Sermon Transcript
That’s a great song to sing right now, isn’t it? More than ever, we just need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness, of his mercy, love, his strength, his hope. All of that comes from our faithful God, and especially right now, we need to be thinking about that in the midst of the hardships that we’re faced with. Welcome everyone, my name is Dave Gudgel and I’m one of the pastors over at Bridges Community Church, and it’s my honor to open up the scriptures with you today. And I want to just begin with a question: what do you do when you find yourself in a bad situation, whether it’s something that you did, you brought on yourself, or it’s something that’s just totally out of your control, like the situation that we’re in right now.
I think that we can all agree that we are living right now in a bad situation. It’s none of our faults. It just happened to us. It’s worse for some people than others. For many of us, it’s just really inconvenient and it’s frustrating.
For some, especially our frontline workers, it’s an outright nightmare. And for some, of course, it’s tragic. But however it is for you, all that’s happened, all that is happening, all that’s yet to happen, I know one thing: every one of us would like to get out of the mess that we’re in. We would like to be done with this and move on to normal, whatever normal was, or as close to normal as possible. Before all of this came.
If this goes on much longer, I may become a long-haired, gray-haired hippie, and I know many of you don’t want to see that happen. But really, when you think about hardships, the hardships that hit in life, sometimes bad things happen in our lives because of wrongdoing, our own wrongdoing. You may have actually seen this photo. This was taken recently outside of 7-Eleven in Santa Cruz. These 7 guys lined up here were being ticketed by the Santa Cruz police instead of sheltering in place in Fremont, where they drove from to get to Santa Cruz and the liquor store there and do some partying.
The Santa Cruz police found them and cited them $1,000 for violating the shelter-in-place rules. And, you know, they suffered for their own wrongdoing. And at some point in our lives, We’ve been caught doing something wrong and then paying the consequences. But at other times, you might find yourself in a bad situation after doing what you felt was the right thing to do at the time. You may recognize this person.
This is United States Navy Captain Brett Crozier. Who’s he? Well, he was the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USF Theodore Roosevelt. He’s the captain that pleaded for help for his coronavirus-infected crew, and he was hoping and pleading to protect the rest of the 4,800 crew members. When help didn’t come quickly, he sent an email to his commanding officer, 9 other captains and officers, and a few days later he was fired for going around his chain of command.
We don’t yet know, he doesn’t yet know what’s going to come out of all of that. That’s kind of being decided right now. But the fact is 660 of his men at last count have since tested COVID positive. And actually he himself has tested COVID positive. What’s the point?
The point is we can end up in a lot of trouble or in a difficult situation because of something that was totally out of our control. Or because of something that we did wrong, or even because of something that we actually did right. But however it happened, what happened, we got ourselves into trouble or we found ourselves in trouble. What do you do? Well, one of the best things that we can do in the midst of trouble, like the trouble we’re going through right now, is what we’re going to focus on today.
Something that applies to individuals, it applies to nations, it applies to the godly, it applies to the ungodly. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to look at a passage, some Bible passages actually, but the primary ones are found in the book of Lamentations, which is a book that was written by a prophet named Jeremiah. He was a man who was seeking to do the right thing in a time when most everyone else was doing the wrong thing. Unfortunately, the nation of Israel, who God had a special love for and he longed to have them love him in turn, at this point in history had turned their backs on God. They were chasing after other gods, and they were living life as if, you know, God didn’t really exist.
Now you could think maybe at that point God would just say, fine, you know, have it your way, see ya. But he didn’t. Instead, he sent 6 prophets in a row, which is just like our God. He sent Habakkuk, Isaiah, Joel, Micah, Zephaniah, and then he sent Jeremiah. And these prophets, over a period of 140 years, called Judah, this nation, to leave her life of sin and turn back to God.
You know, 140 years is a long time, isn’t it, to extend patience to someone, wouldn’t you say? We’ve had it, you know, we, we have it with people, or we’ve had enough with people when, you know, they don’t do something that we wanted them to do and we’re impatient with them, and 30 seconds goes by. I used to think I was patient, Until I had kids. And you know what I found out? I, I needed to learn how to be patient.
That’s what I found out. And you might say, actually, I used to think I was really patient until I had this shelter-in-place thing, and I’m finding out I’m not as patient as I thought I was. Well, God was patient with Judah. He gave them plenty of time to turn from their wicked ways, but she didn’t. So Jeremiah said this in recording what happened between Lamentations chapter 1, verse 5.
The Lord has brought her, Judah, grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile captive before the foe. History tells us that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon led his armies against Judah. They came into Jerusalem and they killed many people. They destroyed the temple there.
