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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] on understanding anxiety so let me recap back on the earlier sermon we did before we started lamentations which was also the book of philippians chapter 4 on anxiety and anxieties and emotion and what's interesting according to the apostle paul the antidote for anxiety is another emotion joy or more specifically joy in jesus now that's that's easy to say but difficult to internalize how exactly do you get joy from the sufficiency of christ and that translates for us to seeing
00:00:42 things christ's way and how do we do it in solidarity with our brethren now it's easy to say it not so easy to practice and so science tells us to understand jaw you need to understand its polar opposite we call this basic emotion theory and scripture has this wonderful way of understanding sorrow or sadness the polar opposite of joy which is lamenting and that's really something we have lost in evangelical church is something very understated so what do we understand from lament we saw this last
00:01:17 week lament is essentially a prayer of pain which leads to trusting god and so you notice there's a process here it begins with pain and it leads to trusting god that's important to really understand we're gonna go a bit deeper into that today and again one way another way of looking at it is to look at light and darkness before you can see the light you need to deal with the darkness before you see the joy of knowing jesus you need to be broken you need to grieve over the calamities of sin and that's really the
00:01:56 core really the core message or the core backdrop of the book of lamentations jeremiah just oversees and looks over the the entire destruction and the despair and the anguish of the people of jerusalem when the babylonian island comes and basically ravages the city and we see this points to the gospel what does the gospel tell us the gospel has two components there is the sorrow of the cross where christ died for our sins and there's the victory of the cross and the resurrection which brings us the
00:02:33 triumphant life we are supposed to have the joy that comes with it and so we see sorrow in christ crucified and joy christ risen and whereas lament lament is the space in between it and i is progressing and one simple way that this resonates with us on the subconscious level we see this in art and why the mona lisa is such a famous piece of art is that i think on a subconscious level we connect with it she's smiling but she's not really smiling she's happy but she's also sad and that's in many ways
00:03:10 not not very not unhealthy at all a person is happy all the time is oblivious to the sufferings of the world a person who is always unhappy is defeated but a person who is generally happy but is sorrowful over the state of the world is someone that god can really use now where does all of this point to joy sorrow it points to a key text today chapter three it points to the purpose of lamenting it points to hope and we're going to study that today and more so as we look at the news today uh is like despair is when things double
00:03:48 down you think it's bad enough we're in a virus unseen before in in in the 21st century we live in so uncertain times and then there's a doubling down we see riots we see what's happening in america just one event and it goes viral these three words i can't breathe and the whole country explodes so this morning we're really going to look into that and at the center of chapter 3 you find this was repeated again hope hope hope hope i'm going to look into that and hope it what it's easy to say hope when things are in
00:04:27 your favor but what happens when is dark and uncertain and everything seems to be against us how then do we have hope so today we look at hope during times of uncertainty and we'll look at lamentations chapter 3 verses 1 to 33 so let's begin with a word of prayer lord we come before you now with your word and i asked this morning that whatever i say on your word it is biblical and i remain teachable if i'm open to correction we ask that this is such a such a important thing to understand during these
00:05:08 uncertain times we ask that your people out there listen and so doing so hear your voice and obey and we say this in jesus name amen hope is connected to many things you find the apostle paul connects it to two other virtues we're going to look at hope today in three parts one hope and difficult truths that's really the core thing in chapter three and then we look at hope and faith and we look at hope and love and you know apostle paul say this in the book of first corinthians he talks about this tree you'll come to
00:05:40 that in a while let's go back to see what hollywood teaches us in of course star wars is basically now canon is basically part of american culture it came out in 1976 after the movie came out the producers and the director decided to attach something at the bottom of it so when the sequel came out they retitled the first star wars movie as episode four not so just because they make money but the title was a new hope and movies like star wars basically shows you how we understand hope how do you understand hope you understand hope
