Looking Outside the Box

Lamentations 1:1-6 | July 11, 2021

Have you ever been window shopping?

That’s where you look at what the store has displayed in the window, but you don’t go in the store because you know you can’t afford what’s in the window, so, you just stand out there and stare at it.  

A more modern way of window shopping is putting stuff in your online cart on Amazon or Best Buy or Etsy. 

Hanging out on Pinterest is another way of window shopping.

And if you’re on a diet window shopping is like standing outside the Double K Ranch looking at all the glazed doughnuts. 

And if that’s you – if you are on a diet – dough-nut give up. 

Or as Yoda would say, “You do or you dough-nut, there is no try.”

Window shopping is being on the outside looking in. 

I want to invite you to do that with me today.

We are going to look in from the outside on a moment in history from 2,607 years ago.

Now, what does that ancient history have to do with your life today? 

Well, that ancient history impacts…

• Your family
• Your friends
• Your job
• Your home
• Your school
• Your church
• Your community
• Your country
• Your world
• Your soul

So, it pretty much impacts every single part of your life. 

Why?

Let’s find out – look with me at Lamentations 1, beginning with verse 1…

1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people!

This moment in ancient history is somewhere late 586 BC or early 585 BC – so about 600 years before Jesus was born. 

The lonely city is Jerusalem – the strong and powerful city of God’s people – and it had been invaded and destroyed and taken over.  

This is the first of 5 poems found in the book of Lamentations. 

These poems are poems of lament – poems that are crying out to God in prayer.

How do you lament?

How do you cry out to God in prayer?

Well, the Bible gives us four basic characteristics of lamenting and Mark Vroegop has listed them like this…

• Turn to God
• Complain to God
• Ask God
• Trust God

That doesn’t mean that we can’t turn to other people for help, but lamenting is the most powerful way to deal with the sin and evil and pain and suffering in life because lamenting forces us to turn to God. 

So, in the first part of this first poem of lament we are on the outside looking in at the desolate city of God’s people.  

You might have driven through a city that was leveled by a tornado or a hurricane. 

You might have travelled internationally and seen a city that was destroyed by war. 

And if we haven’t seen those things in person, we’ve seen pictures of that kind of destruction.

The scene we are about to walk through is similar to what is left after a natural disaster or a season of war.

Some believe it is quaint or poetic to use “she” and “her” to refer to a city – but since this is a poetic lament “she” and “her” are used.

Listen to how the description continues in verse 1…

1 She has become like a widow who was once great among the nations!

In the Bible widows and orphans are addressed with love and honor because of the physical, emotional, spiritual, and practical difficulties they often face.  

I was so humbled by a text I received from one of our widows this week. 

She is so faithful to personally minister to other people – especially other widows. 

This is what her text said…

It is good that I have been thus afflicted to be able to have them whisper in my ear – “I know you understand.”

• Who can you personally minister to this week?
• Who can you personally share your faith with?
• What neighbor can you help?
• What church member can you call or text?
• What often-seen person can you introduce yourself to?

Like many a widow and orphan – the city had been afflicted – they were left with a great deal of physical, emotional, spiritual, and practical difficulties. 

1 She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer!

• She was a princess, now she’s a pauper
• She was Division 1, now she’s lost her scholarship
• She was Premier League, now her team has folded

She was once respected throughout the known world as a leader in business and commerce and culture and now she is working part-time for a pig farmer.

2 She weeps bitterly in the night and her tears are on her cheeks;

She used to have a warm cup of tea and read a few pages of a new book before bed, but now she can’t even cry herself to sleep. 

2 She has none to comfort her among all her lovers.

2 All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.

She formed lots of alliances with other countries.

She even sacrificed many of her commitments to God in order to make those alliances. 

But in her hour of need those alliances did not hold up and she was left in the wake of her own pride and arrogance. 

3 Judah has gone into exile under affliction and under harsh servitude;

It wasn’t just one city but the entire nation – all of Judah was invaded and taken over – the entire nation fell. 

At least somewhere around 1.1 million people displaced – many of them ended up as refugees in Egypt. 

Across our nation there are practical difficulties and strong opinions on issues involving refugees and immigration, but what if this happened to you? 

