Jessie & Co. June 6

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Maybe she did.

Thank you worship team.

This morning or scripture reading comes from Philippians 4:4 to 7 and 10 to 13. I'll be reading from the NIV.

Rejoice in the lord always and I will say it again Rejoice let your judgement gentleness be evident to all the Lord is near do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving present your requests to God and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ. I Rejoice greatly in The Lord. At Last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed you have been concerned but you have no opportunity to show it. I'm not saying this because I'm a need for I've learned to be content with whatever the circumstances I know that is what it is to be in need. And I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well fed or hungry weather living and Plenty or in want I can do everything through him who gives me strength At this time, I would like to invite Arden up. I don't know Arden that well not come up. I don't know aren't that. Well, I know him through his speaking and little bit through his family. What I do know and what I think I know about you. I appreciate Arden. You are continue to explore faith in a genuine way many of us we end up. Landing at a place and then we start reading the type of things that support our point of view and that's something that my impression is you have refused to do and you continue to grow and you continue to challenge us and you use my impression of you is that you read things from various points of view and you can take to you to rub that up against the scriptures and dumb and that's why I love listening to you because you continually challenged the way I look at the scriptures and it gives me a whole often a whole different way of looking at things. So thank you for that.

That was not scripted.

So I wonder if I'll be able to live up to that. this morning every now and then I need a little bit of Robert fulghum. I don't suppose, you know about him have a few little books by him somewhere in his books. He calls himself and Reverend Reverend. He explains that the secret of living a long life is you have to be responsible to her. Don't look in your smartphone books phones now to check that word is not in the dictionary, but he's not in the two dicks are as I checked, but I have lived a long life because I have been a lifelong respiro to her. What does it mean I've been breathing all my life. I think my future because I had a coupon breathing.

They need it. I need a little bit of funny stuff my life now and then because I'm at at by Nature a pessimist. I want spree State sermons on the Book of Ecclesiastes. Not this church, but equally Ecclesiastes is the most hopeless book in the Bible. And before I was done with that members of the church for voicing their extreme displeasure stopping me in the fire back there and asking me when will this on half on this be over? And so I aborted my plans and closed down sooner than I had planned to just imagining the Dreadful things that could happen tomorrow.

Maybe that's why Tennessee Ernie Ford song 16 tons has stuck with me forever since my youth years. I wonder if there's anybody here who remembers that going back to always few hands. Okay. I was just a week and a half ago. I made you a major major thing has happened in our lives. I had no idea it would happen when I put you in January by February Helen and I started doing some very careful talking and thinking and pray and I made a visit to Bridge Park Manor and talk and I filled in application form two weeks later. I came back and change that application form and about It it weeks ago almost there phone call. Hey, we've got a condo for you right now. And it's at will you talk to a two-year waiting list all but you and I said, yes. Over there now. That required very quickly selling our house and missing half of our properties thrift store. Main Street was it was water after load of furniture and household goods and so on. I reduce my library by 2/3 again. And now we were there and they have a habit there at mealtime to sing for the Happy Birthday song for anybody. We can have a little white haired lady old lady while she's younger.

Anyway, I'll just need a little lady. I've talked to her already married to a man from Belgium and she was born in Amsterdam. Netherlands are both Roman Catholics. I don't know when they came to Canada, but barely speak English yet. They Shine for her. I don't remember if you said you don't, Tennessee Ernie Ford. another day older and deeper in debt

Oh I said, you know about Tennessee Ernie Ford. I wouldn't have guessed that I was born one morning when the sun didn't shine. I picked up my shovel and walked to the mine. I love 16 tons of number nine coal as a straw boss said well bless my soul and I think the reason that song by Tennessee Ernie Ford and each stanza always with this refrain because my soul is My soul is owned by the same Peter. Would you call me? Because I owe my soul to the company store so hard he's wrapped up so much credit to The Company Store that they own his tool. That's the ultimate pessimistic stats fascinating. Apparently many people in society today and kind of feel that bit that way. And that's why I thought it was a good thing to start this this this these two sermons without look at Isaiah 40:8 strangely are fascinated by Trump and are leaving the Democratic party and moving over to Donald Trump. The writer of this article said that's very unusual because usually young people are interested in Progressive stuff ready psychologist in California analyze this and she says everything is just so negative. And then she adds to the end of the essay pessimism is not good for the incumbent being the incumbent president. Apparently pessimist can't think straight. They are ready to jump from the frying pan Into the Fire just for the sake of a change and here in Canada many people. I've noticed say that they've had it up to here with Justin Trudeau's happy ways team anymore. Anyway, after the soil mixture of little bit of American politics in Canadian politics and old-fashioned music and spice up with my stupid for taco sauce. I'm ready for the sermon and if you looked at the cover of the bulletin, you notice what I'm talking about. Hope Doesn't make sense. What's the point?

