The Sovereign God in testing and suffering

because I really enjoy their
songs, which are some of my favorites. It is good to be with you, and
again, if I had brought my children, you would know it by now. They
are very rambunctious, and I am very impressed by the children
I see in here. I’m very thankful to Ron for
allowing me to be here. I really admire Ron. I’ve gotten
to sit under his teaching a couple of times already. When he does
the men’s teaching, which I’m guessing he’d want me to mention,
is coming up next week at Grace Church. And if you haven’t been
there yet, we’re going to go over Romans 5. He said that’s
the one. This is where you really need to be there if you haven’t
got to go yet. He still wants you to come. If
you have been, he would also, I’m guessing, want me to remind
you of the homework that is due for that also. If you haven’t
been, you don’t have to worry about the homework. Just show
up. It’s a good time. He is very gifted in teaching
men how to study their Bible. So just show up for that. Be
there for that. I would like to call your attention
to the book of Lamentations, chapter 3. That’s what I’ll be
preaching out of. So if you have your Bible, turn
to Lamentations 3. If you don’t have your Bible,
grab one and turn to Lamentations 3. It really benefits you to
not use a cellular device to look. Because I’m going to call your
attention to the whole book of Lamentations, allow you to see
some of the structure of it, because I find that very important
to the point that we’re going to go through today. So here’s
the deal. About a month of Lamentations
I know is not a popular book. And it’s very actually depressing
if you go through it and just read it. And I knew this, and
so about a month ago I was having trouble, I was praying through
a trial that I was going through, that I was still kind of going
through a lot. And so I decided in the morning
once that I’m going to read through the invitations to kind of find
the words to appropriately express what I was thinking, what I was
feeling. But I had a particularly stubborn
attitude at the time. So, what I knew that I didn’t
want to do was focus on 3, 22, and 23. You’ve heard that. That steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. His mercy never comes to an end. You’re new every
morning. Great is your faithfulness. I
knew that was there, and I didn’t want to read that because I was
stubborn. I wanted to kind of wallow in my own self-pity. in my own trial that I was going
through. And that’s really the only really
popular passage in this book. This is the one that you’ll see
maybe on pillows in some Christian homes, on plaques, they’ll have
that verse. You only really see that one.
The other stuff, not so much. And so I wanted to avoid that
verse, because I didn’t want to be encouraged. I wanted to
be just kind of, whoa, it’s me, sort of thing. It’s a really
sinful attitude I have. But here’s what I found as I
looked at the Book of Lamentations. First, the words that Jeremiah
uses in the Book of Lamentations, they are describing, he is seen
and experiencing a trial that is much more severe, much more
difficult than anything I have ever seen or experienced, and
I guess any of you have been through either. All the verses
throughout the rest of the book of Jeremiah, however, this is
the other thing I found, they seem to serve to make the truth
found right there in that passage I was avoiding, all the more
precious, and it all seems to point right to that. And then
rather than finding a way to complain to God while pretending
to be godly about it, I found instructions on how to respond
even in the darkest trials. So, what we’re going to look
at today is how we should respond when things aren’t just going
bad, but hopelessly bad. So my initial, my outline is
two real things, but a lot of sub points. First I want to show
you, I’m going to focus on a couple of things that are outside of
the text that will hopefully show the severity of the trial
that Jeremiah is writing about, and also kind of point to what
I think is the main point in the middle of chapter 3, and
then I have Don’t stress out. I have 11 points to make that
the text points to on how we should respond to trials. I’ll
get through some of those, some of them a little really quick,
some of them kind of slower. But guess what? I saw in your
bulletin that you don’t have Sunday school this summer. So I’m not as nervous about going
a little over, and you can’t fire me either. So there we go.
I should lock the doors. We’re going to go like this.
Alright, so I have 11 points, and I really want you to get
your pens out and write these 11 points down, even if you’re
not going through a hard trial right now, if you’ve never been
through a trial, whatever. They are coming. As the passage that Mark just
read out in Mark 13 has promised, trials are coming. Even if you’re
not going through one now, they’re going to get worse. It’s coming,
write these things down, because when you write them down, when
you see them, when you extrapolate more truth from them later, they
will help you in times of trial. So, for the words of this book
to really take on their fullest meaning, it’s really kind of
critical that we have an understanding of a couple of things. The structure of the book in
general, and also the context in which the book was written.
Since Lamentations isn’t a popular book, I’m going to assume that
you don’t have that kind of stuff in the back of your mind. So
first I want to talk about the structure of the book. And the
reason I want to focus our attention on chapter three, in particular
the middle of chapter three, is because this is what the structure
of the book points to. Lamentations, so if you have
your Bibles out, you’re going to flip around now, you’re going
to see that Lamentations is constructed of five different poems. It’s the five chapters of Lamentations,
or five separate poems. Now if you look at the first
two chapters, so you can flip over there, you can see the first
two chapters have 22 verses, and each have 22 verses. And
each verse, you’ll notice, contains a three-line stanza. And each
verse, this is the interesting thing that you can’t really see,
you can notice the 22 verses, you can notice the three-line
stanzas, but unless you know Hebrew, and you have a Hebrew
Bible with you, you can’t see that it’s structured in such
a way, in what we call an acrostic poem. Chapter one, chapter two,
chapter three, and chapter four are all acrostic poems in which
each verse begins with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
So, verse 1 of chapter 1 begins with the Hebrew letter Aleph,
which is the first letter in the Hebrew Bible, or Hebrew language,
Hebrew alphabet. And the second verse begins with
the second letter, which is Bet, which is the second letter of
the Hebrew alphabet. And then so on, it does that.
