Jun 25, 2018
by Katrina Goodrich
Women’s Society
A lot can happen in 40 years; it isn’t an insignificant amount of time. Today 40 years is half an average lifespan. It is a long time to wait for something to happen. It is also a long time to be lost in the wilderness—that is how long the Israelites spent wandering around the desert because of their lack of faith in the God who had so recently delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
Israel was in Egypt where God had literally sent plagues on the Egyptians in response to Pharaoh’s hardened heart; placed a pillar of fire between the Egyptian army sent to recapture them; and parted the Red Sea so they could escape that same army. About two months later they were grumbling about being hungry and God provided them manna to eat. Then while Moses was getting laws from God on the top of Mount Sinai, they got anxious and built an idol to worship. Roughly five months after their escape from Egypt they refused to enter the Promised Land because they didn’t believe they could take it from its current inhabitants. They moaned and complained all night that it “would have been better to die in Egypt” and made plans to stone Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb. How quickly the Israelites forgot the miraculous events of just a few months prior and the provision from God keeping them alive. (Exodus 13-17, 33-32, Numbers 13-14)
And the LORD said to Moses, “How long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them?” (Numbers 14:11) Because of their faithlessness, God said that none who rejected following His lead into the Promised Land would live to see His promise come to fruition. So the Israelites wandered around the desert for 40 years, sometimes believing in the promise and, at other times, forgetting God’s plan and doubting His provision, feeling forgotten and lost—even in light of the concrete evidence to the contrary.
Unfortunately the cycle of forgetfulness and faithlessness didn’t end with the Israelites. How many times have you or I been wandering around lost and feeling forgotten because we fail to remember God’s provision for us? We have the poignant example of Christ hanging on a cross, blameless and tortured because we needed a way to pay our debt of sin. Even before His death, Christ knew about the fallacy of human memory and gave us Communion to remember Him saying, “do this as often as you drink it.” (1 Corinthians 11:25) Jesus knew that without the reminder we would forget—we do forget sometimes even when we are participating.
Communion is about remembering the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for you to save you from an eternal damnation. It’s about more than that as well. It’s a reminder to not live as the Israelites who knew the truth and rejected it. They rejected it out of fear and faithlessness that led them to feel alone and unprotected in a world full of big baddies. They weren’t alone and had the distinction of being God’s chosen people. They had just witnessed the power of their God to provide and liberate them from bondage yet multiple times they wanted to go back to that bondage because they didn’t believe their God could take care of them.
Jesus does not want us to return to the bondage we cast off when we became Christians. He does not want us to have to wander in the wilderness for years because we can’t seem to let go of the past and trust in His provision for our lives. So He “remember me”—remember where you were and the sacrifice He made to bring you into fellowship with Him. Remember you are no longer a slave to this world and you aren’t alone because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.
