“Now what did I come for?”  How many times each day to you say this?   You are working in one room and remember something you need.  By the time you get where you were headed, you forget why you came.   Granted, it becomes harder to remember as we age, but the truth is that our minds are just too crowded.  We live in the information age.   We are exposed to more new information in a single day, than Eighteenth-century scholar and pastor, Jonathan Edwards encountered in his entire life.

All that data is hard to hold on to.  Scientists tell us our brains retain every scrap of experience our senses ever encounter.  The unfolding folds of our gray matter have more storage capacity than the world’s largest super-computer.   So, if true, why is it so hard to remember simple things?  And why do memories change and diminish when conditioned by experiences and perspectives gained since those memories were made?

A strong memory is more about strategy than capacity.   Information technologists recognize this in regard to data storage and retrieval.  The capacity of a database is not as significant as its indexing strategy.  Unless you can accurately and rapidly retrieve information, it is immaterial how much you can store.   When it comes to human memory many experts advocate building a “memory palace” where you can categorize and store memories in a visual structure created within your mind.   The ritual of walking through the “memory palace” proves to be a highly effective strategy for remembering.

But the use of rituals to aid in remembrance is not the innovation of contemporary pop psychologists.   It was instituted by God immediately after the fall.   Man made sacrifices to remember the cost of sin and the only means of escaping it.   As history progressed toward the cross, God added ‘religion’ to the ‘spirituality’ of the Covenant of Grace.   The ritual of the tabernacle and later the temple enabled the people to remember what God had done to deliver them from sin and sorrow, what he does, and what he was going to do finally and fully in Christ.   

The rituals and ‘means of grace’ he appointed are vital to faith and life.  They activate and improve our spiritual memory.  Help us keep proper perspective.  This is why the statement “I’m spiritual, but not religious” is untenable.  Spirituality without ‘religion’ will always become cognitively impaired as it forgets that I am not god and my feelings and opinions not ultimate truth.   God graciously gives us the means of remembrance.

On the eve of God’s great deliverance of his Old Testament people from Egypt, he paused the action and gave instructions about a meal of remembrance.   This celebration was to be a lasting ordinance to remind us that He alone is the God who delivers.   And in the same way, on the eve of God’s complete and final act of deliverance in the Cross, Jesus appointed a feast of remembrance.  “Remember,” he said.   And this remembrance is more than thought.  It is action through which we declare to succeeding generations the mighty saving works of our God.   Without these ‘means of grace’ we will forget.

The biblical book of Judges illustrates this. “Every man did what was right in his own eyes”  because they forgot.   Judges 2:8-12 is one of the saddest passages in all Scripture. And the rest of the weirdness of Judges is the fruit of this spiritual amnesia.

And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.

Judges 2:8-12

Exodus 12 describes God’s preparation of the people for the greatest story of deliverance the ancient world would ever see.   A story that melted the hearts of their enemies.  A story known far and wide.   But before the final plague, God prepared the people, giving them rituals for remembrance.  Join us as we consider the Passover in Exodus 12 and the importance of remembrance.

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. 

Everyone has one – the one person in your life who must always have the last word.  Whatever your great exploits, they have climbed higher, caught more, gone faster.   No story is complete until they have added the exclamation point of their own last word.   Though perhaps otherwise unremarkable, they are grand-masters of one-upsmanship.  Yet their quest for notoriety has gained only infamy.  

No one likes a know-it-all.  No one enjoys the one-upsmans’ self-agrandizing sagas.  Far from inviting admiration, the know-it-all only invites scorn.   We all have this person in our lives.  You are not that person are you?  Let this be a lesson.  Don’t seek the last word.  Learn the art of humility.  As Solomon wisely cautioned. 

Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
    a stranger, and not your own lips. Proverbs 27:2

You never know as much as you think.  You are not the smartest or most accomplished person in every gathering.   Praise others and you will be thought praiseworthy.  Learn to exalt others and you will be exalted.   Let another speak the last word.  Exercise restraint against the temptation to focus the lens on yourself.   Discipline in this area helps us to remember that God always has the last word.  

No one likes a know-it-all.  But what if the know-it-all in your life really did know it all.  What if He knew how everything would turn out.  One who not only knew the future, but determined it.  One who knew you better than you knew yourself.  Who knew how to love you and knew what you loved better than yourself.   One who knew exactly what trials and triumphs were best for you.   One who, despite knowing your heart, your failings, your rejections, still loved you better than you loved yourself?  Would you give that know-it-all the last word?  Would you prefer that know-it-all’s last word to your own? 

Pharaoh was a know-it-all.  He always got the last word.   But when he tried to have the last word with Moses the Lord had one more word for him.   And it was a terrible word.

Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’ And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’Exodus 11:4-8

Nine times Pharaoh said no.   But God would force his hand with the worst plague imaginable.   Pharaoh’s own son would die.   And the Egyptian god of death and dying, Osiris, could not stop it.   God would have the last word – a word of judgement.  But it did not have to be.   For in God’s judgement was also a word of grace.

