Life Song: How To Be Sad To The Glory of God

This podcast is the ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

Helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit GrandParkway.org.

Let's pray together.

Father, when we sing a song like that, what we're saying is that uh when we say through it all, those are little words that represent a big reality.

And what we're saying, what we're acknowledging, is that there's uh many of us in this room have been through a lot, and we're also saying there's probably more to come.

And through it all, whatever may come, you're still good, you're still right, you're still righteous, the gospel's still true, and God is still sovereign.

And so we're not, that's not a confession of our toughness, that's a confession of our understanding.

It is well with our soul.

We're saying we trust our Father.

And so, Lord, uh, increase our capacity to trust you with what you say to us this morning from your word.

That's our prayer, God.

Make it our experience, we ask in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to the 44th Psalm, Psalm 44, and we are going to continue in our series Life Psalms, where we're just kind of looking at different Psalms that kind of represent the cry of our heart.

Even when we're not trying to make the confession, it just kind of rises up out of us.

And the Bible speaks to that, and the Bible is full of that, especially the Psalms, it kind of covers the gamut of human emotions.

And so uh I was talking to a friend of mine who's a pastor in another city uh last week, and he said something that confirmed because when I was working on the sermon, I was like, I don't know if this is gonna make sense to anybody but me.

So I should just preach this to myself and be done.

Uh but I was talking to him and I said, uh, because it's it's it's hard in this church right now.

And I said, he said, You gave advice?

And I said, keep your eye on your wife.

Because women don't do well when their husbands are are taking, you know, uh a lot of stuff at work.

And so just he said, it's funny you say that because last week she was kind of off or she seemed different.

And I said, Hey, are you okay?

And she says, I'm good.

Nothing's wrong, I'm just down.

And when she said that, he said that.

I picked up a pen and just wrote that down on my desk.

Nothing's wrong.

I mean, everything's good.

I'm just down.

Now, why is that confirming?

Because, beloved, look at me.

You're gonna wake up some days.

You're gonna not be living in sin.

Everything's gonna be going good.

Nothing major good or bad is happening, but you're gonna wake up and you're just gonna be sad.

You're just gonna get up and it's just gonna be like, you know what?

I yeah.

I just and you're gonna start thinking, okay, am I living in sin?

I haven't unconfessed sin.

I'm on the outs with anybody.

You're gonna go through the little list of little Christian checklist, and you're gonna get to the end of it, and you're gonna wish that something would have been wrong, but there's nothing wrong, and that feeling doesn't go away.

Which is why I want to talk to you this morning about how to be sad to the glory of God.

How to be sad to the glory of God.

And you say, well, what's the alternative?

You be sad so you get pity from people.

And we do it all the time, especially in this day of social media, and there's not hardly anybody that doesn't know who they can call on to get what they need in a time of uh of sadness.

And you've got to be careful because if you're not careful, you'll learn to get from people, and you'll never have to receive from God.

And you need to learn, you need to cultivate Pine Cove people.

You have to cultivate the capacity to get to receive from God.

Not just go to a cool church, not just, hey, I'm kind of this, and I read this book and I went to this conference, and oh my gosh, I listened to Bethel and it's awesome.

It's great, wonderful.

You still gotta learn to receive from God.

And otherwise, people are gonna always, people are gonna become an idol for you, and you're gonna rely on them in ways you should be relying on God.

And so, how do we be sad for the glory of God?

Well, the 44th Psalm helps.

It's a psalm of lament, it's a it's an accounting of the people of God saying to God, hey, in the past you did this, right now we're getting our heads handed to us, and we're kind of looking to the future and we're hopeful.

But come on, man, would you do something about this?

Uh, and because we don't talk enough about things like sadness in the church, I want to open you up to hearing this sermon and not just taking notes on it, but by giving you some introductory thoughts about sadness.

Number one is this sadness teaches us to sing in the minor key.

It teaches us to sing in the minor key.

A man named Dan Allener said that in one of his books, and I thought that that is good right there.

Uh basically, uh you don't have the same uh uh uh uh uh life song to every circumstance and situation.

You can sing in the major, but also in the minor.

Secondly, sadness enlarges my perspective of God and myself.

Sadness enlarges my perspective of God and myself because I can be sad and God's still good.

I don't have to be happy all the time for God to be good.

I can be sad and God's still God.

Imagine that.

Thirdly, sadness rescues us from weightless spirituality.

Let me say it again, and I'll describe what I mean.

Sadness rescues us from this frothy, weightless spirituality that dominates the American church.

Have you ever noticed that when you're sad, people don't know what to say to you?

