SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: I want to take a moment and draw your attention to those words on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: It says second line.
SPEAKER_01: It says, I will be with the one I love.
SPEAKER_01: We get that.
SPEAKER_01: But then we say, with unveiled face, I'll see him.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we say things in the church, we sing things in the church in a way that we don't necessarily talk.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want you to miss the fact that when it says with unveiled face, I'll see him.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says that here in this life we look to a glass dimly.
SPEAKER_01: Translation, there are things that are going to happen in your life that you're not going to understand.
SPEAKER_01: And you have to live with the what, and you never get clarity around the why.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, why did that happen?
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says, hey, there's kind of a veil.
SPEAKER_01: We don't see things clearly.
SPEAKER_01: The best way I know to describe it is kind of like that blocked glass people put in their bathroom window.
SPEAKER_01: You can see that there's somebody in there, but you can't make it out.
SPEAKER_01: And I would dare say most of us in this room have something in our life that we can look back on and say, yeah, I don't know why.
SPEAKER_01: I can't see that clearly, and it bothers me.
SPEAKER_01: And the task for you, or the opportunity for you and I, is to still exercise hope in the midst of that.
SPEAKER_01: Because the Bible says that the hidden things belong to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: But those things that are revealed belong to us.
SPEAKER_01: There are things that are going to happen in this life that we're never going to understand until heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's going to be made clear.
SPEAKER_01: And so the question before us is can we live with this kind of veil over our face, this inability to see everything clearly the way God does, and to know everything absolutely the way God does.
SPEAKER_01: But the question that we're left with is, can I be a person of hope, like the Bible describes it, and not know all the whys that I experience in life?
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about that today.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, thanks for the truth of the Bible, that the gospel doesn't shrink back from just the reality of life, that it's hard and that it's painful sometimes, and things don't always go our way.
SPEAKER_01: We don't get what we want for Christmas every year, and we don't get what we want in life every day.
SPEAKER_01: And yet the Bible calls us to this sustaining reality that the Bible refers to hope.
SPEAKER_01: And so, Lord, we don't want to be glib and we don't want to be sentimental or sappy or we don't want to just say things that the Bible doesn't say.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible gets down into the nitty, gritty details of life, and it speaks to it in a language that we understand.
SPEAKER_01: So speak to us today, Lord, about what it means to be people of hope, we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Ask all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_01: If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to the 137th Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: If you're wondering where the Psalms is, just crack your Bible right in the middle and kind of go to the left a little bit, and you'll probably find the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: One of the longest books in the Bible has 150 chapters.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a kind of a prayer book or a song book of the people of God.
SPEAKER_01: If there was a hymnal in the Bible, it would be the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: These are things they they sang to God.
SPEAKER_01: It's divided into five sections.
SPEAKER_01: The fifth section of the Psalm, which is Psalm 135 to 150.
SPEAKER_01: That is songs of praise or Psalms of Praise.
SPEAKER_01: And so this was a song that they sang in worship to God.
SPEAKER_01: I tell you that, so you kind of get the context because we're going to read it.
SPEAKER_01: And I promise you, most of you have never heard a sermon out of the 137th Psalm because of the violent nature of what it says.
SPEAKER_01: Now that I've got your attention, you're like, well, what is what is what is it?
SPEAKER_01: Can't be that bad, can it?
SPEAKER_01: Let me say this.
SPEAKER_01: I uh in preparation for today, I read a lot.
SPEAKER_01: Uh like I came across Immanuel Kant, the philosopher.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote a book in 1787 called The Critique of Pure Reason.
SPEAKER_01: And in the book, he says that all of our questions of human reason and speculation, they fall out into three categories.
SPEAKER_01: What can I know?
SPEAKER_01: What should I do?
SPEAKER_01: And what may I hope?
SPEAKER_01: And so for a long time, people have been asking this kind of existential question: what can I really hope for in life?
SPEAKER_01: Uh just this this month, someone wrote an article in the uh the Atlantic magazine.
