Good morning. God's grace be with you today. Our sermon text for this morning is taken from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. We'll be reading the whole chapter. I'll be reading from the New King James Version which is printed in your bulletins. Please stand for the reading of our King's Word. Every commandment which I command you today, you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. So he humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. So you should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are ironed and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His statutes, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today. Lest, when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses, and dwell in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, when your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who led you through that great and terrible wilderness in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water, who brought water for you out of the rock of Flint, who fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do you good in the end. Then you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth. And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant with which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. Then it shall be if you by any means forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroys before you, so you shall perish because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your God. Let us pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have spoken it and that you have delivered it to us. We thank you, Father, for the work of the Spirit who works in us to illumine us and reveal you to us in your word. We ask that you would grant us a measure of your spirit today, reveal yourself to us that we might grow in grace and the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ. We ask that you would cause the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts to be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. In Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. Today, we're going to take a bit of a walk down memory lane. So, not what you think, this is biblical memory lane. Walking down memory lanes is a familiar metaphor. It's sort of time traveling in reverse and reliving the past. As it's our last Sunday to worship here at RCC for the foreseeable future, I wanted to offer an encouragement and even an admonition to remember. Not remember me or us, but remember the Lord. As it says in Psalm 115, not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name give glory. Alexander McLaren said this, he said, to efface oneself is one of a preacher's first duties. And, you know, some of you may have seen on the pulpit here, there's a little plaque that says, Sir, we would see Jesus. It's a quote from John 12. That's the duty of a preacher to present the word of God and the person of God. We've had our time. Now it's time to get, for all of us, the business of obeying and worshiping and serving the Lord. The youngers are not really moving. We dwell in God, who is our dwelling place for all generations. So I want to talk about remembrance today. As Gabe Wentmore talked a bit last week he talked about remembrance and I'm going to take a little bit different approach than he did. Gabe mentioned memorials or memory or remembrances as a call upon God to call to mind his own covenant promises and for him to act in accord with them and I think that's right. But memorials also act as a call to us to remember. As we just read in Psalm 105, remember his works and the judgments of his mouth. Remembrance, I believe, is intrinsic to our creaturely nature and our finite state. You know, as Van Til so often pointed out, we are creatures, we are finite, we can't know everything at the same time. We can know some things truly but not exhaustively. Only God knows himself and all things exhaustively. And so we have to remember. We have to remember previous events and learnings and people and put them all together, even systematically joining them to make sense of them. We have photographs and diaries and biographies and recordings. We have Facebook. We have Facebook Live. You can see live stuff on Facebook now. But Facebook generally is used as a memorial, as a way to look back and see what you or what someone else just did or maybe did a while back. You know, those of you who work in data science or computers know that the 21st century has seen a proliferation of information and data like the world has never seen. We have a way of memorializing and remembering stuff that we never did before. And I think that's just, like I said, intrinsic to our nature. We have records of events and people and speeches and laws. And these afford us the ability to understand our world and our context and interpret our current circumstances and also to confirm future events and what will happen in the future. We're creatures of time and I think if there were even no fall, we would still need records to account for history. But the fall, of Adam and us makes our remembrance depraved and feeble and apathetic. Faulty or self-serving memory drives us to consider and estimate the sins of others greater than they are and to consider and assess our own culpability as less than it really is. That's just the nature of the fall. Our kids say, when we ask them, did you do what I told you? Oh, I forgot. You said that. How many of you kids have said that? Have you ever said to your mom or dad, I forgot? Raise your hand if you have. I did, right? It's just natural, right? You do. