How to Pray When Everything Is Falling Apart // David Swart

Good morning, church.

Let's pray.

Father, this morning, as we are ready to open your word, ready to sit under your word, Father, we start by acknowledging your presence in this room.

Your presence in our life.

We acknowledge your Lordship, your kingship.

And as we open the word, Lord, we see it not as a list of rules, Lord, but an invitation from a Father who brings us into a flourishing life.

And so this morning I pray, Lord, as we read it, would you challenge us?

Would you shape us?

Would we submit ourselves willingly to your good, good word and your great news?

We do this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

You may be see this.

I'm so excited, by the way, about the new life groups that have started.

And Carl and Abby, thank you for starting the women's freedoms group as a men's freedoms group.

And I love how you just nonchalantly just walked into that space.

Because pornography, any kind of sexual sin, it's it's so prevalent in our community, but it's often in our church space, not talked about.

And I love that there's a space where we can come and help people get freedom from these addictions and walk it through under a no-shame place, under a grace of the Lord that wants to bring us into freedom and wholeness.

So please check those out.

Um, there's a great, great groups to sign up for.

Also, before I get into the word, I want to start a new initiative here called 614 Carvanna.

Um praises.

I know of four people who need a car.

And I heard about it this week.

So, here it is.

If you have an extra car and you've been wondering, I wonder what to do with this car, I have a place for you.

614 Carvanna.

I'm kind of joking, but come and tell me.

Come and tell me.

I know of exactly four people right now who I found out in this week.

Students, people in different life stages looking for it, needing a car.

You know, the Bible says we we share our positions with one another.

So if you've got one and you're like, man, I can maybe get$2,000 for it somewhere, but I don't have time.

I got time.

I'll help you.

I'll help you take care of it.

Or if you're like, man, I got so much extra money, I don't know what to do with it, I got ideas.

And four cars.

Let's help a brother out, amen.

And a sister.

And let's be the kind of church that's just I'll be we are generous.

You know, you cannot outgive the Lord.

Amen.

Good, let's do it, and then we'll testify next week.

Amen.

Good.

Who likes zombie movies?

No.

I love zombie movies.

World War Z, best zombie movie ever.

It's those fast zombies.

You know, they I don't like the slow zombies, I like the fast ones.

Does nobody know what I'm talking about?

Who likes Marvel movies?

Okay.

Apparently the whole of America likes Marvel movies.

Um what else you got?

Uh who likes those romantic, soppy movies?

Why didn't no girls uh guys say anything?

Alright.

Um, who likes those sad, sad movies about real life and like oh no, come on.

Really?

I do not like sad movies at all.

At all.

They're none of the like the real life ones, you know.

You're like, ugh, this is so sad.

Um when when we're we're in the preaching series, I'm going somewhere.

We're in a we're in a preaching series, and we've put out this outline of walking through the Old Testament and really getting the whole arc of this story of the Old Testament and put it together a long time ago.

And when I got ready to prepare for this week's message and I realized it's on Lamentations, I went, ugh.

It's like it's like watching one of those old lifetime sad movies.

I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

Um so then I thought, I wonder what Danny and Noah are doing this week.

Maybe they want to preach it.

But but the longer I sat in Lamentations as I was preparing for it, I just began to see how important this book is.

Right there, five chapters, how important it is to help you and I deal with the grief and the struggle that we see in life and how to do it biblically.

Lamentations is beautiful for that, but it's it's important for us to learn how to approach lamenting, how to approach looking at these trials, these these hard things that go through life.

I felt similarly growing up in South Africa that the Holocaust was obviously a fact that I knew about, but not something I emotionally identified with.

I I don't quite understand anti-Semitism, I don't understand why people particularly have such an issue with the Jewish people.

So it just wasn't a plus or a minus, it was just a thing.

And then I watched that movie, Schindler's List.

Has anyone seen that movie?

