Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 24, 2019 | Can I Help? - Jesus The Student

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March 24, 2019 | Can I Help? - Jesus The Student · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Glad to hear it.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Welcome, College Avenue Building, Mulvaine Building, and uh wherever you happen to be watching or listening from.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: So we're in a series called the Isaiah Series.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Can I help?
0:20
SPEAKER_00: You look like you need it.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: We have another three weeks or so in this series.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Although, let me say, next week, I'm so excited.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to introduce you to a friend of mine next week.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: And it took getting uh this guy, Ovi is his name.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Very Jewish.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Ovi Snyder.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: It took getting him to come from Europe to uh cause me to give up a week of Isaiah, which I love.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: So I just extended the series so I could still do three more.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: But um so Avi and Ruth are gonna be here next next week.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: And I told my wife on first service I'd forgotten to tell her they're staying at our house.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: So he's one of the, yeah, I was up here so she couldn't throw anything.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: So um, one of the leaders in Jews for Jesus for decades.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's like a short guy, unbelievably energetic, was an actor here in the States, and he's just so amazing.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: He opened up a Russia field, he's so courageous, he's so bold.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Opened up Berlin, Germany, of course.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: He now lives in Budapest, opened up a Hungary field, but anyway, I've got Avi and Ruth.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward, really looking forward to introducing you to him next week.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss it.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, uh looking at this crowd over here in the Mulvaine building, there was a crowd like this yesterday.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, Dick Owen hasn't been in church for weeks because of his health, but it's when someone actually passes on to heaven and you go, really miss him.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: And we had a wonderful God-honoring service here and uh service for Dick yesterday.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And I know I see a number of you were here.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand really quickly.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, a lot of you were.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: So wonderful man, wonderful man makes heaven a lot more attractive to a lot of us.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Lord, uh, we thank you for the opportunity to uh glorify you through the life of Dick, uh, through the book of Isaiah, through studying your word, we thank you for this opportunity.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Bless us as we study one of the more interesting passages in the Old Testament this morning in Jesus' name.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Lord, I know that made it sound like the others weren't as interesting.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, forgive me for that.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: So, uh, really quickly, uh, for those of you who are with us in the series and those of you who want to get with us in the series, uh um I think this is there it is.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: So uh we're taking the Isaiah challenge, we're reading the book of Isaiah during the series, and all that you have to do this week, if you haven't started, is read chapters one through 57.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Which divides out to a lot of chapters each day, about nine.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're uh so this week you'll be reading chapter 53, the greatest chapter of prophecy in the Old Testament, the chapter that I get to get two weeks running start into.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: In two weeks, I'm gonna preach this greatest chapter of prophecy about Jesus in the whole Bible, chapter 53.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Read these five chapters this week, I'll write five devotionals.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: All right, so I want to talk to you today about two different ideas that come together in this passage.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Two ideas that you generally don't connect.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And the first idea is the idea of personal rejection and criticism.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: All of you know what it's like, all of you have been in a situation where either you were on Facebook and you put something on there and somebody just blasted you.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: And you felt like never writing on Facebook again, right?
