Out Of The Depths

0:00Welcome to the sermon podcast of Gray City Church, located in Jackson, Mississippi. For more information about our church and the many ways you can be involved, you can go to our website at GCJXN.org. Good morning, Gray City. My name is Aishmum Foster and I'm excited to be up here this morning. I am involved in the worship ministry and the photography ministry here and the prayer ministry. I help and hold some babies every once in a while as well. And I am going to be reading this morning from Lamentation 3. Join me as I read. I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath. He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light. Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away. He has broken my bones. He has was seized and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.

1:01He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled 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. He has blocked my ways with blocks of stone. He has made my path crooked. He is a bear lying in weight for me, a lion in hiding. He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow and sent me as a target for his arrow. He has drove into my kidney the arrows of his quiver. I become the laughing stock of all people, the objects of their taunts all day long. He has filled me with bitterness. He has hidden me in a warm wood. He has made my teeth grind and gravel and made me cower and ashes. I saw his breath of peace, I have forgotten what happiness is. So I say, my endurance has pierced, so has my hope from the Lord. This is the Word of the Lord.

2:06Thank you, Ashman. Well, you can already tell that where we're headed is a little dismal. So I'm glad that it's beautiful outside. So no matter how deep sorrow you feel in here, you'll at least get to walk out. And so a praise of the Lord, the sun shining, and maybe we'll still be good to us yet. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler Ross introduced a theory, a model that we now would be familiar with as the five stages of grief. The original intent behind the model was to help people process death specifically. It was doing research among those who were terminally ill. And she was just trying to study, hey, what does their life look like as they know that they will die? They know that their end is near. They've been told that it is coming, even though we all live with that reality. It's staring them in the face. And what are kind of the stages emotionally that they're walking through? It was a model not perfect by any means, which was meant to help these people and their

3:08families walk through what was coming. And over time, 70s and 80s, different businesses actually kind of have co-opted this model of how to kind of help their staff and their companies walk through change and loss organizationally. And so they've kind of used some of those to go, hey, this is probably how you're feeling because a lot of changes is going on. You're probably familiar with them. It often looks very logical, especially when it's kind of on a graphic. And we've got one for you in case you're a little unfamiliar of what these five stages look like. Yeah, look nice emojis to kind of help you know what you should be experiencing in those things. That you have denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It looks very logical, right, one, two, three, four, five. And maybe you can relate. You've experienced loss. And you're like, man, I've felt some of these things very personally. Maybe it is loss of a person, a sudden tragedy, grief caused by the death of someone or maybe it wasn't a person, but it was the death of kind of a plan that you had or an idea that you had come up with of what your life was going to look like and then it kind

4:13of doesn't. Maybe it's the death or the loss of a relationship or maybe even the ending of a job that you once held. The years may not be as kind of organized as this. Your version of this process may be a little different. Maybe it's kind of all over the place. Yeah, maybe that's more what it feels like. It's meant to be kind of this little curve, but you're like, oh, yes. I feel so seen. Brother, you ain't got to say nothing else to me. I feel seen. You're all over the place or it might be more of like a you move on and then you kind of have to come back and yeah, maybe it's a little, that was a little bit more blurry. But it's kind of a, oh, I thought it was on this one with scratch that out. No, that's not how I feel now. I've moved on to this one and you may move forward and then kind of actually move back. It could look a little different. Elizabeth came back later on a few years after she released this book that the model had. The book was called on death and dying and she came back and commented on the work that she had done and she said, I kind of regret that I wrote it the way that I did because now that we've continued to walk with people, we realized that it's not this smooth.

