The Uba City is a town in Northern California. The population is about 65,000. It's about 40 miles north of Sacramento. It rests in the Feather River Valley. The unemployment rate in Uba City is about 20%. Most of its citizens make under 35K a year. They're either wide or Hispanic. The median age is 33. Those are all facts that you can look up on Wikipedia if you want to. But one thing you might not know about Uba City is what happened one rainy morning in the spring of 1976. The Uba City High School Choir was on its way to a performance. When the bus that they were riding in lost control on the highway, ripped through 72 feet of guardrail and plunged 22 feet to the ground. It landed upside down. The roof crushed the students. 25 were injured seriously. And 29 teenagers were killed. 29 teenagers who had known each other since middle school days. A few months before they had performed fiddler on the roof together. Two of the dead were twin girls. Carlene and Charlene Ingle age 18. One young man was celebrating his 16th birthday that day. Pamela Instrom had turned 18 just the day before. Many of these kids had gone to the prom just the previous Saturday night. In a few weeks they would graduate and most of those seniors already had college plans. All those hopes, all those dreams, all those lives shattered by tragedy. Multiply the Uba City bus crash by 100. And you have 9.11. 3,000 lives came to an end that horrible Tuesday morning in September 2001. Thousands more families, hopes and dreams shattered by tragedy. And of course, as we've already done this morning, it prompts the question, why? Why do things like that happen in a world governed by a loving and sovereign God? Well, as we're going to see this morning, it's okay to ask that question. And to trust that the answer will come in time. But as we grapple with that why question, it's also important that we ask the what now question? What now? In light of the fact that there is injustice and untimely death and tragedy and terrorism and all kinds of other evils. What do we do now? How shall we now live? And in Nehemiah chapter 9, the Bible says that we need to do two things. I'll tell you what they are and then we're going to look at Nehemiah chapter 9. Two things we do in light of tragedy. We repent and we lament. Okay, so if you've got a Bible or if you just look underneath the chair, turn out and turn to Nehemiah chapter 9 in that Bible. Pull it out and turn to page 480. And we're going to spend a little time in Nehemiah chapter 9. Give you a little bit of background because some of you have not been with us in this series. Nehemiah is a book in the Old Testament and Nehemiah was an individual for whom this book is named. He was the cut bearer to the king of Persia back in the mid 5th century BC. That king's name art exorcise. Nehemiah was his was in many ways a member of his cabinet and he was Jewish. He heard about the fact that there was tragedy back home in his homeland of Jerusalem. And so he prayed and he saw it and he got a leave of absence. He traveled to Jerusalem and helped his fellow Jews to rebuild the wall. You see the Jews of Nehemiah's day could easily empathize with us when it comes to 9.11 because they had been attacked too. They had been attacked by a foreign power who hated them. That power Babylon. Babylon came in and destroyed their city, knocked down their walls. Very interesting isn't it that here on 9.11 when we're thinking about the destruction of sort of the symbol of America's economic power. For the Jews of Jerusalem the destruction of their walls was symbolic of the destruction of their religious identity as well as their security. When the Babylonians came in they not only destroyed their temple and their wall but they also took most of them back to Babylon captive. And that we call the exile. So in Nehemiah chapter 9 we're looking at a group of people who knew tragedy, who knew heartache. And what we're going to see first of all that they did in light of that tragedy was that they repented. Nehemiah chapter 9 we're going to read verses 1 through 3 first. At the very first it says on the 24th day of the same month the Israelites gathered together fasting and wearing sackcloth and having dust on their heads. Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the wickedness of their fathers. They stood where they were and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day, three hours. And spent another quarter in confession and in worshiping the Lord their God. So a total of six hours from let's say 6 a.m. daybreak to 12 noon. They stood there listening to scripture, confessing their sin, turning from their sins and worshiping the Lord. And then in verses 5 through 37 of this chapter you have a long prayer. I'm not going to take time to read the whole thing but you should read it if you can this afternoon or sometime this week. It's one of the longest prayers recorded for us in the scriptures. It begins in verse 5 with praise where the people praying say blessed be your glorious name and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord, you made the heavens, even the highest heavens in all their