The Voice of God - Understanding the Prophets

Let me catch you up on what we've been doing all year long.

We've been doing something really exciting this entire year, and it's okay if you're just joining us.

I'll catch you up.

It's called the whole story.

The whole story.

We are going through the entire story of the Bible in less than a year.

As you can see, we've broken the story down into 14 different series.

And today, we both start and finish the eighth series.

I don't know if you can call it a series if it's only one Sunday, but that's what we're doing.

We both start and finish the eighth series called The Voice of God.

The voice of God.

That's what we're talking about today.

What we're going to look at is this giant section at the end of the Old Testament that's often referred to as the books of the prophets.

If you ever open up a Bible and begin to read it, you read a lot of events, a lot of historical stuff, things are happening, and then you'll get to the section at the end of the Old Testament, and it's just like a huge collection of poems and writings that are super intense, kind of crazy, sometimes really weird, and it's the writings of the prophets.

And it's actually a larger section in your Bible than the entire New Testament.

And so if you're like, well, why then are we doing it in one Sunday?

It's simple.

We're really behind, and someone got cut, and it was the prophets.

No, I'm just joking.

That's not what we're doing.

Not at all.

No.

It's interesting because the events that take place in the writings of the prophets, a lot of those events we've already covered in our previous series on the kings of Israel.

And by the way, if you haven't been here, you can catch up online if you want, but every Sunday is designed to stand on its own, so you're fine.

Or some of the events that the prophets are engaged in haven't happened yet, as we've been teaching.

That's gonna be in our next series that we launch next Sunday called Shattered and Scattered.

And I'm really excited about Shattered and Scattered because it sounds a lot like a Waffle House hash brown option.

And someone brought that to our attention.

They're like, oh, is it like a Waffle House theme?

And you know what we decided to do is just lean into that.

And so next Sunday, if you get here early, uh we're gonna have a Waffle House hash brown bar, and you can have some hash browns before you come on.

Why not?

Let's do it.

It sounds like Waffle House.

We called Waffle House, Waffle House said we can do that, and uh it's gonna be great.

They're even gonna bring a sign with one of the letters that's burned out, just so it's an authentic experience.

It's gonna be amazing.

It's gonna be amazing.

So that is next week, shattered and scattered.

And here's the deal if you're reading the Bible and you get to the prophets, what you have to understand is that the the prophets, these men that were called by God to be his mouthpiece, to be his spokespeople, they were active over the course of centuries.

Israel got to the point as a nation where they were a kingdom, and they were a kingdom for a while and it was going well, and then they split, they had some pretty major division, and then you have the nation of Israel, the nation of Judah, and that existed for a little while, and then Israel gets gets way off track, and they're conquered by the Assyrians, and then a long time after that, Judah gets off track, and they're conquered by the Babylonians, and then there's this period of exile where anyone who's who's someone who's followed God, anyone that's part of the nation of Israel, which was God's people in the Old Testament, they all live somewhere else, they're not able to be home, and the prophets are active during that entire time.

And so when you open up to that section of the Bible, you're reading the writings of people that, oh, that happened several pages back.

That was hundreds of years ago.

And so, again, the events that the prophets are taking part in, we've either covered it or we're about to cover it.

Today, what I want to do, really simply, is just get down to the point of the prophets.

The key idea that as you read through the books of the prophets, this is what you need to keep in mind.

And it's it's really powerful.

I'll be honest, some of the writings of the prophets are some of the hardest in scripture to engage in.

It's really tough.

It's just chapter after chapter of super intense, mostly poetry.

But here's the idea the voice of God is always speaking.

In every era of history, in every season of life, God is speaking.

God is calling out to his people.

The prophet Isaiah sums this up really well in Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3.

Isaiah 40:3

He says, The voice of one calling out, clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low, let the uneven ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley.

Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

God speaks.

God speaks.

The voice of God is always active, even in seasons or situations or periods of time where it seems like God is far away and he's asleep at the wheel.

It's not true.

The voice of God is calling out to anyone who will listen.

To anyone who can, as Jesus would often say, anyone who has ears to hear, let them hear.

The voice of God is speaking and he's calling to people.

And he's asking people to see things from his perspective, to take a step back and to rethink life.

And to see things the way that he sees things, and maybe to adjust accordingly, and to know him.

To know him.

I can't think of anything more meaningful that you could do in life than to simply know God better.

Just to know him.

And if you're someone who has a deep desire to know God, to understand God, to maybe hear God speak to you, however, He will, or at the very least, to be someone who feels like you misunderstand God less, because God is so often misunderstood, and the prophets really show us that.

If you have a deep, genuine desire to know God better than the prophets, that's a section of scripture that you need to know.

Because God is speaking to us through it, and He's calling out to us through it, and He's reminding us that He is here and He sees what's happening, He sees what's happening in the world, He sees what's happening in your life, and He has something to say.

But are we people who have ears to hear?

Because many don't.

That's the point of the prophets.

