Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 4, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Disloyal

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November 4, 2018 | When God Doesn't Make Sense - When God Seems Disloyal · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you can get through that video and the one that began the service on persecuted Christians, get through both of those without crying.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're a better man than I am, Gunga Den.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: So bunch of us, uh 27 of us, have been down in Haiti for eight days or so.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And got back last night, flew into KC about midnight, and uh got home about what you know.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've never been so grateful for the government coming up with daylight savings time.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: That extra hour I hadn't started my sermon, got on 1.30, so I had to do that, and I had a whole hour.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's good.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really good this morning.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh night before last, by the way, uh, as I was watching this wonderful violin, I loved violin, there were two really tall Haitian guys.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Night before last, I was preaching sort of the closing ceremony for the Bethel Baptist Church, this large Baptist church in Haiti, and there's these two tall Haitian guys who are playing violin, and it was just cool.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, um we're in a series, by the way, When God Doesn't Make Sense.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is number five out of six.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this morning's theme is When God Seems Disloyal.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know that word isn't a pleasant word.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The word is not shaped like an ice cream cone.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not shaped like a candy bar.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: That word is shaped more like the curving blade of a knife that gets thrust into your back by a good friend.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think all of you know the feeling of disloyalty.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think you knew it before you got out of elementary school.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'll prove it to you by telling you a couple of stories.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: You may hear some passion in some of these in these stories because in part they are, they reflect a little bit of life experience.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're a fifth year in fifth grade.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're a shrimp of a boy, you're a little smaller than other boys, and you're in fifth grade, and you love sports, and you're you don't mind at all when it's raining outside, and the teacher says, for recess today, we're gonna go in the gymnasium and we're gonna you'll play ball.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you play basketball, which is one of your favorite sports.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can divide up, and as usual, it's no big deal.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You expect that you're the shortest of the kids, so you get chosen last.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you wish they wouldn't, you know, just sort of do away with that last choice.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You wish they go, I'll take that person, you, you know, and but no, they want to get it over with, they get the game started, and you're excited about that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And like all the other boys, you know, when the ball comes to your team, you're running out there and you're throwing out your hands, you're going here, here.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like you're not even playing.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your team ignores you because they know there's a decent chance since your show's short, the other team will kind of rip the ball out of your hands and or you'll turn it over or something.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then the teacher yells out, recess almost over, last game, and at that point, the game is nine to nine, you're going to ten by ones, a miracle happens.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: The thing you've been dreaming about, the thing you think about in your bed every night, you think about this happening, and now it happens.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow, by an absolute miracle, the other team shoots, misses, and you, jumping as high as you can, you get the rebound.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The ball's now in your hands.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's nine to nine.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: You have a chance to be a hero.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have a chance to make every other guy on that court think that you're cool, invite you, you know, ask you to be on their team right away, you know, let you sit by them at in at lunchtime and so forth.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is a little different than that.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is a little strange, all the other kids on your team immediately begin shouting to you, and they're going, here, here, pass me the ball quick, here.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: A little confused, all, you know, because you think I could shoot it, I can make the bucket, I could be a hero.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the strangest thing happens, your best friend, kind of your only friend, his name is John, he's playing for the other team, and John comes up to you, and he holds out his hand, he says, Give me the ball, quick.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hand me the ball.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, Wow, I don't understand that.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, or something, and you just you don't you can't figure it out.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then he lowers his voice a little more and looks at you in the eye with that sort of us.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're friends, you and me.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can trust me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Look.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, hand me the ball now, quick.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, since he's your friend, he's kind of your only friend, you hand him the ball.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: He turns around and he holds up the ball and he laughs, and his team cheers, and your team going, What?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he flips it in, he lays it in for the winning bucket.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And your team looks at you with absolute disdain and disgust.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: You run to the bathroom.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You cry.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: The teacher has to drag you out of there to get you to come back to class.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: What you felt is disloyalty.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You felt a knife in the back because he took the ball that you had gotten that you gave to him only because he was your friend.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he used it against you.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or uh you're a high school, uh, you're you're a sophomore in high school, junior in high school, maybe, and and you're semi-pretty, you like to think, but you're really rather ordinary looking and so forth.