Joy in a World Turned Upside Down

The title of my sermon this morning is, Joy in a World Turned Upside Down. Joy in a World Turned Upside Down. Things can happen in our own lives. Trials can hit that begin to rob the joy out of living. And collective trials can come, such as what we are facing in the church right now, that can also sap the joy from our lives as we deal with the fallout from decisions that people make that create a separation that we have been living through. Larger trials, on a whole national scope, can also sap the joy from an entire people and kill the spirit of an entire people, a nation, or a region. War can do that. World War can especially do something like that. On this trip, I had an interesting opportunity that perhaps may be among the most interesting in my reflection overall that I saw and did on this particular trip. But I want to talk to you about one place that I visited on the first leg of my trip in Holland, in the Netherlands. I had the opportunity one day to go into Amsterdam, and John asked me, what do you want to do? And he rattled off a few things that we could see there, and one of the things that he said was we could stop by the Anne Frank home. I said, let's go to the Anne Frank home. That was number one of what I wanted to do. And so we took the train in. We were staying in a little town of Leiden, which was about 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam. We took the train in, got off at the central train station, and walked about 20, 25 minutes through the streets and across the canals of Amsterdam. You have to remember Amsterdam is laid out in a kind of a concentric circle and full of canals and water. And before we knew it, or before I knew it, we were standing in front of the Anne Frank home. There was a big line of people around there, so he said, do you want to pass the app? Let's get in line. We need to see this. Anne Frank, for those of you that know, was the young Jewish girl who in World War II was sequestered for a period of time in a home and wrote a diary. How many of you have read Anne Frank's diary? Ah, good. I haven't, but I'm going to. After making this trip, I am going to sit down and read that book. You said you could visit her home. I said, let's go see it. And so we did. I spent a few hours there, waiting in line, and then going through and then looking through some of the, you know, there's always a gift shop everywhere you go in places like this. So that's the last stop before you leave such a location. And I found it to be fascinating, and I thought I would talk to you about that and bring some lessons that I had from that experience home to you in a way that just didn't really realize before. All my adult life, as a young person, I heard about Anne Frank's diary. I heard about her story. And as I said, I never read the book. I guess I thought, well, it's a girl in World of Diary and, you know, I never read it. But a couple of years ago, I saw an article that was in a magazine, it was one of these in-flight magazines, one of the airlines that I was on, and I read it. It was two pages, and I read that. And it picked my curiosity just from the point of view of what she exposed and wrote about herself in writing this diary.

But going to the location of such an experience really does bring it home to you. Now, Anne Frank was one of the millions of victims of the Holocaust during World War II. She and her family had moved to Amsterdam. Her father was named Otto Frank, and his wife was Edith. They had two girls. The oldest girl, one you don't hear about, was named Margo, and then Anne. Anne was a young teenager when they went into hiding. But they were Jews from Germany. And in the 1930s, when Hitler came to power in Germany, Otto Frank lived in Frankfurt, and he realized that they couldn't stay in Germany. And so he moved his family in the late 30s to Amsterdam. Holland, even then, going back hundreds of years and still today, Holland has a very, very tolerant culture. You may remember the Mayflower pilgrims sailed to America from Holland. They were in Holland because they had been persecuted and run out of England. They went to Holland because even at that time it was quite tolerant of different beliefs and peoples, and that's where they sailed from, Delft, Holland. So the Frank family wound up going to Holland, and Mr. Frank had a business of pickling spices and pectin, the things that you would make jellies from and preserved meats. He put those together, packaged them, and sold them. And so he set up shop in this very small house that was a multi-story house there right on one of the canals in the middle of Amsterdam. He had a – the whole downstairs and part of the second floor were devoted to his business. He had workers, clerical workers and others that would work in the warehouse to put these spices together. He had two different brands that he put together and marketed during this time and was allowed to do that. And he – they found a measure of freedom and ability to exist after they had left Nazi Germany. But unfortunately, in 1940, the German troops overran Holland. And very quickly because they basically – the government in Holland capitulated very quickly. And they just overran Holland and set up with the occupation. And then gradually, as the Nazis tightened their noose on Dutch society, they set up all kinds of laws that began to restrict Jewish movements and Jewish freedoms, especially. Otto Frank saw that he – in order to survive, he had to – I don't know why he – I guess they had no other place to move to from that point. No relatives in the United States, no other place to go, so they were there. Perhaps he felt that they could just endure it.

