Life By The Spirit: Faithfulness

"Hey, good morning. "Again, welcome to Midtown, 12 South. "My name is Elliot." On the pastor here, and we are eight weeks in, kind of nearing the back third of our summer series, which we're calling life by the Spirit. Let me just give a quick framework for what we're doing this summer. In the New Testament, in the book of Galatians, there's a chapter where Paul, the apostle, and his letter to the church at Galatia, talks about for the Christian, who has the Holy Spirit inside of them. There's something that remains in the Christian called the flesh, our selfishness, the way we were formerly all about us and only thinking about ourselves. But now we have this Spirit that brings us alive. We were dead, now we're alive. There's this internal civil war that goes on inside the life of the believer between flesh and spirit. So the first part of Galatians 5, he talks about when you follow the flesh, when you listen to the flesh, this is what your life tends to look like. And when you listen to the Spirit, when you walk in step with the Spirit, this is what your life tends to look like. And in that section of life by the Spirit, is where our title comes from, Paul talks about what's known, a famous list known as the fruit of the Spirit, the virtues of the Spirit, the kinds of things that the life of a Christian begins to look like when they keep in step with the Spirit. And these virtues are to grow in us. These virtues are to be more manifest in us. These virtues are to become more and more alive in us. And they are as follows, we try to read them every week. These are the Christian virtues, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And so what that list has meant to do is the Christian is to look in the mirror of that list and go, are these fruits or these virtues growing in me? Are they becoming more ripe in me? Am I, am I more loving this time this year than I was last year? Am I more patient? Am I more self-controlled? Are these things becoming more and more part of my life or are they not? That's the first question. But then the second question is this when we read that list of virtues that ought to be made manifest in the life of the Christian, how are they growing in us? Not just are they growing, but how do these fruits, how do these virtues come alive? How do we walk more and step with the Spirit and begin to produce these fruits, these virtues more holy and more completely? And the secret is, and I hope if you've been around the summer, you've began to catch onto this, that the answer to that question, how do the fruits growing in us? Is they growing us the more we behold the Jesus who these fruits are truly describing? Meaning if you want to grow in love, you've got to be loved by Jesus. If you want to grow in patience, you've got to experience the patience of Jesus with you. If you want to grow in these virtues, you have to understand these are describing Jesus. These are the fruits of the Spirit of Jesus. So if you don't know Jesus in these ways, you won't ever be able to self-produce them in and of your own strength. That would be life by the flesh. Life by the Spirit is, do you know Jesus to be this way towards you? Do you know the Lord to be this way towards you? How good the Lord is, how kind the Lord is? And as those become more real to us that we see Him for who He is, they begin to be reflected in our life as well. So that's what we're doing with each virtue. This week we come to our seventh virtue on the list, our seventh fruit, which is faithfulness. This has been an interesting one to dive into. I've loved it, but we're gonna read two sections of scripture from the Old Testament that kind of get us into the conversation about our faithfulness and the Lord's faithfulness. The first one's gonna seem a little out of left field, but I'll give some context for it when we get into it. It's gonna be from Psalm chapter 137 kind of towards the end of the book of Psalms. If you wanna turn there, and then the second one's gonna be a well-known passage from Lamentations, chapter three. It's one of the, Lamentations is a five chapter poem, essentially it's one of the major prophets. And the Old Testament, if you have your Bibles or your phones, you can turn there. Psalm chapter 137, Lamentations three. And if not, it'll be on the screen. So this is Psalm 137, verses one through four. Psalmist says, "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." On the willows, there we hung up our liars for there are captors required of a songs and our tormentors, Murth saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" And then Lamentations, chapter three, Lamentations is a book of lament. It's a poem, we'll talk about it here in a little bit. Says this starting in verse 19, "Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall." It's a great band name. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me, but this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him. Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. So we're Lord. Amen. Okay, seventh fruit, seventh virtue is faithfulness. Faithfulness, what is it? What does it mean that the Christian would bear up and grow in themselves and have grown in them? The fruit, the virtue of faithfulness. What does it mean? Where does it come from? Well, in the Old Testament, the word faithful, faithfulness is usually used about the Lord. And it's a really interesting Hebrew word that in like the ancient Near East, other kind of Middle Eastern languages, this word, this root word, doesn't really exist anywhere outside of the Bible. It starts to exist in some Egyptian manuscripts of some, you know, talking about records of Pharaoh. But it really is a word that almost history and encyclopedia, Hebrew encyclopedias would say, the Bible almost invented this word to describe the Lord. And here's what the word means. When it's talking about the Lord is faithful, it means reliable, secure, permanent. And so you kind of take that reliable, secure, permanent, something that doesn't change. Here's an English word that gets close to capturing all of it as faithfulness is constant. It deals with the permanency of a thing, permanency of a person that is so stable and so reliable and so constant and so trustworthy that it doesn't change. It is permanent, it doesn't change who they are. It doesn't change the integrity of the thing is faithful. It will always be there. And it is so faithful that you can rely on it, you can count on it, you can build on it, you can fall into it, you can land into it and stand on it because it is permanent. It's not going anywhere. Lord is those things. Lord doesn't change, the Lord is constant. Same yesterday, today and forever. He is permanent and secure and therefore trustworthy. But then when Paul uses a word for faithful or faithfulness, when like in Galatians 5, when he says faithfulness ought to grow in the life of the Christian, he deals, I'm going to try to connect all these dots, he's actually talking about the same root word of like faith as belief. So like pistis is the Greek word. So how does faith like my belief in something, how does that connect to faithfulness, like faithful, full of faith? How does that make me, someone who is reliable and constant, how does having faith make me trustworthy, make me consistent, make me unchanging and permanent? Well, okay, so if I have faith, if my life is notably marked by faith, if I am faithful, if I am full of faith, I'm not tossed to and fro by the winds and waves of my own feelings, of my own circumstances. There's a steadiness that comes with my faith and a consistent faith, I am faithful. And so here's kind of the aha moment for what produces a faithful Christian that we would end up being like the Lord in his faithfulness of trustworthy and steady and reliable and constant, is that my faith is in his faithfulness. When I become full of faith, faithful in his faithfulness, I now am so secure, I'm now consistent, I'm trustworthy because I'm not able to be shaken, I'm not able to be tossed off course, I'm able to remain constant because I'm trusting in the one who is constant. Faith produces my faithfulness, faith produces my consistency. See, the one who has faith doesn't just believe in God, like the idea of God or the intellectual ascent of God. The faithful one is the one who believes God. Like, I believe that he's not a liar. I believe that he's telling the truth. I believe that his promises will come to bear. I believe him. So it's not just this like, do I have the intellectual facts and reason and logic to prove to me that I should place my faith, my belief in this God? It's no, do I consider him to be trustworthy? Do I believe him, not just believe in him? When we place our faith, we are faithful because we are trusting in the reliability, the steady, the consistent faithfulness of the Lord himself. And that in turn makes us faithful people. Sounds great, doesn't it? Like to be consistent, to be unchanging, to be permanent, to be steady, to be trustworthy by people like all of us would love to be described by faithful people as faithful people, not just meridally, but like in life, like you're trustworthy, you're consistent. You can count on me, I wanna be faithful. But here's what I end up doing often and what I hear people doing a lot. If faithfulness is the reality of my faith in his faithfulness, so we wanna be a people who declares God to be trustworthy and faithful, here's what I often hear, here's what I often say. I usually say how faithful God is when life is going the way that I want it to go. Like when I'm getting married, when I'm having kids, when my kids are doing well, when I'm on vacation man, God, he's so faithful man. 30A man, God, you're so faithful God. What I mean by that is, God, you're so faithful to give me what I want. And that's when I declare my faith in his faithfulness. But what about like when it's really dark? How do we have faithfulness, faith in his faithfulness? When we're in our darkest and most horrific of places. Like when Texas floods or school shootings happen in our city. Here's like where it really matters. How do we have faithfulness when God doesn't seem to be being faithful? That's the only place this matters. If it doesn't matter there, who cares about your beach or your like great life with your picket fence like that. That doesn't mean God is faithful. Do you have faith in his faithfulness when he doesn't seem to be being faithful? Like maybe you want to be married but you're not. Or maybe you have like things you wish would happen politically and they're not. Or you like want a relationship to be restored