Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 31, 2016 | Route 66 - Zephaniah

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January 31, 2016 | Route 66 - Zephaniah · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: The verdict is mixed.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Life is so good.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Both KU and K-State won last night.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So all is good, except that this morning, if you're visiting, I'm taking you to one of the tiniest, most mysterious, unknown books of the Bible, a book that's actually called Get This.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Zephaniah, a name which sounds like a Tennessee frontiersman from 150 years ago.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where is Zephaniah Randolph Smith today?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he took his muzzle loader out in the forest and he's shooting barmints.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, so but this is one of the minor prophets.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I want to see if you can find it in your Bible.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bible is that thing that has 66 books, and we're doing a Route 66 through the Bible, one book each week.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we've come to the I think the fourth book from the end.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So go to Matthew and turn left.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just three chapters long, I think uh 50, I think 54 words, something like that.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or 54 verses.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: 54 words, that would be short.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is so interesting.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about this book because this book has one of the most beautiful verses.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's in the running for the single most beautiful verse in the Bible.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it ends with five words or the five-word line that could be called, I think, the most comforting five words that God has ever spoken to us.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So open your Bible to Zephaniah, and I'm titling the message I will bring you home, and I want to start with prayer.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads, Heavenly Father.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We come to you today, and we're so grateful that you have given us another day in which to live, another week in which to serve you and to try to be lights in this dark world.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So many good things are happening, Lord, but then again, so many not so good things are happening here in America, overseas, in our families, among our friends.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to thank you for your many blessings.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And singularly, the gift of your son Jesus Christ, the greatest blessing of all, and the reason we're here.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you for the worship this morning and for the fellowship that we have, and I pray that you bless the people who have come this morning and their children in Jesus' name.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um I want to talk to you uh about uh this little book of Zephaniah and share with you that as I stepped back and looked at the forest, admittedly a small forest, of this book, it seems to me that this book answers quite an interesting question, a question that, you know, uh we ask occasionally, and that is the question this world is a mess, so what's God gonna do about it?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: This world is a mess, so what is God's plan for it?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I don't think I would get a lot of argument from you that in many ways the world is a mess.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: That uh, as you look around you, you look at some marriages, even of friends or maybe even family members, and you say, their marriage is a the word is mess, guys.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or you go, wow, that family, you know, is a mess.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The children are fighting with the parents, the parents with the children.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or you look at some churches and you go, wow, that church is is a mess.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is so divided, so fighting.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or, man, work is a mess right now.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: The firings and the letting in, you know, or as uh if you look overseas, you go, I often just think ISIS or something like that.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: You go, what a mess.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, the innocent and the Christians and especially girls, eight, ten, twelve-year-old girls are just so, it's take, it's it's just such a mess overseas.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you can might even think our foreign policy is a mess, but it's partly a mess because the world is such a mess.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you get back home, you go, wow, we live in an we live in an election cycle.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, is it a m is it a mess?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you go, of all of the options that we could have, and these are the options, and we're not far away from choosing our next next leader.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my goodness, it's a mess.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I would just share with you, uh, someone who's lived longer than many of you, that as I was growing up, after World War II, you know, there, you know what's a mess to me, even in our country, is the fact that back after World War II, 50s, 60s, and so forth, actually in the 50s, you know, there there were there were certain values that everyone held in our country, values of hard work, values of of of uh personal responsibility, a value for uh uh rewarded, merit rewarded, reward for merit, value of uh delayed gratification, uh value of sexual discretion, the value of uh reverence for God, the value of uh of love of country, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And those were values that really were held across the board, and then came the 60s, especially the late 60s Vietnam years, and you know, and I was a big I was part of that.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really not responsible for all that happened, but that started attacking those what we might call Christian or traditional values that everybody held.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and the so-called progressives came along, the change, the cultural change agents, and and and and said, no, we don't that value, we don't hold that as a value anymore.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're changing that value.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and since the 60s it's gotten more and more that way, am I right?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you have cultural wars and gender wars and so forth today.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and and those of you who stand against that and and say, no, I can't can't go there.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna hold to the values I've always held, but we always held the traditional values.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, someone may say to you, you know, you stop it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Stop imposing your values on us.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which, if you translated it into what they're really saying, honestly, it's stop defending yourself and your traditional values as as we try to change them to the new values we've come up with this year.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's really what it is.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so the cultural war, to be honest, it's sort of a war on the normals or a war on the traditionalists.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't think that's a political statement.