Again, Psalm 78. The first eight verses of Psalm 78. Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old. which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generations to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he had done. For he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments, and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast, with God. We started this way last week. We're continuing. If you think the notes look familiar, they should. But this is one of the historical Psalms. They use the story of Israel, the stories, I should say, of many people that serve God, and even failures are recorded, and commentary is made, and it's turned into a worshipful, song-like, prayer-like reading that we might meditate, that we might instruct ourselves. And when we're told, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, The first thing it says after that is in Psalms. Speaking to yourselves in Psalms. and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. We are to be instructed by the great message of what is in the Old Testament, what was conveyed through Moses to Israel and all the prophets after that. There's a great big narrative and it's been designed to help us in our walk with Jesus Christ in the new covenant. It's all very important. It's all very relevant. We need to know how to properly apply these truths. But one thing we've been trying to do in this series is look at what it meant for Israel to receive the law. The first group that was brought out of bondage from Egypt, they failed. They failed to receive it with faith. It was not mingled with faith. And when they got to the hard stuff, they murmured, they complained, and they finally balked and said, we don't want to do it. We don't want your gift. And God says, OK, have it your way. You'll become placeholders. And we're going to walk around and walk around in big, big circles till you're all dead and your children get to inherit the promises. Now, it could have just been ho-hum. OK, guys, take two. You guys try it. Could just read, you know, what Moses had written down in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers. But no, God says, I want a fresh, application, same truths, new application to new people. And so Deuteronomy, the restating of the law, the repeating of the law, but it's not just word for word repeated. The concepts of the law are repeated and emphasis is made, don't be like your fathers. Don't be like them. You're here and they are not because of their unbelief. Don't be that way. And so Moses is instructed to give commandment after commandment, repetition after repetition with stern warnings that if you or anyone in the future generations forsake the Lord, walk away from him, there's gonna be serious consequences. You will be scattered amongst the nations. You will be a laughing stock. On the other hand, if you hold true to me, you will be a wonder. You will be an amazing testimony and people will commend you for the wisdom that you have in walking with God. And they had put before them life or death, blessing or cursing. And we couldn't read it all, but we recommended reading Deuteronomy 27, 28, 29, 30, letting it soak in that the more people hear God's word, the more there is the blessing or the curse. I remember an atheist friend of mine one time, he caught this concept and he remembered where Paul had told Timothy about people that are willingly ignorant. They think, I just don't want to know and what I don't know won't hurt me. And that's not true. Ignorance is not bliss in the Christian economy. Ignorance is dangerous, deadly deception. But my atheist friend said, we're trapped like rats. I don't want to know these things, but I already know I'm in trouble if I don't. do something about them. And again, he was an atheist. He had a lot of sense of humor. But he did state something that I think expresses what a lot of people feel. And even Peter says that there comes a day when it would be better if some people had never heard the gospel truth than to have heard it and then turned away from it. So you can't be saved without the gospel, but your condemnation is all the worse when you do hear it and don't believe it. If you don't want to be trapped like a rat, run to the shepherd like a sheep. That's the best thing I can say about that. And we talked already about some of the graphic warnings, and we took what I called a gospel break. We looked at places, particularly in Romans, but there were other places where we understand that the thing that was laid upon them was something that nobody naturally was going to fulfill. The design of the law, its moral law, would show you what holiness is and that we don't have it. The ceremonial law would show how holiness can be obtained through the shedding of innocent blood, through mercy. And what the design is that the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, who is the Lamb of God, who brings us the mercy of God and the grace of God. And so you must be driven there. You will not naturally gravitate, oh, I just love law-keeping, and I love all these things, and oh, I don't want to do anything wrong, so I just won't, right? No, it doesn't work that way. The flesh cannot submit itself to the things of God. and took nothing short of the death of the Son of God to not only purchase the price, the