Your friends are kind of like, hey man, what's going on?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm great.

Me and God are good.

I'm just down, I'm just heavy.

I'm just and they're like, oh, well, you know what you need, girlfriend.

You need to do that.

Beth Moore study just came out.

That's awesome.

And just for the record, look at me.

I'm not making fun of Beth Moore, I'm making fun of you.

Yeah.

So don't leave and kind of go, well, that dude talked about Beth Moore.

No, you're that frothy, weightless Christian that no one's loved you enough to say, you're annoying.

Stop talking.

Yes.

And if you go to college, people right over here, you go to college with people like that.

And I I'm I don't hate on college people, it's just kind of like, please live a little bit of life, okay?

And then come with your happy, clappy Christianity.

I will listen to you then.

But it just, sadness kind of says, you know what?

I need some weight on my words here.

The Bible says like this rejoice with those that rejoice and weep with those that weep.

I'm not sure we know how to do either.

Because we envy the person that's rejoicing, and we don't know what to say to the person that that's weeping.

And and and sadness gives you a bigger vocabulary.

Um this is be the fourth, and sadness deepens my faith.

It just it just deepens, it puts some weight in the bottom, in the kill of the ship so it doesn't tip over.

And here's the last one put a star by this, especially if you're a man.

Sadness moves me beyond my anger.

Why if you're a man?

Because most of us men, our most accessible emotion is anger.

And if you're always angry to every little thing, if your response is anger, look at me, men.

What's really going on is that you are not being sad about something.

You're not allowing yourself to feel sadness about something you should feel sadness about.

So, ladies, every once in a while, if you notice my husband's just mad all the time, just ask the question hey, is there what should you be feeling sad about right now?

Because sadness for a man is it's way vulnerable, it's way too vulnerable.

If I if I let that in, that might get me.

I gotta keep that at bay.

And so part of our psyche, our soul, becomes agitated because of our inability to process authentic, raw emotions.

And so that just multiplies the anger and it comes spewing out of every pore of our being.

And people around us that love us just back up, kind of like, oh, I don't want to get near that.

And the thing we need most is to get close around people, as you'll see in just a minute.

Um, Keith Anderson said this, he's the dean or the president of the Seattle School of Theology.

He said this about lament.

He said, we've traded in the language of lament for something far less, namely the language of grief management or psychology.

When we trade biblical vocabulary for the vocabulary of the culture, we are increasingly subject to losing our ability to hear this language.

And that's what we've done, I'm afraid.

We've traded in the vocabulary, the biblical vocabulary for the vocabulary of the culture, and we can't hear people talk about lament.

The 44th Psalm is a lament.

It happened last week.

A friend of mine came to my office with a book and he goes, Hey, I think you know this person, don't you?

You like acquaintances?

And I was like, Yeah, I know I know that and I know that book, and I'm not interested in reading it.

And he's like, Oh, excuse me, well, I thought I was blessing you.

I said, Yeah, had a nervous breakdown about three years ago.

I I think that because and here's why.

Great guy, love the guy, super guy, wonderful guy.

Have I established that he's a wonderful guy?

Uh but but here's the deal.

I I think right now, why is it that so many Christians they go through something and then they write about it after the fact when they can profit off the sale of the book?

We, the body of Christ, would profit off of it if you would write about it and talk about it while you're going through it.

And I said, I just don't want to read that.

I love that man.

I don't want to read that book.

It saddens me because now it's just a principle or a lesson that we all can learn.

And he said it could have been a very intimate experience.

But people don't do that.

They're just, hey, it's after the fact.

That's what um Keith Anderson's the one that he said uh this leads to reductionism, where we lose the honesty of our experience.

And I think that's where we are.

We we kind of lose the honesty of what we've gone through.

And so that's why I want to talk to you today about how to be sad to the glory of God from the 44th Psalm.

This is what it says in verse 1.

Well, God, we have heard with our ears.

Our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days.

In the days of old, you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted.

You afflicted the peoples, but them you set free.

For not by their own sword did they win the land.

Nor did they own did their own arm save them.

But your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.

You are my king, O God, ordained salvation for Jacob.

Through you we push down our foes.

Through your name we tread down those who rise up against us.

For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me.

But you have saved us from our foes and have put us to shame put put to shame those who hate us.

In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever.

Selah.

Selah means stop and think about what you just said.

And what they just said was, In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever.

Verse 9 radical shift in the mood of the text.

But we have boasted continually in you, and we continue to give thanks to your name forever, but you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies.

You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil.

You have made us like sheep for slaughter, and have scattered us among the nations.

You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.

You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us.

