Maddy Svoboda

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So for me personally, I consider Jesus to be the most compelling, incredible person that ever lived on earth. You might be there with me or may not, but he, for me, is not just my Christian term that we use, Lord. That means kind of king or leader or ruler or my savior. And that is another word for forgiver or rescuer. But he is a teacher, a role model. As Stephen Baxter shared yesterday, he is, in the Jewish framework, a rabbi pointing us to see life and where reality is found and what is true. Which makes the words in John 16:33 that much. I don't know whether it's comforting or not. Maybe you've heard these words before, but my guess is that wherever we on the spectrum of faith, there's going to be some form of resonance there. Jesus says these words, in this world you will have trouble. Has that been anyone's experience here today, that Jesus seems to speak with a degree of certainty about? Within this life and within this world, we will experience a degree of distress, a degree of affliction, maybe persecution. But in this world we will experience trouble. We may not like that, but this is what Jesus says. And I think regardless of where you land spiritually, I think we can all acknowledge we live in a world that is not quite as it is supposed to be. That whilst there is a whole lot of data and a whole lot of facts and a whole lot of writings from people that say that we are, as a human race, getting better every single day and we're way better than what we were. You can read books such as Enlightenment now by Steven Pinker. It's a slog, but it's. You can read it A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman. A bit of an Easier read or Factfulness, A book that I haven't read yet fell in the list of books that. That talk about this topic. All of these books speak to the. That you can look at different areas of human existence and see how we have progressed. And I don't want to argue with some of those points, but there's a reality that I think we have to admit. We're far from living in a utopic time where things are perfect and we've arrived at that vision of progress that has been put forward to us, that in this world we experience trouble. And I don't know if you've heard of this phrase. It was coined in the 1980s by a couple of sociologists to try and describe or give language to the world that they saw coming up around them. And it's this little phrase Vuca and that is that in this world they saw increasing volatility, increasing uncertainty, increasing complexity and increasing ambiguity. That as they look at the world around them, that things seem to be flaring up a lot more than they had experienced before. Things seem to be far more uncertain, far more complex and a sense of very ambiguous. There was a Brazilian guy named Jimaeus Cassio in 2018 that started to think about this and went, what's the impact of living in a world like this? And he said that basically a world where everything is volatile all the time and you're trying to white knuckle it and be strong can lead to being brittle and kind of eroding away. When you try and hold something too strong in a world that is increasingly uncertain, it leads to greater anxiety. In a world that is increasingly complex where it used to be. We used to think if we start here and we're going, there would be a straight line. Now the straight lines seem to be gone. Everything feels a bit non linear. And in a world where everything feels a bit more ambiguous, that things seem incomprehensible. Like how do we even navigate from here to here? I don't know where that lands for you, if you would think that's an accurate description or not. But I think one of the things that I have experienced is that life can be incredibly complex, incredibly anxiety producing. And for some people it just makes it hard, like trying to not give any spoilers away. The image of. I don't know if people have watched the Good Place or not, if you're a fan of that show, but there's a point where they kind of get to it and realize that for so very long, the ambiguity and the complexity of being human has had a profound impact of who gets into the Good Place. That just living life on earth the way it is has become harder. In this life, in this world, you will have trouble. And in a world like that, is it any wonder that we're seeing just increased mental health challenges among younger generations? They seem to be rising up that in his book the Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Justin Brierly speaks of we're living in a time where there seems to be an identity crisis, there seems to be a meaning crisis. We're not quite sure where to turn to find out who. Who we are. We're not quite sure where to turn to find out what is the way that will lead me to a meaningful and purposeful life. And in the midst of all this challenge, in the midst of all this difficulty that comes within Our culture that, let's be honest, we don't do suffering and grief well in Western culture. I like this quote by Whitney Woolard. She says we, particularly us modern Westerners, are uncomfortable with grief, suffering and emotions of that magnitude. We don't know what to do when faced with it, so we don't do anything at all. Now, I don't know, I disagree with that a little bit because in my own life I know some of the things that I have done is I've tried to medicate some of those feelings. If I just have enough of this, it might make the pain go away. I try to numb them, I try to blame others for them, I try to deny them. And the question that I have had to wrestle with myself, that I put out for us to think through, is how's that working out for us? How do those strategies help us cope with just the everyday demands of our life? Where can I turn when life gets hard in this way or when life gets uncertain or complex or ambiguous? Where can