[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Good evening. Welcome to our midweek Bible study tonight. This is the final night of our summer series. We're grateful that you're with us this evening. If you're joining us online, we're especially grateful for your presence and hope that you'll join us here in person as you get the chance. I'm excited for our speaker this evening. He's a great friend of mine. We've been friends for many years now. Patty Flanagan, he is the preaching minister at the Owens Crossroads Church of Christ just across town. He's been there for the last six years and before that was a youth minister at Concord Road up in Tennessee. So we're thankful for his ministry. His wife Melissa is with us and of course the whole family here tonight, along with them as well. Their daughters have been able to join us as well. I've said as well enough. So we'll move on from the introduction part there. Tonight, Patty is going to talk to us, wrapping up our summer series focusing on spiritual resilience. And tonight the emphasis is on internal perspective and eternal hope. And I've seen his slides already and excited to hear his message.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: All right, well, thank you all so much for coming out this evening. I know you have a lot going on on a Wednesday and it takes a lot of effort. And so I thank you for taking the time to get out here and join us together. If we haven't met, my name is Patty Flanagan. I'd love to get to know you all. I'm sure you are incredible because you are here, like I said, on a Wednesday night, ready to open up your bibles and learn a little bit and grow a little bit together before I really get into things, though. And those are not my slides. That's the incorrect ones. Mine are. We can go on Philippians. I can't.
Where were we? Oh, we're buying time now. Okay. So I'm so thankful you are here, and I'm grateful you're here. I'm thankful to be here. For me, it's not just like any other Wednesday night. This is really special to me because the Madison congregation holds such a special place in my heart. I have so many people that I know and love here right now that I'm just thankful for the opportunity and super excited to be here, really, when you think about it, and I'm not just blowing smoke at you, so many of my favorite people on the whole planet are in this room right now. And it's really cool because we all live in different places and we all do different things, and maybe our kids go to school together and we're family and we're friends, and it's just amazing to have the opportunity for us to all be together this evening. And so thank you so much for that opportunity to be here. If you have your bibles, we're gonna be in matthew, chapter 27 to begin. It'll take a couple minutes before we get there. We have a lot of setup work to do this evening, but that's where we're going to really start and launch from there. While you're turning there, I want to do a little quiz with you. Okay. Nothing big. I know school's starting back. Nothing scary, but a real quick and simple quiz. I want to give you the first few lines of a song, and I wonder if you can tell me what comes next.
Let's start easy.
Jesus loves me this I know that's right. Okay, good. That's what we're talking about. You're on the right page here. All right, what about this? Let's take it a little bit deeper. Amazing grace how sweet the sound yeah, we could keep going with that, couldn't we? We could almost quote the whole song if we just go, what about this one more. What can wash a away my sins that's right, man. We know these songs. And if maybe you haven't spent a lot of time in church, maybe you're relatively new to faith and this is kind of new to you, and maybe those lyrics were new. But if you are like me, I was born on a Tuesday and showed up to church on Wednesday. Okay, so I've grown up going to church my whole life. You can ask my mom. She's here. You know, you can ask her. She carried me. But we've heard these songs so many times. Like these songs are so ingrained in our minds and our hearts in such a good way that all we need are the first couple of words. And all of a sudden, everything comes back. Every single line of those songs comes back. The emotions come back. Everything we need to get from these songs, it all comes flooding back in. You think about just the words to amazing grace, a song we could probably say we've probably sung over a thousand times in our lives, but those lyrics still hit every single time.
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I I not everyone, no, I was lost but now I'm found was blind but now I see these songs live within us. They influence us. They affect what we think and how we feel. They affect us. And all it takes, like I said, all it takes is that first couple of words to trigger a memory that we can really kind of settle into this evening as we talk about this eternal, perspective building resilience.
We're going to use a lot of songs along the way, but mainly the one we're going to see is one you may not be familiar with. And that's okay, because the guy who said it was very familiar with it when he said it. And when we look at it, we're going to see how a song, like some of those we've quoted, that one we sang tonight, all the ones you sing on a regular basis. But how that song drives us to have this resilience, because it gives us an eternal perspective, that's really where we're going to settle in tonight.
So before we get into Matthew 27, let me just set the stage a little bit, because Matthew 27 is a heavy point in scripture. It's a difficult point, and we're really picking up in that difficult place in scripture at this point.