They took captive thousands of Jews. They left Jerusalem in ruins. They The people of Jerusalem lost their homes and their businesses, their health, their city, the temple, the palace. The walls were reduced to rubble and its inhabitants were deported or they were exiled to Babylonia. You know, when you start thinking about that, you can kind of see some parallels to our time, can’t you?
It was a sad time in Jewish history, one that Jeremiah in this book of Lamentations, he laments. From the opening words all the way through the book, he laments what happened to Judah. In fact, his opening words are very interesting, very applicable in some ways. He wrote, how deserted lies the city once so full of people! How like a widow is she who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Sound familiar? All across the United States right now, we know a little bit of what Jeremiah was talking about because it looks and feels similar. Streets that used to be packed with people are deserted due to the rapid outbreak of COVID that came on us from another part of the world. I mean, when you think about that, there’s a lot of application here even for us.
Jeremiah, in the book of Lamentations, grieves over what happened to Jerusalem and the nation of Judea. But at the same time, throughout this book, he’s calling for corrective action. And there’s a very important verse that I want to just primarily focus on this morning, found right in the middle of the book in chapter 3. And the verse is found in verse 40, where Jeremiah says, let us— and notice he uses the plural word there. He included himself.
Let us— the good guy, he included himself, the guy who was trying to do the right thing— let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. What I want to look at are 3 corrective actions that Jeremiah brings before Judah, and he includes himself in the need to apply these corrective actions in his own life. And so this is really applicable, I think, for us, because many of us, we’ve been seeking in our life to do the right thing like Jeremiah. And at the same time, we’re living in a world that in many ways has turned their back on God, is doing wrongdoing as far as God is concerned. And corrective actions are needed even in our world, as they were in in Jeremiah’s world.
So everyone at that time needed to just stop and they needed to take some time and they needed to, as you can see, reflect. They needed to reflect. They needed to examine their ways and test their ways. Again, Lamentations 3:40. And I, I think that’s one of the best things that anybody can do in the midst of hardship, to reflect on your ways, on our ways.
How have we been living before the hardship, before the suffering, the tragedy, the pain came? How are we living? And you notice the word examine here. Examine your ways. It means to conduct an investigation.
It means to probe, to carefully look at something, to closely examine it. So to, you know, ask questions, questions like what’s right about your ways or my ways, our ways? What was wrong? What’s good? What’s bad?
What should you keep on doing? What needs to change? What were you doing before that was right? What were you doing before that was wrong? That kind of examination.
And he also says, test your ways. You know, how does your pre-COVID normal stand up when tested by God’s will and God’s purposes for your life? Would God give you an A, or at the very least, would God give you a passing grade? Would he write on your test, well done, you’re doing great, way to go, keep going? Or would he say, well, this needs to change, or this isn’t good?
Or this is definitely not pleasing to me, or this is out of line with my will. See, reflection is something that’s really needed even right now at our time in the world, the situation we’re living in. As I was thinking about how important reflection is, especially in the midst of a tragedy, my mind went back to the morning of February 1st, 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia some of you will remember this, exploded just minutes after liftoff and all 7 crew members were killed. And in the aftermath of that disaster, you know what happened? There was a lot of time spent on reflection.
Scientists, engineers, inspectors, they all got together and they tested everything they could get their hands on and they were trying to determine what went wrong. You know what they found? They found that an external fuel tank had exploded and it tore the shuttle apart after a rocket booster came loose and ruptured the tank. Why did it happen? Well, an investigative board determined that a large piece of foam fell from the shuttle’s external tank and breached the spacecraft wing.
You know what they did after they discovered that? They made changes, vital changes. And then 2 and a half years later, they got back to sending shuttles into orbit again. But they didn’t do that until they first reflected, examined, tested what had happened and determined what they needed to do about it. You know, one of the best things that we can do right now in the midst of this trying time is to just take some time for reflection.
And maybe now more than ever we need that. Ask yourself some questions, questions like these: What needs to change in my relationship with God? What needs to change in my relationship with others? What does God want me to learn? What does God want me to keep doing?
What does God want me to stop doing? Great questions to just explore, to examine, to think through, especially now in the trying situation that we’re in. I don’t know if you’ve read C.S. Lewis. I love C.S.
Lewis, but he wrote a book titled The Problem of Pain. And some of you will probably recall these words Lewis said, pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. You know, you got to think right now during this time that God has something for all of us to hear.
And the big question is, are we listening? Are we paying attention? Or, you know, are we turning a deaf ear? Are we mainly just saying, you know, just, I just want to get back to normal. That’s all I want to do.
