The Rhythm of a Faithful Life // Exodus 34:18–28; 35:1–3

We are in Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

If you want to turn there in your Bibles, Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

And we are working through a series I have titled Leaving the Darkness through the Book of Exodus, verse by verse, chapter by chapter through Exodus, sermon number 88 through the book of Exodus.

Title of the Sermon today, if you're taking notes, is The Rhythm of a Faithful Life.

Heard of a story, maybe you heard of this one.

A man tells this about this leaving for Miami, Florida, and he says, I decided to stop in one of those rest areas on the side of the road so I can go to the bathroom.

The first stall is taken, so I go into the second stall.

And I had just sat down when I hear a voice from the other stall saying, Hi there, how's it going?

I'm thinking, okay, I'm not the type to strike up conversations with strangers in the bathroom stalls at the rest stop.

I didn't know what to say, so I finally said, I'm doing okay, not bad.

Then the voice says, So what are you doing?

I'm sitting there starting to find this a little bit weird, but I say, Well, I'm going to Miami.

Then I hear the guy get all frustrated and say, Look, I'll call you back.

Every time I ask a question, this idiot in the stall next to me keeps answering.

The rhythms of life.

You know, if we look at life, the ups and downs, the steady weeks, the simple tasks done over and over and over again.

Uh oftentimes we'll measure our walk with God by the big moments that happen in life.

The conference that we went to, the retreat, uh, the moment we gave our life to the Lord, our baptism, uh, a really keen moment of discipleship with somebody in our lives.

Those moments matter, but most of your life is lived on a Tuesday morning, sitting in traffic, paying bills, doing dishes, and then doing it again, right?

And sometimes we think, I wish I could have another big spiritual experience.

But what if God is less interested in another mountaintop experience and more interested in teaching you how to walk with him in the valley?

How to walk with him through the valley.

Those moments just aren't every day.

Um the question I want you to think through today is what does a faithful life actually look like after you've experienced God's grace in your life?

Because this is where Israel is standing here in our text.

They have received his mercy right after one of the greatest acts of rebellion in the Old Testament, the building of the golden calf.

And God did not destroy them.

And here in Exodus 34, God essentially says, Let me teach you now how to live.

And notice what he gives them, not a program, not a strategy.

He gives them rhythms.

Remember, worship, give, work, rest, obey.

Again and again and again and again.

The simple rhythms of life is our worship unto God.

And again, I think we are looking for these mountain high experiences oftentimes in lives, those are fun.

But most of life is really supposed to be just like it was in the Garden of Eden: walking with God, tending the land, building, be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, have children, have grandchildren, build society, create, and just walk with your God.

Remember him.

We're in Exodus chapter 34.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

We're gonna read a couple uh two passages today.

We're gonna skip a portion because of the way this thing is uh built out.

We're gonna be Exodus 34, verses 18 to 28, and then 35, verses 1 to 3.

Exodus 34:18–28

Can we stand for the reading of God's word?

We always stand for the reading of God's word to pay honor to him, remember whose word we're reading.

Not my words.

It truly belong to God.

My job is to try and teach you exactly what God is saying here and not to mess with it, not to say anything different.

Uh, just be a delivery boy, the mail carrier, and say exactly uh what it says.

And that's my aim, that's my hope.

And even more than that, I hope to try to teach it in a simplistic way so that you might take what has been taught and teach it to someone else.

Um, it is very difficult to teach something simply so that a 12-year-old can understand the text, but that's the goal.

Um, if you take complex ideas and make them simple, this is the ultimate goal.

Look at verse 18 in Exodus 34.

It says, You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, which I commanded you.

And at the appointed time in the month of Habib, for in the month of Habib you came out of Egypt.

The first offspring from every womb belongs to me, even all your male livestock, the first offspring from cattle to sheep.

And you shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring from a donkey.

And if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck.

You shall redeem all of the firstborn of your sons, none shall appear before me empty-handed.

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

Even during ploughing time and harvest you shall rest.

And you shall celebrate the feast of weeks, that is the first fruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of in-gathering at the turn of the year.

Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord Yahweh, the God of Israel.

For I will uh dispose the nations before you and enlarge your borders.

No man shall covet your land when you go up three times a year to appear before Yahweh your God.

