Sermon
for Easter 4, May 3, 2020
Grace, mercy and peace
from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son. Amen.
Lamentation
3:18-26 18 I said,
“My endurance has vanished, along with my hope from the Lord.” 19 Remember my
affliction and my homeless wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. 20 My soul always
remembers, and it has sunk within me. 21 Nevertheless, I keep this in my heart. This is the reason I have hope: 22 By the mercies of the Lord we are not consumed, for his compassions do not
fail. 23 They
are new every morning. Great is your
faithfulness. 24 My
soul says, “The Lord is my portion.
Therefore, I will hope in him.” 25 The
Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. 26 It is good to hope quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (EHV)
Wait
with sure hope for the Lord’s salvation.
Dear
sojourners in a troubled world,
Have you heard any bad news lately? It’s become almost hard to imagine hearing
anything but bad news, hasn’t it? With
the economy crashing, a new virus sickening and killing people around the
globe, political turmoil, reports of above normal volcanic activity and
persecution of Christians coming from the far corners of the earth, and with lots
of people worried about the future right here at home, it may be hard to
remember all the “Good News” we have been given. Yet, it really shouldn’t be, for God
continues to bless us abundantly every day!
The
writer of this dirge we call Lamentations, lived during a time in Israel’s
history when things looked awfully bleak.
The ten northern tribes of the Children of Israel had long before been
destroyed, and now the southern tribes, the nation known as Judah, had also
been laid waste. The capital city of
Jerusalem, along with God’s temple, lay completely ruined, and most of the
people had been killed or carted off into captivity in a foreign land. The remainder felt that they had been
abandoned by God. Thus, in His mercy,
the Lord had His prophet comfort the survivors and encourage them to Wait
with sure hope for the Lord’s
salvation.
Jeremiah’s encouragement to them is also meant for you and me.
Have you
ever told a whining child that “Life’s not fair?” The human nature expects that everything in
this world should be fair, but we don’t have to live very long to see that some
things in life just don’t seem that way.
There is always someone out there who seems undeservedly richer, someone
having greater success, other people getting what we want and think we
deserve. There are also times when
troubles come our way that are far worse than what we think we deserve, even while
the wicked seem to have everything go their way. So many times, life just doesn’t seem
fair.
It is normal
for people to expect that our loving God will always treat us fairly, but I am
here, today, to tell you that God doesn’t treat you and me fair, and thank God,
He doesn’t give us what we deserve.
So, does
it shock you that I say God doesn’t treat you fairly? Our human nature cries out, “If God is
perfect, if He is holy, then how can God not treat us fair?” Of course, the truth is that each and every
day, our loving God treats us far better than any of us could ever
deserve!
If that
seems a little hard to swallow, let’s look at some background: in the Garden of
Eden, God commanded, “You may freely eat
from every tree in the garden, but you shall not eat from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil, for on the day that you eat from it, you will
certainly die.” (Genesis 2:16-17) Through St. Paul, we learn that “God does not show favoritism. Indeed,
all people who have sinned without law will also perish without law, and all
the people who have sinned in connection with law will be judged by law.” (Romans 2:11-12) The same law that says, “the
wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) There are many passages in the Bible like
these that tell us God is perfectly justified in destroying everyone who sins
against Him, and we all sin against Him, for as St. John wrote, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us.” (1 John 1:8)
God had every right to destroy Adam and Eve as soon
as they desired to eat of the fruit of that forbidden tree. Likewise, God had every right to wield His
just wrath on you and me for our sins. There
is no good reason for God to spare our lives for even an instant, except that
God wanted to demonstrate His great love and mercy for us. If not for God’s mercy, you and I would face
nothing except eternal condemnation and torment.
Now, notice what our text says, “By
the mercies of the Lord we are not consumed, for his compassions do not fail.” What we deserve is death: eternal separation
from God. What we get is God showing us
His mercy, so every day you live on this earth, you are living in God’s grace. Why does God allow sinful individuals like us
this time of grace? The only right
answer is because “God our Savior…wants
all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3-4)
Whenever
we see some tragedy take people out of this world, or especially, whenever some
young, vibrant person is struck down, the human nature would accuse God of
being unfair, but it is the sinner who unfairly judges God, because God has the
absolute right to call any, and all of us, from this world at any moment. None of us have any right to God’s
mercy. We are all sinners, and we
deserve only His just condemnation. Yet,
in His great, amazing love for us, God made other plans—plans that would spare
us from evil. (Isaiah 57:1)
God used
the writer of this lament to teach us to look forward to the salvation God
planned to provide through the promised Messiah. Jeremiah wrote, “I said, ‘My endurance has
vanished, along with my hope from the Lord.’
Remember my affliction and my homeless wandering, the wormwood and
bitterness.” With these words,
Jeremiah foreshadowed our Lord Jesus; we are reminded of Jesus’ horrible,
intense suffering and, especially, His death on the cross. The “wormwood,” here, pictures Jesus’ bitter agony. The bitterness reminds us of the gall offered
to Jesus to drink, which was intended to numb His pain so that He wouldn’t feel
all the justice God was dealing out upon Him for the sake of all mankind. In our place, Jesus refused that crude
anesthetic. Christ Jesus entered this
world for the sole purpose of suffering the punishment and death we each
deserved, and He would not allow any of that torment to go undone.