3:42
SPEAKER_00: No, this only happens to me.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: So I here, if you want to have this happen, all you have to do is go on Facebook and just put on there five letters, just post the word T-R-U-M-P, Trump.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And then you can find out, you can get, you know.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: So it'll be really fun both ways, and then you can start a huge argument, and then you can never want to talk on media again.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: So, or for instance, some of you have prepared a report for your boss, you worked really hard on it, you slipped it under his door at 8 o'clock in the morning, you waited all morning, you were so excited, the boss is gonna be so happy with my report, he's gonna come in and he's gonna tell me what a great job I did.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: And about 10 o'clock in the morning, you heard a yell from his office.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: You heard him stomping down toward your office, you heard him yelling your name.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: He came in waving your report, telling you it was the biggest piece of trash you'd ever read, using words like stupid, pointing out to you a mistake which you can't believe that you made in there, just it was a, you know, something you added wrong or whatever, throwing it on your desk, telling you you're worthless, and that you better get this report fixed and changed and so forth.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: And so while you were revising it, which should have only taken a couple of hours but took the rest of the day because you're absolutely emotionally shredded, and in fact, you stayed after work that night till midnight to get it absolutely perfect and slipped it under his door, you know exactly what it is like to feel rejected, to feel humiliated.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: You would think that there are some people in life who would be beyond that.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: One person that you would think of who might be beyond it would be a young singer, aged 29, who's the top young female singer perhaps in the world.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Her name is Taylor Swift.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: She sold over 50 million albums.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: She is worth over, well over$300 million.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
5:22
SPEAKER_00: She has been named as one of the top most, 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine and one of the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes Magazine.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And yet Taylor is not above feeling absolutely shredded by criticism.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: For her, it happened in the year 2010 when um uh need a new battery in this thing.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: When in 2010 at the Grammy, she was winning a couple Grammys, she's 21 years old at this time, and she and Stevie Nick sang a duet.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to hear how badly she was out of tune, all you have to do is ring that up on YouTube.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So she was out of tune in that.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And she got ripped for being out of tune.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, one well-known musical uh blogger wrote about her that following week.
6:13
SPEAKER_00: She has consigned herself to the dustbin of teenage phenomena.
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Also said she is too young and she is too dumb to realize that she has just killed her career.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: You would think that she would be so powerful that she wouldn't have been hurt by that, but she was hurt by that, and over the next year or two, she wrote a song, and that song was entitled Mean, and it actually won a grammar in 2012.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Some of the words from that song go like this You, with your words like knives, got me feeling like I'm nothing.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: You, picking on the weaker man, you can take me down with a single blow.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: Someday I'll be big enough so you can't hit me.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And you're going, what?
6:53
SPEAKER_00: You're so much bigger than that guy already.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: But you know, this is how it feels.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Whether you're Jesus or Taylor Swift, when people rip you, when people ridicule you, it hurts.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: And all you're ever gonna be is mean.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: Why you gotta be so mean?
7:08
SPEAKER_00: I have asked Becca to sing the song for us.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Becca, would you?
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I happen to know that Becca Reed loves this song.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: I happen to like it too.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Full confession.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: I like Taylor Swift.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I know you I just dropped like four stories in your estimation.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: I tell Melody it's because I need to be on the cutting edge of what young people are doing.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: But it's actually because I like her music, it's clean music, and she sings about her personal life.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: So let's leave Taylor Swift.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: My point is this: it doesn't matter who you are, when you get rejected and seriously criticized, it hurts.
7:40
SPEAKER_00: You're never too big for that.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: And the other issue, the other idea that I want to raise and I want to bring together with uh criticism today, is this idea of school, going back to school.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of Topeka High School in 1911.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: How many of you were at Topeka High in 1911?
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Topeka High School ever.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: He was there in 1911.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: It was on 8th and Harrison at that time.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of it.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: And at that time, a pop song had just come out a couple years before.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: Was the most popular hit song in America in 1911, and it went like this School days, school days, dear old golden rule days.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Anyone heard this before?
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Reading and writing and arithmetic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: Donna could ask you to sing that, but no.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: So now there's a couple things that probably no longer apply, right?