The Nazis made certain laws that Jews could not own a business. So Otto Frank transferred ownership of his business to some of his employees. He remained in the background, made the decisions, took a smaller salary, but it was legally then registered with someone who was not a Jew. And it was allowed – and he could conduct that for another period of time. But then, in 1942, as they began to, again, tighten the noose on Jews in Holland, he realized that they couldn't exist and they had to go into hiding. Now, in this home, there were upper levels and there was what they called the annex, which was kind of a back section that went over the back and was over part of the warehouse.

And so he had rooms constructed and set up that were hidden in the third and fourth floors of this home. That is interesting. If you look at pictures of Amsterdam, the housing in Amsterdam, you'll see these typical old row-type houses. Very small frontage, but they had very deep backage. They just went deep. The Dutch settled New York and the row houses of New York are the same way, based on the same idea.

In Holland, they taxed by the front by the footage up front. So they created very little up front and took it to the back. And that's how this home is set up there.

So he constructed rooms and sealed things off. And he had a bookcase built over a small door that went and took them into this part of the house.

And this bookcase could be slid back and forth to conceal the door that opened up into a very narrow staircase that went up into their living quarters. There were four members of the Frank family, and they brought in four other Jewish friends. So in reality, there were eight people living in this very, very small space. And you go there today and you go up a very, very narrow staircase. It's not handicap accessible. OSHA would not allow it today. And then you get up into the upper rooms. They put kind of a glass scene covering over the windows so that it allowed diffused light to come in, but people couldn't see. And they darkened them at night. And they went up there, and that's where they lived for over two years.

The amount of space they had in there, and to see it, you didn't begin to really feel it and understand it. Many of us have in our kitchens more space than eight people had to live in for two years.

If you can imagine those of you that may have kind of a large kitchen, I don't have a large kitchen. I know the Goads don't have a large kitchen either, but some of you have larger kitchens. And some of the newer homes today. And if you can imagine, that space divided up into a few rooms and eight people sharing it. One bath. No shower. No tub. Just a commode.

One sink. That's just one large sink with one spigot going into it for water. And people sharing their rooms. And then imagine living in that, not for a week, not for a month, but for two years, and essentially not being able to go out. With seven other people. Imagine day in and day out living in that type of an environment. They could not, they had to restrict even the hours when they used the water. So that the water running through the pipes would not attract the attention of the workers down on the first floor.

Because keep in mind, this was essentially built over the business, the warehouse, where Dutch workers were coming in. And for the most part, these workers, most of them, with the exception of two, they didn't know what was going on, that Jews were being hid upstairs.

And so during the day, they had to kind of hold it, because they couldn't flush the toilet. Because it would, water running through the pipes would alert the workers that something was going on up there. And they couldn't turn the spigot on to get water, just whenever they wanted to, because they would hear that going through the pipes. And so that was not just for one day or three days. That was for two years. Keep that in mind. Anne Frank shared a room with another man who was not in her family.

And at a very small desk that was much, much smaller than the space of this lectern that I have, is where she sat every day and wrote in her journal. She was given her first journal, and they have a copy of it there. It was kind of a plaid journal that her father bought for her. And she filled that up. She had very neat handwriting. And she was quite expressive. When that book was filled up, then she got just loose paper and some other notebooks that were brought in. And she continued her writing of her diary there. There were rare moments at night when they might be allowed to go out and help with some of the work in the business, but they had to do that furtively and for very, very short periods.

