What to Say When Life is Hard | The Book Of Psalms Week 1

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- This verse is one of the key reasons

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why you would not like the Bible

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and why you would believe

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the people who believe the Bible are idiots.

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The Bible is freeing you up

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to be honest with how life is hard.

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- Where are we in the Bible?

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Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

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The Bible begins in the Old Testament,

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written around 3500 years ago.

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The first five books of the Old Testament:

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Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,

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are known as the Pentateuch, or books of the law.

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The next 12 books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth,

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1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings,

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1 Chronicle, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

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Whew, That's a lot.

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These are known as the historical books.

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This brings us to the books of the Bible

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known as the Wisdom Literature.

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It starts with Job and then into

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a collection of 150 lyrical poems known as The Psalms.

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- Life is hard and God is able.

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Hey, I'm Brian. Great to be with you today.

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It is hard.

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I hope that's not the clue phone ringing for you.

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You've probably figured out by now

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it is hard and God is able.

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One of the ways that we can cope with the difficulty

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is by connecting with God,

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which I'm going to try to help you do that today.

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And we're going to start a new series

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in the Book of Psalms.

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Psalms, some people mispronounce as songs,

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which is an understandable thing

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because Psalms actually are songs.

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I'm in a place right now

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where people perform music and songs.

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There's something about lifting up our hearts

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and saying things that makes a way for us

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spiritually and also actually emotionally.

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Psalms has all different kinds of Psalms.

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There are Psalms that are meant to be Thanksgiving.

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In the 150 Psalms. there's a lot of them.

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It's a big, big book.

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So if you ever read like an old school Bible study

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where someone says, "Open up your Bibles,

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your paper Bibles to the book of Psalms."

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A little hint open up to the middle of the Bible.

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It'll just fall open.

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And in the midst of that large, large book in the Bible,

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150 chapters, some of those are known as Psalms

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or songs because they would be used in worship

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of Thanksgiving where we're giving God thanks.

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Some of them are are known as Psalms of Lament,

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where we're just saying, "God, this is rough,

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man, this is tough."

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I'm just lamenting the state that my life is in,

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where I am financially or where I am emotionally

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or where I am spiritually or whatever it is.

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I'm just lamenting.

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I'm just sitting in the crap of where I am.

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There are Psalms that do that.

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And then there's Psalms,

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the one we're going to look at today

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is known as an Imprecatory Psalm.

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It's a Psalm where you're just needing to vent,

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your need to say whatever you need to say to get to God.

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And you just need to let it all out.

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And there's anger and there's bitterness,

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and there's, ugh.

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When I feel that way, there are certain Psalms

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I just go to and I just [grunts]

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or when it comes on the radio,

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I immediately go to it [grunts]

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and I just [grunts].

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I'm kind of like that, you know.

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I think of a girlfriend

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who might have dumped me in junior high,

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like, [grunts] "Jane Pessoal," you know?

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[grunts] just, [grunts], it's just like that.

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Here's one song that I do.

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And if you notice, as I do this in a music venue

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where people actually know how to sing,

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I'm not one of those folks. I'm not.

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I do this for my own benefit.

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And we need to learn to connect with God

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through music and through the Psalms or through prayers,

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which I'm going to help you do today

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for your own benefit.

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Not just for the benefit of God,

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because He wants to hear from you,

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but also for your own benefit.

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Here is one such song.

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[music: Go your own way, Fleetwood Mac]

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I don't know if you enjoyed that or not.

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Probably not, but I did.

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I got something out of me.

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This is part of what the Psalms are about.

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Most of them are written by King David,

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but there are actually more than seven authors

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that are named inside of the Psalms.

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The one we're going to look at today, Psalm 137,

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it's certainly not written by King David

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because it came around long, long after he died.

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It was when the nation of Israel was in bondage

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and captivity and had been thrown out of

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or exiled out of their land,

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out of what's known as the holy city of Zion.

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Here's what it says in the Book of Psalms 137.

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They're devastated, emotionally devastated.

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They're remembering their old, ancient city,

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and they're weeping.

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Verse two:

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They took their lyre, or their rough guitar,

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and they hung it up and said, "We're done with music.

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No more happy songs for us. We're done with it."

