The God Who Remembers......

Even though our memory is a powerful storage facility, we are all subject to its fragility.

There can't be anyone who hasn't overlooked a critical detail, forgotten a birthday of someone they cared about….or been forgotten themselves.

Have you ever been forgotten in some way, have you ever been stood up on a date or had your loved one forget your anniversary?

This month marks 34 years since my husband and I were married.

The local registrar had to attend for the legal part of the marriage since none of the ministry team members at the Baptist church we attended were authorised. Ten minutes before the wedding, the registrar asked for the birthdates of both parties, and my groom could not remember mine.

"It slipped my mind," he admitted.

Being forgotten is something nobody likes to experience; it's a widespread belief that if someone we care about truly loved and cared for us, they would remember.

Thankfully, he has remembered every year since!

With our forgetfulness in mind, let's get into God's word and look at Noah.

Noah, who we know as the builder of the Ark, the last of the godly men from the line of Seth, a grandson of Methuselah whose name meant "when he is gone, it will come"…well Methuselah was now gone, and it is now coming…the flood is coming.

Noah grew up in an environment of faith and God's grace, which shaped him into the character described in the Bible: a righteous and blameless man who walked with God.

We will pick the story up in Genesis 8. Although a man of faith, Noah was just like everyone else in that he was human. He had been floating around on the sea for over a year, bobbing around like a cork, on a vast and lonely sea with his wife, family and a zoo!….floating around while underneath him was a dead and buried world….he must have been well aware of what he was floating over and man of faith or not he must have wondered after so long if God had forgotten him.

I know that there are times in our life when we imagine that God has forgotten us, that He's ignoring our prayers, pain, persecutions, and shattered relationships and situations. We've been hammering on heaven's door, but no one is answering. We've been praying for years if not decades.

If this is you, as it is me, then Chapter 8 of Genesis is for us today.

Chapter 8 begins with:

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and livestock with him in the Ark.

This isn't God slapping His forehead and saying, "Oh my gosh, I forgot!" as if Noah hadn't even crossed His mind. By referring to the Lord as "remembering," Moses does not imply that God had forgotten about Noah. God never forgets anything or anybody; when God "remembers," it indicates that He acts according to His covenant promises, and God had established a covenant with Noah back in Genesis 6:17-18

For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the Ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

In chapter 8, we see God doing just as he promised, and he's doing it noticeably for Noah.

Firstly, God began to drain the water…God sent a wind over all the water to dry it up; the waters separated, the dark and dismal rain clouds began to break apart, and the sun appeared.

God's next sign to Noah was the dove that returned with an olive leaf.

Lastly, God spoke to Noah…Noah had been commanded by God to build the Ark and to go in, but now God was commanding Noah to come out.

God caused the water to drain away…and Noah must have been over the moon when the water started to go down… you can picture his joy, "God hasn't forgotten me; God is acting again."

After a year of silence and what seemed to Noah total abandonment, God is acting. Can you imagine the excitement, the relief, the joy as the waters went down?

These are outward and tangible signs by which God consoles Noah; God shows Noah that He hasn't forgotten him. We can also take heart from these signs because we can look for tangible signs during our troubles and dangers, knowing God will not abandon us as we look forward to His promises.

Because God is in control, he knows all his children's circumstances. But, my goodness, isn't it lovely to witness this in Noah's life? What hope we have in knowing that, even if God hasn't moved in our lives in a long time, he will eventually.

God still offers people signs today; God will do something, usually small and personal, that is so meaningful to the people involved that they are reassured of God's providential care for them.

We must trust God in the bad, in the silent times….because we are told to trust God in these times: Habakkuk 3:17-18

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be joyful in God my Saviour

God does not always spare us distress because he has a purpose for such things for ourselves and others. But he has a way of reassuring us that he has not forgotten us, that He remembers our distress, and is still working all things for good to those who love him.

There are many things we don't know; Romans 8:26 states that there are times when we don't even know what to pray for, but one beautiful thing we do know is that God has a plan.

Romans 8:28

 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

What do we do while we're waiting, while we're praying, while we're trusting, while we're waiting for God to move, waiting for a sign…while we're waiting for God to cause the waters of trouble to recede from our lives?

What should we do in such circumstances?

We should do as Noah did: we should go on exactly as we are supposed to do, obeying God, being obedient to his commands….and then wait for God to move again.

Genesis 8:18-19

So, Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the Ark.

Noah obeyed because he had been obeying before. If you have practised obedience during the good times, then it will be easier to always obey God in the dark times.  

When the bible records that God remembers Noah, this is the first time we are told God remembered, and as we read on in the Bible, we also see that God remembered Abraham, Rachel, Joseph and many more. God remembers; God is said to remember his covenants, his promises….God remembers because it is in His nature never to forget.

Someone in the Bible who was forgotten, but not by God, was Joseph…we all know the story of Joseph…even if it's only his amazing technicoloured dream coat!

Accused of abusing Potiphar's wife, Joseph was thrown into jail, where he was joined by Pharaoh's Chief Cupbearer and Chief Baker, who had in some way insulted the Pharaoh.

All three men were under sentence of death.

Following a night of dreams, Joseph successfully interpreted both the Cupbearer's and the Baker's dreams; despite their similarity in content, the meanings could not have been more different. Pharaoh was to lift the Cupbearer to a seat of luxury and recognition, while the Baker's head was also to be lifted, but sadly, it was to be lifted from his body during execution!

Joseph asks for one thing from the Cupbearer in return for this incredible news: “please remember me before Pharaoh and get me out of this house.”

Despite being reinstated three days later, the Cupbearer failed to remember Joseph. The text merely states that he forgot, with no more explanation.

