Now I have not seen to many millenniums’ come and go, as a matter of fact I can only think of one but to be totally honest I don’t know how successful we have been so far.
It all started with that Y2K bug and all of end times talk. But there were no nationwide blackouts, no financial freezes, no air traffic control disasters, no food shortages, no looting in the streets. The only thing that happened was that it was a great time to be in the generator and bottled water business. But we grew more suspicious of our technology.
That was followed up by a presidential race and that didn’t go very well at all in Florida or anywhere else. A disputed election very nearly created a constitutional crisis. By the time Mr. Bush took the oath of office, even the most offended voters were ready for the whole thing to be over. But the confidence we had in our democratic process was shaken. And that was seen in the last election.
Then came the demise of the dot-com industry and with their fall, a deflated stock market. Once we sobered up from the dizzying heights of the market, we began to take a more honest look at some of the accounting procedures of companies we believed in, and couldn’t believe the levels of dishonesty in companies like Enron and people like Martha Stewart. And the integrity of our financial system has been violated.
This was followed by the collapse of the World Trade Centers, an attack on the Pentagon, and the deliberate crash of four commercial jetliners. In the weeks that followed, the word anthrax became a common word on household scrabble boards. Until 9/11, terrorism was something only the Israelis had to deal with. But now we’ve changed the way we fly, the way we view people from other nations, our definition of security. And we no longer expect our government to protect us nor do we believe it can.
Our new millennium has taught us that the promise of technology is hollow. The reliability of our government is questionable. The integrity of our financial system is suspect. The security of our nation is compromised. And our children are not safe.
These large scale, news worthy losses were accompanied by millions of small, unpublicized, but very personal devastations. A doctor writes "Diagnosis: cancer," on a lab report.
A judge signs her name to a divorce document.
A family business closes and locks its doors for the last time.
A medium-sized company down sizes to small.
A single mother hesitates before opening her mail box, certain that there will be more bills in the box than money in her account.
A troubled 15 year old writes a letter telling his family he can’t go any farther.
A husband and father thinks about praying, but doesn’t.
There is an old Arab parable that says: All sunshine and no rain makes a desert." If you never have any down times, dark times, gloomy times in your life you’ll be dried up. You’ll have no depth to yourself, no maturity. It takes good times and bad times to make a mature person. Life is a mixture of pain and pleasure, of victory and defeat, of success and failure, of mountain tops and valleys.
In a world so apparently defined by tragedy, loss and failure do the words faith, hope and love ring true, realistic or possible?
Or do they sound like so much religious denial in the face of overwhelming evidence that there is nothing to believe in, nothing to look forward to, and nothing that can be done?
The greatest devastation for any culture is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will become forgetful. We are wandering aimlessly in a deep state of amnesia. We have become so self focused that we have forgotten what God says about the valley’s of life and that others have been here before and survived.
There are five facts about valleys that you need to remember whenever you go through a tough time:
1. VALLEYS ARE INEVITABLE
They are going to happen so you might as well count on them. You have either just come out of a valley, you’re in one right now, or you’re probably headed toward one. Valleys happen throughout life -- one right after another. After every mountain top there is a valley.
Jesus was very realistic about it. In John 16, He says "In the world you will have trouble." It’s not a matter of if, it’s when. It’s going to happen. You’re going to have difficulty, disappointment, and discouragement in life. There will be times of suffering, sorrow, and sickness. There will be times of frustration, failure and fatigue. They are going to happen. They are a normal part of life. Don’t be surprised by it.
2. VALLEYS ARE UNPREDICTABLE
You can’t plan them, time them, or schedule them. Valleys are always unexpected. They usually come at the worst time -- when you don’t have time, when you’re unprepared. Have you ever had a flat tire at a good time? They just happen. And usually when you least need them and it’s most inconvenient. It would be very great if we could schedule our down times in life. You can’t plan life like that.
Valleys come suddenly. They are unpredictable. Have you noticed how easily a good day can become a bad day? A phone call, a letter, a routine doctor’s check-up, a freak accident. Valleys just happen.
Jeremiah 4:20 "Disaster follows disaster... In an instant my tents are destroyed, my shelter falls in a moment."
3. VALLEYS ARE IMPARTIAL
No one is immune to them. No one is insulated from pain and sorrow. No one gets to skate through life problem-free. Everybody has problems -- good people and bad people. Problems, trials, difficulties, disturbances, downtimes, depression doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you’re a person. It doesn’t mean you’re an evil human being; it means you’re a human being. The Bible is very clear that good things happen to bad people and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Valleys are impartial. They don’t care how good or bad you are.
4. VALLEYS ARE TEMPORARY
They have an end to them. They don’t last. They are not a permanent location. David says, "Even though I walk through the valley..."
The valley is not something you stay in your entire life. It’s something you go through -- a circumstance, a situation that has a season to it. When you’re in a valley you often think it’s a dead end, but it’s not. They don’t come into your life to stay. They come to pass.
I Peter 1:6 "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
He admits that sometimes you’re going to go through tough times. It’s going to be rough. Life is tough. You’re going to have it. But it’s only for a while. There is wonderful joy ahead. He’s talking about Heaven. There are no problems in heaven, no valleys, no dark days. While you may be harassed down here, in heaven you’ll have no problems. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, that’s where you’re going.
5. VALLEYS ARE PURPOSEFUL
God has a reason for taking you through the valleys. Whether it’s doubt, depression, despair, discouragement, defeat -- He’s got a reason behind it.
