Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I hope that we haven't fallen so in love with this world that somewhere in our hearts we don't actually pray. Come, Jesus, come.
[00:00:18] I'm afraid we get tricked and we fall in love with the world, and we pray just the opposite.
[00:00:26] Don't come, Jesus, don't come.
[00:00:31] But the New Testament teaches us God has appointed a time, and in that good time this will all pass away.
[00:00:45] And we will live in the perfection of the presence of Jesus Christ.
[00:00:52] And my soul longs for that in a true and real way.
[00:00:56] And I pray that yours does too.
[00:00:59] Our dear Heavenly Father, you are a God of hope.
[00:01:08] You are a God in whom we hope.
[00:01:14] You taught us to pray.
[00:01:17] May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.
[00:01:28] And I pray that your spirit would guide us to that kind of hope. This morning.
[00:01:34] I pray that we would put our hope in you and we would find rest for our souls.
[00:01:41] In Christ's name, Amen.
[00:01:44] We have been studying Psalm 130.
[00:01:49] And at the beginning of Psalm 130, the Psalmist is in despair.
[00:01:57] And he cries out and says, out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
[00:02:07] And then in verses 3 and 4 he said, My only hope for my despair is your forgiveness.
[00:02:17] If you forgive me, I have hope.
[00:02:20] If you don't forgive me, I'm hopeless.
[00:02:24] And then he said in verses five and six, in your despair, wait on the Lord, wait on the Lord.
[00:02:38] And now he tells us in verse 7 and 8, O Israel, hope in the Lord.
[00:02:44] For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.
[00:02:51] He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.
[00:02:56] If you look at the beginning of this psalm, it's called a Psalm of Ascent.
[00:03:07] I know you don't have your Bible, but maybe you can look it up when you go home.
[00:03:11] The Psalms of ascent are Psalm 120 to Psalm 134.
[00:03:19] And the people who study this, they have several different ideas of what is meant by the Psalm of Ascent.
[00:03:30] Many scholars believe that it is psalms that people chanted as they went uphill toward Jerusalem.
[00:03:41] Jerusalem is built on a mountain, and to the west is the Mediterranean plain, and to the east is the Jordan Valley.
[00:03:51] So whenever you went to Jerusalem, you had to ascend up from the plain to. To the mountain that it was built on. So some people call these the Psalms of Ascent because people chanted them when they went up.
[00:04:06] I think the better interpretation is these Psalms of ascent are about our souls ascending to God.
[00:04:17] I don't mean in a physical and literal way. I mean in a spiritual way.
[00:04:26] Communion with God requires ascending.
[00:04:31] It requires escaping our surly lives and finding something beautiful in the presence of God.
[00:04:43] So these psalms call us. They call us upward toward God. They. They call us upward into his presence.
[00:04:53] In this specific psalm, it's really easy to see verse one, he's in the. He's despairing out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. And by the time he gets to verse seven, he's saying, O Israel, hope in the Lord. His soul has ascended.
[00:05:19] This is a poem about the soul ascending from a desperate place to a place of deep and beautiful hope.
[00:05:30] It is a psalm that we should hold in our lives for times when we are discouraged, for times when we are tempted to despair, for when times when we're overcome by our own failures.
[00:05:45] This is a psalm that God gave us that is meant to lift the human soul.
[00:05:54] So the psalmist calls us to hope in the Lord.
[00:05:58] And so I always want to ask myself, I don't want vague ideas about important words.
[00:06:10] We use the word hope all the time, but how often do we require ourselves to say specifically, this is what I mean by hope.
[00:06:20] So let's do that this morning.
[00:06:23] What is hope?
[00:06:27] Well, hope is a desire plus possibility.
[00:06:33] If you desire an impossible thing, you're wishing.
[00:06:40] Hope is not a wish, it is a.
[00:06:44] It is a desire. But that does not that desire is connected to a real possibility.
[00:06:54] Hope is desire plus belief.
[00:06:58] You can't hope in someone or something that you don't believe in.
[00:07:06] You can't hope in Luke Skywalker.
[00:07:12] It's just a story and it's.
[00:07:16] There's nothing there that can be believed in.
[00:07:21] So when we hope, our hope is connected to something that is firm in our belief.
[00:07:32] Hope is the anticipation of pleasure. Nobody hopes for bad stuff.
[00:07:38] You only hope implies that there is a pleasure involved in it.
[00:07:45] You don't hope to stub your toe in the middle of the night.
[00:07:49] There's no pleasure in that.