SPEAKER_01: Anybody know what the Atlantic magazine is?
SPEAKER_01: It's not a not a Christian, it's not like, you know, hey, this is a guy.
SPEAKER_01: He the the article proved that I read a bunch of different stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Uh my friends are like, you're a nerd, dude.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the article was, is it should there be hope in art?
SPEAKER_01: Is it wrong to paint and sculpt and things that kind of provoke hope in people?
SPEAKER_01: Is that right or is that wrong?
SPEAKER_01: And here's the best line from the article.
SPEAKER_01: The writer says, if if someone observes the world and generally feels hopeful and truly feels that the future is not chaos, but is in fact already written, then that person has the responsibility to say so.
SPEAKER_01: Now hear that again.
SPEAKER_01: This is someone writing about art, and is it fair to capture hope in art?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, if a person observes the world and generally feels hopeful and truly feels that the future is not chaos, but is in fact already written, then that person has the responsibility to say so.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that.
SPEAKER_01: I do not think the future is chaos.
SPEAKER_01: I'm aware of what's going on all around us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm aware.
SPEAKER_01: I got a TV, I got an internet connection.
SPEAKER_01: I know that in our culture it's it's it's pretty jaded and pretty cynical, but it's in that context that what the Bible calls hope, and I say hope, I don't mean hope for hope's sake or hope because I said so, because that insults your intelligence.
SPEAKER_01: And the Bible never does that.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible never says fake it till you make it.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, hey, this is what it means when it talks about hope.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's against that backdrop.
SPEAKER_01: I want to talk to you this morning about the sustaining power of hope from the 137th Psalm.
SPEAKER_01: And the context is that the the people of God are in exile.
SPEAKER_01: They disobeyed God, and God raised up a nation called Babylon, and they came and ramsacked the city of Jerusalem and took its people as slaves back to Babylon.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where they're writing from.
SPEAKER_01: And he says this in the 137th Psalm, by the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.
SPEAKER_01: On the willows there we hung our lyres, our harps, for there our captors required of us songs and our tormentors, mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
SPEAKER_01: How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
SPEAKER_01: If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
SPEAKER_01: Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, Lay it bare, lay it bare down to its foundations, O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed shall be he who repays you with what you have done to us.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.
SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about that much in the church, do we?
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, one of the people, as I was researching and studying this, one of the there's a guy that wrote an article that basically said, I don't believe the Bible because it's this kind of violence in it.
SPEAKER_01: And let me just say this, unless you're thinking the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: Do not miss this.
SPEAKER_01: Do not take the darkness of the human heart and impose that upon God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not God saying, I'm gonna get your babies.
SPEAKER_01: It's these people that were so mad.
SPEAKER_01: They were so mad at the Edomites because they they cheered when Jerusalem fell.
SPEAKER_01: They said, God, we hate those people so much.
SPEAKER_01: We we want people to do harm, harmful violence to their children.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's in that context that the Bible says three things about hope today.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, it says this hope is bigger than our circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Hope is bigger than our circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the first four verses again.
SPEAKER_01: They're down by the river.
SPEAKER_01: It says, by the rivers of Babylon, by the waters of Babylon, we sat down and we wept when we remembered Zion.
SPEAKER_01: On the willows there, we hung our lyres, our harps.
SPEAKER_01: Now, and our it says for our captors, our tormentors, uh, our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth.
SPEAKER_01: Mirth is not a word that you use this week.
SPEAKER_01: Mirth means joy or gladness.
SPEAKER_01: You should go to work tomorrow and people say, How you feeling?
SPEAKER_01: I'm full of mirth.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, did you bring some?
SPEAKER_01: It is not a human word.
SPEAKER_01: It is a really unnerving word, but the people said, Hey, we want you to be happy now, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Because see, here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have time to go into it.
SPEAKER_01: But but but the unbelievers expected joy and gladness from the believers.
SPEAKER_01: For our captors, our tormentors, they they demanded, they required of us songs and mirth saying, Sing us your favorite worship song now.