These are church people that lost their church and their city and their country and had to go somewhere else and find any work they could just to eat. 

Lord willing, we will never have to face that difficulty, but if we did…

• Where would we go?
• What would we do?
• Would we lament and turn to God?
• Would we lament and trust God?
• Would we turn our back on God?

I don’t think we consider those questions with a depressing, zombie-apocalypse type attitude. 

I think we consider those questions as gracious reminders to say, “This the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. I will rejoice in God my Savior today. I will trust in God my Savior today – no matter what comes my way. He is good! He is good! His love endures forever!”

That’s how we consider those questions.

3 She dwells among the nations, but she has found no rest;

The people lost everything, and they fled to foreign lands to work hard labor, sometimes as slaves, just to be able to eat.

And there was no rest for the weary.

They worked crazy hard for crazy long hours and they couldn’t sleep because they were so overcome with grief over all they had lost.

Have you ever been there – in a season of life when you feel like you can’t get any rest?  

3 all her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of distress.

This has the same feel as the words of Paul…

2 Corinthians 11:26-27

I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren…

The city had fallen, the nation had fallen, and the people were facing some level of danger no matter where they were. 

4 The roads of Zion are in mourning because no one comes to the appointed feasts.

Zion is a word that is sometimes used to describe the city of God or heaven or the church or the people of God.

Here it has the feel of the city and the church feasts and fairs and festivals – no one was going to those anymore because the roads into town were destroyed.

4 All her gates are desolate;

The gates to the city were once a hotbed of activity.  

I imagine this scene kind of like the setup of a state fair or the gates into a huge sporting event – there was the ticket booth and the souvenir shop and the food trucks. 

But all that was gone – there was no fair and there was no team and there was no game.

• “Man, Dow, this is so depressing!”
• “Is there any good news?”
• “This is window suffering not window shopping!”

Stay with me. 

4 her priests are groaning, her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is bitter.

The pastors were bummed because no one was going to church or watching online. 

And with that kind of military-style destruction a lot of the young men were killed or had fled to other countries, so, there weren’t a lot of prospective husbands. 

Looking in from the outside, the nation looked like a big box of bitterness.  

We can’t make any connections with that imagery in our nation today, can we (gracious sarcasm).

This is a scene of loneliness and destruction. 

And how about the question we haven’t asked yet…

Why – why did all of this happen?

Stay with me.

5 Her adversaries have become her masters, her enemies prosper;

Don’t you hate it when the biggest jerk in your office gets promoted over you?

Or the laziest, most gossiping teacher becomes the new school principal?

Her enemies were running the country now and they were prospering. 

The worst people around were successful. 

Again, we can’t make any connections with that ancient history and today, right?

But why – why was all of this happening?

5 for the LORD has caused her grief because of the multitude of her transgressions;

Ouch!

All of this was happening because of her sin and her trespasses and her transgressions and her rebellion.

Her grief was because of her sin.  

What does that mean?

The prophet Jeremiah had been preaching to the people for 40 years about how they were being occasionally spiritual and religious, but they were being mostly prideful and arrogant.  

They were not living in the power of God’s grace and mercy and love and salvation – they were living in the power of pride. 

So God allowed and purposed the city and the nation and the people to receive the wages of their sin.  

Sin comes with a salary – and that salary is some kind of temporary punishment or if there is no repentance and no salvation then that punishment becomes permanent separation from all that is good and holy – forever and ever and ever – permanent separation from God.

God’s people ignored God – not just the non-church-going-people – not just the liberal nutjobs and the conservative cranks – but God’s people ignored God – over and over again – for decades.  

And ignoring God led to forgetting about God and disobeying God – all while they kept going to church. 

But their sin and rebellion caught up with them.

In a sense, almost anytime you ask the question “Why?” the answer will be, “Because of sin.”

But in love, God has dealt with the problem of sin…

Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The final wages of sin have one destination: everlasting death. 

The free gift of God in and through Jesus Christ has one destination: everlasting life. 

And that life matters when it comes to the pain and suffering of life. 

Listen to the next part of the poem…

5 her little ones have gone away as captives before the adversary.