But to go outside and breathe fresh air? No. They couldn't do it. There was one woman secretary who knew what was going on, and she was the one who brought food in for these eight people. She would have to go out every day to the markets and shop, not just for herself and her family, but for eight people.

And was able to do that for a while. This particular brochure that you pick up when you go in just had some of the excerpts from the diary and other things that were going on. One entry that she made in November of 1942, she said, it was a Thursday night, she said, on Thursday night, I was downstairs with Father drawing up the debtors list in Mr. Kugler's office. Mr. Kugler was the one who was running the business. It was very creepy down there, and I was glad when the work was finished.

So they could only go out for a very short period of time. Another entry says, our own helpers who have managed to pull us through so far, never have they uttered a single word about the burden we must be. Eight people in hiding for two years, a couple of workers knew about it, and they had to keep that secret, they had agreed to do that. And again, you know, sometimes you and I have a hard time keeping a secret for 24 hours.

Imagine with the growing pressure from the, in Amsterdam, of Jews being rounded up, sent off to the deported, and the Nazis going out every night looking for Jews. She recounts in one of these excerpts here, she says, countless friends and acquaintances have been taken off to a dreadful fate. Night after night, green and gray military vehicles cruise the streets.

It's impossible to escape their clutches unless you go into hiding. One time she even caught a glimpse through the window, she probably pulled the glassine back and saw some Jews being herded off down the street, taken and being deported, and she wrote about that. Yeah, she said here, I saw two Jews through the curtains yesterday. It was a horrible feeling.

Just as if I had betrayed them and was now watching them in their misery. That was in December of 1942. You know, when you go to Europe, one of the things, as you look at either museums or a place like this, you do see the history of anti-Semitism and persecution within that country, as that was monstrously developed during the Hitler years and the years of the Holocaust.

You see that from country to country to country. In Budapest, we took a few hours this past week to go to the, there's a large Jewish synagogue in Budapest. It's the largest in Europe, second largest in the world. And it was built right on the edge of the ghetto that was set up in Budapest, where all the Jews were herded into in World War II. And it was interesting just to see that and to kind of go through that experience of this synagogue. When I was in Vienna last week, we went into a large, large Catholic church right in the center of Vienna, Saint Stephen's Church, and we're just kind of looking around that.

And I noticed a painting on a wall by the door as I was going out, and it was a painting made back during the medieval period of Jesus's betrayal and trial. You could see very clearly that Jesus had his crown of thorns there, and he was before Pilate and the crowds of Jews in front of them. And of course they were painted, the Jews and everybody was painted with, you know, 15th century medieval European clothing, which those paintings are. But I looked very closely at the painting, and I knew what to look for because I'd seen this in Germany a few years ago in another painting that was pointed out to me.

I looked very closely at this painting at the Jews that were accusing Christ, as we all know from the scene there in the Gospels, where they wanted Barabbas to be released rather than Christ. And they had these people, the Jews pointing their finger at them. The way the Jews were depicted were with large noses. If you're aware of art and depiction, Jews are always depicted with very large noses. And that was a statement 500 years ago through this picture.

This was the YouTube, pictures like that, were the YouTube of that period of time as people made statements. It was a statement of anti-Semitism, that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ. And it's that thread that runs not only through European history, but many other, goes all the way back to the time of the Persians, as we know in the book of Esther. Because that was the first Holocaust, if you will, where Haman designed and schemed to kill all the Jews in Persia at that time. But when you see this in these paintings, you then begin to realize how that thread runs through European history.

And it was much older than Hitler. He just tapped into the stream of anti-Semitic thought, which is really an anti-God thought, when you really do break it down. It's not just hatred of Jews, it's hatred of God. And essentially, it's a hatred of the law. The law. Because, as Romans tells us, the mind of man is against God and cannot be brought into recognition there.