There's something about taking a couple hours to sit in the mess of what other people have experienced, to help you begin to not just know the facts, something happened, it was bad, you know, that, but to sit in it, to feel it, to experience it, and it begins to change you.

I I then read a book called Um Night by Eli Weasel and Weizel, if I get the name right, um it just helped you get involved with someone else's story.

You begin to learn empathy, you begin to learn understand what other people are going through.

Today we're gonna sit in Lamentations for this sermon.

We're gonna sit in it for just a little bit, and I hope you will take this further and really go and experience, explore this idea of biblical grief, biblical lamenting, um, as we identify with the story that you and I are part of.

Lamentations is a five-chapter book.

Um, it's kind of like a five-poem funeral dirge for those who whose lives were experienced and described in 2 Kings chapter 25.

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

So there's this poetry that explains the feeling of what happened in the fact of 2 Kings 25, and we're gonna look through all of that.

What we're gonna experience together is here at the era, at the end of the era of kings in the ark of the Old Testament story, what we've been moving towards for 14 generations, the Bible tells us.

40-something kings, most of them have been evil, and it all led up to this point, 2 Kings chapter 25.

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

And I'm gonna ask you and I the question when last was the last time you grieved and prayed over the city?

That's where we are going to go to.

So let me give you some context first.

If you're new with us, welcome.

So glad you chose to come and worship with us, or just come and learn more about Jesus here with us today.

We uh have gone through this series and we've been looking all year through the Old Testament narrative.

Currently in the era of kings, it started with Saul, then David, then Solomon, and then the nation of Israel split into two, and you had this plethora of kings who just mostly did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

The one we're on today, as we finish this series, uh next week we're gonna properly finish it, but as we look at the last king, is the king Zedekiah, and it's recorded in 2 Kings chapter 25.

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

Lamentations, however, does not ask whether Jerusalem deserved what was gonna happen, it assumes it did.

So I want to bring us up into that.

Centuries before 2 Kings chapter 25, we we we know Moses.

2 Kings 25 · chapter mention

Moses was the one who brought the people of God out of uh slavery or captivity in Egypt, brought them out.

God established a covenant with them, and this covenant had blessings and curses that came with it.

You follow God, blessings.

You disobey God, you you break the covenants with God, there will be consequences, there will be curses that come with it.

If you have looked at Deuteronomy chapter 28, it's a at first very exciting chapter, and then a very sobering chapter.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

Chapter 28 tells us about the blessings of doing God's will God's way, and it tells you the curses of breaking it.

Now it's important for us to see because there's some details in Deuteronomy 28, centuries before 2 Kings 25.

Here's here's a couple verses, 28 verse 52.

It says, They shall besiege you.

This is part of the curse, they shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land, and they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you.

This is not a threat that was added later on in the story to make it worse.

This is a fact that was established at the establishment of the covenant of God.

So the people of Judah who are now experiencing some of this, it wouldn't have been news to them.

They're like, oh yeah, he did say if we keep in our unfaithfulness, there would be consequences with it.

So this will be in the Jewish story as we get to this point.

So now when we get to 2 Kings 25, nothing that happened is a surprise ending, it's a promise that was kept.

And here's a quick summary of 2 Kings 25.

Nebuchadnezzar's army surrounds Jerusalem for roughly 18 months.

Then the food runs out completely inside the walls.

Verse 3 tells us there was no food for the people of the land.

When the walls finally break, King Zedekiah runs for it.

He runs for it in the night, he gets caught near Jericho and is dragged to the Babylonian king's field camp at Riblah.

Verse 7 tells us that they slaughtered the sons of Zedekiah, that's the last king, before his eyes, and then put out the eyes of Zedekiah.

So the last image this last king ever saw was that of his sons being executed.

Then they blinded him and they marched him in chains to Babylon.

A month later, Babylon's captain of the guard burns the temple in Jerusalem, burns the palace, burns every great house, tears down the walls, and deports everyone left except for those who needed to keep the farming going.

