Remember to Remember

Amen. Let's turn to the Word, and we're in 2 Peter 1, 2 Peter 1, and we'll read 5-15. 2 Peter 1, reading 5-15. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. For so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know them and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right as long as I am in this tent to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease. So, Peter is still sort of in his introduction. The book has three very specific sections. The first section is the introduction, which we've been dealing with. And of course, it's not just the introduction in a sense, but he is preparing the groundwork. He is saying a few things that are important, that need to be said. And then in chapter 2, he really gets into the heart of the issue. And remember that he didn't write them in chapters. The chapters were divided up afterwards. And in this case, they make logical sense. And so the second section, the middle section, chapter 2, deals with a real issue that he's trying to deal with, and that is that of false teachers. And then chapter 3, again, he's winding up, and he is making some concluding remarks, and he is applying things again. Now, it's all a unit. So while there are these three distinct sections, they all support one another, and they are all related. Here, he is giving us in these four verses that we're going to look at tonight, there's really just one message in these four verses. And that is, remember, remember. And so let's have a look at those. And you'll see that the word remind appears in verses 12, I think, 14, and 15, three times in these four verses you find the word remind. And so he says, for this reason. For what reason? Because, he says, I want you to not stumble, but to have an abundant entrance. Now, remember, that's why I introduced the idea of the false teachers, which we'll get to in chapter 2, is that the false teachers can cause us to stumble. And so, for that reason, because he doesn't want us to stumble, because he wants us to have an abundant entrance into the kingdom, he is not going to be negligent to remind us always of these things. And when I say us, of course, he's meaning those that he is writing to, but obviously he's writing to us also. So because he does not want us to fail, and because he wants us to have an abundant entrance, he says he is not going to be negligent to remind us. Now, the word negligent, of course, is a key verse, a key word in this verse. He's not just saying, for this reason I will continue to remind you. But he is saying, I will not be negligent to remind you, I will not fail in my duty. So he is telling us, then, that part of his duty as an apostle, and part of the duty of every preacher of the Word of God, is the job to remind people. If we don't remind, then we are negligent. And so, the problem, preachers have unique problems. We have many problems, but there are many unique challenges to doing the job of fulfilling our ministry. Whatever your ministry is, whether it's prophetic, or whether it is teaching, or whether it's pastoral, or whatever it is, there are real challenges. There are real challenges in preaching. And I've been doing it for a little while, and I'm not getting any better at it. It's that difficult. Many people think, ah, preaching is easy. You just get up there and you start talking. And some people can get up here and they can talk, but they talk mainly nonsense. But if we're going to rightly divide the Word of Truth, it is a very, very challenging job. It's challenging because we have to understand and know the Scriptures. It's challenging because we must be able to convey the truth in a way that makes sense. And it is challenging because part of the job, and a big part of the job, is reminding us of things. Now, when you remind someone of something, obviously, by its very nature, it is something that they already know. But there is a potential of them forgetting. And there is a very real potential of insulting those that you are reminding. I think husbands are very aware of this. I'm not so sure about wives, whether they really... But we all have a honey-do list, those who are married. And there is the need to... or the wife feels the need to remind the husband, Oh, this needs to be done. Now, his instinctive response is, I haven't forgotten. I'll get around to it. But she feels the need to remind him. Now, if she doesn't remind him of the anniversary, or of whatever, then there's a potential that he's going to forget. So, do you remind him? And I really feel for our sisters who have to deal with this challenge. Do I remind him and upset him because I've insulted his memory, his intelligence, his whatever? Or do I not remind him, and he forgets, and then we have another problem? And so, our sisters have a real challenge as to how many times does she remind the husband? And does she or doesn't she? And when does she? And as a preacher, we have exactly the same problem. Because if we say the same thing too many times, people get turned off. And they say, well, you know, I've heard you speak about that. I've heard that many times. But if we don't remind, then there's a potential of forgetting. And the problem is that we're very good at forgetting. As human beings, we have an amazing ability to forget. And particularly when it comes to things that we don't want to do, or things that we don't like to think of. I was speaking with someone a little earlier about a physical challenge that the two of us share. And if you don't remind us of it, then we tend to compensate, and we just deal with it. But the moment you remind us of it, well, then it all comes back, and it's all very much in the fall. And so, we don't like to be reminded of things that are unpleasant. And yet, at the same time, it's necessary for us to do that. And I'm going to look at the Scripture where Paul says that it is necessary. So, part of preaching, part of the challenge, is