Sunday Morning, June 30, 2019 AM Part 1

The Bible as a Life Cipher and the Big Picture of Jeremiah

We confess before you today that you have made us in your image, you have made us for your word, and Lord we so need this more than our necessary food. I thank you for this word that inspired and illumined brought to us by the Holy Spirit, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that this word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, that your revelation of Jesus Christ is the man of all men, your beloved Son in whom you are well pleased, that this revelation cuts to the very center of who we are.

We thank you for the grace that would give us a clear view of you, that we may glory in you, and a clear view of ourselves, that we may humble ourselves before you. Oh Father, thank you for knowing us, knowing our needs, and providing.

Help us now as we look at your word. We pray these things for the sake of Christ. Amen. Well I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 30. Jeremiah 30. We're continuing through the prophecies of Jeremiah.

A reminder of what Jeremiah is all about is neatly packaged in chapter 1. A read through of chapter 1 and you know exactly what is happening in the entire book. So if you ever get lost in the themes or in the details, chapter 1 will put you right on track.

But we have been looking at some very personal interactions between Jeremiah and false prophets. The false prophets say one thing, Jeremiah says another. Jeremiah is being led by the Lord to confront this false teacher and that false teacher.

Sometimes the false teachers live far away in exile. Some of them sometimes are right there in the city of Jerusalem. But that's the situation that we have. Judah, part of them are in exile, part of them living in Jerusalem.

Lots of false teachers about. And the previous passages that we've been looking at are kind of like low-altitude dogfights between wooden cloth winged biplanes and triplanes of World War I. Just the dogfighting between this prophet and that prophet trying to hash out the truths by which to live.

This chapter and the next three are more like a galaxy cargo plane moving a massive amount of prophetic freight at about 30 ,000 feet. So we're changing in in tone. We're not going to have one-to-one mono-e-mono contests between prophets.

This is a big view. This is an important section of Jeremiah to give the people who lived in his day and us today an understanding of what is really going on from God's point of view. So I think the advertisement is 1 through 24.

I'm going to read verses 1 through 15, and we're going to make it through part of your outline. I'm so sorry, but then again you might come back next week. So I will ask you to stand with me as I read verses 1 through 15 this morning.

Jeremiah 30 verses 1 through 15. The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, thus says the Lord the God of Israel, write all the words which I have spoken to you in a book. For behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel and Judah.

The Lord says, I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall possess it. Now these are the words which the Lord spoke concerning Israel and concerning Judah.

For thus says the Lord, I have heard a sound of terror, of dread, and there is no peace. Ask now and see if a male can give birth. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins as a woman in childbirth?

And why have all faces turned pale? Alas, for that day is great. There is none like it. It is the time of Jacob's distress, but he will be saved from it. He shall come about on that day, declares the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds, and strangers will no longer make them their slaves.

But they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant, declares the Lord, and do not be dismayed, O Israel, for behold, I will save you from afar and your offspring from the land of their captivity.

And Jacob will return and will be quiet and at ease, and no one will make him afraid. For I am with you, declares the Lord, to save you, for I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you.

Only I will not destroy you completely, but I will chasten you justly and will by no means leave you unpunished. For thus says the Lord, your wound is incurable and your injury is serious. There is no one to plead your cause, no healing for your sore, no recovery for you.

All your lovers have forgotten you. They do not seek you, for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with a punishment of a cruel one, because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous.

Why do you cry out over your injury? Your pain is incurable because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous. I have done these things to you. And this is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

On the very rare occasion that I attempt to work on a puzzle, you know, one of the thousand or five thousand piece puzzles, I keep the box top nearby and prominently displayed. I do this because the big picture really helps me as I begin to try to sort through the jumble of pieces.

The big picture makes a big impact on our view of the daily mess. For instance, when husband and wife are packing for a trip, they may both decide not to fight over toothbrush policy and luggage limits when they keep in mind that they're packing for a marriage retreat.

The big picture helps with the details. The big picture makes a big impact on our view of the little pieces, and that's what Jeremiah 30 through 34 does. It's the box top set next to the jumble of pain and hope in the lives of the Jews.