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. You say it. We told our kids to repeat back to us what we had told them. So, I want you to go and make your bed, and then come back and tell me when you've done it. And we told them to repeat it back. What did I just say? You said, make my bed. And we had them do that so that we could make sure that they knew what we were saying, that we said it clearly, but also to hold them accountable. It's important. And then if they forgot, it's on them. But forgetfulness is just natural to us. And for us adults, we don't want to remember, I think sometimes, and be accountable for the past. We don't want to remember that we're not autonomous. We want to fashion our own world and our own present and our own future and ignore our past and our roots. that we are dependent on and connected to our past and even fashioned out of it. And God reminds us of this constantly. He says to Adam, after the fall, he says, you were taken out of dust. He reminds Adam where he came from, right? And to dust you shall return. He tells Israel several times, remember you were a slave in the land of Egypt. The whole book of Deuteronomy, in fact, is a call to remember. It's a Deuteronomy. It's a second giving of the law. It's a repetition and a recollection of what God gave previously. There's lots of biblical examples. Jesus says to his parents, how is it that you sought me? Don't you know who I am? Don't you remember what happened 12 years ago? Don't you know I must be about my father's business? And Jesus says to the people in his preaching, it is written. Remember you've heard it said. Have you never read. He says Remember Lot's wife. All these things Jesus says you know are given us or he wants to remind his his followers his disciples of things that happened or were written before. Jesus even says the Holy Spirit will be given to remind us to remember all things that he said to us. The Gospels themselves are remembrances of Jesus. Peter and Paul and John recount stories from the past and apply them to the present. Doctrine and duty are always presented in the context of history, which we must remember. Paul says to the Ephesians, remember that you were once Gentiles and uncircumcised in your hearts. And he says to the Philippians, for me to repeat the same things to you and remind you of these things is not tedious, but for you it's beneficial. And Peter tells his readers in 2 Peter, his last letter, he says, I want you to remember and have a reminder after my departure. I'm going to die, but I want you to remember what was preached and told you. And I want you to have this as a remembrance. We sing that wonderful hymn, which we probably should have sung today, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Here I raise my Ebenezer. That story, that word, Ebenezer, means a stone of hell. And that word, Samuel chose to name that stone because it was a reminder to the people of Israel that God had just saved them with a great victory from the hand of the Philistines. And so he sets up this stone and says, this is going to be called Ebenezer. And it's a memorial. It reminds the people of Israel what God has done. And there's lots of Ebenezer type moments and monuments in scripture. Abraham names a town, Beersheba. Jacob names Bethel based on what has happened there. There's whitewashed stones which mark the giving of the law between Mount Ebal and Gerizim. There's stones which Joshua had pulled from the Jordan River when they crossed over and it was dry and he set them up as a reminder, a remembrance. The tabernacle articles themselves, the rod and the tablets and the manna which were in the pot. The tabernacle itself is a reminder of what Moses saw in heaven. So the Lord presents constant reminders to us throughout the scriptures, and he gives us physical memorials in the feasts that he commands us. The Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread, which were kind of one long feast, were memorials that you may remember, he says. And the Sabbath, he says, is to remember what God did in creation and in redemption. Remembrances are given to us in our covenant signs, in baptism and communion. Even as they seal God's promise and work, they're mnemonic tools of the Spirit as we preach the gospel through them and proclaiming the Lord's death and resurrection and ascension. And God commands remembrance as an active behavior. It's not an idea. He says, you shall remember. It's not a suggestion. Because if we don't choose to intentionally remember, forgetfulness creeps in. There's really no neutrality when it comes to this. And Deuteronomy 8, as you may see, begins with a command to remember what Yahweh has done. That's the beginning section. The center carries an admonition not to forget Yahweh and it ends with a command to remember him again. So I would suggest that remembering the Lord, remembering Yahweh, involves three things or three ways, three things to remember about him. Remembering his works, his commands and his covenant promises. And if you want some alliteration, his words, excuse me, his works, his words and his warranties. How's that? His works, his commands, and his covenant promises. So beginning at the beginning of chapter 8 here in verse 1, he says, Every command which I command you today, you must be careful to observe that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether you keep his commandments or not. Alexander McLaren, again quoting from him in his sermon on Deuteronomy 8, says this, he says, let memory work under the distinct recognition of divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the first condition of making the retrospect blessed, to humble thee and to prove thee and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou would keepest his commandments or no. Let us look back with a clear recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test and reveal and to make character. Life is meant not only to bring us to humble self-distrust as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to reveal us to ourselves. We are to look back and see God's guidance everywhere. And second, we are to judge of the things that we remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble and to reveal us to ourselves and to knit us in glad obedience to our father, God. You know throughout scripture it's not just the prospect of blessing a new life that God wants us to remember his works and character and promises and commands. It's in trouble and oppression as well. David cries out to God in Psalm 143. He's under terrible oppression. He says My spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed. I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your works. I muse on the work of your hands. Calvin, in commenting on this, says, it is not to be wondered at that many who spontaneously give themselves up to inaction should sink under their trials, not using means to invigorate themselves by calling to remembrance the grace of God. Sometimes it is true. Our trials are more keenly felt when we recall the former kindness which God may have shown to us. The comparison tending to awaken our feelings and rather make them render them more acute. But David proposed a different end than this to himself and gathered confidence from the past mercies of God. The very best method in order to obtain relief in trouble when we are about to faint under it is to call to mind the former loving kindness of the Lord. We will often, upon a slight exercise of the thoughts upon God's works, start aside from them almost immediately. Nor is it a matter of surprise that in this case there results no solid comfort. That our knowledge may be abiding, we must call in the aid of constant attention. And I would note in this verse here in Psalm 143, David says, I meditate and I muse. The word for muse is often translated meditate, and it's often translated also to speak or to utter or to mutter. It's the same word that is found in Psalm 1. He meditates on the law of God day and night. And that word actually has the connotation of speaking and muttering. It means not just to think, but to allow the words to come out of our mouth. And I think that's important for us to declare God's work, to meditate on it, and to muse on it, is to declare it out loud to ourselves and to others. And as McLaren pointed out, God wants us to remember his works so that we might be humble and thankful and trusting. And while he provides, he sometimes does so much more meagerly than we desire and often limits our successes or blessings in order to humble and test us and to build habits of repentance and gratitude. As Paul says in Romans 2, the goodness of God is meant to lead us to repentance. Continuing on in verse 6, Moses says, therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, etc. And then he goes on to say at the end of that section, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, his judgments, and his statutes which I command you today. And it occurred to me as I was meditating on this that forgetfulness is disobedience. I mean, and disobedience is forgetfulness. He says, you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments. And chapter 8 begins every commandment, right? We can't be selective. And Jesus points this out, as does Paul. Jesus says, not one jot or tittle shall fail till heaven and earth pass away. David says, every one of your righteous judgments endures forever. Turn with me to Acts 20, if you will. I want to take a look here at Paul's speech, his parting farewell to the elders and the church at Ephesus. Starting at verse 25, he says, And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone, preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel for excuse me for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. For I know this that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. Also, from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears." Paul wants them to remember. He's calling upon the church to recollect what happened in the past, how he acted, and what he preached. And he says he preached the whole counsel of God. This is very similar to what we read in Deuteronomy. It's got a charge and a command and a benediction and assurance of God's promises and a reminder of God's works through Paul. And as I was thinking about this whole counsel of God and every commandment, it reminded me of what Devin spoke to a couple of weeks ago. He talked about churches that focus on love, love, love, or doctrine, doctrine, doctrine. And that's just our nature. We want to veer off into one ditch or another, or maybe we don't want to, but that's just what we do. And Calvin says, it's the only quote I can actually remember from Calvin, verbatim, and have been able to recollect through the years. Calvin said this, he said, certainly things that are connected together by no means mutually destroy each other. Certainly things that are connected together by no means mutually destroy each other. So we have divine sovereignty, predestination, and human responsibility. Well, which is it? It's both, right? We have total depravity and we have new life in Jesus. Well, which is it? Well, it's both. Jesus says, I have been given authority in heaven and on earth. So it's not just a spiritual heavenly kingdom, it's earthly as well. And we tend to tip or lean toward one or the other of these kinds of things. Jesus says to the Pharisees, you know, in rebuking