Exodus: The Rhythm of Reconciliation

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Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you got a Bible, I invite you to open it up to uh Exodus chapter 35.

Exodus 35 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 35.

Exodus 35 · chapter mention

If you're a guest, we're going to the book of Exodus.

Uh and we're coming to the last part of Exodus.

And it's a part where God has uh had a falling out with his people.

His people were unfaithful.

And so uh the question I want to ask you is how does God make up with his people after a fight?

Which is why I want to talk to you this morning.

The title of the sermon is The Rhythm of Reconciliation.

The rhythm of reconciliation, because God's people were unfaithful a couple chapters ago.

They built an idol, and so God tells Moses, hey, you got to go down and deal with this.

And so he does, and so now God's kind of finishing up actually saying to them what he wants to say to them.

Now, remember this there's things you read in the Bible, and then there's things that you notice in the Bible around what you read.

And today will involve both of those.

Exodus chapter 35, verse 1, it says this.

Exodus 35:1

Moses assembled all the congregation of the people of Israel and said to them, These are the things that the Lord has commanded you to do.

Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord.

Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death.

You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day, short and sweet and to the point, the way God always speaks, okay?

Just those simple five excuse me, three verses there where God just kind of spells it out.

Now, where you're probably thinking, What are you gonna preach from those three verses?

Where do you get this rhythm of reconciliation?

Uh uh let me just tell you how God makes up with people.

I don't know how you make up after a fight.

Whenever I talk to couples in marriage counseling, and we talk about, and I say you gotta have a theology of conflict, you gotta have a spiritual framework for how you fight.

How do you know the fight's over?

And how do you know that you you communicated what you want to communicate and that what you uh what you said was heard, and and and that's always a new endeavor every time.

But God kind of has this pattern, uh, and it involves three things I want to talk to you about this morning.

Number one, he reminds.

He reminds.

And then secondly, he God talks about rituals, and then thirdly, God talks about rest.

And so, really, Exodus chapter 35, verses 1, 2, and 3 are the last part of that.

Exodus 35:1

And so I want to just uh just talk to you about this rhythm that God has for how he reconciles with his people.

And the first one is that he reminds.

Uh, he reminds.

You say, What do you mean?

This is now the fourth time in the book of Exodus that God has talked about a Sabbath.

Uh, I have a friend that goes to this church and he's like, Yeah, I'm not really good at that.

I can't do that.

Man came to me up after the last service and he said, This is the second time now you've talked about Sabbath, and it gives me anxiety both times.

And I said, Why is that?

And he said, I gotta be doing something.

And I said to him unequivocally, No, you don't.

You do not have to do be doing something all the time.

And so the way God reconciles is God comes to them and he reminds them.

He doesn't say anything new.

This is, like I said, the fourth time he said that.

Instead, instead of coming up with new things, it's not like God says, Hey, you guys broke the Ten Commandments, so here's 20 commandments.

I'm gonna double your workload.

No, God just comes back and just kind of says, let me remind you of some things, which which leads us to this question.

In your relationship with God, what are you in danger of forgetting?

In your relationship with God, what are you in danger of forgetting?

And and I'll start with some confession of my own.

Sometimes when I'm talking to people that are not Christians, people that do not believe the gospel, and sometimes people are even hostile to the gospel.

Uh I forget the doctrine of election.

I forget that this is not depend on me.

I don't have to convince or say some kind of phrase.

It's gonna make it all open up to them, it's gonna unlock all the locks in their head and in their heart.

Uh, but when I remember the doctrine of election, that God's gonna reveal Himself to this person and God's in charge of that, I don't take responsibility for it.

So that's what I mean when I say in your relationship with God, what are you in danger of forgetting?

Because the first thing God does is he comes to his people like he does in Exodus 35, and he reminds them, by the way, this is the fourth time.

I'm not saying this because I don't have anything else to say.

God is saying, I'm saying this because I do not want you to forget this.

The second thing God does by way of reconciliation is it he uses rituals.

He uses rituals.

Now let me define what I mean by a ritual.

A ritual is a holy habit that helps me do what I by nature will not do.

And it helps me become who I by nature will not naturally become.

Let me say that again.

A ritual is a holy habit that helps me do by nature what what I I won't do.

Like it's easy for me as your pastor to get up and have full days, and and it's easy for me to get up and get going.

