God is worthy of our trust. He has proven that. He has proven that He is faithful. Starting in Revelation 19 in verse 11, I want to show you what I mean about this. Then heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on him was called, what? Faithful. God is faithful and true. God is worthy of our trust. Back up to just two books before and look at 1 John chapter 1. in verse 9. All of you know this verse. It's just back, Revelation, Jude, 3rd John, 2nd John, 1st John, chapter 1 in verse 9. It says this, if we are characterized by ongoingly confessing our sins, present, active, indicative. One of the evidences of believers are they are confessing and agreeing with God. If we are confessing our sins, He is what? faithful. He is faithful and just to forgive our sins. Revelation 19.11, he is faithful and true. 1 John 1.9, he is faithful and just. God is faithful. Now keep backing up to 1 Peter, and that's just before 1 John, so back two books, 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 19. 1 Peter 4.19, God is faithful. And it says in verse 19, therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God, and that according to is a two-way street, yea all that are godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer, so it is God's will that we suffer. And he's saying if you're suffering according to God's will, sometimes we incur suffering that is not the plan of God. We suffer as a wrongdoer. You know, you suffer because you have a lead foot or because you, you know, overeat and destroy your body and all that. I mean, some suffering God can help us through, but we bring on ourselves. But he's saying if you suffer, verse 19, according to the will of God, commit their souls to Him in doing good as to a faithful creator. God created us and He is faithful to you and to me. He is worthy of our trust. You can trust Him. You can put your hope in Him. You can bank on Him. You can confidently rest in Him. that he will do what he promised he would do. Keep backing up to 1 Corinthians. So you go by James and Hebrews and Titus and Timothy's and all the little epistles and go to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 13. First Corinthians 10.13 is another reminder of God's faithfulness. And this is what he says, First Corinthians 10.13, No temptation has overtaken you. I hope that rings a bell with you. Temptations are chasing us all the time. Did you catch that overtaking you? This week I was suffering for the Lord up at this conference and everybody was trying to be nice to us. In fact, the kids said it was the nicest they had, you know, we've gone to this conference for about 12 years and they said it was the most wonderful week that we've ever had at that conference. It seems like everybody either wanted to take us fishing, or they wanted to take us boating, or they were making us drive their overcharged, super-powered, you know, out of the water, just hanging by their tail, jet-ski things, you know, and it was just wonderful, but... One of them made me get on this hot dog. And a hot dog looks like an Oscar Mayer's wiener. It's just this yellow thing. It's long, and it's connected to the back of one of these oversized boats that comes right out of the water when you rev it up. I mean, the whole thing just comes out, and it's too much motor for that boat. And you attach yourself to the back of it by this little thin cord, and they are totally holding you at their mercy. I don't know why I agreed to that. It was for the children, I think. And so I got out there with all my life preservation equipment on, and the children, and I was, I was, and they said, hold on! I didn't realize what they meant. I mean, we were jerked out of the water on this, I mean, it's just like a hot dog, and it just bounces across the top of the water. You know, I was holding on, I was almost falling off and holding on for dear life, and the kids were just loving it. And we would just come off the ground. My wife said, you look like you're having so much fun. I said, that was not fun. That was terror. And they were going only, they kept it down to only 35 miles an hour. But the thing was, I could tell, I finally got my composure and figured out how to sit. And I leaned back, and that made the hot dog kind of drag, so it brought stability. And then I saw the woman who was driving the boat. And she looked at me. And I thought, that's a bad sign. And she whipped the wheel like this, like that. And we went flying across sideways across the water. She wanted to knock me off. And you know what? She did. And I went rolling across the top of the water at 35 miles an hour. Did you know water at 35 is like pavement? And I'm still sore. But look back at verse 13. No temptation has overtaken you. So I finally got back in the boat, dried out, was just getting all warm, and I was sitting in the very back of the boat. Another trick. they went real fast and they stopped suddenly and the water came, the cold water came like an avalanche over the back and soaked me again and I