Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / September 13, 2015 | Route 66 - Lamentations

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September 13, 2015 | Route 66 - Lamentations · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Settle down.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Settle down.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Too much enthusiasms.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Brian, I want to call out my my friend Brett Durbin right now.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Brett Durbin.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Kickboxer, weightlifter, father, husband, founder and CEO of Trash Mountain Project.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I am.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm not really sure I like the order of that.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't get that introduction very often, Buckwheat.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: So listen.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: So tonight we got a deal happening over here at the College Avenue building, 6 o'clock, and we want to invite everybody to that.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Can you uh tell us uh give us, you know, what's this about?
0:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, usually in the fall, don't we have like a big banquet and you serve really nice food and and and it's a pretty good deal?
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we uh we've done this event called Spoken the last four years, and uh we made a decision earlier this year that we wanted to just take one year off from doing that and really take the time and and just put our energy into going to our church partners and sharing the same vision, the you know, the same updates and and where we're heading and what's happening with the ministry with our churches and invest in that way uh instead of putting the time into that one event, which uh helps us too because we have a lot more partners now around the country.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: And so obviously if when we have an event in Topeka, not everyone can come to that.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: And we've even had issues here where not everyone could come to it just because we've had some space issues at times when we do it and we run out of tickets, and and this is just uh we're trying to make it just uh open to the public free uh opportunity for people to come.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: So just a second.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna get any Italian noodles tonight or anything, and you expect me to write as big a check as I wrote last year, just and I'm not getting any food out of this thing?
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Jesus went like 40 days without food.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: What's up?
2:00
SPEAKER_00: You know Yeah, well, uh okay.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Um so so we're doing a church deal now because you've got a lot of other churches around the country, and plus, yeah, gonna do something different.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's gonna happen tonight.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: And how is tonight gonna be uh special?
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Because I mean we're a special group of people here at TBC.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: TBC is special to us.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, honestly, if I can say thank you to you guys.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we our ministry would not be where it's at without this church, and that's just me being 100% honest.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, just it's been such an incredible journey with you guys.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, so for us, we this is the first time we've done uh we're calling this Serve 1000 basically this uh we can call it a tour or an initiative or campaign or whatever you want to call it, but um it's the first time we've done it here in Topeka, so we're kind of launching it in the Topeka area here, but it's also in an evening, and so most of the time we're doing this, it's during uh worship service, and so you have a 30-minute period to kind of get in as much as you can.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: And uh for this we're gonna take about an hour, hour and fifteen minutes, and so we plan to be out about 7.15.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we can just we can make it a lot more like what you would experience at spoken, minus the food, sorry Jim.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: But um it's gonna be very similar in terms of presentation, just a lot more stripped down.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: And so inviting anybody special tonight?
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've got uh we've we're bringing in a couple of special guests that are only gonna be here um for this uh this event.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh one is uh his name is Dr.
3:23
SPEAKER_01: Russell West, and he was a professor of mine at Asbury Seminary.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Um he's the Dean of Cross Cultural Leadership.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: Sharp guy.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And um he uh he recently actually notified them that he's resigning that uh that position as dean uh to come on board full-time with us in January, uh which is an awesome thing to have your mentor from seminary come on board and and uh work with you.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: It's just it's gonna be a good idea.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: I did.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: Who else you have tonight?
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh the uh derail me a little bit here.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: Um our other guest is uh his name is Micah Albert.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: Um he is a uh international photojournalist, and he's actually he's here already, but he's back in the back.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: We can have him wave and smile.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: There he is, guy with two first names.
4:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so uh you're on on this service.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Um but uh but he's uh he has just a ton of experience overseas.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: He's he's really his whole career has been focused on under um basically under-reported issues, contemporary issues, social issues, and uh that is what ended up bringing him to a trash dunk community in Nairobi, Kenya.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: He shot a picture that ended up winning the World Press Award for contemporary issues, and that's how we found him.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: But what was crazy about it was he was in the process trying to find uh a ministry that focused on trash dunk communities, and then we found him.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: And you can imagine the story that followed has been pretty unusual, and that's we're gonna be sharing a little bit about that when we went over to Kenya this year.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: And and uh he's gonna be sharing some of his photography and just the pictures he's taken around the world, and uh it'll be it'll be an interesting interesting take.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: Then again, that's just gonna be here.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: So Tonight, six o'clock.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, six o'clock.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: No food.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: No food.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: No food.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh child care five and under.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And so if you have little ones, I have quite a few.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: So um we do have child care and sounds good.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks, man.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: See you guys tonight.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Welcome, if this is your first time, to a sermon series called Route 66.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: 66 books in the Bible, 66 Sundays, taking one each week.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm on Lamentations.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh open your Bible halfway through.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: You flip open, you get to Psalms, turn right, five books.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, then Lamentations.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah was long.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: That was last week.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: You remember Jeremiah himself visited us, and uh this week he won't visit us, but he also wrote this little book of five chapters, which I'm entitling When the Worst That Could Happen Happens.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And when I gave it that title, frankly, the first thing I thought was, wow, well, the the worst thing that could happen that I can think of is the kind of stuff that's happening every week or two, it seems, with ISIS, this uh Islamic State thing that's sweeping over the Mideast, uh, in which they're beheading or drowning and you know, innocent, you know, children, and this is 21 Christians they executed, you know, in Libya earlier this year.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And and and I don't know who you are, but you got to think that's about you know the worst kind of thing that could happen, which we never would have suspected, you know, in past years.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: But coming closer to home, what's the worst thing that could happen in your life and in my life?
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know what top five you'd come up with, but my top five are include losing a parent, you know, especially if you're younger.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you felt have any of you felt the pain of losing a mother or losing a father, especially when your years psychologists say years eight to eleven years old, the worst possible time.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget after one Sunday morning service guy walking up, he'd been standing, never sat down, standing in the back in his running shorts the whole time.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: And he came up afterwards, his first Sunday, just to visit her, and uh at that point, and and and then shared with me with with grief, savaging his face afterwards, that his dad, he was here because his dad had died in his arms the previous week.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: A father that he had been alienated from for 30 years, and finally they they got together the previous week and they drove, they were driving from Denver to Topeka, and and he shared about how he'd fallen asleep and driven off the road and his father died in his arms.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: And he was as absolutely the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.
7:56
SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine how you'd feel if something like that happened.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Or, for example, losing a child.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: And a number of you know what that's like, and you feel as though the bottom drops out of your life, and all of the, you know, the sun goes out.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: The worst tragedy, the worst feeling that ever happened in my home in my first 20 years growing up in Oregon was when two-year-old little brother Dougie died.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: It's just a shocking thing when, you know, when uh when a when it when you lose a child.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: Then, of course, there's you have to include getting raped in your list of the top five.
8:30
SPEAKER_00: Going to prison for life, I would think, would be, you know, one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to you, being sentenced and knowing, yeah, you did something wrong, maybe, but I mean, there goes the rest of your life.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Or uh maybe losing the love of your life.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: There are a number of ways that that could happen.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: It could happen through death, it could happen with divorce, it could.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't help, as I got to this point in my sermon, this song started flooding my mind, and and and and it won't flood your mind unless you're about my age.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: But when I was a kid in the 60s, there was this song about a, it was sung by a guy, the name of the group that he sang.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: It was called Brooklyn Bridge of all things, but he sang a song about um about how the love of his life, the girl that he absolutely loved, had just told him she was going to marry another guy.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, you know, if he loves you more than me, then maybe it's the best thing.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the best thing for you, but it's the worst that could happen for me.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Anybody else in here heard a song?
9:31
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to sing it, but but you know, that's uh beautiful, beautiful song, but it but it illustrates the worst things that could happen.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens, that's what we're talking about this morning in the book of Lamentations.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: For the book of Lamentations is all about the worst day, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Still the saddest day every year on the Jewish calendar.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: They call it Tisheba Aav.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Tisheba'av.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: Tisha means ninth Baav, the ninth of Av, of uh Jewish calendar is, you know, sort of July, August this summer.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh Tishabaav, that day of mourning or of sadness, was the last week of July.
