I'd like to welcome everyone to Bridge Gospel this morning.
I'm glad that you're here.
If this is your first time, I'd especially like to welcome you.
I know it can be weird to walk into a new church
where you don't know what's going on
and when to sit and when to stand
and where to put your coffee.
Just relax.
It's okay.
I'd also like to welcome everyone who's watching online.
I believe that God will bless you right where you are.
So I just have one announcement.
The ladies are having a little card-making party.
I believe it's this Saturday.
Yep, it's on Saturday.
So it's just a time to hang out and make some friends,
5 to 7 o'clock.
Just that they ask that you sign up
so they can have enough supplies
and be ready for y'all to come and make cards.
I was not invited.
I'll make cards by myself.
Don't cry for me.
Don't cry for me.
Anyway, I'm going to pray for the offering.
We don't pass a bucket or take a plate
or put anybody on the spot.
We've got a box in the back.
You can do your thing back there.
You can do your thing online if you write a check.
We just ask that you make it out to Two Rivers Church.
They're the ones that supported us getting this church going here.
So I'll pray for the offering.
Dear Heavenly Father,
we thank you that every good and every perfect gift comes from you.
We thank you that you provide for us in so many ways.
Ways that we don't even remember to thank you for.
So Lord, we thank you for just our jobs, our homes, our vehicles,
the things that you have trusted us with.
And Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to worship you through our giving.
And we know that it may leave our hands,
but it never leaves our life.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
So we're going to be in Psalm 107 today.
I'll give you some time to turn to there.
Now, many of you know I'm from Michigan,
and that's the way a lot of my jokes start out.
But I was thinking about the first time when I was young
that I went on the lake with my uncle and my grandpa.
We were going to go fishing on what was known as the Big Lake,
which is Lake Michigan.
The Little Lakes are all the little lakes that are inland,
and Lake Michigan is the Big Lake, okay?
So we're going out on the Big Lake,
and I think I was eight or nine at the time.
My uncle had a boat.
And I don't know anything about boats.
I'd never been on a boat before,
but I was really excited to go fishing with my grandpa and my uncle.
And, you know, we're going out to the middle of the lake to go fishing,
and it's not at all what I expected, right?
The boat is bouncing around.
It's windy.
It's cold.
There's water splashing into the boat.
And I was a little too cool to say how scared I was, right?
And I didn't say anything.
I'm kind of looking around the boat like I have some life jackets.
There's this little donut thing on a string.
And I'm just hanging on for dear life, right?
And the shore is disappearing.
I'm like, wow, we're a long ways out there, you know?
And, you know, this is the 80s.
There's no cell phones.
And I am, honestly, I'm probably white as a sheet.
I'm scared to death.
I don't know what's going on.
And I finally remembered, oh, my uncle and my grandpa,
they must know what's going on.
So I look over there, and we're just kind of getting situated.
There are boats rocking around like crazy, and they're talking.
And then I saw my uncle offer my grandpa a beer.
I thought, okay, this must not be so bad, right?
And I sit down, and I kind of pull myself together.
And I looked at them, because, well, they're having fun.
Everything's okay, right?
So I can be okay.
Now, if they were panicking, and they were trying to figure out what was wrong,
and they were trying to hold on for dear life,
I would have had more questions.
And, you know, there's a difference between, you know,
me being scared as a little kid and wondering what's going on
and a professional being scared, right?
Jay, you fly planes.
So, like, when I'm on the plane, and the plane's doing this,
and it's doing this, I get scared.
Now, when the flight attendant's handing out peanuts, it's all okay, right?
If she stops handing out the peanuts, and she starts praying,
well, then we have a problem, right?
So when I'm scared, I look to the professional who knows what's going on.
Amen?
So there's a difference between being scared and not knowing what's going on
and being scared and knowing what's going on.
And that's kind of what's going on in our story today in Psalm 107.
It's a story, and it takes us out to the sea,
not as tourists and not as people who don't know anything about the water,
but as professional sailors.
Psalm 127, starting at verse 23, it says,
Some traveled on the sea in ships and carried cargo over the vast waters.
