SPEAKER_00: It's fitting, I think, that we are looking at this Sam, not only uh because of the run-up to Easter, but because of the content, we decided to uh to keep the series as uh as is.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're looking at different uh shadows uh or uh predictions of uh the cross of Jesus, Good Friday, uh in the Old Testament on the run-up to Easter.
SPEAKER_00: And so can I invite you uh to keep uh Psalm 22 uh open in front of you and in your in your groups?
SPEAKER_00: And uh why don't I uh pray again uh for us as we look at God's word, Father?
SPEAKER_00: Uh we come to you in these strange days, uh, knowing that you see us, that you love us, uh that you hear our cries.
SPEAKER_00: Uh please uh would your Holy Spirit uh meet us now, be at work through the Word.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we pray to uh to thrill our hearts, to give us hope and courage uh in these uncertain times.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see Jesus more clearly and to marvel at what he has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: We ask it in his precious name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I say it's fitting to look at this psalm because it begins with that uh that cry that's picked up in the in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We'll look at it uh, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because in the midst of uh the isolation and the suffering and the uh the death that we are seeing uh all across the world, particularly in places like China, Italy, Spain, uh, it can feel like God has forsaken his world.
SPEAKER_00: Or is that just me?
SPEAKER_00: Um it can feel in the midst of grief that God is nowhere to be found.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis wrote two books on suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he wrote uh The Problem of Pain, which is a kind of philosophical engagement with the uh the uh objective reality of evil and suffering in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then he wrote another book.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book in the wake of his wife's death, and it's called A Grief Observed.
SPEAKER_00: One is a very philosophical uh look at things, uh, the other is much more personal.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read to you a quote from uh from A Grief Observed.
SPEAKER_00: He writes, Meanwhile, where is God?
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.
SPEAKER_00: When you're happy, so happy that you've no sense of needing him, so happy that you are tempted to feel that his claims upon you are as an interruption.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be, or so it feels, welcome with open open arms.
SPEAKER_00: But when you try to go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, what do you find?
SPEAKER_00: A door slammed in your face, kind of bolting, double bolting on the inside, and after that, silence.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like you may as well turn away.
SPEAKER_00: The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence becomes.
SPEAKER_00: There are no lights in the windows.
SPEAKER_00: It might as well be an empty house.
SPEAKER_00: Was it ever inhabited?
SPEAKER_00: It seemed so once.
SPEAKER_00: And that seeming was as strong as this.
SPEAKER_00: What can this mean?
SPEAKER_00: Why is he so present a commander in our time of posterity and so very absent a help in our time of trouble?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it can feel that way, can't it?
SPEAKER_00: That God is absent in our time of trouble, that God is absent now.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the silence from heaven can be deafening in the midst of our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And the real difficulty with that is, is that one of the things that we're finding out is that suffering is inevitable.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what precautions we take, no matter how well we try to put together a good life, no matter how hard we have worked to be healthy, wealthy, comfortable with friends, with family, successful in our career, something will inevitably come along and shake it or ruin it.
SPEAKER_00: So what do you do then?
SPEAKER_00: Suffering is inevitable, but does that mean that it's meaningless?
SPEAKER_00: Do we live in a world uh where things are simply arbitrary?
SPEAKER_00: The blind indifference of the universe that is without God.
SPEAKER_00: I think our modern secular society, and we'll return to this at the very end, our modern secular society tends to see suffering as an interruption.
SPEAKER_00: You're shut up in your house as an interruption to your life rather than something that is inherently meaningful in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: After all of our locking down ends, will we just go back to normal and try and forget all about it?
SPEAKER_00: Or will it be something that changes us?
SPEAKER_00: Will it be something that we integrate into our beer?
SPEAKER_00: These questions are very real right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure all of us at various points have wondered well, what could possibly be the point of our pen?
SPEAKER_00: Christianity, I think over and against any other worldview, certainly the secular worldview, is emphatically clear that suffering is not purposeless.
SPEAKER_00: You see, suffering, if used right, can be like a nail that drives us deeper into the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than driving us away from Him, it can drive us towards His fatherly embrace.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22 gives us an insight into the nature of suffering and how to interact with God in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to look at it together.
SPEAKER_00: Keep uh it open on your phone or on your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: And note this is a Psalm of David.
