Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 28, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - My Sanctuary

Transcript

January 28, 2018 | Dear Israel: You're Killin' Me! - My Sanctuary · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_02: How are you doing?
0:04
SPEAKER_02: Great to have you here.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: Isn't January the longest month of the year?
0:12
SPEAKER_02: My goodness, we need to change that old nursery rhyme.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: How does it go?
0:16
SPEAKER_02: 30 days to September, April, June, and November, all the rest of 31, except for January and February, which have like a hundred.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: They just keep going on and on.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: But we're here, and um we're in this cool series in the book of Ezekiel.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: And congratulations, Governor.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm so happy that uh you're gonna be our freedom ambassador around the world.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: So glad about that.
0:47
SPEAKER_02: That's an answer to prayer.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: Um I hope that some of you are taking the Ezekiel challenge.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: We're in this very strange, very weird, very fantastic book.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: And this is the fourth sermon, so it's the end of the third week in it, which means that if you're reading with me four chapters a week, 12 weeks will be for all 48, then you should have anybody else done with the first 12 chapters?
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Reading the first 12?
1:11
SPEAKER_02: Okay, and I've got devotions on there, and so if you're doing the devotions, you are really learning this book.
1:16
SPEAKER_02: So this is the Ezekiel Challenge, and I hope you'll join me in this, because this book, yes, I know it's weird, I know it's strange, I know it's uh, you know, off-putting at times, but wow.
1:27
SPEAKER_02: And this morning, oh my goodness, uh, this is if you don't, if if your heart doesn't just melt or get pumped up or something this morning, then just no, I won't say that.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: Because actually this message is really for a specific group of people.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: This is great, this message is actually for you if you feel, you know, one of these feelings, if you feel abandoned by former friends, or if you feel like you're captive and you can't get loose from something, or you feel abandon far away from where you'd like to be, or humiliated in some way, or hopeless.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: Even if you're disciplined, feel like you're under God's discipline, because that's exactly the people that this passage is directed to.
2:07
SPEAKER_02: This is the last paragraph, the last eight verses of Ezekiel chapter 11, verse 14 through 21.
2:14
SPEAKER_02: This is addressed to a group of people who had uh gone through the fall of Jerusalem.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: They were part of that middle group of deportees who had, uh, when the front gate of Jerusalem had been knocked down, they'd been taken away with thousands of others, uh, and marched hungry and uh desperate and humiliated, 600 miles uh up north to avoid the Arabian desert and then down into Babylon.
2:40
SPEAKER_02: And now we're uh we're lodged in this city which looks so great no one, not even God Yahweh, could ever conquer such a city as Babylon.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: And now they were lodged southeast of the city in a suburb on the river Kibar.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
2:54
SPEAKER_02: And this is where Ezekiel is.
2:56
SPEAKER_02: And on in this passage this morning, get ready for it.
2:59
SPEAKER_02: Ezekiel gets the first word from the Lord.
3:04
SPEAKER_02: It is probably not shocking to him, but it's really, it might be shocking to you.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: It's a sad and disgusting truth about life.
3:14
SPEAKER_02: That when you become down and out, that sometimes former friends and acquaintances, even relatives, will sometimes abandon you.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: The verse goes like this Ezekiel 11, 14 and 15, Christian Standard Bible translation of the word of the Lord, the word of Yahweh, came to me again.
3:31
SPEAKER_02: Son of man, how God always addresses Ezekiel 90 times in this book.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: I prefer the translation human, Homo sapien, you know, it's a it's a way of distinguishing the mighty God from who you and I are.
3:43
SPEAKER_02: Son of man, bin Adam, human, the residents of Jerusalem, have said, You are far from the Lord.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: This land has been given to us as a possession.
3:56
SPEAKER_02: Now, there are other hints of this earlier even in the book, but I want you to imagine you're an Israelite, born in Jerusalem, and every morning you wake up in the best hometown in the world, and you see one of the seven wonders of the world, you see the Temple of Solomon, this beautiful, gleaming temple of Solomon, gold, ivory, and so forth.
4:18
SPEAKER_02: And you knew that God had made Jerusalem his beloved city, and that sanctuary, your sanctuary, was his home where he dwelt, enthroned between those huge golden 16 foot.
4:30
SPEAKER_02: Why cherubim, between the wings of the cherubim above the altar in the most holy place, which we call the holy of holies, and you feel safe.