I want to get life back to normal. You know what we need right now? I think that we need the heart of Samuel. Some of you remember that Samuel heard the Lord speaking, but he didn’t know it was the Lord. And finally, when he figured that out and had some help from the priest, He said, speak.
Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Maybe that’s what we need right now. We just need to ask the Lord to speak to us, to make it clear what it is that he wants us to hear right now. But make sure you’re listening. This would be a good time to pray with David, Psalm 26:2.
Test me, O Lord, and try me. Examine my heart. This would also be a good time to pray that prayer found in Psalm 139, where it says, search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
So Jeremiah is saying it’s so applicable even to us in this day. God has something to say to all of us, even in the midst of this time that we’re living in. I know that he’s been talking to me. I mean, not verbally, but he’s leading me in ways and through the work of the Holy Spirit and his word. He’s challenging me and he’s pointing things out in my life that, that need to be changed.
One of the best things that could happen right now is just to take time and reflect. So as Jeremiah says, let us examine our ways and test them. And then he says, and let us return to the Lord. And there’s the second corrective action. First, to reflect, and secondly, to return.
To return to what? He doesn’t say, you know, return to life like it was before all of this happened. Hopefully not. I mean, in some ways, of course. But in this case, Jeremiah is saying that there was something that needed to change in their relationship with the Lord.
And so he says, so let us return to the Lord. And really, that’s the best thing that could happen, isn’t it? That we’d start fresh with the Lord, that we come out of this situation that we’re in right now better. Than we came into this situation. You know, hardship has a way of kind of helping us see what really matters, doesn’t it?
And who really matters. You may remember, some of you, and some of you, maybe this will be the first time you heard this story. But Jesus told the story of 2 sons. There was a younger son and an older son, and the younger son got to a place where he wanted out from his father’s— think of this— compassionate, loving, headship. Can you imagine that?
He wanted out from under his father’s compassionate, loving headship. He just wanted to do his own thing. So he came to his dad and he demanded his share of his dad’s estate, and the father went ahead and gave it to him. And then he flew the coop, so to speak, and he set off for a distant country and he squandered his wealth in wild living. And then this happened, we’re told in Luke chapter 15.
After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. And when he came to his senses, he said, how many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I What did the younger son do? He returned.
He came to his senses. He did some reflecting and then ultimately said, I’m going back. He returned to his father and he said, Father, I’ve sinned against heaven. I’ve sinned against God. I’ve sinned against what God wants for my life.
I thought that I could find a better life by living apart from God and apart from his will for my life. But I came to my senses as I was away, and I realized that’s not the way to live. And, and Father, I’ve sinned against you. I’ve taken you for granted. I’ve acted with entitlement, with a demanding attitude.
I’ve acted like you owe me something more than you’ve already given me. I’ve been ungrateful for all that you’ve done for me. I’ve disrespected you. I’ve lied to you. I thought I knew better than the old man.
Father, please forgive me. Will you forgive me? And of course, the father in Jesus’ story is meant to represent our Heavenly Father, the one who loves us the most, the one who is ready and willing to forgive us and give us the best hug imaginable, which would feel really good right now, especially if you’re coming out of a time of social distancing. Tragedy, hardship, suffering, It all has a way of turning people back to what matters most. The past couple of weeks, as I’ve been reading some books, I started to read Gary Boone’s biography of Dallas Willard’s life.
The book is called Becoming Dallas Willard, and it’s— I’ve really enjoyed this book. But about the middle of the book, he takes us back to 1970 when Dallas and his wife Jane were having a few things that were going on in their marriage that really needed to change. And at that time, Gary writes that they were hit by a tragedy with 2 children already in their family, John, who was 12, and Becky, who was 7. They found out that Jane, Dallas’s wife, was expecting twins, 2 boys. And as you can imagine, it was a very exciting time for the Willard family.
Until Jane went into labor 3 months early. The first son was born stillborn, and the second son only lived for a day. Jane, as she’s looked back on that time and as she shared with Gary, the one who put this biography together, about the tragedy and how it impacted their life, but especially their marriage, Jane said this: This was the beginning of the end of our being at loggerheads. It had not been a good time, but this began to snap us out of it. Dallas and I had come together, and Dallas and I had to come together and deal with our pettiness.
It shook us up and it brought us back to the reality of what is most important. In other words, their time of tragedy changed their marriage. The Willards’ tragedy brought them back together. The prodigal son situation brought him to the place where he said, I’m gonna go back to my father. Jeremiah said, let us return to the Lord.
So the point that I’m trying to make is very simple. If the coronavirus brings us back to the Lord and living for his ways, that would be great. Even though this whole situation is not good, it could be worked together for good by our God, and it could be a good thing. God can do that. He can bring something good out of something bad.
