Remembering God's Faithfulness

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Morning, Conduit. How are you this morning? It's good to see you this morning. Merry Christmas. It is still Christmas season. You realize that, right? We're not done with Christmas. Christmas just started on the 25th. It goes for 12 days. So Merry Christmas still. We'll continue to celebrate that. This is our last Sunday in 2025.

And as has sort of been our custom throughout the last few years, we've taken the last Sunday of the year to reflect a little bit on the year previous.

I've told you before that I'm kind of a self-described New Year's junkie. I absolutely love New Year's. Not because it is a significant, actually significant, or overtly spiritual time or anything like that. It's just another day. The day will click over. The calendar will click over. And the mercy of God will be new on the next day. And then the mercy of God will be new on the next day. And the mercy of God will be new on the next day and every day into eternity after that. But there is something I feel like in my, I just feel like in my gut that is helpful when we can have sort of a period at the end of a sentence that maybe was not so great. And can look back on what was experienced and how God moved in our lives. And then we can also look forward to see and anticipate and expect and pray about what we are asking God to do into the future. And because, like, because of all of that, because of the way, like, hope is built up and stored up as it looks into the future,

New Year's for me is just a really fun time of year. If you spend, I mean, they aren't jamming down there this morning. No, if you spend much time on social media

Or really on the internet at all, you'll, you might see a lot of what I would consider to be like common pop influencer types of people giving advice about your mental health and emotional health and spiritual health and your goals and your objectives and how you should be formatting your own mental space, how you should be thinking about X, Y, and Z. And a lot of them will say at this time of the year, well, we're into a new year. It's important that we don't look back on what happened behind us, right? Because that is literally behind us. We're only looking forward. We're only looking to the future. We're only looking towards what is positive. They'll say things like, well, when you're driving a car, you look out the windshield because it's a much wider view than if you were to look out your rear view mirror. Like you don't drive looking in your rear view mirror. You drive looking at your windshield because it gives you a better and more clear view of the future. The idea being that, of course, looking backwards somehow distracts you from what is really important, which is apparently always looking forward.

Now, not gonna argue that looking forward, we talked for a couple of weeks here about building a culture of hope, even in our own hearts, about the fulfilled promises of God in the future and how they are fulfilled ultimately in the coming and the giving of Jesus Christ. I'm not gonna say that looking forward is a bad strategy. I just think it's a bad exclusive strategy.

I think when we only look forward, we miss the gift of God, the gift of what God has done in the past. And we remove ourselves from the solid foundation of His faithfulness to us throughout generations. When we only look forward, we don't have a place to stand in order to hope for the future. Because any hope that we have for the future is built upon His faithfulness to us in the past, is built upon His faithfulness to us in Jesus. And so I would say that looking backwards is not only helpful, but it is actually an encouraged practice in Scripture. I wanna share with you one story this morning. I've shared this story before. It's one of my favorites in Scripture. I actually shared this story at a similar point in time. Last year, because I think it provides us early significant lesson on the power and the purpose of looking backwards. Especially since this past year, we spent a significant amount of time in the book of Exodus. Remember that of course, spent almost all summer walking through the book of Exodus. But we never really, I don't know if you noticed this or not, but we never really resolved any of the tension that exists at the end of Exodus.

Which is Moses was called and led the people, right? Delivered them. The Israelites were freed from slavery to the Egyptians. They were led through the wilderness by Moses and Aaron. They were provided for by God through significant miracles, water from the rock, manna and quail, leading through the Red Sea. They won kind of against all odds type of military battles. They failed and then they repented and then they failed and then they repented again and again and again and again. And they were just always trying to get to the land that God had promised their ancestors to give to them that would be their own. And finally, at the end of the book of Exodus, the leader, their leader, Moses, dies. Right when they're kind of like on the doorstep of actually getting to the place where the ultimate promise to the people would be fulfilled. They would go into the land that was promised them. And the book of Exodus just kind of stops there with the main military leader at that time, a guy by the name of Joshua, kind of taking command or taking leadership of the Israelite people,