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh just to say that there is a culture war going on, and it's not gonna get any better.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, it's just a mess.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's a mess.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and the world is in many ways in a mess.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the question is, what is God?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: If God's really the God of the Bible, if he's the God who's in control, if he's the God who has a plan, what's he gonna do about it?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that this book actually answers that question in two ways, with two answers, and I want to share with you those two answers.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the first answer, he doesn't really say the answer at the beginning because, like a bad public speaker, Zephaniah just jumps right into it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he would I would never invite him to preach here because he starts this way.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm kidding.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's just I mean, look at the first verse of the book.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, and then it tells you he's the son of, son, of, son, of, son of.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: He's actually the great-grandson of Hezekiah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you can understand why Zephaniah feels like his world is a mess.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of the last prophets, along with his buddies Habakkuk and Jeremiah, one of the last prophets before the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, before the whole thing fell apart.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's going, wow, my great-great-grandfather Hezekiah was the greatest king.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: We know this from the Bible, the greatest king since David.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Life was going pretty well about 120 years ago under my dad.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now this whole thing is falling apart.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whole thing is falling apart.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is my world is a mess.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then the word of the Lord comes to him.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's, and word of the Lord starts off bang.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I will completely sweep away everything from the face of the earth.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's declaration.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will sweep away man and beast.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll stretch out my hand against.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, okay.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think I've ever started a sermon without saying hi or something nice.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, I will sweep away everything.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: You get the picture of a grandpa out in the back porch sweeping away the leaves, except this is God.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you look closely, and he's not sweeping away leaves, he's sweeping away people.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he's sweeping everything off the surface of the earth.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not nice.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not nice.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Zephaniah, in fact, none of the minor prophets are nice people.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus wasn't very nice either, was it?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he talks about judgment, he says, you know, um, it's gonna be the end of the world, and I'm gonna cast you out of the temple, and blah blah blah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let's be honest, this is not the kind of stuff you're gonna hear in a possibility thinking church.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is not the kind of a stuff you're gonna hear, you know, at this for the speaker for, you know, the sales convention.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not, no.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: He just bang, starts right off.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna sweep away everything.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I got a broom, says the Lord, and I'm gonna sweep it all away.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at it closely, he's saying, This is personal.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna commit this to anybody else.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna come down there and I'm gonna do some sweeping.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I, I, I, I.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's total.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna sweep everything away.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just sweep the whole earth, okay?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's grim.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he says, I'm gonna stretch out my hand and it's against, and it's against Judah and Jerusalem, verse 4.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, wow, uh stop, Lord.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I really like it when you stretch your hands out like Jesus did on the cross in love and grace.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love it when you stretch your hands out like many times in the Old Testament against my enemies, and you stretch them out to I'm a little sheep, and you help me off the side of the mountain.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I like that, but the stretching out your hand against me, that's grim, baby.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's grim.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how the Lord starts off.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then Zephaniah tells us, or God tells us, you know, in the next paragraph, I'm I the name for this, there's a phrase for what I'm about to do.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the day of Yahweh.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The day of the Lord.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: The day of the Lord.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Even though Jephaniah is just 50 plus verses, he uses this phrase or varieties of it more than any book in the Bible, including all 66 chapters of Isaiah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Almost, you can't find a verse in here without him going the day of the wrath, the day of the Lord, the day of distress, the day, and so forth.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I, you know, maybe one of the real sort of signature paragraphs in the Old Testament on the day of the Lord, verses 14 through 16, the great day of the Lord is near, near and rapidly approaching.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, you can hear the cry of the warrior on the day of the Lord, and his cry is bitter.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of destruction and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you look at this closely, you see a couple things about it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's Yahweh's day.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be the day of the Lord.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: In contrast to today.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know we call it 2016 AD, and AD stands for, do you know what it stands for?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Latin.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anodomini, literally the year of the Lord.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: We call it the year of our Lord, but that's not correct.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: The year of the Lord.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ha ha ha, says heaven.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: As if it's not the year of the Lord on earth, it's man's year.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you guys act any way you want to.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are, you know, it's it's a mess down there.