[0:00] Many of us who were raised in North America grew up hearing and reciting what are called nursery rhymes. And I would imagine that those of you who were raised in other parts of the world also grew up with little riddles and songs that you would sing or your parents would sing to you.
[0:17] And one of my favorites was Humpty Dumpty. It's about an egg-shaped fellow, a little chubby. Humpty, he's a leader of sorts, and he has this nasty, catastrophic fall.
[0:35] Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
[0:46] And every time I heard that, I felt very sad because it seemed to me that Humpty Dumpty's experience is the experience of the human race. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
[1:03] Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.
[1:13] I have good news for Humpty Dumpty. And for every other human being who feels like Humpty Dumpty, I know a king who can put you together again.
[1:29] I know a king who can put the whole universe together again. We read about him on the pages of the four Gospels.
[1:42] But especially we read about him and his work in two texts from the Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 4 and chapter 9.
[1:53] According to Matthew, the tax collector turned Gospel writer, According to Matthew, the risen Jesus has given this same threefold ministry to his disciples, to his church.
[2:15] I think you can see and hear in the text we just read that Matthew is careful to keep three verbs together. Preaching, teaching, and healing.
[2:27] Why? Matthew and Luke, the physician, keep these three verbs together because Jesus' preaching, teaching, and healing ministry all involve the same reality.
[2:43] Namely, the kingdom of God. Jesus came preaching. What? What was Jesus' basic message?
[2:55] What was Jesus' gospel? Matthew 4, 17. Repent. Turn around. For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
[3:06] Or as Mark records it in Mark 1, 15. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe this good news. The time is fulfilled.
[3:19] That is the basic message Jesus began to preach. The time is fulfilled. Now, this word that we translate time in the text is the word kairos.
[3:31] The more normal word for time is chronos. Chronos comes into the English language in words like chronology and chronological. Chronos time, as my uncle Emmett used to say, is tick-tock time.
[3:44] Chronos time can be measured on a watch or on a calendar. But kairos time cannot be measured on a watch or a calendar. Kairos time is that unique moment in chronos time when God acts in a new way to fulfill his promises.
[4:01] Jesus came preaching the kairos is fulfilled. Now, those of you who know me well know how much I love to preach what Jesus preaches.
[4:13] Jesus came announcing that it is time for God to move in a new and unprecedented way. History has reached a major crisis point.
[4:23] In Jesus, this decisive moment, this unique moment for the fulfillment of God's promises has now begun. Dutch scholar Herman Ritterbos said it so well.
[4:35] Jesus came announcing the threshold of the great future has been reached and the concluding drama can now begin. And what is the concluding drama?
[4:47] Jesus came preaching the kairos is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God has come near. Jesus came preaching saying it is now time for heaven to invade earth.
[5:03] It is now time for the future, God's great future, to spill over into the present. In and because of Jesus of Nazareth, the glorious rule of God, which was thought to only come at the end of history, is now breaking into the middle of history.
[5:19] The kairos is now. That's why we hear Jesus using the word today so often. In his first formal sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, today this scripture has been fulfilled in you.
[5:35] At a dinner party with Zacchaeus, the tax collector. Today salvation has come to this house. And then on Good Friday on the cross, he says to the thief who is being crucified next to him, today you shall be with me in paradise.
[5:48] Today, today, because the kairos is now. That is the message Jesus preached throughout the villages and towns of Galilee and Judea.
[5:58] That is the good news Jesus announced to people whom Matthew, quoting the prophet Isaiah, characterizes as living in the land of the shadow of death.
[6:11] Jesus came preaching that light is breaking into the world. The light has dawned. It is time for God's rule of light and life to invade all other rules of darkness and death.
[6:26] Now, what happened on Easter morning validates Jesus' gospel. Jesus being alive after being crucified says that he is right.
[6:38] The kingdom of God has indeed come near. So, Jesus came preaching and teaching. What did Jesus come teaching?
[6:49] He came teaching the nature of the kingdom he was preaching. The nature of this kingdom that is breaking into the world. As we saw over the past few months, nearly every one of Jesus' parables begins with something like, The kingdom of God is like.
[7:03] And we've learned that this kingdom is about entering into life with God. It's about entering into the inner life of God. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus then starts to unpack the relational and ethical implications of the kingdom.
