Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 13, 2016 | Hunter Ruch - Life On Pause?

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March 13, 2016 | Hunter Ruch - Life On Pause? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen that video three times this morning and many times before that, and it does not get old.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're just a sap when it comes to kids and humor.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Topeka Bible Church.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you who were on our men's retreat this weekend may or may not have recognized the two twin boys in that video were the sons, oldest sons of our retreat speaker, Scott Kadersha, which was neat.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: We had a great time this weekend.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna have a great time this morning.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: That video raises an important principle.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the principle is that, first of all, waiting is difficult.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the second is that good things come to those who wait.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna present that as an argument here for you this morning.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as much information as we have, an instantaneous moment, as much as we have at our disposal in a society that is expecting answers as quickly as possible.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I propose the idea that waiting is actually the most common human pastime that we always experience.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're always waiting for something, aren't we?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're always waiting for someone to return a phone call or an email.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're the person that they're waiting for, and so am I, so we should probably respond.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're usually waiting on hold on the phone.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're waiting at traffic lights when we drive.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in my house, we're waiting for the kids to come to the table at mealtime.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're always waiting for something.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you by the end of this will wait, be waiting for the sermon to come to an end.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: But waiting is a very common experience.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we do it all the time.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes waiting is our choice.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: We put ourselves in situations, we make decisions where we know we're gonna have to wait.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: For some, when the new iPhone comes out, you will wait in line for hours just to buy that new technology.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes students wait and camp out before the big basketball game or football game so they can get inside.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you camp out and wait at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Thanksgiving so that you can be in the line at Walmart on Black Friday when it opens up.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes waiting is our choice.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's not.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: For many, I'm sure we're curiously waiting for the end of the election year.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: This wonderful, maybe you're not.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're, I hope there's no election.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Given our options.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: We are always waiting.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And waiting is a very difficult thing.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Extremely difficult.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I'm gonna propose the idea that good things do come to those who wait.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll have to qualify that and really unpack what that means.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But really, I want us to see that there is profit in our waiting, not financial profit, but spiritual profit.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a blessing because there's a purpose to our waiting.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And God is over it all, and he is graciously overseeing all of it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I want us to learn this morning as we look at the Bible, hope you brought one.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: If not, you can fire up your smartphone or your tablet, and you can go to the book of Psalms, Psalm 130 is where we find ourselves this morning, as we look at verses 1 through 6.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the title of this message is Life on Pause, Principles to Remember While We Wait.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, if you were here, our lead pastor Jim Congden talked about the intertestamental period, that period between the old and the new, when there was 400 years of silence, where God never spoke a word to his people.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Jim's final principle last week in his message was be patient, wait for it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to unpack that a little bit more, talking about the why we experience waiting.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as you think about this principle, a lot of times, like I said, the positions we find ourselves in are not necessarily our fault, but yet we still find ourselves waiting.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: For some people, that season of waiting, that enduring season of waiting has to do with relationships or marriage.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: For some, the question is, God, when will I ever get married?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting so long.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: For others that are married, the question is, when will my spouse turn their heart back to me?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting for so long.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: For other people, the question deals with children.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Waiting.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, will I ever have children, Lord?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: For some that have children, the question is, my child has run so far from Jesus.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: God, how long before they come back, if they're ever going to come back?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: For some, the waiting has to do with vocation or job situations.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, when will that promotion ever come, if at all?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: For others, the waiting has to do with physical issues and health issues.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: God, when will that prognosis be made?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what will it be?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: When will a diagnosis be made?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: How long, oh Lord, will I struggle with this condition?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: When will I get better?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: When will my children get better?