and it's showing no signs of restoration. Would you still say I believe God, he's faithful, he tells the truth, his promises are still true even though it doesn't seem like it. Which is what brings us to our Psalm, Psalm 137. And it needs some context because the context of the Psalm and what the Psalm says gets right into what we're talking about. Like exactly the place we're talking about. So it gets Psalm 137 verse one and I'm gonna give some context for it. So I've got a little raspy voice. I've preached for like 15 straight weeks. Okay, I'm a little out of it, all right? I had one week off. My voice is hating me. Here's what verse one says. "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept." Okay, little context. This Psalm was written by an Israelite who was sitting by the waters of Babylon, the rivers of Babylon, like tigers in the Euphrates. Babylon was a real city and Israelites are there and they're there as captives. They were taken captive by the people, by the Babylonian empire and they're in our exiles in a foreign land and they are sitting by the rivers of Babylon weeping because they're far from their homeland. They're far from their home. They are captives on enemy terrain. So let me give a little Old Testament context for how the Israelites get to Babylon as captives. This takes place long after the Exodus from Egypt with Moses, 10 plagues leads them through the Red Sea and through the wilderness they land in the promised land. This is the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We are to be the people that settled this land, modern day Israel, we're in the promised land. They settle in. Time of the judges happens. It's not so good. They demand a king. They get Saul, David, Solomon. And then it's really ugly. There's a lot of infighting, a lot of rebellion. The kingdom splits. Northern kingdom and Southern kingdom of Israel. There's a lot of rebellion, a lot of idolatry, a lot of doing things that they were told. They should never do in their promised land. And God finally, after many, many, many, many years of a split kingdom, he gives his people over into captivity. Babylonian empire. Babylonian empire comes in and takes the people. Tears, the city of Jerusalem apart. Literally like raids the temple for all of its gold. Billions and billions of dollars worth of gold in the modern day. They raid it for themselves. They kill off much of the people. They kill babies. It's terrible. Babylonians take them then from their homeland into captivity in Babylon. Here's the state of every Israelite at the time of this Psalm, Psalm 137. The holy people of the holy God are no longer in the holy city of God. They're far from home. And so if you're an Israelite in Babylon, here's what every single Israelite is asking about their reality of being a captive people in a foreign land, not in their promised land, not in their homeland. Here's what they're all wondering at this point. What does this mean? What does our captivity, our status as exiles in a foreign land, as slaves in a foreign land? What does that mean for all the promises that God made to us as a people? Like has God completely forgotten about us now that we are in Babylon? Has God completely given up on us? Now that he has given us over to these captives in Babylon? Is God still faithful, even though we're in Babylon? That's what they're asking. What about the promise God that you made that we would be a kingdom of priests to the world? What about the promise you made to Abraham that you would bless our nation so that we might be a blessing to the world? What about the promise you made to come in dwell among us in your temple that Israel and Jerusalem would be like a mini garden of Eden where heaven and earth are one place and God dwells with his people, 'cause that's what he's always wanted as to dwell with his people. That temple is gone and we're not there. What happened to your promises God? So they're all asking in Babylon. And for people in captivity, they're all wondering, if we're not in our homeland, then that means none of the promises that God made to us can come true. Like it's really hard to, I know you're going to like, why does Jerusalem matter so much to them? Why is that such a big deal to them that they would be doubting the promises of God just because they're not in their homeland? It's really tough to communicate the significance of the city of Jerusalem for an ancient Jew. Like we don't, I don't care where you're from I don't care how much you love Nashville. It's not tied up for you in like cosmic sized things if you're homeland, if you could never go back to your homeland or if it was not, if you were unable to go there right now. You may be sad that you don't live there right now, but it's not the same as like, oh, they were tying so much of their very identity with them not being at home. The city of Jerusalem, and this is not an over exaggeration to make a point, this is very real for an old testament to you. The city of Jerusalem was the city that was to be the place where the promises of God came true for the world. Like God restoring the world, which is what He promised to do. Make all things right, bring Shalom to, as far as the waters cover the sea, the glory of God will cover the earth. All was hinging on Jerusalem being safe and secure and them having