God Is Faithful
God Is...

Transcript

Good morning, church. It's good to see all of you here this morning. We're continuing our series entitled, “God is” and we've been going through the attributes of God. This is week six of an eight-week series, and we've been working through what it looks like for us to know God better and to study the different attributes of God revealed to us through his word. And our series theme is found in the Gospel of John where we read, John 17:3 (ESV) “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

What is true life? What is eternal life? It's to know God and to know his son, Jesus, who is the highest revelation of God. So you want to know life? You want to have life?

It means to know God. And so this series is about that. It's about learning about the different attributes of God. And as theologian and author J.I. Packer writes in his book, “Knowing God,” he says this, “What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life?

To know God… Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.”
So writes Packer. And so God made us for himself, and he made us that he might know us and we might know him.

And this is what we're talking about. That's what this series is about, knowing God better. And in this series, so far, we've studied God's love. We've studied his might, that God is almighty. We've studied his mercy, his fatherhood.

And last week we studied his unchanging nature, that God is immutable, that he never changes. And now, one of the things we haven't talked about so far is that these attributes are in two categories. Theologians put them in two categories. And in my small group this past week, I brought that up, and several people said, we haven't mentioned that in the series. So I thought it was important to mention that this morning.

They said that I should. And so I said, “Well, the two categories are communicable and incommunicable attributes.” And so we have several medical people in my group. One is a nurse. And I asked her, “So if you hear communicable, does that make you think of God?”

And she says, “No, that makes me think of the flu, because it's a communicable disease. It's catching.” And I said, “Well, that's what the word means.” Communicable means it's catching. It can be communicated to you.

And so there are attributes of God that we've been studying, and we're going to study another one today that are communicable. They're “catching” from God. And so you could just kind of look at the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, chapter five and see some of those attributes of God that are given to us by the Holy Spirit. They're communicated to us so that we radiate, reflecting the glory of these attributes of God. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control among these and others.

These are communicable attributes of God. We've been talking about some of those. But then there are incommunicable attributes of God that he alone has. No one else in all of creation has them, because God is creator. He stands outside of creation.

And so these are attributes of God that he alone possesses. Some of the bigger ones would be like omniscience, all knowing. He knows everything. Omnipresence. He's everywhere.

There's nowhere that God isn't present and aware, omnipotent. He's all powerful. These are attributes that can't be communicated to us. They belong to him alone. He's eternal.

You can say, “Well, we get eternal life.” Yeah, but from a starting point. He's one without beginning nor end. He's eternal, as in he stands outside of time. He alone possesses that.

Well, I could go on. But you understand there are two categories. Now, one of the categories we said was communicable, and today we're going to be looking at God as faithful. And that is a category that's communicable, that we can catch it from God. He's a faithful God, and we can be a faithful people.

Now, don't you wish you knew somebody faithful, though? I mean, somebody dependable, somebody that would show up on time, somebody that would actually do what they promised? Don't you wish you knew somebody like that? You know, have you ever heard this phrase, “You can't get good help these days?” Don't you wish you could find somebody faithful?

And don't you wish you could be more faithful? You know, you might be here this morning and you've been hurt by someone that was unfaithful to you. Maybe it was in marriage, maybe it was a person that you thought was your friend. Maybe it was a financial situation where they borrowed something from you and you never saw it again, or you saw it again and they broke it and just dropped it off or you had to go to their house and get it. You know, you can really tell that someone is faithful when you're going through a hard time.

Have you ever heard of a “fair weather friend?” They disappear when the weather gets rough. You can tell that you have a faithful friend when you're in a needy moment, when nobody can really get anything out of you because you can't get anything out of yourself. And that's when you find a faithful friend. They show up at your door with soup and a sandwich, and you go, “You shouldn't have done that.”

You didn't really want to answer the door because you were so discouraged. And you look out the door, but then they come in and life comes with them. That's a faithful friend, isn't it? Don't you wish you had a faithful friend? That's what this scripture is about today.

God is faithful. When everyone and everything around you seems to be without faith. God is faithful. And I hope today that you know this faithful God. He never lets you down.

He's always there. He never leaves, he never forsakes and he provides and he protects. And if everyone else around you is unfaithful, he's faithful. And even when you have doubt and you're faithless, he remains faithful. How about that?

Don't you want to hear about this God? Well, that's what we're going to talk about. God is faithful. And our scripture today comes from the book of Lamentations. Have you heard any good sermons from the book of Lamentations lately?

