All right, guys. Good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and I'm so grateful that you've joined us on this October Sunday. I'm hopeful that we don't have to hear that noise again, but who knows? Who knows? Some of you may have noticed that I'm wearing Georgia Tech colors for no particular reason. I just thought I'd wear them today. But speaking of suffering, speaking of UNC football, today's message is about suffering, so it kind of works out, those of you who stayed up late to get your dreams crushed last night. This morning, we're talking about Great Is Thy Faithfulness. When we planned the series, I knew that I wanted to take at least one week and talk about a hymn. Because hymns are, if you ask me like what songs are you listening to, what Christian worship are you listening to, I have a playlist called Acoustic Hymns on Spotify, and I listen to that probably more than anything. I just like hymns, and so I knew that one of the sermons was going to be focused on a hymn, but I didn't know which one, and so I did what I often do when I don't know what to preach about or talk about. I ask Jen what she thinks. Jen's my wife. She's not just a lady that I ask questions to, and I asked her what I should do, and she immediately said, Great is Thy Faithfulness. We love Great is Thy Faithfulness. It's one of our favorite songs. Jen even walked down the aisle to that in our wedding. And so I dove into the song Great is Thy Faithfulness a few weeks ago to prepare for this morning. And what I was not expecting to find was that this is really a song about grief. It's a song to be sung in the midst of grief. And so this morning is necessarily about pain and suffering and struggle and grief. And we've all walked through those seasons. Some of y'all know our story well enough to know that 2019, early 2019 to the end of 2020, were some hard years for Jen and I. In early 2019, her dad John was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he fought the good fight for almost two years and died in the last days of 2020. And that was probably the first time that we moved through that kind of profound grief at loss. And it really shapes you when you walk that path. In a lot of ways, there's my life before we walked that and life after. And the perspectives are very different. And one of the things that I learned in that season of suffering and loss and grief was, and I know that this is, I'm just getting right to it. I know it. I know this is heavy. I know this is even grim, but it's just true. And this is the way that my mind works. Maybe that's why one of my favorite books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. But as we were walking with John on his journey to eternity, it occurred to me somewhere in there that best case scenario in life, you walk with your parents into death. When you are born, the best possible outcome for that relationship with your parents is to accompany them as they transition into eternity. That's the best possible outcome. It's a path we all have to walk. In fact, if we don't walk that path, holding our parents' hands as they fade away, if we don't walk that path, it's because something more sad than that happened, right? They lost you. You were estranged. It was tragic and sudden when they passed. I know that's dark and I know that that's heavy, but I think it's a helpful reality to understand that when you are born, hopefully to loving parents, that the best case scenario for that relationship is for you to one day hold their hand as they pass into eternity. If you have walked that path, you know what an incredible honor it is. I was talking with somebody this week who lost their brother, and he was able to sit with him for the last two weeks while he faded. And I just said to him, it's a unique privilege in life to be invited into that sacred space, isn't it? And he said, yes, very much. So I would say, if you are walking that path, if you have walked it, when one day you find yourself walking it, I know that it is not much solace, but consider yourself blessed. It's a blessing from God to walk with a parent, to walk with a loved one in that way. We don't all have that opportunity. But if that's the best case scenario, what that means is life is going to be filled with strife. Life is going to be filled with grief. I make the comment sometimes that no one dodges the raindrops of tragedy for their whole life. No one does. Something sad will happen. Grieving, suffering, loss is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. Just this last week, within the last week, I went to the funeral of a 40-year-old friend of mine who suddenly passed away. I told you guys about this last week. She has two kids, middle school and elementary school. It's tragic. On Wednesday, I drove to Asheboro and I did the funeral for a man that went to my church in Atlanta who moved up here. And I sat with his kids. He has kids are twins they're both 53 and I talked with his daughter very successful woman she was really struggling and I was talking to her and I just mentioned to her that she had walked through this before and I was sorry that but she knew this path because she had lost her mom and she said said, well, this one, she said, yeah, but this one feels different because I had my dad at that one and I don't have parents anymore. It's hard. I told you I was on the phone yesterday with somebody from our church who just lost their brother. As soon as I hung up that phone call, I called somebody else in our church whose dad just started in hospice care. There is a reality in this life of pain and suffering. And in light of the ubiquity of that human suffering, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. In light of the ubiquity of human suffering and grief and tragedy and loss, we can be grateful for a Bible that includes the book of Lamentations. Now, the book of Lamentations is not a popular one, okay? If you have a Bible, if you were faithful and you brought your Bible this morning, I'm so glad that you did. If you don't have a Bible, you can get one in the seat back in front of you. Turn to Lamentations for me, and you'll be able to look at some of these things as we look at them here in a few minutes. It's