5:14It's not one to five in some linear form. I wish I would have explained it differently in that way. As we enter into the third chapter of limitations, we're at the pinnacle of this book. We're going to see a very distinct process of lament. Similar to the stages of grief, but there's going to be a pattern that the prophet is going to walk us through. And let me say here at the beginning, it is not going to be a one, two, three. You will very much as we go through the chapter, realize that you've maybe experienced all of these things seemingly at the same time. But it's the grief that the prophet is going to put in front of us. As it intensifies, I promise there's going to be a glimmer of hope. I promise you. You're going to get it. I cut ice short on his verses, so you really had to sit in it for a minute, but like right past that, it's going to get just a little bit better if you'll hang on with me. It intensifies, and we know this, because instead of there being one verse or line per letter

6:18of the Hebrew alphabet, I've been saying that to you each week that this is organized grief. Now we have three lines or three verses per letter to really demonstrate to the original readers and hopefully to us, hey, it's getting more intense. It is more organized. It is meant to be felt at a very deep and personal level, which is what the prophet does today. We're not corporately lamenting anymore. He's not standing representative of the nation or the gathering to say, this is how we all feel, right? He is now moving in his lament to saying, hey, this is how I feel. This is what God has done to me very personally. For the past couple of weeks, you've maybe hit out, and the corporate lament where everybody feels that way. I can kind of act like I agree with those feelings, and yet you could have sat here genuinely and said, but nobody really knows how I feel. Nobody's had my experience. Nobody's walked through the very specific thing that I've walked through, and that is true because you are an individual, and so today I hope there's language for you. As the prophet says, hey, let me be very candid about what has happened to me, not the nation,

7:22not the gathering, but to me. This lament is his lament. And the main idea as we walk through these stages of lament is that we will see affliction, we will see assurance, and we will see acceptance. Once you see that process, that there will be affliction, there will be assurance, and there will ultimately be acceptance. The first section of verses, and I really just want to always encourage you that you've got this in front of you. There's one right in front of you. The words will be slightly different, but if you need something physical, I think it may help you today just to look down and to see what's happening so that you have it with you. I'd love for you to follow along because we'll be covering a lot of text in a short amount of time. But here's our first person perspective on destruction. You remember, he already kind of gave us that in the last chapter. Lamentations 2-11 to remind you. He said, my eyes are spent with weeping, my stomach churns, my bile is poured out to

8:23the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. So he was giving us kind of a, man, I feel what my people feel. He was kind of live on the scene, right? You remember from last week, but this is slightly different. This is more personal. He could almost be untouched by some of those things, but what he says today, he's letting us know that this is personal affliction. We're really going to get his perspective on what has happened. We get to hear about all that he has experienced. I want to walk back through some of those verses that Aishmān did read for us. The first six verses, I'm the man who has seen affliction. There's the words. So you can see it right there. I've seen affliction under the rod of his wrath. He's driven and brought me into darkness without any light, surely against me. He turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away.

9:23He's broken my bones. He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation. He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. The prophet finds himself under the rod of wrath is what he says. I want you to notice the word he, he, he, he is pointing back to God and going, you have done this God. You have caused these things to happen to me. He says, I'm being led somewhere by someone, but I'm being led into the dark. His hand is against me time and time again. I feel like a man who's wasting away my flesh and my skin are withering. My bones are broken. He is a man of affliction. He's also a man who is in prison, look at the next set of verses starting in verse 7. He's walled 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. He has blocked my ways with the blocks of stones.

10:27He's made my paths crooked. Now there's some realness to what he's saying is the city has been destroyed and there's actual destruction. The walls have caved in, buildings are shattered and he says, but what has happened to the city has actually personally happened to me. I'm being helped captive by God himself. He's also a man who has been attacked. Starting in verse 10, he is a bear lying in weight for me, a lion in hiding. He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces. He has made me desolate. He's been his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver. I have become the laughing stock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long. He's filled me with bitterness. He has sated me with warm wood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower and ashes. My soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is.

11:29So I say, my endurance is perished, so has my hope from the Lord. He says, God is attacking me like a lion or a bear, the weapon has been turned toward me. It should be aimed at our enemies and the weapon seems to be aimed at me and it is stuck me deeply into my organs the Lord's arrows have stuck. From the laughing stock, he's the butt of every joke walking around the city. He's lying face down and he's eating gravel, he's covered in ashes. He has no peace. How could this be the Lord that we've heard about? How could this be the God that we've given our lives to? You might be wondering, this sounds nothing like the Lord that we hear about in other places in Scripture, even in the Old Testament. This doesn't sound like the good shepherd of Psalm 23. Could we compare the two versions of the same God that we're getting here?

