Exodus: Remembering the Stories

Introduction

This sermon addresses the reality of the "dark night of the soul"—those seasons where God remains silent despite persistent prayer. By examining Psalm 77, we explore the tension between deep personal suffering and the historical faithfulness of God. Using the Exodus story as a backdrop, we see how the biblical pattern of "hiding before rescue" serves to prepare the heart for a more intimate revelation of the Divine.

Scripture References

• Psalm 77: The lament of Asaph and the remembrance of God’s wonders.
• Exodus 1–14: The narrative of revelation, rescue, and recompense.
• Matthew 27:46: Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross.
• Ephesians 2:4-7: God’s mercy in making us alive with Christ.

Key Points

• The Honesty of Lament: Asaph models a faith that is not afraid to cry out. Bringing raw emotion, insomnia, and even "moaning" to God is a form of worship. The Psalms give us a vocabulary for pain when our own words fail.
• The Reality of Divine Silence: Silence from Heaven is a normal part of the Christian experience. It does not necessarily indicate unrepentant sin; often, it is a "divine peekaboo"—a purposeful hiding that focuses our attention and prepares us for a clearer revelation.
• The Weight of Remembrance: When feelings suggest God has forgotten to be gracious, we must intentionally shift the weight of our perspective to history. Asaph concludes that God’s way is "holy" (set apart) by meditating on the Exodus.
• Building Personal and Community Monuments: Because we are prone to forget, we must create "altars"—recorded testimonies, family traditions, or shared community stories—that serve as tangible evidence of God’s past faithfulness during current storms.
• The Ultimate Rescue: Our hope is anchored in the Gospel. Just as the Red Sea was parted, Christ entered the waters of death to provide the final rescue. His resurrection is the promise that every "hidden face" of God will eventually be revealed.

Conclusion

Suffering is not the end of the story, but the tilling of the soil. God's footprints may be unseen in the "great waters" of our lives, but He leads His people like a flock. Whether through personal history, the community of the church, or the ancient story of the Exodus, we find the strength to hold fast until the hands of God part and we see Him face to face.

Calls to Action

• Record Your History: Start a "Family Poem" or a journal of "But God" moments to document specific instances of provision and rescue.
• Engage in Community: Share a testimony of grace with someone in your small group or pact to help build their faith.
• Pray the Psalms: This week, find a Psalm of lament that resonates with your current trial and pray it back to God as your own.

Transcript

Today's scripture is from Psalm 77. If you don't have a Bible with you, there are Bibles underneath some of the seats. And Psalm 77 is on page 488. If you don't have a Bible of your own, you're welcome to take that one with you.

Please stand for the reading of God's Word. To the choirmaster. According to Judith and a Psalm of Asaph. I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me in the day of my trouble. I seek the Lord in the night. My hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan.

When I meditate. My spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open. I'm so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old. The years long ago. I said let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love for ever ceased? Or his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious as he in anger shut up! His compassion? Then I said, I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great, like our God. You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples with your arm redeemed your people. The children of Jacob and Joseph. When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid.

Indeed. The deep trembled. The clouds poured water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flash on every side. The crash of your thunder was a whirlwind. Your lightnings light up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea. Your path through the great waters. Your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock.

By the hand of Moses and Aaron. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

So if you had your Bible open, please keep it open. And, turn to Psalm 77. We're going to be camped out there today. A couple months back, I came across this psalm in my personal Bible reading, and as it got to the end, I was like, hey, there's the Exodus story. You know, that's what we've been reading, and journeying through as a church.

And I was excited and I felt like, as I sat with the Psalm, she's got to begin to speak to me through it. And I began to feel like I heard God say, this isn't just for you. This is for the church. And so I reached out to Travis and he agreed. And he invited me to launch our step back into our Exodus series.

In case you weren't with us back in the fall. We spent the fall journeying through the first 14.5 chapters of the book of Exodus. And we took a break for the advent season and for our agriculture series. And now we're going to dive back in and finish, the book throughout the spring.

If you were here and you remember, we've been looking at Exodus through the lens of three R's: revelation, rescue, and recompense. Exodus opens with the people of Israel enslaved and oppressed in Egypt for generations. But then God finally reveals himself to Moses and gives him his divine name, Yahweh. That God is I am. Then God also reveals himself to Israel through Moses, and not only to Israel, but also to Egypt through the ten plagues, demonstrating his power and his authority over and against the gods of Egypt.