Essentially, Jerusalem falls.

That is the end of dynasties of seeing King Saul, King David, King Solomon building wealth and fame and reputation, and then from then on it being slowly just chipped away and cut away till eventually the last of the tribes, Judah, is captured by Babylon and taken off into captivity.

It's a terrible post-mortem on what happened to the nation.

And this is how kings tell us.

So that's the facts, that's what happened.

What Lamentation does is help us feel it.

Help us unpack it.

Give some color.

Put the movie on.

Let's really understand what happened in here.

So will you turn in your Bibles, please, to Lamentations chapter 3, and we're gonna read from verse 1 through 14.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

Lamentations chapter 3, verse 1 through 14.

Lamentations 3:1–14

Verse 1 says, I am the man who has seen afflictions under the rod of his wrath.

He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light.

Surely against me he turns and his hand again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away.

He has broken my bones.

This is an actual kingdom that has been destroyed.

It's a city that has been burnt.

It is people who've been carried away in slavery and in chains.

It is uh children who have died.

This is a terrible anguish thing.

And we're beginning to understand how this man felt in the middle of it.

Verse 5.

He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.

He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago.

He has walked me about so that I cannot escape.

He has made my chains heavy.

Though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.

This is how he's feeling, even as he's talking to the Lord.

He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones.

He has made my paths crooked.

He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding.

He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces.

He has made me desolate.

He bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow.

He drove into my kidneys the arrow of his quiver.

I have become the laughing stock of all my people, the object of their taunts all day long.

It goes on for a few more verses, but we're seeing here in this chapter, the beginning is 20 verses on of unrelieved affliction before we see any glimmer of hope.

20 verses of unpacking the facts and the feelings and the reality of what they're sitting on, just verse after verse after verse.

And the whole book itself, and I'm kind of focusing here on chapter three, but the whole book itself leads us up to a reality of them even knowing why they're in the situation.

Look at chapter 1, verse 5.

It says, Because the Lord has afflicted her, the nation, for the multitude of her transgressions.

They know this was coming, they know this is attributed to the Lord.

Verse 18 of chapter 1, the Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word.

They'd been told for years, and they'd been lied to by their prophets as well.

Chapter 2, verse 14.

Your prophets have seen for you false and deluding visions, they have not exposed your iniquity.

We read in the rest of the Old Testament where we see some prophets were come and they wouldn't listen to the Lord, they would give words that they thought people wanted to hear, and it wasn't the will of God.

This has been moving towards this moment.

Yet, as you walk through these five chapters, you see so much honesty, real honesty about what they were experiencing.

You see a recognition of the sovereignty of God in all of the dealings, and you see a call to intercession and prayer for relief from these struggles.

What I want us to try to get out of this book today is what does it look like to biblically lament?

It's one thing for us to just sit in sadness and in depression and in grief, but what does it look like biblically?

The whole book is called Lament Lamentations.

What does it look like biblically?

It starts with honesty.

So much honesty in this book.

So much of David's David's Psalms are honest.

I lie in my bed crying in my pillow.

I'm like, how do you sing that as a church, right?

But but it's honesty.

He's pouring it out.

But then there's this recognition of the sovereignty of God, the power of God, the greatness of God, even in the midst of this, and then this call to intercession, a call to prayer, to call on the name of that God that they've recognized as sovereign.

Little bit of structure of Lamentations.

So I said five chapters.

Chapter 1, 2, and 4 and 5 all have 22 verses.

Chapter 1, 2, and 4 are an acrostic.

Each verse starting with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

It's really cool.

And then chapter 3 is 66 verses.

So same thing times 3, also in acrostic, but three verses for every letter of it.

This is a a song, a dirge, a lamentation, supposed to probably be sung at funerals, as looking at this whole idea and giving language to the grief they're feeling, but doing it in a biblically correct, um, appropriate way.

