Introduction

Welcome church! I want to start with a question today: do you know what a “first-world problem” is? First-world problems are small, relatively insignificant annoyances which irritate us. These are problems of affluence, not scarcity.

Examples are: Starbucks makes your coffee wrong. Your favorite sports team loses. The power goes out at your home. Your car breaks down. Your phone battery dies. The wifi is slow. You get a bad haircut. First-world problems cause irritation, not devastation.

Not all problems are first-world problems. If you live long enough you will go through seasons where the problems get much harder, more painful, more emotional. There are times when everything seems to fall apart. We all go through these seasons because terrible things are part of life.

We get laid off. Our business fails. Our marriage fails. A loved one dies. We get a horrible diagnosis. Our sons or daughters go to war. The economy crashes. These things happen outside of our control. Life punches us in the stomach so hard that we collapse and wonder how we can go on.

Sometimes everything falls apart. We’re going to look at Luke 21:5-19 today, a story where Jesus is in the temple with his disciples. We’re going to read the entire scene and then I want to give some historical background so we can grasp the enormity of the events Jesus says will happen in their lifetime.

And then I want to make a few observations because what Jesus does here, both in his teaching and in his life, is give us a very clear path forward when everything falls apart. And we’re going to discover something amazing about the eternal nature of God which can fuel us forward starting today.

Sometimes everything falls apart.

Our scene begins with the disciples admiring the beautiful stones adorning the temple ... View this full sermon with PRO Premium