Jacob's Return to Bethel

Hello, church.

Hear now the word of the true and living God, Genesis thirty-five.

God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there.

Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

So Jacob said to his household and to all who are with him, Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments.

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone.

So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears.

Jacob hid them under the Terebinth tree that was near Shechem.

And as they journeyed a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.

And Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel, which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, and there he built an altar and called the place El Bethel, because there God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother.

And Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel.

So he called its name Alan Bakuth.

God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Pad and Aram and blessed him, and God said to him, Your name is Jacob.

No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.

So he called his name Israel.

And God said to him, I am God Almighty, be fruitful and multiply.

A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.

The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.

Then God went up from him in the place where he had spoken with him, and Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone.

He poured out a drink offering on it and poured oil on it.

So Jacob called the name of the place where God had spoken with him, Bethel.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

As I walked into my podium, I realized that there's a book that I'm going to quote at the end of the sermon.

I need to go get that book.

I'll be right back.

Talk yourself.

See, it wasn't that long.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman, The Ever Prepared.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And we are continuing this morning through the book of Genesis, a book that we've been visiting annually for the past uh, this is our fourth year in this book, and we're at a point in the story in which we're going to see a real transition from it being about Jacob to it being about Jacob's sons.

And this is a turning point and a return for Jacob, one of the central themes in his life.

So before we enter into this, let's pray together.

Holy Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the stories of your people throughout Scripture, that we might find in your faithfulness to them the very patterns which we can experience your faithfulness to us.

Lord, you are the same God.

We pray to the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Lord, the promises that you made to them are ours in Christ.

So, Lord, we pray that we might hear them as as though we're listening to stories of our own heritage, Lord, because we are brought into your family by the blood of Christ.

These promises are ours, and your promise and demonstration of faithfulness to these men we can hope in and trust in.

Lord, all the more, since we know the faithfulness you have shown us by giving us your son, Jesus Christ.

Lord, let us see these stories and let us see our lives in them.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So a couple of weeks ago, I uh went uh back to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Go buffs, and uh uh I was grabbing lunch with some friends uh from school there.

We attended college together.

We hadn't seen each other in years, and one of them works on campus at CU.

And so we went to our old dining hall, uh, the C4C Center for Community, C4C.

And uh we we met outside the dining hall and then we walked in.

And I'm telling you, when I walked in, uh this is something you should know to make the story clear.

I lived on campus all four years because I was an RA, because I love rules.

And uh the uh um so that means I ate in the dining halls my whole time there, which isn't isn't typical at CU, unless you're a four-year freshman like me.

And so I I ate at the C4C every day of my life for four years.

So when I walked in, after having not been there for a long time, it like my the smells were the same, and my body just took over.

And I slid the tray off and I drifted towards the burrito stand.

And I just like the words came out of white, black, chicken, cheese, salsa.

And then the person made it.

And the uh and then I and then I drifted over to make a salad on the other half of the plate that the burrito goes on, and then I and then I floated on a cloud of glory to the Italian SIBO station, and I grabbed I grabbed two slices, yeah.

I grabbed two slices of pizza.

We'll follow up, don't worry, we'll follow up.

I grabbed two slices of pizza, and then we we all like met back together, and we were like, this is weird, right?

This feels bizarre.

And they were my two friends were like, yes, this feels very bizarre.

And then we were like, What where should we sit to eat?

Because there's a lot of different rooms to sit in.

And we all said in unison, the Colorado room, because that's the room where we would always sit and eat.

And it's the room there, you know.

If you're weird and dark, you would sit next to the Italian station.

If you didn't have any friends, then you would sit behind the cereal bar.

But if you were a normal person, then you would uh go to the Colorado room.

It was a no-brainer.

This is not a decision to be made.

But we just knew all of those things just kind of in my body, at just a return to this place that I that was home for so long and that I hadn't been to for so long.

And the as we were sitting and talking, memories and names that I couldn't recall all of a sudden, I was easily able to recollect as we were talking and reminiscing.

And we all decided afterwards we can never do this again.

That was a completely overwhelming experience.

And uh there's there's too many memories here to even visit.

Because there's this sense when we were sitting there, this clear sense that the way that I'm experiencing this feels so similar, and yet I am not the person I was when I was attending school here.

And you I just felt in in my like physically and through the smells of these are all the same things.

I'm getting all these same signals, but I'm not that person anymore.