[00:07:54] The philosopher Descartes said, hope is a weak form of confidence.
[00:08:01] The things we hope for, they are connected with things that we feel confident about.
[00:08:12] This is interesting.
[00:08:13] In the New Testament, the Greek word elpis, which we translate, Hope is used 86 times.
[00:08:23] 86 times in the New Testament, the Bible speaks about Christian hope.
[00:08:30] So you don't have to be real good at math to know if God uses talks about it 86 times. It is important and a valuable part of the Christian life.
[00:08:42] So let's go beyond just all hope. Let's go to specifically, what is Christian hope?
[00:08:50] Christian hope is the expectation of what is sure to come.
[00:08:57] Christian hope is connected to the possibilities that God creates. Christian hope is connected to who I believe God is.
[00:09:08] And so Christian hope becomes the expectation that God is who he is and he's going to do what he said he would do.
[00:09:25] In fact, hope is more of a way of thinking than it is a feeling.
[00:09:32] Most of the time you connect hope with a good feeling you have. But in fact, hope is really not about how you are feeling hope. Hope is more connected with the way you think.
[00:09:48] Hope is a thinking discipline. All right, so if hope is a thinking discipline, how do I hope in the Lord?
[00:09:59] If I. If I want.
[00:10:01] If tomorrow in my devotions I want to hope in the Lord, what should I do?
[00:10:08] Well, here's seven ideas. 1.
[00:10:12] When I hope, I bend my desires toward divine possibilities.
[00:10:21] All right, If I gave you all a note card and say, write down three things you hope for in the next year, what might you write on that hope card?
[00:10:34] I hope to be healthy.
[00:10:38] I hope to have a good vacation. I don't know, whatever. All right, what if you consciously say, I'm going to think about divine possibilities and I'm going to consciously create expectations around those divine possibilities?
[00:11:04] Here's an example.
[00:11:06] I want to be a better man.
[00:11:09] I am not content with the man I am. I want to be a better man. All right, If I hope to be a better man, what divine possibilities are available to me to be a better man?
[00:11:30] So, for example, I would like to be more gentle than I am so I can hope in the Lord that His spirit would work a more gentle spirit within me.
[00:11:48] And I can say, dear Lord, I have put my hope in you.
[00:11:53] I have the expectation that you are capable of making me a more kind person.
[00:12:02] And I will be looking in my life to see how you are working to make me a more kind person.
[00:12:10] You see what I've done? I've put my hope in the Lord about something that is absolutely good and possible for God to do.
[00:12:20] All right?
[00:12:21] I know more of you hope to win the lottery than hope to be a good person.
[00:12:28] The possibilities of winning the lottery are a lot lower than the possibilities of becoming a good person.
[00:12:36] All right. 2.
[00:12:39] How do I hope in the Lord?
[00:12:41] I understand the Lord better and desire who he is and what he does.
[00:12:49] When I put my hope in the Lord, I'm hoping for who God is and what he does in my life more than I'm hoping for the physical things I want. You see, I'm not putting my hope in getting a raise. I'm not putting my hope in my car being good, okay? I'm putting my hope in the personhood of God.
[00:13:20] I'm saying, God, I believe that this is who you are.
[00:13:24] And because I believe this is who you are, I have these expectations for good in my life.
[00:13:37] Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And and I will dwell in the house of the Lord.
[00:13:45] That is a statement of hope.
[00:13:50] God, because you are merciful, surely your mercy will follow me all the days of my life.
[00:13:56] God, because you are good, surely your goodness will follow me every day of my life.
[00:14:03] God, because Jesus said, I have prepared a place for you and if I have prepared a place for you, I will doubtlessly come again and receive you to myself. That where you are, where I am, there you may be also. I am putting my hope in what Christ said he was doing and what he was going to do.
[00:14:23] My hope becomes tethered to the character and the deeds of God.
[00:14:33] How do I hope? 3.
[00:14:36] Because God is good, I anticipate good.
[00:14:41] Some of you always walking around waiting for the other shoe to drop.
[00:14:46] You're always worst. First you know tomorrow is going to be bad. Your expectation is good things aren't going to happen.
[00:14:56] All right, that's not Christian hope. Church.
[00:15:01] Why would you think that way?
[00:15:04] What are you focusing on that you can't see the goodness of God and hope that he's going to show you loving kindness tomorrow?
[00:15:15] Hope is the anticipation of God doing good things in my life.
[00:15:23] The the expectation of God doing good things in my life.
