SPEAKER_01: Visit us online at GatewayFrickwink.com.
SPEAKER_01: And now here's this week's message.
SPEAKER_00: Well happy uh 250th.
SPEAKER_00: None of you look that old, but uh but but congratulations to you for doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I was 12 at the bicentennial.
SPEAKER_00: I still have I got a little liberty bell.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in that area anyway, so I got a little liberty bell.
SPEAKER_00: I've got um I've got my parents gave me a constitution that's kind of etched in bronze.
SPEAKER_00: It's it it's uh it's really, really cool.
SPEAKER_00: Um and I still have a lot of bicentennial coins.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they had stamps, they printed stamps in the bicentennial, so I had I have some stamps.
SPEAKER_00: I'm keeping them, hoping someday um I can sell them.
SPEAKER_00: But uh but happy.
SPEAKER_00: This is a good picture for for a holiday weekend I want to show you.
SPEAKER_00: This is Walker Cruz.
SPEAKER_00: Walker Walker's our newest gateway.
SPEAKER_00: Walker is about four and a half weeks old.
SPEAKER_00: Walker was born three months premature.
SPEAKER_00: Three months he was two pounds-ish.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he was about yay long when I put my hands in to pray to pray for Walker.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but he's just a few ounces away of being able to be moved out of the NICU.
SPEAKER_00: He's been in there for that four, four and a half, five weeks, and Lauren is doing well, and and Justin is doing well, and I wanted him to say hi to you today.
SPEAKER_00: I got that picture this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That's what and that the hat the hat made it.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I gotta I the uh the the NICU nurses at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas are amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm sure that they would appreciate Justin and Lauren appreciate me shouting out to them and all they've been able to do for them as a family.
SPEAKER_00: Um for for our first time guests this morning, we're in a series.
SPEAKER_00: I called it a summer series, and then I said that it probably will last longer than the summer.
SPEAKER_00: I've already got a plan of how to change the graphic out in the great room.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna cross out summer, and that's a pretty good plan.
SPEAKER_00: And um we're going through the Psalms of Ascent, so Psalms 120 to Psalms 134.
SPEAKER_00: Um, these 15 Psalms were were compiled as pilgrimage songs.
SPEAKER_00: And um I contrasted that early in the series.
SPEAKER_00: I contrast contrasted the side that we're on a pilgrimage versus the kind of the adage we talk about being on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: And a new kind of metaphor I have for that is a journey, I think, is more like being a pinball in a pinball machine.
SPEAKER_00: I I loved playing pinball um growing up.
SPEAKER_00: So so a pinball, you you the ball gets knocked around by someone else, something else's actions.
SPEAKER_00: Um it hits plenty of obstacles, those obstacles hit back.
SPEAKER_00: Um you get you get forced down holes, you don't know where you're gonna come out, and then you get thrown around ramps with no guardrails.
SPEAKER_00: And so that that's my take on pinball.
SPEAKER_00: And I think when we talk about life being on a journey, it feels more like that, that we're really kind of reacting to things more than we are kind of responding to things, which on a pilgrimage, I liken a pilgrimage to as a process of being shaped into the image of God through the person of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So that's intentional.
SPEAKER_00: A pilgrimage moves towards a determined destination, not a random landing place.
SPEAKER_00: And our destination has two particular facets.
SPEAKER_00: We're aiming to be in the presence of God now and the presence of God for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a different way to look at our lives as being a journey versus a pilgrimage.
SPEAKER_00: Um, as a reminder, these these 15 psalms were sung as a part of the journey, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for three annual feasts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the annual feasts were were they were seminal, they celebrated seminal moments in Israel's history, but it's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: They were more than just an historical gathering.
SPEAKER_00: They were really what they were doing was celebrating seminal God moves.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you look at the three um the three festivals, this is what they really were celebrating.
SPEAKER_00: The God who delivers was who they were celebrating around Passover.
SPEAKER_00: The God who guides and empowers life and mission was what they were celebrating in the feast of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: And then for Booths, the last one is the God who provides and sustains.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the God they were celebrating in those feasts.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what made them special on those trips.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's no secret that in the Weir family, our our favorite vacation spot is the beach.