[7:21] He's now describing the new character traits and the new lifestyle that began to emerge in people's lives when this light starts to break into the darkness. So, Jesus came preaching, teaching, and healing.
[7:37] Why does he come healing? Why does Jesus heal? The answer is crucial to grasp. Jesus came healing because the kingdom whose nearness he declares and whose nature he explains is all about the restoration of human life.
[7:56] The kingdom whose nearness he announces and whose nature he unpacks is all about the restoration of the universe.
[8:08] You see, this is what gave hope and joy to the prophets of old, especially the prophet Isaiah. Listen to Isaiah's vision of the kingdom as we have it in chapter 35, verses 4 to 6.
[8:21] Say to those with feeble hearts. Know anyone with feeble hearts? Say to those with feeble hearts. Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened.
[8:33] The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame will leap like a deer. The mute tongue will shout for joy. Then water will gush forth into wilderness and streams in the desert.
[8:46] Hear him again. Hear Jesus of Nazareth again. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Now, in his acts of healing, Jesus is manifesting the reality he is preaching and teaching.
[9:02] Jesus of Nazareth is the bringer of the kingdom. He is the bearer of the kingdom. And he restores human lives, not to prove that fact, but because the kingdom he brings and bears is the kingdom of wholeness.
[9:17] The reign of God is all about putting people together again. Indeed, Hans Kuhn says it even more powerfully. The kingdom of God is God's creation healed.
[9:30] Now, the need for Jesus' gospel is plain enough, is it not? I mean, the wreckage is all around us. And if you're like me, there are times when I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the wreckage.
[9:48] This is the gospel according to Jesus. In him, the living God has come right into the middle of the wreckage.
[9:59] And he's come to repair, to restore, to recreate every dimension of human existence. Now, this is what the word salvation is all about.
[10:15] This is what we mean when we say Jesus is Savior. The word salvation and Savior are related to the Hebrew word shalom. And you know that shalom means soundness, wholeness, well-being.
[10:28] Yes, to be saved means to be rescued from the consequences of sin, to be rescued from condemnation and death. But to be saved also and primarily means to be made whole again.
[10:47] To be saved means to be restored to relationship with the living God, to be restored in relationship with other human beings, to be restored in the relationship with the self, and to be restored in relationship with creation.
[11:02] To be saved means to experience well-being in all dimensions of life. For too long now, the church, especially the church under the influence of Western Christianity, has missed this holistic nature of salvation.
[11:24] And this is because we have implicitly adopted a Greek understanding of what it means to be a human being. For the Greeks, a human being is a collection of separate parts.
[11:37] A collection of mind, spirit, soul, and body. And in the Greek view of things, these different parts can be separated and they can function apart from each other.
[11:53] Thus, for most of the Greek thinkers, the body was unrelated to the mind, to the soul, to the spirit. The body was at best a nuisance, at worst a prison.
[12:05] And all that mattered to most of the Greek thinkers was soul. So, when Western Christianity, that is, Greekized Christianity, preached the gospel, it did so out of this Greek understanding of the human being, and therefore preached a gospel which was less than the gospel Jesus preaches.
[12:31] Jesus saves came to be, Jesus saves souls. Now, that's true. Hallelujah. He saves souls.
[12:43] But the truth is, that's only part of the truth. There's more to the truth. The truth is, Jesus saves human beings. And human beings are more than souls.
[12:54] You see, in the Hebrew view of things, a human being is a unitary reality. That is, body, mind, soul, and spirit are but different ways of speaking of the one same reality.
[13:07] For the purposes of diagnosis, you can separate all these parts. But they can never operate in practice apart from each other. Isn't that what you doctors tell us?
[13:20] They don't operate apart from each other. In the Hebrew view of things, I don't have a body. I am a body. I don't have a soul.
[13:33] I am a soul. I don't have a mind. I am a mind. I don't have a spirit. I am a spirit. I am, or at least I was created to be, a mental, spiritual, psychosomatic whole.
[13:47] And the gospel of Jesus Christ is that he saves me. The whole of me. Body, soul, mind, and spirit. The whole. That's why I love one of the benedictions that the Apostle Paul speaks over the believers in Thessalonica.
[14:03] 1 Thessalonians 5.13. And now, may the God of peace himself, the God of shalom himself, sanctify you through and through. And may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[14:21] Paul keeps that all together. So, Jesus came preaching. The kingdom of God has come near. He came teaching. The kingdom of God is like. And he came healing, manifesting the kingdom in the midst of the mess.