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you happen to have a crush on Tommy, on on the cutest, the cutest guy in high school.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely crush.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, your best friend, you tell her all about it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: You confess to her so she knows that you take a special route through the high school so that you can accidentally be outside his classroom, you know, when he comes out, so that you can just accidentally maybe say hi to him once in a while.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you run to your friend, your best friend, kind of your only friend, when he happens to stop by your locker and talk to you one day, you can hardly wait to tell her about how you and Tommy talk.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you're really surprised when one day you look in the cafeteria and you see that there's your friend sitting opposite Tommy at the table, and and you wait for her to be done.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you go to her, and with more than a hint of jealousy, you say, Well, what's going on?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: What gives and she says, Oh, oh, no, it's nothing.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're just friends.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was just asking me about a math assignment.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you believe her, you trust her, she's your friend.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: She's like your only friend.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You she knows all about you, she knows she knows how you feel about Tommy, so you are really shocked and hurt when next the next week you're in the bathroom, in the girls' bathroom, and you overhear the next two girls at the counter saying, Have you heard who the latest couple is at school?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's Tommy, and they name your friend.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: What you feel at that moment is the slide of a knife in your back.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: You feel betrayal, you feel disloyalty.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a horrible word, isn't it?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're a little bit surprised when you come to the Word of God and you find that some of the great saints in the Bible use this word about God.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes to them, he seems disloyal.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't help thinking that some of the people in the news this week, as I'm getting home last night, as I'm sharing in the car, you know, with other people a little about what I'm going to be preaching on in half a dozen hours, they mention, have you heard?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently there are, yes, there are, more than one story this week of how people of God have a legitimate reason for feeling like God's been disloyal to them.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Take again another attack by Muslims on Coptic Christians in Egypt.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are about 90, 95 people who live in Egypt, and fully 10% of them are Christians.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's that's a quite a hefty minority, and most of them are Coptic Christians.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're really sweet people.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you ever met the Coptic Christians, and we've had some at our church, and still do.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: But they're just godly, they're just wonderful people, but in the last three, four, or five years, they're getting slaughtered, their churches burned, and and just this last week, three buses full of Coptic Christians attacked by ISIL, seven, six of them from one family, slaughtered, including little kids, and 19 injured.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is the funeral just a couple days ago, and one of the widows.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what God, what gifts?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're on a spiritual trip.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or in Uganda this week, there's a little 12-year-old boy who nearly strangled to death, got marks around his neck.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Emmanuel is headed down to his grandma's place just down the street to pick up some plates.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was in the evening, and four adult males grab him, knowing he's a Christian, drag him into the bush.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Put a wire around his neck, tell him they're gonna strangle him unless he converts to Islam right then and there.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But he was unconscious when his family found him.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or, for instance, just a few days ago, this is Cameroon.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you know uh Ralph and Jeannie Carr Jeannie's sister and her husband have been working in Cameroon for decades.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: They had to fly home this weekend because here's a couple, a U.S.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: missionary couple who just got there two weeks ago.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: The West Coast have been raising their money for two years to go over to Cameroon.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They visited, they have a heart for Cameroon.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: They take their eight children, they sell everything they have, take their eight children over two weeks ago, and he gets targeted and shot in the head with a bullet this week.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have a right to say, God, what's what gives here?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that you promised us in Deuteronomy and Proverbs 3 that if we followed you, if we did your will, that you'd make our barns full with plenty and you'd prosperous and you'd smile down upon us.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world are you doing?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're loyal to you.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's remarkable to me that in a passage that I don't think has ever been preached in this church in its 80 plus years of existence, Psalm 44, this exact issue is covered in a remarkable way.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: In a psalm written by someone who has a bit of a hurt and a bit of an anger at him at the way God's treating him.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, this psalm falls, I'll just tell you really quickly into four parts.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first eight verses tell about how good it used to be, versus the next verses tell about how bad it is.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the the third section is a surprising one.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Usually in a psalm you get to the third section, and what it says is, oh God, we understand we deserve this.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've been sinners, we've been bad, we deserve to get crushed.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we repent of our sin.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Please restore us.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not in this psalm.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 44, they say the opposite.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: They say, Lord, this makes no sense.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've been loyal to you.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: How come you're being disloyal to us?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're innocent.