Things Worth Remembering!

SERMON OUTLINE:

(1). Recalling (vs 3,9,14,16)

(2). Instructing (vs 9 & 16).

(3). Following (vs 17-22)

SERMON BODY:

Ill:

These are the top 6 things people most often forget:

• (6). Faces 42%

• (5). What was said 49%

• (4). Words. 53%

• (3). Telephone numbers 57%

• (2). Where something is 60%

• (1). Names 83%

Ill:

• Just recently at my own Church;

• One of the leaders at the Sunday morning kids club,

• Asked the children to bring along an object that helps them remember,

• i.e. a camera, a photograph etc.

• The following week not one of the children remembered to bring an object!

• TRANSITION: In this chapter God gives his people;

• Things that are worth remembering!

• I want to pull out three threads from this chapter.

(1). Recalling (vs 3,9,14,16)

Verse 3:

“Then Moses said to the people, ‘Commemorate (Remember) this day, the day you came out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand.”

Verse 9:

“This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips. For the Lord brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand.”

Verse 14:

“In days to come when your son asks you, “What does this mean?” say to him, (Remember the facts, think back to what happened and explain) “With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Verse 16:

“And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that (here is what they are to remember) the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand.’”

It is very obvious that God wanted his people to remember what he had done for them:

• He wants to make sure that the next generation,

• And the one after that and the one after that etc.

• Will not forget what he has done.

• That he had set them free from the slavery of Egypt;

• He had redeemed them at great cost!

Ill:

• At the dramatic conclusion of the musical, Camelot,

• The tragic figure of King Arthur calls a boy named Tom out of the bushes.

• King Arthur dubs the boy a "Knight of the Round Table,"

• But orders him not to fight in the battle.

• He is to "grow up and grow strong"

• So that he can tell of the ideals and accomplishments of Camelot,

• So future generations would remember.

Ill:

• A similar scene takes place in the graphic novel by Frank Miller, ‘300’

• (Released as a feature film).

• One of the Spartan soldiers has lost an eye,

• So Leonidas the king of Sparta.

• Sends him back home to tell the citizens to "Remember us!" as the dying heroes’

• It is his way of telling his people that "Freedom has a cost."

• TRANSITION: For the Hebrew people to be free a price was paid.

• The death of a Passover lamb!

• But also the death of the Pharaohs (and Egypt’s);

• Firstborn sons was the price paid for their freedom.

Ill:

• We took communion earlier;

• A reminder of the price paid for our redemption;

• The death of God’s one and only son who shed his blood on a Roman cross.

• Redemption: "always has a cost."

• The Bible says (1 Peter chapter 1 verse 18 – J.B. Philips paraphrase):

“For you must realise all the time that you have been “ransomed” from the futile way of living passed on to you by your fathers’ traditions, not with some money payment of transient value, but by the costly shedding of blood. The price was in fact the life-blood of Christ, the unblemished and unstained lamb of sacrifice”.

To help the people remember this, God gave them some instructions:

• They were to set apart their ‘firstborn sons’;

• And their firstborn animals.

• The firstborn represented the families and the nations strength,

• Its vitality and its endurance.

• God wanted his people to know;

• That its strength lay only in its dependence on God's strength,

• That its vitality came from the life which is in Him,

• That it would endure from generation to generation,

• Because He is the same and His years fail not.

Ill:

• There is an interesting play on words that the NIV does not bring out in verse 12.

• The word translated 'give over' is really 'pass over,'

• So as God passed over the Hebrew people during the tenth plague,

• The Hebrew people are to pass over their first-born male to him.