payment of the condemnation of our sins, but he also had to die and rise again to save us from ourselves and give us a new nature, be born again. So whenever I'm talking about the law and Old Testament Israel, I want to make sure we keep those gospel disclaimers out there. And Paul graciously supplied, God graciously supplied through Paul many disclaimers and instructions so we have the proper perspective of the law, because the law is just and holy and good, Romans 7 tells us. You know, there's a hymn, it starts out, free from the law, oh happy condition. And I've had some people think that's bad, you know, like, oh, you just want to be rid of the law, you want to throw it away. That's not. That's not the purpose of the song. Free from the penalty of the law. Free from the curse of the law. That's the happy condition. Jesus has died and there is remission. Now, forgive me if you've heard this a few dozen times, but remission is one of those words we can use a lot and maybe not quite know what it means. So, admission means you're letting something in. You know, you buy a ticket, you get to go to the theater or the circus or something. Admission, receive in. Remission's the opposite, means to send away. Our sins are sent away. As far as east is from the west, cast into the deepest sea. And I like what Corrie Ten Boom added to that. She says, and then on the seashore, God puts up a sign saying, no fishing. Okay, your sins and iniquities I will remember no more. Okay, so having said that, And reminding us, we're talking about lamentation. Where does this fit in here? So we go down to, it'd be the fourth paragraph on your notes, just a little one. It says, Israel's history and its future are packed with lamentable events, which means Israel has had and will have a lot of failure and chastisement of the Lord, giving them reasons to lament. Okay, you can read your Old Testament. You can read these historical Psalms and see the suffering. You can read history and see how God has used the nations to plague Israel. And just in the recent generation, Israel is back in the land. And that's just amazing. The promises seemed so far-fetched that Israel would be a nation of power one day that people had started a thing called the transfer doctrine. Like, well, you know, God must have changed his mind about Israel and he transferred all the blessings to the church and Israel can keep their curses, but we'll take the blessings and we'll go from here. And you know what? It doesn't work. But it was understandable because up until a while ago, I don't know, 1900s even. Israel was desolate. It's just a rocky old place where people took care of goats and stuff and it wasn't much of a place. Nobody saw this coming except people who could catch it in the promises and be able to say that God's promises are without repentance. God's grace is without repentance. God's gifts are without repentance. And they still believe. You know, three, no, let me say this right. Around a fourth of the Bible is prophetic. And you would have to discard a whole lot of that if you canceled the promises to Israel. God says in numerous places, I will stop the sun from shining. I'll stop the moon from shining. I'll stop the seasons if I change my mind and will not bless Israel as I have said. And the last I looked, the sun's still shining. And the last I noticed, God said, I won't destroy the world with a flood the next time with fire, but that's in the future, because that hasn't happened either, last time I looked. And so we get two powerful places to help us to not go astray on the matter of Israel. Now one of them is back in Daniel chapter 2. This is not in the script. I'm just rambling here. But Daniel chapter 2. When I was starting to get bombarded with this transfer doctrine, this replacement theory, and that, you know, we are Israel. Two things God put up that kept me out of the ditches. The one is Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar's vision, a clear-cut description of the major world empires, and this thing that Jesus referred to, the times of the Gentiles. and that they're going to proceed, proceed, proceed, and then something's going to change at the end, which I can't get into teaching. But that we have had an understandable time of the Gentiles, and Israel has been in its time of dispersion, it was accounted for. And if you keep studying Daniel, you'll see that God's going to deal with them, bring them back. They're not only going to be back in the land, they're going to be back with the Lord one day. But the other thing is over in Romans 11, and I'm just going to roughly quote it. Has God cast off His people? God forbid is the King James way of saying it. No way is another way of saying it. God is not going to forget the promises He made to the fathers. And if you carefully study Deuteronomy 27, 28, 29, 30, and a million other places that I'd love to show you now, and I may show you a little later, but God has always given Israel hope that they can return to the Lord. Regardless of the conditions and the situations, regardless of circumstances, God has said, I will bring them back. He gave them to this world as a gift to bring us the Scriptures, to give us the promises and the prophecies, and to give us the very Messiah Himself. And for the Father's sake, and that's referring to the patriarchs, they are precious to us. And there's no room for antisemitism, no room for towering over Jews and naming them Christ killers and saying that they're all washed up. As individuals, they need to turn to the Lord. They need to join us in this church age and become one in Christ with us, Jew and Gentile. That's a beautiful, beautiful thing. But one day, all of Israel shall be saved. And again, I can't explain what that all means. But in the meantime, lamentable events. So we got to talk about lamentation, lamenting. It's all over the place. Sometimes literally the word is lament or lamentation and sometimes all the things that describe what lamentation is. The word lamentation comes from a Hebrew word which means a song of weeping. A Latin word, which is used in the Vulgate, means loud cries. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. He wrote this great big book, The Prophecies of Jeremiah, and he's a sad prophet because he had to tell so much about the judgment of God on his nation. and what would happen in the future. And so he suffered a lot and he wept for his people. He had no smile on his face as he pronounced the judgments of God. And we must have no smile on our face as we talk about the judgment of God. Some people think this is just a little hobby to talk about, you know, well, the hellfire brimstone business. We'll talk about that also in a moment. But there's this little book right after Jeremiah. You don't hear it much. One fabulous song comes out of it. But this book of Lamentations, it was written in the very form of Hebrew poetry or song. And the book of Lamentations is probably not people's favorite book. You know, and some people have seen the title of my message and how long I'm preaching on it, and they're kind of wondering, how long are we going to be on this happy topic? You know, like, oh my. I hope I can get across to us the balance of the Lord, His joy and His sorrow. The man acquainted with grief and the man who joy, the joy that was set before him, that we can see that and through Christ have that in our lives. And it's going to take a while to explain this, but this is a rich example. That is, the book of Lamentations is a rich example of how to humbly handle heartache and sorrow before the Lord. And here's the point. If I don't talk about sorrow, does that mean it isn't there? If I don't talk about bad things, does that make it go away? Now, we used to foster two little girls, and we'd play hide and seek in the house. And the littlest one, three years old, would go into the bathroom and stand behind the towel rack. And she blanked herself out, but her feet were just sticking out gloriously. She thought she was hidden. She wasn't. And we can ignore the subject of sorrow, but it doesn't make it go away. But sorrow ignored is dangerous, deadly, and what we get to do is take the sorrow that's in this world and transfer it to the Lord. Get it transferred into another kind of worship. And then there's a level beyond that, Lord. It's not just our sorrows, our personal ones, but now what does make, what makes God grieve? Because He does grieve. And His sorrows, do we get with Him on this? Have you ever tried to share your heart with people and they don't really care that much? They used to say, here's a quarter, go call somebody that cares. A quarter won't even do it now, will it? But God wants to tell us about his sorrows and he wants us to care and identify with him and share with it. Now, quite frankly, a German shepherd can do this better than some people. They don't know our language, they don't know our problems, but if we come in and we're despondent, and I'm saying German Shepherds because that's like a preference, but it may be your poodle, your chihuahua, your Labrador, or your Lappadoodle, or your cat. Though I'm not sure the cats get this. You can tell me. But the fact is, my German Shepherd could know I was having an awful day and would come beside me and just be there. It looked at me lovingly, concerningly, might start licking me a little bit or do a little, you know, sympathy. And we were having a language even though we didn't know a language that's verbal. But sympathy and then the thing called empathy where you actually understand, you actually experience the things that trouble another. And we need that with God. Does God need our comfort like we're going to cheer him up? No. But he wants us to have this area of fellowship to balance out everything so the joy gets better. You see, sorrows like dig out deeper places to hold better joy. And when we get the sorrow of the Lord, we then can get the joy of the Lord. And I'll just frankly tell you, Because sometimes I practice with people. I'm talking to friends saying, you know, I got the hardest series I've ever tried to teach. I just feel like, how can I make this important and relevant and desirable? And I start practicing on them. I start telling them what I feel. And right now, I just want to tell you that we have the capacity for greater joy when we have the capacity to have greater sorrow to the Lord. It prepares us. It allows us to filter negative things and turn them into something positive, and we worship God. Now, I know I'm going to deal with this later, but James in James 5.13 has a little formula. Is any man afflicted? Well, let him get depressed. No, no, no, no. Is any man