There’s 22 verses, there’s 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
And if you follow that structure, that’s the way it is in chapters
one, chapters two, and chapters four. Chapter five is just a
little different. You’ll see that it follows the
22, chapter four you’ll see is actually 22 verses but two line
stanzas. Chapter five is 22 verses of
one line stanzas and it actually loses the acrostic. So you’ve
got, and that all points to chapter three as the most complex poem
in the Book of Lamentations, because not only does it have,
and you’ll notice that the way that English translators have
shown it to you by the verses, there’s 66 verses in it, right?
You see that? 66 verses, but it still has the
three-line stanzas, but what you see is verses 1 through 3. From chapter 3, verse 1 begins
with Aleph, verse 2 begins with Aleph, the first letter in the
Hebrew alphabet, verse 3 does also. And then verses four, five,
and six, verse four begins with the second letter, which is bed.
Verse five begins with the second letter, which is bed. Verse six
begins with the second letter, which is bed. It does it that
way. All to say, chapter three is the most complex, sophisticated
poem in the book. And the book of Lamentations
as a whole does something that we call, is something that we
call a chiastic structure, which is, in English, we’re kind of
used to this The way we read our literature is it builds from
beginning to end, right? The main point is usually at
the end. Well, Hebrew poetry, a lot of
the times, did this thing where they wanted to build to a main
point in the middle and then come down, like a mountain, come
down from that main point in the middle. And that’s what we
see in the book of Lamentations. builds up to the confession,
to the great verses, middle of chapter 3, where there’s this
section, chapter 3, verse 21, where the tone shifts completely,
and verse 42, where the tone shifts a little bit back completely.
The middle of chapter 3 is the most important, the part that
the whole book of Lamentations is pointing to. So it’s important
that you see that, that you understand that. So if you just one day,
you just open your Bible, do your quiet time out of Lamentations
1, and get just horribly depressed, remember that this building to
is pointing to something different. It’s not to say that stuff in
one and two, four and five aren’t important, they are important,
but if they’re by themselves and they’re not pointing to three,
you lose a lot. So that’s the first thing I want
you to see, that the structure of lamentations points to what
we’re going to be talking about today. The next thing I want
you to see is the context for which Lamentations was written.
Lamentations was written by most scholars, agreed by the prophet
Jeremiah. Lamentations was written in response
to Jerusalem being captured and destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar
of Babylon. It’s important to remember that,
as we go through this, Israelites see themselves and are, rightfully
so, as God’s chosen people. And they know that they are God’s
chosen people. So if you remember some of it,
the history of Israel. God swore to Abraham that a great
nation would come from him, that the promised land would be their
land, and that through Abraham’s offspring, all the nations of
the earth will be blessed. You remember that, right? And
then after that, God’s people go into captivity in Egypt, and
God saves them miraculously through the exodus from Egypt. He gives
them His holy law, and He sets up the tabernacle with them,
which was this unthinkable honor, because it was God revealing
Himself and living in a special way among His people. That’s
what the tabernacle was. In the tabernacle, God’s present
with His people even before they’ve yet to attain the promised land.
He goes with them in the tabernacle. And then you remember, through
God’s providence, while He’s in the tabernacle, they go through
the promised land and miraculously miraculous victory after victory. And after that time, we have
the time of judges, we have King Saul, and after all those times,
we see that God puts his guy, David, on the throne. And God
makes this amazing promise, this covenant with David, that through
his offspring, there will come a ruler who will have an eternal
throne. The Davidic covenant, if you
remember that, or if you know that. And then God, And then
under David, God officially makes Jerusalem his city, and the tabernacle,
which was a tent that moves from place to place with the special
presence of God, is transferred into the temple, a solid building
that doesn’t move, in the middle of Jerusalem, that represents
God’s presence to this people in a special way, unlike anything
else that has ever been seen on the earth. And so there’s
this special place where under David’s son Solomon, and for
a brief period, a brief time under Solomon, everything is
good. Everything is the way, it’s looking
like the exact way that God has promised what the nation of Israel
would be. People, foreign dignitaries are
visiting, and they are glorifying God as a result of seeing what’s
going on in Israel. And this was God’s purpose for
Israel. And this is what the Israelites
understood their purpose to be, this is where they’re supposed
to be, this is what things are supposed to look like. But quickly,
Solomon abandons his worship of God, he starts marrying all
these other women, foreign women, and he starts setting up their
idols and setting up their temples for them to worship their foreign
gods, and quickly Israel starts to worship other gods, and after
Solomon, if you remember, the kingdom splits into a northern
kingdom, which is Israel, and a southern kingdom, which is
Judah. The northern kingdom has a succession
of wicked kings, God sends some prophets to tell them to repent,
they don’t, they’re eventually taken into captivity by Assyria
in 722 BC, and the northern kingdom of Israel It’s gone after that, and now
there’s just the Southern Kingdom of Judah, which still has the
Davidic line sitting on the throne. So God’s promise to David is
still, they can still see that promise. They can still hope
for that promise in God’s promise to David, and you see kind of
a mixture in the Southern Kingdom of good and wicked kings, and
every once in a while you see something good happen, and the
hope starts to, okay, God’s gonna do it again. God’s gonna bring
us back again. We’re gonna be what we were under
David and Solomon. That’s gonna happen again. You
see that a little bit under Hezekiah. You see it under Josiah. And
then, all hope is vanquished. Two kings after Josiah. When
Nebuchadnezzar comes in, and he starts conquering cities,
deporting captives to Babylon. He plunders Jerusalem. He takes
the royal family captive. He takes the riches from the
