The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church, Fairfax, Virginia, on Friday night, May 16, 1980. The sermon is entitled, God's Memory. 

It is what the scripture has to say about God's memory. God's memory, God's remembering. And you can trace that through from the very beginning of the scripture.

We hear the Bible saying things like, God remembered Noah. In the midst of this devastation that was going to come on the face of the earth, you know, he's angry with sin, he's going to wipe it out. It says God repented of making the earth, but he remembered Noah.

And there was salvation. He spared Noah, he spared his family, and he gave a new beginning. We read on a little bit further, and he says to Noah, I will remember my covenant.

The covenant that I made with Noah. And we read about covenants. There's a whole series of covenants that God makes with various people in the scripture.

Chapter 9, he says, I will remember the everlasting covenant. You know, what is being said here? It's not as if God were forgetful.

You know, sort of it slipped his mind and all of a sudden, oh yes, it pops back. No, he said, as a deliberate act of my will. I am choosing to hold in the focal point of my attention a fact which will determine my action.

That's what it means when God says, I will remember. I choose to bring into vivid recollection and focus a fact which will determine my behavior, my relationship. It says in chapter 19 of the book of Genesis, God remembered Abraham.

says he remembered Rachel says in Exodus God remembered his covenant with Abraham years and years, generations later God remembered his covenant with Abraham God acts in the light of certain facts which he deliberately holds before himself and takes into account and interestingly he's continually enjoining his people to do the same thing belong to him and those who have entered into covenant with him, you remember these facts. You hold these things before you. So Exodus 13 and verse 3 says remember this day in which you come out from bondage. Remember this day.

You know, that's not, again, don't be forgetful. It's saying choose to deliberately hold that before you. This is a mighty act of God and I want you to determine your in the light of it.

Remember the day in which you came out. In the middle of the Ten Commandments, we're told, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Set it aside and it is a special day.

Numbers 15, remember the covenant, the commandments of the Lord. Deuteronomy 5, remember that you were a servant and so be kind to those who are servants in your midst. We discover that, especially in the Old Testament, Sin is often described as failing to remember.

Failing to remember. They forgot the covenant. They forgot the Lord their God.

They forgot his mighty act. Judges 8.34, it says, Israel remembered not the Lord their God. And they got into a whale of a mess.

There were not many righteous in that day. Every man did as he pleased. There was no king to govern them.

And they forgot. the Lord their God. And in the light of that, repentance is often described as having forgotten, then recollecting again.

Bringing back into remembrance. Psalm 137 By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We've forgotten.

We've forgotten our inheritance. we somehow let it slide away to the periphera of things it failed to occupy that central focal point and we got into the deepest kind of trouble and God brought a spirit of repentance and we wept when we remembered Zion when it came back to that central place so obedience then is cast in terms of remembering just as sin is cast in terms of forgetting the Lord speaks of his own faithfulness you might look at Jeremiah chapter 33 this particular passage doesn't use the word remembering but notice how it plays on the concept Jeremiah 33 and starting with verse 20 the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah thus says the Lord if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that the day and night will not come at their appointed time then also my covenant with David my servant may be broken. God remembers his covenant with David.

This again is generations afterward. Generations afterward. Israel has sinned.

They've gotten into trouble. They are being harassed by the surrounding nations. And some of them are despairing that they're ever going to get back their relationship with God.

And he says, thus says the Lord, if you can break my covenant with the day and with the night, If you can, then I'll break my covenant with David. But if you can't, that's how firm it is. God remembers his covenant with David.

Look at verse 23. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Have you not observed what these people are saying?

The Lord has rejected the two families which he chose. Thus they have despised my people so that they are no longer a nation in their sight. Thus says the Lord.

If I have not established my covenant with the day and the night and the ordinances of heaven and earth, then I will reject the descendants of Jacob and David my servant, and will not choose one of his descendants to rule over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When God is pictured in Ezekiel's great vision, you remember this incredible picture that Ezekiel has of the Lord seated on his throne, and there are wheels on all sides of the throne, and the wheels are covered, it says, with eyes, outside and inside, a very gross kind of a picture. But what's being pictured here is God ceaselessly vigilant, looking in all directions, taking into account all things and remembering them.

And remembering them. God is a God of ceaseless vigilance. Isaiah says the God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

He's aware of what's going on. He sees it. He takes account of it.

He brings it before him deliberately and he remembers it. Our God is a God who remembers. Jesus said not even a sparrow falls to the ground except your heavenly Father knows it.

Even the hairs of your head are numbered. that's easier in some cases than others God is aware of all the facts he sees them all he takes account of them all he remembers them all Jesus says on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word They've spoken. When the Watergate revelations were just unfolding, Billy Graham said, you know, God has a tape recorder too.

He said on the day of judgment, he's just going to turn on that little tape recorder and you're going to condemn yourself. You're going to condemn yourself. God hears every idle word.

sees all those little things that you wish nobody would see. Okay? That's the kind of God the scriptures talk about.

Look at Psalm 139. I know it's a familiar passage, but let's just look at it again in the light of this. Psalm 139.

And verse 13. let's even back up let's look at verse 11 if I say let only the darkness cover me and the light about me be night there are things I want to do that I don't want anybody to see I want to go hide in the darkness if I say let the darkness cover me verse 12 even the darkness is not dark to thee the night is as bright as the day for darkness is as light with thee. You can fool some of the people some of the time.

Maybe most of the people most of the time but you can't fool God any of the time. And he goes on to say For thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise thee for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works. Thou knowest me right well.