SPEAKER_00: And and especially early on as a young family, you know, three and four days away at the beach, that that was about all we all we could afford, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so um we it was important to start what my daughter called vircation.
SPEAKER_00: It was important to start vircation as early as we could.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm in this one particular year, we went and bought this double CD set of Jimmy from Jimmy Buffett albums.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we wanted to do is we wanted to smell and smell the salt air and taste the salt air before we actually got to salt air, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so so those were the songs that guided.
SPEAKER_00: We I I probably wore those CDs out as we were.
SPEAKER_00: We only played them when we were going to the beach.
SPEAKER_00: Um so the so here's here's the and here's the connection I want you to make.
SPEAKER_00: So the Psalms of Ascent were the double CD album of getting the pilgrims to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Now, because they wanted to, even as they were going, they were they were celebrating where they were going, they were celebrating why they were going, they were celebrating who they were going to.
SPEAKER_00: And it extended out what this trip was about.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't um vacation songs to change a vibe.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they were to really shape uh who these people were becoming.
SPEAKER_00: Um in the introduction of the series, I told you that a number of these psalms just kind of leave you hanging.
SPEAKER_00: They're called laments.
SPEAKER_00: They don't, they just express this mood, but they leave you in that place.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and because it was a holiday weekend, I didn't want to leave you in that place.
SPEAKER_00: So I added a psalm of thanksgiving too.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so it's a two-for-one holiday special, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do we're gonna do Psalm 123, we're gonna do one Psalm 124.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna we're gonna sit in the lament, but we're gonna end in the thank in the Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have your Bibles, we're gonna do 123, 124.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture will be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Here they here it begins.
SPEAKER_00: I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit enthroned in heaven, as the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us mercy.
SPEAKER_00: We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant, of contempt from the proud.
SPEAKER_00: And aren't you glad I added Psalm 124 today?
SPEAKER_00: There's a song of lament.
SPEAKER_00: So in our beginning year fast, I tell you that our fast is uh has a double ring to it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh ring number one is for us as a church.
SPEAKER_00: Ring number two is for you as a family.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's important to read the Psalms of Hussain in a very similar mindset.
SPEAKER_00: There's actually three rings because one would be for the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: It still rings for the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: The second ring is because we are Christians who live in America.
SPEAKER_00: Um there is, I think there's a national ring that we can carry as well, like any other nationality reading these Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: And then the third ring is for us personal.
SPEAKER_00: So you kind of listen to these psalms ringing these kind of these kind of uh bells.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Psalm 123 is a psalm of lament.
SPEAKER_00: So here's how I define lament.
SPEAKER_00: Biblically, a lament is more than an expression of sorrow or grief, it is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.
SPEAKER_00: The goal of a biblical lament is restored hope and faith in God and his promises.
SPEAKER_00: Laments are a faithful response to pain, suffering, and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: Leave that up, Caitlin.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So that's different than just than just a woe is me kind of prayer moment, which we all, if you're a follower of Christ, there isn't one of you exempt from a woe-is me prayer moment, right?
SPEAKER_00: No issue with that.
SPEAKER_00: But I think when you can put it in the context and start learning what a lament is, it gives us room, it gives us room to have that woe-is me moment, but it doesn't leave us in that moment.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because who are we praying to in this lament?
SPEAKER_00: And so that should carry us forward.
SPEAKER_00: So, Psalm 123, let's look what what is the psalmist lamenting?
SPEAKER_00: And what I found when I was studying this, that it's easier to understand this psalm going backwards.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the maze when you get, you know, the little maze at the dinner table or at the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: And you you it's easier sometimes in that maze to start at the last point to find your way to the beginning point.
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's the way we're gonna do this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't think I that's how I wrote it.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna do it that way.
SPEAKER_00: So here's here's verse four.
SPEAKER_00: We have endured no end of ridicule from the arrogant of contempt from the proud.
SPEAKER_00: This is what this is what the psalmist lamenting.
