Do Christians Lament?

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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So, as most of you know by now, Pastor Joshua is laid aside. I haven't heard any update from him, but we can certainly continue praying for him in the time of prayer.

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He did mention to me his plan to preach into Psalm 6. I only realized this morning that he actually had a message fully prepared, and it was in the printer, and he suggested

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I could just read it. I went ahead and did some thoughts on my own, and we'll probably hear a sprinkling of him kind of mixed in here.

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But please begin with me. Let's turn to Psalm 6. Please listen as I read

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Psalm 6. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath.

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Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.

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My soul also is greatly troubled, but you, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, and deliver my life.

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Save me for the sake of your steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of you.

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In Sheol, who will give you praise? I am weary with my moaning. Every night

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I flood my bed with tears. I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief.

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It goes weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, O you workers of evil, for the

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Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my plea. The Lord accepts my prayer.

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All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled. They shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.

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I'm going to take the liberty of reading a little bit from what he said in introducing the psalm as he spent some time on it, and putting this in the context of his other preaching on the psalms.

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As before in Psalm 5, we have no specific historic context for King David's lament.

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It is an individual lament, meaning he cries out only for himself and his current trials. He will speak of his enemies and wish them to be away from him.

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We can't know who they are. David had enemies throughout his life. Before he was king, Saul was his enemy.

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Throughout his service for Saul and during his own reign, the Philistines were his primary foe. After his sin with Bathsheba, his own son was against him, along with many of his advisors and former allies.

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After the kingdom was his again, he still had the Philistines without and political factions within.

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Or it could be that he simply wanted God's enemies, who he took to be his own, to be away. We can only hazard guesses here, so whatever answers

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I may give are speculative, but we do need to make some determination just who those enemies were because they are so prominent toward the end of the psalm.

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We do know that David is sick. In fact, he is terribly ill. Whatever physical sickness led to spiritual sickness and the other way around, we don't know.

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What begins as a tentative approach to God swells into confident certainty that he hears and accepts our prayers.

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By the time he is done communing with God, his faith has overcome the concerns of poor health or even spiritual malaise caused by the overwhelming evils that confront us.

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I wanted to begin by thinking for a moment. I was just reading him saying, what is a lament? What does it mean to lament something?

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I think we have a good idea. It's reacting emotionally to our current circumstances.

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Something in what we're experiencing and seeing doesn't, we don't, we're not stones. We react to it, and we react in ways that are often individual to us and are governed by our natures.

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I'd like to tell you a little example from my own youth. When I was a teenager, the

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Nintendo Entertainment System had just come out. It was the most amazing game system we had ever seen.

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There was a shopping cart called Kmart near my parents' home that had these for sale.

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They didn't just have them for sale, they had one out that you could play. You could walk into the store, and you could play it right there.

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That wasn't very common then. My parents would go. The first thing

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I would do would be to make a beeline for that station. There was a particular time I can remember where there was a line of people that wanted to play this game.

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I waited there for a good at least 30 minutes. The person in front of me left, and it was my turn.

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Literally at that about exact moment, my dad walked up. My dad said, okay, our shopping is done.

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We need to go now. I'm trying to remember how

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I reacted. I remember I reacted pretty patiently, I think, but at least on the inside, my soul was not like that.

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It was, why now? It's my turn. Why is it right now?

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I've been waiting here. This is the thing I wanted, and it's right here, and now it's gone.

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I have to go now. My dad is leaving, and I think that's a little bit of the idea of what

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David is putting out, saying in this case, whether it's illness, whether it's circumstances, whether it's enemies against him, that's how he's responding.

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Why now? Can't this go away? This isn't what I want. I think we see a lot of examples of that in the

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Bible. I've already lost myself in my notes. I was thinking with the first example,

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I looked this up. I thought I was in Ezra. We read in Ezra chapter 9 verse 6, and I said, oh my

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God, I am ashamed and blushed to lift up my face toward you, my God. The context of this is the return from exile, where Ezra has been working hard to teach

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God's people, and all appearances, they've been listening, but he's been out for a little while, and he comes back and finds that not just the people are going astray, but the leaders, the priests, and the people in charge that should know better.

