Good morning, everyone. This
morning, I want to speak to you about a faithfulness that will
not fail. And that's the title of today's
message. Be turning in your Bibles to
Lamentations chapter 3, where we're going to examine just that,
a faithfulness that all of us need. If we're to be accepted
before a holy God, a holy and just God, we need a constant,
perpetual faithfulness that never waivers, that never fails. Now, if you are one of the blessed
objects of our sovereign God saving grace, then we know from
John 16 that that means you either have already been or you will
be convinced of sin. And that, that includes being
convinced of it in this sense. That is a recognition of the
reality that you and I are anything but faithful. And yet if you're
one of the blessed objects of our sovereign God's grace, then
also know this. According to John 16, you either
have already been or you will be convinced of righteousness. That is of the reality that anything
short of perfect, constant, or continual faithful obedience
to all of God's revealed will will find you, anything short
of that will find you unacceptable before the presence of a holy
God. So where does that leave us? We know that our impeccably
holy God requires perfection. And just to drill that home,
lest there be any doubt about it, I want to cite very quickly
three very familiar passages that remind us of this truth.
First in Christ's Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 520, he tells
us, for I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed
the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven. As many of you know,
the scribes and the Pharisees, they were outwardly the best
of the best. Most credible Bible commentators
will view them as perhaps the most outwardly moral, law-keeping
folks who ever walked on the face of this earth, other than
the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, Christ himself tells
us here that we must have a perfection. It takes a perfection beyond
what even these, the best of the best, could produce. And
at the end of that chapter, in verse 48, He tells us just how
much our righteousness must succeed theirs when he concludes with
this command, be ye therefore perfect, even as your father
which is in heaven is perfect. How perfect? As perfect as God. So as we consider this faithfulness
that will not fail, I want you to keep in mind that by definition,
one who is truly faithful is one whose allegiance is continual,
It's uninterrupted, it never fails. And lest you doubt that
God requires such a continual, flawless perfection, recall those
words from James chapter two, verse 10, where we read, for
whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in just one
point, at one time, he is guilty of all. That's how holy The God
we have to do business with is, we need an unfailing faithfulness. God, the almighty creator and
sovereign of this universe, he's great. He deserves to be constantly
worshiped. That means our minds, our thoughts,
they should at all times be consumed with nothing but the honor of
his glory, marveling at his majesty and greatness in a constant spirit,
see, of worship and praise. And as God, he deserves no less. I don't know about you, but actually
I do know about you in this sense. I know that you, like me, fall
miserably short of that sort of perpetual faithful allegiance. And I'm ashamed to say that when
I take the time to think on those things above, when I go to God
in prayer, I can't even seem to finish praying oftentimes
without my mind wandering off, contemplating the things that
I need to do that day or daydreaming about one thing or the other
as it pertains to me and my affairs. But in spite of that, in spite
of those occasions such as that, that continually remind us that
we're anything but truly faithful, that does not mean that God lowers
his standard to accommodate our sinful weaknesses. That's why
we need a savior. Now this morning in Lamentations
chapter three, we're going to read about a faithfulness that
will not fail. And it's a faithfulness that
every sinner desperately needs to possess themselves if they
are to be accepted into God's holy presence in heaven. Now,
before we get to our primary text, let me give you a little
background on the book of Lamentations, and in particular, chapter three.
You know, that book, it's God's word. Like all scripture, it's
authored by God, but he used the prophet Jeremiah to pen these
words for us. Jeremiah here is lamenting. hence the name of the book, Lamentations. He's lamenting the sad circumstances
that had come upon Jerusalem and upon the whole Jewish nation.
To lament something means simply to cry out in great sorrow and
grief, regret, and often with a sense of utter despair and
agony, as is the case with Jeremiah here. The book was written after
the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and it was written
as he was considering the sad state of affairs that were brought
on by the sins of the priest and the Jewish people. And as
we get to chapter three, the prophet also begins to speak
of his own personal afflictions and distresses alongside of the
national calamities that had fallen upon Jerusalem and Judea.
