Sermon Tone Analysis

“Fast away the old year passes, Hail the new, ye lads and lasses...” as the Christmas Carol, Deck The Halls, rings out, has come upon us once again.

And what a year it has been.

I’m sure, as with any year, you have experienced the ups and downs of life.

Hopes either realized or delayed yet again, and all the common experiences of time passing by.

I am certainly learning, as many wiser people have warned me, that the longer you life, the faster the years pass.

Looking at photographs of our children from just a year ago tells you in vivid color just how much really transpires in a year, even though it feels like such a short time.

I have to ask you to be honest this morning.

Many people make New Year resolutions.

I don’t have a problem with that.

There is a sense of newness, a sense of reset, a sense of starting over that comes at the New Year, and many people do well to begin a new tradition or habit or reset their frame of minds on January 1st.

The American Puritan Jonathan Edwards had written as many as 70 resolutions to aid his own growth and the growth of young minsters.

But I have to ask, how many of you made a resolution, or a plan, or had set out to make a change or adjustment in your life in 2021 that just didn’t pan out?

I know that is true for me on several fronts.

We make varied goals, all good and noble.

Health goals, reading goals, learning goals, traveling goals, family goals.

Many times those goals are met or exceeded, but often they are missed.

Disappointment and frustration often comes with the missing of those goals.

And then, enter in years like 2020 and 2021.

Years that, at least in recent history, change the entire political, social, economical, and health structure of our lives.

Just in our lives, we have many weeks of not meeting together in church.

We had to learn the concept of Zoom church, online gatherings, social distancing, new communion elements, we cancelled or changed many plans or traditions.

And these decisions were made, no doubt, in good conscience - but they were a change.

Politically, we have seen more unrest than we have in many recent years.

The changing of presidents that didn’t come without controversy, both sides accusing the other’s candidate of being woefully unqualified and in danger or ruining the nation.

We had cities largely pilfered and charred from riots, we had loss of innocent lives at the hands of those who know better, we had an increase in mistrust of government and law enforcement, we had monumental court cases and decisions.

We have seen innocent lives left in distant countries, Christians and missionaries killed and kidnapped for their faith, and the continual marching forward of the normalization and praise of things like abortion.

On a health front, what started as a coupe weeks to avoid a spike in cases of Covid, we have seen the virus morph and change and alter, as viruses do, and though the cases now are very mild, they are in no way disappearing.

And many have lost loved ones to that virus, and if not loss of life, many have lost business or careers, students have suffered in their education, some families have been mostly apart from each other for what is approaching two years, and there is the constant struggle of knowing what truly is the best or right thing to do in all these situations.

Needless to say, the last year, and really two years, have been in one sense, a big blur, but in another sense, a time for the history books, and we have lived them.

Living experiences of history is something that you don’t think of much day to day.

When we read of tough times or monumental occurences in our school textbooks, we often forget that there were millions and billions of people, individuals like you and me, who had to make decisions, process what was going on, pray, trust, and live through those days.

I hope not to be in a down mood this morning, for among all that grief and pain there have been wonderful things.

Even within our church, we have seen new people come, we have seen marriage, the birth of children, we have seen the start of new ministries and outreach, we have seen provision for financial needs, we have seen physically healing and answers to prayer on all fronts.

And if we began to count the personal blessings that are among all of us, we would need a whole service just dedicated to that.

This morning, I want to bring something before us that is not a New Years resolution, but it is also not a doom and gloom message.

I want to set something before us that can serve as a theme, and a touchstone of thought for this year.

It is nothing revolutionary, but it is something worth meditating on, returning to, thinking about, dwelling in, and praising God for together.

And that theme is the unwavering love, unending mercy, and undying faithfulness of God.

Our text for this morning comes from Lamentations 3:19-27.

Before we read that, I want to give a little background.

Lamentations is believed to have been written by the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah, as you have heard, is remembered as the weeping prophet, for it was his lot in life to preach to a people who would not ever listen to the warnings and the teaching that God gave through Him.

The warning, ultimately, was that the people of Judah would be carried away, their land conquered and destroyed.