And if I'm not careful, I can go into a whole day and never open the Bible.

There's just so much to do.

Now, am I saying I do that?

No.

But I have to tell myself, I have to slow myself down and say, you know what?

This is what you were created for.

This is what God calls you to.

And so a ritual, a holy habit that that allows me to become who I by nature, just live in my life, I will not become who the Bible says because the natural bend of our life is towards more and faster and all that kind of stuff.

And rituals kind of call us back and slow us down.

So that's what I mean when I say a ritual.

Uh, Eugene Peterson says this about rituals.

He says a ritual uh protects common but essential elements of human life from reduction, degradation, and exploitation.

I cannot take charge of a ritual.

I can only enter in or not.

Neither can I engage in a ritual by myself.

Others are involved.

So a ritual, simply as ritual, prevents me from retaining any illusion that I am self-sufficient.

At the same time, it thrusts me into a life with others.

See, the good thing about a ritual is that it reminds me that I'm not self-sufficient.

I need some habits that I engage in to help me become who the Bible says I am.

Now, in this rhythm of reconciliation, back one chapter in Exodus 34, I'll start reading verse 18, because God reminds them, He reminds them of some commandments.

He also says, Here's three things I want you to do every year of your life.

Look at verse 18 of Exodus 34.

He says, You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month of Abib.

For in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt, and all that open the womb are mine.

All your male livestock, the firstborn of cow and sheep, the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it, you shall break its neck.

All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and none shall appear before me empty-handed.

Underline that sentence because we'll come back to that in just a minute.

And none shall appear before me empty-handed.

Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.

You shall observe the feast of weeks.

In ploughing time and in harvest you shall rest.

You shall observe the feast of weeks, the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of in-gathering at the year's end.

Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel, for I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders.

No one shall cover your land, covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in a year.

Now, that's a section of the Bible where God is, they've just come back and God said, Hey, you guys were unfaithful, you committed idolatry, and God didn't make up stuff, he didn't bring up new stuff, he just kind of reminds them.

But also he says, Hey, here's some rituals I want you to engage in every year of your life.

And he mentions three feasts.

Now, here's the reality: we're not people that observe the feasts nowadays, but and the reason we don't is because they were all fulfilled in Jesus.

But God said, I want to give you guys some rituals, some holy habits that I want you to engage in every year at different times in the year, and they're all intended to remind you about something different about me.

For example, the first one he said he talks about the feast of unleavened bread.

And I'll just give you one word to associate with that, and it's deliverance.

This is uh this is what they it it's Jewish tradition, they eat unleavened bread during this time, and it commemorates the original Exodus out of Egypt.

It's when God, they were slaves, got the God got them out of slavery, and God says, I want you to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

In other words, for seven days every year, I want you to eat unleavened bread to remind yourself you're not slaves anymore.

You're no longer who you used to be, you're not slaves anymore.

And so when God says, Hey, I want you to remember the Feast of Unleavened Bread, God says, Not only I want you to remember that I'm a God of deliverance, I delivered you back then, but I'm gonna continue to deliver you even to this present day.

So to all of us sitting in this room, this is not something that's just historical.

This is something that's personal, all right?

You say, What do you mean?

Christianity, before it's personal, it's historical.

Do you know this?

A lot, God has done a lot in the lives of his people before we got here.

Do you realize that?

Hello?

God has done a lot before we came on the scene, and if you lose sight of that, what you're that then every time you face a situation where you need deliverance, God is always in the balance.

We don't know if God's gonna come through.

I mean, I don't know if God's gonna do, because if in your mind God's not gonna come through, you've got to take matters in your own hands.

And so God says to these people, hey, I want you to observe this ritual, this the feast of unleavened bread.

Why?

I want you to rem I want you to remind yourself that I'm the God that delivered you from slavery in Egypt and to all you people in this room this morning, God says, I want to remind you, I'll deliver you from whatever you're going through right now.

That's the first ritual he says.

Second one he says, he says, I want you to observe the feast of weeks.

The feast of weeks.

And the word for that is just provision.

What is the feast of weeks?

A lot of things happened at this feast.

One of the things that happened, it was also known as the in-gathering of the first fruits or the feast of the first fruits.

What they would do, they would plant crops, and the first thing they got from their fields, they would take it to the temple and they would present it to the Lord.