4:37
SPEAKER_02: You are in God's country.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: But then, all of a sudden, shockingly, the Babylonians, the pagan armies of Babylon, had come and they broke down the front gate of the city, and they took you and thousands of other people captive, and marched you 600 miles, put you in a settlement where you feel humiliated, you feel far away from home, you don't know when or if you'll ever get back.
4:58
SPEAKER_02: Life seems hopeless.
4:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you have your life, you're still alive, but it's not much of a life.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: But you know something.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: You're pretty confident that you know your relatives, your acquaintances, your friends back home in Jerusalem, they're going to grief share, you know, they're they're praying for you, they're mourning over you, they're praying that God will set you free and bring you home.
5:18
SPEAKER_02: So it's an absolute morale-killing shock when the word begins to seep back to you there by the river Kibar.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: That they're not grieving at all over you and they're not praying for you.
5:33
SPEAKER_02: No, instead they're trying to shut you out of the records, they're trying to shut you out of their minds.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: They are saying that the fact that you are so far away from home shows that you are far away from God, shows that God has thrown you on the trash heap of Babylon.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: The fact that you're not in God's country means you're nowhere close to God.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: The fact that you're no longer in the Holy Land means you are far from the Holy One.
5:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, wow.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: And you're absolutely horrified, and that they're telling each other, out of sight, out of mind, man, just forget them.
6:03
SPEAKER_02: Clearly, they're saying, back in Jerusalem, since we're still in Jerusalem, we're the apple of God's eye.
6:09
SPEAKER_02: Our captive cousins in Babylon, they're the cast-off rotten apple, forget them.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: He has.
6:14
SPEAKER_02: And as they walk down the street, oh, look, there's his house and his land, empty.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: He's in Babylon.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's a gift from God.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: And they've moved into your property, they've taken your stuff, they have said, verses 14 and 15, God's given us their things as a possession.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, can you imagine how you feel?
6:33
SPEAKER_02: Now, underlying these words is a theology, frankly, that as an exile you also believe, because it's a theology that the whole world believed at that time.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: And that is that God's and their lands were hooked together.
6:48
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
6:49
SPEAKER_02: You know how how when people first came to Kansas, they uh, you know, uh to Kansas territory, they just knew this was God's country.
6:57
SPEAKER_02: And of course, you and I know that that is true, that Kansas is God's country.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: But of course, the fact is no land has ever had more of a right to call themselves God's country than the land which God called his country.
7:09
SPEAKER_02: And that would be the land of Israel, which was bordered on the west by the Mediterranean, say, bordered on the east by the Jordan River, from Mount Hermon in the north, Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Dead Sea.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: That was, and there in Jerusalem, he had said, put my sanctuary.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: This connection that gods are linked with their land was so strong across the whole world that it explains that line in a story about the leading general of the Syrian army who came from Damascus.
7:40
SPEAKER_02: Little girl in his house said, You got leprosy, you need to go see the prophet Elisha over in Israel, he'll heal you.
7:45
SPEAKER_02: And he was so desperate, everybody convinced him.
7:47
SPEAKER_02: And so Naaman goes to see Elisha, who says, Dip yourself seven times in the Jordan River.
7:52
SPEAKER_02: And he says, No way, that's a filthy little river.
7:54
SPEAKER_02: We got beautiful rivers in Damascus, but he does it anyway.
7:58
SPEAKER_02: His people love him so much, they say, his soldiers say, Do it anyway.
8:01
SPEAKER_02: And he does it the seventh time.
8:02
SPEAKER_02: He comes up, he goes, Shazam, are you kidding me?
8:06
SPEAKER_02: I'm healed.
8:06
SPEAKER_02: And then he says, Wow, I definitely want to have access to this God back home in Damascus.
8:12
SPEAKER_02: Guys, fill two camels with dirt from right here.
8:16
SPEAKER_02: Because if I've got the land, then I can talk to the God.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: So that's the theology they had.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you and I go, what?
8:23
SPEAKER_02: That's silly theology.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: But everybody had that theology all over the world, right?
8:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean, clearly they, people back in Jerusalem are going, we're the apple of God's eye.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: Because how can they be the apple of God's eye if they're not in the holy land, if they're not in God's country?
8:39
SPEAKER_02: Now, wow.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: God is about to reply to that big time and tell us something that you and I already know, but but that they didn't know, and God's gonna say, exiles God here.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Don't listen to them.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: In their arrogance, they've got it backwards.
8:58
SPEAKER_02: You're the ones I care about.
