SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, there was a place that I did not want to go.
SPEAKER_00: It was the driveway, but not the driveway just at any time.
SPEAKER_00: That may sound weird to you, but it was the driveway at night.
SPEAKER_00: I did not want to have to go out to the driveway at night.
SPEAKER_00: When my parents would say to me, Hey Chad, can you run out to the car and get something that we left out there?
SPEAKER_00: Or can you take the trash cans out to the curb and the sun had set?
SPEAKER_00: That was a place I did not want to go.
SPEAKER_00: I'd have to kind of give myself a pep talk as I as I went to the front door.
SPEAKER_00: I'd leave the door wide open.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have any pets or anything that could get out.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd leave the door wide open thinking that if someone saw the door open in the light, they would think someone else was there and wouldn't try to grab me or something.
SPEAKER_00: Or if someone did, I could, I could uh yell and my parents inside would hear and be able to come rescue me.
SPEAKER_00: I'd I'd prepare.
SPEAKER_00: I'd this was back in the day, uh young people, when we had these keys that you had to put in the door to unlock it.
SPEAKER_00: And so I would get the keys and I would get it in position and ready, you know, because you didn't want to be fumbling at the door with the key when you got there.
SPEAKER_00: So I'd get in position, I'd run to the car, I'd sprint to the car, and I was fast back then.
SPEAKER_00: I'd sprint to the car, put that key in, unlock the door, get whatever I needed, lock the door, sprint back to the house, shut the door.
SPEAKER_00: And then, as I always, when I went in, of course, I'd walk in like I was calm, like, hey, no problem about it.
SPEAKER_00: I was I was terrified of going out to the car or to take the trash cans.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to go to the driveway at night.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us have a place that we don't want to go, but I found that that past childhood, the places we don't want to go aren't most of the time physical places.
SPEAKER_00: They are places of mental and emotional and spiritual discomfort.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's uh a doctor's appointment we've been avoiding because we're terrified of the diagnosis.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a conversation that we've been putting off because of the discomfort that that that that confrontation or that discussion might have.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a grief that you just let consume yourself for a long time, and or you're afraid that if you think about it, you'll it'll consume you.
SPEAKER_00: And you you just say, I just can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: I can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: You ever heard anyone say that?
SPEAKER_00: I can't go there, or said that to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not gonna deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a fear that visits you at 2 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: when everything is quiet.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us at some point have had or will have a there, a place that feels like if we go, we would be there completely alone.
SPEAKER_00: David knew about this place and he wrote about it in the book of Psalms, uh, Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139, you can open your Bibles there with me to Psalm 139.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna look specifically at verses 7, uh beginning with 7 and 8.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139, verses 7 and 8.
SPEAKER_00: David asks the question, where shall I go from your spirit, or where shall I flee from your presence?
SPEAKER_00: When we read this and we read, we we often are people that that read the Bible through just kind of quickly.
SPEAKER_00: We we we work our way through it, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to read Psalm 139 today.
SPEAKER_00: And so we read it and move on.
SPEAKER_00: And we might jump to verse 8, not realizing that that these aren't rhetorical questions that David is asking.
SPEAKER_00: And indeed, in his life, in his journey, he had these moments where he's saying, he's saying, is he's asking the question, is there anywhere in my life that is too tough for God to go?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is in the next verse, and so we might think, oh, they're just rhetorical questions, and he's moving on to the answer.
SPEAKER_00: But the the truth is, is that these are questions that he has.
SPEAKER_00: Where shall I go from your spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Where can I flee from your parents' presence?
SPEAKER_00: Is there anywhere?
SPEAKER_00: And David, through the Holy Spirit, does answer those questions.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 8, if I ascend to heaven, you are there.
SPEAKER_00: If I take my bed in Sheol, you are there.
SPEAKER_00: If I take the wings, verse 9 of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
SPEAKER_00: In heaven, if I'm at my highest point, God, you're there.