thought of that when I read verse 13, no temptation is overtaking you, temptation is following you and me all the time and it is always the world, our own flesh and all the demons and the devil are trying to overtake us But no temptation is overtaking you, except such as is common to man. I mean, it just, it's going to be the same. It's either going to be less the flesh, less the eyes of the pride of life. That's the three varieties. Now, it has a lot of different flavors, but just, it's going to come in one of those channels. But look at this. But God is what? Faithful. And He's always going to make a lighted exit sign. You see the exit sign right there? I was speaking at this very same conference a couple years ago and a huge storm came through and knocked out the power and I was in this large building filled with people and all the lights went out, the power point went off, the microphone went off and you know what was so vivid because it was a darkened auditorium as soon as there was this crash and pop went the lights and it became totally dark and all of a sudden the first thing you saw was those safety battery-powered emergency exit signs were just bright as day, showing you the way out. Did you know that the next time that the storms of temptation, that something of the world, of any variety, has overtaken you in the way that it overtakes all humans, God is faithful and he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but will with the temptation also make a lighted emergency escape route for you. I mean, every time I see those exit signs, I'm reminded that God has an exit for each of us every time temptations come. And he is faithful. He positions himself saying, you can trust me, no matter what you go through in life, no matter what temptation. Now, when I say temptation, it's giving a lot of different ideas in your minds, depending on what age you are. For some of you, you're tempted, you know, to sneak down when mom and dad aren't looking, you know, and eat candy. For others of you, you're tempted in far awfuller ways. But you get older, and there's a temptation to not say that God is good. I want you to keep backing up into the Old Testament and go to the book of Lamentations with me. Now, for those of you who don't know where Lamentations is, act like you do. Go right to the middle, Psalms, and then start going like this to the right, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, that's a big one, 6-6 chapters, Jeremiah, and then Lamentations right after that. So Lamentations, chapter 3. God is worthy of our trust no matter what we go through. Jeremiah went through almost everything that's possible to go through in life that's awful. And Jeremiah wrote a poem about it. Let me just give you a brief overview of Jeremiah's life. Jeremiah is what we call a major prophet. What a major prophet is, is someone that wrote a long, long Old Testament book. He was one of the majors that wrote a big book. He wrote a 52-chapter book called Jeremiah. That's the one just before Lamentations. And Jeremiah lived a difficult life, and this book of Lamentations is his conclusion to life. Lamentations? Lament? Do you know what a lament is? It's a woeful dirge. Do you know what he had to say about life? He wept about it. In fact, he's called the weeping prophet. Why did he weep? He had a lot of troubles. The book, the 52 chapters before Lamentation tell us what his life was like. Okay? You don't know the troubles that he saw. Most of us will never experience in our collective lifetimes all the trouble that he went through. But what he said, and I want to point out to you, is the 23rd verse. Look at chapter 3 of Lamentations, verse 23. It says, they are new every morning, verse 23, great is your what? Faithfulness. Who's faithful? God is faithful. Let me show you something about this chapter. Back up to chapter 1. Look back at chapter 1 of Lamentations. How many verses are in chapter 1? How many? Twenty-two. Okay, good. How many letters are in the Hebrew alphabet? Twenty-two. That's an interesting combination. Look at chapter 2. How many verses are in chapter 2? Twenty-two. How many letters in the Hebrew alphabet? Twenty-two. Okay, look over at chapter 5. How many verses are in chapter 5? 22 and how many letters 22? Okay, how many verses are in chapter 4? 