Life can be very hard to sort through. When I work on a puzzle, sometimes I'm just staring at all the pieces trying to find the one, and I just can't find it. I can't find it. Life can be very hard to sort through, but God mercifully, graciously offers us his word as the big picture.

It's the big picture. When God says to Jeremiah, write all these words in a book, of course they didn't have books as we know them today, but a book is something more serious, something more lasting than just a simple message.

And in fact, even as God told Jeremiah to give the people of Israel, the Jews in exile, a book, he has given us a book. The Hebrew word for book is sephir. Sephir. It's where we get our English word cipher.

And when it comes to decoding something, you need the cipher to decode what is going on, and God has given us a book. A book that decodes pain by hope. Pain causes chaos in our lives. It makes it very muddled.

We can't figure out why this is happening, where to go next. Pain muddles our thinking, but God's book decodes pain by hope. That's what we're going to talk about this morning, that the Bible is our life cipher.

God has given us the big picture, the box top to sit next to all the jumble of the puzzle pieces so that we know, even if we don't have it all sorted out right now, we know where it's all heading, and we have this hope that helps us sort through.

I think it's important for us to talk about that because suffering, which is universal to the human experience, suffering has many pitfalls. Suffering has many pitfalls. Sometimes in suffering, our main response is anger.

We sense that some kind of injustice has been done. Since we're made in God's image, we have this compass, though it may be broken in all of us, it's even seared in some others, but we have this compass and we somehow always know when we've been wronged, at some level.

Even if we don't know when others have been wronged, when we've been wronged, we know it. And usually in suffering, we have a sense that we've been wronged somehow, and anger comes. If we hold on to the anger, then the anger becomes bitterness.

Also, one of the pitfalls of suffering is that we could make suffering our identity. Perhaps we see that when suffering occurs, that a whole lot of attention is given to us as we talk about the various levels of suffering that we endure, physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, and so on.

And so as we talk about our suffering, it gives us a voice. It makes people pay attention to us, and they give us their focus. And so we begin to make suffering our very identity, and make ourselves very important by the level of our suffering, and it becomes a bit of an idol.

Also, suffering, another pitfall of suffering, is that we begin to use our experiences of suffering to interpret God, and to interpret the truth of God, and we only see God through our suffering. And we may begin to come up with some bad ideas about who God is.

Well, he's not powerful, or he's not good, and so on. Or he doesn't care, and so on. So I think that's why it's important for us to pay attention. And in Jeremiah chapter 30, God spends a long time in this book that he wants his people to have.

He spends some time identifying and defining what their suffering is. They need to understand it if they're going to know God and believe God. So we need to look at the character of suffering, and we're going to do so primarily in verses 5 through 7, and verses 11 through 15.

We can see the character of suffering there. And to do that, we have to look at some hard things. We have to look at some hard things. Let me read verses 5 through 7 for you again. For thus says the Lord, I have heard a sound of terror, of dread, and there is no peace.

Ask now and see if a male can give birth. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins as a woman in childbirth? Why have all the faces turned pale? Alas, for that day is great. There is none like it.

It is the time of Jacob's distress, but he will be saved from it. So we have to look at some hard things. We have to look at suffering. I absolutely loathe watching sad movies. I absolutely refuse, refuse to watch sad movies.

You know, I figure I've had enough to cry about already. I mean, and I say this with a disclaimer. Please don't stop talking to me. But maybe you can relate to the experience. But when someone begins to talk to me about some horrible story that they've heard, you know the ones like, there was this young couple, they were in love, and it was like the best ever, and then he had to watch her die from some horrible disease or some accident.

Or here's this family, and their little child drowned as they watched. Horrible stories. Every time someone starts telling me these horrible stories, I feel like my soul has been thrown into an alley and mugged.

It's like, why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me this? I could understand if it happened to them, and they're needing counsel. I could understand that. But this isn't even their sorrow. It's somebody else's, and they picked it up, and now they've got me cornered with it.

What do I do? I mean, I have such a hard time deciphering my own sadness. I feel ludicrously inept when invited to climb down into somebody else's well of sorrow. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

That's why I'm thankful, so thankful, for the grace of God. Who was it who climbed down into the well of our sorrow? Except his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, God incarnate. And thankfully, the book that God has given us helps us decode the pain, the sorrow that we deal with in our lives through the hope that we have in Christ.