SPEAKER_01: And we said, How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?
SPEAKER_01: When I say that hope is bigger than our circumstances, this is what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing for your captors to say things that have no meaning, but when they begin to say things that connect deep inside of you, that you kind of go, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I feel that way too.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to sing.
SPEAKER_01: I threw my harp up in the trees.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, ah, I'm not doing that.
SPEAKER_01: It's one thing when they say things that don't have any register, they don't register with you and all, but when they say stuff that connects with what you're feeling, then you feel exposed.
SPEAKER_01: And which is why you have to face the reality of what you're feeling.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you this, uh uh, parents, if you've got kids, don't teach your kids to fake it.
SPEAKER_01: This is, I've been your pastor almost 10 years now.
SPEAKER_01: And over that time I've gotten to know you and many of your stories.
SPEAKER_01: And there's many a Sunday I'll see people out in the lobby, and worship will be going on, and they'll be just kind of hanging out, sitting on the benches out there, and the pews out there, just kind of, and I know what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: What they're saying is, I don't want to sing happy songs.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go in there right now because that's not where I am.
SPEAKER_01: And one Sunday, one lady in particular was just sitting there staring down at the floor, and one of our greeters walked over to talk to her, and I waved him off and he said, What's going on?
SPEAKER_01: I said, She's just sad.
SPEAKER_01: She didn't feel like singing.
SPEAKER_01: And he kind of looked at me like, we should give her a pep talk.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: No, we shouldn't.
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, you have to learn, this is a sign of spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_01: You have to learn to be sad to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you're just going to be depressed and angry.
SPEAKER_01: There's a whole book in the Bible called Lamentations.
SPEAKER_01: We'll read from it in just a minute.
SPEAKER_01: It's Lament.
SPEAKER_01: It's basically the funeral service for the city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: And it's in the Bible because God wants his people to know, hey, I know you're sad.
SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to feel guilty or unspiritual that you're sad.
SPEAKER_01: Hope is bigger than your circumstance.
SPEAKER_01: These people said, hey, we don't like singing.
SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me, dude?
SPEAKER_01: We've had the life beat out of us.
SPEAKER_01: Some Sunday you're going to feel that way.
SPEAKER_01: And especially if you got your kids with them with you, you should look at your kids and go, hey, dad believes, mom believes.
SPEAKER_01: I just, I just need to listen to other people sing today so I can kind of be reminded.
SPEAKER_01: So I don't want you to look at me and think, oh, mom's mad at God.
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm just sad.
SPEAKER_01: That's more than okay.
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I would say to you, that's a great confession of worship.
SPEAKER_01: This is the way people, so you get to context, this is the way people thought about Jerusalem back then.
SPEAKER_01: This is from Lamentations chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: It says that all who pass along the way clap their hands at you.
SPEAKER_01: They hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?
SPEAKER_01: All of your enemies rail against you.
SPEAKER_01: They hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry.
SPEAKER_01: We have swallowed her.
SPEAKER_01: Ah, this is the day we long for.
SPEAKER_01: Now we have it.
SPEAKER_01: We see it.
SPEAKER_01: In these circumstances, their captors demanded they sing God's songs.
SPEAKER_01: They said, our captors demanded songs of us, and they said, How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land?
SPEAKER_01: I would suggest to you that a foreign land is a great context for singing the songs of Zion.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: I said this before.
SPEAKER_01: The native invader, let me stop and ask a practical question.
SPEAKER_01: Is it cold in here?
SPEAKER_01: We'll do something about that.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Don't hold it against me.
SPEAKER_01: I see some of you kind of like, talk fast.
SPEAKER_01: Hurry.
SPEAKER_01: If you're visiting today, this is not a performance.
SPEAKER_01: We're real people.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, if I'm cold and I got lights on me, hmm.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because I know some of your wives don't love you that much and they're snuggled up next to you.
SPEAKER_01: Just say it.