You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughing stock among the peoples.

All day long my disgrace is before me, and my shame has covered my face at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us, though we've not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant, our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way.

Yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.

If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign God, would not God discover this?

For he knows the secrets of the heart.

Yet for your sake, we are killed all day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord?

Rouse yourself, do not reject us forever.

Why do you hide your face?

Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?

For our soul is bowed down to the dust, our belly clings to the ground.

Rise up, come to our help, redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

You ever notice how uncomfortable we feel when people get honest with God?

It's a little unnerving.

It's a little like, hey, don't talk like that.

God might get you.

I I would say to you, beloved, that God invites not disrespect, but honesty.

We'll get to that in just a minute.

So, what does it mean to be sad to the glory of God?

Let me give you five things that from the text that I think help us be sad to the glory of God, not collect pity from people.

Number one is this is you learn to live in the trajectory, not just a moment.

You learn to live on the trajectory, not just a moment.

In other words, by trajectory, I mean you look at how God has been to you and how long God has been this way towards you.

I believe it was Martin Luther King who said the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Hear that again, beloved.

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

In other words, hey, it may take a while, but but but but but but but the arc of things are trending in a good direction.

And we need to learn to live in the trajectory, not just the moment, because look at me, there are gonna be moments in your life where it's so unfair and it's so hard that you're just gonna want to quit and give up.

And so if you relate to God on a moment by moment by moment basis, then God's always on trial.

God's never really certain.

We just don't know if God's gonna come through.

And if God doesn't come through in this moment and I don't get that job, then I don't know what I'm gonna do next.

Instead of that, because in that, nothing's certain.

Nothing is certain.

Everything's up in the air, everything's relative and pragmatic, and so well, we don't know.

I mean, how can we know?

And eventually your mind just snaps and you go, you know what?

I can't live with that kind of uncertainty.

And you become a functional atheist.

Because you just can't believe in a God that would be that inconsistent.

That's why I say learn to live in the trajectory, not just the moment.

Just ask yourself, when you look at God's dealings, the arc of God's dealings, the trajectory of God's dealings with your family, what do you see?

If you want to start a great conversation with your kids, ask your kids that.

Hey, when you look at the trajectory of God's dealings with our family, what do you see?

How long do you think God's been at work involving himself in the life of our family?

And now, now if you're 38, your natural response is to say, well, I guess since I became a Christian when I was 19 or whatever, wrong.

Okay, well, 38 years, wrong.

I would go back even to your parents, when your parents first saw each other.

Like I heard my friend John earlier said when he saw his wife as a freshman in college walk in, blonde hair, blue eyes, beautiful white dress, long legs, and he thought, what a friend we have in Jesus.

Yes.

Yes.

Now, their three sons could say, Man, God's been been been involved in our family ever since then.

That's wrong because it's not long enough.

You just go back, well, to his parents and her parents and keep going back and back and back.

And eventually you arrive at Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Okay, that's the answer.

Thank you.

Look at me.

No, it's not.

That's too short.

The Bible uses this language that arrests your attention.

The Bible says things like, before the very foundation of the world.

And so what you have to do is stand wherever you are, as a 26-year-old or a 38-year-old or a 53-year-old or 19-year-old or whatever, and look back as far as you can see, and look forward as far as you can see.

And that's that's how long God's been dealing with you, and that's the intentions of his heart towards you.

And ask yourself, can I trust a being that is this consistent?

That's what I mean when I say you gotta look at the trajectory, not just the moment, because there are gonna be moments where it's hard and God is silent, and unless you see the ark, and then this arc of God's dealing with you, it bends towards justice, it bends towards blessing.

That's the heart of God towards you.

Unless you can see that, then it's always up for grabs.

Secondly, you trust God's nature, not just his activity.

You trust God's nature, not just his activity.

It said differently, you trust who he is, not just what you can see him doing, because sometimes, beloved, his deepest and best work is invisible and unbeknownst to us for the majority of the time it's happening.

God is never not doing something.

He's always doing something.

We just have to train our eyes to see it and our ears to hear it.

Because unless you do that and you can trust who he is.

And now, by the way, trusting who he is, that presumes that you have a right knowledge of who he is, that you don't get your your your theology of God, your Christology or the nature of God from the culture, because pretty much every song, every show, every movie, and by the way, they don't want to come and say, There's not a God.

Don't believe in God.

No, no, no.

They're smarter than that.

They come along and say, Oh, there's a God, and he's kind of like this.

And you go, oh, well, that's that's great.

God's this all-loving guy that lives by a shack by the railroad track, and he just loves everybody, and that's all he is is love and compassion.