five chapters, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations. If you get to Ezekiel, you've gone too far. If you can't find it after a few minutes, use your table of contents or hand it to the person next to you who's a better Christian. The book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems that are laments. And a lament is an expression of anguish or grief. It is an expression of deep sorrow. And Lamentations is not the only place where these laments make an appearance. I told you last week as we were talking about Psalms that there's several different categories of Psalms. And one of the categories is Psalms of Lamentations, Psalmsms of lament. We find poems of lament in Job. We find them in Isaiah. And so all through the Bible, we have these poems and these songs and these writings on laments, on deep anguish and deep grief. And I am grateful for a Bible that has those. I'm grateful for a Bible that does not hide from that part of the human experience. We do not serve a God that seeks to whitewash those things and push those off to the fringes and off to the side while we're happy and joyful over here. And in a lot of ways, I'll talk about towards the end, pain and grief and loss can sometimes seek to drive a wedge between us and God and push us further away from God. And so it would seem to his benefit to kind of cast aside, put pain in the shadows so that we don't acknowledge it. But God, in his goodness and in his wisdom and in his word, has chosen to bring pain front and center and show it to us over and over and over again and even show how the saints have responded to it. So we do not have to be afraid of pain or grief and we don't have to pretend like it doesn't exist. We don't have to whitewash it. And because God doesn't flinch about including pain and grief and the reality of suffering in his word, then we don't have to flinch about including it in our church. The church should not be a place where we take people who are grieving and who are hurting and who are suffering loss and put them to the side and ask them to quietly get over it until they can join our happy, joyful circle again. That's not how church works. That's not how the Bible works. That's not how God works. So that's not how we should work. It is okay and right and good to bring our pain and our grief into the middle of the fellowship and say, this is what I'm doing. This is what was happening to me. And this is how I'm suffering. We should do that. But I'm grateful for a God, for his word that does not hide from the reality of suffering and loss. Because everyone in here, everyone in here over the age of 30 has a place they can go. If I were to ask you what was your hardest time, you have a place where you can go. You have something that you encountered that was sad, that was hard, that challenged your faith. And maybe it was so profound that you even mark your life by it. There was me before that and me after that. And if you are one of the lucky few who says, you know, I really haven't known that season, I'm so happy for you. You will know it. You will. It's a reality of life. We will walk through times of profound suffering and grief. And the Bible doesn't flinch about that. And I have committed to you that I will preach about that reality just as often as it comes up in Scripture. Because shame on us if we perpetuate this idea of faith that tells us if we'll just pray hard enough and love hard enough and be faithful enough that we will dodge the raindrops of tragedy, that God will put a protective shield over the ones he loves the most who are the most faithful. That is not in the Bible. That is not in that situation too. And so God includes it in his scripture. And in doing that, I believe that poems of lament imbue human suffering with a sacred dignity. I believe that these poems of lament, that finding deep anguish and grief in scripture, imbues our suffering that we walk through with a sort of sacred dignity. And I don't really know how best to explain it except to say that I'm fond of reminding myself and reminding you guys when I can that we all stand on shoulders. You are who you are, for better or worse, because of the shoulders you stand on. Because of your mom and your dad and your grandparents. Because of the people who were around you when you were being formed, because of the successes or failures that came before you. You stand on those shoulders. I've reminded us as a church, we stand on spiritual shoulders. We do not, as Grace Raleigh, float out in the ether untethered to church history. No, we are a part of church history. We are carrying the torch for our generation, but we are standing on shoulders that go back thousands of years. We stand on shoulders of faith. And in suffering, I think it's important to acknowledge through scripture that we stand on suffering shoulders as well. The generations who have come before us, they know suffering. They know hardship. And the reality of it is, whether we like to admit it or not, we're the lucky ones. Our generations experience far less suffering than their generations. It was not lost on me, and even in other countries. It wasn't lost on me last week as I was at the funeral for Jodi, that we're in a room, there's 750 people in there because this tragic thing happened. This mom died. And 750 people stopped their Saturday and went to a room and celebrated her life and worshiped God together. While on the other side of the globe, there's Palestinian and Jewish moms dying who are not getting services. They don't have time to stop and bring 750 people in and celebrate that life. Life just marches on. And so, comparatively speaking, we are the lucky ones. But just like getting to walk with your parents in their final hours doesn't make those final hours not sad, acknowledging that we are comparatively lucky doesn't make our hurt hurt less, which is why I think the song Great Is Thy Faithfulness can be one of hope. It can be a profound anthem for us during pain. But to understand Great Is Thy Faithfulness, we've really got to understand the book of Lamentations. So you've got it there open in front of you, and I don't expect you to look at this right now, but it's five chapters. Chapters