017 - This I Recall to my Mind

When you pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages. Welcome to More Than Ink.

Wow, I didn't expect that. How many times have you said that this year? I know 2020 is not what I expected and it continues not to be what I expected, but what do we do instead? We remember God. And that changes everything? And therefore we have hope. And therefore we have hope.

We'll look at that today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we are just delighted you're back with us. And these wonderful fall mornings are just gorgeous. So we're sitting here in our dining room with our hot drinks and looking outside and just loving it. But the weather has changed. It's winter.

It has definitely changed. White stuff here in Brigham City is coming down. But that's just nice. I tell people all the time, when I was growing up with snow, when I would see the first snow coming down in the fall, that meant playtime.

And I'm not a skier, but still every time I see snow, I get playful is what it is. Anyway, today we are just a few days before Thanksgiving in our broadcast schedule here. And we thought it would be a good deal to actually talk about Thanksgiving. It's five days away, so it gives you a little while to sort of think about it.

But it can be difficult for a lot of people on Thanksgiving. Right? I'm sorry. You don't know? I just wasn't sure where you're going with that. Because I have just spent a couple of weeks just deeply thinking about this passage that we're going to address today.

Yes, yes. And gained some fresh thoughts. You know, every year kind of brings around a different set of expectations regarding holidays and families and all of that. And I had never really paid attention before to the thrust of this Lamentations 3 passage pertaining to our expectations. Exactly. And so when we get going and talk about that, I'm going to lean into that a little bit.

Yeah, so I'm going to really rely on your most recent studies. Yeah, because 2020 is a year that has blown our expectations. Exactly.

Off the planet, right? We just have encountered so many things this year that we did not expect. Right, right. And what you think might cause us to not be thankful. Right. But we're going to talk about the fact that in the midst of probably the worst of circumstances, the worst of circumstances, you can indeed be genuinely thankful. Not just because mom or dad said, well, you need to be thankful for that.

No, but actually be genuinely thankful even though everything looks like it's going south. Right. And it has to do with the discipline of the mind, right? The writer of Lamentations says, but this I remember. This I will call to mind.

I will turn my attention consciously and deliberately this direction. Yeah, so let's set the context. We are going to go into Lamentations because when we're thinking about this particular program, I thought, well, what's the most downer part of the entire Old Testament? Oh my gosh. This might be the most downer section.

I mean, just emotionally and for the nation viscerally. I mean, it's horrible. So let's set the context because it can't be, your experience right now cannot be worse than what was going on here. Okay. And that's really important for us to remember because this book was written shortly after Jerusalem had been put under siege by the Babylonians and the city of Jerusalem was reduced to ruins in 586 BC. And during the siege, you know, moms were eating their own babies.

Okay. So Lamentations, the book of Lamentations is filled with horrific, terrifying images. And this calibrates us, right? When we go back and realize that these things were written by an eyewitness to that two year siege and the people inside the city were literally starving to death and they were, as recorded a couple of places in Lamentations, they were eating their children as a result of their starvation. Now that's another story for another day, but it's really important that we understand that is the context in which Lamentations was written. And traditionally we understand it was written by Jeremiah.

His name is not on the book, but there's some good evidences for that. And keep in mind too, if you don't know who Jeremiah is, Jeremiah is not a bullfrog. Jeremiah was a prophet in Israel about five centuries before Jesus. The southern kingdom of Judah at the end of its time in the land. And they were not being really good in terms of their relationship with God. So God tried to warn them of the fact that if they don't change, then his gift to them and the land they live in, actually, they're going to get pushed out. Okay, you have soft-sold that because the nation of the southern kingdom of Judah had been profoundly wicked for four or five hundred years at this point.

Pretty off the charts. There were things that had popped up, but since the time of Solomon, they had been engaging in ridiculous, terrifying forms of idolatry, many of which involved the sacrifice of their children. In your face, against God, idolatry. When we connect that to the judgment of God falling on the nation and they wind up literally eating their children, well, they had been doing that spiritually for generations. And so God, in this judgment, has allowed that to become a reality for them. And I don't want to linger on that, but we just need to touch on how horrific their circumstances were.

