Sunday Morning Worship Service November 22, 2020

Well, good morning. Did you see you on this Lord's Day, this Sunday before Thanksgiving. Have a little bit of a

Thanksgiving emphasis in the message and the service this morning. Hope you're looking forward to the holiday.

I hope especially that you're keeping track of some things to be thankful for.

In that regard, normally for Thanksgiving, we have a

Thanksgiving praise service and that usually happens on Tuesday evenings. With the

COVID outbreak and the concern about minimizing public gatherings, what we're going to do instead is on Wednesday evening or normal seven o 'clock hour, we'll have a,

I hate even to use it. I'm getting tired of using the idea of virtual stuff, but an online

Thanksgiving service. What I would like to do with that is, I'd like to be able to share some things people are thankful for.

What you can do to help out with making that service special is to e -mail me just a testimony of Thanksgiving of some kind.

I'll share those anonymously. I won't because it's the nature of it. I won't broadcast names, but just share different things people are thankful for during the course of that Wednesday night service.

There's a couple of ways you can e -mail. I believe I have an e -mail address in the church directory. If you're watching online and would like to share an e -mail and don't have a church directory, you can do that on the church website.

There's a tab on the menu bar, contact us and contact the pastor.

Just send me an e -mail and share those words of testimony of Thanksgiving.

Those will be a blessing to us as we share those together. A couple other things in your bulletin. Again, we're collecting this offering for the missionaries this month as Christmas gift.

Have a goal. We've typically collected over the course of a year about $2 ,000 in the

Sunday school offering to give to the missionaries. We're at about $1 ,100 for the year so far.

So we have a goal of 2 ,000. That gives each of the missionaries about $200 as a

Christmas gift. So if you can help out with that and would like to share a

Christmas offering with the missionaries, a couple of ways of doing it. One is use the envelope on the foyer table.

That envelope says all that needs to be said to those who count the offerings and put that in the offering box, or you can give online and there's a designated category for that giving online.

So note those things. We are planning at this point, a candlelight service

December 23rd. And what we typically do with that is give opportunity for a congregation to participate in some way.

It's gonna be a Wednesday night and we do everything we do by candlelight.

Lights are dimmed, have lots of candles and it just looks really nice. And also a good service of Christmas celebration.

If you'd like to participate in that, there's a signup sheet on the foyer bulletin board and wanna look forward to that time together.

We have come together to worship the Lord and Psalm 118 verses 28 and 29 says, "'Thou art my

God and I will praise thee. "'Thou art my God, I will exalt thee.

"'Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, "'for his steadfast love endures forever.'"

Let's join our hearts as we join our voices in singing to the Lord, Jim.

Take your hymnals if you would and turn to number two. Number two, in your hymnals, come

Christians join to sing. Let's join together and stand together if you would and sing verses one and two.

Let me make a change, that's verses one and three. One and three of number two.

♪ Come Christians join to sing ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪ ♪

Loud praise to Christ our King ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪ ♪

Let all with heart and voice before his throne rejoice ♪ ♪

Praise in his gracious joys ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪ ♪

Praise yet our Christ again ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪ ♪

Life shall not end a strain ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪ ♪

On heaven's blissful shore ♪ ♪ His goodness we'll adore ♪ ♪

Singing forevermore ♪ ♪ Alleluia, amen ♪

Our Father again, we thank you for your grace and your mercy this past week.

Father, with a world that is in such turmoil, Father, we can come and hear the truths from your word, from your wisdom, your understanding.

And Father, may we apply the truths that are heard today to our hearts and our lives.

And Father, may we present that truth to those around us. We pray,

Father, as we sing these praises unto you that we would be joyous in our hearts and our lives, lift our voices to you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Many of the psalms have sections in them that are thanksgiving sections.

Psalm 103 is one of the better known psalms that itemize some things to be thankful for.

On the back of your bulletin, verses one to eight, we want to read together. You follow along in your copy there, in your bulletin of this psalm, encouraging us, exhorting us to bless the

Lord for all of his benefits. Psalm 103, verses one to eight.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities.

Who healeth all thy diseases. Who redeemeth thy life from destruction. Who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies.

Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.

The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed. He made known his ways unto

Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

Thank the Lord for who he is, and for what he does for his people. Jim? Grace greater than our sin, in number 157, one five seven.

Let's sing verses, the first two verses, of grace greater than our sin. ♪

Marvelous grace of our loving

Lord ♪ ♪ Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt ♪ ♪

God of Calvary, where did we get it ♪

As we pray together today, we want to remember the Barillas, the missionaries we support in Cameroon, in Africa.

Last week, the message we focused on praying, the thrust of the message was praying for governmental leaders and rulers and so forth, but the whole context of that passage was to pray for national and local leaders for the sake of the gospel and for the gospel advance.