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: For other people, it's a lifetime struggle with a certain sin and area of weakness.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, I have struggled with this for so long.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: When will I ever be free from this?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see that wherever you are, and maybe right now you're thinking, yeah, I am in the middle of a season of waiting, and it is tough.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not in one now, and I'm going to prove to you that we all are a little bit later, but uh you can recognize that in your own life.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: As having gone through seasons of waiting, I'm sure.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want to give to you as we read through the text are then three principles that we can apply to our lives and attitudes that we can embrace as we wait and endure the seasons that we are taken through in life.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into the text and then we'll roll from there.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 130, it's listed in the context as a psalm of ascent.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: A psalm of ascent, and that's actually in the original Hebrew right there.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's not just an edition that someone wrote when they translated your Bible into English.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: But a psalm of ascent, as this section of the Psalms are called, were psalms that were either sung or read by the Jews or the Israelites as they would ascend up to Jerusalem when they would go for times of feast and celebration.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: That included people that lived in the north that would travel south.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of what direction you came from, you were always going up to Jerusalem because if you've been there, you know that the ancient city was perched upon a hill.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is the location, was the location of the temple, and that's where the sacrifices and the feasts would be centered.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a psalm of ascent, as the we people would sing this as they would go up to Jerusalem.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it begins out in verse 1, as the psalmist writes, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've prayed prayers like this.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I know I have.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: The psalmist paints a picture indicating that he is in such a place of desperation, it's as almost as if he's at the bottom of the ocean, struggling and drowning.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're at the bottom, the only place you can look is naturally up.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's an indication of what we should do too when we find ourselves in periods of struggling.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: The psalmist gives us an indication, too, appealing to God for mercy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Please crying out, Lord, please hear my cry.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've cried those prayers.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: You've cried those prayers.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, he's pleading for God's mercy, which shows us a little bit later that he's probably done something to offend God that's gotten him in this situation.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what we find in verse 3 is he says, If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the indication here is that this calamity that the psalmist is experiencing is the result of his own sin, his own wrongdoing.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he's basically saying, God, if you hold my sins against me, just like we would say the same thing, nobody could stand.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: No one could stand if the completely just and holy God held our sins against us in the balance.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: The scales would tip in the favor of our sin, would be judged with no hope.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: But we know, because of a man named Jesus, that there is hope, even in spite of our sin.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: That when we we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all iniquity.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hope of the gospel.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have that hope this morning, I hope that you'll consider the fact that Jesus, as it's written in history, died on a Roman cross for you and for me, so that we might trust in his shed blood as payment for our sins, a debt that we could never pay, that he paid for us.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the promise is new life, eternal life, demonstrated by the fact that Jesus wasn't in the tomb forever, but he was raised three days later to a new, glorified, risen life, which he promises to you and me when we embrace him and trust in his sacrifice for us.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: In a few weeks, we celebrate Good Friday and Easter.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the great story, the culmination of the gospel.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we find the psalmist crying out and saying, God, with you I wait, and with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says that in verse 4.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we find that the purpose of God's grace and forgiveness and goodness is not so that we might just go out and live recklessly again, but it's so that God may be feared, so that we might be a people who more fully trust and obey Him, in order that we might present Him to the rest of the world, so that the rest of the world might fear the Lord just as we do.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we move to the meat, verses five and six of where we're going today.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to share this.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: For me, this is very special.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I get up every morning as I climb out of bed and I turn on my phone.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tempted to check scores, to check Facebook, to check email.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the first thing I make sure I do, and this is because God's worked in my heart, I'm not better than anybody else, is that I want to make sure that I think about something that's related to the Word of God.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I open up the UVersion app.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you does anybody have UVersion, the Bible app on their phone?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of great apps out there for reading the Bible, and this is one that I found to be very useful.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And every day there is a verse of the day.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's one of the first things that comes up when I open that app on my phone.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And this Friday, this past Friday, I got up and I turned on my phone and opened the app, and right there before my eyes, Psalm 130, verse 5.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this is great, Lord.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had to laugh, just praying him, praising him while I prayed, saying, God, wonderful.