And then this culminates in the events of the Passover and the crossing of the Red sea, where God brings recompense to Egypt for the evil they had done and rescue for his own people. He judges Egypt by killing the firstborn sons as the final plague, and crushes their army beneath the waters of the Red sea. And he rescues his people by the blood of an unblemished lamb, and through parting the waters and leading them through into freedom.

Now, this rescue at the Red sea. It is a magnificent moment. It's one of the famous, most famous miracles and the most cinematic miracle in the whole Bible. And it's a core memory for the people of Israel. And so, and that's what Asaph is referring to in the final stanza of Psalm 77. And that's that reference. That's what leads us to today's sermon.

As you may have noticed, when when we begin reading it, today's Psalm is a song of suffering. Asaph the poet is in a dark place. And the reason I think this message is for our church is that I'm willing to bet that he's not, that he isn't the only one. And it's actually really interesting. We, during worship, we had a couple people come up and just kind of confirmed that they felt like God was speaking to those of you here who are in pain for going through storms in your life and suffering.

And I know that there are many of you here today who are in deep pain, that maybe physical pain, sickness are hurting, that maybe emotional or relational pain. It may be grief or sorrow or fear or deep unmet longings. And I know some of you, I know some of your stories here. I don't know all of you, but I have had enough experience with the world to bet that you're carrying something.

And if you're not today, I mean, praise God. That's that's great. I would still encourage you to listen because, you will be at some point. This world is still broken. It's full of sharp edges and deep aches. But guess what? That's why we're here. This is exactly what scripture is good for. That's right. So we're going to work our way through the psalm, stanza by stanza, and we're going to take a close look at Asaph and what he's doing.

My goals for us today are first, to lead us in participating with Asaph as a way of entering into pain. We pray the scriptures as they correspond with our experience. But not only do they do that, but Asaph here also models for us how to bear the pain faithfully. How to suffer well. So we want to learn from him.

And finally, we're going to see how God is using Scripture. He's using this Psalm, and he's using the story of Exodus to show us who he is, how he works, and what he's doing in our pain, how he's shaping us into those who can see him with clearer eyes. So that's my goal. Let's pray. Lord God, we need you.

You have promised that you are the comforter, that your spirit is moving and working and God, we just ask for that today. Lord, would your spirit in Your Word be shaping us? Be opening our eyes to who you are? God, when you give, would you give me your words, Lord, that I may speak what you want to say.

God, as we we look to you, you are our hope. In Jesus name, Amen. All right, so let's, dive in and look at verses one through three. The poet Asaph, he starts. I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me in the day of my trouble. I seek the Lord in the night. My hand is stretched out without wearying.

My soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan when I meditate. My spirit faints. Selah.

Three things I want to point out here. First, I want you to notice Esau's pain. He's in trouble. He's suffering and he's feeling it. I cry aloud to God in the night. My hand is stretched out. My soul refuses to be comforted. I moan. He self is not afraid to voice how he feels. Maybe you felt this way.

Maybe you're feeling this way right now. Maybe last night. Maybe this morning. Asaph can empathize with you. And this is what makes the Psalms such great gifts for us as the church. There are 150 psalms in the Bible, and they cover the whole range of human experience. There are psalms of hope, of joy, of exaltation. There are also psalms of guilt, of sorrow, of fear and anxiety.

There's songs of rage. The Psalms have been the prayer book of the church for thousands of years, because in them we can find words to articulate what we're feeling, when we may not have those words for ourselves. So I would encourage you to make it a practice to read the Psalms as your own prayers. Find ones that resonate with you and where you're at, and then pray them.

The Psalms teach us how to pray, and they show us that nothing is off limits for God. He is not afraid of your emotions at all. He is, in fact, he is the one who can handle them. He wants you to bring them to him. Because that's the second thing I want you to notice. Notice that Asaph turns to God with his pain.

He says, I cry aloud to God and he will hear me in the day of my trouble. I seek the Lord himself is not satisfied with just gritting his teeth and getting through it. He isn't satisfied with positivity, and he's not. He's not good with just talking to his friends about his pain. He goes to God with him and this is important, first of all, because it's important.

Because God hears and he cares. Just like you would share your suffering with your friends because you have relationship with them. God wants relationship with you to he made you to abide with him. To sit with him. To be in communion with him. He wants to hear your thoughts and your feelings. See how ayes have trust that God hears his cry.

