Memorial Day Weekend

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome to God’s living room,

Today not tomorrow. Today is the 142 anniversary of Memorial Day. It is a day set aside by our nation to remember and honor all who have paid the ultimate price to preserve and maintain our freedom. Stand up if you have ever served in the military. Raise your hand if you have a relative who is serving or who has served in the military. Thank you so very much for your service. It continue to make a difference today in our lives!

It is certainly befitting that we should honor those brave men and women who have sacrificed to preserve this great nation of ours, for we must never forget that freedom is never free. Freedom is always costly. It has always cost one of our most precious possessions—life itself. Therefore, we must remember, lest we forget freedom’s value. We must remember, so that we do not take freedom for granted. We must remember, so that our freedom remains precious to us.

Video The Sacrifice of One

Remember the freedoms we have aren’t because some one set on their back side and was flipping through the channels. The freedoms we have are because people left their family, friends, job, church and way of life behind and many died. Remember?

Remembering is also key to the proper attitude toward God in life. When everything seems the same and nothing is new, understand how great that can be! If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you like me are most blessed than 6 million people who will not survive this week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation you like me are ahead of 500 million people in the world. If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death you like me are more blessed than 3 billion people in the world. If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, roof overhead, and a place to sleep you like me are richer than 75% of this world.

When everything seems the same, and there seems to be nothing new remember how God made all these things amazing to begin with. When you are down and out about having to do school work - remember how excited you were to get your acceptance letter to college. When you are stuck in traffic remember how excited you were to get your drivers’ license. When your employer is driving you nuts remember how excited you were to get a job.

Let’s use 103 call ourselves back to worship. Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. 2 Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. David is saying is “soul, soul, wake up. Soul let’s get it together. Praise the Lord. Soul when you don’t feel like praise the Lord, remember all of his benefits.

So let me ask you and me: Are we thankful today for all that God has done for us? A problem in my life and I imagine in yours is that we often treat God as common. But God is not common. God is holy. God is all knowing. God is all powerful. He controls the universe. He starts and stops lightning bolts. He allows tornadoes to land in this field or that but not to touch this house or that one. His hands keep the planets spinning with far greater accuracy than one of the Chinese acrobats keeps plates spinning while riding a unicycle. And we think that whole acrobat thing is so cool. It’s not just the big things in nature that are cool. It is also the small things. He made all the intricacies of our human body which has a central nervous system that if it were placed end to tend would reach all the way to China. He has given us our eyes that see many of the colors of the world. I’m told that if our legs exercised as much as our eyes did everyday that we would have to walk 20 miles a day. There are small things in nature that God placed there that make our ecosystem run. Here are some; insects dispose and recycle animal dung and the dead remains of plants and animals. Life as we know it could not exist without such recycling processes. Also, the tiny midge pollinates the cocoa plant. Without it, there would be no chocolate! So this summer when the biting flies come around quit swatting those things, I want chocolate. There are many more example that are truly amazing from nature that would intrigue us and blow our minds all day long.

Let me ask us again, are we thankful for what God has done for us? We have become demanding of God and so we frequently have an attitude that we deserve for God to do things for us. We need to be glad that God hasn’t given us what we deserve, because if we got we deserve we would all be in hell already. Psalm 103:3,4 who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion. Remember sin, those are those things that we do and feel bad about and sometimes not. Sins are those good things that we are to do and sometimes don’t and we feel about that and sometimes not. Truth be told there are many sins that we don’t even know about. There are sins we commit and there are sins we do by not doing the good that we are to do. And we ask God to forgive us, which is all good and fine but the sin transaction while it may be paperless, and while it may cost us, certainly was costly - remember.Hebrews 13:12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. And 1 John 1:7 the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. Oh we are not talking a scratch, or a paper cut. We are not talking about an accidental hitting of the finger with a hammer. We are not talking about donating a pint of blood in a nice air conditioned room with cookies, pizza, juice and soda afterwards. We are talking about crucifixion. We are taking about the loss of life, the loss of innocent life, the loss of God’s life. That’s that is how forgiveness was won for us, how forgiveness became ours, that’s the cost of forgiveness. Remember.

Do you have a junk draw at home? A junk draw is one that has a little bit of everything in it. A screw driver, rubber band, batteries, deck of playing cards, pens and pencils, coasters, and coins. It has a little bit of everything. When people sin against us a lot of times we will forgive them but we will also put their sins in a mental junk drawer. And when the time is right for us we will dig through that junk drawer and pull out their sin to hold against them. At best we remember what we are to forget, at worst we never forgave the in the first place. But that is not how God works. And here is another blessing. Look what verse 12 says, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. God forgives us our sins through the blood of Jesus and that’s it. He doesn’t even keep a record of our sins. It’s not like he runs our prayers through the filter of a sin junk drawer. Well, I don’t know if I am going to do this for you because you did this when you were 16, and you did this just yesterday, and you pulled this one off again for the zillioneth time right before worship tonight. God isn’t in to keeping junk. God isn’t into keeping our sins around. And for a lot of us, if we would remember that we could probably get off our back a lot sooner and live free like we really are. And quit saying, woe is me. I don’t deserve this. I can’t do this. My sins have disqualified me. Just so you know that is Satan, that is not your sinful nature and it is certainly not God. Remember who God is. When we remember who God is and how he deals with our sins our joy level will soar; our insecurity level will diminish; and our love will reach new heights.

And when we remember who God is we want to worship him. Our souls are compelled, motivated, eager to worship him. And as we worship with him with our very lives we become frustrated because we find out our worship is inadequate. But that is actually a good thing. God is glorified when we realize that He is over and above anything that we can bring. And we tell ourselves in this frustration, come on soul, more worship, better worship. Come on soul. God is worth it. All the while God is being glorified. And finally we just can’t get over it and so we say, I have to go encourage others to worship this illustrious God. And that is actually a good thing. And this is what David did: Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. 21 Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will. 22 Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, O my soul.

On this memorial day weekend let’s not forget those who have served that we may be free. Remember it is through God that every good and perfect gift comes us. Let’s not forget the one who gave us freedom from sin and freedom to worship him. Remember.