The Jewish people nation at that time. And so if you were to just stop there, you'd be like, well, that was really depressing and kind of anticlimactic. They didn't get to the place where the whole book was kind of leading up to. Their leader, Moses, died at the very end. And now we're just kind of stuck holding this like, well, what next type of thing? Well, Joshua comes on the scene. And in the first book or the first couple chapters of the book of Joshua, which exists right after the Pentateuch or the first five books of the Old Testament, we see actually what happened. The story gets picked up in the book of Joshua. Joshua is sitting on the banks of the Jordan River. He sends two spies over into the land. He scouted out, tell us what we're up against. The spies come back and say, yeah, the land is filled with people. And Joshua's like, great, sounds like a great opportunity to go and walk into the promise that the Lord has given to us.

And so Joshua leads the people through the Jordan River, the Ark of the Covenant as their guide, and into the Promised Land. And what is it exactly that as Joshua is kind of leading this charge of the people, finally into the promise that he tells them?

Now, you know, I try to be a good leader. And I think if I was in Joshua's position, you know, I would like, here's our vision. Here's our mission, right? Here's what we're going to take, walking into the future that God has prepared for us. It's right on our doorstep. Don't look back, march forward, fight hard, be of good courage, do not be afraid. In a lot of ways, that is what Joshua did. But before all of it really kicked off, Joshua did something actually the complete opposite of telling them to march forward. He says, I want you to stop.

I want you to look back, and I want you to remember. He stops to make sure that the people set up a memorial that will allow them to remember that particular moment in history, that particular moment in time, and will give them an opportunity to revisit that particular moment in time, that particular day, that particular season of their life for generations to come.

I'm gonna read that here in just a moment to kind of fill out that story. But this whole premise of remembering things that important spiritual practice for us all, when maybe all of the world has kind of this borderline toxic positivity about always moving forward and never looking back, I want to be clear about something that as your pastor, I want you to remember.

I want you to look back. I want you to consider, I don't want you, I want you to be really clear, I don't want you to forget all that you experienced in 2025.

I actually want it to be so fresh in your memory that you returned to it over and over and over again. And I'm not just talking about the things that brought you joy and happiness and peace. I want you to look back to remember the things that caused you pain and sadness or that were discouraging or that you would have avoided if you had the opportunity. Not to rehash them, not to like stir up any negative emotion with them, not to re-feel them or to re-experience them, but really and truly simply to re-number them.

Maybe to re-envision them. Maybe to re-imagine all that happened and all that God did to bring you through it in his faithfulness.

See, it is only when we look back on what has happened that we can fully grasp, fully grasp, the goodness of God's provision and faithfulness. The steadfast and strong presence of God sustaining us through the moments, the minutes, or the months even, that the enemy intended for our harm and destruction, but that God turned into his good.

Because it's never, it's almost never, it's been my experience at least that it's almost never in the moment of significant hardship that you have a really keen awareness of God's faithfulness, steadfastness, provision, and presence.

It's almost never there in the moment, but it's always kind of right after it. And then a few days after it, and then a few weeks after it, and then a few months after it, you look back and you're like, oh my goodness, the Lord did this in that season, and this in that season, and this in that season. He sanctified me through that. He built my trust in that. He brought alongside this person in my life, like all of these gifts of things that he has done and given based upon his faithfulness. I did not see in the moment, but now I look back and I remember what I went through and I remember what I experienced. I didn't see his faithfulness in the moment, but I certainly see it now.

Maybe that's been your experience, maybe not. But to go back to this story from Joshua, the book of Joshua, we're gonna read just a short little section of it here in Joshua chapter four, verses one through nine is where we're gonna kind of be reading out of the NIV. We should have it up here on the screen for you. Remember all that we just kind of recapped, the whole of the nation is standing in the Jordan River. The whole nation had just finished crossing the Jordan. The Lord said to Joshua, I want you to choose 12 men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and to put them down at the place where you stay tonight.