So just the observation in verses 5 through 7, and the Bible, as in all things, is very honest about suffering. Suffering may be incredible, and that's what we see in verses 5 through 7. Suffering may be incredible.

Jeremiah is writing in the tenth year of Zedekiah's reign. Zedekiah was not a great king. He was the puppet king. He was the uncle of the king, now in exile. And so Zedekiah is known as Uncle Zed. He's a puppet king, and he is not listening to the Lord.

He's not listening to God. He's going to reign for 11 years, but he's in his tenth year right now. Things are getting very bad. Babylon is moving closer and closer with their armies. The rumors are flying that soon Jerusalem will be under siege.

The night watchmen must wake in a panic from nightmares of hearing the sounds of the horses approaching. But as Jeremiah writes this, he tells of a different sound. He tells of a different sound. By this time, he's in prison.

He used to preach in the markets. He used to preach in the temple, and now he's in prison because they want him to stop preaching. And he's writing this down. He says there's a different sound that the Lord hears.

And here's the sound the Lord hears. Men are giving birth. That's the image he gives us. Can men give birth? Then why are they acting like they're giving birth? Why are they in the pains of contractions?

What is going on here? There is this wailing moan. Men are doubled over. They are in great...but what happened? Well, the men of Judah, the men of Jerusalem, had illicitly consented to idolatry, to immorality, and to injustice.

They have conceived heinous, odious sin, and they will soon be giving birth to the judgment of God, and enduring the consequences of their sin. Their suffering will be incredible. And God says this day, this great day, this day of the Lord, and that's a formula throughout Scripture to speak of God's special intervention to judge a wicked nation, or to judge a wicked city.

Babylon knew a day of the Lord. Egypt knew a day of the Lord. There were several days of the Lord in the life of Israel. But this day of the Lord against Jerusalem would be very great. The suffering would be incredible.

Jerusalem would be surrounded by the armies of Babylon. Soon they would begin to starve. Along with their weakness came disease. Violence began to break out among them as they began to kill each other for the last scraps of food.

So theft, and then murder, and then cannibalism. The dead that were not eaten were left to lay upon the ground unburied, and the dogs and the vultures feasted. This was the suffering of Jerusalem under the siege of Babylon.

You can read about it at the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, in Jeremiah, and in the book of Lamentations. It is recorded in all these areas, the great, great suffering of the Jews in Jerusalem by the hand of Babylon.

Suffering may be incredible, the Bible says. And in human history, due to our sin, we have known many instances of incredible suffering. And it's important to remember that before sin there was no suffering.

Before sin there was no suffering. All suffering is related to sin in these ways. Some of our suffering is as a consequence of sin, the consequence of Adam and Eve's sin, the consequence of others sinning against us, or the consequence of our own sin.

Some suffering is related directly to the judgment of God upon sin as he brings his holy wrath to bear. And of course, some suffering entails salvation from sin, as Christ suffered to save us from sin, and as we, too, suffer in denying ourselves in our sanctification process.

So in some way, somehow, all suffering is related to sin in some manner, so it's important to remember that. It's also important to remember that the forced marches, the concentration camps, the chattel enslavement, and the genocides of our 150 generations of humanity, we have to remember that those have not numbered higher or spread farther than they could have.

And that is proof of the providential mercy of a sovereign God. We can thank God for that. And finally, it is important to remember, when we think about suffering being incredible, it's important that we remember that the worst personal suffering that a human being has ever endured was endured by Jesus Christ upon the cross for us.

I think this delivers us from the lie of Satan and the concern of our soul that when we suffer, God doesn't know what's happening to us, or he can't feel what we feel, or that he doesn't know the depths to which we suffer.

If there's anyone who knows what human suffering is, it is God. It is God, and he knows it rightly, without the fog, without the confusion. He knows what it is. He knows what it is. You know, when we suffer, it's a good moment for us to return to the gospel.

