Dearly Beloved,
Every human who is noble desires to leave a legacy or good works that endure after their time on earth is completed. While there are good noble works and charities that endure in the natural, the greatest memorials are spiritual memorials built through first love towards our God and Father. Sometimes those who build great spiritual memorials do so without purposefully attempting to build memorials; while others seek to do so and fail miserably. Cornelius was not seeking to build such memorials but was only interested in living his life righteously with a God whom he loved but did not personally know (Acts 10:1-2). I believe that he was purely concern with helping the poor and living a righteous life. As a centurion who must have trained in rigorous discipline, he was always praying regularly at the ninth hour (around 3pm). After many years of this regular discipline of prayer at a certain time of day, an angel appeared to him and called him by name (Acts 10:3). He was informed by the angel that his prayers and alms have come up for a memorial before God (Acts 10:4). He probably never had a vision in his life before and was greatly afraid at what he saw. What God wanted to do was to bring him further in his understanding of God, salvation and a personal relationship with God. God had mercy and compassion upon him, seeing that he was faithful to whatever level of knowledge of God that he had. From God’s perspective, he was one who deserved to be especially brought into the personal knowledge of all that Christ has done.
In the meantime, in the world of Peter the apostle, God was preparing him to be ready to bring the gospel to Cornelius the Gentile. Even eating or fraternising with the Gentiles was frown upon by the Jewish people. How much more going into their unkosher houses and fellowshipping with them. To God, all these are just human things which have no relevance in the cosmic scale of what He is about to do through Christ Jesus. God sent Peter a vision of unclean animals which by interpretation was the three Gentiles coming to see him and bring him to Cornelius house (Acts 10:9-16). Visions are always allegorically and some times parts of it make no natural sense; like for example, the part about killing and eating, has actually nothing to do with killing and eating. Rather it had to do with fellowship (which involves eating and drinking). The Holy Spirit did say to Peter after the vision that three men were seeking to see him and that he must go with them (Acts 10:19). At the reception in Cornelius’ house, Peter said that it was unlawful for a Jewish man to keep company with or to go to another especially those from the unclean Gentile world (Acts 10:28). Despite the conflict with his own upbringing and culture, Peter preached the gospel to Cornelius. The Holy Spirit did not wait for permission from men but went ahead and gave Cornelius and his household the born-again experience and also baptized him and his household in the Holy Spirit (Acts 10:44-46). After their water baptism, Peter was asked to stay a few days with them (Acts 10:48).
God took an unwilling apostle, crossed cultural barriers, sent His angel, gave instruction through visions and spoke directly by His Spirit in order to bring about the fullness of revelation to a humble righteous man whose only desire is to help the poor and live a righteous man; but in God’s sight was a man who had built a mighty spiritual memorial to Him despite his lack of knowledge in the fuller revelations of God! It is important to be amongst those who build memorials that God loves.
During His ministry days on earth, our Lord Jesus declared that the anointing of Him with costly spikenard by Mary in the house of Simon the leper at Bethany was to be a memorial that will be told wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world (Matthew 26:11-13; Mark 14:9; John 12:1-7). Mary did it out of pure love and appreciation for Jesus. She was not looking for recognition nor consciously wanting a memorial of her ministry towards Jesus. It must have been a great sacrifice to purchase this amount of costly oil and she was not ashamed to be ridiculed by others when she wept and washed Jesus feet with her tears of love and her hair. As always God knows the sacrifice and cost of all that we bring to Him. It was such that differentiated Cain and Abel, who brought the best of his flock (Genesis 4:4). David the king also knows how never to worship God with anything that costs him nothing (1 Chronicles 21:24).
There are certain times when God wants us to remember special events that are of great significance both natural, spiritual and prophetically that God institutes it as a memorial. The beginning of the Exodus was marked as a memorial in the history of the Israelites (Exodus 12:14). The keeping of the feast of unleavened bread was to be a memorial kept between their eyes (Exodus 13:9). The defeat of Amalekites as Moses held his hands high was to be recounted to Joshua and written as a memorial (Exodus 17:14). The breastplate that the high priest Aaron wore bearing the names of the sons of Israel were as a memorial before the Lord continually (Exodus 28:29). There is a memorial portion of the grain offering to be burnt as a sweet aroma to the Lord (Leviticus 2:9). The first crossing of the Jordan was marked with twelve memorial stones taken to build a memorial for the children of Israel (Joshua 4:7).