It rejects God. You know, it reminded me, in Revelation 12, again, just going back then to the experience of the Holocaust and Frank, Revelation 12, something that kept coming back to my mind as I was seeing these things through this trip, Revelation 12 is a vignette of the church down from the birth of Christ all the way down to the time of the end. And at the end of the chapter, when the dragon was cast down to earth in verse 13, the woman's given two wings of a great eagle to fly into the wilderness in verse 14. Verse 15, the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away.

This is the dramatic imagery depicting the persecution upon the people of God, of which the Jews, down through modern history, in a sense, have taken the brunt of it because they, of all of Israel, have retained their identity through the Sabbath and their cultural identity in one sense, and they have borne the brunt of that down through history. But Revelation 12 tells us that there will be a time in the future when anyone who acts like a Jew will suffer persecution, engineered by Satan.

But the earth helped the woman, verse 16, the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood, which the dragon, Satan, had spewed out of his mouth. The dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Verse 17 is a very chilling verse to consider of a future time of persecution on those who are the offspring, the rest of the offspring, who will be persecuted because they keep the commandments of God, including the Sabbath and the Holy Days, which in some people's eyes and minds today would make you and me, what?

A Jew. So when you go through these museums and you see the yellow star that the Jews had to wear on their lapel in Europe, in World War II, too, just as they walked down the street, if they didn't have that on, they could have been arrested. That identified them as Juden Jews, and they were marked. Well, Revelation 12-17 tells us that there was going to be a time when those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ will deal with that wrath.

And again, going through the experience with Anne Frank Holm brought out that fact of just what it was like. Reading another excerpt from her diary here, she said, She said, And the roads are set up in Holland.

You've got car lanes, you've got bus lanes, and you've got bike lanes. You can bike on pavement from one end of Holland to the other. Everybody has a bike.

And if you're walking in that bike lane, you better make sure that the bike's coming up because they'll ring their little bell and make you move over because they have the right of way. They don't have a separate pedestrian lane. But she says the Jews had to turn in their bicycles. Going on, she says, Another entry she made, she says, Interesting statement. She put that down into her diary there.

The months wore on, and it was just over two years that they were there. And as the later months, in 1944, they had access to news, and they knew of the invasion of Normandy D-Day. They knew that the Allies had invaded Europe. She made one statement. She said, This is the day, came the announcement, over the English news at 12 o'clock. The invasion has begun. English parachute troops have landed on the French coast. Great commotion in the annex. The annex was how they referred to where they were living, where these eight people were living in what is called the annex. Would the long-awaited liberation ever come true?

She wrote this on June 6, 1944, D-Day, when they heard news of the invasion of France. You can imagine the commotion, the expectation. And as the months wore on, it took a while for the Allied troops to eventually get into Holland. That didn't happen right away. And as the commotion developed throughout the society, things got worse in Holland. And June became July. And there was no liberation. Food stores got a little bit worse. The food got less and less. The workers were not able to always bring in enough food for the eight people. And so they had to basically eat, in some cases at times, even rotten food. Now, what's interesting, and you see this in the room where she lived, and this is where it speaks to the joy that she demonstrated in her diary.

First of all, to write a diary every day requires discipline. I don't know how many of you have ever done that over the years, kept a journal, kept a diary. To do that on a regular basis takes discipline. We always start certain projects out, and over a period of time we don't always stay with them. But Anne Frank stayed with it day in and day out.

She had hopes of becoming maybe a journalist after the war. She also pasted pictures on her wall that her dad would bring into her. She had pictures of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

Princess Elizabeth is today Queen Elizabeth. And she pasted those on her wall, and they have remnants of that still there. She put movie stars up there. And you look at that and you look at her diary, and the discipline, and the things that she wrote, and some of the entries, and you realize, what a remarkable event this is, and why it has captured the imagination and the interest of people down all through the decades since.

