Yeah, hopefully I can have that introduction every time I preach. That's pretty sweet.
Yeah, I'm excited to be here with you guys this morning. I'm surprised anyone even showed up.
It's eight degrees outside, it's a frozen tundra, and you guys braved it and came here.
So I commend you guys. Give yourselves a round of applause. This is impressive.
This is a lot of fun.
Normally I'm the guy up here giving hilarious announcements and making you guys all laugh,
but today I get to preach to you, and so I'm really excited about that.
But before I get into it, I want to introduce myself a little further and tell you kind of more of my story,
how I got here on stage and what it means to be a slight pastor.
Like you, I was once a WSU student. I came here in 2005 from Bellingham, Washington.
I've got one guy from Bellingham. That's my boy right there.
Two guys? Sweet. All right. So I came here in 2005, wanted to study civil engineering,
so I did that. I came here to Pullman for two reasons, basically to have fun and be away from my parents
and to get this sweet engineering degree. So I came here, did that in four years.
But what happened, I grew up in the church and came here and kind of fell away from my faith
and began to just pursue just the party scene and got my entire identity wrapped up in my career.
So I pursued just my engineering degree and my grades and my classes are really hardcore.
But what happened in December of 2008, which if you guys are mostly freshmen here or sophomores,
you were 13 years old in 2008, so you wouldn't care less about the economy crashing.
You were probably just trying to get a date or trying to clear up your acne. It's middle school, man.
But for me, in 2008, December, I was a senior in college and I was really...
So the economy crashes and all of a sudden my shiny new job was not waiting for me when I graduated
in the following May or spring. So the entire spring semester, my senior year of college
was incredibly rocky and back and forth, I fell into this spiral of depression
and just really wrestling with who am I and asking huge questions of what am I here for?
Why am I even here? And all of a sudden, this just giant idol in my life had been pulled out and now it's nothing.
I went further into alcohol and just partying and just trying to numb my reality and trying to figure out
how can I just survive this semester?
But luckily, God began to really move my life and through a random series of events,
I started coming to resonate, coming to village, actually end up going on a Tijuana,
a Mexico trip over spring break and came back from that trip forever changed.
God rescued me out of my darkness, out of my sin, out of my destruction that I was heading for.
God rescued me out of that and I got baptized that semester, graduated from college
and all of a sudden I had this brand new heart, I could care less about this engineering degree, this career.
I'm like, all I have, I have Jesus now and that's worth it to me.
I don't care about money, I don't care about career, I don't care about this job,
I have Jesus and that's worth it to me. So I had this brand new heart,
I decided to actually intern with Resonate for two years over in Moscow.
Any vandals here this morning? Crickets. Oh, sweet, all right. Colin, nice.
So yeah, I interned in Moscow for two years and then over the last three years,
I've kind of found myself back in ministry as a site pastor here at WSU.
Got married to my wife, Jessica, who's also on staff.
So we love ministry, love college students and love pursuing what it means to be people of God in Pullman, Washington.
That's kind of in my journey, really rocky to be a site pastor.
But a few weeks ago, or yeah, two weeks ago, we were, my family, Jess and my bro and I,
and my parents were in Disneyland and it was my third time going to Disneyland.
And so it was incredible, tons of fun, but you know how like, there's some things in life where you kind of play it off,
like you get older, you're like, yeah, this would be cool, but you know, I'll play it off like whatever.
So we're standing in line and you know, I'm just kind of playing it cool. It's 7.30 in the morning.
We're getting there before the parking even opens.
As soon as you walk in the doors, like you start like running a little bit like, oh yeah, it's on.
You turn into a kid instantly, right?
But it was so much fun, like reminiscing with my brother about past times that we've been at Disneyland.
And so, but multiple times he would come to me and be like, dude, dude, dude, dude.
Remember that one time when like you tripped and fell and like everyone laughed at you?
And I was like, actually, no, I don't remember that at all. What are you talking about?
Are you making that up? Or a different time he said, dude, dude.
Remember that one time we were riding the roller coaster and like your hat flew off
and I caught it behind you in the seat behind you?
I was like, no, how do you remember this stuff? This is crazy.
So I realize how bad of a memory I have and how much I forget stuff.
But I think so whether you're me and my brother, I think as a culture, we tend to forget things really easily.
I think we tend to have things go in one ear and go out the other ear. We remember nothing.
So I think, you know, if we're not, if we're honest with ourselves, like I think it's finals week.
I get it. You come back from Christmas, like you're going to forget everything you learned this semester.
Maybe not, hopefully not, you know.
