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[SINGING] Hear this word, Hear this word. It's found in Psalm 59 and 10. Psalm 59 and 10.

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This is a translation of the passage in the New English Bible. My God in his true love shall be my companion. With God's help I shall gloat over my watchful foes. Will thou not kill them, lest my people forget? The subject of the message, lest we forget.

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wilt thou not kill them, lest my people forget? Lest we forget. For the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem entitled

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wrote the poem entitled "Recessional." God of our fathers known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold,

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dominion over palm and pine. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget. Lest we forget. The tumult and the shouting dies. The captains and the kings depart. Still stands thine ancient sacrifice and humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of hosts be with us yet lest we forget. Lest we forget. Far called our navies melt away our doom and

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and headland sinks the fire, lo, all our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre. Judge of the nations, spare us yet,

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lest we forget, lest we forget. It seems to me that this recessional is fitting for us to consider as together we participate in what is a recessional

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for us today. We customarily have our recessional in our worship services each Sunday. It's It's the last thing on the worship program. Today we come to the last Sunday in the year. It's a point at which we can look back.

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We resort to our power to recall. In other words, we feast on our memories. There are some things we're sure to remember. There are other things that will quickly be forgotten as a dream.

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Some things will become a part of the dear, dear days of yesterday. At the end of the year, we look back as if to view life in a rear-view mirror. We're accustomed to doing this. At this point of the year, we consider the most outstanding news events of the year.

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These things are rehearsed. We have our playback on our television screens. And we lift up that which we treasure. That which we consider meaningful and challenging.

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Lest we forget. Lest we forget. Our lives, you see, are made of memories. The educational process is becoming aware of the memory of the race. And what a wonderful privilege it is to remember yesterday,

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to celebrate our past. Memories are Precious. When we begin to remember a call to mind certain events in our lives,

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we remember our first day in school, we remember our first sweetheart, the first date, the first job, we remember our graduation

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exercises, we remember our birthdays, we remember our anniversaries. These are called cherished memories. We remember the most wonderful thing that happened to us, and it's a good thing now to remember the wonderful things that have occurred in our lives during this

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year 1985. Not only do we remember the most wonderful things, we also remember the worst things too that have happened. Because you see life is a mixture of the best and the worst, and learning to live is learning to accept whatever comes our way and to make the most of it. This is the case of the psalmist. It seems

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that the psalmist were always in trouble. You know I've been preaching now for a year from the book of Psalms during this particular time and we are certainly aware by now, those of us who've been following the Psalms in this series of messages, that in many instances the Psalmist were in trouble. They were

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besieged with difficulties and with foes. And in the in the midst of it many times they cry out. There is what we call the lament. And sometimes it seems that they were always in trouble. Well, I think the Psalms are meaningful to us and applicable to us today because in a In a very real way, each one of us finds ourselves confronting enemies, confronting dangers,

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and in need of help. And there is a need for us to be sustained by the certainty of faith. So in the midst of it all, the psalmist here looks heavenward and declares, "My God, in his steadfast love will meet me. My God will let me look in triumph over my

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enemies." Well we have marched through the year to this point. We come now to the last Sunday and as we depart from this year, as we engage in our recessional, let us join with the psalmist in a testimony of faith lest we forget. The fact of the matter is God meets us. He meets us in his steadfast love. God you see is always

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there. He's with us in our beginnings and he is with us in our endings and he's with us all along the way. He meets us. Seasons come and go, moons wax and wane, years have their beginning and their end, but the eternal God is always there. He meets us. He is with us yesterday, he's with us today, he'll be with us tomorrow.

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Now yesterday in the life of the psalmist here speaks of trouble and if we notice the superscription of this particular psalm number 59 it indicates that there is a time of trouble because it is related to a time when Saul seeks to take David's life and in this particular instance the soldiers have

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surrounded the house where David is staying. David is at home with his wife and it so happens now that Saul's daughter is David's wife, Michael is David's wife, and Saul has given orders to the soldiers to kill David. Go in there and get him, kill him. They come to the house, they knock on the door, and David's wife comes to the door.

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They tell her that they want David, and she says to him, "He's sick in bed. He can't come out." Well now you know how we feel about sick people. We are very sympathetic. Usually whenever someone says, "Well, I'm sick," well, that usually strikes a sympathetic card in our hearts, and we'll put up with a lot of things when a person is sick that we won't put up with otherwise.

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Well, that was a pretty good excuse. He's sick. And so they go back, and they say to Saul, "We couldn't bring him. We couldn't get to him. He's sick." Saul said you go back and you bring him in his bed, bring him here to me even if it's in his bed, you bring him here, I'll kill him. Can you think about the dilemma in which Michael, Saul's daughter and David's wife is in?