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, one day your AD will turn into D D, D Ace Domini, the day of the Lord, and then it'll be my day.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what's gonna happen first is wrath.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing about that is it's coming soon.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's rapidly, near and rapidly approaching, or verse 7, a key verse in the book.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Be hush before the sovereign Lord, for the day of the Lord is near.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, yeah, right, near.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: When was this written?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I go, 620 BC.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's been a long time, you know, since 620 BC, like 2,600 years.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: How can you say it's near?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a good question, and the answer is that what happens when the Lord says it's near, he means you know what?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: We've walked right up to the edge of a cliff, especially in gee, after Jesus came, we're right on the edge of a cliff, and you are now turning, and now all of society is walking along the edge of the cliff, and it is super near.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing needs to happen before you get pushed off.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you are that near it could happen at any moment.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when it happens, it will be scary, it will be terrible, it will be fearsome.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ask really, how bad can the day of the Lord be?
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, how bad?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the verses in this book, just picking one, says, I will bring such distress on all people that they will grope about like those who are blind because they sinned against the Lord.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Their blood will be poured out like dust.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the blood pouring out like dust, that's one of the nicer phrases.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't put the others down because this is, I think, a PG or a G situation.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gonna be really bad.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you say, you know, but surely not here, not in mighty, powerful America where we are, you know, good people and we are strong and we have big buildings and so forth.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 18, neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord's wrath.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: The whole earth will be consumed.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: You go, but why?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that, God?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he starts using where he sprinkles throughout the book, the cause that for doing all this, the the revelation that it will be deserved because of all the paganism, because the because our hearts are like breeding grounds for idols because we've turned back from following the Lord, because the whole earth doesn't seek the Lord, because of violence, because of deceit.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3 is full of social injustice, because of the fact that some people live just for power and other people just live for pleasure, and people live to take advantage of people who are weaker than they are.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bottom line, because we've sinned against the Lord, that's this day is coming, it will be deserved.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by the way, if you read the first 80% of the book, which is all about this and mentions the sins, you know the sin that struck me more than any other, it's not mentioned all that often in the Old Testament, was the one in verse 12, where God says, you know who else?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten fed up.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I put it in front of your bulletin.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was so struck by this.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I will punish the people, the men, who are stagnant in spirit, who say in their hearts, the Lord will not do good or evil.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, in the context, uh there's this picture, sort of a cheers TV picture, where you've got uh actually, because it's speaking about guys together and they're just drinking, which is not, you know, a sin in this context.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're just drinking, but they're saying to each other, actually, not to worry, keep calm, doesn't really matter what we do in life.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: God isn't gonna do anything, either good or evil, nothing will happen.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if somebody comes along and says, watch out for judgment days, they go, hey, whatever, or meh, you know, I'm familiar with meh, it's it's the new word for like, you know, spiritual indifference and and and complacency, and it really doesn't matter, and God won't do anything about it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: This whole idea of not caring, and God says, I'm absolutely fed up with your intermittent, complacent, indifferent religion.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm absolutely fed up with your idea that you can simply come to church because it's the thing to do, or simply be a nice person.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that you really don't care, the fact that you don't care what I think or what I will do.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a principle in life that I think all of us know if you think about it for a moment, that sometimes you have to give up on people.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you don't care, but because they don't.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right about that?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in life you have given up probably on people, not because you don't care, but because they don't.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, you know what, I'm gonna, there's coming a time I'm giving up on you, and it's not because I haven't cared, it's because you don't care.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you want me to tell you, God says, what I'm gonna do to those people who say in their hearts the Lord will do nothing, either good or bad, well, their wealth will be plundered, and their houses will be demolished, and neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord's wrath.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't matter, God says.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even if, even if the sun itself were a lump of gold in your pocket, even if you had a pearl around your neck the size of the moon, even if all of the stars of the sky were diamonds on your fingers and you offered them to me on that day, your silver, your gold, all the wealth that you can imagine.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't help you on that day.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what God's saying underneath us, all that you and I need to hear, is that God will accept nothing less than total devotion.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know that's that's like way too much commitment for some of you, but I mean, God's saying something here.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying something about spiritual indifference and complacency and apathy and you know, meh, that God says, I hate that stuff.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just fed up with that stuff.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I like?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I like it when people come to church, not because it's the moral or the right thing to do.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I like it when people come to church and they care about it and they seek me and they really maybe they never get their hands up above their waist because you know they're stuck.