And we think about that in relation to the Barillas serving in Cameroon. We're so far away from that part of the world that we have no idea what life is like there, but there's quite a bit of conflict in that nation, and it's not just the rhetorical conflict that we are dealing with here, mostly, in America.

It is conflict that is causing widespread violence and damage and death.

In the last few years, thousands of people, for four years, there's been this conflict going on for four years, and in those four years, thousands of people have been killed, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, and this is mainly a division between, it's kind of like a language division.

There's a French -speaking and an English -speaking contingency, and they have conflict over who gets what benefits and that kind of thing.

And so this has been going on for quite some time, and the problem with the government is it's quite corrupt.

One commentator said that the government of Cameroon is one of the most corrupt and authoritarian governments in Africa.

That's saying a lot, if you know the history of governments in Africa. So this is where the

Barillas are serving and endeavoring to build a work for the

Lord, so we want to pray for Mark and Rachel and their family as they serve there.

In the church family, we want to pray for Bob. Bob is having a PET scan this week on Tuesday.

This scan, of course, evaluates the effectiveness of the chemotherapy he's been receiving, so I want to pray that they get good results from that scan, and then also want to pray for Heather.

I understand she's supposed to have a procedure on her hand this week and quite involved things, so pray for her.

And then we want to continue to pray for our own nation and the crises that we face, the election crisis, of course.

We want to pray for truth to come out, for justice to prevail, and for trustworthy accuracy.

One of the problems that we are facing in our country is a complete erosion of trust on just about every level, and that is a sad and unfortunate thing.

So I want to pray for things to develop in such a way that we can actually be confident in the outcome.

And then, of course, pray for the COVID outbreak, and it's easy when, if you've never experienced it or had anybody who has, it's easy to kind of minimize it and think it's overblown.

And yet, what we have to acknowledge is there is an increase. Hospitals are seeing more patients and more serious conditions, so it's a very real thing.

And we just want to pray for God to be gracious to our region, and that this thing will go away soon, that he would provide healing.

And at the same time, as we're going to see even in the book of Lamentations later, I want to pray that the

Lord will use this affliction in our nation to accomplish greater and spiritual purposes in the lives of people.

So let's look to the Lord in prayer, shall we? Our Father and our

God, we are grateful today that we can bless you, as we, as your people, have the privilege of calling you our

God. And we can look at your many benefits with which you have blessed us.

Well, maybe some of us can't look to material things that are so extravagant or luxurious, but yet, even those things that we have are expressions of your faithfulness to your people.

You provide our needs. You give us good things that we don't deserve, but they're good things from your hand, and they revitalize our spirit.

We thank you, Father, for the forgiveness of sins, because every one of us in this room is conscious and aware of the reality of our sin nature and the conflict that it often causes in our lives, in our minds, our hearts, even in our behavior, our choices.

We look back even in this past week, and I have to confess to you, Father, that we have not been a perfect people, far from it.

We couldn't even look back in the last 24 hours and make that claim. We need your forgiveness, and we are so grateful and thankful that you do forgive.

We're thankful, Father, for the healing that you provide, healing us of our diseases.

We think of the COVID outbreak, and even some here this morning have experienced that firsthand.

And thank you for the health that you have given, healing from that disease. But, Father, we especially are grateful for the healing of our sin disease and the ultimate healing of all sickness, all disease, that we, your people, will enjoy for all eternity.

We thank you, Father, for the provision for our everyday work.

You have given us strength and health, and enabled us to provide for our families and for our needs, and we know that even the strength that we have is a gift from you.

Oh, Lord, may we not forget your many, many benefits that you provide for your people.

And we thank you that we can come before you, and one of the benefits that we have as your people is a direct access to your very throne because of the work of Christ.

We can come in his name and through his work on the cross and his ongoing intercessory work in your very presence.

So, Father, we pray for folks in need today. We pray for Bob and the scan that he'll be getting this week.

I pray that if it would be pleasing to you and be in your purposes that the scan would reveal an effectiveness of the treatments that he's been receiving of late.

Also pray for Heather and ask that by your grace you would give skill to the surgeon that deals with the hand problem.

And, Lord, we pray for a speedy healing and recovery from that procedure. We pray for Mark and Rachel Barilla and their ministry in Cameroon.

And, Father, we pray for their protection as English -speaking Anglos from outside of the country there to testify of Christ and to do a work of missions.

I pray that you'd protect them from those that would be hostile to such a person and to such an endeavor.

Protect them, we pray. And I pray that you would do a work in the powers that be, in the government, that you have allowed to be in power there.

Father, I pray for the peace of that land that your work may go on peaceably, that many would come to faith in Christ as the gospel is proclaimed.

We pray for our own nation in that regard. Father, we are burdened over the crises that are going on in our land right now, political crises with unclear outcome of an election, and all of the conflict and the turmoil that is surrounding that, the division of our people.

And, Father, I pray that the outcome of this election would become very, very clear and the truth would prevail and that no corruption would be allowed to continue.