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Certainly hickory stick.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Although when I was in school, I can promise you it was still being used.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: I've got the marks to prove it.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Every one of them well deserved.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Hickory stick.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Oh, our golden rule.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Golden rule, you know what the golden rule is?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Do unto others.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You wish they would do unto you that.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: No longer gets taught to students either because gasp, it was, it came from the lips of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: So we can't use that.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, so I want to bring together these two ideas of rejection in school, and I want to bring them together in a passage which is really famous in the Old Testament.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the servant songs or servant oracles.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: My title of the message is Jesus the Student.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Really quick Bible school moment, just to remind you, is that we're in a section of Isaiah called Isaiah 2 or book 2.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: The last 27 chapters fall into three groups of nine chapters, in which the prophecies first are near prophecy.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah prophesies to the captives in Babylon 150 years ahead of time, telling them that Cyrus is going to liberate them.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing prophecy.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: These are the people he's writing to, and they are a whole lot like you and me.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: These 27 chapters written to these people in this top category, and they're like you and like me, because they are seeing the world turn dark.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: They feel as though that world that they knew and that they loved back in Jerusalem is gone, that the gods of Babylon must somehow be bigger than Yahweh, God of Israel, and they have lost hope.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: They're weary, they're discouraged, as Isaiah 40 says, When you get weary, you're gonna need to wait on the Lord so you can renew your strength.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Now the second section is the section we were in last week and this week in our sermons, chapter 49 this morning, chapter 50.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And here are the most comforting words to those people like you and like Israel who are discouraged and in the darkness.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's a distant prophecy, 700 years down the line, which says that there's a suffering servant coming.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: He's not a victorious Alexander, the great tromp, on their next servant.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: No, he's a servant just like you who suffers, who's in the dark, who hurts, and he's coming to save us.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: The last nine chapters will be remote prophecy, still in the future, Jesus the glorious King.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: So in this middle section, we have not one, not two, but not three, but the four famous servant, anonymous servant prophecies, suffering servant songs.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: They're called different titles.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: You can Google them, servant, song, servant, oracle, servant prophecies.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Last week we took the second.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: This morning we take the third, Isaiah 50.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And you see a gradually increasing focus on the suffering of the servant in each of them.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 42, just a hint, it was mainly about how successful he would be.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 49, last week, remember he complained to his father.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm a total failure.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to bring the light to the to my people Israel.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't save them.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: God says, No problem.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: It was too small a thing for me to assign you just your own people.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have you be a light to the whole world.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 50, you're gonna have more suffering and rejection this morning in two weeks.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: It's all gonna be suffering and rejection.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: So let's take a look at this servant song.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: It goes from verses 4 through 9 of Isaiah chapter 50 and begins like this.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: The servant is actually speaking as he was in chapter 49.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: We are listening to Jesus, the suffering servant, actually speak, okay?
12:03
SPEAKER_00: And he testifies the Lord God, that's his father, has given me the tongue.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Remember the focus last week on Jesus speaking.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't win with swords like Alexander the Great.
12:17
SPEAKER_00: He won, saving the world with his tongue.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: That's just one word in Hebrew.
12:25
SPEAKER_00: It's the word L-A-M-U-D.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: L-M-D is a famous root word in Hebrew.
12:32
SPEAKER_00: It refers to a student that refers to a learner.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: There's actually a book called the Talmud, L M D, which refers to, this is the book by the learned rabbis.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: It is a book for scholars, it's a book of learning.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord God, he is saying, has given me the tongue of a student.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: Jesus went to school.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: You say, how could he go to school?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Schools didn't start until 1635 in America, even at all, and there was no public general schooling until the early 1800s.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: So in Jesus' day, there were no schools.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: Well, there wasn't.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: There weren't schools, it's true.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: But what Jesus is saying is that in effect, he was going to a school.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: God sent him to a school, and we're going to find out the curriculum of that school and all the information about that school in this passage.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: What he did is he attended a specific school, we're calling the University of Suffering.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: You may have heard of it.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: It's also called the School of Arknox, it's called the Institution of Pain.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: So this is the school that Jesus attended, and he's going to tell us about this school in verses 4 through 9 of Isaiah chapter 50.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: We find this school sort of mentioned in Hebrews chapter 5, verse 8.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Although he was a son, the son of God, Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of Jesus, and you know how Jesus learned it.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Jesus would stand here and he would say, When I was born, even though the wise men came to Jerusalem and told them that the future Messiah was just down the road in Bethlehem, even though they knew the book said that, they ignored me.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: At age, you know, at age two, Herod tried to kill me, and I had to, my parents had to take me and flee to Egypt, as all of my two-year-old buddies got slaughtered in Bethlehem.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: As a child growing up in Nazareth, my own brothers rejected me and mocked me, and the townspeople said I was uh I was an illegitimate child.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: And then I gave my first sermon, you know, in Nazareth, in in the synagogue, and nobody stood outside afterwards to say great talk.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Instead, they dragged me and tried to throw me over the cliff.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: And then finally I was whipped and I was beaten and I was stuck on a cross.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I suffered.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: Now I know you have some difficulty with this.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: How could the Son of God learn anything?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: How could the second member of the Trinity learn anything?