[00:15:28] Ah. Do you remember Jesus often said in the Gospels, as you have faith, let it be done to you.
[00:15:38] What are your expectations?
[00:15:40] If God did what you expect him to do, would it be something good, beautiful and delightful, or would it be disastrous?
[00:15:53] 4.
[00:15:55] How do I hope in the Lord?
[00:15:58] I think about what God promised in scripture. With expectations, I start personalizing what God said in scripture and building expectations around them.
[00:16:14] Here's an example.
[00:16:21] Paul wrote, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
[00:16:29] That is the exact opposite of what this culture teaches you. Fight fire with fire.
[00:16:37] If you fight fire with fire, you're just going to burn everything down.
[00:16:41] I have an expectation that good is greater than evil.
[00:16:47] Would you hear me, Church? I don't believe that evil is greater than good.
[00:16:54] I believe that often the only reason evil triumphs is because good people don't do the good stuff. They're supposed to do.
[00:17:03] And if we would be doing the good stuff we're supposed to do, evil would not be rampaging the way it does. All right?
[00:17:13] I want to make these things.
[00:17:16] I want to make these things crystal clear and usable.
[00:17:22] There is a implied promise in do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. The implied promise is that God is at work in good and he that is in you is greater than he that is in the world. All right?
[00:17:40] So I want to attach hope to that.
[00:17:43] I want to say I can do good in the face of evil because I have hope in the Lord.
[00:17:53] It's not just me doing good in the face of evil. I am partnered with the God who is good.
[00:18:02] And my anticipation, my hope is that as I confront evil with good, he will be at work in ways that I can't understand.
[00:18:16] How do I hope in the Lord?
[00:18:18] I wait for the perfect work of God in my life.
[00:18:23] We talked about waiting last week. I want to talk about it again.
[00:18:28] Hope always requires waiting.
[00:18:33] There's always space between the anticipation, the expectation, and the fulfillment.
[00:18:42] That space is the space where hope functions.
[00:18:46] Do you see in the in the time of my life where I am anticipating God doing something, but it hasn't happened yet?
[00:18:57] That is the space where hope drives.
[00:19:01] All right?
[00:19:02] So in that space I have to be hoping that the Lord is doing his perfect work in my life in some way.
[00:19:13] I'm not just marking time.
[00:19:16] I'm not just surviving another day in divine ways. God is at work. And I am anticipating that he will keep doing that perfect work in me until he stands me up before Christ without spot and without blemish. You see, hope is the what we do when we are anticipating the good work that God is going to do in our souls in the future.
[00:19:50] How do I hope in the Lord? 6 I focus my expectation for good upon the Lord and not myself.
[00:20:00] Isn't it easy when you're doing good to expect God to bless you?
[00:20:05] And isn't it hard when you have failed and you're discouraged with yourself to expect God to bless you?
[00:20:14] Isn't that kind of we do we kind of feel like, well, I've been a good boy.
[00:20:18] I deserve a blessing.
[00:20:21] I've been a creep.
[00:20:22] I don't look forward to God blessing me much.
[00:20:26] All right, that's wrong thinking Church.
[00:20:30] That is absolutely wrong thinking. My hope is not built on my performance.
[00:20:37] My hope is built on who God is and what he does.
[00:20:42] You get this. He didn't say hope in yourself.
[00:20:46] He didn't say hope in your performance, he said you put your hope in the Lord and, and you focus on Him. You don't put your hope in yourself and focus on yourself.
[00:21:00] This doesn't mean we don't have to be the best we can, okay? But it means I don't place my hope in myself.
[00:21:08] That's all this self help superstition.
[00:21:13] I put my hope in the Lord because that's exactly what the scriptures teach.
[00:21:21] If you hope in yourself, ah, ah. You're going to be disappointed.
[00:21:29] If you put your hope in the Lord, you'll never be disappointed.
[00:21:33] Church 7.
[00:21:39] We did this already this morning.
[00:21:42] How do I hope in the Lord? I pray. Romans 15:13.
[00:21:49] You oughta. I want you all to mark that verse down some way. You got iPhones and all that stuff. You mark this verse down some way. Listen what Paul taught us to pray.
[00:22:00] May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.
[00:22:14] Do you hear this?
[00:22:15] God teaches us to pray to him as the God of hope and to ask that he would increase our hope.
[00:22:26] God has invited you to pray to him that he would increase your hope.
[00:22:35] How do I hope in the Lord?
[00:22:38] I pray this prayer.
[00:22:40] When I pray this prayer, I am hoping in the Lord.
