Exodus: Feast on Remembrance and Thanksgiving

So glad you're here.

So excited.

I'm so excited to be here and glad you're here.

And I'm excited about what God wants to say to us this morning through this passage that maybe even when you first read it, you're not quite sure what in fact maybe an Old Testament feast uh given to the Israelites thousands and thousands of years ago might have to do with your life today in Marietta in 2016.

But it has a lot to do with it.

And last week um we read the first uh section of this passage in Exodus 23, and we talked about rest.

And God's been laying out for these people, so he rescued these people out of slavery in Egypt, and then now they're in uh they're in the desert, they're out in the wilderness, and he's given them the Ten Commandments.

He's starting to lay out for them ways for their life and what life should look like for them as a people.

And so last week we talked about how we saw this rhythm.

He was laying out this rhythm for them, the six in one rhythm, the six in one uh work your land for six years, and then every on the seventh year, remember this?

Let your land lie fallow.

And then the six and one rhythm of a week, and that seventh day to take take a break.

And what we saw, and what we said is that when the rhythm is off, things just don't work out.

Do you remember?

And Sam played um Happy Birthday off rhythm, and Josh Teague guessed it suspiciously quickly, I might add.

I don't know if he knew there's a Starbucks card in it, and him and Sam worked something out.

That was suspicious how quick that was.

Um but he got it right, and but what we saw was because the rest of us weren't quite sure what song that was, and then Sam played it on rhythm, and all of a sudden you're like, yeah, it's happy birthday.

Everybody knows happy birthday.

But when the rhythm is off, um things just don't work out.

And so we what we said is that that rhythmic rest is vital to our existence.

And so we said that first as a principle, and then we said what we actually see out of that principle is it takes us, it actually takes us deeper.

It takes us to the fact that even a discipline of rest, uh, even a practice of rest is not enough for the core of our being.

And so even that practice points us to the reality that us as people need a rest given to us.

That we need God's grace known in Jesus Christ, which is He.

He is our Sabbath rest.

So, so the day of the week is a metaphor that should point us to the person of Jesus for us.

And now this morning what we're gonna see is we're gonna talk a little bit about a kind of a universal human need that all of us have, you have, and I haven't.

And then we're gonna see two principles, and then we're gonna come back around to this universal uh this need that's inside of us.

You get that?

And we got these three feasts, we're gonna tie them all together, and we're gonna see how this works out.

Okay, so here we go.

So uh, first off, there's a quote in your handout uh by David Foster Wallace, who is uh a great writer that surfaced tragically, his life ended.

Um sort of haunted his whole life, but incredibly, incredibly insightful.

Um he was writing unbelievable books and essays in his early 20s.

And here's what he says about that.

The great lie of the Ocean Liner Cruise, and that's his metaphor here for life, is that enough pleasure and enough pampering will quiet this discontented part of you.

When in fact all it does is up the requirement.

I can remember being 24 years old and having my, you know, uh smiling mug and the New York Times book review and it feeling really good for exactly like 10 seconds.

And then you're hungry for more.

So that clearly, I mean, if you're not stupid, sorry, the language there, uh, you figure out that the real problem is the discontented self.

That all this stuff that you think will work for a second, but then all it does is set up a hunger for more and better.

And that general pattern and syndrome seems to me to get repeated, at least in our culture, for our kind of plush middle class part of the culture over and over and over again in a million different arenas.

Anybody anybody know what he's talking about yet?

Okay, just wondering if anybody's going to like can associate with this guy.

And that we don't seem to get it.

We do not seem to get it.

It may be that those ambitions are what get you to do the work, to get the exposure, to realize that the original ambitions were misguided, right?

So that it's a weird paradoxical link.

If you didn't have the ambitions, you'd never find out that they were sort of deluded.

So here's what he's saying.

He's saying the problem is the discontent itself.

He's saying, he's saying you're the problem.

And I'm the problem.

That we, in fact, are the problem.

That like materialism in our culture is not really the problem, or the the evil on television is really the problem, or the or politics is really the problem.

Really, the problem is us.

We are the problem.

Our reactions to all of this.

That we are the problem, the discontented self.

And now we could chase that a little bit and say, well, where does that come from?

And in the scriptures, they use the word sin for that.

That that's a sin, that's a sinful condition, that we just don't get it right.

We're just we're not happy, we're not bent towards the source that can actually make us content, which is God Himself.

We're bent toward all the other stuff, which actually is the stuff that's not helping.

We're trying to squeeze some love out of that.

So when Christy and I were dating a long time ago, so this had to have been uh 13, 14 years ago, uh, she was living in Athens and I was working in Tucker.

