God is Hope - when you are hurting - Mercy

God Is….

Hope When you are Hurting

Good morning and welcome to worship. It is good to be back in the House of the Lord. Yes, Renee and I had a great time on our trip, but I want you to know, it was good to get back home to Brownwood. Some of you have asked for a slide show with explanation of the different animals. I’ll have to see about a time when that will work and Renee and I can get all our pictures together for something like that. But today, we aren’t here to talk about my trip, we are here to talk about who God is.

In fact, that’s the name of the series I am starting today. Over the next 6 or so weeks, we will be looking at the attributes of God. So many of life’s problems – pain, disappointments, hurts result from a misunderstanding of who God is. They are a misunderstanding of the true nature of who God is… that God is hope, that God is mercy, that God is good, that God is holy, that God is merciful, that God is compassionate and more than anything else, that God is here.

Today’s message is one that should touch us all, and for some of us - it will be very appropriate for the time in which we find ourselves. Today, we are going to talk about the fact that God is Hope when we are hurting.

Some of us are hurting. What is happening in the denomination hurts. What is happening in our finances, in the economy hurts. What is happening with our children, or our parents hurts. What is happening to the world around us hurts. The natural disasters hurt. the violence in our world hurts!

So what we are going to talk about today is that God is our hope when we are hurting.

You don’t often hear preaching from the book of the Bible, Lamentations. It is so full of so much wisdom and help, but it’s kind of a drag to read. The Life Application Bible says that the purpose of the Book written my Jeremiah is to show that when we disregard God’s guidance it can bring disaster, and that God suffers when his people suffer. Jeremiah writes it after the people have been taken to Babylon in Exile and the Jerusalem lays in ruins. Like I said, it’s not a book we often turn to and it isn’t one I preach from often, but I want to invite you to the 3rd chapter of Lamentation.

Now, I want to paraphrase a little of this chapter. It starts out, Jeremiah is basically having a hissy fit… people hate me, life isn’t fair, God, you’ve forgotten me, I’m getting old, my body’s broken… and God, you don’t care! Sound like anyone you know? If not, that’s probably because it’s you.

Ok, let’s pick up in verse 19:

Lamentation 3:19-21

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

I want you to hear this… Jeremiah’s nation has just been defeated and the people have been taken into exile in a foreign land. He has people speaking against him and trying to do him harm. He is hurting, physically, emotionally, spiritually… he is a man of anguish and yet, in the midst of all the pain and suffering, the affliction and wandering, the bitterness and the gall… in the middle of all that he thinks of one thing and has hope. What is that one thing?

Lamentation 3:22-23

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions (Some translations use the word Mercies) never fail.

They (God’s Mercies) are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Jeremiah has hope because of God’s mercy, because of God’s compassion, because of God’s faithfulness and love.

Would you pray with me?

Prayer

We can’t understand the hope that Jeremiah had – and that we can have now as we hurt – until we understand the mercy of God… and we can’t understand the mercy of God without understanding the Justice of God and the Grace of God.

These are all part of God’s attributes. Each of these are an attribute of God and so often we just throw them all in together, overlapping them like a big soup of God… God’s love and mercy and joy and justice and compassion and grace and peace and patience and the list goes on and on. And, yes they are all overlapping and they are all who God is, but they are also each unique and specific. So, we are going to take a moment to look at a couple of these attributes of God:

What is Justice? Justice is getting what you deserve. You speed, you get a ticket – right? I know, when you got pulled over for speeding there were people going faster than you – so they were more guilty – right… but were you speeding? Then you deserve the ticket. That is justice.

So, What is Grace? That’s when you get what you don’t deserve. The best example of this is salvation. Do you deserve salvation? Is there anything you can do to earn salvation? No. Go has done it all and there is nothing we can do to earn God’s grace, God’s unmerited favor.

Keeping with the ticket analogy – when one of our kids had been driving for less than a month, they came home with a ticket… not just any ticket, I mean like doing 80 in a 40 kind of ticket. I could talk a lot about justice on that one, but here’s where grace comes in… that child had not earned love. That child hadn’t earned a meal that evening. That child hadn’t earned the love of a parent, but that is what they got. Yes, there was justice, but there was also grace.