we turn in times such as these? I believe, and I would argue that we can turn to the God who is, as Isaiah writes, the stability of our times, an abundance of salvation and wisdom and knowledge. That we can turn to the one who Stu has just been sharing about and Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. The one who, as Paul writes to Timothy, the one who, if we are faithless, he remains faithful through every season, through every moment, through every path we walk down in life, through every pain and challenge. And that we can, as we're looking at over this next, we're in the middle week of a three week look of the faithfulness of God in every moment. And last week we looked at what does it look like to trust God's faithfulness in the past or to remember, sorry, remember God's faithfulness in the past and how the people of God crossed the Jordan river and God spoke to them and said to grab rocks from the Jordan river where the priest stood, carry them and make a monument. That these people would remember God through tangible practices and telling the story of who. Who God is and what he had done. Because he knew that they were likely to forget what God had done for them in the present, that they would likely forget what God had done for them in the past, and that we can cling to the faithfulness of God in our present moments, regardless of how uncertain or chaotic or what we might be walking through. And if you were to look for a time in the life of the people of God that could be summed up as volatile, uncertain, complex, anxiety producing. If you wanted to look at a time in the life of Israel that could be just seen as straight up traumatic, the book of Lamentations is a good place to start. Now, admittedly I was really excited to read this book when I first became a follower of Jesus because I misheard it as the Book of Lamington. And that sounds really lovely, but if you go back and look at the five chapters in this book, you will realize it is anything but Lamington. That this is a book that is it was written by. Most people attribute it to Jeremiah. We don't fully know who actually wrote this book. What we do know is that they were someone who had survived the Judean exile to Babylon in 587 BC. And I would argue that this event for the people of Israel was the single most psychologically traumatic event that they had experienced up to this point in their history. Why? Why is there so much trauma and so much devastation wrapped up in the exile to Babylon? Well, firstly, they were ripped out of their promised land. This is a land that God had promised them, that even in the midst of their faithlessness, he had proved himself faithful, given them victory. And as they moved in and settled into this land that they believed God, God had given them forever. Suddenly now they are being mercilessly ripped out of this land, which is devastating. And what that meant is they had a king that they believed was a king that was promised to them. In 2 Samuel 7 there is a promise that someone from the line of David would always sit on the throne of Israel. And they took that to mean we have hope that no matter what happens, they would always sit on the throne, they would always be there. We would always have a king. And this king had been viciously dethroned. The king was gone into exile. The temple, the place where the presence of God dwelled, where the people could go and meet through sacrifices and priests, they could encounter God, know they have peace with God. That temple was torn down, the walls of the city decimated, and the best, the brightest, the youngest of the people of Israel were carted off from Babylon to Jerusalem. From Jerusalem to Babylon. Sorry, I mixed that up. This led the people of Israel to come to a place of God had failed them, that he wasn't powerful enough to save them from all that they had been through, that maybe he was weaker than the other gods, or maybe maybe he just didn't care anymore, which is a scary place to be. I don't know if you've ever sat in that place where you've had those thoughts or wondered those things, but that's not an easy place to sit. And so why. Why did they go into exile? And the simplest way that I could think of defining this was going to the language of means. Because throughout their history, the people of God had always been tempted to worship other gods, to place their trust and give offerings to other gods, however barbaric that might be. And they had treated the people that God had said, you were slaves in Egypt. You know what it is like to be a persecuted, powerless people, so take care of these people among you. And they went, no, it's all good. And they didn't do any of that. And God told them that if you don't, there will come a day when there would have to be some comeuppance for the way that you have treated these people, for the ways that you have walked. And he is slow to anger. And this built up through generations and generations. And a king would kind of acknowledge their failure and repent. God would give them another chance. And then the cycles would continue until eventually the evil that the people of God have been putting into the world had to be dealt with and God would have to act in justice. This is why the exile happened. And you get this as you read through the Book of Lamentations, which is interesting. It's a book filled with so much chaos and so much darkness and so much bleakness that actually, if you look and we miss it because it's actually originally written in Hebrew and we have it translated into English. But there is meticulous order within this book that four of the first four chapters are actually written entirely in acrostic form, going through every single letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. And so chapter one, chapter two, and chapter four all have 22 verses. Each one of those verses starts with letter from