Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for He gives to His beloved sleep. See, we work because God works, and He blesses our work. I mean, who built the house in Psalm 127? Well, the primary builder was God. And yet we see that He used builders to do it. Who watched over the city? Again, the primary watcher is God. And yet watchmen are still called to stay awake, keep their watch, and defend the city. Unless God is with us working and sustaining us, we are doomed. Our first scripture reading today will be coming from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 1-18. It's the whole chapter. So if you turn in your Bible to 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, this will be our first scripture reading. the word of the Lord. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this world has blinded their minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God who said, Let light shine out hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, I believe and so I spoke, we also believe and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people, it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Though our inner self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Our passage today comes from Lamentations, chapter 3, verses 22, 23, and 24. Hear the word of the Lord. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in Him." I imagine that this passage is very familiar to most of you. I would hope that it's familiar to most of us. Many Christian songs that we sing have their origin in these verses. Not least of all, Great is Thy Faithfulness, which we'll be singing in response here shortly. Great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me." It's beautiful words. Sometimes we rush past the context of where this author is coming from. I mean, here we have it in the middle of lamentations. Lamentations is this short book and it's snuggled in between Jeremiah and Ezekiel where we see God's justice poured out on His people. And Lamentations is a book of five poems that's dedicated to looking back at the fall of Jerusalem. See, this is a book that's dedicated to mourning and weeping over the destruction of God's city. See, when you read through the book of Lamentations, you recognize right away that it's not a pick-me-up kind of book, but it's rather one that deals with the somber, heavy reality of death and destruction and God's judgment. You can read about it at the end of 2 Kings, or 2 Chronicles, where it tells of the fall of Jerusalem. Maybe you're familiar with this. The king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar and his armies, came through the land and they were wiping people out, and they came to Jerusalem, the walled city of Jerusalem. And they surrounded the city. And they had a siege there. And so the people of Jerusalem ran inside and they waited. And for two and a half years, they held out. But on the inside of the city, the people saw starvation and disease and death as they were rotting from the inside out. Their soldiers were killed. See, the Babylonians breached the walls and they put people to the sword. So the town was destroyed. All the valuable things from the temple were taken away. The temple itself was burned to the ground. They threw down the walls and the pillars and everything that was of value in the city was taken back to Jerusalem. And Lamentations is a book that describes this pain in the city, the atrocities of the situation. And these heart-rending images and the rejection of God's people, as our Lamentations author, probably Jeremiah, but maybe others, is sitting with images of their houses burning, the temple torn to the ground. And yet, right here, in the very center of the book of Lamentations, our author lifts his eyes to the Lord and teaches us of God's great faithfulness. I mean, what happened? His situation didn't change. He's still sitting in the midst of destruction. However, his focus did. When he could see and feel nothing good about what was happening, our author turned his attention and mind to the Lord and what God had done. author was God's great faithfulness. This is an important thing for us to consider wherever we are in life. Whether things are going well for us and we don't have a complaint in the world, or maybe some of us are struggling with the current crisis that seems so far outside of our control. We all need to hear this message from Lamentations and look to our God, who is unchanging and ever faithful. See, that's the point in our passage today. Our God teaches us to constantly look to His continual faithfulness, regardless of life's circumstances. So, we'll consider this in three parts today. First, we'll look at God's past faithfulness in His undeserved love. Next, we'll look at God's present faithfulness in His daily mercy. And then thirdly, we'll look at God's future faithfulness as the basis for our hope. So first, let's consider God's past faithfulness shown in His undeserved love. Starting in verse 22, we hear, "...the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases." Now this idea of steadfast love is actually one word in the original. It's chesed. And it's this really big word for the Hebrews, for the Jewish mind. And it contains a lot of ideas. It talks about God's condescension in His mercy, His coming down to His people in mercy. It means His love, His steadfastness. His faithfulness, His kindness, His goodness. See, often we translate this in the English using more than one word because it's such a big idea. Here we see His loving kindness, or His steadfast love. And the next thing we see is God proclaims His name Yahweh, the capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. See, this is special. When we see this, we're reminded of God's covenant name, His special name that He gave to His people. Remember, he declared this to Moses at the burning bush when Moses was being sent back to the people of Israel and they were enslaved in Egypt. And he said, God, if they ask me, what's your name? What should I tell them? Who should I tell them has sent me to you? You remember how God responded. He said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. Yahweh is the name that God gave to His people, a special name, His covenant name, that they may know Him. And tied to it in our passage, is this picture of steadfast love. And while we may have given a definition of it in our own terms, the people of Israel would have thought of this and they would have thought of a few places. Because it's so packed with meaning. We get a pretty good definition if we look back to Deuteronomy chapter 7, where Moses tells his people about God's steadfast love for them. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all people. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with his mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them. So here in this passage we see it's not because of the might of the people. It's not their strength in number or their winsome personality. No, God chose to love them because God chose to love them. He swore an oath, a covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob to his people and to their people after them. See, God's loving faithfulness was bound up in His promise, in His character, not theirs. We also notice that God views His people not as slaves, not as servants, not as enemies that have been conquered, but rather as treasured possessions, a priceless gem, a holy people on whom He might pour His love and His affection. See, this is good news. for us, too. See, God's love isn't dependent on our obedience. God's love is not based on our strength or our gifts or our abilities. Parents, why is it that you love your children? It's not because they've earned their love. No, it's because they are your children. You love your children because they are your children. Your love for them doesn't grow when they're succeeding and then go away when they're messing up. No, a parent's love for their children isn't about the child's performance, but it's based on the parent-child relationship from birth. It's a never-ceasing love. See, this gets us closer to this idea of steadfast, unfailing love described in this passage. Just like our author called the survivors of Jerusalem to look back on God's past love for His people, so we look back to the sending of His Son as His love for us. Do you want to know what the Lord's love looks like? Well, John puts it this way. This is how we know what love is. That Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. Or perhaps you've heard this one. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal life." See, Christ came and freely offered Himself on our behalf, not because we earned it, or because we deserved it, but because He loves His bride, and He gave Himself for her. We have been lavished with love. We've been adopted as His children and given more than we could ever ask or even imagine. See, God has promised, sworn to us, that nothing in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus, our Lord. See, in every way, He has perfectly purchased our souls. Sometimes, we forget this. that gets clouded out by the busyness of life and the things that seem so busy and pressing right in front of us. But we need to stop and remember God's faithfulness to us in the past. Think about Christ's work for us. Remember how He has worked and shown Himself to us. Stand in awe, thankful of His steadfast love towards us. Next, while we see that God has shown Himself to be faithful to us in the past, we also see that God is a God who continually acts in the present as well. Look again with me at verses 22 and 23. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. See, our God is merciful and kind to us each and every day. See, if we stop and we think about what we deserve and what we've been given, we recognize that we've been given way more than we deserve. I grew up as a which can be good and sometimes not. One of the things that I learned was that the word deserve was a trigger word for him. Because anytime that I wanted to get up and I wanted to say, look dad, I deserve this, or maybe I don't deserve this consequence, for him, I was just inviting him to remind me again about total depravity and what I actually deserve. See, all mankind, he would say, is sinful and fallen and saved for the grace of God. We have all earned and deserve His wrath and righteous judgment. That we deserve eternal destruction. See, he was kind of being funny, but he was also driving a message home that was really important. See, if we talk about what we deserve, we stand on really scary ground. See, I didn't always appreciate getting this lesson over and over again. But it did constantly remind me that when we understand our fallenness and our total undeservedness, it changes the way we view everything. And all the good things that we have in life come to us as a gift. See, rather than being something that's owed, We see them as this gracious, overabundant giving of our great God, who gives extravagantly and freely to His children. We can be thankful for family and friends, a warm house, working vehicles, a job, a beating heart, working lungs, our sight, pain to warm us from danger. I mean, you name it, everything that we have comes from the Lord to us as a gift. See, in kindness, God has given us what we don't deserve. His mercy has withheld the things that we do deserve. So instead of treating us like the enemies that we were, He treats us like children that He has made us to be. And not only can we count on His mercy today, but what's amazing is His passage shows us that God deals mercifully with His people every single day, morning by morning. Think about the sun coming up in the morning. It rises and it travels the whole span of the sky. Here in Nebraska, you get to see the whole trip as it comes up in the morning and then it sets in the evening. And we don't go to bed wondering if the sun's going to come up the next day. No, at the exact right time, the sun comes up again, travels the entire sky, And it goes down. And this happens every single day. Day after day after day after day. I mean that thing is like clockwork. I mean we don't need to worry that the sun won't rise one day. It doesn't need vacation time. It won't slow down one day and then get a little faster the next. See, you can go to your phone right now, or maybe you want to look at the Farmer's Almanac when you go home, and you can figure out the exact minute that that sun is going to come up any day you want. You can tell me what time that sun is going down any day you want. But why is this? Well, because our God