Name the Lie, Find Freedom

Transcript

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[0:00] And now it's time for the sermon. The sermon text is Lamentations 4, 1 through 5. We're not going to go to that just yet. Just a quick word of introduction. So this is the fourth week of our book study. And we are, as Victoria said, we're about half. This is the fourth week out of six, so that's about halfway through. And we're in chapters 11 and 12 of the book. And we're in chapter 4 of Lamentations. And again, I'm going to define lament, but I'm also going to define the word prophetic in just a minute, because that's the name of the book, Prophetic Lament. So lament is a complaint directed at God, or even at nobody in particular, that I'm suffering mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, or probably all of those at the same time. It's a complaint that my current circumstances are terrible and my future circumstances aren't looking good. So lament is complaint in the shortest form of saying it. But there's more to it than that as we unpack it, as we've seen. Now our book is called. Prophetic Lament. Did you notice that? It's prophetic. And so that word prophetic actually sometimes gets misunderstood, especially when you're a kid. Because when I was a kid, I always thought all the prophet did was predict the future,

[1:13] like sort of a Nostradamus type of person. Like, oh, it's going to rain next Tuesday, and it came through. That was a prophet. But actually, prophets speak on God's behalf. That's their function, is they speak on God's behalf. They speak what God tells them to say. Sometimes it is a prediction about the future, but often those predictions about the future are really more like warnings. Like, if you keep doing this, then this big thing is going to happen that's going to be bad for you. But if you stop doing this, then this other thing won't happen. So that's kind of the future. But there are other prophecies, like you see in Daniel, that are very much future oriented, right?

[1:46] But that's just part of it. Just part of being a prophet is talking about the future and the warning. The other part of the prophet is speaking God's voice into a situation that's wrong. And that's a prophecy. And the classic example of this is when David slept with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. And the prophet Nathan came to him and told him like a tiny parable about somebody who stole somebody else's sheep. And David said, whoever did that should die.

[2:15] And then Nathan said, this is the prophetic voice, you are the man because of what you did with Bathsheba and her husband. And then David began to lament and repent, and he wrote Psalm 51. And so that prophetic voice is God's voice saying, I am calling you to account for sin. So the prophetic voice is speaking on God's behalf about the sinfulness of another person sometimes or a whole nation. And then also, even more if you want to drill down, sometimes when we talk about the prophetic voice, that is focused not just on all the sins or run-of-the-mill sins, but on injustice in particular. So it kind of gets particularized to injustice. And that wasn't injustice what David did during his life. There's no doubt about that.

[3:00] So the prophetic voice is speaking on God's behalf. That's just so you, because we'll come back to that, speaking up about sin and particularly about injustice. So let's go to our reading, Lamentations 4, 1 through 5. I'm not going to read all of Lamentations 4. That's kind of left as an exercise for everybody in the book study or people at home. So let's go to Lamentations 4, verse 1. And we believe Jeremiah writing this. How the gold has lost its luster.

[3:28] Even the finest gold has become dull. The sacred gemstones lie scattered in the streets. See how the precious children of Jerusalem, worth their weight in fine gold, are now treated like pots of clay made by a common potter. Even the jackals feed their young, but not my people Israel. They ignore their children's cries like ostriches in the desert.

[3:55] The parched tongues of their little ones stick to the roofs of their mouths in thirst. The children cry for bread, but no one has any to give them. The people who once ate the richest foods now beg in the streets for anything they can get. Those who once wore the finest clothes now search the garbage dumps for food. Let's pray.

[4:18] Father, thank you for this word of lament. Thank you for this prophetic word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Well, real quick, what's happening in our passage? Again, this is lament. He's complaining. Last time it was more personal. This time it's kind of shifted more to the corporate. He's talking about the city of Jerusalem, but also the people in the city of Jerusalem and their entire straits because there's no food, right? And so he's actually lamenting that the value system of the city has been turned around. There were things that used to be valuable when things were normal, like gold and gems, but they're not worth anything right now. Why? Because you can't buy anything with them. There's no food at the market. You can take a big wheelbarrow full of gold coins down to the supermarket. They don't have supermarkets, but you get the idea of the vendor. And you're like, give me all your food for this gold. And they'd be like, you could triple that, and I still have nothing to give you.

