May it please God to graciously
bless us together this evening as we meditate in his word. Let's
turn to the Lamentations of Jeremiah chapter three and we'll read
verse 40. The Lamentations of Jeremiah
chapter three and reading the 40th verse. Let us search and try our ways
and turn again to the Lord. God in his love and mercy has
ordered that Jeremiah should write, if you like, his personal
experience down for us. And we're very thankful we have
this book of Lamentations. We could think, well, why didn't
Ezekiel do the same when it wasn't God's purpose? But it was God's
purpose that Jeremiah should write down something of his personal
experience, his own testimony. And may we, as we read this third
chapter together, be encouraged to recognize that Jeremiah was
a faithful prophet of the Lord, And yet he had many difficulties,
many temptations. And at times it appeared that
he felt that indeed the Lord had turned right against him.
But nevertheless, the Lord was merciful. And we know in the
22nd verse of this third chapter, when he says, it is the Lord's
mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail
not May I knew every morning, great is thy faithfulness. And
he continues by saying, the Lord is my portion, saith my soul,
therefore would I hope in him. And therefore, although we may
trace out some of the difficulties in our lives, may we also be
encouraged by those words and believe that they are true with
us. The Lord is my portion, saith
my soul therefore will i hope in him indeed we have no hope
really anywhere else apart from in the lord but it's a blessing
for us tonight if our hope is in the lord well this 40th verse
is again a verse of instruction to us and a word of direction
really because it tells us Let us search and try our ways and
turn again to the Lord. It is often easy to assume that
our ways are right. Easy to assume that everything
in our life is in accordance with the Word of God. And those
things that we are thinking and those things that we are saying
and those things that we're doing, are indeed right. Well, they
may be right in our eyes, but they may not be right in the
eyes of Almighty God. And that's why we have a word
like this tonight, where the Lord says, Jeremiah says, under
the influence of the Holy Spirit, and indeed you and I should say
the same things, let us search and try our ways. And we might
explain that. Calvin tells us it could be translated
like this. Let us uncover our ways and search. Let us see what's there. Let's see what's underneath.
Let's see what our motive is. Let's see what the true desire
of our heart is. And so let us search and try
our ways. It's something which we will
find to be beneficial, we will find it to be profitable, and
we need to carry out such an examination, recognizing that
we stand before a holy God, who sees us through and through. He doesn't just look at the outside. Our fellow beings, our fellow
countrymen, they look at the outside. They see our outside. You see, God looks at the heart. And as the Holy Spirit of God
gives us grace, so may we be able to look in our heart. and therefore to search and try
our ways. And this word search obviously
clearly indicates that it's not something which may be just evident
on the surface. We may need to stir things up. We may need to look very closely. We may need to carry out an examination
to search and try our ways. And trying means to test our
ways. And that of course means to test
our ways in the light of God's light. That's not our light,
that's God's light. And God's light is very penetrating. God's light penetrates into the
darkest recesses of our heart. And we live in a dark day when
we need the glorious light of the gospel. truly come and to
shine into our hearts. Well we're thankful then that
the Lord has ordained that Jeremiah should write such a word as this,
let us search and indeed try our ways. And we may find if
we examine ourselves carefully we may be that perhaps we come
into the category like Haggai tells us about. In his day you
will remember that Haggai lived in that time when Israel were
wonderfully blessed or Judah wonderfully blessed with the
privilege of coming back from Babylon into Jerusalem and they
had been told by the king to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem
and to rebuild the temple. But what were they doing? Well,
they'd been put off because there'd been a decree from the king,
an incorrect decree to tell them to stop building, and they were
very happy to stop building and to concentrate on their own buildings,
on their own work, and therefore they turned away from doing that. which they'd been commanded to
do. And the Spirit of God tells Haggai. And Haggai writes these words
in the first chapter. It's a very beautiful little
book, Haggai is. We preached from it only a couple of months
ago. But it's a very beautiful book. And this is what Haggai
says. You look for much, and light
came to little. And when he bought it home, the
Lord says, I did blow upon it. Why says the Lord of hosts, because
of my house and his waste. And he ran every man onto his
own house. So we see, don't we there, that
everybody there was concerned, not about the house of God. It was not wrong to have their
own houses at all, but it was to put a right perspective upon
it. and to put a priority, and the priority was for the house
of God, and then to fall in line with the other things that were