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, the fact of the matter is, is that you never learn obedience until you submit to those things that are distasteful to you, to those things that you do not want to do.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: So long as you are doing what you desire to do and what you like to do, you will never learn obedience.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Eat that apple pie.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, mommy, I'll be glad to.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Didn't learn a bit of obedience.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: But when dad says, eat your peas first, then you learn obedience.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: When my kids were younger, one day I got a phone call.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you bring the kids over to the pool?
15:37
SPEAKER_00: There were three children of the angel, Mark and Doug.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: And so we're finishing up lunch, and I say, hey kids, eat your food, hurry up, put on your swimsuits, jump in the car, and we're gonna go swimming.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, you know, they whip down the food, they got the swimsuits on, they're out in the car beating the roof and honking the horn, saying, Daddy, hurry up.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: They didn't learn a bit of obedience because it was exactly what they wanted to do.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: So we drive to the pool.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: We swim for half an hour, 45 minutes, and I go, ooh, kids, I got a meeting, sorry.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Jump out of the pool.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I want to stay here, we got our friends here, it's like jump out of the pool.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: They're starting to learn obedience in slow motion.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: One of them gets on the diving board.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: I I can't do it, I have to jump off the diving board.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: And I go, you weren't on the diving board before, so I gotta jump in the diving.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: So he jumps off the diving board, but then come.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: So I walk around the other side of the pool to tell Doug, to tell one of my sons.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Um and he sees me coming, knows exactly what I'm gonna say, so he takes this huge deep breath and dives down to the bottom of the pool.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: So that he can't hear me say anything.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: So I go over to Mark, who's dove off the diving board, and he's on the side of the pool.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Mark's, I'm getting out, I'm getting out.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And he gets out and then goes, Oh no, I'm slipping.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: And he slips, and of course, and he falls back into the pool.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, they're learning obedience in slow motion, okay?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: But they're learning obedience because they're doing something distasteful to them.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: And even when, and then they, you know, telling them to dry off and they keep dropping their towels.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: Oops, you know.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: So, um, but you learn obedience when you do something that you really don't like to do.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus learned obedience.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: You see, he's the Son of God, but he was also human.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: He learned this obedience through the things that he suffered, through the things that were distasteful to him, and that's the same way you learn obedience and your children, and you've seen it happen.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: You've seen parents who refuse to ever make their children, when they have that battle of wills, ever make their children do something distasteful to their children, and those children grow up with a graduate degree in disobedience, right?
17:49
SPEAKER_00: So you learn obedience by the things that you suffered.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's the school that Jesus went to.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: And we read here in verse 4 the Lord God's given me the tongue of those who are taught, that is, students.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Why?
18:01
SPEAKER_00: That I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: Every school has a purpose.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: If you decide to apply to Dallas Seminary, they'll send you back an application.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: They'll also send you a catalog, you'll open it up.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: And the first statement in the catalog is the purpose of Dallas Seminary is to read, understand, and interpret the Bible so that we can go out and expound and preach it to others.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: If uh you go to Care Paravella, you open it, you open up the Care Paravel Handbook where my wife uh is head of school, and it'll say the purpose of Care Paravel is to serve Christian families in and around Topeka by giving them the opportunity for Christian classical education from grades K through 12.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: Every school has a purpose.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing about the purpose of Jesus school is that it wasn't mental, the purpose was behavioral, that I might know how to sustain.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Interesting word, the only time that Hebrew word appears in the entire Old Testament and has the word seasons in it, like at the right season of time, saying the right, exact right thing at the right time.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was not only learned obedience through what he suffered, but in Isaiah 50, he was learning how he could speak a word that would encourage us when we're down and depressed and out and suffering, injected.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Now I know this is not politically correct right now with the word, because all that you read today, even in Christian magazines, much less psychology today, is that when somebody's suffering and hurting, if they're shut-in, if they're sick, just shut your mouth.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Would you just sit there and don't say anything?