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They're going after false things. They're married to foreign wives. They're leaving God, and this is his response.

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I am ashamed and blush, for our iniquities have increased over our heads. Our guiltiness has grown up to the heavens.

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This is an example of a right kind of sorrow. This is a lament we ought to have when we see evil around us.

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We see our nation on a downward course. We see not but a few seeking after God to say, why

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Lord? Why is it like this? We don't want this. We know that you desire us to men to serve you, but they're not.

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Why? Lord, come fix it. We see a parallel of this in Psalm 38,

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David writing, beginning with almost the same words as our Psalm. O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline in your wrath, for your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me.

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There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden.

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They are too heavy for me. We see Daniel picking up this thread. Daniel chapter 9, in the context when the people are in Babylon, and Daniel is remembering

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God's promise is about to happen at 70 years or almost fulfilled, and yet he sees the nation around him, and this is his response.

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Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong.

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We have been wicked and rebelled. We have turned away from your commands and laws. We have not listened to your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our ancestors, to all the people.

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These men are seeing what's around them. They're responding to that, and that's an attitude that Dave is expressing here, that we can know ourselves, that this is what our response is to things around us.

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Another common cause of our lament, I think this is a bigger one for us, is usually sorrow over our circumstances.

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I don't think I would have to ask you too many questions to figure out what things eat at you, what things are in your life right now that you don't want, the things that aren't good, things that are in the experience of your body, of your family, of your church, of the society around us, and that touches something in our souls.

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We're like God. We have emotion, and we respond to things. Think of also the book of Job.

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I was turning into chapter three. In Job's case, we know the story of Job.

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He was a righteous man. God himself says, there's not a man like him on the earth, that's careful in everything, even offering sacrifices for his son, saying, well, maybe they sinned.

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Maybe there's something they've done that's just please, I better make the offerings for them.

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Someone who's conscientious. Obviously, when he sins, he's not thinking, well, nothing to do here. He's saying, even if there's a possibility of sin,

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I need to go out there. I need to do what's necessary to make it right with God. Of course, we know everything is taken from him.

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He loses his children in a day. He loses his entire wealthy estate in an hour.

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A series of people come in. Oh, by the way, they took, someone killed all the cattle, and I'm the only one left.

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Oh, wait, all your livestock, that's gone. I'm the only one that got it back.

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Oh, your kids, they're all dead. I alone escaped to tell you, and he's left with five or six men, and that's it.

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All his things are gone, and it draws that kind of response out of him. After this,

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Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job spoke and said, let the day perish where I was born, and the night when it was said, a man is conceived.

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Let that day be darkness. Let not God regard it from above, nor light shine on it, and don't we experience things like that in our lives, where we get that phone call that we weren't expecting, that news that comes to us, this has happened, it's done, it's too late.

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And we can, I think we can all think of things like that, and that draws something out of us.

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But when we think about that, how often do we consider that God is glorified in our suffering?

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I was thinking, to quote the example of Jesus, I think that's a little more plain to us, I think we can relate to in Gethsemane, where all have scattered from him, no one, he's alone.

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All the men he trusted are gone. Everything, and he more than anyone, knew exactly what was coming.

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He was anticipating it, the wrath of God falling, even though that was the plan, and yet as a man, he had to respond to that.

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His body undergoed changes that are real physical changes that we don't know much of.

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That's even sweat. Blood comes out of the sweat pores because of the stress and anguish of the body.

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Well, what does that do to us when those things happen? How do we respond?

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And when that lament comes out of us, what's our goal there?

