Having Hope in the Lord

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Take your Bibles and open up to the book of Lamentations.
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If you'll stand, we'll go ahead and read chapter 3, verses 19 through 24.
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Remember my affliction and my wanderings and the wormwood and bitterness.
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Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me.
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This I recall to mind, and therefore I have hope.
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The Lord's loving kindness indeed never ceases, for his compassions never fail.
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They are new every morning.
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Great is your faithfulness.
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And the Lord is my portion, says my soul.
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Therefore, I have hope in him.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, as I open your word, speak to your people, proclaim your truth, I pray that you would empower your servant to speak with the boldness that only which you can provide.
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I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that, Father, as the words go across the year waves, that the sound waves go across the years, that the unconverted would be converted, and that the believer would be more conformed in the image of your son.
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Father, please do what you only can do and what you have promised to do.
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And do not let your word return void, but send it out and let it accomplish that which you have ordained in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Well, first of all, Lamentations was not my choice originally for today.
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It was about two months ago, and it was on May 24th.
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So I was to teach on a Wednesday night here, and Andy texted me.
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Him and Keith were gone.
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And Andy said at 219 in the afternoon, he says, hey, man, what are you going to teach on tonight? And I said, Lamentations.
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And I've often thought what Andy's thought was that only an hour later it would be the tragic news that my son was shot.
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So I have been called a man of conviction.
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I have been called a man that is not to be derailed.
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And that is why I am in Lamentations, because that is what I had planned to teach on that night, and that is what I will teach on today.
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It's not the same passage, but it is the same book.
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Why the book of Lamentations? Well, every time I get the opportunity to stand in the pulpit, I have an opportunity to preach something Keith or Andy has not.
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So I always try to take a small book in which they have not preached from and try to do that.
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So that is why.
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But before we can get into the text, we need to know who wrote the book.
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There is without any argument who wrote the book of Lamentations.
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It is the prophet Jeremiah.
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And in my estimation, prophet Jeremiah, it suffered more than any other prophet in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant.
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And I use the Olds in very specific ways, because I do believe he was after, that Job was before him.
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And that's why I say under the Old Covenant.
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No man suffered like Jeremiah.
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He suffered greatly.
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He was beaten.
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He was imprisoned.
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He was thrown in a hole to die.
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He was starved.
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He preached for 41 years, and he never saw a convert.
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He preached the word of God faithfully and never saw one person turn from the very doom and gloom which he said was coming as the same words that the prophet Zephaniah was preaching that we just read.
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He preached for 41 years.
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Jeremiah is my favorite prophet.
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He was a man of conviction.
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He was a man of steadfastness.
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And he was a glutton for punishment.
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Many times that he would proclaim the oracle of doom, he would then be put in prison.
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And you can read in chapter 20 of Jeremiah when he is the very man that slapped him around the night before for proclaiming doom, he is put in prison by Pasher, the chief priest officer.
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He goes in there and goes to release him from his chains and his fetters and after being smacked around.
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And as soon as he releases him, he says, Pasher, I just want you to know your name is no longer Pasher.
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Your name will be the terror of the Lord because all of your family will be killed in Babylon.
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And your daughters will be raped.
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That is a man who says, hey, I'm gonna preach the word of God no matter what.
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He also preached and loved his people even unto death.
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We think about men that loved their countrymen, Jeremiah is probably the man that loved his people more than any in the Old Testament.
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Other than the Lord Jesus Christ, it would have been Paul in the new.
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And both Paul and Jeremiah were willing to lay their lives down and be accursed to see their countrymen saved.
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I mean, think about what Paul said.
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You know, I remember some time ago I was in a room, I was the only person that wasn't a pastor.
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They didn't have a PhD and didn't have a master's in the room.
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And we were talking about Romans nine and the difficulties and hearing them go around.
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They're talking about election and reprobation and all that.
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And I never really had a problem with that.
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I say, let me tell you, when it got to me an opportunity to speak, let me tell you what bothers me about Romans nine.
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Paul says this, I am not lying.
