[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church Podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our
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[00:00:25] Speaker B: You may not be aware of this, but this coming Saturday will be the shortest day of our calendar year. And conversely, this coming Saturday night will be the longest night of our calendar year. A traditional church has a Sunday set aside to acknowledge the longest night of the year, and that Sunday is actually called a Blue Christmas. Now I know how many of you are in a church that acknowledged that particular weekend or had that sort of tradition, but it's set aside to recognize the reality that for many people, navigating through the holidays is not only a joyous time of the year year, but it's also a difficult time of the year. And I think everyone in the room would probably agree that that's true, certainly true in my life, that there is this joy and there is this wonder of the holidays and it's also accompanied by a bit of sorrow because of the people in your life who won't be with you another holiday. And I get that it can also be a reality that you can go through life and experience the best of times and the worst of times at the same time. And so for many, this holiday season will be difficult because this will be the first holiday they will not have their loved ones. I had a service yesterday for a precious lady, a part of our church, 46 year old lady who went home to be with Christ, leaving behind her a young husband and two beautiful children.
Later this afternoon when this service ends, I'll do another memorial service for a wonderful lady who raised a beautiful family who are a vibrant part of our church.
And then Thursday I'll have another service for another incredible lady who grew up, my dad's church was a part of our church and who finally succumbed to leukemia this past week. And so we all deal with that. In my line of work, I deal with it a lot. But we all have to navigate through the hard times and the difficult times of life. And what you find when you go through those times is they'll do one of two things. Inevitably they'll either draw you closer to God or oftentimes they drive you farther from Him. And I contend sometimes it's a little bit of both we do this weird religious dance with God. We pull into him and we push away from him. We draw close to him and then we walk away from Him. Because it's hard sometimes to navigate the why in the heartaches of life, the find the meaning in the loss. And sometimes that's a difficult thing to navigate because we acknowledge the fact that God is sovereign. He's all powerful. There's nothing he can't do. So we come back to say, well, God, if you are in control of all things, and you are, and why can't you prevent certain things from happening? And we get into that spiral where we start saying, you know, why this and why me and why now? And I think we've all been there. And at the end of the day, what we have to come to the conclusion and we have to realize that nowhere in the Bible does the Bible ever say understand God.
I would challenge you to find a verse where God ever says understand Me. But instead, what the Bible is replete with in story after story and illustration after illustration is God's word to us is trust me, trust me. Realizing that he is too good to do wrong and God is too wise to make a mistake. He is, he is transcendent. He is above all, he knows all. He loves us all. God is a God of purpose. He does everything with purpose and on purpose and for purpose. And so when you navigate through the grief of life and you go through the blue Sundays and you go through the blue holidays and even the blue Christmases, you, you, you have to land, I think at some point on that spot that just says God, I may not agree with this and I don't like this, and I don't even want this. I certainly didn't need this. But I trust you in this and I believe you have a reason for this. And everybody struggles, I think, with these kinds of things. Gosh, you look back in the book of Habakkuk, Habakkuk, that's over in the Old Testament where the pages of your Bibles are stuck together.
And if you find Habakkuk and you read it, it's interesting. It's a little three chapter book. And in the first two chapters, Habakkuk is struggling with God.
He's saying, God, you're, you're not fair and you, you're inconsistent. And people who don't even know you, you tend to bless them more than people who do know you.
He's fouled up. And I've told you before, there's nothing worse than when the upright get uptight.
And he is absolutely messed up. And it's only until you get to chapter three that Habakkuk's perspective changes. Now, look, nothing about his circumstance changed, but his perspective changed. And can I say to you from the standpoint of where I want to talk to you a little bit about my message as we talk about a beautiful blue Christmas, is that nothing in our life may change it. Nothing I say this morning is going to bring our loved ones back to be with us this holiday season.
Nothing I can say can take the pain away from your heart. Nothing I can say can lessen the difficulties of your struggle and of mind this morning. And I understand that. But all I want to do is challenge the way we see it. I want to challenge your perspective.