temple. and he leaves another king in place, and at that point,
there’s almost no hope that remains in Israel, and then 10 years
later, Nebuchadnezzar comes back, they siege to Jerusalem again,
and this time, he completely destroys the city, and he completely
destroys the temple, and this is the lowest point in the history
of the people of God up to this time. Not only is it destroyed,
but it happens in one of the most horrific ways through a
siege. I don’t know if you know what
a siege is, but Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem, had walls
around it, and the Babylonian army came in and they surrounded
it, and basically made them lock up the walls, and so the people
are just trapped inside the city, and the Babylonian army’s just
got all of the resources out there, and they can keep feeding
their army, keep living, keep surviving, and eventually the
people inside Jerusalem, things are getting worse and worse,
and they have two options. starve to death, or they can run out
and be killed by the Babylonian army. This was a way that tons
of armies would conquer other places. If you were really powerful,
you could do this. Nothing to do with time to burn. You can sit outside and destroy
the city that way. And this is what’s going on.
You can see this happening if you look over to 4.4 of Lamentations. This is what Jeremiah is talking
about. The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of
its mouth for thirst. The children beg for food, but
no one gives to them. So the thinking is, how can the
God who’s promised us these things be doing this? I mean, this is
in the Bible, verse 10. This is how bad it is. The hands
of the compassionate woman that boiled their own children, they
became their food. They’re in the destruction of
the daughter of my people. This is why I say the trial is
so severe that Israel is going through the Jeremiah scene right
now. It’s not something, you might have gone through some
tough times. I doubt there’s been a time where you’ve even
been strongly tempted to start up on cannibalism. We’ve gone
through tough times, but that temptation has been for the most
part, I hope, far removed from any of us as we’ve grown up in
America, and to revert to that. This, and so you can see what
the people of Israel have to be thinking at this time, and
Jeremiah has to be wondering at this time, is this, this is
where the promises of God come to? To this point? How is this possible? That the
great city of David is in it? That’s where it stops? What happened
to the eternal throne? What happened to the promises
to Abraham? How is this where it ends? And if you go through, I won’t
do it, but if you read chapters one and two, they describe in
great detail the pain and the shame and the humiliation that
has come upon Israel because of their sins. And they don’t
shy away from saying that they see that this is God doing it. And as you read chapters 1 and
2, you just get this sense of despair, of utter hopelessness.
You get a picture, again, of a trial like you’ve never seen. And it’s worse than that because
it’s not just that God doesn’t seem to care about them. Like,
that’s bad enough, right? If you ever go through a trial
where it’s like, where’s God? He doesn’t even seem to care
anymore. But it’s worse than that because they see God there,
and God doing it to them. God’s the one doing this to us.
It’d be better if he wasn’t there, honestly, is what they’re thinking.
But his hand is upon us. So this is the scene, this is
the setting when Jeremiah writes these words, Jeremiah chapter,
or Lamentations chapter. I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rock of his wrath. He has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light. Surely against me he turns his
hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh
and my skin waste away. He has broken my bones. He has
besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation. He
has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He
has walled me about so that I cannot escape. He has made my chains
heavy. Though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with blocks
of stones. He has made my paths crooked.
He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding. He turned aside my steps and
tore me to pieces. He has made me desolate. He bent
his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. He drove into
my kidneys the arrows of his quiver. I have become the laughingstock
of all peoples. The object of their taunts all
day long. He has filled me with bitterness.
He has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on
gravel and made me cower in ashes. My soul is bereft of peace. I
have forgotten what happiness is. So I say my endurance has
perished. So has my hope from the Lord.
Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and the
gall. My soul continually remembers it and has bowed down within
me. But this I call to mind, and
therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. His mercies never come to an
end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The
Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in Him.
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him. To the soul who
seeks Him, it is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation
of the Lord. It is good for a man to eat.
bear the guilt in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence
when it is laid up. Let him put his mouth in the
dust. There may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the
one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the
Lord will not cast off forever. But though he causes grief, he
will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast
love. For he does not afflict from
his heart, or grieve the children of men, to crush underfoot all
the prisoners of the earth, to deny man justice in the presence
of the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuits? The Lord
does not approve. Who has spoken, and it came to
pass, unless the Lord commanded it? Is it not from the mouth
of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living
man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Let us
test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord. Lift up our
hearts and hands to God in heaven. We have transgressed and rebelled,
and you have not forgotten. You have wrapped yourself with
anger and pursued us, killing without pity. You have wrapped
yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. You
have made us scum and garbage among the peoples. All our enemies
open their mouths against us. Panic and pitfall have come upon
us, devastation and destruction. My eyes flow with rivers of tears
because of the destruction. of the daughter of my people.
