REMEMBER WHAT?! Deuteronomy and September 11, 2001

ONCE AGAIN REPORTS HAVE LEAKED FROM THE WHITE HOUSE ABOUT THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH, PREPARED FOR THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATTACK ON THE UNITED STATES BY (MOSTLY) SAUDI ARABIAN MUSLIM RADICALS . . . .

What we are hearing is that the "prez" will use the occasion (once again) to emphasize an idea known as "national service" -- as if Americans didn't already know about that.  That's because after America was attacked on the original September 11, 2001 date, other Americans volunteered to serve.  They did this to help clean up, repair, and heal the damage our enemies had done to us.  So he is going to emphasize national service, but de-emphasize the whole business about remembering what the day was really about.  Let me give you a hint:  it was not about national service!  The "Bamster" is going to soft-peddle the whole idea of an actual

The worst leaks are the ones that come out in
advance of the actual bad policy decisions
that the man keeps on bumbling into . . .

major terrorist attack on the United States.  In place of that he will replace this with his now more favorite concept of "violent extremism".  That's because like any politically correct liberal he has learned that the last phrase really communicates very little in relation to what actually happened some ten years ago.  But it does have the advantage of allowing his unappointed political machine (and the leftist monsters who run it) to shut down anything which he might choose to abel as "violent extremism".  It also continues his apparent program to weaken our country and encourage our many stealthy enemies.  The dastard! 
This is what tyrants do (normally, not presidents of the United States):  they play games with language in order to get a sizable lump of people agreeing with them; then they use the newly accepted terms and phrases to steal freedom and enforce new regulations.  But this is an old story . . . .

So much for the president's attempts to paint over what actually happened and what it meant.
Meanwhile, rational people know (and this we will remember!) that given the massive cheering of great crowds throughout the muslim world, it is the dominant belief of mainstream islamism that we cannot coexist in the world; but that rather that we must become like them or cease to exist.  In other words the majority of the muslim world believes, (or possibly is forced to believe), that classical, sword-wielding, imperialist islam remains the dominant islam the world over.  This also we remember ten years after their attack on us.

Therefore because we have learned we can expect no real political leadership from the current chief executive at this time when we need it the most, we will all rather, just quietly go off in a

We will always remember what radical muslims (the
majority in control) did to us . . . . 
Only remembering will help us defend ourselves

different direction.  It is the direction which we know deep down is the right one.  We will remain true to our founding, biblical principles and ideas, and do some remembering the way the people of God and our national founders knew to remember.  Many today do not even know what this means so let me explain.

To remember anything properly means several things, especially if one is a Christian.  That's because the foundational concepts for memory are found in the earlier books of the Bible, and especially in the Book of Deuteronomy.  The kind of remembering that is recommended there, is intended to tie the people in the present to the past, and to God's actions on their behalf in their own history.  The end of such memory-practice is not to encourage this people so informed only to "dwell on the past" in a negative fashion.  For then they might only bear a heavy grudge, enough to carry forth vengeance, or they might wallow in self-pity.  The real God who inspired the writing of Deuteronomy and the rest of the Bible is the Father of Jesus Christ.  This God has already shown that He is not interested in any such response!

But He is interested in our being able to capture the large and small moments of His working in our lives.  Those large moments are the ones during which God revealed Himself

The best moments of divine revelation come
when we open the Bible and read
expectantly.

in a mighty way in the stories and events from the Bible.  The small moments are when God reveals Himself to us in our lives.  He does this providentially, sometimes in ways we don't see or understand at the time (though obviously we do realize He was with us later on); or in answered prayer, God shows us that He has acted on our behalf.  We are to exercise biblical memory for all such instances.


The Book of Deuteronomy is the focal point for our modern Christian understanding of such things.  Take a look at the number of times the word "remember" is found in the book (usually as a command from God or an exhortation to the Israelites by the preacher, Moses). 
Conversely note how just as often the phrase "do not forget" is found in the book.  It means basically the same as "remember" (zakar in the Hebrew), but it is more common because the writer of the book, knew that part of Israel's history was its own propensity to forget what God had done for them.  Therefore he frequently reminds them, "do not forget"!  Do not do what you have such a proven bad habit of doing!