I hope you can walk away this morning from the message and say, I'm going to work on how I view what I'm going through. And I want to try to see this experience from a different perspective. That's what happens with Habakkuk. Chapter 3. God puts him on a tower. And basically he changed his perspective. And when you look at really what was going on there, God was saying, you got to get above your circumstances so you can see it a little more clearly. But he wasn't the only one that struggled. Goodness, Isaiah.
Isaiah struggled with God. And then finally God in Isaiah 55 responds. And he says, isaiah, here's the response. As high as the heavens are above my head, so high are my thoughts above yours and my ways above yours. What he was saying is, Isaiah, if I took the time to explain it, I'm not sure you could comprehend it. Trust me in it. And then you look at Jeremiah. Jeremiah, goodness. Jeremiah got so angry at God that he said to God, I will not speak of you again. I'll never speak your name again. Now, have you ever been that mad at God?
Have you ever been so angry at God that you said, I will never tell another person that I know you. I will never tell another person about you. I mean, you are that Isa. This is a prophet, Jeremiah, that wrote a whole book, in fact, two. He wrote lamentations, the lamenting, the crying, the weeping of the people away from God. And he got to a point in his journey with Christ that he was so angry at God that he said, I will never speak of you again.
And you continue reading on and you'll read where Jeremiah said, but his word was within me as a burning fire, and I could not walk away. You can walk away from God. You just can't stay away From God.
He changed his perspective. You come over in the New Testament and you find, here's John. Remember, John was the one who was the forerunner of Jesus. John was preparing the way for Jesus. And John was going before gathering a crowd for Jesus. And he even said about his ministry, I will eventually decrease while Jesus increases. Well, that's one thing to say. It's another thing to do. And all of a sudden, Jesus comes on the scene. John baptizes him and declares, behold the lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world. And Jesus steps from anonymity into the public spotlight. And thousands began to follow him.
And the people that used to go listen to John now are going to listen to Jesus. And the hundreds and thousands of people that used to crowd in to hear John speak are now crowding to hear Jesus speak. And John's got a handful of people out there that he's speaking to when he used to speak to a packed house. That affects person's ego.
In fact, once John was determined to be kind of weakened in his position, they have him arrested and have him thrown into prison. And Jesus is thriving.
And you read about John, who's now upset at Jesus. And one of the people come to check on John and they say, how are you doing, John? And he goes, would you go ask Jesus, is he really the Messiah, or do I start looking for another one?
That's a pretty upset guy. You declared him the Messiah. You're the one that said, on the banks of the Jordan, behold the lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world. He knew he was the Messiah. He was just angry at God. He was angry at Jesus. He knew that his ministry would decrease while Jesus ministry increases. But once, I'm telling you, once the reality of that hit, it was doing a number on him.
There was a little chorus they would sing in church when I was a kid. And the chorus, I'm not gonna sing it, so I'm glad you're here, so I don't wanna scare you, but it went. The words of it went like this take, well, I want to do your will, oh Lord I want to do your will, O Lord. And then it said, take me, break me, mold me and make me. I want to do your will, oh Lord. We would just sing that Kumbaya in our youth group on Sunday. And we just, you know, oh, God, I want to do your will, oh Lord. And then all of a sudden, the next week, something happens in our life where we're being taken and we're being broken and we're being molded while we're being made. And we start going, what are you doing, God?
And it's almost like he's looking down with, I am confused. What do you want from me? You just said, take me, break me, mold me, make me an I am. And you're whining.
And I'm just saying that perspective has to change. And that was what was happening with John. And you know what Jesus said when they came back and they said, jesus, John's pretty upset with you. He wants to know, man, do I just resign and go into another line of work, start looking for somebody else to follow? Cause you ain't obviously the one, or this wouldn't be happening to me. And Jesus said, and I love this. He said, you go back and tell John. Tell him the things that you've seen me do. Tell John the dead that are brought to life again, the blind that have been made to see, the deaf who now can hear, the crippled who've been made to walk. You tell John the things that he's seen that you've seen me do. And then, I love this line. He said, tell him, happy is the one who doesn't get offended in me. Let me translate that into Texan. Happy is the one that doesn't get hacked off every time I do something they don't agree with. Loosely translated, that's what he was saying to John. John, don't get mad every time I do something you don't agree with or you don't like that may cause you some pain. Because I know what's best. Here we go again. Trust me. Trust me.