[14:38] Now, between the two texts that we read, between Matthew 4 and Matthew 9, Matthew then tells us about Jesus preaching, teaching, healing, ministry. He records for us the Sermon on the Mount, preaching, teaching.
[14:51] And then he records ten mighty deeds of Jesus, his healing. In Matthew 5 to 7, Jesus says things like, Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
[15:03] That is the kingdom of God come near. Jesus says things like, Do not be anxious about what you're going to wear or drink or where you're going to live. That's the kingdom of God come near.
[15:14] And then in Matthew 8 and 9, We find Jesus entering into ten different forms of human brokenness and putting things back together again.
[15:25] Those ten deeds are concrete illustrations and expressions of Jesus' gospel. In those deeds, he's doing his gospel. The ten deeds declare that as a matter of fact, the kingdom of God is breaking into the world.
[15:38] And these ten deeds give us a picture of what it will be when finally the light drives out all darkness. So, ten mighty deeds of Jesus. Number one, Jesus touches a man with leprosy.
[15:50] And he's cleansed of this disorder. That is the kingdom of God come near. Two, Jesus speaks healing to a centurion's servant. Sight unseen. That, and especially that a Jew bothered interacting with a Roman, is the kingdom of God come near.
[16:05] Three, Jesus touches the head of Peter's mother-in-law, who had a severe fever. She's restored and begins to serve Jesus. That is the kingdom of God come near. Four, Jesus rebukes the winds and the waves of the storm, and the sea becomes perfectly calm.
[16:20] That is the kingdom of God come near. Five, Jesus simply by a word releases two men from the grip of the demonic. That is the kingdom of God come near. Six, four men break a hole in their neighbor's roof in order to bring their friend down to the feet of Jesus.
[16:36] Jesus surprises them by saying, Child, your sins are forgiven. And then, rise, take up your pallet, and walk. That is the kingdom of God come near. Seven, a synagogue official pleads with Jesus to come to his house and lay his hands on his daughter, who has just died.
[16:53] Jesus goes to the man's house, takes the little girl by the hand, and gives her life again. That's the kingdom of God come near. Can that really be? Eight, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years, sneaks up behind Jesus, touches his robe.
[17:06] She's made whole. Jesus turns around and says to her, It's your faith. You've got what your faith wanted. That is the kingdom of God come near. Nine, two men who are blind follow Jesus.
[17:17] They cry out, Have mercy on us, son of David. Jesus turns around, touches their eyes, says, Be it according to your faith. That is the kingdom of God come near. Ten, a man who could not speak, who had been demonized, is brought to Jesus.
[17:32] Jesus drives out the demonic powers. The man speaks. That is the kingdom of God come near. You see, the whole career of Jesus of Nazareth is to be understood through the lenses of the kairos is fulfilled.
[17:45] Everything Jesus is doing is a manifestation of the kingdom. He preaches and teaches. It's a manifestation of God's new world order. And it is for that order, God's order of wholeness, that we are praying every time we say or sing, Our Father who art in heaven, your kingdom come.
[18:05] Where? On earth. As it is in heaven. Now, all of this, of course, raises a lot of questions, and I can see them rolling in your eyes, even as I've been talking.
[18:21] Questions like, If Jesus' good news is true news, why do we not see more of it? Questions like, If Jesus came to restore, why is there still so much brokenness?
[18:32] Questions like, We prayed our heart out, and nothing seemed to change. It seems we didn't get a hearing. Or questions like, I know that we're all going to die one day, so how much of this kingdom wholeness can we realistically expect before we move into that new world?
[18:53] And then, I think, the most important question to ask as we seek to love our city, what can we promise people who come to Jesus with their brokenness?
[19:06] What can I promise you this morning as you bring any brokenness to Jesus? So, in the coming weeks, we're going to grapple with those questions as we make our way through Matthew 8 and 9.
[19:20] But this morning, let me just briefly develop four observations from reading Matthew 8 and 9 that can help us as we grapple with these questions. Or better yet, four pointers, if you will, that will help keep us in line with Jesus and His gospel.
[19:37] Okay? So, here we go. Pointer number one. I'm going to call the mystery of resistance. The mystery of resistance. I call it mystery because in the final analysis, I do not know why anyone would want to resist the inbreaking of the kingdom of God.