a dwelling place in a temple for God there. Hope for God redeeming the world for an Old Testament Jew was inextricably tied to the city of Jerusalem. The other name for Jerusalem in the Old Testament is Zion. That's why this Psalm 137 calls it Zion. It's the holy mountain of God. Jerusalem was built up on a mountain. It's up on the hill. It is the holy Mount Zion. It's the holy city of God. Zion was everything to them, and it carried with it all the promises that God have made. It was so central to a Jew. It was so central to an ancient Israelite that when the Babylonians come in and they take over Jerusalem and they pillage it and raid it, and they take all the people captive, there's an entire book written about that experience and the lament that an Israelite was feeling about watching the city be burned to the ground and pillaged and taken away from it. That book, it's called Lamentations. It's a book, it's a poem, it's a five chapter book on lamenting, on grieving, on crying out. There's no way this can be happening. The whole thing is a sadness because now that Jerusalem's been taken, all of our hope for the world ever being right again has now been taken to. They're not just sad, they're like, they lost the cul-de-sac they grew up on. Like they're not sad because of nostalgia. I'm sure that some of that, they're not just sad because they watched like their neighbors get killed. I'm sure that was part of their sadness. Zion carried with it transcendent promises and cosmic spiritual hopes. The meaning of life was tied to Zion being safe and secure. God being who God said he would be was tied to Zion being safe and secure. Connect all this. God not being a liar to them was tied up with Zion being safe and secure. So for the people of God now, if that's their relationship with the city of Jerusalem, the city of Zion, now take your imagination to the rivers of Babylon. Tigers in the Euphrates, they're sitting there as captive people. If they're there and they're weeping by the rivers of Babylon, it's not just that man we miss our childhood home, it's the fact that we're not home means a lot for the world. So here's the question that every Israelite that's weeping by the rivers of Babylon is asking themselves while they're captive in a foreign land. Here's the question, is God faithful? He's promised all kinds of things and global realities about his dwelling place in this city and what the city represents. If we're not there, then is God faithful? How are he totally given up on his promises? Okay, so now I'll go one step deeper in that. If he's not faithful and he has forgotten his promises, here's what they have to ask themselves then. If there's no hope for Zion and God is not faithful, is there any hope for my story? Is there any hope for my loss? Is there any way my grief could ever be restored? Could my sorrow ever turn to joy? There's no hope for any future rest. There's no hope, period, for a Jew that's in captivity in Babylon because they're not in Zion and Zion was destroyed. So the question beneath all of it, they're grieving and weeping in Babylon is this, is God faithful? And I would wager with you. That's the question behind many of our tears too. See, because like them and the Bible uses this metaphor, like it uses the Old Testament story of God's people for the New Testament church to relate to, we are in Babylon. Like you have a citizenship that is not here. You have a heavenly home. The heavenly Jerusalem is your home. And one day it will come here, but you and I aren't home yet. We're exiles in a foreign land. And not only are we exiles in a foreign land, but just like an Israelite in Babylon in the day when Psalm 137 was written, life in this Babylon, life in this exile living, life in this like refugee spirituality that we're all in right now, constantly reminds us that we're not home yet. Constantly. It's constantly holding in your face the reality that you are in Babylon and not in Zion. Just so happen to stumble back upon some Phil Collins this week. You're welcome. Home, take me home, Phil Collins, yes. And then Bone Thugs made it even better, yes. Has no one heard this song by Phil Collins and Bone Thugs? Thank you. I would sing it, but my voice is recipe. But he's just screaming. Home, home, take me home, 'cause I don't remember. I have this homesickness for a place I know I belong but I don't remember it, please take me back home. That's what Psalm 137 saying. Life here rarely feels like we're truly home. Like we're living in a time when people in this room know very well people in Texas who are living in a nightmare right now. We're girls at a camp, we're awoken in the middle of the night screaming for their parents and their counselors to save them and they didn't make it. We're not home. We're living in a world where there's a war in the Middle East that's been going on for millennia. And the Gaza Strip right now is currently, like today, a living cemetery. We're not home yet. And we're in a city, we're just like three miles that way, women get trafficked every day. And we're in a city where about three miles that way refugees are being arrested and deported. That like so just came to find a home here and apartment buildings are being raided and families are being split apart in our city, 'cause we're not home yet. We're in a city where