20 this is the only book of the Bible like this. This book is made up of listen to this 7 22 verse poems you said wait a minute. It's only five chapters Look at the third chapter where we are How many verses are in chapter 3? three twenty-two verse poems. Now, the Hebrews were really into structure. Their poetry is not based on rhyme. You know, blue and true and, you know, love and shove and all these other rhymes that we can put in our poems. Theirs is totally built on structure. And so you can tell Hebrew poetry, when you get to Hebrew class, by the structure. And the structure is even more enhanced when it's in a kind of a parallel construction. So chapter 1 and 5 parallel each other and they both are 22 verses. Then chapters 3 and 2, I mean 4 and 2, parallel each other in their instruction. Then you get to chapter 3 and you have a pyramid. You have three 22-verse poems that kind of are the capstone. So the very top of the pyramid, if you go 22 verses, 22 verses, 22 verses, the very top of the pyramid would be the beginning of the fourth 22 verse poem. Okay, so look in your Bibles. Chapter 1, there's 22. Okay, chapter 2, there's 22. The third one is chapter 3, verse 22. What is the very pinnacle on the top of the pyramid of this beautiful structure of poetry that they're building? It would be the first verse of the fourth twenty-two verse poem. And that happens to be right in the middle of chapter three in verse twenty-three. So what is the whole, I mean, in their structural way, what is the focus of this entire book about? It's about verse 23, that God offers us something that's new every morning because His faithfulness is great. Can I give you a quick thumbnail sketch of Jeremiah's life? Turn back to the book about his life, Jeremiah, and I want you to start with me in chapter 11. It's the longest book of the Old Testament. Some of you probably didn't even know that. It has more words than the book of Psalms. This is the longest book of the Bible in the count of Hebrew words, in the count of raw, actual words. It's the longest. Look at chapter 11, the longest book in the Bible, Jeremiah. in verse 19. And let me summarize. I'm going to give you a five-minute biography. If we were interviewing Jeremiah, this is what we would find out about his life. Number one, from an earthly perspective, Jeremiah's life was a failure. What was he? He was a prophet. What are prophets? They're people that speak for God. They're people that warn people that God wants them to know something that they better listen. Okay, he spent his whole lifetime, his whole ministry, warning Israel to respond to God. and before his ministry was over. The people had so lacked in their response that God utterly destroyed the nation through the Babylonians. They came and besieged city after city and made their way to Jerusalem until finally they besieged Jerusalem three times, 605, 597, and then finally they destroyed the place in 586. In 605 they hauled off Daniel. In 597 they hauled off Ezekiel. In 586 they killed everyone, butchered them. and burnt and destroyed and leveled the temple in the city and they left Jeremiah alive because they said you're a good guy you warn these people that God was going to destroy him and he did and you're a good guy and they let Jeremiah see the slaughter and the burning and pillaging and destruction of Jerusalem so from an earthly perspective Jeremiah was a failure. He was supposed to warn them, so they didn't get destroyed. And they didn't listen, and they got destroyed. Jeremiah's life, his ministry, was 40 years. And during 40 years, chapter 11, starting in verse 19, tells us, he saw no visible results among those he served. He had no visible results. You put it in the context. He served his Sunday school class, you could say, or he served his local church, or he served on the mission field, whatever context you want to go to. He served God the way God called him to do, just like we do in our Sunday schools, or in our missions, or in our other ministries and local church, and yet he saw no visible results after 40 years. It says in verse 19 of chapter 11, It says, I was like a docile lamb brought to the slaughter. I didn't know that they had devised schemes against me, saying, let's destroy the tree with the fruit. And verse 21, thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth, who seek your life. I mean, not only did he see no visible results, the people he gave his life to hated him. and tried to destroy him. And he had virtually no converts to show for his lifetime of ministry. Look over at chapter 12 and verse 6. He had no one to find joy and comfort in. At least most of us have a family to go home to of one kind or another. Guess what God didn't let him have? Look at chapter 12 and verse 6. It says, but even your brothers in the house of your father, they have dealt treacherously with you, and they have called a multitude after you. He didn't even have a family to go to. They hated him, too. So, I mean, this guy was a failure. He had no visible results among those that he came to serve. Plus, he never had the joy of a godly home. Turn over to chapter 16 and verse 2. His family was against him, the nation was against him, he had nobody that responded to him. And look at, here's the ultimate one. Chapter 16, verse 2. The word of the Lord, verse 1, came to me saying, You're going to be single and alone your whole life, Jeremiah. That's what verse 2 says. You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place, for thus says the Lord. Did you catch what that means? Jeremiah wasn't allowed to get married. He wanted to. Jeremiah wanted to have a wife of the house of Israel, a faithful worshipper of God. He wanted to go together with her to the