What about you?  When the Lord speaks the best, last word, the word of grace, will you let that be the last word?  Or must you speak the last word yourself, following your own plans according to the stubbornness of your heart.   Even in His wrath against pharaoh, his gods, and his people, the Lord remembered mercy.  

What is the last word in your life?   What last word will define life now and forever?   Join us as we examine God’s last word to Pharaoh from Exodus 11 and consider the importance of giving God’s word the last word in our lives.

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. 

Everything changes in the dark.   What is familiar and comforting in daytime, becomes sinister and disquieting in the dark of night.   Our closet is filled with looming, threatening forms.   And the area under our beds, which houses nostalgia by day, becomes a haunt for all manner of unimaginably malevolent beasts at night.    Even as an adult, I still sleep with my hands under my body.  A holdover from my childhood when I feared any uncovered hand drifting to the edge of the bed would be met by a slimy, cold, deadly grasp.

Darkness brings fear, uncertainty, complication.   It is hard to function in the dark.   You realize this on your first camping trip.  Without a flashlight or headlamp, movement is difficult.  Nothing is where you remember it being.  The simple becomes complicated.   And every squirrel sounds like Bigfoot.   We are all scared of the dark.   It is a fear we never outgrow.

The language of our distress makes this clear.   A trying time is “dark night of the soul.”  Depression is a “black hole.”  Death is the “valley of the shadow of death.”  Quite literally the phrase translated, “shadow of death” in the Bible means “deepest darkness.”   A darkness like that of a cave.  A darkness so thick that nothing can be seen.  A darkness in which you can only grope your way around.  A darkness than can be felt.   Felt in the deep places of your heart, mind, and soul.

 The phrase “deepest darkness” in scripture often describes fear, oppression, and judgment for sin.   Hell is described as “outer darkness.”  When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, Jesus compared sin to darkness and salvation to light.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:19-21

And speaking in the Temple, Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 

And elsewhere we read.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

1 John 1:5-7

It is not insignificant that the first element of creation is light.   Darkness speaks of chaos, destruction, judgment, death.   It was the terror of the ancient world.  Ancient men did not have the benefit of artificial light.   They did not rejoice at the absence of ‘light pollution.’  They dreaded darkness.   All their pagan fears were vested in darkness.  And their relief and hope was founded upon the rising sun.  And this is reflected in their pantheism.

The greatest, most powerful, of Egypt’s gods was the Sun god, Amon-Ra.  Every morning the priests would gather by the river and sing hymns of praise to Amon-Ra and his supposed incarnate son, the reigning Pharaoh.  They would declare that no one in creation compares to Amon-Ra.

Until the day when Lord God Almighty extinguished the sunlight of Egypt in the nineth plague and brought the three days of utter darkness.   A darkness the Bible describes as a ‘deepest darkness’ – a darkness that could be felt.   A darkness of judgement against Amon-Ra.  And against his incarnate son, the Pharaoh.   The darkness of judgement came upon all who were not the Lord’s people.   A darkness every Egyptian felt.  But a darkness which no Israelite experienced.

We are all afraid of the dark, but the plague darkness was a foretaste of hell and of judgement against the gods of Egypt, its king and its people.   It was terrifying beyond imagination.   It immobilized the nation.   And brought Pharaoh to the very brink of obedience.   But only to the brink.  Even in the face of grave judgement, Pharaoh’s heart is hard.  

What about you?  How much judgment must God bring to your life before you will turn to Him?   How long will you love darkness?  And refuse to come to the ‘light of the world?’  Join us as we examine Exodus 10:21-29 to consider the plague of darkness and its warnings for us.

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. 

Men are just not wired for it.  The ‘subtlety’ sequence is clearly missing from the male genome. And lacking subtlety is the ultimate mantrap.  She asks “What do you think of my haircut?” Or “Which of these paint colors do you think will look best?”  The novice blithely assumes only facts are involved, that analysis is the path to success, that these questions are as contextless as “What is the square root of 256?”   And the mantrap of subtlety is sprung.  

The ladies in our lives are fluent in subtlety.  Like a spawning salmon, capable of discerning the chemical signature of their birth-ponds to parts per billion, women get subtlety.  They read all the signals men miss.  They understand emotional contexts men don’t even know exist.  They know that effective communication is not through words alone.

Men often struggle with subtlety in communication.  Perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube video that parodies this through a mythical product called the “Manslater” which claims to use “emotion and female logic deciphering technology” to bridge the subtlety gap.  But there is one area of subtlety in which man, and in fact, mankind, excels.  And that is with respect to our sin.