how do we remind without being repetitive, and without being redundant, without seeming to treat people as though they are stupid. And yet, at the same time, how do we keep a balance? Now, there are two extremes, I guess, here, as far as preachers go. There are those who have their favorite five messages, and they'll preach the same five messages over and over and over. Well, I guess some have a few more than five. I remember as a young man, in fact, as a young boy, one of the esteemed preachers in the denomination that we were in, he was a traveling preacher, and he would go from church to church. And he had a leather briefcase. I don't think young people understand those anymore, but it was like a concertina thing, and it had a flap that you opened, and everybody those days used to have these leather briefcases, and it had sections. And so, he would have his sermons in there. And he had 20, I don't know, I guess about 20, that was about my guess, because I'd heard all of them several times. And I must admit, he got better at them as time went on. He was a pretty good preacher. So I would watch him before the meeting, go through these and say, well, am I going to preach this one or that one? That was his repertoire. That was about all he could do. Now, I don't think that that's a good thing, particularly if you're going to be a resident in a local assembly, preaching the same message over and over and over. And we understand there are some preachers who tend to be more evangelistic, and they'll preach the same gospel message over and over and over, week in and week out. And of course, that's not a good thing. But then on the other extreme, there's the problem of looking for novelty, looking for something new. You remember the people in Athens, on Mars Hill, it says that they loved nothing better than to hear or tell some new thing. And I think the majority of preachers tend to fall into that category today, and so they're always trying to find something new because they don't want to be saying the same thing again. Of course, in that process, there is a real danger of ending up in heresy. So on the one side, you can end up in redundancy, not really growing the audience, and oftentimes it's a sign that the preacher himself is not growing because he only has these handful of messages or ideas, and he'll preach those same ideas from every verse in the Bible, but it's still the same ideas. There is that danger. But then the other danger of chasing new things and trying to suck out of Scripture things that are not there just for the sake of being novel. And of course, that is the real problem today, that the vast majority of popular preachers are preaching all sorts of newsfangled stuff, which is not even in the Word of God, but it's driven by this desire to be moving to some new territory all the time. Now, Peter says no. He says if we do that, we are being negligent. We are being negligent in our duty of reminding people. And as I said, three times in these verses he uses the word remind, and in chapter 3, after having dealt with the false preachers or teachers, he immediately begins again to speak about reminding them. The word forget appears several times in this book. And so, if you can remember back a few weeks, or a few months actually, when we began the book, I said to you that one of the themes in the book is knowledge. And we've seen the need for us to not be unfruitful in our knowledge, to add to our knowledge these various virtues. And so knowledge is an important part of Peter's message. Knowledge is intimately connected to the idea of remembering and forgetting. If you forget everything you ever learned, well, you never build up any kind of knowledge. You never get to know anything because you forget everything. If you're going to have some kind of knowledge, there needs to be an ability to remind or to remember those things that you have learned. Now, I have a terrible memory. And sometimes it's a wonderful blessing because I can listen to my own sermons and I get a great blessing because I said, Wow! I never heard that before. Because I just forget. When I still watch movies, which I don't do anymore for personal reasons, and I'm not making that a rule or a law for anyone else, I could watch the same movie 20 times. And every time it was new, I couldn't figure out the plot from the beginning to the end. Because I can't remember. So I never learn anything because I can't remember. So it's vital that we are remembering and that we are reminded. So he says, I will not be negligent to remind you. Out of my job, he says, as a preacher is to remind you and to remind you always, not sometimes, but always of these things. The things that he has just spoken about in the first 10, 12, 11 verses. He says, though you know them. There's that word know. Though you know them and are established in truth. So ladies, here's a practical tip from Peter. Just tell your husband, I know you haven't forgotten. I know you haven't forgotten. That's what Peter is doing. Remember that the Scripture is not trying to soft-soap us. It's not trying to manipulate us into a situation. But at the same time, Peter knows that one of the real dangers, one of the things that preachers struggle with is turning people off so that they don't hear the message. And so how do we speak the truth forcefully and clearly and yet at the same time not get people to switch off or to tune out and not to listen to the rest of the message? And so Peter says, I know you haven't forgotten, but I still need to remind you. And folks, that is really the heart of the issue. That's the heart of these four verses, is that even though we know things, we still need to be reminded simply because we forget so quickly and we forget so easily. And so, though you know them and are established in the present truth. The present truth is a shorthand version or shortcut for him to speak about the doctrine that has been taught, the