Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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So we are here today, on
the first day of the week, celebrating
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again the resurrection of the dead,
or from the dead, of the Lord
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Jesus Christ, and here I want
to focus on one particular verse that is
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in this passage, and versus one
through twelve, verse that calls us to
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remember. Will think about that this
morning, what it means to remember the
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resurrection, what it means to remember
God's word in our lives. Let's read
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now. Let me God bless it
to us. Luke Twenty Four. But
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on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to
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the tomb, taking the spices they
had prepared, and they found the stone
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rolled away from the tomb, but
when they went in they did not find
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the body of Jesus. While they
were perplexed about this, behold two men
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stood by them and dazzling apparel,
and as they were frightened and bowed their
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faces to the ground, the men
said to them, why do you seek
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the living among the dead? He
is not here but has risen. Remember
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how he told you, why,
while he was still in Galilee, that
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the son of man must be delivered
into the hands of Sinful Man men and
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be crucified on the be and be
crucified and on the third day rise.
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And they remembered his words and,
returning from the tomb, they told all
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these things to the eleven and to
all the rest. Now it was Mary
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Magdalen and Joanna and Mary, the
mother of James, and the other women
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with them who told these things to
the apostles. But these words seemed to
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them in idle tale. They did
not believe them. The Peter Rose and
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ran to the tomb. Stooping and
looking in, he saw the linen cloths
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by themselves and he went home marveling
at what had happened. In one of
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my favorite scenes from the chronicles of
Narnia and Jill, the hero of the
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story of the Silver Chair, one
of the heroes in that story. She's
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on a quest to go and rescue
this prince and as land, a lion
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meets her and guides her on this
journey. He gives her instructions and I
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want to read what he says to
her. He gives her some signs and
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says to look through these signs on
her journey, on her quest. They
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will guide her. And he says
this to her. But first remember,
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remember, remember, the signs say
them to yourself when you wake in the
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morning and when you lie down at
night, when you wake in the middle
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of the night, and whatever strange
things may happen to you, let nothing
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turn your mind from following the signs. And secondly, I give you a
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warning. Here on the mountain,
I've spoken clearly to you. I will
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not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain the air is
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clear and your mind is clear.
As you dropped down into Narnia, the
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air will thicken. Take great care
that it does not confuse your mind,
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and the signs which you have learned
here will not look at all as you
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expect them to look when you meet
them there. That is why it is
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so important to know them by heart
and pay attention and pay no attention to
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appearances. Remember the signs and believe
the signs. Nothing else matters. Well,
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as you may know, Jill does
not remember the signs. She forgets
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the signs. She forgets them by
not repeating them, by not by not
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trust, by trusting and that show, they'll just be there. As land
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gives her these specific instructions to call
them to mind, which is what it
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means to remember and over time,
they grow cold and fuzzy. When she
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finds herself in a terrible predicament and
is asked to repeat the signs, she
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discovers that she can't do it.
She assumes that she remembers rather than remembering,
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and perhaps that has happened to you
as well. When it comes to
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the word of God, to the
signs, to the truths of the resurrection,
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versus that you once knew and once
heard are now a little bit fuzzy,
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concepts that you could once articulate clearly
and precisely, with differentiating categories,
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using the right qualifications, making sense
of things. Now it's kind of muddled
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and it's hard to explain. Of
course, we all none of us has
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a superior minds. That is just
ever, ever growing right most of us.
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As we get older, we tend
to lose some of that ability,
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a lose our ability to remember,
to stay sharp. But then again,
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it's also true that many people,
as they get older, they follow the
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well worn paths. The things that
they have spent remembering and practicing their whole
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lives over and over and over again
tend to be the paths that they continue
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to follow. Remembering is important in
the Bible, talks about remembering quite a
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lot. In fact, remembering is
repeated over and over and over and over
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in the scriptures, perhaps for a
reason, not only to highlights, that
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is importance, but God himself is
helping us in the remembering by the repetition.
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Perhaps you've been reading a portion of
scripture before you you say to yourself,
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didn't he just say this a few
verses before? Why are all these
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instructions being repeated two chapters later after
we just had them, you know,
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two chapters before. Perhaps one of
the reasons is that God wants us to
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remember. He is repeating the instructions, he's repeating the stories, he is
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telling them over and over again,
perhaps with different ways and in different contexts,
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but nevertheless to help us to remember. The Bible itself is a book
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for Minds, a book for memories
of Believers. Listen to how Peter starts
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his second letter, Second Peter One. Well, that's not the start.
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A little bit later on he says, this is now the second letter that
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I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring
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up your sincere mind by way of
reminder. That's what Peter intends to do
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in his first letter and his second
letter. He intends to speak to these
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people and stir up their sincere mind
by way of a reminder. He wants
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to remind them of things. Paul
says this in his letters to he'll say
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things like, I know you know
this, but I am here to remind
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you that this is these sorts of
things should never be an annoyance to us.