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In fact, their tormenters, you can kind of imagine them

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as maybe drunken, drunken sailors or drunken soldiers,

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like, "Hey, hey, sing us one of those songs of Zion."

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Like, "Oh, my goodness, this is so bad.

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Not only can I not sing out of joy,

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I've got to actually sing to make

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a bunch of drunk people or a bunch of tormentors

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actually happy?"

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Then verse four:

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They say, "How in the world am I supposed to sing

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in a situation like this? God, I can't do it.

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I can't do it. I can't sing like this.

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In fact, if I've got to sing, have me forget

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how to strum the lyre, how to strum the guitar."

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Then they continue with this emotional venting to God.

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Verse six:

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They say, "God, I'm feeling emotional right now.

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I'm feeling life is hard.

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But I want -- I want to have You as my highest joy."

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Then verse seven:

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They say, "Remember God, how they were taunting,

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remember how they wanted everything to go down.

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Just remember, I'm remembering it and I'm feeling it.

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I'm feeling it right now. I'm emoting right now."

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This is Imprecatory Psalm.

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"I'm feeling it right now. I'm saying how I feel, God."

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And then verse eight:

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Yeah, this is no like love your enemy as yourself.

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They're feeling it and saying, "Oh, my gosh,

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I hope you get yours. May yours come your way."

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And then, it almost sounds like the New Testament

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for just a split second.

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It sounds like Jesus actually in the Sermon on the Mount

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when they say in verse nine:

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Oh, my goodness.

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Jesus said blessed is the peacemaker,

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blessed is he who is poor in spirit.

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And here we have the psalmist saying,

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"Blessed is he who takes your little ones

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and dashes them against the rock." Wow.

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This verse is one of the key reasons

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why you would not like the Bible

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and why you would believe that

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people who believe the Bible are idiots.

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How in the world can you have a holy book

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where your high literature is telling God

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take their infants and dash them against rocks?

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I mean, we unfortunately in our culture,

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in too, too recent times, like weeks, days,

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have had little ones killed who were innocent.

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Aren't little ones innocent, especially babies?

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And yet we have the Bible calling seemingly

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for the destruction of this. Why is this?

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I want to get into that in a moment,

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but I just want to make sure that we understand

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that the Bible is freeing you up

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to be honest with how life is hard.

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This is Father's Day. I'm a father,

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so I've got a lot of connection with Father's Day.

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It's also Juneteenth.

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It's another holiday, a great holiday

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that's actually in our country

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that I don't have as much emotional buy in with

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because I'm white, but I am emotionally

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getting more and more attached to it

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as I understand the plight of African Americans

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and former slaves way back when.

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Juneteenth is about all of the slaves, former slaves,

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finally understanding that they are free.

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And I find it ironic, I picked this Psalm months ago

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not knowing that this is going to fall

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right here on Juneteenth,

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because African Americans, former slaves,

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have had an Imprecatory Psalm on their lips

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for a long, long, long time.

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This psalm wasn't just used by former slaves.

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It was also used by the original people

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who came to America from Europe, the Pilgrims.

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The Pilgrims would quote the Psalm

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and say this Psalm again because they felt like

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they had come from a foreign land,

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just like the nation of Israel felt like

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they came from another land to a foreign land.

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Here, the Pilgrims, the original pilgrims

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felt like they weren't welcomed with

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their religious beliefs back where they were in Europe,

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and they came to a land where

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they weren't understood and accepted,

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and that's how they felt.

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And they would quote this Psalm all the time.

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And then this Psalm was quoted by Frederick Douglass

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and others who would see this as the plight

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of the former slaves, of Africans.

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It was a song that's been put into disco.

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They actually wanted me to sing that song.

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I would not sing that song.

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This Psalm's been put in all different types

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of music styles because it endures.

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In the Black Music Research Journal,

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it's called Babylon Revisited,

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Psalm 137 as an American protest Psalm.

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And here's a portion of what the article says:

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This is why many African Americans

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have identified with Psalm 137.

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It's why the original pilgrims, the original Puritans

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identified as Psalm 137.

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And it's also why you today may identify with it.

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It wasn't written by David,

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because King David didn't experience

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this oppression with Babylon,

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but he would have written something like this

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because he felt like he was persecuted.