We pray for the outbreak of the COVID virus and pray for your protection over your people.

Pray for deliverance from the sickness. We pray for our community and those who are in constant contact with people who are sick.

We think of Rebecca today and just pray for her and their fellow nurses and doctors.

I pray that you would protect them. From getting this illness, pray for those who are suffering from it that they would be healed quickly and soon.

Father, we do pray for our nation that you would use these crises to bring us to our knees, to bring us to humility, to bring us to repentance.

So do a work of grace even in our land, we pray. Lord, we ask these things today in your name, in the name of our

Savior, Jesus, amen and amen. Jim. And before the morning message, take your hymnals once again and turn to 109, 109,

Great is Thy Faithfulness. Let's stand together again, please, if you would, and sing verses one and three of 109.

♪ Great is thy faithfulness in what

I see ♪ Take your

Bibles, please, and turn to Lamentations chapter three. Lamentations chapter three,

I want to read verses 18 through 36 for a scripture reading this morning.

Lamentations chapter three, it's one of those books of the Bible that's not commonly referred to.

Comes sandwiched between Lamentations, between Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel.

So Lamentations chapter three, beginning in verse 18. And I said, my strength and my hope is perished from the

Lord, remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me.

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will

I hope in Him. The Lord is good to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh

Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the

Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon him.

He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him.

He is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but though He cause grief, yet He will have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.

For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. To crush under His feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the

Most High, to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of this, His word. A brief prayer. So our

Father, this morning I pray that from this passage of Scripture, regardless of what we're going through and how we may feel today, we would see reasons to hope, and from that hope, thanksgiving would rise.

This we pray in Jesus' name, amen. So in your bulletin, on the right side of the bulletin, there's this little blurb about the library and a new edition in the library, and it's a book entitled

The American Puritans. And it's a book that's basically a compilation, short biographical sketches, of some key early

American, colonial American Puritans from the mid 1600s into the 1700s.

One of those individuals profiled in that book is the Puritan Cotton Mather.

And I wanted to share with you a section, an excerpt from that book regarding the experiences of Cotton Mather's life.

It says, while Cotton experienced all the normal joys of life, marriage, children, friendship, and so on, he also suffered tremendous loss.

In 1686, Cotton married Abigail Phillips of Charlestown. Together they had nine children.

Abigail, Catherine, Mary, Joseph, another Abigail, Mehetabel, Hannah, Increase, and Samuel, five of whom did not survive early childhood.

To his great sadness, Abigail died of breast cancer on December 5th, 1702, after 16 years of marriage.

Cotton married his second wife, the widow, Elizabeth Clark Hubbard, on August 18th, 1703.

She bore him six children, Elizabeth, Samuel, Nathaniel, Jerusha, and twins,

Martha and Eleazar. However, the measles epidemic of 1713 brought terrible calamity on the

Mather family. While several in his family caught the illness, his wife, Elizabeth, his dear, dear, dear friend, quote, end quote, she died on November 9th, 10 days after giving birth.

A few days later, one of Mather's maidservants died, followed by the infant twins, and then his daughter,

Jerusha. Having lost so many people inside of one month, Cotton was devastated.

At one point, he scribbled down the names of his children on the back of one of his books, dividing the list by a line between those still living and those he had lost to date.

At the bottom, he wrote, quote, of 15, dead nine.

In 1715, Cotton married his third wife, Lydia Lee George. Whereas his first two marriages were joyful and loving, his marriage to Lydia was contentious and difficult, as she struggled with severe bouts of depression and insanity.

Additionally, Lydia came from a wealthy family, but after their marriage, she grew bitter toward Cotton and shunned him and his surviving children.

At one point, Cotton began selling off possessions, even large numbers of books, to sustain himself financially.

And while Cotton and Lydia did have short seasons of happiness, their 13 -year marriage was marked by tumult.

In honor of his own father, Cotton Mather had a son whom he named Increase, or Cressy for short, born in 1699.

Both Increase Senior and Cotton had high hopes for the young man, hoping that he would lead the fourth generation of New England Mathers.

But he turned out to be nothing but a disappointment. He was uncouth and ungentlemanly.

His Christian faith itself was questionable. And in 1717, he was charged with a paternity suit after fathering a child out of wedlock.

Cotton's own sadness and shame over his son was only intensified when, on August 23rd, 1723, his beloved father died from a stroke at the age of 84.

Cotton mourned the loss of his father deeply, having served alongside him for four decades and greatly respected him in all ways, paternal, intellectual, and pastoral.

His wounds of sadness were opened again the next year when Cressy, his 12th child to die, drowned at sea.

After the death of his daughter Elizabeth in 1726, only two of his children,

Hannah and Samuel, would outlive him. Well, several decades ago, 1941 to be exact,

FDR signed into law, legislation, that the fourth

Thursday of every November would be Thanksgiving Day. That was enacted after many, many years, decades, ever since the 1860, 1863 to be exact.