And as we consider now the words of Jeremiah, I want us to keep
in mind that he like all who are saved is a sinner, but a
sinner saved by grace. And as such, he's a personification
of the entire redeemed church of God, spiritual Israel, all
who are likewise brought to ultimately share in Jeremiah's good hope
of eternal salvation in Christ our Savior. So to capture first
a sense of Jeremiah's grief, we're gonna begin a few verses
prior to our primary text back in verse 17 in chapter three
of Lamentations. There Jeremiah's crying out to
God and he's saying, and thou hast removed my soul far off
from peace. I forget or forgot prosperity. And I said, my strength and my
hope is perished from the Lord. Remembering mine affliction and
my misery, the wormwood and the gall, my soul hath them still
in remembrance and is humbled in me." Clearly, we see here
that Jeremiah's in an almost hopeless state of mind. You know,
in that part of the world, somebody would probably say he's lower
than a snake's belly in a wagon rut. That's low. And Jeremiah
couldn't be much lower than we see him here. When we get to
our text in verse 21, we're going to see how Jeremiah is one of
the objects of God's everlasting faithful love, mercy, and grace. He was actually blessed by these
very calamities over which he was grieving. His circumstances,
we see, while having stripped him of any hope in this life,
They served to turn his heart and his mind to a remembrance
of the certain eternal blessings he possessed through the faithfulness
of the promised Messiah, the faithful substitute, surety,
and representative of all who are saved. You know, when we
think about how God used these tragic circumstances for Jeremiah's
good, you can't help but be Minded of a verse there in Romans that
oftentimes we have a hard time. I know I do keeping in in front
of me internalizing and applying and that's this in Romans 8 28
that truly all things Even the most tragic of circumstances
that come our way things that we would never choose for ourselves
but in God's infinite wisdom All things, his word tells us,
all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are the called according to his purpose. So here's Jeremiah,
in grieving over these calamities, he's brought to recall his certain
salvation, and that based on the faithfulness of God. And
we see that beginning in verse 21 of Lamentations 3, where he
says, this I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. And here's what he recalls to
mind. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because
his compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great
is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith
my soul. Therefore will I hope in him. Verse 21 begins with those words,
this I recall to my mind. And your Bible may have the same
footnote as mine indicating that this recalling to his mind could
be translated as, as made to return to his heart. And I believe
the sense of this here is that it's not that Jeremiah was sitting
there groveling in his desperate condition and, and grieving over
that and suddenly decides I'm gonna, I think I'll start thinking
on those things above, but rather he's, his circumstances brought
him to that. It's made, his heart was made
to turn to those things. And he says there, and he tells
us what they turned to in, in verses 22 and 23, where his heart,
what, just what his heart and mind recalled. And he says, therefore,
or because of what is brought to his heart and mind's attention,
he has hope. Now, remember just a few verses
back in verse 18, we just read that his hope had perished. That
tells us something about Jeremiah. You know, like us, he's anything
but faithful if judged by his own words and thoughts. The word
hope there in verses 21 and 24 refers to An expectation of salvation. In Jeremiah's case, a certain
expectation of salvation. You know, most religious folks
have a hope. That is, they have an expectation
of being saved, of going to heaven when they leave this earth. And,
you know, before we move on past this, I want to discuss something
with you. with everyone that hears this message, and that
is how we might evaluate whether our hope is a good one or not,
the validity of it. And it's very important because
the scripture is clear that most expectations of being saved,
that is the hope of many, shall not be realized. I encourage
you to read that in Matthew 7 verses 21 and thereabouts. Our confidence, you see, in being
saved, our sense of assurance of being saved, that often fluctuates. That can change just as it did
as we see here with Jeremiah. And that tells us something.
