Embracing Ancient Rhythms: Living Out the Ten Commandments, Sabbath Rest, and the Gospel Story

I'm grateful to be able to lead you in worship and, honestly, a lot of what I want to end with talking about at the end of this message relates to our worship and relates to my role and responsibility here at Redeemer Church, but I'm excited and eager to be able to join in in this series.

We're in Exodus for those of you who may not be coming regularly, but today we'll be in Exodus 23.

So you can turn there.

We're in a tough, difficult section of Scripture, challenging things, the kind of debatable things that people who are not believers call us out on and ask for answers to, questioning our faith and the validity of the scriptures.

Pastor Bob handled, I think, probably the hardest passage last week, did a great job.

I get another easier passage at least I feel like it's an easier passage, one that I'm excited to be able to preach from today.

But as we approach this, I want us to be reminded of the fact that the Book of the Covenant, after the Ten Commandments has been given, the Book of the Covenant is really somewhat of a guide to help God's people understand the expectations of what it's like to live out in the world as the people of God.

In some sense, it's also a guide as to how to live out the Ten Commandments.

We hear the Ten Commandments, we can read a very simple commandment thou shalt not kill or thou shalt not steal.

And we wonder what in the world does that look like entirely in certain circumstances?

And we have Exodus, kind of listing out some of those things in case studies and what it might look like for us to follow those commandments within a community.

And today what we have is we have God talking to his people, not about individual case studies or individual sort of events, but more or less something that ought to embody the people as a whole on an annual, weekly and an annual basis.

We're going to be talking about the rhythms of worship for the people of God.

What does it look like for the people of God to engage in regular rhythms of worship?

You know I keep telling Hudson I've told him a number of times but when I'm trying to instruct him as a father and I'm trying to figure out ways to be able to lead him to grow up and be a man who is the kind of man that God created him to be, the kind of man that God has redeemed him to be, I'm like this is my first go at it.

Like this is my first time being a father, so I'm kind of experimenting and I'm kind of trying to work through the challenges of what it is to be a father.

And there's times where I just really really mess up.

And a lot of times there is a challenge between trying to figure out how to navigate between just simple behaviors behaviors that are good or right within the community or within our household to the things that we ought to value as human beings, the things that ought to mean a lot to us, and really what I want to do is I want to be able to lead him and Leland in understanding what really matters in life, what are the things that truly matter in life, because I can lead him to behave.

There's a lot of mechanisms out there that can help people learn a behavior.

There are mechanisms out there to help animals learn a behavior, and behavior is helpful, but it's helpful to be seen.

Behaviors are helpful to be seen more as a byproduct of something deeper inside of us that God is trying to do.

Behaviors do matter, but we want to know that the behaviors that we adopt in our life come out of something that truly is set in a love and the worship of God.

I used to tell my youth group when I was a youth pastor in Baltimore I had inner city kids and I had really good kids that grew up in Christian homes.

I had kids that came from the inner city and I would tell them I was like I'm more interested in you loving God and learning to love God and love people than you are in having like great behavior.

There's gonna be a lot of well-behaved kids in hell.

Behavior is important and, like I said, it ought to be a byproduct of what God is doing in us.

But how do those things, how are those things articulated for us?

How are they adopted by us?

Well, it ought to come from what God is doing inside of us when we learn what he values and we value and love what he loves.

And so what we see here for the people of God today is God instructing these people of God.

Today is God instructing these people of God who he brought out of Egypt, who he rescued from slavery, who he is bringing through the wilderness.

And we see him laying out a plan for their calendar, for their schedules and their weekly schedule and their annual schedule is being marked out in a way where God is walking them through the process of learning what he values and helping them to understand what he loves and what is important to him.

And I think that we as the New Testament church can learn from what we read here in Exodus 23.

So let's read our text this morning, exodus 23,.

I'll begin reading in verse 10.

For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest.

And let follow that the poor of the people may eat and what they leave the wild beasts of the field may eat.

You shall do likewise with your vineyard and with your olive orchard.

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

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

That your ox and your donkey may have rest and the son of your servant woman and the alien be refreshed.

