Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: When Jesus died on the cross, He didn't die for angels. He died for humans. He died for us. That's weird, isn't it? Think about that. Angels are unredeemable. Satan is a fallen angel. He cannot get saved. You are redeemable.

David J: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.

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You'll want to get a copy for yourself because it is written by Dr. Lutzer in such a way that only he can, and the topic, why doesn't God answer my prayers, is something that all of us are asking. *Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers?* by Dr. Erwin Lutzer is available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com/realradio.

On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called "Disciplines of Life" and a message titled "Disciplines of Desolation". Spiritual desolation is one of the worst situations we can find ourselves in. It attacks our very core and the root of our hope and faith.

The harsh truth is no one is exempt. It doesn't matter how beautiful or wealthy you might be. You may even be powerful or popular, but it's only a matter of time when you'll suffer an invasion of desolation.

Today, Pastor Jack teaches us that in those times when we're overwhelmed, the Lord is unchanging. We could be in the middle of those long and lonely days of spiritual dryness, fighting off unhappiness, and yet we can still hold on to God and His word. Now, with his message called "Disciplines of Desolation", here is pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: In our series called the "Disciplines of Life", let's jump into the discipline of desolation. When I saw the title on this one, I thought, how can desolation be a discipline? Desolation is not a word that's used very often, but most people know the feeling.

Listen to the Psalmist. This is it. Thank you, Davie, for setting this up because the discipline of desolation is this. The Psalmist says, "My days are like a shadow that lengthens, and I wither away like grass." Listen to his heart. "But You, O Lord, shall endure forever, and the remembrance of Your name to all generations."

Translation: the discipline of desolation is, I'm weak. I'm just dust, the Bible says. I technically, scientifically, am made of the elements of this earth. I'm not much better than a dirt clod. But if I know God in all of these life's difficulties, the Psalmist says it: "My days are like a shadow that lengthens."

This is an amazing statement because a shadow lengthens, lengthens, and then all of a sudden, because the sun sets, that long shadow vanishes. It's gone. That's what he's saying. My days are like gone. But You, Lord, are forever.

And so when we realize that our life's dynamics that we're going through right now, it's a shadow lengthening. In other words, we love this term, right? "This too shall pass." Whatever situation you're in right now, whatever desolation you're in, it's not forever.

It's not going to last long. This too shall pass because your shadow is lengthening until it's completely gone. And so we can get excited about that. It's a great discipline to realize, embrace those moments that are challenging in and through the word of God. That's how we'll get through these things.

David J: In this series, Pastor Jack, you also mention that unhappiness often comes when we lose sight of God's purpose. Why does our perspective make such a difference in those moments?

Jack Hibbs: Perspective. If you're looking for happiness, here's the deal. If your perspective is, I'm looking for happiness, you're going to forever be disappointed. Just face it, folks. Listen, sorry to rain on your parade, but if your goal in life today is to live a happy life, you're never going to find the target.

Because no matter what happens to you, you can have the most wonderful things happen to you today, but they didn't meet your standard that you had set up for yourself. And so you just always come short of being happy. That is a horrible way to live.

That's why you understand that God doesn't promise us happiness. He promises us joy because every day I can have joy. Good days, bad days, irrelevant, because joy will trump happiness every time. That is practicing a discipline where I can choose to have joy today even if my car blows up or the dog dies or, God forbid, in California it rains here.

Is this the end of the world? No. Listen, God's on His throne. Everything's working out. You're going to be just fine. That is practicing that discipline.

David J: Amazing topic tonight, powerful stuff. And I pray, Lord God, that we would be faithful to deliver Your word and at the same exact time, faithful to put it into action. We ask You, Father, to bless now in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, amen.

Jack Hibbs: Church, grab your Bibles tonight. As normal on Wednesday nights, we're going to ask you to be very, very skilled in the Bible. Turn to Matthew chapter 28. You know that it's our theme verse through this entire series. Matthew chapter 28 and tonight, Psalm 102.

Psalm 102, Matthew chapter 28, as we continue on in our series on the "Disciplines of Life". Tonight we come to the discipline of desolation. Desolation, what does that mean? You're going to be finding that out in a moment. You might say desolation, how does that apply to my life? It will absolutely apply to your life more than you might think. Desolation.

