Ken Boa Reflections Ministries

Ken Boa: I'd just like to say a few words. As you know, I do this for my "Talk Through the Bible" series. We did a visual presentation of every book of the Bible, plus a number of other aspects like the whole New Testament, the whole Old Testament, the poets, and so forth. There are about 80 different ones, and this is a portion of one of those presentations.

Just to say a word about this, it's a funeral, you might say, of a city. It's a tear-stained portrait of a once-proud Jerusalem, now reduced to a rubble by the invading Babylonian hordes. In the five-poem dirge, he expresses his emotions. A death has occurred and Jerusalem has now become barren. The language of the literary structure is exceedingly sophisticated.

Essentially, he writes his lament in the form of an alphabetical acrostic, beginning each chapter with the next successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. You can see the 22 letters that are colored here. One leads to another, so there's a structure there that I think is intriguing. He's literally weeping from A to Z, you might say, as he rings the changes.

Yet, at the same time, there's this incredible statement: "Great is your faithfulness." In the midst of this terrible holocaust, he triumphantly cries out, "Great is your faithfulness." Here we see in the face of death and destruction, with seemingly everything coming apart, life everything coming apart, he turns tragedy in this context into a triumph of faith. He's never failed him in the past and he's promised to remain faithful in the future.

In light of the God that he knows and loves, he does find hope and comfort. But at the same time, the whole of this is a hard book to read, I'll be honest with you. The title "Lamentations" is about tears, about lamentations. These are the lamentations of Jeremiah the prophet.

The author, although he is unnamed, I think there's good evidence externally and internally that it was really him who wrote the book. There's universal consensus in the Jewish and Christian tradition. Even the Septuagint version says it came to pass after Israel had been carried away captive and Jerusalem had become desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem.

There's a lot of other external evidence from the Talmudic evidence, the Aramaic Targum, and others that refer specifically to this. The Old Testament Jeremiah lamented also for Josiah. It's an eyewitness account. It's obviously one who knows what he's talking about. He describes in brutal detail the fall of Jerusalem. The similarity in style is very much as well. We see "terrors on every side" in Lamentations and "terrors on every side" in Jeremiah.

One of the things I love about the scriptures is it's not "long ago and far away," but it's locked into spacetime history. Cities, locations, and details are so easily verifiable. The beauty is that with more archaeological discoveries being found, the reliability is only increasing, only enhancing, and only enriching both the Old and the New Testament because it really is locked in and it's verifiable.

Nebuchadnezzar took Judah and deported key people like Daniel to Babylon. Jehoiakim was a Babylonian vassal, but he rejected Jeremiah's warnings in 601 BC and rebelled against Babylon. Then Jehoiachin was the next king in 597 BC. He was replaced only three months later when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and deported him to Babylon.

The next one is Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. His attempted alliance with Egypt led to Nebuchadnezzar's occupation and overthrow of Babylon in 586 BC. All these things were prophesied by the prophet. Even in the 11th hour, he says, "Even now, if you would only return, I would think better of the calamity that I predicted against you."

Remember in Jeremiah 18, but he already said, "But you'll say, 'No, we won't do it.' Everyone of us is going to follow the stubbornness of his own heart." It was a bona fide offer, yet he knew they would reject it, just as Jesus made his offer. If you would only come as a hen would want its chicks to come, but you would say no. "I will not come again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" And that day will come.

The idea here is that you have this legitimate offer. It's the sovereignty of God and human responsibility illustrated, both going together. I used that as an illustration in my very first book. I still remember this weird experience remembering just now when I was writing that comment when I was 29 years old writing "God I Don't Understand." On the spine, it said "God I Don't Understand - Boa."

It was a hard thing, but my whole argument in that book is that if it is a genuine revelation from God, it would go beyond the ceiling of our own comprehension. You would expect it to do so. It says things that no one ever did make up or could make up. The only solution you have if it transcends the ceiling of our comprehension would be like trying to teach calculus to a two-year-old. It's not that the two-year-old is deficient; it's because he doesn't have the capacity yet to even understand it.