A bit
ago, I said that God doesn’t treat us fairly.
He also didn’t treat His Son as He deserved, and neither do we. Jesus didn’t deserve to die for our sin. He had perfectly obeyed His Father in
thought, word, and deed every moment of His existence, which is from
eternity. Yet, in His great mercy and
love for us, “God made him, who did not
know sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of
God in him.” (2 Corinthians
5:21) The Triune God took all the guilt
of our disobedience and charged it to the Son.
To human reason, that isn’t fair, but Jesus endured our suffering, pain,
and death so that God could count you and me holy. Therefore, “By the mercies of the Lord we are not consumed, for his
compassions do not fail.” Solely because of the Lord’s mercy, our sins
were removed from us, rather than held against us.
Jesus
deserved nothing but admiration and worship.
Yet, on the day of His trial, the whole crowd of people in Jerusalem
shouted out for His death. They all
rejected the Son of God when they bullied Pilate into sentencing Jesus to die
the cruel death of the cross, and then they, and the Roman soldiers, mocked Him
as He hung there in our place.
To our
shame, You and I, also, treat Jesus shamefully whenever we expect God to give
His grace in ways He doesn’t promise, or to show mercy to unrepentant sinners. Though Jesus died for all the sins of the
world, He also tells us that salvation is given to us only through faith in Christ. We can’t in any way, shape, or form earn a
share of Christ’s salvation; it comes to us only as a gift. Neither does God promise salvation to anyone
who doesn’t believe in Jesus; to expect that He would is to mock the suffering
and death Jesus endured for each one of us.
The
writer said, “Nevertheless, I keep this in my heart.
This is the reason I have hope.” True faith understands that God does not forgive
us because of our paltry efforts, but He graciously forgives the undeserving
when we have faith in the One who truly did satisfy God’s demand for perfect holiness
and perfect justice, the Son Who paid with His life for our lack thereof.
As we
remember Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, we grieve for our part in the
guilt that caused His pain. Yet, His
death also gives us the hope of an eternal future. Through faith in Christ Jesus, we have the
sure and certain promise of life everlasting with our Father in heaven. “Indeed,
it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Dear friends, when this world of trouble starts
beating you down, remember the words of our sermon text, “His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. My soul says, “The Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will hope in him.” As long as
you have the breath of life, you can know that God is providing exactly what
you need. Whether we live in a mansion
or a cardboard box, God is taking care of us.
If we have clothes on our backs and a little food to eat, the Lord has
provided. The apostle, Paul, wrote to
Timothy, “We brought nothing into the world, and
we certainly cannot take anything out. But
if we have food and clothing, with these we will be satisfied.” (1 Timothy 6:7-8)
At the same time, if God was providing, only, for
our physical needs, we would remain hopeless.
However, Jesus told His disciples, “Peace I
leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not
let it be afraid.” (John 14:27)
When you trust in Jesus as your one and only Savior, then you can know
without a doubt that God has provided you with everything you need for eternal
life and salvation. He has chosen to forgive
your sins and make you His own dear child through Spirit-given faith.
In the stock market over the last month or so, we
saw how quickly the world can take away our earthly riches. God doesn’t work that way. God gave His Son to die for us, and our salvation
will never be taken away. The Holy
Spirit gives faith in Christ through the Gospel in Word and Sacrament, and God
will never take those things away. In
fact, Jesus declared, “Heaven and earth will
pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Matthew 24:35) God’s promises are
always sure and true, so hold on to the hope you were given as God blessed you through
His Means of Grace. The hope we have is
true hope for life eternal, and though we haven’t yet experienced the
culmination of that hope, it remains a sure and certain reality.
Wait
with sure hope for the Lord’s
salvation. Shortly before He went to the cross to die
for our sins, Jesus told His disciples, “Do
not let your heart be troubled. Believe
in God; believe also in me. In my
Father’s house are many mansions. If it
were not so, I would have told you. I am
going to prepare a place for you. And if
I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to be with me,
so that you may also be where I am.”
(John 14:1-3) Jeremiah assures us, “It is good to hope quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.” It is good, because that hope gives eternal
life. It is good, because while we wait
in faith, we know that God is faithful to all His promises. Just as Jesus fulfilled all the Old Testament
prophecies concerning the Messiah, so He will return, just as He promised, to
take you and me home to be with Him in heaven.
Only God knows how soon that will take place, but we can know that Jesus
will do exactly as He promised because He is “the salvation of the LORD.”
Dear
Christian friends, Wait with sure hope for the Lord’s salvation.
That really is our chief work while we live here on earth: to remain
faithful in the true hope of Christ’s salvation, always trusting His Word of
promise, always eagerly and patiently anticipating His return, sharing our hope
with those around us by persistently showing our faith, even in the face of the
troubles of this world.
We close
with the last words of the Bible: “The
one who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with
all the saints. Amen. (Revelation 22:20-21)
Receive now, with believing hearts, the blessing of
our Lord; the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and
minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.
Amen.
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