Apathy – Psalm 136

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This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Reading for us. It's psalm 136. And then Chris is coming to talk to us.

Good morning. The Bible reading today is psalm 136. As Neil said, give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods.

His love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords. His love endures forever to him who alone does great wonders his love endures forever. Who by his understanding made the heavens his love endures forever. Who spread out the earth upon the waters.

His love endures forever. Who made the great lights. His love endures forever. The sun to govern the day. His love endures forever.

The moon and stars to govern the night. His love endures forever to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt. His love endures forever. And brought Israel out from among them his love endures forever. With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

His love endures forever to him who divided the red sea asunder. His love endures forever. And brought Israel through the midst of it his love endures forever. But swept Pharaoh and his army into the red sea his love endures forever to him who led his people through the wilderness his love endures forever to him who struck down great kings his love endures forever. And killed mighty kings his love endures forever.

Sion, king of the Amorites his love endures forever. And Og, king of Bashan his love endures forever. And gave their land as an inheritance his love endures forever. An inheritance to his servant Israel his love endures forever. He remembered us in our low estate.

His love endures forever. And freed us from our enemies his love endures forever. He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever give thanks to the God of heaven for his love endures forever this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Good morning. Can I encourage any of you younger ones who are around just maybe to come up to the front? I'm going to need some help in a bit and I'm going to look rather silly if I'm doing it all on my own. So if you want to just come and sit, you can bring your worksheets and things, but if you just sit down here for me for a few minutes as we get started, and then you can help me with some exercises that we got. Well, not exercises with a little illustration that we're going to do in a moment.

Yeah, go on. Fantastic. Isn't it great to be in church this morning, eh? Isn't it brilliant? We're going to get into the psalm that we've just been hearing from Colleen, we're going to see what God has to say to us.

Isn't it fantastic that we're going to be here this morning? Or maybe it isn't. Maybe we come in here this morning and actually it doesn't feel that great. We come from whatever is going on in our lives. It's just not feeling great to be here this morning.

We're just not enthused about it at all. Just that's not where we are from. The week that we've had or even the morning that we've had or the past couple of hours that we've had. Should we just pray together and then we'll look at God's word? Lord God and heavenly Father.

We come from scattered lives into this place. We come from lives that are filled with so many different things. And we come into this place together to meet with you, to seek your face, to seek what you have to say to us in your word. So, Lord God, be with us in these few moments as we think about this psalm, as we think about your great love, for we ask it in and through the precious and worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Great. So, as Neil said, we're starting a new series this summer, and can we have the first slide up, please? Yes. With God together. That's our series that we're starting.

And we're going to be looking at over the summer. We're going to be looking at some of the different emotions and feelings that we have as people, and we're going to be looking at them together. We're going to be looking at the psalms and we're going to see how those are reflected in the psalms and how the psalms were used so that people could come together and work through some of these different things. And we're going to see what God has to say to us through these psalms. As kind of Neil alluded to earlier, these feelings and emotions and things that we bring when we come to church, when we come before God, they're universal.

They're something that people have felt down the ages. And we're going to see that in the psalms. And hopefully, as we do that, we can search together. We can find hope together in the psalms. We can see other people's struggles.

We can see how they dealt with it. We can see how they relate to God, see how that relates to us, and it can help us in our lives. And we can keep reminding ourselves of this rescuing, loving God that we have so today. Next slide, please. We're going to be looking at apathy.

I hope you're not too apathetic about coming this morning. But no, we're going to be looking at apathy. This sense that sometimes we don't feel very enthusiastic about thinking about God. Sometimes we can be indifferent. If we feel like God can't help us when it hurts, when things are going wrong in our lives and God isn't there, then we don't have any enthusiasm for God.

Or maybe it's we don't need God because actually everything's going well, and I don't have any need of God. Because my life's going quite well, actually. And I'm enjoying what I'm doing, and everything's moving along swimmingly. I've got nothing to worry about. I'm indifferent to God.