My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord
from heaven looks down and sees. My eyes cause me grief at the
fate of all the daughters of my city. I have been hunted like
a bird by those who were my enemies without cause. They flung me
alive into the pit and cast stones on me. Water closed over my head. I said, I am lost. I called on your name from the
depths of the pit. You heard my plea. Do not close
your ears to my cry for help. You came near when I called on
you. You said, do not fear. You have taken up my cause, O
Lord. You have redeemed my life. You have seen the wrong done
to me, O Lord. Judge my cause. You have seen all their vengeance,
all their plots against me. You have heard their taunts,
O Lord, all their plots against me. The lips and thoughts of
my assailants are against me all the day long. Behold their
sitting and their rising. I am the object of their taunts.
You will repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their
hands. You will give them dullness of heart. Your curse will be
on them. You will pursue them in anger
and destroy them from under your heavens, O Lord.” So you can
see here in chapter 3, the verses, the pain, the desperation, it’s
almost palpable. If you’re just reading some of
these verses by themselves, you would wonder, how some of them
made it into the Bible. Right? You’d be taken up, you
go into a Christian bookstore, and you see all the little decorations
and stuff for your house, and pillows and little potpourri
jars and stuff, and you have all these encouraging verses.
You’ll walk into someone’s house and see the verse, He drove into
my kidneys the arrows of His quiver. Facebook post, someone putting
against me, he turns his hand again and again all day long. You don’t see people ending their
emails, Christians ending their emails with the verse, he has
made us scum and garbage. You don’t see that. These verses
by themselves, if you just read them, that’s depressing. That doesn’t make sense. That’s why it’s so important
to read them in context. And through this, we see these
11 ways, the 11 ways that I want to point out to you, and how
to respond to trial. The first two are kind of based
out of the overall context of the chapter, and then the last
ones are just straight out of the text. So, number one. Number one, understand that bad
things happen to God’s people, and be honest bad things happen to God’s people,
and be honest about your situation. Don’t just pretend that they
don’t happen. Don’t just buy into that false
prosperity gospel that says that if you’re just faithful enough,
if you’re faithful enough, you can keep God from putting bad
things in your life. Because if that was true, if
anyone at that time, at this time, didn’t deserve to have
bad things happen to him. It’s Jeremiah. If it’s true, if that false gospel
that says, if you’re good and faithful, God won’t do bad things
to you or allow bad things to happen to you, if that’s true,
the only person who should be saved here is Jeremiah. If anyone
should, it should be him. He has been consistently tortured
for the sake of God. He brings a prophecy to King. This has been Jeremiah’s life,
bringing a prophecy people don’t want to hear, the king punishes
him. Hey, king, you guys need to repent? Whatever, Jeremiah,
I’m throwing you in a pit. That’s what happens to him. Jeremiah’s
life, he’s called the weeping prophet for a reason. This kind
of stuff happens to him. And if it was true that if you’re
faithful enough, God won’t let bad things happen to you, it
should have happened to Jeremiah, but it doesn’t. I’m sorry. And not just that, but listen
to how honest Jeremiah is about what’s going on. He talks about,
in verse 1, he talks about the rod of God’s wrath. In verse
7, he uses the language of siege, like God is the one sieging him. Like the siege is against him,
and God’s outside, and he’s trapped and starving to death. And he
talks about how God is shutting out, as the most faithful man
in Israel at the time, God is shutting out his prayers. He
describes God as a bear or a lion waiting to tear me to pieces.
He talks about, in verse 12, how He’s not the relationship
that we think of God as our Father. He says, God has me as His target. That’s what I am to God, His
target. And He’s hitting me, too. His arrows are driving into
my kidneys. When it says kidneys, you need
to think of it, they believe the kidneys as like the seed
of their emotions, like the way we talk about hearts. When we
say, my heart goes out to you, we don’t mean like my physical
organ that beats and pumps blood in my chest. We mean the seed
of our emotions. That’s how they describe that.
So he’s saying, my heart, he’s driving arrows into my heart. He fills me with bitterness.
He feeds me, but it’s with bitterness and revolting food. That’s how
he provides for me. In verse 17, Jeremiah said, I
don’t even remember what happiness is. So a lot of times when we’re
going through trials, what makes them so hard for us is because
we can remember a better time, or a happier time, or when this
wasn’t an issue. And Jeremiah’s like, I don’t
even remember what that was like. I don’t even remember a time
where I was actually happy or content. He doesn’t remember
it. He says he’s lost his hope in
the Lord. What a thing for a prophet of God to say. I’ve lost my hope
in the Lord. Jeremiah is honestly describing
his relationship with God. He’s not being glib. He’s not
pretending things like… Don’t do that. When you have
a problem going on, you don’t just pretend like nothing bad
is happening. You don’t just grin and bear it all at this
moment. That’s why we have the church. We get together and help each
other through problems. Don’t pretend like nothing bad
is happening. Jeremiah is not doing that. He’s
not glibly glossing over real problems. But as an additional
caution, I want to point out, not just to not be glib, but
also to be flippant in your attitude towards God. A lot of people
take passages like Lamentations 3 and some of the Psalms, like
Psalm 62 that Laura read to us this morning, as like, kind of,
hey look, this is just my heart, I’m just complaining back to
God, I’m just, essentially it’s okay for me to yell at God, just
because that’s how I’m feeling. I was at a Bible study in college,
and one of the guys said, man, sometimes when I’m praying, I
just cuss at God, because that’s what’s in my heart. And he knows
what’s in my heart. And so I just do that. He knows that, and it’s fine.