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In my spirit, in the Lord Jesus Christ, I am confirmed in my conscience by the Holy Spirit, I would be willing to be accursed for my countrymen.
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I don't know about y'all, but I don't feel that way about my country.
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That's convicted.
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That's what I struggled with about Romans nine.
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Both Paul and Jeremiah loved their countrymen.
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And he preached condemnation.
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Jeremiah did for 41 years, never saw a convert.
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He preached that the doom was coming.
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And in 605, the first deportation took place when Nebuchadnezzar came in and he overthrew Jerusalem and he hauled off the first wave of captives.
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Then in 597, he did it again.
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And then in 588, they sieged the Jerusalem city.
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The siege was so bad for 18 months, and you read Jeremiah, and we'll read parts of it in Lamentations.
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The siege was so bad that the mothers were eating their afterbirth.
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They were boiling their children and eating them.
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You understand that that was because they had been disobedient to the word of God.
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They did not heed the words of the prophet.
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This was Jeremiah's countrymen.
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This was Jeremiah's people that he loved and he knew that the judgment of God was on them.
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And he begged and he pleaded day in and day out, turn, turn, turn, judgment is coming.
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And they would not listen.
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586, it was laid waste.
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The Babylonians came in.
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They knocked everything down in their way.
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They raped the women.
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They raped the children.
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They hauled them off into slavery.
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They took their nobles.
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They slayed them in the street.
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They took their bodies and desecrated them, hanging them up by their hands.
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And then Zedekiah, the coward that he was, the king, runs.
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He is then caught in the plains of Jericho by Nebuchadnezzar.
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He is then brought back.
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He has his sons caught with him.
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They line up his sons in front of him.
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Kills all of his sons before him and then Nebuchadnezzar gouges out Zedekiah's eyes.
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So the last thing he remembers of his sight was the killing of his kids.
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That is when Lamentations was written.
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Lamentations is a poetry.
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It's five chapters, four poems, one prayer.
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It is written in acrostic form.
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And most of our Bibles don't show it, but in Hebrew, it is written as an acrostic and there are 22 letters to the Hebrew Bible.
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Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Dalet, so on.
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Each verse in that chapter begins with that.
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So each, you have 22 verses, each one beginning with that, and it's an acrostic.
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It was an acrostic form to help them memorize this is the Jewish people.
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It is also part of the Megalot, which are the five major scrolls that are used in liturgical use in the Jewish synagogues.
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Even to today, Esther is one that is read.
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It's read at Purim.
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Then you have Ruth, which is read at Sukkot, which is at the Feast of Weeks.
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Then you have Ecclesiastes, which is written, and it is read at the Festival of Booths.
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And then you have Song of Solomon, which is read at the end of the Seder Passover.
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Just to let you know, that'll be one of those small books I plan on teaching, too, and it'll be in chapter seven, so I can make you women blush, and you men say, honey, we got to go.
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I will do that on a Sunday morning so that I can get full effect.
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And then you have Lamentations.
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It is read, and it's read on the 10th month, I mean, on the 10th day of the fifth month of Av, which is remembering 586, when the destruction of the Jerusalem had took place.
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And just to let you know, another little historical thing that took place, 656 years later, to the day, 70 AD, the second destruction of the temple.
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And it is read to commemorate the destruction of what took place.
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I'm going to get a running start up so that we can get to chapter three, verse 19, and then walk through it.
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But you need to understand, as Jeremiah is walking through the city, as he comes up to the city, as it has been laid waste, here's what he sees in verse one.
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He says, oh, how lonely sits the city.
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It was full of people, but now you have become like a widow.
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You were once a great nation, and she was a princess among the provinces, and has now become forced labor, and she weeps bitterly in the night, and there is no one to comfort her.
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This is Jeremiah the prophet coming up to the city, seeing the horrible effects of what the judgment of God has done to his own people.
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Then as you get down to chapter one, verse eight, you see the city personified.
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It says, Jerusalem has sinned so greatly, therefore she has become unclean.
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She, the one that was honored is now despised.
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Her nakedness is laid open.
