Dear Lord, Remember Me

The Apostle Paul instructed the believers at Colosse to teach and admonish one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. That is what I hope to do by explaining the meaning of this hymn, against the backdrop of the Framework of Sovereign Grace.

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[An automated transcript of the teaching video]

The Apostle Paul instructed the believers at Colosse to teach and admonish one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. That’s what I intend to do by explaining the meaning of this hymn—Dear Lord, Remember me. I’d like to give an explanation of the hymn against the backdrop of the Framework of Sovereign Grace, which is God’s master plan for the ages.

To my knowledge, we don’t know the author of the hymn, but that’s okay. As you’ll find, the words of the hymn fit nicely into the Framework of Sovereign Grace.

Allow me to read for you the five stanzas of the hymn:

1 Dear Lord! Remember me,

A sinner weak and vile,

Full of iniquity,

And fraught with sin and guile:

I cannot hope but in Thy blood,

Remember me, O Lord, for good.

2 Unable to depend,

On nature-strength and power,

Jesus, my soul befriend,

Teach me to trust Thee more:

Save me from sin and all its smart;

O save me from my treacherous heart!

3 Upon Thy oath I rest,

My feeble soul secure;

By sin I am oppress’d,

But Thy salvation’s sure:

Though like a bottle in the smoke,

I know Thy vessels can’t be broke.

4 ’Tis true, dear Lord, I am

A sinner vile indeed;

Yet hoping in the Lamb,

Who deign’d for such to bleed:

And while the Spirit seals my heart,

My soul believes we ne’er shall part.

5 Christ ever will defend

The people of His choice,

He loves them without end,

And in them doth rejoice:

For them He shed His precious blood,

And will present them all to God.

I think you’ll agree with me, the message of this hymn fits under the third branch of the gospel—the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. The sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit begins with the work of regeneration, when the Spirit of God—(pointing to the Framework) if that is you and I, and the oval represents the soul—the Spirit of God unites the soul with the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Spirit communicates the life and the virtues of Christ into the soul, thereby making the soul alive unto God and enabled to exercise things such as love towards God, saving faith in Christ and joy in the Holy Spirit. This is the work of regeneration and this is what the hymn is now referring to—a regenerate sinner and his or her experience with the Lord.

Now, let me point out to you that the main message of the hymn centers around sin—sin that remains in the believer. Do you know, my dear friend, sin happens to be the number one problem regenerate sinners face on a daily basis? It’s the number one problem. It’s not the only problem. We all face a number of issues every day. For instance, financial difficulties. We all have to pay bills and earn a living. Relational conflicts. Do we not all face conflicts with various family members and friends, work colleagues and other acquaintances? Physical ailments. All of these are problems we face. And I’ll point out to you that those problems are shared among all the members of the human race, both the elect and the non elect; believers and unbelievers; the regenerate and the unregenerate. We all face these types of financial problems, the relational conflicts, the physical ailments. But watch this, the one problem that the believer faces, which unbelievers do not face, is a spiritual knowledge of sin. That’s not to say that unbelievers don’t face sin. They do face sin, but they don’t have a spiritual understanding of it. They don’t have a spiritual knowledge of it. Their souls are dead in sin and therefore they’re not sensitive to it. But for a regenerate sinner, our souls having been made alive in Christ; we are sensitive to the vileness and wretchedness of our hearts. We know ourselves to be undone. We know the transgressions we have committed against our holy God, and the worthiness of His judgment upon us. We know all of these things. We feel it. And it’s that sensitivity towards sin, the guilt and the shame, as a heavy burden that rests on our shoulders. That’s what we as believers in Christ carry with us every day. And I say, every day. Sometimes believers are under the impression that the sensitivity towards sin, and the guilt and shame we feel as a result of it, is something that we experience only at the time of our new birth. When our eyes are first opened to the glory of God in Christ and we feel and know ourselves to be undone and without hope in this world, it is a shocking and surprising experience when we’re born again. And we think that that’s it! After the new birth, that sensitivity to sin diminishes. That’s not true, my friend. As strangers and pilgrims in this world; as we continue to walk with the Lord as regenerate sinners; that sensitivity towards sin often increases and we often experience even greater measures of mournfulness and grieving and sorrow (godly sorrow unto repentance), later on in our walk with the Lord, than what we experience initially when we’re first born again. 

And you see, that’s the message of this hymn. This hymn is talking about the daily experience of God’s people as they walk with Him and they face this problem of their sensitivity towards the sins they’ve committed against God.

Now, to the first stanza:

Stanza 1

“Dear Lord! Remember me,”

Not that the Lord would ever forget us. That’s impossible! But it’s simply the expression of a sinner who’s under such great burden that he’s afraid—he’s afraid and knows that he doesn’t deserve the mercy and grace of God. And so this is the expression of a sinner who simply, in a humble prayer, asks the Lord to remember him or her; to remember the love and the grace and the commitments that God has made towards me, a sinner—for I am a sinner,

“A sinner weak and vile,

Full of iniquity,

And fraught with sin and guile:”

Only those who have been born again know the experiential truth and reality of those words. Now, what is the answer to the believer’s sin problem? The answer, my friend, is not going back to the heart law and attempting to love God supremely and to love our neighbor as ourselves; and attempting to therefore maintain favor with God based on an obedience to that law. No, that is the wrong place to go. As a regenerate sinner brought under the authority of the covenant of grace, we go always to Christ. We go to his blood, to his redeeming grace. For that alone is what gives us favor with God. It is through the shedding of his blood. There is forgiveness of sins. And when we feel the sensitivity of the sins we’ve committed against God, the person we go to is the Lord Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, our Savior. Therefore,

“I cannot hope but in Thy blood,

Remember me, O Lord, for good.”