Pay attention to all that I have said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.

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

You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, as I commanded you.

You shall not eat unleavened bread for seven days, at the appointed time in the month of Abib, and for in it you came out of Egypt.

None shall appear before me empty-handed.

You shall keep the feast of harvest of the firstfruits of your labor and what you sow in the field.

You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, and when you gather in the field the fruit of your labor Three times in the year, shall all your males appear before the Lord, god.

You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my feast remain until morning.

The best of the firstfruits of the ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord, your God.

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

This is the word of the Lord.

As the people of God, we must order our lives according to the things that God values most.

According to the things that God values most, particularly as it pertains to how he made us and what he has done for us.

These things the Sabbath, the year of Sabbath or the years that lead up to the Sabbath, and then the weekly Sabbath speaks to how God has made us.

He knows us.

Psalm 139 says that he has made our frame.

He knows everything about us, he knows who we are, he knows our vulnerabilities, he knows that we are just dust, that we are made as creatures, as humans, and we need rest.

As a matter of fact, he goes on and he talks not just about us, but he talks about the creatures of the earth that need rest from their work.

And then the second part of this passage.

It talks about these celebrations, these feasts, these times of the year when they are set apart for remembrance and for recognition of what God has done.

He wants his people to not forget what he's done.

So today, as we discuss the rhythms of worship for the people of God, there's three points that I want us to have today to look at, and the first?

I'll give you the three up front and then we'll work our way through them.

The first one is we are going to look at a rhythm of rest.

Secondly, we are going to look at a rhythm of reverence.

And then, thirdly, we're going to look at rhythms of remembrance and recognition.

So the first is a rhythm of rest.

You know, I recently some of you know that I had my cameras stolen several months ago.

I unfortunately packed all my cameras up in a bag.

We were preparing for a trip and I was loading things into the car and as I was loading things in the car and going back into the house to grab more things, somebody came by and saw the bags in the back of our car and jumped out and grabbed them and took off with them, and one of those bags happened to be my bag with all my cameras, and it was very disheartening.

So because of insurance money that I was able to get back from it, I've been looking for new cameras and I found this one camera that I really liked.

It had a lot of good reviews.

It came out recently, but one of the things that I kept seeing in the reviews on this camera and even on the manufacturer itself it says that this camera will overheat.

So if you have it, if you're operating it for a long period of time in certain conditions, and even not in particular conditions it still has a tendency to overheat.

It's not designed to be the camera for the long haul, and particularly when it talks to video, but it's interesting to me.

I would feel like that would be a challenge or something that people would want to try to avoid.

Even a designer would want to try to avoid.

Why would you make a camera that overheats, like, why can't you fix that?

Well, there are things that they were trying to accomplish in that design it being lightweight, it having the small body size, and they just had to make certain sacrifices, but it really is like the hallmark camera for the type of work that it's intended to do.

It just has a problem that it will overheat and shut down.

As a matter of fact, I was just in Texas earlier this week and I was using the camera and it wasn't even a particularly hot day, but, sure enough, I set it up, started doing some video and, next thing I know, it shuts down and says it's overheated and needs a rest.

You know, when we think about humanity, we kind of feel, sometimes we feel invulnerable, like we feel like we can accomplish and do anything and everything we set our mind to.

As a matter of fact, there's campaigns out there Be all that, you can be, join the army.

There's like this idea that if you dream it, you can make it happen.

There's this reality that you can just go and you can do whatever you set your mind to.

And, matter of fact, in our modern day and age, in the 21st century, we actually even have ways in which we are able to shortcut challenges in life to make things easier and better for us.

I remember back when I was a kid, I used to have to write an actual physical note and pass it in class in order for my friend to be able to get what I wanted to say to them.

Now I can just text it and then we have the phones and I don't have to put anything on paper and I don't have to wait to mail something, and we have the phones and I don't have to put anything on paper and I don't have to wait to mail something.

I can shortcut all the process of someone having to hand deliver some physical message to someone.

There's a lot of other things that we have advanced in technology that allow us to be able to be far more productive than we've ever done, far more efficient than we've ever been, and we have the ability just to accomplish so much.