This is where some people might think or say something like this…

“I can’t believe in a God that would allow a whole nation to be destroyed and allow the children to suffer.”

Sharon Dirckx (dear-icks) has a PhD in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge. 

She is a researcher, author, speaker, and teacher and although, there are no easy answers to someone who does not believe in God, she helps us think a little…

Sharon Dirckx (via Christianity Explored)

If you have ever found yourself asking “Why?”, to whom are you addressing the question? You see, if God doesn’t exist, is there really anyone to ask in an ultimate sense?

Sharon Dirckx (via Christianity Explored)

Surely, this is just the way the world IS. Accidents happen, molecules make mistakes leading to diseases, and biology drives human behaviour.

Sharon Dirckx (via Christianity Explored)

The problem with this view is that it doesn’t really help us make sense of the grittiness of life. We get ANGRY at suffering. But where does that come from if this is just the way the world is?

Sharon Dirckx (via Christianity Explored)

The Christian faith makes sense of the rawness we feel in the face of suffering because it says there is something WRONG with the world. Things are not as they should be. We live in a world in which good and evil are at play on the world stage and in every human being. God is good but evil is also real and has influence in the world for now. So, at first glance it seems that suffering gives us good reason to rule out God. But actually, the opposite is true. It is only IF God exists that our outrage at suffering finds a home.

Sharon Dirckx (via Christianity Explored)

Could it be that we ask ‘Why?’ because God is real?

God is real and he has really, really dealt with the problem of sin. 

The final wages of sin have one destination: everlasting death – and the free gift of God in and through Jesus Christ has one destination: everlasting life. 

Just a few more lines of the poem…

6 All her majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion; 

6 her princes have become like deer that have found no pasture; 

6 and they have fled without strength before the pursuer.

She used to be the Queen, the President, and now she has no power, no position, no government, and no land.

And the princes in the palace have now become like livestock in a pasture with no grass and, therefore, no strength to fight or to flee. 

And that’s the rest of the story…with sin.  

• Loneliness
• Desolation
• Desperation
• Discouragement
• Fear
• Worry
• Anger
• And no grass in the field

All the things we love, right?

Or the rest of the story can be different.  

How?

We can repent and…

• Turn to God
• Complain to God
• Ask God
• Trust God

And the journey and the destination will change.  

How?

Psalm 23:1-2

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures…

Looking at your life from the outside, is the Lord truly your shepherd?

Are you turning to God with your life or are you ignoring him and doing life your own way – but still going to church?

If you turning to God, then loneliness and desolation don’t get the last word.

The gospel is not window shopping, it is destination swapping.

The gospel – the good news about Jesus is soul saving and soul satisfying.

Why?

Because it reminds us of this truth…

Scott Hubbard

Even in discomfort. Even in rejection. Even in the valley of the shadow of death…we shall not want.

Message by Dow Welsh |

July 11, 2021 © Holland Avenue Baptist Church

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Above are pre-sermon manuscript notes, not transcript

Sermon scriptures NASB unless otherwise noted

Lots of help from many pastors and theologians

Weekly help from Bruce Hurt at www.preceptaustin.org

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/no-i-shall-not-want

https://www.christianityexplored.org/Articles/469270/Home/CE_ORG/Tough_Questions/Transcripts/03_If_there.aspx