SPEAKER_00: What does David do?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that David does, verse 1, is he cries out to God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you so far from saving me?
SPEAKER_00: And from the words of my groaning.
SPEAKER_00: Now the question is, how do how are we to understand this cry?
SPEAKER_00: In one sense, it's a cry of despair.
SPEAKER_00: He feels like we have all felt at various times the deafening silence that Lois describes in the midst of his suffering.
SPEAKER_00: He feels genuinely forsaken by God.
SPEAKER_00: But it is also a cry of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's not shaking his fist at God, he's not saying, he's not running away.
SPEAKER_00: That double repeated my God, my God, I think it's a cry of faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's laying claim to his God.
SPEAKER_00: My God, my God, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Even as he suffers, David knows that God is not some distant, disinterested deity, nor is he an impersonal force who just created the world and caused it to uh to wind down.
SPEAKER_00: And this is just an inevitable byproduct of that.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: He's my God, he's relational, he's near to the brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the first things that I think that we can learn from this cry is that we should come to God in our grief and our pain.
SPEAKER_00: That oftentimes the worst thing you can do is run away from him.
SPEAKER_00: God loves to be held to his promises.
SPEAKER_00: When he says that he will never leave us or forsake us, one of the things that he wants us to do is to run and to lay claim to that.
SPEAKER_00: To come to God in our grief and pain, in our isolation and loneliness.
SPEAKER_00: And can I encourage you not to wait?
SPEAKER_00: As an old hymn says, an old hymn called Come Ye Sinners.
SPEAKER_00: It's a one of the verses reads, Come ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall.
SPEAKER_00: If you tarry, if you wait, if you tarry till you're better, you will never come at all.
SPEAKER_00: We cry out to God in the midst of our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that David does, looking on down the Psalm, from verse 3 onwards, is that he looks back to God's past saving acts.
SPEAKER_00: He looks back to objective reality and history to how God has acted, and he uses that to give him courage now.
SPEAKER_00: You are holy, verse 3, and thrown in the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: In you our fathers trusted, they trusted, and you delivered them.
SPEAKER_00: So you they cried and were rescued, in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
SPEAKER_00: He looks back at God's past faithfulness, what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: He sees that other people were delivered, his forebears, his fathers, they were not put to shame.
SPEAKER_00: How often do we see the hand of God and the rescue and sustaining of God in hindsight?
SPEAKER_00: Where it's hard sometimes to see it in the moment.
SPEAKER_00: We see it as we look back.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us, I'm sure, will look back on these days and say, I can see God at work there now.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't at the time.
SPEAKER_00: But I can.
SPEAKER_00: David draws strength from God's work in the past.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering has a tendency, doesn't it, to cloud our field of vision.
SPEAKER_00: If we come obsessed at the moment about making sure that we have enough time stuff, make sure we have enough toilet roll right now, we lose perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering does that.
SPEAKER_00: It clouds our field of vision.
SPEAKER_00: We need the scriptures to to widen that horizon again.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: Where is God in Psalm 22?
SPEAKER_00: He's enthroned.
SPEAKER_00: He's enthroned on the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He is still seated on his throne, he has not bolted the door and walked away.
SPEAKER_00: Sam gets worse.
SPEAKER_00: David again goes from looking at God to looking at his circumstances and sees that he is despised by men.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six, but I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
SPEAKER_00: All who see me mock me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads.
SPEAKER_00: He trusts in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him.
SPEAKER_00: Red and understood in a sarcastic tone.
SPEAKER_00: The suffering that David is writing about here is not just circumstance, it's made worse by the people.
SPEAKER_00: You ever find that?
SPEAKER_00: You're in a difficult time, and actually the people make it worse.
SPEAKER_00: Look at how they make him feel like a worm.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a worm and not a man.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering tends to have a dehumanizing effect on us.
SPEAKER_00: It can make us feel less inhuman.
SPEAKER_00: And it's compounded by by him having his faith marked.
SPEAKER_00: He trusts in God.
SPEAKER_00: Let God deliver him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why do they mock his faith?
SPEAKER_00: Because his faith is the last thing that gives him strength, stability.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's the focus of their abuse, trying to undermine his faith and his confidence in God.
SPEAKER_00: But what does David do?
