“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.’”-Lamentations 3:19-24 (ESV)
Today is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Today is another day full of God’s fresh mercies greeting us like a soft rain that kisses the faces. The problem is, it is too easy to dwell on our affliction and wanderings, the wormwood and the gall. But God in His great mercy is so grace-full and generous toward us, so we join Jeremiah in calling to mind His 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 over his.Jeremiah lived looking forward to the coming of Jesus and the fulfillment of the promises of the new covenant…the covenant of grace…which is NOT new just fulfilled in Christ. We live on this side of those blessed events. How much quicker should we be to praise Him and how much greater should our hope be!
Think about this! Jesus, is the reason we aren’t consumed with guilt and paralyzed with fear, stuck in our shame and drowning in doubt; for He took the judgment we deserved on the cross, and exhausted it; revealing for all time that “…the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end…”. Because of the work of His Son on our behalf, God has forgiven all our wickedness and will never remember our sins against us especially on that Day- “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, the One we utterly offended and rebelled against, 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.
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 pray that God won’t let us wander far. When we lose sight of Jesus we make the gall more galling; make the bitterness more bitter; make downcast feel even more downcast. We don’t want to ever get used to feeling disconnected from the gospel.
But, it is also the gospel that reveals to us that the “…steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”. In view of this steadfast love and never-failing compassions, we proclaim this morning (or whenever you actually read this), “The Lord is my portion… therefore I will hope in Him.”- Lam. 3:24.
Now that’s a truth worth getting up with this morning! This IS the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it!
God bless y’all today.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