Here we come, Matthew chapter 28. Jesus said to the disciples, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples." That's what's happening here tonight. Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, that's going on tonight, that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Now Psalm 102. This is an important Psalm for what we're talking about tonight. Psalm of David, Psalm 102. Look at verse 11 and 12. Psalm 102, verse 11: "My days are like a shadow that lengthens, and I wither away like grass. But You, O Lord, shall endure forever, and the remembrance of Your name to all generations."

Before we go any further, it's good that we understand this Psalm because we're going to be going back to it during the course of the evening tonight. David, King David. By the way, there was an archaeological discovery recently in the land of Israel regarding King David.

And it's quite amazing. In fact, the stone or the tablet that was found is actually David's enemies who had written about David and his household. And it was, I forget what tribe or what group of enemy forces, what nation-state it was, but it was quite an archaeological discovery.

David was a man of war. He was a man of passion. He was a man of victory. He was a man of defeat. Let's be honest, it's easy to be a man of victory. It's hard to be a man of defeat. Anybody can win, but it takes a champion to be able to manage losing.

And this is a very powerful thing and David had all this amazing emotion that was wrapped up into one human being. I have to tell you that if I had to pick to be or live or crawl into the skin of, I say this now because I'm 3,000 years removed from him, but I want to believe that many times in my own life, I see myself in a relation with David.

I've got a concept in my mind that at one moment I could pull out my sword and cut off a giant's head. I have no problem doing that. It's just the way that I'm wired. I read our founding fathers, many of them Christian, and they had no problem understanding the concept of war and fighting and defending freedom.

It's not until recent American history that we've gotten so wimpy. But David was a man of war and at the same time he was a man of worship and praise. How do you reconcile those things? Now, David didn't go out and attack people just to attack people. He defended his nation. But listen, it wasn't always victorious.

David was a man that was often ostracized and cut away from normal life and living. The man had been given the promises of God, and yet he had spent over 10 years in the wilderness waiting for the promises to come to pass. From this man's life comes the most passionate, powerful, and expressive language known to the human today: the Book of Psalms.

Read the Book of Psalms. There's nothing in this world in literature that compares to David's heart and all the aspects of his emotions from victory to defeat. In Psalm 102, though, in this Psalm, the Psalmist, David, cries out to God and in his distress he finds the confidence of God.

And he finds his confidence in the Lord. He finds this, that the sovereign purposes of God are there as he's crying out to the Lord. And he also finds out in this Psalm, Psalm 102, you can read it at length later, that we can have confidence because God is unchanging. He's immutable. That is that the God of the Bible never changes.

You can always know from His revealed word what He does in certain situations. What I mean by that is, remember Philip said, "Jesus, show us the Father and we'll be happy." And Jesus said what? "Philip, have I been so long with you and you still ask me to show you the Father? He who has seen Me has seen the Father."

He's talking about nature, the very nature of God. The Holy Spirit, the Son, the Father, and how you see Jesus act and what you see in the revealed word of God regarding the nature of God is what the Holy Spirit teaches you. God never changes. Let me tell you something.

I don't know if you've ever been in a cult, maybe you've been rescued out of a cult, maybe you're in one right now. You know what's great about the God of the Bible? He's completely different than the god of the cults. The god or gods of the cults constantly change. It's whimsical, it's capricious, it's crazy.

You don't know if this particular god is happy this day or not the other day or what's going to happen if I talk to this god. And you have the one true God, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the Bible, and He's never changing. In Psalm 102, David is crying out to God and he finds great strength because he knows his God never changes.

And his prayer in this Psalm is a prayer of affliction, and that comes to every one of us, especially at times when affliction comes, we're being attacked. It could be physical, could be all kinds of ways, whatever it is, and we have a tendency to be overwhelmed. And we get overwhelmed.

And we go through life in seasons where pressures of life come and they overwhelm us. Maybe it's some emotional thing or relational thing, it doesn't matter. When it comes, the Lord is unchanging. You can grab onto Him like a pillar. And so in this Psalm, this great Psalm, he cries out to God and that's a powerful thing.