8:59
SPEAKER_02: I've left their sanctuary.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: If you were here last week, if you were here last week, look at that online.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: God's glory, she kinda glory actually left the sanctuary just before this.
9:08
SPEAKER_02: Okay?
9:08
SPEAKER_02: I've left their sanctuary, I'll be yours.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: And it's an astounding statement.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Only time in the Bible you'll hear this statement.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: Here it comes, here's the verse, 1116.
9:17
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, say, this is what the Lord God, literally Yahweh God, says, though I sent them far away among the nations, God's speaking to Ezekiel, and scattered them among the countries, so he's including not just Babylon but Assyria and so forth.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: Yet for a little while, or it could be, yeah, yet for a little while, I have been a sanctuary for them in the countries where they have gone.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: That's Christian standard.
9:41
SPEAKER_02: My favorite version, and yet in this place, I like the old King James, the New Living, I like, I'll be a little sanctuary for them.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: Not for a little while, but it's like I'm it's the word little.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm just gonna be their sort of little movable sanctuary that can travel around with them.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: Or in the New Living translation, this is what the sovereign Lord says, although I have scattered you in the countries of the world, I'll be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile.
10:05
SPEAKER_02: And they're going, are you kidding me?
10:06
SPEAKER_02: Here in Babylon?
10:08
SPEAKER_02: Because these exiles also believe that messy theology, that theology that said that gods were restricted to their borders, right?
10:17
SPEAKER_02: So, so, uh, and you still, by the way, find that today in some college professors.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, uh, the God of Christianity is just right for you guys because you live in America, the Christian nation.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: But of course, over in other nations, they're gods, the Buddha's just perfect for Tibet.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: And and uh those two million gods of India, those are perfect for India and so forth.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: That's still that same idea that somehow we restrict gods to national regions.
10:44
SPEAKER_02: God says, no, no, no, no, that's true.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: That's not true.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: My country is wherever I choose to be at that time.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: And we could go back and remember when King Saul kicked David out of the land of Israel and he traveled through Philistia, but God traveled with them and took care of them outside of his own country.
11:04
SPEAKER_02: So that's the first, and now we get this is the first of four incredible promises, okay?
11:09
SPEAKER_02: Four promises to you if you're feeling abandoned, lonely, desperate, deprived, far away, and so forth.
11:18
SPEAKER_02: Promise number one is astounding.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: I, say it with me, I will be your sanctuary.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: Astounding statement.
11:27
SPEAKER_02: You'll never read it again.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: But it does remind you, doesn't it?
11:30
SPEAKER_02: One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, wrote King David, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: Now he's speaking about the sanctuary just up from his palace house.
11:45
SPEAKER_02: Right there.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: He's speaking about the sanctuary in Jerusalem.
11:49
SPEAKER_02: But we love that verse because we know that God's sanctuary can be right here where we are.
11:55
SPEAKER_02: A single day in your courts, he wrote another time, is better than a thousand anywhere else.
12:00
SPEAKER_02: I'd rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked, Psalm 84.10.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: The first promise.
12:09
SPEAKER_02: Can you grasp the glory of this promise that God will be your sanctuary?
12:15
SPEAKER_02: I love the little poem written some years back by a woman up in Sebetha.
12:20
SPEAKER_02: It goes like this I searched for God on the highest mountain, in the lowest valley, in the deepest forest, and then I found him in the rainbow-hued bubbles of the water with which I scrubbed my kitchen floor.
12:34
SPEAKER_02: You gotta love that.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: Because God is her sanctuary right there in the kitchen.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: That's promise number one.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: I'll be her sanctuary.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Promise number two here, almost as amazing, I will bring you back.
12:45
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, verse 17, say, This is what the Lord God says.
12:50
SPEAKER_02: I'll gather you from the peoples and assemble you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: What a promise.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: And it was to be partially fulfilled under Ezra and Nehemiah, you know, about 80 years later, when King Cyrus said, You can go back to the land.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: And so he started gathering people back.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: But that promise is continually made about the future, about the end of time.
13:17
SPEAKER_02: And of course, we've seen this happening.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: It started happening in the early 20th century and then began happening as a flood of Jewish people went back, and it's happened just in recent days, so for the first time in for almost 2,000 years, we, uh 1900 years, there are more Jews in the land of Israel than anywhere else in the world.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: They've been coming back.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: What I admire is people who, before this flood of Jewish people, started going back to the land.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: People like Charles Spurgeon in 1850, in the time of the Civil War, before any of them are returning.
