Hope in Every Circumstance

Ryan has been married to his wife, Kimberly, for about 10 years, and they have two children, Mason and Olivia. Ryan is senior vice president for business administration at Southeastern Theological Seminary, where he earned his master's degree. In addition to that, Pastor Hutchinson serves as the chairman of the elders at First Baptist Church of Durham in North Carolina. And many of y'all might be familiar with that name, that church. If you recall, in January, we had Nathan Finn, who is a professor at Southeastern and a deacon at First Baptist Church of Durham came and preached to us. And then we have also in May, We'll be having a gentleman by the name of Matthew Hodges from that church who will be coming to preach for us in May for two weeks. And then also actually in April, Nathan is coming back for Easter Sunday and the following Sunday in April. So First Baptist Church of Durham has been very good to us. I was telling Ryan last night to please convey our thankfulness to their church, to their teaching elder. Dr. Indy Davis there, just a good reminder for us to keep them in our prayers. But we do very much welcome you, Pastor Hutchinson, and we look forward to hearing you open the word. It is a joy to be with you this morning. I bring you greetings from the faculty and staff and our president, Dr. Danny Aiken at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The Southeastern Seminary is one of your seminaries as a Southern Baptist Church, and I thank you for your support of our seminary through the cooperative program. The best way to explain it is that you pay for half of my salary. And we tell our faculty and staff every day that be thankful for those that are in the pews of the churches in the Southern Baptist Convention and how they support the work that we do. And we're doing some great things. We have a very simple mission and that Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary seeks to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ by equipping students to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission. And that is at the very heartbeat of our school. And I encourage you, since it's just down the road, to find a time at some point in time to come visit us, see what it is that God is doing and interact and find out what it is that your dollars are doing for kingdom purposes. This morning, I want us to turn our hearts to scripture. And if you would turn with me to Lamentations, chapter three, you'll find Lamentations right after Jeremiah. And if you would, as we read God's word in honor of God and his word, if you would stand with me. Lamentations, chapter three will actually start in verse one and read through verse twenty six. Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations, and he starts out in chapter three, verse one, he says, I am the man who has seen affliction. Under the rod of his wrath, he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light. Surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away. He has broken my bones. He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation. He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape. He has made my chains heavy. Though I call for cry and help, he shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with his blocks of stones. He has made my paths crooked. He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding. He has turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow and he has set me as a target for his arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver. I have become the laughingstock of all peoples and the object of their taunts all day long. He has filled me with bitterness. He has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on the gravel, and he has made me cower in ashes. My soul is bereft of peace, and I have forgotten what happiness is. So I say my endurance has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord. 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, and therefore I will have hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for them, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. You may be seated and let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, as we come to your scripture this morning, we thank you for the fact that you are sufficient in all things at all times and that your word that you have given us is sufficient and it's perfect. Lord, I pray that we might approach your word with a desire to see our hearts changed, to see the direction of our minds altered, to see the affections of our heart drawn towards you. And Lord, as we look at this passage in Jeremiah and we learn about hope and every circumstance, Lord, I pray that you would draw us to you. That we would see that this is all for your glory and that this is not all about us. We pray that your son may be lifted up, that his name might be glorified. And Lord, we do look forward to the day that we are delivered from all of the trials and the tribulations and the sufferings that happen on this earth. And we look forward to the future glory that we have with you. We pray these things in your mighty, wonderful and your gracious name. Amen. In 1971, John Lennon wrote and released a song called Imagine. Some of you are familiar with the tune, not many of you are probably familiar with all of the words. It's a song that John Lennon said was actually as good as any song that he had ever written with the Beatles. It's one of those songs where we we sing some of the words and then we result to him, you know, to humming the tune because we don't know the rest of it. But it's interesting when you actually read the words in the