And he takes passages like this and says, look, they’re just
saying what’s in his heart. That’s not OK. That’s not OK. If the structure, hopefully what
I pointed out earlier, teaches us anything. It’s that Jeremiah
never takes an attitude of superiority towards God, or even like, God’s
on the same level as me sort of thing, or that God might even
be wrong. He just describes his feelings
and he admits to maybe not understanding. And the structure of the book
shows us, because it’s so well organized, right? You see that. It’s not just, he’s not just
like spouting off complaints against God. It’s well-organized
thoughts and feelings. He’s not kind of losing his mind. It’s showing that he addresses
God and he does it with thought and reverence. That’s what that
points to. And the same thing with the Psalms.
Psalm 62, that was read today. Thought and complaining, yes,
but not in the way we think of complaining like whining children.
Thought and reverence towards who you’re speaking to. Number two, don’t make Satan
or someone else sovereign in your problems. Don’t make Satan
or someone else sovereign. Jeremiah only gives credit for
the source of his pain and the nation’s pain to God. I’ve heard
the phrase before, someone said, Satan’s got me in a trial right
now. Satan does not ever have you
in a trial. That’s something that only God
does. Many people are so reluctant to attribute anything bad. Satan
does stuff, don’t get me wrong. He does stuff, he acts against
you, he’s mean, he attacks you, blah blah blah, all that stuff,
yes. But so many people are so reluctant to attribute anything
bad that may happen to God, and all the bad things that happen
to Satan, that they give Satan this, like, superior There’s
a sense in which he plays this major part that we’re almost
under his control and not God’s control. But he can’t put us
through trial. God puts us through trials. God
does that. Satan can’t do anything outside
of God’s oversight. That’s what Job 1 and 2 teaches
us. If you have the attitude that every bad thing that happens
to you is because Satan is attacking you, then even when we finally
come through the trial, what’s gonna happen is the only thing
we’ll do is thank God for stopping Satan from attacking you, rather
than changing as a result of the trial, which is God’s intention
for putting you through it in the first place. Even more than
Satan, we like to find people and things to focus on in the
midst of the trial. We like to blame all the problems
on temporal causes, because when we do that, when we blame people
or situations for what’s going on, then it’s a little more easier
to excuse having a sinful attitude about whining and complaining,
right? And I just want to point out
that although in the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah mentions Nebuchadnezzar
and Babylon 150 times, in Lamentations, when he’s describing all the
awful things happening, and it is a result of them, indirectly,
he never once mentions Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon. always the authority
is given to God. As Christians, we have this inner
understanding that we can’t say negative things about God. We
know that. But when we choose to just forget
that He’s the one in control of our life situations, just
forget that for a second, then it’s easy to start whining about
the perceived individuals who we deem are responsible for even
the smallest of our problems. So when you go, to a restaurant,
and we have bad service, or there’s something that takes a long time,
or our order’s wrong, or maybe we can start blaming and complaining
against the restaurant, or against the waiter, or even bigger ones. When legislation is being passed,
then we don’t agree. politicians that I didn’t vote
for, that I did vote for. It’s them doing this to me there,
and you start to justify your lying attitude. And as long as
we keep God out of the focus, and we keep Him out of being
the one who’s in control, then it’s easy for Christians to start
sounding like everyone else in the world who believe that things
need to be going right for them to be happy, or for them to have
joy. Don’t make Satan or someone else sovereign over your situation.
Number three, call truth to mind. For this point, I almost want
to read the whole book to you. I’m not going to. I almost do,
because that’s the huge thing that happens. Now we’re going
straight into the text in verse 21. Just remember everything up to
this point. All the ways that my prayers are being shut out.
