All right, let's look at Lamentations
3 and Hebrews 12. I've entitled this message Christ
and the Fruit of Righteousness. The first 20 verses of this chapter,
and the whole book of Lamentations is a record of the prophet Jeremiah's
sorrow. His sorrow, his mental anguish
over the fall of Judah and Jerusalem. His sorrow for the people. He
had a heart for the people. And that's why the book is labeled,
titled Lamentations. It's a lament. That's what that
is. Sorrow for the downfall of a
nation. Jeremiah preached to them. He
preached the gospel. And he also preached the just
wrath of God. He told them that they deserved,
and he included himself. Now, Jeremiah, none of these
prophets were just finger pointers, you know, saying, you know, you're
bad and I'm good. I don't, you deserve it and I
don't. That's not what he's doing. But he told the people that they
deserved the punishment that they were about to face. And
you know what they were gonna face? The city of Jerusalem,
the temple, And the whole nation, southern kingdom of Judah was
gonna be conquered and the people were gonna be taken to Babylon. And that's where they were gonna
be for 70 years until the Lord brought a savior, a physical savior in
to bring them out, to liberate them. And so Jeremiah said, his
message was like this, it says, this is what we deserve, we've
earned this. And isn't that a picture of us
by nature? Because that's what we deserve
and that's what we've earned. And that's why this passage here
in Lamentations 3, that verse 22 just sticks out in my mind.
It's one of those I quote all the time. It's of the Lord's
mercies. that we're not consumed. The only reason the elect of
God are not under the wrath of God is because of his mercy in
Christ. And that's it. If God gave any
of us what we deserve, what we've earned, we'd be no better off
than the reprobate. We'd be no better off. And so,
Jeremiah is expressing his sorrow through this book. In chapter
three, look at verse one, he says, I'm the man that hath seen
affliction by the rod of his wrath. Now, Jeremiah's talking
about God's wrath down upon the nation. He hath led me and brought
me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me he has
turned, he turneth his hand against me all the day. Jeremiah is speaking
for the nation. He's not just talking about himself.
He says, my flesh and my skin he made old. He hath broken my
bones. See, this is a lament. All this
language is a scripture. He hath builded against me, encompassed
me with gall and travail, the gall of bitterness. He hath set
me in dark places as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged
me about that I cannot get out. He hath made my chain. In other
words, there's no way out of it. There's no way to run from
this. There's nowhere to flee. In verse
eight, he says, also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my
prayers. It's like God's not hearing my prayers. You ever
felt like that? Sometimes, you know, when you
go through such sorrow and the agonies of this life and you
pray and you wonder if the Lord's hearing you We know he is, if
we're one of his children. We pray to him through Christ.
He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths
crooked. I can't even walk straight. Verse
10, he was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion
in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways
and pulled me in pieces, he hath made me desolate. This is descriptive
language, obviously, but Jeremiah's not, he's not exaggerating here. I mean, this is God's wrath upon
the nation. It says, he hath bent his bow
and set me as a mark for the air, like a bow and arrow, and
I'm the target. Verse 13, he hath caused the
arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. Verse 14, I was
a derision to all my people and their song all the day. filled
me with bitterness, hath made me drunken with wormwood, the
gall of wormwood, he hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones,
he hath covered me with ashes, and thou hast removed my soul
far off from peace. I forgot prosperity." I don't
even know what prosperity is. That's what he's saying. And
I said, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord, remembering
mine afflictions and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. So
you see that? He's in turmoil. And that's a
picture of the nation because of their sin and their rebellion.
And that's what this lament is about. And then in verse 20,
he says, my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled
in me. And look at verse 21. Now this
is where it starts where we find that the reason that God puts
his people through such suffering, he says, this I recall to mind,
in your concordance it said, this I make to return to my heart.