Or maybe it's just that you're not seeing God doing anything. You don't feel like God is speaking to you don't feel like God's got anything that you want, that you need, that is impacting your life. And so God's just not doing anything. And I'm indifferent. I'm apathetic towards him.

In the general sense, apathy is that lack of interest, that lack of enthusiasm. And it can be caused by various different things. I was looking up some of the causes of apathy. And alongside kind of the medical things that go on. There are lots of psychological and lots of social things that go on.

The impact of personal trauma, of the things that we've experienced of stress and major change in our lives that can cause apathy. Apathy can be caused by a monotonous routine, a lack of stimulation, emotional burnout can cause apathy and disconnection. Sorry. Because of social isolation, all these things can cause apathy. And our lives are so buried, aren't they?

We all have different experiences. Lots of different things happen to us in different ways.

Anybody tell me what these are? Chocolates. Chocolates? Yeah, boxes of chocolates. Now, there's a great philosopher that some of you might have heard of called Forrest Gump.

Forrest Gump said, and he was quoting his mother when he said this. He said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. Now, I have two problems with that. First of all, and whatever you do, don't google this.

It's insane. So there's a whole argument about whether it is a box of chocolates or was a box of chocolates. And if you google that, you'll see there's people on the Internet tearing a chunks out of each other, arguing over whether it's is or was, it's amazing. So that's my first problem with it. I found this out recently and I was amazed.

The other thing is, it tells you on the back, it tells you what you're going to get. So it's not a great metaphor at all. So we're going to try a different one. Don't need those. Don't worry, you'll get chocolate later.

It's all right. Okay, we're going to try something else. Can we have the next slide, please? But don't start it yet. Okay.

The metaphor we're going to use is that life is a bit like a roller coaster. It's full of twists and turns and ups and downs. Okay, so we're all going to go on a roller coaster. Okay, so can we get a straight line here and. Yeah, if you sit down on the floor in that line for me.

And what we're going to try and do as this video plays. Right. What we're going to try and do is pretend we're on the roller coaster and we're going to have our arms in the air and we're going to move as the roller coaster moves on the video. Feel free to join in. Don't feel any pressure.

It's fine. But we're going to try and ride this roller coaster. Okay. We'll get some chocolates at the end. Don't worry.

Okay, so we ready? Arms in the air. Are we ready? Oh. Okay, everybody.

Fantastic. Okay, let's go.

Okay. Okay. This is the boring bit at the beginning while you sat there waiting for it to move. Oh, we're moving. We're okay.

Oh, lean back. We're going up the hill. We're going up the hill. Being back. Okay.

Oh, we're still going up there. I don't know if I can take much more of this. Oh, we're going up the hill. We're going up the hill. It's a big roller coaster, this one.

I didn't think this through.

Wait, we're not gone yet. We've not gone yet. We're not gone yet. You ready?

He's gonna drop us.

Oh, here we go. And open back again. We going round? Oh, we got a twist. Oh, okay, I'm gonna stand this way so I can see which way we're all going.

To the right and over to the left.

Fantastic. Thank you.

That was a lot more strenuous than I thought it was going to be, I'll be honest. Ah. Did you enjoy that? Fantastic. So I.

Yeah. Okay, action news. I didn't expect that. Life has ups and downs and twists and turns, doesn't it? Don't surprise everybody.

Okay, fantastic. So life does have ups and downs. Sometimes it's a bit like a roller coaster in that we might have our arms in the air screaming with joy at one point, and then the next minute we're gritting our teeth and hoping it's going to be over soon because we're just a bit too much. Or maybe just like when we're going up at the start, we're just waiting for something to happen, and we're just waiting for the next thing to come.

Sometimes we can be a bit like that in our lives. We could be coasting along and being a little bit bored. Everything's fine. And we're apathetic towards God because nothing's really going on. Maybe we're gritting our teeth and there's horrible things going on in our lives that are really tearing us up inside, and God isn't there.