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And these words are powerful, powerful for me, and I think they should be powerful for you as well.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: As he just opens up and he says, I wait for the Lord.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: My soul waits, and in his word I hope.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying that the very core of his being, his soul, the very seat of his person, waits for the Lord and looks to him.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: How long he didn't know, but he knew where to look.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, In your word, God, I hope, which is a pretty key indicator for how we should also endure seasons of waiting.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll get to that in a little bit about the importance of the word of God when we are forced to wait.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: He continues in verse 6 My soul waits for the Lord.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that inner longing is for God and God alone.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it waits more than watchmen for the morning.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in case you missed it the first time, he repeats it for emphasis.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: More than watchmen for the morning.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: The watchmen being, according to the interpretation you take, either watchmen on the city walls, as was typical in ancient cities, that would watch along the horizon for enemies that would attack, so that they could call to the city to say, Be prepared, here they come.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some interpret this because of the way that it's written in the context, it's written going up to Jerusalem for the feasts, is that these were actually watchmen in the temple who would watch for the horizon sunrise, so that when that sun rose, they could then make preparations for the morning sacrifices, the sacrifices for the feast or for the day.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: However, you interpret that watching like watchmen in the morning, the key is that it's an intense longing and focus of the soul.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And again, maybe you've been there and maybe you're there right now.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we and we go through this process of reading this psalm, we have principles that we draw from this.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'd like to do is encourage you to have a teachable heart on this.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're like me, you've been in church maybe a while, maybe not.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've been in church a while, sometimes you might hear things that are taught and say, Well, I know this, heard this before.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these are actually principles that we are to remember while we wait.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm convinced that God's people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's the case for me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm alone.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna pause and I'm gonna pray.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll all be sensitive to how the Lord wants to speak to us through his word this morning.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pray.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: God, forgive me, forgive us for the times, maybe even now, where we are tempted to feel that smugness of, Lord, I've heard this before, or even worse, Lord, I know so-and-so who needs to hear this when really we're the ones that you desire to speak to this morning.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So please, I know all of us are in a period of waiting in one way, shape, or form.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I ask that these words would be an encouragement to all of us.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: They've been an encouragement to me as we look to you.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So these principles, these three principles.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I went with alliteration, and some people will say that's a bad thing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If so, you have complaints, please send those in the form of an email next week.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go with it anyway.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: The first is the principle of perspective.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do I mean by the principle of perspective?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is the fact that your point of view and God's point of view are very different from one another, almost diametrically opposed.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have an illustration.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting to use this, so please, you know, please humor me here.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is an illustration.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I heard a story once that illustrates this point about perspective, God's point of view and our point of view being very different.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is a man, it is told, who was caught up in a vision and he went before the heavenly throne room, before God and all the angels, and he was there standing before the glorious God of heaven.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he looked at God and he said, God, you are so great.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You are majestic, you are holy and awesome.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Please help me understand.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just give me a small glimpse, just a small word that would help me understand how great you are, how much greater you are than me.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And God spoke.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, My son, to me, a million years are like one second.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the man said, Wow, God, that is amazing.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I could never conceive of that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: My perspective is so limited.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then God said, But wait, my son.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I also want you to know that to me, a million dollars is like one penny.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the man said, Wow, that's staggering, God.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I could never imagine that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, thank you.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he he paused for a moment and he said, Well, while we're at it, God, uh could you spare a penny?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: To which God said, Sure, just a second.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so why do I tell that?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: To illustrate this point, that God sees life with a wide-angle lens.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a complete panorama of everything.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: In his sovereignty and in his goodness, he knows it all and he sees it all.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And our perspective is limited to all that we focus on in this myopic microscope of what we call life, of what we're thinking and feeling in the moment, of what we're enduring in the moment, which, yes, may be painful, but we do not see naturally from the same point of view that God does.