essentials of the faith. Jude says something similar when he speaks about the fact that we need to earnestly contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Now, Peter is not using the same words, but it's the same idea, the present truth, the truth that has been established. In the next verses that we're going to look at next week, Lord willing, he establishes that these truths were not sucked out of his thumb or out of that of the twelve apostles, but that they were received directly from the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says, you know these things. You are established. You are firm. You are planted on these things, on the present truth. But at the same time, there is a need to be reminded. Just about every false doctrine and every error that people enter into, whether in doctrine or in life, is based on forgetting the fundamentals, the present truth, or what Jude calls the faith once for all delivered. Everything in our faith can be boiled down to some basic principles. We've spoken about these principles before, and I'm not meaning directly the principles that we find in Hebrews 6, repentance from dead works, faith towards God, and so on. But there are certain basic principles that we can never get away from. The moment we get away from those principles, we end up in all sorts of trouble and all sorts of heresy. Now, you remember that last week I gave you an article called The Star-Spangled Cross. The purpose of that article is to remind you of one of the most essential truths of all truths. And that is that the cross of Jesus Christ is central to our faith. And that cross is unadorned, that cross is a naked cross which is not dressed up with gold and silver and all sorts of other attractive things. But the naked reality that Christ was nailed to that cross for my sin, we can never get away from that. When we get away from that, we end up in heresy, and not only do we end up in heresy, but we end up in bad behavior. Hasn't Peter just said that to us? Doesn't he speak about those who have forgotten that they were cleansed from their former sins? I'm going to jump ahead, verse 9. He who lacks these things is short-sighted into blindness, has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. The day we forget about the fact that we were cleansed, and what were we cleansed by? The precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not by our works, not by our denomination, or by our pastor, or by anything else, but by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. That cleanses us. The moment we forget that, we have serious problems in our behavior because we begin to act in a way that we ought not to act, and we have serious problems in our doctrine. And many of the doctrines in cults can be brought back to this basic truth, that we are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. We can never get away from that. Now I know that people want to get away from it, because as we said in the article, it's an unpleasant truth. The reality that God crucified His own Son upon that cross, that my sin was laid upon Him, that they spat on Him, that He hung there naked, all of these things are things that are too hard for us to face, and we try to move away from them, we try to move on from them, but we can never get away from them, because that is the foundation of the faith. And that's not the only one, there are many others, and we would need to spend weeks and weeks going through all of those things. But I'm sure you've seen these little jokes, or whatever you call them, where it has a bunch of rules. Rule number one, the boss is always right. Rule number two, what does that say? In case he's wrong, refer to rule number one. Now, we think that's funny, and yet there's a truth in it. And the truth is that there are fundamentals of the faith, that it doesn't matter how you spin it, and what conclusion you come to, if it denies rule number one, then it is false. In other words, let's use the illustration of the cross. If you can come to some kind of doctrine, that I am saved by something other than the cross, and you can prove it from scripture, because cults do that. You have to go back to rule number one. It doesn't matter what you're reading, it doesn't matter how you're interpreting it, if it denies the cross of Jesus Christ, then it is wrong. If it denies the eternality of Jesus Christ, in other words, that He always was and always will be. If you come up with a doctrine, and there are doctrines within Reformed Christianity that suggest that He has a beginning, it doesn't matter how many scriptures you can bring and try to prove that He has a beginning, it denies a fundamental of the faith, and that is that He has no beginning. And so it doesn't matter what you prove, it doesn't matter how you prove it, because there are fundamentals that cannot change, they are inerrant, they are immovable, and everything must be measured back to these things. Now that's the problem. The moment we forget these things, because we move on and we get involved in this argument and this idea and this theory and the other, and we end up with all sorts of fancy ideas, but we have forgotten the fundamentals that was established from the very beginning. And so, though you know them and are established in the present truth, then, verse 13, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you. So, you'll see that there is an issue of tenses here. In verse 12, He says, I will remind you always. When is always? Is yesterday always? Yes, it is, in a sense. Is today always? Yes, it is. Is tomorrow always? Yes, it is. So, always, continually reminding you of these things. Then, He says, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up. In other words, as long as I am alive. Remember, Paul uses this idea of a tent as well, and Peter is going to change the metaphor in a moment, we'll see that when we get to verse 14. But obviously, he's