Jack Graham - New Morning Mercies
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God is faithful. And the title of this message is "New Morning Mercies" from Lamentations, chapter 3. Yes, Lamentations if you can find it in your Bible. It's next to a big book called Jeremiah. It was probably, most likely written by the prophet Jeremiah. And in just a moment we're going to look at one of the most famed passages in all of the Bible, and it is a scripture to live by every single day, every hour, every minute. The prophet Jeremiah, a great man, God raised him up to preach to the nation of Israel in the midst of their rebellion. And they didn't listen to God's word, and so God judged Israel and sent them into captivity, 70 years of captivity and with the Babylonians. The nation itself was dying. It was devastated. All hope seemed to be gone.
And so Jeremiah gives us a lamentation. The book of Lamentation is not for the weak of heart or the faint of heart. It's filled with tears and crying and grief and mourning and, yes, lamentation. But right in the middle of this desert of a book, really depressing in so many ways, there is an oasis, and the promises of God spring forward. Verse 21 of Lamentations 3: "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".
The big question in this lamentation from Jeremiah; it really speaks of the grief that everyone experiences in this world is "how". It's a Hebrew word that shows up multiple times qavah which means how? How? We see it in chapter 2, verse 1, how? So "How is this happening"? is the question. Often, we ask a "why" question. "Why is this happening"? But Jeremiah says "How is this happening"? And there's a difference, isn't there? "How could this happen? How did we get here? How am I ever going to get through this situation in my life? How will I ever make it"? As a pastor now for over five decades, I've heard the how question along with the why question numerous times. "How did we get here in the ICU of this hospital"? "How did my marriage fall apart"? "How am I so sick"? And at funerals, "How is it possible that my loved one is gone"? "How is it possible that my husband, my wife is gone"? How?
Jeremiah, as a result of the how question is very depressed because it appears to be a hopeless situation. And he is crying. He said, "My eyes are flooded with tears like a river". He's lamenting. That's a word that we don't use much in our vocabulary today, lamenting, or even this word lamentation. But have you considered the role of lamenting in your own walk with God? In your own prayer life? We think of our walk with God, our times of prayer as being praise, yes; and petition, but a part of our prayer life is pouring out our pain before the Lord. God wants us to be so honest with Him and open with Him that when we hurt, when we're crying, that we bring our tears to Him, that we bring our troubles to Him. Our pain, our anguish, our distress.
And when we come with lamentation before the Lord, pouring out our pain as Jeremiah, the great prophet is doing, this includes our anger and our depression and our despondency and our grief. And when we do this, we find a caring and compassionate God, a faithful Father who cares deeply for us and whose strength and everlasting arms hold us up. Lamenting, it's not just whining or venting; it's the sincere desire of a believer to turn to the trustworthiness of God, to lean on Him. Jesus prayed like this. In Israel we were just in the Garden of Gethsemane where there are olive trees from the ancient days where Jesus prayed the night He was arrested. And He's lamenting and He's pouring out this prayer and sweat drops of blood are oozing from His skin. He is lamenting.
Same thing happens when Jesus at those same hours as he stood before Jerusalem having rejected Him, Jerusalem having rejected Him, and He begins to sob. He begins to weep. And He laments the judgment that is coming upon the people that He loves. If we were to include lamenting in our praying, we would find ourselves drawn closer to God. We would. Peter makes this point in 1 Peter 5:6 and 7. "Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time, casting all of your anxieties upon Him because He cares for you".
So there's lamentation. I love to sing songs like this morning of declaration and exaltation of Christ, and supplication as we offer our requests to God. But there is a time and there is a place in our lives for lamentations. In the middle of all this lamentation, comes this exhortation. Verse 21: there's a mindset change. He says, "But this comes to mind". Have you ever just, in times of lamentation and depression in your life, have you ever just grabbed yourself by the scruff of the neck, if you will, and spoken to yourself and changed your mind about the way you're thinking? That's what happened to Jeremiah. In spite of the circumstances all around him, the death and the despair and the depression. He says, "But when I call to mind, I have hope".
Someone described H-O-P-E with this acrostic, Holding On with Patient Endurance. I have hope. I've often defined hope as a sure confidence that our lives are in His hands. The certainty, the confidence that our lives are in His hands. You may be down and feeling despairing and even hopeless today. Suicide is way up in America and around the world; people are giving up. These are dark days for so many people. But as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, don't allow the devil to blow out the light of hope in your heart and in your mind. In the name of Jesus don't you dare quit! God is not finished with you!
Jeremiah said in his book, 29, verse 11, the book of Jeremiah 29:11, He said, "I know the plans for you, not to harm you, but to give a future and a hope". And what is this hope? Hope lives in the promises of God. Hope is been described as oxygen for the soul. You can't live without oxygen and you can't live without hope. And where does hope live? Hope lives in the promises of God. In God Himself. It is trusting God and believing God. It's believing the facts, not the feeling. It's believing what God says, not what the devil says or you say. And when we refocus and reset and repent, then we find that we can trust God and believe Him for every need in our lives because He is our God of hope.
Romans 15, verse 13 says: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing that you may abound in hope". Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:3 that "Our God is the Father of mercies". And we see it here, don't we? That God is faithful, that He is compassionate, that His mercies are new every single day. With every new morning comes new mercies. And we have this promise; we have these promises. There's a promise in the Bible for your every need. Did you know that? For every battle you fight, for every burden you bear, for every problem you face. And all of the promises of God are, yes and amen, in Jesus Christ. You can persevere. You can hold on because of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.