There was the tradition of the proclamation of the last Thursday of November to be

Thanksgiving Day, originally proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. So here it is, something that's put into legislation for our country.

We will have a national holiday of Thanksgiving. But it's one thing to legislate a day that's set aside called

Thanksgiving. It's another thing altogether, isn't it, to actually give thanks.

What if you don't feel like it? A lot of people, because of what's going on in their lives right now, they just aren't in much of a mood for doing any thanksgiving.

And if you know their story, or perhaps if we knew your story, it could be quite understandable.

A sense of pain, grief, hopelessness, it's all so overwhelming.

Would be understandable, but it's not insurmountable. It's not insurmountable for those who are in Christ Jesus, those who are truly

God's children. Are you? Are you in Christ Jesus?

Are you one of God's children by adoption into his family? Has God in his grace so worked in your life that you have seen yourself as a hopeless, lost sinner?

His only hope of eternal life is found in the work and person of Jesus Christ on the cross. Have you come by repentant faith to Jesus, confessing to him, acknowledging to him your sin, repenting of it, turning from it, and trusting in him and him alone as your savior?

Are you in Christ Jesus? If you're in Christ Jesus, circumstances of life may be understandable as to why you might not want to, might not be in much of a mood for thanksgiving.

Understandable, but not insurmountable. So in Lamentations chapter three, let's lay the foundation for a good thanksgiving by moving from a place of hopelessness to one of hopefulness and focusing, not so much on our crisis, but on the character of our

God. And what we'll do as we look at, what will happen as we look at this passage, we'll see the hope rising as we focus on the character of God.

And as that hope rises, so too can be reasons for thanksgiving.

Now a little bit of context for this book of Lamentations. It was written by Jeremiah, we believe, after the complete total destruction of the city of Jerusalem.

City is completely destroyed, the walls are destroyed, the temple is destroyed, thousands of people have been killed or displaced, taken into exile and so forth.

It's kind of like, if you've seen some of the images of the destruction of downtown

Portland or downtown New York City or Minneapolis after all the rioting and so forth, if you could take that and extrapolate it to a national, on a national scale and see that in every major city and not just a pocket, not just a few blocks of the city, but the entire city, totally destroyed.

Like the dystopian view of the skyline of Chicago without the Willis Tower and only half of the

Ferris wheel on Navy Pier and so on and so forth. This is what

Jeremiah is looking at as he looks at the city of Jerusalem and he writes this book of five poems that are poems of lament.

Chapter three is the third of those five poems, it's the longest, it's three times longer than the other four and in this section, in this poem, right in the middle of it, you see hope rising.

But it doesn't, but it rises, I say, from the, shall we say the ash heap of hopelessness because of the circumstances of life, the experiences of life and those experiences of life can indeed leave you with a sense of hopelessness.

And look at the, look at what Jeremiah expresses here. In verse 18, there is this sense of hopelessness because of the suffering of serious spiritual maladies.

Spiritual maladies. He says in verse 18, my strength and my hope is perished from the

Lord. Do you get that? My strength is perished from the Lord.

My hope is perished from the Lord. Those are spiritual maladies. He's lost his strength in the

Lord. Another way we could say that is he's lost his joy. His joy is gone.

And I use that expression because Nehemiah said the joy of the

Lord is your strength. So when Jeremiah says my strength is gone from the

Lord, he's saying my joy in the Lord is gone. What is that joy anyway?

Let's give us, let's be sure we get a good understanding of the biblical concept of joy.

Joy that is in the Lord is the calm assurance. Get this now.

It is the calm assurance that the Lord is sovereignly working good in all things.

The joy of the Lord is the calm assurance that the

Lord is sovereignly working good in all things. So if I've lost my joy in the

Lord, then I've lost my confidence in the Lord's sovereignty.

Oh now, I don't mean to say that I've lost the intellectual awareness of the fact that the

Bible teaches that God is sovereign over all things. But in terms of my experience of life, what

I'm going through right now, I'm wondering is God really sovereign over all things? When we look at our national crisis, we look at this election mess and the

COVID crisis and all the rest of that stuff. We look at calamities and catastrophes and crises in the broad picture of a nation or of a world.

We ask, we wonder, we are prone to wonder, is God really sovereign over all things?

Now bring that home to yourself, to your own personal life. And if crises and calamities and catastrophes and things of that nature are your personal experience in your own personal life, your home, your family, whatever, you are tempted to question, is

God really sovereign over all of this stuff? Which then leads to the next question, is he really good to me?

You see, again, we know intellectually God is good. The Bible says God is good, we understand that. But is he good to me, see?