[00:22:47] All right?
[00:22:48] Then the psalmist goes on, and he gives us three divine realities that hope is built on.
[00:22:56] If you look at verse eight, he says, for with the Lord there is steadfast love.
[00:23:05] That's one.
[00:23:07] Then he says, and with him is plentiful redemption that's due.
[00:23:17] And then he says he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. That's three. My hope is built on three divine realities. Let's look at them individually.
[00:23:30] First of all, my hope is built on the steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:23:35] Here we are at this word, steadfast love.
[00:23:41] I've used this word so many times because it's used 245 times in the Old Testament. So if you've heard me talk to you about steadfast love a lot, it's because the Bible talks about it a lot, all right? And I want to remind you that steadfast love means God loves you because he's loving, not because you're lovable.
[00:24:03] Get this, all right? God loves you just as much on your worst day as he loves you on your best day. That's what steadfast love means.
[00:24:14] And God reminds us that it is quality 245 times in the Old Testament.
[00:24:24] Ah.
[00:24:25] I hope in the divine nature, because he is a God of steadfast love.
[00:24:33] I never have to go to God in my failures and say, do you still love me?
[00:24:41] I never have to go to God and say, ah, are you willing to hear me today?
[00:24:51] Because that's not the kind of being he is.
[00:24:55] His love is a steadfast love. He loves you when you're at your best.
[00:25:01] He loves you when you're at your worst, as much as he loves you when you're at your best. He loves because he is loving.
[00:25:09] God does not love in a reactive way. He loves in a proactive way.
[00:25:16] Now, the psalmist was despairing.
[00:25:20] He was at the end of himself.
[00:25:23] He didn't. He didn't. He couldn't find a way forward.
[00:25:28] And then he remembered the steadfast love of the Lord, and he put his hope in the Lord.
[00:25:35] When you are at your worst, remember the steadfast love of the Lord and hope in him.
[00:25:41] When you are at your best, remember the steadfast love of the Lord and hope in him.
[00:25:48] I told you about Jeremiah last week. Jeremiah was the prophet when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586, and they left it a pile of rubble.
[00:26:05] And Jeremiah wrote a book about it. It's called the Book of Lamentation.
[00:26:11] And I and I quoted from that last week. I want to quote from it again now, before I read this, I want you to imagine you're standing next to Jeremiah and the city of Jerusalem is rubble.
[00:26:27] There is not a recognizable building anywhere.
[00:26:32] Everything that can be burned has been burned. Walls have been pried down.
[00:26:37] You can't recognize streets, you don't see any landmarks. All there is is a pile of rubble. Now Jeremiah is standing and looking at that pile of rubble. He's despairing, and this is what he prays.
[00:26:56] The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
[00:27:00] His mercies never come to an end.
[00:27:03] They are new every morning.
[00:27:06] Great is your faithfulness.
[00:27:08] The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him.
[00:27:17] He's looking around life as he knew it will never be the same.
[00:27:27] He has nothing that's worth any value at all.
[00:27:31] And you know what he says.
[00:27:34] In spite of what I'm seeing around me, I believe that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
[00:27:43] I believe that his mercies are new every morning.
[00:27:47] I believe that his faithfulness is great.
[00:27:50] The Lord is my portion.
[00:27:53] And so, in spite of the disaster around me, I hope in the Lord.
[00:27:58] Church the steadfast love of the Lord is the divine answer to our Despair in the tragedies and the uglinesses of life.
[00:28:12] No matter how tragic it gets around you or how ugly it gets around you, the steadfast love of the Lord will generate hope in your heart if you let it.
[00:28:26] Face your life. Failures and disasters in hope because the steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:28:34] Now I want to talk about disasters that are my fault.
[00:28:41] It's easy to me to hope in the Lord when there's been a problem and it's not my fault.
[00:28:48] I feel different about the problems in my life and they are my fault.
[00:28:56] And when I'm honest with myself, I have to admit they're my fault.
[00:29:02] My failures.
[00:29:05] In my inner heart, I want to be able to say to God, I have one.
[00:29:16] I have one.
[00:29:20] I only have one way of dealing with this failure, and that is to put my trust in your steadfast love and have the expectation that you are at work in my life to make me more pleasing to you and more like Jesus Christ. Church.
[00:29:40] When I can believe that, then I can make the next step in this verse with him is plentiful redemption.
[00:29:50] It always surprises me that God is ready to forgive me for stuff I have a hard time forgiving myself for.