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They should be our delight. It's
a help that the Lord gives to
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us at the beginning of Deuteronomy and
Deuteronomy Eight, verse Eighteen, speaking of
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this covenant that God is making with
his people as they enter into the promised
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land, he says this. You
shall remember the Lord, your God,
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for it is he who gives you
power to get wealth, that he may
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confirm his covenant that he swore to
your father's as it is to this day.
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In fact, throughout Deuteronomy, over
and over and over again, there
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is the command to remember, to
remember, to remember. In fact,
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in Deuteronomy and in other places of
scripture, memory is even embedded God,
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or the call to remember is embedded
in our cupon concept of time itself.
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Listen to Deuteronomy undred fifteen. You
shall remember that you were a slave in
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the land of Egypt, and the
Lord your God brought you out from there
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with a mighty hand and outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord Your God commanded
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you to keep the Sabbath Day.
It's not amazing. Remember this. Therefore,
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keep that God calls his people to
embd in there. The way they
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live their lives, the way they
order their days, a practice of memory,
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of memorizing, of remembering. They
are to set aside a day every
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week to remember the covenant, to
remember who they are, to row,
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to place in their minds and in
their families and in their people that we
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are people who were slaves, who
are brought out of the land of Egypt
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with a mighty hand, in an
outstretched arm. Christians continue this practice on
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the Lord's Day, the first day
of the week, when Jesus rose from
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the dead and let us, with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,
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out of the slavery of Sin,
out of slavery, from death and bondage
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to the evil one, into a
new kingdom as a new people, a
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kingdom of priests, an everlasting Kingdom
of God. We set it outside this
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day to remember, to remember who
God is and what he has done and
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so strikingly now, even here at
the resurrection on the first day of the
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week, this call to remember appears
again, first in a reminder that they
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did not remember, and then a
call that and then and then the in
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verse eight that they did remember.
So Jesus arises from the dead. There
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are these two angels there and they
speak to the women that the tomb.
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They say he's not here and he's
not risen. Remember how he told you
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then, in other words, they're
telling them to call to their minds things
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that they had previously and been told. It told and what have they've been
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told while he was still in Galilee, before all of this happened? Verse
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Seven, that the son of man
must be delivered into the hands of Sinful
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men and be crucified on the Third
Day and be crucified and on the third
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day rise. This doesn't just appear
here. If you look back through the
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Gospels, you'll find this actually happened
several times and it's written where the Lord
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tells them this is what is going
to happen, I am going to be
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crucified, I am going to rise
on the third day. But they hadn't
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remembered. We see that in their
actions. We see that in the disciples
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actions as well as these women do
remember it. In Verse Eight, we
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read and they remembered his words.
All he did say that. Oh what
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it would have happened if they had
remembered. We wonder how might have their
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reactions been different? How might have
Peter's reactions been different there in the courtyard
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or in the garden of the ASEMONE? How, my Judas is, reactions
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have been different if he had remembered
what God had said? They didn't remember.
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And even as these women do remember, and now they go and tell
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to the eleven what all the rest, sadly, they don't believe them.
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These words seem to them an idle
tale. Why? Why did those words
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seem to be an idle tale when
they were the words that Jesus himself had
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said? Maybe because he was dead? That would be hard, I don't
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know. But they certainly hadn't remembered, and now there was an opportunity to
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learn again. Peter begins to listen, he rises, he runs to the
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tomb, stooping any looking in,
he sees the linen clothes and he goes
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home marveling at what had happened.
So we see that memory, remembering the
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Lord in his work, that particularly
these chief actions, in the promises that
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he makes, are essential to who
we are as a people. When we
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don't remember, we fall apart.
When we don't remember, we are no
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longer tied to him. We are
a people of words, a people of
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a book. Many other religions make
things up about their gods and they have
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no problem with this. It's not
sort of an intellectual or religious problem to
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have changing truths about their deities.
It just it's okay, it's not a
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big why? But it's a big
deal for us. Why do we why
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do we make such a big deal
about God's wording being infallible and unchanging and
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always true and not contradictory? Other
people don't seem to have a problem with
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their gods, at their deities,
their powers, changing and morphing and moving.
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Why is that a big deal to
us? Because we are called to
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remember his words, not speculate about
him, not make them up, not
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hope they were something different, but
to remember the things that he has said.
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And other religions, as long as
you kind of have a general path
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for righteousness and a general way to
practice of religious kinds of things, an
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idol that you can keep around.
It basically works. We're stricter, really
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not in a bad way, though. We have this principle that says everything
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depends on the word, everything depends
on the truthfulness of what God has said,
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everything depends on that reliability and the
life that comes to it from it.
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As a result. This comes from
the word itself. Hebrews for twelve.