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you know that they really do sing and they really do care, and there's something inside them that seeks me and comes after me.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a little seminary moment here, or Bible school.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: When is when is this prophecy, Zapanized prophecy, gonna be fulfilled?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: When is this gonna come true?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's important, and I'll just spend a minute or two on it, you know, for those of you that aren't academics, but you need to realize that in the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, when there's a prophecy, like uh, you know, the Isaiah 7.14, a virgin will conceive and bear a son.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, actually, the word is young woman, and that was fulfilled right then in the immediate future, but it was also fulfilled 700 years later in Mary, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Giving birth to Jesus.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that when God would give a prophecy, like about the day of the Lord, it was like the prophet wouldn't be able to distinguish between whether it was going to be immediate or in the distant or remote future, and it was like mountain peaks, uh people have said.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're looking at this stuff, and they and it's only when it gets fulfilled in hindsight that you see which parts of this, you know, in the in this in this fulfillment that it happens.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So let's ask about the day of the Lord.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as we, from the 2016 perspective, which of this is past and is there any that's future?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, certainly there was a near fulfillment.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh 10 or 15, 20 years later, this prophecy that destruction was going to come upon you know the disobedient and the lazy and the indifferent of God's people and so was fulfilled in about 600 AD.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, there were three falls of Jerusalem successively to Babylon, 605 and 597 and 586 BC.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But approximately 600 BC, Babylon came and just destroyed Jerusalem to the ground.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the fulfillment immediate, and that's already taken place.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: The specifics are in prophesied in chapter two of this book.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then 600 years later, there was a second fulfillment.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord Jesus Christ came, and the offer of rescue and salvation, and repentance came again, and Jesus was rejected, and he was crucified, and and there was the promise again, and the day of the Lord came and was fulfilled in 70 AD with Emperor Titus and Vespasian, and they came and they wiped out Jerusalem again in 70 A.D.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And some of this uh book was fulfilled then.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the distant future.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any of it left for the future?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you definitely, definitely there's some left.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: The day of the Lord will still be future.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: We oftentimes call it the tribulation.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: As Jesus said in Matthew 24, immediately after the distress of those days, quote, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's quoting Isaiah.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Zephaniah is also quoting the same passage in Isaiah, which is why it sounds so familiar.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the day of the Lord, a day of wrath, is still coming, and it is scary and it's fearsome, and it's God getting involved to sweep the dirt off the earth.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, when you're all scared enough, all of a sudden something happens against this dark battle.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You have this little pin light of God's grace.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Some people call it the most important verse in all of the book of Zephaniah.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's in chapter 2.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, you're going to want to underline chapter 2, verse 3, where all of a sudden, in the midst of this threat and this warning, you have the beautiful grace of God giving people a way out.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where he says, Seek Yahweh, all you humble of the land.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You who practice his justice, seek righteousness, seek humility.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you will be sheltered in the day of the wrath of Yahweh.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, this word seek.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: This word is such an active word.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you will remember Matthew 6.33, Jesus saying, seek his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's the opposite of spiritual apathy and indifference.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the opposite of meh.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word bakash means to just go after, to seek after, to want to get there, to want to see God, to want to worship God, seek him.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: All you humble of the land, because you have to be humble to do this.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: You have to, it has to be about him and not about you.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: You who practice his justice.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Seek righteousness.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Seek humility.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, righteousness is horizontal, where you're seeking to treat other people with integrity and kindness and so forth and not take advantage of people.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus comes along and says, I'll give you my righteousness so you can live my life if you'll just trust in me.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Seek humility, this bowing down before God and getting rid of your natural arrogance and pride.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And do this.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps he says, you'll be sheltered in the day of wrath of Yahweh.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: The word shelter is the key word here.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love this word, partly because the name Zephaniah, it's a play on his name, Zafan, meaning to hide, hidden in Yahweh.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the picture is here that maybe on that day, perhaps on that day, when the wrath of God falls, you will be sheltered.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sheltered in the wrath of.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You say, perhaps?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: What's the whole perhaps about?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good question, because most of the time in the Old Testament, almost all the time, it goes, if you return to me, I will shelter you.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of you.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll deliver you.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: But once in a while you have this reminder that God, as he says himself, I act as as it pleases me in heaven and on earth.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God has every right.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Nebuchadnezzar says, you know, I'm going to throw you guys in the fire for not worshiping my idol.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the three of them say, God's going to deliver us.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but even if he doesn't, we're still his people and we're not going to bow down.