Pulpit Series Volume 19 Issue 34 November 8, 2009
WW I - 1914 Canada’s population was just over 3 million, mostly women and children. Of the men and women who VOLUNTEERED 60,000 were killed, 120,000 were wounded.
April 22, 1915, the Germans used poison gas for the first time, as 145 tons of chlorine gas drifted over the trenches, the Canadian troops held and stopped the German advance. The casualties were enormous. In two days 1/3 of Canadians died.
April 1917, the Canadians won a major victory at Vimy Ridge. There were more than 10,000 casualties in six days but a year latter, on November 11, the Armistice was signed and the Canadians took part in the triumphant entry into Belgium.
WW2: It was 1939 and again Canadians flocked to enlist. For almost six years, Canadians fought valiantly on battlefronts around the world. More than one million men and women enlisted in the army, the navy and the air force. When the war was over, more than 45,000 had given their lives.
The Gospel of Saint John says, Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
We as Canadians had best remember the price our friends paid for our freedom. And we as Christians had best remember the price our Friend Jesus paid for us.
When war came, Canadians volunteered readily to serve their country as champions of liberty. They came from farms, from small towns and large cities across the country, riding high on the initial wave of indignation, excitement, and patriotism. For the men and women who rallied to support their nation's cause, the threats of war seemed far away and unreal.
In the fall of 1914 as the 1st contingent of Canadians left the shelter of the St. Lawrence for the open Atlantic, some of the realities came into focus....How could they know that four long years of death and destruction were ahead?
There is much to remember.
Foremost are the people, the men and women who served wherever they were needed. They faced difficult situations bravely and brought honor to themselves, to their loved ones and to their country.
They were ordinary Canadians who made extraordinary sacrifices.
It is good to remember today, But I believe it only proper that in our daily living we remember their great sacrifice!
Deuteronomy 8:1-5 Keep and live out the entire commandment I'm commanding you today so you'll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors.
Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don't live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God's mouth.
Your clothes didn't wear out and your feet didn't blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
Deuteronomy 8:6-9 it's paramount you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It's a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, olives, oil, and honey. It's land where you'll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It's a land where you'll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
Deuteronomy 8:10-16 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
Make sure you don't forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don't become so full of yourself and your things that you forget your God.
· The God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
· The God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
· The God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
· The God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
Deuteronomy 8:17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, "I did all this. And all by myself. I'm rich. It's all mine!"— well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I'm on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You'll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn't obey the Voice of God, your God.
May God be glorified in our living!
Remember your salvation: Exodus 13:3 Moses said, Always remember this day. This is the day when you came out of Egypt from a house of slavery. God brought you out of here with a powerful hand.
Remember where you’ve come from: Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33-34 When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don't take advantage of him, Love him like one of your own. Remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Remember your deliverance: Deuteronomy 7:16-18 You're going to think to yourselves, "Oh! We're outnumbered ten to one by these nations! We'll never even make a dent in them!" But I'm telling you, Don't be afraid.
Remember, yes, remember in detail what God, your God, did to Pharaoh and all Egypt.
Remember the great contests to which you were eyewitnesses: the miracle-signs, the wonders, God's mighty hand as he stretched out his arm and took you out of there.
God, your God, is going to do the same thing for you today!
Did you know that there are 591 pictures taken every second? That's 51.1 million every day. We take 3 billion photographs just during the Christmas holiday season. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, that’d be a big book. We do all this to help our memory. We need things to strengthen or jar our memory.
The Bible makes an interesting statement in Proverbs 10:7 (NIV) "The memory of the Righteous will be a blessing!"
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