That is what faith looks like. The second thing is bring your suffering to God because he is ultimately one who can do something about it. So often our problems and our sufferings and our pain, they're beyond what we can do for each other. You can share with your friends and they can listen and that's good. But but often they can't fix it.

And we need God to intervene. And he can. So let's follow his lead. When you're hurting, go to God. Don't run to your phone. Don't run and put something on Netflix. Don't turn to wine or to weed or to porn. Like stop it. Stop it like that. Those aren't. There's just escapes. They're not going to fix it. They're not going to make it better, and they're just going to make it worse.

Go to God. Seek his face. Listen for his voice. Wait for his answer and keep going. Just the third thing I want you to notice in these verses. Esau's persistence says my hand is stretched out without wearying. My soul refuses to be comforted.

And he needs that persistence, because sometimes our requests are suffering, our desperation when we bring it to God. It's met with silence. I think that's what's happening with Asaph here. He's weeping. He's crying aloud. He's stretching out and his spirit is fainting. He's been doing this for a long time. And God is not answering. And listen to me carefully, because I want you to know this is normal, okay?

Silence from God is a normal part of the Christian experience. If you've been crying out to God, if you've been in pain and you've been bringing it to him, and you feel like what you're praying is getting no higher than the ceiling above your heads, I desperately want you to know today that you are not weird, okay? You are not unwanted or unloved or unusual.

You are not the one person that God just doesn't answer. Everybody else in this church isn't walking around praying and yelling bing, bing bing like just getting their prayers answered. It is normal if you're young in your faith. Maybe no one's told you this before the silence of heaven is normal. And it's not just me saying this, okay?

The many of the greatest saints of the past, with far deeper faith and far greater suffering than I have experienced, have written about the silence of God. Sometimes they've called it the dark night of the soul, and often it has nothing to do with you. And now I would be wrong to say, you know, like, sometimes it does have to do with you.

The Bible is clear that an unrepentant, unrepentant sin or unforgiveness can clog the pipes of grace. In times of pain and suffering and unanswered prayers. There are opportunities for introspection. Maybe God is calling you to confession and repentance for sin in your life. Okay. But also, maybe not okay. There's not necessarily something you have to do to fix it.

It's not about you. It's often about God and what he's doing. That does not mean it's not painful. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt deeply and leave us feeling lonely and desperate. I wish I had an answer for you. I wish I could give you a here's why for your situation. But I don't have one. Okay. Now, I promise I do have something to say about it, but I'm going to leave you hanging for now to sit with attention.

Because that's what that's where Asaph is at this point. That's what he's doing. By the way, if you still have your Bible open, do you see that little word in italics at the end of verse three? Selah. It's a Hebrew word, and it doesn't have an exact translation, which is why it's never translated in the Psalms. Now, some scholars think it may have been a musical term, like an instruction for the musician playing the psalm.

Others think it's a direction for the one leading the prayers. But what everyone agrees on is that it's a signal to pause. It's a time to reflect. And I think Asaph puts it here to give us permission to sit with his with the pain for a while. Sit with the silence. Experience it fully. You don't need to be afraid of bringing your pain to God.

He wants to sit with you in it.

But he does move on. So let's look at verses four through nine.

You hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old. All the years long ago. I said let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased?

Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger? Shut up! His compassion. Salem. Now verse four is more anguish. Do you have insomnia because of your suffering? So does Asaph. And he blames God for it. Again, you do not have to be afraid to bring your real thoughts and feelings to God and tell him what you really feel.

As for Asaph, he is in it right now. But what does he do? How does he deal with this? And this is the point, I think, where the psalm turns from an opportunity to empathize to a model of how to respond, how to suffer. Well. Earlier I said that one of the benefits of praying the Psalms is they give a voice to our feelings.

But another major benefit is that they shape us into proper response. These have is a model for us. So what does Asaph do? He stops. He remembers. He makes a diligent search. ESF brings his whole self to his suffering. He brings his heart and his mind. You see, Asia is not cold and unfeeling. We've already seen. He's crying.

He's feeling it. But he doesn't let himself be ruled by his emotions either. He brings his mind and his will into it too. He asks questions and he interrogates the situation. Has God stopped loving me? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Is he angry with me? And he just wants to see me in pain? You know, otherwise, what he's really asking is.