So why not just take that momentum and everything that's behind it and just run with it until we accomplish everything that we hope and dream?

Well, I don't think that that's the way that God wants his people to think about the way they live life.

I think that God actually has a different idea for us as far as how we ought to live our life.

We value productivity to a detrimental extent, we value efficiency to a detriment, and these are all things that God, I believe, has given to us to be able to like.

We, as humans, have been able to create things like.

We are made in his image and we create in a similar way to the way he creates.

We are made in his image and we create in a similar way to the way he creates, but I think that the way that we ought to understand our work and the way that we understand what we do, we oftentimes put a higher priority on things that actually don't matter to God the way that it matters to us.

We need to learn to adopt what matters to him.

I think it's interesting.

As I speak of technology, I think that everything that I've read out of this passage here is given to us.

Within an agricultural society, you're talking about fields being planted and animals working the fields, and all of this it was the overwhelming culture of the day.

It was the overwhelming culture of the day, and so, even in a difference between the way our society is centered around technology and advancement.

It was very, very different back then.

They would have to plow the fields and they would have to sow the seed, and they would have to pull up the weeds and make sure it was taken care of.

I grew up, spent my summers working on my grandparents' farm when I was a kid, and I remember having to go out and hoe the ground in order to plant my grandma's garden, and then I'd have to make sure that the seeds were planted well and the weeds didn't grow up where the plants were that we had planted.

And then what did we have to do?

How did we get the results of what we were doing?

We had to wait, we just had to wait, and there was not much that we had to do that we were able to do.

God is the one who makes things grow, and so we'd have to wait for him to do the work.

And I think that idea of waiting to do the work, and I think that idea of waiting, the idea of something natural in a world that God has made to be a certain way.

We've gone way past that, and now we're living in a world where we can accelerate things far beyond what we intend for them to be.

Now, what does this have to do with rest?

Well, I think, as we look at this passage, we look at this passage and we see that God is commanding his people that every seven years, there's something that he wants his people to do with the work that they have, and that is to take a rest.

He wants them to work for six years to try to do everything he can to farm a field, and then, after seven years, let's give the field a rest, let's give it a break.

So even the ground needs a break in this sense.

You know, it's funny during COVID 2020, among many other things, one of the things that shut down in the world was our national park system, and I love going to Yosemite National Park.

It's one of my favorite places to go, but it's always so crowded, it's always overrun and overworked and it's just like you can't go anywhere to really enjoy the natural scenery.

Well, one of the things as theangers stay there, they close down Yosemite Park and the thing that they started to notice is that animals started coming out that they hadn't seen as much before, in abundance.

They started seeing plants grow and they started seeing trees grow and they started it was more lush and more garden-like and more beautiful than it had ever been.

And they're looking at this and they're saying wow.

And I can tell you, just looking at this, I know why.

It's because the earth needed a little bit of a break.

It needed a space and a place and a time for it to be able to flourish and for it to be able to grow and for it to be able to recover and be refreshed.

We look at animals.

I mean, one of the things that he says here is he says you need to let the ground rest.

You need to do the same thing with your vineyards, with your orchards.

Why?

So that all that might be limited even due to the demands created by human prosperity, may have the opportunity to rest and recover.

The animals need to be rest and they need to be blessed.

They said leave the fields alone.

And then there's people who are poor people, who are struggling.

They don't own fields, they don't have all that, but you give them the opportunity to go into those fields and they just collect what's remained there.

You know, I planted a bunch of tomatoes and peppers last year in these barrels in my backyard and I had some success.

I had some disappointment, but I didn't do anything this year.

I just let the barrels sit there and they're just sitting there.

Next thing, you know, I've got this just overproductive pepper plant that's just growing tons of jalapenos and I was like where were you last year when I was like worried about it and I was spending all my time trying to give you everything you needed, and now I just leave you alone and you're going to grow and do all that?

You know?

The reality is is that God, he wants us to know that he doesn't need us to do what needs to be done.

But there is a way in which these fields, as they shut down and as they're left to themselves, they will continue to grow and they'll continue to do exactly what God made them to do.