10:10
SPEAKER_00: It's the Jewish 9-11, and that's the day on which, according to the best Jewish scholars can figure out, that's the day on which Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians broke through the walls of Jerusalem in 586 BC, with Jeremiah there at the time, and they broke down the walls and they burned the temple, which God's people never thought that would happen, and Zion was raised to the ground, and thousands of people died.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: And the previous chapter, by the way, to Lamentations 1, Jeremiah 52, tells the story.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: It was, as my study sheet tells you, such a significant event that it's recorded for us four times in the Old Testament.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you've got your sheet, follow along.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations has to be the saddest road stop on Route 66.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: It reads as if it were scratched out in blood.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: While its author, Jeremiah, watched his beloved Jerusalem fall.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: He groans out the horrors and atrocities of physical suffering, of starving mothers fighting over whose dead child was to be eaten next, civic leaders strung up by their hands to die, women raped and bound off to exile.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Fall of Jerusalem, 587 BC.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: But Lamentations isn't narrative, but poetry, sophisticated poetry.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Chapters 1 through 4 are crosstics, each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet leaves off a verse in order.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, climax of the book, has 66 verses, three verses for each letter, from Aleph to Tao.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Why?
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps for emotional relief, so the grieving writer could feel he said it all from A to Z.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Hint, writing poetry is good therapy.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Message of the book, it's needed now more than ever.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: Even when you're suffering because of your own sin and God's judgment, there's still hope and relief in the Lord because of his loyal love, mercy, and faithfulness.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about a day, a time when the worst that could happen happens.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Tishaba.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, uh uh what's what's what's interesting about that is that happens to be the selfsame day in 70 AD when Titus, Vespasian, when the when Rome came, and they knocked down the walls of the Jerusalem.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: The fall of the first temple, 587, 586 BC, fall of the second temple, 70 AD.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: Jesus predicted it 40 years before.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: On the same day.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And as you go through the calendar, the historical calendar, the Jews can point out other horrible things that have happened on this day to Shabbat, for instance, when all of the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 when Ford and Ferdinand and Isabel, the day World War I began, and so forth.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It's just a horrible, sad, no good, terrible day.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: And this is where when we talk about the worst that could happen to Jewish people, that's this day, this day in which the Babylonians conquered, knocked down the walls of Jerusalem.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you read about it in those four places in the Bible, like in Jeremiah 52, and it just doesn't do it justice.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of the cold facts.
13:09
SPEAKER_00: And you have to sort of read into it.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations helps with that.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: You sort of have to kind of be there and and and open your ears and hear the screams of the children, you know, and and the and the roar of the fire, you know, and the shouts of the soldiers and the banging of swords and the and the and the footsteps fleeing as fast as they can go.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: You have to sort of see the all the red blood and the and the charred bodies and the black smoke and the and the wide brown eyes of the terrified children.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: You have to sort of taste the the ash, you know, and and you have to feel the awful heat that singes the hair off of your body.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: You understand what I mean?
13:55
SPEAKER_00: You have to sort of, you know, smell all I mean, all those senses I think were indelibly imprinted, you know, for life for Jeremiah and everyone else.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is, I mean, what do you do?
14:08
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when the worst that could happen happens in your life, in your world?
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously, one thing you need to do is you need to go to God in prayer, right?
14:20
SPEAKER_00: I hope you do that.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: I hope you go to God in prayer.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Let me share with you that this week, this is sort of taking a step off to the side because though this movie is a movie about prayer, the war room is not a movie about prayer when the worst that could happen happens.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a movie about uh about uh spiritual warfare prayer.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: I got a I didn't know about it at all.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Three, four days ago I had a phone call from the newspaper asking if they can interview me about the war room.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: I say, what war room?
14:48
SPEAKER_00: And they say, well, it's a movie.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: I say, uh, really.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Ever since I recommended Noah to my congregation, I don't go to movies.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: No.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: I I I didn't I I didn't actually say that.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: But uh but they said you they said, you know, really, you you know, wow, you should consider that a lot of people are going to this movie, and you know, it's still like one of the bestseller or whatever, like that, you ought to go.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And so I look at my watch, didn't have anything to do for three hours.
15:16
SPEAKER_00: It was showing at about one o'clock in the afternoon.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: So I went over there and man, I couldn't believe the place was almost full at about one o'clock.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And I and I watched.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Did any of you see this movie?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, did you like it as much as I did?
