Judges 8:34 And the children of Israel remembered not the LORD their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side.
People without memory are fickle. If I don’t remember what I’ve experienced, what I’ve decided, or what my conviction is then I can very easily change. A lot of people are very given to change. Part of the reason for that is because they have a poor memory.
Sometimes I have made decisions here on the Ranch for which I have worked very hard. I have thought about the facts and come to a decision based on our ethic here at the Ranch. Occasionally, a friend will then come by weeks or months later and say, “Do you still want to do thus and so?” They are asking about the decision I’ve already made. I can get frustrated at my memory. I spent all my time making that decision and now I can’t remember why I made the decision. So, I am either living on a conviction that I have at the moment or the assurance that I made a decision based on good intelligence and conviction at the time. The bottom line is that if you don’t remember things, you can be very fickle indeed. You can waffle between this and that all the time. People without memory are fickle.
In Judges 8 it says, “And it came to pass, as soon as Gideon was dead, the children of Israel turned again, and went a whoring after Baalim.” These are strong words. God’s people had forgotten what God had done, the victories He had given over the Midianites, and how He had used Gideon to deliver that victory. They were unfaithful and went after false gods.
Judges 8:34 says, “And the children of Israel remembered not the LORD their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side: neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, namely, Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had shewed unto Israel.” When God had delivered victory through Gideon, these people had said, “Gideon, you be our king, and your son and your grandson after you.” Years later, they had no knowledge of Gideon’s son or grandson, and they had totally forgotten about Gideon and about God. They went from wanting to make Gideon king to forgetting that he had even existed. They were living very fickle lives.
That is true with us all the time. We are fickle. We sometimes change simply because we forget. People without memory are fickle people. Now the kicker is that the Bible broadens and deepens your memory. You can’t live long enough to make all the mistakes yourself, and you don’t need to. It occurs to me that people who have broad perspectives gain it through time and space, that is, they have been other places than their home town and they have lived longer than their five-year-old. A five-year-old doesn’t have nearly the perspective that a fifty-year-old may have. Perspective is something you can’t buy. It takes time.
The other thing needed is space. I was recently with some friends in Arizona who had recently moved there from Los Angeles. They had perspective on things that I couldn’t have because while I had been to L.A. a number of times I had never lived there. I have friends that were born internationally, and when I talk to them, I gain perspective on things I couldn’t quite comprehend otherwise. The Bible does that in a condensed form. You can gain lessons from an entire lifetime in a three-verse span. You only need to learn a lesson once. You can learn from your experience, but it is better to learn from the experience of others.
So, perspective comes through time and space, neither of which you or I have enough of to be as wise as we ought to be. But, the Bible has and gives that. It gives us the wisdom that we need if we will look to the Word and pay attention.
We learn from the vacillating people of Gideon’s day that people without memory are fickle and that the Bible broadens and deepens the perspective and wisdom you can have for life.