And the relationships I remembered from that time that were hard and challenging, uh all of a sudden I have this different lens on, and I can't see them the same way.

And it it brings it brings up, wow, so much life has happened since the last time I was in this room eating this burrito, looking for the Chipotle um uh Tabasco sauce, which is the key to most dining halls, is finding the Chipotle Tabasco.

And it's this this sort of this sort of visceral, this visceral experience.

It reminded me um Heraclitus, uh the old pre-Socratic philosopher.

He said, I I believe it's you never step into the same, do you know the f do you know where I'm going?

You never step into the same dining hall twice because it's never the same dining hall, and you're never the same person.

He was right.

That's the truth.

Um it's river, actually, just so we aren't so we can all come together.

You never step into the same river twice.

Now, throughout scripture, we see this pattern of these returns, these sort of returns home.

And it's uh it's a pattern that we see throughout scripture, and this is this is the story that we're looking at.

Jacob returns to this place of promise, this place that he had named the house of God.

And in this pattern of return, we see evidence of God's faithfulness to his people who he has always promised to give and to give a home and to bring home.

Moses, when he leaves Egypt, he is shepherding at the base of Mount Sinai, and he sees a burning bush, and then the Lord calls to him and it says, you know, go get my people, and they have a whole conversation.

And he says, You will you will bring your people back here to worship me on this mountain.

And so when the Israelites finally come to Mount Sinai together as a people, it's this return to that very mountain where God had made his promise to Moses.

Then we see the same sort of pattern at not just in Moses' life, but with the Israelites as a whole, where he brings them into the promised land.

And when they're brought into the promised land, they deteriorate into a people that don't even look like God's people anymore.

And so the result is that they're exiled into Babylon.

But when they're exiled into Babylon, it's with this promise that God will bring them home.

And he does with Ezra and Nehemiah, he brings God's people back to the land that he had promised them.

And so we see these patterns of return, these patterns of being home, being exiled, and then returning home.

Now, this is really the story of the whole scripture, because it begins with Adam and Eve in perfect community with God in Eden, at this place that was tailor-made for them.

You know, it was a perfect, it was a perfect fit, like when you move through a dining hall that you're so your body's so attuned to.

That's what their home was like for them.

And then, because of their sin, they are exiled from that place of home.

Exiled from the communion with their father that they experienced directly there, and then pushed out into a dangerous world.

But the promise is you will be brought back.

This is the pattern of the whole scripture.

And we look forward to the new heavens and the new earth where we will be brought home again.

And I think that this gives us an opportunity to acknowledge this real desire of our hearts and this real experience of our hearts.

We desire this twofold thing to return home, but also to be transformed when we get there.

So that means we need to set out so that we might be transformed, but then we desire to return to a true place of home.

And those are sort of intention, those two desires to be a transformed person.

That means a transformed person is somebody who's not here right now, and that's somebody who's not in your past.

But we also desire a return, a deep yearning for a return to a time before.

It's like this mix of hope and nostalgia that are tied together in our hearts that we see in these patterns of return in Scripture, where God brings you home, but he doesn't bring you back as the person he sent you out as.

That's a lot of offspring.

Twelve sons.

But he's outside of the land.

And so the twofold promise of the land and the and the offspring, he has one aspect of this.

He's he experiences the fruitfulness of his life in terms of the offspring, but there's this question throughout his whole life of I'm not in the land that you had promised to give me.

So is the Lord going to be faithful to his promise?

Well, the Lord calls him back here to the land that he was a part of.

The first time that Jacob was at Bethel, he was on the run from his brother Esau.

In fact, God makes note of this.

Says, Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.

See, God is taking him back to that person he was, to the dynamics, the relational dynamics that he was experiencing the last time he was with his, he was at this place, Bethel.

And he was on the run from his brother Esau.

What had happened was Jacob had deceived his father into giving him his brother's blessing.

That's a convoluted sentence.

But he had basically deceived his family, cheated his brother out of an inheritance, and his brother then determined to kill Jacob.

So Jacob leaves his family as a deceiver on the run for his life, a fugitive on the run for his life from his brother.

Now, when he's on the run, he arrives that night into the wilderness.

And in this wilderness where there is nothing else around, he lies down with a rock for a pillow and he has a dream.

And in this dream, he sees a ladder that connects the heavens and the earth, and the angels of God are ascending and descending on that ladder.