15:29
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was really good.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, did you see it, Hank?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was I'm blown away.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking on screen and I'm going, I know that girl.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is I I went to uh Tony Evans was a classmate of mine and has been a friend.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: That's his daughter there, all grown up.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: But um I was really, really, I would recommend it.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a movie about prayer, spiritual warfare, if your marriage is falling apart and stuff.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: Great marriage, great marriage movie, great prayer movie.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And it's showing today, by the way, at 1240 and at 3.30 and at 7.10 and at 9.50.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Just wanted you to know that.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: It's that good.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I actually did a promo for uh Theaters 14.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so one thing you do is you go to God in prayer.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: All right?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: And another thing, interestingly, that you do is you write poetry.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: I believe that.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: The poetry that you write in a time of terrible suffering and so forth, it's called elegy, it's called an ode, it's called a dirge.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh my maybe my favorite dirge or ode or elegy of all time is one written by the great poet in the 20th century, Aden, which ends like this.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: He was my north, she writes.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: He was my south, my east and west, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: I thought that love would last forever.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: I was wrong.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: The stars are not wanted now.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: For nothing now can ever come to any good.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Nothing now can ever come to any good.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: That's that's when the worst that could happen happens when you lose the one that you love the most.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a great illustration.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: And writing poetry, I think, is a way to sort of get that out, is sort of express your emotion.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Remember, my mother was absolutely bereft with grief at the loss of her two-year-old Dougie.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: And and and and we talked about it, and she ended up writing a poem, which was posted in her house for the next 20, 30 years in Oregon, a poem about grief and about Dougie and about God and so forth.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Lamentations is.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: As I said, Lamentations is an actual poem.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations are actually five poems, chapter one, two, three, four, and five.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: And the lamentations of Jeremiah that he expresses are actually a very interesting acrostic poem.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: You know what an acrostic is?
17:49
SPEAKER_00: An acrostic is where you know you put a sign in your daughter's Zoe's room saying Z is for zealous, O is for outstanding, E is for elegant, or something like that.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: Where each of the lines begins with a key letter.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: Except that in the book of Lamentations, and this is what you see if you open up the Hebrew Bible.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know you just love this picture, and it just blesses all of you, but Hebrew Bible written from right to left.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Each of the verses that you see is written from right to left.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 starts with the letter A.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 in chapter 1 starts letter B.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: There are 22 verses, each for the consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, of which there are 22 letters.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: It goes from what we would call A, what they call Aleph, all the way down to Z, what we would call tau.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: It's as though Jeremiah is saying, I need to be able to at least feel as though I've gotten it out and I've said it all.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And so in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, that's 1, 2, and 4, he does that.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, he goes, you know what?
18:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say it in triple.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: I want people to know this is the most important central chapter of the book.
18:56
SPEAKER_00: And so verses 1, 2, and 3 are in A, 4, 5, 6, 66 verses.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: So you have in Jeremiah, 22 verses, 22 verses, 66 verses, 22 verses, 22 verses in those five chapters, 154 verses.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And I think what God is doing with this book is he is saying to you and to me, when the worst that could happen happens in your life, yeah, go ahead and look at the five stages of grief if you want.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: But what I want to give you is five perspectives on pain.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Because the problem is that when you're in pain, you tend to just take one perspective, maybe two.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you, he says, five perspectives on pain.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: Number one, I recommend, God says to you in Lamentations one, I recommend to you the outside view of pain.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: That's the most simple.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: The one that just you spray it out.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm groaning.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Groaning is the key word in this chapter.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm in pain.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: You simply express that you're hurting.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Verse one, how she sits alone, the city once crowded with people.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: She who is great among the nations has become like a widow.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Verse three, Judah has gone into exile.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: She lives among the nations, but finds no place to rest.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: The roads to Zion mourn.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: This is probably a month or so after they're taken into captivity, and Jeremiah's sitting there, and he's looking at the city of Jerusalem, and it's absolutely desolate.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: It's like hell.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: It's like hell with all the people moved out.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And he says, The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the appointed festivals.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: All her gates are deserted, which is so sad since it's the center of the whole world.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: All her people groan while they search for bread.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: They've traded their precious belongings for food in order to stay alive.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this anything to you all you who pass by?
