Hebrews 8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
The other day my sister read in our family devotional from the 8th chapter of Hebrews. I will focus on the 12th verse because the writer of the devotional book made a statement that reminded me of something in our past. It all has to do with a church sign and the message on it. Before I tell you what the sign said I’ll give you our history of dealing with church signs. Back in the late 80s their was an elderly lady at our who apparently had a lot of money. There was a lot of talk about the church needing an electric sign with the church’s name on it on the top and 5 lines where we could put up messages like a lot of other church’s had. The lady, Mrs. McCown, said she would pay for the sign and a 12 foot stepladder that we would need to change the sign. At business meeting, that’s what we used to call it, someone asked who’s going to change the sign? Someone else said we shouldn’t expect the pastor to change it. Then my dad stood up and said that he would see that the sign was changed once a week. The church then voted to have the sign put up in front of the church.
Did my dad kept his promise to change the sign every week? Yes he did, oh did I forget to mention that my sister was the church secretary! As soon as the sign was installed every Monday my sister would arrange the letters and Daddy or me would climb the ladder and put up a sign. My sister would pick out what saying or scripture we would put on the sign. Changing the church was quite a big job, as a few of you may know by changing your church sign. But changing the church sign wasn’t a job, it was a ministry. We didn’t try to be funny, my sister worked hard and knew that what is written on the church is very important. People would talk about what was on the sign every week, there was one woman, who did not go to our church, that would stop and take a picture of the sign! This was way before Face Book I can only imagine how many posts would had been made about the sign if it happened today. We changed our church sign for serval years, those were good times!
My sister went on to be the church secretary for two more Southern Baptist churches, including our current church, Rye Hill Baptist Church. Rye Hill bought a LED church sign a couple years ago but it had to be small because of the sign ordinances, yes that’s a whole other story about the government control over church’s right to free speech, I will address this another day.
This brings me to today’s story. As I mentioned before, it involves what is written on a church sign. At the end of the street I grew up on there’s a Methodist church. The church is on a 5 lane street with thousands of cars going by every day. The message on the church sign read: God forgives but he never forgets. Say WHAT! Those Methodist put that on their church sigh for the whole world to read? Come Sunday morning our pastor during his sermon asked How many of you seen the Methodist church sign? And of coarse everybody raised their hands High! We didn’t know what those Methodist thought of their sign but it made everyone in my Baptist church mad! The way everyone at my church, including our pastor, took it the sign was saying God will always hold your sin against you. Then the pastor, Bro. Ronnie Toon, quoted the scripture everyone was thinking when they read the sign : Psalms 103
11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
That’s what the Bible says God forgets our sin as far as the east is from the west! But when my sister read the scripture from Hebrews the writer of the devotional wrote that God doesn’t forget our sin he refuses to remember our sin. There’s a big difference! Today’s song, one of my favorites, talks about what we should remember every day, but because we are imperfect man we can forget things that we should remember and sometimes we have to be reminded of what we should remember. But God can do something man can’t do that is God can refuse to remember man can’t. Have you ever had a bad experience, like a bad car accident, every time you close your eyes you see that car coming straight at you? You try your best but you can’t get it out of your mind. That’s the difference between us and God we can’t refuse to remember, but God can!! We may say remember when this or that happened and then we try to remember whoever it was. But if we ask God to remember our sin, God will say I refuse to remember your sin. This concept that God choses not to remember our sin may had been the Methodist pastor point, I really doubt it, but it could had been. But if was the case the wording of the sign still sent the wrong message to all the thousands who read it. Isn’t it great that we serve a God that promises us that he refuses to remember our sins.