them, he says, you tithe mint and rue and cumin and neglect the other weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and the love of God. And he says, these you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. So Jesus isn't saying don't tithe. He says you shouldn't have done that, but don't leave the other things undone. And so, you know, and that's that's Pharisees. That's legalism. We tend to want to focus on one thing and then we feel like, oh, I've done the right thing. I just I'm justified. And that's not it. We need to preach to ourselves and to one another the whole counsel of God. It's every command. You know, we strain out gnats and swallow camels. Again, Jesus says when we have done everything we're supposed to do, we're to say to ourselves, we're unprofitable servants for we've done that which we're commanded to do. Jesus in the Great Commission says that we're to teach the disciples that we make to observe all things that he has commanded us. And we're often tempted, I think, to limit this to just Jesus speaking in the New Testament or maybe even just the Gospel accounts. But if we affirm that all of Scripture is about Jesus, it's all Jesus, then the Old Testament is part of the all things that Jesus has commanded, right? The Old Covenant reveals not only his messianic work, but it reveals Jesus's heart for holiness. God hasn't changed his mind, he's revealed it in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus says, he who has seen me has seen the Father. So the all things that Jesus is referring to means end to end the word of God. The whole law is summed up in loving God and loving our neighbor. So we should interpret all of the Old Testament commandments through this lens. Laws around adultery and homosexuality and gleaning and Sabbath and consanguinity and worship and theft and tithe and restitution and kindness to enemies and punishment of criminals. At infinitum, all of these things make up the whole counsel of God. It's a both and it's love, love, love and truth, truth, truth, right? They're connected together. And we're to be careful to observe these things because the blessings we received are often turned by us into stumbling blocks and the good gifts that God gives us become our idols. As it says in verse 19. As Charles Waddell has said, a good thing becomes a bad thing when it takes us away from the best thing. It becomes an idol for us. And we just read, as I mentioned in Psalm 105, that we're meant to remember the words of the Lord and the judgments of his mouth. And I just pause here to encourage you and encourage us to find ways to create Ebeneezers, little Ebeneezer moments in our lives and even in our churches. and then our families. And when we were raising our little ones, we would often pray with them. And then when God provided an answer to that prayer, we would go out in the drive. We had a kind of gravelly drive. We would go out and pick up a pebble. And we had a little jar. And we put it in the jar. And we built a jar. I think I have like three or four jarfuls that I've still kept that my wife has told me we need to get rid of when we moved. But. But anyway there are little Ebeneezer's right there are things that testify to the grace of God. I can look at that and say God has answered hundreds of prayers in my life. And I'd encourage you all to find things like that that you can do. By the way I stole that idea from Robert Jones. I'm pretty sure it was Robert Jones who used to do that or mentioned that. I've got a tie that I wear. I should have worn it today. I forgot. I forgot. I've got a tie that my wife bought me when I first got a breakthrough job at Boise. It was a tremendous blessing for me to work there for the many years that I did. Teresa bought me a tie and a jacket for my interview. God bless her. She was so kind to think of that for me. Every time I put that tie on, I think about that job. I think about God has blessed me. I have a stick. Some of you know what I'm talking about. I had a really bad sledding accident, some of you may remember this, back in Canada in 2007. I almost ran a stick through my brain. It was about an inch wide and about that long. It was frozen in the ground, and I was sledding with Olivia and Jared. A stick came out of the ground, just jumped out of the ground, and hit me in the eye. It fractured my eye socket. The doctor said I was a centimeter away from losing my eye. And you'd never know it today. God restored my sight. I can even see without glasses for the most part except when I read. So I kept the stick. I went back to the site and picked up the stick and I brought it home. That's another thing that we moved with that my wife is chagrined about. But that's an Ebenezer for me and for us. Looking at that reminds me of God's wonderful goodness to me that I can see that I'm alive. You know, we have favorite songs that we sing, right? Be Thou My Vision, we sang a couple weeks ago. There are songs that mark events for us, right? When I was a boy, we used to grow up singing Our God, Our Hope, and Ages Past every New Year's Eve, and so that became like an anchor song for me. And there are songs, I'm sure, that you feel that way about as well, that you experience. It may not even be songs we sing. It may be a song you hear on the radio. But those things remind us. They call to mind things that God has done for us. They're Bible verses that we may have remembered when we were children. Those things become Ebeneezers for us. They mark God's work in our lives. And I'd encourage you to find things that you can do in your families and in your own lives to do that. And the reason for that is as we read further in Deuteronomy 8 he's got his last