talking about his body as a tent. Paul speaks about the body as a temple, but also as a tent. It's a temporary dwelling place. It's a little different than a built house. A built house has some sense of permanency. A tent is impermanent. It's not going to last. A tent is good for a while, and we have bodies that are good for a while. The time comes that we have to, in verse 15 he's going to say, or 14 he's going to say, I have to put off the tent. There's a time when we have to exchange our address from living in a temporary body to living in an eternal one. And I'm going to get into all of the theology as to how all of that works. But as long as he says, I'm in this body, in other words, as long as I'm alive. So he says, always. Now he says, as long as I'm alive. Now he's going to speak about his potential death in a moment. So again, for those who are watching who are preachers and those amongst us who aspire to being preachers, this command, this commission never ends. You can never get to a point where you say, well, I've done with reminding people. I've been here now for 17, 18 years and I'm still reminding you of the same things I taught you 17, 18 years ago. And by the grace of God, I will continue to remind you of these things even after I leave here. And so as long as I'm alive, I must remind you. And we have different ways of doing that and we're going to speak about that. But then he says, I need to stir you up. I need to stir you up. That word stirring up has the idea of stirring up a fire. If you make a bonfire or a campfire or a fire in the house, in the hearth, if you burn the fire for long enough, eventually the ash begins to choke the fire. And you have to use a poker or some kind of tool and shake up the fire so that the ash can fall out and the fire can be rejuvenated. The fire can be rekindled. And Paul uses this concerning Timothy where he says, stir up the gift that is in you. Rekindle that gift that is in you. And here he's using the same idea. We need to rekindle that and stir up the truth. And the truth should be burning within us. It should be as a fire. Remember the prophet of old says that your word was as a fire within my bones and I could not keep quiet. And so Peter says part of my job is to remind you and by reminding you to stir up, to shake out the stuff that is causing death, the stuff that is causing the fire to be growing dimmer and to be going out and to get the flame burning again. And so we need to be reminding ourselves. All right, now before I go to the other two verses, I want to emphasize the importance of this issue of remembering. It is a concept or it's an idea that flows right through Scripture. And the word remember appears over 250 times in the Old and the New Testament in the English translation. And that doesn't count the word remind. And I didn't check how many times the word forget is there or forgot or forgotten, but there are words that appear over and over and over. Now you remember the problem with Israel was that they forgot. They forgot that God had brought them out of Egypt. Remember verse 9, you've forgotten that you were purged from your former sins. They'd forgotten that God brought them out of Egypt. They'd forgotten what God did to Pharaoh. They'd forgotten about the 10 miracles that happened. They'd forgotten about... And so every time Israel begins to complain, it's because they forgot what God did yesterday. And so God reminds them again and again and He institutes, and I've spoken about this so many times, He institutes the feasts. And the purpose of every one of those feasts is to remind them of their deliverance, to remind them of the time that they lived in the desert, to remind them about God. He gives them those tassels, and we spoke about those at the beginning of the year, that when they look down there are these blue tassels. I don't know why they're white these days with modern Jewish folk, but there was supposed to be a blue tassel. And of course every time they looked down to look for earthly things, it was there to remind them to look up because their redemption was nigh in a sense, to look up to heaven, to not look for earthly things but to look for heavenly things. And so over and over and over, God institutes these things and He reminds them. He says, talk to your children about these things. Remind them over and over and over because we forget so often. The feasts are there every year. Every year they go through the same ritual or the same Seder, and the purpose is simply to remind them. Jesus does the same thing, and He gives us the Lord's Supper. So verse 9, we've looked at that. 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 1. So remember, after having dealt with the false teachers, He comes back to where we're at right now, and He says, beloved, I now write to you this second epistle, in both of which, the two epistles, I stir up your minds by way of reminder. Paul does the same thing. But remember that we are serving the Lord's table this Sunday, and we need to be ready. And of course it is there to remind us, to remind us, to remind us of the cross, to remind us of the price He paid, to remind us of the day that we were born again. He broke it and said, take it, this is my body which is broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. Can we forget Jesus? Yes, we forget Him so quickly, so easily. Can we forget the cross? Can we forget our salvation? Yes, we forget these things. We are just like the Israelites in the wilderness. And so He gives us the Lord's table, so that every time we come to the table, we are reminded again, lest we forget. Then in Romans 15, 15, Nevertheless, brethren, I have written more boldly to you, on some points, as reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God. Remember, the idea of reminding is not new information. It's reminding them of what they already know. And so He says then, I have written this letter to remind you of