house of the Lord. He wanted to share his life and give himself to someone else. He wanted to have the joy of seeing God grant conception and for them to have children. He wanted to name his children after himself and see his children and his grandchildren. God says no. No, not only does your family not like you, you can never have your own family that might like you. You're going to be alone and single your whole life. Well, he never had the joy of a godly home because God never allowed him to marry. He suffered incredibly agonizing loneliness. Chapter 18, if you keep going to the right, verse 18, the next thing about him, he lived under a constant threat of death. There were plots to kill him in secret so no one could find him. That's 18, 18 to 23. Chapter 20, the first two verses, he lived with constant physical pain. Why? This is one example of when he was beaten severely, bound in wooden stocks. Amazing what he had to go through. Verse 10 of chapter 20, he had emotional pain as his friends spied on him and were trying to get him in trouble even more than the beating and the stalks. Verse 14 of chapter 20, he was consumed with sorrow and shame. In fact, he even starts quoting Job and says, I cursed the day I was even born. I mean, the ultimate. That's verses 14 to 18. If you read the rest of the book, in chapter 37, his life ends with no relief. He's falsely accused of being a traitor. He's arrested in chapter 37. He's beaten some more. He's thrown into a dungeon. He starved many days. They throw him into an old cistern of which Jerusalem has many. Jerusalem today has cisterns that hold 360 million gallons of water. Most of those hearken back to the ancient times when the Jerusalem inhabitants carved all these cisterns everywhere they could because it's an arid land collecting water and they dropped Jeremiah into one of these dark Empty cisterns and you know what a cistern is like when the water the last water with buckets can't be taken out. It's just a stinky muddy Dark place and the scriptures say when they dropped him in he sunk down To the pits of his arms in mud So he's holding himself up by having his arms out like this and he is sinking in the mud And that's where they left him for days. Do you know what's in dark, stinky places that are wet? You don't have very many basements here in Oklahoma, but those of us that grew up with basements, and we've even lived in homes that had basements that weren't concreted, that were just mud. And did you know there are constant things coming in and living down there? So that's how Jeremiah was. His life never had relief. And if an Ethiopian Gentile had not interceded on his behalf and tied a bunch of rags together and had him put the rag rope underneath his arms, he would have died down there. And they dragged him and pulled him out of the mud and out of all the bugs and whatever else was down there before he was too weak to hold on and rescued him. Well, now turn to that little book of Lamentations. He summarizes everything I just told you in chapter 3. And what he says, and you can follow along with me in chapter 3, he talks about what to do when life hurts. Okay? Now, what I just told you is a hurting life. No family cared for him, single or alone, because God wouldn't let him get married. Never even had hope he could someday get married. I mean, hope keeps people alive. He had no hope. Look at chapter 3, verse 1. I am the man who has seen affliction. He says, I know what it means to say that life hurts. by the rod of his wrath. He knew it was God's hand because God could have prevented all these things. He was the prophet of God. He was the most visible man of God in the whole nation at that time. And God could have very easily protected him. But he didn't. Because he had a purpose. And that purpose, we'll see when we get to the pinnacle of this book, that 23rd verse, which is the first verse of the fourth 22-verse acrostic poem, everywhere I'm going this morning is back where we started. It's verse 23. His they're new every morning great is your faithfulness When can God show his faithfulness to us when in verse 1? We're the ones who've seen affliction when in verse 4 look at chapter 3 verse 4 He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. There's a confession what happens when you're beaten and put in stocks and dropped in pits and people are trying to murder you and people are always spying on you and telling on you and they're Imprisoning you and starving you and trying to kill you. What does it do to you? He says, it has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. Do you know what he's saying? I have broken physical health because I was serving the Lord, because I loved Him. I have broken health, he says. I wonder, you ever had broken physical health? You ever had things that ached? You ever had things that didn't work? Your flesh has aged? Your skin has aged? Maybe you have constant bouts with, you know, skin cancer removal? Maybe your joints hurt? Whatever. He says, that's me. Look at verse 5. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe. You know what he had? Deep emotional pain. You ever had deep emotional pain? We met someone this week. His name was Dick. His wife's name was Jeanette. He was probably almost 80. He had eight children, and they were all there at Gold Lake. I felt, wow. And they were all grown up. It was so sweet to see them loving each other. And all their children were there. In fact, they stayed under us in a cabin, all 32 of them. And they kept apologizing for how loud they were. But this man had deep emotional woe. He had grown up in an alcoholic family, this dick that was 80 years old. He was almost, I think, almost the second or third from the youngest of 11 children. And his parents were constantly drinking, and they never took care of the children. They never had food, never had a place to stay, never had clothing. And finally, the parents got so tired of him, they abandoned him and got rid of them. Now this was 80 years ago in Chicago before all of our social services had cranked up fully at the extent they are now, and so they were just left. And so families of Chicago found them and took them and cared for them, but some of them very grudgingly, and so he grew up being beaten by his foster families. You know, this man just, when he talked about what the Lord had done for him, as he did with me one day, his tears just welled up because you know what he said? He says, and God was so faithful. You know, it didn't warp him, it made him learn. As his deep emotional strain and pain came on him. It made him learn verse 23. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. Look at verse 6. He has set me in dark places, like the dead of long ago. Do you catch that? That's a beautiful, elevated Hebrew for saying, I'm depressed. he set me in a dark place. And then when he said, like the dead long ago, what he's saying is, I don't matter, no one remembers me, no one cares about me, I'm forgotten. So he felt forgotten, he felt unimportant, insignificant, I mean, you can just, just whatever. And that produced, verse six, dark places. He was depressed emotionally. Did you know that that's a common ailment in biblical people? Did you know that Ezra, as he was writing the 119th Psalm, says in the 25th verse of that longest chapter of the Bible, my soul cleaves to the dust? He was depressed. He was crushed. He was afflicted and felt squashed under it. Of course, Ezra says at the end of verse 25, but you quicken me with your word. And that's what Jeremiah is saying here. He set me in dark places like the dead long ago. But, verse 23, every morning I have a new dose of his faithfulness and I start my day when my skin is old and my bones hurt and I just feel totally forgotten and I'm depressed. I get a new dose of his faithfulness. Look at verse 7. He has hedged me in so I can't get out. Do you know what that in English is? I feel trapped. He says, I feel I'm hedged in. I feel like the walls are too high. I can't get out. Do you ever feel that way at work? You feel trapped. All of a sudden you realize that you've come to an age where you're not employable, and so you better really walk gingerly, because if they ever let you go, you'll end up finding yourself flipping burgers at McDonald's or whatever, where you were formerly an executive type, but you get to that age where you feel trapped. Some people feel trapped in their marriages. They realize it's a dead-end street and it's going nowhere. They feel trapped in whatever with their health or their finances or whatever. He says, that's how I feel. I feel trapped. And he has made my chain heavy, verse 7 says. I feel burdened. Now he's probably, remember he's writing this at the destruction of Jerusalem, and he's seeing people that were trapped. They were putting them and huddling them into groups and mowing them down and killing them. He saw others who were the captives that were sold into slavery, and the Babylonians would put a large chain around their neck, and they'd put other chains around their feet, and they would chain them together, and the relief pictures, by the way, they chiseled into stone pictures of the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying off of the goods of Jerusalem, and we know that they were chaining them neck to neck. And those heavy chains were burdening those people. He said, I feel like them. He said, I feel burdened. My chain is heavy. I feel trapped. I'm hedged in. Verse 8. And even when I cry and shout, He, that's the Lord God Almighty, shuts out my prayers. He said, I feel out of touch. I feel like God isn't listening. You ever feel that way? You say, what good does it do to pray? I feel he's not even listening to me." He said, I feel that way too. Verse 9, he's blocked my way with hewn stone. He felt frustrated. He felt that his way was blocked. He was trying to go somewhere, boom, this stone dropped in front of him. He said in verse 9, he has made my path crooked. He says, I'm confused. He said, I can't tell where I'm