In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of remembering God's faithfulness and track record in our lives. He shares a personal story of how God intervened and saved him from drowning as a child. The speaker then references Psalm 106, which highlights the tendency of the Israelites to forget God's miracles and complain in times of challenge. He encourages the audience to remember God's goodness, promises, and faithfulness, and to wait in faith for His plans to unfold. The sermon emphasizes the battle between forgetting and remembering, and the speaker urges the audience to choose to remember what God has done and to forget the negative influences of Satan.

So I wanna look at a couple verses in a very long psalm, just a few verses in Psalm 106. And Psalm 106 has these transitions to it. Starts out with, oh, bless the Lord and praise him and remember all that he's done for you. And then it gives an account of the history of Israel, but in a spiritual synopsis way. So it says this. This is the part I'm not reading. When God did all the miracles in Egypt to get those people free, when he sent those plagues, they forgot when they got to the Red Sea and they complained and they had no faith. Although they had seen, like when you see grasshoppers like all over the place, and then they disappear. Don't you think there's a God helping you, right? Or whatever the plague might have been. And they saw Passover night, but see, no matter what God does in the past, there's a new challenge to remember it and move ahead because the tendency is to do what they did. They forgot, and at the Red Sea, they began to scream and yell, he brought us out to kill us because they saw the chariots of Pharaoh coming after them, mountains on either side, and the Red Sea uncrossable in front of them. So it talks about how their spiritual journey, let's just look at two places here I want you to see. Verse seven, when our ancestors were in Egypt, they gave no thought to your miracles, they did not remember your many kindnesses, and they rebelled by the sea, the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his namesake to make his mighty power known. He rebuked the Red Sea and it dried up, he led them through the depths as through a desert, he saved them from the hand of the foe, from the hand of the enemy, he redeemed them. The waters covered their adversaries, not one of them survived. By the way, that's a beautiful picture, a commentator said, of when God saves us now, not through the Red Sea, but through the blood of Jesus, not one sin remains. How many are happy, not one sin remains, not one of them were survived. There's not one sin that survives being counted against us when you put your faith in Jesus Christ. Then they believed his promises, and notice, then they believed and sang his praise. Why? Because they saw what he did. Aha, but they soon forgot what he had done and did not wait, look at that, they did not wait for his plan to unfold. Look what happens when you forget God. You're tempted to not wait for his plan to unfold. In the desert, they gave into their craving, in the wilderness, they put God to the test. And then later on, in verse 24 and 25, then they despised, as they forgot God, the pleasant land, the land he had promised. They did not believe his promise, they grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Lord. So, there's a big battle in life, big portion of our life, and how we act, and what joy we have, and what outlook we have, and it all revolves around forgetting and remembering. God wants us to forget certain things and remember certain things. Satan comes and says, no, I want you to forget certain things, but I want you to remember certain things. And if you analyze people, what they forget and what they remember will tell you a lot about their lives. If they're remembering stuff that God says, forgetting those things that are behind, but if they let the enemy bring it to their consciousness and they're remembering it, and I messed up, and I failed God, or this person did this to me 20 years ago, 20 months ago, whatever it is, and they think about that and don't forget it, they remember it, it affects their whole spiritual framework. They're held back from blessings from God. Then Satan, at the same time, will have us remember those things, but he'll have us forget everything God has ever done. All the blessings of God, the mercies of God, the promises of God, verses from Scripture, the interventions of God in our lives, the time he reached down his hand and he helped us, protected us, he makes you try to forget all of that. So you live in negativity, unbelief, and all kinds of junk. God, on the other hand, is saying, I want you to forget a bunch of stuff. Forgetting those things that are behind. I know what you did, but I sent my son to die for you. Now I've washed those away, and if I don't remember them, why are you remembering them? For my promise is, their sins I won't count against them, and their iniquities I will remember no more. So what are you remembering it for? I don't remember it. You can actually, in a way, remember things that God has promised to forget. So God says, forget that. So you failed. You stepped out and you failed. You took a misstep. It's over. Forget it now. You got to move on. You got your life ahead of you, and you're not going to go very far if you're remembering all negative things. The devil, of course, is bringing all that stuff up. God is saying, forget it. And what God is saying is, now remember. Remember my goodness. Remember my track record with you. Remember when you weren't looking for me, I was looking for you. Remember my mercies. Remember all the times I picked you up. You know, people don't even know about the times that I picked you up. No one knows. How about the times I provided for you? How many times have I proved myself