Because of my life experience, I am prone to question, is he good to me? I mean, we look around us, you know, you see your friends or your acquaintances on Facebook posting their stuff and it's like, you know,

God's good to them, everything's really good in their lives. You know, we're probably just a week away from starting to receive some of those annual

Christmas letters that we get from, you know, family, friends, you know, people elsewhere.

And honestly, have you ever read one of those Christmas letters that the people recounted all of the crud going on in their family life and their experiences over the past year?

It's not, I've never gotten them like that. And I don't know that I particularly would want them, but nevertheless, you know, you get those, you read those things and it's like, you know, everything's great for them, everything's rosy, but look at me, look at my life.

God's good to them, is he good to me? Is he good to me? My joy is gone.

My confidence that God is sovereignly working in all things for good.

And if my joy is gone, he also goes on to say that his hope is gone. His hope is perished from the

Lord. And when your hope is gone, then you lose any confidence whatsoever that the

Lord is going to turn things around. That what I can expect from here on out is just unrelenting heartache or suffering or whatever.

My hope is perished. So one of the reasons that the experiences of your life leave you with a sense of hopelessness is because you're suffering from some serious spiritual maladies.

But then in verse 19, he talks about the connection here. There's a connection here, but his spiritual maladies are connected to something else.

And they're connected to the physical maladies that he's going through. Look at verse 19. He says, remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

Put those two verses together. He says, my strength and my hope is perished from the

Lord. There's a spiritual side of it, but why? Because I'm remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

He's talking about some very real physical, physical pain. And it's a powerfully real pain that he's experienced.

Affliction and misery. What kind of affliction? What kind of misery?

The first 17 verses of this chapter, Jeremiah tends, seems to itemize those afflictions and the misery, the physical suffering that he's dealing with.

Verses one to three, for example, look at this. He says, I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

He hath led me and brought me into darkness and not into light. Surely against me is he turned.

He turneth his hand against me all the day. It's like he's saying, look where the Lord has driven me.

He's driven me to a dark place, to darkness. He's driven me to a dark place, a place of perplexity, a place of trouble, a place that has no comfort and I find no direction.

When you're in a dark place, you can't see your way out. Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon was a great man of God, that God greatly used, but he suffered from severe bouts of depression and he called them the dark night of the soul.

Well, Jeremiah is looking at the afflictions of life that he's going through because of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, the destruction of his nation.

And he says, God, you have brought me, you have driven me to a place of darkness, to a dark place.

And in verses four through nine, the physical pain is real as he experiences himself being hemmed in by his misery.

Says, my flesh and my skin hath he made old. He hath broken my bones.

He hath builded against me, he's built against me. Look at the imagery here and he has compassed me.

He has enclosed me with gall and travail. He has set me in dark places as they that be dead of old.

Like I'm in a crypt in the middle of a cemetery. He hath hedged me about that I can't get out.

He hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shut out my prayer.

He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone. He hath made my paths crooked.

Why crooked? Because I can't see to make a straight path. It's like I'm wandering in the darkness and the

Lord has just hemmed me in so I can't, I think I need to go this way but I run in, it's like being in a maze. Every time you go down this way, you run into a dead end and you turn and you go this way and there's another dead end.

This is the idea. I'm hemmed in in my misery. Even so far as it seems the

Lord has turned a deaf ear to my cry. That's what he says in verse eight. He shut out my prayer.

And in this physical affliction, misery, he's torn me and pierced me in verses 10 to 13.

He was unto me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places.

He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces. He hath made me desolate.

He hath bent his bow and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

Like I was a target. I was a target. He was hunting me down, using a quiver full of arrows to pierce me.

And all this has left me humiliated in verses 14 and 15. I was a derision to all my people and their song all the day.

He hath filled me with bitterness. He hath made me drunken with wormwood.

A derision, humiliated. And then in verses 16 and 17, all of this has left me utterly impoverished.

Look at it, verse 16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones.

He hath covered me with ashes. We don't quite get this imagery, do we?

He has broken my teeth with gravel stones.

The idea is this. I've become so impoverished that, imagine this.

Do you ever eat oatmeal? Or maybe something like cream of wheat, you know, one of those cereals, you know?

Imagine being so poor that you've got just the last bag of oatmeal, and it normally would only last you maybe a week, but it's gotta last you three.

What do you do? Well, you take half the normal scoop of oatmeal that you might fix yourself for breakfast in the morning, and you add filler.

You know, half a scoop of oatmeal, a quarter scoop of some sawdust, and maybe throw in a little bit of sand just to give it some weight so it sits heavy enough on your stomach so you're not hungry.

Chew that, chew that, that sand grinding against your teeth.

This is the imagery here. This is how impoverished he is. And not only the gravel stones, but covered with ashes, sitting in ashes as an expression of the impoverishment and the woe.

But then verse 17. Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace.

I forget prosperity. I don't even know what prosperity looks like.

Feeling utterly impoverished, impoverished in body and in soul.