This is where I had you underline that sentence where God said, and none of you shall appear before me uh empty-handed.

None of you shall come before me empty-handed.

What is God saying?

God is saying that I'm such a God of fullness.

You can't come to me and say, Well, God, you know, oil used to be$103 a barrel, and now it's 39, and you know, and so it's just kind of hard, so I got nothing, because this is the first thing they, the first uh first fruits from their crops, God said, You're gonna bring to me all of you.

Don't come before me empty-handed.

Why?

It's not a statement about what you have, it's about what's a statement about what God does.

This is the very beginning of the harvest.

God says, everybody come and bring something.

Why does God say that?

Because God knows how he's gonna relate to them the rest of the year.

See, this doesn't make any sense unless you understand that the last feast is called the feast of in-gathering, where God demonstrates that he's faithful.

What is the feast of in-gathering?

It happens at the end of the year, at the end of the harvest.

And the people come and they and they bring, and basically it's a reminder to them you know what?

God, we brought the first fruits to you, and here we are at the end of the year, and you were faithful all along.

Now ask yourself this question: What rituals do you have in your life that remind you that God delivers, that God provides, and that God is faithful?

Because this is what God is saying to his people.

I want you to understand this about me.

Never forget this about me, that I deliver.

So if you're going through something in your marriage right now, you just need to tell yourself, you know what, God to deliver.

We're gonna get through this.

This is hard right now, but we're not gonna fall back into slavery.

That's not that's not what God's called us to.

And so God delivers, but He's He He provides and He's faithful.

Now, when you talk about rituals, it's hard to talk about that because that's not a word we we use anymore.

But let me just give you uh what I call the fruit of rituals or the benefit of having rituals in your life.

The first one is this without some consistent rituals in our life, we live at the mercy of our urgency and our appetites.

We live at the mercy of our urgency.

Oh my gosh, I gotta do it.

Oh, my friends sent me a text.

I better jump up.

No, not necessarily.

You live at the mercy of your urgency or your appetite.

Secondly, rituals reorient our lives around what we value.

Everybody in this room makes time for what you value.

That's why tonight, at about 7:20, many men in this room and in this city will turn on their TVs and sit there for four hours and watch the cowboys and the eagles.

Amen.

I'm going to.

It's not unspiritual.

That's why God gave you a flat screen.

Amen.

And so it's not, you have rituals.

Every one of us have rituals.

You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth.

Amen.

Please say amen.

I mean, come on.

You have rituals.

It's just, here's the thing.

I'm not saying don't watch the cowboys if you love Jesus.

No.

I hope I have a friend of mine.

He has a theater room in his house.

I hope he sits in there in one of those recliners and watches it all by himself, and his wife waits on him hand in foot.

Amen, women.

Some of y'all are like, una min.

No.

See, here's the thing.

You're like, you can go watch it, just don't ask me for anything.

You have rituals.

What we don't have is we don't have the kind of spiritual rituals that allow us to become who the Bible says we are.

And so the fruit of the ritual, the third one is this rituals bridge the gap between what I desire and what I experience.

Rituals bridge the gap between what I desire, what I want to do, and what I experience, what I actually do.

So I said all that to ask you this question.

What is a ritual that you're willing to engage in every day?

Every week?

Every month?

And every year.

And I'm not saying I mean four different ones.

What is a ritual you're willing to engage in every day?

Every week?

See, we're here in this room because for for you, one of the holy habits you've gotten into, and it's a good one, is you assemble with other believers.

That's it's not hard.

Don't make this harder than it is.

This isn't math, this is music.

But if you're not careful, your life will be will be taken hostage by your urgency and your appetite.

And you'll go from one crisis to another, and the world's always on fire, and you can't find enough water to get it put out.

And you gotta ask yourself, is this really what Christ died for me to live?

So what what rituals are you willing to engage in?

Every day, every week, every month, every year?

Let me just give you a couple of white, because we talk about rituals, it's like, I don't know what you mean.

Let me give you some real practical rituals uh that that I would just say consider these.

The first one is kneeling.

Kneeling.

You say, uh, ask yourself when's the last time you just knelt down before God?

You don't have to say anything.

By the way, when you look in the Bible and when when when God's present, people's posture is changing.

People are kneeling, they're laying down before God.