The city had been leveled, buildings had burned, the temple had been destroyed, and the people either killed outright or taken off into captivity in Babylon. Exactly. And so this book is full of what we call laments. Lament. It's a sad, profoundly sad song when something or someone has died.

Yes. And it's important to personalize it a bit for Jeremiah's perspective, because God called Jeremiah early on in these narratives that Israel was going south, God called Jeremiah to talk to these people and to warn them, and say, look, you've got to change your ways. Now God was clear with Jeremiah early on, too, when he called him to warn them. He said, you know, they're not going to listen to you, but even still, you need to warn them of what's coming.

Right, keep saying it. So now this guy, who's been warning them for decades, is the guy who's now standing in the streets of this broken and trashed Jerusalem, you know, raping and pillaging and the entire, and he's seeing what's happened, he knew this was going to happen, and so what's his personal reaction to what he's finally seeing happening in terms of this destruction, which has come about because the nation has been so in God's face in their rebellion against him. And here it is, now he sees it, you know, smoking houses, dead bodies, everything that's the worst about that kind of captivity, and it's happened, and now he pens lamentations. Well and the first part of chapter three is, the first 18 verses, is kind of his personal rumination on all of that ruin. And everybody's familiar with the part that says, you know, oh, your loving kindnesses indeed never cease, your compassion are new every morning, we all know that, but we don't know the context. And so that's why we've been spending so much time on doom and gloom here. So probably what we need to understand too about biblical lament is there is a form to it. You start with pouring out everything that's wretched, rotten, horrible, everything that's hurting and naming the condition, really specifically saying this is wrong, this is horrible and I feel like dirt. And then there's a point in the lament where there's a conscious turning, that kind of a but God moment.

A corner turns. And many laments then stop at that point, but this one, Lamentations 3, then goes on to a third section where the writer applies the but God truths. And so that's kind of where we're going to linger today with the part that says, but God, this I recall to mind, therefore certain things are true. So let's go, you wanted to go start somewhere in Lamentations 3 and what, verse 17? Yeah, I want to start in verse 17 and let me just read you that and make a couple of comments here. After all of this kind of recitation of the horribleness of his situation, the writer says, my soul has been rejected from peace and I have forgotten.

The translation says happiness, but the Hebrew word there is good. I have forgotten what good is. Things have been so horrible for so long. So I say, my strength, my endurance has perished. And so has my hope from the Lord.

Remu Bleek. Yeah, so he's feeling utterly hopeless. But it's important to note that this word hope that happens here is not the same word for hope that shows up later in the passage.

This hope is a word that's only used half a dozen times in the scriptures and it's used in other places to denote a false hope or a hope that is not necessarily based in God. So he's saying, you know, my expectations, my expectations were this and I didn't expect that. Exactly. Right.

So does that describe 2020? Well, yeah, I know. I mean, when your expectations come up so short in reality and it's fascinating because Jeremiah knew this was going to happen. But I think when he finally saw it with his eyes, then what little hope, you know, self-generated hope he had just kind of went out the window. It's like, man, it's worse than I thought.

Yeah. And the depth of the emotion in this passage is unmistakable. My strength has perished. I mean, he's done, at least in terms of his own personal resources.

He's done. Well, he goes on to say, remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul is remembering and bowed down within me.

So that's kind of the summation of the first part of the chapter. His soul is dwelling in the horrific circumstances and he's saying they're leaving me hopeless. I can't even remember what good is or what it feels like to experience good.

And my soul is bowed down when I dwell in that. So does that, does that describe your experience right now? Well, for many people it does. It does.

It absolutely does. And I, you know, just outside of the whole politics of 2020, I mean, there's the virus thing and everything. And a lot of people at this phase of 2020 are saying, you know what, I'm just out of gas. There have been emotional loss, economic loss, social loss.

