Tears of Mercy
From the Series: Tears
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: March 21, 2010
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Transcript
How are we doing? Welcome and let me say thank you for making National Community Church part of your weekend. We are thrilled that you are here. Let me make a special announcement, in case you missed last weekend. If you miss one week around here, you are totally out of the loop. We announced last weekend that we are launching our fifth location in Columbia Heights at the Gala Theater! We are so excited about it! We are going to have an informational meeting, Tuesday night, March 23rd at Ebenezers Coffeehouse and we want to invite you to come out for that. It is informational, we will share some vision and answer some questions and pray together, and I think it is really important for us to gather that night and then prepare for Easter Sunday morning and then on April 11th, we will go to a Sunday night time slot. We are excited that. Not only does it give us another location, it gives us another time slot option for you. We are praying about it and we’ve asked all of you to pray and say, ‘Lord, where do you want me?’ You are part of National Community Church, but as a multi-site church, you have lots of different options. As you pray, the Holy Spirit will begin to tap some of you on the shoulder and you’ll feel, what I like to call a holy desire growing inside of you to be part of something new and see us grow in that part of the city. So come on out Tuesday night and we’ll have a wonderful time together.
I am loving From Garden to City! Not just as a pastor, but as a parent, I’m loving it on so many different levels. We are reading through the Bible together, we’ve read the Book of Job and this weekend, we wrap up the Book of Jeremiah, then we begin the gospel of Mark. This is so perfect because I know most of us have taken the challenge. If you haven’t, you can go to www.fromgardentocity.com and we blog everyday on the passages we are reading and it has the reading plan and helpful things to help you as you read through Scripture. I encourage you to go there if you have not taken the challenge and jump in. Palm Sunday, a week from now, Easter Sunday in two weeks, how perfect to be reading the through the gospels and go through the journey of Jesus’ life to prepare ourselves for what we are going to celebrate on those two weekends. I encourage you to do that.
Can I share how I’m approaching this? As I read through my Bible, I’m reading it, first of all, for personal application, and here’s Jeremiah, for example, you’ll see that I have a lot of verses underlined. These are verses that get in my spirit, things that I need to meditate on and act on. One of them in this chapter, the Lord says I am watching over my Word to perform it. I’ve been living my life with more confidence the last several weeks, because that promise is a promise that I’m standing on. As well as underlining verses, there are verses that are circled, and the way I’m approaching that as a parent is, those are verses that I want to talk with my family about. Maybe it’s a verse my kids could memorize. The first one from Jeremiah, you remember Jeremiah had this amazing calling but he was nervous and didn’t have much confidence, but what does the Lord say to him? He says to Jeremiah, “Do not say I am only a youth.” I got my little eight-year-old Josiah quoting that verse, “Do not say I am only a youth.” Do not use age as an excuse. I don’t care how old you are or how young you are, God wants to use you in a way that is way beyond your ability, beyond what you can even ask or imagine. I believe that for every one of us. I believe it for my kids. So when I’m tucking him into that upper bunk, it’s usually a story from the day or a verse and I want him thinking about some of these different Scriptures. So no matter where you are, let’s journey together through the Bible.
This weekend, we continue through our ‘Tears’ series and we are looking at the Book of Lamentations. What we are trying to do with each book of the Bible is give you a little bit of back-story so they come to life. So let me do that. Jeremiah has been prophesying doom and destruction and said that the Babylonians are going to invade and take Jerusalem captive and that happened, and Lamentations is sort of the aftermath of all of that. The wall has been torn down, the temple has been destroyed, the people of Israel are literally chained together as a chain of captives and led to Babylon where they are relocated, and in Lamentations 1:1, Jeremiah says how lonely sits the city that was full of people.