And so what I would do on Wednesdays, was we see each other on the weekend, but on Wednesdays I would drive two hours through rush hour traffic from Tucker all the way up 85 and out 316 all the way to Athens.

And so I'd drive two hours to spend about two hours with her to drive home an hour.

Now, the math on that's not real great, and especially the frustration factor of two hours in Russia.

The math on that's not great, but that that's the sort of thing you do when you want to be with somebody.

Right?

That's the sort of thing you do when you're in love.

I had a friend in high school who he would drive 45 minutes to get a salad for his girlfriend of a particular restaurant, and then drive 45 minutes back to give her the salad.

A salad.

Right?

And this is the sort of thing we do when we're in love.

We do these things.

We do these things for romantic love, we do these things for a child.

At some point, us children do these things for our parents.

I mean, we'll move across the country for somebody, we'll move to another country for somebody, we'll give up a career for somebody.

I mean, this is the sort of thing when you love someone, you will rearrange things in your life around that love.

And a lot of you can look back and go, oh, yeah, I've done that.

I did that.

I mean, we've heard it in some great, great poetry.

It don't need money, don't take fame, don't need no credit card to ride this train.

It's strong and it's sudden.

Anyone want to and it's cruel, thank you in the back.

It's cruel sometimes, and it might just save your life.

That's the power of love.

Huey Lewis knew it.

Right?

He he knew it.

Good artists always know it.

Right?

I mean, good artists, artists always know it.

Now, now maybe Huey didn't realize that even human love wasn't going to actually be powerful enough because it's not.

It's sort of the clue for us.

The clue, the fact that romantic love will cause us to rearrange so much in our lives is a clue to us that love has incredible power, but even human love won't cut it for our universal need.

And that's what I'm saying.

I'm saying the universal human need is love.

We're simply looking for love.

We're looking for love, and within love we get forgiveness, and out of that we get relief, and we get we get healing.

And that's what we're looking for.

When we overwork, that's what we're looking for.

When we're just consumeristic, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.

That's what we're looking for.

We're just looking for something to love us, something to deem us valuable and loved.

And we can see it in all sorts of things.

We see it how we treat our jobs or a particular person or a car.

We can see it when we so desperately want a heart, a little heart after a tweet or after an Instagram post.

You keep checking back and checking back and checking back and how many you got.

I mean, we're wanting love.

We're wanting people to love us.

And if we feel loved, then we will feel redeemed.

But we need a love that's more secure than what other people can give, or a job, or car, and you know that because this is the universal need, you know it.

The famous quote by C.

S.

Lewis in Mere Christianity: if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

So we know the universal human need.

And just our own experience of trying all these different things, that's leaving us still with a discontented self, like David Foster Wallace said, it should give us some logical conclusion, what C.S.

Lewis is saying, that I'm made for another world.

I'm made for another love, a perfect love.

So there's the human need.

Now let's look at these three feasts in this passage.

Let me reread a few of these verses.

Exodus 23, 14 and 15.

Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me.

You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread.

As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

So remember your slavery, remember you came from, remember your deliverance.

None shall appear before me empty-handed.

So we get this first principle.

Remember ourselves.

Universal need, two principles, universal need.

Here's the first of the two principles.

Stopping to remember your deliverance is good for you.

Pretty simple.

Stopping to remember your deliverance is good for you.

And by the way, it's the deliverance you already have.

It's not the one you're presently earning.

It's not the one that's through halfway, halfway done.

It's the deliverance you already have.

For these people, they've already been delivered out of Egypt.

So, hey, take a feast, unleavened bread, cook the bread, don't even wait for it to rise because I want you to remember how quickly I brought you out of that slavery and making those bricks day after day after day.

And that was their life.

I mean, they had a life of making bricks.

That's what we've said.

It seems like about every four or five weeks.

We come back to the idea, the remembrance of what the slavery was, and for them it was making bricks.

Every day they made bricks where it seemed like nothing would ever change.

And for us, it's just so quickly these questions about have you ever felt like you would never get out of living out of shame?

Being motivated by shame, being motivated by fear, being motivated out of guilt, or by merit, or out of some expectation secular or religious.

And then maybe in a moment or in a day or through a scripture, through a sermon, or you're walking in the woods, and the Holy Spirit speaks to you.

Maybe in a crisis, when you're at the end of yourself, you're flooded with the truth that the deliverance was already given to you.

And you just need to remember that it's already been done and you can rest.

And now you have freedom.

And the bricks that you used to make are no longer the life that you have to live today, because remembering the deliverance that's already been given to you is what brings you the freedom.

And so this feast of oven love and bread, they bring the first sheaf of grain to God through the special ceremony.