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What are we thinking we'll accomplish? Do we think we'll get some relief? Maybe if I just tell it all out to someone, then

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I can deal with it, it'll be gone. Or often we think, well, if I just,

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I have to dump this on somebody, this thing's just happened to me, it's awful, here, I have to tell you. And that's often how we respond,

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I think, when that lament rises up. Now, we obviously, the

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Bible does tell us, we're to weep with those who weep. But I think the difference in how we commonly understand that is, when we're to weep with someone who's weeping, that means if you're the one weeping,

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I'm supposed to come to you, find out, and then I can weep with you. But that's what we have in our culture,

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I think, as a way of understanding that is more, hey, I need to tell you what's wrong with me, so then you can all share in my pain.

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I think that, in some ways, that's selfish, because we think, oh, here, I'm, you can suffer with me, instead of thinking,

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I want to suffer with that man, I want to know what he's doing, what's going on with him, I want to weep along with him.

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But like I said, how often do we consider that God is glorified in our suffering?

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We have God's promises. And one thing different about reading David is,

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David didn't have that. David didn't have Romans 8. David didn't have the promises of Jesus that I will be with you.

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And yet, he still responds differently. How often do we respond in a way that is more like David, which is good, but at the same time, we have so much more.

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We have God's Spirit with us constantly. We have God as our, where we know him as our

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Father. His Son died for us. How often we forget and think, wait a minute, this bad thing's happening.

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There must be something wrong. And yet, Peter tells us, this inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who are through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation, which is ready to be revealed in the last time.

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In this, you greatly rejoice, though now, for a little while, you have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

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These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even when refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when

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Christ Jesus is revealed. That the purpose of our suffering is that God's power might be revealed.

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It's not so that we'll be corrected because we're already guilty enough, as it were.

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That's a, maybe it's right to say that's a purpose, but that's not really God's main goal. God's goal is to make his glory and his power known.

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And when we suffer, that's revealed in us. Reading from 1

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Corinthians 12. So to keep, this is in the context, this is Paul talking about of some visions he had received from God.

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So to keep me from being conceited, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being conceited.

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Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. Is that often what we do when we have a problem?

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It's God, please fix it. This person's sick, I'm sick, please heal me.

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That's a very human answer. Well, this thing with my family, this all this, please give us peace.

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Help us to find a better way forward. But is that God's purpose? But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you.

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My power is made perfect in weakness. That's God's plan.

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When we see ourselves as weak, that's a good thing. When we see this is too much, please remove it,

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God. That's when God shows his power, because when he doesn't remove it, his power is seen.

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This is Paul's response. Therefore, I boast all the more gladly at my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.

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For the sake of Christ, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, calamities.

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For when I am weak, then am I strong. And while we so quickly go to lament, that's not

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God's purpose. God's purpose isn't to make us lament and say, oh, woe is me, I'm such a sinner, please forgive me.

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That's already been done in us. That's what the Spirit does. We've already gotten that far. What God wants from us is to be recognized that we aren't just sinners, we're weak.

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That even with hearts with the Holy Spirit in us, we're still weak. And we still need his power.

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And when we see ourselves as weak, that's when he pours his strength into us.

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How does he do that? This is from Romans chapter 5.

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Actually, if you turn with me, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 7.

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But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

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The power that gets us past, the power that overflows the problem that we're having.

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Surpassing power belongs to God, not to us. We, speaking from our side, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.

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Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken.

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Struck down, but not destroyed. Always caring about in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.

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For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

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And that is the plan of God. That's why we experience these circumstances.

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Why God permits us to live in a culture that's falling apart, and that causes us to lament.

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That God might show his power in us by the way we respond. And when we see things falling apart, and we are still full of hope, there's no explanation for that.

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When we have a body that's falling apart, and we're still gracious, we're saying please and thank you with a doctor.

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That's something that the human heart can't produce. Only God can do that.

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Now, it's easy to go in here, oh well, yeah, I can be the patient. I can be gentle. But what about when the doctor says, you have six months to live, and that's it.

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There's no, well, what if this treatment, there's nothing, sorry. Now that's a different matter.