Don't suppose, as I say with the analogy of a dog and a man, you can teach a dog to fetch a newspaper, but you can't teach him to read it. There are going to be some things you're not going to be able to do. Does it mean it's irrational? No, it goes beyond the ceiling of your comprehension as you would expect if it's a divine revelation. That's part of the uniqueness of the scriptures.

The only solution to the problem in every instance is God's relation to time, his relation to space, omnipresence versus localization, immanence versus transcendence, the God-man, the Trinity, and others. The only way you can hold it is to hold the two truths in tension. You don't understand it, but they're both true. Affirm both and hold them in that tension, and then you are satisfied because you realize you'll never understand the fringes of God's way.

As a scientist, I'm learning more and more about the natural world as well. You can't understand anything about the natural world. If I spoke to you about natural things and you did not understand, how would it be if I spoke to you of spiritual things? Stop trying to understand and start instead thanking God for what he's doing in spite of the experiences. Hard thanksgiving is to trust God that his outcome is good and that he is good for his word and that you can hope in him. You'll never understand him, but instead of trying to understand him, seek to know him. The way you'll know him is by obedient response. Application is the portal of divine disclosure. If you want to know him better, do what he calls you to do. Now you're taking the risk of application and doing what he says, though you'll never understand the fringe of his ways.

The book was written soon after the siege of January 588 BC, through this period of time. It fell all the way to August 13th, and then the city and the temple were burned on August 15th. It was written before Jeremiah was taken captive to Egypt. I want to look at three major themes in this book.

The first theme I want you to see is that of mourning. This goes through all the five laments, as do all these three themes. The most prominent is the theme of Jerusalem's holocaust. The holy city has been laid waste and desolate, and God's promised judgment for sin has now come. In his sorrow, he speaks for himself, for the captives, and sometimes even for the personified city.

But there's another theme; there's a theme of confession as well. It's a confession of sin and acknowledgment of God's righteous and holy judgment upon Judah. His judgment was right and proper, and so it was needful for us.

Then the third theme, and this is the one we're going to be looking at here in our chapter, is hope in God's future restoration of his people. He's poured out his wrath, but in his mercy, he'll be faithful to his covenant promises. Though the Lord's mercies we are through his mercies we're not consumed because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. It's such an incredible oasis in the midst of this desert that we must give clear attention to it and it's right intentionally where it belongs, right in the center of the book.

The keyword is obviously lamentations, which is appropriate because he passionately laments the utter destruction of Jerusalem, of the temple, of many of its people, and the Babylonian captivity. The key verse is going to be in Chapter 2: "The Lord was like an enemy. He swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up all her palaces; he destroyed her strongholds and increased mourning and lamentation in the daughter of Judah."

"He has done violence to his tabernacle as if it were a garden; he's destroyed his place of assembly. The Lord has caused the appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion. In his burning indignation, he has spurned the king and the priest." But though God severely chastised Israel, again he did not forsake it.

The next key verse is the one we've just been looking at again. They're new every morning; it's such an oasis. In the midst of these five chapters of ruin, the key chapter is the one I've selected because, with other hopelessness, he rises and grasps the strong faith in the promises and character of God. Chapter 3 verses 23 to 25 express a magnificent faith in the mercy of God, especially when placed against the dark backdrop of the other chapters.

One of the contributions is what I mentioned before, these alphabetic acrostics in which the first four chapters of Lamentations are acrostics in which the first word in each of the 22 verses of Chapters 1 and 2 and of Chapter 4 begin with the 22 successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Chapter 3 is different because it has 66 verses, and there are three of the letters for each of those Hebrew letters three times. Then Chapter 5 has 22 verses but is not an acrostic poem. In addition, Chapters 1 and 2 have three lines per verse, Chapter 4 has two lines per verse, and Chapters 3 and 5 have only one line per verse.

