The Sunday News
Greetings beloved nation in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Exodus 2:24 “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob”.
Last week we spoke about how God hears and answers our prayers. Psalms 65:2 gives us the assurance that there is a God in heaven who answers prayers.
Many a times as believers we go through times of difficulty, of illness, of death, of loss and other calamities and we begin to think that God has forsaken us or has forgotten about us. We start to blame God that why is he not coming to our assistance or rescuing us from whatever is happening.
We begin to doubt God and his promises to us. When our prayers are not answered we begin to think that God has failed us. The scriptures tell us in Exodus 2:24 that God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
So meaning that we have a God who not only hears and answers prayers, but we have a God who remembers his people and his promises.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to assure you that we have a God in heaven who remembers. We have a God who is faithful despite our unfaithfulness.
When we read the bible, we will discover the term ‘God remembered’ mentioned several times. When we see the word ‘remembered’ we usually associate it with calling to mind something we had forgotten.
So is the bible saying God forgets and then has to remember? What does this term actually mean? Does the term ‘God remembered’ mean he forgets his promises or his people? No! God never forgets.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the creator of the universe. God is perfect. He is all-knowing. God does not remember things in the sense that he has forgotten. Unlike our own limited brains, the mind of God is all-knowing.
Nothing in creation is hidden from his sight. When the bible says that ‘God remembered’ something or someone, it means he turned his attention to someone and acted on their behalf.
We see in Exodus 2:24 ‘the children of Israel groaned in their slavery and cried out to God. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.’ There four things that we notice here; (i) God heard, (ii) God remembered, (iii) God looked and (iv) God was concerned.
God remembers his people who were enslaved to the Egyptians for 430 years and in the next chapter of Exodus 3, God puts in motion his plan to free the children of Israel using Moses. Later on in Exodus 6:5 when God is commissioning Moses, he says,
“I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians were enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant”.
God had not forgotten about them and their situation, it means he was now ready to act. When God remembers, it is followed by an action on his part.
The bible tells us of many instances when God remembered his people, and acted. In Genesis 8:1 we are told that God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock in the ark and he sent a wind that caused the floodwaters to recede. God had not forgotten that Noah and his family were floating in the ark together with all those animals, it was now time for him to act.
In Genesis 30:22 we are told God remembered Rachel, Jacob’s wife who was barren, and he opened her womb and enabled her to conceive. The psalmist in Psalms 106:4 says,
“Remember me O Lord, when you show favour to your people; held me when you save them”. The psalmist understood that when God remembers, he turns his attention to you and acts on your behalf.
He understood that God had not forgotten about him, but his cry was for God to pay his attention to him and rescue him. God never forgets his promises or his people.
In the book of Isaiah 49:14-16, when the people of Israel thought that God had forgotten about them in exile, they received a word of assurance from the prophet Isaiah saying; “Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.’ ‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you in the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” It is not possible for God to forget anything, especially his people.
But let us remember that just as God remembers us, we are to remember him always and to honour him. The human mind has a tendency to forget.
We discover in the bible that the children of Israel time and again would forget about what God had done for them and would turn to worship other gods, in Judges 8:34. That is why in Deuteronomy 8 they are instructed never to forget God.
Let us remember God through the bad times and through the good times that we go through because he never forgets us. The bible assures us that we are engraved in the palm of his hands.
The word ‘engraved’ means ‘to cut into’, ‘to carve or to inscribe.’ So meaning it cannot be erased because it is written in dissolvable ink.
It speaks of something permanent. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to assure you that God has not forgotten about you or your situation.
I pray that this year in 2022, may God remember you, may God turn his attention to you and your situation and may God act on your behalf.
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