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're in the midst of seasons of waiting.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: We often feel like waiting for God is more like waiting for Godot.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ever read that play by Samuel Beckett, you know that you have Vladimir and Estragon, and they spend the entire play pondering lots of things, but the whole while they're waiting for a man, a character named Godot.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of the play, if you've read it, you know that Godot never shows up.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody reading is frustrated.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: What does this mean?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where was he?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't he show up?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we often relate to God when we're in the midst of situations that we just want to be delivered from.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: God, it's frustrating.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're never gonna show up.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've got news for you.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: God doesn't have to show up because he's already here.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: The last time I checked, the scriptures talk about how God is omnipresent.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He is with you and he is with me, and he sees and he knows all.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: The problem isn't that God needs to do something different.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that we need to shift our perspective to see how diametrically opposed our view and his view are.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's God and we are not.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We find this principle illustrated in Psalm 90, verse 4, written by Moses.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday, when it is passed, or as a watch in the night.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: A thousand years.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing to God.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Peter 3, 8.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have some tough news for you.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: The tough news is that your period of waiting may never come to an end until you pass away.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the reality of life.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: That you may endure and have to endure this situation for the rest of your life.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I hope what you understand here in this is that when I talk about waiting, I'm not talking about a call to passivity.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm talking about a call to endurance that's rooted in who Christ is and who he calls us to be.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to understand that God's delays are not denials, denials of his goodness and of his grace and his mercy.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, waiting, like I'm talking about, like we've all experienced, is nothing new.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is full of illustration after illustration of historical figure who had to wait.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is one long book of waiting.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to put some examples down to illustrate the point.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first is Abraham and Sarah, they had to wait 75 years before they were promised that they would have a child.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then 25 years after that, before that promise was fulfilled.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just like them, you and I would be very tempted to take matters into our own hands, and it didn't work out well.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: God just wanted them to trust.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And Isaac would come along.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph put into prison.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you know, sold to Egyptians in Potiphar's house in prison, a period of 13 years in limbo for nothing that he had done.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing he had done wrong.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, 40 years in Midian after he fled Egypt to lead sheep.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: After that, 40 more years leading other sheep in the wilderness of the nation of Israel.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is full of waiting.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, three days.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Granted, that's three days.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have lasted three seconds in that fish.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, taken from his homeland as a teen, brought into Babylon for the rest of his life in exile.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself, 40 days of preparation in the wilderness, but before that, 30 years of being the divine Son of Man in human flesh.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Waiting to see what God would do, knowing that his time had not yet come.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul, three years of waiting in an area of Arabia, another six years of waiting in Tarsus, and his whole life dealing with something he called a thorn in his flesh.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was never resolved.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really think from the constant cry of the psalmist to the complaints of Habakkuk to the desperate plea of the souls in Revelation under the altar, you could almost summarize this book with one phrase.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: How long, O Lord.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a book of waiting.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Even in between the testaments, as you learned, as we learned last week, 400 years of silence.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone wondering, when is God, if ever, going to show up?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, even today, almost 2,000 years after Christ has ascended to heaven, we still wait as his body for the day that he will return.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a long time to us.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But to God, because of his perspective, it's not.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when life feels like it's on pause, we have to remember the differences between his point of view and ours.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because how you view God and what you believe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To be true about God informs everything that happens to you during this wilderness time of waiting.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite books is called The Land Between.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's by a guy named Jeff Mannion, who pastors up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he writes this, posing a question to us.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: He asks, Will we pass through this vast disappointment and still cling to the belief that God is good, that God is wise, and that God is loving?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Will we trust God?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or will our faith in a good, wise, and loving God evaporate as our patience grows thin and our spirits tire?