Who Am I To You? (You Are Loved)
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good Morning. A time back, I was sitting right here in this worship area, and I was challenged to think back about the vastness of our known universe. I started thinking about everything I know about our known universe has been through photographs of things out there in space. When I was a kid, I had a telescope. You could see some of the neighboring planets. You could really see the moon well. It wasn’t powerful where you could see the deep contours of the moon. You could definitely make out the craters on the moon’s surface. According to various sources, the moon is over 238,000 miles from earth. Many of us don’t have vehicles don’t have that many miles. I knew this before, but it got me thinking again of how small I am in comparison to the sheer vastness of God’s creation, because I’m pretty small. Although we’re small in comparison to other things out there, we’re the most important. The reason why God chose mankind, only God truly knows the reason why. In all the universe, God chose us.
Our passage this morning takes into one of the shortest books in the Bible. We’re going to be reading from the book of Lamentations. Lamentations has many things to weep over. But! Today, we’re going to talk about some great encouragement! In fact, our passage is considered by some to be the “theological high point of the book.” I’d like to invite you to open your Bibles with me to the 3rd Chapter of Lamentations. We’re going to begin our discussion starting 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.
Pastoral Prayer
Pastoral Prayer
Our passage starts us off with what’s considered to be a transitional verse. It takes us a new direction for a brief moment. Yes, much of Lamentations records many of the writer’s laments. That’s one aspect that makes our passage this morning unique. We have essentially come to a interlude of hope and affirmation. We all go through times when life seems to fall apart at the seams. When these times come we also need the blessed assurance that God is faithful! Thankfully the Bible gives overwhelming evidence of the unchanging faithfulness of our great God. That’s the turning point here in verse 21.
21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The writer is recalling what was reviewed about God’s character. And because of what is reviewed and recalled, this is a prompt to the words, “therefore I have hope.” In many languages the word “hope” is often related to wishing rather than to the confidence we have and know in God. This is powerful statement and reflection. The writer is writing in full confidence of the Living God, not just “wishing” that is could be so. What is something you have full confidence in? Is what you have confidence in a system of the way things are done? Could your confidence be through years of seeing reliable results? Usually when people reach a level of confidence is after many trials of consistent predictable output. This helps us reach that level, where we would say, “I have confidence when I remember this or I it has my trust when I remember that.” In the case of our writer, we learn why there is confidence in the verses that follow. Verse 21 starts off the series that … :
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
The words “steadfast love” translates in the Hebrew as (חֶ֫סֶד, ḥāsîd). This is an important Old Testament word that refers to the faithful, loyal, constant in the terms of love that God shows to his people. The Bible is filled with examples of the steadfast love of the Lord. (This is not part of the slideshow),one example is found in Psalm 32. Psalm 32 talks about the blessed are the forgiven. One of my favorite things I enjoyed in math class were word problems. They were fun mind teasers. As many of us know different words in the word problem translated to various operators of addition, subtraction and so on. One word that I was always able to get was the word “is.” The word “is” usually translated to “equals.” In Psalm 32 in the first couple verses we’re greeted with the word “is,” from there we can see how the word blessed equates to us. If we go right next door to Psalm 33, we can see a second example of the steadfast love of the Lord. Psalm 33 is all about the steadfast love of the Lord. Relating back to Lamentations 3:22, the steadfast love of the Lord is a type of love that is loyal, constant, faithful, and a kind of love that never ends. In addition to being introduced to a steadfast love that never ceases, verse 22 also tells us that “his mercies never come to an end.”
If grace is the love of God exercised towards the undeserving, then mercy is the kindness of God exercised towards the miserable. Grace freely gives unmerited benefits, while mercy modifies or withholds merited punishment. Because God is merciful ‘he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities’ (Psalm 103:10). Mercy is the goodness of God that is extends to when we feel distressed or suffering. Mercy is sometimes called loving-kindness or tender compassion, because God is ‘the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles’ (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
The word mercies is a very expressive word. It brings forward the ideas of love, mercy, goodness, faithfulness and grace (to name a few). This word frames in the picture of God as the divine lover of all man kind. In the New Testament, we can gather the idea of Gods’ love and grace. It is through His grace we are saved. Only grace could have reached us in our lost and doomed state. There was no way we could get to God. The canyon was simply too wide and deep. So, God came to us! He came in the person of Jesus Christ to die for our sins. His grace not only sought us when we were lost to sin, His grace keeps us in our saved condition (we’ll talk more about that next week).