And my answer to that is in Isaac, Isaiah chapter 44 words. Hope makes you strong. That's it. That's a sermon now we're done. That was just my pup with some details. I know very well that not everybody agrees that hoping is good for you. Some see it as a weakness as a flight from the realities of Life. They see it as an irrational diversion, which may lead to irrational acts has the ancient Greeks had a story and you may not be into ancient Greek mythology, but it's really a very simple story Pandora's Box it was there in that box. The gods had collected and we're starting all the evils with which they wanted to torment humankind. Pandora was stupid enough to open that box and boiled sicknesses and Insanity vices and hunger and starvation and to our surprise also.

That surprises us that hope would be inside a box like that, but it would not have surprised the ancient Greeks because to their Minds Hope was a silly delusion. That one had to come to terms with whatever is is an accepted was toes ism. Go on with life like that longing for better things in the future. They saw as an ignoble weakness, but the Hebrew view which was up all over the Old Testament is all futuristic looking at looking ahead to what God will do. That's what Isaiah 40 is all about. Many people have agreed. So why is people have actually agreed with that? I checked out all around a bit. Found three poets British poets from the 1700s Alexander Pope. Says Hope Springs Eternal in the human breast. Oliver Goldsmith says you'll have to listen to this the hours we spend with happy prospects and view are more pleasing than those crowded with fruition. That puett exotic line musically that looking ahead and enjoying the prospects of what may happen is actually more fun than what it actually happens Samuel Johnson and his various people have decided that claimed that he was the wisest man Great Britain has ever produced Samuel Johnson said it is worth a thousand pounds a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things. It's all since I agree with those thoughts. I'll try to explain how it works before. I read Isaiah does not have to be rationally on evidences or logic. And I did this morning browsing the online use papers. I found this first by accident Derek was spoken by a woman in California. Hope is an Embrace of the unknown and the unknowable and alternative to the certainty of both Optimist and pessimist. That's exactly a line with what I had planned to preach here. Hope requires an imagination. Hope is like a dream. and for the Christians Is not Justin an alternative to optimism or pessimism, it's a matter of looking to God. I have it. I admire this California woman for the wisdom of the line, but there's something missing there that I have and she doesn't I have and come complete total absolute error vocal unchangeable. Confidence in the fact that God is there always there always with me all the time. As far as hope can be a life force in bad times jumps as in good times and darkness. We wait for light and tribulation. We long for Relief an illness. We look forward to Health in bondage. We yearn for freedom and Exile we dream of the Homeland. Hope keeps the situation fluid it refuses to see the present plight as the last word. I already mentioned the social commentators encounter here see a lot of pessimism in society. They also say that depressed people may not just sit there despondent lie hanging their heads. They may try to distract themselves with a constant menu of Thrills and excitement and fun. And sometimes with drugs and sometimes with crime but fun. I didn't notice that the modern secular blessing is have fun. You're not over the place signs off of program. Have fun folks. Have fun. When you have nothing to live for them, the only point in life seems to be to try to squeeze a bit of fun out of life at least and the most the most pessimistic of all the reminders. I referred to already the person who wrote Ecclesiastes. We're not quite sure of who was some say the Solomon so sure of that pessimistic advice eat drink and be merry the sounds good, right? That's the only alternative.

Jesus once told a story about a man who had very very well. He was a farmer very successful farmer tear down his buildings and build bigger buildings to store it all in and then you said yourself now I'm going to have it good eat and drink and God said tonight you will die. So now we turn to Isaiah to see what God speaking to his people that day had to say about Hope right now when we feel despondent or definitely in need of some hope we tend to analyze the circumstances. We studied carefully the storms of life trying to see if there's no actual you do have a silver lining or we appeared on the tunnel because we've heard that sometimes there's a light at the end of the tunnel and we will look and look and see if we can see a light at the end of our tunnel the profit does nothing of that kind. He points only at God. He speaks of God. He speaks for God and he slapped Us in the face with God. You see for seventy years or so these Hebrew people had been living in Babylon watching their overlords. The Babylonians two strong people worshipping their in their Idol temples and they felt weak and slaved they were enslaved and they witnessed these stronger people Revel in their idolatry the emperor Nebuchadnezzar who serves the same Gods as a people did how do you feature their fathers in Jerusalem who worship the Heavenly Creator it seemed to them that the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob had been too weak to do any good. And so for 70 years, they have not reflected on what it means to be the people of an important God that right pronunciation God. They had become acclimatized to buffalonian ways of thinking they still use it for additional God language, but had adopted adopted a Babylonian view of reality and the prophets first objective is not to send them on our return trip to Jerusalem, but you get them thinking like True Believers again to put God back into their picture of the future. How do I start reading Oliver's 10?