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so yeah, there's a, yeah, it's going to happen, but at the same time, it is God's choice and God's pleasure to do as he will.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, yeah, he'll shelter you in the day of his wrath.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that should remind you, some of you, of my mom's favorite Psalm.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91, whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is that beautiful?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is that beautiful?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 91.1.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever dwells in the shelter, and the word most high is in Hebrew El Elion, which means God Most High, which is perfect because the second word will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever ask, you know, I used to get asked all the time years ago when there was a song, El Shaddai, El Shaddai, here come, come, in, and anyway, um, and what does Shaddai mean?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and and it's only been relatively recently that we know what this mysterious word Shaddai means, and it doesn't mean Almighty.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: It really is a word related to the old Akkadian word for mountain.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is like whoever dwells in the shadow of this most high will rest in the shadow, in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of Shaddai, the shadow of God, the majestic mountain.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a picture of a mountain, of a mountain that you run to, and a mountain that you hide in, a cave that you hide in as the lightning storm flashes outside, the storm of God's wrath, but you dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and you rest in the shadow of Shaddai.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the next verse, Psalm 91.2, says, I'll say of Yahweh, He is my refuge and he is my fortress, my God, in Him I will trust.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And a songwriter wrote a song about that.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's our rock.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: In him we hide, a shelter in the time of storm.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Secure whatever ill betide, a shelter in a time of storm.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you grew up in the kind of little Baptist church I grew up in, then you want to keep going.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: You want to go, oh, Jesus is rocking a weary land, a weary land, a weary land.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Jesus is a rock.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm the only one who knows.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: A shelter in a time of storm.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the point here is if you seek, if you turn to God, he can shelter you.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: He will shelter you from the wrath to come.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're looking for a book, a great devotional book about Zephaniah, it's not exactly a commentary, but it's really close by a guy I know well named Ron Allen.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's called A Shelter in the Fury.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shelter in the Fury, a book about Zephaniah.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the picture here that God is our Shaddai.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: He is our mountain cave.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is our shelter in the fury.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: World is a mess.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's God gonna do about it?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is, well, I've got to tell you, God says it is a mess.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm angry about it, and I'm coming.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And wrath is the next thing on the timetable.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wrath comes next, chapter 1-1 through 3-8.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm coming.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's the tip?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, the tip is get to the cave, get to the safe house, get to God, because that's the only way to be rescued from it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now the moralist will tell you something different.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: He'll say that, you know, with bad times coming, if there's another 9-11, if the wrath falls or whatever, what you need to make sure you do ahead of time is have your 401k, you know, all set.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you need to maybe diversify a little bit into some real estate, right?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you need to do the moral things.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: You need to also go to church, you need to be a good person, and so forth.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be show yourself to be compassionate, at least in public, and and so forth.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's how you protect yourself.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds him of a guy who once said, Jim, I got a riddle for you.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Okay, go.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: He said, What's small and what's yellow and has feathers and lives in a cage and sings and plays basketball.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Wow, I was I was pretty good till the last little one there.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's small, has feathers yellow, lives in a cage, sings and plays basketball.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I give up.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: No idea.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: He said, a canary.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, that's what I was thinking about, but it really doesn't work with the basketball thing.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he says I was just teasing about the basketball thing.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so the moralist, you get to the day of wrath, and the moralist all along has been telling us, you know what?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: The way to handle downturn, economic downturn, another 9-11, the end of the world, whatever.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: The way to handle this is the 401k, and be a good person too, and go to church and so forth.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: One thing you don't need to do for heaven's sake is to be an absolute fanatic, like totally devoted, like those some of those Christians are.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then the day of the Lord falls and he goes, Well, I was just teasing about that last part.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, guess we really did need that.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to get to the safe house.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You need God, you need to become a fully devoted disciple of Christ.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: You need to trust Jesus as your Savior and you need to run to Him.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then the last 20% of the book, the last dozen verses, chapter 3, 9 through 20.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, get ready for this, folks.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes joy.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: First comes wrath, then comes joy, and God says, God says, not me, God says, I'll be singing, and I'll be so happy.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was so angry, but in the future I'm gonna be so happy.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: You see this?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at verses 14 and 15 of Zephaniah chapter 3.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sing for joy, daughter Zion, shout loudly, Israel.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the picture is after you come out of the cave, after the lightning storm of God's wrath has swept over the earth, after the broom has gone by.