This difficult moment in scripture is Jesus about to be crucified. Actually, he's on the cross where we're going to pick up. But Matthew 27 kind of takes us through it. And as we walk into Matthew 27, we start to see all the things going on. And this, like I said, is a difficult moment. It's so difficult because Jesus is in just immense pain. On every level that we can think of, he's going through emotional pain.
He was betrayed by a friend in the garden. After he was well, he was praying before that. He's praying. The sweat drops like blood are falling. His friends can't stay awake. He's in the garden. And then when he's done praying, the mob comes and a friend betrays him and hands him over to the authorities he's taken by that mob. He's gone through these trials that don't make sense and aren't legitimate, and he's going through all of it, and the night just keeps going. And of course, Peter denies him. Jesus is inside, but Peter's outside. Jesus knew what was going to happen, and he's denied his friends abandoned him. And that's just the beginning.
When Jesus is arrested, when the crucifixion's really going on, remember, emotionally, what's going on. I think it is what Matthew 27 27 tells us, that there's a battalion of soldiers there making sure that he is tormented during his execution.
Now, I've never served in the military, but I know a lot of you have.
And I don't know if the soldiers you hung out with, if they were given the job to make somebody's life just incredibly miserable, what you have in mind?
I bet there's some creative things being said that I can't even comprehend. In a battalion. That's we're talking 600 soldiers who are there making sure Jesus is tormented emotionally. They're mocking him. They're doing everything they can to make sure he is miserable. And I can't imagine what that would be like with 600 soldiers. But I bet some of you can, and I bet I really don't want to know what that's like. He's being tormented emotionally. He's betrayed, he's abandoned, and he's there. But then there's the physical pain that we pick up with in Matthew 27 two.
There's the idea that he's been beaten and beaten and beaten so much that he has lost just incredible amounts of blood. He's essentially gone into shock at this point. And they try to get him to carry his own cross up to Golgotha, and he just can't do it. He can't do it because he doesn't have enough blood in his body to help him do it. And when he can't do it, they get a guy named Simon of Cyrene to carry that cross up there to help him, to get him there. And then there's the moment on the cross.
He's on the cross. The other guys beside him on his right and on his left, they took those guys and they tied their hands and they tied their feet to the cross. But not Jesus. No, they nailed his hands and they nailed his feet to the cross just to be sure he suffers. You know, the idea of the cross is, if you never thought about it, you die by suffocation up there you're hanging down and you have to push up with your legs to get a breath. And then when you release, you can't breathe again.
And you do that over and over and over. You lift up and put yourself down until you just can't do it anymore and you die of suffocation.
But they want to make sure Jesus is taken care of better. So they nail his hands and they nail his feet to the cross. That's why they broke the legs of the other guys on the cross beside Jesus. Because once they break your legs, you can't lift yourself up and down anymore and you can't breathe anymore.
This is a difficult moment that we're walking into in scripture. You're familiar, likely, with where we are, but if you're not, I'm glad you're here, because it's one of those things that when we feel the weight of what's going on, it really helps us understand and feel what we're about to get to when we really open up. And when we turn to the. When we open up to scripture and we see Jesus has been hanging there for 6 hours, hands and feet nailed to the cross, lifting up to take a breath, letting down. Lifting up to take a breath, letting down. And it's a difficult moment. Now with that, let's open up our bibles and let's see a very short passage with a lot of meaning in it. We're going to be in Matthew, chapter 27, verse 47 or 45 and 46.
Now, from the 6th hour, there was darkness over all the land. So the 6th hour, that's noon. So from the 6th hour, there was darkness over all the land until the 9th hour. So until three and about the 9th hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, eli, eli, lama sabachthani. That is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Do you feel the weight of the moment?
This statement isn't very long. Jesus final words here, these are the last words that Matthew and mark record of Jesus ever speaking. But they're short words because they had to be. He's dying. He doesn't have the energy. He doesn't have the breath. He doesn't have the blood, he doesn't have the oxygen. He doesn't have any of that. He's just got to say what he's got to say.
He's so close to death. And here in this moment of both literal darkness and figurative darkness, Jesus is crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
You know, if we were to look at all the statements of Jesus on the cross, they all hurt. Like, if you've looked at them, you've ever spent some time reading over the seven statements of Jesus on the cross. Every one of them hurt. But this one, this one hits different. To me, at least. This one hurts deeply when I see it because I feel more pain in this one than any of the other statements of Jesus on the cross.
