Well, God our Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning and we, we are expectant. We are expectant because you are true to your Word and you tell us that when two or more are gathered there, you are in the midst of them, and so Father, we come this morning expecting and already experiencing a visitation from you, and now we pray that you would take this your Word, that you would gain great glory from the preaching of it, that your name would be renowned in this land, and we pray that through the preaching of this Word and the activity of your people, we might have the joy of seeing the kingdom come in greater and greater fullness among us. Well, Father, we ask great things of you knowing that you are a great God and it is in keeping with your character to do great things. Come now we pray, then, and bless us through Christ our Lord. Oh, man, please be seated. On Friday afternoon, I picked up three rolls of film from our daughter Sarah's graduation last weekend at Furman University. She graduated last Saturday night and as soon as we got home, I dropped off those rolls of film and I couldn't wait for them to be developed, and Friday afternoon, I had the joy of flipping through about 50 photographs of the graduation ceremony and every single one of those photographs just caused a flood of memories to come over me and it didn't seem like nearly a week had passed since I had taken them. Then yesterday morning, I spent some quiet time reflecting and preparing on the sermon and I put in several CDs from Sarah's Furman Singer's Sacred Corral Concerts. Some of the most exquisite music I've heard in a long time and I listened to those wonderful CDs and I kept calling to mind each one of them having been there in Greenville at the university to hear her sing those and that in the pictures and the realization the college is now over for her. I don't know when I'll be back at Furman, I don't know when I'll have another opportunity to hear her sing that gorgeous music and I thought, gosh, if I'm getting all stirred up an emotional over this, I wonder what it's like for Sarah who has just graduated, who is the one who is really there doing those things and I thought, you know, memories are wonderful. Memories are absolutely wonderful and our God is a God of memories. Memories are not only given to us a family life and the things that take place in our personal lives but God is a God who ordains, who orchestrates and who very much intends that we have spiritual memories and that those spiritual memories be cultivated while we may be thankful for photographs and for CDs and their powerful ability to evoke a sense of being there when we're not. The friends, we're also thankful for the scriptures which give us a sense of being there like this morning at Bethel with Jacob and sing not only the memories that God put into his life but through the effect of this sermon I very much hope that God will stir up in you, that desire for you to have spiritual memories and not just ones of the long distant past but ones that are being made and which are actively being cultivated and so are preaching this week on the life of Jacob continues where Mike left off last week. Last week Mike indicated that this wasn't his language but it fits in the theme of this sermon. It's as though Jacob had spiritual amnesia. He went spiritually dull for a number of years. It's as though his memory of the work of God was severed and he couldn't get back in touch with it. You see God had told him to go to Bethel. He didn't go to Bethel. He went to Shekham. When he last left his brother Esa, he said that Esa, I'll see you in Sair. He didn't keep his word and go there to meet with his brother. Rather he went to Shekham, a city that could well have been on the moral order of Sodom and Gomorrah, a terribly wicked city. And he pitched his tent outside that city in disobedience to his vow to his brother in the command of God and there he lived for a number of years in a most godless manner. It is as though he was cut off from all spiritual memory of what God was doing in his life, but the plan and purpose was and instead he takes this major detour and there he lived a life of little or no god-consciousness. There is no apparent spiritual growth that takes place there. There is only regression. There's no progress recorded. There are no prayers recorded. There no spiritual victories, one. In fact, the only thing that is recorded of those number of years was this disastrous slaughter of the Shekhamites that he permitted his sons to undertake and which caused the entire tribe, his entire family to become a curse to everyone who lived in the area. For you see, when his sons slaughtered every male Shekhamite, looted every family and took captive under slavery all the women and children. It was a wicked and heinous thing that he permitted his family to do. The only thing he did there was to create an environment where he was cursed by the peoples of the earth and it is surprising to him and to us that the other peoples did not rally and come together and in turn slaughter them. But we're told in this text the only thing that preserved their life was the fact that God had caused a great fear to fall on these people so that they would not rise up in arms and do that. Our chapter opens in verse 35 where we read the first word then. Then at a certain point it is almost as if God had said, Jacob, you