SPEAKER_01: They've had enough family togetherness to last them until next Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let me say this.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, hey, they demanded songs for they said, sing us the songs of Zion.
SPEAKER_01: And we said, How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land?
SPEAKER_01: That is the best context for worship, is in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: Because this room right here that's climate control, that's too hot right now, that's hot coffee and padded chairs, this is not the native environment for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: The native environment for the gospel is in the boardroom and in the conference room and in the teacher's lounge and at home doing 16 loads of laundry in a week with your ungrateful kids, don't realize it.
SPEAKER_01: That's the context for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody called me the other day, a friend of mine said, Man, I gotta lay off 18 people this week.
SPEAKER_01: You got any verses for me?
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me see where that is in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, No.
SPEAKER_01: I said, What does this feel like?
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Man, I just, I mean, right before the holidays, when production's down, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, here's the greatest gift you can give them.
SPEAKER_01: Feel this.
SPEAKER_01: Don't just be the company guy and say, hey, we're gonna fire you, but you get a spiral ham.
SPEAKER_01: He said he did six and he's gonna do six and he's gonna do the spread over three days.
SPEAKER_01: He said, about the 12th guy walked in, just sat down and said, Hey, I know what this is all about.
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And his friend, my friend was like, I just burst into tears, and I'm the boss.
SPEAKER_01: I said, You think you're not supposed to have a heart because you're the boss?
SPEAKER_01: He said, That guy Neil just looked at me and said, Hey, what is this like for you?
SPEAKER_01: You have to have this conversation over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it looks like to sing the song of Zion in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: Your boss calls you in to lay you off because production is down and you smile and go, hey, God's got this.
SPEAKER_01: This didn't catch God off guard.
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
SPEAKER_01: You gotta have this conversation 18 times.
SPEAKER_01: Make it 17 because I'm good.
SPEAKER_01: All right, whatever you want to do for me and the company, that's great.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to know how you are.
SPEAKER_01: That's upside down and crazy.
SPEAKER_01: Again, that is the native environment for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: If the people of God do not have the hope that comes from God, how will the world know that there's anything bigger than what they're going through right now?
SPEAKER_01: Let me ask that again.
SPEAKER_01: If the people of God don't have the hope that comes from God, how will people that don't believe in God know that there's anything bigger than what they're going through right now?
SPEAKER_01: Then all of a sudden they take matters into their own hands and head out.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say again a foreign land, a circumstance you did not want to be in is the native environment for not just the gospel, but for worship.
SPEAKER_01: And I saw it yesterday on my TV.
SPEAKER_01: We have a free preview weekend going on.
SPEAKER_01: We get a bunch of movie channels over this weekend.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have movie channels because I'm not paying for any of that.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm flipping around yesterday, and there was a heavyweight championship fight on.
SPEAKER_01: Did anybody know that?
SPEAKER_01: That the heavyweight championship of the world was contended yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: And and Vladimir Klitschko, who's been the heavyweight champion of the world for nine years, and he's fighting this guy from Great Britain, from England, and it's it's it's it's he's a huge underdog, and the underdog wins.
SPEAKER_01: And not only does he win, but after it's over, and I'm flipping across, and I come across right after it's over, and I'm like, oh, there's a guy.
SPEAKER_01: His name's Tyson Fury, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're gonna be a boxer, that's a great name to have.
SPEAKER_01: Tyson Fury.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, get you some of that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go down to the courthouse tomorrow and change my name.
SPEAKER_01: But he said, You say, what's this got to do?
SPEAKER_01: It's singing the songs of Zion in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: Wait for it, saw it with my own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: The cat, after they give him three belts, he's got the three belts, he turns and hands them to his trainer, grabs a microphone, and sings a love song to his wife.
SPEAKER_01: Get this in your head.
SPEAKER_01: The dude is pasty white, he's six foot nine inches tall, the tallest heavyweight champion in the history of the world, and he sings the Aerosmith song, I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, to his wife.