the Hebrew Alphabet. Chapter three has 66 and has three lines attributed to each letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. There is an incredible amount of order to a book to that sings all about chaos. Except for chapter five, which is peak chaos. There is absolutely no order to it. And it actually ends with this thought that the person, the survivor, is crying out, restore to us to yourself, Lord, that we may return, that we may go back to the promised land, renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry beyond measure. That's where the book ends. It's chipper, isn't it? It leaves us in a place of wait, what now? And so the order of this points to. I think you look at the central part of what is Lamentations 3 about, even though there is so much intensity, the Lamentations 3, because of its length, actually helps to give us what the core and the heart of this book is, because it is poetry that is written from the perspective of a surviving man who's reflected on what he has experienced through this entire exile. There is so much like imagery throughout the Old Testament that is scattered through Lamentations 3. And you can check it out if you want, through job, Psalms Isaiah 53. And he speaks of all of this affliction that they have walked through as a response to God's justice at their injustice. But I think this is one of those passages, the one that Stu read. It's one of these passages that you can only get the fullness of it when you understand the context of it. And so I'm going to read for you the verses leading up to this, from verse 4 to 21. I'm just going to read these through. This is the account of this surviving man reflecting on all that he's been through. And when he says he, he is speaking about kind of the emotional response that has come from what he's. What God has laid upon them. He said, he has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me. This would have been how Babylon took down Jerusalem. With bitterness and hardship. He's made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. He's walled me in so I cannot escape. He's weighed me down with chains that even when I cry out for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone. He's made my paths crooked like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding. He dragged me from the path and. And mangled me and left me without help. He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughingstock of all my people. They mock me in song all day long. He's filled me with bitter herbs, given me gall to drink. He's broken my teeth with gravel. These are not easy words. I understand that he's trampled me in the dust. I've been deprived of peace. I've forgotten what prosperity is. So I say my splendour is gone. And all that I had hoped from the Lord. I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them. And my soul is downcast within me. And then verse 21. But this I call to mind and therefore have hope. You get a sense of the weightiness and the depth of trauma that they have experienced. And I haven't experienced that personally. Sitting across the table from my friend Khosan from the Matu church, hearing his story, I think he resonates with some of this. But I don't know where you land at this point. Maybe you haven't been through that level of pain and anguish, but you have been through pain and anguish. You felt downhearted, you felt emotionally crushed. This brutal context. I think the fact that the context leads up to this point. And he says, but in the midst of all that he'd been saying, he says, but this I call to mind. What on earth. Earth can he possibly call to mind in this moment that brings hope? Like we've heard everything that he said. What on what possibly could he bring to mind that there may be hope? Which. That's a powerful. That's a word that can go multiple ways. So in the movie K Pop Demon Hunters, one of the lyrics of the song Free says Jinu as he's trying to. He says, when I remember hope, it hurts. And so I try to forget it. I don't know if hope has ever felt like that to you. My normal go to for quotes on Hope is the Shawshank Redemption. Any Shawshank Redemption fans? Ellis Redding says this, that hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. I think we've had moments where maybe we've put our hope or put our trust in something and it's fallen apart. What we had longed for, what we had felt confident in, what we had hoped would come true didn't. But what kind of thing could this man in Lamentations bring to mind that would provide a sense of hope? I think the hope that Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. It's one of the pivotal conflicts of Red and Andy because they're both arguing on the place of hope in a prisoner's life. And Andy says, no, no, no, hope's not a dangerous thing. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. What could this person bring to mind that may be a hope that that never dies? This is where Stu was reading for us. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They're new every morning. Great is your faithfulness what this person is remembering in the midst of everything that he has gone through. The volatility, the pain, the uncertainty, the complexity, the ambiguity of life. What he's bringing to mind is the steadfast love of the Lord, which this is one word in the Hebrew and we don't really have like a one for one translation of this word. This word is the word Hesed and we try and kind of get a sense of it. It is steadfast, immovable, promise keeping love. It is the kind of faithfulness that God holds to his people. Even when they're faithless, He. He remains faithful to them. And actually so many of the words that he says in these verses will go back that the steadfast love of the Lord, his mercies never come to an end. Great is your faithfulness. All of these words actually come from God's description