Yeah, yeah, and just two degrees, just heck, one-tenth of one thousand of one percent off of the true character and nature of God.

You live in that trajectory, that false trajectory for five years, you're miles from what God's really like.

You're miles from it.

And this is the God of your imagination, not the God of the Bible.

So when I say trust God's nature, not just his activity, it's incumbent upon us, beloved, to have a sense of, hey, what is God like?

What's what's his character as revealed in the Bible?

Otherwise, you're like these cats down in verse 23.

They're saying things to God that they should never have to say to God, like, hey, why awake?

Why are you sleeping, oh Lord?

Rouse yourself.

Don't reject us forever.

They suppose that God is doing things that God could never do, like sleep and reject and ignore.

And once you do that, then you're obligated to begin to ask Him to do things that you thought God never needed to do, like wake up and remember and listen.

That's why it's so important that you have this sense of who God is from the Bible, not from the culture.

Not, oh, I watched Joel Osteen late at night on Sunday nights because I'm feeling down.

I gotta get pumped up to go to school on Monday.

Now, I'm I'm hey, I'm not mad at Joel Osteen.

I don't think less of Joel Osteen.

I don't think about him at all.

Matter of fact.

I just think that's a great, that's a snapshot into our culture.

Hey, discover the champion in you.

The Bible says you're depraved, your heart is deceitfully wicked above all else and beyond cure.

Well, of course your flesh wants to be told you're a champion.

Are you kidding me?

Who doesn't want that?

That's like my wife telling me, man, you're skinny and handsome and you got a great head of hair.

I mean, I'm thinking to myself, if you're taking up drinking woman, what's wrong with you?

Give me a break.

No, but you can just trust his nature.

When you don't see what he's doing, here's the question I want you to think about today is do you know enough about God to trust him when you can't see how he's at work in your life?

Do you know enough about God?

His nature to trust him, even when you can't see what he's doing.

So when you're 20 and you think this is the man I'm gonna marry and he breaks up with you, does that little moment govern your life?

Or does the arc of God's dealing with you cause you to kind of look and say, I'm gonna be good.

Thank you very much.

Well, can we cry?

Absolutely.

Cry your eyes out.

But but don't act like, oh now, what is God gonna do?

Thirdly, you don't look for the lesson, listen for the invitation.

Don't look for the lesson.

If we're always looking for the moral lesson or the spiritual principle, we miss the invitation.

And and what's worse is that we kind of erode God into this principle to be followed rather than a person to be known.

Let me say that again.

We erode God into this principle to be followed rather than a person to be known.

We're always looking for the little nugget beneath the nugget beneath the nugget and give me give me something pithy and quotable that I can put on Instagram and go, mmm, yeah.

And I have people all the time come to me for counts and they go, man, I just pray.

We just want whatever God's trying to teach us.

And I said recently to somebody, what if God's not trying to teach you anything?

He's just inviting you to get to know him and enjoy him more.

No, there's got to be a moral lesson here somewhere.

And I just said, hey, you've confused God with your school teacher.

That's not the God of the Bible.

Can you imagine what your kids would feel like if every time you interacted with them, you said, Let me teach you something, son?

Let me tell you, your kids would begin to avoid you.

Can't we just watch Netflix, Dad?

Come on, shut up.

No, God's not that way.

What's worse than eroding God into this principle rather than a person?

I'll tell you what's worse, you become modern-day Pharisees.

Remember them, the guys in the Bible that were kind of experts on the truth and dropouts on the way?

Those guys?

Jesus said this to them in John chapter 5.

John 5 · chapter mention

He said, You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Hear that again.

He says, You search the scriptures, you read the Bible because you think that in them, in it, you have eternal life.

Beloved, look at me.

You do not get eternal life just because you read the Bible, just because you know a lot of Bible information and facts, and you could win the Jesus pop quiz contest, does not make you a Christian.

There's people that grew up in church and they search the scriptures and they know all that the Bible says about.

Anything.

And Jesus says, Hey, it is they that bear witness about me.

The Bible points you on every page to Jesus.

And then he says, This horrible indictment.

Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

You refuse to come to me that you may have life.

See, Jesus didn't come to give us information or a principle.

He came to be a person that we relate to in a very real way.

Allow me to demonstrate.

This past Friday, uh, my friend, my friend John said, Hey, you want to get lunch?

I said, Great.

He said, Let's go to Perry's and have the Friday pork chop special.

And I said, Yes.

And we did.

And it was great.

And it was so much, I couldn't eat it.

I just got like to-go box and a little bag, and I'm walking out.