the things that you already know and have potential of forgetting. Philippians 3, verse 1, Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, for me to write the same things, not tiresome, but for you it is safe. And folks, this is the purpose of reminding, is it is safe for us, because we forget so quickly. Jude chapter 1, verse 17, But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to remember, and we need to remember particularly, and it's interesting that Jude says, Remember what the apostles said. Peter is now going to transition. Next week we'll get to that section where he is saying, We received these things from the Lord. We are telling you what we got firsthand. What we need to remind one another of is not what was taught 10 years ago, or what was taught 100 years ago. What we need to remind one another of is what was written at the beginning, what was received by the apostles and is written in the New Testament, and obviously that which is in the Old Testament. Our memories can so easily just go back to an event in our own history or an event in the church's history. It's no good. It's good to remember those things and remember the hymn that we had this evening where he speaks about the Ebenezer, that stone of remembrance. Up to this point the Lord has brought us. Yes, we must look at our lives. We must look at the church, and our assembly must say that the Lord has brought us up to this place. He has been faithful up to now, therefore we can trust Him for the future. But it has to go beyond that, and we have to remember that which was handed over to the apostles. All right, so 2 Peter 1, verse 14. Knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. So He says, I need to remind you as long as I'm in this tent, and then He says, I'm not going to be in this tent for much longer. That shortly I must put off my tent. Now, this is where He changes the metaphor. He changes the picture. How do you put off a tent? Well, you don't wear a tent. What do you wear? You wear clothes. So here He's speaking about the tent almost as clothes, because it's the same idea of putting off your clothes. I need to put my clothes aside. And so He says that this body, I'm going to put it aside. I'm going to put it off, obviously at my death. Now, the learned people argue endlessly about how did He know this? Well, the answer is we don't know how He knew it. And any guess is a waste of time, because He doesn't tell us how He knew. Was it by a word of prophecy? Was it just an awareness in His spirit that the time has come, that the end of His life is near? And while we're on that, let's be careful of the traditions that we hold. For instance, and I hear respected preachers speak about the fact that Peter was crucified upside down. We don't know that he was crucified upside down. For a beginning, the Scriptures don't say that that was what happened, because that's not the point. The point is not how Peter died. The point is how Jesus died. Can you see how easily we get away from the basics? And we get into how did the apostles die? No, it doesn't matter how they died. It's Jesus' death that is of importance. But just... As far as Peter being crucified upside down, that idea was written by one of the so-called church fathers in 180 AD, 120-odd years after Peter died. It was the first time someone spoke about him being crucified upside down, and then speaking about him being called back to die in Rome, and all of that. So where was this idea all of that time up to then? What we do know with some certainty is that Clement, who worked with Peter, and worked with Paul, writing in the 90s, in other words, about 30 years after this event, that Clement makes reference to the fact that Peter was killed or executed by Nero. That's all we know. How was he executed? We don't know. But what we do know is that, and obviously not because of Scripture, but because of a credible witness outside of Scripture, that he was executed by Nero. Anyway, to get back here, we don't know how he knew that he must shortly die. He just knew that the time has come, that he doesn't have much longer to go. And he says that the Lord Jesus showed him. And again, as I say, it could have been a vision, it could have been a prophecy, it could have just been an awareness down in his spirit. It doesn't matter. But he says, but from this, and this is why this verse is important here, is because this is Peter's last will and testament, his last will and testament for the church. And of course we put a lot of emphasis and value on someone's last will and testament. That is what they really wanted to happen after their death. And so this letter is called a testamental letter. It is Peter writing his last words. And we have the same thing for Paul. Remember 2 Timothy is in the same sense Paul's last will. This is the last letter that he writes just before and literally days or weeks before he is executed. And so he says, in the light of the fact that I'm going to put off my tent, he says, I want you to be reminded. I want you to be reminded. I haven't thought yet what I would say if I had an opportunity to say on my deathbed. But if I did have an opportunity to say something, I would certainly be saying something like this, that I want those that I have taught to be reminded and not forget what we have taught, not forget what they've received. Now verse 15, Moreover, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things. Now remember that he begins these four verses by saying, I'm not going to be negligent. Now he says, I'm going to be careful. Can you see how the scripture hangs together? We read these verses and we don't think about what we're reading. But he is putting things together that belong together. And he is bookending these four verses. And these four verses do stand in a sense on their own while they're in the context of the verses before and after. But he begins by using the word negligent. He says, I'm