Isaiah 40:8 and now in chapter 44 most of the rest of the sermon the Lord God comes with Mike and his arm rules for him. His reward is with him and his recompense before him he will feed his flock Like a Shepherd. He will gather the Lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosom and gently lead the mother sheet.

Did you notice first of all gods might agrees with some of the songs just saying might have God, but right after that comes a reminder that this powerful God is that gentle God a careful God a caring God and I suggest to you that they were so use probably two thinking about the almighty power of God, and they remember that from the stories about Moses and Joshua and Samsung and so on that they hardly would have known how to relate to a gentle God. In fact, I wonder if we know how to relate to a gentle God. As I think of the Christian preaching I hear it seems to me that there rarely is a minister who ever mentions that that we have a God who is gentle. Like to mention that he was powerful strong and so on.

First of all, we must understand that the gentle God is not a weakling I Redondo verse 12 who has the measure of the waters in the hollow of his hand and Mark of the heavens with a Spam and close the dust of the earth and I measured and weighed the mountains and scales on the hills on the balance who has directed The Spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has instructed him. Whom did he consult for his Enlightenment who taught him the path of Justice who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding even the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales Lebanon would not provide. If you lean of your arse animals enough for a burnt offering all the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and empty.

Do you notice?

How we ask the questions over and over again? Where does God come from? Where did God get his knowledge? How did God do this? How did God do that? There is no answer here and that he reads speaks on and I continue reading.

To whom was 18 now to whom then will you like a god or what lightness Compares with him? And I don't at work man casted and a Goldsmith overlays it with gold and cast Torrid silver chains as a gift one chooses a mulberry wood was it will not want to make a really good I would last longer.

Do you notice he mocks the Babylonians? The gods of the Bible on Ben 10 joke. What is it? Just a piece of Mulberry word with silver trimmings. That's all. And then he goes on and I read it further. Have you not known have you not heard has it not been told you from the beginning have you not understood from the foundations of the earth it is he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spread them like at 10:50 who bring Spencer's to not and makes the rules of the earth as nothing.

The gentle God now seems aggressive. He has an in-your-face kind of a style. There's nothing apologetic about our gentle God when he speaks about him and his relationship to the world. And once when people get God's way of thinking into their heads, they will be able to Hope again the Babylonian Gods had names the prophet doesn't even mention them. It's as if they're so insignificant, they don't even deserve to be named there. Nothing just a piece of Good Wood decorated but against that fever humanistic background the great high god of Heaven and Earth who claims himself as being the only God So now the question arises. In view of the God we have a God who is all-powerful in his gentleness. Why do we wallow in despair?

If God would address us now Us in the 21st century in Canada. He might ask. Why do you say you will never be able to get along with your daughter?

Why do you say that? Your wife is a hopeless basket case. Why do you say that sending out missionaries is useless because those guys over there are too stupid to understand Wheels true spiritual stuff anyway. Why do you say that Muslims will always say that they did I'm a loving God is nonsense. Why do you say that? The future is hopeless because grocery prices are inflating at twice as fast as our pension checks. Why do you say that taking care of her health is unnecessary because sooner or later we all die anyway. Why let's read further.

verse 25 did I read that note? We didn't stop there first 25 know to whom then will you compare me or who is my equal does the Holy One the Holy One by the way is Isaiah's favorite term for God the Holy One of Israel. That's God lift up your eyes on high and see who created these he who brings out there who know what's up? Look at the host numbers and he calls them by name because he was great and strengths might be in power and not one of those tires is missing. Why you say? Oh Jacob on speaker Israel my way is hidden from the Lord and my right is disregarded by my God. Have you not known have you not heard the Lord is the Everlasting God the creator of the ends of the Earth. He does not faint or grow weary is understanding is unsearchable because power to the fan and strengthens the powerless there is even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall Mount up with wings like eagles they shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. It seems to me the prophet imagines Israel being flat-out was despair. They are faint-hearted and they are powerless. They can't act rightly because they think wrongly but you says oh and even the young guys are exhausted panting rounded unable to continue their race. There is hope there is hope because God is not weary. God is never tired. And from his position of infinite power he offers to empower the powerless ones and the sweet secret. How to connect wizard Powers 1 word used twice year. Did you notice? wait Wait, wait on the Lord and with us the prophet looks back to a long tradition. I thoughts in the Old Testament. I'm going to take you back to the Book of Psalms and just point out how that thing is used over and over again in the hymns of the Jewish people. I think I want to start Universe chapter 27.