You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, and the sacrifice of feast of the Passover shall not be left over until morning.

You shall bring the very first of the first fruits of your ground into the house of Yahweh your God.

You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

Then Yahweh said to Moses, Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have cut a covenant with you and with Israel.

So he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights.

He did not eat bread or drink water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Jump down to chapter thirty-five, verse one through three.

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

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

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

You shall not kindle a fire in any of your places of habitation on the Sabbath day.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for these reminders once again.

What you are calling Israel back to, what you are calling your people back to after great rebellion.

Remembrance, rhythms, the things that we are to continue to do over and over and over again, to remember you.

And God, I pray today that legacy would, we would remember you.

We would remember to what you have called us to, to what a life of obedience looks like, and that we would walk with you one day at a time for your glory.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You can be seated.

So remember where we are, Israel has been brought out of Egypt to Sinai, and God has entered into covenant with them.

And Moses goes up on the mountain, remember, and Israel gets impatient, and they make a calf, a golden calf, out of the jewelry which God gave them in Egypt.

And Moses comes down and sees them worshiping another God, and he shatters the Ten Commandments in front of them.

But then, praise God, grace shows up.

Moses intercedes for the people, and God renews the covenant with them.

And here's what's important that it's that God doesn't just give, uh, forgive them and say, try not to do that again.

He reinstitutes the rhythms which he once told them.

So maybe as you're reading through this text, you're like, wait a minute, didn't we just, didn't we read this already?

Didn't we go through these things already?

And the answer is yes.

And God is saying this to Moses again, and Moses is to say it to the people again, reminding them.

Because here's the thing, he told them, don't worship any other gods.

What'd they do?

Worship other gods.

You think he has to probably tell them again?

Don't worship other gods, right?

We already told us that.

Yeah, and you don't listen, okay?

So the rhythms need to be in place.

And church, it doesn't matter how long you've been coming to church or worshiping God or walking with him, it's one year, five years, twenty years, fifty years, we need to be reminded, don't we?

And we need to be reminded of the rhythms in life, and God's word will do that over and over and over again.

You know, I watch my grandma read through the Bible every single year, and she told me she'd been doing it for decades.

And there she is, like in the morning, and she's got her magnifying glass out.

She's like this, trying to read the text.

It was already a large print Bible.

But I watched her, she read through the Bible every year.

And again, you kind of don't get that until you're older and you realize like there's infinite depth there.

You can just keep going, you keep mining forever.

There's so much gold.

You can't mine it in a lifetime.

And points that have already triggered our hearts to worship God will trigger them again and again and again and again.

That's the magic of the text.

It's like that verse has hit me a thousand times.

I don't know why it keeps doing that to me, but it I'm just in awe of God when I read it.

And that's the beauty of the Word of God and what He has told us.

But God is reminding His people again of these rhythms.

Point number one, if you're taking notes, rhythms of remembrance of God.

Rhythms of remembrance.

Uh, verses 18 to 20, you shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, verse 19.

The first offspring from every womb belongs to me, verse 20.

You shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring of a donkey, you shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons, none shall appear before me empty-handed.

We did a whole sermon on this.

Uh really look closely at these details if you want to go back and listen.

But at first glance, a pile of unrelated regulations, Passover, firstborn animals, donkeys, sons, all of these things being brought up again.

Uh, but one thread went through it all, and that is the word remember.

It keeps showing up here in the text.

That they would remember, that they would remember, and that they would remember.

Remember what God did, remember you belong to him, and remember what he told you to do.

He's reminding them again.

God talks to them about the firstborn.

Again, why?

The firstborn was a living reminder.

Remember, Egypt's firstborn died in the plagues.

Israel's sons were spared by the blood of the Lamb.

Remember, the blood of the Lamb over the doorpost as the angel of death crossed over, it spared the firstborn son of Israel.

But all that did not have the blood of the lamb over their doorpost, their firstborn son was taken and killed.

And there was crying in the land, weeping in the land.

It was devastating.

But God reminding them that their firstborn was spared.

When a father looked at his son in God's camp, he thought that boy belongs to God.

And he is alive because God provided redemption.

And that's why verse 20 says, You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons.

He's reminding them to keep doing this.

Do not forget this.

You have to keep doing this.

The child is not sacrificed, a substitute is the lamb dies in its place, and the child lives.