Every time we suffer, every time someone wrongs us, every time a consequence of our own sin comes crashing into us, like these Jews living in Jerusalem, as many of them think of the children who are suffering because of the sinful culture in which they were brought up, and those who were suffering because they themselves were the proponents of that sinful culture, and the judgment of God approaching, and all the suffering that is.

Every time we endure suffering, it is time for us to turn our attention to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why am I suffering? Well, it has something to do with sin, but I know the one who was suffered in my place for my sin.

We have to, every time we suffer, we need to come back to the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ, and cast our cares on him, yes, but confess our sins to him looking for forgiveness, and indeed, find in Christ the justification of all of our sorrows, that everything that we experience if we are in Christ, God will use for good.

Maybe you suffer outside of Christ, maybe that's why it's so intense, maybe you have not the hope, maybe you don't have the mediator standing between you and God, and speaking on your behalf before the Heavenly Father.

Suffering as Divine Chastening and the Hope of Restoration

If you suffer outside of Christ, what can you do? What can you do? What do you have? If you suffer and don't turn to Christ, consider the one who has suffered for you. Now, secondly, suffering must be intentional.

We're going to look at that in verses 11 through 15, and in this, God begins to categorize in detail the suffering of his people. Now, he says in verse 11, I am with you, declares the Lord, to save you.

I will destroy completely all the nations where I have scattered you. Only I will not destroy you completely, but I will chasten you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished. So there's gonna be suffering of the nations that attacked Judah, and then there's the suffering of Judah, and God says, these will be utterly destroyed, but you will not.

There's no hope for these, but there is hope for you. He distinguishes between types of suffering and the intentions of the suffering. These are going to be chastened, these are going to be destroyed completely.

These will be punished, these will be lost forever. For thus says the Lord, verse 12, your wound is incurable, and your injury is serious. When you have a wound, when you have an injury, you are suffering, right?

You're suffering. Judah is suffering right now. They're suffering because of their sin. They're suffering because they have impaled themselves with their idols. They are destroying themselves through their sin.

They are suffering greatly even now. And he says, there is no one to plead your cause, no healing for your sore, no recovery for you. All your lovers have forgotten you, they do not seek you. He speaks of all the alliances that they once had with the nations around them that they thought would give them security against Babylon.

He says, for I have wounded you, God says, I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel one. What is he saying about the punishment they're about to endure? What is he saying about the destruction of Jerusalem?

He's saying, your enemy, your cruel enemy, is going to punish you and wound you. And he says, I am the one who's done it. Babylon is the hammer in his hand to bring the necessary chastening punishment upon his people.

He says, he's done this because their iniquity is great and your sins are numerous. He does this because of their sins. Why do you cry over your injury? Your pain is incurable because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous.

I have done these things to you. So God is saying, this suffering is intentional. It's on purpose. And to put it a different way, Judah is the patient. Jerusalem is their evil heart. The Lord is the lead physician and as the surgeon and Nebuchadnezzar is the scalpel.

Nebuchadnezzar is the knife. God is speaking straight with Judah about their condition. He's saying something to the effect, look, I'm just going to come right out and say it, even if it may be hard to hear.

It's not good. There's no cure. You've waited too long despite all the warnings and the warning signs. Your choices have led to you having a heart full of wickedness and evil and it's incurable. I'm going to take Nebuchadnezzar and I'm going to cut out your heart and burn it.

That's what they do in open heart surgery. Right? Or actually in a heart transplant. In a heart transplant, there's the incisions, there's the breaking of the and the separation of the sternum, then there's the severing of the veins and the arteries and out comes the heart.

They run a test on it. Whatever, it ends up in a medical incinerator. Why? To save the patient. To save the patient. God says there's no good. Jerusalem is so wicked and so evil. The very heart of who you are, oh Judah, is so wicked and evil, has got to be removed.

So that's why he's sent these out to exile and he said of them, these are going to be good figs and then the rotten, no good figs, I'm going to destroy for the hope of his people. So it's important we understand God's purpose in causing such suffering to Judah.

God says it's a just chastening. He says it's a necessary punishment. He wields the wounds of an enemy, the punishments of the cruel to rightly judge Judah for their idolatry, their immorality, and their injustice.