necessary. Well, what they'd done was to
really forget the house of God and cast it aside, and be concentrating
on their own lives. And of course, in the day and
age in which we live, it doesn't just refer to houses, it refers
to everything in our lives. whether we have put things before
our time of worship. Again, these things are critical,
aren't they? As we consider this great truth
and a search and try our ways. One of the biggest difficulties
that we face today is the pressure on our lives. The pressure which
comes upon us. Not only, of course, those of
us who are older and have to go to work, but also the young
people and the youngsters at school. There's pressure today
to spend as much time as they can on learning and pursuing
their own activities. And well, if they have time,
they will fit in the things of God. And well, if they don't
have time, well, they'll pass them over. if they do have time
they'll limit them to perhaps only a short time. You don't
give diligence to the true things of God. You may have read sometimes
some of the the old Puritans who of course were gracious men
and they spent many hours really in reading the word and in praying
and of course you had a wonderful benefit in their lives. It may not have benefited their
natural life, although it may have done, but it did benefit
their spiritual life. And so today, how necessary for
us to search and try our ways, to see whether our ways are producing,
under the grace of God, a natural spiritual growth, or are we just
as it were, carrying on in a fairly aimless way, just fulfilling
what we think is our duty. It's very easy to fall into a
trap and just to follow what we think is a duty. It's very
easy to fall in that trap with regard to reading the Word of
God. Now then, it's good to follow
a pattern of reading in the word of God. But we shouldn't think,
well, I've read that bit today, that's what I had to read, and
now I can close the book and forget about it until the next
day. Well, the great blessing is what have we learned and how
we've been profited from the reading that we've had. Have
we benefited in our soul? Because the great question is,
Not whether we fed our minds. Nothing wrong in feeding our
minds with spiritual truth. But the great thing is whether
we fed our souls so that we have been spiritually blessed, spiritually
enlightened, spiritually encouraged. And whether our reading, whether
our study has brought us nearer to the Saviour. You know, it
won't take you farther away, but we do want to find that it
brings us nearer to the Saviour, so that we're able to evidence
that truth that we have grown in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And so let us search
and try our ways. Let us look carefully to see
what effect the things of God have had upon us, perhaps even
today. You know, we were, most of us
anyway, were able to listen to the service this morning. Well,
what happened after that? Did you forget all about it?
Did you go home and, or did you have your lunch and enjoy your
lunch and then spend the afternoon in doing other things and forgetting
about the things that you heard? Now the searching of our ways
would be to test whether we did benefit and whether we, a bit
like Ruth in her day, she went home and she beat out that which
she'd heard, that which she'd received. It's good for us, you
know, when you and I hear the preaching of the word, not to
then come to the end of the day and say, well, I don't really
remember anything I heard today. Well, was it profitable or was
it not? I remember years ago I was preaching
at a certain place and there was a godly old deacon there
and after the service we were walking up to his house for lunch
and he said to me, you know Stephen, he said, if you preached only
for five minutes and sat down, he said i wouldn't blame you
he said i would blame myself well that's good isn't it to
see there a man who was indeed searching his heart to see whether
the truth of god was beneficial to him and if there had been
a very short sermon he wouldn't blame the minister you know i
expect most people today would blame the minister And we say,
well, we can see that that man wasn't near to God. We can see
that that man didn't study very much. In actual fact, what a
blessing if we don't look at the minister, if we look at ourselves
and blame ourselves. Because how wonderful it is when
the Lord brings his word to touch our hearts. and is truly profitable. Let us search and try our ways. And so we come back to Haggai. He is concerned that indeed there
might be the blessing of the Lord and not be found, as the
Lord says in that verse, in the ninth verse of the first chapter,
he said, when he brought it home, I did blow upon it. The Lord
blew upon that which they'd done in their building of their homes,
perhaps in the food that they'd been able to harvest and bring
home. You see, the Lord blew upon it. I did blow upon it. And the question
was, why saith the Lord of hosts? Because of mine house is waste,
and ye run every man unto his own house. Well, You know, it's
a very solemn thought, isn't it? If the Lord has blown upon
that which you and I have heard, the truth of God, so it's gone
away. Not to return. The Lord's blown upon it. We didn't appreciate it. We didn't
realize it was God speaking to us. We thought it was just the
words of a man. And we thought, well, we didn't
agree with it anyway. So therefore, why should we?