SPEAKER_00: So let's put it in the context of the nation of Israel because that's what that's what he's lamenting.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So, Israel, no other nation had a living God directly involved in their day-to-day lives.
SPEAKER_00: No other nation.
SPEAKER_00: No other nation had been birthed from generations of slavery into a nation living in the most desirable land of the region, where they were thriving beyond what was humanly possible.
SPEAKER_00: When Israel was in a right relationship with God, everything worked well.
SPEAKER_00: When they were, what I called last week, when they were participating in worship malpractice, right?
SPEAKER_00: So when the worship was sloppy, it was heartless, without intent.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only time they ran in a ditch.
SPEAKER_00: But even when they ran their cart in a ditch, they still carried the moniker of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And that was enough, that was enough to endure the contempt from other nations around.
SPEAKER_00: You know this, right?
SPEAKER_00: We've known this since we were kids.
SPEAKER_00: If you have something nice and someone else doesn't have something nice, they want to ruin your what you have something nice.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a there's this level of contempt, and and what what the psalmist is is is sitting in is that's where that's where this the nation of Israel was when he writes this.
SPEAKER_00: And while it was compiled, what we learned is um Israel stays in that spot, it seems.
SPEAKER_00: When I read the words ridicule, that's an action.
SPEAKER_00: Arrogant, contempt, and proud, those are um those are emotions, those are a manner.
SPEAKER_00: My mind goes to, if you haven't read the book of Nehemiah, it's a short read, it's a great book in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah goes from a play, a position of power in the Babylonian government who had taken over and destroyed the temple and had brought most of all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem back into Babylonian captivity.
SPEAKER_00: So Nehemiah is a man who was probably possible he was born in that, and he's and he's and he's raising up in the palace of that, but he has God puts this burden on his heart to re-establish Jerusalem and rebuild the walls.
SPEAKER_00: So he leaves his post of prominence, he goes to Jerusalem, he assesses the situation, he puts together a plan, they begin executing the plan.
SPEAKER_00: And there's two regional leaders named Sembalat and Tobiah that come into the area, and all they're doing is trying to stop the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way they know how to do it, the only way they can do this is through threat.
SPEAKER_00: So they threaten them.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then as their threats did not stop the movement of the walls halfway through, uh, they enter the town and they said, Oh, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: This is awful.
SPEAKER_00: This your work is shoddy.
SPEAKER_00: You're working with terrible materials.
SPEAKER_00: Even if a fox climbed on top of this thing, the thing falls.
SPEAKER_00: And the intent was to deride the work, to discourage the people to stop everything that's going on.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the enemy always wants to do to the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: Threaten, ridicule, demean, comes across arrogant, um, contemptful, putting you down, trying to get any place without why even try anymore?
SPEAKER_00: Why, why, why work forward anymore?
SPEAKER_00: It's it's not going to mouth or anything.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy's always out to stop or slow down the work of God.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a manner in which the the psalmist is experiencing um coming against the nation.
SPEAKER_00: This is how he's experiencing it right now.
SPEAKER_00: Now, now when I when I read this from an American national Christian standpoint, you understand that it it isn't, it's not just America, but but the but the the kind of the chant is if it would if if religion went away, the world would be better off.
SPEAKER_00: That religion is what is causes the world's problems.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so the current aspects of our culture is blaming the church for the source of society ill's intention.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how I see it.
SPEAKER_00: They just want us to sit down and shut up about that all life is sacred.
SPEAKER_00: If we'll just sit down and shut up that all life is sacred, that life isn't a choice, that life is a choice, isn't a choice, life's life is a gift, they want to shut that down.
SPEAKER_00: That God is the if we would just sit down and shut up about God being the creator and the determiner of biological sex.
SPEAKER_00: We're causing too much problems holding to a biblical worldview of man and woman.
SPEAKER_00: If we just sit down and shut up that God has set a boundary for sexuality between one man and one woman, and that boundary is for our good, if we would just sit up, sit down and shut up about that, every the world would just be a just more peaceful place.
SPEAKER_00: If we would sit down and shut up that parents are the most effective in parenting, not the state and federal governments, everything would just be fine.
