Sin is all around us and it tears us down. We are not left without hope though. Some day soon Jesus will come back and take the righteous all home. To Heaven. There the saved will forever be with God and He will wipe away all their tears. Do you long for a better place? Listen as Pastor Mark Finley shares this new sermon that will encourage your heart and fill you with hope for something better than this world of sorrow and sin.

<p>Sin is all around us and it tears us down. We are not left without hope though. Some day soon Jesus will come back and take the righteous all home. To Heaven. There the saved will forever be with God and He will wipe away all their tears. Do you long for a better place? Listen as Pastor Mark Finley shares this new sermon that will encourage your heart and fill you with hope for something better than this world of sorrow and sin.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

HopeLives365

Mark Finley

Longing for Home

The title of my message is Longing for Home.

Father in heaven, as we open your book this morning and share divine truths from your word, speak to our hearts.

May we sense today that in the good times and the bad times, when we stand on the mountain peaks and sing, and we walk through the valleys, when the sun shines or the rain falls, when it's fair weather or stormy weather.

Lead us to a deeper trust in you today and give us a longing for eternity.

There's 1 thing that lifts the human spirit and keeps us going in spite of the challenges that we face.

You see, Hope is that intangible quality that looks beyond life's challenges for a better tomorrow.

Hope leads us to live purposeful lives today because we know that a better day is coming.

Hope anticipates the best in life even when we're facing the worst in life.

It looks beyond today to what will be tomorrow.

You see, hope keeps believing, trusting, anticipating and expecting that out of today's darkness, tomorrow's light is going to shine more beautifully.

The Roman statesman Pliny once said this, he said, hope is the pillar that holds up the world.

You see, without hope, society is on a collision course to disaster.

Without hope, the foundations of our very lives collapse.

Without hope, our lives are spent in silent despair.

Now someone defined Christian hope this way.

They said Christian hope is the expectation fueled by faith that somewhere beyond tomorrow there's a brand new world.

The Apostle Paul speaks of hope greatly throughout the book of Romans, throughout Corinthians, and in Titus, Paul talks about the blessed hope, the second coming of Christ that brings an end to the sickness and suffering and sorrow in our world.

See, hope realizes that this world is not the end, that there's something better for us.

Deep within our hearts we know we were created for something better than sickness or suffering or heartache or death.

See deep within every heart there's this longing for home, this longing for eternity, this longing for the better future.

Now this longing for home is revealed throughout Israel's journey in Babylonian captivity.

If you look at the longing of Israel when they are in captive to Babylon, there's this longing for Jerusalem, this longing for home.

The story of ancient Israel is not merely the story of the history of the people in captivity.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 11 and 12, we're told, and I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and particularly verse 11.

So when we study the history of ancient Israel and look at the Babylonian captivity, the history of Israel is not merely an ancient history.

The history of Israel is rather an object lesson for what God's people will go through in the Babylonian captivity of this world just before the coming of Jesus.

So the lessons of the past cast light on the present.

These ancient lessons speak to us with meaning and purpose in our lives today.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11, can you read the text with me please?

1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 11, reading either from your Bible or if you don't have the Bible from the screen.

Now all these things happen to them as examples and they are written for our admonition on whom the ends of the ages have come.

So everything that happened to ancient Israel in the Babylonian captivity happened as instruction for you, for me.

Let's go back and reconsider this Babylonian captivity.

And this morning we're going to look at 1 psalm from that captivity and study every verse of that psalm and see its meaning and purpose to our lives today.

So let's go back and get a little history of the Babylonian captivity.

Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem 3 times.

He brought Daniel and 15, 000 other captives back to Babylon.

Now each attack became more fierce because the Jewish patriots resisted Nebuchadnezzar's attacks and did not yield to submission.

Had they yielded, his attacks would not have been so furious.

In 586, Nebuchadnezzar attacked again, but this time he ravaged Jerusalem.

Many are killed by the sword, spear or arrow.

But young children are taken and their heads are dashed against the rocks and they're totally destroyed.

Now the reason enemy armies destroyed the children was this, for 2 reasons.

1, to prevent these children from growing up so that they would have revenge upon the attacking armies.

But second, to terrorize their families and bring absolute terror on these families when they saw their children's heads smashed against the rocks, to bring terror, to terrorize them into submission.

Now the Babylonian soldiers shackled many of the teenagers.

They looked for teenagers particularly that they could educate in the ways of Babylon and bring them back in captivity and they look for the intelligentsia, they wanted to school the intelligent young Jews so they could be sent back as puppet rulers back to Jerusalem.

Now understanding this background, we turn to Psalm 137 that is the basis of our study this morning.

The psalmist in Psalm 137 is in captivity.

Now most of the Psalms are written by David about a thousand years before Christ, but some of the Psalms are not written by David, they are written by other Jews.

This Psalm was written someplace between 597 BC and 570, someplace in that 20 year period.

It is written by a Jew who has been taken into exile and is there in exile in Babylon.

With that background we turn to Psalm 137.

The psalmist remembers the glory of Jerusalem.

He remembers the destruction of the ancient city, the particular dominance of the enemy armies.

He no longer has any center for Jewish life.

The people are virtual slaves to their taskmasters.

We can almost hear the weeping, we can almost hear the deep groans in Psalm 137.

We can almost hear the heartfelt longing of this Jewish psalmist for whom we begin.

Psalm 137 We take this psalm in 3 or 4 verse segments and we look at every section of the psalm as we study its 9 verses.

Now remember, the story of ancient Israel is your story, it's my story.

Remember, the things that are written to ancient Israel are examples upon whom the ends of the world will come.

Psalm 137 Verse 1, by the rivers of Babylon.

Now you remember Babylon is a lush plush city, has 13 temples to the pagan gods.

The rivers of Babylon were the Euphrates and the Tigris.

So here, out by himself, out by a natural spot, out there in nature, with the clear crystal rivers flowing by, listening to the bird songs.

There are Times in our lives when we go through deep sorrow, times in our lives we go through disappointment, times in our lives we go through challenges, we need to get away from it all.

Out in some nature, natural scene to regroup, to bring our thoughts back together, to have that opportunity to meditate and pray.

Verse 1, Psalm 137, by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and yea, we wept.

When we remembered Zion, we hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it.

For those who carried us away captive required of us a song.

Those who plundered us required of us mirth, saying, sing 1 of the songs of Zion.

Now There are key words there that we need to look at and study.

In the Old Testament, Zion was used to denote Jerusalem.

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Longing for Home

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