13:50
SPEAKER_02: He was, in his sermon on the return of the Jews to the land, this man of faith stood in front of thousands upon thousands of Londoners and said, The hour is approaching when the tribes shall go up to their own country.
14:04
SPEAKER_02: When Judea, so long a balling wilderness, shall once more blossom like the rose.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: I think we don't attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: We don't think enough about it, but certainly if there's anything promised in the Bible, it is this.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: You cannot read the Bible without seeing clearly that there is to be an actual restoration of the children of Israel.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: For when the Jews are restored, he continued, the fullness of the Gentiles shall be gathered in.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: And as soon as they return, then Jesus will come upon Mount Zion with his ancients, meaning his saints, gloriously.
14:36
SPEAKER_02: And the Halcyon, which means happy.
14:42
SPEAKER_02: We shall then know every man to be a brother and a friend.
14:45
SPEAKER_02: Christ shall rule with universal sway.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: I will bring you back, and he'll bring you back.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: You're longing for what you once had and where you once were, and a promise of God to his people is I'll bring you back.
14:59
SPEAKER_02: And then third promise is I'll give you a new heart.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: Listen to these words.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: I will give them integrity of heart and put a new spirit within them.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: I'll remove their heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh, so that they'll follow my statutes, keep my ordinances, and practice them.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: You say, I think I've heard that before.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, you hear it throughout the major prophets.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: Later in Ezekiel, we'll read this and I'll give you a new heart and I'll put a new spirit in you.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: I'll take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.
15:36
SPEAKER_02: Why do we need a new heart?
15:37
SPEAKER_02: Why do you need it?
15:38
SPEAKER_02: Why do I need a new heart?
15:40
SPEAKER_02: It's because our old heart is a heart of stone.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: It tends to worship and love other things rather than God.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: In just a couple of chapters, God's going to say, these people have set up idols in their hearts.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: He's speaking of the very people he's making these promises to.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: Because you and I, people that follow the Lord, we love idols.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: Our heart is like an idol factory.
16:05
SPEAKER_02: We produce new idols constantly and we trust them and we obey them.
16:09
SPEAKER_02: Tim Keller was so right in his book on this topic, counterfeit gods, when he said, anything can serve as a counterfeit God, especially the best things in life.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: The best things in life.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: Our families, our country, the things we love, and it's so tempting, isn't it, to put those even above God.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's why C.S.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: Lewis said, what did he say?
16:32
SPEAKER_02: He said, brass is more often confused with gold than clay.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: And what he meant was it's the good things, the the pretty good things that we tend to confuse with the best things.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't confuse yucky things with with God and make them our idols.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of our heroes, one of my heroes, because he went to my the school I went to, was a guy named Jim Elliott, and he died with the others in 1956, January 1956, as a missionary.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: Jim Elliott was a star at Wheaton, a star wrestler, a star of other kinds, and he really uh understood the principle I'm talking about, the new heart and the idols.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: In his journal, as a junior at Wheaton College, he wrote this the Lord's given me a hunger for him.
17:17
SPEAKER_02: Such hunger he alone can satisfy.
17:19
SPEAKER_02: Yet Satan would delude and cast up all sorts of other baubles, social life, a name renowned, a position of importance, scholastic achievement.
17:28
SPEAKER_02: What are these but objects of desire of the Gentiles, whose cravings are warped and perverted?
17:34
SPEAKER_02: Surely they can mean nothing to the soul who has seen the beauty of Jesus Christ.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: Wow, a college student saying something like that.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: So we need a new heart, and so that's why the language used in our text is the language of a heart transplant, that God's gonna remove our stubborn, cold heart of stone and give us a heart, a new heart of flesh, warm and tender toward Him.
18:00
SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a new heart, he says.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: And finally, everything is in fours in Ezekiel.
18:06
SPEAKER_02: Remember, uh you'll be mine, he says, and I'll be yours.
18:12
SPEAKER_02: And if that sounds like sort of a marriage vow to you, that's because it was the marriage vow made back in ancient Israel and still is uh in many modern Jewish lives.
18:22
SPEAKER_02: My wife and I, in fact, wear rings uh that she got for us with that line from Song of Solomon in Hebrew I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.
18:35
SPEAKER_02: And that was the line used at weddings back then, and now it's a line used by God, of his people, of you and me.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: A line of, it's a love line, it's a statement of covenant, it's a statement of marriage.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: Jeremiah, who was around uh back in Jerusalem to watch the final destruction of Jerusalem, the great prophet Jeremiah combined these last two ideas when he said, when he quoted God as saying, I'll give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, they'll be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: Promise number one, I'll be your sanctuary.