It tells us that the determination of whether our hope is a valid
one or not, whether it's a good hope or not, is not at all determined
by how, quote, saved we feel. Jeremiah was brought to remember
where his heart was. That is, what his hope was based
upon. And it's that. It's the basis
or ground of his good hope. This certain assurance that's
set forth for us here in verses 22 and 23. And you see, it's
that basis. It's his basis of his hope that
makes it a good hope. a certain salvation. So we judge
the validity of our own hope by examining what it's based
upon. What is the basis or ground of your salvation? And with that,
I want to pose a similar question to everyone who hears this message. You know, due to the reach of
our media ministry, these messages, they go out far and wide beyond
just those of you who are here in our congregation today. So
there's I'm sure we have among those who hear the message a
real sampling of the various thoughts prevalent in what is
called Christianity today. And so to all who hear this message,
I suggest to you this simple exercise to help identify where
your own heart is with regards to your hope of salvation. Because
you see, thereby, if God is so pleased, you can know before
it's too late if your hope happens to be a false hope. An expectation
that would tragically fail to be realized if you persist therein. You see, all who are saved, that's
what they discover. They discover just that. And
by God's grace, they repent from their former false notions. You see, that's why it says in
the scripture, God calls on all men everywhere to repent. That's
why repentance is necessary. So here's a pretty simple question
for you to consider this morning. If you have a hope, if you have
an expectation of being saved, of going to heaven to be with
the Lord when you die, then it's a real simple question. Why? In your heart of hearts, honestly
answer in your own mind, why do you count yourself as saved
and among those bound for heaven's eternal glory? I know I once
had a hope of salvation. I had an assurance in my own
mind, and I was pretty confident. But thankfully, God graciously
revealed to me that my hope at that time, see, was a false hope.
And he did it through his prescribed ordained means, the preaching
of the very gospel of grace that I hope to bring to you this morning.
But, you know, prior to that time, the basis of my hope, it
was pretty much the same as the vast majority, sadly. of those
who profess to be of the Christian faith. So, that makes us a very
important question. Where's your heart on this matter?
And here's a test. Is the ground or basis upon which
you expect to be saved, is it the same as God's choice servant
and prophet, Jeremiah? Note again that in his Holy Spirit
inspired words, he writes that he recalls something specific
and therefore, On that basis, he had hope. It suggests to us
that the ground or basis for our own hope, it better be the
same as Jeremiah's, because you see, Scripture's also clear there's
only one gospel. There's only one way of salvation. There's one way to heaven. Christ
said that was a narrow way and that very few enter therein. Well, the rest of today's sermon
is going to deal with that subject. What a good hope is based upon. Jeremiah wrote, this I recall
to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that
we are not consumed. Recall now great calamity had
fallen upon Jeremiah and upon the Jewish nation, and yet Jeremiah
knew that God would not consume them, he would not finish them
off due to their sins because he knew the gracious promise
that God had made to Abraham and his descendants. God left
them what Romans 11 calls a remnant according to the election of
grace, a remnant from which the mercy of the Lord, the promised
Messiah would come. So while Jeremiah and the other
believing Jews, and I believe that's who he's referring to
when he says, He says we are not consumed, though small in
number they be. He's saying we and those other,
you other believing Jews, though we experienced grave circumstances
due unto our sins and the sins of our nation. And listen, that's
the case with all of us to varying degrees. We all go through difficult
times. Some, some more tragic than others.