They'd cook this bread, but they wouldn't let it rise, and they're not letting it rise.

And what we see, like all feasts, the feast points to Jesus, because Jesus described himself as the bread of life, and then his burial coincided with the offering of this first grain.

So we see that Jesus is our deliverance.

And for us, we should have a practice of stopping to remember that we've already been delivered.

So that's principle number one.

Number two is that uh stopping to be thankful is good for you.

And this is just good, right?

Because we're forgetful people.

I mean, I forget to thank people all the time.

I mean, I forget to thank you if you do something nicer.

I forget to thank Christie for things.

I forget to thank my children.

I get accustomed to my life or my clothes or my house or my car or uh or you know, little things like having a toothbrush.

I mean, when's the last time you've been thankful for a toothbrush?

Well, until you go to a country where people don't have toothbrush and all of a sudden you're thankful for that.

But on a normal life, we're we're surrounded, we're just forgetful.

All the time we're forgetful.

And so stopping to be thankful for people or things or your life or your health or just the fact that you're breathing today, to be thankful for that is good for you.

Exodus 23, the first part of 16, you shall keep the feast of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field.

And so he's saying, this is about celebrating God's gift of the harvest.

Stop and be thankful for God's food and provision, because this is when the harvest is coming in.

So take the first fruits of the harvest, stop.

Stop.

And be thankful for it.

And this is all about being thankful, not just keep moving along.

So last November in the New York Times, there's this article entitled, Choose to Be Grateful, it will make you happier.

And I'm sure you uh I'm sure you gave away your copy of the Cerebral Cortex Journal, which cites research.

Um, I know you've been Sunday afternoons, you really get into that.

Uh it cites research that shows that expressing gratitude actually makes most of us happier.

And here's how it works.

You got a little handout there, you can read the sentence because it has some really big words, and maybe like three of you know what I'm talking about here.

I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm just gonna read it.

Gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus, which is the key part of the brain that regulates stress.

So when we're grateful, we practice gratitude, it stimulates the hypothalamus and the ventral tegminal area.

And I'm sure probably not the VTA is actually what a lot of people call it.

You've probably heard it referred to that.

You know, when you talk about it, it's probably what you do.

So uh, and that's part of our reward circuitry that produces this sensation of pleasure.

Okay, so there's the science of it, right?

Like God created the science of it, by the way.

That's why it works, that's why it's true.

Uh and the science in the science says that we feel better when we stop and we're thankful.

And here is God saying, busy, forgetful people, stop and be thankful.

Six and one, six and one.

Get a rhythm, stop, remember, be thankful.

Right?

I mean, it's just the principle of life, it's the principle of how we work as human beings.

You know, stopping to be thankful is good for you.

Now, if we come back to this feast of the harvest about this stopping to be thankful, this was about God being the giver of every good thing.

And then we learn that this feast coincides with Jesus' resurrection.

So Jesus became the first fruit.

And God provided every good thing that we need through Christ for us.

So there's our two principles.

Now we circle back around to this universal human need that we all have in the second part of verse 16.

You shall keep the feast of engathering at the end of the year when you gather in from the field of the fruit of your labor.

So the feast of ingathering is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, because they would all construct tents and they would live in a tent for a week.

Some of you, that's right up your alley, and you're going camping.

I knew that was close to spirituality.

The others of you can't imagine.

But they would live in tents and they would have a water ceremony and they would pray for next year's rain.

They would get together, they would pray for God, please would it rain?

Please would it rain?

This is hard for us to understand, unless you're a farmer.

Unless you're a farmer and you're praying this prayer.

This is like you coming before God with the core of your existence.

Like with the ache of the inner self, where anxiety and fear and shame and bitterness, and that part of you that wants to consume more to solve the discontented self or control more to solve the discontented self, that core of the inner self to bring that before God and say, I am dry.

And I need you to reign down in this place.

And God's saying, do that, take a feast.

Stop.

Stop.

And take a feast and pray that.

And what's just remarkable and awesome is in John 7, Jesus shows up to this feast.

In verses 37 and 38, and he shows up to this feast where they're praying for rain.

And he says to them in John 7, 37, 38, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

Whoever believes in me, as the scriptures have said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

So this word heart means uh it would be like belly.

Like like the center of your being, that place where that adequacy or inadequacy resides, where your belovedness or your total insecurity resides.

The core, the the belly, your belly, out of there.

It could be nourished to the point that flow rivers of living water, but the passage isn't over there.

Thank God the passage is not over there.

Because when I was reading this, I sort of just read those first couple verses, and I'm going, man, there's a lot of days I don't feel, I don't feel like there are rivers of living water flowing from my belly.