faithful to you? When your back was against the wall, you didn't know what to do. Did I not come through? Can't you remember that? Can't you see what I've done in your life? Remember that. So the battle here is the psalmist is recounting this and saying the reason the people of Israel were such an aggravation to God, and I use that word advisedly, because it says they angered him because they forgot him. They forgot all the good things that he had done. You know, it's possible to forget God. You know, they say now America has forgotten God and all of that, and that could be, and there's obviously a forgetting of God around the world now. It's becoming more secular, more anti-God every month. But I wanna talk to us because it's possible as a believer through the work of the enemy attacking us to forget God. In other words, Brianna's up here and she's praising God. Don't you know two months won't go by and the enemy will try to get her to forget what God has done for her? And she's about 20 now. By the time she's 25, the Lord willing, the enemy's gonna say you never even were sick. Forget about that. That was just an accident. You were lucky. That's the way the enemy works. But Brianna, I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ, remember what God has done for you for the rest of your life. Can we say amen? Remember that. Remember that. Hold on to that. If God did that now, he's gonna come through in the future too. I just want you to see two things that happen when they forgot God. This is what happens when you forget God. There's many things in the Psalm. Psalm's too long. This is not an exposition of Psalm 106. It's just two things. When they came through the Red Sea, you see, and saw what God had done, then they rejoiced and were happy and believed in him. Notice, when did they believe in him? When they saw what he did. That's not real hard to believe then. You get it? When God brought them through, it says that. Very short-lived. But they rejoiced, they were happy, high-fiving and praising God. And a lot of us are like that. When we see the answer, we're praising God and we go like, oh God. But the next thing we know is six days out of the Red Sea, they came to a place that had no water and they began to be filled with unbelief. They forgot everything God had done and they acted like, where is God? Look, we're going through hardship. What's this difficulty we're going through? About three or four weeks later, they went to a place where they were tempted to want meat and didn't see God providing it the way they wanted it and they began to go crazy and turn their back on God. And they wanted to go back to Egypt because they said, at least we had garlic and leeks and onions back then. We made a little salsa and we were cooking there. But here, what are we gonna eat? So the Bible says, listen, because they forgot God, they would not wait for his plan to work out. When you forget God and you lose your faith and your trust in him, you don't wait. I love the wording of this in the NIV. You don't wait for his plan to unfold. God's got a plan for your life. He has a plan for your life. But you don't see it right away. And sometimes it looks like there's no plan and nothing's unfolding. So now what are you gonna do? Forget all of his goodness? Because we don't see what we wanna see when we wanna see it? But oh, when you have faith, you wait on the Lord. And you say, I don't know what exactly is going down right now, but I'm gonna wait on God because I remember all the times he came through. If God has ever come through for you and shown his goodness to you, would you please lift your hand right now, okay? And the enemy's gonna try to make us forget that. But the psalmist is telling us now, when you remember, you have the ability to wait. And when you forget God and you forget his track record and his faithfulness and all the times he's intervened. My goodness, I just think of every time I see a kid or I see Prospect Park, I think of that time when I was little and fell in the lake and couldn't swim and was with friends and none of them could swim and I was gonna be a statistic and be in the daily news. The kid drowns in Prospect Park in the lake and some businessman just happens to walk by at that moment with an attache case in Prospect Park in the middle of a summer day and puts the attache case down and pulls off his jacket and dives in and saves me. I mean, God was looking out for me when I wasn't even looking out for him. He's awesome. So we gotta wait for his plan to unfold. If you're here today and just because you don't see it happening, wait, have faith, faith waits for God. Unbelief says, no, I can't wait, I gotta take it in my own hands. Come on, let's put our hands together, strong. Faith waits on God's plan to unfold. I can tell you all kinds of stories in my own life, you have your own stories, I don't wanna belabor the thing. But notice this, because they forgot God and lost their faith, they would not wait for God's plan to unfold. This especially happens when you're young, but it can happen when you're middle age and old. You just get rushed in your spirit. You gotta make something happen. It's not working out the way I thought. Hey, God's on the throne. His ways are not our ways, and his timing is not our timing. But if you wait, you'll find out that the reason he waited is he had something even better in store for us that by the waiting, it could come to pass. Can we just, one more, just one more, say amen to that. So wait. If you're here today, don't rush, wait. You know, I was telling my grandson the other day, don't define things if you don't know what the definition is, wait. Well, what's exactly happening? You don't know, so wait. No, I gotta define it, that's our tendency, not his. All of our tendency. I wanna define it, this is what's happening. No, you wait, because