when you have eaten are full and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them and he goes through a litany of just wonderful blessings. Right. And he says, you know, God did all these things, lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth. And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. God gives us good gifts to confirm his covenant and to demonstrate that his promises are true. Earthly life and blessing is connected to God's word to us. And while covenant blessings are not a right, they're a promise. Physical life and the life of God are intricately woven together. Jesus says, I have come that they may have life. He says, I am the life. The presence of God brings life and joy, and this is certainly connected with our earthly life and the physical blessings God gives. Gnosticism is a denial of the physicality of earthly life and ultimately of the nature of God's covenant relationship with us. Olivia mentioned that in her lordship class Joshua Apple is want to say food wins. And if you remember his sermon here several months ago or a year or so ago they talked about the blessing of food right. Remember his description of butter and bread and lemon curd and anyway but but food wins right. God blesses us and it's and we taste it and feel it and see it and touch it. In Nehemiah 8 the people are sorrowed from their hearing of the law they hear God's word and their sorrow. It comes out because they recognize how far they've fallen and the Levites and Nehemiah command them don't be if don't be sorrow and eat the fat drink the sweet. Do not sorrow for the joy of the Lord is your strength. And he connects the joy of the Lord with the physical blessings of eating and drinking. That's connected together. It's one of those things that's a both and thing, right? But in the midst of all this, of all the blessings, the homes that God's given us and the wonderful food and the minds that we have to create iPhones and fountains of water and brooks and all kinds of blessings. Don't forget the Lord. Don't worship the creation rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Forgetfulness dulls our hearts and numbs us to God and to his presence. And it numbs us to others as well. It numbs us to how God works in our lives and how he works in our lives through others. And it dulls us to everything around us. As John Mark Hurd sings, there are things I should remember, but I have forgotten how. I'm all tied up with no time and trying to do too much. And the thoughts that I've avoided are the ones I need right now. like a warm wind in a lover's hand, I just want to be touched. An active, intentional memory brings forth gratitude, which bears the fruit of obedience. And an active, apathetic memory breeds ingratitude and brings forth sin and death. One of the things that Pastor Terry in his sermons on the seven deadly sins recommended in his sermon on gluttony was to have post meal prayers. And I think it's a very good practice. It helps us to stave off the idea that everything we have is ours and that we own it outright and that we deserve it. And you know Moses says here after you have eaten when you have eaten and are full then you shall bless the Lord. Right. So we see Jesus blessing God and blessing the bread before he breaks it. But Moses here says after you eat bless the Lord. My grandfather told me that his father and grandfather, who were German, gave him a little phrase, and it's, And that means, whoever comes to the table without prayer and leaves the table without prayer is like the ox or the ass. So we make ourselves into brute beasts when we don't recognize the gifts of God. And so I'd encourage you, you know, maybe make that a part of your mealtime practices. Pray after your meals. Thank the Lord or sing a song. Remember the blesser and not just the blessing. And, you know, for us as a church, I'm going to get personal here, I want to encourage RCC not to forget. Don't forget God's works and God's power, His wonders. As imperfect as RCC is, we have it really good. We really do. We are blessed. We have a building that we own. A lot of you didn't have any part of that right. This is a building that a vineyard you didn't plan and a building you didn't build right. A lot of work went into this church that you and me didn't put in. God has given us a good history here. God's given us men who have gone before us. God draws straight with crooked lines. I'm a real crooked line here. But he uses instruments he uses means. You know we have it good in terms of our education. We have freedom in homeschooling that we didn't have before largely because of a lot of the work of men in our church here. We have a Christian school now that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago. And what a blessing that is. We're to remember the chastenings as well. God brings us through fiery serpents and terrible wilderness sometimes. There are difficulties and God wants to chasten us to remember so that we might know to depend on him and his word. The events of two years ago wasn't the first upheaval that RCC experienced. We've been here 28 years and there have been a couple, three before that. There have been difficulties but God has been good. But we need to remember that God has been good. We need to remember that God has chastened us and brought us out of those things so that we might serve him and that we might love and obey him. I'd encourage you to remember God's words. We have rich doctrine and it's been thoughtfully crafted. We have a strategy map. I don't know how many churches have the kind of strategy map that says solidly biblical. I'm not saying it's perfect. Certainly not. But it's but it's intentional and