So have you ever been window shopping? Window shopping? Window shopping is when you go and you stand in front of the store and you look at what's on display in the front windows, but you don't go inside because you know you can't afford what's in the windows, right? It's just too much money. So you just stand outside and you stare at what you see in the windows, notice that I have a lumber store on the screen behind me right now because lumber is something no one can afford right now. So you window shop by staring and paying attention now for those of you who don't go physically out. Let me give you another example. Window shopping is kind of like going on amazon and putting much of stuff in your cart that you know you can't buy right or on best buy or etc. Or wherever you go or maybe just hanging out on Pinterest for you know an hour or nine, you know, that's one of those things that is kind of like window shop or if you're on a diet, if you're on a diet, window shopping is like going down to the double K Ranch, standing in the window and looking at all of those glazed doughnuts sitting on the shelf just watching. And if that's you, if you are on a diet, listen, we want to encourage you doughnut give up. Okay hanging are as Yoda would say you do or you doughnut there is no try. Okay. You hang in there hanging window shopping is when you're on the outside looking in, I want to invite you to do that with me today. I want to invite you from the outside in to look at a moment in history. It's a moment that was 2,607 years ago. Now you may be thinking, what in the world does this ancient history have to do with my life today? Well, this ancient history has everything to do with your family, your friends, your home, your job, your school, your church, your community, your country, your world, and your soul. So pretty much everything to do with your life. Okay, what we're about to look at at this moment in history, has everything to do with your life today. It has an impact on your life today. Half. Let's see if we can find out. Listen to lamentations. Chapter one beginning with verse one, How Lonely sits the city that was full of people. This moment in history is sometimes late 5 86. Bc. Early 5 85 Bc. The Prophet Jeremiah, we believe is looking on the city of Jerusalem. The lonely city, the powerful city of Jerusalem. The city that was the city of the people of God had been invaded and destroyed and he's looking on the desolation, He's looking on the destruction Lamentations is a book of five poems. The first point here is what we're looking at. These poems are poems of lament. Every poem is a different picture of lamenting to God, of crying out to prayer to God. Now, how do you limit, what does it look like? Well, the bible gives some practical characteristics Mark Geragos has put. In this way, we turn to God, we complain to God, we ask God and we trust them. We turn we complain, we ask and we trust that's the picture that we have in the scripture now doesn't mean that you can't turn to other people in life for help. It just means that the clearest and most powerful way to deal with sin and evil and pain and suffering in life is to lament because lamenting forces us to turn to God and the ultimate answer for pain and sin and evil and suffering in this life. The ultimate answer will only be found in God. So lamenting pushes us to turn to God. And the first part of this first lament is looking from the outside, looking from the outside of what's actually happened now you may have driven by a city or town or community where a tornado or a hurricane blew through there. You saw the devastation of the destruction. Maybe you've traveled internationally and you've been through a city that was destroyed because of war. But if you haven't seen those things personally with your own eyes, we've seen those things in pictures, right? We've seen those things and videos and on the news we've seen destruction and devastation on an area and those scenes are very similar to what we're looking at today. It's a scene of devastation, A scene that looks like a natural disaster or or a war has occurred. And as we walk through this point, just as a point of reference the language for the city. The language here is she and her. Now that's kind of considered quaint and poetic. Most people don't say that anymore. But since this is a poem, it kind of works that it's poetic. So as we walk through this poem, you will hear she and her. It ain't talking about your aunt Matilda. Alright. It's talking about the city, it's talking about the people of God. So listen to how the poem unfolds verse one, she has become like a widow who was once great among the nations in the bible, Widows and orphans are always spoken of with love and honor, particularly because of the difficulties they face. Spiritual difficulties, financial difficulties, emotional difficulties, physical difficulties. I got a text this week from one of the widows in our church. She is someone who is faithful to personally minister to other people, particularly minister to other widows. This is what that it is good that I have been thus afflicted to be able to have them whisper in my ear. I know you understand and that's what we want. But don't we want someone who can sit next to us and say, I understand you're listen, everybody can't do that. There's a lot of times I will not be able to sit with you and understand your pain. Your pain is different than my pain. My pain is different than your pain and all the moments of life. All the painful moments of life are different for all of us at different stages. But as Tommy said at the very beginning, if you feel like nobody can understand your pain, God can understand your pain and God is listening. But I'm so thankful for this precious widow that says I'm going to take my hurt, my pain, my affliction, and