And we're going to read from Colossians 3, verses 12-17. Colossians 3, verses 12-17. Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you are called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. Now, any sensible preacher would have said last week was the lovely ending to a series on lamentation and repentance. Lament and repent. It just seemed like a lovely ending, didn't it? And God says, no, son, we're going to have an epilogue. I forgot to look up what that word means. But when I was a kid, there was this one program. And after it was all done, and the bad guy got caught, or the good guy won, or whatever it was, you think, oh, it's all over. And there's the commercials. And we'll go on to the next thing. But oh, no. come back and they had the word epilogue and there was some follow up story to just kind of add to that story. You thought it was done, but it wasn't. And that's my excuse. And more pastors than I want to admit do this. You think they're done and they just keep on going. Well, what we're going to do today is, number one, we're going to study a rare word in the Bible, and I think it's a fascinating word, and it adds something to our understanding of things, and it's the word hegion. Now, that's the way I pronounce it. You'll doubtless hear somebody say it a little differently. But then we're also going to let Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who wrote the book of Lamentations, we're going to let him have a chance to say something, to set an example, And this is for your consideration. The entire book of the Bible is called Lamentations. And I haven't particularly dealt with it. How could I have a series on lament and repent and not deal at all with it? Well, here we are. I'd like to say the best is yet to come. but from what we've just read here in Colossians. And please understand, normally I do a scripture reading and I like to do a little exposition of the whole thing, get it in context. And I just can't do that and do the job I've got this morning. And so I wanted you to notice verse 16 in its context. because it's a beautiful context. I would tell any young pastor, if you're ever hurting for coming up with a sermon, go to Colossians 3 verses 12 through 17 and just start preaching. It is so full of matter. It is such a beautiful reading. And I have a few others like that, that they're just stuffed full of matter. But you've heard the context, verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. That word let in itself is a study that we are cooperating, yielding. that the Spirit of God has purposes and we're to find those purposes and get them fulfilled in us. And the Word of Christ is to be a living thing, the engrafted Word, a living part of us, and you need to cooperate and let it dwell in you richly, which means you got to read it. Meditate upon it, study it, make sure you know what it actually means. Get familiar, get understanding, and get to where it means so much to you, you can think about it and you don't even maybe need your Bible sometimes. You can just bring it to mind and meditate on it. And then you'll be ready to share it, too. But here we go. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Now, a parallel verse is Ephesians 5.19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Now, the truth is, the psalms can be described by all those words. The Psalms are hymns. The Psalms are spiritual songs or songs of the Spirit. But there's another thing too here is that not all of the poetry of the Bible is in the Psalms. There's other places and guess what? The book of Lamentations is one of those. But we'll get to that in a moment. Singing and making melody in your heart. Now, some of you oldsters, you'll know this song. In my heart, there rings a melody. There rings a melody with heaven's harmony. In my heart, there rings a melody. There rings a melody of love. Since Jesus came into my heart. We like these positive, encouraging songs, and I'm all for it. But I sometimes think we have an imbalance. And we've been trying to talk about this, that the Old Testament people, the Jewish people, they don't get this all by themselves. This idea of songs that sound sad, songs that have sorrowful thoughts, they belong to us too. And we need something there where we know how to balance the joy and the sorrow. And I've said several times, Jesus was the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and yet, for the joy that was set before him, and my joy shall remain in you. These things are simultaneous. They are not mutually exclusive. You don't go from one to the other, like bad hair day, good hair day. No, it is something that you simultaneously will learn how to do through the Lord, to have joy in the things that God has joy in, to have sorrow and grieving over things that make God sorrowful and grieving. That brings us to the necessity here. The word solemn triggered this. When I said the melody in your heart doesn't have to always be a happy sounding song, it could be a more solemn and thoughtful sound too, and enters the word higgaion. And we go to Psalm 92. Psalm 92. Now I've warned you already, you got a lot of notes today, but we're not gonna be turning to all of them. We're not gonna try to exposit all of them. We're gonna pick a few, and this one's an essential one. Psalm 92, the first three verses. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O most high, to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night, upon an instrument of 10 strings and upon the psaltery, upon the harp, with a, King James says, a solemn sound. Now this is where it gets really interesting because almost every translation picks some different word, some different kind of a phraseology. And I'm just going to give you a bit of a word study here. Okay, now we saw the idea there of a psaltery and psalm. If I remember right, the Hebrew word for psalm means to pluck a string. So there's something here about worship and plucking strings that go together. Let's see if we can make this work out. Okay, it's a musical notation, like we have another one in the Bible, Selah. It's a musical notation, and it has been defined as striking a murmuring tone of the harp. Okay, now I don't know how much harp music you listen to. I listen to it a lot. I like harps. And harps have what we call sympathetic strings. You plug something, and the other strings kind of echo along with it, they vibrate with it, and you get a feeling of something that's fuller than just one note. Okay, so we're talking about solemn, the word solemn is used here because the word brings forth the idea of thoughtful, worthy of reflection, meditation. Okay, newer translations have reduced this to simply a melody, a harmony, or resounding music. They kind of just made it a cut and dry musical term. And you just have to look around different translations if you want to. But we need to consider here in Colossians 3.16 to sing with grace in our hearts to the Lord. And Ephesians 5.19 says, making melody in our heart to the Lord Okay, in both cases, you've got the word heart. You sing with your heart. That's the primary musical instrument. I'm all for pianos or guitars or harps or flutes or whatever. But the primary instrument is the heart. And I want to submit to you the idea that the heart and the harp are kind of like related things. God used harps to touch our hearts. As our hearts have other vibrating strings, our hearts should be full of different vibrations sympathetic to what's being said. The passion, the affection, the love, the sensitivity, the care, the sorrow, the joy are to be like strings vibrating in our hearts as we sing. It's not just a bunch of notes. We are not some kind of animals that... I know when you go out to the field and sing, the cows all come up, they're curious, but I don't think they are great musical appreciators like we can be. And different animals have been sued by music, I get it. But this is more than just notes. You know, when you see a sunset, you see all the beautiful colors and you get this feeling inside and you're happy, you're sad, you're thoughtful, you're something, and the beautiful music is playing on the movie with the sunset going down. You know, a cow would look at that and just say, well, it's almost dark. And there are certain people that's nothing more than saying, okay, well, we're looking through the atmosphere and there's a lot of dust, so it's made all that color. The sun isn't going down, the horizon's tilting up and blah, blah. Forget that, you have a soul. God has a soul. And he made sunsets beautiful. And he made birds to sing beautiful things, not all of them, of course. You haven't heard of woodpecker, have you? But he's made beauty. Music, lovely colors, wonderful things because the soul gets touched and affected by them. And you want to be soulish. God is soulish. That's why he made it. He doesn't have to put a signature in the corner of a sunset. You already know he did that. despite all the scientific jargon. And so it is here. We're not just trying to make an impressive sound with an instrument. You know, as far as musical quality, it's something that touches the heart and we're to sing with grace in our hearts. We're to sing making melody in our hearts. And it was typified by the harps playing, psalteries, different stringed instruments. And it creates this beautiful and amazing environment. And there's sometimes you just linger a while and let it soak in. If you love music, sometimes musicians will hold that chord a little longer than it has to be. They'll repeat that phrase over because it felt so good. And that's okay. That's okay. So, Haggaion. Solemn sound. I believe it's, well, maybe it's, yeah, it's later here. We look at Psalm 916. Would you turn back with me to Psalm 9, 16? There's only four times this word, hegaion, appears in the Bible. And one of them I had missed because it is very certainly not a musical notation. It's something else, but it adds to the definition that I'm trying to give us. Psalm 9, verse 16. The Lord is known by the judgment which He executes. The wicked is snared in the work of His own hands. Higaion Sila." New King James here says meditation. Now, Sila is a musical notation. We often say it means to go back and repeat it. Think about it again. And here, Higayon, which is only used four times in the Bible, three of them seem to be musical notations in the Psalms, but they have a heavy meaning saying, you're gonna linger here and you're gonna think about this very much. Take it in. There was one time when Jesus was teaching, he says, let these words sink deeply into your ears. and you're to let your soul absorb this. What a thought! The Lord is known by the judgment which he executes. The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands." Think about that. We're being told to seriously meditate on the thought that the Lord judges the wicked and that the wicked are snared by the work of their own hands. No, this is not a cheery thought, but it is a very important one. Now we go over to Psalm 19 verse 14. Psalm 19, verse 14. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation, hegion, of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Do you see how we're tying in harp and heart? The meditation of my heart, the Higayen, the same thing that Psalm 92 said, make sure those string instruments are really humming around here. We want this to be a big point. Now it's the meditation, the Higayen of my heart. carried over into the New Testament. Grace in my heart, melody in my heart, higaion and heart and harp, all seem to go together. A bonding here is taking place. Now the previous verses in Psalm 19 speak of warnings and rewards, speak of errors and faults, speak of presumptuous willful sins and a great amount of transgression. So like these are pretty serious, solemn things to meditate upon. Higayon. Now, we won't turn to Lamentations 362. This is the one that snuck up on me. Because it's used in a very negative reference to the evil thoughts, imaginations, whisperings, and murmurings of evil people, of enemies. Did you notice the word murmurings in there? And remember back at the beginning, some have tried to define Haggaion as striking a murmuring tone on the harp. Okay, so the idea of repetitious thought, meditations, in this case, they're evil ones, but nonetheless, it's like a whisper. It's like gossip. It's like a secret plot. And Lamentations 362 is not singing a happy song. It's talking about the imaginations, or you want to use the old-fashioned word, is machinations of the wicked, and what that does to us. The things we know and the things we don't know, but we know they're murmuring and thinking evil. So the idea of thoughtfulness, contemplation, meditation, is what Haggaion's all about. And in some way it stirs up our hearts to where we need to vibrate along with the Spirit of God and His Word what this is all about. To even meditate for a moment about the wicked and what a mess they're in and what a mess they're making and bringing that before the Lord. Now this for your interest, King James Version in Lamentations 362 uses the word device. and we've actually had words like that before, that as they plot and they scheme, they sleep not unless they make up and imagine more things on their bed, what they're going to do the next day. So a device here is that I have thought through something. In this case, negatively, I've thought how I'm going to get that guy, or how I'm going to overthrow that company, or how I'm going to defeat that enemy of mine. So this thoughtfulness, The mind and the heart of Christians should be very busy places. And we have our happy tones, we have our solemn tones. And I wouldn't be without either one of them. And I like music that's cheerful, and I like music that makes me contemplate, too. My wife knows. Thankfully, she can get into this with me a bit, but I really like music that others would call sad. Now, some would say it's depressing. It's not depressing if you know the Lord. The context keeps it all balanced. So now we're going to take a sample lamentation from a spiritual song, which is not in the Psalms. The Book of Lamentations. We're not going to do an exposition of it like a theology treatment. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take some motets that were written by Carl F. Schalk. Okay, he died recently in 2021, but we're going to use his devotional approach. Now, he chose the King James Version for the words. He has these four songs he does. I'm not going to sing them to you. They'd be too hard. and you might get bored if you're not used to such music. But afterwards, we will look at a positive resolve in the Book of Lamentations as well. Now, here's the page I told you. I'm not particularly looking up anything here. I've got it all printed out so we can just review this. We have four songs that Mr. Schalk wrote. The Lord is Righteous, From above he has set fire for the sins of her prophets. Remember, O Lord." But I'm going to read the passages to you. These are the words that are sung in those songs. His music reflects the ideas that are in these songs. So it won't sound like Amazing Grace or some other jaunty tune. The Lord is righteous, taken from Lamentations 118, which says, The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment. Here I pray you all people and behold my sorrow. So before we mention the difficult chastisement of the Lord in our lives, we must put out the disclaimer that the Lord is good and just. We may not, we cannot criticize the Lord's dealings in our lives. And you have some references that would be useful to you if you'd like to meditate on that. The next one, from above he has set fire. Lamentations 1.13. From above he hath sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them. He hath spread a net for my feet. He hath turned me back. He hath made me desolate and faint all the day. Now, consider our holy and sovereign God. how powerful and deep can be the feeling of God's displeasure. Can you imagine a burning in your bones? Jeremiah did. He tried, he was getting tired of the abuse he was being given for preaching the word. He's representing God, he's getting punished, and God's just letting him take it out on him. And he got to this point, he said, I don't want to do this anymore. He tried not to preach. And then he said, but his word was as a fire burning within my bones. Now, I don't want to elaborate on this, but I've had a time in my life when I was disobeying God, and I felt His displeasure. And it wasn't that I didn't think He loved me, but I literally felt