This one's difficult. It's difficult to read, it's difficult to comprehend, it's difficult to think about. But what we need to do is we need to read this. We need to absorb what's being said here, because this moment is very, very important, because we need to recognize what's happening overall. Overall, what's happening is Jesus is on that cross because of our sins. Jesus is on that cross because of my sins. Jesus is on the cross because of your sins. Jesus is on the cross because of the sin of mankind. He is on the cross taking all those sins in this moment, since we have a moment, let's flip over to one, Peter, chapter two. It'll be on the screen if you can't follow. But in two, Peter, chapter two, we're reminded of what's exactly going on in this moment. Verse 24 says, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
By his wounds you've been healed.
He bore our sins in his body on that tree.
That's a heavy, heavy moment. That's the cost of our sins, the sins that we don't think hurt anybody, that we think we can get away with, that. We think, ah, it's not a big deal. No, that's the cost of all of those sins, and we see it in this ugly, ugly moment on the cross. And how does that help us keep an eternal perspective? Because that's where we're trying to push towards. We're trying to get to this eternal perspective. How could this statement of Jesus on the cross drive us to look about, look into eternity and say, there's got to be some hope there?
Well, let's look at a couple things, one really briefly. The first, if we go back to Matthew, chapter 27, we kind of see the words that Jesus uses there, and he uses some words that we're not really used to seeing him use.
He says, my God, my God. He calls his father my God, which is weird, because nowhere else in scripture does jesus use that kind of language. Nowhere else does he have that informal kind of language with the father. Every other time. It's that family term?
It's father. It's Abba. Every single time, this is the only time we see him use that distant, more formal title for God.
But it's because in this moment, he's separated from God. Because again, our sins, he's taking those sins in this moment.
This is the first time in all of eternity Jesus has felt abandoned, that he has felt forsaken, that he has felt like he is all on his own.
But there's something else there that's going on. And this is really what we've got to get to and really spend some time in, because the words that Jesus uses here are very important.
You see, when you and I hear the phrase, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I don't know what you think about, but that sounds like a moment of defeat to me when I just read it at face value. If I just skim through it, it seems like a moment where I. There's absolute defeat going on. Like it's. That whole idea of it is finished, it's over. And it's not okay is how it feels when I look at it. But when we see where these words came from, we're gonna see an eternal perspective. And we see, maybe it'll help us see and understand why he used these few words in this moment. It's not gonna stop the pain. It's not gonna stop the hurt, but it is going to help us see where Jesus mind was in this difficult moment. So if you have your bibles, we're going to go back to the psalms now. We're going to go to psalm 22, because the words that Jesus uses here are a psalm. And while you and I, just like you may not, or, excuse me, just like we know the words what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus, we can trigger that. I think the crowd around Jesus probably recognized the jewish crowd, at least recognize what Jesus was saying here. I think Jesus used a short term because he couldn't say everything he wanted. And I think we're going to see where this eternal perspective pulls in. You see, psalm 22 is a psalm of David, and it's not a psalm of defeat. It's a psalm of triumph is what we would call it. Let's read. We won't read the whole thing. Let's just look at a few verses. Let's look at the first five verses. Verse one.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh, my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I find no rest.
Yet you are holy enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them to you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. Do you see what's going on here? Jesus is using these words to describe it. He's throwing out the first line of a song, and it sure sounds at face value like defeat, but he's saying, no, no, no. When you know the whole song, you see what's going on here. And, yes, in moments, those first couple of verses, yeah. There are moments that seem so heavy. There are moments that seem so desperate. There are moments where he feels so broken, but then there's praise on the other side. There's understanding that God rescues on the other side.
Jesus knew he was going to suffer and die. He knew it. He told his followers, he told his disciples, he told his inner circle over and over and over again, I'm going to suffer and die. And they never understood it. They couldn't accept it. And yet he knew it was going to happen.
But he also knew death wasn't the end. He knew he was going to rise from the dead. He knew that wasn't all that there was. But still, you and I know this. Knowing something intellectually and feeling it in the moment sometimes, or too completely separate things.