Being honest, acknowledging the sovereignty of God, and calling on his help, interceding for a relief of what is going on there.

Friends, grief in this book is not a feeling that you just pass through on your way to a point.

Grief is part of the point.

Grief is part of processing the things that they're going through and coming to a right understanding of where they are.

If you're anything like me, we're better at fixing things, explaining things, or just moving on from our feelings.

Can I have a witness?

No, it's just me.

Anybody, leave me hanging here.

I like to fix things.

Typically, guys are blamed like that.

You know, your wife tells you there's a problem, like, alright, let me tell you how to fix it.

And like, no, no, I want you to feel my problem.

I'm like, okay.

Sorry.

Counseling.

Um, this book says it sits in the reality and it doesn't yet move to the nice stuff.

It's being honest, it's heavy.

Because the nation is hungry, the nation is lost, the nation is being captured, the nation is being killed, and the nation is going back into slavery.

So can we sit in that for just a second before we move on?

You're still in chapter 3.

Verse 21 then suddenly changes with without warning.

Verse 21 says this, but this, if you're if you're taking notes, if you're underlining in your Bible, this is what you would underline.

But this I call to mind.

Underline that.

This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Here it is.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I hope in him.

This is the nice part, right?

This is the part we put on the poster next to the kitten, and you know, we feel good about our lives.

You put this on the mug, on your screensaver.

The Lord is my portion.

But so often we just want to run there without sitting in the grief, without acknowledging what's going on in our lives, without acknowledging what's going on in our world and in our city.

We just want to jump to the good and the nice things and not sit in it.

But here's something to notice.

We got to verse 21.

Nothing had changed yet.

He's given 20 verses of lament and and the the listening, the issues, and the desolation that they're experiencing.

And then this beautiful verse.

See, nothing had changed.

There were no change circumstances.

Jerusalem was still smoking, uh, being burned, the smoke growing up.

Exactly as it was in verse 4.

Nothing on the ground had gotten better.

And this is what we should look here.

That the hope isn't discovered by looking harder at the situation.

Because the situation didn't change at all.

So, how is the hope discovered?

The hope is discovered like this it is spoken.

Did you see what it says in verse in the verse?

It says, This I call to mind.

He's preaching something to his own soul that his own circumstances are not currently confirming.

You're sitting in the rubble, but that says, This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

What is he calling to mind?

The nature and the character of the sovereign Lord.

This is how we biblically lament.

Be honest, but then call on the name of the Lord.

Friends, hope is not an emotion that you and I wait for, it's a truth you preach to your own heart when your feelings are telling you that God is gone.

Can I say that again?

Hope is not an emotion you wait for.

When you're sitting in your grief, when you're sitting in your struggle, and you're like, I just don't feel hope.

That's not how it happens.

It happens when we lift up our voices and we bring to mind the goodness of the Lord who made us, who created us, who is sovereign and kept his side of the covenant.

He kept his side of the covenant.

We rest on his faithfulness, on his ability to see us through, not on our feelings, because obviously we are fleeing.

We are covenant breaking.

It's been proven for 44 kings now.

We keep breaking our side of the deal.

So when we're sitting in despair, this I bring to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Amen.

John Calvin speaks of these verses and he says, the hope is not grounded in changed circumstances, but in God's unchanging nature.

David the psalmist, 150 Psalms there.

How many of them say, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, praise his name.

You remember those?

You remember those?

That's usually not when David was feeling all nice and sitting on the top of the roof.

That was when David was running for his life, when David was being hunted down, when David was being trying to kill by Saul, when David's enemies was coming against him, he begins to write these psalms, these worship songs.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul.

My soul, he says, will bless the Lord.

It's the same thing as I bring to mind, and therefore I have hope.

You and I, in our troubles, in our struggles, how often do we let our feelings just have a heyday?

And we just let them go and we ruminate, and next thing you know, we're like, you know, the worst people ever.

