Turn now to this portion of our service, the message of Thanksgiving, as we turn to the Word of God, as it is found in the Book of Lamentations. The Book of Lamentations, Chapter 3, the Book of Lamentations is found immediately after the Book of Jeremiah, because these are the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Rather interesting that the bulletin cover You have one available, apparently, that has the very text that we'll be using this morning for our message. Lamentations 3, and we begin to read in the chapter at verse 19. Jeremiah writes, 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. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, The Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young. Let him sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust, there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace. For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion. So great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. So far the reading of God's word and the text, I won't re-read that except for the verse 22 and 23. I will read those two verses because they read the heart of the message. Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. May God be praised as we meditate upon his promises and his assurances to us today. One of the remarkable aspects, dear people of God, relating to the history of this special day of Thanksgiving in our country is that it was born and observed in a spirit of hope. Typically, as you know, we trace this day back to the time of the pilgrims. who after landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts in December 1620 held a special Feast of Thanksgiving in the following fall of 1621. What I find most amazing is that during the winter of 1620 to 1621, half of that small group of 102 pilgrims who came to America half of them died during that first harsh winter. Now if half of this congregation would have died in the last 10 months, would the rest of us or you be sitting here this morning to offer thanks to God for his goodness? But these pilgrim Christians still gathered in hopeful thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 to thank God for his care and blessings. Now that was not the official beginning of Thanksgiving Day. That goes back to 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be a national day of Thanksgiving. But now think about that date and that year, 1863. What does that bring to mind? Well, if you know your American history, as I'm sure most of you do, that was in the middle of the Civil War. One of the worst times in our nation's history, when our country was bitterly divided and locked in this devastating conflict between people of the North and people of the South with thousands of young men and others being killed on both sides. And yet, in the middle of that horrible time, President Lincoln called the nation to give thanks to God, beginning with these words, I quote, The year that is drawn to a close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added. And then Lincoln enumerated some of these other blessings that God had bestowed on Americans, even while they were at war. But then he also made this statement, he wrote, they are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, have nevertheless remembered mercy. Well this morning, on this last Thursday of November 2012, we too are gathered here to offer thanks to the Most High God who even while he deals with us in anger for our sins, has nevertheless remembered mercy. We're not of course in the middle of a civil war today here, militarily speaking. Even though there is a civil war going on in our country today, I believe morally and spiritually. We have just come through an election, which was, I think most of you will agree, a hard-fought contest. between people very divided in many respects, in our religious values, in our moral perspectives, in our political philosophies, and we're still in economically uncertain times. In fact, we wonder if lasting prosperity will return again to our country, or are we maybe past that point? And is the United States, in effect, a nation in gradual decline? Yes, many of us Orthodox believers have great concerns over the direction and the future of our nation and world today, as they increasingly turn away from God and His Word. Nevertheless, how good and necessary it is that we offer our God thanksgiving today, because we are a people not only blessed, but we can live in hope, not in ourselves, but in God. And so we can offer our Father in Heaven today a hopeful thanks. In fact, we can present to God a song that is filled with hope, and that song of hope can be expressed no more beautifully than in the words of our text from Lamentations 3. The first verses of the text say, Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Now those words, I'm sure, are familiar to most of you, even though they are found in a rather unfamiliar book of the Bible, Lamentations. The word Lamentations means songs of lament, songs of mourning. Yes, overall, the book of Lamentations is a very sad book. It's only hell that the Lamentations in this book were composed by the prophet Jeremiah. after he had witnessed the fall and the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC, marking the end of Judah. And what Jeremiah had seen broke his heart. In his laments he describes the horrible suffering endured by his fellow Jews while their city was besieged. And after the Babylonians conquered it and destroyed it, killing thousands of its inhabitants, and burned the city to the ground, and carried the rest of its inhabitants to Babylon as exiles. The prophet writes this in chapter 1. After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations. She finds no resting place. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone to exile, captive before the foe. All the splendor has departed from the daughter of Zion. So those were horrible times for the people of Judah. But now, right in the middle of all of these laments, Jeremiah suddenly inserts a song of hope. He writes in chapter 3, verse 21, Yet this I call to mind, and therefore, he says, I have hope. And then he gives the reasons for his hope. Let's listen to them, because they're also the reasons for our hope and what enables us to be thankful at all times. The first reason for our hope is given in the first sentence of verse 22. Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed. Now you see, that's the greatest blessing that any person can have in all of life. To be the object of God's great love. And that great love of God is His covenant love. The Hebrew word for it is chesed. The Old Testament term for God's covenant mercy. That special grace of God which he has for his people, whom he has chosen and redeemed to belong to him. It's the love of God for his own children. And because we belong to him, we are not consumed, writes Jeremiah. Consumed here means utterly destroyed, wiped out, like a fire consumes a building, leveling it totally so that nothing of it is left. Jeremiah had seen the Babylonians, as I said, destroy Jerusalem. But his song of hope says, because of God's great love, we are not consumed. He is speaking there of God's true children. They may be tried as by fire. They may have to go through suffering and illness and sorrow and hard times and job loss and loss of income and domestic difficulties, whatever it may be. But one thing you and I must always remember, we have the greatest of all blessings. God's great love assures us that we are not consumed, but instead we're saved, eternally delivered from God's wrath, which we all deserve as sinners. We have a Savior whom God has given to us, his own Son. And because of his suffering and death in our place, we are not consumed. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 1 verse 1, 1 verse 10, we are waiting for God's Son from heaven, whom God raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. That's our blessed hope. And that gives us reason to be thankful at all times, no matter what our circumstances may be. And then a second reason for hope is contained in the next part of verse 22, in the first part of verse 23 of our text. Jeremiah sings, because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Let that sink in. God's compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Now, compassion is a word that means kindness towards those who are in need. But notice here the word is plural, compassions. Because there are many ways in which God shows us His kindness, in which He shows us His mercy. He takes care of all of our spiritual needs each day. He gives us grace and strength to face all of our spiritual struggles, our doubts, our fears, our weakness of faith, our temptations. And God shows us His compassion each day as we deal with our emotional needs. He gives us encouragement when we're discouraged. He gives us strength to cope with the stresses of our work, and of our family life, and of school activities, and of our daily or weekly responsibilities. And God shows us His compassion in providing for all of our physical and material needs. Yes, His compassions never fail. He never ceases to show us His loving kindness. His mercies are new every morning. Ever think of that? When you get up in the morning, God's mercies, his blessings are there again for us to enjoy. I think of the simple but wonderful blessing of our health. You know, isn't it a blessing that you and I can rise up in the morning each day and we feel well and we're rested and we're ready again for the activities of another day? What a wonderful gift. of God's mercy or we get up and we sit down to our breakfast and it's there again every morning we have plenty more than enough to eat to give us strength for the new day reminds me of the Israelites as they were traveling through the desert God sent them a new batch of manna every morning every morning when they got up they looked outside their tents and they saw a fresh supply of manna from heaven food from heaven God showed them His compassion as He cared for their physical need. God does the very same thing for us every morning. His mercies are there for us to enjoy. At Thanksgiving time each year, we must be mindful of the fact that every one of these blessings comes indeed from God's gracious hand. And that hand opens for us each morning again to give us what we need and much more than we need. There's not a single person here who is starving or going hungry, we all have more than enough to live on. And if you would doubt that, you better look today well at what's going to be in front of you on your tables today for dinner. Even in the down times, we're still cared for in our every essential need. Now, I know there are those who indeed have special physical and material burdens. There are those who wake up in the morning with pain, or with worry, or with distress, or with problems, and they find it hard to face the new day. And we as fellow believers must be mindful of them, of those among us or others who have such special needs, particularly during this special Thanksgiving time and the holiday season to follow. If God has blessed us so richly, Let us not ignore, let us not forget, especially our fellow believers and others who have gone through difficult times. Show them our special love and kindness. But you know, also for them, God provides daily grace and mercy to help them each new day and give them