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He felt like things were going awfully.

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And you may feel that as well.

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In fact, whole groups,

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your whole family might feel that way.

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Your whole community might feel that way.

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Actually, our whole country might feel that way.

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This is a group lament or a group Imprecatory Psalm

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where we just say, "God, I am not happy.

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We are not happy."

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Now, the irony here is verse nine when it says,

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"Blessed is he,"

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we think there's going to be something nice

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that Jesus would say, but instead,

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"Blessed is he who dashes infants against the rocks."

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This isn't a blessing like the Sermon on the Mount is.

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It's a curse. It's not a blessing.

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Here we have the psalmist

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actually uttering a form of curse.

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Now, this is an example of something in the Bible

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that isn't true. [gasps / background music stops]

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This is okay.

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This is somethin in the Bible that isn't true.

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It is not true that God wants people

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to pray for the destruction of innocent life.

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It's not true that God likes having babies killed.

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The Bible is not endorsing infanticide here. It's not.

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What it is endorsing, it's endorsing

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being in touch with your emotions

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and taking them before God.

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It is endorsing becoming emotionally

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and spiritually healthy by not holding things in.

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That's what we're going to spend

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the rest of our time talking about.

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- Hey, everyone, I'm Kyle. - And I'm Hannah.

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- We just wanted to say if you're enjoying this episode

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and you want to support us,

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your giving could go a long way in allowing us

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to make more episodes just like this one.

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- That's right.

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And you can give super easily right here in our app.

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It's as simple as going to your profile page,

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clicking the gear in the corner and then clicking give.

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- So easy.

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- Now let's get back to the message.

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- I've got to tell you a story I had just this last week.

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I went to the gym where I work out,

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and in the one section there is

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a bunch of weight benches for people to do flies on

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or presses or incline curls or some such things.

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About, I don't know, maybe ten of them.

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All of them are used by somebody except for one,

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and that one has a water bottle

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with some keys sitting on it.

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It's like someone saving the equipment,

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which is really a breach of gym protocol.

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You can't save equipment with inanimate objects, right?

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So I walk over, I'm looking for whose it might be

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just to tell them, like, hey, I'm going to,

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you know, just to let them know I'm going to work in.

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I'm looking around,

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I don't see anybody looking at me.

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So I go, okay, well, let's just move it.

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So I take it off and I move it about a foot to the side,

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put on the floor nice and carefully,

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keep everything together.

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Get down. I start doing my reps.

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I start doing my reps,

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just about done with my last one,

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guy comes up, big guy says,

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"Hey, can I have my bench back?"

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And I'm just about done.

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And at that point, the one beside me had opened up.

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So I could have said, "Well, just use that one."

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But I was like, "Yeah, fine."

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So I just went over to the other one

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and as I was going over the other one,

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I said, "Hey, hey, man.

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It's just it's against gym protocol.

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You can't be saving your equipment."

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And he goes, "My stuff. I can't --

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I can't save my equipment

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when I'm when I'm going to the bathroom?"

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I and don't remember exactly what I said,

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but I basically said, "No, no, you can't."

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And he didn't like hearing that at all.

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And things were getting a bit heated.

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So I was like, whatever, you know,

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the Bible says, blessed are the peacemakers.

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So I just try to make some peace and just remove myself.

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So I go over to the other gym bench

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and and I'm doing my exercise.

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I look over, he's doing similar exercises,

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except he's using a lot more weight than I am.

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He's got more muscle mass than I have.

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I probably fueled his adrenaline surge

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to just rep them out.

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And I think he's enjoying

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me not being able to lift as much as he has.

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So I'm on about rep eight or so

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and I sense the spirit of God say to me,

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"Brian, go be a peacemaker, just be a peacemaker."

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So stop my weights, put them down, cut my set short.

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I go over, I stick out my hand.

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I said, "Hey, my name is Brian."

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He looks at me and he kind of weakly puts his hand out

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and shakes my hand.

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And I say, "Hey, man, I really didn't."

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I start explaining why I did what I did

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and where it was.

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I was trying to be nice

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and maybe I didn't say it right or whatever did happen,

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but he wasn't having any of it.

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He said, "You can't be moving my stuff,

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my personal, private property. You can't be."