Listen to it. Well, how solemn it is if we
recognize and see and know that God, the great God, has blown
upon it. And you and I will know whether
that's been true in our spiritual life. Perhaps on many occasions
the Lord's blown upon the word that you and I have heard. It's
been blown away. There's been no prophet. Well, let us search and try our
ways. Well the blessed Lord says let
us search and try ways and turn again to the Lord. Turn once again to seek the favour
of God. Turn once again and pray to him
mightily that he will indeed renew in our heart the life of
God, renew spiritual blessings, bring us nearer to himself, bring
us again to the cross of Christ. What a blessed thing it is when
the Holy Spirit brings us to the cross of Christ. Well, is that a place that you
long to be? Maybe a place that you don't
like hearing about. It may be something that means
nothing to you. And that's why it's good when
the Holy Spirit searches us and we realize that, well, we've
been at fault. We find our souls are barren. We have to say, how barren is
my soul today? Well, if that's a truth and if
you are a true believer, you won't be happy with that position.
You will seek that the Lord will indeed come and turn again to
you and grant you visits from himself. And there's no better
place for a visit from the Saviour than to be at the cross of Christ. And so today, may it be our great
concern to be blessed indeed. Just like Jabez prayed so many
years ago in the book of Chronicles, I think it's
the sixth chapter or the fourth chapter, the first epistle, where
there's that short prayer of Jabez, but very effectual. It's good to have and to observe
an effectual prayer, because the word of God encourages us
to be blessed with the fervent prayer, the effectual fervent
prayer of a righteous man that obeys much. And Jabez's prayer
was very short and very simple. Oh that thou wouldst bless me
indeed and enlarge my coast. He desired spiritual blessings. Well what a mercy if you and
I search ourselves and try our ways and find that we're perhaps
lacking a prayer like that, we should never pretend to be what
we're not, because we stand before a holy God who looks right into
our heart. Well we mentioned Haggai, the
gracious prophet of the Lord, We can also think of Hosea again,
someone that we refer to perhaps as a minor prophet, that's only
because their prophecies were short and minor by comparison
with the longer ones of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah, but nonetheless,
very pertinent. And then Hosea, which is a wonderful
little book, we come to the end of it, the last chapter, the
first two verses this is what Hosea says O Israel O Israel
we almost sense a sigh can't we O Israel return unto the Lord
thy God for thou hast fallen by thy iniquity take with you
words and turn to the Lord say unto him take away all iniquity
and receive us graciously. So will we render the calves
of our lips. I mean, so will we bring praise
unto thy great and holy name. Again, here was a confession,
a confession. It's good, isn't it? If we're
searching and trying our ways, there will be confession. We
won't stand and say, well, I am righteous and all the rest are
wrong. Well, probably go the opposite
way and say, well, all the rest are right and I'm wrong. Oh,
Israel, return unto the Lord thy God. My friends, have you
and I left the Lord our God? Well, this is the word, return
unto the Lord thy God. Because it's a blessed position
to be found returning, and not wandering farther away, but returning,
because there is the place of blessing. And as I've already
said, at the cross of Christ. Well, what a mercy then if the
Lord looks upon us in love, which it will be, to show to us our
sinful condition, perhaps show to us our backsliding condition,
perhaps showing to us the need we have of repentance before
God. You see, it's not something that
you and I have to vaunt before all the world, but we stand before
a holy God who knows all about us anyway, and it's a great blessing
when the Holy Spirit enables us to fall down, to bow down,
and to confess before God, all our failings, all our shortcomings. And so he says, he says, return
the Lord thy God for those fallen by thine iniquity. And that's
a very full and broad and comprehensive statement. It includes everything
really in our little lives, whatever the iniquity may be. Sometimes
we classify iniquity into categories. My friends, the Lord takes you
all together, fallen by that iniquity, and then he says take
with you words. What a mercy it is that the Lord
gives us words to pray, to pray to God most high, to pour out
our hearts, unto our God. God gives us words to pray. What a mercy it is. And as he
gives us those words, as he says, and turn to the Lord. No one
else. Turn to the Lord. Turn to the
Lord in secret. Turn to the Lord who is a God
who hears and answers prayer. And say unto him, pray unto him. Take away all iniquity. Remove all my sin. Every sin. Everything is wrong in my life.