12:30Psalm 23, the first three verses. You may be familiar with college students. You walked through this all last semester. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. I lack nothing with God. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. This is the God that we hope we experience and that we do believe is real. This is the God that comforts us in our distress. Compare that to Lamentations 3.2. He's driven and brought me into darkness without any light. What is happening? Psalm 23, 4. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, so there's difficulty here. I will fear no evil for you or with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The rod and staff of the shepherd are a comfort because God does what with them? He uses the rod to protect the sheep from the enemy, from thieves or from wolves.

13:35He uses the staff to guide them, even if he has to nudge him a little with some toughness. He's moving them to the place they should be because he knows what is best for them. But what did Lamentations 3.1 say to us? I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath. The rod of the shepherd seems to be used in the wrong way, now the man of God, the sheep himself. The rod is not hitting the wolf, it's hitting him. What is happening? Verse 10, he's a bear lying and wait for me, a lion and hiding. God's no longer protecting him from the bear or the lion, the image that we get from King David is, he would have protected the sheep, will now God has become the fierce animal. Psalm 23, 5, 3, 6, you repair a table before me in the presence of my enemies, you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows, I have an abundance of all things. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell

14:39in the house of the Lord forever that the good shepherd and the psalm at least is subduing the enemy on behalf of his servant. But what's Jeremiah say, verses 12 and 13, he bent his bow, he set me as a target for his arrow, he drove into my kidneys, the arrows of his quiver, the poet is now the target. The arrows that should be going towards the enemy are now being shot directly at him. Goodness and mercy have not followed him, verse 17, my soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is. Tell me all for the first time ever you're like, oh man the scripture gets me, I have forgotten what happiness is. And after all this, his response kind of makes sense to us now, doesn't it? My endurance has perished, so has my hope from the Lord. God, I can't keep going, I can't do anything else, I've lost it and I've also lost hope in you.

15:40Because this is my real life experience, it is not fun, 10 out of 10 would not recommend, not having a good time, I'm out. This is the lowest point in limitations that we will go because there is nowhere else to go after you've lost hope in the Lord. And this is where I can maybe feel a little bit awkward, you're like, I think we get why nobody preaches this, because how are you going to turn this around? Where are we supposed to go from here? That the prophet of the Lord seems to have turned against God himself. Like we're talking about a thing that at one time or another you have maybe felt about God, or you could be feeling right now, but you're like, oof, bury that deep. You better hope the Lord doesn't hear you thinking about that. And then you have that thing where you're like, oh man, but the Lord hears everything. He hears me having this conversation in my head. Maybe he's listening to something else and not me. Right? You're right, just me, of course. Yeah, I'm the only one who's like, hoping that God doesn't hear my innermost thoughts that he made. Yeah, there you go, it's sinking in.

16:40You're like, okay, yeah, we're all crazy people. Maybe you can relate to this deep affliction. Maybe you need these words and you just need to like, co-sign it. You need to put your name over it and go, this is my lament because I feel this very personally. The conclusion of this stage of grief, the final verses in this section, the way it's meant to be, beginning in verse 19 through 21. Listen to the poet, remember my affliction and my wanderings, the warm wood and the gall. He says, man, man, I never forget these feelings, how terrible they are. Verse 20, my soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. He says, to remember my affliction easy, my soul will never forget what I have experienced. But this I call to mind, the language is actually, if we could dig into it a little bit,

17:43what he's really saying is, I'm forcing my heart to remember what is true. I'm going to, I'm going to will it. Remember that Jewish mindset? We think with our minds here in the Western world, but the Jews, the seat of their intellect and decision making was right here in their chest. It was their heart. And so he says, I'm going to will my heart. I'm going to use my mind and I'm going to force myself to remember what is true. It's like he catches a glimpse. He looks down the road and he sees what he knows will inevitably come and he goes, okay, yeah, that's right, I got to look up. Because if I look up, I see God doing something down there. I see where he is and I'm just not there yet. It's a little bit of the sense and now he's ready to move from one stage to the next, from affliction to assurance, starting in verse 22, if you'll join me again. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy has never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