The emotional impact of that kind of physical affliction is incredible, isn't it?

He expresses it in verse 19. He says, remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

We've seen those words a couple times in that section, right, the wormwood and the gall. Whatever those things are, no time to explain, but you just get the sense, don't you?

It is a bitter taste. It is not something you want to drink, wormwood and gall. It's not something you want to eat or to drink or to partake of because of the bitterness of it all.

You don't want it. A couple weeks ago, I was referring to this passage in the

Daily Devotional. If you watched it, maybe it'll sound familiar to you. But I remember as a kid, every once in a while, you get a sore on your gum or whatever in your mouth.

I did. I think it was too much sugar, I don't know. But anyway. And I would complain about it, it hurt so bad, and my mom would open up this little tin of,

I think it was a Watkins product, if I recall, but it was a little tin of powdered alum.

I didn't know what it was. First time I saw it, you know, I said, oh, it just looked like powdered sugar, the white, very fine, powdery stuff.

And she would dip her finger in the can, get her finger a little moist, and then dip her finger in the can just to cover her finger with the powdered alum.

And then she'd stick her finger with that alum in my mouth right where that sore was. And it was the most awful, bitterest thing that you can imagine.

If you've ever had that, it works, apparently, but you sure don't want it to. You sure don't want it to be there.

It is bitter, it is awful, it is wormwood, it is gall.

It's a bitter thing. The point is, using this imagery of bitterness and wormwood and gall, is that the scars from the physical and spiritual maladies are so deep.

The pain is so deep. It's penetrating, it's lasting. I'm remembering the wormwood and the gall.

It's like the experience that you may know personally about or have read about, heard about, of abuse victims who years after suffering the abuse are still suffering from the wormwood and the gall of it.

Or soldiers that have come back from fighting in Middle East or in Afghanistan and experiencing the

PTSD symptoms. They're not the only ones. Actually, I'm in a

Facebook group called, I think it's Small Church Pastors or something like that.

And some guy, some pastor posted on the other day a little meme, picture, that asked the question, is it possible for pastors to suffer from PTSD?

Yeah. When the affliction and the misery is so deep, it is impactful and lasting.

So the experiences of life leave you hopeless because of the spiritual maladies that you may go through or because of the physical and emotional maladies, but also because they can all be absolutely inescapable.

Look at how he expresses this in verse 20. He says, my soul still has them in remembrance and is bowed in me.

The word humbled would better be translated bowed in me. Or we could say bowed.

I am bowed over. I am bowed down. The idea is this. I can't escape the memories of these things.

No matter where I go, there they are. They're in my mind. No matter what

I do, those memories bring me down. They're inescapable.

They're inescapable. And so life's experiences can leave you hopeless.

Now what? Wallow, stay there, find a way out.

Jeremiah shows us a way out. And the way out is reflecting on the truth that will give you hope.

He says this in verse 21 and he begins this process as he says, this

I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. And we could put a colon after that.

What is it that he recalls to his mind? This I recall to my mind.

And literally that word recall says this. This I make to return to my heart.

This is a deliberate action on his part where he is deliberately focusing on and affirming biblical truths.

He is choosing to focus on the truth. I am setting myself,

I'm setting my focus, setting my attention on this truth and bringing it into my heart, into my mind.

I'm making it to return there. And what he, the truth that he makes to return to his heart, he affirms that truth that he then focuses on.

What truth? Well, he tells us in verses 22 through 25. He focuses on the truth that the

Lord is true to his word. He puts it this way at the beginning of verse 22.

It is of the, and the King James is translated this way. It says, it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed.

A better way to translate it is this. The steadfast love of the

Lord never, never ceases. The steadfast love of the

Lord never ceases. Now that may, that words, those words steadfast love may ring a bell in your mind, it should.

Every time you hear those words, think of that Hebrew word hesed. That word that speaks of God's covenant loyalty.

That God's, the fidelity of God to the covenant that he has made with his people.

So what Jeremiah is doing here, what he's saying is, I have set my mind on,

I have focused on God's steadfast love, his covenant loyalty, and I am affirming that the

Lord is true to his word. What he in his covenant has said he will do, he will do.

The steadfast love of the Lord, it never ceases. Second truth, his compassion toward his people never fails.

The Lord is compassionate toward his people. The last part of verse 22, steadfast love of the

Lord never ceases because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning.

They are new every morning. Just like the day is new when you got up this morning.

It was a new day and it will be tomorrow and it will be the day after that. This is the way the

Lord's compassions are. They are never failing. He is faithful to be true to his covenant and to express his compassion toward his people daily.

Whether we see it or not in the moment, the

Lord is compassionate toward his people. This is what I affirm. Yes, I'm going through the affliction.

Yes, I'm experiencing the misery and the pain is unrelentless. The pain is ongoing.

