Sunday, October 9th, 200581st in a Series on the Life of JesusRun Time – 0:45:12
What to do When the Bottom Falls Out of Your World
It’s a pleasure to be with you today. I would like us to turn our attention to a passage of scripture in Luke where Jesus tells his disciples some very hard and disturbing news. Have the scripture read.
Scripture Reading
Then He told them a parable:"Behold the fig tree and all the trees;as soon as they put forth leaves, you see it and know for yourselves that summer is now near. “So you also, when you see these things happening, recognize that the kingdom of God is near. “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all things take place. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. “Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap;for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. “But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place and to stand before the Son of Man.”
(Luke 21:29-36 NASB)
Think about how the disciples would have felt that day. They were sitting on top of a hill overlooking the city and He had just told them that the entire temple was going to be torn down and Jerusalem was going to be crushed to the ground and all of their hopes and their expectations were absolutely destroyed. In literally just a few moments their worlds probably fell apart, at least what they anticipated, what they hoped for just crumbled. In a moment the bottom fell out of their lives.
You see the disciples entered Jerusalem a couple of days before the events that we are studying right now, which we call the “Olivet Discourse”, and people are screaming and cheering and hailing Jesus as the King. His disciples believe that he is going to establish a kingdom in which they are going to enjoy position and power and money. They believe that in the kingdom that Jesus is about to establish that they are going to enjoy great blessings and prosperity. Yet Jesus has just told them that the temple in Jerusalem is going to be destroyed, earthquakes, and famines, and plagues were about to come upon the earth. He is telling them that there are going to be wars, and rumours of wars that are about to come upon the earth. He is teaching that persecution is going to be unleashed upon the church. A horrible persecution in which ones family member is going to betray other family members. In this persecution Jesus tells them that some of them are going to die because of their commitment to Christ. And they’re sitting there thinking, “we were expecting a Kingdom, we were expecting thrones, we were expecting power and wealth and position and prominence and the good life, what are you trying to tell us here Jesus.” Jesus told them what was going to happen, and literally in that moment, I think as they sat there overlooking the Kidron valley, their dreams died, and their worlds fell apart. They are shattered, they are dismayed, they’re devastated, and literally their world falls apart. What Jesus does in this passage of scripture, very specifically, He gives them some teaching, specifically designed to help them keep it together when their world would fall apart, and as I have said this morning that is what I want us to focus on; how it is that we can keep it together when our world falls apart.
There are probably people here this morning whose worlds have in some sense fallen apart or have begun to fall apart or you are living in the shattered remnants of what was a pretty good life, some of you may have lost loved ones, some of you may have received a diagnosis and are literally fighting for your life, some of you may have been deeply wounded by divorce, your marriage is falling apart and are reeling with feelings of rejection, shame and disappointment, some of you may have been scarred by the conflict that you have witnessed in your homes as you have grown up as kids, others as parents are deeply disappointed with the kids that you have raised, some of you may have recently lost your jobs, your businesses may have failed, your dreams may have died, you may have lost your health, lost friendships or maybe you’ve lost hope. Or you may be able to say to me, “Paul, I’m not one of those people, things are going pretty well right now”. Just remember there are no guarantees in this life. Being a follower of Christ does not make us immune from tragedy and suffering and heartbreak.
In this passage of scripture, I believe that Jesus gave his disciples and he gives us four simple things that we need to remember, we need to sort of tuck away and hold tightly to when and if our world falls apart.
1. The first one is pretty simple, the first one is this “trust that Jesus is working out His will in your life”. Make a decision to choose to believe that what happens in your life is according to God’s will, it is part of His design for your life. When we experience trial and difficulty in our lives and it seems that our world just falls apart and the foundation that we have gotten used to begins to shake, we as God’s people need to understand that God’s will is being worked out in our life, despite the circumstances, it is a choice that we need to make, a choice to believe that we need to make.