Life has never been harder for anybody else in the whole universe.

Because we don't bring to mind who the Lord is.

Amen.

This is what I'm reading from here.

We need to know this that the confessions of our mind, the things you make yourself consider, have a significant impact on how you make it through your grieving.

Last week, when Courtney was preaching us, uh, preaching to us from Job, and I was like, brave girl, first sermon on Job.

Wonderful.

But she brought it, right?

Thank you, Courtney.

Job 121, she says, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Friends, when you're going through troubles, when you're going through danger, you don't need, uh let's put it this way you're in a jungle and you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna get out.

You don't need a kitten.

You need a lion.

You with me?

You don't need a little kitten.

A little kitten, if our image of God and our hope is in some little kitty cat that's gonna come and help you.

Heck no.

What do you need?

You need the lion of the tribe of Judah who can overcome every trial and difficulty that you go through.

You notice need something much bigger than your circumstance, and that is what we're talking about here.

I bring to mind the faithfulness of the Lord.

The faithfulness of the Lord will never change, it will never end.

I may be sitting in the mu in the mess right now.

Most of it is usually my own doing if we're anything like the Israelites, and I'm sitting in the mess.

What do I bring to mind?

The faithfulness of the Lord.

The faithfulness of the Lord, friends.

This is how we allow ourselves to feel the feelings and acknowledge the God of hope.

This is the center of this whole sermon.

Don't miss it, friends.

Grief and hope aren't two stages where the second one replaces the first.

They're spoken by the same breath, by the same man, in the same rubble.

Allow yourself to feel and hope.

Allow yourself to be honest and call on the name of the Lord.

And I'd go so far as to say that if your faith has never let itself breathe, you don't actually have this kind of hope yet.

We have optimism.

And optimism, untested faith, usually doesn't survive suffering.

Let's not move through, let's not move over the grief.

Let's not jump over and try to get to verse 21 every time something hard happens.

Let's sit in it first.

Before our first son was born, Kathy had a miscarriage, and I think it happened on a Wednesday or Thursday, and I'd already I was leaving worship that that weekend, and I'd already set the songs for what we were going to be singing, unbeknownst to me of what my weekend would look like.

And we obviously went through for us, it was our first pregnancy, and it was great grief for us.

It was difficult to lose uh a pregnancy.

And got to Sunday morning and they're I had to go and lead worship.

I'm like, how am I gonna do this?

And we got to one of the songs, and I didn't realize, you know, sometimes you just you play the song and then you sing it, and then you get to the bridge, and you're like, wait a minute, I don't want to sing this part.

We were singing this song called Blessed be the name of the Lord by I think it was Matt Redman, and the chorus is the bridge is you give and take away, you give and take away.

My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name.

I didn't realize that until I started singing it.

Just grieving what we were going through and doing it in front of a couple hundred people while I'm crying.

You give and take away.

I'm playing the piano, you give and take away.

I think we repeated that bridge about 23 times that day because I was processing.

I was processing in a sense, being honest, Lord, you give, you take away.

But my heart will change.

I didn't realize I was following lamentation.

But I got through that service weeping.

Everyone wanted to pray for me, they wanted to figure out what was going wrong.

But I got through that service having grieved and acknowledged the sovereign hand of the Lord and came through it.

The lament carries on.

I wish this was the end.

I wish 20 verse 21 through 24 was the end of lamentations.

But we still have another two and a half chapters of grieving again, of widening the grief.

Look at verse 25 of chapter 3.

It says, The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that no that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

I was I wanted to sing the song, you know, the Lord is good, he's faithful, let's move on.

But no, here we've got to go and wait for the Lord again.

We've got to go back to this, we've got to continue to sit in realizing what is going on, feeling it, and bringing it to the Lord.

Don't just carry on running, friends.

Grief takes time, and strength comes from waiting on the Lord.

Amen.

Isaiah 40 says, They who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.