So, but I think as a culture, we tend to consume a lot. We're on to the next thing and that's it.
We don't care about remembering anything we ever learned.
So recently I'm reading the Bible and I'm noticing a pattern through God's people, right?
So as God's people, we've been forgetting about God for thousands of years
and this is no more, I think, a better display than in the story of the Exodus.
So if you guys grew up in the church or didn't grow up in the church,
a lot of people know the story of the Exodus, but I want to just kind of give you a snapshot history of what the Exodus was.
So real quick, God came to a guy named Abraham, established a covenant with him, said,
I'm going to be your God. You will be my people. All your descendants will be my people.
Abraham has a son named Isaac. Isaac has a son named Jacob.
Jacob has 12 sons. One of his sons named Joseph.
All his brothers hate him because he's a hotshot, right? He has these weird dreams where he says,
hey, all you guys are going to bow down to me. So his older brothers say, we hate you.
So he beat him up and if they sell him into slavery, he goes to Egypt.
Fast forward a few years. God gives Joseph incredible favor with Egypt.
He becomes second in command and more dreams happen and God tells Joseph, hey, a famine is coming.
So tell the Pharaoh to store up resources and food so you won't starve to death when this famine comes.
So they do that. Meanwhile, Jacob, back in his family, about 70 people have no food.
There's a famine happening. So they travel to Egypt to hopefully come in their kingdom and be taken care of and have his food.
And so they travel to Egypt. Lo and behold, Joseph is there and he pardons his family and says,
hey, come be part of our kingdom and we'll take care of you.
So Jacob and his whole family, all the Hebrews are now being taken care of by Egypt and they're prospering.
They're having all this food. They're growing crops and they're multiplying, right?
So this is a couple hundred years where they're just kind of living life and things are going really well.
This is good, right? But as things go on, the Hebrews, who once had known God, forgot about him,
began to worship the Egyptian gods, began to do the same things the Egyptians were doing.
They began to forget their own God and they began to find their worth and their wealth
and began to just pursue their identity and things of the world.
And so after a while, Pharaoh looks upon the Hebrews. They're multiplying like crazy, like rabbits, apparently.
And he says, man, the Hebrews are getting pretty big in number.
We should probably do something about that. Otherwise, they might try and take us over and overthrow our government.
So they enslaved the Hebrews hardcore. So they're in hard labor, slavery for a couple hundred years, right?
And then finally, they say, God, where are you? We're dying here. We're enslaved. We need you.
God listens to their cry, to their prayer, and he sends a deliverer named Moses.
Moses goes to Pharaoh and says, let my people go. We've been enslaved to you for long enough. Let us go.
He says, no. So then commenced the ten plagues of Egypt where God sends crazy stuff, right?
He turns the river into blood. He sends frogs. Frogs cover the entire land.
All the dust turns to gnats and lice and covers the entire Egyptian people.
And then finally, the last straw is God sends his spirit throughout the entire region, the spirit of death, right?
So God tells Moses, if you paint on your doorpost, if you sacrifice a lamb and you paint blood on your doorpost,
the spirit of God will pass over your household and spare your firstborn child.
If not, the spirit of God will come and kill your firstborn child.
So this is the mediator of God saying, hey, I will pass over you if you place this blood on your doorpost.
So Moses and all Israel had to do this and God passes over them, but he goes through and the spirit of God kills the firstborn child of all of Egypt.
So Pharaoh, his own son, gets killed and he says, I've had it. That's enough. Get out of here.
And so Moses takes his people and they get out. They start walking towards, they get out of Egypt
and they get to this giant body of water called the Red Sea.
And they're like, well, crap, because they look behind them and they see the entire Egyptian army now pursuing after them.
They change their minds and say, oh, hold up, our entire workforce just left.
So we better chase after them and bring them back. So they start chasing them.
And so God shows up again and parts the Red Sea. So there's giant walls of water with the Hebrews walk through.
And as they get through and safely on the other side of it, the Egyptian army comes in the water and God causes the water to crash down,
killing the entire army. And the Israelites are doing fist pumps on the other side.
We've made it. We're safe. We're free. God has delivered us.
Let's go. They walk through this desert and God causes a bread to fall from the sky.
This is called manna. So the entire time God delivers them, this is called the Exodus.
An Exodus is a mass departure of people. So God delivers the people out of Egypt and says, I'm going to give you a new land,
a land set apart for you, promised land. Along the way, I'll take care of you, feed you bread from the sky.
This is crazy, right? So I think as people, as humans, we tend to remember really good things,
really bad things, and really abnormal things. So that's just typically, I think.