Think about this, in this passage of scripture, Jesus says two things from verse twenty nine to thirty two He tells a parable and He says two things, He says, “look at the trees; and when the trees put forth buds you know they are about to put forth leaves and summer is on it’s way.” So Jesus says I want you to know this, all of the things that I have told you, all of these earth shaking, earth shattering disappointing things that I’ve warned you are about to happen here on the earth are all going to happen in the next forty years, understand this, there is a God ordained process unfolding, God is doing something, it’s going to take a particular amount of time and it’s going to include all kinds of difficulties and struggles and wars and pain, but listen, in it God is working out His plan, God is accomplishing His purposes, God is doing what God said He would do.
It’s important for us to understand that what was happening in this particular point in history, was that God was introducing into history His Son’s new kingdom. In order for the Kingdom of Christ to be firmly established the Temple in Jerusalem had to be destroyed. You see these people were living in a generation of transition, a generation of change. It was a very tumultuous, a very painful, a time in history that was full of upheaval, full of change and full of suffering. But behind it, God was at work, bringing to conclusion an old covenant, that the bible says wasn’t particularly effective in order to introduce in our world a brand new covenant that is perfect, a covenant in the blood of Jesus rather than a covenant through the blood of bulls and goats.
Now that didn’t make it any easier, the church was still suffering, as they stood up and said to their Jewish brothers and sisters who were still worshipping the temple, “that way is wrong now, this is the right way.” But behind it all God was at work, in back of it all God was fulfilling His purposes in history, God was working out a plan and I want you to know this, I want you to choose to believe it when and if your world falls apart, understand that God has a purpose in our suffering, God has a purpose in the difficulties and the pain and the challenges of life.
Just think of Joseph. Joseph was the favoured son of a wealthy farmer living in Israel, his dad liked him better than all the other brothers and his dad gave him all sorts of privileges and all sorts of fancy clothes and his brothers progressively grew to be very jealous of him. So they decided to kill him, one of the older brothers says, “let’s not kill him, let’s just sell him”, so they sold him to a group of Midian slave traders who took him down to Egypt, and he was sold toPotiphar who was very, very wealthy man who worked for Pharaoh. Potiphar hired him, he grew, and because he was a very talented young man, he grew in his importance and significance in Potiphar’s household until one day Potiphar’s wife decides that she would like to have a relationship with this young Joseph. Joseph was an honourable man who runs away but she grabs his coat and then she goes to her husband and says, “you know what that young slave, that young Hebrew slave tried to do, he just tried to rape me”.
So Joseph ends up in jail. But he’s got gifts and abilities that God has given him to predict the future, he’s a prophet. So there in prison are the Pharaohs cup bearer and his baker who have fallen out of favour with Pharaoh. They ask Joseph, “what’s going to happen to us”, Joseph tells the Baker that he is going to die, but that the Cup Bearer was going to be reinstated”. Sure enough it happened, and Joseph asks the Cup Bearer, “when you get reinstated, just remember to mention me to the Pharaoh and maybe I can get out of prison.
Two years go by and finally Pharaoh has a dream that his wise men cant interpret. The Cup Bearer remembers Joseph and Joseph comes and interprets the dream, Joseph becomes the Prime Minister of Egypt. Years later his brothers come back down to Egypt looking for food, because there’s a great famine and everyone else is starving except the people in Egypt because Joseph has provided for the people of Egypt.
Finally Joseph’s brothers come down to Egypt to buy food and through a number of experiencesthey finally recognize him. His father finally comes down and everything is great and the family is reunited, but the brothers in the back of their minds are saying “someday he’s going to get his own back, someday this guy is going to take it out on us because of all the rotten things we did to him and the only thing that is holding him back is the fact that dad is still alive. And then the Father dies and his brothers go to Joseph and they say, “are you going to take your revenge?” It is Joseph response that I would like you to listen to.