And I look up, and right there across the street from Perry's, I see this sign right there.

I did not know this existed.

And if you knew this was in our city and you didn't tell me, I am mad at you right now.

I mean, I just threw my pork chop bag in the air and I was like, shut up.

I just ran out in traffic and I whipped my phone out and took a picture.

Bacon brothers.

And then it says, Farm fresh food powered by bacon.

Oh, God loves us and wants to be our friend.

I took a picture, I sent it to my 14-year-old daughter.

She texted back, oh my Jonas brothers.

I was like, Who are the Jonas brothers?

Never heard of them.

But my birthday is Wednesday.

I went home and showed my wife a picture.

I said, Hey, if you don't have any birthday ideas, this would be great.

Well, I know you and Sophie might like that, but what about me and Matt?

I said, I will go without you.

I don't, I don't need you to be happy when it comes to food, okay?

Matter of fact, if I could just eat in silence, that would be all the better.

I sing happy birthday to myself.

Yes.

And I saw that on Friday and I was like, shut up.

Right there in my city.

And then Saturday night, we got a text from somebody that said, hey, so-and-so's dad's in the hospital.

He fell and hit his head.

My wife looked at me, I looked at her, I said, We're going.

Come on.

Because by the way, if you're visiting, we don't want to just preach to you.

We want to pastor you.

We want to be involved in the warp and woof of your life.

And so we hauled down to the Methodist hospital here in Sugarland.

About nine o'clock at night, we get down there, check on everybody.

Hey, you guys need anything?

And she's like, Well, I'll just get snacks out of the vending machine.

I'm like, no, no, no.

Let's go get your real food.

We didn't got food.

Came back.

The nurse looked at.

The nurse looked and said, Did you get anything for me?

And I said, No, this is for them.

I didn't even get myself anything.

And she said, That's okay.

I had lunch at Bacon Brothers and it was incredible.

And I was like, shut your mouth.

And she goes, Oh my gosh, they have this bacon-infused deep private okra.

Oh, what a friend we have in Jesus.

And she said now had a BLT, and I was like, no, stop talking.

I'm gonna punch you in the throat, okay?

It's not good.

I pastor a church here in my city.

Bam! And she goes, uh I'm still not even hungry.

And I was like, ha! Now, look at me.

Why am I telling you this?

Because can you fathom when I go here for my birthday dinner, which I am, with or without my family, and the waiter comes over and he gives us all menus and says, Hey guys, if you're your first time, you ever been to Bacon Brothers?

No, I haven't.

This is my first time.

And we just look over the menu and we turn the pages and we, oh my gosh.

Somebody in one of the earlier servers sent me a text.

I just read it on my phone and said, get the crispy ends chili when you go to Bacon Brothers.

Shut up and have bacon chili.

Oh, thank you, Jesus.

Can you imagine?

Knowing what all they have there, I've never been there.

I just read the menu and he goes, You guys ready to order?

No, I'm just gonna read the menu.

I just want to read about these things.

I don't want to taste them.

No, no.

We'll have three waters and a root beer, and we'll just read the menu.

Can you imagine being my waiter?

It'd be like, dude, you messed up.

You you like need help.

No, this is all smells delicious.

Smoky bacon.

We're good.

We're just gonna be content to read the menu.

Beloved, that's some of you.

Your whole life, you've just read the menu.

You're such a dutiful, oh man, I'm just working for Jesus.

Just, mmm, but you've never tasted the meal.

You're the people Jesus was talking to.

This is how you come a modern-day Pharisee.

You search the scriptures because they testify of Jesus.

You go to every conference.

I mean, by the way, there's one every weekend somewhere.

You've jumped through all the hoops and you've been to everything, and still you don't you don't feel it.

You know why you don't feel it?

You're reading the menu, you've never tasted the meal.

Jesus says, You don't come to me.

You refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Ask yourself this question: in what ways is God inviting me closer to Him right now?

In what ways is God kind of going, I got no principles, I got no moral lessons, I got an invitation.

I'm not here to teach you something all the time.

I want you to get close to me.

I want you to know what I'm like.

I want you to understand the subtle nuances of life in the kingdom.

And then I'm gonna just set you free out there so people can enjoy you and be reminded of me.

That's Christianity.

It's not on what page did Noah build the ark?

Nobody wants to know you.

Boring.

Keep searching the scriptures.

And by the way, this is free.

Other people didn't get this.

It's so much safer to search the scriptures than it is to come to Jesus.

Because he's a threat to everything.

He's a threat to your sexuality.

He tells your generation, hey, it's male and female.

He created them.

You guys don't get to decide.