And I bet most of us have felt that at times in our lives. I bet we've had moments where you're like, man, I know intellectually what I'm supposed to feel in this moment, but it. It still hurts at this moment. Maybe you've been in a terrible situation where those emotions and your knowledge and your emotion and, look, I know I work in this town. I know we got a lot of engineers, and forgive me for the y'all having the emotional capacity of a goldfish, but I know you got some in there. It's still in there somewhere. But your emotions and your knowledge don't always match up. And sometimes it hurts. And you're in those terrible moments. And I bet every one of us have been in one of those terrible moments where we struggled with it, where either you or someone very close to you got a diagnosis and you were not ready to hear it, and you knew what you were supposed to believe, but you heard it and you felt a different way, and you had to fix that dissonance. You had that dissonance going on. You couldn't figure out how to get through it or maybe you had someone who you were so close to, someone who you were supposed to be able to trust, someone who was supposed to be loyal to you, a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a family member, anybody, someone just a good friend. And they. And they turn their back on you.
And you felt that terrible dissonance again of, I know how I'm supposed to feel, but I'm not feeling that way right now. I know what I'm supposed to believe, but my feelings aren't matching up with it.
Maybe you face some other tragedy. Whatever it is, there's more than we could ever name, but there's these moments in life where we're trying to deal with this. And the only way for us to kind of get a grasp of this is to have this eternal perspective, because we find ourselves just like Jesus, using different words, but just like him, at times saying, where are you, God? You say, you're here. I'm supposed to. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. I've been loyal to you forever. And why is this happening? I've always tried to do the right thing. And we find ourselves deeper and deeper, and we're asking ourselves questions like, where are you, God? Do you even exist? And do you even care?
And we're torn.
And we think back to this moment of Jesus on the cross. That's why it's important for us to look at these words in the context where we're given them. Because in the moment, it seems like such a terrible, terrible moment. And it was.
But when we step back and we view it with an eternal perspective, all of a sudden now, and Jesus is the one that gives us that. When he quotes psalm 22, he gives us that eternal perspective. He says, look, I know this is terrible right now, but I also know it's going to be okay. I also know God is going to deliver me. And it may not look like how we would picture it, but it's going to happen.
The only way through so many of these difficult situations are to think about how God has been faithful to other people and how he's promised to be faithful in the future. That's the only way we can deal with it right now. We look in the past and we say, look, God said he's gonna be faithful. And we know he's made promises to be faithful in the future. And so my right now, even though it's a really uncomfortable place where I am right now, I can trust, I can have that eternal perspective that'll give me the resilience that I need before coming to Owens Crossroads, as Jason mentioned, I served as a youth minister at Concord Road Church of Christ up in Brentwood, Tennessee. And we had a lot of great ministers. I worked with just this amazing team constantly. In fact, Dan Chambers is at Owens Crossroads tonight, speaking right now. And I hate that I'm missing him, but I love being with y'all. But we had this. We had an associate minister, a guy named Jerry Weldon. If you know Jerry Weldon, you need to tell him. I think he is just made of gold. He was incredible. And Jerry had this phrase that he just drilled into us as a congregation. Every opportunity he had, he always phrased it this way. He said, in view of eternity, everything we talked about, he'd say, well, let's think about that in view of eternity. Let's talk about our classes. Let's talk about our interactions. Let's talk about our fellowship meals. Anything we did, it was, how are we viewing that? In view of eternity? It was so big that he put it on the wall as you walk into the auditorium. Like, y'all have your graphic up there. He put it on a graphic. So as we walked into the auditorium, we all saw this in view of eternity line, and it stuck with us.
That's how Jesus is viewing things right now. He's viewing them in view of eternity. He's in immense pain. He's hurting. There's no doubt about that. He's suffering emotionally, he's suffering physically, and he's suffering spiritually also. But he's viewing it in view of eternity.
And so there's these times when maybe we face those tragedies, a diagnosis, someone leaving, or just anything. That's just a terrible situation that we're having to work through. When we see those, we see Jesus in this difficult moment that we can't even comprehend, but we see him having this eternal perspective and saying, yes, it's terrible now, but I know God's going to come through on the other side.
Jesus, even during this difficult moment, he questioned. It feels like he questioned. At least I think it's fair to say he questioned.
And sometimes we do, too. And we can learn a lot as we watch him in this moment, as he remembered God's faithfulness, we can do the same.
Here's the deal, Madison. I could stop here and we could just call this, like, we could be like, look, you need to be more faithful. You need to do this. We could stop there and it'd be okay. Like, I could say, look to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Watch his eternal perspective and have that own, that eternal perspective. But I don't want to stop there because I know this congregation.