Now, I want to do something sort of fun and interesting at least.

Maybe, maybe I can't say that it's gonna be fun because I don't know what's fun and what's not, for you at least.

I want to do something a little interesting because I want us to feel, like actually feel together as much as we can, what it would have felt like to be a person living in the era of the prophets and to have a prophet speak on God's behalf to us.

So if you're okay with this, and honestly, if you're not, it doesn't really matter because we're doing this.

Um, I want us to engage in a in a little bit of group, sort of large group role play.

All right?

Because it's easy to take for granted the fact that the prophets, just like God in their time, were incredibly misunderstood.

You might think that the prophets were like unbelievably popular, that everyone would see them coming and be like, whoa, dude, that's Isaiah.

That's the prophet.

Nope, not at all.

Like the kings of Israel and Judah hated the prophets for the most part.

There's actually one of the kings is quoted as saying, and we looked at this a few months ago as we were teaching through it, he's quoted as saying, I hate this guy.

He always tells me something that I don't want to hear.

The prophets were not popular.

They were misunderstood, they were, they were hated, despised, and many times killed for the things that came out of their mouth on behalf of God.

To be a prophet was not an easy thing.

And so I want us to sort of, as much as we can, just early in this message, get in the headspace of what it would have been like to experience a prophet speaking to you.

So here's what we're gonna do.

We collectively, me and all of you, we're gonna we're gonna be the nation of Israel circa 700 BC.

Can you get there?

700 BC, I don't know what you're doing.

You just got done harvesting grain.

Um I'm not really sure what you're like.

Maybe you're fishing, I don't know.

We all smell worse and we're all really tired, okay?

We're the nation of Israel 700 BC, long, long time ago.

And, you know, here's the deal.

Here's our situation.

We've seen better days.

We've seen better days.

We're not exactly at our peak.

There's some other nations around us, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, they're horrible, they're evil, and they're kind of out for us, but so far we're surviving.

And you know why we're surviving?

We're God's people.

And he just likes us more than he likes anybody else.

And you know what, guys?

I know we haven't really been doing our best to follow God.

Remember, I'm not talking to you right now, I'm talking, we're we're role-playing.

Okay, so don't take that.

Okay.

How dare he say that?

Just we're we're playing a game.

I know, I know, you know, Israel.

We we haven't really been doing our best to follow God.

We're we're kind of doing our own thing.

We haven't really been worshiping him to our fullest extent.

And, you know, some stuff, we're letting some stuff slide that probably shouldn't slide, but I mean, come on.

We're still we're still the children of God.

And we know that he just loves us more than anybody else, and so we're fine.

I think we're fine.

But I do want to let you guys know that we've got this prophet, and his name's Matt.

Um, the prophet Matt.

Uh, is Matt the prophet around?

Here comes Matt the prophet.

Oh, I made Matt do this, and he's a good sport.

So, Matt the prophet uh says that he he's had a conversation with God.

Um, a lot of you guys know Matt is just a nutty guy who lives in the woods, but he's also a lot of prophets lived in the woods, I'm serious.

So, but he's uh no, he's a prophet, and so he he says he has a message from the Lord for us.

And I think we should listen to what he has to say, and then we'll just decide what we want to do with him afterward.

Um, and he's actually put it together as a song.

And so we're just gonna listen to uh the prophet Matt sing his song from God to us and we'll get back together.

Go ahead, Prophet Matt.

I hate all you show and pretense, the hypocrisy of your praise, the hypocrisy of your festivals.

I hate all you show away with your noisy worship, away with your noisy hips.

I stopping my ears when you're singing.

Instead, let there be a flood of justice, an endless procession of righteousness living instead.

Let there be a flood of justice instead of a show instead of a show, and you turned your back on the homeless and the ones that don't fit in your plane.

Quit playing religion games.

There's blood on your hands.

Instead, let there be a flood of justice, an endless procession of righteous living living instead.

Instead of a show.

You're clapping because you hear that, and you're like, wow, that's powerful, that's intense.

But if we actually were the people of Israel, circa 700 BC, and let's say the prophet Amos came to us and said this, I hate, and by the way, this is Amos speaking directly on behalf of God, not his own opinion, I hate, I despise your religious festivals, your assemblies are a stench to me.

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the music of your harps, but let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream.

That's the exact passage that that little song that Matt just did for us was adapted from.

And you know what something crazy?

We planned this months ago.

Yesterday, Matt texts me.

Um, not Matt the prophet, Matt the worship pastor who lives here.

Uh yesterday, Matt texts me, and he's like, dude, open up the Bible app.

Many of you have the Bible app, and he said, Check out the verse of the day, and it's that scripture.

And it's like, we plan, that's crazy.

Like a little God giving us a little nod, being like, hey, yeah, this is good.

No, the prophets were intense.

To be called by God to be a prophet and to speak on God's behalf was very often to be the bearer of bad news.

And so these guys had short lifespans.

