Speaker 1: Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.
Speaker 1: Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in His presence, growing in His family and living on His mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.
Speaker 1: Visit us online at thelookoutchurch.
Speaker 1: If you have your Bibles, this morning let's open up to Jeremiah 33.
Speaker 1: Jeremiah 33, if you have your Bibles, jeremiah pretty good chance.
Speaker 1: If you open randomly to the Old Testament, you'll end up in Jeremiah, because it's a pretty big book of the prophets.
Speaker 1: Alright, so it's not one of the obscure books of the Bible, but yeah, it's in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: Jeremiah 33, we're gonna start there and then we are going to peel back to Isaiah for a moment, but we're gonna start there this morning.
Speaker 1: So, jeremiah 33, we're gonna start in verse 10.
Speaker 1: And let's see here Do you guys have it on the screen?
Speaker 1: I don't know what version you had, I don't know if you have it here.
Speaker 1: We go all the street from the screen this morning.
Speaker 1: This is what the Lord says.
Speaker 1: You say about this place it is a desolate waste, without people or animals.
Speaker 1: In the towns of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord saying give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good.
Speaker 1: His love endures forever, for I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before, says the Lord.
Speaker 1: Skip down to verse 14, keep going.
Speaker 1: The days are coming, declares the Lord.
Speaker 1: While I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah, in those days and at that time I will make a righteous branch sprout from David's line.
Speaker 1: He will do what is just and right in the land.
Speaker 1: In those days, judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.
Speaker 1: This is the name by which it will be called.
Speaker 1: The Lord, our righteous Savior.
Speaker 1: Let's open up to Isaiah 65 for a moment.
Speaker 1: Isaiah 65, verse 18, says but be glad and rejoice forever.
Speaker 1: And that which I create for behold.
Speaker 1: I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness.
Speaker 1: I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people.
Speaker 1: No more shall be heard in the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.
Speaker 1: We thank you, god, this morning for your promises to us.
Speaker 1: From your promises of old.
Speaker 1: We thank you, lord Jesus, that your word never returns void.
Speaker 1: And we're here this morning because we trust in your word, we trust that you will do what you said you will do, and I thank you, father, that for all of us here in this room this morning, I believe you are pressing in, I believe your nearness is here for every single person to know that you are a man, you are God with us and you have a plan to do what you said.
Speaker 1: So we bless you this morning, we open our hearts to receive your word and it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Speaker 1: Amen, amen.
Speaker 1: So just a few weeks ago an evangelical Lutheran church unveiled a new display of the nativity scene that shows baby Jesus lying in a manger except not a bed of hay surrounded by baby goats and donkeys.
Speaker 1: It shows Jesus lying amidst rubble, large chunks of concrete and debris.
Speaker 1: So at first this photo is a bit jarring, and there's a couple different angles of this photo.
Speaker 1: It's a bit jarring.
Speaker 1: It kind of grates against this traditional sense of a nativity scene of Jesus coming on a silent night, meek and mild.
Speaker 1: The shepherds and angels symmetrically flanking each side of Jesus angled outwards as if to pose for the photographer, they didn't know was there.
Speaker 1: And, of course, all of this while it's snowing in Israel, right in Israel, it's snowing in the Middle East on Christmas night.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, this image, this image here, is not just from any church.
Speaker 1: It's from a Lutheran church in Bethlehem, located in the West Bank.
Speaker 1: Bethlehem, which we know is the birth place of Jesus, is in modern-day Palestine, and the truth is, if Jesus were born today, he would be born into a war and surrounded by rubble and mortar, shells on every side.
Speaker 1: It's a reality that makes this particular Christmas slightly disorienting.
Speaker 1: How do we reconcile the version of the birth of Jesus with what we know is happening in the actual land of His birth?
Speaker 1: Right, and truth be told, it's not anything really new for Israel and Palestine.
Speaker 1: This is what has been going on for for about 6,000 years.
Speaker 1: This tiny plot of land has been at war for a long time and there's a lot of reasons to that war, none of which we will get into today.