19:17
SPEAKER_02: Promise number two, and I'll two, I'll bring you back.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Promise number three, I'll give you a new heart.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: Promise four, you'll be mine, and I'll be yours.
19:25
SPEAKER_02: How do you respond to these promises?
19:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, I've put down my responses, and maybe they'll be like yours.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: When I hear God saying, I'll be your sanctuary, and my response is, Lord, do please be my sanctuary, because I need a refuge.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: I need a place to hide.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: I need a still place, I need a place of worship.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: That's what a sanctuary is.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: It's a place to hide, a place of refuge.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, it's a place of worship.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: And third, it's a place of quietness and stillness.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: That's what I need.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: And I want to be close to you.
19:57
SPEAKER_02: Because I understand, as David said, he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: And when I read, I will bring you back.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: When I read that promise, my response is, Lord, do bring me back to where I once was, to what I once had.
20:17
SPEAKER_02: I tend to wander away and my heart strays.
20:21
SPEAKER_02: So thank you for please bring me back and give me a new heart.
20:24
SPEAKER_02: I need it because my old one's been broken.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: And my old one falls in love with the wrong things all the time.
20:33
SPEAKER_02: And when I read that promise, you'll be mine and I'll be yours.
20:37
SPEAKER_02: My response is that's all I want, God.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: That that's all I want, Lord.
20:41
SPEAKER_02: Be my sanctuary, please.
20:45
SPEAKER_02: Be mine.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: So this message is directed then and now to people who are hurting, to people who even sense that they're under God's discipline.
20:56
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that the amazing thing?
20:57
SPEAKER_02: Even under God's discipline, God says, I'm yours and you are mine.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: Even if you're far away and you feel abandoned by former friends and acquaintances.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: This message is for you a message that says, Listen, I want you to know something.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: You'll be mine.
21:15
SPEAKER_02: I'm yours.
21:17
SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a new heart.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: I'll bring you back.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: I'll be your sanctuary.
21:24
SPEAKER_02: I noted it on the bulletin, you know, it was yesterday, I a year ago, that uh Janet Smith died at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Melody's mother.
21:35
SPEAKER_02: And I was there and the kids were there and so forth for for that for that moment.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: But it was earlier in that week when just Melody was there with her mother that that uh maybe the most remarkable thing happened, the most memorable thing of that week, and that was as as Janet was about to go into surgery and was scared, and they'd given her the drugs, so she was sort of semi, you know, with it.
21:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh but she was.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: Terrified of what was about to happen.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: A man came in the room with a little chaplain's badge.
22:05
SPEAKER_02: And as Melody described him to me, I said, Reverend Richard Rounds.
22:08
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know Richard Rounds, this wonderful, wonderful, godly pastor here in town.
22:15
SPEAKER_02: Looked like Richard, sounded like Richard, and he said, he said, before she was gonna be rolled out, he said, Would you like me to pray for you?
22:25
SPEAKER_02: And she just nodded her head.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: And so he prayed a prayer, the kind of prayers I as I wrote on the website that's only prayed by someone who knows God well, in that deep and warm and resonant voice.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: And then he finished, and before he left, he turned and he said, I have three words for you.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: And Melanie said, I knew what the words were gonna be.
22:46
SPEAKER_02: They're gonna be God loves you.
22:48
SPEAKER_02: But they weren't.
22:50
SPEAKER_02: He said, God's got this.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: And those words for Melody and for Cindy and for mother during that awful week that followed were the words that lifted them and voided them.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: In fact, this last week Melody touched by the fact she shared those words with so many people these last this last year, since her mother's death.
23:13
SPEAKER_02: God's got this.
23:15
SPEAKER_02: She said to me earlier the week, I'm gonna see if I can find that guy.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: I don't know his name or anything.
23:19
SPEAKER_02: So she called down the hospital, she described the man and so forth, and eventually she actually did get a hold of this guy.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: And she told him the whole story, and he became emotional.
23:30
SPEAKER_02: And he was sorry, she said, No one ever does this, no one ever calls back.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: I so appreciate that.
23:39
SPEAKER_02: But God would say that to the exiles, and he would say that to any of you who are hurting, who feel right, far away, lost, abandoned, and all those things.
23:47
SPEAKER_02: And you say, Well, how how do you have this?