[19:56] But we do. Not everyone wants Jesus to bring in this new world order, this rule of God. Indeed, most people resist it.
[20:06] Why? Why? Why? Because of all the other consequences. I mean, we like the idea of creation being healed.
[20:17] But we resist the fact that in order for that to happen, we have to turn around. We have to repent, as Jesus says. I have to turn around at deep, deep levels.
[20:29] I'll put it more bluntly. I have to die. I have to die to my desire to be the king. You see, Jesus' kingdom can only be realized when He's allowed to be the king.
[20:42] And in order for Him to be king, I have to stop being king. I have to let go of this self-lordship that our culture just oozes into us.
[20:52] We drink the water. I have to stop. I have to make a U-turn in the road of huge, huge proportions in order to embrace Jesus as the sovereign Lord of my life.
[21:06] The mystery of resistance. Deep down inside, we resist the very thing that will set us free. Am I right? Even when we do want the kingdom to come, we still resist.
[21:20] For to be healed means we're going to be changed. And we resist change like the plague. You see, if we're healed, we're going to have to accept some new responsibilities.
[21:36] Is this not why Jesus asked a man who had been lame for 38 years, do you wish to get well? Every time I see that, I go, of course he wishes to get well.
[21:46] Jesus, why do you need to ask that question? Well, there are certain benefits of remaining unwell. like people will provide meals for you.
[22:01] You don't have to go to work. You don't have to care about the community. You can just dismiss talk about loving the city. And you don't have to be nice to anybody.
[22:14] People will endure. Do you want to get well? Jesus asked. Yes, and yet, we resist. But what about those times when we really do want to get well and we are willing to accept the consequences of the unbreaking kingdom and yet struggle?
[22:36] So, pointer number two, I'm going to call the complexity of our humanity. There are many dimensions to the human person, many dimensions to human brokenness.
[22:49] And often, brokenness in one dimension is actually due to brokenness in another. That makes sense, doesn't it? Multi-layered humanity and sometimes brokenness in one of those dimensions is due to brokenness in another dimension.
[23:06] There, of course, is this physical dimension, but there's also the relational and the mental and the spiritual. And one's particular form of brokenness might be manifested in a certain dimension, but it's rooted in another dimension.
[23:23] Doctors tell us that much of our physical illness is due to, it's a symptom of emotional or mental or spiritual illness.
[23:35] How many of you have ever heard a doctor say to you, what I've heard a doctor say to me a number of times, there is nothing structurally wrong with you, Daryl.
[23:47] It's not physical. The great physician can discern the root cause in our specific forms of brokenness.
[23:57] And often, when it seems that he is not at work, he is at work in another dimension, usually a deeper dimension. I'm sure that those four men who brought their friend to Jesus were initially disappointed when Jesus says, your sins are forgiven.
[24:14] And I can hear them saying, like, Jesus, what does forgiveness of sin have to do with the fact that he needs new legs? In that case, Jesus discerns that though there may have been real organic reasons for the paralysis, in this case, there was something spiritual.
[24:32] This man was crippled by guilt. Dr. Carl Menninger, many of you know that name. Dr. Carl Menninger used to say, guilt changes the physical structure of the body.
[24:44] Guilt actually makes us susceptible to disease. Centuries ago, the psalmist put it this way, my body wasted away, my vitality was drained away when I kept silent about my sin.
[24:58] Jesus sees through to the deeper issue and he goes to work there. The king is at work in each of us who has welcomed him. I can tell you that.
[25:09] He is at work. He may not be at work the way that we've asked him to work, but he is at work. I can promise you that. I can promise you that.
[25:21] He is at work. And what is true of us as individuals is true of us as family systems and churches and cities and nations. He is at work and he's going after the deeper dimensions of the brokenness.
[25:37] So, mystery of resistance, complexity of our humanity, and then the third pointer, what I will call the great tension. The great tension inherent in Jesus' gospel.
[25:50] In his preaching, Jesus uses these words, at hand and come near. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of God is near. Now, does he mean that the kingdom is arriving, so get ready?
[26:04] Or does he mean the kingdom has already pressed in, so grab hold? Yes. In using at hand and come near, Jesus is pointing to the tension in his gospel, the tension which the theologians call the already not yet.