I'm going to use it for the glory of God, to the best of my ability. So I challenge you with the same. Who can you minister to this week? Person? Who can you reach out to personally? Who can you share your faith with? What neighbor can you help out this week? What church member can you call or text this? What's stranger? Can you introduce yourself to this one? I'm not talking about stranger danger here. I'm talking about like, like people in this room. You know who who in this church, you go see them, but I don't know who they are. Don't come ask me. Don't go ask tammy. Just go over and say, hey, nobody bites. The biters are on the preschool hall. They aren't in here. All right. It's okay. Who can you go introduce yourself to today in the church or are in the community? Who is that person that every morning the place you go pick up your coffee, you see that person all the time. Just say, hey to him. Just say, hey, who can you minister to this with you? Who can you make a difference in their life? This way there are people like widows and orphans and others that are experiencing difficulty. This one, the entire city of God, they were experiencing physical difficulty, financial difficulty, emotional difficulty, spiritual difficult. And they need to some out Point continues verse one, she who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborers. She was a princess Now she's a popper, She was Division one. Now she's lost her scholarship, she was Premier League now the team has folded. She was once super important in the world, among other nations, other countries, other cities. She was important, important in business and finance and commerce important and culture. And now she's a laborer. She's working part time at a pig farm first team. She weeps bitterly in the night and her tears are on her cheeks. She used to have a warm cup of tea and and read a few pages of her new book right before she went to bed. But now she can't even cry herself to sleep, never been there. The point continues, she has none to comfort her among all her lovers, all her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies. She formed lots of alliances with other groups and other cities and other countries and other nations. In fact, she ignored some of the things that God called her to do so that she could make those alliances and those friendships. But then and the moment that she needed help, those alliances didn't hold. She was on her own. Stuck with her pride in her arrogance. The first three Judah has gone into exile under affliction and under harsh servitude. It's just good info. It's not just a city, it's not just Jerusalem. It's all of judas, the entire nation. All of it fell At least somewhere. Around 1.1 million people displaced. Many of them fled as refugees. To Egypt no, in our country, there's lots of practical difficulties and lots of strong opinions when you start talking about refugees and immigration. But what if this happened to you? I mean, remember these are sunday church people. Okay, this isn't some riff raff from across the tracks. These are God's people sunday Church people. They lost their church, they lost their city, they lost their country, They lost everything and they had to flee. The Lord willing, we hope we never have to face anything like that. But what if we did, what would we do? Where would we go? Would we turn to God and lament? Would we turn to God and lament and trust God? Or when our comforts are taken away? When how we want things has changed when how we want things to be? Doesn't happen? Will we turn against God? Well we say, where are you? God? Things are not the way that I want them to. Those are tough, heavy questions. And I don't think we should ask them with some kind of depressing zombie apocalypse type of of attitude. Now, I think we should ask questions like that with an attitude that says this today is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. We will rejoice and God our savior today. We will trust in God our savior today because he is good. He is good and his love endures forever. We asked the heavy questions under that umbrella that our God is good and his love endures forever. The point continues, verse three, she dwells among the nations, but she has found no rest. They lost everything. They had to flee to foreign lands. They had to get any job that they possibly could just to get some food and there was no rest for the weary. They'd work crazy long hours, crazy hard labor and then they go home and they try to go to sleep and they couldn't because they were still so overwhelmed with grief over what they lost. I've never been there ever had a moment. A season of life where you couldn't sleep, where you couldn't get any rest, no matter what you try. First three, all her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of distress. This sounds like what the Apostle paul told the folks current Second Corinthians 11. I've been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. Also regular johnny, dangerously here, goodness gracious! It's danger! Danger! Danger! Danger everywhere he went. That's what was happening to the people. They have been invaded, the city has been destroyed, they are fleeing. No matter where they go, they find themselves in danger. 