Old/New Song for Sunday -- Remember Me

It has been almost nine months since we sang Remember Me. If you remember, this song is based on Psalm 25, and without walking through all the content of the song or Psalm, I simply want to highlight the biblical meaning of remembering. The psalmist cries for God to remember some things and not to remember others.

Psalm 25:6-7 — Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

You can see that the chorus we sing was “stolen” from these verses:

Remember your mercy O Lord, Remember your steadfast love of old
Remember not my sins, let your Son be all you see
For your goodness sake, my plea: remember me.

When the Bible speaks of God remembering his covenant or his people, it is not that he has forgotten his promises or those whom he loves. Instead, it means that he is going to act according to his promises and on behalf of his people. Remembering, then, is more than cognitive recall. It includes his actions.

When we call out for God to remember his mercy, steadfast love or us, in particular, we are not suggesting that he has forgotten something or someone. We are asking him to come and act on our behalf, according to his mercy and love. And we are asking for him not to act according to our sins (remember not my sins), but instead that he would act according to who his Son is, what he has done and who we are in him.

When I ask the Lord to “remember me,” I’m asking him to come and act on my behalf. And some of what I am asking for is included in the themes founds in Psalm 25: come fight my enemies for me (v 2), come lead me in your ways (vv 4-5), come pardon my guilt (v 11) and come bring peace to my heart (v 17). In many ways, the cry for God to remember us is a plea for him to fulfill his promise to always be with us.

The Lord loves to remember his people. He loves for his people to call out for his remembrance and we will do that together tomorrow through this song.

Here is the lead sheet.