And this is a picture of the donkey and the lamb.

Remember?

Jesus is the lamb of God.

We are the donkeys, and this is the gospel sitting right here in that text.

We don't keep Passover the way Israel did because Christ fulfilled everything Passover anticipated.

Paul says it plainly in 1 Corinthians 5 7 Christ, our Passover lamb, also has been sacrificed.

Jesus is the Lamb once and for all that has covered the doorposts of our home and redeemed our home.

Praise God.

But we are compared to donkeys.

Isn't that interesting?

For good reason.

But there's a second principle here.

God's people are a people who are to remember.

We are going to be a people who always remember the works of our God, always remember what he has done, and we will do it forever and ever, even into heaven, into eternity.

You know, we're not much different from the people of Israel here in the text.

God answers a prayer, and six months later we are anxious again.

He carries us through a crisis, and then the next one comes, and we wonder if he's still gonna be faithful.

He parts a Red Sea, and then you wonder if he'll ever part the next Red Sea.

And then he'll part that one too, and then you'll still wonder if he's gonna part the third one.

So God gives his people rhythms of remembrance.

That's why we gather here on Sunday.

We preach, we sing, and we do it over and over and over again, Sunday after Sunday, with purpose, with intention.

The mundane of meeting is good.

For the simple, if you are reminded one time in this service, it has done its job.

That God is good, that his word is true, that I'm going to praise him with other people who love and are committed to God.

Running together.

When one is down, the other lifts him up and encourages.

We run together.

So I want to ask you the simple question: what are you doing regularly to remember God?

Because if you don't intentionally remember God, you will unintentionally forget him.

Again, if you don't intentionally try to remember God, you will very unintentionally forget Him in your heart and in your mind.

And it's true, here's the sobering part.

You don't have to stop believing in God to forget Him.

You can get so busy doing things for God that you stop remembering God.

We don't stop to remember, pause to remember.

So build rhythms in life.

Read your Bible and pray every single day.

There are four things we tell new believers.

Learn this at Harvest.

We tell them at Harvest Crusade after they come forward to receive Christ, make some type of profession of faith, some move in the direction of God.

We hand them a Bible.

We tell them four things.

Number one, pray every single day.

Number two, read your Bible every single day.

Number three, get involved in the church and start serving.

Get committed to a local church.

Number four, start sharing your faith with other people.

These things never stop.

And we are to be doing them continually.

Doesn't matter if we're a brand new believer or we're a mature believer, we are not to stop doing these rhythms in life.

Worship is not merely singing songs.

Worship is remembering who God is and what he has done.

On so many levels, remembering who he is, all of his attributes, all that the Word of God declares about him, and what he has done in our lives.

And that repetition is so important.

Psalm 103, verse 2 bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all of his benefits.

Psalms 103:2

Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 2, you shall remember all the ways which Yahweh your God has led you.

Deuteronomy 8:2

Don't forget.

Luke chapter 22, 19, 1 Corinthians 11, 24, we do communion.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

Jesus told them at the table, do this in remembrance of me.

Remember me, remember my broken body, remember my blood of the new covenant.

We don't go to church to earn salvation.

We come to church to celebrate and remember salvation.

We are not gathering today to convince God to love us.

We are gathering today to remember that He has already loved us.

John Calvin said, we are so prone to forget the benefits of God that we need to have them continually brought before us.

Spurgeon said, memory is very treacherous, and we are apt to forget the mercies of God.

And all of us, like Peter, have said it.

Even if all deny you, even if all forget you, I will never deny you.

I'll never forget you, God.

We said when we were young.

Then you live a little.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

And those lyrics have been coming up so much in these sermons.

But it's true.

We are prone to forget the mercies of God in our own lives.

How do you know?

All you have to do is watch the way you treat another person.

As soon as we treat them the way, opposite the way God has treated us, we have forgotten him again and again and again and again.

And we need to be reminded.

The first rhythm of a faithful life is to remember your God.

Point number two, the rhythm of trusting God.

Here on the text, this is verses 21 to 26.

Look at what God points out to them.

Again, things we've already covered in the text.

He's reminding them again.

Verse 21, you shall work six days, but on the seventh day you shall rest.

Even during ploughing time and harvest time you shall rest.