SPEAKER_00: And you recognize that all of those things, and those are the quarrel, there are others biblical truths and biblical morality that's being opposed.
SPEAKER_00: But those are kind of the the call sign right now of culture.
SPEAKER_00: And do you recognize that all those deal with generation?
SPEAKER_00: It's all about generation.
SPEAKER_00: If we can stop this generationally, if we can just put a some barrier here, then it won't continue to flow on.
SPEAKER_00: The very people that have throughout history stepped in to cure ills of society, right?
SPEAKER_00: No hospitals without Christians, universities.
SPEAKER_00: Stepping in Rome, well, they told you that the Rome, the Christians in Rome, they gained the reputation of going to get the children that were just left to die in the city square.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so so society uh has got it wrong completely.
SPEAKER_00: So um verse three is the ask.
SPEAKER_00: All right, verse four was we're just we're living under contempt.
SPEAKER_00: The ask is mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Have mercy on us, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Have mercy on us, for we have endured no end of contempt.
SPEAKER_00: So let's start backwards again.
SPEAKER_00: No end of contempt.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew is carries the connotation of that we have absorbed, we have absorbed all that we can absorb.
SPEAKER_00: We've had our fill of this.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, you think about we haven't gotten a lot of rain this year, but Nashville knows rain, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we know flood and we know all that.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so when when water doesn't absorb into a terrain, it doesn't absorb for one of two reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One is it's moving so fast, it's moving so fast that it doesn't absorb.
SPEAKER_00: The second is when the ground has already absorbed everything it can't absorb, it's soaked up everything it can, and then the water runs off.
SPEAKER_00: This is the connotation that the psalmist is giving us.
SPEAKER_00: The water has been running, we can't take any more water.
SPEAKER_00: It's not possible for us to hold any more of this contempt.
SPEAKER_00: It has come in its full, it's come in a deluge, and it is just coming out all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: We can't handle it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is the what is the ask for?
SPEAKER_00: He asks for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Now mercy generally we think of mercy as not getting what we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: So kind of an easy definition of mercy and grace is mercy not getting what I deserve, grace getting something I could not obtain myself.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So that's one connotation of mercy with salvation.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the kind of mercy the psalmist is asking for.
SPEAKER_00: The other connotation of God's mercy is strength and power.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's asking for.
SPEAKER_00: So he's not asking for, oh God, would you just kind of come down and kind of console me a little bit?
SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of put your arm around me and make me feel better.
SPEAKER_00: He he's asked, he's asking for, we have had enough.
SPEAKER_00: We can't take any more.
SPEAKER_00: You can almost hear it now more than nationally, you can kind of hear it as a family.
SPEAKER_00: I one more, I can't take one more thing.
SPEAKER_00: One more thing is just gonna I I'm just juggling as much as I can juggle.
SPEAKER_00: One more thing is just gonna crush me.
SPEAKER_00: Would you would you give would you give me mercy?
SPEAKER_00: What a great ask.
SPEAKER_00: Give me your mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and all this works back to us on verses one and two.
SPEAKER_00: Um I lift up my eyes to you, to you who sit enthroned in heaven, as the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a female slave look to the hands of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till he shows us mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is how it begins.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is there's a lot in here to unpack.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Let me unpack this uh first thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um when I first when I first read it, I lift my eyes to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I go, Yeah, I mean that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: I lift my eyes to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Um that is a that reads cleaner than the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew reads um to you I lift my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Now the grammatically, the sentence is still the same.
SPEAKER_00: God is still the subject, but it feels different to me.
SPEAKER_00: I look, I look, I look to you.
SPEAKER_00: I lift my eyes to you.
SPEAKER_00: Feels so I lift my to you, I lift my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: It just feels different to me when I read it.
SPEAKER_00: I might not be able to convey it to you in the way that it hit me.
SPEAKER_00: One is so personally focused.
SPEAKER_00: I'm personally I'm so wrapped up into what the only thing I know to do is lift my eyes to you.
SPEAKER_00: The other one seems to be a little bit more aware of where the hope comes from.
