Bad Behaviour Is Poor Memory: Remembrance Keeps You Humble

Sermon outline

Remembering how God and people brought you through makes you kind, humble, faithful to your calling and grateful, while forgetfulness breeds bad behaviour, disloyalty and ingratitude.

1. 2. Remembrance makes you accommodate others (continued)

   Remembrance governs your present behaviour. Being rude to your parents or forgetting how people helped you shows that you cannot remember; he calls it 'mental amnesia'.

   “Bad behavior is a result of poor remembrance.”

2. 3. Remembrance makes you help others

   When you remember how people trampled you or tried to kill your dreams, you refuse to do the same to others. If you were treated badly by family or a mean boss, do not repeat it when you gain authority; treat people well and give them opportunity, even though some will be disloyal.

   Illustration: He grew up in a church where there was no room for young people with zeal for God, who were told to keep quiet. Now that he has authority, he wants to give others an opportunity.

   “Although we have bad people, they're still good people.”

3. 4. Remembrance makes you kind

   When you recall what you went through, you do not want others to go through the same. Joseph, meeting the brothers who had sold him, is his example.

   Illustration: Joseph when he met his brothers.

   “When you recall what you went through, you don't want others to go through the same things.”

4. 5. Remembrance makes you walk in your calling

   Remember how you got saved and who helped you. People forget the pastors who visited them in hospital, husbands forget wives who stood with them, and wives nag good husbands while other women pray for decades for husbands on drugs or drink. Remember and honour your pastor, church staff and volunteers, and even the bread truck driver and the people who keep daily life running.

   Illustration: He invited his first pastor, who gave his family eight weeks of home Bible studies some thirty years earlier, to come and preach. He also tells of praying for a young man on life support who regained consciousness within hours and was fully healed, yet the family left the church a month later over a remark about the Daniel fast.

   “If we can remember, it will cut the divorce rate down.”

5. 6. Remembrance keeps you humble

   Do not hide your roots in Newlands East, Phoenix, Wentworth or a farm in Zululand, as if you had landed from New York. Remembering his own humble beginnings gives him compassion for the poor and the sick. You can wear a smart suit and drive a fine car and still be humble, because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

   Illustration: As a sickly boy his mother borrowed cars to take him to the temple for prayer, with no help for years; later, while running from God's call, he spent seven days in hospital fighting for his life. He also remembers a credit card being declined at Pick n Pay and having to hand back the groceries.

   “If you remember, it will keep you humble.”

   • James 4:6

6. The last point: Remembrance makes you a grateful person

   The sin of ungratefulness is the sin of forgetfulness: people forget their ageing parents, their pastors and their teachers. Honour the Lord's day, and God will honour your business. Leaders who once longed to serve now come only when begged, and some ordained pastors became disloyal because they forgot the people who raised them up.

   Illustration: At a funeral he recognised an elderly man in his eighties as his old school teacher and went up to greet him. He also reminds grumbling workers of the queue of three hundred people waiting for interviews when they prayed and fasted for their job.

   “The sin of ungratefulness is a sin of forgetfulness.”