They witnessed the acts of the Lord, his amazing feats on the deep water.
He gave the order for a windstorm, and it stirred up the waves of the sea.
They reached up to the sky, then dropped into the depths.
The sailors' strength left them because the danger was so great.
They swayed and staggered like drunks, and all their skill proved ineffective.
Or your Bible might say they came to their wit's end.
They cried out to the Lord in their distress, and he delivered them from their troubles.
He calmed the storm, and the waves grew silent.
The sailors rejoiced because the waves grew quiet,
and he led them to the harbor that they desired.
So these were men that they knew the water.
They knew what to do.
They had been out there before.
They had seen some things.
They knew the wind.
They knew the waves.
They knew what bad weather was like.
But verse 26, it tells us that this stormy wind began to blow,
and the waves were rising.
I'm just imagining a boat climbing these waves,
and it goes down so far you can't even see.
You just see water.
And it's going up and down and up and down.
And it says that their strength left them because the danger was so great.
The original language almost says that their strength melted, if you will.
And they're professionals, and their courage is gone,
and it says that all of their skills had proved ineffective.
Now, when I'm in a boat or I'm in a plane and I'm at my wit's end,
like nobody cares.
I'm just over here scared, and I don't know what's going on.
But these guys, they knew what they were doing.
You see, they were the professionals.
And the professionals were running out of professional answers.
And it tells us that they had seen some things.
But apparently, they had never seen anything like this.
And what's interesting is the boat is physically unstable.
And it tells us, well, now the sailors are emotionally unstable.
And it's interesting how they use the word explaining how they got to their wit's end.
It literally means that their courage or their hearts had melted.
And it seems that the storm that was on the outside of the boat made its way to the inside of the boat.
So we've got a ship, and we've got a storm, and we've got some things going wrong.
And if you've been sitting in church long enough, you know what we need to do, right?
We need to start asking around.
Hey, have you seen this guy?
He's about 5'10", and he's got wavy hair, and he's from this town called Gethsefer, some little town somewhere?
It goes by Jonah.
Anybody?
He likes sleeping through these things.
Because we know that story, right?
Jonah gets on the ship.
Jonah's running from God.
The storm comes.
Everybody's terrified.
They eventually find this guy sleeping through the whole...
There he is, Jonah.
They throw him overboard.
The storm stops.
The problem is solved.
We know that story.
So when something starts to go wrong in our lives,
sometimes the first thing we do is we start looking for what caused it.
We start looking for Jonah.
We start saying, well, who did this?
Who messed this up?
Whose fault is this?
Or maybe we look inward and say, what did I do to cause this?
Where did I get off course?
Did I miss God?
Did I sin?
Did they sin?
Is this some kind of punishment?
Because somehow in our mind, if we can find the Jonah,
if we can find the problem, and the storm starts to make sense,
and then if I can somehow figure out what's responsible, I can explain it,
and then if I can explain it, maybe somehow I can fix it.
And I can control it.
And, you know, sometimes there really is someone to blame.
People really do sin.
People really do make bad decisions.
And our actions do have consequences.
Sometimes there is a Jonah.
But not today.
Nobody's hiding.
At least the psalm doesn't tell us about anything.
There's no identified villain.
There's no disobedient prophet sleeping in the bottom of the boat.
There is just no explanation that someone sinned and brought this storm upon everybody.
You know, these are sailors.
They're just out doing what they're supposed to be doing.
And this storm comes anyway.
So maybe if you can't find someone to blame or some circumstance to explain it,
well, maybe we can find someone who knows what they're doing, right?
And we have these sailors who obviously know what they're doing.
And oftentimes we'll do that in our lives.
We'll find an expert.
Well, get me a doctor.
Get me a lawyer.
Get me a counselor.
Get me a mechanic.
Get me a pastor.
I don't know what's going on.
But get me somebody who has seen this before.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
You know, wisdom is good.
Experience is good.
Expertise is good.
When you're sick, please go to the doctor.
You know, when your marriage is falling apart, get help.