I mean, they they were they were killed, they were hunted down, because they spoke on behalf of God, and very often God was telling his people, hey, things are really bad and it needs to change.

The prophets are super intense.

And maybe even more than intense, the prophets are just complicated.

It's complicated.

If you if you open up the books of the prophets, you know, you're reading Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or some of the minor prophets, the smaller books, like it's just it's complicated.

It's this strange blend of warning and judgment, and then you turn the page and it's like love and hope.

Like warning and judgment, love and hope.

It's it's a strange thing.

It'd be like if you went to a restaurant and you ordered the hottest, spiciest wings you could you could possibly imagine, and you just take a bite of one and then a bite of ice cream, like one after the other.

You're like, this is a strange meal, right?

It's going from really hot to really cool, it's going from intense to soothing.

It's what gives?

Why is it so complicated?

I'll give you some examples of that.

Numbers chapter 14, verse 18.

Numbers 14:18

This is Moses, and Moses is sort of the prototype Old Testament prophet, a man that hears from God, God speaks to him, he delivers the news to the people.

And this is what he says The Lord is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion.

And right now we're like, yeah, I'm tracking with that.

I love it.

Keep talking, prophet.

But then he goes on and says this.

But he does not excuse the guilty, he lays the sins of the parents upon their children, the entire family's affected, even children in the third and fourth generations.

Which, good news, if your life's going awry, just blame three or four generations ago.

It's their fault.

Right?

No, like, I mean, if we're if we're being honest, I liked it better when he said that God was slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and mercy.

That part was great.

That whole, he doesn't excuse the sins of the guilty part.

I'd rather you not go there.

It's complicated.

It's like both things smushed together.

Judgment and warning, but then love and hope.

Or you go to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

This is still Moses.

He continues, I lay the sins of the parents upon their children, the entire families affected, even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me.

And they're kind of like, yeah, you've said that before.

And then the very next statement, but I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands.

So God says, I've got a warning, and there's judgments, and it's even up to four generations, but my love, my love will last for a thousand generations.

If you follow me, it's it's both together, and there's this tension in the prophets.

There is a tension that exists if you read the prophets.

And in fact, we see this tension in many places, especially in the Old Testament, but the New Testament too.

Read the sayings of Jesus in Revelation, and there's this tension.

You've got warnings and judgment, and then right next to them, love and hope.

And I'll be honest with you, it's a tension that our kind of current age really struggles with.

It's this tension of which is it?

Which is it?

Is God a loving God who's merciful and kind and forgiving, or is God the kind of God who's gonna make judgment calls that maybe we we could find ourselves on the wrong side of, or a whole nation could find itself on the wrong side?

Which is it?

Because we kind of want it to be one or the other, right?

We want it to be one or the other.

We don't want the tension and the complication of it all, and so we live in a time where people don't want to deal with that tension.

But it's necessary.

It's necessary.

And we talked about this several weeks back in an earlier series as we went through scripture and we talked about the person of Jacob and how he was defined as someone who wrestled with God.

Wrestling with God, that that becomes the name of God's people.

God changes Jacob's name to Israel.

Israel means to wrestle with God, not to obey God, not to love God, not to follow God, but to wrestle with him.

There is tension in a real relationship with God.

And I'm telling you this, if we could be people that don't run away from the tension, but rather embrace it and let that tension work its way out in our lives, we will come to a more full, a more mature understanding of who God is.

And we grow as a result of that.

But most don't have any desire to do that.

They just don't.

I've seen so many people in my life deal with that tension by just rejecting God.

They can't rationalize, and I get it, they can't rationalize in their mind how God could be both loving and merciful, but at the same time a God of justice.

And maybe in their definition of justice, God is unjust because they think God is being unfair or too harsh.

They can't rationalize that complexity.

They want a God that's just simple and broad stroke.

But you know what's funny about that is like how many of us would say that we're fairly complicated people?

Anyone willing to admit that you're a little bit more complicated than many people know, like, I'm a pretty complicated dude.

And it's funny, one of the things that annoys me the most is if someone tries to paint a picture of me that's very broad stroke.

If someone tries to oversimplify me and describe me and it's like, you don't know me, I'm I'm I'm way more nuanced than that, right?

See, we're made in God's image.

And so if if we, in and of ourselves, have some nuance and some complexity inside of us, shouldn't the God who created us in his image be even more so?

Like God is, he's complex.

He is a little complicated.

And if you really want to know him, again, that's who the prophets are speaking to.

The voice of God is calling out to those who really want to know God.

If you really want to know him, you've got to sort of embrace that tension and say, I don't understand you, but I want to.

It's like being married to a woman.

It's I'm just joking, I shouldn't have gone there.

Sorry.

I'm sorry, forgive me, okay?

But I will say in my defense that I am married to one.

And then the analogy tracks.

Just saying, from a male perspective.

Okay.

But no, there's there's complexity.

Right?

You you and look, we can use marriage as an example.

If you've been married for 10 years, I promise you that you've had this experience.