And he wants to do this so that he can take care of the wild beasts of the field.

Let the wild beasts roam your fields and get what they need out of it.

Let the poor roam the fields and get what they need out of it, and get what they need out of it.

Let the poor roam the fields and get what they need out of it.

He intends for us as human beings, in the way that we are made to find rest and to trust that he will provide for all that we need.

Similarly, the creator made a creation that, by his own word, is good, but it has its limits.

So I want you to think about that.

God created the world and he made it all to be good.

He established it and, after each day of creation, let this happen and it was good.

He declared it all to be good, but it does have its limits.

It has a point of expiration, a point of exhaustion, and so, as we think about that, we must operate according to the way that God made things to live and to thrive.

We ought not to push ourselves beyond what God has made us to be and how he has made us to live.

This means that all of creation, as good and magnificent as it is, needs regular rest.

Now, there is a lot written out there, both secular and Christians, on what it means to Sabbath, on what it means to rest.

There's a lot out there, and I would say that even some of the more remarkable things that I've seen about the human body and the way that it's made and why it needs rest, has been written by people who are not even Christians, not even believers.

They don't even read the Bible as the Word of God.

Just looking at the human condition in the way that we're made, from even a scientific perspective, tells us that we can't do everything all the time, that we have to have rest, we have to have a break, and so when we look at this, we need to recognize that, yes, although we were made, and when God was finished, he said it was good.

And even after he created man and it was all done, he said it's very good.

That very good still has its limits.

We are not the creator, we are not limitless.

We have limits.

So, as humans in the 21st century, we're inclined to think of ourselves as far more powerful and filled with far more potential than we really are.

I mean, we are amazing.

We are made in the image of God, and that ought to be celebrated.

We are the prize creation of all of creation, so there is something special about that.

But we are made in his image.

We are not God.

God even himself to set out a model for us.

It says that he created all things in six days, and on the seventh day, what'd he do?

He rested, and there's even appeals in scripture beyond that to look back and say look, god even did this.

You ought to take and follow his example in the way that he modeled it for us.

So we must acknowledge that whatever drives us to expend ourselves beyond and in spite of the goodness of God is something that comes from somewhere else other than the heart of God.

Whatever drives us to expend ourselves beyond and in spite of God's goodness is something that comes from somewhere else than God's heart, what he loves and what he values.

So what does this mean for us?

Well, as we look at what it means the Sabbath, it means that each of us needs rest.

We need to sleep when it's time to sleep.

We were just at a conference, by the way.

Thank you all so much.

A bunch of us went to a conference for pastors last week and this was actually one of the topics I was already planning on preaching this text, and he did a far more better job than I'm doing right now with this topic.

But he really talked about what it means, and one of the things that I valued I took away from it is this point right here Rest and sleep.

It requires faith.

It requires faith.

He said something.

I'm not going to quote him, but he said.

The speaker of this conference said something similar to this Christians are the only people in the world who can engage in true rest and sleep, because we believe that what we are made and called to do is being accomplished by Almighty God even when we sleep.

We're the only ones that can sleep soundly because we believe that God's doing whatever he's going to do whether we're awake or whether we're asleep.

He doesn't need us.

So sleep itself is an act of faith.

Rest is an act of faith, and we've got to understand that.

That's one of the things that God has laid out for his people in this book of the covenant, so that they might understand that they are human and that they need what they need.

When we started Redeemer over 10 years ago, one of the things that we talked about a lot was we wanted Redeemer to be a place where people would hear the words of Christ when he said come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You know, sometimes even in church work, there's so much work to do, there's so many programs, there's so many things that you come on a Sunday and you're just exhausted and you're just worn out and you're like I'm coming to receive rest on my Sabbath day of the week and I'm exhausted because of everything that I was.

And we wanted Redeemer to be a place where it was simple, minimal, where you could come and truly find rest.

We even encouraged people that if you feel like you can't come today because you need to sleep, then come and sleep in our service, because that's what it is.

You come here, and if you need to bring a pillow, it's an act of worship just walking through those doors.

So if you need to walk in and drop your pillow down and take a nap, then it's the best place in the world to do it.