He's asking is what I'm feeling about God actually true? I'm feeling these things. Is that actually true? And here we get another sailor. In this case. To me, the sailor seems to be more like. Let's stop and think about this for a minute. Asaph thinks about it and he settles on an answer. Verse ten. Then I said, I will appeal to this to the ears of the right hand of the Most High.

I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What? God is great, like our God. You are the God who works wonders. You have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm redeemed your people.

The children of Jacob and Joseph.

Verse ten is the most significant line for us. Earlier we saw him asking the question, is what I'm feeling really true? Will God reject me forever? Has his love stopped? Has he changed? And those questions, they hang in the balance. But verse ten is where he decides what will carry the weight. And he decides, when interpreting his own experience, the history of who God is and has been in the past will weigh the most.

Okay, let me say that again. He decides that when interpreting his own experience, how he's feeling right now, what what his situation is, the history of who God has been in the past will weigh the most. He says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. He will remember them. He will ponder how God has worked before. He will meditate on what God has done and all that remembering.

It leads him to a conclusion. Your way, O God, is holy. What? God is great, like our God. And that word holy. It means set apart one of a kind, unique. And there is mystery in that. There are ways that God acts that we don't understand. That's why we're confused. But ultimately, we ask, Who is God? You are the God who works wonders.

And this leads him to an answer, a comfort for his soul in his pain. This is who you are. This is what you've done. Therefore, I can hope in you. This is where we want to be. To. We want to remember. We want to rest in what we've seen God do. But remembering is hard. So let's get practical.

Okay. What does it look like for us to remember? How do we do this? And I'll say, first of all, remembering can be personal. Okay. You can remember what God has done for you. Ways that he has answered previous prayers. Ways that he's shown up in impossible situations in your own life. Okay. But. And that is good. But I'm just going to say that especially in these moments of suffering and desperation.

It can be really hard to remember the ways that God has been faithful in ways that he's provided in the past. The truth is, we are just so prone to forgetting. We just we forget so easily. And then when we think everything is going good, we think we did it for ourselves. And we just, we forget. And not only that, but in our pain, we also have an enemy whispering in our ear that God doesn't hear you.

He doesn't answer. You're on your own. So I would encourage you as an individual, as a family record, the ways that God has been faithful. Set markers for yourself to help you remember this is what God has people do all throughout the Old Testament. Like ten years ago or so, I was reading the Bible and I noticed how God kept having his people set up monuments and altars as places where he had rescued them, so they would see them and be like, oh, that's right.

That is where God rescued us. And as I read that, I realized how fuzzy I was on remembering the times God had rescued me. And so I was like, okay, what does that look like? How can I do that? And so I began writing a family poem. Okay. Now it's not complicated. It doesn't rhyme or something like that.

It's just a simple structure that says it's like when this was happening, we felt and how we felt. But God and we record the ways that he answered the prayer. And we began a family tradition of adding a little bit to the poem every December at the end of the year, when we look back and, hey, is there ways that God has answered?

And we added him. And every New Year's Day we sit down together and we read our family poem and remind ourselves, of how God has answered our prayers. There's many ways that I feel like I'm failing at intentionally disabling my kids and stuff like this. This is one thing I'm proud of, I love this. Because it's been such a gift to us to annually be reminded of the ways that God has come through and and we've seen fruit from that a few years ago or a few years after we began doing it.

Just a couple of weeks into anyway, I got unexpectedly fired from my job and I drove home, walked in the door at 930 in the morning with all my stuff in a cardboard box, and sat down with the family, with my kids and said like, hey, I just lost my job. And my sweet son looked up and asked me, daddy, did you get fired?

Yes, son. Yes, I did, but we sat together. I print out a copy of this poem and we sat together and we read it. Right there. I didn't know at that point what I was going to do. I didn't know where money was going to come from. I didn't know where we were going to go next.

But we cried out to God, and then we reminded ourselves that we'd been in desperate situations before, and God had always been faithful in the past and so we trusted that he would be faithful again. And it took a few months, but he was. He was. And now that whole episode is yet another entry in our poem. And as you start to record things, I want you to know it's not always tidy or like you can't always wrap a neat bow around it.

There are some people and situations in our poem that were answers to prayer at one point that are problems later in the poem. Okay. It's this all is life together. And like in our family, we've been having some persistent health issues for the last few years. And like, 2024 was spent spending a lot of money and a lot of tears and a lot of pain trying to figure these out.

