2014 OUR GOD IS
FAITHFUL 2015
In just three days we will be wishing each other a “happy
new year.”
If you
are a glass-half-full kind of person (positive outlook) you will be looking
back on 2014 with fondness. It will have been a good year for you and, with
your characteristic optimism, you will anticipate another good year. “Happy new
year” is a fond wish and a pithy cliché at the same time. No matter; 2015 will
be good.
If you
are a glass-half-empty kind of person you will be remembering the failings and
disappointments of 2014. Some would call this “pessimism” but you (we) call it
“realistic.” When someone wishes you a “happy new year” you will think “indeed”
since last year was anything but…Let me count the ways in which 2014 could have
been better, you think. Considering the last 362 days all you can do is hope
2015 will erase the previous dark days.
Both the
positivist and the realist/pessimist have something in common. Their
experiences are much the same: they have the same disappointments, failures,
defeats, and even similar victories, accomplishments, and achievements. The
difference between the two rests in how they evaluate or choose to feel about
their shared experiences. One will say “it was great” and the other “it could
have been better.”
The
challenge for us of moving from 2014 to 2015 will be how we choose to view the
past year while looking forward to a new year. Can we leave the past behind and
adopt a deep-seated hope for the future? On what basis can we begin to change
our view of past events so that we can look forward?
Let me
draw your attention to the book of Lamentations in the OT. This little book was
written by Jeremiah who was known as the weeping prophet. Throughout Jeremiah’s
ministry, he preached a message of judgment on a nation that had grossly sinned
before God. Jeremiah was not a popular guy in his day; other preachers spoke of
peace and good times ahead; Jeremiah alone spoke for God and God was not happy.
Because of Israel’s sin, God said that Jerusalem would be destroyed and the
people taken into captivity. As Jeremiah prophesied, so it came about as the
Lord had said.
The book
of Lamentations is as depressing as it sounds. It is a book of grief. It is the
journal of a man who saw everything he loved become ashes before his own eyes.
This book is a book of laments, Jeremiah’s laments.
As you
read the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah will tell you line by line how terrible
his world had become. His first words in this book set the tone:
“How deserted lies the city, once so full of
people…” (1:1). For two chapters Jeremiah describes how the holy city lost
its splendor, how wasted its gardens look, how her walls are torn down – his
eyes fail from weeping (2:11).
Then in
chapter 3, Jeremiah gets personal. He turns from the scene of his beautiful
city, now a heap of rubble, to his own spirit. Jeremiah lists 9 personal
laments describing how he feels (remember this is a preacher, a prophet of the
most High God, a spiritual man – if he can feel down in the dumps, anybody
can):
1 – He
feels that God is angry with him (3:1)
2 – He
feels that God has driven him into darkness (some call this the “dark night of
the soul”) (3:2, 6)
3 – He
feels like God has turned against him (3:3)
4 – He
feels old (3:4)
5 – He
feels trapped (3:5-7)
6 – He
feels like his prayers go unanswered (3:8)
7 – He
feels like God is a bear laying in wait for him, ready to pounce and mangle him
(3:10-11)
8 – He
feels like a laughingstock among his people (3:14)
9 – His
hope, in short, is gone (3:18).
This
guy’s glass isn’t just half-empty, it’s bone-dry. Jeremiah’s experience of the
past year has left him without hope of any kind.
Unbelief
causes us to look at our God through our troublesome circumstances. While
Jeremiah's outward affliction and inward turmoil pushed him toward despair,
Jeremiah forces himself to bring truth to the forefront of his mind. Like a
computer that "defaults" to certain settings, each of us has a
"despair default." If we don't reconfigure our minds, we will slide
down the slippery slope of discouragement and complaint.
What we
learn from Jeremiah is that we cannot look at the past and fill our minds with
despair. As hard as it may sound, we have to train our brains to think and
process differently. Incredibly, despite what I have shared with you about
Jeremiah’s experience and outlook, he splits the darkness of his despair with
an amazing and profound truth. Put your feelings aside and grab hold of this
hope. Listen to what Jeremiah teaches about hope:
a) Because of the LORD’s great love we are not
consumed – Picture Jeremiah crying, wailing his head off, viewing his city
through tears. The people are near starvation, threatening to eat each other –
it’s that bad – and he stops and thinks: Why doesn’t God destroy me?
It
sounds strange Because of the LORD’s
great love we are not consumed. We have lost everything. We have nothing to
eat. We have nowhere to live. But God loves me. How do I know? Because I’m not
dead. I’m not dead yet; I feel like dancing.
As we
wish each other a happy new year, it strikes me funny in a way. Somehow we
think that we deserve a happy new
year, as if each year should be better than the next. And then we place our
hopes in some mystical unreality that fate will deal us a better hand than the
last year. Fortune will smile on me eventually, if your God is Walt Disney
perhaps.
But what
do we deserve? Nothing. God has seen our sin and sinfulness and declared “The
wages of sin is death…” (Ro 6:23). Life doesn’t owe you anything; God certainly
doesn’t owe you anything. And yet you live. How do you know God loves you?
