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“Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” — Deuteronomy 4:9

It is my held belief that one of the greatest problems we have as a species is forgetfulness or the propensity to. We forget the things that we shouldn’t and we remember the things that we should forget. Important events and dates that we should always remember are easily forgotten; negative events, an unkind word that someone spoke offhandedly linger in the mind, are brooded over and cause hurt. Forgetfulness is a problem common to us all. Is that not why we take notes and have to read before going in for examinations even though lessons are attended and understood at the moment?

We forget the things that we shouldn’t and we remember the things that we should forget. Important events and dates that we should always remember are easily forgotten; negative events, an unkind word that someone spoke offhandedly linger in the mind, are brooded over and causiIe hurt. Forgetfulness is a problem common to us all.

It is to this problem that Moses spoke as he addressed the nation of Israel. The people were told to “take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself.” They were to stay alert, be careful, be on guard and watch themselves closely. What does that tell us? It tells us that something untoward was likely to occur and they had to guard against it. That which they were called to stand guard against was their tendency to forget the things that should be etched on their minds: “lest you forget the things your eyes have seen.” In the immediate context of Moses’ address, he was referring to the giving of the commandments. On that day at Horeb, “the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deuteronomy 4:12). How could anyone forget that? They also saw what the Lord did at Baal Peor, how God “destroyed from among you everyone who followed the Baal of Peor” (Deuteronomy 4:3). Earlier, this nation had seen God plague Egypt ten times and brought them up out of slavery by an outstretched arm; he parted the red sea and the walked through on dry ground while the armies of Egypt were drowned in the sea; they were fed with manna from heaven and given water from the rock to drink; the clothes on their backs did not wear away nor did the shoes on their feet give way. How could anyone forget such miraculous interventions? Yet, these same people at the very next challenge they faced forgot all that God had done for them and grumbled against him and his servant Moses. That was why they had to be instructed to take heed lest they forgot.

What about you, what have your eyes seen? What have you seen God do? Have you seen his mercies? Has he delivered you from the chains of sinful habits? Has he provided for your needs in the past? Has he come through for you at the eleventh hour when all hope seemed lost? Has he healed you? Has he saved you from what would have been a fatal auto crash? The next time you have faced a challenge, have you remembered God’s past acts of kindness or you have forgotten, been filled with anxiety and grumbled as if God had never been kind to you in the past? Does your life and conduct reflect that of a person who has seen God at work or you have forgotten? Forgetfulness!

Does your life and conduct reflect that of a person who has seen God at work or you have forgotten? Forgetfulness!

Not Just an Israeli Problem

This is not just an Israeli problem; we all suffer the same propensity. It is why Jesus instituted the Holy Communion. “Do this in remembrance of me”, the Lord said (Luke 22:19). How could we forget such a momentous and consequential event? Jesus knows we could. I was once invited to preach to a congregation on an Easter Sunday. The topic they asked me to speak on had no relationship with the death and resurrection of Jesus. I had to draw their attention to the season we were in and the need to align their programs with such an important event in the Church’s Calendar. While I don’t think any law was broken and we are not bound to keep special days, there was no other time on their program for the entire year where they considered the death of Jesus. How could a congregation go a whole year without Jesus’ death being remembered or spoken about? It is this kind of tendency that we have to relegate and forget an important event like Christ’s death that I believe the Holy Communion was instituted to guard against.

As an individual, haven’t you had occasions when in the spur of the moment, you have forgotten what God has done in and for you and who you are, and acted in ways you shouldn’t, only to later regret in your saner moments? You need to take heed so you don’t forget what you’ve seen.

You need to take heed so you don’t forget what you’ve seen.

The Danger of Forgetting

That forgetting would do something even more sinister: “lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.” The heart, the seat of worship, would let go of God all the days of their lives. They would backslide because they forgot. If forgetting had no consequences, we wouldn’t have to worry, but the consequences could be and are many times dire. It has been said that the best way for a man to remember his wife’s birthday is to forget it once. The consequences of forgetting what God has done far outweigh those of a spouse’s birthday though. Your whole walk with God could depend in some ways on your not forgetting. The Israelites were warned to take heed lest they forgot what they had seen and those things depart from their hearts not just for a few days but all the days of their lives. Sometimes we fall into sin because we forget who we are and what we’ve been saved from. When faced with difficulty, we lose faith and grumble against God because, like the Israelites, we have forgotten how he came through for us in times past.

Sometimes we fall into sin because we forget who we are and what we’ve been saved from.

Take Heed

How do we guard against this tendency to forget? How do we take heed such that our inability to remember doesn’t cause us to forget the things we have seen and lead our hearts away from God?

1. TEACH IT. Moses’ counsel to the Israelites in our theme text was to “teach them to your children and your grandchildren.” One way to secure the memory of what God has done is to pass it on to the next generation — teach it to your children. In this context, he was obviously referring to biological children but let me expand that to all children, whether they be biological or not. Do you have ‘children’ who look up to you for discipleship or mentorship? Teach them. As any good student would know, one way to internalize any concepts you learn or read about is to teach them to someone, including your peers.
2. BUILD ‘ALTARS’. In Old Testament times, any time God visited a person or intervened in a special way in their lives, they built altars to immortalize such interventions and for them to serve as reminders in the future. ‘The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him’ (Genesis 12:7). When Jacob was running away from Esau and God visited him in a dream at night, in the morning he “took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel” (Genesis 28:18-19). About twenty years later in Genesis 35, when he was distressed in Laban’s house, God appeared and told him to return to Bethel.

I am not asking you to return to the Old Testament practice of building stone altars; I am saying you should do something that memorializes God’s visitations in your life so that you would not forget them. It may be as simple as having a journal or a notebook where you write them down; it may be a photo that you keep as a reminder; it may be a date that you mark on your calendar that keeps the memory of what God has done and reminds you of it from time to time. Let your ‘Quiet Time’ quit being a ritual or a boring chore, turn it into a time of remembrance. Be creative.

I am not asking you to return to the Old Testament practice of building stone altars; I am saying you should do something that memorializes God’s visitations in your life so that you would not forget them.

• THINK AND GIVE THANKS. Don’t be a person who doesn’t exercise their mind. You have a memory, put it to task. Learn to pause and think, especially in moments when you face difficulties, are prone to anxious thoughts and are likely to forget what God has done in the past. Like Johnson Oatman Jr sang, “Count your blessings, name them one by one; Count your blessings, see what God hath done.” The failure to count can make you forget, make you blind to the abundant mercies that surround you and leave you feeling ungrateful.
• PARTICIPATE IN CONGREGATIONAL WORSHIP. The Holy Communion, instituted by Christ and taken in congregational worship is a great opportunity to pause and consider the greatest gift ever given — the life of Jesus on the cross. Nothing tops that. Don’t think of such events in the church calendar as stuff that old-fashioned and orthodox people do. Don’t let your temporary lack or the pressures of this transient life blind you to the gift that will continue giving into all eternity. Paul said, “Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18) and “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Look At You Now

Paul told the Ephesian believers: “Remember that in the past you were without Christ. You were not citizens of Israel, and you did not know about the agreements with the promises that God made to his people. You had no hope, and you did not know God” (Ephesians 2:12, ERV).  “Yet look at you now! Everything is new! Although you were once distant and far away from God, now you have been brought delightfully close to him through the sacred blood of Jesus—you have actually been united to Christ!” (Ephesians 2:13, TPT). Always remember that!