Hi All,
I hope this letter finds you well as we head into a long weekend. If you’re heading away, stay safe and do enjoy some good rest in God’s beautiful world. Don’t forget, you can fire up Spotify and catchup on Sunday’s sermon next week (maybe on the drive home on Monday??).
We’re beginning a new book of the Bible at church this Sunday, which is always something I look forward to. Exodus is one of the all-time great stories. A story that’s shaped the world in huge ways, and a story that we can look forward to benefiting from and enjoying over the next few months (We’ll be looking at the book for the next four weeks, then having a break, then coming back for 6 more weeks in August-September).
One of the themes of the book of Exodus is the theme of freedom. Of course, it’s all about a people who begin the story as slaves and are dramatically set free by God. We’ll talk a bit this Sunday about what Exodus has to say about freedom, because interestingly freedom according to Exodus isn’t freedom to do whatever we like. It’s the freedom to serve God, our maker. The Israelites aren’t set free to go and wander the desert aimlessly, they’re set free to serve their God. To be his people and live as they were created to live.
On that topic, we’re also going to be highlighting, over the next few weeks, the opportunity we have to serve God and his people at Trinity Church Brighton. We’ll be doing, as we’ve done the past couple of years, a serving survey where we have the opportunity to think about how we might serve our church on Sundays and through the week. For those who are currently serving, it’s a chance to review and think about whether you’d like to make changes. For others it might be a chance to get involved in serving the church in a formal way, on one of our teams, for the first time.
Exodus highlights for us that we were made to serve our creator, and that real freedom is found in living our lives for him. Doing something like putting out chairs on a Sunday might feel pretty disconnected from this, but we can be reminded that it is a great privilege to be able to serve, even in little ways, our great God and his people.
Matt