need to know I am really weary of this. You're out of fellowship, you're abusing the covenant, you're spurning grace, you're swattering your neighbors. Now this time when I tell you to go to Bethel, go to Bethel and get my own impatience. It might even be communicated in the tone of voice that I use with the story. We've been impatient there and long suffering on God's part but what he does is a marvellously gracious thing. He doesn't take Jacob to Bethel there to punish him but rather he says go to Bethel because I have some very gracious reminders that I want you to experience once again there. Jacob if I have to I will jump you back to spiritual reality and that was precisely what God did. For you so it was as though a spiritual river of life that had been welling up in Jacob had become damned and there was no output and this river of life had created a rather large pool or reservoir that was going nowhere during the years in Shekhan and so when God said get up to Bethel it is as though God blew apart this dam and this great mighty rushing of spiritual memories and spiritual vitality gushed forth out, cascaded down over Jacob and his family. Now why would God have Jacob go to Bethel? What is so significant about that? Well that particular city was the bookend experience that I talked about a number of months ago when Jacob was fleeing Esau because Esau was out to kill him when he was fleeing his family. When he was fleeing from the presence of God Bethel was the first stop on his journey out of the land of Canaan. It was there that he had his Jacob's latter experience. It was the first step on his way out of Canaan and now this meandering and swerving through history for 30 years has finally come to an end and God said to him Jacob you need to get this life back on track. In order to do that I want you to have a bookend experience and I want Bethel to be the next stop as you go back into the land of Canaan because you must get back into the land of Canaan. And so Jacob goes there and chapter 35 verses 1 through 15 has this marvelous
re-visitation of all the significant things that God had done for him over the course of his life and especially at Bethel. You see on the way out of Canaan 30 years earlier God had told him that even though you're on a flight even though you're on the land you're running. Jacob I am going to give you and make certain that the Abrahamic blessings come true in your life. And he heard those Abrahamic blessings then and in this chapter God reiterates those same Abrahamic blessings that your descendants will be many and great, that you will achieve nationhood, that you will become a blessing to the nations rather than what you are right now which is a curse among the nations and that you would eventually possess this land of Canaan. 30 years, 30 years later the same experience God is awakening spiritual memories, aspirations, hopes and dreams. On the first visit to Bethel God changes the name of the city from Luz to Bethel. Now God changes the name of that city once again it's subtle, it's nuanced and I'll come to it later but he changes it from Bethel to L Bethel but a name change experience. Thirdly Jacob had a revelatory experience on his way out and he has two revelatory experiences on his way back in and encounter with a living God, a revelatory experience. Fourthly Jacob each time builds a stone altar, a pillar, to commemorate what took place. He did it then, he does it now and then fifthly God reminds Jacob of a name change. Your name was Jacob, it's now Israel. We had changed that before God says but now I'm going to reaffirm that and confirm that. Your name is now Israel. He who strives with God and prevails. Now this whole experience was designed by God to be a sensory overload kind of a mysterious deja vu. Jacob must have thought I've been here before. 30 years ago this experience was what I'm now experiencing. It must have been a very powerful thing that God did in his life. For you see Jacob had a lot of life yet to live. His life is not over. There's much that God needs to do to reorient him in order to guarantee that the future that God has guaranteed will in fact come about. And so this is a reorientation through spiritual memories. Now think with me how God uses special places as gracious reminders of His work in our lives. You might know the story of Joshua when they crossed over the Jordan River to begin the conquest of the land of Canaan years later. They crossed over on dry land and God said Joshua take 12 smooth stones from the river and pile them up and make a memorial altar to me in order that every single person who passes by this spot in the future will remember that this is where Israel passed over on dry land. God said specifically to Joshua create something that will provoke spiritual memory every single time in Israel like passes by. The other night I was talking with this Kraslin steward and we were talking about camp and getty which is the high school camp that for the last two years we've created through St. Paul's. And you need to know that 24 years ago I started a camp called camp sunshine and directed that for 17 years and all 17 of those years Kraslin attended that camp. I think she started when she was about 13 and for 17 consecutive years she went there and in the last five or six years since I've not done that she has still gone back to that same place Brooksville, Florida where camp