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The word of God is living and
active, sharper than any two edged
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sword, piercing to the division of
soul and spirit, of joints and of
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marrow, and discerning the thoughts and
intentions of the heart. Second Timothy and
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sixteen. All scripture is breathed out
by God and profitable for teaching, for
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reproof, for correction and for training
in righteousness that the man of God may
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be complete equipped for every good work. Romans and sixteen. Paul stamps his
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foot verbally and says I am not
ashamed of the Gospel. I'm not embarrassed
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because it's the power of God.
The Gospel is the power of God for
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salvation to everyone who believes, to
the Jew first and also to the Greek.
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Everyone who believes what Paul The Gospel, the word of God, the
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promise of the Resurrection, the promise
that Jesus died for our sins and rose
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from the dead. Are Remembering,
we might say, is centered in this
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chief work of God. Are Remembering
is centered in his word that has come
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to us in this gracious way.
Or, if I could put it in
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this way, I'm are remembering flows
from God's remembering, or we remember because
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he remembered us. He gave us, in our sin, promises of grace
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that, if we hold to in
our hearts, we receive all these blessings
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from him, because God has been
faithful to his own word. Let me
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make this a little clearer. Listen
to Psalm one hundred and five eight.
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He remembers his covenant, the word
that he commanded for a thousand generations.
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Here's a good verse from Isaiah,
Forty Three and twenty five. I I
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am he who blots out your transgressions
for my own sake, I will not
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remember your sins. Does God forget
our sins because he is a forgetful being?
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No, he forgets them in the
sense that he's like. He says,
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I'm not going to call them to
mind and hold them against you.
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I'm not going to prosecuting, prosecute
these things against you. Why? Because
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I remember the covenant of Grace that
I made to you, my promise to
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you that I would forgive your sins. Because God remembers his promises, we
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are safe from judgment. So,
thinking about signs again, Jill and her
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signs. Remember the rainbow, for
example, in Genesis UN undred and sixteen,
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God says, when the bow is
in the clouds, I will see
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it and remember the everlasting covenant between
God and every living creature, of all
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the flesh that is on the earth. These are God's promises to us.
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He promises to us that he will
remember his covenant of Grace and as he
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gives that to us, that's what
we are called to remember. I'll just
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a couple things before we finish.
The first is how beneficial this is when
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we do remember and how dangerous it
is when we don't. We know God
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through his word, not apart from
his word, so to fail to remember
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it means we end up like Jill, in a bad situation, struggling,
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even very and often sometimes even in
deadly situations. When we forget the way,
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we lose our way, we stumble. That's what happened with the disciples
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here. They're scared, they're hiding, they're afraid, unnecessarily so. Why?
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Because they didn't remember. When we
depart from God's promises in the Resurrection,
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the promises of the Cross, we
get lost, we get isolated,
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we get alone. God's Word is
like a map. It keeps US moving
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in the right direction. It's also
like a fire that keeps our hearts warm.
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Sometimes we're doing what we ought to
do, but we kind of forget
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why we're doing it, who were
doing it for. We forget about God's
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Love, we forget about as peace, his strength, his goodness, and
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when we do, all can seem
lost. When we struggle, when we
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fight, for example, Paul says
that the things that we endure right now,
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you can think about, whatever is
going on in your life, the
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things that we in do are right
now are a light, momentary affliction compared
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to the eternal weight of glory that
is to be revealed on the last day.
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So whatever you're suffering, no matter
how hard it is or, I
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mean, how many tears you've cried
over it this week, Paul calls it
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a light, momentary affliction, and
that would be very cruel thing to say
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for those of us who legitimately suffer
very hard things. If the comparison we're
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not true. And know how he
talks about the comparison. He says it's
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not even worth comparing to the eternal
way of glory that is to be revealed.
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But if you don't know about the
eternal weight of glory, if you
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don't know about what's coming, if
you don't know about the resurrection of Christ,
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if you don't know about our resurrection
in him on that last day,
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blite momentary affliction is going to not
feel very light or momentary. When we
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don't remember God's words, when we
don't repeat the signs and when they get
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fuzzy and distant, we put ourselves
in danger. Listen to what God speaks
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in revelation three, to the church
in Sardis and to the angel of the
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Church of Sardas right, the words
of him who has the seven spirits of
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God in the seven stars. I
know your works. You have the reputation
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of being alive, but you are
dead. Wake up and strengthen what remains
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and is about to die, for
I have not found your works complete in
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the side of my God. Remember, then, what you have received and
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heard, keep it and repent.
If you will not wake up, I
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will come like a thief and you
will not know at what hour I come
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against you. That's a dangerous situation. The Church of Sardas is in a
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dangerous situation and they are receiving the
word of God, much like these angels
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spoke to these women at the Tomb, saying remember, wake up, wake
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up, remember what you were told. The good news of God's word,
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though, is that when we hold
fast to God's word, even it's an
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even if it's at the very last
moment, it can be our salvation and
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a joy to our hearts. Remember
Jonah, to Jonah, chapter two,
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verse seven. He prays and he
says, when my life was fainting away.