I mean, maybe it's not Comfort-wise, it might not be, but it's a good place If we understand our condition.

Eternwise it might not be, but it's a good place.

If we understand our condition eternally it's the best place you could take a nap.

But we want the church and we want coming to Christ to be an understanding that we find our rest in him, that we come to him for rest and we need to look and understand his cues for what our life and what our human state needs.

God cares about his creation and he does not want anyone or anything to suffer at the hands of unholy ambition.

He doesn't want an unholy ambition to drive us beyond what he's intended for us to be.

So what does this mean for us?

There's a lot of debate as far as what Sabbath means.

Matter of fact, it didn't start with us in the modern day.

You remember that Jesus and his disciples were called out for picking weed on the Sabbath right.

So I mean, there was discussion about what the Sabbath means, and Jesus himself was the target of legalists.

When it comes to what Sabbath means, well, jesus does give us a really, really good understanding of what it means for us.

In Mark 2, it says this one Sabbath he was going through the grain fields and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain and the Pharisees were saying to him look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?

And he said to them have you never read what David did when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered into the house of God in the time of Abathar, the high priest, and ate of the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat.

The Sabbath was not something that, as an extra law, intended to be impressed on us, for us to feel the weight and the burden of what it means, and it's just the opposite.

God made the Sabbath and he modeled the Sabbath for us so that we can understand who we are and how God has made us to be.

We need that rest, and he uses a great example of David, who is running and he needed rest and he knew there was bread in the temple place and he went there and he was able to receive the benefit of this bread.

And so it's not about laws, it's not about defining exactly what should be done and what shouldn't be done, but what I will say is this I think in our society today, we are far more inclined to give up rest and give up sleep in order to do what it is, whatever it is that we want to do.

We're far more inclined to push ourselves beyond what we ought to, and we don't listen to the Word of God as it helps us to understand who we are and the way that God has made us to be.

And so, as we look at this.

I want you to consider for yourself are you taking the opportunity to rest each week?

Are you taking the opportunity to calm your mind, to put away the workload that burdens you throughout the week, that you're called to throughout the week, and are you taking the opportunity to allow your body and your mind, and everything that God has made you to be?

Are you taking the time to rest?

Furthermore, I think it's important that we understand that in the long haul, even as we look at how he starts us out after six years, that seventh year, that's a lot.

If you keep going for so long, there needs to be a break.

That's one of the benefits that comes of this the servants that are working the ground.

They actually get a break themselves.

They're working their fingers to the bones and they actually get a break themselves.

They're working their bones, their fingers to the bones, and they themselves get a break.

Now you're like how do we do this?

Like that's really really like how does this happen?

I mean, each of us could give examples of our own situations in life and we try to figure out how do we make sense of this and how do we do it.

Well, I'll tell you this it doesn't come by accident, it comes with intentionality.

You know this goes back to when God gave the Ten Commandments just a few chapters before, and we walked through that a couple times in the last couple weeks.

But he says this Exodus 20, verse 9, six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, your God.

Exodus 20:9

On it you shall not do any work.

You, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, your livestock, your sojourner, who is within your gates.

For six days the Lord made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in it, and rested on the seventh.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

In short, it's interesting.

In short, he says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And that idea of remember means that there was something kind of already in place or something already in mind that they needed to recall regarding what it means to rest one day a week.

And if we look even further back in Exodus, we remember that when God supplied the people with sustenance from heaven, remember manna coming from heaven.

And he told them I'm going to provide you with manna for six days, but on that sixth day.

You need to make sure you gather enough, because the seventh day I want you to rest.

I don't want you to have to go out and gather and do the work that you need to that you've been doing on every other day.

I want you to go ahead and collect enough for that extra day.

That's the only day you can do that.

If you try doing that for every other day, it's going to get spoiled.

So, from that, what I want us to understand is that, in order to Sabbath, it's got to be a priority for us.

It's got to be something that we plan.

We've got to orient our mind and our schedule around that.

It's not something that's going to happen on accident.

Now I'm telling you this right now, and I'm going to tell you right now I'm not great at this.