[5:20] So when there's nothing to buy, money really is worthless, right? The idea of money having value, gold having value, gems having value, is predicated on the idea that you could actually buy something with them, that you can exchange them for something that you need. And in this case, what everybody needed was food. The people were hungry, the people were thirsty, the city had been destroyed, and so food is the most valuable thing. And you could say by extension, survival is the most valuable thing, right?

[5:50] And later on in this chapter, there's a reference to people eating their own children because they're so hungry. That's shocking. But this is the lament. Lament doesn't pull back from the difficulties, right? And so is it possible that a city under siege, people got so hungry that people ate other people? Well, we know this is true in other situations, the Donner Party, Stalingrad. You know, this has happened in other places, right? So this is what's called siege warfare, right? The city is surrounded by people, surrounded by an enemy army. They cut off the supply to the city. The city doesn't have a farm in it, right? Eventually, the food disappears. It just gets eaten, right? And there's no way to really make much more, not enough to feed the whole population of the city. And so then the attackers, they don't attack just yet. They just wait. They just wait out there. They cut off the supplies, and they wait. And eventually, the city is so weak, it can't muster any kind of defense, and then they march in, and they destroy what you can, and you carry away the people. As many people as you can find, this is what happened. Took them away as captives, brought them to Babylon, and there's the ones who are left. And so this lament is about the ones who are left

[7:06] because some have been taken away. And the ones who are left, they have to fend for themselves. And the goal of this kind of warfare for the Babylonians was, we're going to conquer the city, and we're going to starve the people. Once we get in there, we're going to take away a good part of the population. Especially the people who are able to do things, you know, make things, and the sort of, I don't know, the people who could make a city work, maybe they get taken away. And then we're going to destroy anything that's, any brick that's, one brick that's on top of another is all going to get toppled down. It's going to get rubble-ized, the whole thing. So that all the other nations, whoever dare oppose Babylon, will come to Jerusalem and go, ooh, that place is a dead end. We're going to dump now. We don't want to, you know, we don't want to mess with the Babylonians because they'll do that to our city. So this is like an advertisement. Don't do this. Jerusalem became an advertisement about the Babylonian empire not to cross them.

[8:10] So that was the goal. Now, that happened, and Jeremiah, or whoever the author of Lamentations is, we think Jeremiah, is now saying, how did, kind of, how did we get here? Our value system has been upended. We really care about survival now. And a child should be worth more than gold, right? It's kind of this interesting, he's saying it should be so. And so what we're getting at here maybe is that part of what led Jerusalem to this place where they had to be destroyed and God allowed it to happen or sent the Babylonians to do it is that they were idolatrous when it came to wealth. They had all this wealth. They had fine clothes. They had wonderful things to eat. They didn't take care of the poor in their midst. And now they're all poor. So there's sort of this, sort of, justice is happening to sort of counter the injustice. But with everybody poor and everybody hungry, everybody's miserable. So then there's lament. So I want to come back to that. But before that, I want you to remember two weeks ago I talked about AA. Remember, it happens just right here on the other side of this room. And I think it's great that we're doing this. They come about 20 times a week. I think it's excellent what happens there. It's a place of honesty.

[9:26] You walk in, you say, I'm an alcoholic. And everybody says, yeah, so am I. And so it's this place of just absolute honesty, which I find very refreshing. And I wish the church could be like this. And I think it could be, but it takes a lot of work. It takes an agreement to be that way.