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Her skirt has been lifted up so that they could see that she has been profaned.
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And then as you get to the end of the book, I mean, of the chapter, you hear them say this.
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It is God who has spread a net for the feet.
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He has turned his back.
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He has made it desolate.
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He has made it faint all day.
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And then you hear the prophet say this.
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For these things I weep.
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He says, my eyes run down like water.
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Listen to what he says.
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There was no one there to comfort me.
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No one there to comfort Jeremiah.
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He sees the judgment of God on his people, and he feels no comfort.
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Matter of fact, he didn't say, when he saw the judgment coming on those people, Jeremiah didn't say, ha, ha, ha, I told ya.
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He didn't say, I tried to warn ya.
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What did he do? He weeped and still prayed for the city.
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You can turn over and look in chapter two, and it talks about God's anger towards the city.
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And you can just go through it.
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I want you, you can count how many times where it says, this is Jeremiah speaking.
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It is God who has cast from heaven to the ground the glory of Israel.
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It is God who has brought them down to the ground.
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It is God who profaned his kingdom and his princes.
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It is God who has not withdrawn his hand back.
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It is God who has burned up Jacob.
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It is God who has bent his bow to them like an enemy.
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It is God who has put his right hand against them like an adversary.
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It is God who has laid them slain in the street.
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It is God who has poured out his wrath on them like fire.
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It is the Lord who has become to them an enemy.
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It is he who has swallowed up Israel.
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It is God who has swallowed up their palaces.
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It is God who has destroyed the strongholds of the city.
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And it says that it is the Lord who has caused them to be forgotten.
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It is the Lord who had abandoned the city.
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It is the Lord who had delivered them into the hands of their enemy.
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And here it is.
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It's the Lord that determined to do this.
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He has broken down their bars, he has slain their kings, and he has laid waste to her princes.
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And then there's another observation by Jeremiah.
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It says, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, the little ones, they faint in the street, and their lives are extinguished on the breast of their mother.
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This is what God did to people that disobeyed.
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This is what God did to people that had the revelation of God, of how to be worshiped, and of how to be honoring to God in their worship.
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And you could turn over a little further.
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And it says, the Lord had purpose to do this, and he has accomplished his words.
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What he commanded he would have done from days of old, he has now brought to past.
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He says, I told them that they would eat their offspring and the little ones whom they had born if they profaned my priest and prophet.
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God did what he said he was gonna do.
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And Jeremiah's in anguish.
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You can turn it over to chapter four.
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And he speaks more of the destruction of the city.
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He says, the tongue of the infant cleaves to the mouth, the roof of its mouth because it's thirsty.
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Little ones beg for bread, but there's no bread.
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The ones who used to eat delicacies in the streets, the streets are now desolate.
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And he goes on to say, in chapter four, that the women are ravished in the street.
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Those women that used to be compassionate women now boil their children for their own hunger.
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That's tough to hear.
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This is what the prophet is seeing, and he is grieved over it.
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The whole book is nothing but a cry to God of look what you have done.
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Look what you have done.
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There is no doubt in Jeremiah's mind that this is God that has done this.
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The people rightfully deserve the judgment, but do you hear what he is saying? He is still grieved over them.
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He still hurts because his people hurt.
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He says in chapter two, the very ones whom I bore on my own knees that I raised up are now slain in the street.
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Jeremiah, unlike Job, never was restored.
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He never saw the promise.
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Never, but right dead center of this book, in chapter three, kind of stuck in the middle, there is what Jeremiah and his cry to God for relief.
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And that brings us to 19 through 24.
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He says, remember my affliction and my wandering.
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Some of your translations may say homelessness.
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And the wormwood and the bitterness.
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He is crying out to God saying, God, remember.
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Do you remember what has happened? Anytime in scripture it says that God remembered, it doesn't mean that God had somehow forgotten.
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It says after 150 days, Noah being on the ark, God remembered.
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Do you think for one second that God was like, well, I was drowned in the whole world for 150 days.
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I forgot about Noah.