It says in Ezekiel, Ezekiel said, I shook and became like a dead man.

And just sometimes I just encourage you.

I don't care if you're in the seventh grade or you're 88 years old, you should just kneel.

I love kneeling before God so much.

Don't tell anybody, but my prayer when we build our new sanctuary is that we have pews with kneelers.

And so we can just pull them down every once in a while and just and read the 95th Psalm and say, Come let us kneel before the Lord our God, our Maker.

And we can just kneel down before God and say, God, you're so faithful.

You you told us not to come before you empty-handed because it makes it look like you're not a God, a fullness.

And here we are.

We are living and breathing and worshiping in something that many of us never thought would happen.

And then we're here because God is faithful.

You need to look around and be on your knees with other people and kind of go, yes, this is the church.

The church advances on her knees faster than she ever will on her feet.

And we need to be we need to be reminded.

Here's another one, silence.

Silence.

You cannot rightfully expect to be heard if you're always talking.

And sometimes silence is just uh a way of just kind of saying to God, I just I want you to say something.

I've I've talked so much, my words are so thinned out, God.

I want my words to thicken in me so that when I do talk, that there's a weight on my words behind me, beyond me and my personality.

Here's another ritual: solitude.

Solitude is just learning to be alone with yourself.

One of the reasons we get addicted to people is we don't like ourselves.

And we hide from ourselves with people.

You need to learn to be with yourself in solitude.

Here's one we don't think of that I think is overlooked.

This ritual is friendship.

Friendship.

It sounds kind of weird.

You're like, what do you mean?

Uh I mean you should you you should think about that as a ritual, and here's why.

Because the people you experience most consistently, they have the capacity to affect who you are the most.

The people you you're around most consistently.

That's why once in a while you bring some people home from school and you're and you walk in and go, Hey mom, this is my friend Chanel, and your mom's like, hello, Chanel.

Your mom's putting that 44-year-old vibe on, like, mm-mm, no, sir.

You enjoy this, Chanel, because you ain't never gonna see the inside of my house again.

I'm just peeling carrots, Chanel.

Your mom's not hating, your mom's not being judgmental.

Your mom was 15 once.

And your mom got the distinct mom eye on your friend.

And your mom's not hating your friend, your mom's loving you.

And every once in a while you should look at your mom and dad and say, What does your spirit tell you about this friend of mine?

Ru-Row.

You expect me to say that out loud?

It would save you a lot of heartache if you learned to do that.

Think of it like this: friendships are like real estate.

Here's the rule in real estate, okay?

I'm not a realtor, uh, but I have friends that say this to me: you do not want to be the rich man in the poor man's neighborhood.

Because everybody looks up to you and your house is probably never gonna sell for what it's worth because all the other they're called the comps, the comparables are down here and you're overpriced.

You want to be in friendship, you want to be the poor man in the rich man's neighborhood.

In other words, you want to be friends with some people that being around them builds you up.

For example, uh, there's I live in a neighborhood right over here.

A couple years ago, a house burned down in my neighborhood.

I told you about it in a sermon.

My wife is morbid.

She woke up our oldest daughter, Madison, and said, Come, you need to see this.

There's a house burning down.

And I'm like, Would James Dobson do this?

So my wife opens the blinds in our bedroom, and Madison just stands there and watches the house burn.

We couldn't do anything, it was fully engulfed.

Uh and we went on a walk last night.

Someone had set the lot set empty for a couple years.

Someone scraped it, built a nice house there, but it's too much house from my neighborhood.

So much so that the asking price for the house is$365,000.

Now, I know in some neighborhoods that's not even a garage, okay?

But in my neighborhood, that is the Taj Mahal, okay?

Them cats are so overpriced for my neighborhood, and so then now they're bringing the price down.

And now it's down to$362,500.

And I just walked by my wife went on a walk, she goes, has it gotten any cheaper?

And I said, I don't know.

She goes, Yeah, it's down$3,000.

They're gonna have to keep bringing it down.

Here's why.

They are way up here.

And the comps in my neighborhood are about$190,000,$205,000,$360 something.

I was like, smokeless crack, you ain't getting that for that.

But all of us that live there, we're kind of like, what's in that house that it's worth that?

See, you want to be the person that people are around you, and they're like, how'd you get that way?

Because I kind of want to be, I want to be different when I'm around you.