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is, as many people say, the beginning of the millennium, but whatever it is, it's after the day of the Lord.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sing for joy.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the command is get glad, rejoice with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord has removed your punishment, he's turned back your enemy.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: The king of Israel, Yahweh, is among you, you need no longer fear harm.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Prophetically, he puts himself into the situation and says, this is the charge to you.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, okay, yeah, I will be singing.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be so happy to make it, I'll be really, I mean, you know, aren't you gonna be kind of relieved on the other side?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go, yeah, you know, I I knew my wife was gonna make it, but I wasn't quite sure about me.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, hooray, you know, and you're gonna be singing, you're gonna be happy, you're gonna be glad, but guess what?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be going, oh, somebody's singing louder than me.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Someone is really singing louder than me.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you look over and you know who it's gonna be.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most amazing.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I say it's in the running for the most beautiful verse in the Bible, Zephaniah 3.17.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the Lord singing louder than you.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: He's so happy.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save, he will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's uh pull that apart for just a moment because it's so pretty.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first line: the Lord your God is with you.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And now this is a present tense.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't care how close you're sitting between two people right now, the Lord your God is closer to you than the person sitting beside you.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: He is with you.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when you go through the valley of the shadow of death, you need not fear.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: For I am with you.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Emmanuel, God is with you.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the most central idea that you should remember during the week, that he is with you at all moments, and he is mighty.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is related to the whole Shaddai shelter thing.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is mighty to save, to rescue you from difficult times today, and to save you from the wrath to come.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Third, he will take delight in you.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really, I can see him taking delight in, well, in one or two of you, but um, but I mean, really?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, isn't that amazing?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: He'll take delight in stinky old me, messy me, dirty me, of two minds, me.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: The really, he takes delight in me.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: God takes pleasure in you, and then he will quiet you with his love.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you get the picture of a mother quieting her little baby or grandfather holding that little baby and cuddling it, speaking to it quietly, quiet you in his love.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then bursting out, he will rejoice over you with singing.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, really?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this suddenly in your top five of beautiful Bible verses?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Wow! And then the and then comes the maybe the most comforting five words that God has ever spoken to us in the last verse of the book, Zephaniah 3.20, at that time I will gather you, at that time I will say it with me, I will bring you home.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I will bring you home.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we live in Kansas, you gotta remember what Dorothy finally remembered, you know, what she finally learned, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: She finally learned there's no place like home.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Last night I got to go to the KU Kentucky ballgame, where fortunately in the end, the Jayhawks defeated the evil Wildcats, and on everybody's seat there was a shirt, uh, either blue or white or red, and it read, no place like home.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even think of this on my sermon until I got home.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was lying on the floor this morning.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I go, no place like home.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard that before.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and you know the truth was there was no place like home.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: If can if Kansas had been playing Kentucky anywhere else but the place where they played them, they would have gotten beaten.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: But so that was that was amazing.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is no place like Allen Fieldhouse for the Jayhawks, and there's no place really like the home you grew up in.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I knew it was coming, but this last Friday when my little sister from Oregon emailed us that finally our childhood home had been, she just signed the papers.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something in my heart stopped.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know we live in a world where people move.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: The average American in their adult life moves 11 to 12 times.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or fully uh 28, 29 million Americans, one out of every 10 of us, moved last year.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But my parents got this house in 1951, tiny little house, and they never moved.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so we all, 12 children, grew up in this house.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: This was home for us.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was home, especially after, you know, I grew up and left.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was home because mom was there, you know.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: She home was where the love was.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad was loving too, but in a different way.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: But mom, you know, and you go home because that's and for years until she died just a couple of years ago.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go home a couple times a year and just sit with her for a week and just talk to her because she's so loving.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the home was there, and it's a tiny little home, maybe 1,400 square feet or whatever, with this tiny little footprint, one tiny little bathroom, one little bedroom on the first floor.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: You walk up the stairs and two more bedrooms, and you go, How in the world can you have two parents and 12 children in that little place?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is the older of us got kicked out to the garage to sleep and so forth, you know, uh pretty soon.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but I mean this this is a house that's sold, it will not be kept.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is so dilapidated and so old that they lived in for 60 years that it's just gonna be knocked down.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it's home.