My frame was not hidden from thee when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth, thy eyes beheld my unformed substance. Before my substance even began to be formed, God saw what I was going to become. Before I was a fetus, before I was an embryo, before my mother and my father conceived me, God saw what I was going to become.

Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance. Thy eyes beheld in a book. In thy book were written every one of them.

The days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. This is the God that we're talking about. A God who sees everything before it happens.

A God who hears everything. A God who is aware of every single aspect of his creation. and a God who remembers all of it.

All of it. This carries on into the very last book in the Bible. It says another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books.

All of it. God keeps account. Every time we begin a communion service with a formal prayer, We pray, Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.

That's the introduction. Against that, I want to suggest to you that the most extraordinary act of all God's creation, now it's always kind of dangerous to use a superlative about any one aspect of God's work, but I think I'm on safe ground. The most extraordinary act of God's almighty creation is for him to forget something.

Do you see that that follows from what we've looked at? For God to forget something is an impossibility. It's a contradiction.

And yet that's what the scripture says. He says in Jeremiah 31, For those who confess their sins and believe his promise of forgiveness, he says, verse 33, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine the God who is aware of absolutely every detail of his creation, who knows things before they happen, who hears every idle word, who sees every hidden deed, who knows what you're made of, who remembers your frame, he says, I will remember their sin. No more. No more.

In Amos chapter 8 and verse 7, he says, I will never forget any of their works. And that's spoken in judgment. I will never forget any of their works.

And then in his mercy, he reverses himself. I will forget. I will forget what they've done.

Psalm 103, verse 12 says, As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our sins from us. How far is the east from the west? How far?

Forever. Forever. Get there and you haven't gotten there.

Do you believe that? That God, when you confess your sin and you hear his offer of forgiveness and you put your trust in it, God takes your sin and removes it infinitely far away from you. He separates it from you.

Somebody said, God casts my sin into the sea of his forgetfulness. The almighty God creates a nothing where there was a something. He makes my sin into non-being.

He casts it away from me. as astonishing as astonishing as it is to say that God creates something out of nothing that we serve a God who brings things into being from that which is not Job says he stretches out the north over a void and hangs the world on nothing as astonishing as that is I'm suggesting to you that even more astonishing is that our God takes something that is and turns it into something that is not. He takes my sin and destroys it.

He obliterates it and he forgets it. I can hardly imagine that. He forgets.

He chooses to forget my sin. A few weeks ago we were looking at Matthew's genealogy, the account of Jesus' parentage. Do you remember?

And we noticed this very remarkable fact that alongside, right alongside of all these mighty heroes of faith, right alongside the Virgin Mary in all of her purity and all of her beauty, we had mentioned four very shady ladies. We had one who seduced her father-in-law. We had another who was a professional harlot.

We had one who was the offspring of an incestuous relationship between a father and his daughter. And we had one who was party to adultery and murder. and you say why why does God list those four shady ladies right alongside of the Virgin Mary because in the sight of God they are just as pure having confessed their sins having believed the gospel having received his forgiveness he washes them white as snow Isaiah says come let us reason together though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow as far as the east is from the west so far will I remove your sins from you maybe I can put it another way you've been struggling with something for years you've been struggling with it and every time you get tempted you capitulate all over again and you go and you lament and you weep and you beat your breast and you beg God to forgive you.

And then you're overwhelmed with a sense of guilt because you did it again. And so you think, maybe if I repent a little bit harder and so you go back to God and you say, God, you remember that sin that I just confessed five minutes ago? And he says, no. That's what we just said.

No, I don't remember. I don't remember your sin. God doesn't just forgive.

You know how we do. I'll forgive you, but I can never forget it. When God forgives, He forgets.

Slate is clean. It didn't happen. Psalm 51.

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Create in me a clean heart O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. It's written by King David.

And he was the one with whom that fourth lady committed adultery and murder. And he jeopardized the whole kingdom of Israel. And he brought into disrepute the thing that God had planned from before the foundation of the world.

And David went to God and said, Wash me and I'll be cleaner than snow. Create a new heart, a new spirit, a new life. The scripture says David was a man after God's heart.

God forgot David's sin. He remembered David and forgot his sin. Do you know that the word amnesty, which means treating you as if it never happened, and amnesia come from the same root?

God forgets our sin. And you need to forget it too. Paul says, forgetting the things that are behind, I press on to the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus.

Satan will come. Satan is called, in the book of Revelation, the accuser of the brethren. And Satan's purpose will come to accuse you, to make you wallow in guilt, to feel that you're separated from God, because if you feel that you're separated from God, you're going to act like it, and you might as well be.

And Satan wins the victory. But God says, I've already forgotten it. Didn't you mean it when you asked me to?

Why do you go on beating yourself? I'm not going to. I beat my son to death.

That you don't have to. Let's just bow our heads for a minute. John wrote in his first letter, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Father in heaven, so many times we have come to you and only halfway believed the gospel. Forgive us for disbelieving the wonder of your forgetfulness. Forgive us for presuming that we have a higher standard than yours.

That whereas you can find it in your heart to forgive us, We go on punishing ourselves, feeling guilty, and indulging in emotions. Lord, we would choose right now, tonight, we would choose, because your word says so, to believe that when we confess our sins, you remove them as far as the east is from the west, and you swallow them up in forgetfulness. What an astonishing act of creation.

Lord we would believe that we would choose to trust you this night we would choose to believe that you would put a new and right spirit within us and that when you see us you see us in a purity as great as that of the Virgin Mary in fact you see us in the purity of Christ himself we say hallelujah to you hallelujah to you Lord Christ thank you Jesus thank you Lord thank you Lord thank you Lord Amen