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This is him as he's being clobbered
by seaweeds and pulled down into the
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depths of the earth. He says, reflecting on that, when my life
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was fainting away, I remembered the
Lord and my prayer came to you into
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your Holy Temple. In first less
Lonians, for Paul Talks about the resurrection
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that is to come when Jesus returns, and he finishes by saying, therefore,
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encourage one another with these words.
Talk to each other about this,
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tell each other about this, and
you might say yourself, yeah, but
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they already know. Yes, they
do, and they're supposed to remember and
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you're supposed to remember, and that
doesn't happen without the repetition. Remembering is
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remembering, it's calling to mind these
things again, and so, though we
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may feel fail to remember, and
that may put us in grave danger,
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if we remember, even in the
midst of great danger, there is hope.
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So follow the example of the psalmist
and Psalm forty two six and my
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God, my soul is cast down
within me. Therefore, I remember you.
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If your soul is cast down,
this is the time to remember.
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This is the time to cling to
the promises of God in Christ. And
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lastly, when we remember these things, that news, that word, begins
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to spread. That's what happens with
these women here at the Tomb. They
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remembered his words and then they went
and told them to the eleven. And
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then will happen with the eleven later
as well, Jesus promises, as he
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meets with them right before he is
crucified. He says to them the Holy
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Spirit, after I die, the
Holy Spirit will I will send my Holy
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Spirit and he will cause you to
remember everything that I'm telling you right now.
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I wonder if they thought to themselves, why would we forget, which,
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of course, what we say to
ourselves. Why would I forget this?
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I don't need to remember it,
but we do, and God helps
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us. The God gave them their
his Holy Spirit, and they remembered,
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and then they took those words and
they spread them into all of the world,
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so that even we can also remember. When we remember the word,
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we become people who can now pass
on the word. We can be people
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that share the word both outside of
our church, outside of our families,
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and inside of them as well.
Deuteronomy thirty two seven says remember the days
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of old, consider the years of
many generations. Ask Your father and he
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will show you, your elders and
they will tell you. There are to
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be people among us, especially those
who have been around and if experience the
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things of the Lord, to be
able to pass that on, to share
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it, to steward of that gift
and express it to others. And this
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is the work of God. He
causes these things to be remembered. Psalm
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Ninety eight three. He has remembered
his steadfast, love and faithfulness to the
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House of Israel. All the ends
of the Earth have seen the salvation of
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our God, because God remembers his
promises. We remember them too, and
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all the world here is his word. This is who our God is.
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Let's remember him. Sometimes people wonder
why we repeat things a lot in our
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worship service. The Nice and create
the Apostles creed the Lord's prayer, of
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the Same Commandments, the same Gospel. Now you know the answer, because
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we need to remember and we're forgetful. Through God's Word we come close to
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God. We come to him not
through innovations and speculations, not through new
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things made up, but through the
fixed word he is given, through his
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promises, through his commands, through
his histories, through his palms. We
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draw close to him. To fail
to do so puts us in peril,
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as it did with Jonah, but
it can also save us if we remember
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and believe in time, and it
can save others to let's pray that God
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would help us to remember and that
we would cling fast to his promises.
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In Christ, our heavenly father,
we thank you that you have given us
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the opportunity first to hear your word
and to know it and understand it.
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Having heard it. Lord, let
us not set it aside, but put
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it deep within our hearts, deep
within our minds. Let your word and
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your promises and that are confessed in
them become to us well worn paths,
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maybe repeat them constantly, over and
over and in the places where we find
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ourselves and unfamiliar territory, in places
where we don't really know, let us
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return to your word and refamiliarize or
learn for the first time what it is
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you have said, what it is
you have done. And as we grow
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in these things, Lord, less
desire, a deeper and deeper appreciation for
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them. Teach us not to be
satisfied with the with fuzzy understandings, but
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let us glory in knowing you and
knowing you more and more intimately and getting
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closer and closer to you and understanding
your likes and your dislikes, your love,
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the things you love and the things
you hate, the things you desire
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and promised, the ways in which
you have called us to live and to
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act and to share this word for
with others. We ask also that you
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would help us to share it with
others, to be a people that know
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your word and share whatever we have
of it, with those who don't,
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so that they might rise to and
run to the Tomb and marvel at what
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has happened, giving you all praise
and honor and glory and worship. Finally,
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Lord, as we come to the
Lord's Supper now, we thank you
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for this sign and we thank you
that you have given it to us that
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we might remember when proclaim the Lord's
death. Until he returns, please help
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us to partake in a manner that
is pleasing to you, and we pray
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this in Jesus name.