it no matter the major industries that are here and you may think you're in one. Great. Here's what we've done with every industry here. Let's all create a ladder, a man-made ladder, and let's just step all over each other getting to the top of our industry. And who cares if we betray people or betray ourselves or like in friendships or be selfish or deceitful just to get to the top of this thing that we've all made up that really matters. And we've gotten into your home yet. How about in this room, there are marriages that are hanging on by a thread. There are addictions that are eating you alive. There are relational realities that are nowhere near what you want them to be. There are friends that have betrayed friends in this room. There are spouses who have buried spouses in this room. Everything about your life is telling you, you're not home yet. You're in Babylon, Nazion. And here's what we're all asking underneath all those realities, with all the tragedy, with all the cruelty, with all the we're not homelessness. Here's what we're asking. Whether you realize it or not is what you're asking. It's God faithful. And if you want to get real personal, you probably are saying it this way, depending on where you are today. How could God possibly be faithful if these things are happening? Like it's not possible for him to be faithful and for me to believe him, not just believe in him, but believe him that he's not a liar if these things are all going on. I was talking with Joseph Patton, our worship director this week, about all this, and he reminded me of a childhood developmental stage that I have witnessed more than you, about when little ones are growing up around like nine months to like two years, there's a developmental stage, developed by the French scientist Piaget, called object permanence. Have you heard of this? Okay, let me teach you real quick. So it's this reality, like little children are growing in their ability and they develop this cognitive ability to know that an object still remains in its permanence with all of its fullness, even when a child can't see it. So that's like why peekaboo works with a child because like when they don't see it, they think it's gone and they see it again. Or like you hide a Piaget did this study, like you hide a teddy bear under a blanket, they think the teddy bear's gone. And then you take it off, it's like, oh, it's back again. So that's it because they, or like you hide a ball under a cup, and every time you hide it, they think it's gone and it reappears. Because they don't have the cognitive ability and here's what some scientists would say, they don't have the imagination yet to imagine that that thing remains with all of its fullness, even when I can't see it. Object permanence, developing that ability, developing that imagination. Joseph and I were just talking about it, it didn't really matter. No, I'm kidding. Here's what, here's what, here's what, here's what, why he brought it up. That's what we do with the Lord. Like we haven't developed the imagination, we're developing the imagination, to believe that God remains in all of his fullness and faithfulness, even when we don't see him. Even when it seems like he's not there. But see, part of what makes the idea of like, is God still there with all of his faithfulness, is object permanence, like, is God still permanent? Part of what makes that heart embabbling on, is that some days it doesn't just like, seem hard to do that. Like has God forgotten his promises? Like, how can we be here? How can this be real? If God is still faithful? But here's what it also means, you're like staring down the barrel of, staring over the horizon of, as you look at your spiritual, refugee life. Here's what you have to make peace with. Is it to be a faithful Christian, to have faithfulness grow in you? Here's what you are signing up for, a life that is full of waiting. And waiting for the Lord when he seems to not be faithful or permanent. That's what refugee spirituality is. See, in Babylon, the Israelites, they had promises that were given to them way before Babylon. They even had promises that had been given to them by certain prophets while they were in Babylon. Jeremiah is a letter, is part of Jeremiah's prophecies in Jeremiah, are letters to the exiles in Babylon, to give them promises while they're waiting. They had promises that told them Babylon will not be forever. You will be restored to Zion. They had those promises. Here's the problem when you're in Babylon. It doesn't feel like the promises are true. My experience is telling me something that makes it hard to believe that the promise is still true. Waiting is hard, and now I'm suffering, and the thing that seems more permanent and more faithful than the Lord is that I feel forgotten by Him. That feels permanent, not His faithfulness. So we're waiting in Babylon, the Israelites were, for the promises of God to come true and for us to believe the promises, but here's what makes it so difficult. While I'm in Babylon, sometimes, you will have zero evidence and zero proof to convince you that God's promises are still true. Zero. Like maybe nothing about your life from your experiential evidence is telling you that God is still faithful and God has not forgotten His promises. And then, not only are we waiting, and not only in