So in the Exodus, you have all three. You have slavery, really bad. You have deliverance, really good.
And you have bread falling from the sky and you have the river turning to blood and frogs everywhere.
That's pretty abnormal, right? And so you would think that the Israelites, the Hebrews would remember this stuff, right?
But we'll keep going with the story. I think a lot of times we tend to forget God because we're discontent.
We think God is holding out on us. Even though God delivered us from Egypt, the Israelites still thought,
I think God is still holding out on us. Second thing, I think temptations of the world, whether it's money or sex or power,
we walk through a series called misdirection. We talked about how the illusions of sex and money and power all distract us from God,
causes us to forget Him. And the last thing is, I think we just, laziness sometimes causes us to forget God.
So the Israelites just said, it's easier, as a comedian says, it's so much easier not to do things than to do things.
It's like so true. Like, if we're so lazy, we could care less about pressing into God.
So what happens is that they're traveling through the desert and Moses gets called by God up to Mount Sinai to speak with them for 40 days.
So they get out of Egypt and they're up on this, Moses is up on this mountain and God is talking to him and saying,
hey, I'm going to give you the 10 commandments, bring these back down the mountain and give them to the people.
So he's there up there for 40 days, has the 10 commandments and tablets, comes back down the mountain.
And what he finds is interesting, right? So he comes down, he finds that people have built this golden cow.
They had melted all the jewelry in their rings and they formed it into this probably really crappy looking golden cow.
And they were worshiping this as God. And so I think, I think Moses' initial reaction wasn't like freak out mode.
I think it was like, hmm. So you need to tell me, after God parted the Red Sea, like 500 feet of water on both sides,
we walked through that on dry land. He turned the river into blood. He fed us bread from the sky.
We're safe now, 400 years of slavery, now we're free. And I leave for 40 days and come back.
And you need to tell me, you built a golden cow and you're telling me that's God now? Hmm, yeah, okay.
You guys are playing, right? You're playing, right? No? Then he goes into freak out mode, right?
He's ripping his beard out. He's tearing his cloak. He's going crazy, right? Going ballistic.
How dare you forget what God has done, right? How could you forget this stuff?
You saw it with your own eyes. How could you forget this is who our God is? Not that golden cow.
That's an Egyptian idol worship. What are you guys doing?
And so Moses does is he calls this intervention, right? He calls the entire people together and he says,
hey, listen, y'all, we've got to have a little conversation, a little talk.
It's basically a sermon and it's called Deuteronomy, right? So this is the fifth book in the Bible
and Deuteronomy itself means second law. So the first law was not given to the Israelites in this time.
This is the second law. So basically that means this ain't new news, right?
Moses is saying, hey, I'm preaching to you a sermon you've already heard before.
And so if you've ever thought any of Keith's sermons were long and boring, try reading Deuteronomy.
It's great. It's awful. Like, if you have someone read you 34 chapters of Deuteronomy, you'll fall asleep for sure.
But I was reading this chapter a few weeks ago and it really struck me.
And so I want to read it for you this morning. And so this is a snapshot, kind of a sound bite of Moses's sermon to his people.
So it says this is in Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 11 to 20. So it should be on the screen.
You can follow along in your Bibles on your phones. Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 11 to 20.
So it says, be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God.
Failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I've given you this day.
Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down,
and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied,
then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt,
out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful desert,
that thirsty and waterless land with his venomous snakes and scorpions.
He brought you water out of a hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the desert.
Bread falling from the sky. Something your fathers had never known.
To humble you and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.
You may say to yourself, my power and the strength in my hands have produced this wealth for me.
But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth
and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers as it is today.
If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them,
I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed.
Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.
It's a pretty wordy, but if you could summarize, I think the book of Deuteronomy,
it would be, be careful to remember the Lord your God,
lest you forget him and go back to the same way of living you've been living.
This is not who you want to be. If you don't remember him and keep his commands,
you're going to forget him. So God, God's smart, right?
He knows we're forgetful, so you see him in the Exodus and Deuteronomy,
mandating certain things, these certain rhythms of remembering to help establish these physical actions they would do
to help them remember who they were and who God was.
And so after the Exodus, he establishes this thing called the Passover.
So the Passover is this basically a once a year feast that the people would throw
and they had a three day party, right? They would just eat a ton of food and party and play music
and celebrate what God had done through the Exodus.
And so one thing they would do is they would eat unleavened bread.
So unleavened bread, if you guys are not familiar with bread or you're not culinary students,
basically bread requires leaven or yeast to cause it to rise.