God isn't helping us. Maybe there's so much going on in our lives, it's great that actually we have no need of God. We're flying along on the roller coaster, and we're loving every minute of it. How does the psalm today, though, help us overcome our apathy? How does it help us refocus on God?

Get your bibles out. Some bibles. Make sure you guys, you make sure you can see this screen. We're gonna have a quick look at the psalms, and like the psalm would have originally have been sung, there's that refrain, God's love endures forever. And we're gonna read through some of the verses, and we're gonna talk about them a little bit.

And at the end of each section, we're gonna say together, no, we're not gonna get chocolate just yet. We're gonna say together, God loves us forever. Okay, so, psalm 136, verses one to three, if you've got it.

So in verse one to three, the psalmist puts God front and centre. Okay? God is God of gods and lord of lords. He is the one who is the creator of everything. He's by definition, good.

He is the one who we're being invited to praise by the psalmist, and we're invited to praise him because everybody together.

Fantastic. Okay. And then in verses four to nine, the psalmist gives us evidence of God's creation. He talks about the God who's put together the sun, the moon and the stars, the earth and the universe. And it's the same goddess that loves us.

What does it say on the screen in verses ten to 18. Sorry, it's actually ten to 16. Yes, it is. My eyesight's going, I haven't got my glasses on. So we've got a powerful reminder in verses 1016 of the plight of the Jews when they were brought out of Israel, and what God did there to bring them out, to manifest a people for himself, a chosen people.

It's a reminder of God's control and provision in the face of everything that seems impossible. Why? Because.

Fantastic. Thank you. Verses 17 to 22, we've got a list of the victories of God, the way God has been willing to fight for his people. Okay, that's the same God who in Jesus came down to earth to fight for us, the one who put death to death for us and saved us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who loves us forever.

God loves us forever. Verses 23 to 26. God is the one who cares. He provides food for his creation. God is powerful, but he's not distant.

He's tender, personal and intimate. We're invited to give thanks to the God of heaven.

Fantastic. Can anybody guess what the main theme of this passage might be? Yeah, I think you might be right. Yeah. Yeah, I think you might be onto something.

Yeah. Yeah. God loves us forever. God's love is loyal and enduring. It comes from a word that we've looked at before at church, a word called hesed.

It's this deep, intimate, covenantal love of God. Not a love that fades and flows like human love, but a love that is steadfast and forever intense and fierce and timeless. Life is sometimes really hard. Things happen to us that we can't control, things that we don't want to have anything to do with. But things and circumstances come together and we're forced to face them.

Sometimes a million little things happen to us in our lives. It's like death by a thousand cuts. It all wears us down and grinds us down. Sometimes life's great and we're flying along and everything's perfect and we're riding high without a care in the world. Sometimes we're just coasting along and we're listless.

But in all these things, God's love is constant. God's love is the same. It's the same love that breaks into our lives, whether it's breaking into the darkness, where it's breaking into the bleakness of our condition and our feeling. God's love can do that. God's love is a love that can break into the moments of joy and remind us where the source of all that has come from God's love surrounds us and it envelops us for those of us who are christians, for those of us that know the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's that same love that binds us together as a people. It binds us to one another. It binds us to God. We have a living and breathing relationship, one with another through Christ, and that same relationship with God because of his great love for us. Let's remember and repeat together.

Fantastic. And we'll be singing that in our last song, that God's love endures forever. It'll be soon, don't worry. It will be soon. The last song.

Don't worry. Should we just have a very quick prayer? Hands together. Fantastic. Lord God and heavenly Father, we thank you for the reminder of your great hesed love.

That love that is, is timeless. That love that is forever, that love that can break into every situation. We thank you for the reminder of it this morning. Lord God and heavenly Father, let us take that as we go shortly from this place and into our weeks and into our lives and things that press on us, the things that lift us up, help us to remember that great, that timeless, that. That indestructible love that you have for each and every one of us.

We ask it in and through the precious and worthy name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.