sunshine has continued and now camp and getty has somewhat taken over and I said Kraslin what was it like to go back to and getty for parenthesis sunshine and she started to cry on the phone and she just burst into tears and I said Kraslin was wrong and through her stammering and haltering you know talking I realized that there was a spiritual flood of memories that had welled up for 17 and low 24 years about the same place every summer where powerful experiences in the faith had taken place and all I had to do was ask her a question about that camp and she just gushed forth in that fashion. It was a very dear and tender moment and I hate it when people cry on the other end of the phone but this was a spiritual memory this was good there was no lament there rather the joy was such that when it came out it came out in tears this is night when Mark Cable who was the featured speaker for camp and getty this year did a concert here in the sanctuary with mostly attended by high school students we might have used a few more parents actually the students who got up and spoke spoke in the same fashion about in getty and the spiritual experiences and the memories of that camp of year after year after year and there were tears last night as high school students were counted what it was that they had experienced and which experience was now embedded very deep in their memory banks rich and full and vivid and so as they talked about it even though it was a near experience of just a day or so earlier nonetheless they communicated in such a fashion as to evidence that those memories will be there for a very long time see geography is important in our faith God meets us in time and space God meets us at camps God meets us in sanctuaries God meets us in hospital beds when we're contemplating perhaps even the end of life question I would have for you this morning is you have such places as believers we have spiritual histories that must not be forgotten they can't be discarded we can't allow these spiritual memories of what God has done in space and time to slowly evaporate like missed rather it is incumbent upon us to keep spiritual memories very much alive the idea of spiritual special place needs a bit of refinement however notice how God took the occasion to change the name of the place from Bethel to El Bethel that may not seem like a very significant change but I tell you it is because Bethel means the house of God El Bethel means the God of the house of God you see when Jacob went to Bethel it wasn't a particular stone that he saw that communicated so powerfully to him about all of his memories that the stone was instrumental it helped but what provoked real change in his life what was the dynamic behind the spiritual memory was that it is the God of Bethel who showed not just a stone and folks that is very important for us to keep in mind because you see it's not really the place the camp particular set of buildings bad camp food or something like that that that I'm talking about this morning it's not a sanctuary this sanctuary or another it's not just a hospital bed rather it is the presence of God who is pleased to show up and to use those camp buildings and bad food for a week who is pleased to use this sanctuary as the place where spiritual memories are made as babies are walked down the center aisle being baptized and back again that is pleased to use the sanctuary there's nothing magical about this what is significant is that God is the God of the sanctuary he shows up is the God of the hospital bed and this is a very hard truth for Israel to learn Jeremiah laments that his people would cry out the temple of the Lord the temple of the Lord the temple of the Lord and his the rebelliousness and the continuing sin in Israel later on Jeremiah would would preach to the people and they would point to the temple and they would say everything is okay because we have the temple of the Lord we have Bethel and Jeremiah is saying oh it's not Bethel it's al Bethel don't you get this it is the God of the temple not the temple glorious as it may have been instrumentally used as it may have been by God but folks you are trusting in a physical structure the temple of the Lord when in fact you need to be trusting in El Bethel see places are empty they're vacuous until God fills them now if we want to be really technical we ought to say that it's not the place primarily Bethel and in a sense it's not even al Bethel the God of the place but actually the gracious reminders of God have to do with the grand suite of all that he has done for us it is a survey of redemptive history that we have to have in our mind it is the marveling at at the beauty of the plan of redemption of its intricacy of its intimacy of its personalness we need to be marveling not just at God but at the mighty acts of God that he has literally moved heaven and earth in order that we might experience him in time and space it's one thing to remember God in general it is a far different thing to do with God did in chapter 35 and say Jacob I want you to remember this and this and this all of these things that I've already done from the beginning of redemptive history I am up until your life and I want you to remember this great trilogy of blessings that is yet to come there's much history to be played out Jacob it's not just that he has a God consciousness that God consciousness is rooted in all that God has done