Because if you're not careful, it if you're the rich man in the poor man's neighborhood, listen to me, look at me, students.

You're gonna have to lower the price on who you are to fit in.

And you don't want to do that.

Because that doesn't wash off in the shower.

That's when I say friendship.

Let me give you one more uh uh service.

Service.

I was in the home, my wife and I were in the home of one of our widows uh this week, and and and we hauled some furniture over for her, and she said, Come look at my remodel.

We walked in and I said, Well, Carol, do you need anything else?

And she said, Well, I got some boxes in my attic, and I need to get my attic cleaned out.

I don't know what's up there, I haven't been up there in years, but I can't get up there.

And I said, That's okay.

Hold on a second, because the man in my church said, Hey, I teach the senior guys back here, we're looking for something to do.

Don't tell me that.

I whooped out my cell phone, I broke him off a phone call and I said, Hey, I'm standing here talking to Carol Holton, and she's got boxes in her attic that I think you and your senior guys, senior guys, if you're in here, I'm talking to you and about you, okay?

You don't get to come and eat donuts and drink orange juice and sit in a circle with the already convinced and think this is what Jesus died for.

I told Carol, sometime you go to church and sometime church comes to you.

And she's like, Okay.

And I said, What that means is that Wade Burgess is gonna get hit a long-legged son Alex and some of them hit loser friends, and they're gonna crawl around in your attic like a bunch of squirrels on crack, okay?

And she's like, Okay.

And so yesterday they did.

How do I know that?

Because I saw Carol in the lobby and I said, How are you doing?

She goes, Some boys came and cleaned out my attic.

And I said, That's what they're supposed to do.

Sometimes you go to church, but sometimes the church comes to you.

And she said, and and and I mean, that was just that blessed me so much.

Here's the great thing about service: look at me.

It keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself.

It's a shame.

Sharp stick in the eye that somebody else has it harder than you.

Stop whining on Facebook, trolling for pity.

Go serve somebody.

There's people in our city, there's women in our church whose husband died.

Okay?

They go to bed lonely every night and they got boxes that aren't heavy.

They just can't get up there and get them out.

So what do you mean?

What do you say?

I'm saying service robs you of self-pity.

Thirdly, this rhythm of reconciliation.

God reminds, He doesn't come and yell and scream, oh, you didn't keep the Ten Commandments.

How about 25 commandments?

We'll say you like that.

No.

God just kind of says, let me remind you of something.

There's a thing called Sabbath, you got it in.

Secondly, he says, hey, have some rituals.

Thirdly, he says, rest.

Rest.

The Ten Commandments are given back in Exodus 20.

First time he talks about the Sabbath is in Exodus 16.

And Exodus 20 makes it a command.

Exodus 31, he mentions it again.

Exodus 35, he mentions it again.

My friend that's like, I can't do the Sabbath.

He's not here right now.

He's out of town.

I had lunch with him this week, and I said, by the way, you're gonna miss.

I'm gonna talk about the Sabbath.

What?

I mean, how many times is that in there?

Don't ask that question.

Ask yourself, why does God keep bringing this up?

Because here's why.

God knows that without constant reminders, that we will live as if it all depends on us.

So one of the ways God reconciles with his people is he says, I want you just to rest.

I want you to take a day out of every seven days and do nothing.

And in the book of Deuteronomy, uh they they repeat the Ten Commandments as a reminder.

And this is what after he reads the one about the remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, this is what he says in Deuteronomy chapter 5, verse 15.

Deuteronomy 5:15

He said, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

And the Lord your God brought you from out from there with a mighty hand or with an outstretched arm.

Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

So why?

If you're wondering, like, oh again, really?

Come on, dude.

Why does God keep bringing this up?

Because God knows that we have a capacity to forget.

And so he says, You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

Sabbath does two things, I want you to hear this morning.

Number one, it reminds us that we are not slaves anymore.

It reminds us we're not slaves anymore, which begs the question, what did you used to be a slave to?

I have friends, uh, some of them struggle with different substance abuse issues.

Is that a good church way to say it?

They would just say, I'm an addict, man.

I'm sober, but I gotta watch myself.

I have a friend that he he so knows himself that he has a feeling, he calls it a surge.

He said, Temptation comes over me nil, and it's like a surge of energy coursing through my body.