00:06:16 this way you're going through a bad time going through a difficult time at the end there is good news there is hope the ending of the movie is hopeful that's standard hollywood fair for rule for you the opposite is to go in the direction of a greek tragedy that means the ending of the movie no hope bad ending good ending bad ending and that's where the book of lamentations is very interesting it does neither of that and i told you last week one of the most fascinating things of the book of lamentations is the structure and most
00:06:54 people don't like to look at structure very boring but jeremiah is so precise in the structure he's telling you something he's telling you something you've got to get into that let me give you the most famous verse in chapter three is if you take top 10 verses of the bible this will be in the top 10 list there's an old song i used to sing when i was a kid as the older people know this it says the state fast love of the lord never sees us his mercies never come to an end there are new every morning new every morning
00:07:28 great is your faithfulness so lord great is your faithfulness ta-da we used to sing that and i remember when i sang it as a young man i said wow that's great yes his mercies are new every morning i wake up lord and i thank you that i'm not sick i thank you lord that i did well in my exams i did well i'm thank you that my parents are okay his steadfast loves never us that's how we understood those verses they are right in lamentations chapter 3 verses 21 to 22 his mercies are new every morning hallelujah
00:08:12 can i humbly suggest to you if you understood the context with which jeremiah wrote it you won't be saying those words you know and and that's where context is so important so let me give you the context and the structure again of the book and it's so important to look at this and structures important five chapters number one chapter one no hope chapter two no hope chapter four no hope the ending no hope in fact the ending is really bad no hollywood ending for you you've got the end of the book
00:08:50 you read it you go ha that's it that's it where is the hope in the middle in the middle and and to to ensure you got it right the structure is designed so you get it 22 verses 22 verses 22 verses 22 verses you still don't understand 66 verses 18 66 verses 66 tends us because these verses begin and end with the alphabet order of the hebrew language the hebrew language has 22 verses why did they do it so it's easier to remember verse a verse b verse c so the beginning of the alphabet helps you to memorize
00:09:30 this book was that important to the jews and when it came to chapter 3 they still had 22 verses but now they break it to each tenza so each tensor had three alphabets that's why 66. now and to ensure you got it right to ensure you understand why the hope is he places it in actually in the middle precisely in the middle the great verse starts at where 21 22 you notice that and it goes up to 1 44 is really smack in the middle of the book so jeremiah is very telling to tell you something he's really trying to say in case you
00:10:11 don't get it this is where the hope is but don't don't expect anything to change your life is going to go back your illness that may not change that that lawsuit may not go away that family problem may not go away so you stay there go ha god hope man and that's his point and that's why it's so real so here's one main treatise we're going to look at christians can have hope even in times of deep despair and uncertainty that that's really his main point and he's trying to take you to first where is your hope coming from
00:10:57 so let's let's unpair this because that structure is so critical for you to understand it we live in such uncertain times we we know this we've been saying this and one thing we all want is that we need to separate what we call real hope from false hope and that comes from a con situation we all have we have a problem about what we want to believe versus what we should believe you the report came out in the age property about a few weeks ago that says that the chinese have discovered a vaccine by the end of the
00:11:31 year they will be able to mass produce it so some people say oh fantastic end of year share market will go up everything go back to normal it will boom again you gotta be very careful is that what you want to believe or is that what you should believe have you looked at viruses you look at mars look at the nipah virus in malaysia took ten years and they still haven't got a vaccine for human beings look at sars ask yourself with the europeans and the way they're doing the virus research and ask yourself how long do you think
00:12:08 this new normal is going to be but part of us says what two years three years like this i i don't want to believe that so that's our problem and jeremiah in the set takes us through that nothing takes us more into this than when we look at relationships relationships is where we really have this problem about what we should believe and what we want to believe there's a program out there called catfish another one called 90 day fiance i don't watch this stuff but my wife does as a good husband i
00:12:39 occasionally sit next to her and when you watch those programs you can tell people are for saying that they love me they don't love you they maybe love they probably want you for their money or something else and in a lot of these programs you find a person so desperately wants to believe this other person loves him or loves her but he doesn't he's using you and so we we are wired in such a way where we want to believe certain things we want to have hope that it will end well and so jeremiah takes the idea of