not going to be negligent. Now he ends the four verses by saying, I'm going to be careful. I'm going to be fastidious. I'm going to be diligent to make sure that I have always given you a reminder. Now remember I spoke about tenses, that he says, I'm going to do this always. Then he says, I'm going to do it until I die. But now he says, I want to do that after my decease. So obviously here, this is how we know that he is speaking, when he speaks about putting off his tent, that he's speaking about his death. If we didn't know that from Paul's writings, well then we know it from here because he's saying he's deceased. So, I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease. So he says, I'm going to be diligent while I'm alive to teach you. But he says, I'm going to be diligent to teach you until I lay off my tent. And then he takes the third step and he says, I'm going to be careful to make sure you have a reminder after my death. How is he going to do that? By this very letter. This is what will be the reminder. And has it been an effective tool? Yes it has. Because here we are 2,000 years later and we are being reminded still by what Peter said 2,000 years ago. And so, he's speaking about the letter that he is writing at that moment. And so he says, I want this to be a reminder after my decease. I think we all think about our legacy once we die. And I think that preachers think about it maybe a little bit more than others. But certainly I often wonder what will I leave behind. And it's not about leaving a church or leaving many followers. But I'm particularly for myself concerned about leaving a reminder. And that's why these messages are recorded. That's why, as I've taught right through the New Testament over these last 20 years, every one of those messages has been recorded and is available in different forms. And for me, that is part of my responsibility. My responsibility, I believe for myself personally, is not just to preach while I'm alive. But I pray to God that I will continue to preach once I have died through the recordings and lately the video recordings. I've been reading one of my grandfather's books these last few days because we're wanting to republish it. And as I've been looking at that, my grandfather that I... I can't remember. I think I must have been 18 when he died, thereabouts. So I knew him when I was very young. But he is still reminding me of those truths that he taught me as a little boy. The stories he told me about the mission field. The things he told me about the Lord Jesus and about the Word of God. He is still reminding me of those things through the books that he has written. And so Peter is saying, I'm going to give you a reminder. But you know, the best reminder is something that is written upon our hearts indelibly. And I pray that somehow the Word of God will be so written upon your heart that you won't even need, and I'm not doing away with the Word of God, that you don't even need the Word of God because the Word of God has been inscribed deep into your heart. And that you are being reminded by the Spirit because the Word has become so prominent in your thinking, has become at the forefront of your mind, of every decision that you make, of everything that you do. The Word of God is there reminding you of the principles of our faith. Reminding you of the things that are required of us in our daily living, in our interaction with one another, and so on. Forgive me if I say the same thing many times. It's necessary, Paul says. It is not tedious. And if we are not doing that, we are not being faithful. But above all, and so there are really two things. He's addressing the preacher. He is the preacher in the sense. But obviously he's addressing the hearers. And the question is, are we forgetful hearers? In fact, the reality is that there are some folk who even before we get out the gates have already forgotten what was said and what was taught. It's so easy. May we not be forgetful hearers. May we be those that remember. The reason we don't have victory in our lives many times is because we have forgotten God's faithfulness. We've forgotten His power. We've forgotten His Word. And you remember that David comes and he's a young boy, I don't know, 12, 13 years old maybe. And the armies of God are shaking in the trenches. They're running from this giant absolutely smitten with fear. The king is there with his armor and his crown and his glory and his attendance and he is ready to run. Because they'd forgotten what God had done for them in the past. And here comes this little boy David and you remember the story, he kills Goliath, he kills the giant and he gives Israel a great victory that day. But on what basis was his victory won? On the basis that he had remembered. Because when Saul says to him, Saul the king says to him, you better put on the armor and how are you going to do this thing? David says these words. He says, when I was looking after the sheep I remember that a lion came against the sheep and God gave me the victory over the lion. And on another time a bear came and he says I remember God gave me the victory over the bear and the God who delivered me from the lion and from the bear will deliver me from this giant also. You see the difference between defeat and victory was remembering. If Israel had just remembered they would have not been fearful of the giant. But they'd forgotten. But David remembered and he gained a great victory that day. Father we pray that you'd help us to be reminded. Reminded Lord by your spirit but reminded by your word. Help us Lord to fill our hearts and our minds with your word and with the truths of your word that we may never forget them. Help us Lord to remind one another even as we come to a time of testimonies Lord part of the purpose of us giving these testimonies is that we may remind one another of your goodness, of your word, of your faithfulness. Lord we may remind one another.