SPEAKER_01: With, I mean, I don't want to close my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And I am like, you are kidding me right now.
SPEAKER_01: And the the announcers went just silent.
SPEAKER_01: And finally, Jim Lampley just pierces the silence and says, That is the most strange thing I've ever seen in the history of boxing.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: And then in that moment, the Holy Spirit said, That's what it looks like to sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: Your boyfriend of two and a half years breaks up with you, and you look at him and you say, This hurts so hard, I don't have words for it, but I'm gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because my God is a great God.
SPEAKER_01: You're not the last person that God ever created for me to be in a relationship with, and so whatever's coming, it is coming, and it's got goodness all over it.
SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I want my cat back, and you can have your sweater.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be taking all my Christmas gifts back.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because the Bible is very clear that hope is bigger than our circumstance.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, if you want to get a biblical context, uh Acts 16, by verse 25, Paul and Silas they told them, hey, stop talking about the gospel because they knew the gospel's native environment.
SPEAKER_01: It's not in the church, it's out in the streets, in the highways, and the byways, in the hedges, in Starbucks, and all these other environments where the gospel hasn't penetrated.
SPEAKER_01: They're taking the gospel and they told them, hey, you guys better shut up.
SPEAKER_01: And so they couldn't shut up.
SPEAKER_01: They said, We can't help ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And so they brought them in and they beat them severely and they locked them in prison.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says about midnight, they were praying and singing hymns to God.
SPEAKER_01: And here's that part you need to hear.
SPEAKER_01: And the prisoners were listening.
SPEAKER_01: The prisoners are listening, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: And is the song coming out of you in the midst of whatever circumstance you're in?
SPEAKER_01: Is it a song of hope?
SPEAKER_01: Or are you just as negative and jaded and cynical as everybody else you do life with?
SPEAKER_01: The second thing the Bible tells us is that hope is a confession of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: So far the pronouns have been plural.
SPEAKER_01: We, we, us, our, in verse 5, it shifts gears and gets singular.
SPEAKER_01: He says, If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.
SPEAKER_01: Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.
SPEAKER_01: Here the pronouns change from plural to singular, and here's why.
SPEAKER_01: We're all gonna experience suffering.
SPEAKER_01: We're all gonna experience things that are not our own doing.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna find ourselves in the foreign land.
SPEAKER_01: That is a corporate reality in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: You realize that, right?
SPEAKER_01: Hello?
SPEAKER_01: You realize that.
SPEAKER_01: There are going to be situations and circumstances you find yourself in, and you're just like, we had to tell our 12-year-old last night, hey, by the way, don't want you to hear the smart church for the first time.
SPEAKER_01: But but but your student pastor, your first student pastor you've ever had, Aaron, is resigning.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna go back and focus on school.
SPEAKER_01: Sob for 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_01: And my wife texted me and said, I want to so rescue her from this.
SPEAKER_01: And I texted back, and we're two rooms apart.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what are we, 13?
SPEAKER_01: I walked in there and said, we can make sound.
SPEAKER_01: And and I just said, Yeah, I want to rescue her from this too.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what she's she's gotta understand that this is just the first of many things that, hey, you know what, it didn't go like I wanted.
SPEAKER_01: Can we all stay together?
SPEAKER_01: And so I just said, Hey, babe, it's okay for you to feel this.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to talk.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: That's fine, you ain't gotta talk.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want my children to grow up thinking my dad can fix everything.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's gonna be things they have to experience that are just sad.
SPEAKER_01: If my kids don't know how to be sad to the glory of God, look at me.
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna be mad at God to the glory of themselves.
SPEAKER_01: And that's an epic fail on my part if I let that happen.
SPEAKER_01: So we're all gonna experience suffering.
SPEAKER_01: But here's why hope is a confession of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: It's an individual choice as to how you will respond to it.
SPEAKER_01: And the writer of the Psalm says here in verse 5, he says, If I forget you, O Jerusalem, it's it's it's it's a statement of defiance.