1st 4, the roads of Zion are in mourning because no one comes to the appointed feast. Zion is a word that's often used to talk about the city of God or Heaven or or the people of God even or the church. And so here it has this feel of the city and the church feast and the church festivals and the church fairs, nobody was going to them because the roads were destroyed so nobody could even get into town Verse four. All her gates are desolate. The gates were the hotbed of the city, the hotbed of the entire country and now they're desperate. I feel when I read something like this, I feel like I'm at the fair right? Or like a huge sporting event because what happens when you get to the gate? You know the gate, there's the ticket booth and there's the souvenir stand and the concession stand, maybe a food truck, maybe somebody doing balloon animals and painting your face. I mean there's, there's always something at the gate, there's something going on but not anymore. Nobody's at the gate. There is no fair, there's no game because there's no team. It's all gone. Now. I know somebody's thinking getting this gracious Dallas, so depressing. Come on man, this ain't window shopping, this is windows suffering, come on, stay with me are to stay with me. We're getting there. There's there's a point we're getting first four, her priests are groaning, her virgins are afflicted and she herself is bitter. The pastors were bombed, right? Nobody's coming to church, nobody's streaming online because the church isn't there anymore. So they're bumped out. And then the type of military destruction that came, it wiped out, killed many of the young men in battle and the rest of the young men, they had to flee to other countries. And so there's not a lot of prospective husbands for the young ladies. And if you're standing on the outside looking in on this scene, what you see is a huge box of bitterness. You see an entire nation, it's full of bitterness. And of course that ancient history has no connection to our world today, right? No one can look on the outside of our country and see any bitterness, right? We don't see that anywhere do. There's nothing new under the sun. There's one question we hadn't asked, why, why did all of this happen? We're getting there. 1st 5 her adversaries have become her master's, her enemies prosper. Don't you hate when the biggest jerk at work gets promoted over you? Or the laziest, most gossiping teacher gets raised up to be the principal of the school, the worst people, we're in charge of the entire country and they were being successful. The worst people were in charge of the country, in charge of the city, in charge of everything happening. And they were successful again. No connections we can make today, right? Only perfect people are in all of our offices all over the land, right? Only perfect people are in charge of everything, right. Only good. Perfect Godly people are in charge of everything in our lives. So why is all this happened? Verse five for the Lord has caused her grief because of the multitude of her transgression. Ouch, All of this is happening because of her sin and her transgression and her trespasses and her rebellion against God. Her grief is because of her sins. What does that mean? Well, for 40 Years, not for four Sundays For 40 years. The prophet Jeremiah have been preaching to the people. He had been telling them that they were occasionally religious, occasionally spiritual, but mostly they were prideful and eric, he was telling them they weren't living in the power of God's grace and the power of God's love and his mercy and his forgiveness in his salvation. They were living in the power of pride. It's how they function. And so God allowed and purpose the city and the nation and the people to receive the wages of their sins. See there's a salary for sin and the salary is at the very least, some type of temporary punishment. But if there's no repentance, if there's no salvation, then the salary becomes a permanent salary. And the permanent salary is separation from all that's good and holy and happy and joyful and peaceful. It's eternal separation from God. So God's people ignored God, not just not going to church, people not just the liberal nut jobs or the conservative cranks know God's people ignored God over and over and over again for decades and when you start ignoring God you start forgetting God, you start forgetting who God is, you start forgetting his ways and then you start disobeying God but they kept going to church, they were ignoring God, they were forgetting God in his ways, They were disobeying God, but they were still going to church, it was how they lived but they're sending the rebellion caught up with them. You know in a sense when you ask the question while just about anything in life the answer is going to be because of sin. I mean usually it is I mean I'm not talking about you know something crazy with the mechanical system of an H. Vac but but you know usually when you ask the question why you can usually trace it right back to sin. But God has dealt with sin. Biggest problem in your life. The biggest problem in my life, God has dealt with. I know you think you've got a big problem waiting for you tomorrow at work or waiting for you tomorrow, the doctor or or wherever, maybe you're waiting for you this afternoon when you get home. But the biggest problem in your life, the biggest problem in my life is sin. And God has dealt with the problem of sin. Paul said this to the church at Rome for the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in christ, jesus. Our Lord. The final wages of sin have one destination everlasting death. Death. It never ends death that you feel over and over and over again for all of eternity. But the free gift of God Also has one destination and that destination is Eternal Life. The free gift of God in and through, Jesus Christ is ever lasting life life over and over again to feel and you feel and you feel and it never ends and that life matters when it comes to the pain and suffering that we face to the fact that there is a destination beyond this moment it matters. Listen to the next part of the poem verse five, her little ones have gone away as captives before the adversary. This is where some people will say, look, I cannot believe in a Godthat allows people's city to be destroyed, allows their nation to be taken over and even the kids get hurt. Yeah, I can't