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in the fourth section, which closes the psalm, just a few verses, you know, they say, Please help.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, this psalm is shaped sort of like a ziggurat or like a pyramid.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: The first eight verses are like 12 lines, and then it gets short of the second section, which is how bad it is now, is 10 lines.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: The next section is eight lines, and the final section is six lines.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, here's how he starts.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about this.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, we've heard with our ears, our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in the days of old.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard the way it once was.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard how good that you were.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: You did great things for us.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: With your hand, you drove out the nations.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The memory here is not of Egypt, not of the Red Sea.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's of the fact that, man, we were scared to death to go into Canaan with all those giants.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But with your hand, you drove them out.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: You planted our fathers in the land.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was just amazing.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: In the past, you did great things for us.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you have stories like this every night in Haiti.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: As the 27 of us got together, the 18, 19 who were working in the medical clinic, who had seen people all day long, the little kids, the pastors and the other people, the orphanage kids, and those of us who'd been over at the church doing the seminars for pastors and preaching and teaching and so forth, we'd all get together and we'd share.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: We'd start by singing two songs, two worship songs.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then Craig or Emily, my son, daughter-in-law, who were in charge of this whole shebang, they'd say, okay, share highs and lows.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it was amazing, the highs and lows, the things, the things that God had done that very day.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were just astounding.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in every case, we'd say it wasn't what we did, it's what you did.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Here, it wasn't by their sword or arm that they won the land.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was your hand and arm and the light of your face that you loved you, for you loved them.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: In your love, you did great things for us in the past, and we boasted of you all day long.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we did for like an hour in the evening.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one nurse would say, Wow, did you guys see this?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: This elderly pastor that came in, and they said, You mean the one that had uh had a uh uh a blood uh uh blood pressure of 240 over 180?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Yeah, you know, he's nearly dead, and you know, and they're able to save him.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, what perfect timing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Did you see that little girl coming with cerebral palsy and her family was just wanting to throw in her ditch, they didn't want her at all, and we, you know, by the end of the time as we talked to them about what kind of how she's really a normal person inside and so forth, they were grinning and taking her out and treating her completely different, and and we just were able to boast of God down there.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a wonderful thing to remember how God's been loyal and loving to us in the past.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But now the guitar string snaps in a sense and and he moves into the present.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: But now you have cast us off.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: You no longer go out with our armies.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've given us up to be devoured, you've cast us off.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, sometimes they say you've abandoned us.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is a lot worse than being abandoned.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't God walking away and forgetting about you.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is God picking you up and throwing you into the trash.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it felt.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: No longer do you go out with our armies.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: God leaves them alone on the battlefield.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've given us up to be devoured.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just been 10 or 12 chapters since Psalm 23.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my shepherd.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: He never leaves me, he's my help.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you go through the valley of the shadow, I'll be with you.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, God's the kind of shepherd who says, I don't care about you anymore, and he hands the sheep over to the wolves.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've ditched us, God, and we're in real bad shape.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about this for a second.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be honest, I won't take a long time, but you know, we sort of hide over apparent Bible contradictions, I think, when you go to church.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me there isn't a more clear contradiction between the words, but now you have cast us off, and I will never leave you nor forsake you.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's about as stark as you can get.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with that?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just pretend like it's not there.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a quick handle on it, and you can move on, maybe study it on your own.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But but it seems to me that this is the way it feels, and this is the way it really is.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That you and I know that God is omnipresent, that God is always with us.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: He promises us that he will never leave us nor forsake us.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the Puritans had an old word for this.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: They called it the manifest presence of God, that God is present, sometimes more manifest than others.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you can feel it, you can sense it.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: He answers your prayers, but at other times it's not manifest.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have a clue.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: He seems far away.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: The door seems locked and closed.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't answer your prayers.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not manifest at all.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like he's cast you off.