Well, that very thing happened, culminating in 586 BC, during Jeremiah’s life.

The Babylonian captivity was a time of brutality and destruction in Judah, including the destruction of Jerusalem, and most importantly, Solomon’s temple.

That is the setting for the book of lamentations.

Lamentations comes to terms with judgment.

From the very title of the book, you see it - lament.

There is woe, there is grief, but there is also recognition on Jeremiah’s part that yes, this is what we (collectively) deserve, but it is still difficult, and it is still unbelievably challenging.

There are many lessons for us in Lamentations, and that is one of them.

In difficult, tumultuous times, we can recognize both of those truths.

Yes, this is what our world, our people, deserve because of wickedness - but, it is still ok to admit that it is hard.

Other lessons are things like the fact that God keeps his promises in both positive and negative ways.

He kept the promise that there would be a time of judgment for Judah, but He also would keep the big picture promises to Israel that depended upon their restoration.

We see the Sovereignty of God, working through things like wicked nations and rules to accomplish his purposes.

But right in the middle of the book, in our text today, the most familiar portion of the book , is this gem of God’s Faithfulness.

Lamentations is a Hebrew Acrostic.

The beginning of each verse of each chapter starts with the subsequent letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.

And in chapter 3, the middle chapter, they come in sets of three.

Aleph Aleph Aleph, Bet, Bet, Bet, Gimel, Gimel, Gimel....

Jeremiah was displaying an incredible picture of order within Chaos - for much of the book is lament, mourning, and woe - but behind it all, the structure is ordered and designed to show that there is order behind the chaos in life as well.

Let us read together Lamentations 3:19-27

Within this mourning and woe, there is the gem of God’s faithfulness, his mercy, and his steadfast love.

So, today and all through this year, may we see this together:

Stake your past, present, and future on the unwavering love, unending mercy, and undying faithfulness of the Lord.

As I said earlier, the acrostic in chapter three comes in triplets or sets of three verses, so that will be our structure in these 9 verses.

You will see that each set of three verses has sort of a theme as Jeremiah recounts these truths.

1.

What we Remember - Vs. 19-21

The first theme we see in 19-21, is remember.

Verses 19-20 both begin with the Hebrew word for “remember,” and verse 21 begin with “this I recall...”

What we remember is often out of our control.

If you scan through the book of Lamentations, you will see that much of it is devoted to the vivid image in Jeremiah’s mind of the destruction and chaos that took place.

Also, for us, our memories are often the most vivid of things we would like to forget.

Mistakes we have made, tragedies that have ensued, arguments that we’ve had with spouses, ways that we’ve mistreated or been mistreated.

We remember things, and we are designed to do so.

Our all-knowing, all-wise God is a God who remembers things.

Jeremiah speaks here in verse 19 of the “wormwood and the gall.”

Wormwood is a bitter herb, now commonly used in bitter drinks.

Gall is more pungeant, and that word can refer to poison, or even to the bile of the Liver.

Either way, the image that we are getting is that of bitterness.

We remember the bitterness.

We can feel the bitterness.

We can taste it.

We know the dreadful experiences that we have gone through, it is vivid in our mind.

As we go to 20, Jeremiah says that “his soul remembers it.”

That strengthens the image.

How does the soul remember?

We don’t usually think of the soul remembering.

But the soul is not less than the mind remembering, really in some sense it is more.

The soul is our whole inner being, our whole inner man.

We see that image, that God “formed” man from the dust of the earth.

He made us from the dust, from the common elements.

Our bodies are much like what is around us.

But what is different, is that God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being, creature.

That word for living creature is the word “Nephesh” which is the same word for “soul” here in verse 20.

Our soul is, in one sense, our very life.

It is our life, in the way that we are made in God’s image, in a way that sets us apart from plants and animals - and this is what, Jeremiah says, “remembers” the bitterness.

The soul remembering is not just the recounting of facts or history, it is the recounting of feelings, emotions, desires.

It is to not just remember something happened, but to be continually affected by it.

And that is evidenced in what He says,