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I remain steadfastly focused with the perspective, knowing that God's point of view and my point of view are different.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: We must learn to wait.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We must learn not to jump ahead.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: We must learn to wait and act when God acts, and that is difficult.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when we jump ahead of God's timetable, what we're showing is that we think we know better than he does.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which is certainly not the case.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have to resist that temptation to take control, to manipulate, and have to trust in God's goodness and see him as the great, good, and gracious God that he is.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do this, we have peace.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when we have peace, we can persevere, which is our second principle.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have the principle of perspective, and now the principle of perseverance, which is really the meat of how do we do this thing, this waiting thing.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: You endure prolonged seasons of waiting, when life feels like it's on pause.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: You must do so faithfully.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: You must be faithful.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: After all, God has been faithful to you.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you find that you are faithful and you do persevere by seeking him each and every day, you move from a place of being restless to a place of rest where you know that you can trust him.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Writing in the 19th century, a British preacher named Octavius Winslow.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just love that name.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: If we were going to have another kid and a son, I'd name him Octavius.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's no mistaking there.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Strong.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Octavius Winslow, writing in The Depths, the Soul Depths and the Soul Heights.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He writes, A soul waiting for the Lord is a soul resting in the Lord, wearied with traversing in vain the wide circle of human expedience, coming to the end of all of your own wisdom, strength, and resources.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your uneasy, jaded spirit is brought into this resting posture of waiting on and waiting for the Lord, and thus folds its drooping wings upon the very bosom of God.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how real and instant is the rest found in Jesus.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: The same Jesus that says, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your season of waiting has made you weary and heavy laden.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Come and rest on me.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: When we rest on him, we are able to be faithful to him, and when we are faithful, we are able to persevere.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: After all, the gospel proves that God is faithful to us.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he asks us to trust him and respond in faithfulness to him.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And folks, we have a great reward when we do so.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that reward is what we experience here.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Other times that reward is what we're promised, the deeper, fuller experience of eternal life.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a salvation thing, it's an experience thing.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And God says it is worth the wait.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he is trustworthy.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a key, I mentioned this at the beginning, is the psalmist says that his hope is in the word of the Lord.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: For some people, they feel like maybe maybe you feel like you're in that intertestamental period of 400 years of silence.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, God, I just don't hear you.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: I don't hear from you.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if I can tell you this, if you are not hearing from God, then you are not reading the Word of God.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is an inspired book spoken by God, written down, so that we might know who He is and we might know the people He wants us to be.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So many times people really struggle, and when you get to the heart of it, you find out that they are just not putting their true hope and spending valuable time in this book.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this doesn't mean I'm not a prosperity gospel guy.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that, okay, I'm just gonna read the Bible every day and all my problems will go away.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, but this is the key to enduring through those problems and challenges.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The number one catalyst for moving an individual from A to B to C and so forth in their spiritual life has been proven to be the Word of God, the Bible.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: We do well to embrace this book during times, especially times of waiting.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: As the great British preacher Charles Spurgeon has said, waiting, we study the word, believe the word, hope in the word, and live on the word, and all because it is his word, the word of him who never speaks in vain.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: We must look to his word and we must look to him.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says we must look as watchmen, we must be watchful and intentional.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But unlike the watchman who watched for the sun to rise in the morning, there is a different sun who rose, who provided a different light, the light of the world, and that is Jesus.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we ought to focus our heart and our affection on him, and do so by focusing our hearts and our minds on his word.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Only as we do that we can endure prolonged seasons when life feels like it's on pause.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Writing again in the land between, Jeff Mannion says these words, talking about the whole book about the Israelites when they moved from Egypt to the promised land and how our lives are like that.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have an already promise being taken from death and sin to the promise of a promised land which would be heaven through Jesus Christ and the gospel, and how we navigate through that land between, that wilderness, that season of waiting that we're all in, is determined upon how we respond and our heart's condition.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: He writes the land between is prime real estate for faith transformation.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: The wilderness where faith can thrive is the very desert where it can dry up and die if we are not watchful.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, watchmen in the morning, for the morning.