Psalm 119:93

We Cannot Forget

By Pastor Dr. Ronnie W. Wolfe

Forgetting is such an easy task. To remember is both a blessing and necessity, but it requires work. At present I am trying to "remember" by memory both Romans Chapter 10 and Isaiah Chapter 53. Every day I must rehearse these chapters to keep them in my mind. It would be so easy to forget them, I am sure. I have memorized chapters before and have long forgotten them from memory.

But when something as grand and as effective as the precepts of God have visited us, forgetting may not be so easy, for these precepts are our knowledge of sin, our recognition of a need for a Savior, and the quickening power of God both in our salvation and in our holy living for God every day.

When a lost sinner hears God's word of the gospel, Satan may come and snatch that word away, and the sinner will forget his condition before God, his need of a Savior, and the great benefit of God's grace that may come upon repentance and faith; thus, the sinner forgets the good message that he has heard and goes about his life as normal with little effect.

Others will hear the seed of the gospel message and are at first excited about its benefit, but it has little root (only philosophical and logical root), and the sinner then easily forgets.

Still others will hear as the gospel seed falls among thorns, and the cares and pleasures of the world soon choke away that veneer of gospel truth that only touched the emotions, not the inner soul, of the sinner.

But then there is the seed that falls on good ground, that which God has prepared for the benefit of the soul, the reception of gospel truth that penetrates to the very inner being of the sinner, strikes his mind, his emotions, his actual being, and quickens him, makes him alive.

This we cannot forget, that grace that came to us without our first prompting God, without any effort on our part, without any righteousness of our own, God instituted his grace into our souls to bring glory to himself and benefit the sinner with eternal life now and forever and for the sinner to glorify God in his life of service for the sinner's Lord and King.

Thus, how can we forget that institution of grace that has come to us in the quickening power of God through his precepts? We cannot! Even though some have forgotten that they were purged from their old sins, yet even they do repent of their sinfulness once the precepts of God have come to them through preaching, and they shall be revived again.