This elaborate structure stands in a balanced contrast to the passionate and dramatic outpouring of grief in these five lament poems. This acrostic poem may have been used to express the full range of suffering from Alpha to Omega, from Aleph to Tav, the beginning and the end. A memory aid as well, very likely. It was a liturgical use as well because this melancholy rhythm was used in funeral dirges. This technique adds to the plaintive mode of a lamentation. It's a brilliant "limping meter," it's called as well. It's a brilliant piece just of the architecture. The structure of the Hebrew is incredibly impressive.

How is it possible that he would have this rich complexity of structure and form, but at the same time he would have these passionate emotional outbursts? Isn't it an interesting thing that it has both sides represented? It's both a left-brain and a right-brain book. It includes both the structures of the details and so forth, but also has the heart, the meaning, the imagination as well. It's an amazing combination.

The Jews, by the way, publicly read this vivid and tragic book each year to commemorate Jerusalem's destruction both in 586 and again in AD 70. This book is used in that context. In Judaism, by the way, you have a way of expressing lament, a corporate way where they can deal with a lament in an appropriate way. We don't do that as well. They have a capacity. It's significant about half of the Psalms are lament Psalms. How many of our hymns are lament hymns? Maybe 1% of I'm being generous. Something's wrong with that. The idea because there's a lamentation and it has a power in its dealing with the problem of confession of sin and acknowledgment of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of sin, which is necessary.

The more we grow spiritually, as you know, you will become more aware of both. You will become increasingly aware of both that God is a lot holier than you thought he was as you get to know him better, but also sin is a lot worse than you thought it was. The contrast really reveals a growing apprehension of grace because as you see the greater that gap, the greater your grasp of grace becomes.

I don't think that's going to stop in the next life. I think you're going to continue to grow in your amazement at the grace of God further up and further in. It'll be like Narnia, but it was even more rich and more wonderful. Then there was another one and another. You see this is going to be an endless adventure in my view. Endless, as you know, I like to describe heaven as endless creative activity without frustration to the glory of God.

You will be a gardener of mystery in the new creation. But now creation will serve you, and time will purr at your feet, and space will be your agency. You'll be able to do things that you can't even imagine now. Whatever you imagine, the most wonderful moments of beauty and intimacy, adventure that you've ever known are only hints of better goods that are so much greater that you don't have the mind to understand it. But I digress, as I will occasionally do.

Continuing on here, the book evokes as I read it such a downward pull. You need to have that upward hope, that vision, because it's a brutally realistic book as is the Bible. Yet at the same time, it also reveals there's another act to come. This is not a tragedy as it now appears to be, but a great act is coming. That's what we need to live in and understand.

It was placed in the Megilloth, or the five rolls along with the Book of Song of Solomon, Ruth, Esther, and Ecclesiastes. They didn't know where to put it, so they stuck it in the Megilloth. But it follows Jeremiah in the Septuagint as it does, of course, in English versions. You have two glimpses of Jerusalem's fall. While the Book of Jeremiah primarily anticipates the fall of Jerusalem and issues a warning against it, Lamentation reflects back and mourns over it.

Now Christ, how is he seen in our book? Because in "Talk Through the Bible," I always have a component: Christ in every book of the Bible. So how is Christ to be seen? I think he's portrayed in a couple of ways as the weeping prophet. The weeping prophet Jeremiah is a type of Christ, the prophet who wept over the same city six centuries later. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate."

Like Christ, Jeremiah identified himself personally with the plight of Jerusalem and with human suffering caused by sin. So Lamentations also includes the elements that typify Christ's life and ministry as the Man of Sorrows who was acquainted with grief. He was afflicted, he was despised by his enemies, and he was derided by them as well. All those things happened to this prophet, made him a type of Christ himself as you can see.

It consists of five dirges, you see. So the first dirge is a vivid, dramatic description of the desolation of Jerusalem and its misery because of her sin. Through the voices of the prophet and a personified city, Jerusalem's desolation is described as being both physical and covenantal because of the sin of the people. Throughout the descriptions are repeated calls for Yahweh to deliver them.