There was an innate joy, I think, that she seemed to have that allowed her to do this. It's how she got through the time. It's how she got through the trial. She had dreams of being either a journalist or maybe an actress. Her older sister really wanted to be an actress.

And she reminded herself of that by putting these things up on her wall so that they would not be forgotten. And she would keep that in her mind. And as the months wore on, it got to a point where eventually, perhaps they realized that liberation wouldn't happen for them until the fateful day when they were discovered. And it tells, they tell you that what happened, they knew about people being gassed. She says, you've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist and later on a famous writer. In any case, after the war, I would like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. And that was her dream and that was her desire.

But it didn't happen. On August 4, 1944, just two months after D-Day, the German security police received an anonymous phone call. There are Jews hiding at 263 Prinzengracht, which is their place. The hiding place was betrayed. Someone called it in. Betrayed them. Extensive investigations after the war have still not revealed who was responsible for their betrayal.

They never found out. But someone made an anonymous phone call and said they were Jews hiding. They came. They carted all eight people off. They took all the furnishings out. When you go there today, the furnishings are not there. Eight people left. Only one survived the concentration camps. Anne Frank died. Her mother, her sister. The only one who survived was her father, Otto Frank. And he came back after the war and came back to this spot. And what had happened is, after the Nazis had raided the annex, they carted off all the furniture, but they left the papers and the diaries.

And one of the workers, a lady named Mrs. Gep, saved the diaries. And she then gave them to Otto Frank when he came back after the war. It's interesting, just a little aside, they have some footage of Otto Frank talking about it years later, that they had recorded for archival purposes. And he made the statement of what he learned by reading his daughter's diary after the war.

And he said, I had a very good relationship with Anne. She would confide in me. We had a very good relationship as a father and daughter. But he said, after I read her diaries, I saw a side of her I didn't see and I had not known. And he said, I had come to conclude that most parents, even those who think they know their children, don't really know their children. And I stood and I had to listen to that loop through twice to get the point. But he kept the diary and eventually had them published.

Anne Frank's diaries have been published in 65 languages, still in print. And, again, you go back and you realize when you see this young girl, what she did to write a diary every day, to put pictures up on her wall, to dream, to have hope beyond the narrow confines of the room in which she was in, is an amazing story and an amazing...

They celebrated birthdays among themselves. They even brought in gifts so that they tried to keep a sense of normalcy. You're just struck by the whole situation that was taking place there. And you see how a very civilized people, which Germany was... Germany had produced Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, great works of art, music, literature through the years. And to see that society turned in the 1920s and the 30s, in a very, very short period of time, by an ideology of national socialism that erupted into the war and certainly the Holocaust and the distinction of targeting a race of people for extinction.

And this was not out of a barbaric people. This was out of one of the world's most civilized cultures and societies to that date.

You are struck with the how... the spiritual side of life in a world that is ongoing, that the Scriptures talk to us about. And you see the betrayal that people can have when people turn on each other under a time of stress when a world is turned upside down.

It was reminded of what it says back in Mark 13.

Mark 13.

As Jesus talked about the signs of the times and the end of the age.

Verse 10 says, This gospel must be preached to all the nations. In the midst of the upset that he talks about here in the first few verses. And verse 11, he says, When they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand or premeditate what you will speak. Whatever is given to you in that hour, speak that.

For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. He's speaking here to his disciples and to the church. But he's talking about arrest and being delivered up. Verse 12 even breaks it down and gets more specific. He says, Brother will betray brother to death. And they father his child. And children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake.

But he who endures to the end shall be saved. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And again, you read something like this and you wonder how can that happen? How can that be? And you read history like the Holocaust and you see literally where it did happen. And it happened against a people who, in a sense, were our kissing cousins spiritually, in faith to us, because they had the mark of God upon them that, because they had held fast to their identity, their cultural, religious identity, as members of the tribe of Judah.