The heartache is real. So what I need to do to be lifted out of the hopelessness and from wallowing in it is to cause my heart to return to the truth of who my

God is and what my God is like and to affirm these truths that my

God is true to his word, that my God is compassionate toward his people, that my

God is faithful. The last part of verse 23, we just sang about that a few minutes ago, didn't we?

Great is thy faithfulness. Now I want you to think about this for a minute.

The context, remember the context in which Jeremiah is writing these laments, these poems of lament.

It's in the context of the complete destruction of the city of Jerusalem. On one hand, you can look at that devastation and destruction as nothing but the affliction and the misery and the heartache that it has caused.

But you can also look at the same thing and affirm great is thy faithfulness.

Why? Because the God to whom he's looking, who is ever faithful to his word, who is compassionate toward his people, is also the

God that has for decades, even a couple of centuries we could say, has been warning his people and telling his people, return, get rid of your idols, cast them out, repent, return to the

Lord. And they're not doing it. And the Lord says, I'm going to send judgment on this place.

I'm going to destroy all of your idols. I am going to level this place. Repent, return.

And the people ignored him. And here it has come. The judgment has fallen.

The city is destroyed. The Lord is faithful. He's faithful.

Would he be faithful if the city were still standing and the temple stuff was going on and all the idols worship was also going on and the people were prospering and everything was like hunky -dory and like there is no

God? Because he said he was going to destroy this place and he's not going to destroy this place. He's not faithful to the word that he's given.

He wouldn't be faithful. Even the very, stimulus to the grief and the heartache, the lament that Jeremiah is experiencing is a testimony to the faithfulness of God, to his word.

And then he can affirm in verse 24 that the Lord is my God. He says, the

Lord is my portion, saith my soul. He's my God. And this

God that is my God is good. Verse 25, the

Lord is good unto them that seek him and quietly wait for the salvation of the

Lord. Now, by the way, to affirm that the Lord is good also means that I will be waiting for him and seeking him.

In other words, I won't turn my back on him and run from him as if I'm running from some kind of an ogre.

No, I will turn to him, I will seek him, I will wait for him because I know he's good.

He's not an ogre, he's good. So I deliberately focus on and affirm the truth and this will begin to stir hope rising that will lead to thanksgiving.

But then I also want to affirm the conclusions that that biblical truth demands, consciously accepting those conclusions.

And I want to give you three of them from the balance of our text today, three conclusions.

Number one, it is good to hope and wait for the

Lord. Verse 26, that's what it says. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the

Lord. Why is it good? It's good because of what God is like. What is

God like? Well, we've just been talking about it in verses 22 through 25, right? What is God like? He's true to his word, he's compassionate toward his people, he's faithful, he is my

God and he is good. Because of what God is like, it is good then to hope and wait for him.

It is good to hope and wait for him because all is not hopeless.

See back in verse 18, he said, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord. But now he says, no, it is good to wait and to hope for the salvation of the

Lord. It is good because of what God is like, not all is lost because what

God is like, all is not hopeless. And because of what God does, because God is at work,

I can wait patiently. What is God doing? What is God doing for his people?

He's working salvation, that's what it says. It's good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation, the deliverance of the

Lord. He's working salvation. This is like an

Old Testament example of coming to the conclusion that Paul affirms in Romans 8, 28, right?

What does that verse say? You know it. We know that all things work together for good to them that love

God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. That's one succinct little verse that is expressing what

Jeremiah is expressing. Jeremiah is basically saying this. I know that all things are working together for good to those who love

God and who are called according to his purpose. It's good to hope and wait for the

Lord. Here's the second conclusion that those truths demand. Secondly, verse 27, it's good to endure the will of the

Lord. Verse 27, he says, it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

What he's doing here, Jeremiah, is using the analogy of early training and its benefits.

So it's good for a young person to be taught discipline, to have a yoke on his neck as he grows up.

Why? Because it will stand him in good stead later on in his life. He's using that illustration of that analogy to say it's good to endure the will of the

Lord. What I'm going through is what God has willed at this particular time.

And so in verse 28, he says, we endure by silently accepting his chastening.

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon him. He's borne this yoke.

He's borne this difficulty. It's good to sit alone and keep silent about it.

And what are we inclined to do? Are we inclined to whine and complain to anybody that'll hear our complaint?

No, is that a gracious enduring of the will of the

Lord? By the way, I'm not saying here that we don't bear one another's burdens.

Indeed, we do. That's one of our pleasures and privileges as a people of God, that we do share one another's burdens and we do bear one another's burdens.

And I'm talking about the incessant complaining and whining and so forth that can seep into our souls and into our lives when things just aren't going the way we want them to go.

We endure the will of the Lord in verse 29 by humbly submitting to him. He says, he putteth his mouth into dust.

If so be, there may be hope. He bows down in humble submission to the

Lord. Cotton Mather, remember? All of the heartache, the loss.