You know, when your car makes a weird noise, take it somewhere.
Do not just turn up the radio.
You see, but these sailors, they're using everything that they know.
And it says that it wasn't enough.
It says that their skills were proven ineffective or they were at their wits' end.
See, my wits normally work.
And this is why this is matter.
See, they knew what they needed to do until they didn't.
And there are things that happen in our lives and things that go wrong in our lives that our experience can handle.
And then there's things that expose where our experience ends.
See, our wisdom and our experience will solve a lot of problems in our lives.
But they will not solve every problem.
But isn't it amazing how being wise and being smart somehow does not make us sovereign.
It does not make us like God.
So, we've got no Jonah.
The experts don't have anything.
And we still haven't figured out, like, where did this thing come from?
What is, is it global warming?
Is it El Nino?
Right?
But if you go back to verse 25, it says,
He gave the order for a windstorm, and it stirred up the waves of the sea.
Well, that's uncomfortable.
Who sent the storm?
And in the text, it seems to say that God did.
And it's interesting how it uses that same language from Genesis 1, when the world was created.
That He spoke, and this thing was created.
As I read this passage, and I thought about it, I said, what are we going to do about that?
What kind of God sends a storm?
What kind of God sends something that overwhelms people who are doing everything that they are supposed to be doing?
What kind of God tells the wind to blow, and then listens when these terrified sailors cry out for help?
And I want to be careful here.
You know, some of us have been through a lot.
We've been through a lot more than a bad week.
You know, we've lost people.
We've lost children.
We've lost retirements.
We've lost things.
And some of us have watched things just disappear into thin air that took us decades to build.
And many of us have lived through things that you just wouldn't wish upon anyone.
And I'm not going to stand here and tell you why it happened.
I don't know why it happened.
But this psalm tells us where this storm came from.
It doesn't make us experts on everything.
But it tells us that God created it.
And then that leads us to a deeper question.
Well, if God caused this, I want to know why.
God, why did this happen?
Why did you let this happen?
Why didn't you stop it?
Why didn't you answer that prayer?
Why?
Why did my family fall apart?
Why did my marriage fail?
Why did my business fail?
Why?
And we start asking that question when we're this big.
Why?
Why?
And we never stop.
And I don't think that God is offended by the question.
The Bible is full of people asking why.
Job asks why.
The Psalms ask why.
Habakkuk asks why.
The disciples ask why.
People in pain ask why.
Grief always asks why.
We are allowed to ask why.
But the why is not promised.
And that raises, I think, a deeper question.
The real question, I think, that we should ask ourselves is, what would why resolve for you?
You know, suppose God, suppose God sat you down tonight and he told you, everything, why?
He just explained the whole thing.
Everything that went wrong.
Every delay.
Everything that you've lost.
Every person who hurt you.
You know, every prayer that wasn't answered.
Suppose he just painted a whole picture of everything that happened and why it happened.
What does that resolve for you?
It wouldn't bring the person you lost back.
It wouldn't bring your spouse back.
It wouldn't bring the marriage back.
It might not make the diagnosis disappear.
It might not undo the betrayal, the hurt.
It wouldn't return the years that were lost.
It might not do anything.
So what would why really resolve?
Because maybe knowing why isn't just about our understanding.
Maybe sometimes why is about control.
And if I know what happened and why it happened and how it happened,
then maybe somehow the world becomes predictable again.
Maybe I can make sure that bad things don't happen to me again.
Maybe I can find someone that knows what to do and somehow gain control and make sense of the world.
But I think often we ask why.
But it's something that why can't give us.
It's peace.
It's safety.
It's control.
It's trust.
And I don't think an explanation of why can carry the weight that we put upon it.
1 Corinthians 13.12, it says,
For now we see in a mirror, indirectly, or your Bible might say dimly.
But then we will see face to face.
It's talking about seeing God face to face when we enter into heaven.
So right now we see indirectly.
We see in part.
And Paul doesn't say, I don't know anything.
He says, I see in part.
And I think what's so interesting about Jesus and about Christianity is it's not anti-intellectual.