The person you married is not the person that you're married to.

Or not, at the very least, the person you thought you were marrying.

You thought you were marrying a certain person, turns out there's a lot more that you didn't know.

And that's actually a beautiful thing.

Right?

It should be.

Sometimes it's really hard.

But there's there's there's more to us than than we realize.

And there's so much more to God.

And rather than reject God because we don't like the complexity, we should embrace Him.

We should deal with that tension, we should hold on for dear life and see how God changes us in the midst of that.

Some people don't reject God because of the tension, they just reinterpret God, revise Scripture.

This is something that happens a lot.

I've experienced this a lot.

I've had really good friends that I've seen do this, people that I even used to like work alongside and do church with, where it's like, man, I hate the tension.

And so I've kind of found a way to reinterpret everything that I read to just make it all point to this version of God that I would really like God to be.

And so.

You know, anything in the Bible, maybe that's kind of harsh and intense, it's like, nah, I just kind of either ignore that, or really, if you think about it this way and you do some like mental gymnastics, really it just means that, you know, it's all good.

And I get the desire to do that.

I get the desire to eliminate tension.

But the tension's part of the it's part of the process.

The tension sometimes is the point.

When you read the prophets, there is there is tension.

It's in it's intense.

But if you'll stick with it and keep listening to the voice of God in the process and hear the heart of God as he speaks, then you know him better, you understand him more, and you are changed as a result.

You just can't reject or revise to avoid the tension.

So are you guys okay for a few minutes?

We just jump into the tension.

And again, I guess I ask these questions, and it's like, what are you supposed to say, right?

I'll say, if you say no, I'll just be all right, well, let's pray and we'll be done.

Um, so here's here's the situation.

This is the the basic way to understand the prophets is God's nation, Israel, in the Old Testament, these are God's people.

They are unique.

It's unlike any nation that has ever existed in the history of the world.

They were they were just nomadic, like shepherds, no power, no might to speak of.

And then they became slaves in Egypt.

Egypt was the most powerful nation in the ancient world, and they had no hope for rescue.

There's no strength that they have.

They cannot rescue themselves, they have no chance of that.

But God miraculously comes and he rescues them from Egypt.

And then they they live in the wilderness for 40 years, and of their own strength, they have no ability to provide.

There's not enough food, there's not enough water, and they're being attacked constantly by these other nations that want to snuff them out, and they have no strength in and of themselves to win these battles, and yet they keep winning these battles, they keep surviving because God is with them.

And then they go into the promised land, and the promised land is occupied by these powerful nation states, and these are ancient civilizations, cultures that if you study them, like the level of evil, it doesn't even make sense to us.

I mean, think Nazi Germany is the closest thing that we could probably think of, and and these are powerful nations, and the people of Israel, they stand no chance in the promised land against them, but God is with them, God delivers them, and they end up conquering the promised land, and they are established as a nation.

And it has all been, all been because of the hand of God with them.

And they're supposed to be different.

God calls them to live differently, to be unlike any nation that has ever existed, unlike any civilization that has ever existed, their laws are more fair.

Even if we look at them today through hindsight of like 3,000 years, we can pick and choose and go, that doesn't seem very right.

No, if you compare the laws of the nation of Israel 3,000 years ago to the laws of any other nation that existed, it's like that's incredible how fair and just and good that nation was, especially for that period of time.

God called them to live and to serve him, to only worship him, because he's the only real God.

The gods of the other nations, they didn't do anything when it came to fighting against the God of Israel because they weren't real gods.

And so why would his people put their trust in false gods who had failed their people when he, the real God, had rescued them?

So he asked them to worship him and him alone, and to live good lives.

And he's given them this beautiful land, he's delivered them, and he's asked them to do just that, but it does not go well.

And as time goes on, the nation sort of descends, and there's there's idolatry, and there's immorality, and there's injustice everywhere.

And so, what does God do?

He speaks, the voice of God is active, and he calls these people, these prophets, to deliver messages very similar to what to what Matt just sang.

These these strong, challenging messages.

And they're intense.

Isaiah chapter 47.

Isaiah 47 · chapter mention

The people have been warned many times, and they refuse to listen to the voice of God.

And so here's what Isaiah says as a result disaster will overtake you.

And again, this is God speaking through Isaiah.

You won't be able to charm it away, calamity will fall upon you, and you won't be able to buy your way out.

Catastrophe will strike you suddenly, one for which you're not prepared.

Now go, use your magical charms.

Use the spells that you've worked at all these years.

He's talking about some of the practices of the false religions that they were following.

Maybe they'll do you some good.

Maybe they can make someone afraid of you.

All the advice you received has made you tired.

Where are all your astrologers, those stargazers who make predictions each month?

Many people began to worship the stars.

Let them stand up and save you from what the future holds, but they're like straw burning in a fire.

They cannot save themselves from the flame.

You will get no help from them at all.

Their hearth is no place to sit for warmth.