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Psychology Today ran an article saying that 80% of all words that we say when we're around people who are mourning, are negative, are bad.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: We shouldn't even say them.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: And so what happens is, you know, you find that it's hard to get people to go visiting anymore, visiting shut-ins or hospital, or people get sick or whatever because they're scared to death they're gonna say something bad.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: And admittedly, there are some people who quote scripture too quickly or have always the right answer for you or tell you what to do when you're suffering or how you sinned.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are people like that, but you know what?
20:19
SPEAKER_00: We need to say words, we need to go to people, and we need to speak a word of encouragement, we need to quote scripture to them, we need to be that.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus was learning how to do that, which is why when you're down and out, one of the best things to do is to look for words of Jesus.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Plop open your Bible to whatever.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: John 14, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Let your heart not be troubled, right?
20:46
SPEAKER_00: You read words of Jesus, has Jesus learned?
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Did he learn how to give a word of sustenance to those who are weary and troubled?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: That was the purpose of the school, the school of hard knocks, the university of suffering, the institute of pain that our Lord Jesus Christ went to.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: In Hebrews, Huber says that's exactly what happened, chapter 2.18, because Jesus himself was tested through what he suffered, he's able to help those who are being tested.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know he was the Son of God.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Of course he was the Son of God, but he was human and he learned this, and he's able to help us because he went through it.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: So back to Isaiah chapter 50, and now the remarkable verse 4.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Morning by morning he awakens, he awakens my ear to hear as those who are being taught.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Who's he talking about?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: The servants talking.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Who awakened him every morning, morning by morning, to hear as those who are being taught?
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is it was his father.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Right?
21:50
SPEAKER_00: Every single morning.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: This reminds you a little bit of Mark 135, where it says, Jesus, morning by morning, before when it was still dark.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Those disciples are sleeping, would wake up and go up into the hills and talk with his father.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: So, uh by the way, I love this word morning, morning by morning.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: You go over to Israel today, you know, one of the most common words you'll hear today, and a word that you have to learn if you ever go over there as a tourist is the word boker.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Boker means morning, tove means good, boker tove.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: They always tell you to say that in the morning, your guide will get in the bus and he'll say boker tov, and you have to say, you have to say it back.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And if you forget, he'll say, just think broken toe, okay?
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Just say broken toe if you have to.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: So, boker tove, good morning.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: So you have that as titles of children's books.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: You have, you can buy yourself a mug, boker tove.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: Let's just say it to each other this morning.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Say good morning in Hebrew.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Boker Tove.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a little slow, but that's good.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: So I was doing an archaeological dig, you know, my first one years ago, and and there were about 200 of us who were sleeping in tents, and every 4:30, every single morning, over the loudspeakers, it just would fly out of our bunks and fall so loud.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: This popular pop song in Israel, and it started out poker to poker toe, you know, and it was just like, just, you know, you know how you want to shoot the rooster in your neighborhood sometimes?
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sort of like that.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: But here's the word, that's the very word used here in Isaiah 50.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: It goes, boker baboker.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what it says.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Boker baboker, morning by morning, every single morning, he awakens.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: So the school's calendar notice, his calendar is every single day.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: 501, I think, is close for snow, about eight days this year already, right?
