Unlimited Grace

Bryan Chapell: There is something more than the temporal world, more than the temporal creation, and God is working it. He is bringing about our desperation, even working beyond our doubts, so that we will trust him in the dark and the awful moments because the temporal is not the final story; it is the eternal for which he is preparing us.

Guest (Male): So glad you joined us for today's Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell. In today's episode, Pastor Bryan shares the second half of a message from Psalm 116. Dr. Chapell reminds us of the faithfulness of God amidst the sometimes difficult journey of life.

You can find this lesson and many others when you visit unlimitedgrace.com. And while you're there, look for Pastor Bryan's book, The Multi-Generational Church Crisis. This compelling book asks the question of the church, what could be accomplished in the name of Christ if we could better understand each other? Let's hear now from Dr. Bryan Chapell as he shares the second half of the lesson, I Love the Lord.

Bryan Chapell: I’m going to ask that you take your Bibles now and open them to Psalm 116. Psalm 116. We’ve been this summer going through different psalms, and this one contains some of the most precious words for God's people, particularly in times of deep stress.

A number of you know that my family, because of my father's ill health, has been in hospitals a lot lately. And if you go to hospitals, you recognize that sometimes getting where you want to go can be difficult. You go to the information desk and you start navigating. Somebody will give you words like, you go through that door on the left, then you take two rights, then go down the long hallway. Then when you come to the flower fountain, you know you're at the elevator. Then you can go up and see your father.

And you start out going, I hope this is the right door. I hope this is the right hallway. And by the way, what is a flower fountain? Until you come to it, and with the assurance of your seeing what has been provided, you know you're in the right place, ready to take the elevator to what God has you needing to face.

The psalmist is on a similar journey here in Psalm 116. He’s going down a long, dark hallway to the elevator to the Father. See if you can follow the journey. Let’s stand together and read Psalm 116.

The psalmist writes, "I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my plea for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: 'O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!'

Gracious is the Lord and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

I believed, even when I spoke: 'I am greatly afflicted'; I said in my alarm, 'All mankind are liars.' What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord; I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant; you have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!" Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, there is no harder time to praise than when the hallways are long and dark. Thank you for the word of God, which does not deal lightly or sugarcoat the realities of our lives, but talks about death pangs and anguish in real terms. How easy it is to praise you when the sun is shining and the days are sweet. But you speak of an eternal care which gives us hope and confidence even in the hard times here, because they are temporal and because you are still near.

Father, we can't be in these numbers without having people in some dark hallways right now. And so we pray that you would shine the light of your word into our hearts that we might claim the hope and the peace that you intend. Give us this grace, we pray, for we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.

"I love the Lord," says the psalmist. Despite my doubt, my desperation, my lack of understanding. I couldn't make sense of it and couldn't rise above it. And he heard me and helped me. I love the Lord. If it weren't on the pages of scripture written thousands of years ago, what would it look like for you today? What would real life look like to know even in the dark hallway God is listening and working in such a way that we can trust him?

Christianity Today this past month recorded the story of Tara Elshick. Not a name that I knew, but an amazing story. They wrote this, she first telling her own story. "The message of my childhood was clear and insistent. You work, you play, and you love hard, but at all times, stay in control. Because something scary is waiting to take you down."

"I heeded that message," she said. "I went to a great college, I found the perfect job, I chose a wonderful husband. Weaker souls might need a God, but I needed no such crutch. I was in control." That belief, she wrote, was obliterated when her husband of five years died from complications of routine surgery. Ten days later, she said, she gave birth to her first daughter, stillborn.

"I had a choice," she wrote. "Did I still want to go it alone, trying desperately to keep all the balls in the air, or did I want to admit that Jesus had offered himself so that I didn't have to be alone? To admit that I had little control but was infinitely loved."

She said she had to admit that what she had fought so long, she was actually hungry for. She was hungry for Jesus. For the Jesus who hung out with whores, who wept with his friend when he died, who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life. "I didn't have to find him or to explain him or even make sense out of him. I just had to say yes to him."