worldview that John Lennon is trying to provide, for he says, if you listen to the words, he says, imagine that there is no heaven. It's easy if you try. No people below us, above its only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. No need to kill or die for and no religions too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing for the world. You may say that I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday that you'll join us and the world will live as one." Lenin obviously thought that a part of the major ills of society was religion. And if we could simply do away with these misplaced beliefs that we could work together to obtain some kind of utopia where there was no more want, no more wars, and no more suffering. It's true that misplaced religious fanaticism has caused much heartache. But true faith in the only true and living God is really our only source of hope. Lennon believed that man could be good under his own willpower, but we know that man cannot be good apart from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. There is no hope in life if man is left to his own devices, and we know it is only because of the hand of God that this world is not worse than it is. It's because of man's sin that suffering entered into this world, and there is no hope in suffering without God's love for his children. The context of this book of Lamentations that we're looking at this morning is one of great suffering among the nation and the people of God. Suffering and trials come for many different reasons, and God's people have found themselves facing great suffering during this time because of their rebelliousness towards God's command and a loss of their love for him. After years of preaching a coming judgment against God's people, the prophet Jeremiah saw the fulfillment of the warning in some of the darkest days of the children of God. God used the Babylonians to put his people under an 18 month siege that concluded with the destruction of the temple, widespread death, enslavement, and exile. The situation was so desperate that Jeremiah refers to starvation, economic disaster, and cannibalism. Jeremiah states in chapter four that this chastisement of God's children is worse than the judgment that he brought on Sodom and that those who died by the sword during the overrun by the Babylonians actually received a much happier end than those living in that day. The picture painted is utter desolation. You can imagine homes burned, an empty temple mount, the sense of death and walking dead men as they are only days or week away from death due to lack of nourishment. There's no United Nations, there's no Red Cross to provide relief, there's no Christian Children's Fund to raise money for the needy, and there's no military being used to drop supplies into a war-torn region. Some are wailing, some are sitting in utter silence, and some out of their mind. And many are wondering, has God not only removed his hand of blessing from them, but has he left them forever? Chapter three of Lamentations, Jeremiah switches from laments on the national crisis to personal laments about his situation. Even though Jeremiah is God's prophet, he is still with God's people in the midst of the judgment that they have brought upon themselves. Jeremiah gets so low in chapter three that before he gains a proper perspective again, he declares that his soul can find no peace, that he has forgotten what happiness is. His endurance has perished and he no longer has any hope in the Lord. Jeremiah is in a very dark place and many of us at different times in our lives, or maybe even at this very moment, find ourselves wondering if we are alone among the six plus billion people that are in this world. If God knows that we exist or does he, if he does, does he even care? We might be familiar with hope and have experienced in our lives before. But have you ever or are you now in a place where Jeremiah found himself having forgotten what happiness is, ready to give up and certain that we can no longer hope in God? The state of suffering could be related to a medical condition. The death of a loved one, the possible loss of your house due to foreclosure, wondering how you're going to take care of your family, a marriage heading for destruction, or quite honestly, all kinds of various life circumstances. We can find ourselves in these positions for many reasons due to a test of our faith. Scripture presents sin that is in our life like God's children here and lamentations or even the impact of man's sin in this fallen world. Things not even due to our own doing but doing but because of the sin that other people have put forth. So is there hope in every circumstance? You might think that there are many around you that have hope. But hope for you is nothing more than someone that's simply trying to rescue you from quicksand with this moss covered branch that you can't grasp onto. Again, is there hope in every circumstance? As Jeremiah found, it is an emphatic yes. In the midst of Jeremiah's depression over his situation, he turns his mind back to the truth about God and his character. With that turn, Jeremiah does not receive immediate relief from his situation. But he is comforted by the great faithfulness of God that will give him the strength to endure. So let's look again at this passage at verses 21 through 23. Jeremiah says, But this I call to mine, 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. So this first thing that I want to point out in this passage is that Jeremiah takes this turn and he sees that the hope that he claimed was lost is being restored through remembering and seeing God's daily provisions in his