If you got your Bible looking, go ahead and find Isaiah. It's a big book, and Jeremiah is right next to it, and it's a big book. And then there, that next book. Don't turn pages too fast.

You'll get to Lamentations. It's written by the weeping prophet Jeremiah. The whole book is about what people have called an “extended lament.” In other words, he's crying out to God in sorrow and grief and pain and trouble.

But in the midst of it, in chapter three, his soul rises up within him and reminds him of what matters. God is faithful. Now, he had a reason to lament. He'd gone through a terrible time. Even his calling was difficult.

I don't know if I had said “yes” to being a preacher, if I'd have got the calling to be a preacher like Jeremiah had. It's in Jeremiah, chapter seven. When God called him He said, “You shall speak to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you” (Jer. 7:27).

That was Jeremiah's calling. I think I'd have quit on the first day. He said, ‘Jeremiah, I want you to go plant a church that no one's going to come to. I want you to hold a meeting, and I want your attendance to be zero, your baptisms to be zero, your offering plate to come around and people take some money out instead of putting money in.

Now, some of those early meetings that we had as a church, I was concerned that maybe I did have the calling of Jeremiah. I still remember one particular meeting on a Wednesday night. We used to meet in my house in this particular Wednesday night meeting. It was the first summer of our church, and we've been running, like, 20-30 people in my living room on Wednesday nights.

We were going through the Bible. But this particular Wednesday night, my wife didn't even come. She was sick, and she stayed upstairs in the upstairs bedroom, and she said, “Don't even tell them I'm here.” I was on my own, and only two people showed up. And they were the two most introverted people that had been attending.

And there I was sitting, and they had these terrified looks on their faces like, are we it, or is it just us and you? And so they knew I asked questions. On Wednesday nights, I like to have a discussion about the Bible. And they were like, Don't look at me. I'm not answering any questions.

These two people never came back. We lost them that night.

I thought I had the calling of Jeremiah for a little while there. You're going to preach to people that won't listen to you, and you're going to call people that won't answer you. I thought I was worried. But Jeremiah didn't quit. You know, he didn't quit.

He kept believing, even after the destruction of Jerusalem, after he saw God's temple destroyed, after he saw all of God's people exiled and carried off by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, after he saw he had no home, no people, no nation, no nothing. He said, ‘You know what? Great is our God, and great is his faithfulness.’ He said, ‘I still have God. We can do that. We can be like Jeremiah.

We can place our hope in a God who is faithful. As we look at the text today, we're gonna be looking at Lamentations. We're gonna be looking for three reasons that we can place our hope in God's faithfulness. Let's look.
Lamentations 3:22-24 (ESV)

22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.” This is God's word. Amen. We're going to be looking at three reasons we can place our hope in God's faithfulness.

Here's the first:

1. Because of His faithful love.

Do you see it there in verse 22? “...steadfast love.” His faithful love.

“Steadfast” is a synonym for faithful. He's steadfast. He's faithful in his love for us. The word steadfast love or the phrase steadfast love. I'm going to teach you a Hebrew word

if you want to write it down. If you're taking notes, it's spelled, “ḥeseḏ.” You have to get some phlegm in the back of your throat if you're going to speak Hebrew.

”ḥeseḏ.” The equivalent in the New Testament would be the Greek word, “agape.” So often, if you read a Greek translation in the Old Testament, they encounter this word.

It's usually “agape.” We know that word better, don't we, as New Testament believers? And it means God's kind of love. Covenantal love, steadfast love. Faithful love.

That's what it means. It's a synonym for faithfulness. Sometimes it's translated as “loving kindness” or “covenantal love.” He loves us with a steadfast love. That never ceases.

Now, some of you may be looking at another translation that says it like this, that his love or his loving kindness because of it, because of God's loving kindness, we are never consumed or we are not cut off. I guess the difference between the two translations is how you look at this phrase - “never ceases.” It could also be cut off because of God's steadfast love. His love never cuts off.

So it's like a tap, you turn it all the way on and his love just keeps pouring. So it never ceases, never cuts off and acts on love. The ESV translation, which is what we're reading from, is a good translation. But some translations say that it never ceases to act on the recipient of the love.

And it says, because of God's love, because of his loving kindness and mercy, we are not cut off. I'd say both are true. So whichever translation you have, you're good. Yeah. God's love never ceases.