What we see here is the thanking of a spiritual person going through
these, this I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. Now after
reading 20 verses, And chapter one and two, same thing. After
reading 20 verses of pure agony, and suffering, and sorrow, and
look, desolation, how in the world could he have hope? And
you know what that hope is, that's the certain assurance of deliverance
from all of this, based upon God's word, for a believer, for
us today, it's the certain assurance of God's grace in Christ. And
that's why we'll look at Hebrews 12 in just a moment. But here
it is, verse 22. It is of the Lord's mercies that
we're not consumed. That we're not totally, totally
obliterated. Now, as that applies to the nation
Israel under the old covenant, even though they were conquered
and went into Babylon for 70 years, they had the promise that
they were gonna be brought back to their homeland, that the temple
would be rebuilt, the city would be rebuilt, and we know what
that's all about. See, God had a purpose. He kept
Judah, the tribe of Judah, together against their sin and rebellion
because it was God's purpose to send Christ into the world
through the tribe of Judah. And he said through Jacob, he
said the scepter, the kingdom, the king would not depart from
Judah until Shiloh, that's Christ, peace, till he comes. And then
he did obliterate him. He divorced himself from him.
So all of this suffering, this mental anguish, And Jeremiah,
you know, he's called the weeping prophet sometimes. He's been
dubbed the weeping prophet because he wept over, he showed by his
weeping that he loved the people. He had a heart for the people.
And I put in your lesson here, by weeping, and the Lord himself
wept. Jesus wept. I mean, that's the
shortest verse in the Bible, in the book of John. He wept
over Jerusalem, wept over the children, and by weeping he showed
us that we ourselves, and that's to be a tribute to his humanity,
you know that, his sinless humanity. The same Lord who wept is the
same Lord who brought judgment upon the people. So don't think
that that means, well, he just felt so sorry for everybody and
he's just gonna try to save everybody and he just can't unless you
let him and he's hanging over the banister of heaven hoping
that you'll accept him. That's not what that weeping
is about. The main purpose of his weeping
is to show us that we need to recognize that our salvation
is totally of God's grace and that we're in Christ and that
we by nature are no different than those who perish in their
sins. And so we weep for the lost. Y'all have good friends,
family members who are lost. And you don't spend all day crying,
I know that, I don't, but I do feel sorry for them, I weep for
them, because were it not for the Lord's mercies, I'd be consumed
with them, if that's what happens to them. If they go through this
life, not believing the gospel, and die in unbelief, they're
gonna perish. And that's not a happy thought. That's a cause
for lamentation. Yet we recognize that God is
sovereign, and he does what is right, and he doesn't make mistakes.
So Jeremiah's suffering. We'll look over at Hebrews chapter
12. Now there's all kinds of suffering, you all know that.
There are sufferings that are common to all people, believers
and unbelievers, and those are the consequences of sin, the sufferings that we go through
in our physical bodies. The Bible says in Romans 8.10,
this body is dead because of sin. These bodies are dying. And I'm not just trying to be
a downer this morning or anything like that, but that's the truth.
And we need the truth. We need to number our days, the
psalmist said. We need to know our end. that
we might seek the Lord, that we might know the way of life
and righteousness and forgiveness through His blood by the grace
of God. So there's suffering that's common
to all of us. And then there's, and to an,
the difference is is this. To those who live and die in
unbelief, those sufferings are just pre-manifestations, of something
worse that's coming. The wrath of God. Alienation
from God. Perishing in our sins. But to
the believer, they're called the chastisements of our father.
Because he loves us. The parent who loves his child
will discipline his child. And you say, well how, why do
I need to be disciplined? Well, number one, because even
though we're saved by grace, we're still what? Sinners saved
by grace. Only a sinner saved by grace.
And why else? Because we have a tendency to
give into the flesh, which is opposed to God. One in our way,
you know, I tell people all the time, you know, we're in a battle,
we're in a warfare, an inner warfare. And we know the warfare
is won because Christ has given us the victory, but we're still
struggling. And sometimes we'll hit the dirt,
you know, so to speak. And we need to be disciplined.
Sometimes we're disciplined for particular sins that we commit.
I received a letter yesterday from the city of Albany where
they took a picture of my car going through what was a school
zone. Thank God it was a warning. It was on North Slappy, and I
didn't even know there was a school zone up there. But I didn't know
it. But they gave me a warning. I'll
do better next time. But if there was a school zone,
I broke the law. And I received the chastisement
in a warning, thank God, for this time. Next time, it'll be
a fine I have to pay. And that's a mild example, but
that makes the point. You know, sometimes we're punished
for particular sins, not in the way of the wrath of God, and
not in the way of payment for sin. Christ paid for our sins
perfectly, completely. There's no way that a sinner
can pay for his sins in the way of satisfaction. But Christ drank
our damnation dry when he took that cup of wrath and went to
the cross and died for our sins. But sometimes we're chastised
not for any specific sin. You can look at the difference
between David, King David, and Job. Job was chastised by God,
but not for any particular sin that he was committing. And you
remember his three miserable comforter friends, they were
trying to figure out why he was suffering. And God showed him
in his providence why he was doing it. But David now, when
he committed adultery, the Lord brought the sword to his house.