They will rise up with wings like eagles, they will run and not faint, they will walk and not grow weary.

This is the idea.

We wait on the Lord even when you're not feeling it.

Even when your legs are tired, we wait on the Lord.

A few verse later in verse 40, the man's private grief then widens to something shared.

He says, Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.

Do you notice the pronoun shift in this chapter?

Verse 1, he says, I am the man.

Verse 40, he says, Let us, let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.

There's a writer who writes a lot on grief, David Kessler.

He says this, that grief demands a witness.

To just sit on our own in our private selves, grieving often just leads to downward spiraling, versus coming in agreement with others, in community with others, we begin to find our way through.

You see, grief that turns honest and shared, uh it actually goes somewhere.

We we do it to it, it doesn't just resolve in our minds.

So much of scripture is written to a community for a communal faith to endure communal trials and testing, to communally gather to worship and honor the creator of us all.

Scripture, most of it, is a communal activity.

This testing was communal, the grief was felt personally but expressed communally.

The nation was falling.

Captivity, death, starvation, it was all sitting on the doorstep.

Now, just as a quick side note, please realize the subject matter it's it's it's severe.

But it isn't because you know your Starbucks order got wrong and now I've got to grieve, or the buckeyes lost last night, and uh I've got to grieve, and can we get together and you know pray to the Lord?

Or you didn't quite get into your chosen school, or or perhaps you know, I'm just going through something hard.

And I'm not trying to minimize your grief, but but but expand your definition a little bit more.

Expand your experience.

Yes, there's things you and I go through, but there's things our community goes through, there's things our nation goes through, there's things the people of God go through that He still speaks to us communally to try and talk about.

Most of us have just understood and started feeling again what 9-11 looked like to so many people 25 years ago.

Many of you weren't born, and so you're hearing the stories, but it's hard to feel it.

Kathy and I, it was weird, it was the weirdest day.

And like I remember every moment of 9-11.

I remember where I stood, I remember where I heard it first, I remember what I saw.

I remember we cathy we moved to America two weeks later.

I remember coming into America and feeling a nation that was grieving.

These are communal griefs that you and I are also invited to enter into great legalized systemic injustices like apartheid to segregation.

We don't have it now, but but people felt it and experienced it at some point.

There was a place for the church that should have and could have stepped in to those moments.

National wars, we're experiencing that, natural disasters, significant crime affecting neighborhoods and cities.

I don't know if you guys realize how much more crime is happening just here in the short north of late.

Are we feeling it?

Are we stepping into it, asking the sovereign Lord to intervene on behalf of his people?

I say this as a side note because sometimes we get into deep despair and grief over relatively insignificant things.

When some of these things we just need to snap out of it.

Amen.

You know what I'm saying?

Let's not make everything a grief, let's not make everything a trauma.

Uh there are there are big T and little T things.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Alright.

So here we are Lamentations.

Lamentations grieves are a nation that is fallen, a city, Jerusalem.

But this is not the last time in Scripture we see someone weeping over Jerusalem.

Would you turn in your Bible, please, to Luke chapter 19?

Luke 19 · chapter mention

We've been going through lamentations, weeping over the city.

But look at what Luke 19, what happens here?

Verse 41.

Luke 19, verse 41.

Luke 19:41

We see Jesus, and we're talking about Jesus here.

He says, and when he, this is Jesus, when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it.

It's not the only time we see Jesus weeping.

He wept over it.

Verse 42, saying, Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes.

For the days will come upon you when your enemies, look at these words, your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation.

Read that next to 2 Kings 25, and lamentations surrounded, barricaded, hemmed in on every side, torn down to the ground.

See, Jesus is describing the same kind of catastrophe 600 years later.

In the same language that echoes what we see in Lamentations.

But here's what's different.

Here's what's different.

It is thought that Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations.

So here's what's different.

Jeremiah grieved a city that he couldn't save, but Jesus cries over, grieves over a city he's about to die inside of.