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No, when it says God remembered or we're asking God to remember, you're asking God to act.
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You're asking God to act.
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It says God remembered Noah and then God caused a wind to go across the earth and he dried up the water.
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Or it says that God remembered Rachel's womb and she bore a child.
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Or God remembered his people when they were in anguish and under heavy taskmasters in the land of Egypt and he sent Moses.
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See, remember and God acts.
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He's asking God, God, do you remember my affliction? Do you see the anguish that I am in? Do you see the hurt that I'm in, God? Do you understand the wormwood meaning bitterness? What you're doing to me, and he says that God has did it to him.
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Read the book of Lamentations.
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God did this to Jeremiah.
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What you have done to me is bitterness and poison to my soul.
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Look, Jeremiah on that tragic day did not have no Chuck and Kelly bud to come run into the scene to whisk Sibyl away or his family away so that I could handle the things that I needed to handle.
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Jeremiah didn't have those people.
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There was no Mike Smith or Adam Martazzoni to show up on the scene and say, hey man, I'll meet you at the hospital.
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Jeremiah had nobody and he's crying out to God, God act.
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He says, my soul, chapter three, verse 20, my soul remembers, my soul remembers what has happened, Lord.
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If you don't remember, I remember and my soul is in anguish.
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My soul is depressed, he says.
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Surely my soul knows the devastation and destruction and the death that you have put on the earth.
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And then he says this, I'll recall to mind as he is crying out to God to remember and act in a way that he could fix what had taken place in Jerusalem.
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He says, I recall to mind though.
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See, he says, remember, remember, recall.
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He's right there.
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Remember my affliction, my soul remembers and recall.
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He recalls what God has already revealed about himself.
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He says, this I recall to my mind.
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And because of what he says, he's fixing to recall to his mind.
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In verse 21, he will have hope.
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He will have hope.
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And you know what he does? He then from us theologically astute men, he goes to theological theology proper.
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And he remembers about the nature of God and how good God is.
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He says, I recall it to mind and I have hope.
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In his anguish, he was wanting God to do something that he was capable of doing, which was fixing it.
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You know, I'll just be quite honest.
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God is our father.
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And we ask God to do something that he is capable of doing.
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And then he doesn't act, we're upset with him.
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Right? How many of you in here have children that if you were able to fix it? You see your children in anguish.
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You see your children in pain.
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They're hurting.
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And if you had the ability to fix it, would you? Well, how do we respond to God when he has the ability to fix it and then he doesn't? Jeremiah answered my question.
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You recall to mind.
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You recall to mind.
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You recall to mind what God has revealed about himself.
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And that is what you have hope for.
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You have hope in.
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And he says this in verse 22.
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The Lord's loving kindness indeed never ceases.
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It never ceases.
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It's awesome.
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It says the Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease.
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For his compassions never fail.
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And I do want to make a statement here because I know some of your translations may say this.
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Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed for his compassions never fail.
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How many of your translations say that? Okay.
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That is the translation from the Masoretic text.
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And the one that I read that's in the New American Standard comes from the Septuagint, the Syriac-Paschitic.
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It comes from the Aramaic Targum.
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Okay, it's all that.
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And that is, they're trying to interpret it to still keep it poetic, okay? I prefer, although that's not what I read, I prefer because the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.
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I prefer that translation.
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And the reason being is, if the Lord was to account your iniquity, who could stand? Hey, that's spoken of in the Old Testament.
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And when you get to the last book of the Bible, what does it say? Oh man, if God doesn't seal them, who can stand? Nobody.
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If you are not under the mercy of God, you will be consumed.
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God is a consuming fire.
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And if you don't think so, read through Lamentations and see God went through God.
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He went through the city of Jerusalem like a one-man wrecking ball and laid him to waste.
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Why are we not consumed today? Because of the loving kindness of God.
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Because of the loving kindness of God.
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God's covenant love, his hesed.
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That's the word that's in the beginning, his hesed.
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His covenant love towards his people is that he will remain faithful to himself.
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And by remaining faithful to himself, he remains faithful to his covenant people.