[26:21] Now, we have spoken of the already not yet a lot, haven't we? And we're going to speak about that until the not yet becomes already. In Jesus, God's kingdom of wholeness is already present in some form, but not yet present in the form it will be in the culmination of history.
[26:41] The fact that Jesus has already come and is with us says that something of God's wholeness is already present and with us, but the fact that Jesus teaches us to pray for the kingdom of God says there is something not yet, something still to come.
[27:01] I have found it helpful to put it this way. You've heard me put it this way. When we say or hear or speak the words Jesus heals or Jesus repairs the wreckage, we have to remember that this Jesus is the Jesus of Christmas Eve, he's the Jesus of Good Friday, the Jesus of Easter morning, the Jesus of the Ascension, the Jesus of Pentecost, and the Jesus of the Apocalypse coming again.
[27:32] That is, the purpose of Jesus' birth is incomplete without his life. The purpose of Jesus' life is incomplete without his death. The purpose of Jesus' death is incomplete without his resurrection.
[27:45] The purpose of his resurrection is incomplete without his ascension. The purpose of his ascension is incomplete without his pouring out of the Holy Spirit. And the purpose of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit is incomplete until he comes in all his glory.
[27:59] Now, because he has already come, the kingdom of wholeness has already come. Because he's not yet come, the kingdom of wholeness has not yet come. And faith is all about living in that great tension.
[28:12] Now, the church has throughout the years not liked the tension and tended to swing between one extreme or the other.
[28:23] Either Christians have emphasized the not yet to the exclusion of the already or they've emphasized the already to the exclusion of the not yet.
[28:39] On the one hand, we are told this is a broken world it will be that way until Jesus comes. And in the meantime, we have to accept our brokenness and have God give us the grace to endure it.
[28:51] This is what I grew up with. My dad loved me. And I had migraine headaches until I was in my early 40s, three a week. And my dad and his love would say to me, Daryl, Jesus will give you the grace to endure.
[29:06] That's one extreme. The other is told, we're told that we can have total healing now. Just name it and claim it. And we have to resist both extremes because the kingdom of God is both already and not yet.
[29:26] None of us will be completely whole until that day when mortality is swallowed up by life, as Paul says. Yet, because the kairos is fulfilled, something has happened, can happen, and is happening.
[29:39] The king is already at work. Which then brings us to the fourth pointer. I think the most important factor as we grapple with all the questions. Pointer number four.
[29:51] The issue is Jesus. Surprised? Keep the focus on Jesus. Fix your eyes on Jesus who stands in the midst of the wreckage.
[30:02] in Matthew 8 and 9, Matthew emphasizes two things about Jesus. And it is to these two things that I think he keeps calling us.
[30:14] They are Jesus' authority and Jesus' compassion. The authority of a king and the compassion of a shepherd. Matthew keeps them together and so must we.
[30:25] So pointer number four is throw yourself on the authority and compassion of Jesus Christ. his authority. In those ten deeds of wholeness we see in Matthew 8 and 9, Jesus exercises authority over everything that threatens to undo us.
[30:45] And he does it simply by speaking. Simply by speaking he exercises this authority. To the man with leprosy, I am willing, be clean and the man is clean.
[30:58] To the centurion, go your way. It will be done as you requested and the servant is healed. To the demons, get out of here and they run. To the paralytic, your sins are forgiven and they are.
[31:12] And to the little dead girl, talithakum, I say to you, get up. And she did. Matthew wants us to hear in Jesus' words in these texts the echo of the original creative word.
[31:27] We are to hear in the voice of Jesus the voice spoken at the beginning of creation. The one who has entered into all the mess is the one who in the beginning said, let there be light and there was, let there be sky and there was.
[31:44] Jesus Christ need only speak and something happens. He need only utter the words and what he utters comes into being. He need only say, Darrell, you be free and I'll be free.
[32:01] He need only say, First Baptist Church, be alive and we'll be alive. He need only say to our city, be at peace and we will.
[32:12] Jesus need only say, the kingdom has come and the kingdom does. Now, am I overstating the case? Not at all. Because after his resurrection, what does Jesus say?
[32:26] All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. He who is the word made flesh had the first word and he gets the last word. And he need only say, now, and a new heaven and a new earth descends and we are finally experiencing the glory of God.
[32:45] Authority, throw yourself on the authority of Jesus Christ and on his compassion. I think one of the most powerful lines of Scripture is Matthew 9, 36.