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Will she be faithful to her father? Or will she be faithful to her husband? And life always sort of has us in dilemmas. We find ourselves in this dilemma or that dilemma,

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and we really don't know where to turn or what to do or where to go. Many times. And so she decides that she is going to protect her husband, David. She takes what is known as one of the household guards and puts it in the bed, takes some

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gold hair and puts it around the head part of the bed, covers it up, and there she has it and then she lets David down out of the window. David escapes. And when Saul's soldiers come and they come into the house to take him out, even in his bed and carry him to the king so that he might be killed, they find that all they

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have is a dummy so to speak that David has miraculously escaped. Now this escape is a miracle and here David is in an ungettable place as one of my friends would put it, surrounded by the soldiers and yet a miracle occurs David is able to escape. Well each one of us in a way can identify with the fact that we have

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escaped so much during this year. The fact that we are here today isn't because we are so good. The fact that we are able to worship God and to praise his name and to look back over this past year. There have been people who've done all the things that we've done, who've eaten all the right foods, they've gone to the right doctors, they've done the right things, but they're gone on.

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And somehow we are left here. We have escaped the hand of death. But this has happened because of the grace of God. God through his grace has somehow spared us. He's left us here for some purpose. Enemies may surround us, we've had our bout with sickness and disease, we've had reverses, we've had dangers seen and unseen, but that which would destroy us has somehow been

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overcome we have miraculously escaped and it's not because of Lady Luck, it's not because of just some coincidence, it's not because of happenstance, but it's because God meets us in his steadfast love. That God meets us and provides for us and God somehow protects us and not only does he meet us but he

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redeems us from the enemy he delivers us from the snare and the fowler and from the noise some pestilence he saves us even from ourselves God meets us with his all-pervading presence he meets us you know some things about but about life when you begin to look back that you just don't understand that's it

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doesn't every life there is in every life a certain mystery I call it the mystery of our history. And that mystery of our history is gone. Whether we recognize it many times or not, he's there. And there's some things we don't understand, that mysterious presence is there, many times keeping us and protecting us, guiding and guarding us that mystery. He meets us, he meets us, cares for us as a

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loving father and one theologian Martin Buber calls this relationship that of the eternal vow. The eternal vow, the great vow communicates with the little thou. He meets us as father and child. He meets us in his steadfast love. He meets us in the close intimate relationships that we would have as a

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parent and a child. He communes with us in that way and then he also meets us out there in those places but we may call the it's of life the uncertainties of life out there in the it's that the vow meets us when we are out there with the it, out there when we don't know where we are that somehow he's out there with us, he searches for us and he is there to redeem us.

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meets us out there in the hits. And you see there is nothing that deters God in exercising his steadfast love. And the wonderful thing about it is that God doesn't keep score on us. He just keeps on loving us. Sometimes we're going on and on and on farther and farther in the wrong direction but God just keeps on

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lovingness and you read this psalm the writer refers to him as the Lord of hosts the Lord of hosts in other words God has many forces at his disposal to use in his fight of righteousness so all may have his enemy forces there for David, but the Lord of hosts, that all of the hosts of the world, the stars, and all

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of the forces of nature are at God's disposal. He is the Lord of hosts, and the hosts of God are able to overcome whatever David may face with the armies of Saul. And so here's what the Psalmist says, "Lord, you are my strength, you are my fortress." And so the Psalmist, you see, looks back to yesterday in the life of

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the nation he looks back because he knows what God has done in the life of the nation he looks back to yesterday yesterday yesterday God led the people out of Egypt yesterday yesterday they faced the raging waters of the Red Sea yesterday Pharaoh's armies were at their heel so to speak and the raging waters

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of the Red Sea before them and they cried to the Lord yesterday and the Lord cut a path through the waters yesterday. What about our yesterdays? We've had our Egypt experiences, we've had Pharaoh in our hills and somehow we faced the waters of the Red Sea and in our yesterday we saw the hand of God as he made a way out of

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no way. Yesterday. Yesterday. Yesterday. The people were bitten by fiery serpents. Yesterday. Somehow God was in the midst of the camp and he gave healing for the fiery stings of the serpents yesterday yesterday we have our yesterday and we can thank God for yesterday they were without food out there in the starving

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land they were without water out there and they would have died of thirst but God rained down bread from heaven and brought water from a rock yesterday. We have our yesterday. And so the psalmist looks back to yesterday in the life of the nation,

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and he declares that God's steadfast love, that steadfast love that God manifested yesterday, he still manifests today. You see there are some lessons to be learned from history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, someone has said.

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Just keep going around and around and around. That's not the biblical view of history. God is leading us forward. He's leading us on the upward way.

