Strings on fingers, dates circled in red, and desktops shingled with sticky notes are old-school.  Now we depend on digital calendar, app, and text reminders to prompt us to be where we should be and to do what we should do.  As our knowledge and activity increase our ability to remember diminishes.  The more we know and do, the less we remember.   I now appreciate the maxim of an aged mentor who decried, “I don’t need to learn anything new.  I just need to remember half of what I already know.”

Remembering is important.  Without memories we lose our mooring, identity, and purpose.  Anyone who has experience with dementia knows this all too well.  God has made our world for remembering.  The fabric of time is woven in the warp and woof of celestial and biorhythmic cycles designed to help us remember.  Weekly sabbaths and annual holidays are memory prompts.  And the ability and desire to record information, history, and expression teaches us that ‘remembering’ is a core distinctive of what it means to be human.  

But remembering transcends time.  The Bible tells us that even when we stand outside of time in eternity we will still remember.   The songs of the redeemed are inextricably tied to experience, to the epic story of redemption. And throughout scripture both Old Covenant and New Covenant worship are rooted in a command to remember.   To remember what God has done.   Remember what God has said.  Remember what God has promised. Remember who God is.  And who is God.

We are easily tempted to make faith and worship about us.  Prone to place ourselves at the center of all things.  So, the Bible calls us back to our chief end; to glorify and enjoy the one who is the center, the source, the purpose, and the end of all things.   Week in and week out, biblical worship is a covenant renewal; a remembering of God’s covenant of grace.  We are too apt to forget; to forget who is God and who God is.  To forget what He has done, what He has said, and what He has promised.

In the Book of the Covenant in Exodus 21-24, God explains how the Ten Commandments are lived out in community, what it looks like to be ‘the people of God.’  But a community ethic is not enough.   What makes them his covenant people is God’s presence, promises, and purposes.   As he wraps up the Book of the Covenant in Exodus 23, the Lord explains how He will bring Israel into the inheritance He promised and gives us a road-map for the Christian life.

Join us as we examine Exodus 23:20-33 as we unpack God’s plan to bring His people into promised rest and consider what this plan teaches us about the Christian life.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.