And his family was in shambles, and his kingdom became in shambles,
but not to the point of eternal wrath. He said, although my house
be not so with God, he hath made a covenant with me, ordered in
all things and sure, and this is all my hope, this is all my
salvation, though he make it not to grow. So those chastisements. But here's the point in Lamentations
chapter three. And it's stated out in Hebrews
12. And I actually took the title of this message from Hebrews
12. Because look at Hebrews 12 and
look at verse 11. Now we're told here in Hebrews
12 how we as children of God, washed in the blood of Christ,
having his righteousness imputed to us, and that cannot change.
God cannot and will not impute our sins to us. He always imputes Christ's righteousness
to us and we know this because our hope is built on nothing
less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. We don't have any hope of salvation
but in Christ. God forbid that we should glory
save in the cross. And so he says that the sufferings
we go through are the loving chastisement of a father whose
discipline is to teach us. And what's the ultimate lesson?
Well, look at verse 11. He says, now no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. When you go through
chastisements, suffering, it's grievous, it hurts. And there's
no use trying to be something we're not, going around like
it doesn't hurt. I heard a preacher one time who
said that he was just anxious to be chastised. Well, I'm not. But I'm going to be, and I do
thank God for it, because that's one of the sure evidences that
we're children of God. And I need it. But he says, it's
not pleasant, it's grievous. Nevertheless, afterward, when
God brings you through it, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit
of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. And what is that peaceable fruit
of righteousness? I'll tell you exactly what it
is. It's simple. It's not complicated. Is we come
out of that chastisement looking to Christ and clinging to Christ
even more than we did before. We grow in grace and in knowledge. And that's, go back to Lamentations
3 now. That's what's happening here.
Listen to it. This, verse 21, this I recall
to my mind, therefore I have hope. What hope do you have,
Jeremiah? Your nation's gonna be destroyed,
the temple's gonna hit the dirt, and you're gonna be, Jeremiah
himself wasn't taken to Babylon, he fled to Egypt and died there.
But that's not a pleasant prospect, is it, for anybody. But he says,
therefore I have hope, and what is your hope? It's the hope we
have in Christ. It's of, verse 22, it's of the
Lord's mercies that we're not consumed. My goodness, think
about that. It's of God's mercies, his compassions. That's what he says in verse
22. His compassions fail not. God said I'll have mercy on whom
I will have mercy, I'll be compassion, I'll have compassion on whom
I will. Therefore it's not of him that runneth, nor of him
that willeth, but of God that showeth mercy. Salvations of
the Lord. This is that peaceable fruit
of righteousness that we read about in Hebrews. It's of the
Lord's mercies we're not consumed because his compassions fail
not. We're assured that as we stand
in Christ, washed in his blood, think about that, that's forgiveness.
forgiven of all our sins, past, present, future, inward, thought,
everything. I mean the slate is wiped clean. There's no charge against me. How do I know that? Because I
believe in Christ. God has brought me to rest in
him. That's the evidence. That's the peaceable fruit of
righteousness. And I have a righteousness. that answers the demands of God's
law and justice that cannot be contaminated and cannot be taken
away. If you want to talk about a righteousness
that cannot be contaminated, better talk about Christ's righteousness
imputed, not something you have within you. It's of the Lord's
mercies that we cannot perish. And so we cannot be separated
from the love of God. Romans 8 talks about that. Who shall separate us from the
love of God in Christ? Nothing. Nothing. Because those upon whom he sets
his love, they shall be saved unto glory, and in between the
time, they'll be chastised. But this is the peaceable fruit
of righteousness. Our hope is in Christ, who suffered
in our place. And he suffered under the wrath
of God and purged our sins away at the cross. And our hope is
in his righteousness. Look at verse 23. These mercies
and compassions of God are new every morning. I know that you never get tired
of hearing about the mercies of God. You understand what I'm
saying? They're new every morning, new
and fresh. It's not that we don't know them,
I know them. I've been preaching them for
many years now. But I still love getting up here
and preaching about God's mercies in Christ. And that never gets
old to me. And as I study the scriptures,
I may come to passages of scripture, and the Lord may give me new
light on that scripture. Now there's no new revelation,
it's all revealed, but there can be new illumination for a
sinner like me. And I may look at that passage
and say, you know, I never saw this before, but there it is.