As a matter of fact, as I was walking through this and reading about this, I'm like, oh my goodness, like I'm the one I'm preaching this and I have a lot of work to do.

I have a lot of things to do to kind of like dial back my schedule, my agenda, my plans and all those things and really focus on doing the work and then planning and preparing to be able to take the rest that God intends for me to have.

So if we truly value what God values, if we truly value rest, then it's something that we ought to prioritize and plan for, not just do if it seems convenient.

So we each need to determine what it looks like in our own lives to have this rest.

The second thing I want us to look at in verse 13 is this we are looking at a rhythm of reverence, because the God of the Bible is uniquely God alone.

We must honor him and him alone.

Verse 13.

Verse 13.

Verse 13 says here, hold on, I'm on the wrong page.

Here.

Verse 13 says pay attention to all that I have said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.

God is telling them if you're following me and you're doing what I'm supposed to be doing, whatever gods you were made aware of in Egypt or anywhere else, they're not even supposed to be mentioned in the life of God's people.

It ought to be that everything that you do is out of motivation for following and obeying God and God alone.

Isaiah 46 says this I am God and there is no other.

I am God and there is none like me.

2 Samuel 7,.

Therefore, you are great, o God, and there is none like you.

This was after God made his covenant with David, and David is praising him.

There is no God beside you, according to all that you have heard with their ears.

1 Samuel 2,.

There is no one holy like our Lord.

There is no one beside you.

There is no rock like our God.

And then Psalm 86, there is none like you among the gods, o Lord, nor are there any works like yours.

All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, o Lord, and shall glorify your name, for you are great and do wondrous things.

You are God alone.

At the heart of all these things that God is calling us to do, he wants us to be so sure and understand very clearly that this is all for him and him alone.

There is no other name, there is no other being, there is no other idea that ought to take precedent and has a place in the midst of God's people.

We have to acknowledge God and God alone.

I love Psalm 8.

It's one of my favorite psalms to go to and it says O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.

You have set your glory above the heavens.

And then it goes on and he says when I look at your heavens and the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man?

That you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?

This speaks to God's amazing work that we can see in all of creation.

And to see all of that and just to think of ourselves, god, why do you pay attention to me?

Why do you look at me?

Why is it that you even care for me?

The problem is that in our society we have that flipped.

We do allow other things in our lives.

We allow other things to take precedence.

We allow other people's influence and agenda to run our lives and to cause us to do things to the point where we could probably rewrite this in our own society and say this oh self, how majestic is my name in all the earth.

I've set my glory and everything out here.

When I look at my home and my work and all the things that my fingers have done, when I look at all the things that I have accomplished and all the things that my fingers have done, when I look at all the things that I have accomplished, who is God that I should be mindful of Him and who is God that I ought to care for Him?

That's what we are tempted to believe.

We buy into this, thinking that we are God, that we deserve the glory that we get the honor, and God is a side piece for us.

He's convenient for us on Sundays or when we need him and we pray a prayer out of desperation, but he's not at the heart and the center of who we are.

That psalm ought to resonate with us.

Who is God?

What is man that he's mindful of?

He is so great, why does he even pay attention to us?

And yet we're constantly challenged as well.

Who's God?

Why should I pay attention to him?

We need to orient our lives around the fact that God is God alone and that nothing else should be mentioned in connection with him and alongside of him.

Our memories and this is what he's really encouraging them to hear he's telling them to remember what he's done and that they are to focus on the fact that no other name should be associated with that.

Our memories should be filled with the stories and truth of God.

We're coming to a time where we're going to celebrate Thanksgiving.

I mean, thanksgiving should be something Christians do every day.

It's part of who we are.

As a matter of fact, one of the verses I think that serves as a huge warning for me is in Romans 1, where it says that although they acknowledged him to be God, they did not worship him as God, nor were they thankful.

It's interesting that thanksgiving is at the very turning point of whether you are going to be a follower of God, as he intends you to be, or if you're going to divert to some other pathway in life.

We must worship him as God and we must be thankful.

We must be thankful.

Our memories should must be thankful.

We must be thankful.

Our memories should be filled with stories and truth of God, his goodness, his faithfulness, his love.