the waiting, do we sometimes have zero evidence? Here's what makes waiting more excruciating. Sometimes we get taunted in the waiting. Look at verse three. This is what the Psalmist is speaking about. For there, that's Babylon, by the rivers, there, our captors required of us songs and our tormentors' muths saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. That's ancient world shade. They're making fun of the people of God who are in captivity going, "Look at your high claims of your high God in your high city of Zion." Isn't that cute? You think Israelites, your God and your city, He's the God of all gods, He's the King of all kings, and Zion is the place where He's going to set His throne and Zion is the place where all His promises are going to come true. Isn't that hilarious? Sing us one of those songs about Zion again. Sing us one of those songs about how your God can defeat all of His enemies. We love that one. Sing us that one. Hey, you Israelites in chains over there. Sing us one of your Zion songs about how free you are as a people. Sing it. Sing it. I can't hear you. Sing it. Sing it. Sing us one of the songs about God delivering His people, and you're so dearly loved by Him that He would never leave you and never let anything happen to you. Sing us. Sing us the song about how your God never sleeps. Sing us the song about how He's dwelling with you in Jerusalem. Sing it. Sing us the song of Zion. Waiting is really hard when you're taunted. Hoping is really hard when you're taunted. See, because the same thing happens to us. We may not be taunted by human captors or tormentors. We're taunted by death, by grief, by longing. Like, hey, hey, sinstruggler. Sing us that song about how the Lord satisfies all your desires. Sing it. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you believed that. Hey, grieving one. Sing it. Sing us that song about how death doesn't sting anymore. Yeah, yeah. Sing it. Sing it. Hey, depressed and lonely one. Sing us one of those songs about how the joy of the Lord is your strength. Sing it. Sing it. See, that place of not just waiting and the promises don't seem to be coming true. Then when the taunting begins, this is why it says, in the Psalm verse 2, we hung up our liars, mandalins and guitars. We hung them up. We're not singing anymore. Like, I would just rather give up, then choose to keep believing in this God who claims He's faithful and to wait on Him to come true on His promises. Where is He? But this is what the faithful Christian actually embraces. And like makes peace with. The faithful Christian makes peace with the fact that refugee spirituality, the Babylon life, is a life of waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. And I'm hoping. I'm waiting. And I'm believing that God is not a liar. I'm waiting. And I'm waiting. See, if you hope for something, if you long for it, but it's not here yet, like if the heavenly Zion hasn't come yet, if you're waiting for it, then you're truly waiting for it in like a healthy way. Then you're forced to hope for it. Hoping and waiting are almost the same thing. In fact, in the Old Testament, the Old Testament word for waiting, the Hebrew word for waiting is the same word for hoping. It's the same thing. You cannot truly wait and not hope at the same time. And you cannot hope and not wait. That's what Romans 8 says. Romans 8, Paul says, "Hey, if you hope for something, who hopes for what they already have?" You don't hope for it if you already have it, but if we hope for it, we then wait for it with patience. He's talking about the new creation there. We don't have it yet. We're hoping for it and waiting. We wait for it with patience. See, if we're going to be a faithful people, we have to be willing to wait. And faithful people are the people who have made peace and can stand in this place in between the dissonance. That word means like the gap, the space, in the dissonance between what I long for, with like my life in the world, all of my longings, and the dissonance in the space, in the gap between what I long for, and what is this place over here is called reality. It's a really lonely place because no one's there. Here's what the faithful Christian is willing to do. I will wait in this place. I'm not going to ignore my longings and what I know I was made for. I'm also not going to try to over-grasp myself into something that is not yet, or pretend like it's not going to numb myself, not going to ignore myself, not going to over-medicate, not going to distract myself. I will wait in this dissonance. See, the reality of what is is that we live in Babylon, but my home is Zion. And every river I sit by makes me long for the river of life, but my present reality is Babylon. And so the Christian, the faithful Christian is the one who waits in reality. So the only place faithfulness can exist is in reality. Being honest about what is in the pain and the loss and the grief, and this is not the way I want things to be, and you have made peace with that. You're not ignored it, you're maybe faithful in the waiting, which means we become intimate friends with pain, with sadness, with sorrow, with grief, with loss, with woe. Christian weepers don't avoid pain. Faithful Christians are good waiters. In fact, becoming a good waiter, like having faithfulness grow in you, means