And so basically when they were in Egypt, they couldn't eat,
when they were about to leave, they couldn't eat leavened bread because it took too long for it to rise.
So you wouldn't see anybody, if Moses buss into your house and says,
hey man, we've got to go, we're out of here.
And you said, nah, man, I'm waiting for my bread to rise.
I got some time to chill, I went for my bread to rise.
No, he'd be out of there, right?
So unleavened bread was like these little wafers, crackers, probably really gross,
but they would eat this unleavened bread once a year to remind them of what that was like to rush out of Egypt
and not have time to eat leavened bread.
So they would do this physical action to remind them of what that was like to leave Egypt.
They would also sacrifice animals and this bloodshed would remind them,
that bold red color would remind them of that time they had to paint blood on their doorposts
and God would pass over their house and spare their household.
They would also, God told them and commanded them to keep the Sabbath.
So he said, rest, reflect, and remember you are once a slave.
So take a day off of work from every week and remember that you are once a slave in Egypt
and press into me, remember me.
If you don't, you're going to forget me.
The last thing God says to do is tell the story, right?
So he says, keep the Passover, keep the Sabbath and tell the story.
So in Deuteronomy 6, it talks about, Moses says in the sermon, he says,
one day your son is going to come to you and ask you,
why do we, your dad, why do we follow this God?
Like why do we keep these traditions?
Why do we eat this nasty bread every year?
Why do we do this stuff?
Moses says, you better have an answer for him, right?
You better tell him the story of the Exodus.
If you don't, you're going to forget it.
So when your son comes to ask you, hey dad, tell me the story of the Exodus.
You say, how much time you got, little man?
Sit down, I got some stories to tell you.
If you don't tell your son, you tell your family the story,
you will forget it ever happened.
If you don't tell him, this is, I think this is really true just of us too.
So as believers in Christ, if your friend comes to ask you like, hey,
why do you follow Jesus?
Like why do you go to church?
Why do you do all this stuff?
If you don't have an answer for them, if your answer is, I don't know man,
I've grew up in a Christian home and I've just been doing it ever since day one.
There's a problem with that answer, right?
That means you don't know what God has really done for you.
So when your friends, some day when you have kids come to ask you,
hey, why do you follow Jesus?
Have an answer for them.
God tells you, tell the story, both of my, how I rescued all of humanity
and how I personally rescued you.
So all throughout the Old Testament, you see that this cycle of Israel,
when they go through deliverance and apathy and slavery.
Deliverance, apathy and slavery.
You see it happening over and over again where God delivers them.
They forget about him.
They get kind of complacent, apathetic and God allows them to be enslaved again.
And so this is cycle.
And God's response to them is repent, remember and repeat.
Repent, remember and repeat that whole process.
Like keep remembering me.
Repent from your sin, turn from your evil ways.
Remember that I delivered you from Exodus, from Egypt out of the Exodus.
This will go well for you if you repent, remember and repeat.
So why do I give you this giant history lesson of the Exodus?
You guys probably only the history you care about is the history of rock and roll
or history of international hip hop.
But I assure you this history lesson is important because this is our history too.
So this is not just a distant story, distant history of some other people,
but this is the history of God's people and we are God's people.
So this history lesson is our history as well because we're part of the same story.
So the Exodus, God's been delivering his people from day one.
He's in the business of redemption.
It's on his business cards.
It's on his name tag.
My name is God.
I redeem people.
My name is Jacob and I eat a lot of pizza and I tend to be a bro.
Do a lot of fist pumps and whatever.
God is, it's all about redemption.
He loses the chains of slavery and bondage.
The Bible was not just a random series of events,
but it's actually an interconnected story and all stories are part of one giant metanarrative.
There is, it's a masterpiece.
It's one story, one theme, one hero and his name is Jesus.
I was reading this week, this guy was talking about how there,
there is a crimson thread woven throughout every single book of the Bible
all leading back to the cross of Jesus.
The entire Bible is pointing back to the person and work of Jesus.
So the Exodus is a foreshadowing of the Exodus of Christ on the cross, right?
So God says, I don't want my people to be living in slavery and bondage forever.
Therefore I will send my deliverance and bring them out and give them freedom.
The same thing is in Christ, right?
This is the gospel.
God says, I don't want my people to be in sin forever.
Therefore I will send my son Jesus to die for them, to, to pass over their sin,
to bring them out, give them freedom.
This is the greater Exodus.
Jesus is, Jesus is referred to in the book of Hebrews as the greater Moses.
So he's, he's Moses only better.
He's eternal.
He's, he's permanent.
His covenant is forever.