SPEAKER_00: To you I lift my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Now in scripture when when when you read, um, it doesn't always point out male and female when you read.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when it's using some male language, it's it's in reference to just the whole name, all of mankind, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's no slight, it's just that's just the language.
SPEAKER_00: And I find it fascinating in this psalm, he addresses both man and woman.
SPEAKER_00: Says to the man, look, I'm gonna get to the enthroned heaven apart, but he says to the man look to God like your master.
SPEAKER_00: And to the woman, look to God like your mistress.
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't have anything.
SPEAKER_00: If I if I'm a servant to a master in this century, right, everything I have comes for you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have clothes without you, I don't have food without you, I don't have shelter without you, and and this is the context he's putting this in.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we're to look and lift our eyes to.
SPEAKER_00: Like we have no other recourse other than him.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When when you have a different recourse, in most cases, right, we try it.
SPEAKER_00: And it's it the psalmist is trying to get us to skip this piece.
SPEAKER_00: Skip it in the sentence saying, You don't you don't have the mercy that's necessary here, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because you're you're already full.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're absorbed.
SPEAKER_00: We have to lift our eyes to the one enthroned at heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Psalm 120 said, I call to the Lord in my distress, and he answers me.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It was the verbal, I call to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I told you that distress there, the Hebrew meant uh uh the uh in a tight place.
SPEAKER_00: So I call to the Lord when I'm in a tight place.
SPEAKER_00: And then the the MO of God is to bring us into spacious places.
SPEAKER_00: So saying I call out to God in a tight place, and God answers me.
SPEAKER_00: The answer is I bring you into spacious place.
SPEAKER_00: Here he's saying, I'm lifting my eyes to you, and he says, to the one enthroned in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: So I told you that Jerusalem and I showed you the temple last week, and I said, This is God's address, because God said, This is where I put my name forever.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is where I will not take my eyes off on the dedication of the temple back in the Old Testament with Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: But there was times in Israel's history, one included I mentioned, Israel was no more.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, are Jerusalem was no more.
SPEAKER_00: The temple didn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: It was destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: Walls are down.
SPEAKER_00: So anytime we just limit God to a place, we're always limiting God.
SPEAKER_00: We're always limiting God to a particular action.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the way God should respond here.
SPEAKER_00: We're limiting God.
SPEAKER_00: Every time you put a limit on God, actually we're the ones that get limited by it.
SPEAKER_00: And so this would have been real important throughout a bunch of time in Israel's history that the psalmist would say that his address is enthroned in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That it's not just essentially located in one place.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is kind of strange because they're going to a place.
SPEAKER_00: But when they couldn't get to that place, God still sat enthroned in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Now so he didn't just sit there in a camping chair in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He's on a throne in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He's the king of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So even the acknowledgement of who he is and where he is and what he's done, this is encouraging, it's encouraging to the psalmist.
SPEAKER_00: So our eyes look to the Lord, our God.
SPEAKER_00: So we we we read it backwards so that you could sit somewhat in the emotion of what it felt like to be ridiculed to the point that you couldn't take anything else to be held in contempt by arrogant people.
SPEAKER_00: And you didn't know what to ask for, but you knew who to ask.
SPEAKER_00: So let's shift to the a Psalm of Thanksgiving, because I believe these two actually probably were linked, were linked together.
SPEAKER_00: If the Lord had not been on our side, let Israel say, if the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us.
SPEAKER_00: The flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging water would have swept us away.
SPEAKER_00: Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us been be torn by their teeth.
SPEAKER_00: We have escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.
SPEAKER_00: The snare has been broken and we have escaped.
SPEAKER_00: Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so now we get resolution for the problem.
SPEAKER_00: Let Israel say.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great line in there.
SPEAKER_00: Let Israel say.
SPEAKER_00: He's leading a cheer of sorts.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If God had not been on our side, let Israel say.
SPEAKER_00: My grandson's only a couple months away from um being two, but he's already been to two monster jams here in Nashville.
SPEAKER_00: And they came back from the second one.