The Bible says, by the way, that you and I have been created in the image of God. David had that. Think about that. David had that knowledge like you do tonight. He had the first five books of Moses to read. And in that, Genesis 1:26 is: "Then God said, 'Let us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) make man in our image according to our likeness.'"

What does that mean? That means every one of us tonight have the moral likeness of God. I didn't say you're perfect. Far from it. And I didn't say that God is imperfect. Far from it. He's perfect, we're not. When He says I've made you in My image, what does He mean? He doesn't mean that we are six feet tall so God must be six feet tall.

No, moral likeness. "Let us make man in our image." It is the moral likeness. What does that mean? Well, what's interesting is outside of angelic created beings, you and I are something different. First of all, we are redeemable. Angels are not redeemable.

When Jesus died on the cross, He didn't die for angels. He died for humans. He died for us. That's weird, isn't it? Think about that. Angels are unredeemable. Satan is a fallen angel. He cannot get saved. Wouldn't it be nice if Satan got saved? I wish he would get saved and leave me alone, but he's not going to.

You are redeemable. And the amazing thing is this: that when God says I made you in My image, it means this: you have the capacity to love and to hate, to write a song or to be angry or whatever. And you say, how is that in the image of God? Well, that's because you and I relate to that in the negative because we're fallen creatures now.

God hates. Did you know that? He hates. His hatred is absolutely perfect. He hates sin. We don't have that holiness in us like that. We're not holy like that. He has declared us holy, but we are in route to receiving that ultimate redemption the day that you and I die or get raptured up into His presence.

Then, all that sin nature will be gone from us. Until then, we struggle every day. But in a word, what we think and what we feel, what we desire in this life is all a result of good having gone bad. You and I are fallen creatures tonight, but we are creatures that have been created in the image of God. You are not an animal.

Somebody might try to convince you of that in school, but they're wrong. And besides, the guy's trying to convince your kids that they're animals, he must then himself believe that he's an animal. And your kid does not know or believe that they're an animal. They believe that they're created in the image of God.

That's a great verse to show the teacher. Teacher, excuse me, you can keep talking all you want and I'm going to give you all the answers you want. You want 500 billion trillion years, I'm going to write it down. I just don't believe in it. And you need to write it down.

And the teacher's going to get all bent out of shape. He'll say, what's your trip? You tell him, I believe I was created in the image of God. He's going to say, we evolved! Everything's an accident! Everything is evolutionary! And what's funny is that they want to talk about absolutes, but everything's an accident according to them.

And why should I listen to you if you're evolving? You tell me that this is the right answer on Monday, it could be different on Friday because you're evolving. No, we are created in the image of God and that's important to where we're going this evening.

David J: You're listening to Real Life with Pastor Jack Hibbs. To learn more about this ministry or to catch up on some previous episodes, go to jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. And now let's get back to today's message. Once again, here's Pastor Jack.

Jack Hibbs: The Bible says in Genesis 2:17, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." Note this next verse, verse 18: "And the Lord God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.'"

Isn't it interesting? Genesis 2:17 and 18. God says don't eat of that tree. The day that you eat of it, you shall surely die, spiritual death. The next verse says man shall not live alone. I think those two things are connected in a very powerful way.

Because listen to this. Desolation or disillusionment or fear or sorrow cannot be separated from one another. If you think about it, they travel in a pack. To be disillusioned, fearful, sorrowful. Desolation of the soul. I believe the first soul to experience spiritual desolation was in the Garden of Eden and it was with Eve.

Have you read the Bible carefully? The Bible says Eve must have been alone, by the way, according to Timothy, because Paul writes that Satan deceived the woman. Where was Adam? He's not even mentioned. Did you know that? It appears that Adam shows up later. Was he gardening? Was he riding a horse? What was he doing? Goofing off?

Was he sleeping under a tree? What happened? But Satan came and she did not have as God had created her spiritual covering there, her man to protect her. I want to believe that if the story went different, Adam would have tied that Satan snake his tail in a knot or something. I don't know, but it's pretty amazing.