And then next to him, at the base of the ladder, he sees someone who is like an angel of God.

And he awakes from the dream.

He's given a promise then from that man.

And in this promise is you will have land, you will have offspring, nations will come from you.

It is the very promise that had been given to Isaac before him and to Abraham before him.

As a fugitive on the run, he has this encounter with God.

Jacob awakes and he says, one of my favorite lines in all of Scripture, one which I think we could all utter when the Lord meets us, which is, Surely God is in this place and I did not know it.

There in the wilderness, as a fugitive on the run, he is met by God and recognizes God is in this place.

In this place of terror, in this place of fear, in this place of being on the run, in this place where I have been deceptive, and part of the reason I'm on the run is just my own sin.

Well, surely God was in this place, and I did not know it.

And so he takes that rock that he had slept on as a pillow and he turns it vertically in the pattern of the ladder that connects the heavens and the earth, and he names that place Bethel, which means house of God.

That is the last time that Jacob was in Bethel.

So now God calls him back.

He calls him as this return, but he's a very different person.

And it's a very different time this time, decades later, as he goes back to this place, Bethel.

It's a different time, he's a different person for this return home.

Genesis 35, verses two through three.

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your garments.

Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an off an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone.

You can hear the very pattern of the nation of Israel being gathered to Sinai.

You know, before the Lord comes in a cloud of smoke on on top of that mountain, and Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments, and God speaks to them in a booming voice that they wish they never heard.

God called the nation to purify themselves, to prepare themselves, to enter into the presence of the God, worship to the presence of God, worship fully.

In the same pattern, Jacob participates in as they head back to Bethel.

He prepares his household.

They purify themselves, they cast out other gods.

And listen to the way that Jacob describes the God that they are going to worship.

He says, I am going there to make an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.

Now, the first time he went to Bethel, he could not have said that.

He would not have known that language, he wouldn't have had those words.

The first time he was at Bethel, it was God breaking into Jacob's life and letting him know that I will be with you, I will be present with you.

Now, this time when he returns, he has decades, 20 plus years of faithfulness to look back upon, where he looks back and he says, This is the God who was with me in the day of my distress.

And that day was not just that first night in Bethel on the run from his brother.

It had been his time in exile away from the land, where he experienced constant distress that the Lord was faithful to him in.

And he says, He has been with me wherever I have gone.

Do you see this dynamic here?

This is one we're going to need to learn how to operate in because it's this recognition we are going to this special place that is like a home for God.

But it is not that we're going there to finally be able to access God, because God has been with me wherever I have gone.

So there's this return that's married with this recognition: God has never left me.

God has been with me in my distress, and he has been with me wherever I have gone.

And that is the way that Jacob returns to Bethel.

In verse 5, it says, as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.

Now it had been a constant concern for Jacob that because they were traveling with incredible wealth, Jacob had become absurdly wealthy.

And because they were this caravan traveling through other people's territories, Jacob was always concerned that because of the small numbers of people that they had, but the immense wealth that they had, that they would be, you know, taken and killed and taken over by the cities that they were marching past.

But the Lord worked things in such a way where as they were journeying, that these cities had some terror from the Lord, which prevented them from attacking this vulnerable but profitable people to attack.

Now, this kind of shines a light back on the story that we looked at last week.

Because if you'll remember last week's story, Jacob's daughter was taken advantage of by a people in the land.

And Jacob, out of fear of the cities around him, did not seek to accomplish any justice on behalf of his daughter.

And we saw that this deteriorated the family that Jacob was a part of.

And yet we see as he finally sets out in faithfulness, he needed not be afraid.

The Lord who had been with him protects him as he goes on this journey.

It makes his faithlessness and cowardice from the story that we saw before just look even more glaring and awful.

And we see that he ought to have moved in courage because it is the Lord who protects him.

The Lord had protected him this whole time.

Now, while we're considering this journey back, we should refresh ourselves as to what Jacob's life has been like for the past 20 plus years.

When Jacob left Bethel, he went to a family member named Laban.

And upon first arriving at Laban's house, he spots Laban's youngest daughter.

Her name is Rachel, and he immediately falls in love with her.

He becomes infatuated by her beauty and he makes an offer to Laban.

He says, I will work for you for seven years to be able to marry your daughter Rachel.

And Laban says, Sounds good?

That's an outrageous offer.

Not that Rachel wasn't lovely.

