We Sat Down and Wept - Loren Kropf

Good morning and greeting some the name of Christ this morning.

It's interesting to notice that you are going through Proverbs.

I think that would be an enjoyable Sunday school, at

least for me, go through Proverbs. We're just starting James

at our church there, and I think they're starting that

this morning, and I think that's going to be interesting

as well. So's a lot of practical things there. I

would like if you could turn with me for a

bit of an introduction to Psalmon thirty seven. The message

I would like to share with you is a second

of three that I have. The last one I have

not preached yet, but maybe we'll just get a little

background here. The first title was by the rivers of Babylon,

and the title that I've given the message this morning

is we sat down and wept. Look at the context

of Psalm one thirty seven. Here by the rivers of Babylon.

There we sat down, yea, we wet when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst

thereof for there they carried us away captive. They that

carried us away captive required of us a song. And

they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, sing

us one of the songs of Zion, How shall we

sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I

forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave

to the roof of my mouth. If I prefer not

Jerusalem above my chief joy, Remember, oh Lord, the children

of Edom in the day of Jerusalem, who said, raise

it even to the foundation thereof stop there. And I'd

like to focus just a little bit on the first

verse and make a few comments on where I'm going

with this. Why were they weeping in psalmone thirty seven

Verse one, Well, it was because they were in bondage

in a strange land. And I'm really only using this

passage as I launch pad here, so I'm not trying

to say a whole lot about Psalm one thirty seven,

but I thought it made some nice sermon titles. So instead,

we're going to go to Luke chapter nineteen. So please

turn with me there and we'll use that as yet

another kind of starting place for this morning. Again. The

title is we sat down and wept, And I would

like to say that one of the goals I have

is to help us to understand the importance of caring

about the right thing. If you're like me, it's easy

to get distracted and to want to be somewhere else.

Like we heard in the Devotional Brother Earl when he

said that thought, well, that kind of is what I

was thinking a little bit. Where would I rather be?

And so if you look at Luke chapter nineteen, verse

forty one, this is in the context of right after

at least I don't I guess I don't know exact

timing here, but at least soon after, probably where Jesus

had his what we call the triumphal entry. And then

verse forty one, I would like to read those verses

all the way to the end of the chapter. And again,

sometimes in scripture it's a little hard to know exactly

how soon something happened after after the next So if

somebody afterward would like to let me know what that

timeline is from verse forty one through forty eight, I'd

be curious to know if anyone knows that, like, was

it the same day, was it same week? So on?

I don't think it was probably very long though, Okay,

And when he was come near. He Jesus beheld the

city and wept over it. This is Jerusalem, saying, if

thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day,

the things which belong into thy peace. But now they

are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come

upon THEE, that thine enemy shall cast a trench about THEE,

encompass THEE around, and keep THEE in on every side,

and shall lay THEE even with the ground. So just

imagine Eugene or Portland being laid even with the ground. Okay,

and thy children within THEE. And they shall not leave

in THEE one stone upon another, because thou knewest not

the time of thy visitation. This is what Jesus thinking about. Okay,

there's forty five. And he went into the temple and

began to cast out them that sold therein, and them

that bought, saying unto them, it is written, my house

is a house of prayer, but ye have made it

a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple.

But the chief priests, and the scribes, and the chief

of the people sought to destroy him, and could not

find what they might do. For all the people were

very attentive to hear him. So quickly, let's notice just

four things about this passage. I want you to notice

that Jesus first physically beheld the city. He looked upon it,

and with his eyes it triggered memories, which triggered in emotion,

and he wept. Secondly, he wept over it, which is

a physical expression of his emotion. And thirdly there was action.

He went into the temple and he cleansed it. We

say maybe he was angry. And fourthly, then he taught

daily in the temple. Notice how Jesus went from caring,

from seeing to caring, seeing, crying, action, teaching. I think

that is an interesting what would you say line of

things happening there. Can't think of the better word there.

So instead of simply walking by Jerusalem, walking by his

people and saying, well, you poor people, if you just understand,

and then just keep moving and ignoring them, he actually

wept and took action and cleansed. So I hope what

I have to say here can make a little bit

of sense. But I would like to, in a bit

of an introduction, talk about emotions for a bit. And

I get a little scared talking about things like that

in a way. But I want to make three points

quickly as we get started. First of all, when we

think about emotions and Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, emotions are

always triggered by something. Did you ever think about that?