And I'm like, should I be hearing this?

Yes, I should.

Yes, and so when something comes over him, he'll just say out loud, I'm not a slave to that anymore.

And you're like, oh, oh, okay.

And my favorite part is when we're at a meal with other people who don't know him, and he has a thought, like we had, I remember one time we were eating, and he said, Man, after this, I just want to go smoke weed.

And all these church people were like, oh, my mother warned me about people like you.

And then he just says, I'm not a slave to that anymore.

And I said, You might want to fill in the gaps for these people.

And he's like, Yeah, I was a heroin addict for a while and started off smoking pot when I was 13.

So don't think you could just smoke pot and quit because your body will crave more.

And I just sat there eating my dessert.

And it was so authentic and fresh.

It was just beautiful.

And he just because some of the people I was eating with, they lied to themselves.

They say things like, Well, marijuana's, it's legal in Colorado, so it's okay if I smoke.

And this brother was just breaking it off, and I was just eating my dessert.

And they were looking at me like, you shut this up.

No, I didn't.

No.

Temptation surges through his body.

He said, I sometimes I missed a warming glow of heroin.

I'm like, Don't say that.

But on the heels of that, he'll just say, I'm not a slave anymore.

I'm not a slave to that anymore.

And guess what?

He's been sober and clean, cleaning sober for years.

Because he doesn't lie to himself like some of you religious people do.

Some of you are like, I just wish you wouldn't say things like this in front of my children.

Hey, you should teach your kids to know themselves because they know themselves, they know what they struggle with.

So, what am I saying?

Sabbath reminds us we're not slaves anymore.

Ask yourself, what did you used to be a slave to?

Not to glorify it, but just to remind yourself, you know what?

I'm not a slave to that anymore.

No.

Second thing Sabbath does for us is it reminds us that everything doesn't depend on me.

Everything does not depend on me.

That's why if you're a workaholic, quote unquote, your issue is not that you're a workaholic.

You believe the lie that if you stop working, the world will stop working.

And the world will be just fine.

And God so believes that that he says four times in the book of Exodus, I want you to take one day out of seven and do nothing.

Now the guy comes up to me and he goes, Well, can I go for a ride with my wife?

And I'm like, Yeah, you don't have to sit on your bed like this for eight hours waiting for the sun to go down.

No, no.

Take your wife out to dinner, go for drive to the hill country.

I don't care what you do.

But God just says, Don't work.

Matter of fact, look at me.

God says, I believe this so much that if you work on the Sabbath, you should be killed.

Well, my God would never say that.

There's not another one, by the way.

Stop saying my God.

You don't own him.

He owns you.

And so God's not, by the way, if you're visiting today, God doesn't want to kill people.

God wants people to rest.

Just take.

Why?

Because by resting, by ceasing from our labor, what we're saying is that we believe Philippians 1 6, where God says, He who began a good work in you will continue it to the day of Christ Jesus.

So even when you stop working, God keeps on keeping on.

And it's that right there.

So you can rest and be with your wife and kids.

You can rest, men, and say to your wife, What have you not gotten to do that if you I just said take four hours and go do it, I'll watch the kids.

Could you find something to do?

The next thing you would hear is your wife burning out of the driveway.

Are you kidding me?

Let me ask you this and we'll be done.

That's right.

We're gonna be done early today.

Yes, shut up.

Have an assignment for you.

You women are gonna love it.

You men are gonna be like, I'm gonna get you for this.

But here's the thing in your thoughts about God, because we like to, if you're visiting Data and we tell you, we like to teach the Bible.

We don't apologize for what it says, we don't rub the contours off of it so it's all round and shiny.

No.

And then we say, let's think about this.

But ask yourself this rhythm of reconciliation.

God says, I'm a God who reminds.

This is why I reconcile people.

I remind you of the truth, okay?

I tell you, have some rituals that orient you around what you value, what you love, what you worship.

And then I'm a God that says, rest.

Ask yourself this question: why would you not want to know that God?

Who else in your life do you make up with like that?

Here's the way most of us wake make up.

We make up because we run out of things to yell at our spouse about.

Oh, I'm done now.

Just want you to know, I'll tell you what, boy, good.

Okay.

And God comes and says, Hey, I want you to remember the commandments, and I want and I want you to observe these three feasts that remind you that I'm I'm the God that delivers, I'm the God that provides, and I'm the God who's faithful.