He’s like a bear. He’s like a lion coming after
me. He’s driving arrows into me. I’m his target. All of this
stuff is true. All of this stuff is happening. But this I call to mind. This I remind myself. And therefore,
I have hope. What he’s saying is, in spite
of everything that’s happened, the horrors of the destruction
of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple, the loss of the
promised land, the hopelessness that comes from not being able
to see what God is doing, or how his covenantal promises can
even still be fulfilled. Jeremiah says, in spite of all
of these things, and in spite of the soul-crushing pain that
I feel, in spite of the fact that I feel like God has turned
away from me, and is even attacking me, in spite of all that, I know
this to be true. His mercies never come to an
end. Our faith is not based on feelings,
it is based on the truth. And there will be times in this
life that are the darkest of dark, when we feel somewhat like
Jeremiah, and the only things that will get us through those
times, the only things, it’s not our feelings, it’s knowing. It’s knowing beyond a shadow
of a doubt that it doesn’t matter how I feel because this book
is true. This is the whole reason that
this passage is so great, verses 21 through 23. It’s the whole
reason. And to just repeat those words,
just to repeat those verses without this entire context in mind,
it misses out on so much. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases, even when it looks beyond the shadow of doubt that
it has. No matter how bad it may seem, His mercies are new
every morning because He says they are. Even when it looks
like He’s turned His back on you completely, He is the one
great faithfulness. These things are true no matter
how you might feel. In the midst of trials, force yourself to
call truth to mind. No matter how unnatural that
may seem at the time. So now, from this kind of mountaintop
spot that we were talking about, and he’s going to kind of describe
how calling truth to mind, it kind of affects all of these
other points. So, number four, call to mind
and remember the fact that God is all you need. Look at verse
24. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope
in Him. What does it mean when he says
the Lord is My portion, because you kind of think of portion
as like, that’s my little piece of the piece that I get or something
like that. But that language is directly
from Joshua 19. I don’t know if you’re familiar
with Joshua 19. That’s where they go into Canaan.
They conquered everything. And now they’re allotting the
different portions of the promised land to the different tribes.
of Israel, said, this is your portion, Judah, it’s over here
on this side of the river. This is your portion, Simeon,
this is over here. All of the tribes get a portion
of the land, except for Levi. And Levi is told that their portion
is the Lord. The tribe of Levi is the one
that’s called to be priests. And that’s what this language
is calling to mind, is that particular passage to remind them that the
Lord, you don’t need all the stuff that everyone else looks
like they have to be happy. You don’t need all that stuff.
All you need is the Lord, and if that’s all you have, you have
more than enough. The Lord is your portion. Number
five, remember or call to mind the truth that it is good for
you to go through trials. It’s the truth that it is good
for you to go through trials. In verses 25 to 27, The Lord
is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of
the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his
youth. The Lord promises good to those
who wait patiently on Him through trials for His salvation. You
have the metaphor of the yoke there. I don’t know how long
you’ve been in church, but hopefully you’ve heard the yoke metaphor
before. So the yoke is the big, heavy piece of wood that goes
over beasts of burden, and what that does is it kind of forces
them to go in the direction that the master intends them to go
in. So they can’t go wandering off and doing their own thing.
And it’s heavy, and they don’t like bearing it maybe at first,
but without it, you go your own way. With it, you go the way
the master wants you to go. So he uses that. He opens a burden
and forces you to submit to God’s desired direction. It is good
for you to bear it in your youth. When he says that, that doesn’t
mean, oh, I’ll cry. Whatever your definition of old
is. I mean, trials aren’t good for me now? No, the point is,
the principle is that it’s good for you to go through trials
while you’re in a place where you can grow stronger through
them. Meaning, the more time you have,
And after this, to learn from what you’ve learned. The idea
is that you change because of it, and then it changes. Whatever
happens after the trial, your life is different. Your life
is changed as a result of it. So it’s good to go through it
while you still have time to learn from it. That’s the point. So the way you know that you’re
going through a trial that God still wants you to learn from
is if you’re going through one. That’s how you know. So if you’re
going through a trial, God has something for you through it.
Point six. Point six. Humble yourself and
endure it. Humble yourself before God. Endure
the trial. Verse 28-30. Let him sit alone
in silence when it is late on him. Let him put his mouth in
the dust. There may yet be hope. Let him
give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled
with insults. So, you don’t Fight it when you’re
going through the trial. And you don’t argue with God
over it. You endure it in silence. That
means when you’re going through a trial, your attitude shouldn’t
be like, oh, what was me? Oh, don’t notice me. It’s tough. Or you’re making a big deal out
of it and pretending that you don’t. But you really want everyone
to know what you’re going through, what you’re dealing with. No,
in silence. Go through it. in silence, and
that doesn’t mean you don’t share prayer requests. That just means
you’re not using it as an excuse to call attention to yourself.
Prayer requests is hopefully an attention for, is in a situation
for you to gain the power of God and bear it on your tribe,
right? It’s an attitude, or to have
an attitude of complete humility That when it says, putting your
face in the dust, that means an attitude of complete submission
to God. I know that you are right about
this, no matter what I think, no matter what I believe, no
matter how much this does not make any sense to me right now.
You are right about this. Giving your cheek implies the
humility to say, God, I trust you. Listen. This is what this
indicates. Listen. God, I trust you so much
that I am asking you to put me through whatever you need to
make me what you want me to be. That’s what burying your cheek
means. Have you ever tried to pray that? God, you do whatever you need
to do to me to make me who you want me to be. That’s a tough
thing to pray. But that’s the attitude that
this verse is calling us to. You feel God’s hand on your cheek? Offer it up again, because you
know what He’s doing is right for you to become who He wants
you to be. Point seven. Remember that the
trial is temporary. Verse 31, two, three, three.
The Lord will not cast off forever, but though He causes grief, He
will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast
love. For He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the
children of men. The trial is temporary. God is
holy, but He is also compassionate. So here we have the second time
that His steadfast love is linked to compassion in this chapter.