Consider a series of these terms and phrases from the book itself.  Any of you readers can

Remembering the Lord our God is
something that comes to us all through
His covenant.

perform the same word study and find the listing of these terms for Deuteronomy by going to biblegateway.com.  Specifically here for zkr, use this address line:
http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=remember&version1=50&searchtype=all&bookset=3&limit=bookset


Here in fact is some of that list from Deuteronomy (using the New King James Version of the Bible).  As you read through them, note what they have in common:

Deuteronomy 5:15
And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
Deuteronomy 7:18
you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt:
Deuteronomy 8:1
[ Remember the LORD Your God ] “Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers.
Deuteronomy 8:2
And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Deuteronomy 8:18

“And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
Deuteronomy 9:27
Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look on the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin,
Deuteronomy 15:15
You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this thing today.
Deuteronomy 16:3

No man but Jesus has ever seen
God.  But the great artists
have tried to depict His glory . . . .

You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

1.  God's people are ordered to remember firstly the torment and the torture they were forced to endure at the hands of others:  "Remember you were slaves in Egypt . . . ." says God or His preacher.  They are to remember precisely that hardship that others had put them through against their own will.  They are not to sugar coat it, or forget it, or re-describe it with some cleverly phrased human euphemism.  For that would hide completely the nature and meaning of what they had experienced.  They are to know their enemies before God, by name, and remember what that enemy did to them.  It is an order from God, and in Deuteronomy (and in the rest of biblical history) God's people obey this -- at least some of the time.

But God's people are not to dwell on the actions of their enemy so as to exact vengeance on that enemy by themselves.  That falls to God and He has already exacted His justice on (in this case) the Egyptians.  (Note that when He did so, He did not blot them out as a nation; rather, He punished the recalcitrant Pharaoh and his circle of people in ever-widening ripples, until finally God had to destroy at least part of Pharaoh's army). 

2.  This leads us to the second major thing they are to remember:  that whatever hardship they suffered before at the hands of another nation of men, God delivered them from those hardships.  They are ordered to remember, and they do remember that God rescued them

The Israelites wanted out of Egypt, the land
of giant, arrogant statues and slave masters. 
God brought them out.  That was deliverance.

from slavery.  It is of preeminent importance that this divine rescue be remembered above all else!  For in remembering this God's people cannot for a moment consider themselves the source of their deliverance.  This truth takes their minds off themselves and puts it on the power redeeming God, who in saving them, also saw fit to punish their enemies.

An examination of the converse command, "do not forget/you shall not forget" yields very similar results.  Again, observe most of the occurrences of this phrase from the Book of Deuteronomy here (and those not included offer the same findings):

Deuteronomy 4:9
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 4:23
Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you.
Deuteronomy 6:12
then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
Deuteronomy 8:11
“Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today,
Deuteronomy 8:14
when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

If the Book of Deuteronomy is not
on your reading list, then you have
chosen the path of gross stupidity.

Deuteronomy 8:19
Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.
Deuteronomy 9:7
“Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.

[  Again one may see the entire list for this phrase "do not (or "you shall not") forget" (lo' tishkach), here from the same web site:  http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=not+forget&searchtype=all&version1=50&bookset=3 ]

The ideas here are somewhat more differentiated.
1.  One is not to forget the evidence of one's own eyes.  The present generation of Israel has seen God at work on its behalf:  defeating Egypt by stages and clearly defining a way out of slavery.  It is easy to forget such, but they must not.  Rather must they build memory into their present consciousness, and act on that memory in a spirit of praise to God their deliverer.
2.  Nor are they to forget the covenant which God has given to them.  The covenant is a total agreement sealing a relationship with God and including in its details the precise commands by which all humans are to conduct their lives.  God proved His authority over them for such a relationship by virtue of His work of deliverance.  The covenant is the foundation of that relationship.  Therefore they must not make an image of their Deity, for they saw no image or form of Him.

Think about where supreme authority comes from.
It always and ultimately comes from the
One Triune God.