However two years later, when Pharaoh asked for someone to interpret a dream, the Cupbearer remembered Joseph, who was subsequently taken from jail; he interpreted the dream and saved Egypt from famine and ruin. So, Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of Egypt and made him second in command. God showed his infinite wisdom and power through Joseph, even when our unnamed cup bearer forgot him.  

However, we shouldn't be surprised because when Joseph was first put in jail, we were told that God would show him steadfast love and favour in the sight of the prison keeper. Genesis 39:21

 But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.

And what about us? What can we learn from this story?

Well, God never forgets his children. When it looked like Joseph had been completely forgotten, even when he was considered to have done the unthinkable and assaulted Potiphar's wife, God was with him and working in the details to gain Joseph's freedom and use him to bring glory to His name.

We will experience all kinds of hard things in this life. We might be forgotten or betrayed by the people we love most. However, if you have repented from your sin and put your faith and trust in Christ, in his perfect life, in his substitutionary death and resurrection, then nothing that can happen to you here can take away what God has said about you and the promises He has made to you. God never forgets you.

On our side, we must never forget our saviour Jesus. The cupbearer forgot his saviour, Joseph….granted, it's stretching things a little, but Joseph was the one who delivered the good news; every minute the cupbearer lived, every luxury he enjoyed at Pharaoh's right hand, every act of recognition he received was the fulfilment of Joseph's words. But the Cupbeared forgot him.    

How much more terrible would it be for us to forget Christ, our Saviour? In contrast to Joseph, Christ did not merely promise our eternal life; he gave his life to ensure it. We were also imprisoned and deserving of death, but we were declared innocent, righteous, and free by the death of Christ.

What's also amazing is not so much that God remembered Noah, as we said earlier, that is God's nature, but that Noah didn't forget God when he came out of the Ark; as soon as he came out he started building…but not a shelter for his family, no, Noah built an altar, and then he sacrificed some of the clean animals and clean birds as sin offerings—Noah came to God as a sinner for forgiveness; if this was going to be a new start it was essential to Noah to start it right, with a proper and thankful approach to God and with a thank offering for saving Noah and a sin offering for everything he and his family had done….and I sort of get the feeling that shut up for over a year with the same seven people there could have been quite a number of sins committed! While it is God's nature not to forget His children, it is often in our nature to forget our father and His goodness....sometimes quite quickly.                                                                 

A well-known example of this forgetfulness is in Luke 17:11-17  where Jesus encounters the ten lepers while heading to Jerusalem. As Jesus walks between Samaria and Galilee, ten lepers, known as walking dead, stand far from him. These lepers are desperate and cry out, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us." Jesus did have pity. He healed them. Then he urged them to go and show themselves to the priests, which the law required. The priests would certify that they were clean so that they could return to society. A little later, one leper came back and thanked Jesus profusely. He was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and praise God except this foreigner?" How quickly, in relief and elation, they had forgotten to thank their healer.

It would make sense that after exiting the Ark in a state of relief, Noah would begin giving the family instructions on what they needed to gather and construct to start their new life on what was effectively a new earth. But what action did Noah take first? To express his gratitude to the God who had spared his family from the flood, he collected his family, constructed an altar, and made sacrifices. Noah didn't overlook anything.

So, what is your story? Where are you in your circumstances today? Are you bobbing like a cork on an ocean, lost because you can't see anywhere to go, the storms coming and buffeting you and no dry land in sight?

Are you feeling trapped, unjustly persecuted, jobs or promotions being withheld from you for no apparent reason, or are others taking positions you justifiably thought should have been yours? Are you trapped in singleness, longing for a partner with whom to live a godly Christian life, but where are they? Are you or the people you love and care about stuck in illness, doubt, or hopelessness right now?       

Everyone makes plans. However, most of us have not gotten the partners of our dreams, the careers we studied for, the excellent health we believed would last forever, or the children we had discussed having. Some of us have been compelled to leave the nation of our birth due to a variety of uncontrollable circumstances. Many of us just don't have the life that we had envisioned or the home and possessions we had dreamed of, but God assures us that we will have all we need. We might see our waiting in a different light when we allow that promise to settle in.                                                      

With God, it is not about what we get and what we become after God has made us wait, but who we become in that waiting. Perhaps God is making us wait for the same reasons that he made Noah and Joseph wait, the way he made Abraham and David wait, to strengthen our faith, to make us attentive to his Word, to deepen our relationship, to solidify our trust, to prepare us for ministry, to make us teachable, to transform us into his likeness…..because this is His promise to us, this is God's objective, to transform us into the image of His Son, so never underestimate what God can do in a lifetime of waiting.

In the meantime, what do we do? We do what Noah did, we carry on doing what needs to be done, we carry on obeying the commands of Christ, and sometimes that means being like Noah on the Ark, doing the everyday things of life, clearing up the muck, the dung, the garbage of life and throwing it overboard.

We can have faith that God is genuinely concerned for us, even during protracted times of stillness. Just like David did, we can remember to "Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord." Psalm 27:14. We can experience and grow to a new level of maturity and character that we can carry into the future as we wait on the Lord.

God may not have acted in our lives for what is perhaps a long time, but he will, at some point, act again. And until then, we keep praying. We keep asking, seeking, and knocking like Matthew 7:7-11 and ask him to assist us in receiving the numerous ways He demonstrates His love for us – even when it doesn't always feel like love.

And in the meantime, our job is to go on in faithful obedience to what he has already shown us—however long ago that was.

And the words of faith from Habakkuk again:

I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

Never forget that we have found our way into the Ark of Safety, which is Jesus Christ, and we rejoice in it. We must be as faithful and obedient as Noah was.