37. Spiritual Memory
37. Spiritual Memory
Deuteronomy 8:1-4
1 “Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors.
2 Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.
3 Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
4 For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell.
▣ Deuteronomy is a message to remember God.
It is to remember how God has led us in the past 40 years when we are hungry and struggling in the wilderness.
This is because, when they settled in Canaan and were satisfied with their lives, they were satisfied with the flesh and their memory of God faded.
Therefore, God sets the feasts to be observed by the Israelites.
These are the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Harvest, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.
All these feasts are ordinances ordained to remember God.
Christians have the Spirit of God in them.
The problem of modern people is that they lose this spiritual memory and have no memory of God.
They don't know God.
Thousands of people gather in the church eagerly because they want to meet God, but they still do not enjoy God's holy presence in worship.
Because the spirits of Christians do not feel His presence.
It is not because he longs for and does not seek God.
All Christians wish for God's presence and walk, but they cannot enjoy it.
It is not because God's presence is absent, but because the spiritual ability to sense His presence has been lost.
There is a movie called "Five Days Meet" directed by Changi Maw.
Her husband eagerly awaits her husband, who was taken into exile during the Cultural Revolution in China.
The Dark Ages are over and everyone has returned to their homeland.
Liu Yanshu, her husband, also came to the house of his beloved wife.
Sadly, her wife does not recognize her husband.
Waiting for her husband and enduring the difficult times, she suffers from amnesia and cannot recognize people.
Her husband, whom she had been waiting for so much, has returned, and her wife thinks that her husband who has returned is her uncle next door.
She is scared
Then, still on the 5th of every month, she goes out to the train station and waits for her husband.
That's because her husband had a letter from her saying he would be back on the 5th.
In order to restore the memory of her beloved wife, her husband plays the piano he had previously sung at her home and reads numerous letters to her wife.
Because her wife's memory must be restored before she can accept herself as her husband.
The film ends with a scene where her wife is still waiting for her husband who has already returned, holding a sign with her husband's name, Liu Jens, at the train station in five days until her wife grows old and becomes her grandmother.
Her husband is already with her, but her wife cannot welcome her husband because she has no memory of her husband.
So, even when she is older, she desperately wants to meet her husband.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with me (Revelation 3:20).
Christians need to restore their spiritual memory. As we praise the Lord, listen to His Word, and pray, our spiritual memory of the hidden God will be restored.
There are several reasons why our spiritual memory of God needs to be restored.
1. There is a will of God for everyone.
Remember that the LORD your God made you walk in the wilderness these forty years, because he humbles you and tests you to see what your heart is and whether you keep his commands or not (Deuteronomy 8:2).
The first reason that the spiritual memory of God needs to be restored is because God's will is for everyone.
The sufferings in the wilderness for the past 40 years are not hard and difficult sufferings that we have experienced accidentally. It is for God to train His people.
Suffering is experienced by everyone.
It is a blessing to know God's plan hidden in suffering.
We do not have the answers in life.
The things that God has already planned will come true.
All Christians are born of God.
2. We must listen to God's voice.
He humbles you and makes you hungry, and gives you manna which you did not know, neither did your fathers know.
It is not the bread that you feed that people live.
so that you may know that you live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3).
The second reason that the spiritual memory of God needs to be restored is that we must listen to God's voice.
Christians must listen to what comes from the mouth of Jehovah.
He must be able to hear the voice of the Lord.
The problem is to treat faith as a matter of will.
Having the will to believe in God is mistaken for faith.
No matter how much will you have, you must be in a state where you can do that.
The memory of God must be restored.
In order to hear the voice of God, the memory of God must first be restored.
You must know God.
If you do not know God, you cannot hear the voice of God.
3. God leads.
During these forty years, your garments did not wear out, and your feet did not burn (Deuteronomy 8:4).
The third reason that our spiritual memory of God needs to be restored is that God guides our lives.
In the past 40 years, in the desert where there is nothing, the clothes did not fade and the feet did not swell because God led them.
What God's people need to remember is that God has guided their way up to this point.
You must know that God will guide you on the road ahead.
He is the God who led us both in front of the Red Sea and Jordan River and in front of the city of Jericho.
We must remember that God, who is always by our side and guides us, is with us.
Amen