Stanza 2

“Unable to depend,

On nature-strength and power,”

Well, that’s exactly what I just mentioned. You don’t go to nature’s strength and power. You don’t go to the covenant of works and to the heart law. Or worse, you don’t go to the Mosaic law or the Ten commandments. And you don’t try to depend upon your own nature and your inherent power of the flesh.

“Jesus, my soul befriend,

Teach me to trust Thee more:”

That’s what we need! We need to learn, under the covenant of grace, to trust the Lord Jesus Christ more.

“Save me from sin and all its smart;”

That’s an archaic word, smart. It refers to mental anguish or suffering. Save me not only from sin, but from the result that sin has upon my mind. It’s creating in me great anguish and guilt and suffering. Save me from the sin and the guilt.

“O save me from my treacherous heart!”

See, these are words, my friend, of a regenerate sinner who’s walking with the Lord. This is not one who’s just been born again. This is one who’s waking up day after day and feeling that burden of sin and the guilt in the heart and beseeching the Lord to bring relief through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Stanza 3

“Upon Thy oath I rest,”

What oath? Well, the oath of God, His covenant. I rest upon the covenant of grace—the electing love of the Father, who has promised to love us with an everlasting love; the redeeming grace of the Son, who promised to redeem us and even now is at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us; the promise of the Spirit, who has given an oath to sanctify us, beginning with regeneration. And now, as we walk day by day with the Lord, this is the oath upon which we rest!

“My feeble soul secure;”

I am feeble, but my soul is secure upon this oath of God.

“By sin I am oppress’d,”

It is the oppression of our lives. Make no mistake, my dear friend, you attend church on a Sunday, and when you’re asked to give a testimony, how often do you focus on problems such as financial difficulties and relational conflicts and physical ailments? And, while there’s nothing wrong with that—these are real problems that we face—but please listen to me, how often do we focus upon the burden and guilt of sin as part of our testimony? How often is it your testimony that you mourn, you grieve over the sins you’ve committed against God? Over the vileness of your heart?

“But Thy salvation’s sure:

Though like a bottle in the smoke,

I know Thy vessels can’t be broke.

Vessels! You, my friend, are a vessel unto honor. According to the electing love of God the Father, you are a vessel of mercy according to the redeeming grace of God the Son. And you are a vessel of gold and silver, according to the sanctifying power of God the Spirit. 

So, though like a bottle in the smoke, I know Thy vessels can’t be broke. That’s the oath of God on which we depend! 

Stanza 4

“’Tis true, dear Lord, I am

A sinner vile indeed;”

You remember the publican and the Pharisee that were in the temple. And when the Pharisee prayed, he looked around and thanked the Lord that he was not like the others in the temple—the other sinners—he was self-righteous. Yet there was that man, the publican, who when he prayed, bowed his head and he could not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but he simply asked the Lord to have mercy on him, a sinner. And that, my dear friend, is the expression of a regenerate sinner! One who is made sensitive to his or her sins, ’Tis true, dear Lord, I am a sinner vile indeed!

“Yet hoping in the Lamb,

Who deign’d for such to bleed:”

I hope in the lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who deign’d, who chose, who committed Himself to bleed for me, to shed his atoning blood, that I might be reconciled to God.

“And while the Spirit seals my heart,”

That’s the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. While the Spirit seals my heart,

“My soul believes we ne’er shall part.”

We are forever secure in the hand of God. No one can pluck us out of the Father’s hand. No one can pluck us out of the Son’s hand. No one can pluck us out of the Spirit’s hand. A threefold cord cannot be broken. And my dear friend, we are bound to the Triune Jehovah by the threefold cord of this gracious covenant! 

Stanza 5

“Christ ever will defend

The people of His choice,

He loves them without end,”

These are the people of His choice. First, chosen by the Father. And then the Father gave this people to His Son as a gift and the Son of God received them and they became His choice. He loves them without end, the Son of God, with the Father and the Spirit. All three persons of the Godhead love this people—you and me without end.

“And in them doth rejoice:

For them He shed His precious blood,

And will present them all to God.

In them does the Son of God, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, rejoice. Make no mistake, my dear friend, the Triune Jehovah rejoices in you and me, for we are the apple of His eye. We are the vessels of honor. He has set us apart to be objects of His special love. And yes, the Lord Jesus Christ in particular rejoices in His people. It is for them He came to save. He loves and He joys in them. He shed His precious blood for them and will present them all to God. And that is what He does. Even at this moment, the Lord Jesus Christ, having ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father. And at this moment, He is making intercession for you and me. He is our great high priest and He is presenting us to God. That is a marvelous truth, my dear friend, for if any of us say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. But if we are sensitive to our sins, and we confess them to the Lord, He is faithful and He is just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And in this we hope! That the Lord Jesus Christ, our great high priest, not only shed his blood for the forgiveness of our sins, but He represents us. He presents us before God. 

Oh, may the Lord be pleased to speak peace to our hearts, to soothe our guilty conscience! And let us rejoice, my dear friend, if we have that sensitivity to the wretchedness and vileness and corruptions of our hearts, for then we know we have truly been born again. And let us now turn to the triune Jehovah, who by His oath, has secured for us a full and complete salvation.

If this has been your testimony throughout your pilgrimage, you have every right to now sing the words of this hymn, and let us make it a prayer to God.

May the Lord bless it to us.

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