18:45The Lord is my portions as my soul. Therefore, I will hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bears the yoke in his youth. I love that he's like, this is a young man's game. I am trying to experience sorrow down the road because I'll be too old to tired. This is a youth game. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust. There may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes. Let him be filled with insults. For the Lord will not cast off forever. But, though he calls grief, he will have compassion, according to the abundance of his steadfast love, for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. You hear the shift? Do you see the language that he's beginning to use? His current reality is dismal. He didn't suddenly look up and go, oh, wow, I made it up in my head.

19:47The city is fine. We're all good. God did not just snap and move him to a beautiful place. And now he can describe something that is wonderful. He's holding these two truths. Currently, what I'm living in is the worst that it could be. And yet, I have this belief about God that I just can't walk away from. His covenant love, and multiple times, he says, this steadfast love, or this tacit love, this love formed from a covenant, an agreement between God and his people that he would love them. I stood right here yesterday, marrying two of our members. And I said, hey, you need to be really mindful of what you're saying yes to. That this is a covenant. It's not a contract. You're not signing a contract that's built on distrust. You're beginning a covenant that is built and founded on trust. That you regularly will wake up and believe that person has your best interest at hand. You will regularly wake up and you will believe that you trust each other. That they're going to do what they said they would do.

20:50That that is what you fall back on in the covenant. This is covenant love. He may cause grief, but he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. It's a guarantee, but you may have to do really deeply to remember it or to feel it. Verse 24, the Lord is my portion that says my soul. Your flesh may tell you one thing, but your soul may have to step in to tell you what is true. I imagine the next few verses are a bit of a pep talk to himself, which maybe you need to see it that way. Verse 25, the Lord is good to those who wait for him. It's good that I wait. I'm not sure about that, but I'm going to believe that the Lord is good to those who wait. Verse 26, it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Verse 28 and 29, let him sit alone in silence, let him put his mouth in the dust. He's saying, hey, these things are okay. I can learn something from them.

21:51And then he moves on to saying, again, what he knows to be true about God. He doesn't afflict from his heart. Man, God's not mad at me and he's punishing me. Verse 35 and 36, if you look down to deny a man justice and the presence of the most high, to subvert a man in his lawsuit, the Lord would not approve. God would not be unjust to me even if my life is difficult. He wouldn't do that. He is a standard that's not my standard. We've been talking about Job. I've referenced that, right? That his friends sit with him and they're like, well, man, just based on the facts, it must be you because God is just. He punishes sin. And so if you're being punished or afflicted, you must be in sin. And Job says, guys, it's not true. I know everybody's like the hero of their own story. He goes, but I promise I didn't do anything. I don't think that you're right. Jeremiah helping us understand what Job felt where he goes, man, I believe that God is just. And yet I also am in pain. Who has spoken and it come to pass, verse 37, unless the Lord commanded it.

22:56Nothing gets past the eyes of the Lord. Maybe this is where you are today. You're in the midst of affliction or maybe you're actually past affliction. Like the event has happened, but there's all of that residual impact of your affliction. And you're right here. You're trying to will yourself back to the assurance of the Lord. Hanging on to hope. Tim Keller wrote a book on suffering and in it, he wrote, we may hear our hearts say it is hopeless, but we should argue that. You may be your own worst enemy in your affliction. You may have to wake up and go, come on man, that's not true. Whoever's trying to make you believe that, that's not true. Don't buy it. Don't buy the enemy and his lies. Don't buy what your flesh is telling you. This might be what you need to do to argue back with the truth of God and will yourself to believe it even if you don't feel it. This is it quietly in the presence of the Lord to read his word and do what you should be doing,