it's biblical and we can hope to improve that. But but it's a blessing that God has given us. We have community fellowship. We have an agape meal that we've had for 35 years. I don't know how long we've existed, but it's existed ever since this church has existed. It's wonderful fellowship. That's a gift. We have covenant worship here, blessed worship. Joseph and many others have worked on the music ministry here, the hand gardeners and others. We have really, really wonderful music and worship here. We have weekly communion. Not a lot of churches can say that. And for those of you who may be anxious for us to change our membership statement, maybe pause. God has bound us together. And our membership statement is rigorous. Definitely. But God has blessed us with a community that few churches enjoy. And I would suggest to you to consider that in how we craft or rework our membership statement. We want to be bound together. We want to recognize God's covenant with us and our covenant with him and with one another. And all these things, all the things that the Lord has done here at RCC are gifts. Paul says to us, what do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you didn't receive it? Kind of harking back to Deuteronomy 8. And as RCC endeavors to call a new pastor and moves into a potentially more comfortable and blessed future, we have to hold on to the memory of where we came from. We're only blessed because of the goodness and power and grace of God. And we need to remember that those who have gone before us, prophets and apostles and saints, reformers and pastors and parents, all of them have laid the foundation which we've inherited and stand on here at RCC. So I exhort you, my brothers and sisters here, remember this. What we remember will be the foundation of what we believe. The writer to Hebrews says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Remembrance is bound up together and leads us to hope. We hope in or we hope because of a past promise that's been given to us and we wait for its fulfillment. So it's a remembrance to hope. Abraham believed God, but he had to persevere in hope, remembering and holding on to what had been promised him. Paul says he staggered not at the promise of God and unbelief, but was faithful, believing that he who had promised was able also to perform. The scriptures which we read and remember and recount are given to us for hope. For whatever things were written before, Paul says, were written for our learning that we, through the patience and comfort of the scriptures, might have hope. And again, from Hebrews 6, And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end that you do not become sluggish but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises he's calling them to remember right. Those who through faith and patience inherit the promises for when God made a promise to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater he swore by himself saying surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you. So after he had patiently endured he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have is an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus. By remembering the promise of God and hopefully expecting its fulfillment, we're confessing, I believe you, Lord. And we are anchoring our souls to withstand the temptations of both wealth and poverty. As Paul says, I know how to be abased. And I know how to abound. I can do all things to Christ who gives me strength. I'll close with another quote from Alexander McLaren from his sermon on Deuteronomy 8. He says, Let us remember that we may hope it is the prerogative of Christian remembrance that it merges into Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved them and blessed them, whose hope is in a God that changes never, whose memory is charged with every good and perfect gift that came down from the Father of lights. whose hope is in that same Father with whom is no variableness in either shadow of turning. So on every stone of remembrance, every Ebenezer which is graved, hitherto hath the Lord helped us, we can mount a telescope, if I may say so, that will look into the furthest glories of the heavens and be sure that the past will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may legitimately be, thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake me. And his answer will be, I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. Remember that you may hope, and hope because you remember. So remember the Lord. Remember his works and the things he has done in history, in the church, in your country, in your family, in your own life, and here at RCC. Remember his commands. All of them, his statutes, his judgments, his laws, his testimonies, all things that Jesus has commanded us. As Rastuni has said, God doesn't speak to us to satisfy our curiosity. He speaks in order to lead and order and orient our lives, to command us to follow him, the Lord of Armies, and to walk in his footsteps. And remember his covenant promise to dwell with us, to be our God and to walk among us. He has bound us together with himself. through His covenant by the blood of Jesus. which covenant we renew and engage here in our worship and in communion. He is our dwelling place and our length of days and our very life. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you for the remembrance of your holy name. We thank you for your works in our lives, in our church and in history. We thank you, Father, for calling us and commanding us to remember you. We pray that by your spirit you would grant us memory of you and your works and your power and your grace. We ask this in Jesus name and for his sake. Amen.