SPEAKER_01: They demanded songs of us saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
SPEAKER_01: And we said, How shall we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land?
SPEAKER_01: It so ticked him off that he said, Oh, you think this is a joke?
SPEAKER_01: You think now, sing your favorite hymn now, huh?
SPEAKER_01: I tell you what.
SPEAKER_01: And he rises up and says, If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above its highest joy.
SPEAKER_01: Exclamation point, exclamation point.
SPEAKER_01: Translation, you provoked the wrong guy at this point.
SPEAKER_01: What am I saying?
SPEAKER_01: They ask for the songs of Zion, and the psalmist responds with a song of defiance about Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, this happened in Paris a couple weeks ago on a Friday night when they attacked outside the soccer stadium.
SPEAKER_01: Most of you the media didn't talk about this, but as they are evacuating the soccer stadium, all the the Parisians started singing the French national anthem.
SPEAKER_01: I had the words printed out, but it's parts of it are so gruesome that I wouldn't read them in church.
SPEAKER_01: But basically, on the night they were attacked, I mean 30 minutes after they were attacked, they were singing back to their to their captors, we're not afraid of you.
SPEAKER_01: You don't intimidate us.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna march out and your blood's gonna flow.
SPEAKER_01: And they sing it with a French accent, so it sounds fun.
SPEAKER_01: And they're just walking out, there's no big, you know, goo ooh.
SPEAKER_01: No one's face was painted.
SPEAKER_01: They were just walking out singing.
SPEAKER_01: This is what we're gonna do to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know about the French.
SPEAKER_01: You know, they got I know they love wine and a five-hour work day.
SPEAKER_01: They got something figured out we don't.
SPEAKER_01: But I promise you this: they walked out.
SPEAKER_01: No one said, and now we'll sing the national anthem.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody just started singing.
SPEAKER_01: Someone struck the original match and said, You're not going to intimidate us into fear.
SPEAKER_01: And it just swept over the stadium, and they're just what men, women, children, all saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, the Bible records, I told you earlier that Lamentation, the book of Lamentations, was basically a funeral service for the city of Jerusalem, written by a man named Jeremiah who had a front row seat for the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01: He writes these words.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to read a long section of Jeremiah chapter 3 because I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_01: This is when the Bible talks about hope, look at me, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible doesn't say, hey, fake it till you make it.
SPEAKER_01: Don't teach your kids that.
SPEAKER_01: Smile.
SPEAKER_01: See how phony that is?
SPEAKER_01: You're like Donald Trump.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, no one wants to know the God that you know when you're that phony.
SPEAKER_01: This week, a week ago today, there's a young couple that goes to our church.
SPEAKER_01: Her brother was killed in a car accident in Bryan Codd Station.
SPEAKER_01: 21 years old.
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about seeing through an unveiled face.
SPEAKER_01: All he's doing is crossing the street, hit by a drunk driver.
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about, hello! Excuse me, God.
SPEAKER_01: You should read what that young man that lost his life, what his dad wrote.
SPEAKER_01: That's hope, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: That's a man saying, My heart is so broken right now, but God is so good, and my son's life was not in vain.
SPEAKER_01: There's people that are reading that have no don't know the family from Adam, and they're being confronted with, what does this man know that I don't know?
SPEAKER_01: This is what.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, hope was a confession of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations chapter 3, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.
SPEAKER_01: He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light.
SPEAKER_01: Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long.
SPEAKER_01: He has made my flesh and my skin waste away.
SPEAKER_01: He has broken my bones.
SPEAKER_01: He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.
SPEAKER_01: He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.
SPEAKER_01: He has walled me about so that I cannot escape.
SPEAKER_01: He has made my chains heavy, though I call and cry for help.
SPEAKER_01: He shuts out my prayer.
SPEAKER_01: He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones that have made my paths crooked.
SPEAKER_01: He is a bear lying in wait for me.
SPEAKER_01: A lion in hiding.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, he's talking about God.
SPEAKER_01: A lion in hiding.