And because of this, we know that the trial is temporary.
Because of God’s steadfast love, and because of His compassion,
and because also it says right there, He won’t cast off forever,
we know that the trial is temporary. No matter what it is you might
be going through right now, rest assured that it is temporary. If it is something you will have
to deal with for the rest of your life on Earth, it is temporary. Even if it is something that
will eventually kill you, it is temporary. When you think
of the eternal state, it’s temporary. This life is like a paper. It’s
like a paper. Anything that you try and go
through, it is a paper. It’s temporary. The toughest thing you’ve ever
gone through, a billion years from now, it’ll seem ridiculous
any time you spend complaining about it. Just the way, like,
when you give, when your kid cries over, like, not getting
the right flavor ice cream or something, right? And three days later, when they’re
eating some other ice cream or something, they don’t repent
of that. Even more so, to an infinitely
greater degree, will any trial we go through on this planet
seem inconsequential, even a thousand years from now, right? All right, number eight, remember
that God is just. Remember that God is just, just.
That’s what 34 through 36 says, to crush underfoot all the prisoners
here, deny a man justice in the presence of the Most High, To
subvert a man in his lawsuit, the Lord does not approve. Though
while we’re on this earth, injustice seems to run rampant. That prayer that John prayed
mentioning what’s going on in Russia right now. How they’re
trying to pass laws to make preaching the gospel illegal. That’s unjust. That seems awful.
By the way, it won’t work. You can say it’s going to be
illegal. all you want. You can make a legally binding
that you’re not allowed to. That won’t stop the gods and
gospel. So even though we see that type
of stuff, we do see laws similar to that being passed in our nation,
probably more coming. And we see that coming, but knowing
that every unjust action on this planet will be accounted for. It will be paid for in God’s
economy, either on the cross or in hell. It will be paid for. And this is the great, God’s
justice, this is what’s so great about God’s justice in our trials
for us as believers, because we know that God is just. We
know that if we are in Christ, then whatever horrible thing
may ever happen to us, We can count it joy because we know
that it is just a trial and it is never the wrath of God on
us. We never have to worry about
the wrath of God because all of the wrath of God owed to us
because of our sins has been paid for in full in Christ on
the cross. For God to require any punishment
from us in payment for our sins after that would not be just. This has been paid for already. Praise God. that we who are in
Christ will never face the wrath of God, only the discipline of
a loving Father. 9. Remember God is Sovereign.
God is Sovereign, verses 37-39. Who has spoken and it came to
pass unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth
of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living
man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? God is
sovereign. Throughout the book, God alone
is given credit as the source of destruction and pain that
is in place, and sovereignty has certainly been raised in
that light, but here it’s raised, and it’s pointed out, in more
of a positive light. In this context, the context
of the Lord in that realm, yes, God is doing all of these things,
knowing that He is sovereign, but then also knowing that He
has steadfast love, and His faithfulness never ends, and He is merciful. Knowing all of these things,
in the light of God’s sovereignty, makes all of these bad things
good, suddenly. This is the God. This steadfast,
loving God is the one who is in control of all things. This
is reminiscent of Job’s words in response to his wife in Job
2.10 when he’s going through his trials. He says, shall we
accept good from God and not trouble? How we view the character
of God makes all the difference in the world when we see awful
things happening in the world. Right? How you view his character.
So if you were to run into a guy, If you were to run into a guy
and he had a bunch of small sharp objects and he said he was going
to stab you with a bunch of them, you don’t really submit to that,
right? Probably, in most situations. But the picture changes dramatically
if he is a doctor and you put your trust in his superior medical
knowledge that stabbing you with these needles will protect you
from much greater dangers. So much more so, the infinite
knowledge of God over what’s going on in our life and our
knowledge. You can trust Him with the things that can shock,
the things that hurt. You see greater evidence in the
merciful character of God also when He says, why should living
man complain about the punishment of his sins? And like we just
talked about, it’s true that in Christ we don’t have to worry
about feeling the punishment of our sins on ourself, because
God has taken them on himself in Christ. But we do, we can
emphasize this part where it says, why should a living man
complain? Emphasis on living, because we know that upon our
very first rebellious act against God on this earth, because of
how holy he is, we should at that point immediately die and
spend eternity in hell, from that moment on. First rebellious
act. When it says, when it emphasizes
living men, and we know that, because that’s the punishment
for one sin against an infinite, holy God. So therefore, the very
breath that we would have to utter a complaint against that
God, shows the mercy of God, because
we have that breath to complain. Right? Number 10. Number 10. Test and examine ourselves. test and examine ourselves. In
40 and 41 you see, let us test and examine our ways in return
to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven. So, the trials are a place, a
unique opportunity that gives us the chance to examine our
ways. The word way here is the Hebrew
word derek, it means road, it means path. So it’s test our
road, test the path we’re on, see where we’re going. It’s a
call to examine where you’re headed, what you’re doing. Although
our trials, again, are not a punishment for sin, sometimes they are a
result of sin. Sin has natural consequences
and sometimes those result in a trial and it gives us a chance
to repent of that sin. and confess it to God, and in
turn, like we’re supposed to do with all our sin. So, mercifully,
God gives us the trial that’s the result of the natural consequence
of sin, so we don’t continue on in that sin. But also, even
trials that we don’t see as having anything to do with our sin.