not only do you accept the pain, accept the reality of what is, and what is not yet, in Babylon. Here's what you also, it's really, I have to be so tender in saying this, here's what you also make peace with, that the situation I'm in, the circumstances I'm in, may not get any better. Then they get worse. This is not a like, "Hey, if you'll just make peace with the pain, God will shell it out, he'll give you everything you want." That's not what it means to be a faithful Christian. Faithful Christian realizes that Babylon may get hotter, and tormentors may get more cruel. But if you'll deal with that, if you'll deal with that dissonance, like my refugee spirituality is in Babylon, and Babylon may get worse, you will begin to know what hope is, and you will begin to know what faith in God's faithfulness really is. That's the only place faithfulness can grow. And it's actually what Psalm 137 is all about. We don't have time to read the whole thing, and it gets really intense, if you want to read it. I'm sure you'll have a lot of questions if you finish one, Psalm 137, but there's lament, and there's an acknowledgement of the pain that is in Babylon, and here's what the author is saying, very intensely. Israel, our reality is really bad. It's really hot here, it's really miserable in Babylon, but this is not the end of the story. Justice is coming. Faithfulness is coming. God's promises are not over yet. God is a faithful God. So here's what he would say to them, and maybe say to us, every funeral you do in Babylon, every capture that torments you, every sleepless night you have here, every longing for Zion that goes unmet here, don't you dare believe for one second that Babylon is your home? Don't you dare believe that the promises tied to Jerusalem, the promises tied to Zion are over? Don't you dare believe that God is not faithful, just because your life doesn't have evidence for it right now? Do not use your life in the courtroom against God to put God on the dock to tell him he is not God because your life is not going the way that you want it to. No, faithfulness in Babylon looks a whole lot like, looks a whole lot like waiting on God's faithfulness. And while we're waiting not losing ourself in the waiting, not committing acts of self-patraile, not committing, not losing our identity, not losing our security in Babylon, not losing our faith in his faithfulness. That's what it means to be a faithful Christian who's a refugee on the road home. Now, what would possibly give an exile, a captive, in Babylon, and if you're not catching on, that's us. Okay. What would possibly give us reason to be faithful in Babylon? Reason to have faith in his faithfulness and reasons to sing songs of Zion while we're in Babylon. Well, this is what we turned to the poem, the song that was written at the time of the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of Zion. No one knows who wrote lamentations. Some people think Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, maybe he wrote it, no one knows. The lamentations is a sorrow-filled poem, five chapters, all about the destruction of Zion, and all that's tied up with that. And in the middle of the book, which is the main part of the book, it's what we read. It's a very well-known stretch of verses. Listen to what the poet, the songwriter, says, and how he is, listen to all these threads that we've talked about, how he is begging the Lord to not just act on his behalf and to act on his promises he made, but to help me be a good waiter while I'm waiting on you, Lord. Look at verse 19. He says, "Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the warm wood and the gall. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me, but this I call to mind. And therefore I have hope." The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him. To the soul who seeks Him. Please note, as the section begins, He asks the Lord to remember something, which is really important. Because in what this waiter and this griever and this refugee needs while he's waiting, he's asking the Lord to remember something, which means this. When we're in Babylon and we're singing songs of Zion in Babylon, we sing because the Lord remembers, not because we do. We sing because the Lord is faithful, not because we're so faithful. And here's what has to happen in Babylon sometimes. Sometimes you have to sing songs of Zion in Babylon, because there's no other way to believe that the Lord never forgets you. So, as you have to sing while in Babylon to remember that the Lord has not forgotten you. So, what does he ask the Lord to remember? Verse 19, "Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall." Love that phrase. Had to look it up. What does it mean? Remember my affliction and my wanderings. Remember my affliction and my pain, the wormwood and the gall. Those are two plants and herbs in the ancient world. Wormwood, notably bitter. Gal, notably poisonous. I could kill you. Wormwood and the gall, the bitterness and the poison of my story, the bitterness and the poison of the things that I have experienced. And he says, "I can't stop remembering them. I can't stop remembering all the places in my story that are creating bitterness in me. I can't remember the places in my story that when I think about them, they create poison in me. It feels like they're