Reading a book 27:14. Wait for the Lord be strong and Let Your Heart Take courage wait for the Lord chapter 33 now.

and verse 20

33:25 and chapter 33 it should be here.

Our soul waits for the Lord he is our help and shield.

And it's verse 7. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret over those who prosper in their way over those who carry out evil devices and verse 34 the same chapter. Wait for the Lord and keep to his way and he will exalt you to inherit the land and you will look on the destruction of the wicked. I'll take a big jump forward to Psalm 130.

130 and there's two versus I want to use their first five. I wait for the Lord my soul Waits and in his word. I hope my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning more than those who watch for the morning. Wait, what does it mean? It doesn't mean to be idle. to be lazy to be inactive to be impassive like the man who explains on the guy who's not looking for a job because I'm waiting for my laundry check ticket check to arrive.

I met those people I had a friend once who was always waiting for the Reader's Digest price to arrive. Yeah, that that's not what we mean by waiting to wait on God means to look to God to focus on God to talk things over with God to put our situation. Whatever it is right before God as he got. Here it is. This is what's happening in my life. Maybe it means counting on God. It means depending on God. It means expecting God to be involved with us. Maybe we should also say that we should be ready to serve God. Here's another funny little idea. Have you ever thought of the fact that when we go to the restaurant the people who come in and serve us our our Waiters?

What do we call the witcher's because they wait on us? They pay attention to us. They are there for us. They take our orders and they fill our cups. We call them our waiters. Maybe we should say tomorrow morning God. Hi there. Good morning. I will be your waiter today. Waiting on the Lord more seriously now. We should not conclude that the future has already been determined. Wait for the Lord. We should not assume too quickly that our prospects are as hopeless as they seem rather wait for the Lord. We should not resign ourselves to a future that will be as bad. Maybe worse than the past wait for the Lord. I would remind you this morning by some reason I did that we should not too easily agree with the fastest who say that the world is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter and soon the horses will be boiling over and life will and finally ultimately totally for good. Wait for the Lord Rider. Don't complain that you are doomed to the kind of life you live by the genes that you have inherited from your parents rather. Wait for the Lord. I don't expect the other world roll. Never be the same again after covid-19 rather. Let's wait for the Lord. And now I asked you to look once more at the three promises that we have in the last verse of the chapter. I read the verse again those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall Mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint not a pessimist to read this say this is this is a picture of how it is with human life young and and We might feel like pounding up, but then you get older and will you get more subdued and finally just walk in the end we crawl around with a walker. I don't think that's the point. I don't think that's what the prophet thought the prophet thought of three kinds of people that there are in God's kingdom. They all belong there. They all fit in there. There are those who are fires high-flyers have great ideas strong faith unlimited Vision. God can give them Wings to soar. And then there are the runners active either Roundup Ready for the race. That's how the Apostle Paul once described himself. God can give them the enduring power to run to the finish and then there are those who walk. Who don't seem to have an exciting life, they just judge and flawed. There's nothing self energy. There's no self-energizing thrill of flying high or the Adventure Island Jewel to do when they just move on one stubborn step after another always forward one step at a time, but always in the right direction as we conclude this morning. Whether you see the Christian Life as an adventure in flying high and soaring Like an Eagle on an updraft or whether you see it as pounding along on the racetrack trying to beat everybody else and be the first at the finish line or whether you see it as simply as a matter of Walking With Jesus. Just keeping your eyes on him making sure that you don't stress I to this side or that side wait on the Lord with hopeful trust and you will receive the strength to carry on. Why don't we know pray about it? gracious father I think some of us want to confess that when we see the troubles in our life or the troubles in Canada or the troubles in the USA. We are tending to throw up their hands in Despair and say who can fix all this. Father forgive us for awesome forgetting about you that you care about every country in the world that you care what all the people in the world that you care about Israel you care about the Palestinians you care about the ukrainians you care about the Russians father. This is your world and you care for it help us to understand that and help us to wait on you.

I meant that every day the spirit of God might move in our lives and point us in the right direction. Looking to God for another day living with God. Thank you for the answer. Amen.

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