Speaker 1: But much of this stems from God's ancient covenant to His people and ever since that, god decided he had a promise for this people and this place, this particular geography, this part of the earth, has been under assault ever since.
Speaker 1: Another photo recently shows smoke rising from the tear gas released on this release on the streets of Bethlehem we see them, the smoke rising straight up.
Speaker 1: So when you look at a photo like this and then you finish reading what the prophets have to say, what Jeremiah and Isaiah have to say about a day coming where it's gonna be so good that gladness is gonna fill the hearts of God's people and there's gonna be no more sound of weeping.
Speaker 1: He's gonna replace mourning for joy, it becomes a little difficult for us to reconcile the two, because we look at a photo like this and that gas is literally tear gas, gas that exists to bring tears to people's eyes.
Speaker 1: And so the tension that we're faced with, both today, every Christmas season, but certainly in the Christian life, is how do we sing?
Speaker 1: How do we come into church and sing songs like Joy to the World with these huge smiles on our face, but then also have a deep knowledge of the injustice that's happening and these war tornations that are happening all around the world?
Speaker 1: How do we sing songs of Christ as King but also reconcile the fact that probably a lot of us, most of us in this room, are aware of some kind of loss in our life, whereas we're holding some kind of grief.
Speaker 1: There's something grief, there's something that's not the same, that's been taken from us or something has changed or is different in this season of life, maybe, than past seasons.
Speaker 1: How do we come in and sing about the joy, and even receive and gladness, the promise of joy, the promise that came with the Messiah, and reconcile that with the fact that not everything is okay yet?
Speaker 1: Does anybody else ever feel that?
Speaker 1: And it's a really, really important question, because these prophetic promises were declared hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, and some of them would refer to when Christ, the long-expected Messiah, would come for the first time.
Speaker 1: Others were about a finality, when he would come once and for all.
Speaker 1: The final time he would come, the second coming to make all things right, to put His enemies under His feet and to restore the world to His original design.
Speaker 1: But in between, we're filled with this little tension of this now and not yet clinging to the hope of Christ's return, yet living most of our days with this confusing in between.
Speaker 1: And so this question of how do I reconcile a season of gladness with a pervading sense of sadness.
Speaker 1: Can we just hold that question before us today.
Speaker 1: Is that okay?
Speaker 1: It's an important question, because it's not just that Christmas time that we hold this.
Speaker 1: This is a tension that we feel a lot as we're trying to figure out what it means to follow Christ and be disciples of Jesus.
Speaker 1: Right, and the truth is, we've all experienced loss.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of you are feeling that even more particularly and more significantly this season the loss of a loved one that's no longer here.
Speaker 1: You have memories of them from long ago and now you're having to redo life in a new way without them by your side.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have relationships or friendships that have just changed and you don't know why.
Speaker 1: Just things are different and they aren't what they used to be.
Speaker 1: Maybe your body isn't quite performing like it used to right, and some of you, you know it's just kind of the.
Speaker 1: You know just the reality of getting a little bit older.
Speaker 1: The knees are a little more sore, the back a little more sore when you wake up, but that's a little bit of a loss.
Speaker 1: It's a grief of what happens when we naturally age.
Speaker 1: Maybe your memory is fading, maybe your children are growing up and not acting like the sweet little kids from the old photos and you're still trying to get them back there.
Speaker 1: You pray to God every night put on rewind, let's go back.
Speaker 1: Let's get them back when they were innocent and pure and life was what it was supposed to be right.
Speaker 1: But maybe they've grown old, grown old, maybe they've moved out of the house and you're reconciling it.
Speaker 1: That's a loss.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're facing this time with regrets from the past, the regrets even from this past year, or even anxiety about the next year.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've felt the loss of even the debilitating effects of sin, the real effects of sin or life wrongdoing in the world and brokenness.
Speaker 1: And the fact is all of these things are actual losses.
Speaker 1: All of these things actually do and should produce a sense of sadness, because it's a natural thing to grieve what is loss.
Speaker 1: But this creates a little bit of an internal conflict.
Speaker 1: That happens when we come into church, because when we experience sadness, oftentimes what we're told and we do this in church world for some reason we're told that we should be full of joy, and so then we start to believe it's an either or.