"How lonely sits the city that was full of people! She's become like a widow who was once great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer! She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. She has none to comfort her among all her lovers. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile under affliction and under harsh servitude. She dwells among the nations, but she has found no rest. All her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of distress. The roads of Zion are in mourning."

This interesting poetic imagery that you have, it's rich. The metaphors, the images, the figures of speech are profound. Just an analysis of that again would be worthy of study. But the idea of the personification of the city as an individual and there's like a covenant that was broken and it becomes personified as a covenant breaker.

"Her virgins are afflicted and she herself is bitter. Her adversaries are become her masters; her enemies prosper. For the Lord has caused her grief because of the multitude of her transgressions. Her little ones have gone astray as captives before the adversary." I don't have time to read the entire book, but you get the picture that it is a sorrowful thing.

I will read this one's 22 verses. Why is it 22 verses? Because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, Dalet, and so forth. Each one starts with the next one in succession. So the structure in the limping meter, all those things have to amplify the text and they would be like a funeral dirge as well. And so it's a very powerful image in a minor key, of course.

"They found no pasture and they've fled without strength before the pursuer. In the days of her affliction and homelessness, Jerusalem remembers all her precious things. They were from the days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the adversary and no one helped her, the adversary saw her; they mocked her ruin. Jerusalem sinned greatly, therefore she has become an unclean thing. All who honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness. Even she herself groans and turns away.

Her uncleanness was in her skirts. She did not consider the future. Therefore, she has fallen astonishingly! She has no comforter! 'See, O Lord, my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself!' The adversary has stretched out his hand over her all her precious things, for she seen the nations enter her sanctuary, the ones whom you commanded that they should not enter into your congregation.

All her people groan, seeking bread. They've given their precious things for food you to restore their lives themselves. 'See, O Lord, and look, for I'm despised! Is it nothing to all you who pass this way? Look and see if there's any pain like my pain which was severely dealt out to me, which the Lord is inflicted on the day of his fierce anger. From on high, he sent fire into my bones and it prevailed over them. He has spread a net for my feet. He has turned me back. He has made me desolate, faint all day long.

The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand; they are knit together. They have come upon my neck. He has made my strength fail. The Lord has given me into the hands of those against whom I am not able to stand. The Lord has rejected all my strong men in my midst. He has called an appointed time against me to crush my young men. The Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah.

For these things I weep. My eyes run down with water because far from me is a comforter, one who restores my soul. My children are desolate because the enemy has prevailed. Zion stretches out her hands; there is no one to comfort her. The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob, commanded that the ones round about him should be his adversaries. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.

The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his command. Hear now, all peoples, and behold my pain. My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity. I call to my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders perished in the city while they sought food to restore their strength themselves. See, O Lord, for I am in distress! My spirit is greatly troubled. My heart is overturned within me, for I've been very rebellious. In the street, the sword slays. In the house, it is like death.

They've heard that I groan; there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my calamity; they're glad that you have done it. Oh, that you would bring the day which you have proclaimed that they may become like me! Let all their wickedness come before you and deal with them as you have dealt with me for all my transgressions, for my groans are many and my heart is faint.'"

I wanted to read that whole chapter. I will not read the others, but I wanted you to read it to see how brutally creative yet distressing it is at the same time. It's rich and beautiful on the one hand and ugly on the other. As you know, evil has always been a parasite on the good, and evil always invites us to pursue disordered loves and distorted goods. And so it is here, so there's a beauty on the back side of it, isn't there? There's a strangeness about this.

And so we go to the second one, and this one I'm going to cover more quickly. But I wanted you to get a feel for the dramatic description that we're dealing with here. I wanted you to see the second dirge as well, and it's a description of the city's desolation from the vantage points of Yahweh and the prophet Jeremiah.

So the Lord describes the desolation of Jerusalem as that which he has actively done against his own, and the prophet confirms that her desolation is due to her sin, but he urges the people to seek the Lord in prayer and the Lord to look upon the tragic state of his people. And so a very brief look. He's covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger. And so it goes on down. In his anger, the Lord has become like an enemy. He's destroyed the strongholds; he's abandoned the sanctuary. Rampart has been broken down; the prophets are gone. My eyes are full of tears. Where's the grain and the wine? How will I admonish you?

