Finding Hope In The Midst Of Despair
Notes
Transcript
I want to invite you to turn with me to Lamentations 3.
Good morning Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church!
I consider it a great honor and privilege to be with you this morning and to preach God’s word to you.
My name is Jason Purdy, and I have the privilege of being the lead pastor at Christ Covenant Church here in Rocky Mount.
We are a fellow reformed baptist church.
Your pastor and I met a couple of years back through our connection to the Pillar Network of churches.
I’m sure you have been learning about the Pillar Network some from him, but we are a group of reformed baptist churches who are doctrinally aligned and missionally driven to help equip, plant, and revitalize churches together.
Our Eastern North Carolina Pillar pastors get together once a month to encourage and learn from one another, and we are about to host our Equip and Edify conference in the beginning of April at Christ Covenant church and would love for you all to come.
Today’s sermon is going to focus on the topic of finding hope in the midst of despair.
While despair may not be the most popular topic for a sermon, it is certainly one of those almost universal experiences.
If you have lived long enough to become a teenager, surely you have experienced the feeling of despair in one degree or another.
It may surprise you to know that the Bible deals very openly and honestly with topics such as suffering, anxiety, depression, and other emotional problems.
Despair by definition is simply the absence of hope.
Despair can be experienced due to the loss of a family member
or due to having a rebellious child who constantly makes bad choices and is racing toward destruction.
Despair can set in in the midst of a difficult marriage when you see no way out and nothing improving.
It can be due to the loss of a job, the inability to get pregnant, an unmet desire to be married,
Despair can set in due to constant conflict and tensions in relationships,
or when a dream of yours is shattered.
Despair can set in due to a sinful habit that you have fought against over and over again, but have finally succumbed to once again.
Despair can also just be a dark cloud in your mind telling you your life is not going well and nothing is ever going to get any better.
We all struggle with despair from time to time, and some of us, most of the time.
The book of Lamentations is a personal journal most likely written by the Prophet Jeremiah in the midst of his own despair.
Jeremiah was a prophet of God who lived during the reign of King Josiah.
That’s important because Judah and Jerusalem has suffered under the reign of many evil kings.
The major percentage of Kings and Chronicles read like this:
“So and so became king of Judah or Israel when they were so many years old, they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and led God’s people into sin, and then they died.”
But, then comes King Josiah.
2 Chronicles 34:2 says: He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in the ways of David his father; and he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.
This was finally a reprieve from bad leadership.
Jeremiah grew up under the godly leadership of King Josiah.
King Josiah was the one who finally once again found God’s law and began to read and obey it after it had been ignored for generations.
The people of God began giving money in order to restore God’s temple.
They also once again began to observe the Passover and declare that the God of Israel was their salvation and deliverance.
See, Jeremiah was raised under godly leadership and a hopeful time for Judah and Jerusalem.
He was called to be a prophet of God during a time of blessing and spiritual renewal.
He was called to be God’s prophet during a time of great hope.
Yet:
10 See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
What could this mean for Jeremiah?
We know from God’s word that it means the time and blessing and favor was not going to last.
King Josiah dies, his son becomes king, and does what is evil in the sight of the Lord.
God sovereignly allow King Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan kind of Babylon, to capture and burn the city of Jerusalem, God’s holy city.
Jeremiah was there when it happened.
Jeremiah saw men of Jerusalem slaughtered, both young and old.
He saw the city burn and the walls pummeled to the ground.
God’s people were taken to be slaves in a foreign land.
And all the while, Jeremiah, the prophet of God, only has one message for the people: you are being rightly punished for your sin.
Let’s hear God’s word written through Jeremiah:
1 I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3 surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.
4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
5 he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
6 he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.
7 He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
8 though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
9 he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked.
10 He is a bear lying in wait for me,
a lion in hiding;
11 he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
12 he bent his bow and set me
as a target for his arrow.
13 He drove into my kidneys
the arrows of his quiver;
14 I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,
the object of their taunts all day long.
15 He has filled me with bitterness;
he has sated me with wormwood.
16 He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
17 my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
18 so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord.”
19 Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
20 My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
Who is it that Jeremiah said has done all this to him? He’s talking about God!
Have you ever felt like your prayers aren’t getting past the ceiling?
God, I am crying out to you, but you are not responding, and I don’t know why.