How long has it been since you were actually in a group of people where you could hug them? Right. Right. So when he says in Lamentations 317, I've forgotten what happiness is, I've just forgotten what good is. A lot of us get to this stage in this year and go, man, I've forgotten what it was like before. And I'm, and as far as my personal resources go, I'm out of gas.

I'm just out of gas. And so when you mentioned, well, let's celebrate Thanksgiving this year. Well, for one thing where we live, we are under a state mandate not to gather with anybody who's outside our household. So Thanksgiving is going to look real different for lots of people. That's right. But I think for the cynics amongst us, they're saying, what's there to be thankful for? Right.

And so, so this is really, this is pretty close. And I think that's, let me tell you, that's a very honest question. What do I really have to be thankful for? Quit saying, let's have Thanksgiving and forget about the world.

And that's really not the issue. The issue is, is there something deeper? Is there something, a bigger picture that's worth being thankful for when the circumstances look really so unilaterally bad? Is there, is there more for me to be looking at than just, you know, 10 yards away from me in my circumstance in life?

And if there is, is it cause to be thankful? Like you said before, that's going to take, that's going to take a discipline of thinking for just a moment. I mean, your, your eyes are overwhelmed with negative messages perhaps, but what do we counter when our eyes are full of negative messages and he goes on and tells us. Well he says in verse 21, this, I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope, right?

He has been mentally dwelling in everything that has been foul and horrible, but now absolutely real, but circumstantial. And so he says, now I'm going to turn my mind in other direction and that's going to yield hope, a hope that is a confident patient waiting on God. This is a different word for hope than the one he had used a few verses before that was simply a solid and eternal idea of hope.

Whereas previously it was just a circumstantial expectation. It says, now I have a real hope, here's the, but God moment, the Lord's loving kindnesses indeed never cease for his compassion's never fail, they are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. It's good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord. It's good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth.

So first let me put this on the table right here. This is the first bright spot in this book. After this, but God moment, when he suddenly turned his attention to God's covenant devotion to his people, then suddenly he's redefining what is good. Remember he had said before- And he's getting a bigger picture of reality. Right, I had forgotten what's good, but now he says, oh, but this is good, this is good, this is good. And he's reorienting his hope, not in his circumstances, but fixing it on God. Well, and he's not looking at his circumstances and saying, well, it's okay, because it's not.

No. The circumstances still stink. This is in the full presence of the terrifying circumstances. Exactly, but what he's saying is that I'm missing part of the picture. So let's lean into what he is remembering, because he is consciously fixing his attention now to commemorate something about God. Yeah, yeah.

And that's what he does in 21. So this I recall to my mind, and therefore I have real hope. Well, what are you recalling to your mind? You're not trying to actually talk yourself into the fact that your circumstances just aren't that bad. Right. Which is what I hate when someone, when you tell someone, I had a bad day, and they look at you with grace and sincerity and say, well, it'll be okay. Yeah, I call it Christian chirpiness. Yeah, and I hate that. No, this is an important and big deal. You jump over the grief and say, oh, but Christians should be joyful, so let's give thanks.

Great. Lamentations validates the authenticity of the grief. Yeah, and yeah, so in fact what we do instead, what we should be doing instead is what Jeremiah just did.

He says, wait, ding, ding, ding, I'm going to stop for a second, stop being overwhelmed about my IC. I'm going to remember the bigger truth that has not changed. And what is that truth? Well, that truth is that the Lord's lovingkindness is never ceased.

And I like that line because that word lovingkindness, it's not a close match to a word we use for hardly anything. You've probably looked this up, and I did years ago, but it's this word chesed, and chesed is, I tell people who are more familiar with New Testament love words like agape, this is sort of like the agape of the Old Testament. This chesed is a demonstrated kind of, it's a determination, in fact, it comes from the root of this word to mean zeal, and zeal is like this unstoppable determination. Well, in a real sense, this is God's unstoppable determination to bring good in our life. That's what this thing is. Have you got more on that word?

