WEBVTT

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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father and our Lord, and

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Savior

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Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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Please be seated.

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When I was in high school, my grandmother had just moved into a

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nursing home in between my school and my home.

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And so, on my way home from school

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I would often visit with her.

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And there was one day, when I was visiting with her

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we were going for a walk, and we saw this checkerboard

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and so I challenged her to a game of checkers.

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And it seems like at first, she was letting me win and then she gave

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me this look like you're not going to like what's about to happen. And

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I had three Checkers in a row

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So they were unjumpable and a blank space on the other end. And she

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was looking at me the whole time she did this and she grabbed one of

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my pieces and jumped over the other two and said, King me.

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We both just kind of laughed about it.

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But in that moment, I realized my Grandma had pretty much forgotten

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how to play the game.

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Which was hard because I had remembered playing checkers with my

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grandma in her condo on that  little patio.

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And sometimes, even back in third grade

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sometimes we would spend hours playing checkers together.

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But my grandmother was dying of brain cancer.

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And as her memory started to fade, her memories of those nostalgic

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moments started to fade, her ability to play the game went away.

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And her worlds got just a little bit smaller.

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Because that's what memory does memory expands, our world.

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It is, it's not just a recalling of past events, but recalling, those

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past events shapes

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the way that we see every single day of our lives and it even shapes,

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our Hope for the future.

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And so when God commands us to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it,

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holy his intention is to fill up our memory with himself. So that we

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see him in the way

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we perceive our world so that his knowledge of him will expand our

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worlds and shape, our Hope for the future.

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So I want to take a minute and consider the two texts that God gives

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us this command

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in. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it.

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Holy. All the way back in Deuteronomy

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Chapter 5, God gives this command observe, the sabbath day.

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And the reason for it is so that you remember your slavery in Egypt.

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He tells the people remember the Sabbath day.

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So you remember exactly what Sabbath is not.

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You remember those days of bone-crushing labor

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stacked on top of each other with no break under a Lord

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that is not your God.

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And that you remember

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that the Lord your God rescued that from rescued, you from that with

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his mighty outstretched arm. That God has freed you from that life to

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remember the Sabbath.

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It's to remember what God has freed us from.

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And in Exodus, God tells his people to remember the Sabbath on a

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different basis.

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He tells them to remember the Sabbath day because it was in six days

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that the Lord, your God, created the heavens and the Earth

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and on the seventh day

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He rested.

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It's a recollection of the creation event that God sets everything in

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order.

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And at the end of six days, he stands back looks at his creation and

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says it is very good.

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It's finished.

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And on the seventh day, he rested.

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And oh, what a blessed Sabbath that was.

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On that seventh day before Adam and Eve plunge, creation into the

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depths of subjugation to death, sin and the devil. On that seventh day

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all of creation lives in perfect, harmony with God and his will.

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Remember, the Sabbath day is to remember what God has created his

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people

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for. To remember the Sabbath day is to remember what he has freed them

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from and to give them a hope for the future that they remember what he

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has freed them for.

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As God tells us to remember the Sabbath day by keeping it.

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Holy.

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It's the same for us.

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It's to remember the freedom that God gives to us.

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It's to remember that Jesus comes on this Earth and and and he carries

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out a Liberation Ministry.

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He frees diseased people from their diseases.

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He frees the demon possessed from their demons.

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He even freeze the dead from death itself.

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And he sets his sights on freeing us from sin and the power of the

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devil.

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And it's on a six day that Jesus looks out at his creation and says,

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it is finished.

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And it was very good.

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And on that day as he gives up his life on the Sabbath that follows.

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Jesus would rest.

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He would be laid to rest in a tomb.

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And on that Sabbath day, all of creation would hold, its breath as the

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worker of its entire salvation, and creation was laid to rest.

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We would hold our breath as we waited to see if he would overcome 

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evil, as we waited to see, if his victory over sin would be

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vindicated.

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And then on the eighth day, he rises

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with freedom, freedom, from death, freedom, from sin, freedom from the

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power of the devil.

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And as we remember that Sabbath day

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it's no accident that our Pulpit is placed between day 6 and day 8.

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We remember that Sabbath day because we remember we remember what we

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have been freed from.

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And we remember that that Sabbath day where Jesus lay dead in a tomb,

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it was the end of an era

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that points us forward.

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Points us forward to a new Sabbath.

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Where Jesus returns where the resurrection of the dead happens, and

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where we live an everlasting blessedness, righteousness, and

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innocence with our Lord.

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Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it

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Holy.

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God fills our memories.

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He fills our memories to expand our world and build us up with a hope

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in the future.

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Remember the Sabbath day.

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What does this mean?

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We should fear and love God.

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So that we do not despise preaching and his word, but hold it

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sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.

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There are a lot of ways to despise preaching and his word.

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There was this retired pastor at my congregation and he was a guy that

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really, really knew his stuff.

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He knew his stuff a lot more than I did.

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He had studied for a lot longer than I had.

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And one day, we got the call that he had gone into the hospital.

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And I volunteered to go see him because I had a little bit of time

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before dinner and I figured, I'll go in.

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I'm not going to tell him anything new that he hasn't heard before.

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So I read my Bible, verse, I'll say some words.

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I'll say a prayer with him.

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Get home in time for dinner.

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And the visit went, pretty much exactly how I expected and I get up to

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leave and he says, oh, yeah, there was one thing I've been meaning to

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tell you and I said, oh, yeah, what's that?

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And he said, Jesus is not God.

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Well, I'm not getting home in time for dinner.

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And in that moment, I realized that by going into that visit thinking

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that God's word was just going to be a little comfort in a time of

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hardship.

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I had a really small world.

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And by having that really small world, I had despised God's word.

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Because God's word intends to expand our worlds.

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It intends to expand our worlds to fill our memories to shape, our

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perception of the world.

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And when God's word comes,

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sometimes it brings out hard conversations.

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The kinds of conversations that just don't get you home in time for

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dinner.

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And God's word that day intended to expand our world to bring us from

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misconception to the world that Christ has us hoping for.

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Some of you are called to Ministry.

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Many of you will receive calls and a few months, others of you will be

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sent and Deaconess internship or vicarage assignment.

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And you might end up in your ideal congregation where everybody just

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eats up, every little word of God that you put before them, but

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probably not.

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We'll probably end up in a congregation where it seems like you're

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telling people the same words that they've heard thousands of times

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before. You'll probably end up feeling like, you're just giving people

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a little comfort here and there to get by.

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But God's word is so much more than just a little comfort.

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God's word, expands our world.

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God's word fills us up with memories of him

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it shapes our perception, and it shapes our hope for a future, until

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that hope overflows into the lives of the people around us. Until we

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get to share that hope and fill the memories of others.

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Remember the Sabbath day.

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Because it's that Sabbath day

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that is our entire hope.

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And it's by remembering the Sabbath day by hearing God's word and by

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living in it every single day

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and sharing it that God shapes Our Hope, for the Sabbath that he has

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promised in his kingdom.

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Amen.

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In the name of Jesus.

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Amen.