Only two of his 15 children outlived him. Listen to what he wrote.

And imagine yourself writing this as well. Mather wrote this.

He said, my Savior yet affords me this light in my darkness that he enables me to offer up all the sacrifices he calls me to.

And as for the continual dropping which I suffer in my family, I freely submit and consent unto it that the glorious Lord should continue the sorrows of it upon me all the few remaining days of my pilgrimage and never give me any release until I die.

Only let me obtain this one thing of him, a soul full of Christ, a mind not only assured of his being my

Savior, but also sensible of his gracious and quickening influences and continually irradiated with the precious thoughts of him.

Now to be able to write such a thing in the context of such grief and heartache is an expression of humble submission to his glorious and gracious God.

And then in verse 30, it's good to endure the will of the Lord by meekly, obediently serving him.

And here Jeremiah uses the picture of a servant or a slave even who has disobeyed his master and is giving his cheek to him that smites him, filled full with reproach.

It's a graphic picture. It's one that we can't really comprehend much in our day of no such activity in slavery, but it was very vivid in that day.

And it's simply expressing a meek, humble, obedient service to one's master.

This is how we endure the will of the Lord. The third conclusion that he draws, it is good to hope and wait for the

Lord. It is good to endure the will of the Lord. And third conclusion is it's good to trust in the

Lord. This balances out our text, verses 31 to 36. It's good to trust in him.

Why? Because his rejection, if I can use that word, is temporary, it's not permanent.

Verse 31, he says, for the Lord will not cast off forever. It seems like he's cast me off.

Well, this too shall pass. This isn't forever. His rejection, quote unquote, is temporary.

And in verse 32, I trust in him because his compassion and loyalty will remain.

They will return. But though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, of his steadfast love.

His compassion and loyalty will return. And then I trust him because this isn't, all that I'm going through is not, it's not for his entertainment.

It's not as if God is some kind of sadist who takes pleasure in hurting and causing misery and woe.

Verses 33 to 36. He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the

Most High, to subvert a man in his cause. The Lord takes no pleasure in it.

In other words, all of this affliction, all of this misery, it is not for the

Lord's entertainment. It is for his greater purposes. So you may be going through some very painful things.

Things that are of such depth of woe and heartache that you've been left feeling a bit hopeless.

Maybe it's robbed you of a grateful heart. Are you focusing on the temporary painful things or on the eternal, faithful purpose of your compassionate

Heavenly Father? Earlier this morning, I was reading and came across, not intentionally, but just happened to come across this particular verse in 1

Peter 1, verse 13, the closing exhortation.

"'Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, "'and hope to the end for the grace "'that is to be brought unto you "'at the revelation of Jesus Christ.'"

Right now, it may seem like there's not much to find hope in. Oh, be sober, be sober.

Gird up the loins of your mind. Hope to the end, hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

If our focus is where it should be, then truly, in everything, we can give thanks.

And so our Father and our God, maybe that we're having a hard time with this today, this week, looking forward to a holiday that's set aside for giving of thanks, and our focus has been in the wrong place, not to minimize the hurt or the grief or the heartache in any way.

But Father, we need to rise above that. We need to look above it all, and we need to look to you.

We need to gird up our minds. We need to be sober. We need to hope to the end for the grace that's to be brought unto us at the coming and the revelation of the

Lord Jesus. And with that hope, we'll find ample reasons to give thanks.

We pray that we shall, in Jesus' name, amen. Let's close this morning with number 94 in our hymnal.

Number 94, it's the song, Joy Will Come in the Morning. And indeed, it shall.

Number 94, let's sing stanzas one and three, first and third stanzas.

♪ I trust in God through darkest night ♪ ♪

He faithful will remain ♪ ♪ I trust

Him till the morning light ♪ ♪

Again, joy will come in the morning ♪ ♪

Hope is sorrows adorning ♪ ♪

Tears will vanish at dawning ♪ ♪

For joy come in the morning ♪ ♪

Satan breaks my heart and tears of sorrow flow ♪ ♪

When troubles come and hopes depart ♪ ♪ God's promise stands,

I know ♪ ♪ Joy will come in the morning ♪ ♪

His sorrows adorning, adorning, adorning ♪ ♪

For joy will come in the morning ♪

Well, I trust that the Lord will give you a wonderful rest of your Lord's Day. And of course, unfortunately, because of the

COVID thing, we're limiting our services, so just the morning service today. The Wednesday night virtual quote -unquote service, if you can share a word of thanksgiving, email it or call it in, whatever, however you can, but let's share that.

And some of you may question, well, you know, can I just show up Wednesday night at seven o 'clock? Well, we're not gonna lock the door, we'll just say that, but it's gonna be focusing on live streams here.

You may come, but you're not encouraged to. Let me put it that way. Just gotta kind of cover my base there a little bit.

But let's close, shall we? And now, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the

Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. And this we pray in our