Emotion and behavior always have a reason for occurring. If

I act or emote in a certain way, there is

a reason I am doing that. And so the reason

that Jesus cried about Jerusalem was one of the reasons

was that he cared about it and the people of it. Secondly,

it's interesting, also just an observation, not from this passage necessarily,

but you can see it here that emotions are always,

mostly always expressed physically. If you are sad, if I

am sad, you might have a frown, a tear, an

inability to sleep, a lack of concentration. These are physical

expressions of something. I feel This is a little bit

of a new thought to me, but I think it

is often true that almost all emotions are expressed physically

in some way. If you're happy or joyful, there will

be a smile, maybe you will laugh, You'll have increased

energy to do things, And that's what we see happening

with Jesus. He cried, but also he was inspurred to

action because he cared. And that is my third observation

about emotions is they often spur us to action. A

crying baby will evoke invoke the senses of a mom

really quickly. A screaming child will get the father to

just go and get that person out of trouble. Now,

when they scream too much, we will get used to it.

But but if we know there's trouble, we will react

and we will just get in there and even hurt

ourselves doing it. Is that an emotion. Maybe that's not always,

maybe that's something else, but it has something to do

with what we feel and it makes us act upon it.

I'm sure it's much more complicated than that, but just

some observations. Emotions can also be misled. So we said

they can be triggered, they are expressed, and they p

use action. But we can also be emotional about the

wrong things. We can cry about the wrong things, laugh

about the wrong things, become joyful about the wrong things.

We can have the wrong emotional response to a situation.

That's easy to do if you struggle with anger. And thirdly,

we can become emotionally injured. All right, Just an example.

Let's say you are somewhere in a parking lot and

your name is James, and you're a Christian. You watch

as someone backs into your pickup in your car, and

you up to them and you just scream and you

yell at them for being so careless to back into

your vehicle. That's a mislet emotion. But why well, it's

something you care about, something I care about. Mislet emotions

also occur when I have been hurt, maybe innocently hurt,

or I have improperly grieved. Maybe that's not completely fair

to put those together, but emotional damage can happen because

we live in a fallen world, we live with fallen people,

and maybe I've lost a loved one or something like that,

and I don't properly allow myself to grieve. I'm continually

in denial. We can become emotionally wounded and we don't

heal like we should. Or maybe, of course it can

be abuse or something like that. But when we are

in that situation, we will tend to respond in unhealthy ways,

innocently or not, and so our emotions are acted out

rather than talked out and that's an interesting one to

think about too. For me is emotions are generally if

they are not talked out, they are acted out, but

often perhaps it's both. An example of that is a

husband and wife screaming and yelling at each other. Hopefully

that doesn't happen here, but those emotions are being acted

upon when it would be better to sit down and

find a place to talk about it. All right, So

there's some just some groundwork on emotions, some really basic

ideas and thoughts. You can disagree with them if they're

not accurate. The question I would like to ask you

this morning and me is what do you weep about?

So in PSL one thirty seven, we just briefly looked

at that that was Israel and captivity, and they were

weeping because they were in bondage. And that's not how

we should be this morning. So that's not really what

my message is about. But they were in a strange

land and they were remembering Zion, and I believe they

cared about something there. When they remembered Zion, they realized that,

you know what, there's something better that we could have,

and they actually wanted it. I've wondered a little bit

could have they just kind of fit in and gotten

by and had a good time. But why did they weep?

Was it just because they were in a strange land?

If I go to China or North Korea? When we land,

will I automatically weep? What causes a person to weep?

To become angry, to be happy, to be sad? I

want to give one more illustration before moving on here.

Two more. I'm not a huge funeral person, but let's

say that you go to a funeral of a ninety

year old man that you didn't know lived in Alabama,

and the reason that you went is you liked to

visit with people. I'm sure a mena nite would never

do that, would you, oh at his funeral? I don't

think I would, because I don't really care that much

if he's dead. Now it sounds bad, but we're not God,

and we can't care that everybody dies. Just not possible.

It's impossible for me to care about everybody in the

world in the way that God can't. Yes, we should

care about everybody in the world in a sense, but

we can't go to everybody's funeral. We can't cry at

everybody's funeral. We can't become attached to everybody, right, and

so I am not emotionally invested in that person. I

am detached. That makes sense. Now, let's say you're part

of a church community and a ten year old boy

would drown, so you remember, maybe you know of some

examples of that. I think of Kyle Lehman up in Washington,

used to be there. I think he helped his brother,

tried to help him out, and I don't remember how

old his brother was, but reasonably young, unable to save him.

Do you think he cried at a brother's funeral? Well?