So thousands of years after this first Exodus, God sends his son Jesus to rescue us
and deliver us from eternal condemnation, slavery and sin.
This is our Exodus.
This is part of the same story.
So I was listening to a sermon by a guy named Tim Keller this week and he was talking about
how if, if you were, if you were an Israelite and you were traveling from, you know,
Egypt to, you know, you're on your way to the promised land to Canaan,
if someone were to stop you along the way and ask you, hey, who are you?
Like, what are you guys doing and who are you?
Your response would be we were in a foreign land under the sentence of death in bondage,
but we took shelter under the blood of the lamb, but our mediator let us out and we crossed over.
And now we are on our way to the promised land, but we're not there yet.
And his presence is in our midst.
That's God.
And he'll stay with us until we get home.
So I think if you were, if you are a Christian and someone were to ask you the same thing,
hey, who are you?
What are you about?
What are you people doing in this room Sunday mornings in Ta'adah?
Your response would be freakishly similar.
Right?
You'd say, yeah, we were in a foreign land under death and sin.
We were under the sentence of death and slavery and bondage, but we took shelter under the blood of the lamb.
Christ died for us.
He's a lamb.
His blood covers us.
We passed over.
We crossed over from death to life.
And now we are on our way to the promised land, but we're not there yet.
Heaven's waiting for us.
We're not there yet.
But the Holy Spirit's presence is in our midst and he will stay with us until we get home.
So we are, we are part of the same story, man.
We are the exodus of Egypt is a foreshadowing of the exodus of sin.
And our answer is the same.
I've been thinking about like, why do we do church?
Why do we gather together and worship and sing songs?
And why do we read the Bible?
Like, why do we go to village?
And what's all this tradition all about?
And I think that I think you can say there's multiple answers to that question, but I think
the main thing we do, why we gather, why we do church and why we, we gather in community
is to remember what God has done.
So these physical actions cement in our memory what God has done.
So we sing songs, we read the lyrics and we, we raise our hands and we identify with that.
We gather in a village and we get around community.
We get around people who remind us who we are in Christ and who Christ is to us.
We celebrate Christmas and Easter because these are traditions once a year.
We throw a party and say, look at what God has done.
God sent his son to be born of a virgin on Christmas.
That's good news.
And Easter, he died on a cross and he was raised again.
That's why once a year we celebrate Christmas and Easter.
We celebrate once a week a Sabbath and say, today I'm going to worship God, take a rest,
reflect and remember what he's done for me.
If I don't, I'm probably going to forget because here's the danger, right?
So if, I think if, if you were in Israelite back in the day in, in the Exodus coming out of Egypt,
if you were to keep the, keep the Sabbath and you were still doing all traditions of,
of the Passover and you were sacrificing lambs, but you weren't telling your kids the story of God's deliverance.
I think you begin to functionally forget what he has done.
So I don't think they forget the imagery.
You can never forget walking through, you know, a tunnel of water, right?
You can't physically forget that.
I don't think, but I think you can functionally forget what that was.
And so I think the same thing goes for us.
If we're not telling the story, if we're going to church, reading the Bible,
going to village and doing the whole routine, but we're not telling people about Jesus.
We're not telling the story of both of how God has, has rescued humanity,
as well as how God has personally rescued and delivered you from sin and condemnation and death.
You're going to functionally forget what God has done.
You're going to begin to distrust him, complain, and you're going to start building golden cows and saying,
that's my God now.
This money and power in his career, this, this girl, this guy, that's my functional savior now.
You're beginning to forget who God is.
Even in the midst of coming to church, reading the Bible.
There's power in stories, man.
I'll never forget the day that I received an envelope in the mail from my grandma.
I was a senior in college that semester in college where Super Rocky,
I didn't know what direction was up, but I got an envelope in the mail one day from my grandma.
Random, I don't get mail from my grandma just, you know, out of the blue ever.
And so a few days prior, I was sitting in a resonant service at night
and I felt that the prompting of the Holy Spirit probably for the first time in my entire life.
They announced this trip to Tijuana for spring break and I felt like something was being to happen in my heart,
where I'm like, this sounds really cool, but A, I can't afford it.
And B, I think mission trips are for Christian people, right?
I'm not really, I mean, if you saw what I was about, I've been a part of the last four years in college.
I'm not sure you allow me to go on this trip, but there is God.
You have it, take it or leave it.
So I went home that night, went to bed, whatever.
So a few years later though, I got this envelope in the mail from my grandma.
And so I opened it up and inside of it is a check written to me for the exact amount of money that my mission trip to Tijuana cost.
And so I hadn't told anybody about this.