SPEAKER_00: Sheol, if I'm at my my lowest point, the lowest place there is, the farthest depths of the sea, even there you are with me.
SPEAKER_00: You're there.
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 11 comes and says, If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be at night.
SPEAKER_00: Even the Bible says, the darkness is not dark to you, the night is bright as the day, for the darkness is as light with you.
SPEAKER_00: David is here in verse 11 asking, Lord, those those other places, the highest, the lowest, but but even the lower than the lowest.
SPEAKER_00: What about the darkest spaces of my life?
SPEAKER_00: What about that space that I that I feel like if I go there, I'm gonna get stuck and it's just a place I don't want to be.
SPEAKER_00: I I can't go there right now.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do that right now.
SPEAKER_00: Even there, Lord, even that place that visits me early in the morning, even that that that nighttime driveway experience of my life, are you even going to be there?
SPEAKER_00: David is is trying to find the edge, trying to find if there's a place where God runs out.
SPEAKER_00: And his answer is, I couldn't find it.
SPEAKER_00: I could find no place where God runs out.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what David didn't fully understand when he wrote that psalm.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't understand that God just wasn't going to follow David or any of us from a distance or follow us into that dark place, but that God himself, through Jesus Christ, was going to go into that darkest of place even before we got there, before us.
SPEAKER_00: That is that is the story of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 23, which was read by by uh Mia this morning, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
SPEAKER_00: We quote this at funerals and we put it in on sympathy cards, and that's not wrong, but it can be kind of this softened, nice little quote.
SPEAKER_00: The valley of the shadow of death isn't a metaphor for just hard times.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's the darkest place that there is.
SPEAKER_00: Even when I'm walking through that darkest place, that place that it seems that nobody comes back from, even physical death, even that darkest place, the place that takes everyone, the shepherd says, even there I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: On Crucifixion Friday, Jesus didn't just watch from heaven while we walked in the valley on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: We see that crucifixion uh Friday shows us that he went into that darkest of places before we did.
SPEAKER_00: And he didn't just die the the temporal death, physical death that that that all will eventually have to face if we live long enough on this earth, if Jesus doesn't come.
SPEAKER_00: But he went into that darkest space of what we refer to as the second death, which is the destruction of humanity, the destruction of those who choose not to accept Jesus as their savior, who choose to stay living in their sins.
SPEAKER_00: So he's been to the darkest place, truly the darkest of darkest places.
SPEAKER_00: He was arrested, he was condemned, he was beaten, he was crucified, he was laid in a tomb, the stone was rolled across a tomb, it was sealed, it was done.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are watching on Friday evening, it looked like this darkest of places had won.
SPEAKER_00: It looked like the valley had swallowed him whole, but then Sunday comes along and changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection actually proves much more than just uh an argument for the existence of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's proof that there's no place, not even death itself, that God cannot enter and leave victoriously.
SPEAKER_00: There's no place, if you think, man, there's this place I'll go, and if I go there, God's not gonna be with me, or I can never get out of this trap that I'm in.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in that place right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just on this cycle of spiraling.
SPEAKER_00: I I can't get out of it.
SPEAKER_00: I I went into this place and I I can't get out of the and the the resurrection shows that that any place God can get you and leave victoriously.
SPEAKER_00: Which means, and I need you to hear this, there is no valley you will walk through that he has not already been in.
SPEAKER_00: Your grief, he's been there.
SPEAKER_00: The fear of death, he walked through it.
SPEAKER_00: Last night we asked people to turn in um or to write just something that they were going through on their cards.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't put their names, but on cards and to bring them to the cross last night.
SPEAKER_00: As I was going through those, I told Pastor Jason, I said, Man, there's some sermon series in here.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I saw, a word I saw appear over and over again, was fear.
SPEAKER_00: Some people named what that fear was, other people just wrote the word fear.
SPEAKER_00: Some people wrote, a lot of people wrote disappointment with myself.
SPEAKER_00: Disappointment with my life.
SPEAKER_00: This burden that they're carrying.