According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, the circumference of Jerusalem in his day was 33 stadia, which is the equivalent of 4.5 miles. That would make an area within the walls of Jerusalem about 960 acres or 1.5 square miles. That capital city then was about one-ninth the size of our capital city. I know that doesn’t seem big by comparison, but by ancient standards, this is a major city. According to some scholars, and the estimates range, but many scholars believe that prior to the exile, the population of Jerusalem was about 250,000 people. So we’re talking about a major city with a lot of people, and most of the people are led as captives back to Babylon, but for some reason, Nebakanezer decides to leave the poorest of the poor in a destroyed depopulated city. What you have are the ruins of Jerusalem and the poorest of the poor, who maybe are the only ones who could have survived in those circumstances because they were used to it, are left in the city. And it’s almost like Jeremiah is now on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem and he says, “How lonely sits the city that was full of people.” The people are in exile and Jeremiah writes this book called Lamentations. It is five chapters and those are actually poems, and more specifically, they are a genre of poems known as laments in English. It is tough to pick up on this in English, but in the Hebrew language, there is a three two meter to these poems. In other words, three stresses in one line and two stresses in the next line. Why do I need to know that? The significance of that is that it gives these poems a limping cadence. I just felt like, as I read through this book, it helped me know, how many of you know, reading through Jeremiah and Lamentations, you can’t read through these books, you limp through these books, and even the poetry and the cadence and the way it is written, these are just books that when you are limping through life, these are the kinds of poems we read. It’s really tough in our culture, I don’t have time to talk about because we just medicate it, but there are moments in our lives where we have got to walk through the lamenting process. I hope that this weekend is a step in that journey.
One last footnote, the Book of Lamentations is read on the evening of Tish A’bov, which is the day commemorating a day of fasting, commemorating the destruction of the first temple. So the Jewish people, on an annual basis, on this day, would read this book as a way of remembering that destruction of the first temple.
Turn over to Chapter 3, have you found Lamentations by now? The funny thing is it’s buried between Jeremiah and Ezekiel, two of the books that we barely read and then you have a book that we barely read even less, but trust me, it’s in there. You can miss it because it’s only those five poems, but right in the middle of the book, I believe is one of the most hopeful promises in all of Scripture, and it is just so fitting that this promise is right in the middle of this book. It is in the middle poem and it’s in the middle of this middle poem. Lamentations 3:17
I have forgotten what happiness is.
What a statement! That’s when you have hit bottom. Verse 21
Yet this I call to mind and therefore, I have hope, because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail, they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.
(Recorded voices of a man and woman)
Nailing the lid on my daughter’s coffin was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
We knew immediately we were going to have babies. We got married and we got pregnant so fast, that when we told people everybody went like this, they counted the months and said, ‘You are ok.’
We did not have trouble having children at all. We had three in 39 months.
Our first child was due on our one-year anniversary, and we had our first three children within 3 years and 3 months. We were going strong.
We tried to have more children and we had five miscarriages.
When we had our first miscarriage, it was sad and tragic. When we had another miscarriage, we started questioning if it was an anomaly. We had a third and a fourth and a fifth, then by the time we were pregnant with Audrey, our ninth, we didn’t have a lot of hope. We figured we would lose her as a miscarriage too. At one point, they told us that we were fine, then they came back and said there was no hope, she will die. She would either die in utero or she would die shortly after birth. The doctor quickly proceeded to tell us that we could terminate the pregnancy and I would be put on anti-depressants and I would be referred to a psychologist and that was all he could offer me. I will never forget, the last time she kicked was on my birthday. We were having dinner and she was very lively that day, but five days later, she was stillborn.
We’d experienced loss before, but to hold your own daughter in your arms and feel her go cold, it was an astounding thing.
Peter had made the coffin for her and had drawn a picture of the Resurrection on the cover for her.
Family and friends and the children dug her grave.
I felt like my heart was also being buried with her. I was either going to walk away from Him forever or I was going to let Him heal me. It was then that I realized that in all my anger and my despair against God, I had forgotten to thank Him for giving me the gift of Audrey, and I realized that in spite of all the pain, I would never choose to erase the scar that I carry in my heart for her because if I did, then I would forget her. I just think it seemed like He had abandoned me, I felt abandoned. Then when I look back, I see how He was always there in the face of other people and the community.
It was an NCCer that helped us dig her grace. Pastor Mark had helped us through it, so I guess Audrey brought us into a new community.
Since her death, my faith has taken a great leap forward. I had looked for comfort in the world and there is no comfort from the world and what it had to offer me.
We are in this complex relationship of pain and love and profound unanswerable questions, and having come out of this, it’s like we are in a new relationship with the Lord.
We were laughing last night about Audrey. We have a cabin in West Virginia and all the things she’d be doing to drive us nuts. She’d be trying to play with the fire, she’d be getting in to deep into the river; she’d be chasing the cat and pulling it’s tail and annoying her siblings.
We struggle with the why, but ultimately, understand that you cannot understand. We went through a lot of these losses without telling anybody, and that’s crazy. Reach out to somebody who has been through it. Reach out to us. I would say take the journey, take the journey in its fullest.