Lord, sometimes I'm not able to really appreciate and understand
what is wrong. But Lord, don't I ask all. Don't
I ask the end from the beginning. Lord, help me to come in this
way and say, take away all iniquity, every sin. and receive us graciously. What a desire that should be,
to be received by our God. And God does receive us. God does look upon us. God is
gracious. God is merciful. Receive us graciously. And you see when this is granted,
when the Lord is merciful, when the Lord does renew us perhaps
again, brings us once again as it were into the banqueting house
and the banner over us is love. What's the outcome? Praise from
our lips unto our God for his mercy toward us. Let us search
and try our ways and turn again unto the Lord. You see this is
really the reality of true religion. It's not something that somebody
who has no religion understands, because it won't mean anything
to them. But as we come before a holy God and realize that by
nature how unholy we are, and yet to think that this great
God looks upon us in compassion, He knows our state. He remembers
that we are dust. He doesn't deal with us as our
sins deserve. What reason for thankfulness? What reason to praise and to
bless Almighty God? You know, there is a tendency,
isn't there, to seek great things for ourselves. And in Jeremiah,
in in his actual prophecy himself. The Lord speaks to Jeremiah,
this is what he tells him. Seekest thou great things for
thyself, seek them not. Now that doesn't mean to say
the Lord won't do great things, because the Lord very well may
do great things. But you see, if you and I seek
great things for ourselves, it'll be to just feed our pride. But you see that when the Lord
brings great things, we give him the honor and glory, and
our pride then is not fed, and we're thankful we have such a
kind and gracious God. And so we have this statement,
seekest thou great things for thyself? It's a question. Let
us search and try our ways. God knows whether you and I have
been searching great things for ourselves the word says then
seek them not for behold i will bring evil upon all flesh saith
the lord but thy life will i give unto thee for a prey in all places
whither thou goes that means the lord will be with us and
all go with us the lord will bless us and that really is the
vital thing that you and i need to know that lord is with us
and the lord will bless us because if that is so and if it is so
it will come to pass and it will be great things there's no greater
thing than to receive the blessing of the lord to receive his favor
to receive the smiles of his face, to be guided and directed
by such a great and good master, to be dealt with in love to our
souls, to recognize the glorious Saviour dying to atone for our
sins. These are the truths that the
Holy Spirit reveals to his people and they are great things that
exceed all the things that this vain world can offer. And so
may we be encouraged to heed the Word of God. Let us search
and try our ways and turn again unto the Lord. It's a great blessing
if the Lord gives us the grace to do just this. It's not something
that you and I will want to do naturally. No, We want to carry
on in our carnal way, satisfying all the things of the flesh,
whatever that may be, different one to another, but God knows
what a mercy it is. Because you and I desire surely
to be built up a spiritual house. That's why I want to search and
try ways to see whether there is any building going on. whether
we've stagnated, where there's been no progress, where it's
just still. The building stopped just like
it had in the days of Haggai, when the building of the temple,
it had stopped. There was no building. It would
be a sad thing in our lives if the building has stopped. Well,
David, I believe, understood the reality of that. because
he tells us in perhaps a well-known verse in Psalm 127, and the first
two verses, only a short psalm, but Psalm 127, this is what we
read, except the Lord build the house, and that referred to of
course the temple in those days, refers to us in our spiritual
life today, except The Lord build the house and if the Lord builds
our spiritual house, the result will be the honour and glory
of God because it will be God's work. Isn't it good when God
builds, builds us up in our most holy faith, brings us into the
narrow way, directs us unto the Saviour. It's God who is building. Accept the Lord, build the house.
They labour in vain that build it. If you and I try and build
it ourselves, there won't be any benefit. There won't be any
true building. It'll only be wood, hay and stubble,
which will collapse and be burnt up. We need the Lord to build
our spiritual house. Accept the Lord, build the house.
They labour in vain that build it. Accept the Lord, keep the
city. The watchman waketh but in vain. And then he says, it is vain
for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread
of sorrows. So he giveth his beloved sleep. The Lord deals with his church
in love. He knows naturally that you and
I need sleep. And it won't benefit us just
to think, well, if I start really late, if I get up really early,
now I'm going to be wonderfully blessed. It's the Lord's sovereign
grace. It's the Lord's sovereign mercy.
The Lord knows how to bless. The Lord knows when to bless. The Lord knows what we need. What a mercy then to have such
a kind and gracious God and to come to this knowledge as we
search our ways and try them as to whether the Lord has and
is building our spiritual house. As he's come to us, as we read
his word, as he's opened our spiritual eyes to see wonderful
truths out of the word of God, our faith has been strengthened.
We've been encouraged to press on. We've been blessed with the
evidence that we possess the life of God in the soul. We've
been blessed with the evidence of light from on high shining
into our hearts. And we're therefore able to recognize
God as building my spiritual house. I couldn't have done it
myself. You know how true that is? Because
the Lord puts everything in a right place. The Lord brings everything
together at a right time. He knows how to organize it.