Speaker 1: Either you're sad or you're full of joy.
Speaker 1: But you can't be both, and so there's a few ways that we respond to this tension.
Speaker 1: I just want you to tell me if any of these sound like you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you four responses that happen when we feel like we have to choose between joy and sadness.
Speaker 1: So number one this can produce shame, and it sounds a lot like this you come into a room and everyone's singing, you know, just with smiles on their face, everyone's got their hands up, and you're thinking, man, there must be something wrong with me, because apparently I am the only one not giddy and bubbling over with joy right now.
Speaker 1: All right, this must be my problem if I don't feel the way that everybody else is feeling, that person down the row is feeling from me, right?
Speaker 1: So it can produce sometimes this produces a sense of shame I'm the one who has.
Speaker 1: If I feel sad, I'm the one who has a problem.
Speaker 1: Right, that can actually grow.
Speaker 1: That shame can sometimes grow into a different kind of response, which is cynicism, and this is really.
Speaker 1: This can be very pervasive, especially this time of year, and so that can happen.
Speaker 1: When you come into a room like this and again, we're singing about joy, you got your wreaths and your poinsettias and your lights and you're thinking, oh my gosh, this is all hype.
Speaker 1: It's fake, right, there's problems in this world, things are messed up, we're all just pretending right.
Speaker 1: And so there's this kind of this thing of like.
Speaker 1: It's just so superficial, and how can anybody be joyful with all the problems in this world and it can produce this sense of like?
Speaker 1: You know this negative Nancy type of thing and I apologize to anybody named Nancy in this room Debbie Downer sorry if anybody's named Debbie, I don't know, but cynicism, and what cynicism can sometimes do is I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to be joyful right now.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to criticize anybody with joy or gladness, right.
Speaker 1: But there's a third thing that we can do and it's a denial and it's the sense.
Speaker 1: If you come into a room like this and you're just like, oh man, I just wish all the sad people would just stop feeling sorry for themselves, right?
Speaker 1: Just suck it up, guys.
Speaker 1: You're not victims, right?
Speaker 1: Just stop throwing a pity party.
Speaker 1: Jesus came, what more could we want?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: And there's a sense of like.
Speaker 1: Just get over it.
Speaker 1: You're sad, so what?
Speaker 1: Everybody's sad?
Speaker 1: Get over it.
Speaker 1: We should be full of joy.
Speaker 1: Jesus came, newborn babe in a manger.
Speaker 1: Come on, put a smile on your face right and that leads to a close cousin of that which is striving, and we've all done this from time to time.
Speaker 1: Where you come into church, you're like today, I am going to be joyful, it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I am a happy person.
Speaker 1: This I say to my kids in the morning you're ruining my peace and quiet.
Speaker 1: It's ruined.
Speaker 1: They look at me, they're like dude.
Speaker 1: They're like dude.
Speaker 1: You're not peaceful or quiet.
Speaker 1: We didn't ruin anything, all right.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing how sometimes we feel this need to kind of ramp ourselves up into an emotional state that we should be in.
Speaker 1: Does anybody ever feel that way?
Speaker 1: We feel that way at church.
Speaker 1: We feel that way in a lot of different situations in life.
Speaker 1: Now, to be clear, when it comes to joy and gladness, the Bible does have a lot to say about rejoicing, which is an active participation.
Speaker 1: Right, there is like this decided, conscious decision at times to say I am going to rejoice, no matter my circumstances.
Speaker 1: Amy brought a great message and talked a little bit about that last week.
Speaker 1: There's something about rejoicing about declaring who God is right.
Speaker 1: There is a participation in joy and gladness, rejoicing in the Lord always.
Speaker 1: But here's what I would just propose for us today.
Speaker 1: We cannot get their integrity while avoiding sadness.
Speaker 1: You cannot get to joy in integrity while avoiding sadness.
Speaker 1: See, sadness is not just a negative feeling to be avoided.
Speaker 1: It's a God given emotion that reminds us that the world has not yet been restored to what God originally designed it to be.