That's true. And because of God's love, we're not cut off. Isn't that right? That's true. Now, if you're looking at the text again, notice that the word, “LORD,” is in all caps.

It's in all capital letters. LORD. If it's in all caps, do you know what that means? It means the Hebrew word underneath that is “Yahweh,” or “Jehovah,” which is God's covenantal name, first revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14, where God reveals to him that his name is “I am that I am.” Moses says, “I don't know your name.”

God told him, “My name is I am,” which is “Yahweh,” or as some pronounce it, “Jehovah.” And that's the word we see here. If you see it in all caps, in the English translation. Now, you know this is God's covenantal name. The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases.

Because of his love, we are not cut off. We are not consumed. It never ceases. I'm so glad about that. He has the kind of love that keeps on loving.

And you can know this love. It says in Deuteronomy 7:9 (ESV) “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.” That's a lot of generations. A thousand generations.

Now, some of us here are in my age group, and so you've probably had some kids, and now you've got some grandkids. I got a bunch of them. I got about ten of them “crumb snatchers.” And it matters to me that they know Jesus. In fact, it matters more to me that they know Jesus than any other thing they might know, because I know that determines their eternity.

And I want them to know the love, the steadfast love of God, which is most perfectly revealed through the person of Jesus. And as I look at this verse, it says that he keeps. You can know him, and he keeps this steadfast love relationship to a thousand generations. I like that because I want this next generation, this generation of my grandkids and your grandkids and your children and this generation that's in the room, and then the next generation, I want them to know the love of God, the steadfast love of God that never quits.

Steadfast love, faithful love. And it's this kind of love that causes him to say, I want you and my family. God wants to be your father, and he wants you to be in his family. It says in 1 Corinthians 1:9 (ESV) “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” You've been called.

God wants you in his family through the relationship of Jesus. When we talk about faithfulness, we might ascribe it to people like this. We might say, ‘Well, he was a faithful husband.’ You know, you might say that. It might be on the stone there when the man dies. You might put it on his gravestone.

“Faithful husband,” “faithful father.” What do you think of when you think of that? You probably think, Well, he provided and he protected, and he was always there, and he showed up at ball games, and \he took care of his family. You probably have a list of things that you'd have in your heart and your mind: trustworthy, reliable, dependable, loyal. Wouldn't you be thinking about those things?

Marriage is supposed to be a picture of God's faithfulness. If you read Ephesians, chapter five, it has a list of things from the apostle Paul, teaching the church at Ephesus of what marriage should look like. And it starts out sounding like he's talking about husbands and wives because he says, “wives, submit to your husbands as unto the Lord.” And then he says to husbands, “husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for it.” And certainly he's talking about marriage, but then he shifts gears and says, “this is a mystery, but I'm talking about Christ in the church.”

Because what he's really saying is, ‘I want marriage to be a picture that reflects Christ in the church, so that your house is a lighthouse for the gospel, and so that your faithfulness to each other, then, is a depiction or reflection. It's a communicable attribute of God's faithfulness in the way you're faithful to one another.’

And so marriage is this idea of being loyal in your love and steadfast in your love. And it's supposed to be. But isn't our world filled with brokenness?

Now, my wife and I just celebrated 45 years of marriage on June 2. Praise the Lord. Amen. And you can applaud, but applaud God. Don't applaud me, because I've had some faithless days.

In those 45 years, I've had some faithful days. Come on, Lord, help. He helped me. But there have been some days where I doubted. I got mad at her, or she got mad at me, and you'd be like, Well, I can't believe that, preacher.

Well, no, I'm a sinner, too. Saved by grace, just like you, I get grumpy, I make mistakes, I lose my temper and say things I didn't mean. If we've got 45 years together, and we do, it's because of God's faithfulness to us and our desire to cling to him. Even when we weren't getting along that great now, we most of the time get along real good all the time now, because we got used to each other those first few years, we would occasionally hit a bump in the road. There'd be a faithless day, but we hung on.

Maybe you had a faithless day where either you or your spouse didn't hang on, and you've gone through divorce, or you've gone through abandonment or adultery or faithlessness, you know, but God didn't leave you. He says, “I'll never leave you nor forsake you.” And if you're here today, thinking, I've got a wound, I've been hurt. He loves you. He won't quit. You can hang on to him.