Understand that I have a plan. I'm working the plan. And sometimes the plan involves. Listen to this. Sometimes the plan involves building, and sometimes the plan involves breaking.
Read Hebrews 11. And there's that great list of the heroes of our faith.
And these people, as you read Hebrews 11, had they had the faith to escape man. They escaped the sword, and they escaped persecution, and they escaped. And man, you read about them, and man, it's exciting. And all these heroes of faith. But then it transitions verse 34, 35, and change, all of a sudden it says, and others.
And others.
The first group had faith to escape, but the others had faith to endure.
And it talks about people who were martyred because of their faith.
It talks about people who paid a price. Both of the people had faith. Both of those people. All of those people loved God. Why is it that some escaped and some had to endure?
Why is it that some had great building moments in their life, while others had great broken moments in their life. Why? I don't know. Doesn't explain it. It just said they had the faith to believe that God was in control and he had a plan and he had a purpose. And that's all I'm saying to you. That's what I'm trying to learn in my life as well, is at the end of the day, regardless of where we are, what we've gone through, or what we're going through or what we will go through, at the end of the day, God can be trusted.
And one of the incredible things that the Apostle Paul learned about God is he learned a new perspective of God when he went through a hard.
In fact, Paul promised the church at Corinth. He said, look, I'm going to go on this missionary journey and before I'm finished, I'm going to come back and spend some time with you guys and minister to you and we'll be able to get caught up and we'll fellowship. But he doesn't show. He doesn't come back.
And all of a sudden, man, they thought the very worst. Well, he's given his word. He didn't keep his word. I thought Paul was a man of integrity. He's obviously not. I thought Paul, you know, was the real thing, and he's obviously a phony. He said he was. He never showed up.
And Paul hears word that they're upset at him because they're angry that he said he was going to come back and minister to them and he never did. And Paul said, well, don't they realize what happened to me?
Paul said, don't they realize that I was beaten and left for dead? I've been in intensive care. I nearly died. And none of them checked on me. Not one of them went to see how I was doing. They had this expectation that, you know, I was going to be there and I would have been there, but they nearly. That was nearly kill.
And so what you had there was a failure to communicate.
On one hand, Paul should have communicated back to the church what was going on so they wouldn't have thought the worst. On the other hand, the church should have cut the brother some slack to realize maybe there's something going on and we shouldn't be so quick to judge.
And so Paul, with that experience, he writes to the church of Corinth, which is the heart and the centerpiece of the scripture. I wanted to share with you before we go in Second Corinthians, chapter one. And here's what he said. I Learned in the brokenness of my life.
The blue Christmas, if you will. Here's what I learned. Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies. Note how he describes God and the God of all comfort. You see that the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble. How do we do that? With the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Two of the most powerful verses that you'll ever read. When it talks about the comfort that God provides and what we are to do with that comfort, it's interesting. The word comfort by definition means to give strength or hope. The idea of comfort is to ease the grief or trouble it is to console someone.
And what the beautiful part is we're going to discover with this is there's no one more qualified to give comfort than those who have received comfort.
No one better to talk to someone who is going through a divorce than someone who's been through a divorce.
No one better to help someone who is going through a betrayal than someone who's been betrayed.
No one better to talk to someone who's lost a child than to someone who has been there and has lost that child.
You're never more qualified to help someone navigate through the loss of a spouse than when you've lost your spouse.
Paul is saying there's some things he learned about himself and some things he learned about God and an opportunity that God used to use him in his brokenness that really impacted his life. And the first thing when I read those verses that jump out at me is what I'm calling. If you're taking notes, I'm calling this the Comforter.