So here is the truth: God is faithful. Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verse 9 puts it this way: "Know therefore that the Lord". You see, we don't live by what we feel; we live by what we know! "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". And after all of these generations, after all these mornings, after all of these years, God is still faithful! He's faithful to me. And every promise that He gives us in His Word is unshakeable and guaranteed it is unbreakable, it is infallible because He has made a covenant with us; He has given us a promise. And the character of God is at stake on His promises.
God cannot lie! And when God makes a promise to us, we can count on the fact that He will always come through with every promise. When we say God is faithful, we're talking about His integrity; we're talking about His character. We're speaking of His infallibility, His dependability. And His promises are because of this unceasing love and because of His great, mighty power to do what He says He will do. God's love for you is greater than you can ever know. Jeremiah once again, the prophet, he wept a lot but he also worshiped a lot. And he said, "God loves you with an everlasting love." Jeremiah 31:3. So when it says His mercies are new every morning, that His compassions do not fail, that God is faithful, it means that His loving care is always for us and with us.
Don't rush past these words! God loves you! You are His child! Let that sink down deep within you! God's love, His grace is dependable; it is faithful; it is eternal and He will not allow anything in your life as His child that is not motivated by His love for you! Did you hear that? God will not allow anything in your life that is not motivated by His love for you! And when you weep like Jeremiah, and lament and cry, and wonder how on earth, how am I going to get through? qavah in the Hebrew. qavah. How?! Remember hope! Remember your hope in Jesus Christ because God faithful. And that means that we can have confidence in Christ when we pray. It means that we can be confident when we are tempted, that we can overcome temptation.
For what does 1 Corinthians 10:13 say? When we are tempted, "God is faithful and will not allow us to be tempted more than we can bear. And with the temptation will make a way of escape". Why? Because God is faithful. And when you are realizing the faithfulness of God and remembering the faithfulness of God, you are courageous to face anything in front of you. Your faith because of the faithfulness of God overcomes every fear. The prophet's point in all of this is when you don't understand what's going on, when you say, "How?", that the question really isn't "how?"; it is Him.
You can live with hope in Him because the future is in His hands. His compassion for you, His love for you is limitless. And when you lift your thoughts from the ashes and in your mind, you throw open the windows of hope, you are strengthened with "strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow".
Those are lines in a poem written by a man named Thomas Chisholm. He was a newspaper man, saved in his mid-twenties and ordained as a minister a few years later. But he was known locally for his poems, and he wrote many poems. He continues to write poems in spite of the fact that his health issues, he had major health issues and he couldn't really fulfill his calling as he desired. He couldn't really be the pastor, the preacher that he wanted to be, but he kept writing the words to these poems. And he wrote a poem from Lamentations chapter 3, among many. He sent it to a man by the name of Thomas Runyon who worked at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.
And as Runyon was looking through all these poems, he was taken by this one from the words of Lamentations chapter 3. And he prayed and God gave him a melody. God gave him the music to this poem which you now know is the song Great is Thy Faithfulness. You think of this song, a hymn as being really old. Well, it's not that old. It really came into prominence in the 1930's and the 1940's. And in reality it wasn't going anywhere much as a song until a young baritone singer by the name of George Beverly Shea sang it on the radio in Chicago.
"Great is Thy Faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not; As Thou has been Thou forever wilt be". And there was a young evangelist by the name of Billy Graham who heard Bev Shea sing those words on the radio. He reached out and contacted Mr. Shea, asked him to join him as a young evangelist in his evangelistic ministry. And the two coupled up later with others, Cliff Barrows, primarily. And in every crusade, they began to sing Great is Thy Faithfulness. Bev sang it; the congregation began to sing it. It was sung in 1954 when Billy was preaching in London, and it captured the hearts of the people of Britain.
"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! Summer and winter, springtime and harvest, Sun, moon and stars in their courses above. Join with all nature in manifold witness To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. 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! Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide; (And here's the line I love so much) Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, Blessings all mine, ten thousand besides! Great is Thy faithfulness (sing it)! 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"! True! He is forever faithful. The psalmist said in Psalm 37. "Feed on His faithfulness".
Feed on the faithfulness of God. When you feed on something, you desire it, and then you devour it! And then you digest it. You feed on the faithfulness of God. God's faithful love. You know what we need? More of this prayer. We need more. You know, the problem with prayer? You know the problem with prayer? We don't do it enough! James said, "You have not because you ask not". Jesus said, "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened unto you". And when you trust in God who is faithful and true, He will never break a promise. When you go to Him in prayer, you can count on the fact that in His time, in His way He will answer.
Life is fragile. Life is described in the Bible as a vapor, it's a mist on the morning dew. Our heart is just one heartbeat away from eternity. We're one heartbeat away from standing before God! We think we've got 70 or 80 years more, maybe more to pursue our goals, to raise our families. Maybe, but maybe not. We're all just one heartbeat away. And the fact is, life is brief no matter how long you live it on this earth. And eternity is long and you need a hope that sustains life. "Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow". And a hope that endures beyond the grave so that you win in life. This happens, the mercies of God, the love of God, because of what Christ has done for us. It hadn't happened in the book of Lamentations, but those mercies that are new every morning to us, they came at the cross. Hope came out of the grave when Jesus burst forth out of the tomb. And He is alive, and therefore, hope is alive because Jesus is alive.