Because you’re not dead. “…but the gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “The gift” is life.
b) His compassions (mercies) never fail – Since
God’s love for us preserves us, his mercies will not fail us. God’s
“compassions” or “mercies” are noted in the plural. Jeremiah highlights that
they are many. That’s how intense and limitless are the mercies of God. We have
no idea really, how much God loves us.
“Compassion”
comes from the Hebrew word for “womb.” Hebrew is a picture language and nearly
every word causes us to think of a picture. This picture shows us that God has
a gentle feeling of concern and care for us like a mother has for her newborn.
The word literally means “to be moved in the heart out of love for another.” So
God is moved in his heart when he thinks of you.
When
James thought of mercy he turned to Job. That’s odd isn’t it? Job, who suffered
more than any man or woman who has ever lived, is a picture of God’s mercy.
James said, “You have heard of Job’s
perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is
full of compassion and mercy,” (Js 5:11). Just because God allows suffering
into our lives doesn’t mean that he isn’t compassionate. In fact, how would we
know what compassion was if God only allowed good things to happen to us?
c) They are new every morning – “Morning by
morning new mercies I see,” is how the hymn puts it. God’s mercies are new
every morning; they are fresh for today.
Try this
a few mornings in a row: when you wake up, sit up in bed and loudly proclaim,
“I’m alive!” If your spouse is still sleeping it will freak them out. You may
recall the prayer your mother taught you, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray
thee Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray thee Lord my
soul to take.” I went to bed some nights wondering how dangerous sleep really
was. But as Jeremiah affirms, waking up in the morning is a real mercy.
Every
morning God’s mercies are fresh. They are not held over from yesterday but
renewed for our enjoyment today. Consider the analogy of manna and the children
of Israel as a comparison. Each morning the Israelites would go out to gather
manna for the day. If they stored some away for the next day it would spoil.
God had promised to provide fresh manna each day, except on the Sabbath. God’s
mercies don’t spoil but we are reminded that we should not live in the past. It
is good to remember God’s mercies but only as a reminder that He continues to
show new compassions to us every day.
In this
way we want to live with a certain expectancy about the day. Even as the day
brings fresh troubles, God counters those troubles with fresh mercies.
I
struggled a few weeks ago with being passed over for a teaching spot at the
seminary. It was just a one-week intensive on Anabaptist History, but I really
wanted to teach it. When I fell ill a week or so ago I began to brood over this
rejection in the midst of my fever. Then one morning God revealed His mercy to
me. With all the preaching I am scheduled to do, the dissertation, the EMC
committees I am on, when would I have time to write 20-30 hours of lectures?
God mercifully kept me from overloading.
d) Great is your faithfulness – Jeremiah
delivers the summary of his great revelation concerning God’s mercies: Great is
your faithfulness, O God, my Father.” Thomas Chisholm adds his own thoughts in
his hymn, “There is no shadow of turning with thee.”
God is
faithful. When Moses wanted to see God, the Lord placed Moses in the cleft of a
rock and passed in front of him showing only His back to Moses. As God passed,
He declared, “The LORD, the LORD, the
compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and
faithfulness…” (Ex 34:6). Faithfulness describes God. He is consistently
who He says He is day to day, moment to moment, without fail.
Ethan
the Ezrahite asked, “O LORD God Almighty,
who is like you? You are mighty, O LORD, and your faithfulness surrounds you,”
(Ps 89:8).
God is
faithful. Like Jeremiah, when we surrender to live for God day by day, we feel
fresh breezes of love, grace, and compassions blowing across our soul. God's
supply comes when we need it - not earlier and not later. God gives us what we
need for today. If we needed more, he would give us more. When we need
something else, He will give us that as well. Nothing we truly need will ever
be withheld from us.
Paul
discovered God’s faithfulness in all things through times of little and times
of plenty. He said, “I have learned the
secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry,
whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives
me strength,” (Phil 4:12b-13).
Jeremiah’s dramatic turn-around is a lesson for me. I
hope it is for you too as we approach a new year of opportunity. While Jeremiah
began to focus on the negatives, he realized that the difference between
despair and hope is how you see life. More importantly, hope is seeing how God
is faithful even when everything looks its worst.
Consider
your life. Consider 2014 alone. How has God been merciful to you? How has the
Lord shown his faithfulness to you in the midst of your trials?
Jeremiah
said that the Lord is good to those whose hope is in him and those who seek
him. Seeking God is that simple act of recognizing God’s hand in your life. As
2014 comes to a close, take a journal or sheet of paper or go to your
electronic devices and list all the bad things that happened in the last year
in one column. In a parallel column, beside each of those troubles or
disappointments, write out what you think God’s mercy might have been in those
moments. Consider how the Lord revealed his faithfulness to you. This is one
way of seeking Him.
Then as
we approach 2015, adopt an attitude of waiting with expectation to see what God
will do with each turn of events. When a set-back occurs, how will God work out
the blessing in its midst? Wait for him; hope in him; seek him.
Happy
New Year!
AMEN
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