23:49
SPEAKER_02: And his answer would be, Well, I've got this because you're you're mine and I'm yours, and I'll give you a new heart and I'll bring you back.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: And best of all, I'll I'll be your sanctuary constantly.
24:02
SPEAKER_02: The slaves understood this in the middle of the last century around the Civil War when they used to sing that wonderful old Negro spiritual whose words go like this He have been with us, Jesus, he have been with us, Jesus.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: He's still with us, Jesus.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: He will be with us, Jesus.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: Be with us until the end.
24:23
SPEAKER_02: No matter where you are, how far off you feel, even in crisis.
24:28
SPEAKER_02: This last week, I reread uh a book just put out by TBC'er David Osborne.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: He was here in first service sitting ten rows back.
24:36
SPEAKER_02: David's a pilot.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: Some of you know the story.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: A pilot of a small aircraft.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: It was in August of 2012.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: He was flying back from South Dakota.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: For some strange reason, cockpit filled with smoke.
24:49
SPEAKER_02: The engine shut down and he crashed.
24:50
SPEAKER_02: Up here between Topeka and Holton.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: Crash.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: He and the other three, then that little plane should have all died.
24:58
SPEAKER_02: They should have died.
24:59
SPEAKER_02: The wings sheared off as they crashed through the trees and so forth.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: And yet, they all lived.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: And that book is a story of the thoughts that went through his mind during those five minutes until impact his thoughts.
25:14
SPEAKER_02: And as the smoke filled the cockpit, and he had no idea what was going on.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: I love the line late in the book as after this, after they are pulled out.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: The good neighbor that helped us that night told us, I think there were four people in there with you.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: As time passed, there was no doubt in any of our minds how true that was.
25:33
SPEAKER_02: God had saved our lives that lonely dark August night in Kansas.
25:38
SPEAKER_02: God had been with him in the cockpit.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Because when you feel desperate and hopeless and alone, God says, I am your sanctuary.
25:56
SPEAKER_02: Last week I was reading a story about a missionary.
25:58
SPEAKER_02: A missionary in Western China who ran for his life.
26:01
SPEAKER_02: Mob was after him.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: They're angry about the gospel, and so he hopped in a boat and then they chased him.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: And so he hopped, he's jumped in the river, and the spears are splashing around him, and somehow he made it out and he came back to America.
26:11
SPEAKER_02: And a friend said, I'm really curious, what verse was it that buoyed you up during that awful time and you're running for your life?
26:18
SPEAKER_02: And he said, Verse, no, Jesus, Jesus himself.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Jesus himself was with me.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Nothing wrong with verses, but you know what?
26:27
SPEAKER_02: We've got him with us.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: He's our sanctuary when you're in trouble and when we feel abandoned by former friends and when we feel far away.
26:35
SPEAKER_02: And even under his discipline, he is with us.
26:38
SPEAKER_02: I think this is captured by the words of a song that you probably don't know, a contemporary song that I've asked Jeremiah and the band to close us with after I pray.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: Words go like this: I found a place I can call my own here in your embrace.
26:56
SPEAKER_02: It's here that all my doubt and fear melt away.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: I lay my burdens down and I look upon your face.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: You are my refuge.
27:06
SPEAKER_02: You are my sanctuary.
27:09
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
27:12
SPEAKER_02: Such an astounding idea, Lord, that you drop on us here in this strange book out of nowhere.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: That even when we feel so attacked, even disciplined, alone, far away, abandoned, that you whisper to us, even if everyone else abandon you, I will not.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: In fact, I'll be your sanctuary when you feel far away from my sanctuary.
27:37
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for this promise, Lord Jesus.
27:41
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Here in your embrace where your mercy overflows it's here that all my doubts infierce melt away.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I lay my burden down, and I look upon your face.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: You my refuge, you are my sanctuary, and I fear the frame.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: You're my hiding place, you my refuge, and when the storm is raging underneath your wings, I rejoice and sing for you my refuge.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: I found a place I can call my home here in your embrace where your mercy overflows it's here that all my doubts and fears just melt away.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: I lay my burdens down, and I look upon your face, you my refuge, you are my stand to weary when I feel afraid.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: You're my hiding place, you're my refuge, and when the storm is raging and me to me, I rejoice and see for you my refuge dwells in dusty place of most high God underneath the shadow, the shadow of your refuge, you are my sanary when I feel afraid you're my hiding place, you are my refuge, and when the storm is raging underneath your wings, sphere rejoice and sing Oh underneath your wings sigh, rejoice and see for you are my refuge.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming, you're dismissed.