afflicted? Let him pray. And I forgot the next word. Is any man joyful? Let them sing Psalms. Convert it to worship. Convert it to communion with God. And what I'm concerned about, and especially with this election year we're having, and what we've had in the last how many years? I can go way back, 2020, whatever you want to. But I am watching believers battle depression, anger. It's kind of like a lifestyle road rage. And there's people getting angry or wanting to give up or just get distracted with pleasures so that they don't have to think about the hard things. And I see it eating people up. And I am not eaten up. I had a distinct experience some years ago. I dove into the prophets, found all kinds of neglected places where I hadn't studied much, and I started preaching out of the book of Isaiah, and I preached myself happy. I got myself so full of the presence of God and the promises of God that whatever they're doing now, that's a temporary interference. As a janitor, I put it this way. I can focus on a dirty window, bird droppings from the outside, dog smudge. There I am with my German shepherd again. Dog smudges down here, smash fly over there. And I can stare at this dirty window and say, boy, I want to clean up this window. And you know what? It just keeps getting dirty. But when I focus on looking through it instead, and I see the king is coming. Jesus is coming. And I believe with all my heart that you and I are going to be standing on an earth that is ruled by Jesus. We're going to have good government. We're going to be a part of it. And it's as real as what we have right now. And they're trying to mess it up, but they already have lost. They just don't know it. I saw a silly movie one time and a guy was bragging how fast he was with a sword. And the other guy says, well, show me. And it looked like he just stood there. And the guy says, well, you didn't do anything. And he said, try to walk. And the idea was, I sliced you up so fast, when you walk, you're going to fall apart. And the world's standing here saying, God didn't do anything. He's not coming. 2,000 years, man. or how many millions you even want to say, but they're saying God hasn't done anything, isn't going to do anything. Just try to walk. See how far you get defying God, raising up your fists against Him. And then Psalm 2 says, you kings of the earth, you better kiss the sun while you can. Well, there I am. I'm preaching. But here we are looking at the question now, Well, Jews lament. They got lamentable things. Old Testament's full of lamentations. But the New Testament's all about, ah, prosperity, right? Let's think about that. Should Christians lament? Or is that just an Old Testament Jewish thing? So many dismiss the idea of Christians lamenting. And we need to look at some of the reasons why. Because I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I don't want to give up the joy and the things that we're going to talk about for just a second and say, now I got to be all unhappy all the time. It's not about that. It's not excluding one for the other. This goes together and it doesn't seem natural, but who said we're supposed to live naturally with Christ? So some want to emphasize the joy of the Lord and the confidence that comes with knowing Christ. We want to live by God's promises and focus on the positive. We don't want to get depressed or to be discouraging to anyone. Let's use an example here. Some people dismiss evangelism that teaches against sin. They don't want to touch the subjects of sin's consequences, of God's condemnation of sin, of God's future judgment, and of the doctrine of hell. But these are important themes in Scripture. You don't have a gospel without this. This is the black velvet that displays the diamonds of God's grace. So there's this contrast. People make fun of these subjects. They mock and they say, oh, that's the hellfire and brimstone stuff. And then they ha ha ha about it. Well, there are some people that have abused and overemphasized, done incorrectly, the subjects of hell and sin and condemnation. But just because some people have misused it, and just because it's a difficult, uncomfortable truth, doesn't mean we can dismiss that teaching of the Bible. Okay? So it is with the subject of lamentation, sorrow, grief, and mourning. It can be dismissed as pessimism, depression, and the doldrums. Now, you know, it's funny. I show my age once while by using a phrase that nobody uses anymore, the doldrums. Anybody remember that word, the doldrums? Well, I didn't know what it actually meant, and I thought, well, I better make sure I'm even saying it right or spelling it right. So I looked it up, and you know what it is? It's a nautical term. It refers to There's some ocean space around the earth near the equator, an area where sailing vessels can sometimes get stuck in windless waters. So the doldrums represents a time of listlessness, despondency, inactivity, stagnation, or boredom. I never knew it was a nautical term. It has another connection. We lose those things, and then we say these words, and eventually our kids say, why do you say that? And then we say, I don't know. Well, now I know! So, the doldrums. And that's what people think this is about. Getting miserable looking. Get a face like a moose, serve lemons for communion, and look as miserable as you can, and then tell people, you don't want to follow Christ with us, do you? because we're all so sad and depressed. Let's get that picture out of our heads. This subject is often mentioned in Scripture, and we can't relegate it to the matter of Old Testament Jewishness. It's in the New Testament. And of course, if we're going to talk about the New Testament, we've got to talk about Jesus. Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount, "'Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'" Matthew 5, 4. And Jesus mourned and lamented. Now, in case you're already thinking, oh yeah, but he was talking to Jews and it's still, you know, Old Testament-ish. I'm not done. Believe me, I'm not done. But let's take a moment to look at Luke 13. We're going to get an example of lamenting. Luke chapter 13. And we're going to go to verse 31 to 35. Luke 13 verse 31. The same day there came certain of the Pharisees saying unto him, get thee out and depart hence for Herod will kill thee. As if they cared. And he said unto them, Go ye and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. which killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto thee. How often I would have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate, and verily I say unto you, ye shall not see me until the time come when ye shall say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." So if you will, The Pharisees here, they're trying to scare Jesus. They expect him to want to save his life. Run for your life! And of course, they're worried about Herod, all right. Because the whole time that they're listening to Jesus, they're going to say, he's going to stir up trouble and make Herod take it out on all of us. And Herod was a vengeful, wrathful, horrible person. But they thought they could put the fear of Herod in Jesus, which means they didn't know he was the Son of God. Because he only honored and feared the will of God. And when I say feared it, that's in a reverence way. And says, well, if you want to go talk to Herod about it, you tell him what I'm doing, and I'm going to stay here and do it. And in time, I'm going to be perfected. And he didn't explain at the moment, that means I'm going to get killed, and I'm going to rise from the dead, and I'm going to be glorified. And you know what? I'm on target with my plans. Then he turns and sorrowfully talks about Jerusalem. And you know, when he says, how I would have gathered thee as a hen gather her chicks or her brood, I almost wonder if he wasn't even talking about his spirit that was in the prophets. Peter says that the spirit of Christ was in them. And even though they didn't understand all the prophecies they were writing, Christ's spirit was in them. And every time he is calling, he is calling and they're rejecting and ignoring and rejecting and disobeying and rebelling. So it's not just when he came to earth and became the adult. I think that expresses something over a longer period of time yet, though they wouldn't understand that either. But I want you to hear the sorrow here. It's impossible, but when a prophet's killed, it has to be in Jerusalem. The very place, the footstool of God, the place where the temple is, the sacrifices, the festivals, that's where they kill prophets. Makes a lot of sense, but he's saying it with grief, with sorrow. He's not yelling at them here. He's lamenting a sad truth. Then we go to Luke 19. Luke 19 verses 41 to 44. Luke 19 starting with verse 41. And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it. Now we actually know there's tears at this point. And he's saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, encompass thee, surround thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. I'll be honest with you, in my mind, in the past, I've gotten these two passages mixed up. I've kind of blended them. I have them clearly separated here. But in one place, he's responding to the Pharisees who are taunting him. And here, he is looking at the whole city and just has to weep. Now, if our sovereign Lord, who has all the power and knows the plan, if He takes time to weep, How shall we not weep? And I don't mean produce tears on purpose. But the weeping in our mind and heart, the grieving with God, it may produce tears. But in either way, the lament is a sorrow. And you're pausing to be still. You know, there's this time in Revelation, and it says that as God's about to pour out the big bold judgments, there's silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour. Can you imagine? They're up there celebrating the Lord. Yay! We're finally out of there. But when God says, here's the last judgments I'm going to pour out, they get a holy hush. A solemn awe comes upon them and heaven gets quiet for 30 minutes. That's got to be a tremendous effect. How can we not ever have times where we pause for awe and wonder and sorrow for even those people that have been our enemies." You know, Saul was an enemy, and he became Paul. I won't name names, but there's people that we would say are enemies of the gospel. They might become real brothers and sisters. And we're told to grieve, to sorrow, to fear for them, to have compassion on them. Lament is a segue to those good things. to pause and reflect and to give sorrow. It can be prayer, it could be tears, it could be even a song. You know, we have this way of hearing