I know you guys, I come to your events, I'm here. I hear, I talk with your ministers. I know that the mindset and I know the attitude, and I know that Madison wouldn't be happy stopping here either. And I want to push this just a little bit further.
You see, it's easy for us to get fixated on our own issues, which we have to deal with. We can't ignore our own issues. By no means am I trying to diminish those things. But I know this. While we have issues and people in here are struggling and getting through different things, and we're all working on this stuff together, I know there are so many more people who are not sitting in these pews right now, who are outside of this building who really, really need an eternal perspective. And I know you guys are willing to work with them, and I know you are willing to reach out to them and to help them gain that eternal perspective.
You see, there's a lot of people hurting everywhere. There's a lot. We say there's a broken heart on every pew. But when you start getting outside of these walls, those broken hearts get more and more and more frequent. There are people in the neighborhoods just around here who feel abandoned and forsaken. There are people in your kids schools who, they're going to show up in the next week, and those kids feel abandoned and forsaken and they need an eternal perspective. They don't have that resilience because they don't even have the perspective yet. And we need to think, how can we help them have that eternal perspective? So I'm going to challenge you tonight to share your eternal perspective with others. I don't want you to just keep it to yourself. It'd be so easy, wouldn't it, to just say, let's keep this eternal perspective here. Let's make it all our own. But instead, no, no, no. I want you to reach out with your eternal perspective. I want you to show that to other people.
Think about it. While Jesus was on earth, he cared about the people who were forsaken. He cared about the people who are abandoned in his society who were all around him. And he shared that eternal perspective with them while he was on this earth.
And here we are, his hands and his feet on this earth, and we need to do the same.
You know, it'd be really easy for us to sit back and ask ourselves, and I gotta admit, I took this from my favorite author, my favorite artist, my favorite christian artist. I don't know who your favorite christian artist is. My favorite christian artist is a guy named KB. You probably don't listen to KB. That's okay. I do. And I love KB. He has a line in one of his songs that hit so hard, and I want to use that as kind of my motivation here. This is not an original thought to Patty Flanagan. Little citation there on the end. Okay? But he puts it this way. It'd be easy for us to sit back and to think about all the trouble that's in the world. And it would be really tempting for us to look at the world all around us and say, man, there is so much messed up stuff in the world. There are so many people hurting. There are so many people in need. There are so many people in poverty. There are so many people being taken advantage of. There's so much racism, there's so much hate, there's so many wars. There's so much, so much, so much. It'd be so easy for us to sit back and talk about that, and then it'd be even easier for us to start complaining about that and to then look to God and say, God, why do you allow these things? God, why do you allow poverty? Why do you allow people to be taken advantage of? Why do you allow the weak to be treated that way? Why do you allow children to be taken advantage? We could do all that, and we could actually say those words, God, why do you allow these things?
Can I tell you what? I'd be terrified. He'd turn around and respond with?
I think he'd turn around and say, patty, I was going to ask you the same thing.
Why do you allow so much poverty, Patty, why do you allow the weak to be taken advantage of, Patty, why do you allow people to be mistreated?
Why do you allow it?
And that's when we realize we're his hands and his feet. We're the hands and the feet of Jesus on this earth. And as we look around, we need to worry about sharing our eternal perspective. And the way to do that is to care for these abandoned and those who are mistreated and those who are forsaken by society. That's how Jesus did it. And we can learn really quick and easy how to follow his example and realize that's our responsibility to do.
We're the hands and we're the feet.
We need to look around and say, who's crying out to God? Who's questioning if he's real, who's questioning if he cares and can we do anything about it? And then we need to do something about it. We need to figure out how we can walk beside those people like Simon of Cyrene walked by Jesus. We need to figure out how we can take their weight that they just can't carry, and we can put it on our back. And as we walk with them, we can tell them about the cross that Jesus had to bear the whole time. As we carry their cross with them, as we carry them through life. And we point them to Jesus, and we give them that eternal perspective that we have that is so important to us. We can't just keep it to ourselves.
Can I give you an example of what this looks like?
It has to do with another song. A song you've probably sang before, and you've probably sang it. And if we're being honest, you probably got in the car and you said, I don't even know what that song means.
You ready? There's a balm in Gilead.
I give a shiny nickel to anyone who can quote the scripture, where that comes from. We got some smart people here, best and brightest. I didn't know either, till one day I got really curious. You know, sometimes we sing songs, and here I raise my Ebenezer and there's the balm in Gilead and Rose of Sharon. And we're like, what do those even mean, man? Like, I don't talk like that.
