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Why doesn’t the book of Lamentations end with Lamentations 3? Why not end on the high note of Lamentations 3? Why not stop at Lamentations 3:22-23? The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness! Why can’t we end on the faithfulness of the Lord? Why not sing the song that Annie sang, “The sun will come out tomorrow” and proclaim that tomorrow is only a day away? Jeremiah is teaching the people that even with a renewed hope in God’s faithful love and mercy, the reality is still the reality. Real hope needs to accept the real situation. The people of God are living a new reality and must prepare for the new direction God’s hand will lead them. Life goes on. But life is changed. This is where Jeremiah and the people are in the mountain of lament. While we maintain our hope in God’s love, we must forge forward in the new reality. Open your copies of God’s word to Lamentations 4 and we are going to look at how Jeremiah teaches the people to accept their grief in the new reality…
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We have been looking at the suffering of Job. We have noted that his suffering and pain have been extraordinary. Further, Job’s friends have come to comfort and show sympathy to Job. But rather than succeeding, they have been miserable comforters to him. We have also noticed that Job’s suffering has caused him to feel separated from God. Job cries out that God has hidden his face from him and counts him as his enemy (cf. Job 13:24). Job longs for a return of God’s friendship (cf. Job 29:2-4). But rather than feeling close to God, Job feels hedged in by God (cf. Job 3:23). We can feel the same way when we are in the storm of suffering. We can wonder where God is. We can believe that God has turned his face away and no longer cares for us. A couple of lessons ago we addressed these false answers. But what I want us to focus our attention on in this lesson is how Job is able to move forward through his suffering. In fact, our next few lessons, Lord willing, are going to be an examination of Job’s words to learn and understand how we can work through our suffering and how to endure our hardships. But for today we are going to look at four statements that Job makes that teaches how to hold strong in our trials…
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