Hope Renewed: Finding God's Mercy New Every Morning - Lam 3:19-24

Good morning, and welcome to the service of Dillingham Moravian Church.

We have the wonderful opportunity to be able to worship the Lord together as we hear from God's Word.

What a joy it is to be children of the Most High God, Jesus Christ, is it not?

Our goal here at Dillingham Ravian Church is to make disciples of Christ here

in Bristol obey and beyond through the study of God's Word as we trust in Christ together.

All of us at this point have heard of the disaster in the YK Delta region of Alaska.

Massive floodings, homes destroyed, some washed away.

Villages like Kipnuk and Quig have been evacuated, and thousands are now homeless.

A pastor friend from Kipnick said that his family and himself were evacuated

to Bethel with family, and he's very thankful for that.

But so many ended up in the gyms in Anchorage where they have no idea where to go.

I share this with you because in the midst of this tragedy,

my pastor friend from Kipnook and so many Christians from those communities

are clinging to God as their only hope, who is with them in the midst of this

extremely challenging time.

Even on social media, groups, churches who have been scattered around are getting

together and singing God's word in Yupik and praising the Lord for His mercy

even in the midst of this tragedy.

The truth is, is that if you are in Christ and belonging to Christ,

then you are not alone in trials because God Almighty is with you and His mercy never fails.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you.

We thank you that you are the Most High God.

You are Lord, and you are the one whom we are to worship.

Thank you. You are Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one God, Yahweh.

And so, Lord, as we go to your Word today, teach us and guide us, show us your truth,

show us yourself so that we may worship you, and teach us how to live in challenging times,

with your joy and your hope.

We ask this in your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray in the power

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jeremiah in Lamentations 3.19-24 cried out to the Lord, Remember my affliction,

my wandering, the wormwood, and bitterness.

Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me.

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.

The Lord's lovingkindness indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul,

therefore I have hope in Him.

Lamentations is the book that cataloged the personal experience of the prophet

Jeremiah after the Babylonian captivity.

The nation of Judah for hundreds of years continually cheated on God by worshiping

false gods through immorality and by sacrificing their babies to the false god Molech.

All justice had broken down, and the strong preyed on the weak.

God's laws were ignored. And thus God sent prophet after prophet to the Jews,

and they either ignored the prophets or killed or imprisoned them.

Jeremiah was one of those prophets who were imprisoned.

And just like the other prophets, the people of Jerusalem did not believe Jeremiah or the Lord.

And they imprisoned Jeremiah in stocks and then threw him in a pit with mud and water in it.

The people would daily throw rocks at Jeremiah and mock him as they pass.

Jeremiah wrote about many of his bones being broken while being imprisoned.

And then God brought in the Babylonians who crushed the armies of Judah and

literally destroyed the city of Jerusalem.

The walls, all the houses, the palaces, the temple, they were all gone. They were smashed.

Then the Babylonians took a large portion of Jerusalem into captivity to Babylon

along with the king and his family.

However, there were still Jews living among the wreckage of the ruined city.

Jeremiah was one of them. The water was polluted with dead bodies,

so they had no good water, and they had no food, and some people had been taken

to eat the bodies of their loved ones in order not to starve.

From all sides, the neighboring nations took advantage of Jerusalem's vulnerability

and were attacking the left-behind Jews, whittling down their numbers.

And in the midst of all this death and carnage, when everything seemed hopeless,

Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations, sharing his cries and laments to Almighty God.

And right in the middle of this book that begins with hopelessness,

Jeremiah grows in hope as he remembers the faithfulness of God.

In the midst of the deep division in our country and the craziness in our world

today, hope seems in short supply, yet God is with us.

In our Lamentations 3 passage today, there are three main truths that I want to impress upon us.

The first truth is that we have hope in God as we call to mind God's truth.

Lamentations 3, verse 19, Remember my affliction and my wandering,

Lamentations 3:19

the wormwood and bitterness.

Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me.

This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.

Jeremiah's soul was downcast. His heart was broken. His emotions were depressed.

It is important for us to recognize that Jeremiah had suffered physically and emotionally.

He was crushed. He was laid low.