Jeremiah knows what he's talking about here. Nobody would even come to his preaching. Nobody would listen to him. Whenever he started writing the book of Jeremiah, he sent copies, early editions to the king. And the king sat in front of his fireplace, and as the scribe would read it to him, it was full of warnings about getting right with God, or else Babylon is going to come and take your kingdom away.

He took a knife, and it was a scroll, right? He's undoing the scroll. And as the scribe would read a part, he'd slice off that part and throw it in the fire. Slice off that part, throw it in the fire. They wouldn't even listen to his written preaching.

If he'd been on Facebook, they wouldn't have even clicked.

Only God was faithful to Jeremiah. But he said, ‘that's enough. My God is great, and he's faithful.’ Whether it's been you that was faithless or somebody else that was faithless to you, you can depend on a faithful God who loves you no matter what. And that really leads us to this second reason, that we can put our hope in a faithful God.

2. Because of His faithful mercy.

It's because of his faithful mercy. Do you see it there? We've said, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. But then we get in verse 22, it says, “...his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

His mercies never come to an end. Now, “mercies” in the plural is speaking of “acts of mercy,” not mercy as an attribute, as much as that which comes from the attribute of mercy. That there are mercies. There are actions that God takes because of his compassion and his mercy. And I'm glad about that, because if I'm the one that was faithless, I need a faithful God, even to me, and I need some forgiveness, because these acts of mercy, I think chief among them, chief among the mercies of God is forgiveness, because I need forgiveness,

don't you? It always takes “two to tango.”

There's no, the only innocent party of any relationship is God. All of us have our part that we blew, right?

Mercies. What might this be? Well, usually when we think of a merciful act, we're speaking of someone who ismoving from greater to lesser. In other words, this person has greater resources and this person is poor.

And so this person shows mercy to someone impoverished, and that means, from their riches or from their greater resource, they showed mercy, and it was an act of mercy. Are you with me? So mercy usually implies that it moves from greater to lesser, that someone who had something to give felt compassionate enough to give it.

That's certainly true, because God is great and he has unlimited resources and he has unlimited mercy that moves him to do that. It also implies that the person might not be deserving. Not only are they lesser and they have need, but they might be undeserving of that mercy. And that's certainly so, too, because we deserve God's judgment, because we've offended God because of our sin. But “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

And so, because of his love and because of his mercy, he sends Jesus as the chief reflection and revelation of his mercy to us, that he died in our place. “And while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

That's his mercy, because his mercy is most clearly seen in that he forgives us, that he loves us while we were undeserving of it. “His mercies are new every morning.” Now what does that mean? He's got all kinds of mercies, and he's pouring them out and they're fresh every day. Because we are so dependent on him.

If he's not merciful, we cease to exist. I mean, we don't even get the next breath unless we get a new mercy.

Oh, we think we're all independent and got it together. We need his mercy. And Jeremiah knows it. You know how you know it when everything gets stripped away from you, and there you barely stand and you say, “If it weren't for God…”

His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, you know, physical mercies. The idea of these mercies, they renew. This word, “mercy,” comes from the Hebrew word which means “bowels, or the center of the body.” Like God's mercy comes from this deep place, from within.

God. This is part of who he is. He just pours out “bowels of mercy.” Have you heard that phrase before?

Hospitality, leniency. In that he holds back punishment and instead gives us grace.

Instead of giving us what we deserve, he gives us the opposite of what we deserve. That's mercy. And it's new every morning. It's fresh every day.

And so here he is, and he's gone through it. And I didn't read the whole chapter because I could hardly tolerate the whole chapter. I can barely tolerate this book. It's so full of lament. But Jeremiah pours out the reality of how he feels in his emotions, because God's not afraid of us.

He's not afraid of our questions. He wants us to be real with him in our prayers. Let me just read a little bit of how Jeremiah is feeling here in chapter three.

He says,
1 I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath. 2 He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness instead of light. 3 Indeed, He keeps turning His hand against me all day long. 4 He has worn away my flesh and skin; He has shattered my bones.

5 He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. 6 He has made me dwell in darkness like those dead for ages. 7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains. 8 Even when I cry out and plead for help, He shuts out my prayer.

9 He has barred my ways with cut stones; He has made my paths crooked. 10 He is a bear lying in wait, a lion hiding in ambush.” He's talking about God. This is how he feels.

‘God, where are you?’ And verse 21 says, “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. 23 They are new every morning;

great is Your faithfulness!