24:01which is waiting in silence ready to respond to what you hear, God say, by believing that if he did it once and he would do it again, right now I'm reading an Exodus and I'm reading in the gospel of Luke personally. And right now, God is smoking the Egyptians. Right, come on, y'all, you get excited because you're like, they ain't no doubt about what's happening in here. I can read this and I know what God is doing. No confusion. 430 years, they've been in slavery long time to suffer but when God shows up, whew, he don't mess around and they're getting hammered and it's awesome and I love it because I'm like, this is my God. You know what I'm saying? Like, suck at Egyptians. Come on, come on, I'm just saying what you're feeling. You're like, yes, God is good to his people. He never waits longer than he has to. He's coming. And then I go to the gospel of Luke and Jesus is just manifesting that and he's touching people on their heels. People who've waited years, their whole life, they haven't been able to walk.

25:06Twelve years, this woman has bled and no doctor can help her in a moment. He touches her, it's gone. This is the God that we love who steps into the heels but he doesn't always do it as quick as we want because the Egyptians did have a lot of power and authority over his people for a long time. These people did have to live the bulk of their lives suffering before Jesus showed up and he put a hand on them. You were to come to me and tell me your problem which I actually love for you to do that so I'd keep doing that. Some of y'all need to be telling me more about your problems. I walk around most weeks and I'm like, I guess these people are doing okay because they ain't calling. I'm not going to leave my house all the time. I've got some boundaries but I'd love to be helping you out and praying for you and caring for you. It's in my text me this morning and I was like, hey man, I got this really terrible thing happening and I tried to not be excited. I mean that I was like, oh man, that's really terrible but I'm so stinking glad that you texted me so that I could pray for you because that's what we're here for.

26:08But if you were to come to me and tell me about your problem and I'm going to, what's God saying to you in his word and you're like, well I don't know, I haven't been reading it. I can love you, I can patch you on the back, I can hug you if you're a hugger. I'll buy you lunch. I'll tell you how much I care for you but I'm not going to be able to do much more than that if you will not open the word of God and listen to what he has said and what he wants to say to you in the midst of your affliction, the assurance that he wants to give to you. You want to make it through your affliction, you have to walk through the land of assurance and only then can you move to the final stage that the prophet gives to us today and that is the stage of acceptance. So join me in verse 40. Jeremiah says, let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hands and hearts to God in heaven. We have transgressed and rebelled and you have not forgiven.

27:11You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us killing without pity. You have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. You've made a scum and garbage among the people. All our enemies open their mouths against us. Panic and pitfall have come upon us devastation and destruction. My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite until the Lord from heaven looks down in seas. My eyes cause me grief at the fate of the daughters of my city. I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without calls. He said, I've been hunted and they had no reason to do it. I haven't done anything. They flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me, water closed over my head. I said, I am lost. Fear my returns a little bit to presenting his case. I want to be really clear, God, that I can accept it, but I want to be real clear about the facts

28:12that this has been our situation. I want the record to be set straight for all time. So he states what the problem is. You know what? Now that I think about it, Lord, we need to return to you. Again, clearly, we've rebelled not you. We were wrong, not you. The first Lord, let me say that something, this is kind of on us. But also, God, you have pursued us and killed us without pity. You've wrapped yourself in so grand of a cloud that even our prayers can't get to you. Woof! The prophet is not afraid to talk to the Lord. And sometimes you've got to be in that kind of a spot to be real honest with God. He's been waiting for a long time for you to do it. Our enemies devour us. Devastation and destruction have come to us. And then it gets personal. This is the most personal part of this lament. He says, I've been hunted like a bird. They flung me into a pit and cast stones upon me. Water closed over my head. I said, I am lost. Jeremiah's title, I think I told you a couple of weeks ago, he's known as the weeping prophet.