The only tribe to do so. They were marked. And Christ is not just speaking directly about that. He's speaking to the spiritual believers here. And it is a strong warning for us all to make sure that we don't ever get ourselves into a frame of mind where we could find ourselves turning on one another or betraying one another. And yet also to recognize that, as this speaks to on a larger scale, how a society can turn itself inside out.

Sometimes it can happen even within the spiritual fellowship of the church, where betrayal takes place. And people think they do God a favor in certain ways by what actions they take or what words they take. Brother will betray brother to death and a father or his child. That speaks volumes in many different applications. Again, you see it in the context of all of this. A visit to a place like the Anfrank home, which is just a microcosm. You know, there's one quote on the back of this from a survivor of Auschwitz, a man named Primo Levi, a Jewish writer. He wrote in 1986 about Anfrank. He said, One single Anfrank moves us more than the countless others who suffered, just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows.

Anfrank becomes a face to the Holocaust, more so than just about anyone else. He wrote, he went on, he said, Perhaps it is better that way. If we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live. And yet, when you see all of this, as you see it up close, and I've been to Yad Vashem in Israel, the Holocaust Memorial, the granddaddy of all Holocaust Memorials. I've been there three times over the years. And it's a moving experience, every time I've been. But this one was different, in that it focused in on, there was a face to it.

And then there was a place, and you see. And you really do absorb it, and you understand something deeper than you might just by reading a book, visiting even a museum. This is a museum, but it was an actual site and a spot where it happened with a face to it and a situation there that really does grab you.

And yet, what really grabs me through it all was how she dealt with it. Because we even know about it, and we even know there was a girl named Anne Frank, was because of the way she dealt with her adversity. By writing about it, and writing about it in such a way that she has reached out through the years to multiple generations and audiences, of all different cultures and languages, with the thoughts that she was experiencing as she went through it, and what is the overriding thought, to me at least, and what I think appeals to the human spirit, is the joy she was able to maintain, the hope she was able to maintain of a future.

You don't sit down and write day in and day out your thoughts without a certain amount of hope. You don't put pictures of movie stars or royalty on your wall when you're having to eat rancid canned goods, because that's all you've got, unless there's a certain level of hope and expectation that is driving your life. You don't do those things as a human being. And I conclude, and this is just my personal conclusion, that perhaps God gives us certain things down through history and experience of people and situations just like this and other ways to teach us certain lessons and help us.

And he's saying, you know, this person went through this. We should note this. There are some spiritual lessons there. And the lesson I take is joy in a world turned upside down. And I go to the Scriptures such as that of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4, where he wrote from his own prison, one of the most joy-filled letters of the New Testament.

And if you just focus in on chapter 4 of Philippians 4, which we are all familiar with, you see it just building to a crescendo in this letter, which is a very positive letter written from prison.

And in verse 4 of Philippians 4, he says, Again, I say, Always. In the midst of trial, personal, collective, national, church trial, national trial, if you lost your job, you've got an illness that you're grappling with, you've got a challenging situation, rejoice always in the Lord, knowing that God has a greater purpose, that God sees it all and knows it all. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing. But in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Being thankful. And that approach leads to what he says, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. If we can bring forth that fruit of the Spirit, that positive fruit of God's Holy Spirit, Galatians 5 talks about love, and the second one is joy, then we can endure, we can deal with, we can reach a certain level of understanding and acceptance of whatever it is that we may be struggling with in our life. He goes on in verse 8, finally brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely. Again, I think of her, and she didn't read these verses. She was Jewish. This was the New Testament. She wouldn't have read these at all, would not have heard them read in her synagogue. And yet she found lovely things to put into her life, to express herself through a diary, to put a picture of a movie star or a princess who lived a far different life than she would have ever lived on her wall, just to be reminded of that. What is it that you and I might find solace and comfort and encouragement in? A picture of your family? A favorite song? An encouraging, uplifting poem? A section of Scripture? A psalm? A section such as this that you go to?

Where do you go to push out all the problems that keep pressing in on you? Where do you go to find your quiet spot? To talk with God? To listen to God?

