“Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in Him.’” Lam. 3:19-24
Beloved, here we are another day and another amazing deposit of God’s fresh mercies greets us. He is so full of grace and so generous toward us, enabling us to join Jeremiah in calling to mind the LORD’s great love and His great faithfulness. In fact, we can “call to mind” much more of His love and faithfulness than Jeremiah. Our place in the history of redemption is to be much preferred even over his, for God, our Father, has revealed so much more to us.
Jeremiah lived looking forward to the coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of the promises of the covenant of grace. But we live on this side of those blessed events. How much quicker should we be to praise the LORD and how much greater should our hope be even in the midst of those days where the wormwood and the gall seem to be front and center!
It is the LORD and the Spirit of the LORD within us who are the reasons we aren’t consumed with guilt and paralyzed with fear, stuck in our shame and drowning in doubt; for Jesus took the judgment we deserved on the cross, and exhausted it. Because of Him, God has forgiven all our wickedness and will never remember our sins against us. “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”-Jer. 31:34 Jesus became sin for us, and in Him, we have been declared presently and eternally righteous, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”- 2 Cor. 5:21.
Please note this morning: it is because of this gospel, this good news, that we also join Jeremiah in lamenting our wanderings. With humility we still sing, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.” We need the gospel every day and every hour. We need to pray, “Father, Don’t let us wander far. When we lose sight of Jesus, make the gall more galling; make the bitterness bitterer; make the affliction even worse. We don’t want to ever get too used to feeling disconnected from the gospel.”
And the absolutely good news on those days that the wormwood and the gall seem to afflict us most is this: we have in a panoramic view, God’s steadfast love and never-failing mercies which enable us to proclaim with confidence, “‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”- Lam. 3:24.
God Bless y’all today!
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