Verses 22 to 24, cover the feast of weeks and the feast of in gathering, the command that three times a year every male shall appear before the Lord Yahweh, and God's promise to drive out the nations before them.

Verse 26, you shall bring the very first of the very first fruits of your ground into the house of Yahweh your God.

So we got Sabbaths, we got feasts, we got first fruits, and underneath every single one of them is one giant principle.

Trust God instead of trusting yourself.

Verse 21, work six days on the seventh rest.

And then he has, even during plowing time and during harvest time.

Why would God say that?

Because God knows when the people will be tempted during plowing time and harvest time, the busiest weeks of the year, when a farmer says, I can't stop working.

I'll rest when the harvest is in and when the work is done.

And God says, Don't you worry.

The crops will be sitting there on Monday.

You stop.

You stop working and you worship.

But I got so much to do.

And if I don't get it done, then I'm not gonna have it.

I'm gonna miss the harvest.

And the Lord says, No, no.

You are missing the harvest of your soul.

You are missing what I'm trying to give to you.

God says, No, you will rest now.

Sabbath is more than stopping work, it is trusting God.

Israel was saying, God, I believe you can take care of what I cannot control.

We have to get to this point.

God, I believe you can take care of what I cannot control.

And that's hard, huh?

You got a deadline?

It's much easier just to work seven days straight, and God says, No, don't do it.

Hang it up.

Work your six days, you can fire an all-cylinder for six days.

On that seventh day, you stop and worship and remember me and rest.

Then the feasts.

Three times a year, they are to leave home and leave the crops behind to worship God.

Go on a retreat, the feast three times a year.

God says, Go worship me, I'll take care of what's behind you.

And again, that's trusting Him.

And then we see the first fruits.

You give God the first before you know what the rest produces.

That's hard to do, huh?

I have to give to God first, and I don't even know if it's gonna work out on the other side.

And that is called trust again.

You're saying, God, this came from you, and I trust you with what comes next.

This all came from you, and I trust more is going to come from you.

We live in a culture that has made exhaustion a kind of a virtue.

How are you doing?

Busy.

How's work?

Crazy man.

And we say it like we're proud of it, you know?

But God says you should have rhythms of rest.

You don't have to be productive every waking minute.

You don't have to hold the world together.

Did you know that?

And newsflash, you don't hold the world together.

No one ever saying, Josh, he's got the Whole world in his hands.

Definitely not.

You're not God.

And friend, that's good news because he is God and we are not, and he is holding your life together, not you.

And if you don't believe that, don't worry, God will break your hands.

I got it.

No, you don't.

The moment you realize you don't got it, and that he does, is the true moment of faith in which life ignites and changes.

And that is a story over and over in the text, over and over and over again.

That is the currency of eternity.

It is faith.

And that's the true change of a person's heart.

You are not holding anything together.

God is holding all things together.

This is the first and most important acknowledgement.

Fear God and obey his commands.

The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.

A, the letter in the alphabet, to fear him, who he is, and what he is doing.

A.

Step one.

You miss that?

The whole thing is over.

You're going to be working with your hands all of your life, trying to make it all happen, just like the apostles, just like Peter.

And he will break your hands to realize you do not have it together.

Me too.

It's a hard lesson.

Because that's how it works.

Every time we get life together and things start to turn out and do really well, we start going up on this curve, like, man, I'm kind of good.

Kind of got it together.

I'm better than you, that's for sure.

You don't read your Bible.

I do.

The Lord's like, pull the rug on that guy.

He's going to forever remind us of our need, our great need for him, our dependence upon him.

And he wants us to get on the front end of it and just say, trust me.

Trust me first with all that you have.

So let me ask you, where are you refusing to trust God?

What do you try to control?

Your finances, your work, your children, your health, your marriage?

Maybe you're living as though everything depends on you, and God is saying you can rest, not because nothing matters, but because God matters more than your productivity.

You can work hard without worshiping work.

Did you know that?

But you have to understand this is the difference between Christianity and the world.

I should say Christianity and every other religion.

Every other religion is trying to work their way to heaven.

Furthermore, every other person in the world who doesn't believe in God, all they have is their work and their control.

They don't have God.

Well, they have a God, they worship something else.

You can work hard without worshiping work, you can be ambitious without being ruled by ambition, and you can rest because God is still completely God when you're not working.