3.  The major idea of course is a warning against forgetting the Lord their God Himself.  His mighty works spring from His character and are the enactment of His spoken Word.  But all of this points to God Himself, so they are not to forget Him.

4.  Likewise, God's people must not forget how prone they are to stray from His written commands, that are constituent to His covenant.  They must remember their own sinfulness, as already demonstrated on the way to the promised land.  They complained against Moses and Aaron.  They ordered Aaron's construction of the golden calf, they even rebelled and questioned God's appointed human leadership, suggesting others in the place of Moses.  Man must remember His bent toward sinning in the presence of Almighty God.  This last item should go a long ways towards eliminating any spirit of vengeance against one's past enemies.  Though muslimism today cannot even seem to exist without a living, generations-long, lust for blood vengeance, there is simply no room for it in a life lived with and under the genuine Covenant God.

Do you really want your world to be
ruled by a bunch of uneducated, angry
"moose leems"??  You don't!!
(Look at what they've done to their own
countries.  Remember that too!!)

This is memory in a key book of the Bible, and, as one would find by extending the word study to many other books, these ideas are central to much of scripture.
How then are we to apply them to our present summons to memory?

1.  We are to remember our enemies by name and precisely what they did to us as a nation, from the details, now more fully understood, of their long-term plot against us, to their actual successful assault on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
2.  We are to remember that God did not abandon us even with the death of so many Americans.  Though some would say, "we do not see any visible evidence of His deliverance on our behalf," the evidence is in fact found for every believer in the cross upon which Jesus died, and the sign of the empty tomb which no longer contains His dead body.  These stand for signs in all ages of God's love and redeeming power for all of humanity.
3.  We are to remember our own propensity to sin:  to go away from the God who has delivered us, even after He has rescued us.

4.  We are to remember that we in this nation did not respond to their enemies as we well could have.  Rather, then-President George W. Bush, responded with a very measured approach, seeking to assault specific, well-identified enemies, in specific locations, and as much as possible, to avoid any harm to civilian populations.  We must consider his leadership

This is what the United States could have done to
several middle eastern countries.  Remember
the forbearance of this country and its
leaders, and be very glad!!  (You unpatriotic
weasel!  Not really . . . but seriously . . . .)

in this area as very measured indeed when one considers what the United States could have done, given the depth and breadth of its full armament.
5.  We are to stand ready to give as Jesus ordered (first Peter, then all of us) in Matthew 18:21-22 (23-35).  But this command of His cannot simply be applied as a blanket or bandaid over the entire wound!!  He says such deep forgiveness and healing of a relationship can only be offered to those who come to us knowing they have wronged us, acknowledging they have sinned against God and us, and then seeking -- actually seeking -- our forgiveness. 

But muslims have not done this!  Not as individuals (are they the greatest cowards in the history of the world?), not in groups, and certainly not as nations!

They cannot admit that they have done us wrong, because by and large they must admit the opposite:  that their devil-god orders their wicked treatment of those not like them with never the thought of apology.  Thus, for those unrepentant, whoever they might be, there remains no divine forgiveness.  None. 
Against such there can be no wonder that Jesus promised His own followers, that there would always be wars and rumors of wars, but that the presence of many such would not signal the end.

Observe Holy Communion, and you
will be remembering Jesus and His
sacrifice for you (you sinner!).

Yet one more memory for the Christian overshadows all others:  it is that which God orders us to practice in the Bible when we celebrate Holy Communion.  We look back to the symbolic meal Jesus shared with His disciples; it reminds us of the cross He would face a few days later.  And then we look forward to the fact that Jesus is alive today and with us as we worship Him.  He is present in us and around us, as the resurrected Christ.  We relate ourselves to Him by obeying Him, not least of all when we break the bread, eat it, and drink from a cup of wine in His name.  Indeed our relationship with Him becomes stronger in our act of obeying Him by experiencing the Holy Communion service together.  This is His gift to bring divine grace into the lives of His followers.  It enables us to carry our own crosses, face our enemies, offer them Christ's love in word and deed; then welcome them to the same Jesus, the same redemption, and ultimately the same table.  This we will remember!

LBC