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think God, or maybe always God does that, to drive us to himself, to make us come after him and say, What are you doing?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, you've cast us off.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have scattered us among the nations.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're a farmer.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Most farmers take good care of the seed, but no, you've just thrown us amidst the thorns.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: You sell your own people for nothing, gaining nothing from the sale, now comparing God to a merchant.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You ever been to a store and you're looking at something that's got a lot of dust on it, and you go, how much do you want for this?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy's merch, and the store owner says, Please take it free.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been wanting to get rid of it for so long.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they feel about God.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's selling us for nothing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't even care to get anything out of it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's how little you like us.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: No longer our loyal friend.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even want us around.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses 9 through 16.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've completely broken us and you've covered us with the shadow of death.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And unless you help us now, we're dead.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now it turns, you expect uh, we're sorry, we repent, but instead, verses 17 through 22 say, hey, God, this is us.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know us.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We're innocent.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: All this happened to us, though we'd not forgotten you.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: What he's talking about is some of the Israelites would remember God on Shabbat on Saturday, and the rest of the week they'd forget him.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were sort of Sunday Christians, we'd say.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So saying I'm no Sunday Christian, I'm a seven-day-a-week Christian.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know I've stayed loyal.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: He continues, we've never been false to your covenant.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The word false is like uh hypocrites, like someone who says one thing but does another.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the claim is, God, you know I'm no hypocrite.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an authentic disciple of yours.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says uh in 17 through 22, our hearts hadn't haven't turned back, neither have our feet strayed from your way.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no backslider, I'm a faithful follower.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on here?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't make any sense.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm innocent, I've stayed loyal.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But for your sake, we face death all day long.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you're treating us sort of like you've commanded us to do with those sheep.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to collect lambs, they're supposed to be pure, they're supposed to be innocent, and then we killed them.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: We understand that's the rule, because, you know, for the sins of the community, we're supposed to do that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Are we supposed to be like those sheep?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are we just sort of expendable in your holy war against the world in a world that's at war with you?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the cost of loyalty?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what you can hear this.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I feel like one of those lambs, innocent lambs that you require for sacrifice.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, uh, after claiming utter innocence, you know, and by the way, Job probably expresses it better than anyone in chapters 27 and 31.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, listen to what Job says in front of his friends to God.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I vow by the, this is almost like blasphemous, it's so strong.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I vow by the living God who has taken away my rights.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting combination.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: By the Almighty who has embittered my soul, wow.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: I will maintain my innocence without wavering.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: My conscience is clear for as long as I live.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a godly man, a man that God said was the most righteous man on the face of the earth.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: A man that God said at the end of the book, unless you pray for your friends, I'm not going to forgive them.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I swear I'm innocent.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: I swear it.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, you go to the New Testament and we're reminded that innocent Christians suffer and die.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the best ones down through the years, Hebrews 11 says, as it lists the Hall of Fame.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Some were jeered at and their backs were cut open with whips, others were chained in prisons, some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, others killed with the sword, some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: But none of them received all that God had promised.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you think?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't receive all?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't receive hardly anything that God had promised, it seems like to me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's be honest, it seems like sometimes God is the most disloyal to the most loyal of his people.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a famous old story of Saint Teresa of Avila, a woman who lived like 700 years ago, wrote a book on prayer, very godly.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the story goes, she's riding in her carriage one day, and a huge rock or a hole that opens up in the ground, and the carriage flips open, she flies out of the carriage, lands in a muddy ditch.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: She was always praying, always talking to God.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: She shoots up a flare prayer, says, God, what gives?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: What gives?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: How come you're doing this?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, This is how I treat all my friends, and she snaps back, then it's no wonder you have so few.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, it's kind of how you feel, God.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: How come you treat your friends so poorly?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the writer of the Psalm concludes with the last four verses Wake up, oh Lord.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine talking to God this way?