killing me." To remember these places in my story where I know grief and loss and betrayal, where I've committed those things. And he asked the Lord to remember those places. Now, really important, biblical reality. When you ask the Lord to remember, it's not like saying, "Lord, we remember that today's Sunday and he's like, "Oh, man, I totally slip by me. I forgot. I forgot today was Sunday. Thank you for letting me remember. Remembering for the Lord, the plea for the Lord to remember has this. We know you have made promises. We know who you are. We you act on those promises now. We remember in such a way that we know you haven't forgotten." So, Lord, we remember the things that are poisoning me. We remember the things that are bitter in my story. And will you in those places also show me that you haven't forgotten me? Also show me that your steadfast love never ceases. Also show me how faithful you are, that your mercies are new every morning. And they never end. I need while I am self-poisoning and eating bitter herbs, I of my story and my life and my world, I need to know that you haven't abandoned me and that you're still faithful. I need to know that there's nothing that I could do or have done that would cause you to stop being faithful to me. He's asking the Lord to remember His pain and His heartache and to remind them of how faithful He is. So, isn't that an interesting request? Lord, see me, see my story, see the places in my past, maybe even like as recent as yesterday, that are causing great bitterness in me, and then help me to remember who you are. So, what do you think it says about a singer, songwriter, poets, who's writing a song of grief and lament to ask the Lord to remember pain and heartache? What do you think he had to believe? Like, how could you possibly ask Yahweh, the God of the heavens, to remember pain and bitterness in poison? This is how faithful the Lord is. And what the writer of lamentation is new in part, here's what we know now in full. The Lord was so faithful, He so remembered our pain, He so saw our pain and our heartache, He so remembered His promises. He is so constantly reliable and never forgot what He promised. That in order to redeem the poison and the bitterness, He actually wrote Himself into that story. The Lord wrote Himself into the story of the world in order to bring us back home. See, in the person of Jesus, the Lord shows up and He drinks the bitter cup. In the person of Jesus, get even this like reality. This lamentation author is watching Zion be ransacked and burned to the ground. He's watching literally like the lifeblood be drained out of Zion. He's watching it be completely depleted in ransacked. And that's exactly what happened to Jesus too. Like, the God who He's praying to is the God who would then come and be depleted of His lifeblood too and completely ransacked. He's depleted, destroyed, drained. Meaning God is so faithful, He is faithful to the point of His own death. So you can ask the Lord to remember your pain and your poison. You can ask the Lord to remember your heartache and your bitterness because He knows what it's like. And then to tie up all the Zion bows here, this is too good. Like, if you fast forward to the end of the story, like, lamentations watch a Zion get burned to the ground and then there's exiles and captivity who are asking for Babylon to not be their permanent home and to return to Zion. But Zion is just this, Zion is a real place. It's also so much more than just like the geographical location. It's the promises of God for the world. And if you fast forward to the end of our story, do you know how the whole mess of the world ends? Yes, we're in exile now. Yes, we're in Babylon now. But do you know what the faithfulness of God and what the blood of Jesus also has secured for you? That one day the heavenly Zion will come here. One day in the New Jerusalem, you won't weep by the rivers of Babylon anymore. One day all will be mended and all will be well. And so here's what we do. God's faithfulness has begun something and He will complete it. God's faithfulness will bring Zion here, even though we're weeping by the rivers of Babylon now. So while we weep by the rivers of Babylon, here's what we do. We sing Zion songs. We don't hang our liars up. Because here's what we're choosing to believe. I don't just believe in Jesus. I believe Jesus. The Jesus is not a liar. And as a faithful king, He will bring Zion and all of her bliss to us. So we sing Zion songs while we wait. So let us pray and let us sing as we wait faithfully for Him, Jesus. So many days we want to hang the liar up, hang the guitar up, turn the music off, because it just feels like a taunt. It feels like there's too much pain and heartache. There's too many grieving and weeping stories. There's too much betrayal. There's too much horror. It's really hard to be faithful in weight, Jesus. But as the faithful one, would you help us to not just believe in you but believe you? That you will bring Zion here. You have bought it and secured it. And you're preparing a place and one day you will bring the heavenly city to us. So comfort us while we wait, Jesus. Help us see how faithful you are. Help us see how faithful you have been. And how faithful you will be. Let's go all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.