People say, well, we're ignorant.
We're not intellectual.
We believe something that isn't real.
But, you know, almost every time that people came to Jesus and they had doubts and they had questions,
you know, Jesus said, well, I have more faith.
You know what he responded with?
He responded with evidence.
When John the Baptist sent people and they came to Jesus and they said, what is going on?
He said, well, don't you, the blind see the lame walk?
He presented evidence.
And I think that our wisdom and our knowledge and our experience matters, but we can only know in part.
There are things I can know.
There's things I should know.
There are things that I can never know.
And having faith doesn't mean that those questions don't exist.
It doesn't mean pretending that everything makes sense.
It doesn't mean we have to smile when our heart is broken.
It doesn't mean we call evil good.
Faith can cry.
Faith can grieve.
Faith can ask why.
Faith gets angry with God sometimes.
I was having a conversation with a business person this week and they came to me because I dealt with a lot of customer service over the last 20 years of my life.
And they had a lot of angry customers.
Some of us have been angry customers, right?
If you got a cell phone, you've been an angry customer, right?
And he's going off about all these things people are angry about and how he's not sure he can resolve their anger.
And I just told him, I says, okay, let's stop here.
He says, you know what?
I says, I love angry customers.
I just let that hang there for a minute.
He's like, why?
I said, it's because they care.
It's because they're invested.
It's because they care about what you did and what you're thinking and what's going on.
They like this thing that you did, but they just, their expectations weren't quite met.
But they're in it.
And I think that that's okay.
We see so many people in Scripture that get angry and frustrated and upset with God.
The men's Bible study, we were going through lamentations.
And it was all the things that were disappointing and hurtful and the disappointment of everything that they were going through.
But someone who gets angry and upset, they care?
I think God can do something with that.
But there does come a point where we have to decide, you know, does God have to satisfy my understanding before I trust his character?
Does he have to satisfy my understanding before I will trust his character?
Because what if, what if I never get to see his vantage point?
What if I never get the why?
What if I never see the things he doesn't allow me to see?
Then what?
Maybe this is where some of us are.
I've been there.
You've done everything that you know how to do.
You've asked everybody.
You've prayed every prayer.
You've read the book, 3,500 effective prayers that don't return void.
You've read, you've thought, you've cried.
And you still don't know.
And eventually the question goes from why did this happen to I think something even deeper still.
It says, God, where are you?
And there's some pain behind that question.
There's some anger behind that question.
There's some doubt behind that question.
Maybe even a hint of accusation.
God, where are you?
Acts 17, verse 27.
It says that he's not far from each one of us.
That perhaps we would grope around for him and find him.
So scripture says he's not far.
And it may feel in this moment of your life that he is far.
And you may have prayed and there was nothing.
And you prayed again and there was nothing.
And you tried and there was nothing.
And you asked why and there was nothing.
And you looked around and the storm was still there.
But verse 28 says,
For in him we live and move and have our being.
You see, we're not sustaining ourselves outside of God.
Our next breath literally exists in him.
We live and we move and exist in the presence of God.
At the same time we're asking where he is.
But it says he's not far.
And if our why continues to remain unanswered,
then the question becomes,
well, what do I know about him?
You know, not what do I make of my circumstances
and try to figure out through the worst thing that ever happened,
but what has God shown me about himself?
And when God describes himself,
it says in Exodus 34,
it says he is compassionate.
He is gracious.
He is slow to anger.
He's abounding in loyal love.
He's faithful.
And our story in Psalm 107,
it brings us back to the same thing.
His loyal love.
It doesn't mean that if God loved me,
that nothing terrifying would ever happen.
I think that God's love is deeper than our comfort.
Psalm 34, 18 says,
the Lord is near the brokenhearted.
He delivers those who are discouraged.
It says that he's near.
He's not annoyed.
He's not embarrassed.
He's not telling us,
well, you should just get over it.
You should just man up.
You should just have more faith.
You should,
no, he's near the brokenhearted.
You know, when Jesus was standing outside the tomb of Lazarus,
he's dead.
Jesus knows what's going to happen.