He and his fellow Judeans had lost so many friends, family, and countrymen.

Their grief would have been overwhelming.

The situation that they were in was beyond hard.

And yet, Jeremiah did not stay

down. He did not let his emotions and the situation overcome him. Why?

Because Jeremiah recalled the faithful and loyal love of God.

Hope was restored to Jeremiah by remembering the faithfulness of God,

remembering that God was still with his people, and that God,

the king of the universe, loved his people so dearly, even in his discipline of them.

And instead of staying in his depression and his inner turmoil,

which he did have, Jeremiah remembered the loving kindness of God.

And here's what happened.

His hope was renewed.

How can we as Christians have hope in the midst of hard times?

We can have hope as we recall to mind the faithful truths of God.

The temptation is to let situations like loss of loved ones or financial problems

or natural disasters to overcome us and make us useless for God.

Yet God in His Word tells us to be overcomers.

Jesus in John 16, verse 33 promised, I have told you these things so that in

John 16:33

me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart,

I have overcome the world.

We overcome these situations by hoping in God.

We hope in God by actively calling to mind the faithful deeds of God that His

Word tells us about, trusting in them, surrendering to Christ's control,

and then obeying God's Word.

We remember God's gracious and compassionate love as we study God's works.

And remember his character. The author of Psalm 111, verse 2 through 4,

Psalms 111:2–4

saying, Great are the works of the Lord. They are studied by all who delight in them.

Splendid and majestic is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. And here it is, verse 4.

He has made his wonders to be what? To be remembered.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate. I encourage all of us,

to you who are hearing from me,

for all who are in the building, to read and memorize daily the truths and promises from God's Scripture,

and recount His works and His character to ourselves every day,

and believe and cling to God's truth as if our lives depend upon them.

And you know what? Our life does depend upon the truths of God.

And the promise is that you will have hope in God.

The second truth I want to point out to you is that as Christians,

we too have hope in God as we trust that because of God's love,

we are not rejected by God.

I have used this illustration before, but it's such a good story.

I'd like to share it with you again.

On November 2020, Newsweek.com reported that a mom in Alaska chased off a bear

after it tried to attack her son outside of her home and claimed she stared

the predator right in the eyes and growled at it before it ran away.

Before she came face to face with the bear, Shannon Caton from Haines,

in the northern area of Alaska's panhandle had sent her sixth-grader son Walter

Jim outside to lock their car in case a bear tried to break in.

When Jim got outside, he noticed a bear looking at him from about ten feet away.

Jim said, I jumped, I tried to open the door, and then it started to run after me.

The newspaper news organization reported the bear was large.

Jim got inside the house and told his mother that there was a bear right there.

And Catan said, literally, you know, nibbling at his fingertip.

And the mother was like, no way. She opened the door and then the bear was trying to come in.

The bear swiped at her. So the mother stared him right in the eyes and maniac growled and screamed.

The mother lunged at the bear to try to get the back away. And then she slammed

the door and grabbed her shotgun.

I tell you this story because this is the kind of love that God has for his

people, except infinitely more.

In Lamentations 3, verse 22-23, Jeremiah proclaimed, The Lord's lovingkindness

Lamentations 3:22–23

indeed never ceases, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

In verse 22, the Hebrew word that Jeremiah used for God's great love was chesed,

which conveys the meaning of loyal love, an unfailing kind of love,

kindness or goodness often used of God's love that is related to faithfulness to His covenant.

Judah, which was southern Israel, was disciplined by God, but due to his faithfulness

to His covenant promise to Israel, God did not reject His people.

Even though the nation of Judah had sinned horribly against God and needed to

be disciplined, God did not lead them.

God stayed with them through the trials.

God could have rejected them. He could have destroyed Judah.

He had every right and cause to.

And yet God loved his people loyally and cared enough about them to discipline

them so that they would return to him.

Combine God's loyal love with

his compassions and we see that God will not give up on his people ever.

The word compassions relate to a baby that came from a mother's womb and the

love that she has for her child.

And that love is fiercely protective.

The Lord in Isaiah 49, verse 14 to 15 promised.

Isaiah 49:14–15

But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.

And here's what God says.

Can a woman forget her nursing child and have compassion or have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.

Most mothers would never forget their children, but even if they did,

God would never forget His.

God's love for us is supremely fierce and protective and tender,

and He never ever leaves us even when we feel like He does.

Even when we sin against God, He may discipline us as a loving Father disciplines

His children, as Hebrews chapter 12 teaches us, but God will never forsake his believing children.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

The more we focus on the hope that we have in God's love, the more we will see

the mercies of God in new ways every single day.

Verse 23 declares that God's mercies or compassions, they are new every morning.

Great is his faithfulness.

The way we can apply this verse to us as Christ believers today is that we must

continue to trust in the fierce love that God in Christ has for us as His beloved children.

However, we must also recognize that God's love does not always remove us from

tragic circumstances like typhoons or flooding,

or the death of a loved one or financial issues, or a country that is divided by politics.

Rather, God fiercely loves us from within the circumstance we are in,

as He dwells within us through the Holy Spirit, as God walks with us through

the pain, the grief, and uncertainty.

Our town and all of the bush of Bush, Alaska, is now under attack.

Suicide attempts are really high, especially in Dillingham.

And yet God has been in those situations God has saved those people From death

through our EMS and hospital staff Here in Dillingham,

It's so easy to focus on That people were trying to commit suicide And yes,

that is terrible And we need to pray and work with these folks But we also have

to remember that they were saved,

They are still alive.

And as I said before it's so easy to focus on the troubles, especially that of the future.

But God through Jeremiah wants us to focus in on the truth that God gives us

his mercies new every morning.

God's mercies are sufficient for you for today.

Trust in God and his mercies today for what you are going through and let God

take control of tomorrow.

I'm not saying we don't wisely plan in the Lord for the future.

The Bible teaches us to do that.

Yet, we must give up control of today to the Lord.

Remember, He will give you mercies tomorrow that are new and different today.

Yet we can be convinced that what He gives us today and tomorrow will be enough. It is sufficient.

Why? Because God is great in His faithfulness.

God's loving compassion is a fiercely protective love for which He cares for His children.

God is also communicating to us, His children, that the Lord is our portion.

Therefore, we have hope in God.

Many who live in Dillingham know that my wife and I own land here in Dillingham.

All around our parcel of land, the land belongs to Chowgyung or lands that are native allotments.

And according to BBNC, allotments are considered restricted land.

You need BIA approval to sell, lease, or gift, or otherwise convey your land

or inherited interest in restricted land.

BIA also needs to review and approve transactions such as selling or leasing

the land, selling materials such as gravel from the land, using the land as

collateral, or putting a right of way or easement across it.

My point with this illustration is that large portions of land have been given

to the tribes in Alaska and then portioned out to those Alaska natives who have laid a claim.

However, native allotments being restricted land have specific purposes set

out for the land and cannot be used for anything other than those purposes.

Unless permission is given by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

And this concept of an allotment or portion given or inherited to be used solely

for its intended purpose is what Jeremiah was praying about to God.

Jeremiah continued in Lamentations 3.24, The Lord is my portion,

says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him.

I want to show you something extremely important. Jeremiah began in verses 23, 24 with the Lord.

The Lord or Yahweh is the one bringing into being. He's the life giver.

He's the giver of existence.

He's the creator. He is the one who brings everything to pass.

He's the performer of his promises. The one who is the absolute and unchangeable

one, the existing, ever-living, and self-consistent, the God of redemption and salvation.

Yahweh is the only one who is able to approve of himself or give evidence of his own being.

There is no human being that can say that.

Yahweh is the great I Am. He is the one who is with his people.

And this paragraph I just spoke to you is just a part of the definition of who Yahweh is.

Yahweh is completely almighty and completely in charge.

Yahweh is the one and only God, and there are no other gods besides him.

Yahweh is God.

Understanding who God is is crucial to understanding this verse because Jeremiah

prayed that Yahweh, the great I Am, was his portion.

And according to one commentary, this phrase refers to Israelites' land allotment.

The priests and Levites had no land portion because Yahweh was their portion.