23:39
SPEAKER_00: Jesus never got a day off.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: It was seven days a week, every single morning, and then through the day, because he was living through the school of experience all day long, every single day, he awoke, had a talk with his father, then went through the day, taking the courses in the school of experience, in the school of suffering.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: That's the school's calendar.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: And notice, I think I'm I'm I'm sort of grabbing on straws here, but the fact of the matter is, I think Jesus, when it says he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: You have to remember that you didn't learn through your eyes so much in those days.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have movies, they didn't have videos, they didn't have blackboards, and so forth.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: That the way you learned was by a lecture, and that's how students were taught, but it seems to me those lectures, the textbooks, were the same three textbooks that every single person in the world has.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Jesus and you have the textbooks of creation, scriptures, and experience.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Creation, you learn from nature.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: In the Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus is constantly pointing to nature, to sparrows and to flowers, to draw lessons about God's love and God's care and God's goodness and God's omnipotence.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures were his second textbook.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Jesus clearly knew, seems like he knew all the Old Testament by heart.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: We know Jewish people today, some know the entire Old Testament by heart.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus could draw from Old Testament scriptures.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: But third, and this is the textbook that we're talking about this morning from Isaiah 50, it's the most difficult textbook of all.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: It's the textbook of experience.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: The textbook of experience, the experiences you have in life as you suffer, as you go through the vicissitudes and the difficulties of life, the school of experience.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in verse 5, the Lord God has opened my ear, right?
25:36
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord God's His teacher opened his ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: This, it seems to me, is the school's requirement.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: And basically is the requirement, single requirement of submission.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: You might say the school has three rules.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Number one, you have to listen, he's opened my ear.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Number two, you can't have a rebellious heart.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: And number three, you can't quit class.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: I turned not backward.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: So the school's requirement is that you submit to the suffering.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I know that's not popular either today, because in America, we don't want to have to suffer.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's health or whether it's finances, we expect that that'll be taken care of.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: We're mad if the doctor can't heal us, we're upset if we make less money than someone else or if we have financial struggles.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: In the rest of the world, of course, we know it's different.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: We know it's much more like in Jesus' day.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: Where you don't, where you're not able, you can fight all you want to against poverty or against bad health.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you can do about it.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Lord Jesus Christ submitted, and that was the number one requirement.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: He explains, I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when he was spat on?
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when they pulled out his beard?
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when they struck his back?
26:54
SPEAKER_00: The very morning of his crucifixion.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
26:59
SPEAKER_00: I always get the feeling that Jesus sort of, just before, you know, he got up on the cross, you know, after dragging the cross up the hill, he said, Hold it, I got a diary here, you know, and they gave him five minutes and he wrote down Isaiah 50, verses 4 through 9, as he talked about the pain and the and suffering he had endured.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the picture that we get here.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, I've learned from what I've suffered.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: I've learned obedience, but I've also learned how to comfort you.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Now, here I think he's talking about the curriculum.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the classes that he had.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: I gave my back, I gave my cheeks, they pulled out my beard, they spat on my face.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Every single class in the University of Suffering for Jesus was a class on suffering and rejection.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus graduated from this school with highest honor.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: He learned obedience through what he suffered, even though he was a son, the verse says.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you're going to learn anything this morning and take away any verse, why not learn these nine words right here in Hebrews 5.8?
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Would you say these words with me?
28:07
SPEAKER_00: He learned obedience by the things that he suffered.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: By the things, things he suffered.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: So I just had to make you suffer a little bit.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So great.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: So this is what Jesus did.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews adds something in chapter 12.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: It lets us know that Jesus graduated with a diploma and graduated with highest honor because none of us have yet resisted to the point of shedding blood and your striving against sin.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Jesus suffered far more than anyone else.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: And he did it for one reason.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: He did it for you, and he did it for me.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: So that he can know how to sustain people who are weary with the word because he had gone through it.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Because when you go through something, then you can use your experience to help others.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: I was on a website the other day, KVC.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: It's a group in Kansas City that helps child abuse victims.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And it was really interesting, this uh they had on their Chrissy story that this child abuse survivor now helps other children heal and find loving families, and to, you know, look at the stories of their employees and find out that most of them were what?
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Child abuse victims as children.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: They know exactly what it is that people are going through.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the reasons I think grief share is so effective here at TBC and other places?
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Because you have a room full of people who've gone through horrible grief and they share a word with each other.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: And they comfort each other with a word.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: You can comfort someone else if you've been through it.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like having a cardiac arrest, and after you recover learning CPR, you know you want that person next to you in a restaurant, right?