00:13:13 hope and smacks it in the middle of a situation where there's absolutely no hope and says you better get this right it's an extremely powerful powerful way of telling you how scripture looks at hope and how hope actually points to the gospel let me give you a little bit of science to to go into this uh those of you who study business psychology there's something known as the johari window johari windows is something that the japanese developed to basically study what you know and what is hidden to yourself what
00:13:46 is known as the blind spot and there's a there's a version of this which is used to understand hope let me give you four boxes wishful thinking i hope it's true this is correct hope this is helpless you gave up on hope and this is also the same category but in another way let me look at the first category wishful thinking and we have we've talked about it just now it's about a hopeful outlook but it's a distorted reality you want to believe that there will be a vaccine found at the end of the year
00:14:22 you want to the facts do not support that that's called having a hopeful outlook but it's distorted and so you are not really having hope you're having a false hope now what's the opposite extreme the opposite extreme let's just say we take that same story you wait to the end of the year vaccines not found your funds run out your options are not there you give in to despair you have a distorted reality now is compounded by what by an outlook which is also distorted we say there's a hopeless outlook and the
00:14:58 distorted reality what is this we call this you have no hope some people go into this they get into depression majority of us however actually i'm this you know most people in this meaning we have probably a correct reality but our outlook is distorted we have what we say like example oh look at that harapan baru we will hope for a new change change again maybe change again a government how many times are we going to change i'm not referring to any country in particular so you give up you say aya
00:15:40 malaysian never change or not will always be like that or you could be in america and he says you know what racism will always be like this there will always be a policeman brutalizing a black person there will always be someone getting shot at at school and so it's not that you have no hope you have lost your hope and so this book is so critical and the placement of the verses to me are probably one of the most profound verses in the bible because he's telling us hopeful outlook and accurate reality
00:16:11 gives you real hope and what is the accurate reality jerusalem is devastated the jews now are saying in their mind god has abandoned us he's given up on the covenant his covenant was to give us a kingdom that's everlasting and now we are taken off to captivity and so jeremiah writes to them in this time of utmost despair to say you must have and hopeful outlook and what's the first ingredient you must have to do that is this you must have faith let me explain faith in a generic sense the way we understand it and then we
00:16:50 look at faith when things are going bad here's one way of understanding faith and i'm going to tie it to hope so we understand how the two tied together let's just say this is before the um the everything was shut down and your kid you you you have a kid and you come home one day you tell your kid i'm going to take you this weekend to sunway lagoon the kids get excited small kid and this is when sunrise looking to stay open okay and so the kid has two things one does he believe you that's called
00:17:22 faith he if the father has proven to be a man of his word he has faith in his father that's faith but because of the words of the father he now hopes his visit to sami lagoon will be a enjoyable one so you see faith you see hope they are separate but they are basically connected that's how we understand faith it's a simple understanding of it so the kid has faith in the father because he has seen the behavior the father the father is not the type the flip flop says one thing does something else and so now he hopes
00:17:59 his trip to san mi lagoon will be a great one the two are connected and hebrews chapter 11 gives off the verse he tells us faith is confidence in what we hope for now that's great right we get it but let me give you the end of hebrews because in the end of the chapter after going through many heroes of the past this is what he says they were all commended for their faith and hear this yet none of them received what had been promised none of them received what had been promised they all had been
00:18:38 disappointed so let's pick this up a little bit i'm going to read through some of the verses we're going to go through just 33 verses today and please read the whole book and let's start by reading chapter one chapter three sorry verse one i am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the lord's wrath he has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light indeed he has done his turn his hand against me again and again all day long he has made my skin and my flesh grow old has broken my bones