And you know, most of the trials, all the things that we consider
bad that happened to us, they're all a result of our fall in Adam. You know, it's all a product
of sin. Well, this remnant, he could
say of them, we are not consumed. We're not cut off due to our
sins. And likewise, spiritual Israel. Now I'm not talking about the
nation now, but rather those typified by the nation, those
like the nation of chosen people, but chosen for eternal deliverance
in Christ. Called in the Bible, God's elect,
they shall never be consumed. You know, all of their earthly
belongings may be consumed. Their bodies may be wasted away
by disease. And listen, ultimately all of
them shall be consumed by physical death in this body, but not their
souls. It is well with their souls,
that is those chosen in Christ, their surety and substitute,
chosen to be blessed in him with an eternal salvation and inheritance
in heaven's glory. You see, such are not consumed
or cut off due unto their sins because the Lord Jesus Christ
put an end to their sins. So that the saved sinner's hope,
see, is like that of King David, as we read about in Romans 4,
beginning in verse 7. It says, even as David also describeth
the blessedness of a man unto whom God imputeth righteousness
without works. He puts a righteousness upon
them based upon no work of their hand, a righteousness they did
not produce. Saying, blessed are they whose
iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. That is the blessed
of God. So you have their hope and their
sins being covered. totally put away by the blood
payment of their substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore
their guilt, the guilt that was due unto the demerit of all of
their sins. Blessed is the man whom the Lord
does not charge with sin, having instead, you see, charged all
the demerit of their sin to the only one who could and who did
pay that debt, due unto the guilt, the debt
due to God's strict and holy justice, and thereby providing
the very righteousness, and that simply means that perfect satisfaction
to the Father's justice, which they must have. And it's a righteousness
made theirs by God's gracious imputing or accounting of it
unto each and every one for whom Christ lived and died. Each and
every one whose sins they were imputed are reckoned to him that
he might pay that debt for them. Now only those truly convinced
of sin by God the Holy Spirit can see themselves as sinners
deserving to be utterly consumed by a holy and a just God, deserving
utter destruction if they are judged according to their very
best deeds and efforts. And you know, sad, but many of
the honest answers that are often given to the question I posed
earlier as to why one expects to be saved, the answer I would
have once given to that question, it reflects an ignorance of the
depth and depravity of our sinfulness. Many expect to be saved, you
see, because they believe they've struck a deal with God and they
fulfilled what was required in order for them to be saved. They'll
say, well, oh, but I professed belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.
They will recall that profession of faith. Maybe they'll recall
a baptism. Some spiritual event are happening
perhaps in their lives in which they sincerely dedicated themselves
to their God as they perceive God to be. And on that basis,
the basis of their presumed faithfulness, Their free will choice to follow
Jesus, what they did, their faithfulness in meeting whatever that condition
they think is required, on that basis they expect to be saved. And no doubt, that is truly the
sincere hope of many. But it's not a good hope, it's
a false hope. Though sincere, they are sincerely
mistaken. Knowing that our own faithfulness,
it falls so terribly short of the true, continual, perfect
faithfulness that's required by a holy God, why would one
imagine that we sinners could muster up any so-called decision
for Jesus that would be of the quality and the constancy such
that it would find us acceptable before God? You see, To imagine
such actually denies the need for Christ saving work on the
cross. You see, it's to assume that
we can do for ourselves when it really took his precious blood. To many, you see, what he did
there merely made salvation possible. And though they may call him
a redeemer, their doctrine would suggest that he truly did not
redeem anyone. He didn't pay in full the sin
debt for any person, And that shows up in the fact that so
many imagine that Jesus Christ lived and died for everyone who
ever lived. And at the same time, know they
know too, as we do, that the scripture says, most shall perish
in hell. So here we have a case where
in many of our, it was a doctrine that many of you and I once held
too as well. We believed that God sent his
son to go and shed his precious blood on the cross, to die for
sins, and then turned around and said, yeah, I know you died
for their sins, but I'm gonna send these to hell anyway, because
the real thing that matters is not my precious son and his shed
blood, but the real thing that matters is will this sinner render
me some sentient decision to accept me? Do you see what we've
done? It takes and elevates the sinner
so far above the Savior in our sinful, lost minds. Well, I didn't mean to get off
track there, but you know, that widely held view, and again,
it's a view that was shared by many of us, it exposes that at
that time, you see, I didn't see the depth and depravity of
my own sin. God had not yet convinced us
of sin as he always does in true regeneration and conversion. At that time, in my mind, I knew
I wasn't perfect. I would say, oh yeah, I know
I'm a sinner. But I didn't really think I deserved
to be consumed. And you know how it shows up? In our minds, we weren't such
bad sinners. We weren't so bad that we couldn't,
by our own sin-tainted decision or efforts, save ourselves, make
the difference between being saved or lost by what we did
or what we believed. Those who would truthfully answer
that they expect to be saved, as so many do, because of their