And all your friends, those with whom you've done business since childhood, they'll go their own ways, turning a deaf ear to your cries.

And he's talking about the nations that Israel had made treaties with, actually evil nations, and said, Hey, if we're in trouble, you'll help us out, right?

And they're like, Yeah, then no, they're not going to.

And God says, Hey, you have not listened to me, you've not followed the advice I've given, you've not listened to my warnings, and so disaster is about to strike.

And there is a lot of that in the prophets.

It is it is intense.

But then there's love and there's hope.

And it's it's incredible, it's powerful.

And so, for example, there's a prophet named Jonah.

And Jonah gets called to go to the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, to Nineveh.

And Jonah does not like the Ninevites.

He detests them.

And God says, Hey, I want you to give them a warning.

And he does, and it works.

Jonah goes and he says, if you don't turn to God, he's gonna destroy this place.

And the people all go, oh, we don't want that to happen.

And they pray and they repent, and it makes Jonah furious.

Because he's like the worst kind of prophet.

He doesn't just, he doesn't just speak on God's behalf and predict calamity, he roots for calamity.

He's like, I want things to go down in flames.

And so the people repent and it infuriates Jonah.

And here's what Jonah says to God says, This change of plans, God being merciful to the Nineveh, greatly upset Jonah.

And he became very angry, so he complained to the Lord about it.

Didn't I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord?

That's why I ran away to Tarshus.

Jonah tried to escape his calling.

I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

You're eager to turn back from destroying people.

So just kill me now, Lord.

I'd rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.

And the Lord replied, Is it right for you to be angry about this?

And the answer is no, it's not.

But Jonah's like, I knew it.

I knew you're merciful.

I knew that you're so compassionate that you don't want to destroy anyone or anything.

And I knew these people might respond, and I'm mad about it.

Because the prophets are not just judgment and warning, it's love and it's mercy and it's hope.

You get to Jeremiah, and man, Jeremiah is a rough read.

Jeremiah is it's intense.

But if you stick with it, you get to chapter 31 or so, get to the late 20s, the early 30s.

This is what God says.

And this is after, by the way, Jeremiah has predicted calamity, like you can't imagine.

He says, The day is coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.

And guys, we're included in this because we follow Jesus.

This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt.

They broke that covenant, though I love them as a husband loves his wife.

But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days, says the Lord.

I will put my instructions deep within them.

I will write them on their hearts, I will be their God, they will be my people.

And I will not, and they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, You should know the Lord, for everyone from the least to the greatest will know me already, says the Lord.

And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.

The prophet Ezekiel, after chapter after chapter of warnings and judgment, he says, On behalf of God, I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart, and I'll put my spirit in you, so that you will be able to follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

In other words, God is saying, I will do what you can't.

It won't be you doing the work, I'll be the one that does it.

I'll take out your stony, stubborn heart, I'll put a new heart inside of you, I'll change you, I'll put my spirit inside of you.

Isaiah chapter 61.

Isaiah 61 · chapter mention

The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.

He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord's favor has come.

And these are the very words that Jesus reads when he announces to the world around him that he is the Messiah and He's here to fulfill these very prophecies.

And all of that's in the prophets.

It's so complicated.

You have judgment and warning and calamity and disaster, and then you have promises of new spirits and new hearts and new covenants and new relationships and total forgiveness.

And it's all meshed together in this one sort of beautiful mess.

And it's deeply complicated.

And for many, it's just, nah, doesn't make sense, too much.

Reject it, revise it, don't want to deal with it.

And by the way, Jesus encountered that too.

But for those who have ears to hear, for those who desperately want to know the Lord and to know him more deeply, and you can listen to his voice, you begin to learn his heart.

And you begin to have a better formed understanding of who he really is.

Who are you really dealing with?

If you're gonna follow God, you gotta know him.

Right?

If you're gonna follow the Lord with your life, you want to know him as well as possible.

You want to know who you're dealing with, right?

I want to know the Lord.

And I don't know him nearly as much as I want to, and I want to spend the rest of my life trying to know him better.

And I'll be honest, this complication stuff, like all the judgment, the warnings, the love and the hope, I struggle to make sense of it all.

In fact, I spent the last couple of weeks doing just that.

Like I was, I've just, this is something pretty normal for me, where I'll feel like I just don't have the right thing yet.

Like I'm waiting to hear something from the Lord, hopefully through prayer, reading scripture, just thinking a lot and having the sort of open dialogue with God, like, hey God, any moment you want to give me something, that would be a real help.

Because you know, Sunday's coming and there's gonna be some people there and they're gonna expect me to say something.

I got nothing.

That's a normal thing for me.

That's like Tuesday, Justin.

Tuesday, Justin, you don't want to be friends with Tuesday, Justin.

So I for days in the last couple of weeks, building up to today, and by the way, you know, it's the first Sunday of August, everyone's back from summer, and it's not usually like prophets, that's usually not how you want to roll into August, you know, with like judgment.

