Part 2- God’s mercies, compassion, and faithfulness

Lamentations 3:21-26

21  This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

22  Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.

23  They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

24  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

25  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

26  It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.

In my last post, we looked at the hope Jeremiah found in God in such a dark time in His life. In verse 21, we see him finally seeing some hope, some light, in the darkness of this time in biblical history. So……..why do you think that Jeremiah was able to find hope? What did he know about God that gave him hope? How does God give us hope? 

Verse 22 tells us why Jeremiah could find hope. “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.” This is why Jeremiah had hope. He had seen God show mercy and forgive His people over and over. God took them back every time they repented. Look at all the times the people turned away from God to worship idols and our great God just kept forgiving them. Now let me be clear, this wasn’t without consequences. The people still had to face the consequences of their sin. Sin brought consequences on the people. Sin brings consequences on us today. But……God will forgive us of our sin. Jeremiah knew about the covenant God had with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Jeremiah 33:26) He knew about God’s covenant with Israel when they were in Egyptian bondage. (Jeremiah 34:13) He knew the history of God’s people and how often God had shown mercy on them. God was dedicated to preserving His people so that Jesus Christ could be born from this lineage. God has been dedicated to preserving US through His Son!! Jeremiah 33:14-16 are prophetic verses promising the coming Messiah, “Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David, a branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’” God had said that Jerusalem would dwell safely. So even though things were terrible at the time of Jeremiah’s distress, he knew that God would keep that promise. He also knew from those same verses that someone was coming to “execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.” He didn’t know who was coming, but he knew God was sending someone to set things in order on earth. In Isaiah 55:7 we read, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” This verse plainly says that God will have mercy on the wicked and pardon them if they will turn to Him and obey Him. All they had to do in Jeremiah’s day was turn to Him with a sincere heart. As Christians, that is all we have to do today. We have to turn to Him AND obey him. In times of distress for us, we can know that God is still in control and will keep his promises to us. Like the verse above says, His mercies will not allow us to be consumed. As Christians, no matter what happens in our lives on this earth and no matter how many times we fall short, as long as we turn to God with a sincere heart and ask for forgiveness, everything will work out according to His will someday. When we ask Him for forgiveness, we are admitting that we are sinners and that we need our savior, Jesus Christ.

Isn’t it wonderful that we can go to God anytime? What a blessing!! Hebrews 4:16 assures us that we can go to God anytime we need him. ANYTIME! Listen to these words, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We get to not only come, but come boldly, with confidence that we will be heard and listened intently to!! God wants to listen to us. We are not insignificant to God! Our concerns, problems, needs, heartaches, etc. are never insignificant to God! He cares about all of it! Just like He cared for Jeremiah when He was in such grief, He cares for us in ours. We can be in a horrible place in our own personal lives like David was at one time. David had hit rock bottom when he wrote Psalm 51. He had committed adultery and murder. David was away from God, but He came back on his knees begging God to forgive him. Psalms 51 has been a go-to chapter for me to pray through at times when I have not been right with God. This chapter helps us know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we can go to God with anything. In Psalms 51:1-2 David writes, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Skip down to Psalm 51:10-11 and it reads, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” God knew David’s weaknesses and He knows ours today. If God forgave David, then He will forgive us when we fall short. Jeremiah and David were both lamenting. They were both in anguish. Their reasons were very different. Jeremiah was in anguish over failing to get the people to repent. David was in anguish over his own sin. The point is, it doesn’t matter what we come to God with, He will be there for us. We can lay it at His feet. AND……… if we look to His word, we will find the solution to whatever our problem is or we will find comfort in whatever is grieving us. 

The only reason, and I mean the ONLY reason, our world is still standing today is because of the mercy and compassion of God. Because of His mercy in preserving His people and sending His son, we are here today, we are called Christians today and we are His church today. We have today to live right before God, ONLY because of God’s mercy. If we haven’t obeyed the gospel yet or if we are not living up to our commitment to Christ by living faithful, we have today, ONLY because of God’s mercy. We are not promised tomorrow. I have learned from my daddy to pray for time in my personal prayers. He has always prayed for time for more people to be saved, for more people to see the truth. I have started doing this as well. I pray for time for as many people as possible to see what they need to do to gain eternity with God and His Son. The thought of anyone, especially those I love so much, being lost just hurts me to my core.

Are compassion and mercy the same thing? The verse also says that “His compassions fail not”. Mercy and compassion are different. When God shows mercy on us, it means He forgives us when we fall short. He tells us to forgive others if we want Him to forgive us. God has compassion on us when we are struggling in our lives with sickness, problems at work, problems with our children or in our marriage. He is concerned about us. This is compassion. We can know His compassion when we open His word and read about it and we can feel that compassion towards us. We know what it feels like to show compassion to others. God feels that same compassion for us. Think about all the times that God showed compassion on the children of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness and they were some pretty ungrateful people. He sent manna and quail from heaven for them to eat. (Exodus 16) He brought water from a rock twice when they were thirsty. (Exodus 17:1-7, Numbers 20:2-13) This is only a couple of examples of the compassion He showed His people. 

Jesus was God in the flesh and we saw Him showing unlimited compassion for people when He was on earth. The Bible says that Jesus had compassion on them and healed their sick. (Matthew 14:14) Jesus also was moved with compassion on people at one time because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. (Matthew 9:36) Jesus is our ultimate shepherd. And let’s not forget when Jesus had compassion on the multitude because they had been with Him for three days and had no food. This is when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish. (Matthew 15:32) God and his Son have unlimited compassion and mercy on us when we obey them, when we lean on them, and when we make them the center of our lives. 