29:14And that's not like a jest at him. Like, oh, he couldn't really hack it. And he just cried. Like, he was the emo kid on the block. No, no, no, it's not that. He's called the weeping prophet because I think he wept so stinking much for the people who wouldn't listen. And he probably wept a lot for himself to go, God, why have you given me this assignment? Publicly on record, let me say, not an experience I have with you. Very joyful being with you. He had a tremendously difficult role as a prophet for starters. He wasn't allowed to marry. You may remember that from your Old Testament class. That God calls him to be a prophet and he says, oh, hey, BT Dub, you don't get to take a wife. Oh, I'm sorry, God, I think I missed something that you said there. What did you say? You don't get to take a wife. And it will be a sign of judgment on the people. Can you imagine your whole life? Oh, hey, Jeremiah, what's up, dude? Hey, you haven't found anybody yet? What's going on? It's because God's got you doing these weird things and nobody really wants to hang out with you because you're wearing a dirty loin cloth.

30:14Yeah, you got dirty underwear, bro. That's when nobody wants to marry you. Right? And he goes, no, I actually, God told me that I couldn't marry so that every time I got asked this, I could make sure to clearly communicate to his people that judgment is nigh, that his whole life he had to go, no, I can't get married because God's going to judge you and you're going to not be betrothed any more for a time. What a terrible life. Like it's hard enough if you're walking around going, man, I'm still looking for a spouse, and I hope that's not why God's making me not get married. I'm praying against that, okay? But this is where it started for him, but in his ministry, he was attacked by almost everyone in his life. The nation just didn't listen to him. He was rejected in his hometown and by his family. Right? Jesus is saying, hey, prophets got honor everywhere, but it's hometown. I feel that so much. I ain't trying to walk around Clinton telling people to do stuff because they're like, well, so you got to be kidding me. Okay, well, you just wait.

31:17Faults prophets spoke against him. The priests, the holy man had him beaten because he was calling him out for their corruption. One king flat out ignored him, and another king Zedokai had him thrown into a sister in Jeremiah 38. Then the official said to the king, let this man, Jeremiah, be put to death for he has weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in the city, and the hands of all the people by speaking such words to them. The prophets walk around going, whoa to you because we're all going to die. And that's not a good morale booster for soldiers, apparently. And they said, we got to kill this guy because like everybody's about to fully out of here because they're listening to this man. But this man is not seeking the welfare of his people but their harm. And King Zedokai said, behold, he's in your hands for the king who knew nothing against you. So they took Jeremiah and they cast him into the sister of Nakaya, the king's son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by rope. So I guess, thanks guys, you didn't like throwing. They're like, hey man, hang on to this rope, we're going to drop you in.

32:19And there was no water in the sister, but only mud and Jeremiah sank in the mud. This is a real life story following after God that he is in a literal pit. No escape, sitting in the mud, going, God, what are you doing? I did everything you told me to do and this is what happened. I've been faithful. I have followed your word. And this is where I end up, which makes the next thing he says is we get to the end, even more impactful versus 35, 55 to 57. I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea. Do not close your ear to my cry for help. You came near when I called. You said, do not fear one of the worst moments of his life. And Jeremiah is still looking to the Lord because there is no one else to call. There is no one who can help you like the Lord can help you.

33:23And I love that line, you came near when I called and you said, do not fear. If you miss what is being said here, you can basically just scrap everything else I've said to you. If you miss the experience that Jeremiah has and then how he still makes this turn and to see what God does for him, God doesn't make the pain disappear, does he? Acceptance does not come because you get relieved. You don't get the step into acceptance. Go, oh, accept all that God did to me because now he's been good to me and everything's fine. Acceptance can happen even while you are looking at the remains of your brokenness. They can be both at the same time. Acceptance is trusting the Lord even when he has left you and your mess. But what he will do since he will draw near and he will whisper do not fear. God is not standing far off, he's not at the top of the well going, hey man, looks fine from up here, I don't know what the problem is. You'll be okay if you'll just trust me that Jeremiah says he drew near to me.

34:29I imagine it helps me that God sits down into the pit with him, covered in mud just like the prophet and says, don't be afraid. He doesn't say, oh, I've heard you now, let me fix this in a snap. He says, hey, I'm here right with you. Do not be afraid. You need not fear because God will make it right. The final verse is for us today. You have taken up my calls, O Lord, you have redeemed my life, verse 59. You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord, judge my calls. You have seen all their vengeance and all their plots against me. You have heard their taunts, O Lord, all their plots against me, the lips and thoughts of my assailants are against me all day long, but hold their sitting and their rising. I'm the object of their taunts. These people live to mock me. You will repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. You will give them doneness of heart. Your curse will be on them.