[00:29:59] I don't know if you're like this. I can remember some fool thing I did 20 years ago, anyone, and 20 years hasn't made it any easier to handle.
[00:30:16] I just remember it again. I go, why were you such an idiot?
[00:30:22] Church?
[00:30:24] Ah.
[00:30:25] But then I remember the steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:30:29] I remember, he doesn't love me because I'm lovable. He loves me because he's loving.
[00:30:34] Then I can say, even if I'm handling this poorly, I believe with him there is plentiful redemption.
[00:30:47] So I was having a hard time with the word plentiful.
[00:30:52] And the Hebrew word can actually be translated numerous or multiple.
[00:30:58] I can handle that better with him.
[00:31:02] He multiplies redemption.
[00:31:06] God doesn't just redeem me once, he redeems me multiple times.
[00:31:13] With him, there are multiples of.
[00:31:17] Of redemption.
[00:31:20] Peter once said to Jesus, peter is an odd one to be asking this, but he did.
[00:31:27] How many times do I have to offend?
[00:31:30] How many times do I have to forgive somebody who offends me? Seven times.
[00:31:35] If I was Peter, I would. I'd set the number a lot higher because I am aware of my need for forgiveness.
[00:31:43] And listen to what Jesus said.
[00:31:46] No, not seven times. 70 times seven.
[00:31:51] What's he saying?
[00:31:52] He's saying, you got to have more forgiveness than you think you do.
[00:31:59] And then guess what? God's saying that because he models it for us, he is plentiful. He is numerous. He multiplies forgiveness.
[00:32:13] It is the nature of the God of steadfast love to multiply forgiveness so that we can hope in him.
[00:32:27] Romans 5:20.
[00:32:29] Now the law came to increase the trespass. Now listen. Listen. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
[00:32:42] The Greeks have a word called who pair, and it's close to our word super. It means above and beyond.
[00:32:50] Where sin increased, grace increased. Above and beyond sin.
[00:32:57] There is always more grace in God than there is sin in us. Do you hear this? And that's how he can multiply forgiveness. That's how he can multiply redemption.
[00:33:12] Ah.
[00:33:13] And then the third.
[00:33:15] The third divine reality is he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
[00:33:21] Forgiveness is a divine reality.
[00:33:24] I just want to remind you of what we talked about several weeks ago.
[00:33:28] Psalm 130, verses 3 and 4. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be respected?
[00:33:40] Remember, when we studied this, we learned that the word mark iniquities means pay close attention.
[00:33:46] Lord, if you pay close attention to my iniquities, I don't have any chance of standing in relationship to you.
[00:33:57] The Lord does not respond to our sin instantly. He is not reactionary.
[00:34:05] Remember we talked about.
[00:34:08] God's mercy is expressed in his patience. He gives us time to repent because he is a God of steadfast love.
[00:34:19] Because he is. He is a God who multiplies forgiveness. Because he is a God who redeems all iniquity.
[00:34:30] He gives us space to repent. He gives us space to grow and become better. And again, that space is the space that hope thrives in.
[00:34:42] In the space that God creates for me to recognize that I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In the space he creates for me to feel that this is not acceptable and I have to be a better man in that space. I hope in the Lord. My anticipation is that God is at work both to will and to work according to his own good pleasure.
[00:35:08] If God doesn't pay close attention to my sin, what is he paying close attention to? He's paying close attention to Christ.
[00:35:15] Because I am in Christ, and in Christ he sees me as everything he wants me to be.
[00:35:24] Remember the psalmist said, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. Listen, as far as the east is from the west so far. Does he remove our transgressions from us?
[00:35:40] How does he remove our transgressions from us? He multiplies forgiveness.
[00:35:48] How does he remove our transgressions from us?
[00:35:50] He forgives all iniquities.
[00:35:56] Ah.
[00:35:58] Now, in a. In a room this big and with people watching online, there is a degree of iniquity.
[00:36:10] Some people have done things that are a lot worse than others. We've all done bad stuff.
[00:36:16] Okay, if you're sitting here thinking you're not so bad, you've missed the point.
[00:36:22] All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of the Lord.
[00:36:26] But it is true that there are some people who are more wicked than other people.
[00:36:33] When he says he forgives all iniquity, does he just mean all kind of good people iniquity, or does he mean all iniquity?
[00:36:45] Yeah, he means all.
[00:36:48] Let me tell you sin that I know. God has forgiven.
[00:36:53] Murder.
[00:36:56] Moses and King David murdered people.