[9:43] But here's a little more detail. And I think you want to listen to this. If you go to AA, you say, I want to stop drinking, and I start going to meetings, then I will stop drinking for a while. Because there's a community around me. And there's people keeping me honest and things like that. And I'm being honest about my disease. That's just the start. If you only do that, you'll probably end up drinking again. And because you need to take the next step in the 12 steps. And so to really stop, you have to get to the reason why you started drinking in the first place. So I want to give you an example. Say, for example, there was a tragedy in my home. I was in a car accident in my childhood, right? Say, I had been in a terrible car accident that left me injured, and it took me a year to recover from it. That didn't happen, so don't be sitting there worrying that I got in a car accident when I was little. I almost died several times as a child, but who hasn't? Playing with fire, and matches, and knives, and not guns, but just, I can think back, almost falling off a cliff, and I just think, thank God I'm still alive. But all of it was my own doing, right? I was never in a car accident. But just imagine I had been in a terrible car accident,

[10:54] and I was injured, and I was haunted by the memory of it. And I was worried that it could happen again. I was always worried about being safe, right? And I can't change the fact that that happened to me. I could kind of think, oh, I wish I could undo that, but there's no undo button in life. There's no Command-Z or Control-Z or whatever you want. And if I remember that tragedy, it brings up these strong emotions that make me feel uncomfortable. Just imagine this is my background. And then I found out somehow that drinking alcohol, or it could be any other addiction, but we're using alcohol in this case, drinking alcohol makes me not feel those feelings, at least for a few hours, right? Because alcohol is a depressant, or it's a diversion, it distracts me from it. And so for a few hours, I don't feel that anxiety over what happened to me in my childhood. But now the problem is compounded, right? Because I'm not processing it, I'm processing my history in a constructive way, and I'm avoiding thinking about those feelings and sort of processing them in a healthy way. And I've added an addiction on top of that. That's a whole other layer that I have to get through, right? And that can destroy my own wealth, and it can create a tragedy.

[12:08] Actually, if I start drinking too much, I could create a tragedy for another child out there by driving unsafely or something like that. So you see how this sometimes a tragedy can beget another tragedy. And this is, the Bible is kind of smart when it says, you know, from generation to generation, we see these things happening. It's actually describing reality. These things can hop from generation to generation. And so the devil, I think the devil loves this. The devil's like, this is a factory for more suffering. Your suffering is a factory that creates more suffering for other people. And the devil's like, I just get the thing started, and then I sit back and think, I can watch it go. He doesn't even have to work anymore. Now, that's maybe personifying it a little bit too much, but I think he really loves that. So what's the step? The next stage in recovery is to look at that and say, this is the tragedy. And you disarm it by processing it, by asking, am I telling a lie about it? Now, here's what I would say is, the lie I might be telling myself is that this will never happen to me again. I'm going to do everything I can, and this will never happen to me again. But do you think that's a lie? It is a lie. Why? Because I can't control whether it happens to me again.

[13:28] Unless I live inside, unless I become agoraphobic and live inside a building and never leave and have all my food delivered, I'm going to have to walk across the street. I'm going to have to get in the car. And even in a general sense, something could happen to me again. But if I tell myself the lie that I'm going to keep this from ever happening to me again, then I'm telling myself a lie. And I might even start to think, I'm going to start trying to control other people around me so that I'm safe. And do you see how that kind of keeps going? And I'll start having in, sort of in, unhealthy levels of control towards other people, right? So I can try to control other people, other groups, people at my work, sometimes people at my church, right? And actually, it doesn't make those people safer, and it doesn't make me safer, but it creates chaos and havoc in my family, in their family, in their lives. Because it's a lie. The lie is that these things could happen again. You can limit how these could happen. You can drive safely. You could really limit it, but in absolute reality, there's a non-zero chance that this could happen to you again. So the original lie is that I can live completely safely in the world,

[14:36] but that's a lie. So to live is to risk at times I can't control everything around me. So let's go back, you know, the world is dangerous. I kind of said that. Now, once I accept that I can't control all my surroundings, all the people around me, all the other drivers around me all the time, and I realize there's a small but actual chance that I could get hit by a car again, then I can start healing. Because I've named this reality that's still out there, and I'm saying, I can't control it anymore. I'm going to stop trying to control it. And I'm going to take my chances in life, and I'm going to live freely. So then I'm less likely to drink to cover my fears because I've put my fears into context. And God has a role in this too. I can give the fear to God. I can give the control to God. And I can trust that other people in my life are crossing the street safely because they're smart or driving safely. You know, sometimes they won't be, but, you know, we can't control what other people do. So we go back to the original tragedy, and the lies that we've told ourselves about that tragedy in order to move ahead. Now, hold on to that thought. That's just an example, right? So I'm going to go back to Lamentations. I'm going to ask you to kind of shift back and forth with me.

[15:57] Our author makes the case, this is I'm talking about Dr. Ra now, that there's an original sin and maybe an original lie in our midst as North Americans that's left us addicted to wealth. That's what comes up in this chapter is wealth. Wealth is super powerful. Wealth is so powerful. And not only is wealth powerful, it's addictive. Like, there's this... It's strange. I think a good number of us probably have more wealth than we could actually reasonably spend in our lifetimes. And so you're going to give it to your children, which is great. But think about sort of that caveman brain, the hunter-gatherer, and he's walking around, and he's, you know, he's like, I don't know what I'm going to eat tonight. And he comes across...

[16:43] you know, this just big pile, like, say, a honeycomb, and all the bees have gone off somewhere else looking for something else. And there's just all this free, you know, carbohydrates there or sugars there. And he's like... You know, that's... Unfortunately, that's how I am with chocolate. I'm like, oh, I'm never going to see this again. I'm not going to see chocolate again for, like, 12 months, so I better eat all of it right now. Of course, I can go to Safeway and buy another one, but you know what I mean? So like this caveman brain... But the caveman brain is like, I got to take what I can get when I... And we don't turn that off when it comes to food, and sometimes. If you can, I, you know, praise God, I just wish I had your genes, but I don't. But we don't turn it off when it comes to wealth either. And so there are some people who are getting wealthier and wealthier and wealthier just because they don't know what else to do with themselves, and they don't know... They can't even spend it all. And so this accumulation of wealth, beyond the point where we're taking care of our needs and taking care of our children's needs, becomes an idolatry. And it was the... You know, the author says it was the original sin

[17:44] of this country, and it could be... It could be that the church is a bit complicit in it. The church sometimes... Some factions of the church talk about prosperity gospel, like if you, you know, if you follow God, you're going to get all these riches that are going to land on you.

[18:02] Take a look back to... I just want to read what I read earlier from Luke chapter 6. I kind of had put it at the end, but I'm going to bring it up now. Where did I put it? I guess probably not too far away. Oh, well.

[18:20] Look in your bulletin there, Luke chapter 6. I guess I didn't put it in my... So he talks about this thing being pressed together, shaped down, put in your lap, flowing over. A lot of Americans think that that's the way that God wants you to be. That's about wealth. A lot of Americans think that that's about wealth. And maybe you've heard that too, that this is a promise from God, right? I'll just read it to you here.

[18:46] Give and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full. Press down, shaken together to make room for more. Running over and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back. Pastors love this because they're like, give to the church, you know, and you'll get all these blessings, blah, you know. And then other people have said, this is the prosperity gospel right here. Like God just wants to make you healthy and wealthy and wise. But if you look at the context of this whole passage, it's not about money. It's about relationships. Really interesting. Give to anyone who asks of you. It's about generosity, right? If you love only those who love you, what should you get credit for that? Love your enemies, do good to them. Don't judge people. So this isn't necessarily a promise as much as it's just good advice. If you're a forgiving, loving, kind person, it's going to come back to you. You're going to have good friends. You're going to have good relationships. You're going to be trusted. You're going to be well thought of. That's what's coming back to you. Not a big pile of money, probably, right? But that's this original kind of sin in America, is we're addicted to wealth. And as Pastor Victoria said, I mean,