I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening. But I know one thing, God is with me, and if he brought me through 10,000 valleys and over mountains, I'm gonna wait for his plan to unfold. I don't know what to do yet, I don't have to do it. I don't have to do anything. Wait on the Lord, be strong and wait. He works for those who wait for him. Faith waits, unbelief panics. Don't panic tonight. Now, last thing. Also because they forgot God, when things didn't work out for them, and they didn't see the supply that they wanted, they began to grumble. They despised the land when the spies came back and said, we went to this promised land, Moses, but there's giants in the land, and there's well-fortified cities, and there's armies there, and we're just been, you know, straggling through the desert here all these decades. We can't do this, and they despised what God wanted them to do, because they forgot God. They lost their faith. So the good thing that God had for them, they actually, the Bible says they despised it. That can happen. God can have a plan for your life, and if you forget how good he is, you can actually fight against the good thing he has and walk right into the mouth of the lion, and the devil just chop you in half. But that's what unbelief does, and the Bible says instead of worshiping, they grumbled. When you forget God, you grumble. When you remember God, you won't be grumbling. You'll be worshiping. I have found that in my own life. When I lose a hold of God, and I lose my focus, you can complain, you can murmur, you can grumble, and God took that serious. In other words, God was saying, here, I close. After all I've done for you, you're gonna grumble like I'm gonna let you go? How would I let you go? I brought you out of Egypt. I opened the Red Sea. I gave you manna every day. I gave you water out of a rock, and now you're saying, we're gonna die, we're gonna die. Blah, blah, blah, like that. Don't you trust me? Why are you murmuring? Why are you grumbling? If you're here today, and you're grumbling and murmuring in your spirit about life, I have one word for you. Stop! Stop it, stop grumbling, stop murmuring. Get your heart looking up, get your arms up, and start worshiping God by faith. Let's say amen to that. So the secret is this. When you remember God and you have faith, you know how to wait and to worship. Not just wait, worship while you're waiting. Not just worship, because after you worship, you can be panic-stricken and be driven. Worship and wait, wait and worship by faith. Just don't thank God when you see the answer. Brianna, there'll be a test for you in the next number of years, and now you'll wonder, okay, will that same God who helped me out of near death, will that same God come through? He will come through. Remember, though, remember, remember, remember, remember, the great things he has done. How many have a life filled with mercy and grace and God's faithfulness? Come on, let's just lift our hands and praise him out loud. Just, come on, let me hear your voices up. Just praising God aloud. You're not sensitive and shy about that, are you? We praise you, God, we praise you. Glorify your name, Lord, in all the earth through our lives. Glorify your name again. Glorify your name through the church, through me, through Carol, the choir, through everybody in the building. Glorify your name again and again and again and again. Glorify your name, Lord. We believe. Use our difficulties to show how great you are. We praise your name. You know, it's nice and early, so I wanna wait and worship with some people. Because I have some situations I'm trying to work through here. I wanna obey the word that you speak. I wanna tell God, ah, I'm waiting for you to work these things out. Number two, God, I'm gonna worship you even though what I see doesn't make sense. I'm gonna worship you, I'm not gonna grumble. If you've been tempted to grumble, tonight's your night to get rid of the grumbling. Everybody close your eyes. If you're here and you say, pastor, that was for me, I don't wanna miss out with God by forgetting all the good things he has done, all the promises. Goodness, how great God has been to us. He can bring honey out of a rock. So pastor, I wanna just come out of my seat and walk to the front here. I wanna sing, I wanna wait, I wanna worship, I wanna sing some more, but I wanna let God to know, God, I have not forgotten your faithfulness in my life. I'm gonna wait by faith and I'm gonna worship by faith. I'm not gonna get hasty and make a bad decision. Just come out of your seat and walk right up here. God, I'm gonna wait. God, I'm gonna worship. God, I'm gonna worship. Satan, you're a liar, you're a liar. I will not forget the goodness of God in the land of the living, I will not forget it. I'm gonna worship, I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna praise him. I don't know even what tomorrow will bring, but I'm gonna wait for God to show me. I'm gonna worship him despite the fact I don't see the answer yet, I'm gonna worship him. That's where faith is tested. Not when you cross the Red Sea, when you get in a situation and God is saying, remember what I've done and what I promise, I will come through. Come on, everybody, God said he will come through. He will come through. Lord, thank you for your word. We will not forget your goodness, nor your promises, nor your faithfulness. By the grace of God, we will remember our God. Remind us every day so that we will never forget you. And by faith, we will wait until your plan unfolds. By faith, we will worship even when there's tears sometimes rolling down our eyes. Because he who has begun a good work in us is gonna complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Let's give him one last hand clap of praise. Everybody turn around and hug a bunch of people. God be with you, God bless you.