Now, What is Mercy? That’s when you don’t get what you deserve. Following our speeding analogy, You were speeding and you got pulled over. You were going 12 miles over the speed limit… but you were kind to the officer, you had your window open and your dome light on, and your license and insurance out for the officer and your hands were on the wheel and visible before the officer got to the door – and she gave you a warning… WHAT>>>> But you were speeding. And you deserve a ticket – but they gave you a warning. That was mercy. You deserved a ticket, but you got mercy.

So often, we want justice for other people, but we want mercy for ourselves. But here’s the good news for us… Our God is a merciful God! That is good news isn’t it.

I want to show you something from Ephesians. Turn over to chapter 2 of Ephesians. The chapter starts out talking about how we are spiritually dead because of our sins. It talks about our nature without Christ and in verse three it says,

Ephesians 2:3

By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

But wait, I thought God was a God of love and a God of mercy, right. How can God be an angry God? This is something we all need to understand. God is both a God of love and mercy AND a God of anger and wrath. You and I were created in the image of God and you and I have the same attributes. Don’t believe me?

Let me use this analogy. A moment ago I talked about one of my children getting a big – big speeding ticket. When I got the call - because the officer made them call me before leaving the scene, I was angry. In my wrath, I took their vehicle away from them. In my anger I sent them to their room. I was angry with their actions… but I still loved them.

Carry this a little farther…

Has your child ever lied to you? It made you angry, but you still loved them.

Do you have a friend who continues to drive drunk? It makes you angry because they are putting themselves and others at risk, but you still love them.

Wives, has your husband ever left the toilet seat up? It makes you angry – but you still love them, right?

The attributes of love and anger coexist within us who were created in the image of God, why would we not think that they can coexist within God.

Yes, God loves us, but when we do things that are contrary to God’s will, when we do things that are in opposition to the creation God intended, God is angry. God loves us, but sometimes God is angry at what we do.

What Paul is saying in Ephesians is that without Christ we are in trouble. Without Christ our lives are a wreck. We may not recognize it at the time, but we are a wreck. Then there is verse 4 and it starts with 2 of the best words in the Bible… But God! Amen, We were dead to our sins, BUT GOD… we were subject to God’s anger, BUT GOD. We were obeying the devil, BUT GOD…

Ephesians 2:4-5

But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, 5 that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)

Though we deserve to be punished… we deserve justice for our sins… But God is rich in mercy… God doesn’t give us what we deserve God is merciful!

Here’s the thing about this word Mercy. Paul uses the Greek word Eleos here. This is a nuanced word. It is in the present tense and it means that God is in a continual state of unending mercy. He always has been and always will be.

So many of us have this wrong view of God. It’s like we start reading in Genesis 3 where God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden and end in Revelation 20 with the judgement of God and the Lake of Fire. So many of us live in fear that God is going to banish us from paradise and cast us into the lake of fire. So many of us think only of the God of Judgement and miss out on who God really is.

We miss Genesis 1 where God created a good earth, a very good creation. You, I, we were called very good. In the story of Adam and Eve, they ate of the fruit and they were naked and afraid, and what did God do? God sacrificed a life that they could be covered, God showed mercy – God loves his creation. Yes, there are consequences to our actions, Adam and Eve left the Garden, there is pain in childbirth, we toil against the soil, but that wasn’t the end of the story and the story doesn’t end with a Lake of Fire. God has been in the process of redeeming God’s good creation ever since. Our story starts with the goodness of God, the mercy of God and it ends, not in Revelation 20 talking about the judgement, but in Revelation 21 and 22 where all things are made new! Our story is book ended with God’s Goodness and mercy.

I could go on and on. I could talk about how King David fell on the mercy of God rather than the judgement on men.

I could talk about the Psalms that cry out about the Mercy of God.

I could talk about how Jesus’ brother James talks about how mercy triumphs over judgement.

I know I said that the title of this sermon is that God is Hope when we are hurting, but maybe, just maybe I should say the title of the sermon is God is mercy.

Because that is where we have been headed. Yes, we have hope, but we have hope, just as Jeremiah had hope, because God is Mercy.

Are you hurting? Bring your hurts to God, because God’s mercies are new every morning.

Are you struggling? Bring your struggle to God, because God’s mercy never ceases.

Are you broken? Bring your brokenness to God, because God’s mercy is constant.

Bring your pain, bring your sorrow, bring you brokenness to this table, leave it at the Altar. Fall upon the mercy of God as we gather at this table.