On this earth, God’s compassion falls on the just and the unjust according to Matthew 5:45. He takes care of all of us regardless of what we believe or how we act which says a lot about God’s character. He loves every soul He ever created, born and unborn, and wants all to be saved.  However, on judgment day, His mercy/forgiveness will only be on ones who are in Christ and have remained faithful until death. (Romans 6:3-4, Revelation 2:10) We have to be in Christ for Him to be our mediator for us with God the Father at the judgment day. (1 Timothy 2:5) Paul does a beautiful job of explaining baptism in Romans chapter 6. To be in Christ, we have to have been baptized into Him through water baptism for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38) Acts chapter 2 is where the gospel was preached for the first time and the church was established for the first time. People were only added by God to the church after they gladly received the words that the apostles preached. (Acts 2:47) What were those words? Look back at Acts 2:38 to see how Peter answered the people whose hearts were pricked after they heard about what happened to Jesus. They asked in verse 37 “what shall we do?”. They were pricked in their hearts. But more had to be done. If those people at that time were commanded to be baptized to have sins forgiven, then why wouldn’t this commandment be the same for us today? This is not me saying this to offend anyone who believes differently about baptism. I’m simply saying what the Bible says verbatim, because I love all people’s souls too much to say anything else. According to God’s word, we have to come into contact with the blood of Christ to have remission of sins. Acts 22:16 says that plainly as Ananias tells Paul what to do to wash away his ugly past. With an open heart I ask you to listen to the scriptures, not me. I talk about baptism more in depth in another article I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I ask you to be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11. Paul bragged about them because they searched the scriptures of old to see if the things Paul and Silas were preaching to them about Christ were true or not. Never take my word for it in these articles I write. Please go look in the Bible at the verses I provide and make sure I’m right in what I’m saying. I would never want to say anything other than the truth and I am only human. Let’s all be careful to listen to God’s word and make sure that what someone is telling us lines up with God’s word. Why take chances? Why not just do what the Bible tells us to do? This is just food for thought. 

And now comes the most beautiful thought that Jeremiah had as he looked up into heaven and realized that God was still there…….in control. He says that God’s mercy and compassion are “new every morning”. What a beautiful thought!! Every morning when we open our eyes, God’s mercy has given us another day of life, another chance to serve Him, another chance to help someone else on their journey. Every morning God’s compassion allows us to have everything we need to survive the day. We all have struggles in our lives, but we are taken care of by God. Our physical needs are met for the most part. We have to work to make money to buy what we need. But who gave us the health, ability, and talents to work and do the specific jobs we do? And then the work that we do, in turn, helps other people in their lives to have the things they need to survive. I’m a teacher and I hope that I have used my talent to help children in their school journey so that they can grow into confident, productive, hard-working adults who contribute to society. But God is the reason that I have the ability to teach. He gave me the calling to do the job I do. We are all able to survive because God gave us all unique abilities to help each other make it through this life. It is amazing when you think about it. God’s mercy and compassion are new every morning. I love it. 

So Jeremiah then exalts God by saying, “Great is Your faithfulness”. Jeremiah is simply recognizing God for being so faithful to His people throughout all their ups and downs. What does it mean to be faithful? Let’s use marriage as an example. In a marriage, we vow to be faithful to our spouse for the rest of our lives. Husband and wife are loyal to each other and trust each other completely. You are one with each other when you are joined together in holy matrimony. Song of Solomon 2:16 says this beautifully, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” You belong to each other.  Each person puts the other person’s needs ahead of his/her own needs and is dedicated to their spouse for a lifetime. The wife is to submit to the husband and the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. (Ephesians 5: 22-25) I can guarantee that no woman would ever have trouble submitting to her husband if the husband loved her like Christ loved the church. Let that sink in. Christ gave up His life for the church. This is how a man should take care of His wife. He should be willing to give up His life for her. Life I said before, submission would never be a problem if all husbands would put their wives ahead of themselves. And we wives should show respect and love to our husbands and put them ahead of ourselves. Our number one goal in our marriages should be to help each other get to heaven and to serve God together. We might not need divorce lawyers anymore if we would follow these simple verses in God’s word and keep our marriages Christ-centered. So how is God faithful to us today? Well for one thing, He gave us Jesus. He made a promise that Jesus would be born of a virgin, grow into a man, go about preaching and performing miracles, be rejected by mankind, be beaten and humiliated, and finally crucified and killed on a tree. And all of this happened just like God foretold through the prophets in the old testament. Isaiah 53 tells all about Jesus Christ and what he would go through for us. But that is not all!! God also promised that Jesus would not stay in the grave, but that He would rise from the dead to conquer death and Satan. And He did!! David prophesied about it in Psalm 16:8-11. And Jesus himself told of His own death and resurrection in Mark 9:31. I encourage you to go read those verses. God has kept every promise that He ever made to us, except one. He has promised that His Son would come back to earth someday and take home the faithful that are in Christ Jesus.  1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 explains it so beautifully, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” This is the promise that we who are in Christ are waiting for, and we fully believe in the faithfulness of our great God just like Jeremiah did when he spoke of it in Lamentations many years before. The faithfulness of God is everlasting. I’ll end with Psalm 36:5, “Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” 

Always remember the mercy, compassion, and faithfulness of God. We are so lucky to have an almighty Creator who cares so deeply for us and desires to have us with Him for eternity. All we have to do is follow His plan found in His word. His plan is simple. It starts with hearing. We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47) Lastly, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ and His church until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

I am really enjoying the blessings I am finding in God’s word through this blog! The treasures in God’s word are new every morning for me. I hope this helps everyone who reads it want to search the scriptures daily. I hope everyone has a blessed Mother’s Day tomorrow and a wonderful week ahead!! I will post part 3 on these verses next week. 

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