SPEAKER_00: And my daughter and son-in-law got him had him jam.
SPEAKER_00: When I say monster, you should say jam, monster jam, monster jam.
SPEAKER_00: And he's he's he's 18 months going, monster jam, monster jam.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this this is kind of this is kind of what this almost is coming into.
SPEAKER_00: Like hey, I know, I know the pressure.
SPEAKER_00: I know where we sit with the man.
SPEAKER_00: Let's let's get let's get a hold of ourselves, let's take a gauge of things because we wouldn't have been swept away.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty that's pretty sure.
SPEAKER_00: Gods on our side.
SPEAKER_00: We've been swallowed up, but we're not swallowed up.
SPEAKER_00: Using the same the same kind of visual surroundings that they would have had, this idea of water rushing through areas.
SPEAKER_00: Where Jerusalem and that that terrain that would have been water coming down from mountains, you wouldn't necessarily know.
SPEAKER_00: Here comes a flash flood.
SPEAKER_00: The flash flood comes in and takes up these waddies that were dry and couldn't hold a lot of water, couldn't absorb a lot of water.
SPEAKER_00: And we we would have been absorbing it and swept away if God had not been on our side.
SPEAKER_00: But guess what, folks?
SPEAKER_00: God is on our side.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to go and walk and reflect on what's been hard.
SPEAKER_00: Those seasons are real.
SPEAKER_00: You have to live through them or you're living through them.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's real.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying anything to try to uh get you to deny that that's what the case is or or that or the pain that that's extracted, but he's joined in the Psalms of Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: So you you can sit in that as long as that lament is looking to God and not just being swallowed up by that grief and that pain that you're in, because God's on your side, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so now he moves to this, he moves to the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: Um praise be to the Lord who has not let us be torn by their teeth.
SPEAKER_00: We have escaped like a bird from the fowler's snare.
SPEAKER_00: The snare has has been broken.
SPEAKER_00: We have escaped.
SPEAKER_00: Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's break this down.
SPEAKER_00: Who has not let equals who has intervened?
SPEAKER_00: We have escaped equals this will not be our end.
SPEAKER_00: The snare has been broken.
SPEAKER_00: Equation of our weapons have been shattered.
SPEAKER_00: Its correlation is no weapon formed against us would prosper.
SPEAKER_00: This would be the old testament version of that sentiment.
SPEAKER_00: And then our help is in the name.
SPEAKER_00: When that word is used, it's talking about God's reputation, his renown, his fame, his character.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Our help is in the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: Our help is in the reputation of God.
SPEAKER_00: He has earned a reputation of deliverer and power.
SPEAKER_00: He's earned that reputation, and our hope is in that reputation.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is in his character.
SPEAKER_00: Our hope is in the name.
SPEAKER_00: And then he is the one that sits in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Um he is the maker.
SPEAKER_00: So we have him enthroned in heaven in verse 123 or chapter 123, and we have him a maker of heaven and earth in 124.
SPEAKER_00: So let me repeat what a lament is.
SPEAKER_00: A lament is more than a sad song.
SPEAKER_00: Come on up, team.
SPEAKER_00: A lament is more than a sad song.
SPEAKER_00: It is it is a faithful response to pain, suffering, and injustice.
SPEAKER_00: A thanksgiving psalm is more than a cheer.
SPEAKER_00: It is truth.
SPEAKER_00: It is hope set to melody.
SPEAKER_00: God is on our side.
SPEAKER_00: What has struck me as I've been going through these psalms is it's made me pay more attention to the mechanics of what they had to do three times a year to go to Jerusalem for these festivals.
SPEAKER_00: And I think in one of the messages I told you that they they were, they I think it was last week, they looked forward to this, and I and I just get lost in the logistics of it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I gotta stop this, I gotta stop this, I gotta budget for that, I gotta get everybody rounded up, and I look weren't we just there?
SPEAKER_00: But that's not how they approached these pilgrimages.
SPEAKER_00: These pilgrimag were were hope-filled because they knew why they were going, they knew who they were going to, they knew where uh who was going to be there when they got there.
