(music playing) (laughter) (music playing) (laughter) (laughter) (music playing) (laughter) (laughter) (music playing) (laughter) (laughter) (laughter) (laughter) (laughter) (laughter) (laughter) (music playing) All right, church family, why don't we take a minute or two just in preparation as we reflect on this upcoming new year. We're on a time constraint, so we're going to start right at 11, so why don't we take a minute or two just to prepare our hearts.

(music playing) (music playing) (music playing) (music playing) (music playing) (music playing) (music playing) (music playing) Let's go ahead and pray together. Father, we thank you for this evening where we can come together as a corporate body of Christ to celebrate, to reflect, to look forward to this new year.

Lord God, you are so faithful to us, and we're so grateful, Lord God, that you've allowed us to see the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, that we can come together to honor you, Lord God. That is our first and primary goal, Lord God, to give you the glory and worship that you deserve.

Lord, I pray that you help us moving into this new year. Give us passion, fervent hearts, Lord God, to live out our lives ultimately pleasing to you. God, I pray that tonight may be a time of celebration, a time of reflection of what you are doing and what you continue to do, using us as your children, as your church.

So we pray, Lord God, that you may be blessed and honored through this evening's service. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Church family, why don't we all stand together as we sing? Wow. Sing it together. Who can light the candles? Who can light the fires of a thousand burning suns?

Blazing in the heavens, there is only one, he is our God. Who commands? Who commands the nations, building up and tearing down? Silencing his rivals, there is only one, he is our God. Yes, he is. And he is our God. Holy, you alone are holy. Matchless in your glory, holy God.

Who will come to save you? Who will come to save us when we turned away his love? Conquer us with kindness, there is only one, he is our God. Sing it out, he is our God. And he is our God. Holy, you alone are holy. Matchless in your glory, no one is like you.

Worthy, you alone are worthy. We adore you only, holy God. Now to the king. Now to the king on the throne, who was and is to come, and to the lamb who has slain me, glory. Now to the king on the throne, who was and is to come, and to the lamb who has slain me, glory.

Now to the king on the throne, who was and is to come, and to the lamb who has slain me, glory. Holy, you alone are holy. Matchless in your glory, no one is like you. Worthy, you alone are worthy. We adore you only, holy God. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. What is our hope in life and death? Christ alone, Christ alone. Our only confidence that our souls to Him belong. Who holds our days within His hand. Who holds our heart from His command.

And what will keep us to the end? The love of Christ in which we stand. Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hopes praise eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah. Now and ever we confess, Christ our hope in life and death. What truth can calm the troubled soul? God is good, God is good.

Where is His grace and goodness known? In our grave, Redeemer's blood. Who holds our faith when fears arise? Who stands above the stormy trial? Who sends the waves that bring us nigh? Unto the shore, the rock of pride. Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hopes praise eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah. Now and ever we confess, Christ our hope in life and death.

Unto the grave, unto the grave, what will we sing? Christ He lives, Christ He lives. And what reward will heaven bring? Everlasting life within. There we will rise to meet the Lord. Then sin and death will be destroyed. And we will feast in endless joy. When Christ is ours forevermore.

Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hopes praise eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah. Now and ever we confess, Christ our hope in life and death. Oh, sing hallelujah. Our hopes praise eternal. Oh, sing hallelujah. Now and ever we confess, Christ our hope in life and death. Now and ever we confess, Christ our hope in life and death.

All right, good evening to everybody. I want to begin just by reading Lamentations chapter 3, verses 22 to 24. Lamentations chapter 3, verses 22 to 24. This should be a passage that's familiar to many of you. And it reads, "The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I have hope in him." Let's pray together. Father, we offer up this time to you. And we seek your face. And we draw near with humble yet bold confidence to the throne of grace.

And I pray that you would cause our hearts to be stirred tonight. And as we give you just our final moment of 2022, Father, I pray that you would cause us just really to be grateful and to be worshipful this evening. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So New Year's Eve service is something that we do every year.

As far as long as I've been at Berean, that's what we've done. And many of you guys were here exactly one year ago. And in 2022, there are things that have happened in our world and in our lives that perhaps we would not have imagined would happen, that things that we would not have expected, anticipated, and both good and bad.