There are financial valleys, relational valleys, emotional valleys, and all kinds of different trials. This is no accident -- it happens to prove your faith
The valleys are not just a freak of nature. God wants to build your faith in the valleys of life. We love to enjoy the mountain tops, but you don’t build faith on the mountain tops. You build faith in the valleys of life. When everything is going fine and great you don’t really need God. But when you come face to face with a dark valley, you get on your knees. Faith is strengthened in the valleys. When you don’t feel like serving and trusting God, praising God... that’s where your faith is tested. Not in the good times of life, but in the valleys.
Every problem has a purpose. Even the little tiny ones, the inconsequential ones, the things that seem like mere irritations. They have a purpose. God can teach you character. He wants to change you, mature you.
I want you to Listen to these old words from a book whose very title sounds relevant for our times. The book is Lamentations we will be reading the 3:18 – 20
"Gone is my glory, all that I had hoped for in the Lord. I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me."
It sure sounds like Jeremiah is going through a valley, But where is his hope? If the book of Lamentations ended at 3:20, all we could say is that at least someone, somewhere knew what it was like to live in a world unhinged. But the raw honesty of verses 18 - 20 is followed by these words of hope in verses 21 - 26
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ’The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."
How can someone who so eloquently describes his struggle, pen words so equally full of confidence? The difference between unrecoverable despair and un-intimidated confidence in the future is hope. Before we talk about how he manages to find hope in his desperate situation, Let be absolutely sure that we know what hope is. And what it isn’t.
First Hope, the kind the Bible talks about, is not optimism.
Don’t get me wrong. I love optimists. They tend to live longer than pessimists, accomplish more and are just a lot more fun to be around. A pessimist can hardly wait for the future so he can look back with regret. Optimists can hardly wait for the future because they just know it’s going to be better than today.
A student was seen pedaling a bicycle around his college campus. He was wearing a tee-shirt that read, "Studying to be a doctor." On the back of his bicycle was a tag that read, "Studying to be a Mercedes."
Optimists handle failure and frustration better than pessimists.
For all their similarities, though, hope and optimism are entirely different animals. Optimists think they can. Or that others will. Those with hope, know God will.
Optimists survey the circumstances and find the positive. They see the glass half full. They see a flat tire and say, "Yeah, but it’s only flat on the bottom."
Hope, on the other hand, doesn’t take its cue from circumstances. In fact, there is this odd calculus involved with hope. The greater the pain, the more desperate the circumstance, the stronger, more confident hope becomes. Paul talks about that in Romans 5:3 - 5.
"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
Did you notice the reason hope does not disappoint? "Because God."
Which is exactly why Jeremiah was able to find hope in his dismal circumstance back in Lamentations 3 :21.
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope." What did he call to mind? "Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed."
Jeremiah’s confidence in the future had nothing to do with optimism. If you were to rank the characters of the Bible in order of their positive spirit and optimistic outlook, Jeremiah would be dead last. He was, by far, the most pessimistic prophet to ever bend Israel’s ear. In fact, he’s called the weeping prophet.
The lights dimmed when Jeremiah walked into a room. He could cloud up a sunny day. But when he talks about the future he sounds like he’s selling on commission.
Why? His hope was in God.
When your hope is in what God can do, you aren’t just wishing.
Secondly Hope for the future is based on the experience of the past.
And when your hope is in God, you are basing your confident expectation for the future on the faithfulness of God’s action in the past.
Which is why memory is so important to hope. By reaching into the past we find assurances that the future will not be destroyed by the present. That’s how the Jews did it. No people have ever been through so much for so long at the hateful hands of so many, as the Jews. Yet few people are so hopeful.
Look at Psalm 136. This is a text book example, literally, of how hope for the future is maintained by remembering the past. This is an antiphonal Psalm. The leader would say the first part and the congregation would respond. Listen to the hope found in these lines.
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His loving kindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the God of gods, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him who alone does great wonders, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
To Him who made the heavens with skill, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
To Him who spread out the earth above the waters, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
To Him who made the great lights, For His loving kindness is everlasting:
The sun to rule by day, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
The moon and stars to rule by night, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him who smote the Egyptians in their first-born, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And brought Israel out from their midst, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
With a strong hand and an outstretched arm, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
To Him who divided the Red Sea asunder, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And made Israel pass through the midst of it, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
But He overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
To Him who led His people through the wilderness, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
To Him who smote great kings, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And slew mighty kings, For His loving kindness is everlasting:
Sihon, king of the Amorites, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And Og, king of Bashan, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And gave their land as a heritage, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
Even a heritage to Israel His servant, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
Who remembered us in our low estate, For His loving kindness is everlasting,
And has rescued us from our adversaries, For His loving kindness is everlasting;
Who gives food to all flesh, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
Give thanks to the God of heaven, For His loving kindness is everlasting.
That’s how they kindled hope. That’s how they overcame despair. They remember what God had done in the past. They were honest about the tragedy of the present. But they were hopeful about the promise of the future, because their hope was in God. Hope grows out of memory.
What was it Jesus said when he instituted the Lord’s Supper? Do this in remembrance of me. Was that for him? Or was it for us?
In the catacombs of ancient Rome, archeologists have discovered a number of early Christian symbols. One of them is the Icthus or a fish. One is the shepherd. And there is one more common symbol. The anchor.
Now why do you suppose they would have an anchor as a common symbol? Maybe it’s because of Hebrews 6:19; "But we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure."
The catacombs were where Christians hid from Roman persecution and where they buried their dead. Odd, isn’t it, that a symbol of firm and secure hope would exist in a place of hiding, in a place of death. Not when you remember that their hope in the face of persecution and death rested on the memory of an empty tomb, a risen savior, and a coming King. Ours can rest there,
too.