We must protect ourselves from getting caught up in memories of beings and situations and circumstances, of things that challenge and contradict the reality of the person and the work of the triune God.

We have to protect ourselves from allowing outside influences to lead us and to direct us and to guide us in a way that takes us away from the reminder that God is everything that we need.

We must guard ourselves so that we live and dwell in thanksgiving in light of God.

Lastly, I want us to look at the rhythm of remembrance and recognition.

You know we're a forgetful people.

We forget.

If you read the first five books of the Bible, you will find often that God tells the people to do something so that you don't forget, like over and over and over Do this so that you don't forget, and you know what those things are.

It's interesting he doesn't say this, write it down and put it on like a well in some sense, like he tells them to put up on their walls and on their doorposts and all so there are ways, but he actually calls them to an action.

He calls them to an activity of building an altar or setting aside a particular day for a particular reason.

This is not just like don't forget.

So write it down on the back of your hand so you remember.

This is don't forget and let's just stop everything that we're doing and let's just have a party or let's build an altar or let's do something that signifies us.

He wants us committed all in when he calls us to remember.

This is one of the reasons why we do the Lord's table every Sunday.

This is one of the reasons why we get up from our seats and we walk to the front.

It's because there is something we all kind of participate in the service.

Throughout the service, we all sing together, we respond together, we pray prayers together, but there's something that's all fully engaging.

When I have to get up out of my seat and walk here and I have to pick up some elements and go back to my seat, it's something so that you remember.

Do this in remembrance of me.

And, as a matter of fact, where we get this from is from one of those feasts, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which came out of the Passover.

Jesus was observing the Passover when he pulled out the bread and said this is my body.

Do this in remembrance of me.

This cup is my blood.

Do this in remembrance of me.

This is one of the three feasts that he gave to his people to observe.

So you have the first feast, the feast of unloved bread, which is a feast for remembrance.

Remember what I have done.

And he had it rigged.

He had a foreshadowing.

He had it rigged.

He wanted them to do that every year so that when they finally got down the road and he says this is my body, this is my.

Oh, I see it, man.

It's like you know, a good catch in a good movie, where you're following a storyline along and you're like how did I miss that?

How did I not see that?

Oh, my goodness, it pulls everything together.

Jesus is setting his people up to both remember and to usher them into a day when Jesus would come and be that Passover lamb.

The other two feasts that he mentions are ones when they begin their harvest.

They're going out and beginning the first day of cutting the grain and to gathering the harvest.

Day of celebration.

We're starting the harvest.

We recognize that all the work that we've done, god has blessed and he has given us something to be able to harvest.

And then the third feast is when everything has been harvested and it's gathered together and it's prepared to carry them on into the next year.

God wants his people to celebrate, not just write it down.

Hey, mark the day when we started gathering stuff.

We're going to have a celebration.

We're starting to collect all the stuff that we've worked hard on that.

God has blessed us with my dad when I was growing up.

It annoyed me because we didn't have much money as it was.

But my dad had took this to heart and anytime he got a new job or beginning of the year, he would always give his first paycheck in the offering plate.

And then I remember as a kid many, many times realizing we didn't have food in the house because my dad gave all our money away for that week.

And my dad would clearly say I'm trying to follow the first fruits, the festival of first fruits, and it was annoying and frustrating and I didn't quite get it, but I'll tell you whether it was right or wrong.

I'll tell you it made a difference.

I remember it.

I remember that my dad gave this sacrifice of what he was calling the first fruits of his work.

There is something significant about actually committing to and sacrificing and setting aside a time when we celebrate and acknowledge God and who he is and what he has done, and that's what we've got to do.

I'm going to wrap this up because what I want us to understand is that God wants us to rest, but he also wants us to celebrate and make a big deal about what matters to him.

What I want to kind of call our attention to in closing is this this, as I mentioned at the beginning of the service is the reign of Christ.

Sunday it's the end of the church calendar year At Redeemer.

Here we make not a big a deal of some churches but a big deal about the church calendar.

We look at the church calendar as a way in which we walk through every year the story of the gospel, the anticipation of Christ's coming.