I think he did. Why what's the difference between that

and the ninety year old man? Not necessarily just because

one is older or younger, but because of an attachment,

a investment in that person's life, personal investment. I would

like to make four points. I don't feel like this

is super straight line. I'm going here on just one, two, three,

to seven, but I would like to make four points

and then move on to some other practical things before

we close here. So number one, one of the points

I would like to make this morning is that we

must invest in the church. Do you see where I'm

going with that? We talked about going to a funeral

of a person you don't know, and a person you

do know, a person you haven't invested in, and a

person you have. My question to us this morning is

have you invested in God's Kingdom? Have I? You see?

At the top of the list of the concerns of

the head of the head is the body of the

head is the body. On the top of the list

of the concerns of the groom is the bride. And

at the top of the list of concerns of Jesus

is his church. And at the top of the list

of the Christians concerns is what? Well? You have to

wonder sometimes when you look when I look at my life,

but I would ask us, what is the top of

the list of things I get excited about? What is

at the top of the list of things I get

angry about? What is that the top of the list

of things that I get joyful about? And what is

at the top of the list of things that I

get sad about? If you are and if I am

a Christian today, I have chosen to invest my life

in the Kingdom of God. I don't become a Christian

and then later decide, you know, what I wonder if

I should invest in people of God. Now that is

the choice we are making. I am choosing to weep

for Jerusalem. The question is do I Now, I understand

we can't do everything. I'm not suggesting that we can

do everything there is to do in the Kingdom of

God by ourselves. You know as well as I do, hopefully,

that you can't be on twenty committees at once and

do a good job on all of them. It's not

what I'm not talking about that here, But I do

encourage us this morning that if you say no to

a kingdom based opportunity, let it be because you are

pursuing another one, rather than too busy vacationing, pursuing hobbies,

paying off debt, earning money, and entertaining myself. And so

this applies that maybe you're thinking local body, It could

apply global, it could apply in any way. You can

apply how you want, however God wants you to here.

I think it applies well to the local body. But

as Jesus came near Jerusalem, he looked at it and

it seemed to have trigger an overwhelming feeling within him

because he cared, and because he had invested himself one

hundred percent into His people. If our churches today find

ourselves filled with people who don't know how to cry

figuratively or literally, and are without care for the people

of God, we might as well go home. In a sense,

whatever you all want to do, go ahead. If that's

my attitude about the local or global or broader church,

maybe I should just go home. But if, on the

other hand, on the positive side, if we find ourselves

with people, even in our human weakness and problems. Sometimes

if we talk about things that face the church and

are joyful for it, and weep for it, and are

sad for it, and maybe sometimes just a tad angry

for it, there's a lot of hope for the church.

In other words, our feelings express what we care about.

My question is do I have care an investment in

the church? Number two? I would like to encourage us

this morning. If you don't feel if I don't feel

like investing, do it anyway. Another way of saying this

is that it's always right to do right. It's much

easier to say this than to do this. Sometimes we

don't feel like caring. Sometimes we feel like giving up.

Sometimes we get tired of all the inconsistency. Sometimes we

are discouraged. But I must remember that investing in the

Church of God is not always easy, and that's normal.

It's helpful for me to be reminded of that, that

it's normal for it to be a little hard sometimes,

and it's normal to make some sacrifices for the church,

and maybe it's normal not to be noticed sometimes. The

same is true of your marriage or of any other relationship.

Just because you don't agree with your spouse one day

doesn't mean you divorce them the next. And so if

you find yourself, if I find myself not caring enough

for the church, not feeling enough for the church, for

the people I go to church with, or for the

people in whatever circles I relate to, I don't think

we should sit back and relax and wait for care

medication to rain down on us from God's pharmacy. We

can't expect someone to walk by and just give us

a vaccine that will cure this. But get involved. Get involved.

You've seen it as well, probably, But I remember a

particular situation actually in this building, where someone came into

a circle of people that he didn't normally relate to

and talked about a nonprofit organization and kind of like, well,

five years ago he probably didn't care about that, but

then he was caring about it because he got involved.

Now it could go both ways there, but it's interesting

that what we do influences who we are as well

as who we are influences what we do. It goes

both ways. Think about that, and if you don't feel

like investing in the church, whatever scale you want to

look at that, I would just encourage you and all

of us to just do it anyway. Number three, turn

with me to Psalm eighty five. There's a neat little

verse here that I probably risk doing a little proof

texting here this morning, but I think it's a good

principle in scripture. I think it's biblical Psalm eighty five.