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And so this is what the psalmist asked God to do. The psalmist asked God to give his enemies something to remember him by. You know when we were boys sometimes we'd get in a little scrap, a little fight one with the other and we'd be hitting and one would say to the other, "I'm going to give

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you something to remember me by, you know, and hit just as hard as he could hit. Well this is what the Psalmist is saying. The Psalmist is saying kill my enemies. So well that's that's not Christian. Well that whole lot of things we say not Christian. That was before the Christian era. Some people are still before the

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Christian era when it comes to their lives and their relationship. And so the Thomas just paints life as it is. He says kill my enemies. That's what he says in some instances, but in this particular case he said now don't kill him Lord. In this instance he said don't kill him. He said just give him something to remember you by. Just give them

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something of your power and of your presence so that they'll know that you of God give them something to remember you by. Well that really is true to the nature of God because we can have one of two relationships with God we can be the foe or we can be the friend of God that's our choice whether we'll be

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friend or foe. And whether we are friend or foe depends on, well that really determines how God meets us with his steadfast love. When we are foe, then God meets us with a fist. And when we're friend, he meets us with an outstretched hand to caress us. But we determine how he meets us in his steadfast love. And so

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says, "Now Lord, give him something to remember you by." Oh, to remember. How wonderful it is to remember. To remember. Sometimes we forget how precious memory is. And often, often we try to remember something and then it's down there in the subconscious and we're trying to get it out. It doesn't come as quickly as we'd like. And then as we get older, we begin to cherish even more how precious memory is.

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Well, you know, I can't remember like I used to, I hear some people say. So precious possession. In fact, I read just the other day, and many of you possibly did too, of a man whose name was James McConnell up in a little town in New York.

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He gave his wife a Christmas present by coming home after being away for 17 years. But the reason he was away 17 years is that he forgot who he was. He suffered from amnesia and he just didn't know where he was. He left New York and went to Philadelphia not knowing who he was.

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He changed his name, he got a job, she had him declared dead, and she went on living alone there in that house and he got a job working there in Philadelphia and he worked there for 17 years not knowing who he was. And then he was down in the cellar and he bumped his head down in the cellar and it all came back

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to him as to who he was. He remembered home, he remembered his wife, he remembered all of the things that were so precious in his past and he went back home and he knocked on the door and she opened the door and greeted him and now they're getting their life back together after 17 years. Well that's a true story but so many people have suffered amnesia when it comes to God. They have forgotten who God is, they have forgotten God's power and they have

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drifted away and they have continued to drift and drift, they're like the particle sun in a far country. And sometimes what they really need is just sort of a lick on the head. Something to drive them into their senses, something to bring them to themselves so that they can remember that God is a loving Father who will fight our battle, who will provide for our needs.

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And oh, there's so much worth remembering that God does for us. Let the Lord lead. Let him guide your life. Let God be the governor, for he'll conquer the forces of evil, lest we forget. As we stand here in our recessional, as we look back, lest we forget that God has brought us safe thus far.

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Now what I love about the psalmist here is after they talk about all the trouble that they've had, and in this case after the psalmist describes what's happening and he says, "Give them something to remember you by," is that God has always given us something to remember him by. He's given

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us his love. He's given us his grace. He's given us his forgiving spirit and so we ought to praise him today. And it is a praise I'll praise my God who meets me in his steadfast love. Praise God. Praise God for the gift of the years that we have enjoyed. Praise God for His power. Praise God for His excellent greatness. Praise

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God for His love. Praise God. Who's Lord of hosts. Praise God. Praise God for He enables us to triumph over the enemies of life. Praise God. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That's a wonderful thing

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to celebrate on. That's wonderful to be able to praise His name. Hallelujah! Hallelujah. Praise God. Praise God. We come now. It's a time of decision.

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It's a point in which we have the recessional. You can look back. How'd I get where I am? Hallelujah.

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(shouting) [INAUDIBLE] [MUSIC] [ Music ]

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♪ Save your hope ♪ ♪ That life to me ♪ ♪ I am here ♪ ♪ Bringing hope ♪

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♪ For you ♪ ♪ And I pray ♪ ♪ Shed blood for me ♪ ♪ Keep me at heart ♪

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♪ And pray for me ♪ ♪ And I will rise again ♪ ♪ Let me live ♪ ♪ Let me die ♪

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♪ Let me live ♪ ♪ My death is nigh ♪ ♪ May thy tears ♪ ♪ No more ♪

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♪ Come to me ♪ ♪ I need no sun ♪ ♪ God shall ♪ ♪ Hold ♪

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♪ To me ♪ ♪ Oh, the changing world below ♪ ♪ The angels play ♪ ♪ Just play ♪

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♪ Ah, I know ♪ ♪ Trust in me ♪ ♪ I am not afraid ♪ ♪ I can never ♪

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♪ Never ♪ ♪ Die ♪ ♪ Every door ♪ ♪ Every door ♪

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♪ Let me in ♪ ♪ I can see the light ♪ ♪ Daylight turns ♪ [Music]

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[BLANK_AUDIO]