And at the end of the year, and they weren't figured out. And so we actually put that in our poem as the last thing. And there was no but God there. It was like, God, we we're hoping 20, 25 we saw some improvement. But honestly, this year we we kept it in there and hopefully 26 will be able to like add a bow around it, but maybe not.

Either way, either way, we're trusting that God is with us even in our pain. Now, you don't need to do a family poem, okay? But I would encourage you to consider how do you build monuments in your life that remind you that you can hold onto of the ways that God has been faithful and. But remembering is not just a personal project either.

It's also a community project. ESF sings you have made known your might among the peoples we remember together. This is just one of the reasons why we gather together, why it's so important to live regularly in community. This is why we worship together on Sunday mornings. The past couple of weeks we've been seeing Great is Thy Faithfulness and faithful you are.

Maybe you didn't feel like singing that on your own, but together we sing it and we remind ourselves this is why we do pacts. It's why we eat together and retreat together and do life together. Because in doing so, we tell each other the stories of God's faithfulness in our lives, with friends, with people. In this church. I've heard the stories of how God has brought life out of death and shown light in the darkness.

I've wept with others in pain. I rejoice in salvation. I mean, were you here last week? That's what we did last week. I mean, do you remember Chris's story? Sharing God's incredible mercy and provision? And like, I was sitting there just blessed by his testimony of God's grace and like, it inspired me to keep going, keep praying for the people in my life.

This is what we're doing. Church. Let's keep going. These stories, they build faith. They restore hope. They help us to marvel at the generosity of God. We can endure faithfully because we've seen God come through for those around us. You cannot do this life on your own. You were never meant to. We were made for each other and to enjoy our God together so we can remember individually.

We can remember in community. But I can go still further back. And this is what Asaph after us. Look at the end. When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid. Indeed. The deep trembled. The clouds poured out water. The skies gave forth thunder. Your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the world.

When your lightnings lighted up the world. The earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea. Your path through the great waters. Yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock. By the hand of Moses and Aaron. Asaph ends his poem with the Exodus story, a poetic retelling, a reminding of how God has rescued his people before.

I love the way he puts it. When God reveals himself. The waters were afraid, the chaos and the darkness trembled. When God comes to rescue, he doesn't mess around. Just like Asaph was suffering. Israel sat in bondage and slavery, just like Asaph is experiencing the silence of God. Israel cried out for generations, wondering if God had heard or cared or remembered.

And he did. That's why, in the middle of his own pain, Asaph clings to the hope that God will bring Exodus salvation in his life, just like he did for the nation of Israel. And we can do this to. We are also a piece of the long history of the story of God and His people. The Bible tells us that because of Jesus, we have been grafted into the family of Abraham.

This story is our story too. And we and don't say, well, yeah, that was a long time ago. That has nothing to do with me. It was a long time ago for Asaph two. He was writing this poem 600 years, probably after the Exodus. He didn't remember it. He wasn't there, but he still claimed it. Clung to it as his story.

Yeah. And as we lean on these stories for hope in our own, as we do that, we can see that this pattern of God hiding his face before revelation and rescue. It's something that happens all throughout Scripture, but lives in the big moments and in individual stories, and that even Jesus walked through the hidden face of God on the night before he died.

Jesus knowing what was coming. He wept and he prayed. And he asked his father to take this cup from him. And he was met with silence on the cross, bleeding and in pain, Jesus cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God didn't bust in and rescue him. Jesus died. But God would not abandon him to the grave like the gods of Egypt.

Just when the gods of this world thought they had won, Yahweh allowed the waters of death to swallow him up before revealing himself in resurrection power and glory. That Easter morning, Jesus stepped out of the tomb with the keys to death and hell in his hand, in the greatest rescue the world has ever known. So now, no matter what happens to us, no matter what swallows us up, even death itself, we can hold on to his hand and know with full confidence that he can and he will pull us through.

Remember. Remember your stories. Remember what he has done. If God would not spare his own son, but graciously gave himself up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? There is nothing that will stop him from coming after you. So if you're here today and you're hurting, be like Asaph. First of all, don't be afraid to feel it.

You don't need to pretend everything is all right, because it's not. This world is broken. Sickness, pain and death are all around us. And weeping is a proper response. Know that God hears your cry like he heard the cries of those people dying in bondage. Years ago. And if you're feeling like you're drowning, that's okay, because God's way is through the sea.