[32:57] And seeing the multitudes, distressed and downcast, Jesus felt compassion for them. I've pointed out before that this word compassion that Matthew uses is a deeply visceral word and it's too mildly translated as compassion.
[33:15] Compassion doesn't do the job. It's the word splunkna, related to the word splin, splin, from which we get spleen. It refers to the inner parts of our body, the seat of our most intense and tender emotions.
[33:29] In other parts of the Bible, it's translated as guts or bowels. The splunkna is the place where we have these emotions that clutch at us and wrench and tear us apart.
[33:42] That's, by the way, where pastoral ministry is done. That's where we have Matthew says, Jesus seized a crowd and his guts get ripped up in him.
[33:58] I understand that. The bringer and bearer of the kingdom is the shepherd who feels the pain of the sheep. And we can endure in the already not yet.
[34:10] We can wait for Jesus' authoritative word when we know that he feels the sickness that he bleeds with us. You know that the apostle John tells us that Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus.
[34:24] By the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. And when Jesus saw the tomb, he wept. Now, what's interesting there is Jesus knows what he's going to do.
[34:35] He knows he's going to call Lazarus out of death, back into life. But before he speaks, he weeps. And the word John uses is another deeply visceral word. And it means more than feel sorry.
[34:47] It means to snort in spirit. It describes a horse rising up on its hind legs and pawing at the air at the grave of Lazarus.
[35:00] Jesus experiences this gut-wrenching pain. It's one of the most mysterious moments in all of history. God incarnate in this pain.
[35:12] And so, Henri Nouwen can say, when Jesus was moved to compassion, the source of all life trembled. The ground of all life burst open.
[35:24] And the abyss of God's immense, inexhaustible, and unfathomable tenderness revealed itself. C.S. Lewis understood this tenderness.
[35:35] In one of his books of the Chronicles of Narnia series, in The Magician's Nephew, he tells about a boy named Diggory who witnesses Aslan the lion.
[35:46] Aslan the lion is the Christ figure. He witnesses Aslan sing creation into being. And because of what he witnesses, hope rises in his soul that somehow his mother, who is back in London, could be healed.
[36:00] Aslan asks Diggory to go on an errand. And Diggory agrees to go. I mean, who's going to say no to the great lion? And then we read these words. Yes, said Diggory, I'll go.
[36:14] He had had for a second some wild idea of saying, I'll try to help you if you'll try to help my mother. But he realized in time that the lion was not at all the sort of person one could make bargains with.
[36:28] But when he had said yes, he thought of his mother, he thought of the great hopes he had had and how they were all dying away. And a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes and he blurted out, but please, please, won't you, can't you give me something that will cure mother?
[36:47] Up till then, he had been looking at the lion's great front feet and the huge claws on them. Now in his despair, he looked up at its face. And what he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life.
[37:00] For the tawny face was bent down near his own and wonder of wonders, great shining tears stood in the lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Diggory's own that for a moment he felt as if the lion must be really sorrier about his mother than he was himself.
[37:19] My son, my son, said Aslan, I know, grief is great. when you know that the king grieves your grief, you can trust him to do the right thing in the already, not yet.
[37:41] So, how then do we pray? In the face of the brokenness around us, how do we pray? In addition to the card that you have in front of you entitled A Framework for Prayer, this is what the Matthew text leads me to pray.
[38:00] Lord Jesus, you are the great king and you are the good shepherd. We do not pretend to be able to tell you how to run your kingdom.
[38:14] I wish we could. But because you are the shepherd king, you invite us to tell you the desire of our heart. And it is this, will you please?
[38:32] Humpty Dumpty, I know a king who enfolds all the pieces of your wreck.
[38:45] I know a king who feels all that pain and makes it his own. I know a king who can put you together again.
[38:57] How and when I do not know. But this I know, Humpty Dumpty, that when this king gets through with you, you will be more than you were before you fell.
[39:13] Let us pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. I would invite you now in these quiet moments to bring before Jesus Christ, the great king and good shepherd, any form of brokenness that is troubling you, any form of brokenness that your loved ones are facing.
[39:43] and I invite you to say to Jesus here is my heart's desire will you please if you would like some help praying along these lines many of us will simply be down here in the front and you're welcome to come even as we sing our response songs you're welcome to come afterwards too but even now come and many of us would just love to bring you to the feet of Jesus