faith, their decision to accept or receive Jesus, in other words,
their faithfulness, not his, they do not yet share in the
certain hope of those blessed with Jeremiah. If salvation is
conditioned in any way or to any degree on you, the sinner,
then know this, such a salvation is not of the Lord's mercies. Such do not need mercy. You don't
need mercy if all you got to do is if you can get yourself
saved by something you believe or something you decide. Mercy
like grace speaks of a favor that's bestowed freely and without
any merit found in the object and recipient of his mercy and
grace. If Christ's righteousness, if
his obedience unto death, if it failed to save even one sinner
for whom he lived and died, we might as well toss this book
out. You see, because it would present us with a clear contradiction. It would mean contrary to what
the book says here, that salvation is by grace. It would mean it
is not by grace, nor is it by the Lord's mercies. But that's
not the case. Many sincerely believe that they're
trusting in Jesus while at the same time believing that the
real ultimate determining factor in their salvation, what distinguishes
them from the lost, is something done by or in or through them,
the sinner. Perhaps something they even give
credit for God causing to happen in them, the sinner. But here's
the mark. It's not solely the doing and
dying of the Lord Jesus Christ as a successful substitute for
all whom he saves. You see, that kind of thinking
is faith in faith, not faith in Christ. Such do not need mercy,
but rather they just need to fulfill whatever condition is
set forth by their particular denomination and get themselves
saved when they get ready. If that's the way you believe
God saves sinners, according to that gospel, you don't need
mercy. You only need mercy if you shut
up with nothing you can do to save yourself. That presumed
false way of salvation is not grace, and it is not of the Lord's
mercies, and it is not the good hope of Jeremiah and all his
brothers and sisters in Christ. So this begs the question concerning
your own hope. Here's another way of putting
it. In whose faithfulness have you placed your trust? As Jeremiah
wrote this, I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope it is of
the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions
fail not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. That
word compassion also refers to the Lord's mercies. This means
that his goodness, his kindness, his mercies, his compassions
toward the objects of his everlasting love. You see, they're likewise,
they're constant and they are everlasting. They fail not. And
note that Jeremiah is saying that they're not consumed because
his compassions fail not. He's citing that the reason is
it's because of who God is. Is this the God you worship?
His compassions fail not. They're new every morning. Great
is his faithfulness. I encourage all who hear this
message. If this is your current persuasion,
don't spend another day expecting salvation based on your own faithfulness. See what you need and what is
brought near in the very gospel of God's grace is his faithfulness
in establishing a righteousness for us. We read about that in
Romans three, beginning in verse 20. It says, therefore, by the
deeds of the law, that is by your obedience, There shall no
flesh be justified, declared not guilty in his sight. For
by the law is the knowledge of sin. See, if we really are convinced
of sin, we see the extent of the law. We see our hopelessness
to do anything to measure up to be accepted before a holy
God. But he says, but now the righteousness
of God, without the law, without your efforts to obey, without
any work of your hand is manifested, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets, and that includes the prophet Jeremiah, even the
righteousness of God, and look at this, which is by faith or
faithfulness of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that
believe. And as Mark preached on last
week, for there is no difference. All have sin. It goes on. But
look, what this is speaking of is the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ to fulfill all that the Father required for the everlasting
objects of his love to be saved by establishing a righteousness
for them. And this righteousness is preached
or declared whenever the gospel is preached. It's preached or
declared unto all, and it has been put upon or imputed to all
them to whom He grants the gift of faith, that they might believe
on Him. That they might find their hope
in His faithfulness, see, to produce for us what none of us
can produce for ourselves, a perfect righteousness. Lamentations 3,
verses 22 and 23, they describe the only true God. You know,
in John 17, 3 Christ, in His high priestly prayer, Before
sending to the Father, he prayed this, and this is life eternal,
that they might know thee the only true God in Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent. The saved, see, come to know
God as he's revealed in the person and work of Christ. And here
in Lamentations, we're dealing with an attribute of God that
identifies the God that saved sinners come to know. Through
Jeremiah's words, we see that the hope of the saved is a good
hope because of where or better in whom the saved place their
trust. This character attribute of faithfulness
is much like God's attribute of immutability, and that just
simply means the truth that God does not change. The attribute
of God's faithfulness, like God's holiness, His immutability is
coupled with, I guess is the best way to put it, it can't
be separated from every other attribute of God. We know, for
example, if we speak of God's love, that God's love is holy. Holy means perfect. It describes
the perfection of that attribute. We know that God's love is holy,
immutable, faithful love. If we talk about God's justice,
we know that God's justice is a holy and immutable and a faithful
justice. And we could go on and on with
every attribute of God's character by which we know him. So if God
is faithful without wavering, that means he cannot change.