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And Jeremiah's remembering that.
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Jeremiah's remembering, look at all of his suffering, all of his depression.
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He is going, okay, I know what I am seeing.
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What I am seeing is not lining up with what I'm supposed to be feeling.
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Okay? That's why our faith is not based on feeling.
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It's based on fact.
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And the fact is there's a loving God in heaven who's carrying out his purpose according to his will and according to his eternal good.
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Not my feel good.
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Not your feel good.
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It says that his compassions never fail.
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And indeed, the translation that puts it, the Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease and his compassions never fail because it's in poetic form.
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It's trying to say the same thing twice.
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And that's what Hebrew poetry does.
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Does God's compassions ever fail? No.
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Even to the wicked, has his compassion, forget for a second eternal condemnation, okay? But on the earth, does it not say rain falls on the just and the unjust? Yeah.
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Does the unconverted man that hates God go about doing his own thing? Do his crops grow just like the guy that loves the Lord and serves God and loves his family, tithes? Yeah.
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They never fail.
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His compassions are new every day.
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Verse 23 says, they are new every morning and great is your faithfulness.
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You go, well, how can his compassions be new every morning? I'll tell you what, roll over.
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And those of you that have an alarm clock, when you turn it off and you, that's a recognition that God's compassions are good every morning.
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Yep, but you got your faculties that some of you will get up, that have a job, not retired like Andy.
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He still gets up early in the morning though.
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Put your key in your car, turn the key with gas that God provided with the money that you earned, that he provided you the strength to get up to go to work so that you could turn the key for it to crank because his faithfulness is that his laws of physics is that the combustible engine will continue to crank.
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That's God's loving kindness, they never fail because God's faithful.
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Great is your faithfulness.
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Do you believe that God's faithfulness is great? Really? We sang it, but do you really believe it? It's easy to believe that God's faithfulness is great and good when things are great.
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But man, when you go and things stink, sorry, my King James is stinketh.
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When things begin to stink, life gets tough, do you believe that God's faithfulness is great? Or just some cliche Christian thing? His faithfulness are great and God's faithfulness is great because God is faithful and that is his being.
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He is love, his love, therefore, he must be faithful.
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He must be faithful to those who are his own and not faithful in the way that we see it.
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Faithful in the way that he has ordained it to carry out his purposes.
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Jeremiah is struggling with the same things that we struggle with when we suffer.
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I know what you're saying, God, but I ain't seeing it.
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God, you said that you were going to restore your people.
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Man, I ain't seeing it, they're all dead in the street.
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Jeremiah is fixing to be kidnapped, okay? He's fixed to be kidnapped and he's fixed to be taken to Egypt and when they get to Egypt, he's going to tell them, hey, the word of the Lord said this, I'm sending the Babylonians over here because you ran from my judgment, I'm sending them over here and they gonna kill you over here.
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That's what he says.
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And then you know what they do to Jeremiah? They stone him to death.
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So Jeremiah is going, Lord, regardless of what I'm seeing, regardless of what's going on, all this death, destruction and horrible around me, you're faithful.
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You're faithful.
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And here's why he says it, it finally comes to the point.
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Here it is.
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Because the Lord is my portion.
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You understand what Jeremiah just said? He has talked about theology proper, the nature of God, but then he says, I'm embraced by God himself.
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Look, if God be for you, who can be against you? Okay, but if God be against you, who can help you? Jerusalem was a picture of no one.
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He says, the Lord is my portion.
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The Lord is my inheritance.
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The Lord is the one in whom I will have hope.
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He says, man, I have to remember that what God told me in the 12th year of the reign of Josiah is that my life was gonna be terrible.
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And that's what God told him when he called him.
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He said, Jeremiah, your life's gonna be horrible.
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You're gonna get beat up.
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They're gonna hate you.
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They're gonna imprison you.
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They're gonna do all of these things, but I'm gonna be with you.
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No matter what, Jeremiah, I'm going to be with you.
