Life Is Hard. God Is Good.

00:00:00.000 | Life is hard and God is good. This was the point John Piper made in his sermon

00:00:11.580 | "Thank God for the Mercies of Christ" preached on November 19th, 2000 on

00:00:17.160 | Lamentations chapter 3. Here's what he said.

00:00:20.720 | Lamentations chapter 3. You may have a hard time finding it. It's a teeny little

00:00:24.600 | book sandwiched between Jeremiah the big prophet and Ezekiel. And it's a book

00:00:30.080 | that I do not expect many of you to know anything about because it is so small

00:00:34.720 | and so tucked away there. Doesn't get read very much and one of the reasons it

00:00:39.080 | doesn't is because it's such a horrible book. Because it is so shot through with

00:00:43.720 | with horrific pictures of the judgment of God upon Jerusalem. Jeremiah wrote

00:00:49.200 | this little book as Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC and the pictures of

00:00:56.080 | destruction are terrible, loss of life, starvation through siege. But, and here's

00:01:02.640 | the amazing thing, in the middle of this five chapter book, the middle chapter,

00:01:08.080 | comes some of the sweetest, most precious words that God has ever put in the

00:01:15.680 | mouth of a prophet to tell to his people. And those are the ones I want to read.

00:01:20.720 | Because they have a special punch when you realize where they are. Verse 21 to

00:01:27.840 | 25 of chapter 3 of Lamentations go like this, "This I recall to mind and

00:01:36.680 | therefore I have hope. The Lord's loving kindnesses never cease. His compassions

00:01:44.520 | or His mercies never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

00:01:52.480 | The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. The Lord is

00:02:00.600 | good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him." Now that should

00:02:10.520 | boggle your mind because those precious words, especially the words, "His mercies

00:02:16.880 | are new every morning," is spoken in a situation that was horrific in its

00:02:23.920 | suffering. The afflictions, the devastation, parents were eating their

00:02:30.640 | children. They were so hungry and the siege was so horrible. Now how did these

00:02:36.440 | words, how did these words get into that book? And as a partial explanation I want

00:02:44.360 | to read two more verses. Drop your eyes down to verses 32 and 33. "For if He,"

00:02:51.440 | meaning God, "if He causes grief, then He will have compassion according to His

00:02:59.760 | abundant loving kindness. For He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of

00:03:08.080 | men." Now the very least we can draw out of those verses is this, the mercies of

00:03:17.040 | God are often hidden and hard to see while they are happening. Because it says

00:03:26.000 | He does cause grief and He does afflict and yet it says there's a merciful

00:03:32.320 | purpose in it all and it's not coming from the bottom of His heart. He does not

00:03:36.920 | willingly afflict the sons of men. There are purposes for His affliction. It's not

00:03:42.320 | the thing He delights most to do and yet He does it. And if we'll trust Him, there

00:03:49.320 | are mercies hidden there for us. It's just like the book of Job. You know the

00:03:54.800 | story of Job. He lost everything he had. He lost ten of his children, all of them.

00:03:59.680 | He lost all of his possessions. He lost all of his health and James, Jesus' brother,

00:04:06.440 | thousands of years later, in his little book called James, writes in chapter 5

00:04:11.920 | verse 11 this interpretation of that book. He says, "You have heard the

00:04:17.040 | endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the

00:04:23.120 | Lord is full of compassion and is merciful." So there's the point of the

00:04:29.080 | book of Job according to James. He lost all of his children. He lost all of his

00:04:33.800 | health. He lost his possessions and this says the purpose of the Lord was

00:04:41.160 | compassion and merciful. So if we'll trust Him, that's the meaning of the

00:04:47.520 | destruction of Jerusalem. That's the meaning of the loss of his health. And I

00:04:51.800 | don't know where you are this morning, but if you will trust God, mercy is in

00:04:57.040 | your life right now. It is all over your life. Mercy, a design, a compassionate

00:05:03.600 | design. If you will trust God and hold on to Him for that, it will show itself

00:05:08.560 | sooner or later. We could say it in the words of Susan Shelley, Marshall Shelley's

00:05:17.440 | wife. Marshall Shelley is one of the editors for Christianity Today. 1991,

00:05:24.600 | November 22, a few days before Thanksgiving, 820 p.m. their son was born

00:05:32.160 | and at 822, two minutes later, he died. Marshall wrote an article in CT about

00:05:41.000 | four years ago about it called "Two Minutes to Eternity." Magnificent article.

00:05:47.000 | The nurse standing over her, holding her dead baby said, "Does the baby have a

00:05:53.280 | name?" And she said, "Toby." It's short for a biblical name, Tobiah, which means God

00:06:04.880 | is good. And when Marshall came to speak to the Wheaton alumni a few years ago

00:06:12.960 | down at Wheaton and told this story, he said at the end of his talk, summing it

00:06:20.400 | all up, "Life is hard and God is good." Life is hard and God is good. That's

00:06:30.440 | the meaning of lamentations. That's the meaning of Job. You might say that's the

00:06:37.400 | meaning of the Bible. Life is hard and God is good. And many of you are right in

00:06:43.440 | the midst of proving it to be so. Now, at least if you would trust him, if I could

00:06:48.760 | persuade you this morning that God is trustworthy in it and he held on to it,

00:06:54.120 | you would discover that life is hard and God is good. Oh, that God this morning

00:07:02.400 | would give us eyes to see his mercies in our lives and we would see them all the

00:07:07.960 | more clearly and know that they were mercies if we knew the price that he

00:07:12.160 | paid for them for us. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to die so

00:07:18.680 | that my guilt would be taken away, his wrath would be removed from me, and there

00:07:22.960 | would be a free, open course for his mercies to flow to me while he is just,

00:07:28.760 | even though I'm a sinner, I could be treated with mercy. That's a glorious

00:07:33.080 | thing that God has done in Jesus Christ and we would taste the mercies all the

00:07:37.840 | more sweetly if we knew the price. That was from John Pepper's sermon, "Thank God

00:07:44.640 | for the Mercies of Christ," preached on November 19th, 2000, on Lamentations

00:07:49.400 | chapter 3. Thank you, podcast listener Calvin Katzma, for the recommendation. You

00:07:54.200 | can find the full message on our site, along with a couple thousand other

00:07:57.520 | messages like this one from John Piper. See our sermon archive at DesiringGod.org.

00:08:02.560 | And have you seen the music video by Shane and Shane we titled, "A Song for

00:08:07.160 | the Suffering?" If not, you should. Go to DesiringGod.org and search for the

00:08:11.360 | title, "A Song for the Suffering." If you are passing through a season of

00:08:15.440 | suffering now or if you know others who are, this video is glorious and helpful

00:08:19.400 | and hope-giving. Well, John Piper returns tomorrow coming off a six-week writing

00:08:24.080 | leave and we'll talk to him about how he researches, plans, and writes books. And

00:08:28.320 | then, of course, we'll ask him specifically to talk to us about the

00:08:31.360 | book that he just wrote. That begins tomorrow. Until then, I'm your host Tony

00:08:35.000 | Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:08:40.200 | you

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Life Is Hard. God Is Good.

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