in God's mighty acts and deeds on his behalf Psalm 77 is a wonderful example of that we don't have time this morning to look at it but I strongly encourage you to look at it during the course of the day in more than 10 places the psalmist uses either the word remember or a synonym for it when he thinks back on what it is that God has done for him and for Israel the power of memory the spiritual place of memory is cultivated in that song it has a very dear dear ending to it but as New Testament believers what we earnestly desire is not just Bethel not just the God of Bethel not just great acts of God but specifically my friends what we desire and what God is pleased to grant is a gospel memory we need to remember and to recount the mighty acts of Christ on our behalf the first history book published in the United States back very early on in the Puritan era was Magnolia Christie Americana the great acts of Christ in America the very first history book published even in pre-colonial days was a recounting of the great acts of Christ on behalf of the pre-colonial people what we want is a gospel memory that allows us to over over the life of Jesus Christ and to be able to recall all the Old Testament lead up the promise of him and then the New Testament fulfillment we look back and we want to understand how the sweep of redemptive history included the incarnation of the God man the perfect life of obedience the atoning death the resurrection the ascension of Christ and his now being seated at the right hand of God Almighty we want a gospel memory that is able to locate our place in that history and in that life of Christ this point is very important you see our gracious reminders are not designed to remind us of what we did but the gracious reminders of God get the up to Bethel is for the purpose of remembering what Jesus did we might be able to remember much more our lives and because we are so egocentric we will remember everything about us and we will forget things about others and one of the others quite honestly that even we as believers forget is Jesus God gives us gracious gospel reminders not primarily of how we became a Christian or what happened on that spot in a rededication or a recommitment service or the or the profound truth that we maybe learned lying in a hospital bed wondering if this means death or not but the Godful reminder is that Jesus Christ came into the world that Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory that Jesus Christ died for the sins of his death is primarily to be remembered we have a role in that because he died for us but please don't put the card before the horse we want a gospel memory of Jesus and secondarily how it is that we fit into that time however is a grinch time is a grinch that causes memories to fade sometimes into complete forgetfulness what a sad thing and and little little recognized implication of sin see it's due to sin that we would forget Jesus Christ it is due to the effect of sin in our lives and our hearts and our minds that we need to get up to that doubt because even though powerful experiences have taken place in our lives the enduring effects of sin erode those memories caused them to fade almost into oblivion and therefore God says to us get up to Bethel it is as though we develop a spiritual amnesia just like Jacob did even an Alzheimer's effect spiritually memories that once animated us burned hot within us which resulted in spiritual passion which created religious affections many times now like cold and dormant that certainly happened to Jacob at Sheckham and I'm quite sure it happens to you it does happen to me and so God led Jacob back to Bethel he had to command he had to exhort he had to push to speak for Jacob to go because you see Jacob must now find again his roots his spiritual heritage if Jacob doesn't have that orientation then there's no sense going back into the land of Canaan Jacob has been spinning, tumbling, swerving out of control for a great number of years though a believer and that's been the that's been the mystery of this whole study of the life of Jacob how can this man be one of the elect of God and live a life such as he did tumbling and swerving for over 30 years but this is now going to be an orientation a getting back on track by gracious memories folks it's interesting to know that God will go to the extreme in order to provide these things in Jacob's life Israel's life my life and your life if you're married you probably thought about a second honeymoon haven't you going back to the place where you first really got to know your spouse where everything was bright and cheering and happy and it was this marvelous experience of the honeymoon and people who are married talk about having a second honeymoon why because memories run cold because they want to reinvigorate what they once enjoyed and the passion and love and and commitment that they had one for the other it's a good thing to have a second honeymoon you know God took Israel on a second honeymoon in Hosea chapter two verse four verse 14 God says this about Israel during the time of his judging of Israel therefore behold i will allure her i will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her i will give her from there and the valley of acro as a door of hope she shall sing there as in the days of her youth as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt the wilderness wandering