Our God does mark special events, timings and things done as special moments to be remembered and celebrated. But even more powerful are spiritual memorials that are ordained and sanctified by the Lord Himself. In each of our lives, we are to become living sacrifices to God bringing Him praise and worship in our own unique way. There are obvious principles and keys that make something a memorial before His presence. They are:
- Things that are done sacrificially out of pure love for God
- Things that celebrate and commemorate special acts of God that He did for us
- Things that are done to help us to remember to keep loving God and worship God continually
- Things that are done by God that marked the acts of God done to keep His promise towards us
- Things that are done in a regular and consistent manner that fulfils God’s Will on the earth
- Things that are done to give ourselves regularly to the Lord in prayers, praises or worship
- Things that are done without any other motivation except to love God and to love others whom God loves
Part of the process of building spiritual memorials is spending a regular time with God on a daily basis as an expression of our love and adoration to God and to being like God in helping others. Cornelius had a regular discipline time to seek God every day at 3pm in giving of alms and prayers. Others like him are Daniel who prays three times a day facing towards Jerusalem. Daniel would knell down three times a day and give thanks to God, a custom he developed ever since his youth (Daniel 6:10). David declares that he praised God seven times a day (Psalms 119:164). It is indeed the person who meditates day and night on God’s word that becomes like a tree planted by the rivers of water, bearing fruit in its season and whose leaves do not wither (Psalm 1:2-3).
At other times, a consciousness of what God has done, of the majesty and greatness of an event and the demarcation point seared into our memories is what helps delineate an event of God into a lasting memorial. It is easy to became callous towards the things of God and the holiness of God when we have it as a constant experience. Never ever take the things of God for granted. To do so would be to be unappreciative of what God has done and also to become hardened to the presence and the holiness of God. People like Eli and his sons have taken for granted the positions they had and the holiness of the work that God had sanctified them to do (1 Samuel 2:27-36). Others like Korah begin to overstep the boundary of what God wanted them to do, assuming positions that God did not give them (Numbers 16:8-11). They all perish for taking God for granted. The sin of Esau is his lack of appreciation for his firstborn status and he traded it for a bowl of red bean soup (Genesis 25:34). Judas Iscariot did not worship our Lord Jesus nor did he fear Him but he took our Lord for granted and treated our Lord Jesus as just a normal human whom he can manipulate and use politically to secure himself a place with the Jews. In the end, his demise was equal to that of the antichrist. By the time, he tried to repent, he still only regarded Jesus as just a man, an innocent man (Matthew 27:4). One of the things that caused the rebellion at the end of the thousand years of Millennium was a type of lethargy or taking for granted what they had during the thousand years. The Lord Jesus reigned in the Millennium and yet they were not satisfied and wanted to join the devil in going against the Lord (Revelation 20:8). What more could they not have? What else could they have wanted? Being resurrected from death and serving God a thousand years as priests was insufficient for them (Revelation 20:6). These roads to backsliding and sin are to be avoided:
- Taking the things of God for granted
- Taking God for granted
- Taking the positions from God and the servants and the people of God for granted
- Taking our life for granted
- Taking our gifts and blessings from God for granted
- Taking others for granted
- The lack of gratefulness and thankfulness towards God and towards others
The only cure for such things is to:
- Live a life of thanksgiving and praise every day
- Remain humble and worship God on your knees
- Fast often and humble yourself before God
- Know that you are nothing and you can do nothing without Jesus
- Be always childlike
- Be always learning and growing
- Be a worshipper of God
Let us rise and become memorials to God. Let our lives be the essence of which God would be well-pleased. The one sentence that we all must aspire towards is for God to say that He is ‘well-pleased with us.’ Let everything be done always through Jesus living through us. There is nothing that we have that is of value except for Jesus and Jesus alone. Live Jesus, breathe Jesus, be conscious of Jesus living through us day and night.
In Jesus Name. Amen.