He knows what we need in our spiritual building. And so let
us be found then. with this spiritual building,
searching and trying our ways. Again, the psalmist David in
the 119th Psalm, he really addresses us in similar ways to this verse
in Lamentations. In the 59th verse in the 119th
Psalm, he says, I thought on my ways. What was he doing? He was searching out his ways. I thought on my ways and turned
my feet unto thy testimonies. He turned his feet unto the ways
of God. That was the great blessing for
God's servant, David. And turned my feet unto thy testaments. You see, he meditated on the
truth of God He tells us indeed about the Word of God. How love
I thy Lord is my meditation all the day. He was thinking on his
ways in accordance with the Word of God. The Lord was then turning
his feet unto the testimonies of the Lord. This is a wonderful
blessing. And we see here the true desire
and the outcome these things so that we do grow in grace and
in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Well there was the case of David
you know we can cast our mind back to the the patriarchs can't
we and we can think of God's servant Abraham well he was a
wonderful example for us today we see the faith that he was
given faith to believe that would come to pass which was naturally
impossible to man yes god gave him faith and we're told it was
accounted unto him for righteousness god-given faith accounted to
him for righteousness but you know as he was journeying on
this is the good news one of the verses which i think is very
wonderful in the hebrews 11th chapter which of course speaks
so gloriously to us about faith, and it speaks to us about the
faith of Abraham. This is what it says, verse 10,
Abraham, for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God. Let us search and try our ways. Abraham was looking for a city. which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God." Today, are you and I in a same situation? Are we looking for a city, the
glorious city of heaven at last? It'd be a great blessing if we're
enabled to search and try our ways and to examine ourselves
in the light of God, because we're all facing a never ending
eternity you and i will spend that eternity either in heaven
or hell well as abraham journeyed what was he doing he was looking
forward wasn't he looking forward for that city now he lived a
long time 175 years he was when he died lived a long time but
nonetheless this was written about him in his life he would
see mostly through his life did the will of God, he left Ur of
the Chaldeans where he was born and he was brought up, he wandered
about just like the patriarchs, just like really the whole Church
of God today. Because we read in an earlier
chapter, for here we have no abiding continuing city, but
we seek one to come. What a mercy today, if by the grace of God We are looking
and seeking that city which is to come, because if we truly
are by the grace of God, we won't be disappointed. And we shall
be brought safely home. Indeed, as we read in the 107th
Psalm, so he brought them to their desired haven. Let us search and try our ways
as to whether we are seeking for our desired haven. Have we
a desired haven? Have we a haven which we're traveling
to and that haven is glory at last, where the Saviour reigns
forever and ever? Yes, what a blessing it is for
the true believer to be searching and trying our ways as to whether
we are amongst those who are looking for that glorious place
of heaven, and I'll be found as we journey on, as the twelfth
chapter in Hebrews tells us, looking unto Jesus, the author
and the finisher of our faith. Let us always be found searching
ourselves to see whether we are indeed looking for that eternal
inheritance which is, as Peter says, incorruptible and undefiled
and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven, for you are kept by
the power of God through grace unto salvation, ready to be revealed
in the last time. What a mercy that is, isn't it? To realize we have such a kind
and gracious God. And then perhaps just one final
reference with regards to searching. The text for us tonight is, let
us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord? Well,
the psalmist in Psalm 139, verse 23, he asks God for this. He
says, search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my
thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead
me in the way everlasting. That was a prayer. And that will
be our prayer because we won't want to be deceived. We won't
want to find ourselves short at last. We won't want to come
to the gates of glory and find that we lack the wonderful evidence
of the grace of God in our souls. That we lack that certificate. We lack that passport. which tells us we are cleansed
through the precious blood of Christ. Oh, my friends, we need
the evidence of that. Let us search and try our ways
to see whether we have that certificate signed with the blood of a Saviour,
never to be destroyed, eternally written for our eternal good. Well, what a mercy it is then,
if we have a desire in searching our ways to seek the God will
search us to assure us that we do have an interest in the shed
blood of the Saviour so that we are able again to confirm
with the Apostle Peter when he said that we're not redeemed
with corruptible things the silver and gold from our vain conversation
received by tradition from our fathers, but with a precious
blood of Christ. As you and I, by the grace of God, are able
to search and try our ways, do we find the blood of Christ is
precious, is invaluable to us? Because it is. Without the blood
of Christ, being shed for us. Without our sins being washed
away, there is no hope for us of eternal glory. But with the
evidence of it, our eternal state is secure. And we can believe,
as we've just already said, there is a place reserved for us in
glory. Well, can we not come and say
tonight, blessed be God, for such a great and glorious gospel,
for such a glorious and wonderful statement of truth we have in
the Word of God. And may He give us all, every
one of us, that grace to come down, to come down individually
before God, not to go up, to come down. If we come down, God
will then raise us up. Let us come down. and search
and try our hearts and turn again to the Lord. Amen.