going. My pathway is crooked. He says, I feel trapped. He says, I feel burdened. I'm frustrated. I feel out of touch with God. I feel confused. I don't know where I'm going. And it didn't end that way. Look at verse 17. I love this. In fact, this I think is humorous. Verse 17, you have moved my soul far from peace. That's a very big way of saying I am quite anxious. I don't have any peace. I'm worried." He says, my soul has moved far from peace and I have forgotten prosperity. He says, I'm sad. I can't remember when there was ever any good times. Verse 18, and I said, my strength is gone. That means he was weak. I'm in weakness. And my hope, my strength and my hope have perished from the Lord. I'm weak and I'm hopeless. Remember my affliction in roaming, verse 19. The wormwood and the gall, do you know what wormwood and gall is, verse 19? That's bitterness. He said, I just feel, I just feel, in my mouth I just taste that life isn't what I thought it was going to be. It didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. And I feel bitterness about that. And my soul still remembers, and verse 20 says, and sinks within me. Every time I think about my 40 years and I'm a failure and no response to my ministry and my whole family hates me and I never got to have my own family. And then they're all against me and I just feel trapped and burdened and I feel out of touch with God. And he said, when I think about all those things, verse 20, my soul sinks within me. I mean, imagine he's looking at the city burning and all the blood flowing. Kind of gruesome. But look at verse 21. When all this is happening, when I have broken physical health, deep emotional strain, I'm depressed, I'm trapped, I'm burdened, I'm out of touch, I'm frustrated, I'm confused. Verse 17, I'm anxious, I'm sad. Verse 18, I feel weakness and hopelessness. And verse 20, my soul is sinking within me. just as I'm going down, remember, 35 miles an hour, and that devious power boater went like that and threw me off, and just as I was sinking into the icy waters of Gold Lake, this beautiful life vest lifted me out of the water. I was in so much pain from my 35 mile an hour impact. and I started rising up out of the water, and the sun started shining on my face, and I looked down at that gray, beautiful life vest, and I thought, I can just relax and just hang here and float until they come around and pick me up with the ambulance, you know? And you know what? Verse 21, while he is sinking down in all that problem, verse 21, this I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope." And what did he start remembering? What was he? He was a prophet. What had he spoken for 40 years? The Word of God. And now, he had no Bible, he had no friends, he had no relatives, he had no hope on earth. Everything he knew was burning. Everything was destroyed or murdered. But something he still had written in his mind was the Word of God. And so he starts remembering what he had memorized in God's Word, and he starts meditating on it. And he says, I have hope, verse 21 at the end, because verse 22, I remember the Word of God. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. And those mercies and compassions, verse 23, are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Now, a while back, I told you a story about a man. We're going to end with this, so don't miss it. About two months ago, I told you the story of a man born in 1866, Thomas O. Chisholm. And in 1866, Thomas O. Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Kentucky. And Thomas O. Chisholm was brought up in a godly Christian home, raised for the Lord, came to faith in Christ, went through school, educated, studied his hardest, went off and studied for the ministry, and returned to Kentucky to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he served faithfully until he was 50 years old. And in 1916, Thomas O. Chisholm was released from his church. That's a polite way of saying that they threw him out. They fired him. And what the records of the church said was he was too sickly to be their pastor. he had respiratory problems and the respiratory problems, I don't know, we'd probably say he was asthmatic and something else but he was just too sickly and they said that he didn't have a loud enough voice, they couldn't hear him because they didn't have microphones and that he didn't have enough strength to visit them regularly enough and so they just released him and actually they put him out of their church, they said we don't want him and so the next year, 1917 he had written down his testimony. And he wrote down, I'm going to live for Jesus a life that is true. I'm going to strive to please him in all that I do. I'm going to yield allegiance glad-hearted and free. That's the pathway of blessing for me. even though they don't want me in the church, and even though God didn't give me an Olympic body and health. And so what I'm going to do is, and this is what we looked at a few weeks ago, I'm going to say, O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee, for