certain hymns, very few of them that sound sad. And we usually say, that sounds Jewish. Well, you know what? We ought to sound Jewish. Because that's the foundation, the roots from which our faith came. And we ought to pick up on some of this. Now, with this, I take you to Hebrews 5. Got to jump over a little bit, but here is a description. And proportionally, I don't hear this one talked about as much, and I probably myself haven't talked about it as much. But Hebrews chapter 5, verses 7 through 9, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared." Again, this word fear is in the sense of reverence. Though he were a son, capital S-O-N, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. Jesus learned? I thought he was all the wisdom of God. I thought he knew everything. There's things you learn by experience. There's things that qualify you to do something by experience. You can study driving in the driving school with the books and watch some movies. And you might even get a little toy steering wheel to practice on in the lab. But you finally got to get out in that car and do it. You finally got to get out there and get the full feel of it. And I could use many other things to describe the difference between knowing something and doing something. And you're not going to get your license unless you pass the driver's test. Jesus was fully qualified, but he had to go through the process of suffering so that he could be the captain of our salvation, so that he could be in that driver's seat for us. He had to fulfill these things. He had to be tempted yet without sin. He had to surrender himself and not speak of himself, but of him that sent him. Do the works not of his own, but of those that sent him. And he had to be despised and rejected and be like a sheep and be silent and committed all to the one who judges righteously. On and on this goes. He qualified himself. He proved his qualifications. And he had to do it with prayers that were sad and sorrowful. He lamented, he wept. And he learned obedience by suffering and he demonstrated he is the one and only qualified Savior for man. Now consider Matthew 23. Now, if you don't want to turn there, that's okay. I'm not going to read the entire reference. But I want you to be very aware of this. I had a distinct turning point in my life some years ago. I was watching a DVD, I think it's called the Visualized Bible, and it was a particular set of two discs on the book of Matthew, and forgive me if I don't pronounce this correctly, Bruce Maraschino? That name always makes me think of those cherries that are soaked in the good stuff. Well, anyways, he portrayed a Jesus, and I warn people, he may make you uncomfortable. Because he acts awfully much like a passionate man who can laugh, who can tease, who can do things. And people want the iconic Jesus that walks around with two fingers stuck up in the air, talking like this. He came across as a real loving person, normal, except of course he wasn't a sinner. But when he got to the 23rd chapter, now this is a portrayal of Christ's life strictly by the text of Matthew. And so he doesn't say what isn't said in Scripture. It's not like, you know, the Chosen. You're used to seeing a lot of ad-lib and editorial liberty and things like that. The only liberty here was the way he portrayed things. And I don't say he invented this, but he is the first one who showed me in Matthew 23, we have this phrase, woe unto you, Pharisees, woe unto you, scribes, hypocrites. Let me get my eyeballs down here. Yeah, here's one at verse 13. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. And you see in verse 14, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Verse 15, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Verse 16, woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, and then it goes on. So there's eight woes pronounced. And you know what I always thought? That's the feeling I thought. He's letting them have it. Finally, they're getting what they deserve. And I'm sitting here like I don't deserve this. You know, that's the problem. But the portrayal we saw in that movie, he said it weeping. He said it with sadness. And there was times he even fell on his knees and wept, and the disciples come up afterwards to comfort him because he's utterly broken that he has to pronounce their judgment. See, he didn't come to condemn the world, did he? He came that the world might be saved through him. His job at that time was to save the world. Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save those who would repent. And people who love condemnation, Jesus would say, you don't know what spirit you are of. The disciples want to call down fire from heaven on Samaria because that's what Elijah did many years ago. And Jesus said, you don't know what spirit you're of. And in this Matthew 23, as I caught that it was a sorrowing Savior, these awful, sarcastic, lying, deceptive, manipulative enemies of His, but he wept about their destruction. And you will never see a scripture that says he takes pleasure in the death of the wicked. No. Pleasure is always associated with what it took to save people. But the death of the wicked is a solemn fact to God. He will do it, but it's not any pleasure, any joy as we think of joy. And so we see a sorrowing Savior, a man acquainted with grief, a man