The weeping prophet Jeremiah sits outside the city and he writes about it.

Jesus, the weeping Jesus, sits and walks straight through it, through the gate, towards his execution.

This is the difference.

This is what Jesus did.

This brings us back to where we started today.

You remember Deuteronomy 28?

There's a blessing and a curse for our unf there's an unfaithfulness curse on how we do it.

Really explicit language in chapter 28.

Walked out and experienced and seen and felt in 2 Kings 25, described emotionally in lamentations.

But here we are, 600 years later, Jesus weeping over the city, and Paul describes to us in Galatians the significance of this.

He says in Galatians 3.13, is it coming up?

Galatians 3.13 says this Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, curse is everyone who hanged on a tree.

Jesus doesn't just survive the curse friends, he becomes the curse.

And he walks exactly into what 2 Kings 25 describes.

Surrounded, torn off, cut off, abandoned.

The full weight of the covenant judgment lands on Jesus, on his body, so that it would actually be finished, fulfilled, covered.

Now you and I have a hope.

Now you and I have a hope.

This is what the cross did.

You're just where you are for a minute.

Say thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Even in our unfaithfulness, we deserved the curse.

But because of Jesus, who finished the work on the cross, now you and I can walk in life, can walk in freedom.

We should constantly thank Jesus.

So as I close in praying, how do we relate to this?

How do you and I relate to something that happened so many thousands of years ago?

What does this mean for us in 2026?

And I just feel the call for each one of us as those who have been redeemed by Jesus.

Here's the question Do we grieve over the city?

Do we grieve over a city that has fallen, is fallen, is falling?

Do we grieve over it?

Us who have the hope of Jesus in us, who can sit unlike Jeremiah, wondering if his hope is gonna come, knowing and saying and expressing it, but now we can say it came.

Jesus came, the fulfillment came.

Do we grieve over the city?

Do we grieve over what we see?

See the prayers of Jeremiah in in Lamentation, as I said, their honest recognition, their express trust in the sovereignty of the Lord, and they're a bold intercession.

Chapter 1, verse 20, Lamentations.

He says, Look, O Lord, for I'm in distress.

Do we call on the name of the Lord like that?

Look, O Lord, Columbus is in distress.

Look, O Lord, short north is in disarray.

Look, O Lord, our families are falling apart.

Chapter 2, verse 19, arise.

This is a call to the people for intercession.

Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the night.

Watch us, pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.

Lift up your hands to Him.

It's a cry for intercession for the things that we're seeing.

Chapter 3.56.

Do not close your ears to my cry for help.

Chapter 5, verse 1.

Lord, remember, remember what has befallen us.

Look and see our disgrace.

Chapter 5, 21.

Restore us to yourself, O Lord.

Friends, do you see the intercession that is part of biblical lament?

Biblical lament.

Say it, say it as it is.

Acknowledge the sovereignty of the Lord and let's intercede all throughout it for the Lord to bring the healing and bring the restoration.

My question for you is do we grieve at the ruin of our city?

The sexual violence that so many people have experienced.

I wish I could say it's one story here or there, but we hear it all the time.

The amount of violence people are experiencing, men and women in our city, the brokenness in families, the fatherlessness that we've just come to make a joke of.

Fatherless as as a common thing in so many of our communities.

Do we grieve over that, friends?

The mental health crisis in America, the idolatry, friends, that has taken the glory from the one who deserves it, and we've put it onto football players or careers or self-wishes.

We we put this idolatry.

We're supposed to worship him.

And we've moved it.

The duplicity in Christians who call Jesus Lord but live such a confused and contrary lifestyle.

Do we grieve over this, friends, or have we just become hardened to this?

I'd like to invite the worship team up, please.

Just in the last few minutes, friends, I want us to respond in a way.

Maybe you all want to close your eyes for a second.