Thou in Thine atonement didst give Thyself for me. Did Jesus have an easy life? No. He was oppressed, he was afflicted, they were always accusing him of being an illegitimate child, and that, you know, that he was born in sin and all this other stuff, and he was demon-possessed. So he really related to Christ. He said, Jesus had a hard time, and I am having a hard time, and thou and thine atonement, just give thyself for me. I own no other master, in fact, nobody else even wants me. I mean, can you imagine being put out of your church for being sick? I mean, that's what the church is for. They should have been bringing him meals. and lightning is the load. They just put him out. I own no other master. My heart shall be thy throne. My life I give henceforth to live, O Christ, for thee alone. And he went out and began to support himself. Remember I told you, going door to door, selling brushes. How many brushes do you need? Has anybody ever come to your house selling you brushes? I mean, I don't need brushes. You know, I mean, what a hard thing to sell in Kentucky, in 1917, when people were living far apart. So that's what he did. Okay, let me ask you. How do you think he did? How do you think this bold statement, I mean, when he got home from selling his brushes, he sat at his table and he wrote these poems. This is a poem that Thomas Chisholm, the rejected pastor, wrote and sent off. And Heidelberg Press grabbed it and captured it and started putting it in hymn books. I'm so glad they did. But can God be counted on for someone that says, oh Jesus Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee. Nobody else wants me. My family rejected me like Jeremiah. I don't have a family like Jeremiah. People are against me. I'm sure Chisholm felt that way. Well, let's look at the end of the story. What happens when someone says, O Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to Thee, and they still have a hard life? History records Chisholm walked the muddy, ruddy roads of Kentucky year after year after year. They never invited him back to the church. And you know what? He went humming down the road And look what he said six years later. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee, even though those people at the church turned on me. You know, I added that part. Thou changest not, even though all the people I poured my life into changed. Thy compassions they fail not, even though those people don't have any compassion for me. As thou hast been, thou forever will be, even though I don't know where my next meal is coming from, and I don't even know if I have a friend on the planet. Isn't it wonderful that you can make it even when everybody on earth seems to be against you? Look what he says. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Who did he have his eyes on? Certainly wasn't those people that weren't going to take care of him anymore. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. Can you imagine having asthma and having broken physical health, living in a log cabin, and walking all day from door to door, selling your brushes that no one wanted to buy, and having to get up the next morning and do the same thing? How did he do it? Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Where did Thomas Chisholm get this idea from? Where were we just now in the Bible? We were in Lamentations. Where did Thomas O. Chisholm turn for hope when he was walking In fact, the next stanza reflects that. Summer and winter, springtime and harvest. Do you know what I see? I see him setting off from his cabin and it's frosty and cold and the fall is coming and he's looking out at the harvest and the pumpkins and the corn shocks. And he'd gone through the hot, dusty, muggy, do you know what the valleys of Kentucky are like? I do. I've spoken in the valley. Now they even have paper mills, which makes it smell like something died. And it's hot, and it's dusty, and it's muggy in those river valleys. and summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and stars. Do you know what I see there? I see him walking home after a long day and he left in the morning as the sun came out and now the moon is peeking out and he's still walking back with his bags that he didn't sell, of whatever, back to his cabin. Sun, moon and stars in their courses above and instead of being dragging along and feeling sorry for himself and everything else, he says, Join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. You know what that says? I am joining with all nature in praising my Creator, because He's faithful. Last stanza, what was he really buzzed about? Pardon for sin. a peace that endureth. He had every reason to not be peaceful. He had every reason to be upset, to be troubled, to be angry, to be anxious. Strength for today, and look at this, bright hope for tomorrow. He had no pension, he had no company, he had no savings, he was living on a shoestring. And he says, I have bright hope for tomorrow, because I have blessings that are all mine with 10,000 beside. Thomas, what are your blessings? Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning, new mercies from you, O God, I see. Everything I've needed, your hand hath provided. What did God say we need in life? Having food and raiment, therewith be content. What do we want? We want too much food, too much raiment, and a lot of places to store it, and a lot of money to buy new stuff because we love buying more food and raiment. And we're not content. But he says, All that I have needed thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. But I want to show you the rest of the story in Lamentations. Look back at Lamentations. When life hurts, like it was hurting for old Jeremiah, what does God offer? He offers in verse 22, in our failures, God will always offer His unfailing love. All of Jeremiah's failures are the first 21 verses, or first 20 verses, and he was sinking inside. I mean, he just felt he was a failure in every way. Some were probably real because he was a sinner just like we are, and he probably had failed the Lord, and some were imagined. But all of our failures, and all of his failures, in all of those, God always offered what? His unfailing love. Look at verse 22. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because his compassion, his loving loyalty to us, fails not. Jeremiah never said he was perfect. He was a realist. He knew the Lord. What he did say was, I know I'm weak, I know I've failed, I know that the Lord has revealed himself to me, and it's the Lord who's perfect. And he has offered his unfailing love. Verse 23, Look what he offered. Into our monotonous lives, look what the Lord promises. He promises daily freshness. Verse 23, they are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. God delivers a fresh new load of mercy, of compassion, of loving kindness to help us through whatever day we have to face. No matter what we're going through, he has a daily freshness. to come into our monotonous lives. Look at verse 24. Into our weakness, He gives us a personal dose of strength. He says in verse 24, the Lord is my portion, therefore I hope in Him. He's my portion, no matter how weak I am. Look at verse 25. Into our often frantic lifestyles, He promises to bless us. Verse 25, the Lord is good to those, what? Who wait for Him. One thing I'm sure about old Chisholm, he had time walking between cabins to think about the Lord and to wait on the Lord. And he meditated on this verse, verse 23, great is thy faithfulness, until he wrote his testimony. I'm so glad he did. You know, I can never sing that song without thinking of the man's life, and what a testimony he was to what Jeremiah said, that the promise of blessing. Verse 26, the next one in Lamentations 3, into our anxious lives, his salvation gives us quiet hope. It's good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. We need to realize that we're not here to get as much of the planet under our belts as we can get. We're not here to own as much as we can of this place. We're not here to have everything and experience and have all these pleasures. God says, I have unimaginable pleasures for you waiting. Why are you trying and wasting all your time having all the pleasures here? When I am taking you somewhere. It's like the kids on the way to Disney World are just content to scoot around the parking lot, you know, and play of the parking lot, of the amusement park. And you say, but I want to take you inside. And you go, I just, I know, I want to be here, I want to play on the pavement. That's what we're like on Earth. God says, I have unimaginable blessings for you. if you will, as verse 26 says, if you will wait quietly and hope in the salvation of the Lord. If we would stop thinking that we're here to have a party and realize we're going to the party, we wouldn't be so depressed about not having a party here. And we would look forward to there. Let's go to 33 and end. Verse 33, for he does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. We get confused sometimes, and we think, God, God wants me to have a hard life. You know, it's kind of like, you ever seen kids play duck, duck, goose? You know, they go, duck, duck, duck, goose? We think God goes, duck, duck, goose, and he really gooses us, and we have a hard time in life, and God is enjoying goosing us. No, no, no. He says, no, no. He does not afflict willingly. Jesus said this when he was telling the parable about the widow going to the judge, he says, will not God bear long with us? Do you know who is struggling through all of our struggles with us? God. He does not afflict us willingly. He's saying, I want you to learn I'm faithful, so I'm going to allow you to have this hard life so that you can know that I'm faithful. This week, when you feel squashed, alone, out of touch and peace has been removed far from you and you can't remember prosperity. It's a time for you from your heart to the God of the universe to let him remind you that he is great in his faithfulness. Amen?