New Mercies Every Morning
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning everyone!
Please open your Bibles with me to the book of Lamentations. This is our last week of what has been - for many of us - a really tough year. While it can sometimes be easy to remember all the reasons it was difficult, what I want us to concentrate on this morning is the fact that it doesn’t have to continue that way. Circumstances will often be out of our ability to control, but we often forget the unfailing promise that the mercy of the Lord is new each morning. In other words, every day we wake up is a gift from the Lord.
I think its important to distinguish and define what we are talking about - so as to clear up any potential confusion. There is a difference between mercy and grace in the Bible - it is subtle, but distinct and important.
Mercy = receiving what is not deserved
Grace = not receiving what is deserved
Think of it in terms of punishment - by God’s grace, we receive forgiveness that we do not deserve and by God’s mercy, He gives us access to forgiveness through His son’s blood shed on the cross in our place. The difference can be subtle, but it is important.
Mercy is receiving what is not deserved while Grace is not receiving what is deserved.
Lamentations is a book whose author remains anonymous, but is often attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, though the evidence for that relies more on tradition than anything stated clearly in the text. It consists of five laments, specifically over the destruction of Jerusalem in 586BC by the Chaldeans. It is believed that the book was written in or close to the city’s ruins. A lament is a God-centered prayer of honest, raw expressions of sorrow, pain and confusion over the world’s brokenness, leading to renewed hope and trust in God’s promises. It's "crying out to God in the midst of hurt". The book of Lamentations for Christians is especially helpful because it shows us that we can bring our hurt and emotions to the Lord without abandoning faith - there’s the idea out there that being a Christian somehow means that we should be so evenly keeled that expressing deep emotion should only be emotions of joy, gratitude and love but this book shows us that we are also allowed and encouraged to express deep emotions of sorrow - and it gives us an example f a healthy way to do that - by bringing it to the Lord and talking to Him about it, processing through our grief with Him and relying on His goodness to remind us of all His promises for us.
So the author of Lamentations is weeping and wailing to the Lord the deep sorrow he feels over the destruction of Jerusalem because of what it means for the Israelites - there is an ending to the section of history for the nation where they enjoyed God’s favor to them because of the covenant. I like the way one commentator put it when he says:
All this means that at the return from exile, a completely new beginning was needed. Lamentations, in this sense, is a funeral dirge over an irrecoverable past.
If we were to look at this in the context of the entire nation, it would be similar to how those of us old enough to remember what life was like before September 11th, 2001 and what our country has turned into ever since. For example, I was 15 years old and just starting my sophomore year of high school. I wasn’t a Christian yet, but as an American, I knew the kind of freedom we had in our country was unique. That was back corruption was a foreign concept - something we would associate with other countries, but not the USA. It was before the political divide of left and right where we could stand together and discuss issues without foaming from the mouth in a seething rage like we see all-to-often today.
I personally associate many of the troubles we have in our country as results from the terrorist attacks on that day. We openly traded our freedoms and way of life in exchange for security, which quickly degraded into a form of tyranny. Though I was young when it happened, my heart still breaks over what has become of us as a country - and that is (in my best assessment) one of the closest analogies to an American version of the book of Lamentations: Mourning something we have lost to the one whose sovereignty and rule remains unchallenged by circumstance and emotion - no matter what happens or what has happened, and no matter how deeply sorrowful we feel, it doesn’t change the fact that God is still on the throne forever - He is still running the show and is still in charge. So in a sense, the deeper the grief, the more and more motivated we should be to take those things to the Lord and process through them with Him to ensure we come out on the other side having learned to rely more and more on Him.
Read with me, from…
19 Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison.
20 I continually remember them and have become depressed.
21 Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!
24 I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.”
As we bring this year to a close, we experience a natural season of renewal. The New Year can offer people a lot of motivation for change or even the opportunity to honestly reflect on ways they would like to see improvement in their lives. If you were to take away one thing from the sermon today, my hope and prayer is that it would be this: Even in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
Our outline is available in the bulletin, but if you don’t have that - here is a brief overview of what we will be discussing:
The Honest Reality (3:19-20)
The Turning Point (3:21)
The Faithful Love of God (3:22-23)
The Confident Hope (3:24)
The Honest Reality (vv. 19–20)
The Honest Reality (vv. 19–20)
Read with me, starting in…
19 Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison.
20 I continually remember them and have become depressed.
The author, here, is begging the Lord to remember him and the nation as a whole in their distress. He is speaking honestly about where he is at and refusing to put on the mask that we often put on for each other. He is honest that the circumstances he is seeing and living in have brought him to a place of depression.
A clinical definition of depression would be “Persistent feelings of sadness, worthlessness, and lack of interest.” However, what that kind of definition lacks is causation - what is it that brings about depression, and what is the difference between actual depression and just being sad?