SPEAKER_00: David recognizes that he is despised by men, verses uh 6, 7, 8, and meets that with a realization or with a reaffirmation, might be a best better way to put it, that he is loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, look at it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Yet you, do you see how the Psalms moved?
SPEAKER_00: So why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: You're the one enthroned in the praise of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a worm and automatic.
SPEAKER_00: He's constantly moving between uh the pain and grief of his circumstances and uh and crying out to God in faith and acknowledging who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And isn't that so isn't that so human that the pain that we experience often comes in waves, and we pick ourselves up again, and we think, no, we can do that, you know, no, we can do this, God can do this through us, we acknowledge who he is, but then something else kind of knocks us back.
SPEAKER_00: But again, David, in a sense, meets their accusations with the intimacy and love of God.
SPEAKER_00: He might be despised by men, but he's loved by the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9, yet you are he who took me from the womb.
SPEAKER_00: You made me trust at my mother's breasts.
SPEAKER_00: On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb.
SPEAKER_00: You have been my God.
SPEAKER_00: Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there was no one to help.
SPEAKER_00: You feel the intimacy between David and God here.
SPEAKER_00: He recognizes that he is loved and he has been loved over his life.
SPEAKER_00: Can you, Christian, look back over your life and seeing the Lord's care for you?
SPEAKER_00: Can that give you courage in these difficult days?
SPEAKER_00: He moves again to his circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: From verse twelve onwards down to verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the psalm, it's like the psalm is going in this kind of downward spiral.
SPEAKER_00: Things are getting worse and worse and worse.
SPEAKER_00: Things are getting more and more graphic in terms of what is happening to this sufferer.
SPEAKER_00: They're profound.
SPEAKER_00: He finds himself surrounded.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Many bulls encompass me.
SPEAKER_00: Strong bulls at Bashan, just a place where really strong bulls came from.
SPEAKER_00: But it's to show that he is facing um daunting foes.
SPEAKER_00: These bulls surrounding me.
SPEAKER_00: He finds himself weak and poured out like water.
SPEAKER_00: His heart is melting like wax, like a like a candle melting down.
SPEAKER_00: That's how that's how strong his his heart feels right now.
SPEAKER_00: Not very.
SPEAKER_00: His strength is is dried up.
SPEAKER_00: Dried up like a like a like a pots hard.
SPEAKER_00: That's just a uh a broken shard of of pottery that's uh that holds no water.
SPEAKER_00: My tongue sticks to my jaws.
SPEAKER_00: But because he is doing this thing of looking back and forth, this looking back at uh at who God is and what God has done, again the tone shifts.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the tone changes uh in verses uh 19 onwards.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 11 and 18 kind of form the if you think of this psalm kind of as a as a V shape, uh verses 1 through to 18 were going down, down, down, down, down, right?
SPEAKER_00: And verses 11 to 18 are right down here in the pit.
SPEAKER_00: And in 19 the psalm changes, and the tone of the psalm changes, and it begins to you begin to see glimmers of hope and goodness and joy again through to the end of the psalm, and it changes with again a calling on God.
SPEAKER_00: But you, O Lord, be not far off, or you, my help, come quickly to my aid.
SPEAKER_00: And he begins to see a time when this suffering will not always be true, in the same way that we need to keep to remember, like we'll not always be locked down like this, we'll not always uh not be able to meet.
SPEAKER_00: We will gather together again, we will uh get through this.
SPEAKER_00: Similarly, the Sama sees a time when when the suffering and the pain that he's currently going through will cease.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, verse 22 I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: I will praise you.
SPEAKER_00: You who fear the Lord, praise him.
SPEAKER_00: He's like calling other people to join in praise of God.
SPEAKER_00: And don't we need that sort of hope?
SPEAKER_00: Because we wonder, will this ever end?
SPEAKER_00: Will our suffering even outside of these days, will it ever end?
SPEAKER_00: Will I always feel like this?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer of Christianity is no.
SPEAKER_00: One of the ways that Christianity sits in in distinction from every other worldview, is that other worldviews want you to sit in the midst of life's joys, foreseeing on coming sorrow and wishing that it would slow down and hoping that it would never come or maybe pass you by.