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Look, is there any pain like mine, which was dealt out to me, which the Lord made me suffer on the day of his burning anger?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Lord, he concludes chapter one, see how I'm in distress.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm churning within, my heart's broken.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: People have heard me groaning, and there's no one to comfort me.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: My groans are many.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm sick at heart.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: So therefore, one perspective of pain is just how bad you're hurting, and you need to find somebody.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: You need to get that out.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: You need to express it.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And and and corresponding with that, chapter 5 tells you to take an upward look and express it to God.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help, Lord, remember what's happened to us.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Look and see our disgrace.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: 5.1, 5.15.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Joy has left our hearts, God.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Our dancing's turned to mourning.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Why have you forgotten us forever?
21:30
SPEAKER_00: Why do you have abandoned us?
21:32
SPEAKER_00: Lord, restore us.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: So that's the prayer side.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: You express it to other people.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Upward view is you express it to God.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2 is really interesting where God says, Have you stopped when you're really suffering and taken a personal look?
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Taken an inside view.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And ask yourself this question Why is this happening to me?
21:56
SPEAKER_00: And this chapter, chapter two in Lamentations, answers it.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: With sort of a coin with two sides.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Side number one, God.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: God's doing this because he's in charge.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: He's sovereign.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: And the flip side of that coin is, well, actually, at the same time, I I've done it to myself.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm to blame.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: If you if you look at Lamentations 2, you can see that the first nine verses all start with the word Lord or God, and then the verb is like, He's thrown us down, He's abandoned His footstool, He's swallowed us up, He has demolished us, He's cut off His relationship with us, He's withdrawn His right hand.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm in verse 3, and He's burned us, He's slain us, verse 4.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: He's like an enemy, He swallows us on and on and on.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Interesting that God does not mind you laying it at His feet.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Because He wants you to realize that if at any point God is out of control, then He's not God.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: And I know you and I would like a God who's only nice, you know, and all of the bad stuff comes from elsewhere, but the fact is at the same time, you and I need a God who's utterly and totally in control, or else He won't be able to get rid of evil at the end of time.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: So you have to say God's done this to me, but if you're honest about it, a lot of our suffering, and certainly the suffering in 587 B.C.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: is self-inflicted.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: I did this to myself.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: Now we're we're slow to realize realize that nobody wants to be told, well, the reason you're hurting right now is you know because you did that.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: You ever look at what the police list of favorite excuses that year of speeding speeding drivers?
23:37
SPEAKER_00: I was looking at the ones from state of Georgia, those have my favorites now, where they list the top ten excuses that people gave when they pulled them over for speeding.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm just trying to get the dew off my windshield.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Pretty good.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's another.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: She said, I'm I'm just trying to get home before I ran out of gas.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh they pull over a guy on Sunday morning about 11 o'clock.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: He says, and I quote, I was in church when they started to pass the plate, and I realized it didn't have my wallet, so I'm trying to get home and back again to put my dough, put my money in the offering plate.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm going, I hope they let that guy free.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Here's the guy that actually let go free.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: This has got to be my all-time favorite.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: The pullover guy, and he's really overweight, and he said, uh, you were speeding.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah, I have to.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean you have to?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, I said, there's a spear factor.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: He says, the faster I drive, the more I fear getting caught, and that just burns off my calories.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: It just it it I lose weight.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: They let that guy go.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: So maybe we can use that, you know, you and me.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: So, but that's tendency.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: You talk to people about why they're doing wrong, they tend to make excuses.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: But as you and I know, oftentimes when we're when really bad things are happening, there is an element of that that's you know, self-inflicted, right?
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Okay, maybe just with me.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I I you know, I I I really I I think there's a lot of value in that old story about that comes, you know, from Native Americans about the Indian brave who's trying to get the eagle feather and he had to climb this high mountain and exhausted, and he he finally climbed the high mountain, he got the eagle feather, and he stood there, put his hands out, yelled, he was so excited, and then he heard a small voice and he looked down.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: There's a snake.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: He bent down, the snake said, I am so cold up here.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Would you take me down the mountain?
25:49
SPEAKER_00: Leave me at the bottom.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: He said, No way.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I try to take you down the mountain, you'll bite me.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Poison a snake.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Snake said, I promise I won't.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I just want to get down the mountain, I'm cold.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: No, he said, I'm not going to.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: You think I'm stupid?