story host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything and the multitudes of heaven worship you. So there's first this beginning of prayer that's praising God and adoring him for who he is. And then after that the people praying recount some of the history of Israel beginning with the days of Abraham. And then moving from Abraham through the days of Moses tracing the faithfulness of God through those days in Israel's past. And now look at verse 16, we'll pick it up there. Now at this point they begin to confess their sin. Verse 16, but they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff-necked and didn't obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, this is your God who brought you up out of Egypt or when they committed awful blasphemies. And then at that point the people praying continue to remember the history of Israel. They go through the days of wandering through the wilderness for 40 years. They remember the days when they crossed over the Jordan River into the land of Canaan and took it over. And then they remember the days when the prophets spoke to the people and warned them to stay faithful to God. And when judges came and kings came and delivered them from their various enemies, all of that is in that prayer. And now let's go to the very end. Look at verse 33, we're just skipping over to the very near the end of the prayer. Verse 33, continuing to pray, they say, in all that has happened to us, you have been just. You have acted faithfully while we did wrong. Our kings, our leaders, our priests and our fathers did not follow your law. They did not pay attention to your commands or the warnings that you gave them, even while they were in their kingdom. Growing your great goodness to them in the spacious and fertile land you gave them, they did not serve you or turned from their evil ways. Alright, let's pause right there and ask, what were these people doing? What were the Jews doing as they were led in prayer by their religious leaders like this? They were repenting. They were repenting of their sins. To repent, what does that mean? It means to return. It means to come back to God and it involves confession. It involves owning up to what they have done wrong. It involves feeling the weight and the depth of that sin and then by God's grace running to God for mercy and for grace. Now let's think a little bit more about repentance because a lot of people would say, oh, I've heard about repent. I've heard about repent. That means get your act together. It means stop doing those bad things that you seem to always do. And well, sure, that's part of it. Stop doing bad things. That's part of repentance. And that's what the Israelites had to do, isn't it? Because they had been bad. They had broken God's laws. They had worshipped a golden calf like we read and worshipped foreign gods and so on. They had killed the prophets and refused to do what God told them to do. But let me give you something maybe new to think about. Did you know that it can be just as important to repent of your good deeds as it can to repent of your bad deeds? And you know, what I mean by that is that whatever it is that's keeping you from trusting in and relying on Jesus alone for your salvation and for your daily life, that's what you need to repent of. It could be a very, very good thing. Whatever at the end of the day that you're really looking to, to validate yourself, to find significance, to feel good about yourself, to feel like you have meaning and purpose. That is really your functional God with a little G. Whatever you really find is the foundation of your life that makes you get up in the morning and makes you feel good about yourself when you go to bed at night. That is your functional God. So if your God is anything or anybody but God with a big G, you need to repent of it. Even if it's a good thing, tell you about myself before I became a Christian, I trusted in the fact that I had been a church goer all my life and was raised in a really good family and I was a really, really, really nice guy. And I thought that would be enough to get God to love me. So what is it for you? What is it for you that makes you feel good about yourself when you sleep at night or think about it this way? What causes you to be in terrible despair when things don't go well for you? It could be your family. You know, you got a great family or when your family's not doing so well, you feel like giving up entirely. There's no hope at all for you. See, that's your functional God. That's what's pulling you through. It might be your business. It could be your academic work. It might be being successful or excellent in the things that you do for other people. It could be your art. It could be your music or your relationships or what a friendly person you might happen to be. It could be having perfect, obedient kids or working at campus crusade as a missionary full time or having a great body and working out. Every day. In other words, what makes you feel like you've arrived when you get it right and what brings you into utter despair when you don't? That you see is really what you're living out