Like, I mean, I just don't feel that.

That would be sort of depressing, and I'd feel like I've got to conjure that up every single day.

But then verse 39 says this, now this he said about the spirit.

So he didn't say that you are going, that your personality or even your fruit, the fruit of your life, is gonna be the rivers of living water.

It's about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive.

So Jesus is telling you, if you believe and you trust in him, the Holy Spirit resides in you.

God himself, inside of you, he set up a home inside of you.

And he's working alongside you inside all your issues and around your issues and helping you see your issues to comfort you.

This strong word of fortitude.

He wants to comfort you.

He's on a mission to help you believe and remember and rest and be thankful in the fact that the slavery days are over.

That we are redeemed by God's work on our behalf, not by our word.

So we see that this inner thirst, this human need that we talked about, can be quenched by the power of this love.

Because this love is perfect.

It is so perfect, it takes on all of our sin, even all the reality that we just keep we keep acting out of our discontentment.

He takes on all of that, and he deems us righteous.

And it is a divine love by the creator of your soul, who can redeem you back to himself, who has the power to do that.

It's perfect in its application to you, and it is secure because it's not based on you.

It's based on his work toward you and his grace towards you.

So Jesus shows up to this feast, and he's basically declaring himself to be the Messiah.

So you have the Father, and then you have the Son, and then He says, Oh, yeah, and then when you trust in me, you're gonna have the Spirit.

In you, so we have the spirit, so here we see the Trinity at play.

And if you trust in Him, the work of redemption is at work in you, and the Spirit resides in the core of your being and your belly, and that spirit is working, even when you think it's all over, it's He's working.

And what I'm learning is we're all searching for the great metaphor for the Trinity.

Like, how do we understand this?

What I'm learning is maybe the best metaphor is that of a dance.

That there is a dance going on.

That it's not a picture of the Spirit of God inside of you waiting to zap you.

He's making that list, and he's just, he is getting you, and you oh, you're horrible in that one, and that one, that one, and that one, and that one, that one, that one.

He's in there comforting you, trying to relieve you so you don't have to go to those things anymore, those idols anymore.

He's comforting, he's loving, he's healing.

And there's this dance, and there's this singing going on over you.

I just have you heard the Spirit of God in your belly and the core of your being?

And if you've heard it as condemnation, you have not heard the Spirit of God.

Maybe you heard some conviction, which is part of the process of love toward you to get you out of depending on things that you don't need to, but not condemnation, not shame.

That is not the voice of God.

That's the voice of like moralistic, perfectionistic, performance-oriented uh religion, moralism.

That's what that is.

The Spirit of God is a dancing and a singing over you that is saying, Yes, you're imperfect.

I know about that.

That's why I died on the cross.

I took all your imperfection and your sin on me, and I deemed you righteous.

Do you remember your righteous today?

Do you remember your value today?

Do you remember your love today?

Because that would be game-changing for you.

And I'm gonna dance in here, I'm gonna sing in here, I want to keep singing this to you because I need this to become the soundtrack of your heart and your life and your mind.

That you are already righteous.

I'm seeing that personally, I'm seeing all of my anxieties, all of them, and all of my insecurities and my ridiculous thinking always comes from my lack of trust in that declarative word.

That I am already righteous, already loved, already deemed valuable by my Creator.

And what helps me is not to work harder, what helps me is to stop and take a feast.

To feast on the fact that I'm not making bricks anymore.

I don't have to do that.

And this is where we have to keep preaching the gospel to ourselves, because our hearts will keep, you know what they'll keep returning to.

Well, you know, because you do it every day, just like I do.

They'll wake up, your heart will wake up to want to return to merit or return to living out of shame.

But the gospel is a different story.

Because we've been relieved from having to live by merit, and we've been relieved from having to live out of the shame.

Because we are already loved, the work is finished, the redemption is secure, and we need to hear it again and again and again.

So when you wake up tomorrow, you need to tell yourself you're already loved.

So, my brothers and sisters, feast, feast on the reality that you are already loved by God.

You are already righteous, you are justified, you are already complete before any person or job or car or house or religious striving.

And this was done by the work of Christ crucified, buried, and risen.

Let's pray together.

God, would you help us in our lack of faith and our lack of implementing trust on the great work, the complete work of Christ crucified and risen, would you would you help us?

Would you show us where we lack trust and where we turn to loves that never love us in return?

Or don't have the power to love us in return in the way that we need to be loved.

And would we turn our eyes upon Jesus and see how sufficient his work for us is and that we have been adopted fully as your children?

And when you see us, that you deem us a child, beloved.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.