00:19:14 he has beseeched me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship he has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead he has walked me in so i cannot escape he has weighed me down with chains even when i call out or cry for help he shuts up my prayer he has barred my way with blocks of stones he has made my paths crooked like a bear lying in weight like a lion in hiding he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help he drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows he pierced my heart with arrows from his
00:19:53 quiver i became the laughing stock of all my people they mocked me in song all day long he has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink he has broken my teeth with gravel he has trampled me in the dust i have been deprived of peace i have forgotten what prosperity is so i say my splendor is gone and now that i hope from the lord and the first part of chapter 3 is a lost hope now let's understand what he's saying you notice when you begin the first verse i am the man i'll just bring it
00:20:31 back to you you look at chapters one and two it doesn't do that it starts off you look at the previous few chapters and even chapters four and five jerusalem is described as what the grieving window the daughter of zion but here's sunny there's a shift i am the man jeremiah is now lamenting himself now what is the context he's talking about and then you notice he deliberately removes the word the lord after verse one the lord appears again only at verse 18. for 17 verses he just uses the word he
00:21:08 he he now you gotta ask again why is that such a restraint from doing that and then again there's this little verse if you look at the verse 14 i became the laughingstock of all my people now that very obviously gives us a clue jeremiah isn't talking about now the destruction jerusalem to really understand this you've got to read jeremiah chapter 20 he's talking about before jerusalem was destroyed he tried to warn the jews and they laughed at him another verse down chapter 3 talks about he was put into the pit and the jews
00:21:47 went so far in jerusalem to actually put in a pit to try to starve him to death so jerusale jeremiah is now talking about a time before the destruction jerusalem where he went through great calamity he's now recalling his own difficult times he's lamenting it and he's lamenting it to such a point where look at those verses he basically says god is basically making him a target look at verse 12 he drew his bow he here is god and made me the target for his arrows in simple english god why are you doing this to me
00:22:30 what what did i do you made me target practicer that's what he's saying verse 13 he pills my heart with arrows from his quiver that's what jeremiah is saying so let me give you one treatise for us to pick up the major prettiest is this there is a link between lament and hope so what is that link very simply the link is just this before you can even get to genuine hope you need to lament that's really just what jeremiah is saying it's again a process remember what we say about lamenting is a prayer
00:23:08 of pain that leads to trusting god and what what jeremiah is lamenting look at the words is why does he use the word he he he instead of putting what the lord because he's trying to have a posture of humility but make no mistake in his heart he is basically saying god i don't deserve this god is not fair god i've served you for so many years he's lamenting and he's giving his disappointments out he's giving out his despair so where the genuine hope comes from it requires an experience of disappointment
00:23:46 and despair and doubt all of these come in the problem with evangelical christians is that we tend to suppress it we don't give a platform for christians to say you know what i i struggle with the bible in this area i struggle to say why is it this sister who served the lord for so many years is so sick we don't give a room for that expression and when we do give it it comes out in the spirit of doubt and what lamentations does is that take it in a postural humility any what the jeremiah says is god you made me target
00:24:20 practice that's that's really brutal but in a spirit of humility and the road to genuine hope is to say that and i think we have missed that a lot of us when we pray we jump in and say god uh help me through this god uh give me the strength but we forget to pause and on our knees i said god i just feel you're not being fair to me pretend to say that's not right to say but jeremiah tells us that's the process to genuine hope he goes through this lamenting and then it leads him to another part and the next verses tell us
00:24:59 this he says i remember my affliction am i wondering the bitterness and the god he's talking about his tribulations we found it in the early verses i well remember them and my soul is downcast within me and he says something interesting yet he uses the word yet he pauses this i call to mind recalling all those bad things and therefore i have hope now it's almost crazy how can you recall bad things in your life and you have hope well if you look at jeremiah 20 jeremiah 19 he realizes two things one