[Display Verse 23]
I’ve heard it said, “today’s mercies for today … and tomorrow mercies for tomorrow.” We can also see how our Lord taught us “therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself” (Matthew 6:34). Right now! We know that “His mercies never come to an end; the are new every morning.” When our feet hit the floor in the morning, we not only know it’s a new day, but mercy is renewed. Just as the freshness of the new morning, the Lord’s mercy is fresh. Knowing all this, we can feel the gladness and rejoicing in our writers heart, when we read the words, “great is your faithfulness.”
The famous hymn “great is thy faithfulness” (Hymn #43 in our hymnals) birthed from this verse. The story of how Thomas Chisholm came to write this loved hymn reveals a profound truth about God’s faithfulness. Not long before his death he said, “My income has never been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me on until now. But I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care which have filled me with astonishing gratefulness.” If we place this into the context of verse 23, the wonder of God’s love and care becomes clear.
God is faithful in His gifts. God did not promise we would have a road of tarmac the entire time. We could find ourselves on a dirt road, sometimes on a washboard, other times we could be cutting ruts. But! We have the assurance and promise of God that His grace would not only be carry us, the would be sufficient. Paul went through quite a bit in his life. In 2 Corinthians Chapter 12, this is where Paul begins to talk about his vision and his thorn. In the middle of verse 9 our Lord gave Paul some great encouragement, where He said, “My grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.” With this in mind, no matter what life should send our way, we are comforted, and we have confidence that the Lord will supply the necessary strength during those times of strong head winds. This also means God is a satisfier!
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
You’ve heard me speak of my old life in how I enjoined my time in the pools of selfishness. The hard lesson that needed to be learned was that the self centeredness selfishness of the pronoun “I” was that I could not plug the hole that existed. A hole always seemed to exist to matter how hard the old Richard “I” tried. I was going crazy from running to this barrel to that barrel trying to keep them all full. Have you all picked up on the root of the problem? The problem is with “I”. I cannot not satisfy. I cannot do it all. I cannot provide my own salvation. Only the Lord can satisfy! The Lord is to be our portion. Only by Jesus Christ can we really be “satisfied.” God may not always give us the things we desire in life. One thing for sure! When God gives, He gives the best. He gives according to His will and that will satisfy our souls.
God is our sustainer! God will never fail those who put their trust into Him. There is no doubt that the land of Canaan was the promise land for the Israelites. In the early Chapters of Exodus, we can read about how God mentioned to Moses that He would “deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.” In the same sentence, God describes as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” This of course is a metaphor. The land didn’t have streams of actual milk and honey. What’s meant here is the land is rich in resources. The land contained everything needed to sustain the Israelites. In all actuality, it is God who sustained the Israelites. If we look to Him for the needs in our life, we will never be disappointed. This means that God will sustain you through life and into eternity. Paul said in:
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.
God is our Savior!
[Display Verse 26]
We need to remember that God is able to deliver both the saved and sinner. God know right where you are today. He knows what you’re going through. He know what you’re facing. You will not be forgotten or left behind. He will faithfully keep you and bring you out in Him time. The Bible says in:
15 The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous
and his ears toward their cry.
16 The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
20 He keeps all his bones;
not one of them is broken.
21 Affliction will slay the wicked,
and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
22 The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
Application
Application
Several weeks back, many of you put on a piece of card board something you were feeling or facing.
[Do unveiling and speak about them]
This is how some of us feel or that facing ...
Now lets look back the question to the title of our sermon — Who Am I To You!?! Who Am I In Christ?
You are a child of God, where
The faithfulness of God has proven to be true
You are a child of God, where
Mercy renews
You are a child of God, where
The steadfast love of God extends from ever lasting to ever lasting (Psalm 90)
[Turn Cardboard Signs Over]
How can God answer?? He can answer with the words: YOU ARE LOVED!!!
You are loved GOD! You are loved by the sovereign Creator! YOU ARE LOVED BY CHRIST JESUS!
The Bible says in:
11 He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
If you’ve been wondering — God who am I to you — you are loved! Today might be a day for repentance. Do you want to experience begin gathered “in His arms?” Today you can come to know the love of the Father. It’s through Jesus Christ that we have access to the Father. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one come to the Father except through me.” The time to come is now!
Closing Prayer
Closing Prayer