strength for each new day. They too must remember that God's mercies are new every morning and His compassions Never fail. So that's another reason that we have a song that we can sing this morning of thankful hope or hopeful thanks. And then a third reason for our hopeful thanks is mentioned in our text in the last clause of verse 23. Great is your faithfulness. Yes, our Lord is faithful. We can count on him. We can count on his goodness and love. We can count on his care. We can count on his promises. God never forgets us, not a single one of His children. He never forgets that we belong to Him. He never forgets His covenant commitment to us, to bless us and to lead us in our lives. As we read together in Psalm 100, to begin the service, for the Lord is good, His love endures forever, His faithfulness continues to all or through all generations. The promises of man are never fully reliable. And you and I know that. Even the best of saints are not always faithful, faithful to God himself or to their word, to their promises to others. And even those closest to us may at times fail us. They must stand by us as we hope and expect when we need them. But God is always faithful to his word and promises and his children. It doesn't mean, of course, that God does everything that we just want him to do, that we'd like for him to do. God has his own plan and purposes for our lives, which may lead in a different direction from what we expect. But God still always remains faithful to us, above all, in his love for us, so that we can be assured of what we read, as in Romans 8, 28, that all things work together for good. to those who love the Lord, to those who are called according to His purpose. How do we know that all things work together for good to those who love God? Because He is faithful. And so, as part of our song of hope and thankfulness, we also sing this morning, Great is Your Faithfulness. Now let me end this morning by noting in what way we should sing that song of hopeful thanks that is contained here then in our text. In what spirit then should we express our thanks to God for all his mercies and for his faithfulness? Well, let's listen just a moment to the remainder of our text from Lamentations 3. And it's beautiful how Jeremiah expresses it. He says in verse 24, I say to myself, the Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will wait for him. Notice, the Lord is our portion and we must wait for him. And in verse 25, Jeremiah continues, the Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him. Notice, you must hope in God and seek Him. And then in verse 26, Jeremiah writes, it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. What do all of those verses tell us? Well, they tell us that we must continue to hope and trust in God with a quiet but steady faith in Him. as you and I, too, face the future. And that future is known to God, of course, even though it is not known to us. But that's exactly why we must wait on the Lord. Waiting implies that we must humbly submit to God and let Him do His gracious work in His time. Jeremiah had just witnessed the tragedy of Jerusalem's downfall and destruction. He had seen the hand of God's judgment on his wayward people. But Jeremiah was still confident that God would again show mercy. And so he writes in verse 32, though he brings grief, he will show compassion. So great is his unfailing love. But all of that would happen according to God's timetable. And so, said Jeremiah, it is good to wait, to wait quietly. for the salvation of the Lord. And so you and I must only trust Him and hope in Him and seek Him. I think that's God's call to all of us in this period of our nation's history and in this time period of our lives. A lot of people are waiting today. They're waiting for things to change perhaps, or waiting for the economy to improve again, or waiting for an end to the present situation and downturn, or waiting perhaps for a job. or waiting for better times to come. And many can do little more than wait. But what we should be waiting for today and at all times, and what should Americans be waiting for? What should we be waiting for at all times? What should Americans be waiting for? Instead of waiting for conditions to change around us, what God is saying to us today and to our fellow citizens is, wait for me. Wait on the Lord, seek me, hope in me, because I am the only source of your salvation. I'm the only source of your blessing and prosperity. That's the message of God for our nation today, as it was for Israel and Judah in Jeremiah's day. Wait and put your faith in God. if only more would listen to His voice and place their trust in Him. Indeed, without God's mercy we have no lasting hope and no blessed future, whether personally or nationally. And so let us, as we sing our song of thankful hope or hopeful thanks today, wait for the Lord as we look ahead. For when our trust is in Him, He will again show compassion. Remember, He alone today can fill our hearts with joyful and peaceful thanksgiving. Amen. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you. We thank you for the Word of God that we've been able to meditate on just briefly here this morning. And we are so grateful, O Lord, for this song of hope, of thanksgiving that was uttered by your servant in a time of great distress and destruction. And yet, Lord, he could say and we can say and echo your word this morning that your mercies are new every morning and great is your faithfulness. Help us, we pray, Lord, to live in hope and to be thankful that we have a great hope because you're the God who's on the throne of the universe. You're the king of all creation and you're our Lord and our Father. In Jesus' name, Amen.