When bad things seem to happen for no good reason, it’s still
an opportunity to examine ourselves and see if we trust God, to see
if the sin of unbelief is in our hearts at all. It gives us
a chance to repent of that sin. So test and examine yourself,
examine your faith. That’s what a trial also does
for you. All right. Verse 42 then, as
I mentioned earlier, begins this shift down, back down the mountain. The tone once again becomes one
of pain and suffering. But even though it begins with
this kind of depressing tune again, and it goes all the way
through chapters 4 and 5, we see these little glimmers of
hope, these little cracks of light in the darkness. And it’s
in one of these spots where I want us to see a final response to
the darkest of trials. And that is to remember what
God has already done for you. So notice he says in verse 42,
“…you transgressed and rebelled…” I’m going to read a little bit
again. “…and have not forgotten. You have wrapped yourself with
anger, pursued us, killing without pity.” You’ve made us scum and garbage
among the peoples. All our enemies open their mouths
against us. Panic and pitfall have come upon us. Devastation
and destruction, my eyes flow with rivers of tears. Because
of the destruction of the daughter of my people, my eyes will flow
without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord from heaven looks
down and sees my eyes causing grief, the fate of the daughters
of my city. I’ve been hunted like a bird by those who are
my enemies. Without cause, they form me alive into a pit and
cast stones on me. Water closed over my head. I
said I am lost. Now listen to this. I called
on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard
my plea. Do not close your ear to my cry
for help. You came near when I called on
you. You said, do not fear. You have
taken up my cause, O Lord. You have redeemed my life.” Verse
42, we see it start down and it looks bad again. And in that last section there,
we see Jeremiah remembering what God has done for him. I mentioned
earlier the situation, the real situation in Jeremiah’s life,
where he’s literally picked up and thrown into a pit. It’s an
old well. The well is empty, but it’s recently
empty, so there’s mud, like a quicksand type of mud at the bottom, and
he sinks down below his waist, and he’s just left there to die
until However long it takes for someone to come to the king and
say, hey, maybe we shouldn’t do this. And so he sends, and it
takes 30 men holding on a rope to get him out of the mud. And he’s stuck down there. But
here’s what Jeremiah’s doing. He is remembering this time that
this is happening. He’s remembering what God’s done
for him in the past, when he gives him certainty that God
will act for him again in the future. And if you kept reading
from 59 to 66, you’d see, has in God’s justice. Here Jeremiah
likens what is happening to him right now to this real event
that took place in his life where he did see God come through for
him. So it’s good to remember the
ways in which you have seen God act in the past when it’s so
hard to see He’s working during the current situation that you
might be in. And here’s what’s awesome. I’m
just winding up here. a salvation to remember and to
reflect on that Jeremiah could have never imagined. If you go
to Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah prophesies. He’s the one who prophesies about
the new covenant that’s future for him, but that we all have
been able to experience. We’ve been able to experience
the reality of the thing that Jeremiah was so looking forward
to. And we can call to mind the unbelievable
way in which God works to bring about our salvation and Jeremiah’s
salvation, not from something as comparatively weak as the
Babylonian army, as strong as they may have seemed, but from
the wrath of Almighty God that was supposed to have been on
us throughout all of eternity as we spent it in hell. But we
can look back now and see how God was faithfully bringing His
salvation about, even during the time of Jeremiah, as the
line of David continued, even after through the Babylonian
captivity. God’s promise to David did not
fail. Heirs did come to reign on the
eternal throne. Jesus Christ comes through that
line. God incarnate, who would live
the perfect life that we cannot live, so that He could be the
perfect sacrifice and take the full punishment for our sins. And I know, I know that some
of you might be going through very dark times right now. And maybe they’ve lasted four
years. And you might honestly have to
endure them for the rest of your life. And you just get the sense,
by the way, when you look at the world, that more of these
times are coming. More, not less, are coming our way. And it might
feel as though God is just ignoring your prayers. And you don’t understand
why these things would happen, and honestly, you might never
understand fully in this life. You’ll go through times where
you don’t feel the presence of God, and where it feels like
your prayers are just hitting the ceiling and not getting to
Him, and you doubt, you doubt that He’s actually with you,
that He’s actually for you, but call this to mind. Force yourself to remember. Meditate
on this fact. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. His mercies never come to an
end. They’re new every morning. Great
is His faithfulness, and He has proven that truth once and for
all in Christ. Let’s pray. God, thank You so
much for Your Word. Thank You so much for the opportunity
to be here among Brothers and sisters in Christ, I thank you
for the truth of your word, your sufficient word, that even in
the worst times, you knew we’d go through times of doubt. You
knew that we’d go through times of hardship. You have those in
place for us. And you gave us your word so
that we would know how to deal with it. Thank you for your faithfulness,
God. Thank you for your steadfast
love that never ceases. Thank you for the ultimate proof
of what you’ve done for us already and the guarantee of what you
have to do for us because of Jesus Christ. Thank you. In Jesus’
name, amen.