So you see this overarching theme about again such creativity with these laments. It's not just "I'm miserable," but it's something rich and wonderful and beautiful at the same time because it's a distorted good. This is not the way things were intended to be.

But then we go to this chapter that I'm eager to go to because, of course, we long for that. We long for hope in the midst of despair, don't we? It's our natural desire. And so when we see people aging, when we see people dying, when we see the loss of hope, loss of careers, loss of dreams, broken things, we all need to have a sense of hope without which we will despair. We'll become bitter and disappointed and unforgiving. The root of bitterness will destroy us.

The only way we can have hope is really to fix our hope on that which is going to endure, that which is going to remain. And you know where I'm going with this right here. I keep going here because this is what the prophet is reminding me to remind myself about: to say, "Look, Ken, you have to remember that in spite of all the adversities you're facing—and all of us in this room are facing adversities—yet in spite of this, I will have hope."

But it's not just a whistling in the wind. It's based upon the sure promises of the resurrected Christ. And so we're not just saying this is in the level playing field of ideas, there's nothing even like this biblical worldview. But renovation requires wreckage. This is remember what I tell my bride to quote every night, as I did last night. So she quotes it. And it's good for her to quote as her head's on the pillow and I'm asking her to recite that to me.

She's this is her hope: that God redeems what he allows, that we're not defined by the pain of our bounded past but by the joy of our unbounded future, and that the best is yet to come. And I think of Jonathan Edwards' wonderful sermon as well because this great sermon, our bad things will turn out for good. He did this as his first sermon. He was 18 years old. It's an incredible this is an outline of his sermon Romans 8:28. Our bad things will turn out for good, but our good things can never be taken away. That overcomes the downward pull of remorse on the one hand and regret on the other.

You see, he will even use that. He redeems what he allows is what we're saying. And so it's with that hope that we can actually walk with richness. And we don't have to walk with regret because even our good things can never be taken away from us. And then in 1 Corinthians 2, the best things are yet to come.

And this is why we say the best is yet to come. I'm using it as a signature more and more. See, for such a time as this and also the best is yet to come. And that is a good word of hope, isn't it, in a context of apparent absurdity? We realize this.

So here he responds. As a representative of the community, he laments, yet he expresses his hope in God and urges the nation to repent and confess their sins, praying for vengeance upon their enemies. And so this is a 66-verse lament. And so the ones that I want you to particularly note, though, are going to be in Chapter 3. Yes, so he seen affliction. So he goes on here and all of a sudden, bam! There's this section of verses, just a small little oasis as I say in this desert, a place or an eye in the storm.

And this eye in the storm is says, "'Remember, surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness! The Lord is my portion,' says the soul. 'Therefore, I have hope in him.' The Lord is good to those who wait for him."

That's a hard thing, isn't it, to wait on the Lord? You always find his timing is never ours. You know how I love to describe prayer. I'll do it again if you want. I count on collective amnesia for many people. Prayer is a strategy session in which we tell God what our best interests look like and then we give him generous suggestions as to how and when to pull them off. That's not prayer; that's a cosmic slot machine, a vending machine. But if I hit the right button and say the right words, bingo!

What is he, an idiot? That's sympathetic magic. He's not going to bow down to your absurdities. Prayer is instead to align my will with his, not his with mine. You don't know what your best interests look like. Remember the two things you have to remember in order to really trust and obey God: Number one, God's in control and you're not. Number two, God has your best interests at heart and you don't know what they are because you'd have to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent to understand these matters.

He knows what your best interests look like, and you and he will often disagree as to what that looks like. That's where prayer is a matter of "Your will be done," you see. "Your kingdom come." So hallowed be your name, your will, your kingdom—not mine.