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: How come you sleep?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds you of the disciples in the boat, remember?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sea of Galilee stormed Jesus asleep, and they're disgusted with him.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Rouse yourself.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Don't reject us forever.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, please wake up and help me, Lord.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're my only hope.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're my only hope.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, famous movie line.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But this is like a house being on fire, and you calling out of the house that's on fire to the very person who set the house on fire, asking them for help.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what choice do we have?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: For this is God.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last verse of the psalm, we read Rise up and help us and redeem us, because notice the last word it's our word loyalty, disloyalty, or because of your loyal love.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Please rise up and help me, Lord.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Show me your loyal love again.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've been loyal to you.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, this is the psalm.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, I don't have a lot of time.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the Lord's table, but I want to share with you really quickly how we can use this psalm and how valuable it is, especially on IDOP on the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: How do you pray at these certain times, special times when God seems disloyal?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you start by honestly admitting that you're hurt and you're disappointed.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: You just cry out, wake up, help me.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So a day earlier than the other 23, four of us, my son Craig and I, and Patty Delaberto and Connie, we flew down early because our church has been involved in uh it's called the One Body Project that Craig now leads.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a project by which, and some of you have heard of this before, where uh the uh one body is trying to build 25 churches for remote villages in 10 years.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: 25 church buildings and also a well.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Costs uh I think$25,000 for a church building.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We send the money down so that they can build the building, but we put up the trusses because they don't have the right wood and don't do it right.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we fly down on an Air Force plane, put the trusses on, we've got a building, the best building in that village.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: The building that can be used for a school, for weddings, for everything.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: They use it for everything in it, and it'll stand even during an earthquake.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the building, but we just we found out that most of these villages they have to walk two hours each way for water.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we're also giving them a$5,000.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We drill a well there, and it's just going great.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Craig said there's one that TBC's paid for.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to come down and see it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna dedicate it and so forth.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we flew down a day early, the four of us to go see it, take some pictures to dedicate it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And to say they were excited to see us, we fly into the very north of Haiti.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was as an understatement.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: They had two weddings, a baptism, and a baby dedication set for about a 16-hour period.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we fly in a Friday night, and and the church building is is is full.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's 230 by 60 room, is all it is, but there's 250 people squeezed into it, including two couples that are about to get married.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Pastor Leo looks at Craig, fortunately not at me, and says, You, you preach the wedding message.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, Yes, so happy for this.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I have been this has been done to me over the years.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's time that he got his.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, but anyway, so he he does a fine job.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It gets translated.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow they all get married.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, so it's it's dark, and then you know, we go in the hospitality, so we go to Leo's house and the family, and they make room for us and a couple of rooms, and and their hospitality is great.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have to remind you that hospitality has absolutely no relationship to number of hotel stars, you know, that go after it.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, so I I I could describe to you the uh the outdoor facility of uh such a sort and in the middle of the night, and then how you're the the doors of the rooms are flimsy curtains, and then the hot and cold running roaches in your bedroom without any air, and it's so hot.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: My dad used to say, and try to motivate us to work, that uh a man never drowned in his own sweat.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I beg to differ.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Beg to differ there.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so, but anyway, and then the next morning we get up early and we're in the river, and you know, we're baptizing uh Craig and I eight eight eight eight people, and then then we go to the we had we sent down enough money so the village could have food, and so they're all really happy they're eating food, and then the pastor Leo says, We're gonna have a service.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jim, you preached that one.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I go, oh so anyway, so we do that, and but anyway, we're looking forward in some way, and a baby day again, and then we're looking forward to leaving.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So to go down to Port-au-Prince, the capital city, about four hours' drive south, and I'm looking forward to it.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get there by supper because I've got to finish preparing a message for this large church the next morning, Bethel Baptist, last Sunday morning.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, we take off at about two o'clock.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and we drive, and the thing is it's this tiny little car, and so you know, there's Leo, the driver, and then the four of us, Connie, Patty, myself, and Craig, we squeeze into this thing, and then behind us, right behind my seat, you know, and where where we're supposed to put the luggage, but we put it on the roof, are three Haitian guys that are sort of contorted and squeezed in.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's no air conditioning, and so we're bumping down on this four-hour ride south again, about an hour down, and then all of a sudden I'm looking, and you can't even see the road because there's so much steam coming through the hood from the radiator, and then you can hear it.