35:29You will pursue them and anger and destroy them from under your heavens, O Lord. In God's time and in God's way, he will make things right that all will be made right. In your affliction, find assurance and let your assurance help move you to acceptance. As we're closing, I'd like for you to kind of apply this to yourself to take stock for just a second and think about where you are. You could be in one stage for one scenario and you could be in a different stage for a separate scenario. It wouldn't be nice if just one thing happened at the time, right? Just one chaotic thing. For some of you, it's like, man, you got eight chaotic things and you just can't even spend all of it. You may be experiencing all of these things right now. But, man, if it would just help you to think about one situation in your life right now and to go, God, where am I on this scale? What stage am I really in? Because then what it's going to do is if you can identify that and ask the Spirit, hey, Spirit, could you just give me some guidance

36:32about where I am in this process that you then could go ready for this back to the Word of God and go, man, I need to read those verses today. And I feel so afflicted. Let me read, let me read from the top here, ooh, okay, I'm not the only one who's ever felt this way. I'm not, not by a long shot. I want to remind you that this is also cyclical. You will come to the end of this process and then life will come for you again and you will re-enter it once more. And no matter where you are, you need to be familiar with all of them. And the point today is not to rush through and you know, try to just get to the end and get past it. If you are in a place of grief or distress, I would actually encourage you to slow down years ago when I was kind of just in a spot like this. I was sitting with a guy who had a similar experience and said, man, if I could give you one piece of advice because really nothing I'm going to say is going to fix it. He said, if I could give you one piece of advice, he goes, I would tell you to not rush through it. He goes, because I've been where

37:34you've been and I tried to just move past it and I tried to not think about it. He goes, and I did the male thing and I just tried to work more. He goes, I just decided I would just go to my job and I would just like get after it and I thought that would fix it. And he said, but you better believe the second that I stopped and slowed down, it was waiting for me. My grief was sitting right there and I had to pick it back up and I had to walk through it. Take your time, become familiar with the landscape and get comfortable. I'd like to remind you that once the Israelites were taking captive at the end of Jeremiah's story and they were carted off into exile, the Jeremiah had to write a letter to them, I want you to hear what it says. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce, take wives and have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, give your daughters and marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease. Can we, you've heard these verses before, there's like a one section of

38:35Jeremiah we read and go, okay, we know what's happening. And he goes, hey, get comfortable. I think I've said this to you all before, get comfortable. You're going to be there a minute. You're going to be an exile for a long time. Some of you young books are going to have grand kids by the time this is over. Could you imagine if God looked at you right now and said, hey, the thing that you're suffering in right now is going to last 50 years. Get comfortable. You better build you a house. I mean, I'd be out already. I'd be like, God, I can't even build a house. Can I buy a house there? I can't even build a house. Come on. I can't plant no plants. Come on. Can you, can I, is there somebody I can pay? You know, it's going to be a while. And then he says, but seek the welfare of the city that you're going to be put into where I have sent you. Pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare, you will find welfare. For thus says the Lord verse 10, when 70 years

39:38are completed for Babylon, I'll visit you. I'll fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare enough for evil to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me and when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord. I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you in to exile. Don't you love hearing all of that instead of plucking out Jeremiah 29-11 and going, yeah, this will fix my situation because God has good plans for me. But what surrounds that is God going, gonna be a minute, gonna be hard, then it will be good, but you will sit and you will suffer and it will cost you. But I know that I will bring you out because I'm a good, good father. Sorry, your life's in flames, but God hasn't planned, but sometimes pain precedes