Your generation is like, well, you know, just give birth to me, and then I'll decide if I'm a boy or a girl.

Really?

Are we that big of moral cowards in America?

No.

See, it's dangerous coming to Jesus because Jesus is always going to insist that Jesus is right.

Ha ha! Which means by extension, a lot of times I'm wrong.

Fourth thing, cultivate the habit of speaking honestly with God.

Cultivate the habit.

How do I be sad to the glory of God?

You cultivate the habit of speaking honestly with God.

I was seeing a couple couple weeks ago for marriage counseling.

Apparently, somebody wrote my name on the bathroom wall somewhere.

Call this guy.

He says crazy stuff.

And the guy goes, hey, I don't go to church anywhere.

I don't go to this church.

I don't want to go to your church, but my marriage is messed up and I don't want to be in it anymore.

So if you can help us, that'd be great.

I'll pay you whatever it's worth.

No, I don't take money because I have to say direct things and people don't like to pay me after that, so I do it for free.

He's like, okay.

And so the whole time, we are 22 minutes in, I'm looking at the clock on the wall, and I'd ask him a question.

He's like, You really want to know?

You really want to?

I mean, if you really want to know, I'll tell you.

And I said, Yes, we want to know.

Tell us.

I mean, I just, I just and finally I just said, Hey, how angry do your wife and I have to get you before you tell the truth?

Because you keep saying, Do you really want to know?

Do you really want to know?

I experience you.

I'm not accusing you.

This isn't observation.

I experience you, a man who doesn't know what you feel, so you can't represent what you feel.

So you bluff.

You don't be.

You bluff.

You really want to know?

Don't make me angry.

I'll turn green.

Who are you, the Hulk?

Just answer the question.

And about 20 minutes after that, the volcano erupted.

And it was great.

And I said, What does actually feel in this feel like?

And he said, It scares me.

And I said, Yes, it scares you so much that you have sent out this false sense of who you are, this idol.

You sent out this empty Trojan horse that everybody in your life accepts and loves and appreciates.

And you don't respect that person, and you think to yourself, if they really knew what I was like, there's no way they would love me.

And he'd go, that's exactly right.

So I'm just going to keep on doing this.

I said, No, no, no.

Now that you've broken the seal on the volcano, you're going to hate that person even more.

And so we ended with a little marital bliss exercise.

We had them turn their chairs facing each other.

And I said, look at your wife and tell her the most honest thing you feel about her right now.

And he's like, Are you serious?

I mean, you really want to know?

Stop saying that.

And I go, I mean, I just don't know.

I mean, I just I mean I don't want her to feel, I don't know if she could take it.

And I said, by the way, that is so pathetically sexist and stupid.

Like, I would crush my wife with the church.

I said, matter of fact, I'm not going to speak to that.

I'm going to let her speak to that.

She had rings on both hands.

Here's how I know it.

She clicked the arms on the chair and said, Bring it, big boy.

And I said, Your wife is ready for a more authentic marriage than you are.

Because see, here's the thing.

You got some truth crammed down here in your guts.

Guess who else has got some too?

Because she's accommodated you in your anger for so long.

She's afraid of you.

But girlfriend might snap and go off on you.

And by the way, they're making great progress.

Because he stopped sending out the false little, hey, this is the idol.

This is how I get accepted by people.

And the real, I said to him, I said, can I quote one of my favorite theologians?

He goes, Yes, please.

And I said, Would the real slim shady please stand up?

He goes, Who's slim shady?

What?

You don't know Marshall Mathers?

I'm the real shady.

I'm the real slim shady.

All you other slim shadies are just imitating.

Want the real slim shady, please stand up.

Please stand up.

I said, I'm gonna pray this.

I'm such not a good counselor.

I came around my desk and I laid hands on him.

And I said, I'm gonna pray you hear this song every day in your heart when you wake up.

Want the real slim shady, please stand up.

Please stand up.

Please stand up.

And he was like, Is that on the radio now?

No.

Look it up on YouTube.

And he did.

And the next session they came and he said, My whole life, don't miss this.

He said, My whole life I've been like one of those guys on the conveyor belt, just coming around, coon, coon, coaching.

Yes, because that's how you get acceptance, not authority.

And God created you to be a man who lives and speaks with authority now.

If you're a thinking person, you're thinking about now, what has this got to do with cultivating the habit of speaking honestly with God?

Thank you for asking.

Let me connect the dots.

It's easier, speak honestly, to cultivate habits of speaking honestly with God if you learn to speak honestly with people.

If you have people in your life, when you get together, it's not like ver, it's not like verbal volleyball.

Ping, here you go.