The comforter. He. He refers to God as the God of all comfort.
Can I suggest to you that Paul saw a side of God he had never seen before when he was broken.
And there is a side of God. There is an aspect of God. There's a characteristic of God that you will never see until you're broken.
Until you've gone through some life altering, soul crushing, disappointing, devastating experience of life. All of a sudden you'll see a perspective and you'll see a side of God that you didn't see and you never have seen before.
Listen to what the psalmist wrote in Psalm 34:18. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart.
Your heart broken this morning.
The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart. Heart.
Matthew 5. Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
The idea of mourning is. The word mourn is a lot like the word wound. Wound. Wound is something. A wound is something like an open injury. It hasn't yet healed. It's a wound. It's in the process of healing, but it hasn't yet healed. It's a wound. To mourn means I'm not through with it. I'm not done with it. I'm in the process of healing from it. But I'm still. I'm mourning.
My heart is still broken and I'm still bleeding, and I'm not through it yet. And listen, there's no time limit on it.
Grief is not a destination. It's a passage. And sometimes the passage is a lot longer for people, for some people than others.
Some people can navigate through it quicker than others. And that's okay. Never shame yourself or beat yourself up. If you're still grieving and you're still mourning over something simply because a period of time has passed, there's no time limit on mourning. That's not even what Jesus said. He said, blessed are those who mourn. You may mourn for most of your life over someone you've lost. You may never fully recover or off or never fully get over the loss of that person. And that's okay, because God has promised a blessing and he's promised a comfort to be with those who mourn. And he said, I am. I'm near. Those with a broken heart listen to the promise of Jesus in John 14:6. I will pray the Father and He will give you. Listen to this. Another comforter.
Another comforter. It's an interesting word in the Greek. It's parakletas in the Greek. It's the idea of someone who has been sent to come alongside.
Someone sent to come alongside.
Picture a vessel at trouble at sea, and they reach out and they send a message to the Coast Guard that they're in trouble. And all of a sudden, the cutter comes alongside. The helicopter buzzes above. And all of a sudden there's hope because someone has come alongside them to help them. Paracletos, the comforter. God has divinely sent the person of His Holy Spirit to come alongside us. And you never know he's there until you need him. And when you see him as comforter, he's always there.
I love this idea. God will never send you somewhere that he will not go with you there. He will not send you somewhere that he will not go with you there. You remember the three teenagers in the fire in Daniel 3, Shadrach Meshach, Abednego. When the Nebuchadnezzar throws them into the fire because he wouldn't recant their faith, you remember after a time when they should have been just destroyed by the fire, he looks in and you remember this. Incredible. He said, didn't we throw three in the fire? He said, I see four. And the fourth one is likened to the Son of God.
He didn't keep them out of the fire. He went into the fire with him. It's interesting. The first invitation in the Bible was the invitation to come into the ark in Genesis 7, verse 1. And I love the wording of this. He said to Noah, he didn't say, go into the ark. I would have gone. But he didn't say it that way. He said, come into the ark. Go into the ark. Might indicate God's not in there. He's sending you somewhere where he's not. But when he says, come into the ark, it means he's there. His presence is there. You're just joining him where he is.
So all I'm trying to suggest to you to hopefully change your perspective this morning is even in the brokenness of our lives, God will not send us into a broken experience. If he's not there.
And he's there in our lives and he's there in the moment, he's there as our comforter.
Listen to Hebrews, chapter four and verse five. The Bible says, listen. We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He was in all points, tempted as we are, yet he without sin.
God feels what we feel. He experiences what we experience. The shortest verse in the Bible, by the way, if you want to know what that is, the very shortest verse in the Bible is just Simply this. John 11:35. Jesus wept.
Jesus wept.