Speaker 1: And this way, sadness is a gift that anchors us into the eternal longings of our heart.
Speaker 1: And you guys see, this is part of the gift of sadness.
Speaker 1: So healthy, grieving actually makes wholehearted people who, in turn, have the capacity to experience joy.
Speaker 1: So, chip Dodd he's the author of Voice of the Heart, which is a fantastic book about, kind of, the hidden angles of many of our emotions.
Speaker 1: Every one of you should read it, chip Dodd.
Speaker 1: He said this when we cannot feel sadness, we cannot value.
Speaker 1: When we cannot ache within over what we lose, we have resigned ourselves to an existence that never lets life affect us.
Speaker 1: As a result, we can never find the healing that sadness can bring.
Speaker 1: We cannot delight deeply in anything or anyone unless we're willing to walk in the world of sadness.
Speaker 1: And so the reason that that matters in a time like this is because we do believe.
Speaker 1: As the angels declared hey, rejoice, I bring you good news of great joy, meaning you should be joyful.
Speaker 1: We should be joyful at the coming of the King, right?
Speaker 1: But in order to be people of great joy, that means we need to be the kind of people who can feel deeply, and the kind of people who feel deeply are subject to sadness.
Speaker 1: Now hang with me, guys.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons that we avoid sadness in our life.
Speaker 1: Most of it has to do with the Western lens in which we view our life.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 1: A lot of this has to do with the West.
Speaker 1: Now Pete Schizzaro.
Speaker 1: He said it like this.
Speaker 1: He said we devalue loss and grief because we place such a high value on control and continue to sent through life.
Speaker 1: We like things going up and to the right, whether that be our finances or careers or sense of mastery in the spiritual life.
Speaker 1: So when pain enters our lives, we deny or minimize it by distracting or numbing ourselves.
Speaker 1: It is not an exaggeration to say that our culture and, sadly, our churches, are lost, denying and grief phobic.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because grief and loss require surrender.
Speaker 1: Grief and loss require surrender.
Speaker 1: What exacerbates this is in a secular society, there is no good answer for what to do with death and pain and suffering.
Speaker 1: That's why it's not really a compelling case Like secularism even atheism, I would argue is not a compelling case because there's no good answer for what to do with pain and suffering.
Speaker 1: And this is why we no longer have cemeteries going in the center of a city.
Speaker 1: If you notice, it used to be all throughout history the cemeteries would be in the center of a city to remind ourselves of the mortality of life.
Speaker 1: And now we are so uncomfortable with death that we have to put them all out in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: I'm not joking you, it's.
Speaker 1: People don't want to move into a house next to a cemetery because it's uncomfortable to even look at death.
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: When you go into Europe and you go to most of the old churches in Europe, you literally have to walk through a bunch of grave stones to get to the front door.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine showing up to church on a Sunday morning walking by like 200 grave stones before you open the door to praise God?
Speaker 1: Did you be in a good mood?
Speaker 1: Let's do this, jesus.
Speaker 1: Let's skip my praise on.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that?
Speaker 1: Like walking through a cemetery on the way to church?
Speaker 1: But for most of human history this was part of the worldview that life and death are things that happen.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it shouldn't be uncomfortable for Christians is because we actually have an answer for death.
Speaker 1: We know that death is not final.
Speaker 1: We know that death is only a doorway into another world.
Speaker 1: We know that death is not the end of the story, and so we can face death without minimizing it or without flinching, because we know that our God has come and he died and he resurrected from the death so that there will be a day where there will be no more death and sadness and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
Speaker 1: So death doesn't have to be uncomfortable for us to talk about because it's a doorway, it's something that happens.
Speaker 1: Life is fleeting.
Speaker 1: You are here for a breath, the scriptures would say, I mean it's here and gone, but while we're here, we're given the capacity to feel.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Is Christians should, we ought to have the most realistic view of the state of the world, of anybody on earth.
Speaker 1: Christians should have the most realistic view of both the deep pain and suffering of this world and the deep hope and gladness that is available to us and Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: We don't Christians don't deny what is happening on earth or inside of us.