Um so I'm like, Lord, I I I feel like I'm just missing something.

I'm struggling to make sense of all of this and and and help me.

I'm asking for help.

Help.

And just a few days ago, God is two days ago actually, or was it yesterday?

It doesn't matter.

Recently, this like experience, that's a common experience in my life, combined with a pretty recent uh development in this dynamic, came to my mind, and it was like God was saying, See, that's that's what I'm talking about.

No analogy's perfect, but it was like, I got it.

And here's what it is, okay?

This this might help.

Because again, this is all about understanding God, his heart, hearing his voice, and knowing who's talking to you.

So my home is uh it's an it's an interesting place.

I feel bad for our cul-de-sac because everyone's retired but us.

Um when we moved in, the people who live there before us also retired.

They were like, it's the most quiet cul-de-sac in the neighborhood.

And I was like, it is not gonna be anymore.

And I'm so sorry.

I mean, really, because we have four kids, and it's just no children are children, and there's four of them, and they're they're young, and it's great.

It's in a it's we brought a lot of life to our street, I'll say that.

And so, you know, when you live in a house with four small human beings uh that you're trying to raise, but you don't know what you're doing, um, it gets interesting.

And there's this unique dynamic that's happened in our home, and it's kind of because of the layout of our house.

You see, I've got I've got three sons.

My oldest is 13, and then I've got a seven and a five-year-old.

And the way our house is laid out, they kind of have their own section of the house.

One bathroom, two bedrooms, and there, they live there.

And then myself and my wife and Lily, we're in the other section, and it's very separate.

To where you can sometimes go whole days without ever venturing into their territory.

And honestly, Megan almost never does.

Right?

I'm her envoy.

I go on her behalf, right?

And so a pretty normal dynamic in my life is I'll walk up the stairs to their rooms, and I'll be like, what has happened here?

Some of you will relate to this.

The level of filth and just disgusting conditions that young boys are totally comfortable with, will, if you've never experienced it, will blow you away.

Flushing a toilet, that's an option.

Right?

That's an option.

Or you can just let nature do its thing.

That's option number two.

They don't seem to care.

Wiping something down, no one's even heard of that before.

Right?

There will be like cups of milk.

It's like science experiments just laid out.

And they're just, and it's and it's like I was here two days ago, and it and I what what is going on?

And I and I have a challenge.

I have a challenge in those moments, I'm gonna be honest, because I love them.

I'm I'm their dad, and they're my boys, and like you want to talk about being made in someone's image?

They are literally made in my image.

They're my sons, and I love them so much, but I'm also in charge of the house.

And like, I cannot, I cannot allow things to exist in that state.

I can't do it.

And so I have this, I'm torn, right?

Because I I love them, but also this will not fly.

This cannot be how it is.

This is not the way things need to be.

And so there are warnings given.

There are threats made.

And it kind of depends on how I'm feeling.

Like sometimes I'm level-headed, and I'll be honest, sometimes I've had a long day, and I'm just out, and I walk up and I'm like, what it get in here! Like I have those moments, and you know, the kids.

And this is the cool thing.

What they ought to do is be like, Dad, we see it too.

We recognize our failures and our shortcomings.

And go back downstairs, give us an hour, and I promise you we will rectify this situation.

That is not what happens.

This is what happens.

It's like, what?

You know, my oldest is like, it's not that bad.

It's like, oh, you think, okay.

You think the way forward in this situation is to convince me that I'm wrong.

That I'm too hard, I'm too, I my standards are too intense, you know, that it's crazy that, yeah, you've eaten popcorn and apparently just thrown it on the floor like confetti, but who am I to come up here and be like, that's not okay?

Yeah, sure.

There's like ants all up in here, and they're nowhere else in our house.

But I'm the one with the problem, right?

That's how it typically goes.

Or they'll be like it was, they'll just point fingers at each other constantly, like that's his milk.

Yeah, but you walked by that milk cup 57 times in three days and never once thought, I'll just take it.

You know, it's it's it's it drives me crazy.

And so there's there's warnings given, there's threats made, and I'll be like, look, here's here's what's gonna happen, guys.

If if you don't change things, if this doesn't change, like Armageddon, which for them just means no video games.

And that is the that is the I mean, you tell my five-year-old no video games, it's just like he can't imagine life.

There's no point of living, right?

Because he's a child of this generation, and so whatever.

And so I'll give threats, whatever, and sometimes it works.

Sometimes they're like, we're on it.

And then this is the craziest part.

Some of you really relate to this.

Sometimes I'll be intense and I'll be like, this better change, here's what's gonna happen, and I'll go back downstairs and I'll come back like a day later.

No change.

And they'll all be like playing a video game, and I'll just I'll just stare at them.

I'll just be like, hey guys.

I'll turn around.

Do you remember that conversation we had yesterday?

About and and it's it's oh so frustrating.

Then about two months ago, Megan took all the kids out of town for a few days.

She and another mom friend of hers did like a uh mom thing, and it was it and it was great.