It's written while he's at the tomb of Lazarus, his close friend. I've often wondered, and when I talk about this, kind of. It's a little puzzling. I've wondered, because you know the story. Remember, Jesus calls Lazarus out of the dead. Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus walks out. And I believe he had so much power, had he not called him by name, everyone who had ever died since the time of Adam would have walked right out of their graves. So he had to be specific. Lazarus, come forth. And so he calls Lazarus forth. And Lazarus walks right out of that grave, just as Jesus called. But before he did that, the Bible says he stood and he was overwhelmed and he wept.
I wondered. Well, if you know, you're about to bring him back from the dead. Why would you allow yourself to be overwrought emotionally? And why would you stand there and weep? Why didn't you just cut to the chase, Jesus? Save yourself all that emotional turmoil and just say, lazarus, come forth. Let's go to the party.
But instead he wanted that emotion and he wanted to express that grief. And he. He wanted to. To go through that. And he. He. He says to Lazarus before that, he says, he. He weeps.
Well, I struggle with that. Why do you do that? I'll give you a theory. I got it. It's free like the rest of it.
Somebody says, well, he did that so he would know what it feels like to lose someone you love. Well, that. That's fair. I mean, I understand that, but Jesus was God, right? I mean, next weekend we'll kick off the Christmas services and we'll talk about the incarnation of Christ. That word incarnates is in flesh, God in flesh. So Jesus was God. He was much God, as though he were never man. Though he was as much man as though we were never God. So being the God, man, being sovereign, would not Jesus have known that?
So why would he need to experience it? So that he would know it. If he was God, he already knew it. You get my point. So I don't think that was it. Here's what I think it was. I don't think that he grieved at the grave of Lazarus and he wept so that he would know what it feels like. But get this. I think he did it so that we would know that he knows what it feels like.
So all of us, when our hearts are broken and we're weeping, we immediately know we don't have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He was in all points touched as we are, yet he did it without sin. He wept.
So Paul saw him as the comforter. Notice the second thought, and I'll hurry. Here, you see the comforted, the comforter comes. And who is the comforted? He said, who comforts us? I love it that Paul includes himself and he includes us. He comforts us. He comforts us in all our tribulation.
Paul said this God of heaven comforts us. Can I tell you he's the comforter for you today? He's the comforter for me. There's not a thing you and I will ever experience in our life that will ever go, that God will not come alongside and he will not comfort us. I know. Listen. I know it may not always feel that way.
You're going to have moments when you feel forsaken. There are going to be moments when you wonder, where is God and does he understand?
But can I tell you something? When you can see God at work in your life, he's working. And when you can't see God at work in your life, he's working.
When you know what God's up to in your life, he's doing something. And when you don't know what God's up to in your life, he's still doing something.
When you can feel God at work in your life and you feel that you're in the presence of God, he's there. And when you can't feel him at work, work in your presence, he's still there. Why? Because he promised I will never leave you or forsake you. Hold onto that promise. Don't rely on your feelings. Our feelings are probably the shallowest part of our being. They're important and I think you're alive. So you feel things and feeling is a part of it, but they're the shallowest part. I have all kinds of feelings. You can have good feelings and bad feelings and you can feel good one minute, bad the next minute. You can have a bunch of feelings in a five minute period of time. You can't rely on it. Feelings are fickle. They're important, but they're fickle. That's why Martin Luther said, feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving my warrant. What I lock in on is the word of God. Naught else is worth believing. Be careful, trusting too heavily in your feelings. But I'm saying, even when you don't feel it, hang on to his promise and say, God, you said you won't leave me and you say you won't forsake me. And I'm not feeling that right now. But I'm still believing it and I'm still trusting you in it because you cannot lie and you will not break your word.
The Comforted here's the last thought. The comforting what are we to do? Notice the so that so that Paul said this is happening for a reason, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble. How do we do that? Paul? With the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Isaiah 60:1 Isaiah wrote, He has sent me to comfort the broken hearted. God has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted. Isaiah realized that part of my role is to try to provide encouragement and consolation to people who are going through a hard time.
We talk about this all the time in our church that people really don't get reachable, or you don't reach people, rather, till they get reachable.