God carries the work when we rest.

Did you know that?

He doesn't sleep nor slumber, the psalmist tells us.

He is always forever moving and working.

And he didn't rest in eternities past because he needed to.

He rested to give us an example.

Because we need, he knows our frame.

He remembers that we are dust and that we need to trust him and rest on him.

Jesus would say to us, Matthew 11, 28, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you what?

Rest.

Why does that hit so hard?

How does he know that we need rest?

Because he's our creator.

The deepest rest isn't a square on the calendar.

It's not a day that we set aside.

It is a person that we learn to rest in, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We rest in him.

We shelter in him.

Under the shadow of his wings we find rest.

Genesis chapter 2, God Himself set the pattern for us to rest.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Exodus 20, verse 8, we see the Ten Commandments that we are commanded to rest on a Sabbath day.

Exodus 20:8

Matthew 6, 34, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

Hebrews 4 9, so there's a special rest, still waiting for the people of God.

For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop, rest, pray, be with your family, enjoy God, sharpen the axe, then get back to work.

Now, some of you brothers are resting six days and working one.

I'm rested, man.

I know, you look rested.

Now get to work.

Oswald Chambers, faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading.

Charles Spurgeon, God is too good to be unkind, he's too wise to be mistaken, and when we cannot trace his hand, we must always trust his heart.

And that's what Sabbath teaches.

I don't have to know what tomorrow holds because I truly know that God holds tomorrow and that I'm going to be okay.

That is the trusting.

You see these rhythms he's bringing back up and reinstituting.

Don't forget to trust me in all of your work.

Point number three, and finally, the rhythm of obeying God.

The rhythm of obeying God.

This is verses 27 to 28 and chapter 35, 1 through 3.

Then Yahweh said to Moses, Write down these words, for in accordance with these words, I've cut a covenant with you in Israel.

Verse 28.

So he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.

Chapter 35, verse 1.

Then Moses assembled all the congregation of the sons of Israel and said to them, These things, or these are the things that Yahweh has commanded you to do.

Watch it.

God speaks.

Moses listens, and Moses writes it down.

Moses comes down and tells the people, these are the things Yahweh has commanded you to do.

Again, the third rhythm is obeying God.

Israel wasn't handed information, but a way of life, a way of living.

God's word shaped their calendar, their work, their rest.

God was not after a people who merely knew his commands.

He wanted a people who actually live them.

And that's why verse 27 matters write down these words, because you cannot obey what you refuse to hear and listen.

I would never forget Francis Chan saying this.

You know, he's like, you know, everybody loves the Great Commission.

You know, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, then teach them to observe all that I've commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always to the end of the age.

You know, Jesus tells us to go and make disciples, and what do we do?

We memorize that verse.

That's not what he said.

He didn't say memorize the verse, he said, go and make disciples.

That's oftentimes we'll get the scripture locked in, and because we have the scripture locked in, but then we look at our lives, we look at somebody's life, like, what in the world?

Obedience.

We have what Israel really could only anticipate.

You know what we hold in our hands?

The complete word of God.

And we have the Messiah.

We get to see him and behold him through the text.

We we we are filthy rich.

We have it all here.

John 1, 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Like, yeah, I've read all this stuff, but can I can you give me like a picture, illustration, example?

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.

I want to see God.

Like you get, like they didn't get that.

Jesus doesn't just tell us what God is like, he reveals him, and he doesn't call us to admire him.

Jesus says, What?

Don't admire me.

He says, follow me.

Obedience.

You follow what I do.

Do you see what I'm doing?

You do what I do.

That's what the word Christian means.

Did you know that?

Christ follower.

The word Christ is not Jesus' last name, right?

It is the word Messiah.

Messiah followers.

Christians.

He doesn't call us to admire him, he says, follow me.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself daily, the text says, take up his cross and follow me.

We always leave out that word daily.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.

No, no.

The verse says, deny himself, take up his cross.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.

It's an everyday thing.

That's discipleship.

Christ is not a moment with God, it's a life with God.

And anyone can have a moment.

When you stand up and say, I have decided to follow Jesus, you raise your hand, somebody prays for you, you come forward in an altar call, you kneel beside your bed in your room, you cry out to God, you're on a walk somewhere in a park, God reveals Himself to you, you're out staring at the ocean, and God shows up and you say, I'm gonna follow you all the days of my life.

