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Familiarity with the words of the Bible makes them lose their force to us. The Lord's Prayer, the Liturgy generally. But this is no argument against a form of prayer. If we are to give up a form because of this danger, then we may give up reading the Bible for the same reason. But formalism is our fault, not that of the form we use. And this familiarity tells upon the truth taught in text.

I. MEN'S FORGETFULNESS OF GOD. And yet we ought to fear, for if in David's day, when men were under the law, our text was true, how much more now in our state of greater privilege. See how we ward off the blow threatened by the idea that we are not of the number of those who forget God. This is true in a sense, for no one can quite forget God. Conscience will not let him. Not the infidel even, still less the profligate. The text, therefore, tells of something short of total forgetfulness. Who, then, are they who forget God?

1. Those who do not habitually remember Him. Such persons may be respectable before men.

2. Those who are afraid to do right because of the ridicule of the world.

3. Those who think that He will not punish sin.

II. THIS DANGER OF FORGETFULNESS presses on us all. And it is worse in us than in David, for we have the Holy Spirit given us in our baptism. If we call on Him He will help us to resist temptation. Pleading forgetfulness only adds to our fault if we fall. Therefore let us seek to remember God.

(F. E. Paget, M. A.)

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KJV: The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.

WEB: The wicked shall be turned back to Sheol, even all the nations that forget God.