1.― “Forgotten.”
HOW easy, alas! it is to forget even the passing things of time, which perish in the using; but oh! how terribly solemn, and infinitely worse, when it becomes a question not merely for time, but for that endless eternity, to which we are all hastening! We dare not slight the psalmist’s warning words, “The wicked shall be turned into hell; and all the nations that forget God.” The day we live in is, however, one where God is entirely forgotten by countless thousands; at least, six days out of seven; and then, perchance, just one brief hour on Sunday suffices for all thoughts of Him.
How still more serious is this when we reflect that, speaking generally, one-third of our lives is spent in sleep! Men to-day are too much engrossed with their business and money-making, their selfish schemes and ambitions, pleasures, and the like, to let God come into their thoughts; and, while feeding on their ever-increasing love of excitement of all kinds, Satan drags down his willing victims into a whirling vortex, where God is forgotten, but the end... is hell. “Beware lest thou forget the Lord thy God,” were the law-giver’s warning words to God’s ancient people, and Israel’s after history, ending as it did in the rejection and crucifixion of their Messiah, is a solemn object lesson to every God-forgetter.
Does God forget? So far, dear reader, as you are concerned, the answer to that question rests with yourself. If you still continue to persistently forget God, He will most assuredly not forget your sins; and at the great white throne they will all appear against you, and your final sentence and everlasting doom will be pronounced by the very One who would have been your Saviour now, but who will then be your Judge. If, on the other hand, you come now, as a poor, guilty sinner, to Christ, He will save you now, for His precious blood avails for all who trust it, and God’s word to every believer is, “Your sins and your iniquities I will remember no more.” “Can a woman forget her sucking child? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”
Thus is it sweetly true that, though God eternally forgives the believer’s sins, yet He never forgets even the feeblest believer. For you, dear reader, if still unsaved, is it not high time to “awake out of sleep,” and “consider your ways,” or one day you will be “forgotten as a dead man out of mind,” and “the place that once knew you shall know you no more”?