Many things that we did expect, that we did plan, actually, I'm sure some things turned out very well. And some things probably a little rough. And there have been a lot of things that have happened in 2022. Early on in the year, war broke out between Ukraine and Russia.

The US government estimates currently that about 200,000 soldiers have been killed thus far in this battle, in this war. And that's not including civilians and children. And Ukrainians probably did not anticipate a year ago today that their lives would change forever. In other news, Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Roe versus Wade was overturned.

I don't know if you guys remember that the Rams won the Super Bowl earlier in the year. And my beloved Dodgers had one of the best regular season records in the history of mankind. They won 117 games. And then they lost in the first round of the playoffs. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on live television.

It was the most watched slap in the history of the world. I just checked, 104 million views as of today. 158 young Koreans were trampled to death in the Itaewon Stampede on Halloween. We lost Queen Elizabeth. In the summer, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated. And we just lost Pele, Barbara Walters, and the Pope just in the last few days.

And so these are all headlines at some point during the course of our year. But what were some of the happenings in your 2022 that didn't make any headlines but were probably more significant to us? Some of you guys were loveless a year ago, and you started dating, to your own surprise.

Some of you guys got married. Some of you had babies. Actually, all of you had just one baby. Some of you lost loved ones. Some of you got hired. Some of you got fired. And I know that there are some who got saved and met Christ. And then some of you brought people to Christ.

One year ago today, you might not have thought those things would happen in the year. But there's really nothing new under the sun. Because despite all of these things that have happened, both good and bad, 2022 wasn't that different from the years past. At church, we studied the Petrine Epistles.

We studied 1 Peter between January to June. And then we studied 2 Peter, and we just wrapped that up just a few weeks ago. And Peter's epistles, they have a heavy emphasis on the end of the world. The destruction of the heavens and the earth. And reflecting on what we studied in Bible study this past year, 2023 means we're just one step closer to the end.

Happy New Year. We who love Christ and believe that the Bible is God's inerrant word, we actually know that most years are not happy at all. And yet we say it. Every year is filled with devastation, heartache, frustration, and grief. And the curses that were laid out in Genesis 3 and expounded upon in the books of Moses, they come to pass year after year.

And some years are especially painful. Book of Lamentations, out of which I read just a few moments ago, was written in one of those really, really dark years. It was written perhaps in the darkest hours of Israel's history. And if you guys read earlier in the Old Testament, Israel was a very, very powerful nation.

But when we read Lamentations, we have to understand that they have lost everything at this point. They lost all their land. All their armies, their soldiers were all wiped out. They no longer had any might, any military power. Their once great wealth was no more. The temple, the physical dwelling place of Yahweh God, was completely destroyed.

And countless Hebrews were taken as slaves to Babylon. So the Book of Lamentations opens with these words from the prophet Jeremiah. And I'm going to read the first three verses for you. "How lonely sits the city, Jerusalem, that was so full of people. She has become like a widow who was once great among the nations.

She who was a princess among the provinces has become a forced laborer. She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks. She has none to comfort her among all her lovers. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile under affliction and under harsh servitude.

And she dwells among the nations, but she has found no rest. All her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of distress." Verse 4 actually continues that even the roads are mourning. So this is akin to the streets of Washington, DC being turned into like a wilderness. All the beautiful monuments in Washington, DC, all destroyed and razed down.

And only like the poor wandering the streets among the rubble. There's chaos and anarchy. All hope is wiped out. That's what we see. So can you imagine Washington, DC becoming like that? So that's what's happened here. And Lamentations is a very interesting and fascinating book. There are five chapters in the book and 154 verses.

And with the exception of the first three verses that I read, those three verses, all of the other 150 verses are negative. Most of the verses are literally all lamentations, verbalized sorrows. And what's cool about Lamentations is chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 are all 22 verses each, all beginning with a consonant in the Hebrew alphabet.

And chapters 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 are written objectively, detailing the events of the world as Jeremiah had seen them and as he had sometimes predicted them. So he's reporting in Lamentations 1 and 2 and 4 to 5 in a poetic form all of the stuff that has happened to the people of God.