Change suggests that he became something he wasn't or that he
learned something he didn't know. Or listen, that he responded
to something that he, the all-knowing God now, didn't know before? Or he reacts to something? And this is where most of so-called
Christianity, this is where they lie. They would have God reacting
to something that would prompt him to change his all-wise, eternal
purpose or course of action. Him, the sovereign God of this
universe, who said of himself, I declare the end from the beginning,
who says he works all things according to the counsel of his
own will. If he changes, as you've heard
it said before from this pulpit, if he changes, that means he
either has to get better or he has to get worse. If he gets
better, I guess he wasn't quite God before then. If it gets worse,
I guess he quits being God. No. You see, we're talking about
the eternal everlasting God. By definition, deity does not
change. God is faithful to himself and
he can't deny himself and still be God. His compassions fail
not because he is the great I am, the eternal God. His love is
an everlasting love. His compassions are new every
morning. You know, we actually see every
morning an indication of his faithfulness with the sunrise.
He keeps this world in place because he still has some of
his elect to bring to faith and repentance. His compassions, being new every
morning, tells us that they are constant. They are perpetual. that he's faithfully always there
keeping us, his sheep. He chastises us, and as is in
the case of Jeremiah here, he orders our lives in ways we wouldn't
choose necessarily, but in his infinite wisdom, knowing what
is best for us, he orders our lives to ensure that our hearts,
you see, always return to a sense of the blessings we have in him,
of the good hope of salvation. according to his mercy and grace,
according to his faithfulness, not my own. God said in Malachi
3, 6, for I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob
are not consumed. Here too we see that elect sinners
are spared. You see the just eternal wrath
of God because of who God is. because he's the unchanging,
immutable, perfectly faithful Lord. That word Lord there is
the same word that's translated Lord back in Lamentations. It's
Yahweh, our Jehovah God who saves. Now, for those who insist that
salvation is conditioned on their free will decision to accept
Jesus as their personal savior, in other words, their presumed
faithfulness, to meet that or some other condition, rather
than his great faithfulness, know this, that God that you
worship is not the Lord. It's not Jehovah God who saves. For you see, he, the true and
living God, he does not react in response to what you, the
sinner, does or does not do. He does not save any sinner because
that sinner believes. A sinner who truly believes does
so because he or she is saved by the redeeming work of Christ. And if God saved you because
you believed, he would not be faithful to himself. Think with
me about that kind of God. If God reacted to the sinner
and he changed his mind about that sinner's eternal destiny
because that sinner suddenly believed something or came to
what he calls faith, then what would such a reactionary God
do when that same less than perfectly faithful sinner had that one
moment of doubt? Wouldn't it stand to reason that
such a reactionary God would again react? to that doubt and
change his mind again about that sinner's eternal destiny? What
if you had that moment of doubt right before somebody ran and
t-boned you and took you out of this world? What kind of assurance,
what kind of faithful God is that? Our God is not a mutable,
reactionary, and therefore an untrustworthy and unfaithful
God. God brings those he saves, you
see, to repent of these God dishonoring notions. and causes us to look
instead to Christ alone for all of our salvation. God bestows
his mercy and his grace, you see, freely upon those he saves.