SPEAKER_00: But what Christianity does, Christianity empowers the Christian, the believer in Jesus, to sit in the midst of life's sufferings and taste oncoming joy, to taste oncoming hope, and to continue to persevere in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: How is all of this possible?
SPEAKER_00: How are we able to interact with our suffering like that?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is because Psalm twenty-two isn't ultimately or primarily about us.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we can learn things about how to suffer, but the power to suffer like this comes when we realize that we are not the sufferer of Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that you've uh been digging through a box of uh class photographs and you've come across one from uh a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you had hair uh at that time, perhaps you had uh uh straightened blonde tips as I did, and you pull out that that class photo, and what's the first thing that you do?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing that you do is you look to see yourself in it, you look to find where you are.
SPEAKER_00: In that photo.
SPEAKER_00: And we can come to the Bible like that.
SPEAKER_00: But Psalm 22 isn't ultimately about us, is it?
SPEAKER_00: You see, Psalm 22 is really a kind of prophecy of the cross, of what Jesus went through.
SPEAKER_00: You see, I don't even think that David is the sufferer of Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_00: I think he is writing better than he knows.
SPEAKER_00: I think he is writing of another.
SPEAKER_00: Because let me show you how Psalm 22 parallels with Good Friday.
SPEAKER_00: I'm picking up from Matthew 27.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you the verses and where they where they parallel, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so you may want to have one finger in Matthew 27 and be flipping back and forward, but I'm going to show them to you now.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 1 of Psalm 22 begins, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: And in verse 46, if you're looking along with me, verse 46 of Matthew 27, we read this.
SPEAKER_00: And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, saying, Eile, Eli, Lama Sabacthani.
SPEAKER_00: That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: He takes that.
SPEAKER_00: That cry of forsakenness, but also that cry of faith, that cry of hope onto his own lips.
SPEAKER_00: But there's more.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 of 72, all who see me mock me, they make mouths.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 39 of Matthew 27, we read, Those who pass by derided him, wagging their heads.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 8 of Psalm 22, he trusted the Lord, let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 43, how dreadful it is that the religious leaders and the Pharisees take this on their own lips.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 43, he trusts in God, let God deliver him if he desires him, for he said, I am the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16 of Psalm 22 even says that they have pierced my hands and feet.
SPEAKER_00: Now remember, this is this is written a thousand years before the coming of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is written before the rise of the Assyrians who developed crucifixion, which pierced hands and feet.
SPEAKER_00: And yet David writes verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, this will be the final one of the parallels, final one.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18 of our psalm twenty-two, they divide my garments among them, and for my clothes they cast lots.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35 of Matthew 27.
SPEAKER_00: And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.
SPEAKER_00: It brings us to the foot of the cross of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We see that He is the forsaken one.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who is surrounded, the one who is mocked, despised.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who cries out in faith, who even trusts, even in the midst of the deafening silence from heaven, continues to trust in his God.
SPEAKER_00: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Why was Jesus forsaken by God, his father?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is simple.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus cried, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: So that you might never have to.
SPEAKER_00: He was forsaken by his father.
SPEAKER_00: So that you could be welcomed into his fatherly care.
SPEAKER_00: Sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Heart restored.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus lost all of his glory so that we could be clothed in it.
SPEAKER_00: He was shut out so that we could gain access.
SPEAKER_00: He was bound so that we could be free.
SPEAKER_00: He was cast out so that we could come near.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that could really destroy us being cast away from the presence of God, experiencing his judgment and wrath against our self-love, our sin.
SPEAKER_00: That is the only thing that can separate us from God.
SPEAKER_00: Neither the suffering that we go through personally nor what we are experiencing globally right now.
SPEAKER_00: And that for the Christian changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: He says it is good news for the poor.
SPEAKER_00: May your hearts live forever.
SPEAKER_00: The afflicted, those who are hungry, it's good news for them.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he's calling everyone to come and join in praise of this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just good news for the poor, it's good news for the rich.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29 the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship.
SPEAKER_00: Before him they shall bow, all who go down to the dust, every human being, whether great or lowly, rich or poor.
SPEAKER_00: This is for them.
SPEAKER_00: It is even good news for those who have not come into the world yet.
SPEAKER_00: It is good news for those yet unborn.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 31.
SPEAKER_00: They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.
SPEAKER_00: Just a note as we conclude is that you can post questions into the chat window.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be concluding in the next couple of minutes.