Sure, she was lovely.

But this is, these are terms that are almost absurd.

He serves Laban for seven years.

And then on the night of the wedding, Laban switches his daughters and marries off Leah, the oldest daughter, to Jacob.

Now, this is Jacob experiencing himself the very pattern of deception that he had pulled on his brother as he claimed to be someone else to receive his brother's inheritance.

Now, Jacob, because of Laban, he sort of meets his match in his uncle, of someone who is so shrewd and deceptive, switches his daughters.

And so Jacob awakes in the morning and realizes he has married Leah and he has not married Rachel.

And he comes back to Laban and he says, I will work another seven years in order to finally marry Rachel.

And that's what he does.

And then as he develops this, uh the his family grows and he becomes increasingly wealthy.

And Laban's sons become increasingly hostile to Jacob.

And Laban becomes more and more deceptive, saying you're constantly changing the terms.

You know, you'll have to work this amount of time to have this much cattle.

You'll be able to keep your family if you only take these types of sheep.

But the Lord works it such that Jacob is never actually taken advantage of by Laban, but he grows more and more wealthy.

But the relationship becomes adversarial.

Jacob and Laban become pitted against one another.

And so one night they decide to flee.

Jacob flees from Laban, taking his daughters with him, Jacob's wives, and their whole family.

And then Jacob and Laban, Laban pursues them.

They get in this terrible fight because of Jacob's fleeing.

And then they come to these barely peaceful terms, but the family is really broken.

As they're fleeing, and as Jacob intends to head back to Bethel, Jacob realizes that he is going to encounter his brother Esau.

Esau, the one responsible for his exile, whom he had originally deceived and then originally fled from.

So he faces this fear of what will be an almost certain death as he approaches Esau.

Let's continue with today's story, and then we'll revisit what Jacob's journey has been like.

In Genesis 35, 9, it says God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Padana Aram and blessed him.

Okay, so Jacob comes back to Bethel.

God appears to him and blesses him, just as he had done those decades earlier, before all of this time and confusion with Laban.

Then in Genesis 35, 10 it says, And God said to him, Your name is Jacob.

No longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.

So he called his name Israel.

I wanted us to hear that verse.

Now let's go back in time.

There's a lot of movement in this sermon.

It's like an episode of loss.

God said to him, Your name is Jacob, but you shall not be called Jacob.

Israel shall be your name.

You know, the night before he finally met Esau, when he was terrified that Esau is going to see him and then kill him, a man comes and starts wrestling Jacob.

And Jacob refuses to let go of the man.

Soon he realizes that this man has an incredible power, something that's beyond what any ordinary man could have.

And when Jacob is wrestling this man, Jacob realizes the immensity of power that this man has and then demands that this man bless him.

Says, I will not let go until you bless me.

Jacob's name means something like a deceiver, but it also means something like someone who will doggedly hold on, someone whose grip cannot be loosed.

Jacob has all of this in his name.

And the man who it will be revealed is God who he's wrestling, says to Jacob, I will bless you, but tell me your name.

The reason this is so important is because the last time that he had received his father's blessing, the blessing of the promise, his father said, What is your name?

And he said, My name is Esau.

He was lying, pretending to be his brother.

But this time, when he wrestles God himself, he says, My name is Jacob.

His name is a confession of all that he is.

I am the deceiver, he is saying.

I am the one who has been wicked.

But I'm also the one who won't let go.

And there God changes his name and says, You shall no longer be called Jacob, but you will be called Israel, because you have striven with God.

This becomes the name of the nation.

So here, Jacob returns to Bethel, and he hears, it is the same God who wrestled with me, who meets me here at Bethel once again.

And he says, listen to the phrasing, your name is Jacob.

You know, when Jacob returns, he is not a different person.

He is the same person.

It is the same Jacob that was initially met in the wilderness.

It's really him, it's really who he is.

And yet, no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.

That way in which you have been renamed by God as you've gone through this journey that God has taken him through, that really is you now.

Do you see the double movement of these two different cries of our hearts that are the nature of people who of being a human, this type of creature that we are, such that we have this distant memory of being sinless and pure and close to God in our first parents, Adam and Eve.

But then, and so we have this desire, I want to return to that place.

I want to return home to before this tragedy happened.

I want to regain my innocence before I stopped sinning in this way.

I want that sense of return.

But I know that I can't.

And so, in that sort of return, I need to be transformed.