And she did. Years later, she remarried, she started a life and family again. And after bearing two sons and adopting a third child who would have been the age of the one that she lost, she discovered that one of her Christian friends in another state had encouraged her community group, her prayer group, to be praying for Tara those years ago.

The woman didn't even know Tara. She had just heard about her circumstance: she’d lost her husband, she’d lost a child. And so this woman prayed in her prayer group for Tara, lost track of her, didn't know about her, moved to England. Years later came back, and through a mutual friend asked, "What happened to Tara?"

The answer: "She got married." "Who did she marry?" "Jeff Barnson." "You’re kidding," said the friend. Jeff was in the community group that was praying for her. When Tara heard that story, she was amazed. Her husband had been praying for her before he even knew her, and didn't know that he was doing so until the friend returned from England years later and told the connection.

Tara went to work the next day and told her friends at work, "My husband was praying for me in this prayer group before he even knew me." "Wait," said one of the friends. "Were you the one that lost the husband and the child?" "Yes." Said the friend, "I was in that prayer group, too."

And then another friend at the lunch table said, "I was in that prayer group, too." And then a third friend at the table said, "I was in the prayer group, too." Tara writes her story, you will understand. "I spent the rest of the day crying. I had just learned that my husband had been praying for me before he knew me. Now I learn that three of the five women who are in my present prayer group today had been praying for me before they knew me."

"Piecing it all together, I wept and wept, unable to imagine the grace of it all. I was an agnostic widow living in New Jersey. A group of Christians praying in Massachusetts had been praying for me. They not only prayed me into the kingdom of God, but God arranged for them to include my husband and my now best friends who pray with me every week." She concludes, "These days, I am in awe of how little we control, how ugly life can be, and of the beauty that seeks us out in the midst of all the horror."

Guest (Male): You're listening to Unlimited Grace, the audio broadcast ministry of pastor and author Bryan Chapell.

It may seem hard for younger Christians to believe, but people over 50 were raised during an era when 90% of Americans identified as Christians. These older believers were once part of a majority group that understood the mission of the church was to take control of our culture, to halt its evils. At the same time, Christians under 50 have lived their entire lives perceiving themselves as a minority that needs to make credible their faith to a secular, pluralistic culture.

These distinct experiences and perceptions have a profound impact on the priorities different generations have for church ministry. It's no wonder that younger and older believers don't always see eye to eye. In his new book, The Multi-Generational Church Crisis, Dr. Bryan Chapell asks the question, what could be accomplished in the name of Christ if we could better understand each other?

This practical and hopeful book is backed by thorough research, revealing how to open the lines of communication, appreciate the experiences that shaped each generation in your church, and unite in one mission to impact your community and the world. You can request your copy of The Multi-Generational Church Crisis when you donate online at unlimitedgrace.com or by calling 844-41-GRACE. That's 844-414-7223. And now, more from Bryan Chapell on today's Unlimited Grace.

Bryan Chapell: God has given our souls rest. He uses it in the language of the Hebrew Sabbath, and the sense of God has given his people rest. He did it long ago. But beyond that, he talks about his own experience. Remember, he says, "God, you delivered my soul from death," verse eight. "My eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling." Yes, there has been a temporal deliverance of some sort.

But the psalmist still lives in this broken and difficult world. He knows that more pain will come, he knows that difficulty will come. When we say, "Baby, the rain must fall," we know that is not just song lyrics; that is the reality of existence in this fallen creation. You cannot escape it. Your life may have gone along with such blessed tranquility, but I will tell you, you cannot exist in this world without pain at some point reaching out and grabbing you and saying, "This is a long, dark hallway. Where did God go?"

And we look back and we say, he has preserved a people. And from that people came a Messiah. And that Messiah had such power to take the sin of the world upon himself that even death itself was defeated. So much so that the psalmist writing centuries earlier says God has given us hope, he has released my soul from death.

There is something more than the temporal world, more than the temporal creation, and God is working it. He is bringing about our desperation, even working beyond our doubts, so that we will trust him in the dark and the awful moments because the temporal is not the final story; it is the eternal for which he is preparing us.