SPEAKER_00: Post them into the chat window now or over the next couple of minutes, and then I'll interact with any questions that people may have before I pray and we conclude.
SPEAKER_00: But what this shows us, and what confidence this gives us, is what it shows us is that God is for us in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That at the at the moment of humanity's deepest need, at the moment of humanity's greatest darkness, God did not look away.
SPEAKER_00: God did not abandon humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, in a sense, all of humanity is caught up in the man Christ Jesus as he hangs suspended between earth and heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And what do we see?
SPEAKER_00: What do we read?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.
SPEAKER_00: He has not hidden his face from him.
SPEAKER_00: He has heard when he cried to him.
SPEAKER_00: At the moment of humanity's greatest sorrow and suffering, God was there.
SPEAKER_00: And he is here now.
SPEAKER_00: He did not look away.
SPEAKER_00: He did not cut us off because he did not cut off the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's not such that there was some rupture in the Trinity, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that the Son ceased to exist for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, while truly forsaken in the sense that he was not rescued, was still regarded by his Father.
SPEAKER_00: God has met us in our darkest hour with the salvation that comes from the cross of Christ at Calvary.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what we look to.
SPEAKER_00: David, as he was writing, is looking back to most likely the Exodus, that great event in Israel's history where they are saved from the curse of death, that death of the firstborn, because of the blood of the sacrificial lamb that was sacrificed on that first Passover.
SPEAKER_00: That God rescued a people from slavery in Egypt and brought them to himself.
SPEAKER_00: That's what David looked back to.
SPEAKER_00: But for the Christian, we look back not to that event, but to what that event points to.
SPEAKER_00: We look rather to the cross where Jesus, our sacrificial lamb, what is it that John says?
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus for the first time, says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who bleeds for us that the curse might pass over you and I.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we're fearful, when we lack faith and confidence and trust, and when it's shaken, and when our whole world begins to rock because of the suffering that we are going through, we look back to the cross of Christ and we see that God does not abandon those he loves.
SPEAKER_00: He does not abandon those who trust him, who put their faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: He is with them always.
SPEAKER_00: It is no accident in God's sovereign goodness that we are as a world experiencing this during a time during the time of Lent on the run up to Easter.
SPEAKER_00: As we remember what God has done for us in Christ and draw courage from it.
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus, what was that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, for Jesus it was his resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: His bodily, physical resurrection in history from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the resurrection is Christianity's great sign.
SPEAKER_00: That all that Jesus said of himself and all that Jesus came to accomplish was true.
SPEAKER_00: And this matters so much in our cultural moment.
SPEAKER_00: Because I said right at the start that people in our world, people in the secular West, tend to see suffering as an interruption.
SPEAKER_00: You see, secular society, our West, tends to place its hope in the here and now.
SPEAKER_00: People derive their security from the things around them, from their job, their finances, their health, the health of their loved ones.
SPEAKER_00: And now, all across the world, those things are being shaken.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are crumbling, and suffering is taking them away from many people.
SPEAKER_00: And so people are feeling left adrift.
SPEAKER_00: When those things that you rely on go, the most natural response is fear and hopelessness.
SPEAKER_00: The suffering of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead means that there is hope in this world that suffering cannot destroy.
SPEAKER_00: Because he suffered to bring us into the family of God and rose to demonstrate that that was true, that that actually happened, and that by faith we can be part of that family, that we can have a hope that endures this season, that endures this world, that allows wave upon wave of suffering to break over our back, and we get to move forward with hope because it cannot be taken away, because it's not joined to circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: It is joined rather to the one who is risen, the one who is enthroned in heaven, the one who loved us and gave himself for us.
SPEAKER_00: So, brothers and sisters, can I encourage you not to be fearful in these difficult days, but to rejoice again, to have hope, to take this time to renew yourself spiritually to grow in faith and trust and love.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can post any questions that you may have.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, I thank you that at just the right time you sent the Lord Jesus to suffer in our place.
SPEAKER_00: In order that he might restore our humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Stir our affections for Jesus in these difficult days.
SPEAKER_00: Give us perspective, lift our gaze, that we might see the beauty of what you have done.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you, Lord Jesus, that you loved us in this way and that you have given yourself for us.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: For your great name's sake.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.