No, not on that in particular. I was just thinking the word that I like to use instead is total devotion. Devotion is a great word. God is absolutely fixed on doing good for his people. I like devotion because it tells about the determination of the will, and that's exactly what this is. So even though everything is falling apart in Jeremiah's world, he says, but God still has this fixed determination that will not be stopped to bring good. He is devoted to his people. No, what I was thinking of as he follows that was saying it never ceases, and that's an interesting word because it means it never strays, never wanders, never vacillates.

He's got his eye fixed on his people. It doesn't change. With utter devotion. As I recall, too, that word sometimes gets used for, like if you have a water jar and you're pouring out of it and it goes empty, it's consumed up. This is the idea that you haven't come to the end of your water jar. Well, that's the second part of when he said his faithfulness never fails, that that word fails means it's never poured out completely. It's never used up. Never gets finished, never is completed.

Never gets to a point where there's nothing left. Now, that's really important because they have just experienced this incredible judgment of God, and it looks like his patience was used up. And I like these two words, too, because instead of saying that God's... It doesn't say that God's just determined. It says that in a symbolic kind of way, he has this big reservoir of determination. And I'm sorry, you haven't come to the bottom of that.

Right. You drained the last drop, but you haven't. You have not drained it. And it tells me, too, that God predetermined to fill that reservoir with love and good toward you. I mean, this is something that he put there ahead of time, and I'm sorry, you have not drained it.

It doesn't have a hole in it. It hasn't run dry. God's determination beforehand to bring good in your life has not run dry. And so that tells me more about not just his determination to love and to bring good, but of his predetermination to bring love and bring good. You have not come to the end of that reservoir. That reservoir is still full on your behalf.

And then he cries out, oh, this compassion's never failed. They're new every morning. What does that mean? New?

Oh my gosh. New every morning? But the one thing that has never failed to happen since the beginning of creation is the day always arrives. The sun clears the horizon every morning. And it's funny, because when I said this this week to our daughters who live in Fairbanks, they kind of looked at each other with a funny look, because they're almost approaching the days when they're in the dark, but the sun does clear.

No darkness. The sun does clear the horizon even where they live, even if it's only partially and for a few minutes. It waits till 11 in the morning, the sun is going to get there. But the planet has continued to turn, right? Our orbit has not changed. Every morning, God's faithfulness is poured out.

We have daylight every day. So his love toward us is as predictable as the rising of the sun. And it also speaks to the fact that it's maybe sort of adapted to today, like it wasn't adapted to yesterday. It's new every morning. Maybe it's actually refashioned. I mean, it'll definitely be there, but it's refreshed different to us today. It's refreshed today.

Yeah. So it's not an old, it's not an old compassion. It's a compassion that's meant for this morning, for sure. And he's, he adapts that way. It never goes dry.

It never goes stale in that sense either. Well, this word faithfulness is related to truth, actually, in the original language. And so that this is a true truth, right?

God renews every morning his promise to, his intention to be good to us today. And I seem to recall, maybe you can kind of, you looked at this more recently, I seem to recall this word faithful has this kind of root idea of being firm. Foundational.

Foundation. You can actually stand in it. You can count on it. You won't sink on it like quicksand. Right.

It's firm. So. I mean, we still say that, don't we? You sleep on it because tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow's another day?

We just, it's just kind of worked its way into our, we're created to understand tomorrow's another day. Yeah. If we forget that, we're going to be done in the night. Well.

Right? And if you continue with the metaphor about the sun going down at night, you know, the sun goes down at night and you're thinking things are so bad, the sun's going to go down. And you know, I may not see the sun tomorrow. And God says right here, oh yeah, you will.

Things may look really dark today, but my compassion will be back tomorrow, fresh and new, every morning as we start the next day, I have not decided to withdraw my love from you. And that's the kind of truism that says the darkest hour is just before the dawn. Yeah.

Right? Do we understand that? That no matter how much darkness it seems like we're in, are we looking with an expectation that God will bring the dawn? Right. That is a huge theological idea. He's built it into creation. The physical earthly dawn happens every morning, but there will become a new day in all of eternal reality when the Son of God is shown to be who He is and creation is remade.