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: God intends for us to emerge from this land radically reshaped, but the process of our transformational growth will not occur automatically.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our response to God in the land between is what will determine whether our journey through this desert will result in deep positive growth or spiritual decline.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's up to us.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Your time of waiting, your wilderness experience is either going to draw you so much closer to God than you've ever been, or it's going to drive you farther away from God than you'll ever be.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's up to you.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: The question is: will you endure faithfully so that your wilderness experience will make you better?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or will you give up, in which case it's gonna make you bitter.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's hard to understand which one God wants for us.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have the principle of perspective, the principle of perseverance.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our third and final, again you're thinking, how long, O Lord?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: When's this ending?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Our third and final principle is the principle of preparation.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, this was the most eye-opening as I thought about this reality of waiting, the principle of preparation.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that your season of waiting is actually a season of preparation.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've looked back on times of your life where you've gone through a trial, you didn't think it was ever going to end, and when it ended, you realized, wow, Lord, that's why I went through that, so that I might be prepared to do this.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the result of our sin, where we are running away from God, living in a way he doesn't want us to live, and he graciously, like a good father who loves his children, disciplines and corrects and draws us back to him.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: If he didn't love us, he'd let us just run wherever we want to go without reminding us through his spirit and through other circumstances that he wants us to come home to him.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: But whether or not it's because of our sin or nothing we've done, God desires for us to know that when life is on pause, he is up to something.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because during these difficult trials and seasons of life, it's as if this spotlight is shined on our soul and everything is revealed.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everything about our integrity, our lack of integrity, our maturity, our lack of maturity gets exposed by God as he takes us through this transforming process in making us more like his son Jesus Christ.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he is preparing us for something in the midst of it that we don't even know what it is.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes, not always, the bigger the task he calls us to, the longer the season of preparation and waiting.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: We find this to a degree in the Bible again, some of the examples we listed before.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: See what God was preparing these people for.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham and Sarah, waiting so many years, a century, to have Isaac.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were being prepared to be the launching pad for God's covenant people, the nation of Israel.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's worth the wait.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph, after 13 years of being in this limbo prison in Potiphar's house, unjustly, he was prepared so that he would rise to be the second most powerful man in the Egyptian Empire.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, who would shepherd sheep in the wilderness for 40 years, would then later be prepared for one of the greatest rescue operations in the history of the world, of two million people leaving Egypt to then travel through the wilderness.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And even those people were being prepared to enter the promised land, which is why one generation had to be wiped out so that a new generation would be ready to embrace God and trust him.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jonah, he was being prepared and broken to the point of humility, where after three days, when he was spit up on the shore, went to Assyria, the land of Nineveh, and proclaimed to a people the message of hope in God, in Yahweh, that they otherwise never would have heard.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Daniel, much like Joseph, from his teen years through the rest of his life, was in waiting so that he might be prepared to be one of the leaders in the Babylonian Empire and stand as a testimony for what it meant to trust in the true God.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself, thirty years of preparation, forty years in the wilderness, right before his ministry began, so that he might carry forth the greatest act of salvation and deliverance through his death and resurrection.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul prepared through his series of times of waiting, so that he might take that message of that Jesus to the rest of the world, so that Gentiles might understand the gospel and become the greatest church planter of all time.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Even as Jim said last week, we learned that the 400 years of silence between the old and the new was a time of preparation, where God was laying the groundwork and preparing the soil so that when he came in the person of his son Jesus Christ at the incarnation, the world would be ready.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even yes, today, you and I, in this almost 2,000-year waiting period, where if you're like me, each and every day you say, How long, O Lord, please?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: We are waiting for the great appearing of our Savior Jesus to earth once more, and we are being prepared for something.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Something in the present as well as in the future.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: God desires for us in the here and now to yield ourselves in humility to his preparation process.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: But once in a while, you know, it's very painful.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the only way that God can do it.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to understand it's worth the wait, it's worth the endurance because he himself is worth the wait.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Once again, Charles Spurgeon writes, He is worth waiting for.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: The waiting itself is beneficial to us.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: It tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Expecting him to come to me in love, I quietly wait for his appearing.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I will wait upon him in service, I will wait for him in faith.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: For God I wait, and for him only, if he will manifest himself, I shall have nothing more to wait for.