period was the first honeymoon now i doubt any of you would book a week into the Arabian desert under the primitive conditions that Israel had for 40 years but that first wilderness wanderings was the honeymoon it is where God consummated his love for Israel it is where they were wetted as husband and wife things have degenerated through the years Israel is now so wayward that God says the only recourse is to take them on a second honeymoon we need to get to know one another again i want to provoke in Israel by alluring her and these are powerful words to allure Israel out into the wilderness and there cause her to sing even though she is at the door of trouble the valley of acro that is the door of trouble but God says i'll make that into a second honeymoon this judgment of Israel that fell upon them God because he's God turns into a second honeymoon in order to provoke a spiritual awakening a memory of what God had previously done on their behalf God is prepared to go to the extreme finally allow me to say this you know one of the reasons God set one day in seven apart for us to worship is in order to thwart our propensity to forget apparently beyond seven days did it become spiritual spiritual memory begins to evaporate it runs cold we become vulnerable we encounter slippage a person one time asked Martin Luther Martin why do you preach the gospel every single week and Luther's answer was because you forget the gospel every single week spiritual memory has to be cultivated and kept alive worship is certainly in a fresh new encounter with God i trust that's taking place today it is a fresh encounter with God John Piper is correct worship is also about future grace not knowing just grace that is ours today and grace wearing we stand but it's about future grace and the anticipation of what God will yet do but my friends we come together to worship because we all have spiritual histories and because we come together in this sanctuary to recount the mighty acts of Christ on our behalf to provoke a spiritual and gracious memory among ourselves of what Christ has done for us until worship is about the present it's about the future but it is most certainly also about the past and this morning we have communion communion is arguably the most intimate expression of God's love for us people it is a time when he graciously comes in ways beyond any other way that he comes to us and parts grace to us we anticipate this in just a moment we very much look forward to eating a covenant meal with our Savior the words on the front of the communion table say this do this in remembrance of me when we come to this table it is designed to provoke within you a flood of gospel Christ centered memories of what he has done for you first four for three it is in the chapter tells us and Jacob got up and went to Beth out and the rest is a gracious gracious history of what God did for him I encourage you my dear friends let us get up and go to Beth out let us pray let us continue in our worship services together we confess our sins most merciful God we confess that we have sinned against you in thought word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone we have not loved you with our whole heart we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves we are truly sorry and we humbly repent for the sake of your son Jesus Christ have mercy upon us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name amen hear the word of God who all who repent and truly turn to him if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness the peace of the Lord be always with you the Lord be with you and also with you lift up your hearts let us give thanks to the Lord it is truly right to glorify you father and to give you thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord who was tempted in every way as we are yet did not sin by his grace we're able to triumph over every evil and to live no longer for ourselves alone but for him who died for us and rose again and because you censored beloved son to redeem us from sin and death and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his to behold his appearing countless throngs of angels stand before you to serve you night and day and beholding the glory of your present they offer you unceasing praise joining with them and giving voice to every creature under heaven we acclaim you and glorify your name as we sing
seated and you are invited to kneel let us pray together or heavenly father we thank you that you had you had in mind this morning a passage of scripture that would so well prepare us to take this kneel we thank you for even the intimacy and your loving care for us that you would do that the father you have done far more for us you've given us the Lord Jesus Christ we celebrate him we exalt him we lift his name on high father thank you for giving us this table we acknowledge that Jesus is the host of it we acknowledge that he is the one who bids us come and so we will come to Bethel or father we ask that you would now take these elements and transform them from their ordinary use into a use that is fitting for your kingdom and pray that we might apprehend Jesus in the taking of the bread and the cup we pray father that once again you would impart to us a grace a grace that transcends anything we have experienced before and your goodness to us this morning would be immediately evident this we pray in Jesus name amen