It is a moment.

It is a moment of prayer with God.

It is a moment of surrender, making him Lord and Savior over your life.

But what you're saying is, I'm going to follow you all the days of my life, no turning back, no turning back.

It doesn't mean you won't fall.

It doesn't mean you won't trip along the way.

But God will, don't worry, dust your knees off because of the cross, forgive you, and help you to continue on.

It's easy to raise your hand and worship, it's harder to forgive the person who hurt you.

It's easy to make a commitment at an altar call, it's harder to keep it six months later.

But that's where faithfulness is formed.

It's in ordinary, everyday life.

I've decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.

Though none go with me, still I will follow.

So here's the question: what has God already told you to do that you know you need to obey?

Not your spouse, not your boss.

This isn't for them.

This is for you.

Maybe you need to forgive, maybe you need to confess, maybe you need to stop compromising, maybe you need to make something right you've let sit for years.

Here's what I found: we don't have an information problem, church, we have an obedience problem.

Most of us don't need to hear another message, we need to do what God has already said.

Right?

Preach a good one, preacher.

Why?

I think I preached maybe 10 good ones over the last 12 years.

It'd be 12 years this next month.

Come party with us.

James 1, 22, but become doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves, deceive themselves.

Faithfulness is obedience over time.

And that's what Christ is looking for in the end, right?

Well done, good in what?

Faithful servant.

Enter into the glory of the Lord.

John 14, 15, if you love me, you will what?

Keep my commandments.

Do you love me?

Yes, Lord, I love you.

Keep my commandments.

Right?

You say to your spouse, Do you love me?

Okay, keep my commandments, okay?

Luke 6, 46, now why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?

You call me Lord all you want, but if you don't do what I say, I'm not actually your Lord, you see?

And that's why Jesus will say to them, Matthew 7, many say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name?

And I'll say to you, I'm sorry, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice iniquity.

Galatians 6, 9, let us not lose heart in doing good, church, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up, if we do not grow weary.

Think about learning an instrument.

Nobody becomes a great musician by practicing once for six hours.

They become great practicing 20 minutes a day over 10 years.

Um 20 minutes to an hour a day for 10 years.

That's how you get your time in.

And muscle memory, see, you need blocks.

You need brain blocks, right?

What's happening to me right now?

Like when you sit down at a piano, you sit down at a guitar, you need blocks uh to happen in your brain.

What happens is you come up next to it, you try to do that lick, or you try to play that chord.

What ends up happening is your brain will not, your your fingers will not do what your brain is telling it.

And you're like, you listen to me, and they won't listen.

What happens is you come up to it and you get frustrated, you put the guitar down, you put the piano down, and then you try it again the next day, and what happens is the brain starts to push forward even an inch, and you're like, oh my gosh, my finger listened to me.

And then before you know it, you do that another 10 days in a row, and all of a sudden you can lock the chord without even thinking about it.

It's amazing to watch the discipline and how that works.

It's the same thing with anything.

It's incremental.

It takes 30 days to break a habit, 30 days to start a habit.

And so you need more than six hours of training today, you need 20 minutes over 30 days.

So incremental obedience is better than a one day full of great obedience.

Do you see that?

Lord, I was obedient to you on July 12th, 2026.

Do you remember that day?

That was the most obedient day of my life.

And you were disobedient every day for the rest of your life.

That sounds like Judas.

You see, Christ would rather you have be obedient 20 minutes a day for a lifetime than obedient for one day.

Does that make sense?

No single session looks extraordinary, but over years those ordinary sessions produce something extraordinary.

And that's how spiritual formation works.

One prayer, one passage, one act of obedience, one temptation resisted, one apology, one Sabbath, one faithful day, then another, and another, and another, and another, and another.

And one day you look back and realize that God has been forming a life in you over many years.

William Grenal said, How can there be a great faith where there is little faithfulness?

Faithfulness isn't built through spectacular moments, it's built through repeated obedience.

Now don't worry.

Oftentimes we, you know, I can preach that strong.

You're gonna have this amazing, perfect life of obedience.

And that's why there's so much hypocrisy in the church, is because sadly, you can walk with God for 29 days and on the 30th do something terrible.