And it's gonna lead me back to that peaceable fruit of righteousness,
which is Christ. It's not gonna change the gospel.
Any new light you say you have that changes the gospel, you
don't have new light, you've got some new darkness. Because
all light points to the Son of God incarnate, who died for my
sins and brought forth an everlasting righteousness. And look here. Now, look at verse 23. They're
new every morning, and what do I learn as I hear these fresh
illuminations? Great is God's faithfulness. Now, I believe, and you do too,
that when God saves us by his grace, when he brings us to know
Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the preaching of the
gospel, and we're born again, we're convinced of sin, of righteousness,
and of judgment, convicted, I believe that, generally speaking, we're
going to be faithful to Christ. But we'll have moments of doubt,
moments of even legal fear. That's the struggle, the flesh
and the spirit. We'll have, as Hebrews 12 says,
that sin that so easily besets us. You know what that sin is,
don't you? It's unbelief. But how do we run the race of
grace? Hebrews 12 too. Looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He which began
the good work in us, he'll complete it, he'll perfect it. He saves
us by grace, He keeps us by grace, and He'll bring us to glory.
Now why is that? Because we do what we're supposed
to do? No. Does that mean we ought to stop
trying to do what we're supposed to do? No. But the reason we're
gonna be in glory together with Christ and all His people is
because He's faithful to His promise. He's faithful. Christ is faithful. He never
lies. He never goes back on his word.
And every promise he made to his people in Christ, he's able
to fulfill. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed and I'm convinced that he's able to keep that which
I've committed unto him against that day. And what have I committed
unto him? My whole salvation is committed
to him. None of it's committed to me.
I'm committed to Him, and that's only by the grace of God. Even
the faith that we have to be faithful is a gift from God.
And where does it lead us? To that peaceable fruit of righteousness. I love that Psalm 32. I don't
have that, I may have it in your lesson, but I don't think so.
I said Psalm 32, it's Isaiah 32. I love this passage here. He's talking about desolation
and restoration here. And verse 17, he says, well,
verse 16, he says, then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness
and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. That's a prophecy
of Christ. And he says, and the work of
righteousness shall be peace and the effect of righteousness,
quietness and assurance forever. The work of righteousness. the
effect of righteousness. Well, where are we gonna find
righteousness? Not in ourselves, we find it in Christ. And he
says in verse 18, and my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation
and in sure dwelling places and in quiet resting place. That's
what he's talking about. Now go back to Lamentations three
and I'll finish this. In verse 24, he says, he says,
the Lord is my portion. saith my soul, therefore will
I hope in him. God in Christ is our part, our
inheritance. And when we look at that portion,
you know in life as we go through, we have certain portions of things,
some more than others. But if Christ is our portion,
what do we have? Ephesians 1.3. Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. We have it all. For in him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are what? Complete
in him. We have he who spared not his
own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not
with him freely give us all things? Every blessing, every benefit,
of salvation by God's grace, we have it. He's our portion.
So if he's our portion, we don't have just part of something,
we don't have 99% of something, we have it all. All that God
requires, all that we need. And then verse 12. Verse 25,
the Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that
seeketh him, and it is good that a man should both hope and quietly
wait for the salvation of the Lord. Now I've got a little teaching there at the end of
this about goodness. You know, man's natural view
of goodness is much, much lower than God's. So if we have, if
we understand this goodness, it is good for a person, All
goodness has to be measured by God's standard, and that's in
Christ, none good, no not one. All goodness has to come from
God by his grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. And all goodness
that comes through us is by God's grace in Christ and is only accepted
with God in the merits of Christ and not our own. And so therefore
we quietly wait. That's another way of speaking
of faith. We wait for him. And we wait
for the salvation of the Lord. We wait for deliverance from
all of this sinful existence. And He'll bring us to glory.
Okay.