Have you ever felt like God was a bear lying in wait to tear you to pieces?
An archer making you a target for his arrow?
He says, “I have forgotten what happiness feels like.”
These are the words of Jeremiah, the prophet of God.
1. Even God’s People Can Find Themselves In Extremely Dark Places
1. Even God’s People Can Find Themselves In Extremely Dark Places
Would you just consider with me for a moment that God chose to put these words in the Bible?
God chose to put these words in the Bible for those who suffer because He knows how you feel, and he wants you to know that he knows how you feel.
May we have such a high view of God’s sovereignty to believe that God rules over the suffering in our lives.
May we have such a high view of God’s power that He could end all suffering in an instant if He so chose and willed to do.
May we have such a high view of God’s compassionate care to believe he cares deeply for us in the midst of suffering.
And may we have such a high view of God’s purposeful love toward us that we believe God is doing something glorious in the midst of our suffering and the suffering of the world.
As I read through the passage, did anyone feel oddly comforted by it?
Maybe you thought, I did know I could talk to God that way!
I mean, I know I should praise God in prayer, and confess my sins in prayer, and thank God in prayer, and ask for things in prayer,
But, I never really thought I could just be gut honest in prayer to God about where I’m really at and what I’m truly feeling.
But, God includes prayers like this in the Bible, because He knows that in the midst of despair,
What we need most is not to have all of our questions answered,
What we need most is a loving Father God who understands us and will never leave or forsake us even through the pain!
Maybe for some of you, the application to the message today will be to get somewhere alone with God and just pour out your heart to Him like Jeremiah did in our passage today.
When was the last time you just poured out your heart before God with passion, pain, and honesty?
You could write it, or you could find a really quiet spot and pray out loud to him.
God, this is where I am, and it’s not where I want to be.
I don’t understand it.
I can’t bear the weight of it.
I don’t know what to do with it.
I don’t have the strength to go on nor do I even have the motivation to try!
I need you! God help me!
You see, praying difficult and gut honest prayers to God are not dishonoring to Him!
For one, He knows where you are at.
He knows how you are feeling and what you are thinking!
You are not going to surprise Him with a harsh word or a desperate cry!
Actually, the prayer of desperation brings great honor to God because it comes from a heart that says, “God, I want to praise again! I want to worship again! I want to find joy in you again! I want to share about your goodness with others again!”
23 Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
Sometimes in order to keep your heart with vigilance before God, you must pour out to him your true thoughts and true feelings before your Father God who loves you and cares for you.
One of the reasons I chose this passage for today was so that I could share with you a little about my own story of God’s grace in my life.
I went straight from high school to Bible college and straight from Bible college to seminary.
I was passionate to know and serve the Lord.
I met my wife and we have our first two children during this time.
And God called us to the international mission field of India, and we believed we would serve there all of our days.
Yet, the the midst of following our calling, I experienced a prolonged season of heightened anxiety that finally led to a dark depression during a first months in India.
God put me in a place where I did not have the strength to move forward.
I despaired of my life and seriously considered ending my life.
I struggled to get out of bed, and I spent many hours weeping in emotional distress.
During that time, God used passages like Lamentations 3 to keep my heart open to him by allowing me to cry out and weep and wail to him in the midst of my desperation.
Oh church, cling to God’s word.
No matter where you are at, there is life and salvation in the Word of the Lord!
After twenty verses of desperate lament, Jeremiah makes a stunning transition in verse 21.
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
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.”
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
2. There Is Always Hope As You Call To Mind The Character Of God Toward You
2. There Is Always Hope As You Call To Mind The Character Of God Toward You
This is one of the most stunning transitions in all of the Bible.
In the midst of deep despair, Jeremiah calls something to mind that gives him hope.
You see, we do not get to always choose the state of our physical health, or our emotional health, or the state of our finances, our marriage, our family, or our job, while we seek to live wisely in these ways, there is still much outside of our control.
But, we always have a choice in what we call to mind.
What Jeremiah called to mind and set his mind on gave him deep and lasting hope in the midst of his suffering.
What was it that Jeremiah called to mind?
Jeremiah called to mind the character of God, and this gave him hope.
Verse 22 - The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
Throughout the Bible, the love of God is displayed as a steadfast commitment.
It is so much more than a feeling, it is a covenant commitment.
A covenant commitment exists whether the warm and feeling of love is present or not.