No, she's talking and God had told them don't eat this. And they exercised their will and they partook of the fruit and they had sinned. And God said the day that you eat of it, you will die. Well, they lived 900 years on. They spiritually died in that moment.

And listen, you read the Bible later and where were they? Remember in the cool of the day, God came to fellowship with them in the garden and the Bible says that they were hiding. It sounds so Victorian that they sewed to themselves fig leaves. A little fig leaf. Like there's all this skin out there, but she's got three of them and he's got one of them and they're like, hey God, what's up?

Like what, he's not going to notice there's fig leaves on strategic parts of your body? They were covered like a bush. Have you ever seen the Jolly Green Giant on the label? They were covered with leaves. They were hiding. The very first, they were together hiding, but were they together?

No, they had experienced desolation of the soul, separation from God. That's why the feel came upon them. Oh my gosh, we've got to cover this up. Something happened. I love the ancient Hebrew scholars believe that Adam and Eve were actually clothed in light, that when they sinned, their light just went out, just phew.

And they saw their nakedness. And the Bible says that they were ashamed. Think about the desolation of that. Spiritual desolation is one of the worst situations for you and I to experience because it attacks the very core of who we are and the root of our hope, which is faith.

Spiritual desolation. You say, what? I need to know what this means. This is what we're talking about. It's those long and lonely days in our spiritual walk with God, Christian, where we need to learn the discipline of desolation, meaning this: there are times in our walks, listen carefully, where there's a dryness of soul in our lives.

Every time we have that experience, there's an answer for it. You must not write it off. Some of you need to hear me tonight more than ever because you have become comfortable in a setting or in a place of being spiritually apathetic. You've fallen asleep, as it were, in the light. And there's a sense of apathy and laziness and it's dangerous and you don't even know it, but you're in a spiritual desolation.

And we're going to talk about that tonight. The Psalmist says in that Psalm 102, verses 6 and 7, listen to what he says about his personal desolation. He says, "I'm like a pelican of the wilderness. I'm like an owl of the desert." He says, "I lie awake and I'm like a sparrow alone on the housetop."

Listen to his writing. That's a soul crying out. He's saying, listen, I'm like a pelican. Now, on the West Coast we don't get this. We don't understand this. Because our pelicans are near the water. But in the Middle East, if you've ever been into Wyoming or Colorado, you'll see pelicans.

They're white ones with black-tipped wings with orange beaks. They're the same pelican, same big thing, same bird. And you're in the wilderness, you're in Yellowstone National Park, and you see pelicans go by. What in the world? And David says I'm like a pelican in the wilderness.

What a strange bird. Think about it. He's crying out in this great Psalm. A pelican can't sing. A pelican can't sit on a branch. A pelican is an awkward-looking thing. And a pelican often dwells alone. David says I'm like a pelican in the wilderness and you might feel like that.

He goes on and he says I'm like an owl in the desert. Have you ever seen owls hanging out together? You ever seen a telephone pole and owls all lined up? They don't do that. They're lonely birds in the night, haunting the night as it were.

And then he says this. He says I'm awake, I'm up all night, I'm like a sparrow alone on a housetop. All alone. So mark this down, Christian. Are you struggling? Do you struggle? Do you have it? And I'm not talking about struggling with sin. I'm not talking about that in the text at this moment.

I'm talking about do you struggle with your walk moment by moment, day by day with God? Listen carefully in the dynamic of it. Church, listen, this is incredibly important. Your walk with Jesus Christ is to be a reality that is more true than the clothes you're wearing right now.

I mean this. This is not hyperbole or I'm not goofing off right now. You can't be a Wednesday-Sunday Christian. You who are Christians, you've come here tonight to get refueled. You've come here tonight to get recharged. Why? Because you're going back out there into the world and you take your shield of faith and you are out there living it day by day. Jesus is ever before you. You are for real.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, and his message called "Disciplines of Desolation". Thanks for being with us today. We really do appreciate you being here.

You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called the "Disciplines of Life". It's a series that highlights the disciplines of a Christ follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

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Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person.

It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode. This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners.

Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.