And I want you to take one in seven days, and I want you just to rest.

Just disconnect from all the flurry and hurry and worry about work.

And I don't want you just to say, I'm not working on work.

I don't want you to work in your house, I don't want you to kindle any fires in your house.

I want you to just lay back and just believe that somebody else is working, even when you stop.

What if God is really this way?

Ask yourself, why would you not want to know this guy?

Let's pray together.

Just give you some questions to reflect and think about.

They'll be up on the screen.

First question is this in your relationship with God, what are you in danger of forgetting?

Secondly, what is a ritual you're willing to engage in every day, every week, every month, and every year?

Finally, let's think about this this morning.

What did you used to be a slave to?

What did you used to be a slave to?

Let it be a reminder to you that God, who began a good work in you, will keep on working in you.

And it'll keep on working you.

He's never gonna run out of ideas, he's never gonna run out of resources, he's never gonna run out of capacity, he never exhausts himself.

And so ask yourself, what do you hear this God saying to you today?

Just think about that for a minute.

Father, our confession this morning is that left to ourselves, our heart will turn into a stone.

And yet, the Bible, the good news of the gospel is that you take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh, and you put your spirit in us and you move us to follow your decrees.

You give us rituals that reorient us around what we love and what we worship and what we know to be true.

Because left to ourselves, we will harden our heart, we will brace for impact against our depravity.

We acknowledge that sin is fun, but what we don't acknowledge is that it's fun for a season, and then we begin to reap what we sow, and our hard heart keeps people from seeing how much it really affects us that we're dying inside, and we just don't have the words to represent what it feels like to be dying, and nobody really knows how hard it is.

But you know, and you've come to do something about that.

You're the God of reconciliation, and you reconcile with your people by saying, Hey, remember this?

What are the rituals that you need to be practicing right now?

And then finally, you say to us, hard-hearted people, rest.

Rest.

Stop thrashing about I got this.

Rest.

So, Lord, we hear you today, and we're humbled by your voice.

And so we say thank you in Jesus' name.

But everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're our guest today, let me say thanks for being a part of our service.

When you came in, you were given a uh little folder.

Uh now I see you greeter people getting up to leave.

Don't leave yet.

Don't make me shout you down.

I see you, Russell.

Uh I know you're you're you're you're excited to go vote early, but voting's closed today.

Uh if you're our guest today, when you came in, you were given a little worship folder.

Has information about different events at our church on the far right side, it has a little tear off portion.

If you've had a chance to fill that out, just tear it off and drop it on these wooden boxes by the doors.

That's where we receive our offering.

And so for the rest of us that today's the day we worship through giving, uh through, excuse me, through obedience or through generosity, that's where you would do that as well.

Uh, here's why I don't let the greeters leave, uh, is because uh uh we ended earlier today for this very reason.

I talked about one of the rituals is friendship.

And the people around you are the people that are gonna help you be and become who the Bible says you are, okay?

It's not just us.

I said this to my wife a couple years ago, and then she read it in the book last week.

What I said a couple years ago was we wouldn't need so many counselors if we had more authentic friendships.

Where you had honest conversations, where you went to dinner with people and said, Hey, your wife looks sad.

How much of that is your fault?

Don't you want to have a conversation like that before you die?

Or you could just be religious posers who are phony.

Hey, brother, good to see you.

I do not want to eat with you.

So, I want you to practice by getting to know the people around you.

So we locked off about 10 minutes of our service, and so in just a minute, I'll speak a blessing over you.

I don't want you to run to the Buick and get out of here.

You women are like, yes! You men are breaking out in hives right now.

Just relax.

We're not gonna shake you down.

I just want to know you.

So that, hey, they get to know you a little bit better today.

One day they may call and say, hey man, I'm struggling with some stuff, and I think you might be able to help me.

Can we have coffee?

That's what the church is.

Okay?

So stand on your feet.

Let me speak a blessing.

There's people dying to meet you.

Aren't you excited?

Hold your hands out.

God says, don't come before me empty-handed because he's a God of fullness.

He's not stingy, he's not desperate for your stuff.

He's got more stuff than you could fathom.

And so depart now.

And so enjoy and relate to this God in such a way that everyone around you knows that you not only believe that, but you experience it.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissing God.