And God says this all the while by saying, I am with you, declares the Lord. Wow, that is some intense suffering from the one who says he's with you and for you. But indeed that is the case. That is the case.

God's arrangement with Israel called for their faithfulness to him and when they refused to be faithfulness and when they went off into cycles of idolatry and running from God, God would send severe judgments and crises to turn them around back to himself.

He would often even destroy an entire generation to move them out of the way so the other generation would learn the lesson and then be faithful to him. He did this with the first generation up out of Egypt.

He did this in generations during the days of the judges and he's doing it now in the days of the kings. And so God is saying, understand your suffering in light of the big picture. When you're suffering and in this jumble of and the mess and oh exiles when you hear about the destruction of Jerusalem and how awful it is, don't throw away the box top.

Keep in view what is going on. Understand why this is happening. It's intentional. It's intentional. And God promises to destroy the enemies of Judah, even those who had brought about the fall of Judah, for their wickedness and their evil.

And that's intentional as well and it brings glory to God as well. You see there is no facet of life, there is no facet of life which does not operate under the sovereign will of God. There is no facet of life which does not operate under the sovereign will of God.

What does that mean for suffering? It means that there are no loose threads, scattered leaves, or stray dogs of suffering. There isn't. All suffering is intentional, meaningful, and purposeful even if we can't see it and we don't understand it.

Suffering under the hope of salvation that glorifies God, suffering of judgment under righteousness that also glorifies God. I'm so thankful for the scriptures in that they are plain and honest about these things, that suffering may be incredible and also that suffering must be intentional.

The Bible is our life cipher. It is the book that decodes our pain by hope. It is the box top that sits next to the jumble of puzzle pieces that we have a hard time putting together. Romans 8 is a consistent perennial comfort to the people of God and we read in verses 18 to 24, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this but we also ourselves having the firstfruits of the spirit even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons the redemption of our body for in hope we have been saved.

For in hope we have been saved. This does not mean that suffering has ceased to exist. The entire created order is like a woman in labor in intense pain and suffering. Indeed we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the spirit in the new creation growing and blooming within us still yet we groan and we suffer and we strive but we have been saved in hope.

The box top has not been thrown away. We know what's ahead of us the weight of glory that is ahead of us the joy of glory ahead of us. So there's two things we need in suffering. We need to know God in suffering and we need to leave God through suffering.

We need to know God in suffering. God's character and sovereignty are unassailable. When God's talking to Judah about the horrible destruction of their heart, their capital city, their beloved city Jerusalem.

When he's talking to them about their destruction about the destruction of Jerusalem, God has not then ceased to be good. But in fact because of his goodness and righteousness that's why he will have that city destroyed.

And when it's Babylon who's doing all of this to Jerusalem, this isn't the accident of history. It is God wielding the scalpel, the sword. He's the one doing it. So when we look at the way that God describes the suffering in Jeremiah 30, he's still good and he's still in control.

Those two truths about God are unassailable even in the midst of human suffering. And so our first need in suffering is to know God. When we suffer we must start with God. Who is he? Who is he? This is so important for us when we begin to suffer.

We need to recognize this. We are not screaming into the uncaring void if we're sobbing in our father's arms. We have to know God in our suffering. Who is he? Who has he revealed himself to be? Through Christ.

The chaos of suffering is never an argument against the bigness of God. That he's not really good or he's not really in charge. The chaos of suffering is never an argument against the bigness of God. It's the proof of the smallness of us.

And so we have to start out with this, knowing God. Secondly, believing God through suffering. Believing God through suffering. We often get very angry with God in suffering because he's the one in charge, so you're responsible.

Don't we get angry with the people in charge? You know, when you're at a restaurant and your steak comes out bloody and cold, you do not turn to the waiter and say, please send out the janitor. You're not wanting to talk to the janitor, who happens to be the lowest guy on the totem pole.

You want to talk to the manager. And if the owner is in, I want to see him or her, whoever's running the restaurant. I want the person in charge, right? Because my beef is with the, well, that was a pun.

So you get angry with the one in charge. When you suffer, guess who's in charge? God is. That's why when we shake our fist at this way or this way, we're really shaking our fist this way in our complaining.