So chapters 1 and 2 are very despondent and sad. Chapters 4 and 5 are even worse. But chapter 3 is at the very heart-- can I have chapter 3 back? It's at the very heart of Jeremiah's short book. It is unique. And unlike other chapters, it's actually three times longer.

It's 66 verses. So you have 22, 22, 66, 22, 22. And all four others, remember, they're 22 verses each. They're all objective. Chapter 3, which is right in the middle, Jeremiah is actually very subjective. He's writing what is mostly like a personal prayer. And right smack in the middle of all of this are three of the most beautiful verses in all the scriptures.

And I want to read them again for us. Lamentations 3, 22 to 24. "The Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I have hope in Him." 150 verses of negativity and three verses of exclamatory worship right at the center.

And around Jeremiah, there's nothing but devastation. He was left behind in this wilderness. The world around him had completely fallen apart physically, politically, and even perhaps spiritually because his temple, the center of the worship of Yahweh, it was completely destroyed. His life and the life of every single one of his countrymen had been turned upside down, just crumbled.

Yet, right at the heart of these sorrows, Jeremiah worships. And this is an important passage because in this, we learn what worship is. It isn't a superficial denial of pain. It's not wishful thinking. It's a confident trust in the character of the God of the universe. So Jeremiah's confident trust, his worship, is not based on circumstances.

It's based on objective truth that the God of Israel, the God who created everything, ex nihilo, created everything out of nothing, that He is good. That His loving kindnesses never cease. His compassions, they never fail. And he writes, they are new every morning. They are new every week. They are new every month.

They are new with each passing year. And Yahweh God isn't just faithful. He is great and lofty in His faithfulness. And this God, He's Jeremiah's portion, His inheritance and His reward. And Jeremiah, in these three verses, right at the heart, even though everything around in chapters 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 and in his life, everything around is devastation, He will worship in and through every circumstance.

He will worship even in and through daily lamentations. Verse 24 reads, "The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I have hope in Him." I have hope in Him. The ESV and the King James actually say, "I will hope in Him." That's an interpretation, almost like, okay, there's going to be some bright stuff that happens in the future.

The NIV reads, "I will wait." The ESV, the King James, and the NIV make it seem like this is a decision Jeremiah has committed to taking or committed to making. He's doubling, he's going to be like, "Okay, I will worship, I will hope." But actually, the verb is in the imperfect tense, which means it's a past action that is ongoing.

So for Jeremiah, waiting on and hoping in God aren't things he committed to doing despite the circumstances. They were not his resolutions that he was making, to hope in and better, to wait better. Waiting and hoping in God characterized who Jeremiah was. Waiting and hoping in God are not things that we plan to improve on.

Waiting on and hoping in God are things that characterize every Christian sitting in this room. I don't have any hope in 2023, nor should you. You know, 2 Peter talks about destruction, devastation. What if that's 2023? It's not going to be a happy new year at all. I have zero hope in 2023.

And I don't trust in my New Year's resolutions. Because that's all effort to become a better person. It's a works-based self-improvement. I have no hope in those. I don't have any hope or dread in the policies that the governments will pass in 2023, and nor should you. But it's still a happy new year.

The God who sustained us, who loved us, and who was our only hope in 2022. Not the leaders of this church. Not the articulate teachers that are around us. But God, who was our only hope in 2022, will be our only hope in 2023. Amen? I have hope in the Lord, is what he says in verse 24.

Therefore, the application is this. As we are already in the habit of doing this, we will wait for him. We will continue to pray to him. We will continue to learn about him. We will hope in him, and we will worship him in 2023, like we did in 2022.

I don't know what 2023 is going to bring. The world as you know it may collapse on you. God's still good. What if this turns out to be the worst year of your life? If in the event, if in the God-ordained event that you mourn in 2023, we will mourn together.

That's a promise. If in the God-ordained event, he allows for a great 2023 for you, we will rejoice together. And this will be a happy new year, not because our circumstances are going to change for the better. The chances are, just from what we see in scripture and what we read on the news, things get worse each year.

Our happy new year is not in the happiness of the circumstances that 2023 will bring. But this is a happy new year because Christ Jesus is our God. And he is and will continue to be on his throne. Amen. His hesed, his loving kindness is it never ceases. His compassions never fail.

