Remember the days of old; consider the years long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you.Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.Remember the days of old, Consider the years of many generations: Ask thy father, and he will show thee; Thine elders, and they will tell thee.
3 sermons cite this verse
Our second passage for this morning comes from Paul's first letter to the Christian community at Corinth. Here, Paul retells the story of Moses and the rock. The apostle gives new meaning to this story by connecting it to the ministry of Jesus. Let's listen together to this passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 10, beginning with the first verse. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. Our final passage for today is a short but familiar one from the book of Psalms. Here King David embraces in a personal way the notion that God is a rock. Listen again to Psalm 19, verse 14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. …
… Remember how the Lord your God led you through the desert these 40 years. Remember the days of old. Consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. remember, remember, remember. It sounds like a broken record. It sounds like a broken record because humanity's history is a broken record. We sin, we are punished, we confess our error, God delivers us, we are restored, we forget, and the process begins all over. It's so sad. No, God doesn't like to be written off. God doesn't like to be forgotten. I can't imagine a sadder example of God being written off than when Jesus returned to his boyhood home of Nazareth. Maybe when Jesus hit town, he walked around the old neighborhoods and reminisced about the good old days, recalled events from his growing up. Homecomings should give a person a chance to remember the people and places that have shaped him. Homecoming should give folks a chance to catch up with a local guy or gal who has made good to see how they came out and what they've been doing. …
Now, as to the reverence enjoined and taught the Jews towards persons and times past, we may notice first the commandment given them to honour and obey their parents and elders. This, indeed, is a natural law. But that very circumstance surely gives force to the express and repeated injunctions given them to observe it, sanctioned too (as it was) with a special promise. Natural affection might have taught it; but it was rested by the Law on a higher sanction. Next, this duty of reverently regarding past times was taught by such general injunctions (more or less express) as the text. It is remarkable, too, when Micah would tell the Jews that the legal sacrifices appointed in time past were inferior to the moral duties, he states it not as a new truth, but refers to its announcement by a prophet in Moses' age,--to the answer of Balaam to Balak, king of Moab. But, further, to bind them to the observance of this duty, the past was made the pledge of the future, hope was grounded upon memory; all prayer for favour sent them back to the old mercies of God. "The Lord hath been mindful of us, He will bless us;" this was the form of their humble expectation. The favour vouchsafed to Abraham and Israel, and the deliverance from Egypt, were the objects on which hope dwelt, and were made the types of blessings in prospect. For instance, out of the many passages which might be cited, Isaiah says, "Awake . . . O arm of the Lord, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old." Micah, "Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitary in the wood, in the midst of Carmel; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old; according to the days of thy coming out of Egypt will I show unto him marvellous things." The Psalms abound with like references to past mercies, as pledges and types of future. Prophesying of the reign of Christ, David says, "The Lord said, I will bring again from Bashan, I will bring My people again from the depths of the sea," and Moses too, speaking to the Israelites--"Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father and he will show thee, thy elders, and they will tell thee." Accordingly, while a coming Saviour was predicted, still the claims of past times on Jewish piety were maintained, by His being represented by the prophets under the name and character of David, or in the dress and office of Aaron; so that, the clearer the revelation of the glory in prospect, in the same degree greater honour was put upon the former Jewish saints who typified it. In like manner the blessings promised to the Christian Church are granted to it in the character of Israel, or of Jerusalem, or of Sion. …