And I was like, oh, well, you know what I was gonna do?

I was gonna watch movies where things blow up and people get punched in the face.

I was like so excited about it.

Because I can't watch that stuff.

Megan doesn't like it.

My kids, it's not probably not good.

But I'm a child of the 80s and I watched a lot of Rambo movies, and I like it.

So and I went upstairs and it was a disaster.

And I was tempted to get really angry.

Like, I was like, oh my god, dude.

But then I had this idea.

I was like, you know what would be cool?

What if they came back and this was just like transformed?

And I'd love to say that I was probably doing it out of the kindness of my heart because I love my kids.

I was probably doing it to impress my wife, too.

You know, like it's always good to deposit into that bank, you know?

And so, and I and I thought this won't be that bad.

So they're gone for like three days, and basically every hour that I'm not here at the building, I'm at home and I'm going through closets and I'm like pulling out stuff.

I'm not just cleaning, I am like deep cleaning, I am reorganizing, we are restructuring.

I almost remodeled the whole house.

I mean, it was like basically like that level.

Like, my wife is very sentimental, and so every time we try to go through stuff when she's in the room, she's like, Well, I can't throw this away.

You know, this was like they wore this shirt in third grade.

I'm like, they wore a thousand shirts in third grade.

Like, why are we, you know, or this toy, they I haven't played with this toy in years, but she's like, but you know, and so she was gone, so I just threw so much stuff away.

So much stuff.

Trash, I mean, I'm not even exaggerating.

I think I counted it was like eight to ten trash bags of stuff.

I was just like, gone.

It was either donated or gone, thrown away.

And then they got back, and they walked up the stairs, and it was like a whole new world.

And I and I honestly did it out of love.

There was no threat, I didn't say, listen.

I was like, guys, I just, you know, you drive me crazy in the way that you won't keep this stuff clean.

But I also recognized when you were out of town that it had gotten to a point that you're not really capable of fixing.

And so I was like, I just need to do this.

So I did it, and I love you, and I want you to enjoy it, but but please, just please.

In response to the love that you've been showing, please.

And and so God brought that to my mind.

I really believe that.

Like it came to my mind out of nowhere a few days ago as I was asking, like, Lord, I just I'm struggling to put it all together with the prophets.

And it was like God was saying, that's the dynamic.

You know, with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, it's like He said, I love you.

I've you're made in my image, you're my people, and I love you so much, but also, guys, I I'm blown away by your comfort level with the disastrous conditions that you're allowing to take place.

The immorality, the injustice, the idolatry.

I love you, but I cannot allow things to exist in this state.

This is bad, this is really bad, and it cannot be this way.

So please, please, change.

And sometimes they do, but most of the time they don't.

And so more warnings are given, more warnings are given, and eventually there has to be a consequence.

And so sometimes disaster strikes from their perspective because they've ignored the call of God, they've ignored the voice of God, they haven't altered course at all, and God says, It can't, I can't let it get worse than this.

But but then, even though that's the reality, then God says, But one day I'm gonna do something for you that you can't do for yourself.

One day there's gonna be a whole new dynamic, an entirely new situation.

And I'm going to do for you what you are incapable of doing.

And I will I will no longer look at your sins, I will no longer hold your iniquities against you, I will put my spirit in you, I will give you a new heart, I will pay the price for your failure.

And that is Jesus.

And now, what we're called to do at this point in history is just to live in response to the act of love that's been shown us.

And all of that exists within the prophets.

This very Complicated, but at the same time, really honestly understandable dynamic of a God who loves people so much that he gives them a longer leash than you could possibly imagine.

And he's constantly speaking, calling to them, saying, Hey, like, come back, do better, come on.

It can be better.

At the same time, he says, I got I love you, but I'm God and I have authority over this.

I can't let it get this bad, and I will take action.

And sometimes you're not gonna like that action, but my heart for you is so strong that just know that even when that happens, even when disaster strikes, I'm not done with you, I'm not giving up on you.

In fact, I'm gonna do for you what you can never do for yourselves.

And we live in that.

That's the beautiful thing for us.

We live in the time that the prophets could only dream of, could only speak of.

We live on the other side of Jesus, and they spent so much time predicting Jesus.

But these scriptures, they they reveal to us the heart of God.

A loving, caring Father who at the same time has a job to do, and he has a world to take care of.

But no matter what, no matter what action he deems appropriate, never stops loving people and ultimately does for them what they could never do for themselves.

And we get to experience that.

That's the complicated judgment, warning, love and hope dynamic of the prophets.

Does that make sense?

And so I was I was thinking through, like, well, what do we do with that?

You know, what do we do with that?

Because I'll be honest, they're just, I'm pulling the curtain back, like, you know, first Sunday of August, it's kind of a Sunday.

You want it to be like, do this, and life gets better.

And I guess the closest thing I can give you to something like that is to just be a listener.