I mean, we have this eternal hope that extends so far beyond what's happening this week. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it makes me think too, Corrie Ten Boom, you know, if you don't know Corrie Ten Boom's name, you really ought to know Corrie Ten Boom's name. Look her up. I mean, she passed away decades ago, but she was involved in World War II with sheltering Jews and stuff like that, but she wrote some great stuff. I remember her in her biography talking to her sister, they were both in this concentration camp. By the way, they were not Jews themselves. They were Christians who helped Jews, but he would always say to his, her sister would always say to her, say, you know, basically, look, things look really bad here in a concentration camp and they are, but she would say the best is yet to be.

And so she would constantly take Corrie and do this. She'd remember, look, this is not the end of everything. They're the best is yet to be. And so that's what Jeremiah is doing right here. The best is yet to be. And tomorrow another day will come up and God's loving kindness and his compassion have not failed.

They are as firm as they ever have been, even though things look pretty bleak. Well, and he goes on in the passage to say in verse 24, the Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I have hope in Him. In Him.

Now, just a little study tip here. Whenever you run across the Lord, and it's all in capital letters, L-O-R-D, that is the proper name of God. That's the way English editors have agreed to say, well, this word is Yahweh. This is God's personal name, the one that he revealed. The Latinized version is Jehovah.

Okay, right. The one that he revealed to Moses when he said, I am that I am. So the writer here says, oh, I'm remembering this. The I am, the eternal one, is my portion. So what does that mean to be a portion? Oh, okay. So culturally.

That's a great word. We're running short on time, but we've got to talk about this. Culturally, that brings up the idea of every family in Israel being assigned feet on the ground in the land that God had promised them, their portion, a specific place that was theirs. And so for us, figuratively, that means the Lord has assigned himself to us.

He has dished himself up on the plane and said, here, this is for you, this is for you. And it's all of me. You have all of me.

It also implies that there's not anything outside of that. That's right. The Lord is my portion. That will be enough for you. That is enough. His enoughness is a word I like to use.

So you know, that has just resulted in this huge turning point for the writer here. The Lord is my portion. And Psalm 73 26 actually restates that another way, saying the nearness of God is my good. The very definition of good is if God, who is good, is near.

Yeah. I like to always re-translate Lamentations 3 24, the Lord is my enough. Yes, the Lord is enough. The Lord is my enough. And you know, if you go to Passover Seder, they sing this song called Dayenu, Dayenu in Hebrew means enough. It would have been enough.

Yeah, would have been enough. So the Lord is my enough, which is an interesting, it's an interesting thing against your present circumstances. Are your expectations blasted because you're over expecting something about your circumstance? Or is the Lord your enough in this circumstance? Right, because you always have him no matter what your circumstances are.

And here's the probably the last big thing I want to press into in this passages. He says, so in verse 25, the Lord is good to those who wait for him to the person who seeks him. So before he had said, I have forgotten what good is. And now suddenly he remembers, oh, Yahweh, I am is good. And he's good to those who seek him, those who wait for him, who lean their strength and exchange their weakness for his strength. Yeah. And he even says at the end of this chapter, I think it's 56 or 57, you check that when he draws near to God, God responds and does come near. Yes, yes. So here's what we want to leave with you. When we remember who God is, we can redefine good as the presence of God.

That's a one size fits all good. He's in every circumstance. He's good to those who wait for him, who seek him. It's good to wait quietly for the deliverance of God. It's good to learn to be controlled and disciplined by God.

And that's where the writer goes. Is he still good in the midst of toweringly bad circumstances? Indeed he is. And that's our encouragement to you this Thanksgiving.

God is good to those who wait for him and who seek him. Remember the loving kindness of the Lord. So join us next week. We're going to come back to Thanksgiving a couple of days after Thanksgiving and we're going to continue talking about Thanksgiving as a topic. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're just glad you're with us today on More Than Ink. Thanks, bye. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Right? I'm sorry. You don't know? I just wasn't sure where you're going with that.