Speaker 1: You guys hear that Because Jesus came to give us permission to enter into all of it, to all of it, it all counts.
Speaker 1: Can you guys hear that?
Speaker 1: So for the Christian, we are actually able to mourn and grieve well, at the same time rejoice, because God has come and he will come again.
Speaker 1: Even when Jesus came the first time, what's really interesting is he didn't solve all the problems.
Speaker 1: Somehow we got some Christians have got this idea sometimes that as soon as they follow Jesus he solves my problems.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to make light of that, but what happens is In church, where we have the thing of he's gonna eliminate all pain and suffering.
Speaker 1: Now we are a church that believes in miracles, we believe in breakthrough, we believe in a moment.
Speaker 1: A story can be flipped around, a heart can be saved, an addiction can be broken, a body can be healed in a single moment.
Speaker 1: We believe that we are unapologetic about that.
Speaker 1: Yet when we see Jesus come, he was born into rubble.
Speaker 1: He was born into a mass genocide.
Speaker 1: He had to flee Egypt right as a young child and then have to return back to his homeland.
Speaker 1: He lived under the oppression of the Romans.
Speaker 1: He didn't actually fix that?
Speaker 1: He didn't fix it in his birth, he didn't fix it in his life, he didn't fix it in his resurrection.
Speaker 1: He left them under oppression with the Romans.
Speaker 1: Then even Jesus' arrival didn't save his own life.
Speaker 1: It didn't spare him of suffering, which is why, for us, the deepest revelation of both the joy and the terrible condition of the world is when we turn our eyes to Jesus on the cross and we behold the one who went to the cross.
Speaker 1: It's both the worst day in history and the greatest day in history.
Speaker 1: It's both great tragedy and great hope, all summed up in one moment.
Speaker 1: Because it's a tragedy, because the Son of God, the beautiful, innocent, sinless Son of God, his life was stripped of him.
Speaker 1: And if that doesn't do something to you, I believe the Lord would want to open you up.
Speaker 1: Because for all of us, as believers, that should affect us, especially on Good Friday.
Speaker 1: That should affect us to behold the Son of God on the cross and at the same time, it should affect us to see the profound love that he went to all lengths, he did whatever it took to give his life, even unto death, which is why it should fill us with the sense of oh God, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: The love of God culminates in Jesus.
Speaker 1: Which means what?
Speaker 1: Which means it's okay to feel two emotions at the same time.
Speaker 1: I just want to.
Speaker 1: I know that would seem very basic, but for some of you that's going to be the most liberating thing you hear all day.
Speaker 1: It's going to be the most liberating thing you hear all day it's okay to feel two emotions at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's actually a sign of maturity as a disciple of Jesus, even as a human being, to be able to feel more than one thing at a time.
Speaker 1: So I had this experience earlier this week, even just on a much lesser degree.
Speaker 1: I was coming to church Wednesday night.
Speaker 1: We did kind of a worship thing in here.
Speaker 1: There's a handful of us here for worship Wednesday Before coming to church, we had some really hard conversations at home, like among my family.
Speaker 1: Some hard words were exchanged and some things were going on.
Speaker 1: I was in the car coming and I was both angry, I was frustrated, I was sad.
Speaker 1: We just got through some really real disorienting conversations.
Speaker 1: I'm in my way to church and I was like honest with myself.
Speaker 1: I'm like I have zero desire to go to church.
Speaker 1: And then shame kicked in.
Speaker 1: I am the pastor.
Speaker 1: I should always have a desire, unending desire, to be in church.
Speaker 1: And I'm driving here.
Speaker 1: I'm like this is the worst, like what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Show and pretend I'm going to be clapping and just doing it.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: I'm just going to act like I didn't just get done with some conversations that affected me, and I'm just rehearsing this in my mind.
Speaker 1: What could I have done differently?
Speaker 1: What can I do with my anger?
Speaker 1: How could I have, you know, would I contribute to this?
Speaker 1: And feeling some guilt from that.
Speaker 1: I'm also thinking I'm sad because of some words that were exchanged.
Speaker 1: And I came in and I was like, oh God, okay, we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to do it.