is a God of order. And He created the universe for His good pleasure and to display His glory and reflect His faithfulness. Every day you can count on the sunrise. But even more than that, you can count on our God's faithfulness. He never, ever, ever changes. And every day that the sun rises is a testament to that. See, we are a people that need a God that is faithful in His mercy and in His love. See, I don't know your situation. And I don't know about you, but every time I go to the Lord in prayer, I have a lot of confessing to do. See, I'm a mess, and I know that. And it's not because I didn't get enough self-esteem pumping when I was a kid. I got plenty of that. It's not because I'm a navel gazer and I like to make my little sins in my life these giant mountains. It's not because I have some false sense of piety that I want to prove to people how much I like to beat myself up. No, it's because I know myself and I know my heart and I get a front row seat to the horror show that is my inner life. I get to experience it on the inside and I see it coming out as I'm impatient and uncaring and so many other things. And how could a God, like our God, not get sick of my constant failures? And surely I'm not alone. Do you ever get afraid that when you mess up, when you've been unfaithful to God, that He's just going to wash His hands and say, I'm done? Like He's going to say, no, I forgave you for that yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and the day before that. I've given you your chance, and now I'm through. We need a God not like that. See, in moments of doubt, in moments where we worry like this, think of the sunrise. Remember the faithfulness of the Son that doesn't have to be doubted. Now look beyond that to our God that we see here in Lamentations, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, that His mercies never come to an end, and that they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. See, the blood of Jesus that washed us pure as snow is far stronger than any sin that we've ever committed. And as Dr. Mosley likes to say, His grace outruns our sin every single time. Therefore, we can count on His present faithfulness and His mercy towards us every single day. We can come before Him knowing that we're accepted as His children. And it follows, if God has shown Himself consistently to be faithful in His steadfast love in the past, and every single day we can expect new morning mercies, doesn't it make sense that we can trust Him with our future as well? See, this is what verse 24 points out to us, when it tells us to hope in the Lord. says the Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in Him. See, hope is future focused. It's a trusting in what lies ahead. Often times we get the idea of hope to describe something we want, but we're really not sure if we're going to get it. I mean, how many kids say, I hope I get a new bike for Christmas. or I sure hope the weather warms up. I have a good feeling, and I'm not quite sure about this, but I hope it'll work out. See, this is how we tend to use the word hope in our culture, but this completely misses the biblical picture of hope. See, biblically speaking, hope is confidence. It's a certainty of what we haven't seen or yet experienced. It's a trusting or having faith in what God has said. And we're people that need hope in our lives. The good news for us is that our God has a perfect track record. And we'll continue to work all things together for ultimate good. And we don't always understand why He does what He does. We don't need to fear the future either. But we can trust in Him and put our hope in Him. See, our future is in good hands. So we can rest assured today, thankful for His future provision. And what I find interesting in our passage is the reason for the author's hope. In verse 24, you see the soul of this individual is talking. And listen to what it says, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will hope in Him. We see this idea of being a portion all throughout the Bible and especially in the Psalms. In Psalm 73, we have a man who's grappling with what's going on. Why do the wicked seem to do so well and the righteous not so well? And he comes to his conclusion at the end of the psalm, and he says this, Whom am I in heaven but you? There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My heart and my flesh may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Do you hear what he's saying? That God is my portion. That He's my inheritance. That God is my everything. That nothing else in heaven will do. That nothing else on earth could possibly do. Even if the psalmist's flesh gives way, even if his heart fails, He will be fine because the Lord is his portion. Which brings us back to Jeremiah's situation in Lamentations. Remember where he's at. He's sitting, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. He's lamenting the tragedy that he's witnessed as the destroyers have come and wiped out this city. Everything was stripped away from this individual. And yet, in the midst of it all, he looks up, he remembers the Lord his God, and he praises Him. He says, Lord, all I have is You. But You're more than enough. What beautiful testimony. From ashes comes this beautiful message. From a cry of despair, this radiant hope. Now let's stop and ask the tough question. Does this describe us? Can we, like Jeremiah, say, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will hope in Him? Is He our only hope, our only comfort in life and in death? My prayer is that we may echo this. That at the end of the day, we may look to Christ and see the riches of God lavished upon us. He is our portion and our hope. As we go about our lives with joys and busyness and problems and whatever else God has in store for us, may we always remember His great faithfulness displayed to us in His steadfast love in the past, new morning mercies in the present, and as the basis for our hope for the future. Let's turn to the Lord in prayer. your faithfulness. We ask that you would help us to turn our eyes to you, that you would help us to set aside the busyness of this world, Lord, and that we would have fellowship with you and that we would look to you and we might know you more. Teach us to trust you, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.