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And I could tell he was still amped up.

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And so I was like, okay, okay.

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I just just dropped it and went back and doing my thing.

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Now, let me tell you the main conclusion I had

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coming out of that story.

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People don't know how to use public gym equipment.

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That's the main conclusion I have,

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though that's true, that's not the main conclusion.

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You know what I had?

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That guy had a whole bunch of problems in his life

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before someone moved his water bottle and keys.

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That guy has had a hard day. He's had a hard week.

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Maybe he's had a hard life.

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I don't know what's going on,

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but you generally don't get that hyped up over that

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unless something is going wrong.

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Hey, life is hard.

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Three big ideas as we come down the final stretch.

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Life is hard.

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The nation of Israel is feeling this.

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They've been thrown out of their land.

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They've been robbed of their culture.

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They're having their situation rubbed in their face.

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"So sing a songs, Jewish people sing a songs

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that make us party hard."

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It's not good at all.

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And I don't know where it is that we started

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to think that if I know God, if I know Jesus,

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then life isn't going to be hard.

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It's just not true.

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There's no verse in the Bible that ever tells you that.

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You can have peace,

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you can have joy that transcends all circumstances.

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But Jesus said, quote, I quote him exactly:

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In this life you will have trouble.

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I think we struggle with our faith because

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we're under the illusion that if I'm with God,

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if I'm in the family business,

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there should be some perks that are coming my way.

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And when life is hard, then we start doubting our faith

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and getting a bad attitude.

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But if we just accept on the front end

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that life is hard, it's going to be hard,

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It'll help us format and frame things.

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The Psalms remind us that of that again and again.

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Psalm 137 is an Imprecatory Psalms.

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You see, the psalmist is looking around

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at a terrain that would look like this,

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this is in the Middle East,

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you have big rocks all over the place.

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And ironically, in the motorcycle world,

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those who ride off road,

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rocks that are about this size are referred to

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as baby heads.

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I know it's gross. I know it's awful.

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Everyone hates that when they hear it first,

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but it's about the size of a baby's head.

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And when you drive over it,

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it's awful because your tires move around

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and all that stuff.

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I don't know if whoever came up with that term

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understands Psalm 137, but this is what's taking place.

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This, these, this community that's in emotional turmoil

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and physical pain, who's being humiliated.

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They're just crying out to God and they're saying,

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"God, I wish -- I wish you would just

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take their infants, dash them on the rocks,

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just take them and just, bam, dash them on the rocks."

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I was going to maybe get a baby doll to show this,

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but it would have been so traumatic

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just to see that with a baby doll,

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it would be awful sights.

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It's actually even awful to even hear it talked about.

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That's why it's easier sometimes in the Bible

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just to criticize it and shut it off

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than it is to say what is the Bible actually saying

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and wrestle with it.

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Let's not run away from this. Let's wrestle with it.

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You ever had injustice done to you,

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any form of injustice?

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You ever been let go from a job when somebody else

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was the one who should have been let go

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because you were a higher performer,

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maybe they were taking the accolades

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that should be coming your way?

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You ever been cheated on in a marriage?

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You ever been divorced?

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You have been lied about?

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You have been shamed on social media?

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Have you ever been abused as a child?

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You ever been abused as an adult

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by somebody who was physically more strong than you?

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Have you ever had somebody lie to you

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and cause you to be bankrupt because you trusted them

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and now your life is in tatters financially?

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Have you ever -- I could go on and on and on.

00:21:30

These are all forms of injustice.

00:21:32

And when you have this happen to you,

00:21:35

it's appropriate to be angry.

00:21:39

One thing that happened to a staff person

00:21:40

just this past week, I just found out about,

00:21:43

it's just awful.

00:21:44

An African American person on our staff

00:21:46

and they just were processing said,

00:21:49

"Three times in the last week I was profiled.

00:21:51

Three times I was profiled."

00:21:53

What does that mean?

00:21:54

Well, the last time, what it means is

00:21:57

a young white child with his mother

00:21:58

looks at a black man and says, "Oh, no, we have to run."

00:22:04

Horrible.

00:22:05

Now, how would that make you feel?

00:22:06

I don't know how it would make me feel.