I need to become something new, even in order to experience something like the home I had lost before.

See, this is the pattern, this is the story of Scripture, this is the way that we experience it.

Because I know that you know that your life is like that.

There are times of innocence you wish you could go back to, but you know that you can't.

And so, how do you hope for a home that even if you return to it, you, the way you are now, the type of thing you are now, can't participate in it.

You can't experience it.

We have to be brought home.

But the home in our past is cut off.

We have to be brought home, it's cut off because there's no going back in time, but also your you couldn't experience it like that anymore.

We have to be brought to a home that's somewhere in the future.

And we have to be transformed in our hearts to be able to receive it.

Jacob is your name.

It's really you who longs for this home.

But you need a new name to be able to actually participate in that.

In verses 11 through 12, God extends his promise to Jacob once again.

And God said to him, I am God Almighty.

Be fruitful and multiply.

A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.

The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you, and will give the land to your offspring after you.

It is that same promise.

The promise that had been given to Abraham, the promise that had been given to Isaac now rests with Jacob.

It is the same promise that God gave to Jacob when he was first at Bethel on the run from his brother.

It's a little different because this time it's expanded a bit, because now he includes this idea of kings that will come from Jacob.

And the promise of land is made sure once again for Jacob.

Do you see what it is?

This is God's promise of a homecoming.

This is God saying, Look, come back to Bethel.

I will tell you the very same things that I told you those 20 years ago.

And you will see that I am faithful to my promises.

You will see that I am the God who in your sin sent you away, but who pursued you and remained with you, that I might bring you back to a true home.

And Jacob can know this and have a faith in this by his very experience in his life.

He had been sent away, been sent out of Bethel, out of the house of God, into exile, but the Lord was with him wherever he went.

And so now when he returns, he's returning, seeing, look at how faithful God has been to me.

Look at the faithfulness that God has shown me.

I know it because God has brought me here.

But these returns in this life are always bittersweet.

When Moses returns to the mountain at Mount Sinai, Moses goes up to as the nation is purifying itself.

And then when he comes back down, he sees that this nation who has been led out of captivity, out of Egypt, has now turned away from the God that led them there.

And at this very return, what should have been this glory and triumph that God's people have been rescued and brought to the mountain where God had promised that they would come and worship him, and they are not worshiping him.

It is bittersweet.

When Ezra and Nehemiah, after the Babylonian exile, return to the promised land and they rebuild the temple.

But it was a mixture.

It was a mixture of celebration and of weeping.

Because those who had seen the temple before, the oldest among them, saw this new temple that was built, and they realized this does not have the glory that the old temple had.

This return is in some way not the return that my heart really needs.

And here at Bethel, when Jacob returns, he is brought back and has this deep experience of God's faithfulness, but there's a bitter sweetness to it.

At this place, at this return, Rachel will get pregnant with their final son, Benjamin.

And while she's giving birth to Benjamin, Rachel will die.

The one, the love of his life, whom he had labored 14 years to be with will pass away.

All of the hardship that Jacob had gone through on this journey to Bethel, now that he has returned, he will enter into the most challenging and terrible part of his life.

As the story shifts to his sons, his family enters this terrible turmoil.

Part of them will conspire to sell off into slavery his most beloved son, but Jacob will think that he was dead and killed by wild animals.

Jacob will enter into an incredible amount of suffering after this return to Bethel, this joyous return back to the promise that God had given him.

You see, all of these returns in Scripture are bittersweet returns.

Because as we see this pattern of God's faithfulness, he's reminding us, I am with you.

I am with you.

I've been with you in exile.

I've been faithful to return you, and now you participate in my return.

We recognize that these are not the ultimate returns that our hearts really need.

The return that we need is to that place we were in Eden, when we walked with God in the cool of the day.

And we felt like we could easily say our names to God and they were untainted by sin.

And we felt absolutely at home there as though we were, as though we were in just that place of absolute comfort and security, able to say our names.

But here in the sinful lives that we lead and in the places that we live in, we recognize that we must be transformed.

And if we are transformed in that place that we long to go back to, there is no going back there, not in the same way.

And so our hope for a return home always lies in the future.

This is that strange dynamic of our faith that our longing for home, for home, you know, that's a return thing, that's a back-again thing, is to a place that we've never been.

Our longing for home exists in the new heavens and the new earth.

Now, what is our faithful return?