(Mark)
I’ll never forget the day of the funeral and I didn’t know what to say, in the midst of their pain. It was an incredibly difficult day. Still unanswered questions, but I appreciate Peter and Naomi having the courage to share their story because if any place needs to be a place where we can share our story and where we can have others to help us through our pain, it better be this place. I want you to know that my son Parker goes up to their cabin in West Virginia, he is friends with Jonathan, their oldest son, and some of his greatest moments in life are up at that cabin because that family laughs and has fun like you wouldn’t believe.
I want you to know that maybe this weekend, you are in the place where they once were, and you need to know that there is hope on the other side. I want to share one thing from this story that, to me, really gets to the heart of this passage and really to the heart of our faith. I think that there are moments in life where the hope of heaven is our only solace on earth.
When Peter showed me the painting on the inside of this tiny, little casket, caskets should never be made that small, but when he showed me the picture of the Resurrection on the inside of that casket, I don’t know exactly what inspired him, but he is an artist and an expression of his faith was to paint that Resurrection picture on the inside. I remember when he told me about that, I was so overcome, because, listen to me, Audrey is not looking at that picture, she is experiencing the reality of what that picture represents. If I could say anything at the front end of this message, it would be this, this entire series, my friends, points to Revelation 21:4 where it says, “He will wipe away every tear.” So as you read From Garden to City and you read Job and the tears and the weeping and the tears, and Jeremiah and the tears and the confusion, and then in Lamentations, the weeping and the tears, as you read next week as we talk about Jesus, his tears, He was sweating blood, and as He hung on that cross, it was this emotional expression of pain, and as we read about all the tears in Scripture, you better get to Revelation 21:4 because that’s the promise we look forward to, that He will wipe away every tear and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
There are moments in this life when the hope of heaven is the only solace that we have on earth. I want to tell you this weekend, it THE hope, it is the ultimate hope, it is the hope that you can hang on to no matter what. Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
How do you find hope when you are in exile? How do you find hope when everything around you is destroyed? How do you find hope when something precious to you dies? In Lamentations, verse 21, it says, there are some things that you need to call to mind. I want to share with you right now what I believe is something that could absolutely change your life. It will not change your circumstances but it could change your life.
Several years ago, psychologists did a study with college students. It consisted of two questions. Question number one: how happy are you? Question number two: how many dates have you had in the past month? The researchers actually found a weak correlation between those two things, and then they changed the sequence and they said how many dates have you had in the past month, and then said how happy are you? And all of a sudden, they found a strong correlation between those two things. Why? Because they got them to focus probably on how many dates they didn’t have, thereby producing the feelings of being a loser or something like that. Psychologists call it the focusing illusion. Basically, the whole point is this – how you feel is a function of your focus. The way we say it in our family, it is one of our family values, your focus determines your reality. Every night, our family, this year, we are keeping gratitude journals, so every night, I write in my daily calendar something that I’m grateful for. It’s a little box but I usually fill it with very small writing. Every night, I think about the day and what happened today that I’m grateful for or what happened today that brings me joy, and I write that thing down, and it’s amazing, most nights, I go to bed in a wonderful mood because I am calling to mind something that gives me joy.
What Jeremiah is saying here is, this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. I don’t know what your circumstances are like but I know there is something that you can call to mind. Let me give you a prescription, a biblical prescription. Philippians 4:8
Whatever is right or good or true or pure, think about such things.
In other words, call those things to mind and it will begin to change your life. Here’s the problem, most of us don’t want God to change us, we want Him to change our circumstances. What I’m describing to you is not designed to change your circumstances, but I promise you it will change your life.
Verse 22
Because of the Lords’ great love, we are not consumed, but his compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.
What an amazing promise in this passage! On Monday mornings, I take our children to school and drop them off, then I go to the gym and I begin my week with a workout, then Lora and I grab coffee every Monday morning. It’s my day off and that’s our routine. We love going different places, it’s just us and we love it. Our campus pastor at Ballston, Joel Schmidgall, has been talking about this little diner that he discovered over on Bladensburg Road, and Joel is like Guy in Diner, Drive-ins and Dives or something like this. In fact, he used to wear his hair like Guy but that’s another sermon. Joel is like on this perpetual quest for the ultimate greasy spoon. I can’t describe it any other way. He is always telling us about places. So he found this little diner and there’s a guy who bought a dining car on ebay and then bought a little piece of property and the diner sits on it. It’s so out of place. Joel’s been talking about it, so Lora and I decided to check it out. I was so hungry, remember I had just worked out, and I had this craving for pancakes, and I felt like I’d earned it because I’d worked out that morning. And diners are notorious for greasy food and I was getting so hungry. We finally find it and find a parking place and we walk up and it’s closed on Mondays! I’m so hungry and I can’t believe this. The first thing that comes to mind in Jimmy T’s over on East Capitol and I’ve not been there forever but I know it’s a greasy spoon. So I broke some laws and we sped over there and we get there and it’s closed! What does a guy need to do to get a greasy pancake in this town! So I am so hungry and so desperate, so I’m like, we are going out of the city, can someone say thank the Lord for IHOP? I get my stack of buttermilk pancakes and they weren’t as greasy as I wanted them to be but that’s ok because they have strawberry syrup, so I use half the thing of syrup, and I’m loving it and enjoying it. I am living the life. Here’s the thing, I have never, I don’t think in my life ever, eaten at 3:00 a.m. but it’s just so good to know that there is a place that’s open at 3:00 a.m. Did you know that IHOP is open 24 hours a day? Next time you wake up in the middle of the night, you are going to remember this sermon and you’re going to have this comforting feeling just knowing that it’s open and you could go there if you wanted to or needed to.