who would lament and pray with tears, and even to his enemies express the sorrow of their condition and the future of them. Now, later on, Jesus was questioned about fasting. Now, fasting, there's starting to be more talk about it. It used to be it was a subject that had dropped off the grid, but fasting is, you're not just dieting, you're not trying to earn your prayers getting answered by making yourself uncomfortable. Fasting is temporarily ceasing to eat in order to give more time to intently pray and seek the Lord. It's a shifting of priorities on a temporary basis for something special. Now, Jesus was questioned about this. The Pharisees fasted. The disciples of John fasted. But why did not the disciples of Jesus fast? And he compared it to a wedding feast. They're celebrating with the bridegroom, which he represents the bridegroom. And he says, while the bridegroom's here, everybody celebrates. But there will be a time when the bridegroom will be taken away. Then the wedding party will experience fasting and solemn praying. Now, you can read about that three times. If you know what the Synoptic Gospels means, it means Matthew, Mark, and Luke are written in a lot of symmetry. They followed some similar patterns. They're not just identical knockoffs of each other, but they follow the same way of narrative, whereas John is unique and he has the concepts and things, and he only talks about a little bit of the Lord's life compared to what the others did. But anyways, every gospel has this discussion. And then when you get to, you know, I'm kind of going backwards at this point. Matthew 4, after the Lord was baptized, it says, the spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. That doesn't sound like a nice day. But you know what? It was 40 days of fasting. Satan looked at him as weak. He hasn't eaten for all those days he's been out there drying up in the sun. Now I'm going to pound him with temptation. Well, with Jesus, he got stronger, not weaker. Because he was spending that time focusing on God, focusing on God, focusing on God. And when Satan came with the temptations, Jesus could blow him off. And by the way, if you care, he quoted Deuteronomy every time. In case you think that's not an important book. Jesus used it a lot. But we have to understand spiritual warfare. Time in the trenches and sorrows. We accumulate damages. Now, I need to make this point. Bear with me. I need to make this point after trying to give you an idea about Jesus. We are told in Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. Now, the Greek word here for mind, and it's used quite a bit, I put them down. I wanted you to have them all. I'm just going to mention a few of them. But this Greek word for mind means to think, to understand, to feel, to share along with others. It implies more than a belief or an opinion. It implies having moral interest that causes reflection. It is to join a mindset and have affections and desires which come to a heartfelt union with others. Now Philippians has a bunch of them and I thought, man, I'm going to breeze through this other part so fast. I'll get to read all these, but you know, I never do know what I'm doing. Not when it comes to how much I get to say. And you notice it says to be continued. There's, there's other things we're going to have to talk about, but let's take a few of these and start capturing the idea of let this mind be in you, which is in Christ Jesus. And realize if we all have this mind in us, which is in Christ Jesus, we also have it with each other, right? This union of thought, this passion, this focus, we have it together. Philippians 1, 7. Philippians 1, 7. Paul is talking about a wonderful promise in verse six, where he says that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And he says, it's appropriate for me to think this of you all. OK, Paul has a mindset with the Lord that all of you are in his grace. All of you are under his promises. All of you have the access to these things. And Jesus just isn't done with you yet. And it's appropriate for me to have that mind to think this of you all. And by the way, just to add a little more to it, we had this in the past with our series on partakers of Christ. It says, it's appropriate because I have you both in my bonds and in the defense of confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of my grace. In other words, the grace that I am receiving, you're receiving. The grace that God gave me, He's also wanting me to give it to you. So He's using me as a channel of grace. We share the same grace. We're not competitors. We're not enemies. We're brothers and sisters. And Christ is uniting us in mind, heart, and soul. Let's go over to chapter 2, verse 2. Philippians 2. Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. And I can't talk about what's before and after, because I don't have the time. But this is also a few verses later, verse 5, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. We go also to chapter 3, verse 15. Chapter 3, verse 15. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded. And if anything you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you." I really lean on that one. That God has to every now and then take my mindset, my brains. And you know those little shakers you have when they play Yahtzee? God has to do that with my head often. And when we roll it out, we see what I got. Well, we can get better. And so if we don't have the right mindset, he will reveal this. And I love him for that because I can't control my mind as well as I wish I could. But he's there. And this sense of being perfect or mature in Christ makes us similarly minded. We are all in need of the Lord. We are all seeking the Lord's best for one another. Other statements in Philippians confer this, that you don't just seek your own things, but you seek the things that profit others around you. It's a mindset that's so important, so valuable, so rare. Verse 19, chapter 3, verse 19. By contrast, he talks about the enemies of the cross, verse 18. He says, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mine earthly things. Their mindset is united with the world. They're caught up in whatever's the trend. They're all focused, and John will talk about this in 1 John 4. They are of the world, therefore speak ye of the world, and the world heareth them. But we are of God who hear the apostles and the doctrine of Christ through them. So this mindedness is so important. I've got one more here in Philippians. I need to read chapter 4, and this time I do have to read four verses. Are you getting tired? You don't want to ever get tired of this. You don't want to ever get tired of being called beloved of the Lord, beloved brethren. You don't want to ever get tired of that. You ought to be in a world full of hate and see what the hate does. We have an environment of love. And he mentions these two ladies, Jodius and Syntyche, and he's requesting that they be of the same mind in the Lord. Now he's not mad at them. He goes on to say that these women have labored with me in the gospel. They're valuable to the work of the Lord. They're having a problem and it's your job to get around them and help them reconcile because they're precious. We're not here to cancel them, deplatform them, eliminate them. We're here to nurture them, get them back to operating order because they got out of the right mindset. And with that mindset, verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Now as much as I want to share those Roman passages and 2 Corinthians and Galatians, I'm just going to take us to Colossians 3, verse 2. The one I put in bold to make sure I ended on that one. Colossians 3, verse 2. It will help tie us back in with a hint about the lamenting that we need to experience in our life and properly place in our lives and exercise. Colossians 3, verse 2. And I'm, of course, in Philippians. Let me fix myself here. Colossians 3, verse 2. Set your affection. On things above, not on things on the earth. Now some of your Bibles will say, set your mind. And that's this word. So that's a correct translation. Set your mind. But affection is a part of this mind we're talking about. You're not just knowing stuff. You're embracing it. You're experiencing it. It's a part of you. It's engrafted. Since then you've been risen with Christ. Seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your mind, your affection, your passion, your loyalty on these things which are above and not on the things of the earth. Now, if that be true, then we're going to love what God loves. We're going to hate what God hates. We're going to be grieved with what grieves God. And we're going to celebrate and have joy. with God about his things. And we don't need these earthly props like we used to, to be happy and feeling secure and peace and all that stuff that people so much want, but they don't want it enough to go to the Lord to get it. They don't like his version. They say a guy fell off a cliff in the middle of the night. He was walking and he stumbled, he fell off a cliff and he reached out and he grabbed some root or some branch sticking out. He says, help, help, help. Is there anybody out there that can help me? And the voice below said, I can. Oh, what are you going to do? Well, just let go. I'll catch you. And he thought a minute and he said, is there anybody else out there? The Lord's love and grace can sound scary. It's so utterly different, but let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. And remember, he wept and he prayed, he shed tears and he sorrowed and he allowed suffering to perfect him and qualify him to be our savior. Now we are going to have suffering in our life to qualify us as his disciples and his ministers, his ambassadors. Well, last thing on that page is to be continued. Bear with me. It's gonna be a happy summer. once you have the joy of the Lord to be your strength. Father, please allow these thoughts to live in us, dwell in us richly. Show us, Father, how your joy and your sorrow mingle together and that we will deliver ourselves from anger and pride and sorrow and depression that is fleshly. Show us how to not lose our strength by the awful things that the world threatens with and tries to do to us. Show us how to gain new strength as Jesus did, as he sought you, Lord, as the son of man, and how he overcame Satan and sin and death. We are more than our overcomers through him that loved us, and nothing shall separate us from the love of God, and we rejoice in that. But may we, Father, want the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, and be made conformable to His death. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.