They are going to be new in about 30 minutes. Great is his faithfulness. So bring on 2023, because Christ Jesus is still on his throne. He is still sovereign and he is supremely good. Amen. What we're going to do is we're going to give you guys about 10 minutes just to pray together over a few topics that I prepared.

Can you go to the next slide? OK, I sent a follow up email. That was my fault, though. Basically, there are two prayer requests. One is that pray for our church and our members that we really will grow in abiding in Christ, in knowing him and hoping in him that our trust is not circumstance centered or people centered, that our trust is God centered.

Amen. Pray for our church. And then if you're here with your family, gather with your family to pray for each other. That God will cause you and every member in your family to be a more receptive conduit of his kindness. And that he will not just bear fruit in you, but also through you.

So that's the second request. The first one is more of our church body. And the second one is more for you personally. OK, and the goal is to try to get us ready for 11.59. OK, so we do have a slideshow or like a video presentation and a closing song.

And so at about 11.40, I'm going to pop back up here, interrupt your beautiful moments of prayer and then just gather our focus back. OK, so 11.40. So please do pray for those things. (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) All right, I'm going to give you an extra 20 seconds just to wrap up your prayers.

And then in about half a minute or so, we're going to show you just a year-end wrap-up video. (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (music) (applause) >> We're going to stand together as we sing this last song.

(piano playing) One second. (piano playing) As we gather may your spirit work within us. As we gather may we glorify your name. Knowing well that as our hearts begin to worship, we'll be blessed because we came. We'll be blessed because we... One more time, as we gather. As we gather may your spirit work within us.

As we gather may we glorify your name. Knowing well that as our hearts begin to worship, we'll be blessed because we came. We'll be blessed because we... The steadfast love. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.

New every morning. Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord. Great is thy faithfulness. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. New every morning. Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord. Great is thy faithfulness, O Lord. Great is thy faithfulness.

You guys can go ahead and have a seat. It's 11.53 at the moment. I just have a couple of announcements and I do want to close our time in prayer before we do the countdown because after that it's going to be a little bit like a taste of heaven where we're all like happily greeting each other with a holy hug.

Okay? So a couple announcements. Tomorrow the services are at 9 and 11 o'clock. We do not have the cry room available for you guys who have small children, so we do ask that you guys squeeze in in the old cry room just for tomorrow because tomorrow we're making -- a good number of our church people are making rice cake soup, ttukguk, for everybody or whoever signed up paid the dollar.

Okay? So that's tomorrow. That's a lot of work, and so if you do see the people tomorrow, please do go ahead and make sure you thank them. Tonight, after we do the Happy New Year's and we greet each other, please don't loiter too long. First of all, tomorrow morning is Sunday service, and a lot of people have to come here by 7 for differing reasons.

And so please do try to leave. My goal is that we lock up everything and everyone's gone by 1220 so that we can come back in about seven hours, all right, at a reasonable time. So please do go home, sleep, and then prepare your hearts for worship. Okay, so do we have any other announcements?

No? Okay, let me pray for us, and then we're going to just hang for, like, for about the New Year's in five minutes. But let me wrap our time in prayer so there isn't going to be a formal, like, get back together and dismiss. We're just going to pray here, and then at 1159 and 50 seconds, we're going to have a countdown that's going to be up on the screen for you, and then we'll call it a night, or we'll call it a morning.

All right? Let me pray for us. Father, we are very grateful that you give us an opportunity to reflect, to pray, to celebrate, and just even think through all the baptisms and all the new lives in Christ that we got to experience this year. We thank you for our growing church, and our prayer, Lord, is that this church doesn't just become a large organization, but that it really becomes a church that pleases your heart.

And, Lord, help us to just be faithful. Help us to abide in you, and in your time and in your way, would you bear fruit in and through us. We thank you, and we entrust 2023 into your care. We love you, Lord, and we pray all of these things in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, so we got three minutes. I've never looked at my watch so much in a service before in my life, but we got three minutes, so pay attention. Once the numbers go up, everyone just get up, count together, and then after we say happy new year, we can wrap up that way.

Okay? And drive home carefully in the rain. (audience chatter)