So Joshua called together the 12 men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe and said to them, go over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of tribes of Israelites. Verse six, to serve as a sign among you.

In the future, when your children ask you, what do these stones mean? Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. And so the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took 12 stones from the middle of the Jordan. According to the number of tribes of Israelites, the Lord had told Joshua and they carried them over with them to their camp where they put them down. And Joshua set up the 12 stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at a spot where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant had stood and they are there to this day.

The question is, well, we know what Joshua did, but what was actually the purpose of the stones? Why did God command Joshua to pick up the stones or to have the 12 tribes pick up the stones and bring them over? It says in verse six here that he was to do this. So the stones were to serve as a sign among you.

But as a sign of what exactly? I mean, most people would see just a pile of rocks as a pile of rocks, but what did God actually want this pile of stones to signify? What did he want them to look back and remember?

In the future, he says, when your children ask you, what do these stones mean? In verse seven, that question gets answered.

Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord when it crossed the Jordan. The waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. This is a really important point here because some people will read through this really quickly and say, oh, well, the stones, they were meant to come out and they were meant to, and he piled them up 'cause they're like an altar to the Lord. And that's not what the word says. It says, the word does not say anything about the stones being an altar or a memorial unto the Lord. It says that it's actually not for the Lord, for the people. The stones were not a memorial to the Lord. They were an offering, they weren't an offering of praise. They weren't an altar. The stones were meant as a memorial to the people of Israel

That it wasn't for, it was for them, that they and the generations after them would not forget what God did in that place on that day.

Listen, God does not ever want us to forget his faithfulness to us. And it often requires that we set up little moments of remembrance and memorial to what he has done for us in the past, how he has provided for us or shown himself faithful. The scripture goes on there in verse eight, Joshua 4a, it says, so the Israelites did as Joshua commanded him, commanded them to do, and of course, that commandment came down from the Lord, which should be important for us to recognize here that it was the Lord that commanded the Israelites to remember, that the act of remembering, the discipline of remembering, the kind of like generational solidifying of God's faithfulness for the Israelite people was not some type of harebrained idea that Joshua had come up with, that it was God's idea, that God wanted them to remember, that God wanted them to have something that drew their attention back to what he had done for their lives.

This is very similar to what God did in the giving of the 10 commandments and Exodus chapter 20, verses eight through 11, when he talked about the Sabbath, right, like all of the 10 commandments were like, do not do this, do not do this, do not do this, do not do this, do not do this. And when it comes to the Sabbath, he says what? Remember, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Sabbath as a day of remembering, a day of reflecting, a day of looking back to the faithfulness of God, the provision of God, the strength of God, the mercy of God, all that God has done in that moment. God wants to, not only does God want us to remember, God actively has given us a tool that creates space in our lives. So we have the margin to actively remember in the Sabbath.

God's like, I know we have a tendency to only look forward. So let me create some space in the natural rhythm of all creation for you to stop and remember.

And set that time apart, set that place apart because forgetting is dangerous to your very souls.

We need to make space to remember. This is ultimately the role and place of Sabbath in our life. God desires and wants us to know and remember his powerful hand of deliverance, his steady place of presence. This remembering is a tool to encourage us and to strengthen others around us. It was an opportunity for them to pass on the faithfulness of God, not to just hold it into their own memories, but to pass on the faithfulness of God to their children and their grandchildren and to the line and lineage after them. That God's faithfulness does not just exist in the vacuum of my own individual life, but that God's faithfulness and provision and plan and purpose of my life existed in my family of lineage long before I was even a thought in my parents' mind.

And God is like, I want you to make sure that for generations, upon generations, upon generations, there is something that will draw the children's children, children back to remembering God's goodness. God's faithfulness.