And if you want something to read this afternoon or

tomorrow morning, you could read the whole Psalm here. I

don't think i'll do that, but it does kind of

fit together, this whole Psalm does. I'd like to focus

a little bit on verse ten, and maybe i'll just

read verse nine through thirteen. Here this is asking for

God's mercy and coming out of bondage into God. Surely

his salvation is nigh them that fear Him, that glory

may dwell in our land. And verse ten, mercy and

truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Versus eleven. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and

righteousness shall look down from heaven. Yea, the Lord shall

give that which is good, and our land shall yield

her increase. Righteousness shall go before him and shall set

us in the way of his steps. And if you

go to the first part of Psalm eighty five here

you'll notice God's mercy. And it's interesting. In the last

part here he's talking about God's truth a little bit,

and I find that interesting. But I guess my point

here number three from Psalm eighty five to ten is

that mercy and truth should influence my emotions. Now, maybe

that's not deep enough, that's too shallow to think of

it that way, but maybe it's practical enough. We can

get a hold of it. At least I find it

easy for my emotions to be influenced either by truth

too much or by mercy too much. You know, you

know what I'm talking about. I think mercy without truth

tends to give peace without righteousness, while truth without mercy

tends to give righteousness without peace. Again just a general concept.

Maybe that's that's not the best way to say it.

But mercy and truth, suffice it to say, must go together,

and our emotions should be influenced by mercy and truth together.

Sometimes it can be helpful maybe for me to look

at the way I react to things and say, am

I properly balanced? Because I'm not okay, And so it

can help me to see my heart when I look

at how I react to something emotionally. So let's say

that someone comes to your church, maybe a young man,

and he smells like a barnyard and maybe looks a

little bit like one, and we could go up to them,

and maybe it's it could be on either side here,

but we could say to him, couldn't you shower before

you come? Couldn't you dress up a little bit respectfully?

And you know, those things are true in a way.

It maybe would be good at least if you're an

organ in twenty twenty four in Halsey, you probably should

dress up a little bit. You should dress respectfully whatever,

you should not smell nasty. So those things are true,

and you could come to that person. I could go

to that person, just just tell them the truth. But

you know, if I have a conversation with him and

ask him how his job is going, and he says, well, yea,

it's going. Well, it's a lot of work. I work

from my dad and cow was sick and the sick

cow died. And you ask him about how big this

dad's farm is, Well, they have a lot of cattle,

and his dad wants him to work on Sunday morning.

And I'm just completely making this up. But the point is,

as we begin to understand maybe even a bad home

situation or something that's kind of influencing this young man

to come this way, we start to have a little

mercy on him. Does that make sense. He still needs

to know the truth at some point, and he still

needs to be led to the truth if he's being

offensive to people, the truth needs to be told at

some point. But a mercy and truth can lead someone

much better than just one or the other. And I

mean I stand in need of that probably as much

as anybody here. It's something that I think is a

really powerful concept that if we can get a hold

of it can be very helpful. And I feel like

I hardly know how to get a hold of it.

But mercy and truth should influence my emotions. It's a

way maybe I can check my life and say, is

that am I being balanced here? There's no way, in

no way excuses sin or wrong or wrong direction. It's

not what I'm saying here, but we are getting much

closer to an actual solution by using both mercy and

truth rather than just approaching something with the cold, hard

facts all the time. It's easier to apart sometimes and

is to build up. I think mercy truth can sometimes

tear down what should be torn down, and mercy builds

up what can be built up. All right, Number four,

I would like to say this yet before we go

on to some I know this is already practical, but

I have just a few more practical points here at

the end. But number four carrying people disengage from unimportant things.

In John twenty one, verse twenty two, I'm just pulling

a verse out there a little bit, But we have

a story of Jesus telling Peter, what is that to thee?

Follow thou me and you maybe know the context there,

but Jesus is telling Peter there's some things you're going

to have to leave behind in order to follow something

more important. And so to flip this around to the negative.

First is that if I disengage or don't care about

the church. Let me reword that if I don't care

about the church, I will disengage from it, and if

I don't care about you or this other person, I

will not engage with them. And if I don't care

about my family or whatever it is, I will disengage

from them. If you're driving a tractor, you onhook machinery,

and you put something else on, you disengage from one.

You engage with another because something else has become more

important at the moment. And when disengaged from a church,

and I think it's true in a local body, a

person is likely engaged to something besides the church, and

it's probably not better. And on the flip side, though,

I must understand that if I am engaged and invested

in the church and care about it and weep for it,

there are some things I can't weep for anymore. We

have a word for that in English language. It's called sacrifice.