SPEAKER_00: Um 74 times in the book of Psalms the word enemy is used.
SPEAKER_00: It's three times more than any other book in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's why when you read you read so many laments in the Psalms, they feel kind of under attack.
SPEAKER_00: And life didn't stop for everyone when it came time for a festival, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we're having a real struggle, and it's like, oh, struggle stops because guess what?
SPEAKER_00: We're going to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody start singing.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just start singing the songs.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just let's just round everybody up and it.
SPEAKER_00: No, it just they came at all all different seasons of their life.
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine there's certain seasons of their life, certain of these psalms that have sat just struck a chord with them.
SPEAKER_00: And others, they just kind of ran through.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I bet that happened throughout the life and throughout the generation of them.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they fell under attack, sometimes they didn't.
SPEAKER_00: But these psalms were to communicate some very important facts.
SPEAKER_00: To find comfort in God in your times of war, you have to believe three things.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta believe that God sits over everything and everyone.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta believe that God is the mercy giver, and his mercy overwhelms that which is overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: And you have to believe God is on your side.
SPEAKER_00: Leave that up, Caleb.
SPEAKER_00: To find comfort in God at your times of war, you have to believe those three things.
SPEAKER_00: God sits above over everything and everyone.
SPEAKER_00: That God is the mercy giver, and his mercy is sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: Well, his mercy overwhelms that which is overwhelming, and that God is on our side.
SPEAKER_00: God answers laments with powerful actions that result in thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: Um I would say that Lamentations is one of my favorite books, and it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but Lamentations is an amazing book.
SPEAKER_00: There's a whole book just called Lamentations.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't beg you to read it, does it?
SPEAKER_00: Let me read your lament.
SPEAKER_00: It's five different poems of lament.
SPEAKER_00: But in the geographic center, if I could use that, the very center of that book of Lamentations becomes one of the most powerful verses of scripture that we can carry with us.
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations 3, 21 through 26.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with the word yet.
SPEAKER_00: Love that word.
SPEAKER_00: Yet is an indication that there's something here that's real, but it doesn't counteract that which follows.
SPEAKER_00: You with me?
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.
SPEAKER_00: For his compassion can also translate mercies, because his mercies never fail.
SPEAKER_00: They are new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, my inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I will wait for him.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.
SPEAKER_00: It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What a powerful sentiment.
SPEAKER_00: That his mercy, his power is new every single morning.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us in the room have gone to bedtime drained, emotionally spent.
SPEAKER_00: I carry this passage with me in those times.
SPEAKER_00: The enemy will tell you it's going to be the same thing tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to be dealing with the same stuff.
SPEAKER_00: There is the best lies tell tell some truth.
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is you might get up and have to be dealing in the same with the same stuff, but you're not dealing with it without God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And where you felt drained of God's power and mercy on this day, you wake up and your cup's full again.
SPEAKER_00: When my mom passed, I remember telling people that my glass, um, I would start the day with a full glass.
SPEAKER_00: And at some point in the day, I'd get to where my glass was empty.
SPEAKER_00: And I never could tell you what part of the day that would be.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I could get through a whole day and my glass would be full.
SPEAKER_00: There'd be other days I'd be, I'm I'm 30 minutes in and I'm empty.
SPEAKER_00: And Gene and I, we learned the language where I just said, honey, my glass, my glass is empty today.
SPEAKER_00: Which meant don't ask me where we're going to dinner.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot make that decision.
SPEAKER_00: You know, just put a hot dog in front of me, I'll eat it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But but but this should change some of your outlook of his mercies being near the morning.
SPEAKER_00: And I love how it ends.
SPEAKER_00: That we would sit quietly and wait for the Lord of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: How is it possible to sit quietly?
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody good at sitting quietly waiting for anything?
SPEAKER_00: Today, this afternoon, you will be, you will be some some hostess or host will put you on a list, and you will not get called at the time in which they had said.
SPEAKER_00: And you will go to that hostess stand wanting to know where are you in line?
SPEAKER_00: Or that's just maybe me.
SPEAKER_00: We don't sit quietly very well.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is he meaning?