But here, again, an important thing to remember, an important part to see, is what the purpose of the remembering, even what the purpose of remembering was, okay? The purpose of remembering was, once again, it was not to focus on either my circumstances, it was not to rehash and re-feel and re-experience and remember what I had gone through, but the purpose of remembering was to redraw our attention back to the God that sustained us in it and through it. And that through that remembering, it now becomes a tool or a gift in our own lives to help encourage others who are in the midst of what we experienced, but we're now on the other side of it and can speak of the faithfulness and goodness of God where maybe they can't.

There's nothing but hopelessness and darkness and pain and suffering in the midst of what they're going through, but we've been there, we've done that, we've got the T-shirt, right? And we are now in the space of remembering what God has done, and we can share that with them. Always pointing them back not to how I victoriously beat all the circumstances of my life, but how God sustained me and how God provided and how God was good and about how God was faithful. And this is exactly what Joshua is meant to do here. If you look later in this chapter, at the end of chapter four, in the beginning of chapter five, we see that this act of remembering inspired others in their trust and belief of God. It wasn't primarily just about them, that God's faithfulness to us, that God's faithfulness to others is a tool also that can be utilized to encourage others in the midst of their own situation. Look at Joshua chapter four, verse 24. At the end of this chapter, it says he did this.

So that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful, and so that you might always fear the Lord your God. And look at what even happens to the enemies of the people of the Lord, the enemies of the people of God, when they recognize the significant provision and faithfulness of the one true God in the lives of the Israelites. Now when all the Amorite kings, this is Joshua five, verse one. Now when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan, and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until we had crossed over, their hearts melted and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites.

The memorial stood not just as a testimony of God's provision and faithfulness to his people, it also stood as kind of like a lighthouse of the power of God, the one true God, for those that do not believe.

Now, this is really clear throughout all scripture that even up until this very day, the power of remembering. In fact, if you're familiar at all with the Jewish faith as it exists now, that Jews today, even to this day, the main holiday that Jewish people celebrate is what?

I heard it somewhere salient, Passover, right? It is like Easter for us, right? It is the thing that anchors them and centers them in their faith is Passover, and they celebrate it even still to this day, and they continue to celebrate it this day because they are told to never stop celebrating it until, because they are always to remember what God did in the original Passover, when God freed them from slavery to the Egyptians. In fact, in Exodus 12, when Passover is actually the original Passover is happening, it says this, "Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance "for you and your descendants. "When you enter the land that the Lord will give you, "as he had promised, observe the ceremony. "When your children that you have ask you, "what does the ceremony mean? "Tell them it's the Passover of the Lord "who passed over the house of the Israelites in Egypt "and spared our homes when He struck down the Egyptians." And so God was relying on the ceremony

And the regularity of celebrating His deliverance of His people for that truth to get into the hearts of generations that didn't experience it.

And that responsibility has not escaped us either, that we continue to have a responsibility to pass on to our children's children's children, the faith of the one who has saved us.

You know, as we look back, as we remember a year that has passed, I kind of like look back through my, one of the ways that I try to remember the things that God has done in my life, I mean, like I can, what day is it even right now, right? No one knows what day it is between Christmas and New Year's. Like everything gets all confusing. And so to think about like, well, what was God doing in my life in March?

You might as well ask me what I did when I was three, okay? Like no recollection of what was going on in my life in March. But maybe one of the benefits of kind of everyone having a supercomputer that they keep in their pocket all the time, that's also a camera, is that most of us take semi-regular pictures or screenshots from our life. And so I go back in my photos and I'm like, oh yeah, that's what I was doing in March of 2025. That's kind of like what life was like in that moment. That helps me to remember what I was walking through, what I was feeling, what God was trying to do in my life, how that relationship was going, X, Y, and Z. And so, but the question really exists or some questions can exist for us is if you were to look back on your year,

What would be the thing that you told others about? Like if you were to look back on your year and you had to pick something, one thing, two things, three things that you're gonna be like, I am never going to forget to tell my kids about how God showed up here. I never want my family to forget this moment, that moment, these moments. What would be that thing for you? Now, it's very possible that maybe that thing was something that was birthed out of a lot of pain, was birthed out of hardship. In fact, that's almost always what it is. We certainly have moments of joy and celebration, just moments of pure absolute bliss that we only see as positive and celebratory. And those moments certainly do exist. But it's been my experience that what we remember the most and where we see God show up the most in our lives are in moments that have created a lot of pain in our life, a lot of suffering in our life, a lot of hardship in our life. And now that we're maybe one step, two step, three steps away from them, we can begin to see how God was moving to develop the character of Christ in us in ways that we were not willing to let him do in other circumstances.