Hold on. He has promised before that he would rescue his people. And he did. Be like Asaph. And remember that. Cling to it through the waiting. Okay, back to the question of why. Why does he do this? Doesn't he know who it hurts to be kept in silence? And like I said before, I don't know why. Not exactly.

Not for your situation. But I do think this pattern of silence and revelation hiding before rescue is persistent enough throughout the whole Bible to give us a sense that somehow, for some reason, this is how God works. I don't understand it. Maybe it wouldn't be the way I would do it. But I trust him that somehow, through the waiting and the silence, he is preparing us to meet him more intimately.

To move from knowing about him to knowing him. Well, this last week I read this writer named Ross Byrd, who described the way that God hides himself as a game of divine peekaboo. Here's what he said in shouldn't. Most likely, the first game you ever played was peekaboo. Someone, for some mysterious reason, decided to hide their face from you with their hands.

But somehow this simple act of hiding arrested your attention. It made your little eyes focus on something rather than on everything. For, of course, to look at everything is the same as to see nothing at all. And then revelation. The hands part not despite the hiding, but because of it. A face is revealed, a familiar face, but one which you now see and enjoy, as if for the very first time, through the very through the simple act of hiding, you were given a new way to see.

I love this, I'm going to say it again. Through the simple act of hiding. You were given a new way to see. God is using this game and I know it hurts to call it a game because it's painful. It hurts. But God is using this as a way of telling the soil of our hearts. We've been talking about agriculture, right?

We've been talking about the preparation of our souls. The patience. And God is preparing us to receive the revelation with joy. We are so prone to wander. We don't know where to look. As bird said, we look at everything but see nothing. And God's hiding brings us desperately back to him. Your suffering, his hiding it is not for nothing.

He is preparing you for himself. I don't know what God is going to do in the situation you're in right now. I don't know if relief is just around the corner. We're still a long way off. But whichever it is, you are not alone. And you are not abandoned. No one playing peekaboo with a child covers their face and then walks out the door.

Okay, we don't do that. The whole point of peekaboo is to reveal the covering as a promise of revelation in Jesus. He told us that if we as who are evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will our father in heaven bring good gifts to us? So remember who he is. Remember what he's done.

Lean on the revelation to hold fast until God uncovers his face and reveals himself in new ways, so that you will see your father in a new and richer way. And he will okay. And ultimately, church, ultimately this broken world that we live in of pain and alienation and in death. This world is but a last game of peekaboo.

There is coming a day when the hands will part and the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll. The dead will rise and we will see Jesus. God will reveal himself once and for all. And our final rescue will be complete. Our God is coming down to live with us and he will never hide himself again. No matter what happens today, no matter what happens tomorrow or in 30 years, our God has promised he is coming again and he's making all things new, and that all the sorrows you will ever hold will barely fill a cup compared to the ocean of his glory.

Coming for those who belong to Jesus, we can rest in that hope right now. Abiding with our father in the midst of pain, we can experience that eternal life today. Will you stand with me? As we close, we're going to do a couple things to put this into action. First of all, the bread and the cup are around the sanctuary.

For those of you who have put your faith in Jesus to take and eat and remember back to the rescue that has already come, that our God has revealed himself, and that we will remember forward to the final rescue that is still coming, when we will all eat and drink together at the wedding feast of the lamb. There are also going to be some people available at the front for prayer.

If you're hurting, if you are in a storm today and you're despairing of faith, if you've been stretching out your arm and crying out to God feeling faint, you are not alone. Come, let us join you in prayer. Let us speak the blessings and love of Jesus over you. We are a body together. I thought it would be a fitting two way to close the sermon with the words that close our family poem.

It's a call to remember and so let me speak over us. How many more stories of God's faithfulness could we come up with if given the time or the space? How small are these in light of the greatest truth that when we were still sinners, when we all, like sheep, had gone astray, we were dead in our transgressions and enslaved to sin?

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, he came and died and rose again, and in his marvelous grace made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

Each one of these stories is testimony of God's great faithfulness in our lives, and a mere glimpse of his abounding love for us through Jesus Christ, His Son. Surely there are countless more stories, and many that we will not even know until we meet him face to face in the everlasting light of his presence in the new heavens and the new earth.

But until that day, we, Janssens, and we radiant church, we praise the living God who was and is, and is to come. And we say boldly with great joy. As for our house, we will serve the Lord. Amen. Yes.