And so he tells us, yes, at times you will see my hand and my heart so clearly. More times for most of us, we look back. And it's somehow seeing, when I went through that long, dark hallway, I didn't know God was anywhere to be found. But at some point, somehow, I got to the flower fountain, to the place where things began to bloom again, where life began to start again, and my soul found rest at some point.

And that's when I recognized the working of God. But even that may not even happen in this life. At which point we look back and we say, but he has redeemed my soul from death. How does he do that? No more precious words are in all the scriptures than verse 15: "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant; you have loosed my bonds."

I know they just seem kind of distant and remote. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints." What you have to recognize is this: if this was one of the four psalms used in the Passover services of the Jews for a thousand years plus more, then the person we know who read these words at the Last Supper was Jesus.

Now read them again. What if Jesus were saying this in your hearing? "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your handmaid. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving." How precious are you? You get to say the words that Jesus said.

You have loosed my bonds. We know that God was going to loose the bonds of death, but in to do so, he had to loose the bonds of sin that Christ had to take upon himself, the guilt upon his body that you and I deserve. So that ultimately sin would be defeated and death itself. It was Jesus who said, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints. O Lord, I am the son of your handmaid."

And it should just ring in our ears that in the nativity narratives where Mary is speaking to the angel after the announcement of the news that she will bear the Son of God, that she says, "O Lord, I am your handmaid." And now Jesus reads it at the Last Supper. "I am the son of your handmaid, and I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving." If you and I get to read that and know precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints, we know that we are as precious to God as Jesus. Which is the point.

This is not the final chapter. This world is not the final story. We take hope and our hearts are at peace because we know in the long, dark hallways, yes, many times we look back and we say he rescued me. But what we can say with assurance is, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints." I may have those markers of God's goodness and his salvation at different parts of my life, but ultimately I stand at the elevator to go to my Father.

And there I need to know what you need to know: precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints. There are moments that nothing will mean more to you. You know, I'm learning what it means to be a pastor. For 30 years, I've been a teacher and not pastoring. And at times, I wonder how much of me to share with you.

How much of my family's experience is just kind of maudlin or will appear to be self-centered. But so much of what I want you to know is these are not just words on a page to me. This is life, this is breath, this is hope, these words. And I could not think of it any more clearly this week than when I had to write to my brother—some of you remember, mentally handicapped, in prison—about the soon death of my father.

So I wrote to him this week. "Jeff, while I was in Australia, I got the word that you have also now received about Dad. His lung cancer has returned but moved to his brain. This is a great sadness for our family to know that we will be missing Dad soon, but we at the same time are so thankful that he loves the Lord. It's so important for you and for me to know that the Bible promises that Dad will no longer be sick when he is with Jesus. And that when Jesus comes back, we will be reunited with Dad and Granddaddy and Grandmother and all our loved ones."

"There can be some hard things for us to face in this broken world. But everybody with Jesus will be made whole in body and mind and soul." Do you know how important it is for me to be able to say to my mentally handicapped brother, everyone with Jesus will be whole in body and in mind and in soul?

"That is something to look forward to when we have completed the purposes for which God put us here. As Dad completes his purpose of being a good dad for our family and showing us his love and respect for God's grace, I take great joy and satisfaction in knowing that he will soon be with Jesus and feeling much better. We will all miss him. But we know that Dad will be completely healed in heaven. And when we see him again, all troubles and sickness and sins will be wiped away. We'll be together forever. That is why the Bible says, 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints.'"

I love the Lord. And I want you to. I want you to know that these are not just dry words on a dusty page. This is the promise of God who loves us enough to incline his ear to little children who haven't got it all figured out, who haven't risen above it, who have some long, dark hallways to walk. But when they walk, they know the heart of a God who sent his Son so that we could be made right and whole and healed and together forever. I love the Lord. And I want you to. Trust him. This is not the last chapter. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints. He will receive you as you trust in him. Turn your heart to him.

Guest (Male): That's Pastor Bryan Chapell, and you've been listening to Unlimited Grace. Please be sure to join us next time as once again we endeavor to put Christ at the center of our efforts so that lives might be transformed by his unlimited grace. This ministry is brought to you by Unlimited Grace Media and continues to be made possible with your generous financial support.