believe in a Godlike that. Sharon Derricks has a PhD in brain imaging from the University of Cambridge. She's a researcher and author, a speaker and a teacher. And although none of us really have any easy answers for why people don't believe in God, She at least helps us think through this notion of why we won't believe in God. This is what she says. If you've ever found yourself asking why to whom are you addressing? The question? You see if God doesn't exist, Is there really anyone to ask? In an ultimate sense? Surely this is just the way the world is, accidents happen, molecules make mistakes leading to diseases and biology drives human behavior. But then she says this, the problem with this view is that it doesn't really help us make sense of the grittiness of life. That's where we are, right? We're in the grittiness of life, we get angry at suffering. But where does that come from? If this is just the way the world the user answer, the christian faith makes sense of the rawness we feel in the face of suffering because the christian faith says there is something wrong with the world. Things are not as they should be. We live in a world in which good and evil are at play on the world stage and in every human being, God is good, but evil is also real and has influence in the world for now, just for now. So at first glance, it seems that suffering gives us good reason to rule out God, but actually the opposite is true. It is only if God exists that our outrage at suffering finds a home. And then she asked could it be that we asked why? Because God is really in the moment that we say, why would God let this happen? That has to come from somewhere and where it comes from is you have been created. I have been created to worship and enjoy God. We will or we want we'll worship and enjoy something. But we've been created to worship and enjoy God. It is part of our D. N. A. We'll worship something and in the moment of pain and some many people turn to the God they don't believe are at the very least they begin to ask is there some purpose bigger? Yes. Could it be that we asked why? Because God is really God is really and he really really has dealt with the problem of sin. The final wages of sin is death. That's the final destination. A death that never ends. You feel it over and over and over again. That's the language of the bible but free gift of God in and through Jesus Christ. There's only one destination and that's life. Life that never ends life that you feel over and over and over again. Just three more lines of the point for six all her majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion. Her princes have become like deer that have found no pasture and they have fled without strength before the pursuer. So she used to be the queen, She used to be the president, She used to be in charge. She used to have people, she had power and position. She had a government, she had land now she has nothing, nothing. And the princes that lived in the palace. Well they're like animals that live out in the pasture but there's no grass in the pasture. So they don't even have enough food to have enough strength to fight or flee. They have no purpose. And that's the rest of the story with sin. The story with sin is always loneliness and desolation. It's desperation and discouragement. It's fear and anger and worry. It's no grass out in the field. That's the story of sin. All the stuff that we love, right. But the story can be different. How can the story we do? Well, We can repent Instead of ignoring the sermon for 40 years, instead ignoring the truth of God over and over again, that keeps coming into our life from so many different ways, even from creation. Instead of ignoring God, we repent and we turn two and we complain to God and we ask God and we trust God, we love, we write our own point and when we do that, the destination and the journey, the change. How, why? This is what King David said. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not okay. He makes me lie down, not in pastures with no grass. He makes me lie down in green pastors. This is who God is. This is what God does. He doesn't always meet our needs, but he always meets, I mean, you always meet our wants, but he always meets our needs always and our greatest need. It's the problem of sin and he's met that in jesus. So take a moment step outside your life. Look from the outside in Is the Lord truly your shepherd with your family and your friends and strangers at the coffee place? What would they say? Yeah, I don't know that guy. But something is good about, something is good about from the outside in. Is the Lord true leader shepherd? Are you turning to God? Are you complaining to God? Are you asking God, are you trusting God or are you ignoring God? Are you pretty much doing whatever you want to do? But you're still going to church or you're still kind of acting like you believe in God, You're just ignoring. If you are turning to, if the Lord is truly yourself, then please understand this. The gospel is not window shopping, it is destination swap. And when your destination has changed, everything else in life changes. When you know where you're going, when you know who you're going to be with, everything else changes. You see the Gospel is soul saving and it is so satisfying. How do we know? This is how we know scott Hubbard, put it this way, even in discomfort, even in rejection, even in the Valley of the Shadow of death. We shall not even in loneliness, even in desolation, even in discouragement, even in the shadow of death, we shall not. That's why we look at that's why we keep turning to God because God has promised with all that is within him, that when we turn to him, but he will hear our prayer, let us be good. Lem enters. Because, as we lament, well, remember, we shall not. The Lord is our ship. Yeah.