one and two and three and four are acrostic poems. They're all 22 verses. Each verse starts with a different Hebrew letter, obviously in the Hebrew, not in the English that we are looking at or whatever language you read your Bible in. And then chapter three is a little bit different formulaically than the others. But all five chapters are poems and all five chapters are poems of grief and suffering and strife. If you've ever tried to read through Lamentations, I did, sat down, read it cover to cover before I started to write the sermon on it. It's a hard book to read. It is not a hopeful book. It is not, besides what I'm going to show you, besides this one little nook right in the middle, it is not a faith-filled book. It is a book of despair. And so I wanted to acquaint you with kind of the sense of the book of Leviticus so we can understand the deep anguish that the author is talking about. It's attributed to Jeremiah historically, but recent scholarship calls that into question. But we're going to say Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations. Look with me at chapter 2, verses 11 and 12. These are hard verses, but I want you to see the kind of pain that he's talking about here. as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom. I cannot think of anything more profoundly sad than that. That a mom clutching her small child as that child's life is poured out on her chest. And I do not think that was a figurative verse, because the book of Lamentations is written in a response and reaction to the downfall of Jerusalem being conquered by the Babylonians and the Jewish people being carried off into slavery. The book of Lamentations is written while the smoke rises from the ashes of Jerusalem in the background and slavery awaits in the foreground. So please understand that to the Jewish mind, to this person, to Jeremiah, and to those who would read it, the anguish they are expressing is because of actual grief that they are seeing. Women and children dying in the streets is what they are seeing as the city is conquered. But it's not just that that they are grieving. This also is a grieving of a loss of a promise from God because God promised to care for his people and God promised to look out for them. He promised to protect them. And more than anything, he promised them that land, the land that they were on. And then God allows a foreign army to come in to destroy his city, the crown jewel of Israel, to lay waste Jerusalem and the temple and take his children that are claimants of his promise and march them into slavery in a land where they don't belong. Back pretty close to where Abraham came from originally. So when they are marching, it is not just the sights that they have seen that have broken their hearts. It's not just the ones that they have loved and lost that have broken their hearts. It's not just the future that they face that's breaking their heart, but it's also the thought, the reality to them that their God had failed them. Their God had broken his promise. Either he was unfaithful or he was weak. But their hopes had been dashed. It's with that that Jeremiah writes these laments. This verse in particular struck me about women and children in the streets as their city was destroyed around them. I wrote this sermon in the days following the original Hamas attacks a couple of weeks ago. And I didn't have to imagine what it would look like to see what Jeremiah was writing about. Because all I had to do was turn on my TV. And you see horrific pain, horrific violence, and horrific evil. I watched a dad celebrate when he found out that his eight-year-old daughter was dead rather than captured because being captured was worse than being killed. That's sad. And my heart breaks for not just the Jewish people who have lost their lives, but for all the Israelis. It's multicultural that have suffered needlessly for this. And my heart breaks for the Palestinians who are caught in the middle of a war that they did not choose to wage. And I don't know the answers there. I don't know the right thing to do. The only thing I know to do is to pray for them. Don't turn our eyes from it and pretend like it's not happening. To be grateful that we don't live in a place where we have to suffer in that way. I've thought over and over and over again what I would do with my young family if I was unlucky enough to be born in Palestine. How do you protect them? And the thought that really struck me as I was reflecting on that and reading these verses is that there truly is nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah wrote these words 2,500 years ago. And here we are right back in the same place. Women and children are dying in the streets of Israel. The suffering until Jesus comes back is unavoidable. And then you flip to the end of Lamentations. The very last verses. This is the time to finish on a high note and encourage God's people. Isn't it, Jeremiah? Not to him. He finishes it this way. I sure do like the sound of pages turning in here. That's good. Verse 21 and 22. Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us. The end. That's the book. It ends with a dot, dot, dot. God, please restore us. Please take us back. Please make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Please, God. Unless you're just going to forget us. That's it. There's no resolution there. Which is why I think that these verses in chapter 3 are remarkably powerful verses. These verses are the only hopeful, optimistic verses in the whole book of Lamentations, and we find them in the dead center. And if you know your hymns, these verses are going to sound really familiar. Look with me at chapter 3 and listen to these words. Verse 21. I love the way he starts this verse off with that phrase, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. This I call to mind, but therefore I have hope. In the midst of all the suffering he's written, he's seen the ashes of Jerusalem are fading behind him as he's led into slavery. He has seen the very worst of human suffering. He has finished the book with uncertainty, but in the middle of it, almost like a nail being driven into a wall with a curtain, just letting it drape there, holding up the last tendrils of faith is this declaration of hope in the middle of it. But this I bring to mind and it gives me hope. Great is your faithfulness. Your mercies are new every morning. You provide for me and I believe in you and I hope in you, God, because I know that you are good. Despite everything that I've seen, despite everything that's happened, despite all the questions that I cannot answer, I know that you are good. And see, I always thought that Great is Thy Faithfulness was a jubilant song. It was to be sung in seasons of plenty. It was to be sung when we realize we're blessed. Great is your faithfulness, O God, my Father. All I've needed, your hand has provided. I have all that I need. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. I thought it was a song to be sung in the midst of plenty. But it's actually a song to be declared in the midst of grief. Which is interesting to me that Jen chose it. We're not too far off. As the song to walk down the aisle, maybe she knew something that I didn't about the years ahead. But make no mistake about it, and I love this. Great is thy faithfulness is an anthem of defiance. You understand? The song, great is thy faithfulness, is an anthem of defiance. And here's what I mean by defiance. Because when you've walked through grief and pain and hurt, you know something to be true. Those things have whispered in your ears. When you are hurting, when you are suffering, when your life is marked by sorrow, that pain whispers in your ear. The same thing it was whispering to the ears of the Hebrew people as they marched away from the ashes of Jerusalem. That pain will whisper in your ear, your God is not big enough. Your God has forgotten you. Your faith has failed you. Your faith is not serving you. Your God is too weak. He's too apathetic. Or your faith is weak. or this is your fault, that pain and grief will begin to drive a wedge between you and God. It will whisper things when you're trying to fall asleep that your faith has failed you and your God has failed you. And if you let it linger long enough, it will work to convince you to walk away from your God. And when you go to the place you went when I talked about your darkest hour, we both know we heard those voices then. We both know we hear them sometimes now. We know people who have let those voices win and have walked away from faith because the pain was too great. So it is those voices that this anthem is defying. Jeremiah was hearing those voices as he wrote Lamentations, and yet in the middle of it, nail in the wall, he hangs his hope. Great is your faithfulness, he declares it, despite everything going on, despite the fact that, God, you could have stopped that and you didn't. God, you made us a promise and it feels broken. Lord, I don't understand how these things can be happening to these people. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. How can you possibly watch the news and see what's happening in Israel and not be moved? How can you possibly watch the news and see what happened in Maine this week and not be moved and not wonder and not ask those questions that we all ask in the midst of pain. God, why are you letting this happen? And I don't understand. And I can't explain why. And I don't know what to tell my kids. And my faith feels weak. But in the midst of that dismay, I choose to sing with Jeremiah and all the saints, great is your faithfulness. God, I don't understand this, but I know you're good. Great is your faithfulness. God, I don't have enough to get through today, but I know you're going to give me the strength. I love that line, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, even in the darkest of times. So from now on, for the rest of your life, when you hear the song, great is thy faithfulness, I want your mind to rush to Lamentations chapter three. I want you to see it holding up the tendril of hope and faith and our creator and uncertain times and things we don't understand. It's an actual choice to choose faith in those moments and declare to God, I don't understand it, but great is your faithfulness. And it's an anthem of defiance because when we choose to sing it in the midst of pain, we are telling those voices of pain and grief and fear. Not today. You will not rob me of my faith today. This pain will not take my faith from me. And it will not take it from me because I know who my Jesus is. And I love him I trust him and I know he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And I don't see how, and I don't see why, and I don't know when, but one day he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. And so today this pain will not take my faith from me because great is his faithfulness. And I will declare it even when I don't feel it. So in a minute, we're going to sing. And when we do, let this be an anthem. If you're walking through pain right now, sing it. Defy it. Declare it. When you hear it in the future, sing it as an anthem that my faith will not be shaken by the circumstances that I'm walking through. But I know that for me, for the rest of my life, whenever I hear great is thy faithfulness, I will remember it as an anthem of defiance that in the midst of the greatest suffering and the greatest trials, we stand up and we choose to sing, God, I don't understand, but I know you are good and great is your faithfulness. Let's pray. Father, your faithfulness is steadfast. You have never broken a promise. You have never not done what you said you were going to do. There's so much that we don't understand, God. There's so much in life at times that seeks to rob our faith from us. And so, God, we pray that you would give us strength for today. Continue to give us hope for tomorrow. That we would declare this as an anthem against the evil one who would seek to tear down our faith. Lord, if there are those here who are listening, who don't feel like your faithfulness is really great right now. Would you give them the strength to sing? Would you give them the strength to declare? Would you give them the strength to defy today? God, we thank you for being good. Thank you for loving us. We thank you for being faithful to us. Help us see it more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.