00:22:08

I've never had that happen to me.

00:22:09

But I'll tell you what,

00:22:11

that happens three times in a week,

00:22:12

that's one week, something's going to rise up in you.

00:22:16

All of us on one level or another have felt

00:22:19

some sort of bad hand that's been dealt us.

00:22:22

And when you feel that, how do you respond?

00:22:26

Do you take it to God?

00:22:28

This guy I talked about in the gym,

00:22:30

I'm confident he was not taking it to God.

00:22:33

I'm confident he wasn't aware of God.

00:22:35

I have great pity for him because

00:22:37

life has been difficult for him

00:22:39

and he doesn't know how to handle it and vents it.

00:22:43

In Psalm 137, we see the psalmist,

00:22:46

the people of God venting to God,

00:22:48

and God doesn't hear these things and say,

00:22:51

"Oh, do you want that done with the infants?

00:22:53

Oh, okay, I'll consider that."

00:22:54

No, God isn't listening to that and saying,

00:22:56

"Okay, you're praying that I actually

00:22:58

dash infants against rocks. Oh, I consider it."

00:23:00

No, God isn't into that.

00:23:02

God's never going to do that.

00:23:04

But God is able, that's the second big idea. He's able.

00:23:08

God is able to -- He's able to get you to a new place.

00:23:13

God is able to give you grace.

00:23:16

God is able to give you strength

00:23:18

that surpasses understanding.

00:23:20

God is able to give you peace to pass understanding.

00:23:22

And God is able to hear you vent.

00:23:27

He's able to take your emotions.

00:23:31

To many of us we think prayer is about

00:23:35

just telling God the things that He wants to hear.

00:23:39

That's not good communication.

00:23:42

He wants to hear from us.

00:23:43

He needs to hear from us,

00:23:44

not to educate Him necessarily,

00:23:47

but He needs to hear from us so He knows

00:23:49

that the relationship is healthy and strong.

00:23:51

When a relationship is there,

00:23:52

there is accurate emoting and venting.

00:23:55

And this is what the nation of Israel is doing.

00:23:58

I've done this a bunch the last two years.

00:23:59

Man, I've had some really tough times.

00:24:02

I'm doing pretty well right now.

00:24:04

Man, rough, rough times.

00:24:06

People shaming me on social media.

00:24:09

People using their understanding of me as a person

00:24:13

who we've been friends in the past

00:24:14

and cracking on me and trying to

00:24:15

character assassinate me for things that aren't true.

00:24:18

Frustrated about just what it looks like

00:24:21

to be leading a church or leading an organization,

00:24:24

any organization in this time,

00:24:25

anybody who's in management or leadership

00:24:27

can tell you it's just not fun to lead people right now.

00:24:30

Everybody is sensitive, everybody is on edge,

00:24:32

everybody is hurting.

00:24:33

Nobody has enough bandwidth to offer grace.

00:24:35

Every decision seems loaded.

00:24:37

It is frustrating being a part of a thing that

00:24:40

we've grown a lot this last year.

00:24:42

But before that, man, just everyone's leaving,

00:24:45

everyone's upset, everything's --

00:24:47

dealing with family tensions.

00:24:49

And I just sit before God sometimes in my prayer time,

00:24:52

I sat before God months ago and God would hear me say,

00:24:57

[grunts] I'm not going to tell you the word right now.

00:24:59

It starts with an F.

00:25:01

And I would just tell God, [grunts] "God, why?"

00:25:05

I'm not going to repeat all the prayers,

00:25:08

but I'll tell you right now,

00:25:09

God can handle my profanity when I'm talking to Him.

00:25:12

He can. He's heard it before.

00:25:15

I'm not cursing God in that moment.

00:25:18

I'm just letting my emotions out.

00:25:19

"God, why? Why in the world is this so hard?

00:25:23

Why in the world are people the way they are?

00:25:27

When is this going to end?"

00:25:29

I have no answer. Other than like [grunting].

00:25:36

If you've never felt that way,

00:25:38

then you've simply not lived.

00:25:41

You've not lived in a way that would bring pain to you.

00:25:45

You've not lived in any environment where there's risk

00:25:48

and you're going to find difficulty.