He's thankful to the Lord because of who the Lord is. Everything else around him might be falling apart, but not his relationship with God. And even how he feels. He's not afraid to talk to God about how he feels, because he knows when he does that God will help him bring his feelings into alignment with the truth. So he writes it out. He journals it out, and he sends a copy to the king.

And the king cuts it off. But guess what? Jeremiah had made a copy, and we're reading it right now. In fact, you could read about it in the scripture. He goes back to his scribe and says, ‘I hadn't forgotten what I said.

Let's write it all down again.’ He keeps that copy. He doesn't turn that copy into the king. I'm glad he did, because we're reading it today. In Titus 3:5, it says, “He saved us,

not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit.” It's by virtue of his own mercy that he saved us, not because we deserved it, not because we earned it, but because of his mercy. In 2 Timothy 2:13 (ESV), this is Paul writing to Timothy … “if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.”

If you belong to him today and you're going through a season of doubt, you're going through a season right now, and you ask, “God, where are you and why'd you let this happen to me? Wasn't I living for you? Why'd you let this happen to me? Why am I going through this?

Why have I got that surgery coming up? Why is the medicine not working? Why did this person leave me? Why is this happening? Why did I lose my job?

God, where are you?” And you're going through a season of faithlessness, and you feel like God is distant and you're doubting. When you're faithless, he remains faithful. He's just waiting for you to come to your senses. He's still there.

He's faithful. He will not deny himself. And if you belong to him, you belong to him. And he's faithful. And he's loyal.

He's dependable and he's reliable. He's committed to you. Do you remember the story of David? The Bible describes David, King David, as a man after God's own heart. You know the guy.

He's the one who slew the giant when no one else would. He believed in God more than anybody in his generation. He was a man after God's own heart. But the Bible says that in the season when kings go to war, David stayed home. That should clue you in right there, right off the bat. Instead of going to work,

he stayed home, “slick.” You know what it is when you stay home “slick?” You ain't really sick, but you don't want to go to work. You call in “slick.”

Never heard that one before. Don't use that now. The pastor didn't mean it. That's a good example. Don't call in “slick.”

You're lying. But anyway, David didn't go to war. All of his men went to war and he was staying home.

He was somewhere he shouldn't have been. He went up on the roof of his palace. He's looking out over the kingdom that belonged to him. And he was feeling good about it.

And he looked out on another rooftop and ironically, there was a woman there taking a bath whose name was Bathsheba. And he was like, man. Now, it was okay that he saw her by accident, but it was the “second long look” that got him in trouble. He couldn't help the first look, but the second look belonged to him. And he goes, who is that?

He asked one of the servants who she was. ‘Oh, that's Uriah, the Hittites wife, Bathsheba. David says to him, ‘tell her to come over. I'd like to meet her.’ So she comes over and he ends up committing adultery with her.

You know the story. He commits adultery with her. And a few months later, she sends word to him, ‘I'm pregnant.’ And Daniel says, ‘Uh oh,’ because all of his men have been off to battle this whole time.

They're laying siege to a city over there. Daniel sends word to Joab, his general, and he says, ‘Send Uriah the Hittite home. I have a message I'd like to send by him. Send him home as a messenger.’ David thinks, I know I can handle this. I can cover this up.

Uriah comes home and Daniel has dinner with Uriah. Daniel is hanging out with him like they are long lost buds. This is hte man he'd committed adultery against with his wife. Daniel says to Uriah, ‘Hey, go home. Spend the night with your wife and come back and see me in the morning.

I want to send a message to the commander, and I want you to carry it. I'll give it to you in the morning.’ Unbeknownst to Uriah, Daniel had big plans. If Uriah goes home and sleeps with his wife, then Daniel is good. It'll be Uriah’s kid. No one will know the difference.

But that's not what Uriah did. Because Uriah was a faithful man, he was an honorable man, he slept on the porch of the palace.

He slept outside. The word came from the servants, ‘Uriah didn’t go home; he slept outside.’ David thinks, Uh oh. And so the next morning when Uriah comes back, David asks,

’Why didn’t you go home and sleep with your wife? And Uriah replies, ‘How could I sleep with my wife when my brothers in arms are sleeping on the cold ground on the battlefield?’