He knows Lazarus is going to come out.
He knows the whole thing.
But yet, it says Jesus weeps.
Think about that.
Jesus wept.
So we can trust God and not pretend that things don't hurt.
Faith can cry.
And trusting God's character doesn't require us to somehow label this storm as a good thing.
You see, God can be sovereign and we can still say this hurts.
And in Scripture, years later, another body of water, another storm,
some more sailors, another boat,
some more experienced seamen.
Seamen.
And there's someone sleeping in that boat.
But this time, it's Jesus.
And the disciples are trying to wake him up.
And Jesus stands up.
And he speaks to the wind.
And he speaks to the sea.
And the storm stops.
And I think the disciples ask one of the most important questions in all the Gospels.
It's Matthew 8, 27.
What sort of person is this?
Even the winds and the sails and the sea obey him.
And I don't know if they were intrigued as much as they were scared.
Who is this guy?
Who commands the wind?
Who stills the sea?
Who is this guy in our boat?
And before the storm stopped, they were afraid of what was outside of the boat.
And then the storm stopped.
And now they're afraid of who's inside.
Because the storm is not the most astonishing part of the story anymore.
It's this guy.
And I think this is where the Gospel goes beyond, well, Jesus can calm your storms.
You know, I've had people tell me that before.
It's kind of the hallmark Jesus, right?
And it's cute until it's not.
It's cute until the storm doesn't stop when we ask.
And some of the things in our life, they don't change.
I pray that they do.
You know, some relationships, they never get restored.
You know, Christianity doesn't make this promise, well, follow Jesus and the weather will always improve.
You know, I think the Gospel provides something so much greater than that.
It's something greater than calming the storm.
It's something greater than any of us could even ask for.
It's the God who gets in the boat with us.
It's the God that we wonder if he's far away, coming near.
It's the Word becoming flesh.
It's Emmanuel, God with us.
The God who got hungry.
The God who got tired.
The God who was misunderstood.
The God who was betrayed by his only friends.
The God who wept.
The God who grieved.
The God who suffered.
The God who bled.
The God who died.
You know, Christianity doesn't give us a picture of a God that's standing on a shoreline yelling,
Hey, maybe you should try harder.
Maybe you should row the boat harder.
Here, let me throw you this.
And it's not the God that's sitting there and saying,
Well, it's your sin.
It's your past.
It's your parents.
It's your goofy upbringing.
It's the God who got in the boat.
And that God went somewhere darker than the sea.
He went to a cross.
So, when I can't understand the why of what God is doing and what his plan is,
I get a lot of assurance looking at Jesus.
And when my circumstances apply so much pressure that it makes me want to question the character of God and where he is and what he's doing,
I look at Jesus.
And when I cannot understand what the hands of God are doing in my life, I look at Jesus.
Because God himself has made himself known to me and to many of you.
And maybe we never get the why.
I think that we're all going to have questions that we carry our whole lives until we see him face to face.
Because it says right now, we see dimly.
But one day, one day, we can see him face to face.
But right now, we only know in part.
Psalm 107 had said that these sailors, they had seen some stuff.
Verse 24, it says,
They witnessed the acts of the Lord.
His amazing feats on the deep water.
You see, they knew what the sea could do.
They'd spent years at sea.
They were experienced.
It tells us that.
And now in this story, they're crying out and they're seeing what God can do.
And in verse 30, it says,
The sailors rejoiced because the waves grew quiet.
And he led them to the harbor they desired.
You see, the storm was not the destination.
The calm wasn't even the destination.
They were going somewhere.
And I underline that part that it says he led them to the harbor.
Because after the storm stops, God brought them somewhere.
That wasn't the end of the story.
So maybe, maybe our faith is not, well, I finally understand everything.
I can explain everything.
Maybe our faith is more like, well, I don't really understand what's going on, but I know you.
And I trust your character more than I trust my conclusions.
And maybe that's, maybe that's where some of us are today.
Maybe we've spent years asking God why.
Maybe we've spent years trying to make sense of, why did all these crazy things happen in my life?
