going through a rough patch with someone relationally, adversity can look like confusion and second-guessing and stress. Financial problems can put a lot of strain and pressure on us.

I read so many things that I was like, “wow, I forgot that even happened.” I don’t remember that. Oh yeah, that was a big thing at that time. Which shows how today’s problems, today’s adversities will become yesterday's problems and we’ll eventually forget them as new adversities take their place.

But we don’t want to forget our God and His faithfulness to bring us through. Remember your stories. Remember how God met that need, answered that prayer, healed that loved one, gave you grace to go through that fire, got you to this point.

We’re not just remembering the amazing things or the big things God did, more importantly we’re remembering God’s faithfulness to us over the years. Remember His faithfulness yesterday and it will help you believe He will be faithful today and tomorrow.

And we’re not just remembering for ourselves. Psalm 78 is a remembrance psalm that encourages us to tell the next generation so that they don’t forget God’s faithfulness.

tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done…⁶ that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, ⁷ so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God Ps. 78:4, 6-7

Our testimony of remembering God’s faithfulness helps pass the baton of faith and trust in God and the saving power of Jesus Christ to the next generation and nothing is a better testimony or legacy than that.