ThenDavid, the man after God's own heart, wrote a message to his general, Joab. And he says, ‘When Uriah gets there, send him to the front lines right in front of the gate, and then pull back the troops so that he dies.’ And Joab kept that word. And Uriah the Hittite died. So, Daniel stayed home. He let his eyes look somewhere they shouldn't have looked.

He committed adultery, then he committed first-degree murder. David, a man after God's own heart. Now, Gary, why are you telling us this story? Because David needed some mercy and he knew where to get it. Not one of us is better than David.

Every one of us has committed sin. Maybe we haven't done it the same way David did, but we're all sinners. And David knew what to do about this. And David was a man after God's own heart, not because he wasn't a sinner, because he was a sinner. It's because he knew the Lord and he knew how to go get mercy and forgiveness.

That's what made him a man after God's own heart; he knew God. And so he writes this in his diary, Psalm 51:1 (ESV) “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” He wrote this right after Prophet Nathan came to him and said, ‘God knows what you did and as a result, that firstborn child between you and Bathsheba is going to die.

Not only that, but your whole kingdom. You're going to experience one of your own sons treating you the way you treated Uriah.’

”Have mercy on me, o God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.” He doesn't go to God and say, ‘You know, I'm the one who killed Goliath, remember? You know, I'm the one that's laying aside stuff to build you a temple. You know God,

I've been your man.’ No, he didn't go to God like that. He went to God and said, ‘Don't judge me according to me, because I'm a sinner.

According to your mercy, according to your steadfast love. Look at your accounts in heaven. Look at that and forgive me according to that, not according to me, because if you look at me, you won't be able to forgive me. Forgive me according to your mercy and your love.

Wash me with hyssop, make me whiter than snow, clean out the stain.’

God's faithful, and he did. In the book of acts in the New Testament, it reports once again that there was no one like David, that he was a man after God's own heart, not because he was a good man, but because he wasn't. He was a sinner. He was a messed up man, just like all of us messed up men and women in this room today. But because of a good God and because of Jesus and because of the mercy and grace and love of God, he made him clean.

Here's the third reason that we can put our hope in a faithful God.

3. Because of His faithful provision.

We're in the final part of verse 24. We're in verse 24. He says, “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”This is Jeremiah.

He's lost his home, he's lost his nation, he's lost the temple of God, he's lost his people. They've been carried off into captivity in Babylon. He's lost everything. He says, ‘You know, I didn't lose everything. My soul has just reminded me, I didn't lose God.

I still have him, and he's my portion, he's my provision. I'm going to be okay. He's my share, he's my allotment, he's my inheritance, I have God, he's my portion, I'm going to be okay. I've lost everything, but I have God. I haven't lost God, I have him.’ He says, 24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul…”

Now my flesh has been crying out for help, but my soul knows the truth, and my soul says, hope in God. Great is your faithfulness, he's my portion, therefore, I will hope in him.

Not in his provision, not in his stuff, not that if he does what I want him to, not if he fixes this, that no, I'm going to hope in him. And whatever he has for me, it's going to be what I want. I'm going to hope in him because he's faithful. He knows what's better for me than I know. I'm gonna hope in him.

Right in the middle of his lament, he has a moment of clarity as he gets to know his God better. You know, it seems to me that we learn the most about God and about ourselves in the valley, in suffering. If only we'll look to him.

He reveals the most about himself at those kinds of times. My portion. He's my portion. In the book of Philippians, Paul writes to the church at Philippi. He says, Philippians 4:19 “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Every need. Because if Jesus is yours, if he's your portion, then everything else is yours, because everything belongs to him. If he's your portion, you can be at peace. Now, tomorrow's the first day of the month. Some of you are thinking, Ooh, my mortgage is due.

My car payment's due. I wish you hadn't brought that up. But God is my portion. He's my provision.

He will meet all my needs.

I have a surgery scheduled this week. God is my portion. Whatever it is. To begin to think like that, God, do you believe this? God will supply every need of yours according to his riches.

And not only will he provide, but he protects, he's a faithful protector. 2 Thessalonians 3:3 (ESV) But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one. He will guard you.

And even in temptation, he'll give you a way out. He'll protect you.

Abraham was asked by God to take his son, his only son, by Sarah, the son of God's miraculous provision, the promised son, the “son of laughter.” Isaac means “laughter.” He was told to take him and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah. And as they traveled up the mountain, Isaac said, ‘Father, I see we have the wood and we have the fire, but we don't have the sacrifice.’ And Abraham, by faith, the scripture says, ‘God will provide a lamb.’