If there's anything that the prophets teach us practically, it's that God is speaking, the voice of God is calling out, and if we will just be people with ears to hear, if we would listen to the voice of God, number one, we avoid a lot of calamity.

But more importantly, we get to experience more love and more mercy than we could even fathom.

And if you spend your life listening to God, and it's like, how does that work?

How do you listen?

Well, he speaks through scripture, he speaks through his spirit inside of you.

Sometimes there's just this gentle voice.

And I'll be honest, sometimes we confuse it with our emotions.

I've done that before.

There have totally been times in my life where I thought God was speaking to me and turns out wait, that was me.

And, you know, you learn and you learn the hard way sometimes, but hopefully you learn over time to discern the difference between your own thoughts and God's.

Sometimes you'll just you'll hear God speak in a way that you go, that's not me.

Because I know what I sound like, and that wasn't me.

That's the Spirit of God inside of you because He promised He would put a Spirit inside of you.

The Holy Spirit's inside of you if you've given your life to Jesus.

He speaks through other people.

He loves to use people.

And people are messy, and even when people try to, you know, tell you something on behalf of God, maybe they've discerned something, they've prayed for you, and they've heard something.

Sometimes it still comes out a little sideways.

That happens sometimes, but if you can be a listener who so desperately wants to hear from the Lord that you take it all in, you consider it all.

The New Testament tells us that we should listen, and if someone has a word from God, then you go, okay, well, you test it.

And I've had people give me what they thought was a word from God, I don't know, that one true at all.

Because we tested it, it didn't hold up, it contradicted scripture, it didn't make any sense with the situation we were in.

It was just, it was that's fine, and that's fine.

People are messy.

But God speaks in a variety of ways.

In a variety of ways.

I would say script if he speaks, it will never contradict the truth of scripture.

So the better you know scripture, the better you can hear the voice of God in that way.

But but he speaks.

Be a listener.

Be a listener.

Listen for God.

When you're in a situation, you don't know what to do and you're struggling, listen.

Set time aside to pray, but but don't be the one that does all the talking.

Be a listener.

Tune your ears.

Say, Lord, I believe you speak.

I want to hear from you.

Open up scripture, read, read the word.

Ask others that you know and trust to pray for you.

Even if it's through the church here, you can come, ask someone on the prayer team, ask me.

Who, I don't know.

I'm just saying, get people involved and say, hey, help help me.

I'm trying to hear from the Lord here.

And then listen to what they say.

But if you will be a listener, you will hear the voice of God in some way, shape, or form.

You will hear the voice of God and He will lead you.

And He will lead you into the right place.

And so, to tie the bow around it, the prophets are complicated, they're messy.

It's love and judgment, all mixed together.

And that's kind of what this meal represents for us as well.

And we're going to take this now as we wrap up.

And so if you didn't grab a cup of bread and juice in the back, they're in the at the back tables, do that now.

You're not going to mess anything up if you go.

This is really, it's a really important part of our gathering.

We do this every week.

If you're unfamiliar with this, it's called the Lord's Supper, sometimes called communion.

Um, depending on how you grew up, it's the sacrament.

But we don't do it in that official, so don't, okay.

Those of you who know what that means, you get it.

This meal represents the death of Jesus on the cross.

And it is exactly what we're talking about with the prophets.

It is the love of God, and it is God's justice and judgment all together.

Because what this meal represents is a moment.

That same moment that the prophets spoke about, this new covenant, this new way, where instead of God holding us accountable for our sin, Jesus Christ, the perfect, blameless Son of God, took our sin upon himself.

And he died on the cross in our place.

And now our sin, from God's perspective, the Father's perspective, it's been dealt with.

It has been dealt with.

And there was judgment in that moment.

That death.

That death happened.

And Jesus even prayed beforehand, hey, if there's another way, Father, if there's another way, show me.

If there's a way to do this and avoid the cross and avoid the intensity of that, show me.

And there wasn't another way.

This was the way.

And we have love and judgment and justice and mercy, and it's all smooshed together in this meal.

And it's maybe this will make sense to you, maybe not.

I don't fully understand it, but it does make sense.

Do you get that?

Like I don't fully understand it, but it also makes sense.

It speaks to my heart.

All of it together, and it's beautiful.

And so we're gonna take this bread and this juice, and we're gonna thank God that his voice constantly beckons us to come to him.

And so let's pray for the bread.

Father, thank you for this piece of bread.

Thank you, Lord, for what it represents.

This is your body broken on the cross.

This is a moment where your mercy and also your necessary judgment of sin collided and it's blessed us more than we can even put into words.

Thank you for this, Jesus.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

Thank you, Lord, for this cup of juice.

We thank you for the blood that it represents, the blood of your son.

And Jesus, we thank you for shedding this blood, for dying in our place.

And Lord, what was so difficult and hard for you, what was calamity for you, was salvation for us.

And we thank you, Jesus.

We receive this, we put our trust in you.

And Lord, we want to live in response to this moment.

Let's take the Jews.