As the Lord said to Aaron in Numbers 18, verse 20, you shall have no inheritance

Numbers 18:20

in their land, nor any portion among them.

And this is what I want to hear, I am your portion and your inheritance among the sons of Israel.

And this is somewhat similar to native allotments here in Alaska,

given for a specific purpose, except Jeremiah didn't own God in the sense of being in control of God.

Rather, Yahweh, Lord God, was Jeremiah's treasure that he sought,

the destiny and security of Jeremiah's life.

For those whom the Lord is their portion and inheritance. The Lord is their

hope on whom they can completely trust and rely on. Why?

Because the Lord is completely worthy of trust and hoping in.

The Lord is completely faithful.

Those who keep the Lord as their portion, their security comes from and lies

in the Lord and his provision of them.

For Jeremiah, Yahweh being his portion was central and foundational to his life,

especially in overwhelmingly hard times. Why?

Because Jeremiah's hope came from God being his portion, his destiny,

his treasure, and the one whom Jeremiah trusted more than anything.

This is what God being our portion means.

What can you and I learn today as believers in Christ?

We can learn that God is to be our portion, whom we completely trust and rely on.

This is the heart of the Christian life. As Christians in the Western world,

with all of our affluence and comforts and recreation, this is perhaps the most

difficult truth for us to apply to our lives.

It's easy to want to rely on an inheritance or a retirement savings fund.

It's easy in our country to desire a good job, our own home or land or money

in the bank to feel secure and safe.

It's also very important to us and our families to have health care to feel secure.

And yet there's no guarantee that the securities that provide for our wealth

and comforts in our health will even be around for much longer.

With all the craziness that's happening in the world right now,

the things that we trust in for our security may not be secure after all.

Remember what happened in COVID?

All of a sudden, almost everything that we trusted for for our security wasn't there.

I want to press upon us today with the simple truth and yet foundational truth

that you and I must trust and rely on the Lord.

If God isn't the one whom we truly trust and rely upon, then where do we get our hope?

There is no security. There is no certain hope in our lands,

our houses, our jobs, or our possessions.

My retirement stocks go up and down by many thousands of dollars, often on a daily basis.

So many people rely upon their loved ones, their spouses, and children to feel secure and feel worth.

As we all know well here in Bush, Alaska, especially, people do die. It is a fact of life.

We thankfully enjoy and love the people in our lives as we focus ourselves and

them upon loving God as first in our life.

And through God, we love others better.

We thank and praise God for His blessings, and we joyfully use them for God's

glory, but we must not truly rely on them. Please listen to this.

Where our trust is, that is where our hope lies.

And I'm going to say this once again. Where our trust is, that is where our hope lies.

What is God teaching us as we live in this crazy world?

That in the midst of hardship and struggle and pain and a lot of uncertainty, there is great hope.

We are able to live in that hope by reminding ourselves continually of the faithful

love of God for His children by trusting God as our portion and obeying His Word.

It's easy for us to let hope slip out of our grasp.

Life can be hard and distracting, especially when we lose our loved ones,

and yet God is the only definition of good, and He is so faithful.

As Christians, we must remember that we belong to the Lord. We are His,

and He fiercely protects and loves those that belong to Him.

Our job is to put our trust and hope in God and rely on Him at every moment

as we remember the Lord's compassions are new every morning.

Great is His faithfulness.

Isaiah 64, verse 4 says that God acts for those who wait upon Him.

Isaiah 64:4

And I want to encourage you today by urging you to make Christ your focus and treasure.

And when you do, all of life's problems and questions will seem small because

God, who is almighty and so colossal, is in your sight.

And if you're listening today and you've never put your faith in Christ,

I encourage you to surrender your life to the Lord today.

Because we do not know when we're going to leave this earth.

If you've fallen away from Christ, repent and follow the Lord by living in Christ's

love as you trust and cling to Him and obey the Word of God.

Let's pray. Father God, thank You for the joy that You have set before us in Your Son, Jesus Christ.

Thank you, Lord. Help us, O Lord, as we go through trials, as we go through

every day, the good or the easier and not so easy times,

that we keep our hearts and minds focused on you and the hope that we have in you.

May we trust you. May you be our portion and our life always.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you.