life. This is the first thing that Jeremiah sees as he turns here, remembering and seeing God's daily provisions in his life. Just as Jeremiah reaches the very depths of despair, a ray of light that interrupts his darkest thoughts, restores him to a foundation of hope. The ray of light comes when Jeremiah's thoughts of self-pity are replaced with remembrance of who God truly is. With the destruction around God's people, the circumstances they find themselves in become an obstacle to thinking rightly about God and his character. What Jeremiah recalls is the truth that God's love, even among his suffering due to discipline, is steadfast. God presents this to us in Scripture, we learn this in Hebrews, we see this with the church in Laodicea in Revelation, that he tells them that the discipline that they are facing is simply because he loves them. Not only is this love steadfast, but he also says that it never ceases. God's steadfast love is like a tower of refuge through which we are saved. It's able to withstand this 20 foot tall tsunami of suffering that levels everything else in its path. The writer of Hebrews, speaking to this theme of God's steadfast love, uses the picture of an anchor in Hebrews chapter six, verse 17 and following. The writer of Hebrews says this. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath so that by two untangible things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope that is set before us. We have this as a sure and a steadfast anchor of the soul a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus is gone as a forerunner on our behalf. In the poetic fashion of lamentations Jeremiah repeats this thought in the latter half of verse 22 by saying that his mercies never come to an end. What is interesting is that Jeremiah is not simply looking back into history recalling God's faithfulness. But he is claiming that even in the middle of this grave devastation that by the very hand has come by the very hand of God that his mercies are new or more properly renewed every morning renewed mercies every morning is easy for us to imagine during good times. We can thank God for a healthy family a great a good job being saved from our sin and good friendships. God's mercies are like standing outside breathing the fresh cool mountain air as the sun shines down on us and we gaze at the beauty of God's creation that's around us. It's easy to see and be thankful for his steadfast love and never-ending mercies during such good times. However, Jeremiah was able to find himself encouraged by recognizing God's daily mercies at the very worst moments of his life. There are times that God's mercies come in both miraculous forms and through everyday provisions of life. We recall the examples of his daily provision of the manna given to the Israelites while they were wandering in the wilderness. We have to recognize, though, that all good things, all good and perfect gifts are from God and not just the miraculous gifts like the manna that happens in our lives from time to time. What are some of these more common mercies that are renewed every day that we can look to for a sense of encouragement? Well, let's look at some of the examples that are given to us in scripture as God rescuing his people from danger, providing for the needs of his creation, no matter how great or how small. His ear inclined towards the prayer of the people, the provision of the Holy Spirit to his children, the promises found in his word, wisdom for those who seek it, remembrance of past blessings, the forgiveness of sin, not repaying us in kind for our sin. The rain that comes on the righteous and the unrighteous and the list can go on and on. We many times mistake what is provided for us in our lives as disconnected random occurrences. But scripture tells us that they are all from a very deliberate hand of God. Therefore, his mercies are a provision that are renewed for us every single morning. Whether you find yourself at the present moment at the height of your walk with God, the lowest you've ever been, or quite honestly, you're apathetic towards your walk with God, you can find your hope renewed. Spend less time focusing on yourself and more time focused on God, his righteousness, his steadfast love, and consume your mind with how God's mercies are still evident in your life. If you're without hope at the moment, know that turning your focus may not be a recipe that's going to result in immediate release from your circumstances. Your trial might continue so that endurance is bolstered in your walk with Christ. If for discipline of sin, it might continue as God is teaching you about righteousness. Regardless, we know that God's love and concern for his children are at work in every circumstance and are working for good. If a trial, it's for the perfection of our faith. If it's for discipline, it's because God is showing his love towards us like a parent that is disciplining his child. Neither instances of suffering are fun as we endure them. But in any instance of suffering, it is in any instance of suffering that God is still there with a compassionate love that is showing us mercy every single day. What is our job? Is to seek God's face. It's his wisdom and his provision rather than being consumed by the difficulties that we face. So in verses 21 through 23, we see where our hope is renewed through focusing on these provisions that God gives us, realizing the provisions that God gives us. And now I want us to see in verse 24 how it is that that hope is realized. Jeremiah writes in verse 24, he says, The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will have hope in him. Jeremiah has turned his attention from the