And when people get reachable is when they're going through a hard time. And sooner or later, we're all going to be there.
And when we are there, we want to be a church that has a heart and a desire and a will to help people navigate through those hard times.
I can tell you that one of the things that helps me navigate through the loss of Cindy and the loss of Evie and some of the other losses that we've dealt with in life has been when somebody tells me that through the things that you've gone through, I've received comfort. That helps me because it helps me begin to make a little bit of sense of some of the things that I've walked through.
And what you may realize in your life is God will take your experiences, and more than you may even acknowledge or even know, he'll take those experiences. Maybe you've had a kid that has just had all kinds of things go on in their life, and sooner or later, you're gonna have a coworker who has a kid that has all kinds of things going on in their life, and you're gonna be able to pull right up next to them and say, been there. Let me tell you what we did and how we're doing it.
I'm telling you. Paul said, I'm able to give comfort because I've received comfort, and I've received comfort because I needed comfort.
And everybody around us is going through something. And sooner or later, God will sovereignly bring us into somebody's path who needs help, who just needs a word of encouragement. The Bible says that these kinds of words are like apples of gold and pitchers of silver. A word fitly spoken in due time. You say the right thing at the right time. You never know what a difference it might make in someone's life.
I read and shared this with you years ago. But there's a Japanese art called kensukari.
And this Japanese art is really interesting because they will take a cracked vessel, a vessel that most people would discard and throw it away. It's got fissures in it. It's got cracks in it. It's of no use.
But the artisan, the Japanese artisan will take and melt gold, and they will pour the gold into the cracks of that broken vessel and make that broken vessel much more beautiful and much more valuable because of its brokenness than it ever was before.
And I can tell you the Holy Spirit of God has a way of taking the brokenness, the broken life and the broken heart. And through the power of his Holy Spirit, he can make it the beauty for ashes. He can take that which was broken and make it a work of art so that it can bless and impact the lives of other people.
Sometimes it's the cracks in the heart, the fissures of the heart, that allows the light that's in our life to shine the brightest.
And the people who walked in darkness, Isaiah 9 said they've seen a great light.
Jesus said, I'm the light of the world. Before he left, he said, you're the light of the world. And sometimes for the light to shine, the body has to be cracked and the heart has to be broken so that the light of life that we have can be seen through the people around us who are in darkness.
So Jesus said, let your light shine. And I'd say, as I close this morning, let your light shine. On the blue Christmases, on the hard days, Let your light shine. Just keep loving people. Keep loving Jesus. Keep trusting that he's got a plan that he's too good to do wrong he's too wise to make a mistake Remember what the disciples said if they saw him work. They said, he does all things well he does all things well he makes no mistake a.m. overton said, My Father's way may twist and turn My heart may throb and ache but in my soul I'm glad I know he maketh no mistake My cherished plans may go astray My hopes may fade away but still I'll trust my Lord to lead for he doth know the way Though night be dark and it may seem that day will never break I'll pin my faith, my all in him for he doth know the way for by and by the mist will lift and plain at all he'll make through all the way Though dark to me he made not one mistake. Let's pray.
Father, thank you that you are a God that can be trusted.
Thank you that you are a God who never fails.
And in the dark seasons of our life, when our hearts are heavy and our souls are crushed and we feel so broken, to know you are there.
To know that you will not leave us or forsake us.
Father, what a blessing that is. What a comfort that is.
So help us, Lord, as we go through this incredible season and make new memories with our families, those children, grandchildren. Help us all to be sensitive to those around us who are gonna have some moments of sadness, who are gonna have some moments of loss, to just put an arm around them, to love them, to think about them, to pray for them. Because we've been there, we are there.
Help us to comfort those with the comfort we have received from the parakletas, the comforter, the Holy Spirit.
And I pray finally, for anyone in the room who may not know you as Savior, that this might be the moment, Father, right where they are, where they humble their heart and say, lord Jesus, with everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, and this is my prayer. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