Speaker 1: But as I got, I have to do this as honestly as I possibly can.
Speaker 1: So I came in and I just sat.
Speaker 1: Now listen, I don't think I'm probably the only one who's ever had a hard conversation on the way to church.
Speaker 1: Right, that's never happened to any of you.
Speaker 1: You guys are holier than me.
Speaker 1: Showing at the church.
Speaker 1: This is the last place I want to be.
Speaker 1: So I came as I got, I got.
Speaker 1: I need a way to do this with honesty.
Speaker 1: I need to know that somehow all of what's inside of me matters in your presence.
Speaker 1: And so it just came and just you know the first part just just resting, and then somebody prayed about relational discord.
Speaker 1: I was like that's me, and so I received prayer, but in the middle, as I was worshiping, I was I was being reminded, though, of how much these relationships meant to me and the deep love and affection I have for each person that was kind of involved in this scenario, and I started just kind of bringing that before the Lord and say God, this feels so unresolved inside of me and, god, I'm thankful that some, but that you've, you've allowed me to not have to get over all of my things before I come into your presence.
Speaker 1: And so, as I was worshiping, I started to connect with.
Speaker 1: There's a gladness welling up.
Speaker 1: It wasn't gladness because everything was solved.
Speaker 1: It was a gladness because everything mattered.
Speaker 1: Everything mattered Because he didn't ask me to get over anything.
Speaker 1: He said just bring it to me, let's process that together.
Speaker 1: And so, in the same moment, I felt both sadness and gladness because Jesus in the presence of God, the God who is here and now.
Speaker 1: That's a good news for any of us who feel more than one thing at a time, who doesn't feel like all of your life is all buttoned up and neat in the way you'd like it to be, the good news is God is with you.
Speaker 1: He was born into your mess.
Speaker 1: He didn't ask you to get over your life.
Speaker 1: He asked you to receive him as he entered into your life.
Speaker 1: Chip Dot again says quote if you wish to be experienced the life to the fullest, your heart requires that you be willing to feel sadness.
Speaker 1: Sadness is the feeling that speaks to how much you value what is missed, what is gone and what is lost.
Speaker 1: It also speaks of how deeply you value what you love and what you have and what you live.
Speaker 1: So some of you maybe feel bad because you've experienced sadness.
Speaker 1: Listen, I just want to tell you this morning it's actually more of an indication that you have a capacity to love and to feel deeply.
Speaker 1: Your soul is doing exactly what it was made to do and it's not over.
Speaker 1: It's not over.
Speaker 1: See, the scripture doesn't seem to create escape mechanisms for sadness In our culture.
Speaker 1: We numb and we escape sadness.
Speaker 1: We don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1: We move it to the suburbs, right, we put shiny bows on things.
Speaker 1: We do that at Christmas time, right, and there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker 1: We love the beauty of the season, we love it, we love the lights, I love it.
Speaker 1: But in the scriptures it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: They're not as allergic to sadness as we are in the scriptures.
Speaker 1: In Hebrew culture, sadness they would.
Speaker 1: They often saw it as a necessary pathway into gladness.
Speaker 1: It was a signposts of the gladness that was to come.
Speaker 1: It was always an anchor point of another world, poetically, in Psalm 126,.
Speaker 1: Here's how the psalmist writes about sadness.
Speaker 1: Psalm 126, he prays restore a fortune, oh Lord, like streams in the negab.
Speaker 1: Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.
Speaker 1: He who goes out weeping bearing the seed for sowing shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
Speaker 1: So it's really interesting from a poetic point of view.
Speaker 1: Sadness is actually much like a seed that when planted in the ground with tears, it will yield a harvest.
Speaker 1: So sadness is something that actually becomes a gift, because the tears that we actually shed mean something and when we shed them, when we don't withhold them, when we shed them, it actually are tears that actually lead to a harvest, which will lead to the shouts of joy.
Speaker 1: We may go out weeping today, sowing our seeds and tears, but there is a harvest of joy we shall reap for all of eternity.
Speaker 1: And this is how Jesus would even comfort his guys, his disciples, when he was preparing them for what they were about to experience in his death.