"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”
(Genesis 50:20 NASB)
Joseph’s world fell apart and for years and years and years he struggled, and he agonized, and he was in prison and was rejected and he felt all sorts of pain as a result of what happened to him, but through it all he knew that God had a plan and in the end he was able to say, “what you intended for evil, God meant for good to bring about this preset result”. Folks remember this, God loves you, if Jesus Christ is your saviour, you are a child of the living God and He loves you personally and intimately, He cares, He is not capricious and He will never allow you to suffer just for the sake of suffering, He always has a plan.
2. Secondly, always make a choice to rest in the truth that God’s word is true, look with me at the next couple of versus. Jesus makes a statement, he says, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away, until all the things I have told you, all these things take place”, he says here is a truth, “Heaven and Earth will pass away someday, but hear this, my words will not pass away”. Jesus said to them, what I have predicted will happen. You can believe my words. He told them “my words are absolutely sure and true, they are a foundation, an eternal enduring foundation for your life, hold on to them.” So the early church did that.
Now the things that Jesus spoke about didn’t come to pass immediately. All the stuff that we have talked about from Luke chapter twenty one didn’t come to pass in the early days of the church, as a matter of fact nothing really changed. Essentially everything stayed the same except the church began to be persecuted, Stephen was killed and James was killed, Saul began arresting and killing Christians. But all the earthquakes and all the famines and plagues that Jesus had predicted did not come to pass. And so people began to question whether the words of Jesus could really be trusted. But the early church had staked Jesus’ reputation and in some sense staked their lives on that principle, that Jesus’ words were trustworthy and true and provided a solid, immovable, permanent foundation for their lives.
However when we look at the historical record everything that Jesus had predicted in 30 AD had come to pass by 70 AD. History shows us that everything that Jesus said came to pass. His words were true. And today His Word remains true.
Therefore the second thing I want to remind you about today is this. When the bottom falls out of your world remember to turn to and trust and rest in the Living Word of God.
I remember when, just after my first child was born I had a nervous breakdown. I just, broke down, emotionally, physically and psychologically, I just fell apart. I didn’t realize what I was doing; I was just living on adrenaline and just piling more and more and more stuff into my life because I thought that working harder and harder for God was what he wanted me to do. I ended up in the basement of my home, broken, literally broken. Now God taught me some amazing lessons through that experience. But the thing I learned that I would like to share with you is this. When the bottom fell out of my world the one thing that brought me comfort and was the source of my healing was the Living and Powerful Word of God. My wife Cindy with our three day old baby in her arms would come downstairs with my daughter in her arms and the bible, and she would open the Psalms and she would read to me the Psalms and suddenly the word of God became living and dynamic and powerful and active, it just sort of went down inside and it comforted me, gave me peace, it gave me a sense of strength, just allowed me to hold on, it was almost like God was talking to me, it was God speaking to me. I don’t know what challenges I have in my future and I don’t know what painful paths that the Lord is going to call me to walk. But I do know that his Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path and that I can not only find guidance in it but that I can also find peace and comfort and encouragement and strength.
The third key to keeping it together when the bottom falls out of your world is seen in what Jesus says in verse thirty four, He says, “Be on your guard, be alert, be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and if you do this, the day won’t come upon you suddenly like a trap”.
3. The third point I want to share with real briefly is this, “Make a choice to reject counterfeit coping mechanisms”. Jesus identifies three counterfeit coping mechanisms that people in His day and people in our day are want to embrace, when our world falls apart people will go for counterfeit coping mechanisms, it’s natural to look for counterfeit coping mechanisms.
Jesus deals with three of them, dissipation, drunkenness and worry, the last two make a lot of sense but let me explain the first one, dissipation, the word literally means hung over, it means looking to physical experiences to heal the hurts of life. To life a life of dissipation is to try and satisfy emotional and spiritual needs with something physical something sensual. So when life gets hard we want a physical experience, something sensual; something that touches the external man rather than dealing with the brokenness and the hurt and the wound in the inner person. Its going to the fridge when life gets tough, when your world falls apart, you look for comfort food.