You know, the faithfulness, the the way that we get to understand the faithfulness of God to us is not just like the way Jacob did, where he sees, I came back to where God was.

We have something much greater than that.

You know, in in Jesus, we see that it is not just that God brought us back to some particular geographic land of promise.

It is that God himself has come to where we are.

God himself did not leave us to wander, but he himself came to where we are.

That we might have an absolute trust in his faithfulness to us, that he would not let us wander.

He is our home.

That when God came, he came not just to return us somewhere as we are now, but to make us the type of people who would be fit to go home.

So that we might unashamedly say our names to God again.

Because he would take the punishment for our sin, remove our shame from before him.

He would cleanse us as Jacob and as the Israelites tried to cleanse themselves before returning to the place of worship.

Jesus would accomplish that cleansing in our hearts by atoning for our sins on the cross.

And then Jesus goes to prepare a place for us and promises his return once again, his return, where he establishes the new heavens and the new earth, and we live with him eternally in that place that is finally home and that we have finally been transformed to receive.

Well, how do we experience that?

What does that mean for us now?

Don't you see?

If that is the story that we're in, then this is why we lead lives of faith.

Because faith holds fast to this promise.

Just like Jacob had to hold fast to the promise of the land, we hold fast to the promise of the new heavens and the new earth.

And what have we been given?

Not just a return to a land, but the very Son of God who atones for us and is present with us now.

We hold fast to that promise.

Over the past month, I read this book called Faith in the Wilderness.

And it's a collection of essays, basically a collection of sermons, from written in 2020 by pastors of Chinese house churches.

So so Chinese house church pastors.

So there's house churches, right?

In China.

They have pastors, they wrote these.

One says this as we continue to live in chaos.

We long for that clear glass sea.

You know, he's using language from the book of Revelation to look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, where there's this clear glass sea.

However, it is our faith in Christ that connects our present sea of chaos to that clear sea of glass.

In the final scene, we will sing with all saints: great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty, just and true are your ways.

Even though we feel a gap remains between our experience and biblical proclamation, we ask God's Holy Spirit to help us embrace the truth with faith.

Although we remain living on earth, through our faith in Christ, we are already living with the risen Christ.

We do not fully understand many of God's ways, but we must learn to trust him like children, to trust his sovereignty, that he is the Lord of grace, as well as his works and his ways.

Dear brothers and sisters, we need to embrace this reality of life on earth.

There is a hope.

A hope of returning home to a home you've never been.

You can participate in that hope now, a resting of your soul, that transformation of your heart.

Because Christ has returned to us.

He came to us to seek and save the lost, those who have been ultimately exiled.

I know you have this in your heart, that sense of exile.

So the Christian life is one of a double movement.

It is one of a present reception, of the assurance of the Lord's faithfulness to us in what Christ has shown, in the work that Christ has accomplished.

It is done, it is finished.

And we hold that by faith.

And yet we look forward to that place that we know we are not at yet, that our hearts long for, to that place of home in our Father's presence.

As he says our names.

How clearly and preciously Jesus meets it.

Are there any questions today?

Great, that means we covered it.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 23 and following, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

We gather at the table, the table that Jesus called us to, to remember what he has done for us.

Why is it that we remember the sacrifice that he made, the breaking of his body and the pouring out of his blood?

Why do we remember it?

Remember it, something that's happened, like that home that's been left.

Why do we remember it?

Because it shows us the steadfastness of his promise to come back again.

That all the brokenness and the shattering that we experience now that remind us constantly this is not home.

I am unsettled here, and the world is unsettled around me.

This is not home.

Well, we remember he's come back to restore us to himself and to make this place home again.

That is the hope of all who are in Christ.

So come to him.

Learn to remember him, the work that he has done.

Make that return.

Come back to the dining hall and remember this is what it felt like back then.

Oh, it will feel all the more then.

I'll be able to have the thing itself as the person I'm meant to be.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we thank you for your loving kindness towards us.

Lord, you are one who came into the world so that we might be brought back into the courts of heaven.

Lord, you have entered into our exile so that we might be returned home.

Let us hold fast to what you have accomplished.

The destruction of our enemies on the cross, so that sin and death cannot keep us from you.

The faithfulness that you have shown to us in being with us wherever we have gone.

Lord, train our hearts to look forward to that future.

You are faithful to return.

You will make all things new.

We praise you, Lord.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.