Let me say this from the outset - I am not a doctor or a licensed therapist, so I cannot speak on these things with that kind of authority - but what I can tell you with authority from the Scripture is that depression and mental illness have a stigma associated with them that has unduly encouraged some in the church to disregard the feelings of the afflicted to the point where they disregard the afflicted completely - adding to the turmoil they are already feeling. I am saying this as one who has experienced both sides of that awful reality. I have struggled with clinical depression since I was 18 and have cried out to God to take me home because I was so overwhelmed with sorrow. I have also been confronted over my inability to sympathize with those going through times of sorrow, or perhaps a lack of empathy or compassion - which is ironic considering my own history with depression.
From my experience on both sides of the stigma that exists regarding mental health, let me encourage you in this: depression is a symptom of a sick organ - the brain. It is no different that when someone gets a kidney stone, stomach ulcer or hearing loss in their ear - we cannot judge someone’s spiritual vitality based on their emotional health. There is a difference between their emotional health and emotional maturity. We should be striving for maturity in all areas of life so we can gracefully pass down wisdom to younger generations and hopefully help them evade some of the problems we experienced in our youth. Emotional health deals more with the brain’s chemistry and function whereas emotional maturity looks at a person’s ability to cope in the midst of varying levels of adversity. If someone can’t emotionally handle little inconveniences, they have the emotional maturity of a child. If someone can go through the worst situations we can possibly think of and they properly rely on the Lord to get through and refuse to throw in the towel, they are said to be emotionally mature.
There are times though, when we are given more than we can bear on our own - and it is not a sign of spiritual weakness to express that - especially to express it to God and to press into our relationship with God for help.
That is what the author is doing here: he is in the ashes of the Holy City, remembering its ruin and regret. He isn’t romanticizing Israel’s past, he is acknowleging their fault and their ruin and is lamenting to the Lord the great sense of despair and depression he feels. What his action points out is that God knows our faults and our sins and welcomes us to bring the results of those to Him for not only healing and restoration through the blood of Christ shed on our behalf, but also to find comfort and solace in the midst of our suffering.
The honest reality is that we do experience pain and sorrow and we are invited through the example given to us in Scripture to bring those feelings to the Lord so we can lean into Him and experience His compassion and care.
Charles Stanley once said this…
An expression of emotion is part of what makes us human. Emotions are a gift of God, who created each of us with a capacity to feel and to express emotions.
Charles Stanley
When we feel deeply, we should bring our sorrows to God because He wants us to. Here are a few examples of this in Scripture:
22 Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time,
7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.
I don’t want to belabor the point any more than necessary - for some of you, 2025 was a great year and you are pumped to head into 2026. For some of us though, 2025 was a challenge - and this time of year serves as a reminder for some of the pains you experienced. Whether in good seasons or in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
That brings us to the ultimate reality that the author is trying to remind his reader of…
The Turning Point (v. 21)
The Turning Point (v. 21)
Please read with me again…
21 Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:
Notice how - before he allowed himself to go down the rabbit-hole of depression, he makes the conscious decision not to live there, but consciously makes the decision - he says he “call(s) this to mind…” He acknowledges his sorrow but doesn’t let it define him.
For any of us who have dealt with clinical depression, we all know that sometimes it’s not as easy as flipping a switch to have control over the severity and depth of our sorrow, making this kind of conscious change really difficult - if not impossible. I have been challenged by some that exercising will power - the ability to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps - specifically the attempt at exercising will power to enact change for the better in our lives, is merely an illusion. For real change to occur, we must be met by truth, allow that truth to transform us, and from that moment forward, we will be different people.
So far, we haven’t gotten to the substance of what he is calling to mind, but he does go on to note that what he is bringing to mind makes him have hope!
8 Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things.
The author said I am so sorrowful that I am downright depressed! But I will focus my thinking on something else - and that “something else” give me hope! His deep, dark pain and lament has a natural turning point, and it all has to do with what the meditation of his heart is. The advice I wish I had gotten when I was a young man was that the things we allow our minds to dwell on will determine the emotions that overflow from the heart. If we focus on the doom and gloom, sadness is a natural outcome of that - we are allowing ourselves to focus on the black hole of despair in our lives instead of focusing on the true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent and praiseworthy. If we focused on these things instead, maybe we would be able to find more reason to be encouraged!
This isn’t in any way meant to shame someone for feeling depressed. I am of the persuasion that actual depression is an illness and we can’t blame the sick for being sick all the time! It doesn’t help them and it does nothing to advance the cause of Christ. I will, however, mention that perspective plays a big part in it, and if we can ensure that we are meditating on the positive and beautiful things instead of the things that put undue weight on our hearts and minds, we will generally be happier people! Garbage in, garbage out! Good in, good out!
One way I find to focus on the positive things is to remember what God has already done in your life. The likelihood that we would all be in this room together today is astronomically improbable. However, the blood of Christ paid our debt and the gospel of Jesus Christ has traversed the centuries to meet us where we are - and God brought us together! God has done so much good in our lives!
Notice how authors in the Old Testament refer back to the crossing of the Red Sea so much? It serves as a reminder of God’s unfailing love and provision! If we go back through our own history of faith and remember not only how God saved us, but what exactly He saved us from, I believe we would find a significant amount of encouragement in that! We’ve spoken before about the spiritual discipline of journaling - writing down what we are praying for, what God has placed on our hearts, and later entries of how God is answering our prayers and guiding us through the leading of His Holy Spirit.