Why did all these crazy people come and do this?
Because you know people are crazy.
And you've prayed.
And you've cried.
And you've wondered.
And you've done everything you know how to do and you don't understand.
And I can't tell you that you ever will.
I can't promise you that.
But I can promise you something better.
Is that God gives you a reason to trust him.
Look at what he's done.
Look at Jesus.
Look at the cross.
Look at what he was willing to bring to the relationship.
Look at what he was willing to suffer and go through and give.
And on the third day, he was risen from the dead.
An empty tomb.
Death did not get the last word.
So when I ask people to trust God,
I'm not asking them to trust somebody that I don't know anything about.
But I'm asking them to look at what he's already done and he's already shown.
And we may not understand what he's doing.
We may not understand the things that, from our perspective, he allowed to happen.
We may never know why.
But you can know what kind of God he is.
He says he's near the brokenhearted.
He's faithful.
Even when we're faithless, he's faithful.
He's the kind of God that lays his life down for his friends.
And maybe today you can't say, well, I understand.
But maybe all you can say is, God, I don't understand and I'm hurting.
And I have some questions.
But I know who you are.
And I'm going to choose to trust you today.
Because the question was never whether the storm was bigger than you or bigger than me.
It is.
The question is, who's in your boat?
And if you've never known this Jesus,
Jesus, I invite you today to consider what God has done for you that you maybe haven't even realized.
And if you've struggled with your relationship with God because of some things that happen that don't make sense,
I encourage you to consider his character,
his steadiness,
his loving kindness that he's given you all the days of your life.
And I encourage you to try to get to a place where
maybe not knowing why is okay.
It's okay.
But you can know God
for who he is.
So dear Heavenly Father,
we thank you
for who you are.
We thank you
that you are always with us.
Your word says that you are not far
from us.
For in you we live
and we move
and we have our being.
So Lord, I pray for each and every person here
that has struggled with why.
Why God?
Maybe they'll get an answer.
Maybe they won't.
But Lord, I pray that something greater happens.
That their trust in you is renewed and strengthened.
That you can impart faith
where there has been doubt and questions.
And Lord, we don't need to have all the answers
to know how good you are.
Your word says to taste and see that the Lord is good.
So we thank you, Lord, for your goodness.
We thank you for your loving kindness.
We thank you that you're the kind of God
that gets in the boat with us.
Lord, we celebrate that
this morning.
And Lord, I just want to pray
for each and every person here
that has been going through some difficulty.
We all endure suffering.
Your word says in 1 Peter,
And I believe that is a word
for this church this morning.
I believe that God is coming
to restore what has been lost,
what has been broken,
the trust that has been damaged,
the relationship with God
that you have maybe struggled
to maintain through everything.
I believe that God is coming
to restore that.
I believe that he is coming
to confirm every word
that he has spoken to you.
I believe that he is coming
to strengthen you.
I believe that every promise
in his word for you
is yes and amen.
I believe that breakthrough is coming.
And his word says
that he will establish you.
So I believe that God
is bringing a breakthrough
in the lives of people
in this church.
And I refuse to sit here
and listen to the suffering
and the pain
and not proclaim that
over each and every one
of you this morning.
I believe that your breakthrough
is coming.
I can't say it's coming
this afternoon,
but it's coming.
It's on the way.
It's around the corner.
And I confess that
and I believe
and I pray that
over each and every one
of you this morning.
I pray that the pain
leaves in Jesus' name.
I pray that the cancer
leaves in Jesus' name.
I pray that the job
comes that you're seeking
for in Jesus' name.
I pray that the business
has a breakthrough
in Jesus' mighty name.
I pray that all the hard work
that you've put in
for decades
finally pays off
in Jesus' name.
And I pray that each
and every prayer
that you prayed
has been heard in heaven.
And that a breakthrough
and an answer
is coming.
Amen?
Amen.
God bless you guys.
I hope you have
a wonderful Sunday.
If you'd like prayer,
we'll be up here.
If not, enjoy some coffee
and some snacks
and I'll see you next week.
God bless you.
God bless you.