like there was a microwave cooking me on the inside. I sensed His displeasure so strongly. In a way, I hope you never feel that. I hope you never need to feel like that. I did. And even though I knew I was going to heaven, for a moment I thought, what must it feel like to those who go to hell? The displeasure of God goes all the way down into the inside and can take away all hope. But thankfully, I had hope. And it made me want to run to God and not from Him. Amen? Yeah. Okay. Now, the third one, for the sins of her prophets. Lamentations 4, 13 through 15. In this one, I use the New King James version because it's a lot easier to understand. You know I'm a King James guy, but it was hard to make it look clear and the New King James kind of spin it up a little bit for us here. So the words again from Lamentations 4, 13 through 15a. Because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in her midst the blood of the just, they wandered blind in the streets. They have defiled themselves with blood so that no one would touch their garments. They cried out to them, go away, unclean, go away, go away, do not touch us. Now what a source of grief. And we have this in religion and we have this in politics as well of hypocrites, bloody people who manipulate and used for advantage other people. And it grieves our hearts as it should. God is grieved with it as well. The spiritual leadership of Judah was dangerous, murderous, spiritually blind, defiled, and repulsive. And of course that turns people away from the faith when they see leadership doing that. The prophets and priests were turned away as people turn away lepers. They would no longer live in the land. Now think of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew 7, verse 15, he says, "...beware of false prophets, for they wear sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." And again there in Matthew 15, verse 14, he says, "...if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." We are extensively warned to beware of false teachers and false spiritual leaders. And I'm telling you, there's a time to get mad about it. There's a time to speak out against it. But first, before you do all that, you better go to God and get on the same page with him and grieve for them. You've got to remember Samuel's example. God told him to tell King Saul, I'm going to remove him as king. I will not let him be king anymore. He's disobeyed me, dishonored me. And Samuel didn't practice up a juicy speech. It says he wept all night for Saul. And Paul would talk about those who are enemies of the cross, and he says, I tell you weeping that they are the enemies of the cross. If we can't weep, we can't work in the spirit of the Lord in the right frame of mind when we deal with evil, hypocrisy, and blasphemy, we've got to do it with a broken heart. And my life was somewhat changed when I saw a rendition done of Matthew 23. We talked about this last week, but I'm going to say it again. Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites. All my life I had said, woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, and Jesus is just kind of like this to me. But an actor got up, that Bruce Maraschino guy, And he wept, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. By the time he was done that Matthew 23 section, he was weeping. They were walking away cold-heartedly, but he was on his knees weeping. And the disciples actually came up and comforted him. He said it with sadness, not pleasure. And we mustn't take pleasure in the wrath of God. God doesn't even take pleasure in it. He only takes pleasure when He saves people. And you check it out. When He's saving people, it talks about the pleasure of the Lord. But He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And we need to grieve with God about this. The last song, the last motet, remember, O Lord, from Lamentations 5, verse 1, verse 7, verse 15 through 16, there's a number of them here, and I'm just going to read them. Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us. Consider and behold our reproach. Our fathers have sinned and are not. And we have borne their iniquities. The joy of our heart is ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is fallen from our head. Woe unto us. We have sinned. The joy is ceased. The dancing is turned to mourning. This means that they have lost the joy of their relationship with the Lord. The crown has fallen from our head. This means that the glory is gone. There is no power or authority from the Lord working within them. There are blessings and privileges from God that we take for granted and we do not appreciate them until we lose them. Okay. That's yours to meditate and study upon. But now we want to take a faithful look at God's correction and perfection of His people. And I'm going to use Lamentations 3, but before I do, I probably better go to Lamentations chapter 5, because we have a problem here. You may not know it, but I want to end this on a happy note. I want to not leave us down there. I kind of did one week. I kind of let you just stay there because I had to. Well, in Lamentations, it gets kind of difficult. If you look at Lamentations 5.21, this is pretty good. Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old. That feels a little better. Something positive, but he's not done. Verse 22, but thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very wroth against us. Now I wouldn't have ended a book like that, but you know what? I'm not the Holy Spirit either. And there's a time for this to linger on. And I'm going to address that in just a second. Now we go back a few pages to Lamentations 3, verse 19. Galatians 3 verse 19, and you're gonna hear something I'm sure is familiar. Several songs have been based on this, but he says in verse 19, remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall, my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. And we have one song that's newer today and it says, the steadfast love of the Lord never faileth. Okay, well, great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see. That's an old hymn. And they love this passage here, right where I've just read. He sitteth alone, and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be that there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to them that smiteth him. He is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion, according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men, to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Lord of the Most High, to subvert a man in his cause the Lord approveth not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good. Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin? Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens." Now, if Alex Lindsay were writing this book and not the Holy Spirit, that's why it ends. That's great. And you know what? It's kind of like we needed some air in the middle of this lamentation book. And we got the perspective, you know, don't lose that. Remember in the dark what you learned in the light. because the dark times come and you better have these things stored up. And that's why this book is so valuable. But here's the thing. I stopped at verse 41 on purpose because you start reading, guess what? We go right back down to sad, doleful sorrows and mournings and grievings and miseries again. And you know, we'd like grief and sorrow to be something that we just get over with quickly. Okay, got that done. But many times it just does not go away quickly. It can be a long labor and a terrible battle. It doesn't mean that the Lord has given up on you or failed you. It is just a long delivery until the birth of a better hope and a mature, faithful outlook. I said last week, I fully respect some of you people out there have suffered greatly. You know what sorrow is. I'm not teaching you something that's foreign. But it's a thing that we live with yet in this life. And we got to keep remembering how to do it and do it better. And we need to know how to comfort those who are sorrowing because we can't cheer up hurting people with trite statements like, well, just trust the Lord. Now, sometimes we have to come alongside them, and for the brief moment that Job's friends were faithful, they came up, and I think it was for seven days, they shut up and just sat there with him. And then they open up their mouths and well, we learn a negative lesson there, what not to do. But this idea of grief. Now, it's so important to me, folks. I got these references in bold, and I'm not going to look them up. Time will not allow. But for the sake of anybody who's listening to this sermon in the future, I want to say these references in case they have no access to my notes. Jeremiah 29, 11 through 13. Psalm 30, verses 1 through 12. Psalm 34, 15 through 22. Psalm 130, verses 1 through 8. And Luke 18, 1 through 8. And there's more yet, but I put those in bold particularly, and you know I would love to explain and talk and linger on that, but I gotta finish my thoughts here. This is the last message. God help me. So let God do His work in you. He uses trials and sorrows to give you wisdom and faith. Now we must turn to the book of Ecclesiastes. Get over there, pass the Proverbs, before Isaiah, before the Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes chapter 7. I really, really don't want you to miss this one. Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 2 through 4, it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. For that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter. By the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." God be praised. In this life, we must use the sorrows and offer them to him. He is teaching us. James tells us in James 1, let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire. There's a sense of cooperation. It's time to be sorrowful. And one day we leave the sorrows behind, we'll leave all these things, but he uses them to mature us, to protect us from foolishness and many other things. That's a great verse to meditate upon along with a list of some others that I have there in that short little paragraph. Now there are other lamentations in the Bible. I chose not to use all the lamentations in the book of Job because Job is a work in progress, and he says some doleful things. I'm no kidding. He says things, and he's got to get corrected. He's going to get fixed. And his anger towards his friends, and then he turns angry to God. He says some things I don't want. I don't want you to pick that up. You can learn from it. But what I'm giving you here is some very good, positive things. Psalm 80, 1 through 19, Psalm 3, 1 through 8, and so forth. I want you to notice there's three very powerful, big prayers. They are national prayers. Ezra 9, 5-15, Nehemiah 1, 1-11, and also 9, 1-38. And then comes Daniel. Daniel 9 has always been my epic prayer. And you look at how many times he refers to us and our and not just them and theirs. And at the end of his prayer, he's commenting on what he was doing in verse 20. And I want