SPEAKER_01: He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces.
SPEAKER_01: He has made me desolate.
SPEAKER_01: He bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow.
SPEAKER_01: He drove into my kidneys the arrow of his quiver.
SPEAKER_01: I have become the laughing stock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long.
SPEAKER_01: He has filled me with bitterness.
SPEAKER_01: He has sated me with wormwood.
SPEAKER_01: He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes.
SPEAKER_01: My soul is bereft of peace.
SPEAKER_01: I have forgotten what happiness is, so I say, my endurance has perished.
SPEAKER_01: So has my hope from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.
SPEAKER_01: My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.
SPEAKER_01: But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
SPEAKER_01: For 21 verses, Jeremiah says, This is what it feels like.
SPEAKER_01: In case you missed it, God got a bow and arrow for Christmas and told me I was the target he was aiming at.
SPEAKER_01: Now, is that true?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: It's a man writing what this feels like.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 21, he says, But I, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I say hope is a confession of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: There's got to be things, beloved, that you call to mind.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you live at the mercy of what you feel.
SPEAKER_01: And what you feel and what I feel is not always reality.
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 22, This is what I call to mind, and this is why I have hope.
SPEAKER_01: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
SPEAKER_01: His mercies never come to an end.
SPEAKER_01: They are new every morning.
SPEAKER_01: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I will hope in him.
SPEAKER_01: I will hope in a God who I just spent 21 verses telling you this is what it feels like, what he's done to me.
SPEAKER_01: Because hope is a confession of remembrance.
SPEAKER_01: Thirdly and finally, this morning, hope reminds us that God remembers.
SPEAKER_01: Hope reminds us that God remembers.
SPEAKER_01: It's verse 7 to 9.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem, how they said, Lay it bare.
SPEAKER_01: Lay it bare down to the foundations.
SPEAKER_01: These people cheered.
SPEAKER_01: As our city was ramsacked, God.
SPEAKER_01: O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall be he who repays you with what you have done to us.
SPEAKER_01: And then the ultimate.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.
SPEAKER_01: Again, why does the Bible put that in there?
SPEAKER_01: Do not attribute the darkness of the human heart to God.
SPEAKER_01: That's not God.
SPEAKER_01: That's people saying, We're so mad at you.
SPEAKER_01: We hate you so much.
SPEAKER_01: We hope someone does physical harm to your children.
SPEAKER_01: You say, Well, that's not very hopeful.
SPEAKER_01: Where do you get hope from that?
SPEAKER_01: Hope reminds us that God remembers.
SPEAKER_01: It's verse 7, remember, O Lord, against the Edomites.
SPEAKER_01: That's all they had to say.
SPEAKER_01: You think God's forgotten the injustice that you've experienced?
SPEAKER_01: Remember, O Lord, but they go on.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, if you believe that God remembers all the injustice that you've suffered, then give him all your hatred.
SPEAKER_01: Don't take it out on other people.
SPEAKER_01: What they're saying is, remember, O Lord, and by the way, if we were Lord, this is what we would do.
SPEAKER_01: We would dash their babies' heads against the rocks.
SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about that in church, do we?
SPEAKER_01: But you know why that's in the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: Because the Bible knows that you and I have thoughts that are just as dark as that in us sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: Sure you do.
SPEAKER_01: Someone cut you off in traffic and you're ready to go.
SPEAKER_01: A waitress at a Waffle House got into an argument with a man about smoking.
SPEAKER_01: She said, You can't smoke.
SPEAKER_01: He pulled out a gun and shot her in the head.
SPEAKER_01: Over the right to smoke a cigarette.
SPEAKER_01: That's how dark the human heart is.
SPEAKER_01: And so when the Bible includes that, you can't go, and some people, oh my gosh, I don't believe there's a God because of this.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the darkness of God's nature.
SPEAKER_01: That's the darkness of the human heart.
SPEAKER_01: And look at me.
SPEAKER_01: Here's your first Christmas present.