And God calls us to sacrifice our entire body and

our entire life, really even our families at times, even

our friends a Christian calls this normal, and perhaps we

get soft in that. And I don't know all the

answers to how that looks, but the Holy Spirit can

guide you in that. But often we have to sacrifice

earthly things in favor of heavenly priorities, and it can

be very costly at times. Sometimes there's money I cannot earn,

a field I cannot farm because Jesus has called me

to forsake some earthly things. All right, a few warnings

and encouragements before we conclude, maybe one warning, and you

can think about this and see if it's true. Compare

it with scripture. But I believe that a non invested

church member we're talking local body here, but again I

suppose it could apply broader, but it's more easily understood locally.

An uninvested church member wears down the whole church. Potentially.

Maybe sometimes I think that if I don't do my job,

I can kind of fly under the radar. But it's

very likely you're not flying under any radar, or you

might be some people's. But probably one person not investing

makes a wait on somebody else. Very likely you can

think about that and see if it's true. Secondly, I

would like to encourage us this morning to invest in

prayer for the concerns that you have for the church.

Maybe this is the mercy and truth part a little bit.

If we're truth people and we're out to spread truth,

maybe especially we need to spend some time in prayer

before we do that. Maybe you wish something were different,

or maybe you don't get along with someone you know.

Prayer is not asking God necessarily to sweep in and

make all the drastic changes you want, but it's asking

God to help my attitudes align with His priorities. So

remember to invest in prayer. It's so easy to forget

that for me. Number three, So I said already it's

fine to say no to some things in kingdom work,

but try to do it because of other heavenly obligations.

And I don't know how that applies to your life

for sure, but check your heart on that. Is it

my worldliness that's getting in the way of not teaching

Sunday school or not going somewhere that God has called me?

Is it my materialism? We need to say no to

some things, for sure, but if it can be because

of heavenly reasons, if I can say it that way

I think, you know what I mean, I think we're

much better off. Just a way to think about it.

Number four, I want to encourage us that when we

accept responsibility or assigned something, be faithful in it. Be

faithful in it. You know, our communities, especially some of us,

tend to operate on a trust system. Maybe the deacon

or the minister or the song leader doesn't have somebody

looking over their shoulder, keeping track of every song, keeping

track of how balanced they are all the time, keeping

track exactly of what they're doing. Maybe you're a trustee.

You know, it's possible to be on a board or

on a committee and be a drag to it. And

probably I've been one of those people sometimes. Maybe we

all have our weak spots. I guess I'm more thinking,

try to invest when you're given the opportunity. Try to invest,

even if there's no written document telling you exactly how

to act. Take some initiative. Men, of course, do it

appropriately for your culture, but try to invest. But I

think as each person, from the you know, the song leader,

to the preacher, to the Sunday school teacher to whatever,

as we come invested in what we've been called to do.

It will bless the church, and it will bless God's people,

and it'll bless his kingdom, and it'll bless Jesus, the

one we are supposed to be here about, right, what

your hand finds to do, do with your might again,

something I need. Some of us laid back people need

all that encouragement we can get. Maybe number five. Maybe

I'll say two things on number five. I'm not sure

which one to do first. But learn to recognize when

people do invest again, something we can probably most of

us can grow in. Learn to recognize and see the

value of other people and what they've done. Maybe it

was the Sunday school teacher, the song leader, thank you

for leading that song. Sometimes people need a little encouragement,

And I think our church is are generally better off

when we have an encouraging atmosphere on the good things

that are here. Not to ignore the bad, of course,

but a healthy compliment is good. At the same time,

I would also say that don't always expect to be recognized.

That's okay too. That's normal as well that sometimes people

don't recognize, or maybe they do and they don't say anything.

It's a challenge to me to learn to be sacrificial

when nobody's telling me to be and nobody recognizes that

that's good for us. We need to learn to be

that kind of person, not to have a pity me attitude,

but just to not expect to always be recognized for

our sacrifices. And if we are, say thank you. All right,

So as we conclude here this morning, I want to

ask you this question again, what do you weep for?

What do I weep for? Jesus looked at Jerusalem and

he lost it. You could say, I don't know if

it was just a few tears. I don't know if

it was uncontrolled sobbing, but something prompted him and his

emotions to spill out because he cared about something, and

ultimately he cared about you and me. Is what that

was about, wasn't it? But my question is to me,

is do I do that? When I view the Church

and its people and the future of it and the

work we have to do, tremendous amount of work we

have to do in this world before God calls us?

Do I weep and invest in it? And like Jerusalem

or like Christ beholding Jusalem, does that well up within me?

Do I feel it? If I don't. Is there something wrong?

And if I do, praise the Lord. But may we

be people like Christ? When we look at the Church

of God with its faults and its problems, and the

people who like me are inconsistent. Sometimes do I still

care and invest anyway? And does the future of the

church weigh on your shoulders? Thank you for your attention.