And this is not a foreign thing to those who follow the Lord or even to our scriptures. In fact, the psalmist, this is almost exclusively how the psalmist, mostly David, experienced the goodness and provision and faithfulness of God in his life. For example, Psalm 66, verses eight through 12, he says this, he says, "Praise our God, O peoples. "Let the sound of his praise be heard. "He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.

"For you, O God, tested us. "You refined us like silver. "You brought us into prison "and laid burdens on our backs. "You let men ride over our heads. "We went through fire and water, "but you have brought us to a place of abundance."

Later, the psalmist says in Psalm 126, verses five through six, he says this may be like a theme verse for Cameron Lionheart in 2026. "Those who sow in tears "will reap with songs of joy.

"He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow "will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him."

We may sow in tears, but our children will only see songs of joy. We may have to sow in pain and hardship and trial, but for generations, the story that my lineage hears is how God provided, sustained, loved, protected, and delivered in those moments.

Because those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. There's been a lot of tears sown.

I wanted to have some kind of practice that we could go through together as a church this week.

Like I said, not that there's anything, spiritually significant about December 31st, clicking over to January 1st, I get that.

But to kind of maximize the moment and the season, I have seven questions, okay? They're meant to be personal for you, whether you want to write and journal about them, whether you wanna use them as a conversation starter or something to talk about with your spouse or a close friend, someone that you love and trust that can be, that can help you to reflect on a year past

And begin to prepare your heart or to even plant seeds of the awareness of God's provision. So we'll post these on our social media later, but if you wanna take screenshots of the screens as well, of course you can do that. So if you're a journaler, journal, if you like to talk about it with someone, talk. Question number one for reflection for this week for us, where did God quietly sustain me this year when I didn't even realize I needed it?

Where did God quietly sustain me? Not like showing up like parting the Red Sea, manna and quail falling from heaven, but where can I look back now upon my life in the last year and recognize that there was a quiet and still but strong and faithful presence in my life?

Where does the act of remembering draw my eyes back to God's sustaining power? Maybe the way that God quietly sustained you was with a relationship, a friendship that you didn't know that you needed, but you have now.

Maybe it was a person that came alongside of you in a time of grief or pain or sorrow and encouraged you and loved you and quietly prayed for you. Maybe the way that God quietly sustained you through this year is like in your job security. Like, "Holy cow, I have a job."

Like, "God is providing for me and for my family." Maybe it's in your health. Maybe it's something entirely different, but what are the quiet ways that God has sustained you this year, maybe when you didn't even realize that you needed it?

Question number two, what trial stretched my faith the most this year and how did God meet me in it?

Of course, if you remember, maybe you don't because whoever remembers what their pastor says, but like, we talked a couple of times lately

About what a trial is. A trial is not something that you experience as a consequence of some poor decision that you made, okay?

Right, so it's not like, oh, I cheated on my taxes and I've been arrested, God really has me in this trial. No, that's just illegal and you got caught and that's called a consequence, okay?

A trial is something difficult, painful, or hard that comes into your life from the Lord as a way in which to sanctify you into the image and lightness of Jesus' son. It's something that God uses to sanctify your heart and soul and to make you more like Jesus and it's not necessarily tied to or attached to anything that you did or didn't do. And the word says that trials, how do you get through a trial? You persevere and endure. The only way to get through a trial is to get through it, is to go through it, it's the only way. There's no short way, there's no fast way, there's no hacks, like, or tricks or cheat codes to get through them. If you want the trial to produce in you what God has designed at producing in you, you must endure it and persevere through it so it has time to do its work, okay? So what trial stretched my faith most this year and how did God meet me in it? Kind of attached to that is in what ways am I not the same person I was at the beginning of the year?