Speaker 1: He says to them in John 16, verse 20, says I'm telling you the truth.
Speaker 1: You will cry and weep, but the world will be glad.
Speaker 1: You will be sad, but your sadness will turn into gladness.
Speaker 1: When a woman is about to give birth, she is sad because her hour of suffering has come, but when the baby is born, she forgets her suffering because she is happy that a baby has been born into the world.
Speaker 1: That is how it is.
Speaker 1: With you Now.
Speaker 1: You are sad, but I will see you again and your hearts will be filled with gladness, the kind of gladness that no one can take away from you.
Speaker 1: The truth is God, when he's birthing something new in our life and this is what Jesus said I'm birthing something new into the world you can't see it.
Speaker 1: When something is being birthed, it's a lot like discomfort and pain.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm not speaking personally on that, but from what I've heard and whatever I've seen.
Speaker 1: It's a deeply uncomfortable time, but that discomfort is momentary.
Speaker 1: It always is unto something.
Speaker 1: It's unto and so what Jesus is saying to his followers.
Speaker 1: This had to do with his death and resurrection, but I believe it was much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: I believe it was about his death and resurrection, but also in this life, in this world, I am birthing something new.
Speaker 1: You're gonna feel the effects of what's being birthed in this world.
Speaker 1: You're gonna hear the groaning of all of creation.
Speaker 1: But if you embrace that, if you understand that this is all part of the process and it doesn't end in just groaning what we're experiencing in Israel, we're experiencing all over the world in the Ukraine and in different parts of turmoil different parts of what's happening in our existence.
Speaker 1: There's a groaning that's happening, but it's a groaning that doesn't just end in groaning.
Speaker 1: It ends in the birth of something beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I just want to announce and declare that God will finish everything that he started and we don't have to run away in this moment from what we feel.
Speaker 1: We enter into it with Jesus, expecting that he will restore and renew all things for all of time.
Speaker 1: So if you stay the course, if you stay the course, if you're here and you feel like a sense of sadness, first of all, you're not.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make you broken.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make you flawed.
Speaker 1: You were flawed and broken anyways.
Speaker 1: Okay, sorry, that didn't sound comforting.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move into the comforting part of the sermon.
Speaker 1: No, I mean if you feel that, listen, you're right at home.
Speaker 1: You're right at home with Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus is home with you.
Speaker 1: Some of, for some of you, in the season, the most important thing you can do as we come and we sing these Christmas songs as we do the things we take communion as we do, things as a community is pay attention to the places where you feel lost.
Speaker 1: Some of you have a gratitude journal.
Speaker 1: You might also need a sadness journal, a grieving journal, because every one of those are seeds that are being sown and they're proof that your heart feels and loves deeply, because that's what it was made to do.
Speaker 1: It's proof that you're alive.
Speaker 1: I just want to encourage you this morning, some of you.
Speaker 1: The best thing you could do in this time is sow tears, and not just because it's better to be sad.
Speaker 1: I'm not glorifying sadness or depression, that kind of thing, but I am saying sadness leads to joy because God promised it will.
Speaker 1: Because God promised it will.
Speaker 1: So this morning I just want to bless you in this room.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful thing to be fully alive.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly appropriate to sing joy to the world or rejoice, rejoice, emanuel has come to thee Israel.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly appropriate to sing about rejoicing while feeling a deep discord.
Speaker 1: That's okay, because we get to live a full life before God.
Speaker 1: God did not come just for your spiritual life.
Speaker 1: He came for your life.
Speaker 1: Some of us want to give God our spiritual lives.
Speaker 1: Here's my spiritual life before he didn't come for his spiritual life.
Speaker 1: He came for your life.
Speaker 1: He came that you would be wholehearted to live one life before him.
Speaker 1: So this morning, friends, I just want to bless us in this room as you're holding whatever it is before God that God would meet you in incredible closeness.
Speaker 1: I just want to invite you even now.
Speaker 1: Let's just close our eyes together.
Speaker 1: Let's close our eyes together, let's just take a minute and be quiet.