00:25:50

Life is hard, and when it is God's able

00:25:53

and when we talk with God, prayer is a battle.

00:25:58

It's a battle.

00:25:59

That's the third big idea, and the last big idea for today.

00:26:02

When we talk to God, God doesn't want to hear

00:26:04

these little prayers like, "Oh God,

00:26:07

I thank you for all the little birds up in the sky

00:26:11

and all the precious little children of Scotland."

00:26:15

I don't know why I go to a Scottish accent,

00:26:18

but you know, these correct prayers, they're just nice.

00:26:22

And it's okay to have correct prayers

00:26:23

and feel nice, fine to prayer nice.

00:26:26

But I'll tell you what, when you pray

00:26:27

you're asking something to change.

00:26:29

You're getting real before God.

00:26:31

It is a battle, it is a war.

00:26:33

And if your prayers don't interest you,

00:26:36

they're not going to interest God.

00:26:39

How would you feel if someone is just going to

00:26:42

show up in your college classroom and lecture you

00:26:45

by reading their notes, pre-prepared, you know,

00:26:48

this and this, and you go like,

00:26:50

I don't even need to be here.

00:26:51

You just need to talk to me.

00:26:53

You would feel totally devalued.

00:26:54

How does God feel when all we do

00:26:56

is we recount pre-rehearsed lines,

00:26:58

whether they're reading them

00:27:00

or we've had them drilled into our mind.

00:27:02

Where we're saying this thing because

00:27:03

we think that we should say it.

00:27:05

He wants to hear you and we need Him to hear us.

00:27:10

And this is what we learn in Psalm 137:

00:27:16

Blessed are those who are honest with God.

00:27:20

Blessed are those who wear their emotions

00:27:23

on their sleeves in their time with God.

00:27:25

Maybe if we did that more with God,

00:27:28

we'd be wearing our emotions on our sleeves

00:27:30

less with the innocent person next to us

00:27:33

who just moved a water bottle.

00:27:35

Maybe if we learn how to do this with God,

00:27:37

we'd have less road rage.

00:27:39

Maybe we'd have less fighting on social media.

00:27:41

Maybe we all get a little more happy and joyful.

00:27:47

This is why Psalm 137 exists.

00:27:50

This is because it's the life that God wants you to have,

00:27:53

a life where in the difficulty, life is hard.

00:27:56

And I recognize that God's able

00:27:58

and this is a battle

00:28:00

and I'm going to pray and work through it.

00:28:02

You do that and you will find a peace

00:28:05

that passes all understanding.

00:28:08

This message may hit a bit close to home for you.

00:28:12

I hope it's helping you,

00:28:13

but I also want to pray for you right now.

00:28:15

So let me pray.

00:28:16

God, there's so much difficulty right now.

00:28:18

I know there is.

00:28:19

It's almost like I can feel it

00:28:21

coming through the camera.

00:28:22

These pains and these difficulties are real.

00:28:24

They're not imagined. It's how we feel.

00:28:26

And God, we're not just asking that they would end.

00:28:30

We do ask that they end.

00:28:31

We ask them injustice ends.

00:28:33

We ask that evil that other people does to us,

00:28:36

that other people put on us, we ask that that ends.

00:28:39

But we also ask that ends.

00:28:40

We ask that our feelings of just being crappy,

00:28:45

that that ends, God, wipe them out.

00:28:48

We want to tell you right now how we feel.

00:28:50

We're telling you how we feel

00:28:51

and we're wanting it to go away.

00:28:53

We don't want to keep feeling this way.

00:28:56

I pray that your peace would come and sweep over us

00:29:00

and we would experience You as the Way Maker

00:29:04

that Your Word says that You are.

00:29:06

I pray these things

00:29:08

according to the character identity of Jesus. Amen.

00:31:33

- Hey, if that message connected with you

00:31:34

or made you curious to learn more about us,

00:31:36

you can create a profile at Crossroads.net.

00:31:39

That's right.

00:31:40

We've got podcasts and shows and articles

00:31:42

and episodes just like this one that are catered to you

00:31:45

and what you're looking for.

00:31:46

That's all we have for today.

00:31:48

We'll see you next time on Crossroads.

00:31:49

And Happy Father's Day and happy Juneteenth.

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