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the so we pull over to the side, and now we have to wait for it to calm down and so forth and go get water, and then we pour it in.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and I've experienced this, you know.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: My first car, my brilliant car rambler ambassador is still by the road somewhere in Pennsylvania because of the radiator.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: But so I recognize some of this, and so it's super hot, steamy, but after an hour or whatever, we get on the road again.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: We get about a half an hour down the road, and all of a sudden there are more sounds, more steam.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: We stop.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing again.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: We got on the road again, and I'm going, oh my goodness, we're not gonna get to Port-au-Prince till after dark, maybe.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, after about 15 minutes, there's this huge bang, and I recognize that sound.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happened to my rambler, and it has never moved since.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and we look and we open up, you know, the hood and the top of the radiator's has been sort of blown off, and you know, then there's holes, and a guy's driving by on a sign, and I go, we're dead.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And a guy's going by on a motorcycle, pulls over him.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, Haitian Creole.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand him.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: He roars off in a cycle.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, What's going on?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor Leicester says he's gonna go to the next town and buy a tube of silicone, he's gonna repair it.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: He comes back with a tube of silicone, an English tube of silicone, which is for pipes, pipes, not metal like this.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's rubbing this stuff on, but of course it's it's 190 degrees anyway outside, and the radiator's 3,000 degrees, and it's not setting up.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not setting up.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: We wait and wait for it to set up, which is supposed to take 10 minutes, but if after an hour, we go ahead and start it anyway.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, it doesn't set up, it just sprays out.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, Oh, he's gonna get two more.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we wait for him to go, and he gets two better tubes of silicone, and now he paints the whole top of the radiator with silicone.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And after an hour, hour and a half of waiting for that to set up, I'm sitting on the road and they start it up again pouring water in.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, it whole it's all over the top of the radiator.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: They formed a whole new radiator.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm looking at underneath the car, I'm the only one looking underneath the car, and as they pour water in, it's just pouring out, you know, what is an absolutely destroyed, you know, connector or whatever.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And anyway, so of course the thing doesn't work.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: So now we're like at about five o'clock, and somebody makes a phone call the way to Port-au-Prince, and Pastor Daniel himself says, I'll come get you, but I don't drive at night, so I'll bring a driver, but I'll bring my car.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there we are for hours waiting for him, and the stars come out, and we're in nowhere's Phil, waiting.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And finally the lights come over the hill.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes down, and it's like one of these little Honda pickup things.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's him, and there's the driver, and there's a little back seat.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Connie and Patty and I, because of tenure, we take that back seat, squeeze in, and then we have the outside, you know, the the, and so we pack our luggage in there, and then Craig and two Haitians, because Craig doesn't have tenure, he's there.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's back there.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we start off again, we're finally there, and I mean, it's miserable, but we've only got like two and a half hours to go now, and at least we're gonna get back.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we're bouncing along, and suddenly it starts to rain.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts to rain really hard, and we hear all this laughter from behind us.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, Craig and the two Haitians have decided that this is funny, and so they're holding cardboard pieces over their heads.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: We pull over long enough for me to get my computer out of there.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so anyway, and and we're driving along, and then all of a sudden they're trying to sing.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: What they need to find, since they don't speak English and Craig doesn't speak Haitian Creoles, they need to find a song that both cultures know, Christian song, a hymn, whatever, that they can both sing with different words.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they try a few, and and through the back window, we can hear them trying in between their laughter, and it's not working well, but they finally find one which they settle on and sing for an interminable two or three hours.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know the verses, but they can sing the chorus, and we understand the words very well from Craig, and I can't now get the tune out of my head because I heard it forever.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this Lord, I need you.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how I need you.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um is it?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every hour I need you, right?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: You are my defense, my one defense, my righteousness.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, how I need you.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And they sing it in Asian Creole and English, and then they sing it over again.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I need you.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need you.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every hour I need you.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Giggle, giggle, laugh, laugh.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: My one defense, my righteousness.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, how I need you.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: So appropriate.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know exactly how they feel.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because at times that's happened to you.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: The radiator has blown, and you have found yourself by the side of the road.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: You missed an appointment, you know you're never gonna get there on time.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's well-meaning comes along, says they can help you.