I got into it and I looked it up.
That's an important song. Once I learned what it has to do. What has to do with anything? If you have your old testament, flip over to Jeremiah, chapter eight comes from Jeremiah, chapter eight. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, is grieving for his people heading into exile. This is not a pretty moment in scripture, either. Gilead's the mountainous region that is just east of the Jordan. It had these trees with SAP that was used as a balm. You catching on now?
It was used for medicinal purposes.
Jeremiah is going to mention them in a moment of despair.
I want to read this, and then I want you to think about the song as we read it. So, Jeremiah, chapter eight. We'll start in verse 18. We'll go all the way through. Verse 22.
My joy is gone.
Grief is upon me. My heart is sick within me. Behold the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land. Is the lord not in Zion? Is her king not in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols? The harvest is past. The summer is ended and we are not saved. For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded? I mourn and dismay has taken hold of me. Verse 22. There is no.
Is there. Excuse me. Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there? Why, then, has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?
Did you check out verse 22?
Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
If you know your songs, something's different, isn't there? Do you remember the song? There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. You remember that? You remember. You see? There's a different direction. Wait. The scripture says one thing, but then the song says something, and there's this difference there. Jeremiah's weeping. Whoever wrote this song is looking at it differently. Whoever wrote this song, I'd argue, has an eternal perspective.
You see, it says, yes, there is a healer. Yes, there is a balm. Yes, there is a God who remembers. And this is where you need to know where that song comes from. It's an old african american hymn sung by slaves who experienced hate, who experienced violence, who experienced pain, and who experienced even death, all because of the sinful racism of other people. And yet, do you see where their perspective was? Jeremiah says, is there no balm in Gilead? It's all over, man like. And then they say, no, there is.
There is, and there is a healer, and it's going to be okay. They're looking at this with an eternal perspective. They believe that the hate, the violence, the pain, even the death that they experienced, that while it may not ever be taken care of on this earth, they trusted that it would be taken care of by God, that in eternity they would still be okay, even if on this earth, everything was as miserable as it could be. Maybe they still trusted in God, and they realized God had not forgotten them and God had not forsaken them.
They realized they could trust God with their eternity, if nothing else.
So what about you? And what about me?
Do you have an eternal perspective?
Do you have one? Because it's going to be. You may not. I'm not taking that for granted. It's not like just a let's just throw it out there question. No, I'm asking, do you feel like you have an eternal perspective? It's not always easy to have because you have those moments of pain and dissonance and hurt, and you wonder, is this really going to be okay? And why is this happening? And has God really given up on me? Is that going on and we question it.
You may not, like, we're not. We're not about to offer an invitation, stand and sing and all, but I just. If you're. If you don't have that eternal perspective, you've got some great people here who can help. You've got a great team who can help you out and will answer your questions and will be there for you. But it's one thing to have an eternal perspective, and I believe most of you do. Even if you're hurting right now, I believe you still have it. But what I really wanna challenge you to do is to share that eternal perspective. I really want you to take it outside of these pews. I really want you to take it outside of these walls and out of this property, and take it into your office, and take it into your school, and take it into your neighborhood, and take it into your community and the people that you have influence over. I want you to start influencing them with this eternal perspective. I want them to know this is what's important to you, and I'm gonna make it important, and I'm gonna follow through with it. I want you to have that mindset when people interact with you. I want them to know you have that eternal perspective. I want you to help other people have that relationship with Christ that hopefully you have. And if you don't, you can't share something you don't have. So let's work on that first.
Man, I hope you can take this outside of these walls. I believe you can. I think you can see those words of Jesus, and you can say, look, it hurt. Yes. But he's still trusted in God, and I think you can do the same, not just with yourself, but with other people. And I hope you can find people who need you right now and help show them that eternal perspective. Let's close out with a prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for today. We thank you for the opportunity to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ, to open up your word, to grow together. But, Father, most of all, that we can have this hope. We thank you for the hope that we have in eternity, and I ask you to help us all to lean into that hope, to feel that hope, and to share that hope with others. Father, I thank you so much for this wonderful congregation, for the ministers, the elders, the deacons, everyone. And, Father, help them to continue to do the great things that they're doing in their community. Father, most of all, though, we thank you for your son who gives us this hope. We thank you for his example. We thank you for his life and his death and his resurrection. It's in his name we pray. Amen. Thank you.