Let me tell you something this weekend, it’s something we take for granted. Is it not amazing that God’s mercies are new every morning? He does not close on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday or Thursday. Every 24 hours, the Lord is spinning planet Earth on its axis, and every 24 hours, his mercies are new every morning. We take that for granted, but is that not one of the most beautiful promises in Scripture? I don’t know if you’ve ever even thought about this but I have a lot of days that will end and I’m so glad I get to go to bed today and wake up tomorrow and it’s a new day. I’m just grateful that there is night and day and sleep and we can start over again. Amen! To me, night and day is this reminder that his mercies are new every morning. What this passage is saying is that God’s love and mercy are inexhaustible, that there is an endless supply.
In Romans, Chapter 5, it says it this way, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. In other words, you never reach the end of God’s mercy. It is not possible, because his mercy is inexhaustible. That is incredible in itself. Does anybody else hate daylight savings time? I love fall back but spring forward? Why does it have to be on Saturday night? It kills me as a pastor. Last Saturday night, I set my clock forward an hour because it’s really important that I do that, but what I didn’t realize is that the new alarm clock I got for Christmas automatically does it in the middle of the night. So it’s bad enough losing one hour on daylight savings, like it’s already the worst day of the year, but then to loose two hours of sleep! I got up at 4:40 a.m. last Sunday morning! I drive Lora crazy, pray for my wife, because for the next two weeks, she has to listen to my body clock language. 6:00 is really 5:00 body time, I drive her crazy for a couple of weeks because I continue to complain about this. Then Tuesday morning, I have to get up and drive three hours, some of our team goes up to Valley Forge Christian College and I spoke for four hours up there and then we drove three hours back, so by Tuesday night, after losing two hours on Sunday, getting up super early on Tuesday, I am like a bobble head! Absolutely exhausted! You know what I’m talking about? I am so easily exhausted. I get up early in the morning, I love what I do so I’m energized by that, but if it was up to me, I would pass legislation to mandate a nap every day. I believe in it. God created us with a rhythm that dips in the afternoon, let’s obey it! I’m so off topic!
I think to really appreciate God, you have to laugh at yourself a little bit and I am so easily exhaustible, and to think about his mercies are new every morning and the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. It is never closed! Mercies are new every morning, every morning. Thank the Lord!
Verse 24
I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.
I’m not sure where you are at spiritually this weekend, but I want you to know that if you are in spiritual exile, you’ve come to the right place and that the Lord’s mercy is waiting for you. All you have to do is turn to Him and the Lord is waiting. In fact, He is doing more than wait for us.
When I was up at Valley Forge this weekend, after I spoke in chapel, a young man in his early 20s came up to me and he was crying. So I knew that something was going on in his heart but I had no idea what. He was a strong looking guy but the tears and his eyes were so red. He told me that he gave his life to Christ at National Community Church. He grew up in a ministry family and when he graduated from high school and he said that he just totally walked away from the Lord and he joined the military just to get out of the home. He went into a lifestyle that was so far from God and had nothing to do with God, but by some circumstances, he landed an internship at the White House. He said he didn’t even remember applying for it, but he gets a job there and he is working in the west wing and basically, he reestablishes himself here in Washington D.C. and he gets into a circle of friends and a rhythm of life that I think is easy to get into here into in D.C. and he had a drinking problem. So many nights would end with him in a drunken stupor and he’d wake up with a hangover the next morning. So one Saturday night, that’s what happened and the next morning he got up and for whatever reason, he was walking through Union Station and someone randomly said to him, ‘what are you doing?’ and he said he was kind of upset at that, like ‘what do you mean what am I doing? What are you doing?’ I don’t know who this is but evidently an NCCer said, ‘hey, we got a free event going on in the theater.’ Hey, if it works! He waked into the movie theater, and he said it’s hard to describe but the moment he sat down, the Lord sobered him and the Spirit of God began to work on him. He said, ‘There was a moment in the message where you looked right at me and in that moment, I knew that the Lord was calling me back to Himself and I gave my life to Christ.’