Oh, here you go.

Bump.

Set.

No spiking.

Boom.

No.

You ought to have some people you get together and play verbal dodgeball with.

I aired this one up extra tight.

It's gonna sting a little bit, but I love you.

I have a friend that does a thing in his home.

This is what happens when you come to the third service.

You get bonus round material.

I have a friend, he has a beautiful home, and he has a thing called wine in words.

He serves wine and they talk about spiritually formative topics.

And I said, How's that?

He goes, Well, you know, it's all in moderation.

I said, Oh no, I might say it.

Hey, people get drunk.

He said, Sometimes it's hard because we have to call each other out as couples.

And we I had to tell a man the other day, you're lying.

And I said, Oh yeah, now we're having dinner.

This is worth it.

But see, most of us, that kind of we don't experience it horizontally.

It's hard to take it vertically.

And these people say to God, starting in verse 9, but you have rejected and disgraced us, you have not gone out with our armies, you have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoiled, and they go on and on.

You made like sheep to the slaughter.

What am I saying?

What am I saying is that most of us, when we speak directly to God, it's in protest, it's not in praise.

And these people are just protesting.

If the only time you get mad enough to tell God how you really feel is in protest, you will never be a biblical worshiper.

Because you have to be provoked, and the volcano has to erupt for you to get honest with God.

Last thing is how to be sad to the glory of God is you don't think of this as historical but personal.

What I mean, it's easy to read this and think, yeah, that must have been bad.

I mean, I'm glad it was them and not me.

I mean, I'm glad we live in the New Testament and they live back in the Old Testament.

I mean, where I mean, in the New Testament, God doesn't let any bad thing happen to people.

I mean, I mean, in the Old Testament, God was angry.

In the New Testament, Jesus is nice.

I like Jesus.

Well, beloved, let me tell you something.

This is not two stories.

This is not one about an angry old God who punished people, and another one about a sweet, kind teacher who came to make up for his abusive father.

This is one story and one God.

And he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

You say, Why do you tell us that?

Because we like to push the hard parts of God back into the Old Testament and say, Oh, I'm glad we're under the covenant of grace now.

As if God has somehow lost some of his godness.

He said, What do you mean?

What I'm saying is in the New Testament, God doesn't wrap us all in bubble wrap to keep us safe.

And to bring it down to where we really live in Fort Mean County, look at me.

He doesn't wrap your kids in bubble wrap either.

And for some of your kids to experience God, he's gonna have to unwrap them from all this false security you've wrapped them up in.

So I don't know about that.

Verse 22, where he says, Yet for your sake we're killed all the day long, we're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, shows up in the New Testament, one of the most popular sections of Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Let me read it as I close.

Are you still with me?

Romans 8 31 says this, what then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how we not also uh with him graciously give us all things?

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies.

Who is to condemn?

Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us, who shall separate us from the love of Christ.

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword, as it is written for your sake, by the way, as it is written means I'm fixing to quote the Old Testament.

Tell me this sounds familiar.

As it is written, for your sake, we've been killed all the day long.

We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You say, Well, what how do you get that from the 44th Psalm ends with this sentence?

Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

We've told you we get in the past, but in the present, we're getting our heads handed to us, God.

Where are you?

Would you wake up?

And they end by saying, Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

Here's the last question, and we're done.

Look at me.

Do you believe in a God who loves you in such a way that nothing in this life can change the way he loves you or make him stop loving you?

Nothing separates you from this God.

He's that consistently affectionate towards you.

Because people are gonna fire you, they're gonna break up with you, they're gonna lie about you on social media, they're gonna manage people's impression of you.

And in Romans 8, this section starts off by saying, Who shall bring a charge against God's elect?

Who this and who that and all this stuff.

Who is to condemn?

Who's gonna bring a charge against God's elect?

Who is gonna condemn?

And then he says, Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, who was raised?

Who's at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us?

Who was raised?

Because see, sometimes you got to see that who through the lens of uh of this who was raised, who was raised.

If he was raised, why was he raised?

Because he died.

Why did he die for your sins?

Who was raised?

Who's gonna condemn me?

Christ Jesus was raised, who is at the right hand of God, and who is interceding for us.

What that means, ladies, you're 21 and you got your wedding all planned out on your Pinterest board, and he breaks the engagement, and your friends are like, What do you do?

Don't you hate him?

You say, I don't have words for how mad and how sad and how angry I am right now, but I take great comfort in this.

Jesus, King Jesus, resurrected Jesus is interceding for me right now, so I don't have to talk.

Because you see that who through the lens of the who of who God is.

Does that make it not hurt?

Absolutely not.