40:43provision. Sometimes our pain comes before God's provision and sometimes pain is the only way to get where God needs us to go. But could I also ask you to believe that God will be good to you, that you wouldn't hear all of this and still walk out today and go, yeah, God's just never gonna be good to me. God's just never going to help move me forward. But would you daily train yourself to say, God, I believe that you will be good to me. And that may be all that you can say. Your prayer may be short and sweet. God, I believe you'll be good to me. God, I believe that you'll be good to me. God, I believe that you will be good to me. And it doesn't mean that God's gonna give you what you want, just so you know, that he will be good to you. Final story before we pray. I once was listening to a podcast about a couple pastors who were just kind of talking about the work of ministry that God had given them and one of them, a Ray Ortland, somebody on a Ray Ortland, just like just the most godly grandfather that any of us could have. And he's talking with kind

41:48of a guy that he works with. Sam, Sam Albury is his name and they were having a conversation about a minister to people through grief. And Ray does this thing. We're like, he makes you feel like the most important person in the room and I'm not even in the actual room. I just imagine that's what it feels like. And he said, you know, Sam, I remember a time that I came, that me and my wife came to comfort you when you, you had experienced a loss. And he said, I knew I couldn't fix it. We just wanted to sit with you. He goes, and do you remember what you said to me? And Sam was like, I'm mad, you know, it's like I was in grief. I have no idea what I said. I hope it was good. And he said, I was there to comfort you, but Sam, you looked at me and you said, we don't doubt that God will be good to us. We just don't know how yet. And that that would carry you today. That you would say, God, I don't doubt that you will be good to me. I'm just not sure how you will be good. And so we will wait and let you show us because we hold that space today that no matter

42:49what stage you're living in, that you and faithfully that God will be good to you. Can I lead us to pray just a little bit longer as we've been doing the past couple weeks just to give you a moment to kind of sit and really listen a little bit undistracted from the Lord. Could you get a posture of prayer that just converts with the God of heaven who goes before you? Maybe it'll help you to kind of just like pray through the stages and ask the Spirit for a moment to reveal to you where you are. Is it affliction? Is it assurance or is he leading you into the stage of acceptance? What is it? God.

44:13I encourage you to, you may be saying they're going, oh man, my thing is just not that big of a thing. I know ten other people who have a worse situation than me. And so you take this road of false humility to go, oh, my problem's not big enough to give it to the Lord, but could I just tell you that that's not how God sees your affliction? That your affliction is valid, fam. No matter how grand it is, would you please be honest with him and say, hey, I know it's not that big of a thing, God, but this is Raphael very afflicted.

45:34You don't have to, you don't have to put that down. You don't have to, you don't have to put that down to step into assurance. I think it's good for you to hold both of them and say, God, I'm going to hold my affliction out before you and yet at the same time as the prophet does that you would say, and while I am being afflicted, God help me to see exactly who you are. Father, help me will myself to believe that you are good. Father, help me will myself to believe that you are good.

47:03Father, finally, would you help us? Maybe it's in this moment or maybe it is years to come that we would accept and faithfully walk in where you have placed us, that we would believe and that we would hold hope that you will do everything that you say you will. Father, that you will continue, as you always have and you promise to, that you would continue to have a steadfast love for your people, that if we are in Christ, that we are sons and daughters, that we are co-airs with your son, that we are citizens of a new kingdom and as a good father that you will care for us,

48:08that in your way and in your timing, that relief will come. This is Jeremiah knew that the day would come where his enemies would be dealt with because you are just where we are not, but he had to wait. Help us, God, in our waiting. Help us be patient. Help us slow down. Help us to open your word and to receive from it, that it would be encouragement to us, that it would help heal our souls, that it would give us endurance to run the race that is before us, that is difficult, that we would continue just to look forward, eyeing the day that you have promised to return for us to make all things right, and that we would know that we are closer to it today than anyone else has been in history, that we would find encouragement in that, that we are closer and we are getting ever closer to you.

49:14And in our suffering, Father, I pray that we would be reminded, especially in a moment, as we take communion together, that your son came willingly and suffered on our behalf, that he understands better than anyone what it is to suffer, to the greatest degree, and even in his sorrow about what was going to take place, he was faithful to do it, that we would be encouraged to do the same, that we would continue even in our lament to be faithful, because you have been and will be faithful to us. Jesus in your name we pray. Amen.