Forgetfulness

Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice; Surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoked me see it: (Numbers 14: 22, 23)

We were having a discussion about forgetfulness.

Though we differed on a few things, we were agreed on the fact that forgetfulness is sin.

In short, forgetting what I am supposed to remember is sin.

Then I got to consider forgetfulness.

Do you know that it could be foundational in the whole dynamic of sin?

It could actually be the sin that enables and empowers all other sins.

We say, ‘once bitten, twice shy’, because we are employing memory.

You remove that memory and you can be bitten all the time.

Let us look at a very common sin, illicit sex, or, in short, sex outside divine and societal boundaries.

Who doesn’t know that they could be caught and dealt with ruthlessly?

Who doesn’t know about STI, even terminal ones?

Who doesn’t know about the shame that accompanies that thrill?

Who doesn’t know that their marriage could collapse due to that?

Who among the unmarried doesn’t know that they are playing with their future?

Who among the students doesn’t know that that thrill will affect, may even kill their studies?

However, looking at the reality on the ground, sexual immorality is growing at alarming rates everywhere you look.

Boundaries are being demolished all the time.

That despite the fact that divorce is soaring and that is the key driver.

This despite the fact that there are enough examples of students whose lives have been cut short and others have had to do the same to their studies.

This despite the fact that businesses are collapsing as a direct result of that.

What does this tell us?

We choose to remember what favours our circumstance.

We employ selective amnesia for that short thrill.

In short, we forget everything else when the sex animal gets aroused.

No wonder Proverbs says that the sexually immoral lacks sense, or is an idiot if we used more current wording.

But it is the same when pursuit for self interest takes charge.

Look at greed. Or addiction. Or gambling

Look at corruption. Or overindulgence.

Someone is digging themself into a hole they know is bottomless yet lacks any sense to stop digging, yet it is in their power to do so.

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! (Isaiah 5:8)

The pursuit of things and wealth is one very stupid pursuit when looked at from outside.

You wonder what drives someone to pursue wealth at the expense of self.

Why does someone who has everything never stop grabbing?

Why does someone with more wealth than his posterity could ever exhaust however profligately they live and spend never pause to wonder why they still are unable to pause in their grabbing?

There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. (Ecclesiastes 4:8)

The rich fool in Jesus’ parable was wiser than most of us because he at least came to the conclusion of his pursuit when he realised that he had made enough to live on for the rest of his life.

The fact that there are wealthy people who die of hunger in their busyness as their employees and labourers are left enjoying their wealth is telling on that pursuit.

Forgetfulness is the reason Adam sinned.

The evil one just needed to question what God said, shift it ever so slightly to imply what He meant, to lure our first parents to rebellion.

And he succeeded because he dealt with the person who did not get the original memo since she couldn’t argue about an order directed elsewhere.

Then, because of her feminine appeal, she was able to shift Adam from the order, because she ate of the fruit before informing him and most likely questioned God’s ‘threat’ of death.

Did God really say? was Satan’s snare.

Will we really die? must have been Eve’s rolled eye challenge to Adam after she ate the fruit.

And the fall happened because of that slight memory lapse.

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119:11)

The only insurance we have against sin is God’s word stored in our hearts.

This is because it is the only one that can direct our heart to be aligned to God’s word since that is where it originates from.

But it doesn’t easily get into the heart’s storage.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. (Jeremiah 17: 9, 10)

There must be effort to condition the heart to willingly host God’s word.

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. (Joshua 1:8)

Before it gets into the heart, it must be the conversation around me. it must be the topic I am constantly engrossed in, consistently.

I must be committed to spending adequate time hearing, reading, studying, memorizing and meditating on God’s word for it to have that kind of impact in my heart.

I cannot be flippant with my intake of God’s word and expect to have God’s worldview.

I can’t spend time following news and trends and expect to find my rest in God.

I can’t spend more time in worldly pursuits and expect to have a heart leaning heavenward.

In short, the amount of effort I spend on my pursuit of God’s revelation (Bible), will determine the state of my heart as far as God is concerned.

And it will be evident to anybody around me.

Preachers whose sermons revolve around current affairs show you where they are feeding from.

In this world cup season, you can be sure that most fellowships revolve around it, because that is where the hearts are.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

The filling comes because there is a desperation in that pursuit.

You cannot use your spare time to pursue godliness and expect to achieve anywhere close to someone who is up long before daybreak in his pursuit.

You do not expect to get as much from prayer when you are squeezing moments to do it as the person who dedicates hours toward the same.

You do not expect as much from your intake of scripture when you will open your Bible before bed as the person who has set up a study room, time and resources for his pursuit.

That is why there are believers who are decades in the faith who have never matured yet you find a firebrand new believer taking great strides in a very short time because of his sold-out nature.

We are still dealing with forgetfulness.

I just want us to realise that God’s word is the glue that binds us to all His revelation, past, present and future.

It is the one that activates our memory and kills our forgetfulness.

Allow me, however, to get us a scriptural example of forgetfulness.

Esau was third in line on Abraham’s promise.

He must have spent some years with the patriarch and heard enough stories about his journey of faith.

He of course knew of his father’s pursuit of a wife and its demands.

Yet for a meal he kicked himself out of that position.

Imagine hunger disinheriting you!

Worse still, he married Canaanite girls.

Yet he didn’t realise that his father was saddened by that breach until Isaac issued a similar order to Jacob.

Yet we know that Esau was a very hard-working man.

This simply means that his heart was not as hard working as his body.

Or that he allowed his hard-working body to dictate terms to his heart.

No wonder a birthright could be exchanged with a plate of stew.

And going the lengths his grandfather went to get a wife for his father was untenable to his basic need of a wife, even wives.

You even realise as he was meeting his brother that he had completely forgotten how he was tricked out of what had been his; because he had made it anyhow.

Esau was not spiritually leaning and so had little awareness of the spiritual.

And we are not much different if we become preoccupied with the here and now at the expense of the eternal.

The reality is that everything the world offers is temporal, however permanent we may want to make it appear.

And that is so from wealth to fun to power.

We are like a child who thinks he has an unlimited amount of time and energy.

We are like a tycoon’s child who looks down on everybody beneath his class because of the wealth he was born into, wealth he may waste in a flash once the one who made it exits the scene.

We are like that limousine chauffeur looking down on one driving his own ramshackle without realising that this one he is looking down on at least knows how to manage his own car.

All these forget the basics.

His parents were once children.

That tycoon sweated to create that wealth.

That limousine is not his.

In short, the main problem is that someone looks at the temporal and interprets it as eternal because of that forgetfulness.

And we do that even in ministry

For example, what are the marks of a successful minister or ministry?

We revere huge churches, large congregations, impressively large autos and huge titles.

We will want to tap into the anointing of someone who dines with kings without asking whether he could be a sellout to the Gospel of the kingdom.

We want to be mentored by the megastars of the church without caring to know where that stardom is based.

We conveniently forget that when God looks at His ministers, faithfulness in their obedience is the only currency He uses.

We also conveniently forget that Christ’s anointing manifested first in preaching the Gospel to the poor and underprivileged.

We also choose to forget that Christ’s mark of greatness was washing other’s feet, not lording over them.

We therefore forget God’s standards for the world’s allure.

We forget His standards for the world’s rewards.

And like Israel, we are condemned with wandering year after year, wallowing in our choices.

Can I stop here?