He believed that. He goes up, and he lays his son down on the stone. And as he lifts his knife to follow through, an angel stops him. And then he looks, and he sees a ram with its horns caught in a thicket. And God had provided a sacrifice.

And on that place, Abraham gave God a new name. Have you heard it before? “Jehovah Jireh,” the Lord will provide. And he named the place. I'm going to call this place “Jehovah Jireh.” Can you imagine the way that old man skipped down that hill?

”Jehovah Jireh.” He wrote himself a song I bet that day about “Jehovah Jireh,” the Lord will provide.

Anytime you have a need, I want you to say to yourself, “God is faithful.” “Jehovah Jireh,” he will provide and be at peace. His ultimate provision is Jesus. He is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. He is my portion.

He is your portion. All of our needs are met in him. And so that we could say, as Jeremiah does, “The Lord is my portion.” Except maybe I would like to say it like this. “The Lord Jesus is my portion” because he is mine and I am his.

And all my needs are met in him.

Therefore, I will hope in him, I will trust in him, I will depend on him, and I will ask him to communicate to me his faithfulness so that I might be more faithful to him, first of all, but to my wife and to my children, to my grandchildren and to you, the church that God has entrusted to me. God, I want to be like you, Jesus. I want to be faithful. Don't you?

Back in 1923, a Kentucky man named Thomas Chisholm wrote a poem based on Lamentations, chapter 3:22-25. He'd been a pastor, but in his declining health, he had to leave his congregation. He no longer had the health to lead a church. In the years that followed, financial issues arose from hospitalizations and medical bills, and he continued to have financial trouble. Many people would have become bitter against God, and during this time of health and financial crisis, you would have thought Thomas would have been bitter, but he did quite the opposite.

Yes, he was no longer a minister, but now he had more time to focus on God and write out how he felt. And so he wrote poems. Yes, he had health problems, but God had given him a wife and two beautiful daughters that were his constant support. Yes, he had financial struggles, but he never lost his house, and they never went hungry and always seemed to have just enough to get by. No matter the struggle, Thomas always chose to see God's faithfulness.

His positive outlook never shifted. In 1923, he wrote a little poem, and he sent it to another Reverend William Runyan, a musician of the Moody Bible Institute and editor of Hope Publishing Company in Chicago. And he put it to music. He put the poem to music and it's become a beloved hymn.

It probably wouldn't have become a beloved hymn because it kind of sat on the shelf. A few people sang it at a few churches, but then evangelist Billy Graham heard the song at one meeting he was at, and he had it added, and so it became a constant at the evangelism crusades of Billy Graham. The song goes like this: “Great is thy faithfulness, O God, my father, there is no shadow of turning in thee. Thou changest not thy compassions, they fail not as thou has been, thou forever wilt be.

Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided.

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

Do you know this faithful God? Do you know his steadfast love, his mercies that are new every morning, his provision through his chief portion, which is Jesus? Let's pray.

Lord, I pray first for the person that's far from you today that came in without a relationship with you today. But you've been stirring their heart through your spirit. You've been inviting them into the family. Would you say “yes” to Jesus right now, right in your chair, right where you're at? Maybe you're watching online.

Wherever you're at right now, you can say “yes” to a relationship with Jesus. What's that look like? It's a conversation that begins with a conversation of faith through prayer. Will you pray with me? Pray like this.

Dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner and I repent of my sin. And I turn to you looking for forgiveness. I believe you died on the cross for my sin and that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. I believe that with all my heart. Now come into my life, forgive me of my sin and make me a child of God.

I want to follow you as my lord and savior the rest of my days. If you're praying a prayer of faith, believing the Bible says that he will save you, you'll begin the adventure of the abundant life of following Jesus as a new believer. Others are here today, and you're a Christ follower. You're a follower of Jesus, but you've been having some faithless days. Maybe today started out a little faithless.

Maybe you're like the father who Jesus asked, “Do you believe?” when he was asking for healing for his son? And the father said, “Lord, I believe. Help me with my unbelief.” Is that you today? Lord, I've been doubting.

I confess it to you right now. I've been faithless. I haven't been living up to the calling you put on my life. I haven't been trusting you for provision. I've been complaining.

Lord, forgive me. I recommit to you afresh. Right now I want to be faithful to you. Help me with my unbelief. I pray it now in Jesus’ name.

Amen.