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And it's interesting when we do think about, because there's so much parallels between Job and Jeremiah, is we often go, hey, man, if Job would have just known kind of that conversation that happened between the devil and God, you know, maybe things would have been different.
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His perspective, I'll tell you what, if you look at Jeremiah, he knew what was going to happen, and their laments are the same.
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Their laments are the same.
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Their laments are the same as, man, it'd have been better if I wouldn't have been born.
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I'd have rather, it'd have been better for me to die in the womb than to deal with his suffering.
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But then he remembers, but wait a minute, the Lord is my portion.
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He is the one who has promised to save me, and I can't help.
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But every time I preach to say, quote a Hebrew passage, what does it say in Hebrews chapter 11? Faith is what? The substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.
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We put our hope in Christ.
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We put our hope in Him.
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We put our hope in God because we as believers have the Holy Spirit implanted within us that we are now partakers of the divine nature, and we now have everything pertaining to life and godliness in Christ Jesus.
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And that which was promised to Jeremiah, he never saw.
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We are without excuse.
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Amen.
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We're without excuse.
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We're without excuse.
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I'm not saying things aren't tough.
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I'm not saying that things can't be hard, but we are without excuse.
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We have an economy of God that we can truly say the Lord is my portion.
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How? Because He has put it within me.
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It's in me.
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Jesus Christ, the Spirit of Christ is in me.
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I am His and He is mine.
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And then he says, therefore I have hope in Him.
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He has hope in God.
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He has hope in Yahweh because He is His portion.
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And lives, trials, tribulations, toughness, full of lack of understanding, I have hope.
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And I have hope because due east of here, 6,500 miles through the Straits of Gibraltar, you hit the shores of Israel.
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And you go past the shores of Israel and you go just outside the Damascus Gate, there's an empty tomb.
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Amen.
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There's an empty tomb.
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And there's an empty tomb because there was a man that was born of a virgin.
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And his little baby feet, his little baby hands was laid in a manger.
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And those little feet and those little hands grew up.
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And they walked the streets of Judea.
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They walked down the dusty paths.
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And it says, blessed are those who carry the gospel of peace.
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And Jesus went with those feet and He walked all over Judea preaching the gospel of peace.
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Those very feet then graced the temple complex as He preached the word of God on Solomon's portico.
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Those very feet walked on water.
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Those very feet that walked to the Garden of Gethsemane then crumbled to His knees as He sweat droplets of blood.
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It would be those feet that would be led away to Caiaphas and Pilate.
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But it was those hands that would be led away.
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That held up His hands and says, come unto me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
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It was those hands that reached down to Peter's mother-in-law.
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Hey, we know that Peter loved his mother-in-law.
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You know that? Because he said, will you heal her? Ha ha.
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And he reached down with his hand and he lifted up Peter's mom with his hand.
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Get up.
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She went there and made him some food.
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Get busy.
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It was those hands that then reached down into that loaves and he broke loaves and he fed 5,000 people.
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And then he showed off and did it again, fed 4,000 with some more fish and loaves.
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Ha ha, I'll do it again.
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It was those hands on the night he was betrayed that he broke the bread.
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He said, this will be my body which will be broken for you.
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And then it was those hands that grabbed that chalice and he picked it up.
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It was those hands that he lifted up.
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He says, this is the blood of the new covenant which will be shed for many.
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And then it would be those hands that would be bound, that then would be strapped to a post and he would be beaten mercifully, mercilessly.
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And then it would be those hands and feet that would then bend down and he would pick up a cross beam, be laid upon his back, and he would carry those with his hands outside the city gates.
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And it would be those very hands that would be laid down on a cross beam and he would be stapled to a cross beam to then be lifted up, to be set on a stipe and then have his feet stapled to the post.
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And then after suffering immensely, not just his physical torture, but he bore within his own soul, it says, the sin bearing of every person that would ever believe.
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You understand the myriads of sins that were laid on? That's unfathomable.
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The infinite Holy Son of God then is now laid on him an innumerable amount of people's sins for innumerable amount of people.
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And then he was that afternoon laid into a borrowed tomb, cleaned up his body to come back after the high Sabbath and to be properly buried.