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: But until he shall appear for my help, I must wait on, hoping even in the depths.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just like the psalmist, I cry out to you.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Just like little children, waiting for maybe it's a marshmallow, or maybe it's Christmas, we too have something that we're always waiting for.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know that the reason why we are waiting now is that we are being, all of us, prepared to be the people that God wants us to be.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: That involves being faithful in this life as well as looking forward to the promise of heaven.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's kind of a tension.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's a tension there.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's what scholars call an already not yet that we experience.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We already experience Christ now, but we are not yet fully experiencing the salvation that we have to look forward to in heaven.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: But in the scriptures, we find writings like in Titus chapter 2, which tell us that there is a purpose for our waiting and how we are to conduct ourselves while we wait.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Titus 2, verses 11 through 14, as the Apostle Paul writes to a young church leader named Titus on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he writes to him, he says, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Keyword here, verse 13, waiting or looking for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that God, with the promise of heaven and waiting for Christ, is preparing us now to be zealous for good works, so that we might be his special possession, so that we might take this message of Jesus to other people in and around us.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: What a crystal clear purpose that gives us direction for how we are to conduct ourselves while we wait.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm confident that the reason why we experience this and this preparation and the reason why Jesus is constantly preparing himself for himself a people in the present is because he has already made preparations for his people in the future.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 14, verses 1 through 3, we find Jesus having just shared some of the most devastating news he could ever share with his disciples.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, I'm gonna die.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a great three-year run, but man, it's almost over, and I'm out of here.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are devastated.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he says these words to them and to us that are powerful.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let not your hearts be troubled.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Believe in God, believe also in me.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: In my father's house are many rooms.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about the great hope of eternity in heaven.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the gospel is about, folks.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's about Jesus dying and being raised in order that there might be a people that understand him and love him and follow him, in order to live faithfully in the present, while we look forward to the great culmination of our salvation experience in the future.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it is going to be awesome.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: But until that day, we must wait as he prepares us.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you understand the importance of that.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is something going on under the surface, behind the scenes, outside of our mind, that God is doing while we endure these seasons when life is on pause.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to know God is always up to something, bringing something good out of it.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: And a final quotation before we close from The Land Between by Jeff Mannion.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: He writes this is one of my favorite quotations from the book.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: It leaves us with kind of a penetrating question, really.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Remember that God is at work in all things, that He desires to shape and transform you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Resist the temptation to zone out, numb out, or check out.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: God intends to grow something beautiful and deep and lasting, but we must cooperate with God.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we must be faithful.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let your detour go wasted.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: You are in training, and God is up to something good.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, like our opening illustration from the video, the children, we are.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to wait, but good things come to those who wait.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully you're encouraged, as I've been encouraged, by these words and these principles, to remember that there's that principle of perspective, God's point of view and your point of view, mine, very different.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: But also that principle of perseverance, that we are to be faithful, faithful to him, hoping in his word.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's your application today.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just want, God, I need to seek you more in your word.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, that principle of preparation, that God is up to something, and it's good.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: We may not experience what it is until we see him in heaven.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, he wants us to be a faithful people.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Father, you know how each of us struggles through different seasons of waiting.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: When we feel like you're silent, you're not there, but you are there.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: You are with us.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's difficult, God, but we need to understand that you do not delay, that everything is according to your plan, but we just have a different perspective on it.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we need grace, we need you, we need the patience, the perseverance, which is also from your grace.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: We can't just grit our teeth and clinch our fists.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: We need you every step of the way, that sufficient grace that you supply, God.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And may we be thankful, even in the midst of trial and waiting, knowing that you are bringing something good, just like the ground that needs to be burned and then tilled again so that it might produce something again.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's what you do with us.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we we want to trust you, we want to be faithful this week as we continue to wait for you as our soul cries out.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name we pray.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.