This “turning point” in the passage can also be seen as a turning point in our own laments to God. As we bring our sorrow to Him, we call to mind what He has already done and the promises He’s made for the future and we find hope!
Consider the words of the Psalmist in
11 I will remember the Lord’s works; yes, I will remember your ancient wonders.
12 I will reflect on all you have done and meditate on your actions.
or this in
49 Remember your word to your servant; you have given me hope through it.
50 This is my comfort in my affliction: Your promise has given me life.
51 The arrogant constantly ridicule me, but I do not turn away from your instruction.
52 Lord, I remember your judgments from long ago and find comfort.
So by turning to the Lord for comfort, reading His Word and obeying it by meditating on His good works and promises, we are already finding comfort!
Even in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
The Faithful Love of God (vv. 22–23)
The Faithful Love of God (vv. 22–23)
Read with me again, starting in…
22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness!
Remember that the author is expressing a lament that is representing the whole of the nation of Israel - we see that in the first person plural pronoun in verse 22 - “we do not perish…” The substance of verse 22 is what the author referred to in verse 21 - this is what he is setting his mind on - that because of the Lord’s faithful love to His people, they will not perish! He reminds himself that the mercies of the Lord never end and that give his hope for the future of his people, even though he stands in the ruins of Jerusalem. What we are seeing here is a pattern that even we - a people separated by centuries of history, language and even covenants, that if we believe on Christ for our salvation that his faithful love for us will not allow us to perish - that we will be with Him for eternity, that his mercies never end! We have promise after promise that everything will turn out okay because God is good and will fight for our good.
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
Even though the author was writing from a Jewish perspective to a Jewish audience, we know that the Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ, was given everything under heaven and under earth to bring glory to the Father and for the Father to bring glory to the Son! Not only can we bring our sorrows to the Lord, not only can we find guidance and direction in His Word, but we can find comfort from God Himself in the midst of our pain because of His goodness and mercy!
The main concept in this verse is found in the single Hebrew word חֶֶֶסֶד, which we translate as the simple phrase “faithful love.” This word is a prevalent theme throughout the entire Old Testament and can be seen anywhere where the author uses poetry to communicate his message.
Here are a few ways to remember what Hesed means:
“Hesed is the love that refuses to walk away.”
“Hesed is when God not only loves you — He stays with you.”
“Hesed is love that doesn’t depend on how well you perform.”
It is not: sentimental love, emotional affection or temporary compassion
But rather, it is: durable love, binding love and a promise-anchored love.
No matter what we may experience in life, we will never be able to escape the amazing love of God and Jesus Christ, our Savior.
It is described for us by Paul in the New Testament when he says
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That is Hesed. We could be facing one or all of these things Paul mentions and we are still deeply loved by God.
Even in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
The Confident Hope (v. 24)
The Confident Hope (v. 24)
Read with me again…
24 I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.”
In a sense, this is the exclamation mark on the end of this section of the author’s lament. He is making a declarative statement that he belongs to the Lord and will derive his Hope from the Him.
What does it mean when he says, “The Lord is my portion…”? It is a linguistic expression found throughout all Scripture - a “portion” is metaphorical language that signifies inheritance, sustenance or satisfaction. According to atheists, all that happens when we die is we simply go offline, like a computer in a power outage. But what do we know with certainty? That what lies ahead for the believer is deliverance into the embrace of our savior
Robert Mounce was a prominent theologian and professor at Whitworth University in Spokane. He said this about our confident hope…
Hope is not superficial optimism but the confident assurance of that which will surely come to pass. It distinguishes those who have kept the faith in times of severe testing.
Robert H. Mounce
The fundamental reality of hope is that it is not an emotion - it is a state of being. Hope is not anchored by what we own or whatever status or label we may or may not have attained to, but it is solely given its value by the one in whom our hope is found. This lament from the author has turned a complete 180 from despair and depression to hope - all because he took his grief and surrendered it to the Lord and relied on Him for strength.
Even in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
Conclusion
Conclusion
How many of you have already been planning your New Years Resolutions? We’ve been talking about it in our house, and we have a lot of ways we want to improve ourselves and be more useful for the cause of Christ in the coming year. However, there are a lot of things that we could simply try to do in our own effort, but inevitably, those efforts fall short and fail. According to Forbes Magazine, only roughly 6% of New Years Resolutions make it to December 31st. The vast majority of these resolutions are abandoned within the first month.
I don’t want to discourage you from trying to improve yourself, I am just hoping to help you remember that relying on the Lord’s unfailing love and mercies for you is not only what He wants for you, but also to help you navigate the idea that lamenting to the Lord with your grief and sorrow is good! You can find guidance, solace and wisdom from the Lord by seeking Him through His word.
As we prepare for a new year, you may be going into it with lots of hurt from this year. You are not alone, many of us are in that same boat. Just remember that even in weary seasons, God’s compassion never fails; every dawn brings new mercy.
13 For I am the Lord your God, who holds your right hand, who says to you, “Do not fear, I will help you.
Let’s go before the Lord and ask for His help for the coming year…