Do I remember looking at him? No! But he was a Valley Forge because he believes the Lord has called him to ministry and he is training for it, and I believe God is going to use him.
What’s so amazing about that story to me is that here’s a guy in absolute spiritual exile, he walked away from the Lord, but I want you to know today that the Lord never gives up on us and never turns his back on us. I think it is easy to read a book like Lamentations and absorb all the sorrow and all the pain and miss the whole point of the book. His mercies are new every morning, and all we have to do is simply turn around.
Let me talk about this last phrase,
I say to myself, the Lord is my portion.
What does that mean? This is actually an ancient phrase that means to acknowledge the sovereignty of a king, which is fascinating in light of the circumstances, because technically, the Israelites are under the rule of Nebakanezer, the king of Babylon. But what does Jeremiah say here? No, he is not our sovereign, he is not our portion. Jeremiah says the Lord is my portion. The Lord is my portion. It is a statement of God’s sovereignty in his life. Can I ask you this question? Have you ever given your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ? Have you ever said He is my portion? In the midst of tragic circumstances, in the midst of exile, there is one way out. I’m going to tell you that the way out is to submit yourself to the Creator. It’s almost like Naomi saying in the video that she knew she could walk away forever or she could turn back to the One who could heal her. She made a decision in that moment and they become a vital part of this spiritual family in the years subsequent to that last miscarriage. She made a decision, the Lord is my portion.
The bottom line is this, hope, true hope, is found in Christ. The Bible says that there is no other name under heaven given unto men by which you must be saved. Jesus himself said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one else died on the cross for me. No one else was raised on the third day. No one else is seated at the right hand of the Father. There is one, his name is Jesus. My question is – is He your portion? Have you ever submitter your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ? I believe it is the most important decision you’ll ever make and I want to encourage you to make it now. Today is the day for salvation.
You may have no idea why you are here. You may be like Shane who wonders into a theater. Or you may be in a season of your life where you have a lot of doubt, a lot of pain or a lot of things you are going through. Let me tell you that there is a reason you are here and your healing begins the moment you make Him your portion.
I believe that for some of you, today is your day. For the rest of us, can I just say that there are moments in my life when I feel like the things I love and want so much are falling apart, I find myself singing a song Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. Every once in a while, when I’m in the toughest of circumstances, I may be driving in my car or in my office, I just sing that song, because I need to be reminded, if all else fails, if I have nothing else, is if I have Jesus Christ, I have everything. In the scheme of eternity, that’s all the matters. I believe right now, the Holy Spirit is tugging on your heart. I want to challenge you to respond to Him. Let’s pray.
Father we come to You this weekend and I pray for those that so desperately need your mercies today, that need your healing touch, that need your hope. Lord those who maybe feel like they have forgotten what happiness is, God I thank You that there is a day we can look forward to when you will wipe away every tear and we will spend eternity with You. Lord I pray right now for those that this is your moment.
Let me ask you to do something right now, this is between you and God, in an attitude of prayer, I want to ask you a question. If you want to today make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, if you want to say the Lord is my portion, I want to ask you to do something simple. The reason I ask you to do this is because Jesus said, ‘If you acknowledge me before men, I will acknowledge you before the Father.’ This is a moment where I want to challenge you to acknowledge his lordship in your life. So right now, if you want to make that decision, make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, slip up a hand and take it right back down. Thank you. Wow! There is rejoicing in heaven! We rejoice with you right now.
Lord we thank You for these raised hands. I believe that this day is a defining moment, a turning point, and Lord I pray for those who have raised a hand acknowledging You, saying the Lord is my portion, submitting their lives to You, God I pray that right now, your Holy Spirit would come and fill them and surround them and embrace them and let them know the love of Christ in their hearts right now. Let them know the peace of God that transcends all understanding. Let them know joy unspeakable in their hearts, that their circumstances may not be changed but everything has changed in this moment, their life has changed because You are now their portion. We celebrate and we rejoice and we give You thanks, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
404-775-4197
margaretsalyers@gmail.com