devastation that's around him and the darkness that has consumed his soul to focus on God's daily mercies and a never-ending love for him. Now he proclaims the very foundation of that hope. There's a reason that God's steadfast love never ceases towards Jeremiah. It's because that he has an abiding love and a relationship with God. For he says in verse 24 that the Lord is my portion and therefore I will hope in him. A lot of questions surrounding what does this mean the Lord is my portion not understand how is it that this is supposed to bring comfort into my life. Well in Numbers 18 we're given another example of this concept. This is when God is speaking to Aaron and the Israelites they're looking forward to the promised land the provision that they're receiving in the promised land. And each tribe is basically told that you are going to receive a certain allotment of land as part of your inheritance. This is to be used as a place of personal possession for them, to produce food, raise livestock, provide for their people. However, of the tribes of Israel, there was one tribe for which this was not the case, the Levites. And in Numbers 18, verse 20, God tells Aaron this, you shall have no inheritance in their land, You shall have no apportion among them. I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel. The other tribes were receiving a portion of land as a reward or blessing from God for their faithfulness. However, the Levites were to receive a different reward and that was God himself as they were appointed the spiritual leaders of God's people. Therefore, they were not to look to their physical possessions for provision, but were to look to God himself and find complete satisfaction in him and that he would provide for them through the hands of their tribes and the nation of Israel. So Jeremiah claims that his portion is God himself. The land that was once the very possession of the children of Israel is now desolate and controlled by the Babylonians. Therefore, God removed their inheritance and reward as a nation. And Jeremiah recognized this and realized that his reward was God himself. Therefore, he has hope, as David said in Psalm 20, verse seven, he said, Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord, our God. And again, in Psalm 16, five, David says, The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup. You hold my lot. And then the psalmist says in Psalm 119, 57, he really fleshes out this concept of the Lord being our portion when he says the Lord is my portion. I promise to keep your words. I entreat your favor with all my heart. Be gracious to me according to your promise. When I think on your ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies. I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments. Though the cords of the wicked ensnare me, I do not forget your law. At midnight, I rise to praise you because of your righteous rules. I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who kept your precepts. The earth of the Lord is full of your steadfast love. Teach me your statutes." So where do we see this in a New Testament perspective? In Philippians chapter 3, verses 8 through 11, Paul tells us this. Indeed, I count everything as a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, literally dung is the word that's used there, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death that by any means possible I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. In summary, the Lord being Jeremiah's portion, the Levites portion, David's portion and Paul's portion is to find ourselves being content in our everyday relationship with him rather than finding our contentment in the other events and possessions of life plus Christ. Let me say that again. In summary, the Lord being Jeremiah's portion, the Levites portion, David's portion and Paul's portion is to find ourselves being content in our everyday relationship with him rather than finding our contentment in the other events and possessions of life plus Christ. In essence, we can say, if the Lord is our portion, that you can take away my family, you can take away my clothes, you can burn my house, you can harm me physically, you can have the world scorn me at every turn. But just like Job say, be able to say with conviction, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. One thing is impossible. There is no way for the Lord to be your portion if you have no relationship with him. You can try your best to live by the golden rule, to claim you are a Christian due to family heritage, to make concerted attempts to do Christian things like coming to church today. But all of these represent marred human efforts to create something that can only happen through a transformation of a person's heart by the power of God. If you are here today and you believe that you have it all figured out or you're here today and your life is in shambles, know that there is only one solution and that's to come to Christ. The first step for you in making the Lord your portion is to confess your sin before him, repent through turning from your unrighteous ways and call on the mercy of God to save you from your sins. Today and even right now is the time when you call on God to save you. Jesus died. He shed his blood. so that forgiveness could be made possible. And he rose again on the third day so that you could overcome the grave and be able to spend eternity with him in heaven. If you hear nothing else from this sermon today, it should simply be repent and believe on Jesus Christ. For those of us that are followers of Christ and have been transformed by his power into a life that's free from the eternal penalty of sin. You