Why? In order that he might receive
all the glory and honor. You see, it's all about him.
You know, now those that he sent Christ to die for, they shall
surely come to him in faith, as Christ said they would in
John 6, 37, all that the Father giveth me shall come to me. The elect, those given to Christ,
will come by God-given faith in time in belief of his gospel. That is that good news that all
of salvation's conditions for their salvation were fully met
by the doing and dying of Christ their substitute. And that is
he faithfully, you see, fulfilled the terms of that everlasting
covenant of grace made between the Father and the Son, the Holy
Spirit. A covenant that you and I weren't party to, but greatly
affected us. You see, That simply means this,
God the Son's compassions, they fail not toward those that Christ
in that covenant took on the responsibility to redeem. Those objects are the Father's
everlasting electing love. And as John 6.37 ends, it gives
us all the reason there in the world to forsake the God, little
G, and Jesus, little J, of our imaginations. of our false hope,
and instead flee to the Christ of the Bible for all of salvation. Because Christ said, y'all that
the Father giveth me, they shall come to me, and him that cometh
to me, I will in no wise cast out. Well, let me ask again, where's
your heart on this? Where's your hope? Here's another
way of asking it. Is the Lord your portion? Look at that wording at the last
verse of our text in verse 24. Jeremiah writes, the Lord is
my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him. Here the
prophet, upon a consideration of who God is, of his unfailing
mercies, compassion, and faithfulness, he concludes that he has a sure
inheritance or portion in the Lord, in Yahweh. Jehovah God
who saves. So to identify with Jeremiah
in claiming that the Lord is his portion would mean simply
this, it's for your very soul, in your heart of hearts, to be
convinced that the Lord is your lot in life. In other words,
your lot is cast with his. That he is your inheritance. It's to have been convinced by
God the Holy Spirit through his saving grace, listen, of the
necessity of having been made one with him, linked to his destiny,
and having the righteousness of God in Christ made to be yours. Have you been brought to the
place where you must have that? If so, there's good news, because
you see, only those objects of his everlasting love, those who
Christ faithfully lived and died for, those, only they are given
the spiritual eyes and ears of his blood-bought gift of faith
to see and hear the gospel of God's sovereign grace that would
convince them that His imputed righteousness, the merit of His
finished work accounted to us, and that alone could find us
accepted before God. You see, He, Christ, He purchased
that very gift of faith for them by His shed blood. So any who
come by faith to this Christ, they have the same sure and certain
hope. When Christ died, I died. I wasn't
there personally, but I died in him as my representative.
Likewise, when he arose, I arose in him to be accepted by the
Father as holy, unblameable, unreprovable, me a sinner. You see, that's what it is. The
scripture says to be accepted in the beloved. He's my portion. His lot is my lot. His inheritance
is mine because I'm a child of the king. And that's grace. Here I am still a sinner, but
as a trophy of God's mercy and grace, I'm declared before God's
justice, not guilty by the judge of all, by God almighty. all based upon having the perfect
righteousness of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, imputed or
reckoned to my account. When knowing this, the saved
can say this with Jeremiah, therefore will I hope in him. They have
a good hope, a certain expectation of salvation, of being delivered
from all our afflictions and sorrows and difficulties and
troubles, a deliverance that will find them, you see, ultimately
enjoying a wondrous, eternal, everlasting future of joy and
peace and happiness and the presence of God in heaven's glory as a
joint heir with Christ. In Christ's person, in finished
substitutionary work, and listen, and nowhere else, we find a sure
and a certain assurance of eternal salvation, and here's why, because
the faithfulness of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, that's a faithfulness that will not fail.