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When we experience things that cannot be just resolved, that's when

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God's power is shown. When we respond differently, when we have a hope that goes past what's going on around us, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God, not only so, but we also glory in suffering.

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Glory. Not just, well, look, I'm suffering. I'm suffering. Does everybody know that?

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Do you realize what I'm dealing with right now? Can you imagine that? We rejoice in glory in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

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You haven't had to persevere until you've had something that won't go away. Whether it's somebody who won't be reconciled to you, no matter what you do.

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Whether it's a condition that just doesn't end. No matter how patient you are, your body's still falling apart.

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Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance over the long time produces character.

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It becomes ingrained in us, not just while there was that one time, but when littler things come, when bigger things come, it develops character in us.

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And character produces hope. I don't think I wrote down the next verse, but I think

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I wanted to put it in here. I might remember it, but I don't want to bet on myself.

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And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. So why don't we do that?

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I mean, it's one thing to say, but there are times I can certainly say from my own life where that has not been my response.

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When I've got some problem that doesn't seem to want to go away, that's not how we natively respond.

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Why not? And you might even see an example of this in David. Obviously, he doesn't get to, you know,

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God has accepted my prayer. He's been weary a long time. He's been weeping a long time.

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He's saying, night after night, I do this. Night after night, I'm crying and crying, because we often lose sight of the love of God.

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It's easy for us to do. This is an expression my little ones have sometimes used with me when things are difficult to say, well, if you loved me, then you would do this.

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If you loved me, then you wouldn't have let that happen. You'd be doing this instead. That's an easy thing for us to go.

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Of course, if you loved me, then things would be different. But that's a hard nut for us to crack,

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I think, because that's how our hearts work. We think, well, God is good. God is love.

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Of course, this is good for me. So this is what God should be giving me, and he's not. Why? We see that in David, I think, a little bit here.

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Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing. Heal me, O Lord, my bones are troubled.

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But you, O Lord, how long? And often we're tempted to bargain a little bit.

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Well, Lord, deliver my life. For in death, there's no remembrance of you. I kind of wonder if that's really an expression of him saying,

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God, I want you to be praised, and that's not going to if I'm dead. So please deliver me.

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I want to keep praising you. It's easy to think, well, God can't be wanting this, because if he did, well, that couldn't be to his glory.

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It wouldn't be to his glory if I died from this disease. God would be better glorified by me getting healed.

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God would definitely be better glorified by me having a miraculous turnaround. But I think we lose sight of what

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God intends for us. And I think we see that some in Jesus, and we think back to Gethsemane again.

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We don't really know his words, we weren't revealed to us, but he prayed for an hour.

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But the culmination of what he said was, not my will, but yours.

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Even saying, if this can pass for me, that'd be great. Please let it pass.

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But your will be done. Your will, whatever that is, whether it's for me to get better, for me to get worse, whatever you will, do that.

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I think we see that in Daniel's friends, too. When you think back to that example, it's one of my, something that's always caught my attention.

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When they were told by the king, you're going to be thrown in the furnace unless you do this. You worship these idols, or you're in the furnace.

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And they don't say, well, we're okay. God's going to protect us. God loves us.

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They don't say, well, I'm good. God's more powerful than you, O king. Now they believe that.

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But they said, first said, we're not going to do this. Our God, our

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God can deliver us. He can deliver us out of your hand, O king. You have no power over us. But if he doesn't, we're still not going to.

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And that's different, I think. Because they're saying God's plan may be to deliver us. If so, that's good.

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But if he doesn't, that doesn't matter. Because he's in charge. He will work his good pleasure.

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And it won't be what you want. It won't necessarily even be what we want. But he will work his will.

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I think that's where David ends up with stepping out in faith and saying,

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Lord, you've accepted my prayer. I'm not going to cry and weep anymore.

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I've accepted you know better than I do. You're going to do your will, and it will be good for me.

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I want to read over something I've gone over with my children probably more times than I can count.