The Bible records for us that Satan is the most subtle of all the creatures the Lord God created.   He weaves fact and fiction into a tapestry of sin that makes the hideous appear radiant and the malignant seem beneficent.   He gives the shine and luster to our sin.  He calls it empowerment.  He appeals to our pride as he leads us not to become uber-menschen, but slaves. 

Satan, Abaddon, Apollyon, The Accuser is the King of Rebels, the destroyer.   He does not seek your allegiance or your love, only your complicity.   He does not want your worship.  He wants only your death.  And by making you complicit in his rebellion, he thinks he can weaponize the justice of God.   He is subtle.  He sells his deception well.   And has taught us his craft when it comes to holding on to our sin in the face of both God’s justice and God’s grace.

Pharaoh is a perfect example of this.  Egypt is in ruins.  The plagues ravaged the land, the animals, and the people of Egypt.  The gods of Egypt are silent.  And all that gave Egypt her strength was shattered.   Yet, when the last hailstone melted, the heart of Pharaoh did not.   He reneged on his promise, and held on to his slaves and his sin.  And now Moses and Aaron have appeared again before him.   In a bold move, Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?”

Often men just will not see where their sin has taken them.  They refuse to see that their lives have been ruined by it.  That it cannot be weathered.   Pharaoh is in no position to bargain, yet he attempts to bargain with God.  He places demands, stipulations, conditional asterisks and double daggers on his obedience to the Lord of heaven and earth.  He drives out those bring God’s word of grace.  Then even when suffering the righteous judgement of God in the plague of locusts, he offers only a self-serving repentance and fails to comprehend that much more than Egypt has been ruined by his sin. 

What about you?  Are you as subtle as Satan when it comes to clinging to your sin?   Have you justified it?  Blamed others for it?  Despised any who lovingly point it out?   Rejected the Word of grace that calls you to repentance?    Pharaoh loved his sin.   It brought unparalleled destruction to his life, to all he loved, to all he stood for.  Yet he would not let it go.   Join us as we examine Exodus 10:1-20 as we consider the plague of locusts and see how Pharaoh’s response warns us of the grave dangers of subtly clinging to our sin.

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. 

One of the places where human depravity is more clearly displayed than rush hour traffic, may be a child’s birthday party.   These gatherings, designed to celebrate a child’s special day, can easily turn into self-fests, with every attendee assuming that he, himself, is the reason for the season.   Meanwhile parents visit with one another in relative oblivion, until little Johnny Schmidt goes too far.

Then you hear it. “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!  You tell little birthday Bobby you are sorry.”  Called from parental lethargy, Mrs. Schmidt arises, grasps John Jacob by the ear and marches him to the emotional remains of birthday Bobby and repeats the command.  “Say it!  Say your sorry! Say it now!” She bellows.

John Jacob barely opens his mouth and barely disturbs the air with his virtually inaudible, “Sor-ry.”  And everyone who observes this farce thinks the same thing.  The thought bubble above everyone’s head screams, “No You’re Not! You’re not one bit sorry!”  Everyone knows that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is anything but sorry.  Birthday Bobby knows it.  Mrs. Schmidt knows it.  And John Jacob smiles inwardly.  The use of a magic word has relieved him of all consequence.  Nothing has changed.  Bobby is still an emotional wreck, the party has been ruined, contrary to her self-deception, Mrs. Schmidt has not actually parented her son.  All that was broken is still broken.   But John Jacob has been released from trouble.  Or has he?

This is what most people think repentance looks like – like John Jacob using magical religious words, smooth words to remove consequence and relieve himself of obligation for his sin against God and others.  We mumble a half-hearted prayer, say “sorry” in liturgical dressing and, voila, everything is fixed.  Or is it?   We are so self-centered by nature that we can never escape the gravity of self-love in order to truly repent under our own power.   Repentance demands sorrow for how our sins affected others, not just how they affect us.   The Apostle Paul distinguishes between godly sorrow that rightly grieves its offense and worldly sorrow that only grieves its consequences.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:10

Real repentance begins with God — with his kindness, with his grace, with the convicting work of His Holy Spirit.  Without this kind of real repentance, we live lives that are broken – broken in our relationship with God and broken in every other relationship as well.  It is not enough to say, “sorry” and think that magic words will put the world back the way it was before.  What we need is real, gracious, God-given repentance.

The seventh plague of Egypt brings new things to the table of God’s judgement against Pharaoh, the gods of Egypt and the people of Egypt.   For the first time, the plague takes human life.  Escalated from something that makes you want to die to something that actually makes you die this plague begins the final cycle of plagues which culminate in the Passover.   But there is something else new.

Pharaoh says something he never had to say and probably never said – “I was wrong.”  We read in Exodus 9, “Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.” Has Pharaoh’s hard heart softened?  Is he repentant?   On the surface it seems so.   But while his words say one thing, his life and commitments say something else.   Repentance is more than saying, ‘sorry’ when things get out of hand.   Join us as we examine Exodus 9:13-35 to consider what true repentance is and what it is not.

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.