Allows you to say, hey, I don't want to think about this as historical, but personal.

Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.

Again, do you believe that God loves you in such a way that nothing could stop him from loving you, nothing could separate you from this reality?

Because that is the God of the Bible.

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, we like to teach the Bible and then give you some space to think about it.

And so what I would just say to you during this time is just ask yourself, hey, what did I hear that I want to think more about this week?

Father, we understand today that uh the arc of your dealings with us is is it it goes back further than we can see before the very foundations of the world, and it goes forward further than we can see into eternity, God, it does not stop, it never stops.

And so we can endure the moments because we see their trajectory.

We can make the right decision in the moment because we trust the trajectory.

We trust that the ark of God's dealings with me is long and it bends towards blessing, it bends towards justice.

So I'm not gonna be held captive to the moment.

And so, Lord, make of us the kind of men and women that we can be sad to the glory of God when we need to be, and we can celebrate when we need to celebrate.

This is our prayer guide.

We prayed in Jesus' name, and everyone said amen.

I appreciate your presence today.

Let me uh if you're a guest when you came in, you're given all of us were given a worship folder.

On the far right side is a little tear-off thing, ask for some information.

If you've filled that out, if you would just tear it off and drop it on these wooden boxes by the doors on your way out, that's where we receive our offering as well.

So if today you worship God through obedience or generosity, that's where you'd do that, okay?

Let me make you aware of just a couple of things before I let you out of here.

Number one, this coming Wednesday night, we have a college uh and young adult dinner and get together at the Pearson's house.

All the information is there on the slide.

When we say college and young adult, we mean if you just graduate high school to up to about 22, 23 years old, we'd love for you.

It's not a no-man's land.

You don't just kind of, hey, come back to church and what do I do?

It's a place for you to get together.

It's a beautiful home.

There's plenty of food.

We want you just to get together with other people that are your age and be encouraged that A, you're not crazy, and B, God hadn't forgotten you.

Two great things to remember during this time.

And just be encouraged.

There's some godly men, young men and women coming out of our church, and we want to give them an environment where they can continue in the things that they that they experienced growing up in children's ministry and student ministry.

So is this coming Wednesday?

Uh, we want you to put the word out on all your social media platforms because we want to invite people, okay?

If it was up to me, I would say, hey Pine Cove, y'all go too.

They got a pool.

But it's not up to me.

Uh, right, Pine Cove?

Where's my friend Michael?

Is he over here?

Where is he?

Did you stay awake?

Yeah, that's a lie.

Barely.

Uh secondly, pray for our mission teams this week.

Mission did we have a team in Romania, we have a team in Haiti, okay?

This is a very missional church, okay?

We don't just, when you give to the when you when you give an offering to this church, it doesn't just stay here in this city or in this building.

It goes to the nations.

And so you're a part of things that are bigger than you could ever fathom.

We want just to remind you of that.

Uh, third thing, I want to remind you that next week is family worship, which means there's no children's ministry activities and there's no student ministry activities.

We have child care from birth up to kick birth up to kindergarten, but all the other kids want we want you to bring them to worship with you.

Uh, does it get crowded in here?

Yes.

But look at me.

We do this because we want our kids to see you, mom and dad, or you single mom, worshiping Jesus.

We want them to look and see, dad, your mouth moving and and and words coming out as you sing songs that make much of God.

That is shaping for your sons and daughters.

That's why we do family worship on occasion.

And so next Sunday is one of those Sundays, all right?

So just don't go, oh well, it's the it's the fourth.

No, it's the second.

Oh, you know, I gotta get my party on.

You know, you're not gonna party that hard.

Uh bring your kids and model worship for them next Sunday, okay?

Last thing I want to make you aware of is that just as soon as you're dismissed here in a minute, when you get up, we're gonna stack all the chairs in stacks of eight.

And then people are gonna come in with dollies, and Rick Branick is gonna be back here in the back directing traffic.

We're gonna clear all the chairs out of here because we have 165 kids coming to Pine Cove camp in the city this year.

That's what all these people are doing over here.

Uh, as this young man pulls his mom's earring out of her ear.

Uh so uh if you're visiting today, we don't do this every Sunday.

Uh uh, but so but we're gonna just stack the chairs in a neat orderly fashion, eight tall, and then they'll begin to get wheeled out this door here and down the hallway.

And Rick will be kind of guiding the guys with the dollies, okay?

Stand to your feet, let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

You are so loved and accepted by God that whatever emotion you experience, whatever you're feeling, he's not going to change his mind about you.

So depart now and live in the reality of acceptance and divine love.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you and dismiss you.