should realize that the only hope that will remain is if you see the Lord as your reward in this life and in the life to come. So many things in this life can distract us and become our portion. Our families, our families can easily replace God on the throne of our heart. Our desire to excel at work, the material possessions of this world that can so easily draw us away. God has blessed us, especially here in America, in so many ways, and we need to make sure that the ways in which he has blessed us don't replace him as being our portion. As with Jeremiah, this will only come through a conscious decision to find the purpose for our being and our contentment in him. As the psalmist set forth is to seek to obey God's commands, to praise him continually for righteousness. And when we begin to be consumed by our life, either through how great it is or how terrible it is, that we would instead look to God's towards God's provision and to God's word. This is a foreign concept to many of us that are redeemed, if we're quite honest. We're still living our life trying to balance all the things that please us. We want pleasure during the week from this world in the moment in which we find ourselves. And on Sunday mornings, we want pleasure through a good time of singing songs and hearing a good sermon. Therefore, we feel like we have a perfectly balanced life. I'm able to enjoy the things of this world and I'm able to enjoy the things of God. However, God wants us to see him as our portion each and every day of the week. This does not mean that there can be no enjoyment from the things that surround us. But it does mean that if those things are not there or don't happen as we expect that we don't care because our contentment is found in our eternal relationship with Jesus Christ that far surpasses any joy that we can receive from anything in this world. This is how hope is realized in our life in every circumstance by being satisfied with the Lord is our portion. So we see how Jeremiah remembered and turned back to God as his portion, and therefore hope was realized upon this foundation. So hope is renewed daily through God's provision. It's realized through this reliance upon God. And finally, I want us to see how hope is blessed through quiet patience. Look at verses 25 and 26. Jeremiah says this. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. So I want us to see how hope is blessed through quiet patience. Jeremiah is in the middle of this absolutely unprecedented disaster. Jerusalem is destroyed. The temple is in ruins. God's children are either dead, wasting away, hiding or enslaved. If you go through and read the Book of Lamentations, it's not an encouraging book. You want to talk about some of the worst things, you think some of the pictures that you've seen on TV, you read what is described in the Book of Lamentations and you realize this is a horrible situation. They have resulted in some cases to literally eating each other for food is how bad the situation got. And so here it is that if at any time that somebody would want to act immediately to rectify a situation, if God really cared, wouldn't it be now? And right now, among us people with all these things going on, does God not know that his children are resulting to this cannibalism, are being mocked by other nations, are dying from starvation, have seen their possessions stolen, and would quite honestly rather be dead than endure the travesty that they're experiencing? God does know, because as Jeremiah states over and over again, this suffering has come because of their sinfulness and their rejection of God. However, we believe as with most situations in life that we should simply be able to cry uncle and immediately everything be back to normal. This is how we think that things should work. Quiet patience is something that's unheard of in our society. All you have to do is not hit the gas that very minute that the stoplight turns green and then you hear that symphony of horns that come behind you to remind you that it's time to go. We're an on-demand culture. We can watch movies on demand. We can access banking on demand. We can communicate electronically and via voice on demand. And we can even demand that the customer is always right when we don't get what we think we deserve. When we can get all of this on demand, we just don't understand why there are times that we can't, especially when we are facing difficult circumstances. Job's wife was impatient and had no understanding. Jeremiah was wondering how long the Lord was going to forsake them and Paul even asked three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed before he learned how God's power was perfected in his weakness. The point is that as children of God we have a promise above all promises. That is that all the struggles will one day disappear and we will be in the very presence of Christ. Revelation chapter 6 verse 7 verse 16 says this. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them nor any scorching heat for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will be their guide to them. Springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Jeremiah states the Lord is good to those who wait for them and it is good that we should wait quietly. James 5 7 we're told. Be patient, therefore, brothers. Until the coming of the Lord, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rains. You also be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord. Patience shows this, that we know an outcome is coming that far surpasses the difficulties that we face while we're waiting. Many times these difficulties are for our refinement. either to enhance our faith or to bring us to repentance. However, even when we recognize those things in the midst of a difficult situation, we still might have a long road to go before deliverance will come. And for some situations, quite honestly, that deliverance might not come until that time that we're taken home to be with Christ. We just have to settle sometimes on that fact. It's important to note that during the waiting, the position in which we are to find ourselves is not waiting in which we withdraw from engagement with our Christian walk and wait for someone to knock on the door to tell us that God has rescued us from our suffering. But while we are waiting for salvation to come, we are to seek him. Seeking gives us the picture of this active search of us diligently seeking God's face and his will at every turn. Psalm 34, four tells us this, I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from my fears and those who look to him are radiant and their faces shall never be ashamed. So the suffering that we face may be short term. It may be long term, may get easier, it may get harder. But through it all, we should find ourselves in a posture of quiet patience. Through our quiet patience, we recognize that God is in control. He has not forsaken us and that our present sufferings are pale in comparison to the future glory of being in the presence of Jesus Christ. When going through suffering, you're going to have ups and downs. We're making sure that you're waiting with quiet patience is sometimes easy, but sometimes it's going to be very, very hard. It's the hard times for which you have to prepare yourself. Times like at night when you're alone with no one to comfort you. Times when troubles seem to come in never ending waves that erodes your confidence in God. And when you had first discovered or when you first discovered that you're just about to go through a very hard time of struggle. It's at these times that we must renew our confidence in the Lord and commit to wait with quiet patience. Our reason for waiting quietly is not because things have spiraled out of control and it's going to take time for God to straighten them out. We wait because we know that God has us in this situation for his purposes and for his glory. David Brainerd lived from 1718 to 1747, only a brief 29 years. In that short time period, he experienced great suffering, yet his life was focused on advancing the kingdom of God. At the age of nine, he lost his father. At the age of 14, he lost his mother. He struggled with depression, and Jonathan Edwards once described him by his constitution and natural temper so prone to melancholy and dejection of spirit. During his college years, he was subject to frequent sickness and early signs of tuberculosis. In 1741, he heard a missionary to the Indians speak and he was challenged to take the gospel to them as well. And while taking the gospel to the Indians, he continually struggled with depression. He said in one letter, quote, my circumstances are such that I have no comfort of any kind but that which I have in God. Despite his battles with depression and sickness, he saw great success in his work among the Indians. But by 1746 tuberculosis started to overwhelm them and in 1747 he moved in with the famous creature Jonathan Edwards and he died in his home in October of that year. Some of his final words give us a picture of his focus on God rather than the intense suffering that he endured during his short 29 years. He says this quote, It is impossible for any rational creature to be happy without acting all for God. God himself could not make him happy any other way. There is nothing in the world worth living for, but doing good and finishing God's work and doing the work that Christ did. I see nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction beside living to God, pleasing him and doing his whole will. Brainerd had great hope in God despite his circumstances and his life challenges, us all to look at how it is that we live in the midst of suffering. So again, is there hope in every circumstances? Yes, there is. And in those circumstances, we are to find that our hope should be renewed daily through God's provisions, that our hope is realized through a reliance upon God and that our hope is blessed through quiet patience. Listen to it once again in Jeremiah 3, 21 through 26. 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 have hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for them, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the encouragement that we have in your word. Lord, as we look at the circumstance that the Israelites found themselves in, that Jeremiah found himself in, incredible destruction and devastation. That in the midst of this, that he turned his heart to you and he saw that even in all of that trials that you continue to provide for your people and that your mercies are new every morning. Lord, may it not be that we simply praise you during the good times of our life for how it is that you provide for us, but that even during the midst of suffering, that we would see that your mercies are renewed every morning. We would be relying upon those provisions that you've got, that we would find our portion in you. The fact that even if we lose everything, that we still have all that we need because of our abiding relationship with you. Dear Lord, during this time is that any of us in this room or any time in our life go through suffering, Lord, that we would look at these times, not as times to cry out in anger against you, but time to wait patiently and quietly for the salvation that is to come. We pray these things in your mighty and your wonderful and your gracious name. Amen.