Back to the Future
By Grant Gaines
In 1992, Eugene Pauly suffered a severe head injury that caused him to lose all short-term memory. This meant that for the next three decades of his life following his head injury, Eugene was never able to create a new memory that he was able to recall. But despite this serious handicap, Eugene wasn’t just a “vegetable” laying unconsciously in a hospital for the rest of his life. Instead, he actually lived a relatively normal life with the exception that he could never remember what happened so much as 20 seconds earlier.
Eugene’s unique situation fascinated scientist and researchers so much that they began to conduct a battery of tests on him to learn more about how the brain works regarding memory and habits. These tests went on for three decades but no matter how many times Eugene went to the same doctor, the doctor would always have to reintroduce himself and remind Eugene why he was in his office. Because, if the doctor didn’t remind Eugene who he was and why he was in his office every single time, Eugene would be completely oblivious to who the doctor was and why he was in his office.
The Lord does a similar thing throughout the Bible. Whether your reading Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 + 2 Samuel, 1 + 2 Kings, or 1 + 2 Chronicles, nearly every time the Lord gives His people a lengthy address, He almost always includes some version of the following phrase: “I am the Lord your God who rescued you out of Egypt.”
If you’re anything like me, this is one of those sentences that your continue to glaze over without giving a second thought to. But the other day it struck me that as your read this phrase during the Kingdom Era of the Bible (1 Samuel-2 Chronicles), many of the Israelites that received this word directly from God were roughly 400-500 years removed from the actual exodus from Egypt that occurred in Exodus 13-14 in approximately 1446 BC1.
To put that in perspective, that would be like me reminding you of our victory over the British in the American Resolution every time we talked. That would be pretty strange, wouldn’t it? Surely you would be a little bit concerned about my mental health if out of the blue I left you a voice message on your phone that said something along the lines of, “Hey friend! Just calling to check up on you to see how you were doing. And, oh yeah, by the way, don’t forget our victory over the British!” Or if you followed me on Twitter and you saw me tweet out, “@grantgaines: 200+ years later and we still have our freedom from the Red Coats #thesecolorsdontrun.”
But what you begin to discover as you meditate on the Lord’s introductory remarks more and more is that we, like Eugene, struggle to remember where we have come from and who we truly are. This has the potential to lead to a lot of rebellion and sin.
Just think about the Israelites. When they were living with an awareness of the bondage and oppression that God saved them from while they were living in Egypt, they lived with gratitude and obedience. But the second they forgot about their former way of life that the Lord delivered them from, they quickly ran off to serve other gods and began to participate in the detestable practices of the surrounding nations.
All of this sin and consequential suffering came about because of the Israelites’ fading memory of what the Lord had saved them from. Knowing this, God took it upon Himself to remind His children of His incredible deliverance from their suffocating bondage.
We would be wise to allow God to do the same in our lives. We would be wise to daily take some time at the beginning of our prayers to thank God for saving us from so much sin, shame, suffering, guilt, addictions, loneliness, sadness, condemnation, hatred, evil, and ultimately an eternal life separated from the Author of Life.
It is through remembering this bad news that the Good News of the Gospel was born. It’s through echoing the words of David in Psalms 51:12 (NIV) as we start out each day by asking God to, “Restore to [us] the joy of [our] salvation” that we are able to avoid being like a dog who returns to his vomit (Proverbs 26:11).
The Israelites learned this truth the hard way. Let’s not make the same mistakes they did. If we don’t remember our past, we are destined to repeat it. If we don’t remember where we’ve come from, we can’t get to where God wants us to go.
Comments? Questions? Suggestions?