SPEAKER_00: That fear, that that disappointment, Jesus has walked through it.
SPEAKER_00: The place you're terrified, he already went ahead of you.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139 asks the question where can I go from the spirit, the cross, and the resurrection?
SPEAKER_00: Answer the this question.
SPEAKER_00: Nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: There is nowhere that you can go that God has not been and cannot bring you back from.
SPEAKER_00: You may be sitting here carrying something heavy right now.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're in the valley right now and it feels dark and you're not sure God is anywhere near.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you on the authority of the empty tomb, He is there with you.
SPEAKER_00: He is there with you.
SPEAKER_00: God is not a God watching from a safe distance, not waiting for you to climb out first.
SPEAKER_00: He is in it with you.
SPEAKER_00: David said, I will fear no evil.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid that was scared to go to the car, scared to take the trash cans out.
SPEAKER_00: My parents used to tell me, there's nothing out there to be afraid of, Chad.
SPEAKER_00: Just go.
SPEAKER_00: Just move.
SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes stop stalling and just do what we asked.
SPEAKER_00: The sooner you do it, the sooner it's over.
SPEAKER_00: Just get through it.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Through the inspiration of Scripture, David says, I will fear no evil.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say there is no evil.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say, God doesn't say the valley isn't real, but he says, I don't have to fear it.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you are with me, because God is with you.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a kid, going to the driveway, I would have never been scared if my dad had walked out to that car with me.
SPEAKER_00: Not once.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'll just give you a little side note.
SPEAKER_00: My grandma, they owned a huge farm.
SPEAKER_00: My grandma and stepgrandfather, they owned a huge farm.
SPEAKER_00: And uh this was maybe a place actually I hated going worse than the driveway.
SPEAKER_00: They had to irrigate their trees.
SPEAKER_00: They were walnut uh farmers and they had to irrigate their trees, and I would spend every summer there.
SPEAKER_00: And as I got older, they would say to me, Hey Chad, can you go out and change the water?
SPEAKER_00: You know, you have to turn on certain areas or you have to turn it off.
SPEAKER_00: The irrigation pump was all the way in the farthest corner, the farthest corner uh of the property.
SPEAKER_00: And when they would ask me that, oh man, I hated.
SPEAKER_00: I just got shivers even now, just thinking about it, remembering from my childhood, walking out there, because you'd have to get up like at three in the morning, two in the morning, middle of the night, and walk out to the to the pump, the irrigation pump, and change things.
SPEAKER_00: I hated that.
SPEAKER_00: Hated it.
SPEAKER_00: And even when I was a teenager, I hated it.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes my grandma would wake up and she'd say, Well, I'll go with you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'd be like, Oh no, you don't have to do that, grandma.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, No, I go.
SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, okay, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: My little grandma just going out there with me.
SPEAKER_00: And she did it every all the time by by herself, so often.
SPEAKER_00: But just my little grandma going out there, I I felt better.
SPEAKER_00: Just having that presence with you.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 23 doesn't say that there is no evil or there's no valley that you that that is that is there not to be fearful of.
SPEAKER_00: No, the valley is fearful, and the the valley is evil.
SPEAKER_00: What makes it not be fearful is that God is with you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that the Lord goes with you.
SPEAKER_00: I will fear no evil.
SPEAKER_00: The valley is fearful, the evil is real, but I won't fear it because thou art with me.
SPEAKER_00: You are with me, God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the resurrection promise.
SPEAKER_00: Not that, not that life gets easy, not that the valley disappears, not that the scary nighttime driveways or walking out to the irrigation pumps aren't actually scary.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection promise is the shepherd who walked out of the grave on Sunday mornings is the same shepherd that's walking in that place with you today and in the future.
SPEAKER_00: There is no place he won't go.
SPEAKER_00: There is no place he hasn't already been, and there is no place, not even death, that gets the last word.
SPEAKER_00: It is because God, Jesus Himself, chose to go through everything that you go through even before you were there.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, Isaiah 63 and verse 9 is true.