you to catch this. In Daniel 9, 20, I was praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people, Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord, my God, for the holy mountain of my God. Now, there is a scope about prayer that we really need to absorb. I come before the Lord, and first thing I do is I take care of my sinfulness before I point at anybody else, confess my sins, and then I confess the sins of my people. Now, he didn't say, I accuse my people. I'm coming to God and confessing. I'm agreeing with God about this. And if you read Daniel 9 carefully, it's our sin, our sin. There's a sense in which we need to identify with the failures of our brothers and sisters in Christ. You know, years ago when that Jimmy Baker stuff came out and the Jimmy Swagger stuff, it was a disgrace. And people were mocking them and getting all haughty. I said, wait a minute, this isn't a time to be cheerful. And you heard last week, Paul told the Corinthian church they should mourn for the person sitting in their church. I said, Jesus Christ just got a black eye, and we belong to Jesus, and people have bad thoughts about Jesus because of what's happening. We need to grieve. We need to sorrow. We need to humble ourselves lest we do the same thing. That's why I think this series is important. Getting our energies directed properly to the Lord so we're useful for the problems that are going on in this world. Ours problems, the world's problems, your friend's problems, your enemy's problems. All of this needs to get the mind of the Lord. Now I'm going to throw out a little clue, no extra charge, but you take Daniel's life and you compare it to the Sermon on the Mount. And our dear prophet Daniel, he is the epitome of the Sermon on the Mount. I'd love to explain what I mean. I can't right now. But you look at the Sermon on the Mount and you get familiar with Daniel's life. And just what I read to you from 920, what did Jesus say we should pray in Matthew 6, 9 and 10? Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Did you notice that Daniel was praying, not just confessing sin, but is also supplicating, making requests before the Lord for the holy mountain of my God. See, we need to be jealous for God. What happens in churches is a reflection on God and his son, Jesus Christ. And we need to make petitions that the churches be strengthened, the people within those churches be strengthened, and the people find churches and get busy serving the Lord and not wandering around like a bunch of loners, mavericks. We need to be caring about the work of the Lord on earth. And the church that Jesus built is the pillar and ground of the truth. And we need to uphold that, and be a part of that, and work in that. And our prayers need to be aimed to Him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus, world without end. Amen. Thank you. So, lamenting isn't forever. It can be serious, it can be intent, it can come back in cycles, it can last longer than we want. but it isn't forever. And in Psalm 30 verses one through five, I'm just gonna quote one verse. Weeping may endure for a night or a moment, but joy cometh in the morning. And that's the tone here turning. I'll take a moment. I dare take a moment. Psalm 27, let me read a few verses to you there. Psalm 27 verse five. For in the time of trouble, he shall hide me in his pavilion. In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me. He shall set me up upon a rock. Verse 13 and 14. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Okay, now all the times that we can point out the prophets condemning Israel, warning Israel, Moses there in Deuteronomy 27, 28, 29, 30, kept saying, if you reject me, if you turn from me, I'm going to bring terrible things upon you, and you shall be cursed, and the nations of this world will rise up against you, and mock you, and persecute you, and scatter you." And for all of the negative things, the warnings, and the threats, and the terrible bondages that they went through, yet the Lord always had the other tone of promise. The other tone of promise. I've got a list of great passages here that show the future of Israel and the hope that they can still look forward to. And with the Lord, there's always something to look forward to. And I'm going to just share one of them in particular, the book of Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah chapter 61. Now, one day Jesus walked into a synagogue on a Sabbath and he was asked to do the scripture reading. If they only knew who he was, they would have had him deliver the full sermon. But he started to speak and they got mad at him, wanted to shove him off a cliff and kill him. But here's what Jesus did. He read from Isaiah 61, part of it. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." And he stopped and closed the book. Now, it wasn't a book like this, so I wanted to make a big thud. But, you know, when you close a book, you're rolling up a scroll. But the idea is he stopped reading. He's right in the middle of a verse. And he said, this day, these scriptures are fulfilled in your eyes. And everybody was staring at him, something's up, and you could feel the hair on the back of your neck probably. But what he said after that, oh boy, it was very displeasurable. You can read it in Luke 4, 16 through 30. But you know what? He stopped at a precise point, because there's this matter that Israel never figured out ahead of time, is that Messiah's coming was twofold. He came once to be a suffering Savior. He will come again to be the conquering King." And they thought, hey, it's conquering King. That's what we want. It's conquering King time. Lord, we got to have that conquering King. Well, he stopped at the suffering Savior part because the other is yet to come. And I continue to read in the middle of verse 2. and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified." And I must stop there. You can keep reading. But do you notice two things in verse 2? One is the day of vengeance of our God, and simultaneously is the comfort for those that mourn. The comfort for those that mourn. You know, the Apostle Paul matches that really well in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 and verse 7. Give me a moment here, I'll turn and read it carefully for you. 2 Thessalonians 1, verse 7. And to you who are troubled, rest with us. When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, And then, verse 10 says, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe. Because our testimony among you was believed in that day. In that day. Flaming fire, take vengeance on the enemies. On the other hand, to be admired of the saints. Rest, comfort, joy, fulfillment. Sunlight can harden a lump of clay or melt a block of ice. You better hope you're the block of ice being melted today and be thankful for it. These things bring us to running to God. clinging to God, desiring him. Now, the only reason we might want him not to come today is because we think of more people we'd like to come into faith. But if you read carefully, when Noah built the ark, it was the Lord who closed the door, not Noah. And you know what? We can't close this door. We would keep it open for one more, one more, one more. God can handle this. And one day the door closes, the day of salvation over for those we know in that time of salvation. But so shall we ever be with the Lord and we must comfort ourselves with these words. Paul says, you're troubled, rest with us. Now, the last thing I want to do is end with a prayer, a divine prayer. It's in the book of Habakkuk. And again, you can find people pronounce it differently. There's plenty of renditions, I'm sure, but Habakkuk chapter three, and I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm not gonna even try to preach on this. This would make a fabulous subject to consider on its own, but it's a great way to end what I think is a very important series, a subject which we have studied about lamentation, about sorrow, about grieving to God, about coming close to the heart of God with the things that cause sorrow. Now, I got you all in suspense, a little more suspense. Last minute, I almost forgot to do this. Michael Card, we'll say he's sort of a modern-day prophet, and he wrote a song called, Tears of the World. One day I heard this song, and I'd heard it before, but one day I got it. I got it, and it brought tears to me. And I think he's teaching us here how we should seek the Lord so that we know how to grieve. So, I'm not gonna sing it, I'm just gonna say it. In any split second of a moment of time, in the blink that is one single day, the sum of the sorrows that wraps round the world could catch every soul up and sweep them away. As vast as the ocean, as deep as the sea, swept up in one toxic tide by warm salty waves, the world weeps its woe. So how could it be that my own eyes are dry? So open my eyes and open my heart and grant me the gift of your grieving and awaken in me the compassion to weep just as one of the tears of the world. There's more to that song. If you want to see it, I'll get you a copy. It's a beautiful song, but it makes you consider. It makes you consider there's a reason for tears. There's a time for them, a time to mourn, a time to weep, but also a time of joy. But let's remember these times and make them sacred. Now again, the prophet Habakkuk chapter three, A prayer of Habakkuk, the prophet upon Sheogonoth. O Lord, I have heard thy speech and was afraid. O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make known in wrath. Remember mercy. And Father, I cast this upon you now. that that which is of your spirit and of your word will linger on in our minds and our hearts, and that we can meditate upon this, that the strings of our heart will resonate with this, that as we sing with grace in our hearts and singing, making melody in our hearts to the Lord, that we'll remember the times for the sad song, as we sorrow for the tears of the world, as we think of the tears of Jesus, and how you have said that when we weep for the sorrowful things in this world, the things that make you sorry too, Lord, that you take our tears and put them in a bottle, you write them down in a book, you've made note of those who take time to grieve and help us, Father, to do that so that we don't get caught up in the fleshly spirit of battle or in the fleshly depression and withdrawal. Show us how to get strength, even as Jesus out in the wilderness fasted for 40 days and prepared himself to do battle with the devil by taking time for prayer and solitude. And Lord, we can't always lay aside that much time. We can't always manage that. We don't know how or there's so many demands, but some way help us to steal time to think with your thoughts, to feel with your heart, that our souls would bond with you, and that we would, as we have grieved, we also have the strength of the Lord's joy to be our strength. Give faith where it's needed now for each one here, and those who hear this message in the future. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen.