When the Deck is Stacked: Will Comfort Keep You Away?

``So there there will be a reckoning. Kohelet says his eyes tell him one story, his confession tells him another, and and he refuses to surrender belief in a moral universe that is under god's judgment. Just that it we are all to be judged. There will be a reckoning. The wicked don't get their last the last word, and we are not neutral just floating through. We're led by Jesus, and so we've got to be those people. [00:39:56] (27 seconds)  #I’m missing a clear separation of the individual quotes — could you confirm how many quotes you want hashtags for or resend them as a numbered list or one-quote-per-line?

Now one of the first moves that people make nowadays, because they've decided that God doesn't exist or that is not relevant to their lives, they don't take a proper lament before god and say, god, what are you doing? You're on the throne, aren't you? You said you're king. What are you doing? And why don't we do that? A peep generally, why don't we do that? I think it's because we think he's either not interested, not listening, or can't do anything about it. So where do we take our prayers? Well, the modern impulse apparently is take it to the streets. [00:14:33] (40 seconds)

That may be a step in the future for something we have to deal with, but what about just taking it to god first and saying, god, what about all this? What is going on in my heart? Why is my heart broken, And why are these things happening to my family? Or broaden them out to social issues. It's fine. It's important to think through these different methods of dealing with the angst that we've got in our hearts. What's actually going to solve it? Because I think just going before God and having a proper row with him, just go for it. Just take it. Take him on and say, God, what is going on? [00:15:29] (37 seconds)

And if you're not even if you're not even willing to be moved into your sphere of influence, why are you bothering with all that other stuff out there anyway? If you're not willing to, like, do something about the the sphere you're in, the influence you've got, let's not let's not just get our minds wrapped around things that we don't even have any power over. Let's actually take steps with the things that god has put right in front of us. Let me pray for us because we need it. [00:46:29] (33 seconds)

And you have a mixed crowd, obviously. Some of you feel like you're under layers of system that kind of that press you down. Some sit in rooms where those layers are decided all within the same room. And Ecclesiastes is saying, don't be naive about how this works and don't be surprised when the poor carry the heaviest load. Don't be surprised. That's just kind of the way things happen. It's just they work hard. I don't know how many of you know friends who work two or three or four jobs. But there's I don't work that many jobs. I mean, I have a couple extra W-2s, but I but that's there's not much money in those ones. [00:17:01] (45 seconds)

But we're we're not gonna do a huge rant about the people out there and, oh, those those are the those are the worst people, but it's not really a feel good hug either. Ecclesiastes in this story is is like he wants to just lay it out bare and say, man, there's some stuff that's just hardcore. And people get crushed under systems that just aren't right, and we should just deal with that. And so whether you think I'm aiming my arrows at you or not, I don't have any idea. But we're just gonna actually read scripture, and then we'll see what see what happens. [00:03:04] (29 seconds)

But this is what I'm hoping to convince you of as we process this. There's someone someone's got no brother, no one to walk with, no one to experience life with. With your comfort comes a calling. With comfort comes calling. And this is how we could do it. We could hand over our control. Widen that sense of, like, I've got my life is set. I'm fine. Thank you very much. I've got it just the way I want it. Know, us four no more. This is it. This is where we hand over that control. Widen your circles, not just thicken your walls to keep these people out. I'm hoping we can walk through this together. I grew up with a with a great example of this. My mom was always, what she would say, picking up strays. And these weren't animals. These were humans. So we would always have someone at any big dinner, any big table, any time we put all the dishes out, it was there was someone else there. And they usually, they had issues. And we're all like, mom, what's going on? What is going on with this person? It was just it was like, oh, that's interesting. But but that was the heart. You have do you have another chair for your table? [00:09:19] (74 seconds)

Adoniram Judson whose translation into the Burmese language is still used two hundred years later today. But when when he was planning to set off to go to Burma, which didn't have any gospel witness that he knew of, it was just, well, here I go. He he proposed to Anne, his his future wife, but he he had to ask the parents first. And so he wrote out, are you willing to let Anne go to places where she is most likely going to die of disease or be imprisoned? You will likely never see her again, but this is for all for the sake of the gospel. It's a fascinating story. And they said, yeah. That sounds about right. What a different class of people [00:41:49] (50 seconds)