SPEAKER_00: It means to sit at ease.
SPEAKER_00: To sit at ease.
SPEAKER_00: I'm wondering if anybody's in the room today, if you're watching online, that you need to be at ease.
SPEAKER_00: That you are wound up, you are tight, you are anxious, you are fearful.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We say feelings are real, but they're not what?
SPEAKER_00: Reliable.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That you need to be able to sit at ease.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be able to just go through deep breathing exercises to get you at ease in some circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: You need to know where the mercies come from.
SPEAKER_00: This week it was Wednesday, and I opened up my Bible app, and you know, the verse of the day came up, and um, I'd read it plenty of times.
SPEAKER_00: It's out of Romans, I think.
SPEAKER_00: Be um be joyful in hope, uh, patient in affliction, and I think faithful in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And so for some reason I woke up snarky on Wednesday, and um and I read that, and I went joyful in hope.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: I mean joyful in hope.
SPEAKER_00: If I have to have hope, that means I'm in a position where I don't want to be.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So you're asking me to be joyful at a place where I'm don't want to be.
SPEAKER_00: And and and I don't think that's not only when I say I don't think it's realistic, but I mean I don't think that's even what our connotation of joy is, I don't think that's what God's shooting for.
SPEAKER_00: I think what he's shooting for when you dig deep is to be at ease.
SPEAKER_00: That I will be at ease in hope.
SPEAKER_00: And that makes more sense, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think, ha ha ha.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy to be crushed today, right?
SPEAKER_00: But I can but I can be at ease that I'm being crushed, but I I'm being knocked down maybe and that I'm not being crushed.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what I was that's what I started praying for then for this Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: I started praying for that we would, that you would be at ease.
SPEAKER_00: We all go through seasons of lament and seasons of thanksgiving, and then we go back to, right?
SPEAKER_00: They all intervert.
SPEAKER_00: We we don't have just lament and we don't have just thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where the message hits you today.
SPEAKER_00: If it hits you in a season of thanksgiving or hits you in a season of lament.
SPEAKER_00: But what I wanted to tell you today that is God is on your side.
SPEAKER_00: His mercies are new.
SPEAKER_00: You got up this morning and you had new strength in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He has given that to you.
SPEAKER_00: God is on your side.
SPEAKER_00: You can live at a place of peace, even if you are sitting in a place where you need hope, right?
SPEAKER_00: Hope, biblical hope, is not an emotion.
SPEAKER_00: Biblical hope is a confident expectation in the God who sits enthroned over heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: He is king.
SPEAKER_00: He made it, he rules over it.
SPEAKER_00: And there isn't anything in your life that's not outside of that scope.
SPEAKER_00: So when we pray today, we this side of the altar, we save this.
SPEAKER_00: If you just want to come over here and spend some time with the Lord, no one will come over here and pray with you.
SPEAKER_00: But over here, if you want to, if you want to come and want to join your faith, borrow some faith, link some faith with another brother and sister in Christ, you can come to this side of the altar here.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is on my left and on my right.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to participate in communion, you can do that in your seats, you can do it on the altar, you can do it with your family, whatever you'd like.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to stand, I'm gonna pray, and then I'm gonna ask you to move.
SPEAKER_00: And I boy, I assure my prayer that you would not leave carrying the same kind of anxiousness by which you came in today.
SPEAKER_00: And I really think at this point, guys, that decision rests with you.
SPEAKER_00: I call to the Lord in my distress and he answers me.
SPEAKER_00: When we call, he answers.
SPEAKER_00: I'm encouraging you not to try to tough it out, minimize it, dismiss it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm encouraging you to call out, to look to.
SPEAKER_00: So, Father, today we lift our eyes to you.
SPEAKER_00: To you we lift our eyes, the Maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're in need of you, and only you can bring peace and mercy to these circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: So as your people reach out, look up, call out to you today.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I have full confidence that you will step into that moment.
SPEAKER_00: You'll speak peace to them.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus, we ask.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I invite you to move on.
SPEAKER_01: We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.
SPEAKER_01: Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us today.