[19:55] it started with slavery and ownership and wealth. And that's what's coming back to you. That is kind of early on, like in the early 1600s, it's like slaves started coming across the Atlantic into our country. But why? To do the work that people didn't want to do, to work on plantations and make money for them, right? And then all these other kind of, I guess, just justifications came about, sometimes from Scripture, but also just other people saying, how can we justify this? Well, let's make up. Yeah. You know, let's make up some reasons why this is OK for us. But of course, it's not OK.

[20:38] So just like if I have an addiction, I need to go back to the original event and the original lie that I've been telling myself about it before I can ever move forward. Our author is saying that we have to go back to the original lie and name it and examine why we told it. And then we need to repent of that sin and lament and ask to be remade in our identity the way that God would have us be made. So our identity is even based on this lie. So what we're being asked to do is something really painful and really powerful and really scary. It's to say, keep chipping away until you find that lie and all the layers of identity that you've built on top of that, be willing to let them go. Find that original lie. Tell the truth about it. Repudiate that lie. And then start building things back together again with that reality in mind. And that will take us away from our addictions. It'll take us away from our, you know, I wouldn't call America, I guess I would call America's connection to wealth somewhat like an addiction, right? And so this is prophetic lament. Remember, that's the name of the book. It's prophetic lament. It's lament because we're complaining that we wish our lives weren't that way. We're lamenting because it's painful to unpack all that and to say,

[22:01] oh, we've built our lives on something that wasn't quite really real. That's the complaining. That's the lament. The prophetic part of it is that we say we're going to tell the truth about it and there might be some injustice at the bottom of it all that we need to name. And so that's that prophetic word, lamenting, at the same time. So it tells the truth about a sin and it exposes our connection to that sin. And it allows us to repent and complain that we've been taken captive by sin's power. That's the thing. So it's just like the people of Israel were taken captive by Babylon. We can be taken captive by sin's power. There's like a Babylonian captivity of the heart. Actually, Martin Luther wrote a really interesting tract called The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, which is the idea that the church itself has been taken captive, right? So the image of the people taken into captivity is really powerful, right? Psalm 137 is a lament psalm. You should think about reading that one. But I'm going to read you just the first few verses of Psalm 137. It goes like this.

[23:04] So in the heart of the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, in the heart of the heart, so we need to think of ourselves in this way this is challenging i mean because you might say i'm not in captivity i'm not in bondage i'm not in babylon i think we need to think of ourselves this way we are in bondage to an original sin and an original lie and we're exiled to a faraway place until we can name that lie and repent of the sin and then we can start thinking about home again i mean this is challenging stuff i'm not saying i can do this and i'm asking us all to do it but i think we have to start so um the the lie is so strong because we love wealth it's everywhere and if you watch tv it's always happy looking wealthy looking people doing buying things that you know that you kind of want now and you need wealth to get those things this is how our this is how our society is put together and i'm i'm not telling you to give away all your money that's between you and god i'm not telling any of that stuff but your relationship to your money could be like an addiction it could

[24:33] be based on a lie it could be based on a lie that this nation maybe was found founded on or or even the church is challenging right so we need to somehow uh start telling the truth about things and that i think is the beginning like i keep saying this is the beginning um so lamentations as a book is a way of telling the truth about the situation the people of god are in and how they're going to be treated in the future and so i think that's the way we should think about it soetics etics etics ! etics etics etics etics etics etics etics etics etics etics or you might have something else in mind. You know, it could be the enlightenment. You could name it. You name it. You have your own answer. I'm not going to tell you how to answer that, but there is some original sin that this is all based on. Now, what's the original sin of the church?

[25:42] Don't get me started. Do you have an hour? You do. No, you don't. Here's four things. I think it basically comes down to the original sin of the church, pride, greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, which is like pride, but a little bit different, right?