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: They only make things worse.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: There seems to be a rescue, but it's only a temporary rescue because the rain starts pelting down, and you wonder why God would allow that to happen to someone who's only living for him, but you have no one else to call on but him.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you sing, Lord, I need you.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I need you.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every hour I need you.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: My one defense and righteousness.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, how I need you.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he does.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: You cry out, Lord, wake up and help me, and then you give him three reasons, the three reasons from Psalm 44, that he ought to answer your prayer.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Andrew Murray says, however cold and dark your heart, don't try to force yourself into the right attitude.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Bow before him and tell him what a sad state you're in, and that your only hope is in him.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: But you say, wake up and help me for three reasons.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, because you've done it in the past.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: You were so great in the past.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've done it before, Lord.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And number ten, because I've stayed loyal to you.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Look at me, I'm innocent.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know me, you know my heart.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: And number three, because oh Lord, that's who you are.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're a loyal, loving God.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's your character.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Please, Lord, save me.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is the power by which things happen which otherwise would not happen.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And praying that prayer, sometimes you find that God does wonderful things for you, and he's done wonderful things in the last few days for a couple of persecuted Christians.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor Andrew Brunson, I've mentioned him before.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful pastor, graduate of Wheaton College, a Presbyterian pastor in Turkey, but he was arrested and thrown in jail for the rest of his life, it seemed, by the president of Turkey who accused him of terrorism and trying to overthrow the country.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody knew it was false.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, you know, uh President Trump, as you know, appointed Sam Brown back as a religious freedom ambassador, and then there was Pompeo, the Secretary of State from Wichita, and Mike Pence, the vice president, and they went over there and they all said, let him out of jail.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: President Erdogan said, No way.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Trump said this summer, then I'll ruin your economy.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're serious.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the economy of Turkey crashed in August, September.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, two and a half weeks ago, they let him out of jail.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And within 24 hours, he was there in President Trump's office actually praying for Trump.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they asked him on television and all the major networks, they said, How do you feel about that?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I knew I was innocent.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I hadn't done anything, but I counted it a great honor to suffer as so many have before me for the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even more recently, this week, Asia Bibia, an illiterate woman, a mother of five in a little village in northern Pakistan, has been in a tiny jail getting starved for the last eight years because a woman who hated her family and knew that she was a Christian loudly said, She's been cussing out Muhammad.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: So eight years ago, they started beating her up, they threw in prison, they said, We need to hang her, we need to behead her.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everything, even though the stories were just crazy.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: They kidnapped one of her five little kids, a little boy for five years, they threatened and so forth, and then amazingly, this week on October 31st, the three judges in the Supreme Court of Pakistan said this case is crazy, and on the basis of the Quran, the Quran says that you cannot falsely lie about and persecute people who are infidels.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, she's an infidel, but we're breaking the Quran, we're letting her go.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which is why, by the way, last night and this morning, there are riots all over Pakistan with extremist Muslims saying they're gonna kill the Supreme Court, try to kill everybody, and so forth.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they can't let her go.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: She has a no-fly, they won't let her fly out of the country yet.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so her life, she may still die, but she's out of prison and she's been declared innocent.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, thank you, Lord.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've been, people have been praying for her for so long.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: We come on this day, the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: We look at Psalm 44 and we look at the Lord's table and we realize we're in the right place.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because who is more innocent and more persecuted than our Savior Jesus Christ?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: As the men pass out the bread and pass out the cup, on this day of all days, let's look at Jesus with new eyes.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Say, God, we know you know best.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: We know sometimes we suffer and it makes no sense.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: We know sometimes we've got to tell you, God, it feels like you're being real disloyal.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: But we have no one else to turn to.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're calling on you to save us.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, there's a lot of hurting people here.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know there are, and I know that most of them don't deserve, you know, they haven't done anything wrong, and yet they're absolutely suffering in their marriage, at work, financially, in some other way, health-wise.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we do pray for them.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you rescue them?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: You tell us to still pray to you.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: We pray to you because we've seen you do great things in the past.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: We pray to you because you're a loyal God.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: Please show it in Jesus' name.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Please serve the bread and the cup and and participate in these whenever your heart is ready.