In what ways have I recognized God's changing of me? Transforming of my heart, transforming of my mind, transforming of my emotions, transforming my daily practices and habits. Where, listen, where has God gently corrected me, humbled me or redirected me this year?

What sinful patterns did God expose in my life and how did he invite me toward repentance and restoration?

Number four, I think it is, what did this year teach me about the kind of God that he is? In all of this, what did I learn about who God is?

What did I learn about my relationship with him? The next question, how could my story encourage someone else who is struggling?

Remember that these things that we look back on in our lives, they don't sit solely for our own individual benefit but they exist also as memorials or remembrance points for those who would come behind us, after us, in our life, how are you praying into God's plan

And purposes to use what you experienced in 2025 to encourage, admonish, exhort, love others.

This is an important one. What fears feel smaller now that I've seen how God has carried me?

Maybe you're already reflecting on things that happened in 2025 and you recognize the way that God provided for you even in the midst of like the fear in the moment.

And maybe it's just that very question that you needed to be like, oh, wait, there's this thing that I'm fearing now.

There's this thing that I'm like, that I'm struggling with now. And I already went through that fear and saw the way that God sustained me through it. So what, in what ways can I carry the truth of God's provision in my life into what I'm currently experiencing so that it does not become debilitating for my soul?

Now, this last question is a little bit rhetorical in nature because it is kind of what we're gonna be talking about next week and a few weeks afterwards, but it is important, okay? If God has been faithful to me up until this point, what does that tell me about my year ahead?

Right, it's been great. It's important to look back to like, as Joshua commanded the 12 tribes to pick up a stone out of the middle of the river of God's deliverance and to place it on the bank in a big old pile so that we can always look back for generations and remember His goodness.

But there was also a very strong thread of Joshua's leadership was to be strong and courageous. The Lord is with us. Let's go, let's move forward.

Laying fear behind, looking behind only to remember the faithfulness and goodness and sovereignty and power and provision and love and mercy and grace and deliverance of God. Let's look behind to see that, to remind us when our memories and our needs get weak in current circumstances, and now let's plow forward ahead for what God has for us in the future. And that's exactly what Joshua did, that's what we'll do.

My encouragement to you this week is to take these questions or maybe others, you know, like, it doesn't have to be these, but it could be these or ones like them. And to take opportunity to remember. Do not, listen, do not go, do not carry with you into 2026, the same fear, the same doubt,

The same questions, the same timidity about your spiritual life and your relationship with the Lord and His plans and purposes for your life as you might be holding now. Give your, receive the gift of remembering God's power, provision and faithfulness in your life this year, and carry that, receive that gift and carry it with you into the next season. Because indeed, like, it, God's mercies are new. And we might have, we might have sowed in tears. But listen, there is a season where we are gonna reap in joy. And that season is ahead of us. Yeah, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your goodness and faithfulness and provision to us through and in all things, Lord, we trust in you. Lord, even when we do not see, we trust in you. Even when we are afraid, we trust in you. Even when we, even when we are delivered and everything seems dire, Lord, we trust in you. Lord, you have shown yourself generation after generation after generation to be a God who provides and delivers and is faithful to His people. And so Lord, we pray that you would build up our faith in your faithfulness. In Jesus' name, amen.

Heavenly Father, we wait for you. Lord, like Moses said in Exodus 33, if your presence does not go with us, Lord, do not send us. Heavenly Father, if your presence does not go before us, if your presence does not go with us into this next year, Lord, we don't wanna go.

Lord, we desire you and you alone. Lord, would you sanctify every other desire, every other pursuit, every other passion or preference for our lives?

Give us clean hands and pure hearts, Lord, that we might not lift our soul up to another. In Jesus' name, amen. Condo, you are loved. We will see you soon.