26:03
SPEAKER_00: Snake said, Honest, I promise I won't bite you.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: Just get me down at the bottom of the mountain.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Feeling compassion, he picks up the snake, puts it in his pocket, takes him down to the bottom of the mountain.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Puts in his hand to pull out the snake, and he feels a bite on his hand.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: The pain is absolutely severe.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: And then he can feel as the poison starts to work through his system.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Fast acting.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Knees get wobbly, his vision is going, and before he dies, he mutters to the snake, he says, Whoa you promised.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: You promised that you wouldn't bite me.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: If I brought you down the mountain, the snake says, You knew what I was when you picked me up.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we're suffering, you know, we go, really, I mean, I I really didn't think I was doing anything all that bad.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I was just playing around with that, you know, disobedience a little bit.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: And the sin looks at us and laughs and says, You knew what I was when you picked me up.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the fact of the matter is that a lot of our suffering, a lot of our worst kind of suffering, is at least in part self-inflicted.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: It's due to ourselves.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I want you to stop and look at that, because the fact of the matter is, you yourself believe that sin should be judged and punished.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: God's put in, I've put in you a desire to see justice done.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that in India these days you have thousands and thousands of women who are marching on behalf of a 12-year-old girl, a little girl who, who, you know, has been beaten, mistreated, just because she's a girl won't be allowed in school and so forth.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: God's put us in us a desire to see justice done.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: And we want it done, and we want it done in our country.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: And Thomas Jefferson, when he said, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: God says, Yeah, I showed you back in Israel in 587.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: My justice can't sleep forever.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: I brought Babylon.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: I brought Rome in 70 AD.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's I know it sounds awful, you know, and when it comes to you, you'd like to snake out, you'd like to sneak out, you'd like to slither out from underneath any kind of a punishment.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is you yourself know that sin does need to be judged, that justice can't sleep forever.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And here's a great quote from a hundred years before Thomas Jefferson from a guy who looks really weird, John Trapp.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: But one of my favorite quotes to prosper in sin is the greatest tragedy that can befall a man this side of hell.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Parents, do you believe that about your children?
28:40
SPEAKER_00: To prosper in sin is the greatest tragedy that can befall a man this side of hell.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: You and I have a sense inside us that sin needs to be recompensed, that there needs to be a cost, right?
28:55
SPEAKER_00: And on his uh in his short commentary on this book, Jay Sidlow Baxter wrote, High calling, flaunted by low living, inevitably issues in deep suffering.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: High calling, that's where you and I are, friends, flaunted by low living, inevitably issues in deep suffering.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Inevitably, that's what God happened, that's what happens, and that's chapter two.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: That's the inside, the inner, the honest, the personal view of why we're suffering this pain.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Chapter four corresponds to it.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: I won't get into it.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: It's just a close-up view of all the miseries that sin causes.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to get to the key chapter, and that is chapter three, which is sort of the step back, the wide-angle view of sin, the single most important chapter and most important verses of this book.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: The reason he wrote this book, you get to the middle verses, and Jeremiah writes, I'm depressed.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: He says, I've forgotten what happiness is, and then I thought my future's lost.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: I've no hope.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: I've become depressed.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Really?
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, what is it that you call to mind that gives you hope?
29:59
SPEAKER_00: And he answers in those famous words, because of the Lord's faithful love, we don't perish.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: For his mercies never end, they're new every morning.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: I say, the Lord's my portion.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will put my hope in him.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: And when the worst that could happen happens to you, when you are absolutely out of hope, then you find you do have hope.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: You have hope in God.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: In specifically in three of his attributes.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Now you know this verse better from the King James, so say it with me.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations 3, 22 and 23.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: They are new every morning.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: Great is thy faithfulness.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: You should know that verse by heart.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Your children should know that verse by heart.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice, and here it is, by the way, in a song that we often sing, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: His mercies never come to an end there new every morning.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Great is thy faithfulness.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to say to you is that out of its deep dark pit, when the worst that could happen ever happened to Jeremiah, he looked up in the sky and he saw three bright stars, and he recommends, and God recommends, that when the worst that could happen happens to you, you look up out of the dark pit and you grasp onto those three bright stars: the star of God's love, the star of God's mercy, the star of God's faithfulness.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: The star of God's steadfast love, Hezid, is this uh love, this word for love is the word that indicates that God entered into a love relationship, a marriage relationship with you, with Israel first, but now with you.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: If you've trusted him as your Savior, I hope to God that you've done this for your sake.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And God wants you to do this.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: You just simply throw yourself with an abandon upon him and enter into this relationship with the one who died for you.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: And he enters into this loving relationship with you.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine how the angels must must have gone, God, really, you're gonna enter into a covenant with Israel, with those Jews?