In fact, as you look at the Bible, what we see there is that oftentimes in hard times, he works in amazing ways, and they can be the best things— those times could be the best thing that could happen to us. They can bring us back to what matters most. I’ve appreciated Randy Alcorn’s observation about the coronavirus. He said that You know, this coronavirus has attacked the 2 things that people in our world value the most: health and wealth. He said for many, those are our 2 gods.
They’re our 2 idols, those idols that we most worship. Now we might say, well, that’s, that’s just not true. But often, think about it, the way we live our lives shows us that it could be true. That, you know, when all of a sudden all the security that we had connected to our health and wealth is taken away, what we valued as the 2 most important potentially commodities are ripped out of our control or our imagined control. In the midst of that loss, we’re kind of driven back to what really matters most.
And what really matters most is the one who matters most. It’s God, who we need more than health and wealth. Now, whether or not that lesson is going to impact us in life-changing ways, I think in some ways it’s going to depend upon whether or not we take some time to reflect with the help of God on this time and ask, Lord, what is it that you would have me learn? And whether or not we return to God and to his ways. Well, there’s one more important action that I think that we really need to bring into focus.
It’s also found in this chapter 3 of Lamentations. Where Jeremiah, after lamenting the tragedy that came on Judah because of her sinful ways, Jeremiah then talks about his experience, his personal experience in the middle of this mess. And what you see here is, I think, so helpful to us because this is a guy who had been seeking after God. He’d been seeking to do what was right in the midst of a world that was not doing what was right. And in the midst of all of that, he writes, I have become a laughingstock to all my people, their mocking song all the day.
And my soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness. So I say, my strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. In other words, this guy’s a mess. The impact of the hardship on the nation of Judah hurt Jeremiah also.
I mean, the bottom— you might say the bottom dropped out of his world for a time. He found himself in a state of despair, without happiness, without hope, until he came to God’s throne and he prayed this: Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. I mean, he’s just pouring his soul out to God at this point. And then he says, and surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope. What you see here is a change in Jeremiah’s spirit, a change in his soul.
He went from, as you can see here, from a state of bitterness to a state of hope. He went from a state of despair and weakness, and he found hope, a renewed hope. But of course, this was the result of him humbly coming before God and asking God to remember his condition, to not forget his condition, his state of affairs, the pain he was in, the troubles he was in. When he asked God to— and notice the word— to remember, he then remembered his need for God, and he remembered this about God. Lamentations 3:21-23: This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.
The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. What does Jeremiah do at this, this point? He remembered.
He recalled. You know, one of the best things that we can do in the midst of a difficult time is remember. It’s to remember God’s never-ending love It’s to remember God’s never-ending compassions. It’s to remember God’s never-ending faithfulness. I think when we remember, like Jeremiah remembered, the Lord’s loving kindnesses that never cease, and when we remember his compassions that never fail, and we remember that they’re new every morning, and God’s faithfulness is great, when we remember We’re going to be filled up with hope, too.
Fresh hope. We’re going to live with hope. I can’t tell you how many people have been helped by the promises in, in those 2 verses, verses 22 and 23, by, by remembering in the midst of the challenges that they’ve been faced with that no matter how hurtful things get, like in Jeremiah’s situation, how hurtful people can come along and say hurtful things, or how hard things are at any given time, To remember that God loves us can change everything in our, our perspective on the challenges that we’re faced with, that God has not stopped loving us, that he’s filled with compassion and mercy and empathy, that he’s with us in our pain. He’s not distant. He cares.
He’s not going to walk out on us. He’s going to be faithful to the end. And then after this is all said and done, in a relationship through Jesus Christ, he is going to receive us into his presence and we will live with him forever. You know, when I was a young pastor, I can remember sitting with a friend as he was nearing death due to the cancer that was stealing life away from his body. And we talked and we laughed and we shared tears at one point.
And I asked him if it would be okay if I shared a passage of scripture that had been an encouragement to many. And of course, I was thinking about this passage from Lamentations chapter 3, verses 22 through 23. And so as I was turning there and I was preparing to read, it was just going to come right then and there. We were talking a little bit before we got into the passage, but for some reason at that moment my pastoral training kicked in and, and I thought about, well, you know, I need to read this scripture in context. And so I began earlier in the chapter with these words: I am the man who has seen affliction.
Because of the rod of his wrath, he has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away. He has broken my bones. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drunk with wormwood, and he has broken my teeth with gravel. He has made me cower in the dust, and my soul has been rejected from peace.