00:25:39 whatever god said came to pass jeremiah 1 tells us you go out there and you be my voice but they will really give it to you and in this virus when you look at what's happening in the world the words of scripture are so true man is sinful that's why we lament and so when jeremiah looks at jerusalem and he despairs over his destruction he realizes he can have hope because one god is steadfast in truth and number two god is steadfast in holding him true throughout all his afflictions god had been with him so he clings on to
00:26:23 the yet yet i this i call to mind and so we learn one thing today we learn to heal finding rest in the yet and sometimes you have you you see in church with in my views really strong people who just struggle with illnesses and this struggle and uh two people come to mind i won't mention names and they struggle with illnesses and one of them i'm quite close to and keep asking and they learn to yield that's something most of us have forgotten how to do because we want to be in control but learning to yield is learning to
00:26:59 trust is to move from god why do you make me target practice to sing lord i trust in you i have hope that's what jeremiah progresses from all this bitterness and god he goes to hope we can say you move from lamenting with clenched fists we're saying god is not fair to praying with open arms most of us like to go straight to praying open arms but we forget this process then this process is critical for your soul to process have the holy spirit to come with you and for you to do this in a way that leads to truth and sometimes you
00:27:38 need to do this with others most of us don't have the courage to do this so i think this is something for us to process and this points us to the cross when you look at the cross you see before the victory of the cross there is a lot of lamenting we find two lamentations the first in the garden of gethsemane where in this grief crisis if you can take this cup away from me exactly on the cross itself when he recites the psalmist and he says why have you forsaken me these are lamentations and they lead us to victory
00:28:13 and so from sorrow to trust to hope god doesn't show us the direction too far he gives us just enough to take the next step and the next step and the next step and that's our journey of faith with hope now you can be sitting there and says easy to say hard to do so let me give you the most critical component we look at truth and hope we look at faith and hope and the greatest of all this as the apostle paul would say is love and so now jeremiah progresses he now progresses forward and he gives us the two most
00:28:51 famous verses of the book as i said it comes at verse 22 very significantly to prove a point because of the great laws great love will not consume and compassion never fail they are new every morning great is your faithfulness the niv in a sense doesn't give it its full strength of its meaning the esv is better the steadfast love of the lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end they're new every morning great is your faithfulness there are three key things you want to pick up here the first is the steadfast love
00:29:26 that's how you can yield to the lord because god's love is steadfast his scripture his steadfast in truth he's steadfast in holding us through he may let us go through difficult times but his love is steadfast and we have another psalm psalm 42 again very famous song we like to sing it as the deer pants for the water so much so long for you we forget the context again in despair and david says this in assam in verse seven he says deep cause too deep and the raw of your waterfalls all your breakers and your
00:30:00 waves had gone over me he's so overwhelmed overwhelmed by grief and then he calls back this by day verse 8 the lord commands his steadfast love and the night his song is with me a prayer to the god of my life steadfast love of the lord let me now break that down what does the state fund love of the lord really mean in detail here and this is probably to me one of the most amazing things about these verses there are two things firstly it says the state fast love of the lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end what does
00:30:34 this two words say it's never ceases never come to an end it means eternal there's one perspective of it here's the second perspective of it they are new every morning what is new every morning is the moment so you have two things here you have eternity you have moment and and jeremiah is basically telling us hope is found in between these two let's look at idle eternity first when when you have lost hope right when you've resigned yourself to a life whereas there's no direction or your problems weigh you
00:31:06 down you in a sense you become like a living dead they just pass us a day it's like a bit like during this virus time right and you lose track of time you just you just resign yourself you become old and you just go through without feeling any freshness because you've resigned yourself without hope so here's the first thing jeremiah picks it up because the jews are feeling the same way they have resigned themselves they are now going off into captivity the covenant has been broken so jeremiah picks up two points the first eternity
00:31:37 here what do you do let's look at some of the new testament there's two dimensions to it one it found in revelations 2 verse 15 behold i'm making all things new and the lesson is that hope has to be benchmarked on eternity if not we're hoping on man you either hope in god or a hope in man when we hope in god is against eternity it means during this time we can and we will have difficulties when you hope with man you try to navigate life to avoid issues avoid having difficulties that's wishful thinking and so he uses this word he