You see, emotions are created as followers and are disordered if they are leaders.
It is not the feelings of love that should keep us committed to our relationships.
It is the commitment of love that does that.
Now, as you make good on your commitments, many times the feelings follow.
But even when they don’t, the commitment of love is as strong as ever.
Consider:
7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
Psalm 136 repeats this phrase 26 times: for His steadfast love endures forever.
Prophesying of Jesus Christ in:
9 In all their affliction he was afflicted,
and the angel of his presence saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
3 the Lord appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
1 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”
17 The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
Oh that we would dwell all the more on the steadfast love of the Lord toward us - His children!
32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Back to verse 22-23: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
You see, in the midst of suffering, it is tempting to believe that God is punishing you for your sin - that your suffering is evidence to the fact that you are receiving the punishment and wrath of God.
But for those who are God’s children, the gospel tells us that God’s son Jesus took all the punishment and wrath due our sin on the cross.
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
In great love, Jesus suffered in our place for our sin, God’s punishment and wrath placed on Jesus so that there was none left for us!
This is how God made possible for us for his mercies to be new every morning and his faithfulness toward us to never come to an end.
All his punishment and wrath toward us was poured out on Jesus so all that is left for us is mercy, grace, the gift of righteousness, and salvation before God.
This is great news, but where does it leave us as people who still experience suffering?
What could God possibly be doing in the midst of the suffering in our lives?
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
God uses all things, even the trials of suffering, to shape us more into the image of His son.
That is what we are created for!
We were created for something so much more glorious than to grow up, get a job, make money, retire, and die!
We were created to find all of our needs met and desires satisfied in worship to our great God and savior.
Do you see how understanding the good God is doing in the midst of your suffering can provide some relief to your soul?
Can you dare to believe that God is working all things for your ultimate good and His ultimate glory?
For we are being prepared for His presence.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
You were made for God.
He is doing all things in your life in order to restore the image of God in you.
Job understood this, so in the midst of His suffering, He was able to say
15 Though he slay me, I will hope in him;
yet I will argue my ways to his face.
Listen to what A.W. Tozer says about God use of suffering in a person’s life:
“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.
Verse 24 - “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
People are tempted to place their hope in all different kinds of things in this world.
25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
This is the essence of idolatry.
What is the ultimate thing that you love, fear, and pursue?
If it is not the creator God, then it is something in creation.
So, what God does throughout our Christian walk is he removes things from our lives that we are tempted to hope in and love more than He do Him.
I was tempted to find hope and comfort in my identity as a missionary.
God removed that in order to move me to more fully hope in Him alone.
The Lord is my portion says my soul.
I do not ultimately hope in my health, my job, my family, or my money, those portions will never eternally satisfy.
The Lord is my portion.
Verse 25-26: 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.
(fill in comments before ending)
You see Jesus Christ is the true and better Jeremiah.
Jeremiah called to mind the closeness of God toward him in the midst of his suffering.
Jesus was forsaken by God the Father in the midst of his suffering for us.
Jeremiah experienced a moment of God’s wrath.
Jesus took the full weight of God’s wrath for the sins of the whole world.
Jeremiah felt like his prayers were not going past the ceiling.
Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jeremiah felt as though God had torn him to pieces and his arrow would pierce him.
Jesus experienced being torn to pieces and was literally pierced through the heart.
Jeremiah was the laughingstock to His people for a time.
Jesus has been the laughingstock to all generations who have claimed that it is foolish to say what he did on the cross was the only way of salvation.
God knows our despair and is acquainted with our grief.
Jesus is our eternally living hope who walks with us through every
moment of our life and who will be our portion forever.
Christians, I urge you to pursue God in His word. He is not found in some mystical experience.
He is found in the spiritual disciplines of the Word of God, the Spirit of God, in prayer to God, and in the community of God – the church.
Do not despair for the church of Jesus Christ. There is hope!
He will build His church and the gates of hell will not defeat it.
If you are not a Christian here today, despair is actually exactly where you should find yourself.
The payment for our sin against God is death.
But hear me, the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead.
You can walk out of here with a living hope!
If you are believing in Jesus today, do not leave here today without telling someone else about it!
Tell someone that you have been convinced that Jesus is Lord today and that he has saved you from your sin.
The church will rejoice with you and would love to invite you into the family of Christ.