SPEAKER_00: In all their affliction, he was afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: No one understands what I'm going through.
SPEAKER_00: In all their affliction, he was afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: Great writer Ellen White wrote, Christ alone was able to bear the afflictions of the many, and then she quotes that verse: In all their affliction, he was afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: He never bore disease in his own flesh, but he carried the sickness of others.
SPEAKER_00: With tenderest sympathy, he looked upon the suffering ones who pressed about him.
SPEAKER_00: He groaned in spirit, and he saw the work of Satan revealed in all their woe.
SPEAKER_00: And then listen to this great line.
SPEAKER_00: I love this line.
SPEAKER_00: And he made every case of need and of sorrow his own.
SPEAKER_00: He chose that.
SPEAKER_00: He chose to make every case of sorrow in your life, every every uh aspect of woe and tragedy, that place where you say, I just can't go there.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, I will embody and take all of that for you, so that you know you never have to go there alone.
SPEAKER_00: And how is this promise sure?
SPEAKER_00: It's because Jesus went to the cross and to the grave, and on the cross he bared all of that.
SPEAKER_00: He bore all of that.
SPEAKER_00: Let me use proper English, Miss Scribner.
SPEAKER_00: He bore all of that.
SPEAKER_00: And he rose from that grave.
SPEAKER_00: And because he is risen, I want to tell you today that place that you think that you're all alone in, that place that maybe one day you're gonna be walking through and you're gonna think, no one is here with me.
SPEAKER_00: All your afflictions are his afflictions.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't need to fear because he is with you.
SPEAKER_00: That is the promise of the cross and the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to take just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: I don't ask you to just bow your heads and whatever that thing is in your life right now.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not that ultimate thing, but everyone has something.
SPEAKER_00: Just name that thing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord knows what it is, but it's good to say it sometimes to him.
SPEAKER_00: And then I want you to thank him that he's already been there.
SPEAKER_00: I want to leave you with this.
SPEAKER_00: One word, one act, one prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The one word I want you to think about this week.
SPEAKER_00: If you forget everything else about this sermon, of course you're gonna remember the irrigation thing probably, but if you forget everything else, I want you to remember this word.
SPEAKER_00: And the one word for this week is with.
SPEAKER_00: Not above, not ahead, not watching from a distance, with.
SPEAKER_00: That's who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: I will never leave you nor forsake you.
SPEAKER_00: I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the cross and the resurrection prove.
SPEAKER_00: The one act this week, maybe go home, write down your valley, write down that thing that you talked to the Lord about, the thing you've been carrying alone.
SPEAKER_00: And then right underneath it, he has already been there.
SPEAKER_00: Put that on your desk, put that on your computer, maybe have it be the reminder on your phone, whatever that thing is, and then right underneath it, he has already been there.
SPEAKER_00: And rejoice that the Lord understands.
SPEAKER_00: And then one prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Father, here is the valley I'm in right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm scared, I'm grieving, I'm not sure you're close, but the empty tomb says you are.
SPEAKER_00: So every day this week, pray.
SPEAKER_00: So I choose to believe it, walk with me.
SPEAKER_00: I trust you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for the promises that are many about the resurrection and about the cross.
SPEAKER_00: What a what a miracle, a miracle on so many levels, Lord, that you have done for us.
SPEAKER_00: We understand in the in the great scope of things, truly the cross is our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And as Paul says, the resurrection is our hope for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: But but Lord, even what the cross and the resurrection say to us right here and right now, even about our everyday lives, that you've already been there through those valleys, through the dark times, that our afflictions are your afflictions, and that you will continue to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: And as David, Lord, as we think we've gotten to the edge of where you'll go with us, or where the struggles in our life take us, and we think there's no way God can get out of this.
SPEAKER_00: Get me out of this.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you that in our weakness your strength is made perfect, and we thank you that your grace is sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, even for me and even for my brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: In your name I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.