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And my little sister sent us some last pictures, you know, of the house, of the tiny little kitchen where mom stood.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: You could find her there day and night, always fixing food for all of the kids, or the trail around the house where we'd listen on our transistor radios to the Indy 500 as we raced around the house on our bicycles as little kids.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or the shortcut out to the pasture.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was a small little three-acre farm, you know, where it had different animals.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or she sent a picture of the barn where I have vivid and painful memories of hanging out that upstairs thing and pulling off as a kid the hay from my dad's pitchfork and then, you know, carrying it back and piling it up to the ceiling, my brother Steve and I, uh, every every summer.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the chicken house next to the barn, where I can't see that without thinking of the half an hour I just stood in the doorway one evening after feeding the chickens and listened as the transistor radio blared out the news that President John F.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Kennedy had succumbed to the wounds, the gun wounds of that morning's, and just thinking, what is happening in our world?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, uh, one day I'll bring you home.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it strikes me that even though that that's where my heart was for so many years, that after I trusted Jesus as my savior as a boy, that that never really was my true home home anymore.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: My home home was somewhere else.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: My home home was where my savior was, or where Jesus was.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And one day God will speak to me and he'll say, I'm gonna bring you home.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't mean to 16539.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we just called it.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: We called it by the number 16539, not the street, not the town, Portland.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just, and he doesn't mean 16539.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: He means he means heaven.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way for you and for I to prepare, for me to prepare to go to our home home, is to head back home now, especially.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story of the prodigal son, you know, and how he he started living for pleasure and started living for himself, and it was all about him, and he wandered away from home and then he got tired.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: He knew there was something he was missing, and so he went back where?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: He went back home, and his father came and greeted him, and he knew for a certainty that home was where the love was.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: And God says it's exactly right.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the love is.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: The love is at home, and you say the world is a mess.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do about it?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I gotta tell you the truth.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wrath comes next, because I'm even angrier than you are.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I beg you to get to the safe house.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I beg you to consider running to the cave because I'll deliver you.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then's gonna come joy on the other side, and I'm gonna be singing louder than you are.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And my son Jesus is gonna be the happiest person in heaven, I promise.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I would ask you to go home where the love is.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Go home now, so that one day I can say to you, I'll bring you home.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I will.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: The signature, the most important, the most uh maybe striking event in our church's history this month has been the passing, the sudden passing, the surprising death of a little five-year-old girl named Faith.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: That I know you agree with me immediately when I say that her death is absolutely absurd.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's really unnatural.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: It just is just wrong, it just feels wrong for a father or a mother to ever have to bury their son or daughter.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or for a grandparent to have their grandchild, their granddaughter, grandson die.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just as unnatural, and it and it just feels like a period before the end of the sentence, and it feels like somebody's life has been shortened and they haven't lived as long as they should have.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to give you another perspective.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's unnatural, but it's something else, Heaven says.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Something else.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven says it's not just unnatural, it's beautiful.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Ecclesiastes, we're told that these the world is a mess, that the world is absolutely absurd, that things are happening that are inexplicable.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, overseas and the culture wars and everything, but also just the deaths and sicknesses and wrongnesses of life.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we can't figure it out.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 3, he says, he says, he says, God says, I have a plan, and it's beautiful in its time, but I'm not giving you the key.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't figure it out.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you that there are days for things, and there's a day, chapter 3, verse 2, to be born, and there's a day to die.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's part of my plan, and everything is beautiful in my time.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, I want you to realize it was unnatural for faith to die after just five years.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: But she lived her whole life, and it was a beautiful life.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the decades for her turned into months, and the years were simply weeks, and the months were simply days for her.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: But she lived the life that I had arranged for her, and it was a beautiful life.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And one day I whispered to her, I am calling you home.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing that one day I want to whisper to you, the same thing that I have whispered to your loved ones who've gone on before you.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: I say, I will bring you home because you are my child, because you have run to the rock, because you have hidden in the fortress, because you are mine, I'm calling you son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, I'm calling you home.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: I will bring you what home.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for your love for us.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Astounded at your love, oh, how marvelous, oh how wonderful.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And our song shall ever be.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how marvelous, oh how wonderful is our Savior's love for us.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: We bask in your love and look forward, Heavenly Father, one day to listening to your song as you sing your delight over your children in Jesus' name.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.