It's like sitting and watching those presents sit under a tree and waiting for Christmas Day.

I can't wait to open up my presents.

I can't wait to celebrate on Christmas Day.

It's that anticipation.

And then Christ comes and we celebrate his coming and then we celebrate his life as he walks on the earth.

And then we are sobered as we acknowledge the fact that it was our sin that sent him to the cross and we are human and that we need a Savior, and Jesus was willing and loved us so much that he was willing to be that Savior.

And so then we have a day where we celebrate him as king on Palm Sunday, and then we observe Good Friday when he dies, and then we celebrate Easter, the resurrection.

All of these things were guided by the calendar, and one of the reasons that we encourage and invite you to participate as much as you can in this is because we don't want it just to be that.

We know the gospel story and I can give you the verses, and here's my pathway.

We want us, as a church, to embody both the truth but also the emotions of the gospel each and every year.

Now understand, I'm not saying that celebrating Advent or Christmas is right there as scriptural and as inspired as the feasts of the Old Testament.

I'm not saying that.

But what I am saying is that if we acknowledge the fact that we're human, just like God's people were human in the Old Testament, if those feasts and those rhythms benefited the people of God in that time, so that they wouldn't forget, I think that it is important and wise and responsible for us to say what ways can we order our lives so that we can enter into the rhythms of the gospel story that reminds us that we're saved, that we can enter into the rhythms of the gospel story that reminds us that we're saved, that we're his, and so I would encourage you as we enter in, we're gonna have we've got decorations where we're gonna decorate this place for Christmas.

We have Advent coming up.

We're gonna have special events throughout December.

We're gonna enter into the Christmas season, where we have a Christmas Eve service.

All of these things are going to have cultural implications to them.

They're going to be cultural feelings to them, but at the heart, as God's people, we want to enter into this and realize that all of this is centered around the story that's changed the world.

Realize that all of this is centered around the story that's changed the world.

It's the story that gives us the identity of who we are and as we gather each week, from week to week, one of the reasons why we do this service the way that we do is that because it mirrors the gospel story the creation, the fall, the redemption, the new creation.

So we have a call to worship, just like God, who speaks and initiates a conversation and calls us to acknowledge him.

We have a call to worship to acknowledge him and as we celebrate who he is, we realize, man, I fall way short of him and his glory.

I need to confess because I'm fall, I am part of the fall.

And then we're reminded that we're not left there, that we're redeemed, and we're reminded of the forgiveness that we have when we confess.

And then we're like how are we to walk?

How are we to live?

How am I to live my life in light of being a new creature, part of the new creation?

And that's why we have the preaching, and then all of that culminates in our communion around the table.

All of these things are rhythms and patterns that we engage in that help us to enter into the type of rhythms of remembrance and recognition that I believe that God wants us to have, and so I want to invite you A couple takeaway pieces of homework.

Figure out how you can start planning rest and prioritizing rest in your schedule.

Find a way, even if it's just a little thing, find ways to be able to say God knows me, he knows how I'm made, he knows everything that I need and everything about me, and he still wants me to find rest, and so let's rest.

Let's find ways to prioritize and plan for rest in our lives.

Secondly, let us work hard to acknowledge that God alone is worthy of our praise, that he alone is due our worship and our reverence.

And then, lastly, let's just not look at coming to church and participating in worship service or taking part in these holidays that shape our year as just being something fun to do.

Fun to do.

Let's think and work hard to engage and embrace the story of the gospel as it is lived out within the church and within the guides of scripture.

Let us embrace that and walk in it and celebrate, so that the knowledge and the glory of God isn't just something that we affirm but it's something we embody, it's something that we live out.

Lord, thank you so much for your goodness, for your grace in our lives.

Thank you so much for the book of the covenant.

Thank you for the opportunity that we have to see what it means to live according to what you value and what you desire in us.

God, I do pray that you would help us to pursue rest, that we would live in light of rest, that we would embrace the rhythms of redemption, the rhythms of remembrance, the rhythms of recognition.

God, we honor you.

You alone are worthy of our praise.

Thank you so much for being our God, and we pray these things in Christ's name, amen.