[00:36:59] And God forgave them.
[00:37:02] Lying.
[00:37:04] Abraham lied and said Sarah wasn't his wife.
[00:37:10] Dishonoring your parents.
[00:37:13] Jacob dishonored his father when he pretended to be Esau and lied to his father, stole the blessing that he wanted to give to Esau.
[00:37:26] Kidnapping.
[00:37:28] Joseph's brothers kidnapped him and sold him as a slave into Egypt.
[00:37:34] Adultery. There was a woman taken in adultery. And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.
[00:37:43] Denying Christ.
[00:37:45] Peter denied three times that he knew Christ.
[00:37:50] Ravishing the church.
[00:37:53] Paul.
[00:37:54] Paul said, I am the least because I tormented the church.
[00:38:01] And if you don't see yourself in any of those.
[00:38:04] God forgave us all for the ugliest thing the human race ever did.
[00:38:09] Crucifying Christ.
[00:38:12] Do you remember? Jesus prayed, father, forgive them.
[00:38:17] They know not what they do.
[00:38:20] And brothers and sisters, that them includes us.
[00:38:26] God forgives me for the worst thing the human race ever did.
[00:38:32] And it was.
[00:38:33] It was insult, blaspheme, and crucify Christ.
[00:38:38] Since God has redeemed us from such horrid sins, surely you can hope in his steadfast love to forgive you today.
[00:38:50] Now let's do a hard thing.
[00:38:54] It's not hard to do. It's just painful to do.
[00:39:00] I want you to allow yourself to remember the worst thing you've ever done.
[00:39:08] Be honest with yourself.
[00:39:10] The worst thing you've ever done.
[00:39:15] Don't tell anybody we were confessing to the Father. All right?
[00:39:27] Now, I am aware of the worst thing I've ever done.
[00:39:32] And I feel the heaviness of it. I feel the regret of it. I feel the shame of it.
[00:39:39] I feel the misery of it all. Right, now I'm going to practice what this psalm teaches.
[00:39:47] I'm going to say, the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.
[00:39:55] The Lord is multiplying forgiveness.
[00:40:03] The Lord forgives all iniquities.
[00:40:07] And I'm saying, dear Heavenly Father, I hope in your steadfast love I ask for your.
[00:40:18] I ask for your plentiful redemption.
[00:40:24] I trust that since you forgive all iniquities, you will forgive this iniquity that haunts me.
[00:40:33] And my hope is in you.
[00:40:36] My hope is in the name of the Lord.
[00:40:40] Ah, dear Father, I'm.
[00:40:46] I'm looking at the rubble of my life the way Jeremiah looked at the rubble of Jerusalem.
[00:40:55] I'm looking at my worst failure, and then I'm looking above that and I'm saying, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
[00:41:07] His mercies never come to an end.
[00:41:10] They are new every morning.
[00:41:12] Great is your faithfulness, O Lord. You are my portion.
[00:41:18] My soul, therefore, will hope in you.
[00:41:21] Amen.
[00:41:23] Church, We've just practiced this psalm.
[00:41:28] It's taken us eight weeks, four weeks to learn how to do it. But now you know how to do it. You've learned from this psalm what it means to feel the sorrow and the burden and the ugliness of failure and sin.
[00:41:46] But now you have a spiritual tool to deal with that in a new way.
[00:41:53] Every time I remember my failures, I have a moment of unhappiness with myself.
[00:42:00] And then I lift my eyes up and I stop focusing on my failure, and I start focusing on the steadfast love of the Lord.
[00:42:12] I start lifting up my head and saying, God, you are great. I believe in your goodness. I. I believe you multiply forgiveness. I believe that your mercies are new every. All the time. You are my portion, and I'm hoping in you.
[00:42:31] If you will do this, your soul will ascend with the psalmist. From despair to the expectation of future goodness and pleasure.
[00:42:45] It is the truth of God. Our dear Heavenly Father, thank you that you teach us your way.
[00:42:54] Thank you. Have provided a way.
[00:42:58] Thank you that you are a God of steadfast love.
[00:43:03] Thank you that you are full of forgiveness.
[00:43:08] Now. I pray for each one of us.
[00:43:11] I pray your spirit would do in our hearts what only you can do.
[00:43:15] And I pray that we would face the future in a different way, with greater hope, and we would not let the failures of the past keep us from hoping. In your goodness, I pray that we would have the same spirit with others that you have with us. And we would love them the way you love us. We would forgive them the way you forgive us.
[00:43:39] And I pray this all through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