I didn't call my mom or my grandma or anybody.
I didn't tell anybody about this trip.
So at first I'm a little freaked out, right?
I'm like, this is weird.
So I call my grandma immediately and say, grandma, what's this money for?
She said, Jacob, I woke up in the middle of the night a few days ago this week,
and I felt like God was telling me, you need some money.
Do you need it?
And my heart was like, I couldn't even speak.
My heart melted inside my chest. I'm like, I think I do, grandma, I think I do.
And so I decided to go on this mission trip.
I'm like, this must be a sign from God.
Like this is when I experienced the power of prayer.
Like God really listens to me.
He listens to us and He's for us.
He loves us.
And so I'm like, apparently prayer works.
And I grew up in the church and didn't really think much of it, but I'm like, whoa.
So I'm like, okay, I got to go. This trip sounds like it should be.
It's my destiny to go on this trip.
And so I go on the spring break trip.
I meet my future wife, Jess, on this trip.
I meet some of the guys that I've become best friends with on this trip.
Fell in love with Jesus on this trip.
Fell in love with Christian community on this trip.
I come home like wrecked.
My entire life is just upside down.
I'm like, everything I've known my entire life has been wrong and Jesus is the answer.
And so I had this monumental foundational transformation where I'm like,
everything I've been a part of for the last 10 years of my life is no longer even remotely interesting to me.
And all I care about is Jesus and getting to know Him and being a part of this new family.
So this is crazy, right? This story is incredible.
But a few weeks ago, I met this guy and we were kind of swapping our stories.
And I was telling this part of my story and I realized about halfway through,
I haven't told this in a long time.
I began to almost forget or distrust that this even happened.
I'm like, this actually happened. It did happen.
I began to think that if I haven't told the story in so long,
I've almost began to forget it even happened at all.
And this is why telling your story is so crucial and so powerful.
You could be going to church, you could be doing all this stuff,
but if you weren't telling people what God has done in your life,
you won't really believe who Jesus is.
You won't really believe He's transformed your life.
So when God moves in your life, tell the story often, frequently, all the time.
There's power in telling stories.
What's good news though is that even though in the midst of our facelessness and our forgetfulness,
God never forgets us.
God is a loving Father.
He is faithful when we are faceless.
When He set up His covenant with Abraham, He said,
I will never leave you or forsake you or forget you.
I will be your God. You will be my people.
So the picture of God is kind of like this prodigal son story where he's saying,
hey, I'm hanging out on the front porch waiting for you to come home.
So he's not saying, hey, I want you to live on the front porch.
I want you to go out in the world and live in the world.
But if you never come home and hang out on the front porch with me and remember who I am
and look at my face and you're going to forget what I look like.
You're going to forget what I sound like, what my word sounds like.
If you're hanging out in the world and never come back and hang out on the front porch with Jesus,
you're going to forget who He is.
If you weren't telling the story of Jesus, you will functionally begin to distrust that He's real.
He's alive and He's still moving.
So if you're here this morning and you, if you don't know Jesus,
if you're here and you're new, like, I'm just, I'm here because someone told me there was free coffee.
So that's why I'm here.
I'm glad you're here because this is good news, right?
The exodus of the Israelites was only for God's people, the Israelites.
But the exodus now is an eternal covenant, eternal exodus from sin.
That invitation is for anybody.
The freedom from sin, from slavery, from condemnation, from depression, from shame, from guilt.
Before you even cry out for deliverance, God's already sent to deliver.
He's already sent Jesus.
He's already rescued humanity.
All you have to do is believe in Jesus and He will set you free.
If you were here this morning and you know Jesus, you're growing up in the church and you're just kind of like,
man, I'm just here because I'm supposed to be here.
Or I'm just, you're not really sure where you're staying with God and you're kind of like apathetic.
And how do I get back to know God and remember Him?
There's going to be points in your life where you're going to forget who God is and how special He is.
If I have some questions here to help kind of provoke your heart.
If you're sitting here this morning and you're like, man, I'm not sure where I sit with this.
Hopefully this will help to clarify that.
Where have you forgotten God?
What has distracted you from pursuing Him?
Where have you just plain gotten lazy?
Where have you just said, it's way easier not to do things than to do things.
You're just going to chill out, check out.
Are you discontent?
Are you tired of waiting on Him in this timing?
Have you given up on Him?
Has temptation blinded you and caused you to forget Him?
Has money, sex or power or relationships blinded you from the goodness of God and caused you to functionally forget Jesus?
Where have you misplaced your trust in something that's created instead of your actual Creator?