[26:03] Greed. Greed is part of the church. Hypocrisy is a big part of the church right now. And they all mix together, and they make this toxic brew. It's a mess. I'm sorry. And I say I'm sorry on behalf of the church, of the big church with the big C, for how the church has treated people and how the church has been carrying on. And I point the finger at myself because I'm perfectly capable of all of these things, right? So this is the final word. There's this power in naming a lie as a lie. There's spiritual power in naming a lie as a lie because it refutes Satan. It's really great. Like, Satan loves lies because they are like factories that keep producing more lies and evil that produces more evil. And when you name that lie and tell the truth over it, it destroys it spiritually. And I think Satan's upset about that. So there's this power. There's this power in naming a lie. And what they say in Alcoholics Anonymous is, my life has become unmanageable. That's the truth. That disarms the lie that I can control my drinking. The lie is my life is manageable. I got this. I've got it under control. I can take just two drinks in the morning and I'll be fine, you know. On the weekends, I'll take 20 drinks, but my boss isn't there, so it's okay.

[27:16] Monday mornings, I'll just take... Can you hear how unmanageable that sounds? So the lie is I got this. I can stop anytime. The truth is, it's unmanageable. So Sandy Patty, I've told this story before. Sandy Patty was kind of famous. She was on the 700 Club, Christian artist singing.

[27:37] She had a lot of, she had sort of a meltdown because it was always success, success, looking good, looking good, looking good. And it was so bad, she went to a mental health institution and there was an intake and the psychologist said, who are you? You know? And she said, I'm Sandy Patty. I'm on the 700 Club and I'm singing all the time. And he's like, okay, who are you?

[28:02] I'm Sandy Patty. I'm pretty important. I'm kind of a big deal around here. Don't you know me? And then he says, who are you? And she says, I have no idea. I have no idea who I am. And then he says, now we can start working. Now we can move forward. So you tell the lie, you tell the truth about your life. You tell the lie about who you are, what you are. My life has become manageable. It disarms the lie that I can control my drinking. So that truth telling is actually lament. God, I have lost my illusions, which is a good thing because, but it's also painful. I've lost my illusions about who I am. Now what do I wish for us? I wish for us to be honest. I want us to go back to the original lie and name it as a lie and tell the truth about it and lament that we believed the lie and be free from its dark spiritual power. That's what I want.

[28:54] It's a simple, really, it's really a simple thing to do, but it's very hard to do. It takes work. It takes a moment to work our way back. This is what step four of AA is, is they make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

[29:10] Well, that's not a 20-minute job right there. It could take months, years. It could take a long time because it's a searching and fearless moral inventory. I think we need to do that of the church, of the nation, you name it. And the fifth step is a lot like it. They admitted to God and to oneself and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, the specific nature of our wrongs. Because, yeah, you may have done the inventory, but you have to name it to another person. You have to name it to yourself because that's the first person you lied to. And you have to name it to God because that's the second person. And then you have to name it to another person because you're always lying about it to somebody else, too. So, you destroy all three lies. They're the same lie, they're just told to three different people, and you start with yourself.

[30:06] So, you confess to God and to ourselves, and finally, to another person. Oh, that's the end of the sermon. So, that's . Nothing left, nothing left, nothing left. Nope. So, that's what we're called to do. This is prophetic learning. This is lament. This is prophetic because we're telling the truth about injustice, and it's lament because we've gotten ourselves into this mess and we're unhappy about it, but we're ready to be free from it. So, my wish for us is to be free from the lie that is enslaving us and holding us captive in a foreign land so that we can really return home. Let's pray.

[30:43] Father, thank you again for this book, for this book that Dr. Ra wrote, and for especially for the book that you wrote. Thank you for Lamentations 4. Father, thank you for . Your promise that you'll be with us even in these difficult times when we tell the truth. And Father, we pray for your mercy on us because we've been lying to ourselves for so long. Amen.