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Or if your heart goes out.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point we're making here.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: There's a value in going through the university of suffering because then you can help someone else, and that's the genius behind God sending his own dear son through the university of suffering and the school of pain.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: So let's ask.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, well, well.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see if we can get that back.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: Can somebody help me with that?
30:31
SPEAKER_00: So we have this question, and that is um if we asked a servant this question, if we said, servant, how did you find the courage, you know, to face your suffering like this and go through it?
30:44
SPEAKER_00: Because after all, you were just human, you're like us.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, how quick is that?
30:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have geniuses at this place.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: So um let me go back a little bit.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: So if we ask the Lord Jesus Christ, how did you find the uh I'm going back quite a bit.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: How did you find the ability and the courage to endure your suffering?
31:10
SPEAKER_00: How how could you set your face like a flint and just go right into it?
31:14
SPEAKER_00: And his answer in the last three verses of this text is, hey, I knew God was helping me.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I knew God was on my side.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: You know that too, right?
31:25
SPEAKER_00: As you're in the University of Suffering.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: Notice these verses quickly, verse 7, but the Lord God helps me, therefore I've not been disgraced, therefore I've set my face like a flint.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: Remember where he set his face like a flint?
31:36
SPEAKER_00: He determined he knew he was gonna die, but he leaves Galilee and leads on his disciples on that final trek to Jerusalem.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: And it says he set his face like a flint, and now we have that statement in Isaiah, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: The servant found courage to face his rejection because he knew God was helping him.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8 He who vindicates me is near.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Who will contend with me?
31:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's stand up together, who's my adversary?
32:01
SPEAKER_00: So all of a sudden he realizes you know what?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't mind, go ahead and rip me, go ahead and ridicule me, go ahead and criticize me, stand up with me in court.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: The servant found courage and confidence to face his suffering and his rejection because he knew God would vindicate him.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: I may lose in the short run, but I know I'm gonna win in the end because God's gonna show me I'm on the right.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the Lord God helps me.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna declare me guilty?
32:28
SPEAKER_00: He concludes the text.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: Behold, all of them, my enemies, will wear out like a garment.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: The moth will eat them up.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's gonna take a while.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Garments don't wear out really quickly, moths don't eat things up really quickly.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take maybe your whole lifetime, but in the end, you will be vindicated.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: In the end, Lord Jesus, you're going to be shown to be in the right, and the same is true of you.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says to us, I could face my suffering with confidence because I knew God was helping me and would defeat my enemies in the end.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you this.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Let me draw this to an applicational close.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: Are you a student in the school of suffering?
33:08
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have been already in your life, maybe even recently.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in the school of hard knocks today.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: And some of you, though you don't know it, are headed for the Institute of Pain.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe by the end of the year, maybe in the next year or two.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: We're all going to be acquainted with this.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Robert Lewis Stevenson shared, three hours out of every five, I'm nearly insane with misery.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther, you know, one of the greatest saints of all time, put it this way.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm utterly weary of life.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: I pray the Lord will come right now and carry me away.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: And a woman sitting there said, I hope he lets you live another 40 years.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: And Martin Luther blurted out, I would rather give up my chance for paradise than live another 40 years.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: That's how much it hurts at times.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: That's how much the school of suffering can make you just want to die.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Are you a student in the school of suffering?
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Have you been?
34:15
SPEAKER_00: Might you become one?
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you two lessons to take away.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: A story, and then I'm gonna ask Jeremiah and Amanda to summarize number one lesson.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: When you get rejected, when you get blasted, say this.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: Say it's not about me.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: It's about them and God.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: They could be much nicer to me.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have to rip me like that or be critical like that on Facebook or wherever it was.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have to be that way.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Distance yourself from it.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is comes from all the psychological or counseling books as well.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: It's what your therapist will say.
34:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, say, distance yourself from it.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Tell yourself repeatedly it's not about me.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: It's really about them.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: But we learn from Isaiah 50 it's also about God.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: It's about glorifying God who allowed his son, in fact, placed his son in a position where he would be rejected so that he would learn how to encourage others with a word.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: When rejected, say it's not about me.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: It's about them and God.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: And number two, just looks like a one.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: When suffering, say sorry.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: When you're suffering, okay, say, Lord, I'm in the school of suffering.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm in the institute of pain.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: Teach me to trust and obey.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: You go, that's not very comforting.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: I know you want comfort.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: If you're going to the school, the university is suffering, and you don't want to hear, okay, I'm going to learn something.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: But you are.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: You are.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: If you'll allow it.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: Say, teach me to trust and obey while I'm going through this.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Make me more like your son.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Hudson Taylor was the greatest of the early missionaries, 1800s.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: He opened up China.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: He was a Britisher and he went to China.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: It's called China, China Inland Mission, he called it.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: He opened it up and got a number of other people to come, but he was the boss of the mission.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: And it was a horrible time to be in China at that time.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: They had a massacre of all foreigners, and he and his wife and his children escaped, but they slaughtered a lot of foreigners in China.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: And then a plague hit, and a plague started killing all kinds of people.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: Hudson Taylor was the only doctor, the only physician.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: And so he had long lines every single day.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: He was exhausted, and the plague, you know, was he was in danger of getting sick himself.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: And finally, his wife, his young wife, they were a young couple at that point.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: They'd only been married 10 years.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And they decided they should take their four children, their daughter and their three sons, and they should send them back to England.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Because they didn't have the time to homeschool them at that point because of the plague and the busyness and so forth, so they could get them an education.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: They could also keep them safe, health-wise.
37:02
SPEAKER_00: So they took this quick trip to the coast of China, and on the way the youngest son died, and they were heartbroken.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: They had now lost one of their four children.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: So they put the other three on the boat and they came back, and now the house is quiet and it's kind of lonely, and they're really missing them.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: And they do a lot of weeping.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: And then, shockingly, horrifyingly, Hudson Taylor's wife, of now only 12 years, gets the plague and suddenly she dies.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And Hudson Taylor, a man of God, an incredible man of God and a leader, finds he can hardly get up in the morning.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: In the morning, he says it's the worst possible time, he'd get up and he'd look over, reach over for his wife, and his young wife would not be there.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: He'd listen for the voices, no voices of children, and he'd think, I have got to lead.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: All these other missionaries are having trouble.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: There's long lines of people, a couple hundred people already waiting for me.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: I just don't feel like getting out of bed or anything.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: And he was he was crushed and he was ready to give up.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: He was reading the book of Isaiah and he came across Isaiah chapter 50.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: And he came to verse 4.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: And he read these words.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Morning by morning, he awakens.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: He awakens my ear to listen as a student.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And he looked at that and he read it over and over and he said, Lord, could that be?
38:20
SPEAKER_00: I can't get up in the morning.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: Could it be that you might wake me up and that you might teach me something out of this, that you might give me faith?
38:31
SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, for the rest of his life, Hudson Taylor, according to his daughter-in-law Geraldine, Hudson Taylor let the Lord wake him up.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: He talked to God and he learned how to trust.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: And it transformed his life.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: And according to her, his favorite poem in life, this really old poem, is a little one that goes like this.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: So near, so very near to God, nearer I could not be.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: For in the person of his son, I am as near as he.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: So dear, dear to God I cannot be.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: For the love with which he loves his son is the love he has for me.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And Hudson Taylor wrote Hudson Taylor's spiritual secret.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: And his spiritual secret is this.
39:40
SPEAKER_00: And when you're going through suffering, if you let God wake you up, and if you walk with God through your life, then he will teach you how to trust.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: And you can let Jesus Christ live your life through you.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: What a great lesson to learn.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: Even if you have to learn it in the university of suffering.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
40:09
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, teach us to trust and obey.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: It's such a difficult lesson.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: We don't want our children or our loved ones to have to go through that pain.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to have to go through that pain ourselves.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: But eventually we know we'll have to.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: And I pray for these dear folks, Lord, and for myself, that when we go through ejection and go through suffering, that we would draw closer and closer to your Son Jesus Christ.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: In whose name we pray.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Amen.