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In Hebrews chapter 12. If you turn there, Hebrews chapter 12. Let's start at verse 3.

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And one thing I want to notice, especially for you little ones, when I read the word discipline, it occurs a lot of times in this passage.

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And you're probably thinking, well of course that means a spanking. But that's not what it means.

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The word is actually chastisement. It's a word that means pain. It doesn't mean punishment.

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It doesn't mean you know payback or something. It means pain. And that means not necessarily, well daddy's going to have to discipline me now.

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That's usually kind of what we usually by that mean mean by that word. But it's saying pain for now.

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To think of that word pain or chastisement in place when we read these verses. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself.

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Of course this is speaking of Jesus. So that you may not not grow weary or faint -hearted.

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In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. As if to say, it can get worse than this.

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What you're facing right now, it can get worse. Or have you forgotten the exhortation that is that addresses you as sons?

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This is God speaking. My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the

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Lord. Do not grow weary when he reproves you. For the

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Lord disciplines the ones he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

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It is for discipline or for chastisement that you have to endure because God is treating you as sons.

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So he's kind of turning around the motive here to say like, well this pain trouble, well I must have displeased

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God. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Please I repent Lord. But that's not why

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God brings this thing, these things into the lives of his people. And he takes an example and says, what son is there that his father does not discipline?

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Every parent knows you need to train a child so that they will learn and be ready for an adult life.

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And if you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are not sons.

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And he says, if you're not experiencing this, you're not his child because he does this for his sons.

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He brings these things into their lives. Beside this, we have all had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.

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Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of Spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.

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But he disciplines us to make us miserable. No, that's not what it says.

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He disciplines us because we sin. It's not that either. He disciplines us for our good.

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So what's that look like? What does it mean for our good? What's our good? Is it going to be,

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I have a great relationship with all my family. I have a good, strong, healthy body.

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Is that what he's trying to do? No. He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

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For the moment of discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

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Now you might think, well, how could that possibly be? How could this hurting make things better? But that's how

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God trains us. When we have nothing else, when we are shown to be weak, that we can't fix it, that's when he shows himself to be strong.

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And it makes it very obvious. It was him, because you clearly, I didn't do it. I know it.

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I didn't do it. I couldn't have borne that. But I did. How? Because his power was in me.

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Therefore, lift up the drooping hands and strengthen the weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, so that that which is lame may not be out of joint, but be healed.

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God's purpose is not to ruin us or to drive us back to the way, but to be healed.

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That we might be healed from our own selfishness, our own thinking we know best. And God treated his son in this manner.

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If you think about it, the Bible says he learned obedience by the things he suffered. Now he didn't need.

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He had a perfect nature. And yet there's something different when you're obeying and when you're obeying through suffering.

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That's different. It's different to say, I'm going to stand alone. I'm going to be a good. And then people start attacking you.

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People start thinking poorly of you and trying to hurt you. That's a big difference. And that's what he's teaching us.

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When things are against us, whether it's circumstances or people, he's using those to show his power in teaching us and training us to obey.

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We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance.

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Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope. And instead of saying, well, you don't love me because this happened, we respond instead, because you love me, you are producing a good character in me.

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Because you love me, you won't leave me into my sin. Because you love me, you are making me to seek and ask and knock so that I will find my hope in you.

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And back to my little example. That's a true story. I was at that store and dad did tell us we had to go.

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But I didn't know something. When I turned around and left, that impressed my dad,

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I think. He was surprised that I just, I went, didn't say a word about it. And I didn't find out until we got to the car that he had one of those game systems in his trunk.

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He had already went, bought it, put it in the car, and then went and got me.

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And I didn't know that. And obviously, it wasn't necessarily my obedience that made him, obviously, he had already bought it.

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But that was his purpose. His purpose was to give me those good things. And I didn't know it. And that's what

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God is like. God's plan is not to cut us off from things. But he's planned to give us everything.