00:32:13 will make all things new and that attitude should be reversed today here's another verse found in second corinthians on our temporal sufferings and again paul tells us by the old self a new self he says the old has passed away encouraging people there to basically live on their new self so if you tie the two together is this what what people who lose hope do is that they give up on living they give them a living because no point i just go through every day is the same i resign myself i'm defeated
00:32:51 and what hope does when you begin to realize he'll make all things new the all has passed away it tells you that you are to put on your new self yes your own self is breaking down because that's what sin does it does it directly and indirectly but you are being renewed every day and here is the main thesis which goes to the second part of verse 22. so the first part of it is that what's the second part is because his mercies are new every moment you get that that's how eternity finds his meaning in the moment it's
00:33:32 really profound so here the truth is every single day is the new day to live by his mercies i find it very very helpful i don't know what you're going through we all have our issues but every morning wake up and say lord give me your mercies just for today breathe it in after you have lamented on all your issues and you remembered how his state fathers have carried you through you say lord every day is a new day when you say you know i know how about tomorrow well then say this the strength to live tomorrow
00:34:12 will be given by god tomorrow not today today we live by the mercies for today uh in the old testament we have the story of how god gives mana to the israelites while they are on their journey have you noticed the mana is only enough for what one day because it's about faith and hope you can't store the mana the next day god will provide mana again and the moana was enough for that day except for the sabbath where they could store up and so that's how god operates with us beyond his journey he lights up one step at a time
00:34:48 you walk through that we want to see the end like abraham we never saw the end of the journey like moses he never saw the end of the journey but we walk day by day and every morning we wake up we say god your mercies are new today can i encourage you to do that especially if you're going through a very difficult time you lost your job or you're worried about family members who are struggling with illnesses or you yourself are going through an illness i know it's easy to say this but for me my own little problems this
00:35:18 has proven very helpful i wake up and i say every day is a new day to live by his mercies so as we go on believe that there will be new mercies for tomorrow today's mercies include faith that unseen mercies will be sufficient for tomorrow so here's your second prayer when you go to bed lord tomorrow i don't know what happens maybe my illness will make a turn for the worse maybe you'll get better maybe my fortunes will get better maybe it'll get worse maybe my family members will be better with me maybe they won't
00:35:52 but i will not go to bed giving in to despair i will not go to bed worrying i will not go to bed in anxiety i will not i will claim this victory that his mercies your mercies o lord are new every moment and i'm destined for eternity amen you should say amen where you're sitting there right now why again the new testament supports this it says this do not be anxious for tomorrow for tomorrow will care for itself each day has enough troubles of his own his mercies are new every morning there's a big difference between being prepared
00:36:30 for tomorrow and being anxious for tomorrow and so now become full circle and let me end this three-part sermon and we're going to go back where we started off on this verse which is where we started off and we already said what is the antidote for this is the joy in jesus and how do you experience the joy of jesus by reflecting on his mercies every morning how he died for you and me for our sins on the cross and how he walks with us and we do not know what tomorrow brings but we know he walked with us let me end by just
00:37:09 reading with you let us read together the remainder of the verses because after this jeremiah takes the jews to a more reflective solemn silent thing and you need to feel the verses so the way we're going to end this sermon is we're just going to contemplatively read the rest of the verses as a benediction so let me start verse 24 i say to myself the lord is my portion therefore i will wait for him the lord is good to those who hope in him to the one who seeks him it is good to wait quietly for the
00:37:47 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 strike him let him be filled with disgrace for no one is cast off by the lord forever and let's read this together church with full confidence verse 32 though he brings grief he will show compassion so great is his unfailing love for he does not willingly bring affliction
00:38:24 or grief to anyone god bless you all and may god's mercies be new to you today and tomorrow amen