I have forgotten happiness. So I say, my strength has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. You know, about there I began to realize this is probably not the appropriate passage to be reading to my friends right now. In fact, I looked up and they didn’t have a lot of hope on their face at that point. There was more like dismay, probably wondering, why do we have this guy in our home?
You know, we should have sheltered in place without inviting Dave the pastor without the gift of mercy. You know, all of that was just showing up on their face.
So I did the best thing I could do at the moment. I kept reading and I got to Lamentations 3:21-23. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness. And this time when I looked up, you know what I saw? I saw on their faces hope, and I saw gratitude, and I saw peace. I even saw some joy. Why?
Because when you stop and you remember, even in the midst of pain and suffering and exhaustion, frustration, whatever it is for you— worry, loss— When you remember the Lord, when you remember our compassionate God, our understanding God, you know what happens? Your soul, your spirit, it’s going to be lifted up. It’s filled with renewed hope. I’m among those who believe that things happen for a reason, that in our present situation there are things happening right now for a reason. And if that reason is nothing more than a time to reflect, and a time to return, and a time to remember who our God is, and to remember his love, and to remember that he wants a close relationship with us now and forever.
If that’s all that happened right now, that would be good. No matter how good or how bad we are, in whatever circumstances we are facing, the God of loving kindness and compassion wants a life-changing relationship with us. He wants to be at the very center of our lives. And of course, the Bible says that that’s been made possible, that even sinful people like us can have a relationship with God through the Savior, through God’s Son Jesus Christ, who came to give his life so that we might have life. First step in having that life is is turning to the Lord and asking him to save you.
It’s confessing with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and you will be saved. You’ll be adopted into his family. And the moment that you begin that relationship with God, that changes everything. Even in the midst of an unsettling, uncertain, unwanted time like this, we can still come back and reflect and return remember again and again that our God is filled with loving kindnesses, and his loving kindnesses will never cease, and his compassions will never fail, and his faithfulness is going to be new every morning. And calling those facts to mind, we can live with hope in the midst of trying times.
Let’s thank him together. Father, thank you so much for this wonderful truth that’s found in the midst of a Bible book that is filled with lament, is filled with grief, it’s filled with loss. And yet even in the midst of that, sandwiched into the middle of the book, is this wonderful reminder that you are with us, Lord, and that you care, and that you hear our prayers. We ask that you would forgive us for ways that we have sinned. We pray that you would use these awful circumstances to draw us to yourself, that we would come out of this situation not the same as we came into it, but better.
And so, Lord, I pray for forgiveness for our sins. And I pray for a new commitment to live according to your ways instead of ours. May you work in each one of our lives. And if that means for that person that’s listening right now that doesn’t have a relationship with you, I pray that today might be the day of salvation for them, that they would receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. And if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that.
He’ll hear your prayer. And Lord, we pray that you would continue to be our strength, our comfort, our hope. We pray that things would change. We pray, Lord, that the coronavirus would quit spreading, that people would quit dying, that those that are sick would get their health back again. That you would be comfort, a comfort to those who’ve lost loved ones.
In the midst of all that is going on, we, we passionately ask, God, for your divine intervention to stop this virus from spreading any further. And we ask at the same time that in our lives we would receive the gift of life that’s found in Christ in new ways. Either initially in salvation or continually in the transformation that can take place in us as we even do what we’ve talked about today, as we reflect, as we return, and as we remember. Help us do that, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, we’re going to continue our time of worship this morning with another encouraging song and some final information from Pastor Steve. But just before we get there, I want you to know that today we’re starting something new and we’re very excited. We’re just going to call it a Coffee with a Pastor. It’s kind of a meetup opportunity. We’re going to do this by way of Zoom.
You know, in the middle of a series like this, or a challenging series where we’re focused on hurts and the times that we’re living in, oftentimes people have questions. Maybe you have some questions, or you’d just like to talk to a pastor Or perhaps you want to just spend some time together having coffee. And so we’re going to make that opportunity available today at 3 o’clock. You’ll see right here on the webpage where this video is at a button. The button says Coffee with the Pastor.
If you click that button, what it’ll do is it’ll take you to another page where you’ll be able to get a little bit more information about this coffee. We’re not going to be able to provide your coffee, But we do think that if you want to have a coffee, I’m going to bring a frappuccino probably, and we’ll just sit together. I get the privilege of being a part of that conversation today. So we’d love to have you come, and the Zoom link is going to be found on the page that’s on the other side of the button, Coffee with a Pastor. So push the button, you’ll see the Zoom link.
We’d love to have you come today at 3. We’ll have a great time together, just having a good time talking together about whatever’s on your heart. And so let’s bring today’s worship service to a close. We’re going to sing a final song, and then Steve’s got some final information for us.