Where have you built a golden cow and you are foolishly worshiping this created thing instead of Jesus who is the Creator Himself?
Are you telling the big story?
Are you telling your personal story?
Are you telling the story at all?
There's power in the story, not only to save.
In the Gospel there's power to save.
But it's also the power to help us remember who Jesus is and how special He is.
We're not careful, the Gospel becomes ordinary.
We chill out every week, we kind of do our thing and the Gospel just becomes, yeah, Jesus died for my sins and that's cool.
I'm going to heaven, but there's no passion in that.
There's no power in that.
We're not careful, the Gospel becomes ordinary.
So God calls us to remember and says, He connects the past and the future in a single thought.
He says, as you remember, this is going to connect obedience to you.
So He says, remembrance leads to obedience, in the moment, wherever you are this morning, looking backwards helps us go forwards.
Because remembering God and remembrance of His deliverance will lead to obedience.
If you forget who God is, you begin to go back to our old way of life.
This is so true, man.
Like looking forward to this break coming up, you guys have like 30 days.
Four weeks to go home from Christmas and you're going to go back to your same family, same friends.
And what's coming for you, you know what's coming for you.
If you're a freshman, it's your first semester going home, I'll tell you what's coming for you.
So you get home, you've got a couple days to chill out and hang with friends and family.
But then you've got about 25 days of like, man, what do I do now?
I've got some video games, I'm going to eat a lot of cookies and not work out and just get blimp up.
And we're just totally okay with that.
But along with that physical laziness, we get really spiritually lazy too.
And so all the momentum you had this semester, maybe you've been growing in Christ,
all of a sudden you kind of get hit by this invisible wall of Christmas break.
You're like, man, fine, I can just rest and just like chill out and just check out and spend some time with Jesus.
Maybe I'll kind of sleep in and kind of see what happens.
And I guarantee if you don't have a plan, when you go home from Christmas, you will functionally forget who God is.
You will fall into old sin, old ways of life.
The same friends who are waiting for you back home are going to call you back in the same way of life.
Maybe you lived in high school or last summer.
So have a plan, plan ahead, know what's coming for you.
Look backwards to know how to go forwards.
God knows that we are prone to wander.
We are prone to leave Him and forget Him and we love ourselves over Him.
And so this break, remember that we are prone to wander.
We are sinful or selfish.
We're not going to just automatically, magically press into Jesus and know Him better over Christmas than we did before.
And so just to kind of close and just to send you out, I have three action steps for you guys.
If you're taking notes, use your chance.
So over break, I got three action steps. This is actually just kind of in life.
Like you should do this all the time.
But specifically over break, do these three things to help you remember who God is and who you are in Christ.
First thing, the church is the answer to them all, right?
Read the Bible.
We say it every week, but read the Bible because the Bible was God's word.
It reminds you who you are, reminds you who God is, and is planned for you.
Write stuff down, right?
So Deuteronomy 6 talks about, most of it says to the people, he says,
buying these words around your neck, write them in your house, post them up all of your walls.
You never can be out of the sight of God's word.
Read the Bible, write it down, memorize stuff, familiarize yourself with God's word,
hang out on the front porch with Jesus, and spend time with them.
Second thing, get in good Christian community.
If you go home and you're hanging out with the same friends, you will not, if it's you versus like 10 of your other boys who are drinking beer and partying,
you are not going to affect those 10.
Those 10 are going to affect you.
So have a plan.
Get around people who challenge you to be more like Christ.
Get in good Christian community who would challenge you.
Stay in contact with your friends here in Pullman.
Text them, call them, send weird Snapchat videos, whatever you got to do, man.
Just stay in good Christian community.
If you don't, you're going to kind of begin to morph into the people around you.
This looks like the Israelites, right?
They're just hanging out in Egypt, and over time, they're kind of lazy in their spiritual walk,
and they're going to look a lot like the Egyptians.
They're sacrificing their kids.
They're building golden cows.
If you're not careful, the people around you are going to affect the way you live.
Last thing is tell the story.
This is the part of the church that I think we're missing, right?
We're reading the Bible okay.
We're kind of hanging out and doing community okay, but I'm not sure how well we're telling the story,
or how often we're telling the story.
So especially for just to time out, there's 20 people in this venue who are getting baptized tonight.
That's a big deal, right?
So hey, if you're getting baptized tonight, would you stand up real quick?
I want to just give you a round of applause.
Right there, right there.
Cool.
So I want to speak just for a second to you guys specifically, man.
Like, over break, tell the story as much as possible.
Like, your baptism is a big deal.
I got baptized in my senior year in college, and I will never forget that moment.