How do I know?

All you gotta do is look at David.

All you gotta do is look at Moses.

He got kicked out of the promised land.

All you gotta do is look at Noah, a hundred years of faithfulness, the righteous preacher.

He steps off the boat, he builds a vineyard, and he's drunk naked in his tent.

And it's recorded.

So again, it doesn't mean that your life is going to come without failure.

There's going to be a lot of failure and a lot of sin.

And that's where God comes in, praise God.

The Lord Jesus comes in, praise Jesus.

For without his grace, you are not making it through.

And at the end of the day, he basically says, your righteousness is like filthy rags in the end.

It's all tarnished with so much of you.

Your little wrong motives in there.

And anytime you did something actually perfectly pure and good, it was my spirit working in you to actually accomplish that.

For apart from me, you can do what?

Nothing.

And so, if you have some good works, it's not because of your working less any man can boast.

It is God's work in you.

And if I'm learning anything over the years, it is not to think that I'm great and that I'm getting better.

But maybe like the Apostle Paul, that I'm seeing that I might be the chief of all sinners.

That I can't believe sometimes how much sin I can see now.

Because I'm educated in my sin.

I understand the depths of my fallness.

And when I see glimpses of grace and God ignites the heart, and I can pour out grace at an unbelievable level, I'm in awe of it too.

Did I do that?

Thank you, God.

That you used me to love and serve people that way and forgive, like only you can forgive.

For apart from you, I can do nothing.

So, in closing, what does faithful like look like with God's grace?

There's three things that I see here in this text.

Have the rhythm of remembering your God.

Remember him, rhythms of worship, remember the cross, remember his faithfulness.

That's what church is for.

That's what the word is for.

That's what uh community is for.

Have the rhythm of trusting God.

Work hard, rest, give to him, trust him with what you can't control.

And then finally, have the rhythm of obeying God.

Don't just hear the word, live it.

Keep taking steps of faith to be obedient to God, and then let that shape your entire life and watch your life grow.

But don't ever go back to the golden calf, right?

Israel had failed, sinned against the God who rescued them, and praise God that he restored them and he taught them how to live.

That's grace.

Grace doesn't leave you where it found you, it teaches you how to walk with God long term, all the way into heaven.

And every line of this passage really points to the Lord Jesus.

Israel needed this mediator.

We have the Lord Jesus.

Israel needed rest, and Jesus would say, Come to me and I will give you rest.

And remember, Christianity is not try harder to become a faithful person.

It is look at the faithful Savior who saved you and start walking with him.

We do not obey God.

We do not obey so that God will love us.

We obey because God has loved us.

We do not give so God will accept us.

We give because Christ gave himself for us.

We do not rest because nothing matters in the world.

We rest because God is ultimately sovereign over all things.

We don't worship because God needs our praise.

We worship because he is ultimately worthy.

And that's the rhythm.

Remember, trust, obey again and again and again and again.

You don't become faithful overnight, you become faithful one day at a time, church.

That's why rhythms are so important in our lives.

And one day, when life is over, that is what we want to say or hear from our master, hear him say, Well done, good and faithful servant.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

That's the life I want for us, for this church, for my family.

By God's grace, we'll make it.

Amen.

Let's pray, let's go before the Lord.

Father, we worship you in this place.

And even when we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

And Lord, there are many days when we are faithless.

Like Peter.

Can't even watch and pray one hour.

And we could deny you.

But by the grace of God, go there.

And we thank you for your grace in our lives today.

And Father, I pray for every person in this place, whether they have been walking with you for a long time or they are just trying to figure out what it looks like to walk with you, God, that all of us would take one step of obedience to call you Lord and Savior over our lives again today and say, Lord, I'm going to follow you.

I'm going to follow you all the days of my life, all the way into heaven.

No turning back, no turning back.

We believe in your death, burial, and resurrection.

We thank you for the gift of the cross.

Thank you for your blood being shed that we might be forgiven and raised to life in Christ.

Thank you for paying our debt.

Thank you for taking our hell, our punishment, our wrath.

And now, Father, we gladly give our lives over to you again and again and again and again and again.

We will give our lives over to you every week, every day, over and over again, all the way into eternity.

We choose to walk with you this day, from this day forward.

We do it in Jesus' name.

Amen.