SPEAKER_01: You have thoughts that are just as dark sometime.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you?
SPEAKER_01: When your boyfriend breaks up with you and begins to date your best friend.
SPEAKER_01: And you take to Facebook.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of saying, you know, God, I hate him and her both.
SPEAKER_01: And and I wish ill.
SPEAKER_01: If you really believe that God remembers.
SPEAKER_01: I love what Frederick Bieckner said.
SPEAKER_01: He said, to sentimentalize something is to savor rather than to suffer the sadness of it.
SPEAKER_01: We want to sentimentalize something like that in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And savor it.
SPEAKER_01: Just kind of swish it around in our mouth.
SPEAKER_01: Or like President Clinton, you smoke but you don't inhale.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible, look at me, inhales that deeply.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible doesn't sentimentalize anything.
SPEAKER_01: It lets it read in its undiluted sternness because God knows our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's hope for these people, and there is, there's hope for you.
SPEAKER_01: Don't live this Advent season at the mercy of the people you hate.
SPEAKER_01: I read this this week to get myself ready for Advent.
SPEAKER_01: This is written by a man who's like, when Advent comes around, he said, I just don't feel it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: So he said, I had to stab myself and awaken myself.
SPEAKER_01: He wrote these words.
SPEAKER_01: Advent is about anticipating the birth of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It's about longing, desire, waiting for that which is yet to come, that which isn't here yet.
SPEAKER_01: And so we wait expectantly, together, with an ache, because all's not right.
SPEAKER_01: Something's missing.
SPEAKER_01: Why does Advent mean so much to me?
SPEAKER_01: Because cynicism is a new religion of our world.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is, this religion teaches that it isn't as good as it seems.
SPEAKER_01: It'll let you down.
SPEAKER_01: It'll betray you.
SPEAKER_01: That institution, that church, that politician, that authority figure, they'll all let you down.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, don't get your hopes up.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you think it is, whatever it appears to be, it'll burn you.
SPEAKER_01: Just give it time.
SPEAKER_01: Advent charges into the temple of cynicism with a whip of hope, overturning the tables of despair, driving out the priests of that jaded cult, announcing, there's a new day, there's a new day coming, and it's better than the one that came before.
SPEAKER_01: Advent confronts this corrosion of the heart with the insistence that God has not abandoned the world.
SPEAKER_01: Hope is real, and something is coming.
SPEAKER_01: Something big, beautiful, and real is coming.
SPEAKER_01: And it's coming in the form of some one.
SPEAKER_01: Which is why thousands of years before Jesus came, the prophet Micah wrote these words.
SPEAKER_01: But you, O Bethlehem, Ephra, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me, one who is to be the ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.
SPEAKER_01: God has always made big statements out of little simple things.
SPEAKER_01: Way back in the very beginning, in Genesis, shortly after the fall, first messianic promise that the Messiah was gonna come, simply said this, you will he will crush your head and you will bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_01: And God just kind of wove into the tapestry of the story.
SPEAKER_01: He's fixing to tell this sense of hope.
SPEAKER_01: This sense of, hey, don't let your circumstances overwhelm you.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you you you gotta remember, but also hope reminds us that God remembers.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible tells us that a smoldering wick you will not snuff out.
SPEAKER_01: So, regardless, if we just have a little bit of hope in us today, you're not insulted by that.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, we believe, help our unbelief.
SPEAKER_01: Our confession today is God, we have hope.
SPEAKER_01: Give us more.
SPEAKER_01: Some trust in horses and some trust in chariots.
SPEAKER_01: We trust in the name of the Lord our God.
SPEAKER_01: So, regardless of how dark it gets around us, we are a people of hope.
SPEAKER_01: This is true because the gospel is true.
SPEAKER_01: And for that we're grateful.
SPEAKER_01: So we say thank you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone said, Stand to your feet, let me speak a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_01: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_01: May the God of all hope fill you with joy in believing that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may overflow with hope.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Bless you're dismissed.