We get angry with God in suffering because we know he's in charge. The God atheists deny is the same God with whom they're angry. And that's why they denied him. Even believers struggle with God, who has made them his children.

We can question Christ. Yes, he is the ruler of the kings of the earth, so he must be the reason why I'm in the problem that I'm in. We often wrestle with the Lord in our suffering. I was thinking about the story of Jacob.

We've been studying Genesis Sunday night. We just finished up Genesis 31. And Jacob has been at odds with Laban. Jacob has been suffering in Laban's household. He's been doing all of Laban's dirty work and hard work out in the field.

And finally, it's too much. And he takes his four wives, and that's a long story, and many children, and they leave. And they take their flocks and herds, and they run. And Laban catches up to them. But God has cautioned Laban not to do any harm to Jacob.

But they're still really mad at each other. And so, they make a pact with one another, and they set up a pile of rocks and say, okay, this is the boundary. This is what we call the watching place. And it said, God will watch and make sure that Laban, you don't come after me.

And then watch that Jacob doesn't come back after Laban. And so, this is going to be our boundary, and we're never going to cross that boundary ever again. And having burned his bridges, Jacob literally has his back against the wall as he moves forward.

And there's Esau, his brother, whom he had cheated, and swindled, and vowed to kill him. So, he's got suffering behind him. He's got suffering ahead of him. He is in between the rock and the hard place.

And do you know what the name of that place is? Manaheim. Manaheim. I can't pronounce it. But it's, I'm going to have to go pronounce it now. It's bugging me. Manaheim. Manaheim. You know what that means?

God's camp. Because it was there that he met the angels. It was there he met the angels. When he's got suffering on this side, and suffering on this side, and he's caught between the rock and the hard place, and this guy hates him, and this guy wants to kill him, where is he?

He's in the Lord's camp. He's in the camp of the angels. Isn't that amazing? And as the time approaches, as the time approaches for Jacob to have to face Esau, as suffering looms greater and greater in his horizon, and you know how it is when you're waiting for a horrible thing to come closer and closer until you have to endure it, Jacob wrestles with God.

He wrestles with a man. It was God appearing in human flesh, meaning this is an appearance of Christ before Bethlehem. And he wrestles with a man until daybreak, and he's wrestling and saying, I won't let you go until you bless me, right?

Why is he so desperate? Why is he wrestling with God all night long and clinging on to him? I won't let you go until you bless me. It's because he's got Laban over here and Esau over here. He's in the place of suffering, and the suffering is drawing closer and closer and closer, and so he's hanging on to God, and he's wrestling with Christ and saying, I'm not going to let go until you bless me.

And then Christ puts his leg out of joint, and then blesses him. And from that day on, Jacob walked around with a limp. He walked around with a limp the rest of his life, and with a new name. With a new name, Israel.

Israel. We wrestle with the Lord in our suffering, but proceeding in faith means walking. Believing God through suffering means walking with the limp Christ gave us in the name with which he blessed us.

This name is not condemned. This name is justified. This name is not beat down. This name is beloved. This is the comfort of Scripture, and we'll talk more about that point next week, but this is the comfort of Scripture.

God says, take these things and write them in a book, says to Jeremiah. Write them in a book. Why? Why write a book? Why write this thing that they're going to read later on? Why? Verse 3, Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel and Judah.

Why write the book? The days are coming. The days are coming. That's why you write the book, because those days that are coming are not yet now. Right now you have the book. Right now you get the book, but the days are coming, and so you receive the cipher of hope that you can use to decode the pain that you endure.

You get the box top to help you as you try to figure out the puzzle pieces that are all a jumble. What a blessing that God has given us this book. What a blessing that it is full of hope to help us understand why we suffer.

Well, let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us. I'm thankful, Father, you know our frame. You know that we are but dust, and that you graciously, lovingly condescend to save us and reveal yourself to us that we may know you and live in light of your glory.

Father, you say that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen, and that we are called to live by faith. Oh, help us to do that, and Lord, you don't call us to a blind faith, but a faith full of substance and evidence.

So help us to put our eyes upon that substance and that evidence here in your word, the book you have given to us to guide us through. Thank you for our time this morning. I pray that you have accomplished.