32:07
SPEAKER_00: Really?
32:08
SPEAKER_00: I imagine that when they heard that God was gonna enter into a like a covenant with me, a marriage or whatever, you know.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: I'm reminded of I'm reminded of the story of Rodney Dangerfield getting married, and he said that when he was up front and the pastor said, you know, if anyone has anything against this marriage, speak now or forever, hold your peace.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Rodney Dangersfield said, I turned around and her family had formed a double line.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Imagine in heaven the angels forming a double line when God says, Yeah, you know, I think I'm gonna save Jim, enter into a you know, a love relationship with him.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
32:45
SPEAKER_00: The way I wander, the way you wander, can you imagine that he stays true to us?
32:49
SPEAKER_00: It's steadfast love, it's loyal love.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
32:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean Bum Phillips, coach of coach of Houston, what he and his wife had a famously close relationship.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: He took her with him wherever he went.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: He was once asked, in her presence, why do you take her with you wherever you go?
33:08
SPEAKER_00: He said, She's too ugly to kiss goodbye.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: He honestly said that and she giggled.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I could see that with go, you know, uh, Jim's too ugly to kiss goodbye, God says.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: So I guess I'll keep him on.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: But no, that's that's I mean, God is incredibly faithful to you and to me, with whom he's entered into sort of a loving relationship.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: I've told you before how I said, Melody, you know, will you still love me when I'm old and gray?
33:30
SPEAKER_00: She says, I still do, yeah, I still do.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: And and so God still loves us no matter what.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And the second star that that we can look up and grab hold of is a star of what's called mercies here, which is the word Raham, which is the word for a woman's womb.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: It's so this word has to do with the feeling that a mother gets as she looks at her newborn.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: It's a maternal yearning.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: This is the feeling God has for you if you're one of his children.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: He has this maternal yearning for you.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: How often does he have it?
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Here's the shocking thing, and the best part of the verse for me is it's new every morning.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Like the manic coming down from heaven.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: God's sort of pity for you.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: It's persistent.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: It starts over every morning.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: So, Jim, are you saying that I can actually go to God and confess today the same sin that I committed yesterday?
34:23
SPEAKER_00: And confessed and committed the day before, and confessed and the day before, this besetting sin that has me by the throat, and I really don't want to do it.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: But are you, you know, I I really feel like I should stop confessing.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: I said, no, no, because his feeling for you, which causes him to forgive you, is brand new every morning.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: So, so please, please, he begs you, please confess it to me again.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: Because his love for you is loyal, and his pity for you is persistent every single morning.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: And third, great is his faithfulness.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Everybody else in your life may leave you, politicians may break their promises, and the folks that you know best even sign contracts with may back out.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: But God is faithful, and his faithfulness is great.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Those are the three bright stars here, so that when you're at the bottom of the pit, and the worst that could possibly happen happens.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: You can say, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there's no shadow of turning with thee.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not, as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: And the amazing thing about this, as Walter Kaiser says, startling fact is that this statement is made against one of the bleakest backgrounds in the Old Testament.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: It's be as if someone stood up on one of the prison camps of the Third Reich and announced loudly, Great is God's faithfulness.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: It's so ludicrous, it might bring the scornful sneer of every destitute's soul in the barrage.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: That's such a shocking statement, but that is the statement God gives us.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: No matter how bad it seems to you, look up and grasp the stars of my love and my mercy and my faithfulness.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
36:05
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have you sing.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna all sing the song, Great Is Thy Faithfulness, and then take the Lord's table.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Bow with me in prayer.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace and for your mercy, for the faithfulness and love and mercy that uh surround us at all times as your beloved people, even when we've sinned and don't deserve it.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in full witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and thy faithfulness, grace thy faithfulness, born in my morning.
38:59
SPEAKER_03: All I have prayed in thy hand through thyness.
39:51
SPEAKER_03: Blessing ten thousand great is my faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, only born newness all I have faith, thy hat.