And so to recognize the dethronement of the self and the enthronement of Christ. It's like the Copernican revolution from going from the S-O-N, but now the S-U-N is in the center, from an egocentric to a Christocentric vision of life. And so every day you have to die. I die daily. You have to crucify; you have to die and lose your life to find what? Something better. He never asks us to lose something without giving us something better in return. Lose your life and you'll find my life in replacement. So it's that hope that we have to have that's so necessary in our own life journey.

So though I do not understand him, I can trust him. And that and you grow in trust by leaning on him and taking the risks of obedience because I do believe that biblical faith is risk-taking. Remember faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. It invites us to pursue that which is not yet over that which is now and that which is invisible over that which is seen. Wouldn't you say it takes a measure of risk?

We're betting the farm that Jesus is who he claimed to be because he's come back from the dead. And he promises that we in our caterpillar bodies will become butterflies like he already is. And remember the pupa in the chrysalis? It has to die, liquefy, and then a new body plan emerges. There's a death, burial, and resurrection that takes place. You never dream that caterpillar would be that butterfly. So they're the same, yeah, but they're not. They're different, but they're the same. It's a strange mystery how the same thing can be that.

Wait till you see what it'll be like! And by the way, it'll this a caterpillar cosmos and God's going to resurrect it as well. Imagine then being able to in and after having gone through the judgment seat of Christ! Good grief, think about that for a moment. You won't be able to think sin. And everything you desire would be something pleasing to him.

Furthermore, whatever you want, you're not now dealing with a recalcitrant nature that's fallen, but one that cooperates with you, where you have this creative activity both individually but I think collectively in rich wonders that'll take place.

I do a lot of planning with my wife about things. I try to imagine things that we're going to be doing together. And so through and over the hills and far away, she walked hand in hand with Piggling Bland. That's our love story, the tale of Piggling Bland. I love that. It's an image. Read it. It was Beatrix Potter's love story, too. But it's a beautiful picture of how the world is full of dangers and oppression and risks and so forth, but at the end, they go over the hills and far away. I find that a very evocative concept, don't you?

Use your mind's eye; dream with me; imagine because it's your imagination that's the organ of meaning. And you have to use that to it's that's the whole idea. We live too much in our left-brain world. That's a good servant but a terrible master. And so I want you to use your imagination to dream and that this moment of hope that this so beautifully clarifies is a picture of the salvation of God.

The fourth dirge is the Lord's anger in view of its former glory and present misery. Again, unstoppable judgment. And then it goes on to the fifth dirge. So the repentant remnant pleads for merciful remembrance.

One other thing I want to comment is about the whole book is a chiastic structure itself. So there's Lamentations is A, and then God's judgment, then Jeremiah's response. And then B prime, the Lord's anger, and then the remnant's response. So it's a chiasm. So the book is amazing; the more you look at it, the more astonishing it really becomes.

And yet there's another thing as well: the middle chapter intensifies the use of the alphabet because there are still 66 lines but each line begins with a letter of the alphabet. The subject matter of Chapter 3 is also somewhat general. The writer expresses his dismay, his contrition, and his hope of restoration. This then is the peak chapter of the book and so it gives us that moment of hope where there it evokes that sense of longing and hope and purpose.

And so when I when I look at this when I look at this book and consider the meaning and the profundity of this book, I recognize that in spite of the afflictions of God that are there, there's still going to be a centrality and you you'll see it in the context this prayer for mercy. We look back. Remember how we know that it's the statement is that the old is in the new concealed, the new is in the old revealed. I got it backwards, didn't I? And you didn't pay attention!

The old is in the new revealed, the new is in the old concealed. But you didn't notice! Oh, you did? Okay, sure you did. I didn't I saw no objection! Liars, liars, pants on fire! You're a bad influence for me, Rodney. My friend Steve. Steve is visiting us with us with us from Charlotte and would you introduce your friend by the way? Did you already do that? Oh, you already did that? Okay, I wasn't paying attention. I was preparing. Well, I'm looking forward to being with both of you today; I really am. But to just to wanted to open it up for a Q&A and see because I have a little bit of time. But I I want to end begin and end with that sense of beauty of of of the languishing but of beauty. There are moments in music that that dissonant chord is so profound.