Like, never stop telling your story.
Never stop remembering that baptism.
That's what we do baptism, not only to symbolize what's happening within your heart
and to tell the whole church about it, but for you to remember that stuff.
When you get in that tepid, probably gross water you come back out,
you know, if you're last, there's going to be some sweat in there, maybe some hair.
But it's awesome, right?
You will never forget that moment.
You will never forget it.
It'll be warm.
Sorry, that's gross.
I'd probably just dissuade like half the crowd to never get baptized at a resident church.
But we got a heater, sorry.
When I got baptized, we didn't have money back then, so it was cold.
So things are better now.
But never stop telling the story, man.
Like, when you get baptized, that's a big deal.
Invite your friends tonight, invite your family, get them here,
and let them watch your video and hear your story.
So over break, don't only tell the story, the macro, you know,
like the meta-narrative story of God's deliverance and exodus of all of humanity.
But don't also forget to tell your personal story.
How has God moved in your life personally?
What has God done for you that you've forgotten to tell people about?
If you're not telling your story, you'll be in a distrust that ever happened in the first place.
One really cool thing that Jesus does, to kind of close out this morning,
the night before Jesus is crucified.
He gathers his twelve disciples in a room, and this is during the Passover, right?
So the Bible is just, God is just incredible, right?
So during the Passover, this history, this thousand-year-old tradition,
Jesus dies and is resurrected during the Passover.
So this idea that God passes over us, and if we believe in the blood of Christ and the land,
that he passes over us and gives us freedom and life in him.
So during the Passover feast, during this time, these few days,
Jesus calls his disciples together for dinner called the Last Supper.
At the Last Supper, Jesus says he breaks the bread up, probably unleavened bread,
gnashed the crackers and says, hey, guys, this bread is my body.
This wine or this juice, probably wine, is my blood.
And so the disciples are saying, whoa, hold up, Jesus, this is the Passover.
What are you talking about?
You're flipping the script on me right now.
This has been a thousand, you know, ten thousand-year-old tradition, however long it's been.
And now you're saying this bread is now your body and this wine is your blood.
Like, what's going on here?
See, this is the new covenant.
Tomorrow I'm going to die, I'm going to be crucified.
And when I raise again, I'm going to establish a new permanent, eternal covenant,
eternal exodus, a mass departure of people coming away from sin and death and condemnation
and experiencing life, freedom in me.
So do this in remembrance of me.
So Christ says, break this bread, drink this juice and do this in remembrance of me often.
Do this all the time.
This physical action, this symbolic act is going to help you remember my blood.
When you see that blood red juice, remember that my blood was spilled for you.
When you break that bread off that, the crumb off that bread, remember my body was broken for you.
And this is an ancient tradition from day one.
God established this covenant with Abraham.
They've been celebrating the Passover for thousands of years.
So we take communion.
This morning you'll see bread and juice to your left and your right.
We take communion this morning.
If you are in Christ and you believe and you take shelter under the blood of the Lamb,
you take that communion.
You are partaking in an over 10,000 year old tradition that we say,
we want to remember what God has done for us,
lest we forget and turn back to our sin and our old ways.
So this morning, as you take communion, as you respond to worship,
may we be people who remember God, remember what he's done for us,
how he's delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of light.
That's good news.
That's good news.
So if we sing this morning, we raise our hands and raise our voices and say,
yes, I remember what God has done for me, what he's done for all of us,
humanity.
We take the bread and the juice and we break that and we say,
Jesus, I remember.
Help me to never forget.
Holy Spirit, be with me this break as I go out and tell the story.
I remember I read the Bible and I stay in community.
Maybe we remember.
God, man, it's a joy.
It's a joy and an honor to be your people.
You've established your covenant with us thousands of years ago.
This is a tradition.
We gather together and worship you.
We break bread and we drink juice and we sing songs of remembrance.
We worship you, God.
You are good.
You are worthy.
And we love you.
But God, we are prone to wander.
We are prone to forget.
We are prone to leave the God that we love and go back to our old way of life,
our old sin, our own patterns.
God, help us in this moment, guys.
We look backwards to know how to go forwards.
We know that remembrance of you leads to obedience in you.
God, be with us this week.
No one is immune to falling away from you, God, myself included.
God, give us the strength and the passion to press into you, to pursue you,
to love you with our entire hearts.
God, may we be people who choose to press into you this break.
God, we love you.
Pray all this and sing all this in our mediator's name,
who has caused us to pass over from death to life
and has given us eternal freedom in you.
In Jesus' name, we pray.
Amen.