of. It's what you're trusting in. And those things can be as bad as bad things if you look to them as the ultimate source of your life and your joy and your value in this world. C.S. Lewis wrote, and if you've read my email recently, you saw this quotation. He wrote in a book called Mirror Christianity. And I quote, a cold, self-righteous pig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. Do you get that? Whatever it is that's keeping you from being a follower of Jesus from trusting in his blood and his righteousness alone, that is what you need to repent of. For some of you, it's being bad. And for others of you, and I dare say because we're in a church this morning, it's probably being good that you need to repent of. You need to take it to God. You need to confess it and say, Lord, forgive me, forgive me for using this thing, this pursuit, this hobby, this talent, this person, this family, this performance, this job, whatever it is, forgive me. I'll bring it to you and I say, Lord, I need you to take that away and replace that love with a greater love for Jesus, that he might be the one and the only trust of my life. So the first thing that we should do on this, the 10th anniversary of 9-11, is do what these relights did, repent. Secondly, we lament. What's our proper response to tragedy? Lamentation. Look with me now at the very end of the prayer verses 36 and 37. They continue to pray and they say this, but see we are slaves today. Slaves in the land that you gave our forefathers so that they could eat its fruit and the other good things that it produces. Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress. Now look at that last word, distress. It means trouble. It means evil. They are lamenting the evil and the oppression that they are suffering. See the Jews in the Amized Day were oppressed by a foreign power. The Persians. They had to pay taxes to Persia. They had to give Persia tribute from the produce of the land. They were also, as I've said before in this series, surrounded on all four sides by threatening enemies. Sand ballot to the north, Tobiah to the south, Guessam to the east and the Ash Doddites to the west, surrounded by these foreign enemies. The people of God were tired of it. They were tired of being oppressed and overrun. That's why they pour out their hearts to God and they say, see, see, Lord, where slaves today were virtually slaves. These people rule over us as they please. We are in great distress. What are they doing? They are lamenting. To lament means to express deep remorse and grief and sorrow. It means to mourn. Many of the oldest and the most lasting poems of human history have been laments. Examples. You've read Beowulf. There's laments in there. There's the Iliad, the Odyssey. There are sections of laments in those poems. See us Lewis wrote a book called A Grief Observed, a book about his lamentation after the death of his wife. You might have heard about a woman named Anne Weems. Her 21-year-old son died a day after his birthday. She wrote a book of poems out of her grief called Psalms of Lament. You should read that sometime. The Bible is replete with lamentation. Full of laments. There's a book in the Bible called What? Lamentations. 58 or so of the Psalms are laments. Let me show you a few examples. They're up here on the screen. From Psalm 13, we're going to read it later this morning. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? Psalm 22, don't be far from me for trouble is near and there's no one to help. Psalm 25, the troubles of my heart have multiplied, free me from my anguish. Psalm 77, when I was in distress I sought the Lord. At night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted. Or Psalm 116, the cords of death entangled me. The anguish of the grave came upon me. I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. That word trouble in most of those Psalms is the same word we see in the Amaya 9. We are in great distress. In these Psalms what is God saying? He's saying it's okay to lament. It's a good thing to lament. You need to lament. Like I said earlier this morning, it's okay to ask why David pointed that out too. You need to write your sorrow. You need to shout your pain. You need to put it into words. If not words, into groans. You need to share your sadness with other people. You need to allow yourself to feel the things that are not as they should be. It's not right that terrorists hijack planes and fly them into buildings filled with people. It's not the way God created the world to be. You need to complain to God, to pray out your protest, to cry your confusion, to scream out your sorrow. You know what? It's hard to do that. Ellie Vizel, who survived the Holocaust, said this. He said that abuse, torture, and terror drive us to silence. He said, quote, it is far easier to suppress the memory of such events or gag them in silence than to bring them to memory and speech with all the pain that this entails. You and I must do it. We must lament because you'll never get to praise but through pain. Someone said we can praise God only when we are willing to trust him with our lamentations. See, if you don't lament, what you'll do is you'll bottle up your sorrow and grief and it'll cause you to cope with it in other, less healthy ways. A failure to lament is a failure to trust in God's mercy. When you run to God with your pain, what you're doing is you're really trusting in Him and it is through lamenting that eventually healing comes. Remember what Jesus said in the Beatitudes? Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be what? Comfort it. You get to comfort through lamentation. The Bible is full of lamenters. Job comes to mind of course as well as Moses, Abraham, David, the prophets like Jeremiah, Jonah, Habakkuk, the martyrs and the book of Revelation. It's an all- lamented but the chief lamenter in the Bible and in all of history is Jesus. He's called in Isaiah 53 a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He was born into an environment of lament when he was born were told that lots of children had to die. Matthew 2.18 says that Rachel was weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more. Jesus lamented over the city of Jerusalem. You remember that at the day that he entered the city? Oh, Jerusalem. How often I have longed to gather your children together like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. In Gethsemane when he was sweating drops of blood he called out to God and he virtually said I am in great distress. Take this cup for me if it's at all possible but if not your will not my be done. On the cross of course Jesus lamented from Psalm 22 my God my God why have you forsaken me? So as you and I lament we're entering into the fellowship of Jesus' sufferings. And best of all as we lament we are drawing nearer to the one who hears our cries knows our infinite pain and is promised to redeem evil and make all things new. Christians you see are people who lament in hope. We lament in hope. Did you catch it in Nehemiah 9? Did you hear the good news in Nehemiah 9? Because in verse 32 that I read the person is now therefore oh our God the great mighty and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love. Don't let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes. Hear that God keeps his covenant of love. How do we know that God keeps his covenant of love? We know it because of the cross. We know it because of the cross. Walt Whitman wrote a poem called Song of Myself and in that point he said I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I myself become the wounded person. See on the cross God became the wounded person. God was wounded on the cross. We don't know why tragedies like 9, 11 take place but as Tim Keller pastor of a church in New York City put it the Sunday after 9, 11 we know what the reason isn't. It isn't because he doesn't love us. It isn't because he doesn't care because God lost his son in an unjust attack. He stepped into our fallen world and died bearing our sin and misery. So God hears your lament. He knows your pain and he'll lead you through pain through suffering to redemption. Repent in faith in the cross and lament in hope of the glory of God. We're going to read a corporate prayer of lament now if you'd look on the screen with me. This is taken from Psalm 13 that I read from a little while ago. Let's read it together. How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer. Oh my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. My enemy will say I have overcome him and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord for he has been good to me. Would you pray with me and let's prepare for communion this morning? Father, we thank you for your infinite mercy and grace. Thank you that you are so familiar with suffering. You are indeed a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. And so father, as we draw near the table this morning, we thank you that we come to a God who knows what it is to be wounded. You too suffered an unjust attack on the cross. You took our sins upon yourself. And now we come to celebrate around this table your redeeming grace, the fact that you are a sovereign and good God, a God who is making all things new, who can take our sins and failures the worst of atrocities that happen in this world and bring them around to good for your children. Lord, as we come to this table, we do what we have been called to do from your word. We repent. We turn away from those things that we have sought after, those things we have looked to for life and hope that are not you. We repent of our independence. We repent of our self-trust, of our greed, of our lack of love, and unforgiving spirits. We turn away, oh Lord, from our lust and from our hateful thoughts, from our covetousness, from our lack of respect for parents and other authorities. We turn away from our idols, from the way we have misused your day, from the way that we have misused your resources. Lord, all these things we repent of this morning. And we lament our sin and trust in your good and wonderful and matchless grace. Lord, would you now bless we pray this supper? Would you let it be a time in which we draw near you and one another in faith? And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.