of himself in Exodus, chapter 34, the first time God ever shares with his people what he is like. He says he is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. This is who God is. They're clinging to the character of God and his steadfast love. I really love one of the Bibles that we read to our kids is called the Jesus Storybook Bible. I don't know if anyone has read that with their kids. Their description, Sally Lloyd Jago's description of God's love I find particularly powerful here. It is never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. I think that's a pretty good summary of the steadfast love that Hesed talks about and means that this, this is what we cling to in the moments where life goes chaotic, where it goes off the rails, where we don't, we don't really know which way to turn and which way is up. We cling to the character of God and we know that his mercies never run out, they're never exhausted, they're new every morning, they are replenished. That we get through one day and we get to the end of that and go, I don't know how, I've got another day in me. And we wake up and go, God is like, I'm here again. I can meet you where you're at again. And because this is who God is, this is what he's remembering. His soul. That is the Hebrew word is nephesh. It means throat. It's not like when someone passes away and the immaterial part of them floats up out of their body. In the Hebrew understanding, you don't have a soul, you are. A soul is the core of who you are. And in this place, because of the steadfast love of God, the mercies that are always new, great is his faithfulness. The soul of this man who was born so much, says the Lord is my portion. Which is a word that kind of can mean inheritance. And it's a throwback, it's like a hyperlink. Like if you've ever been reading through an article and seen a line, a word that is blue and underlined, and you press that and it takes you to a whole other place. That's kind of what this phrase is supposed to do to remind you that in Deuteronomy that there is this light that speaking of the Levites, the priests. And as everyone was getting an allocation or an inheritance of God's land, the priests were told they don't have a portion or inheritance among his brothers of that land, because the Lord is his inheritance. That these priests were to be the people who would mediate and connect with the people and God because they had this special relationship connection. And what the writer of Lamentation says here is that that special portion of God as my inheritance, that's mine as well, that's a complete, like foreshadowing to the gift of the Holy Spirit as a portion inheritance for God's people moving forward. That we can wait because of God's character, we can hope in him and know that that hope isn't a dangerous thing that can be dashed, but a good thing that never dies. He ends this section. There are another 40 verses to go. But I thought, let's cap it here. For today the Lord is good to those who wait for him, who can trust in him enough to hold on in the midst of that, to the soul who seeks him, who prays, who chases, who cries out, who pours out the deep anguish that is in their [00:29:30] Speaker B: heart, it is good that one should wait quietly, that is, with a sense of trust in the salvation or the rescue of the Lord. Because what this survivor understands is that even though all of this was in a response to the injustice and idolatry of the people of God, he understood what the psalmist understood, that his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime. That weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. And so because of this, he waits. He waits on the God who is faithful, who is gracious, who is full of steadfast love. And so, regardless of what you're walking through at this moment, whether it's a period of transition, whether it's a period of heartache, whether you've got decisions to make, whatever that might look like for you, we cling to the character of God in the midst of transition, uncertainty, complexity. We can trust in this God who is the sure foundation of our times, and that we can cling to him in this present moment, whatever this present moment looks like. So just some questions to ponder. Where or what do you turn to when the inevitable troubles of life come upon you? [00:31:25] Speaker A: Where do you run? [00:31:27] Speaker B: Where do you seek comfort? What does that look like for you? That if someone were to ask you what it means to seek or to wait on God, maybe they have no understanding of God and they've heard this sermon and gone, what on earth was that guy on about when he talked about seeking God or waiting on him? How would you answer? I guess as you listen to the words that Stu read earlier, or what we've talked about today, what's the thing that stands out to you to ponder on, to take away, or to wrestle with Jesus? The book of Lamentations is a heavy one, and it can be difficult to read about what we have just read about. But I thank you for your steadfast love and I thank you for your mercies that are new every morning. And grace is your faithfulness. And so for us here today, whatever we might be going through individually as a church, may we know that we can cling to you in the midst of that time for those here that are hurting and struggling, and maybe the images or the feelings of this passage just resonated a bit. Father God, would you draw near to them? Would you help them to seek the help that they need? [00:33:10] Speaker A: May they know that you are with them. [00:33:12] Speaker B: May they know that people are around them who love them. May they draw near to your faithful, gracious, merciful love. [00:33:24] Speaker A: Help me. [00:33:24] Speaker B: Help us as a church, help to cling to you through all seasons. Great is your faithfulness. In your name we pray, Jesus. [00:33:35] Speaker A: Amen.