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And then the Mary show up.
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Why do you seek the living among the dead? That's why I have hope.
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That's why I have hope.
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I have hope because there's an empty tomb and that there is a man who named Jesus Christ was put in that tomb, he resurrected from the dead and now God has fixed a day when he will judge the world by that man.
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The destruction that Jeremiah saw is only a picture of what those who do not place faith in Christ will endure for all of eternity.
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Do you know that it'd be better for you to not have been born than to die apart from Christ? I have to say that about my boys.
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From a standpoint of suffering and eternal punishment, if you do not place faith in Christ, it would be better for you to have not been born and I would plead for you.
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Run to Christ.
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Just as Andy said last week, run to Christ.
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He said, God's not a God to be trifled with.
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My hope is this.
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That those hands and feet that were stapled to a cross that was resurrected on that final day will be those hands that reach forward and I'll see those nail-scarred hands and he will wipe away every tear.
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James, he's gonna wipe, he's gonna do it.
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He's gonna wipe them away.
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It's not like it's just gonna be poof.
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No, it says God will wipe away those tears.
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Mike, Deborah, God, amen, that's gonna be so cool.
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You're gonna see those nail-scarred hands come right up to you and just.
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He don't say wipe some of them away.
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He wipes them all away.
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Then death, hell, and everything that's evil and defiled, and unclean will be thrown in the lake of fire.
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But until then, it stinketh.
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If you're here today apart from Christ, there is no hope for you outside of Christ.
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There ain't no help for you outside of Christ.
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There's nothing that can save you.
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There's no good deed that you can do that's gonna get you a reprieve or a pardon.
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And on that final day, that time for pardon, reprieve are over.
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There will be no pardons.
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There will be no commuted sentences.
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There will be no probation.
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There will be no parole.
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It is over.
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So today is the day of salvation.
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If you are here and you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and have not have put all of your faith and trust in him, that final day, you will face the judge and he will not be some lip-wrested, swivel-hip, rainbow toga-wearing.
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It ain't gonna be that.
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It's going to be full justice.
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Eyes like fire, hair like wool.
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He's gonna have on the diadems of the kingdoms.
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He's gonna have a sword that comes out of his mouth.
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His robe's gonna be drenched in blood and he is gonna dispense justice.
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Run to Christ.
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He is the only way of salvation.
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The children of Israel in 586, if they would have just heeded the years and years and years of the prophets.
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You know how many years that they disobeyed the prophets? 490 years.
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Not just 41 years of Jeremiah.
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490 years.
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The men are gonna come forward here in a minute.
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We're going to partake of the Lord's table.
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This table is for those who are in communion with God.
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That's why it's called the communion table.
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They're gonna come forward and we're going to enjoy the communion table together as a body of believers.
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But if you're here today and you're not a believer, do not take that table.
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If you're here today and you are a believer but you're in not in right standing with the community of church where you were at, don't take that.
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The scripture's very clear that some of you are sick, weak, and some of you have even died.
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So if you want to come to this table flippantly, you're putting judgment on your own self.
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But as we remember this table when it comes and we drink the juice and we take that bread, it's a clear reminder that our hope is in nothing less than Jesus Christ and his righteousness.
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You know, we think about some of the, and then I'll shut up.
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Me and Keith talk sometimes about hymns and some of them aren't real deep.
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But man, some of them really got some good stuff.
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They might not be theologically deep, but man, they're so soothing.
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Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
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Look full in his wonderful face.
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And the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
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That's so elementary, but man, that's good.
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That's good.
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Father God, thank you that you are our portion.
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Thank you that our faith is not based on feeling.
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Father, thank you that love for you, our desire to follow you, is not something that is mustered up within ourself, but it's from the Holy Spirit, which is our sign and seal until that final day.
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Father God, thank you for this opportunity and privilege to open your word to your people.
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Father, I pray that the unbeliever in this room would earnestly contemplate eternity.
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And Father, that the believer would certainly look forward to eternity.
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In your precious name, amen.