Guest (Male): As I've grown older and read through the whole Bible, I found it surprising that one year Exodus was my favorite book in the Bible. And I'd love to hear, connected to what you talked about today which I love on the sorrow side of things, and I was reminded this morning in my Bible time how the author of any book does not release and reveal the climax. Yes, we can often cheat and go to the end of the book and read some of this climactic narrative which some could argue helps you read the whole of the Bible. But the Bible is sweet in its entirety, and maybe not for this group or this church—I don't know, there's got to be somebody here—but the Old Testament is becoming obsolete in my generation. So I wonder if you could maybe briefly discuss to me the sweetness and the power of indwelling in the sorrow, of indwelling in God's wrath, of indwelling in his nature of how he treated this insignificant people group that he chose, Israel, makes the cross stand out so much more beautiful, makes the nature and the fullness of God's character in human form even sweeter to digest as you read through the New Testament.

Ken Boa: You've answered yourself! That's exactly what I was going to say. James, that's that's rich. Yes, the the the law was revealed through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ. And yet you see a God of love and a God of wrath in both Testaments. More wrath in Revelation than anywhere in the scriptures. But you have this whole idea that it's not one versus the other; it's the same God. It's not a God of wrath; it's a God of love, of graciousness, of pursuit, of lament. He himself sees himself as one who's been spurned by his by his lover, that Israel has rejected.

You see, only the God of scripture, only the Trinitarian God of revealed scripture, is actually a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. And you know what a covenant does. A covenant is committing yourself to the well-being of another. A contract is protecting yourself from the person. But marriage is not a contract; it's a covenant; it's a risk. And you know the risks and perturbations of love mean that it can be spurned and rejected, and God well knew this. He already underwrote the cross. In some mysterious way, he is anticipating all that.

And yet there's this progress in revelation, and there's a beauty in that general revelation. I I argue that God reveals himself yes in the natural world, and he does it through beauty and the scriptures and rather the created order. So the beauty of the created world points to the truth of the revealed word. And in the revealed word, you see God revealing himself as one who loves his people, who pursues them, has a purpose for them, knows them, and already understands in some mysterious way.

He's in all times at once, and we sometimes forget that he's back there looking forward; he's not looking he's seen in your future looking back; he's also right now. Every moment is an eternity, and every eternity is a moment. With the day of the Lord is as a thousand years, a thousand years is a day. You can reduce that to what I just said. He has an infinite amount of time to process billions of prayers. But every all of time is as a moment.

How can this be? We're transcending. How can you and I think outside of space and time? We don't we can't even define energy let alone spirit. Do we think we know anything? The more you have to understand education is a movement really from cock-sure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty. You have to recognize that we if we grow in our knowledge, the greatest scholars are the ones who finally know enough to know how how little they know. And this epistemic humility is the need to realize we don't know anything, so stop being so stupid as to argue against the Almighty but submit to his purposes and know that he's caring and loving. That he's created that, he's made because he's the wellspring of all things that are beautiful. You can be an aesthetic being because he is the source and the fountainhead of all things that are good. You're a moral being and because he is the origin of all things that are that are true, you're a rational being. You're because he's a personal being and an I and of a Thou, a one and a many, you are a relational being. You're a spiritual being having this earthbound experience.

So understand all these things are there in the mind of God, but they're being progressively revealed through the period of time. So you look at the progress of revelation as it moves more and more toward the New Testament. But even there I have to say, I'm astonished and this is where we'll stop, I'm astonished when I read Matthew 1 every time. It's almost an "oh, look at that!" It's no longer a bloody mess, but it's a relationship, a covenant relationship with a with a loving person, the lover and romancer of your soul.

It's there, but it's hidden. But it's always there for those who see, and the more you see the Old Testament, the more you begin to see the intimations of the new. So they both work very well together. But we we have a romancer of a soul and the greatest stories are true, the greatest romances are true, that that there is a lover of your soul who purchased you with his own life, who pursues you, who protects you, and who provides for you.