Where do you go? What do you do?

I think we've all had the opportunity to learn, and I hope all of us have learned to take whatever to carve out a time, a place, a space, a ritual, a routine, that, you know, whether it's just 30 minutes of prayer, you know, solitude or study, where we go to. And we, in a sense, retreat inside ourselves to be with God and to think on these things, to reorient ourselves, and then we get recharged, we get back up, and we hit it again. Where do you go? What do you do? What is your practice, your custom? One of the things that I was struck about Jewish culture on this, and this was in Budapest at the synagogue, they had a Jewish museum with so many of the paraphernalia of Judaism on display. And we were talking about this. They have a prayer shawl. They have a prayer hat. They have a prayer book.

They have a prayer book for Passover. They have a prayer book for Sukhoth. They have a covering for the bread for their cedar, Passover Cedar. They have special knives for circumcision. They have beads. They have things that express their rituals, their faith.

What do we have? We don't have those things, do we? The closest thing we come to rituals in the church is at the Passover time. The foot washing, the bread, the wine.

I mean, we have the Bible every day. We always have the Bible.

But, you know, unleavened bread.

Beyond those things, we don't have prayer shawls. We don't have phylacteries. We don't have special prayer books for certain holy days. We have one book. And I'm just saying there's a marked contrast. I'm not evaluating it one way or the other.

One thing I take from that is that the New Covenant Christian has the law being written on the heart.

And we are a testimony. We are an expression of God dwelling in us through our lives. Not what we wear, not the things that we carry. And the Jews have far less than other religions in terms of outward expressions of their faith.

Study Catholicism, and it's all over the place. But when it comes down to the Church of God, let's say, in our own culture and what we've developed, and from out of Scripture, you will not find a lot of those physical things that express our ritual. Which brings me back to the point I was making. All the more so, we have to develop the life of the Spirit.

And that's what Paul really is addressing. When he tells us to think on whatever is noble, just, and pure, you have to make an effort to do that. I do, at times. We have to crowd out all the other distractions of life and make sure we find some time. If it's five minutes, if it's fifty minutes, whatever it is that we can do, where we recalibrate.

We talk about getting a compass check, where we reorient ourselves, make sure we're headed in the right direction. But to accomplish what verse 8 is talking about, we have to carve that out in our life. Whatever things are of good report, if there's any virtue and if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. Think on this. And to think on that requires us to make the effort in our life to put it there. Because that is where we will get joy. That is how we will write the script of our life and make a life that reflects these qualities. This will allow us to, in a sense, look to God, not to the around. Not to what's in our checkbook, not what is parked out in front of the house, not the size of our kitchen, or all the gadgets that are in there, but we look to God, ultimately. We look up. And the more we look up, rather than whatever's around us, the more we look up, then we will be able to have the joy that will get us through a world that is turned upside down and through a trial. That's what we have to figure out. In prison, Paul found joy. He found joy by the relationship that he had with the Philippian church, because he thought back through that. And that resulted in this letter, which has been a sense, kind of like a diary entry, that we continue to read today. We wouldn't have known that if Paul hadn't been inspired to sit down and put these things to pen and paper. Just like I said, without a diary, we would have never known a girl named Anne Frank lived. And when you really do understand what it took for her to do that, you're touching upon something that is spiritual, that she... I'm not saying she understood all that she was doing, but she did what she had to do to survive. And it, to me, is an object lesson to make sure that my life is focused and anchored on the joy that is needed. And there's many other qualities as well, but that inner joy will allow us to deal with adversity, deal with the challenges, and get us through. And get us through a world that can be turned upside down at various times.

So that was how I traveled, how I reflected on some of the things that I saw. I thought I had to share that with you here this morning. Hopefully it will help you to reflect in your own life and to make sure that there is enough joy mixed in with all the other challenges that are always in front of us to help us to endure and to learn and to endure to the end.