And I've I've listed some things that have been on my mind as we grieve the city and we grieve the things going on, but what have you seen?

What has the Lord showed you?

What situations has he put you in?

Have we so hardened our hearts that we're just like, eh, you know, I'm good.

Or we taking the example of our our Lord as Savior who grieved, who wept over a city that had not recognized the hour of their visitation.

I believe this is the hour of our city's visitation.

There's a revival we've been praying for.

People have been praying for for a while in the city that our students would be saved, that our communities would be transformed, that that that revival would come to the city.

Are we grieved or are we just carrying on with our day?

It's not for you to answer to me.

Talk to the Lord, would you?

We're just gonna take a few minutes.

Would you just begin to talk to the Father where you are now?

Cry out to Him, acknowledge what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, and let's begin to call on the sovereign name of the Lord for the city.

Perhaps where you are, you just want to begin to quietly pray and intercede for them.

And while you do that, I want to speak to somebody else in this room.

Perhaps you don't know Jesus, you haven't given your life to Jesus, and you're carrying burdens, but these burdens are crushing you.

Perhaps you have done church things, but you haven't put your faith, your hope in Jesus who died for you.

You haven't said this out loud.

Jesus, I acknowledge you as the Son of God, the one who died for my sins, who rose from the death, said that.

I could live, the one who writes my name in the Lamb's book of life, that I could have eternal assurance of my salvation.

If you're not sure about that, friends, I want to pray for you today.

Do you want to give your life to Jesus?

And with every eye still closed, I want to ask you, would you like to give your life to Jesus?

I want to lead you in a prayer.

Just some words for us to begin to express what maybe is going on in your heart.

If that's you, would you lift up your hand so I know who I'm praying for today?

Thank you, ma'am.

Is there anybody else?

Anyone else who wants to put their faith in the Lord?

If you're in the balcony, if you just put it a little higher, thank you, sir.

I see you up there.

I want some of our leaders are gonna come around.

Thank you, ma'am.

Some of our leaders are gonna come around.

If you lifted your hands, would you do that one more time for me?

Everyone, eyes are still closed, but a couple of our leaders just want to see who you are and just help you with what a next step is.

Would you lift your hands one more time?

Thank you, sir.

I don't want to belabor this much longer, but friends, this is an invitation from the Lord.

He wants to save your soul, he wants to heal your brokenness.

He wants to bring you into relationship with him.

Will you receive it?

anybody else?

Okay, I'm gonna pray this prayer.

And if that was you, pray this with me.

There's nothing magic in these words, but I hope they express what's going on in your heart right now.

Would you say this with me?

Dear Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God who died for my sins and rose from the dead in order that I may live.

Jesus, I want to surrender my life to you today.

Jesus, I want to follow you.

Will you help me follow you?

Jesus, show me how.

We celebrate with you.

We celebrate with you.

Could we all stand together?

I believe there's something the Lord wants to do as we close in this song.

If you're like sitting here and you're like, man, I didn't feel anything of what you were feeling.

I want to encourage you, would you ask the Lord to soften your heart today?

Maybe you're like, I haven't experienced all these things you're talking about.

I get it.

I get it.

Maybe the Lord has really protected you from a lot of it.

But it'd be impossible to walk down our streets and get to know any people and not see the consequence of brokenness in our world.

Would you ask him to soften your heart right now?

And then there's other people in this room.

You're so overcome by your grief that it's taking you out.

And I want to pray for you right now that the Lord would give you a revelation of who he is, he would give you a revelation of his sovereign power that you'll be like, I don't have to carry this on my own.

I can put my hope in the Lord.

Amen.

Jesus, I pray, soften our hearts, soften our hearts, and give us a revelation of the Lion of the tribe of Judah who roars over the city.

Would you give us a revelation of Jesus, conquered death, seated at the right hand of the Father, the one who spoke the world into being?

We do not have to despair, but we hope in you, Jesus.

Let's worship the Lord.