SPEAKER_00: We need to recall what we talked about last week with His Holiness.
SPEAKER_00: And really one of the biggest things we need to remember and kind of recalibrate is that we went to His Holiness in understanding who God is like and his attributes based on Isaiah chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: And we stood in the throne room of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we said, you know, the first thing, the most important thing that we talk about in Scripture, and that Scripture wants us to know is that God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: Not very good, not the very best version of the things that we already know about Him.
SPEAKER_00: He is other.
SPEAKER_00: And it's holy, holy, holy.
SPEAKER_00: Because in Hebrew, repetition is how you say most.
SPEAKER_00: You know that there's now a superlative for the most holy.
SPEAKER_00: It is holy, holy, holy.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's the holiest of all things.
SPEAKER_00: And we felt a little bit in this room when we looked at the the how gigantic God is.
SPEAKER_00: When we looked at that video of seeing the relative size of us compared to the size of the entire universe.
SPEAKER_00: And so we we watched that when and what that holiness did to Isaiah, even, where he said, he said, Woe is me, I am undone.
SPEAKER_00: I am a man of unclean lips.
SPEAKER_00: And then a coal came from the altar and touched his lips and made him clean, so that he could approach the throne, so that he could be there, so he could be sent.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here is why I want to kind of bring us back to that idea today, is because uh we we some of us walked out of here last week feeling a little bit small.
SPEAKER_00: We might have felt a little exposed, a little afraid of that big, gigantic God.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe, you know, we're wondering whether a God that holy could ever be real for you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, to get down on our level, to walk amongst us.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to hear this clearly today that the holiness of God, the holiness of God, is not the opposite of the comfort of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is the foundation of it.
SPEAKER_00: It is the foundation of God.
SPEAKER_00: So think about it with me.
SPEAKER_00: The reason that you can trust God completely is precisely that he is not like you.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: He is not like you.
SPEAKER_00: If God were simply a bigger version of us, then he would be as inconsistent as us, as moody as us, uh as distracted as us, and as likely as us to change his mind the moment keeping his word got inconvenient.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning that when things get a little bit hard to do, that we kind of stray from the truth.
SPEAKER_00: We stray from what we should be doing.
SPEAKER_00: But he is holy, set apart, not made from the same stuff that we are.
SPEAKER_00: And that means the very otherness that undid Isaiah in the throne room is the exact reason God has never once broken a promise.
SPEAKER_00: So last week's truth becomes this week's comfort.
SPEAKER_00: He is holy, utterly unlike us.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore he is also faithful, utterly unlike us.
SPEAKER_00: And this is exactly why we give a whole summer to something like the attributes of God and who he is.
SPEAKER_00: I know that Eastridge exists to lead people to know God, not merely to know things about him, but to actually know him intimately, to personally.
SPEAKER_00: And you cannot know someone you have never slowed down long enough to study.
SPEAKER_00: So today we keep looking, uh we keep looking up, but we shift from a question of awe to a question of trust.
SPEAKER_00: We we because it's one thing to say that God is high and lifted up and we can praise him.
SPEAKER_00: It's another thing to ask, can I actually count on him?
SPEAKER_00: Can I count on who God is and why uh circumstances change?
SPEAKER_00: You know, and like and like if my circumstances change, does that mean that that he is also changing?
SPEAKER_00: You know, when I fail him, does he walk away?
SPEAKER_00: When when life falls apart, does God also fall apart?
SPEAKER_00: Today's answer is one of the oldest and most tested truths in all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: God never changes, and God never fails.
SPEAKER_00: He is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you where I've been faith where I've been watching faithfulness up close lately, and it's it's not very dramatic, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Uh my wife, uh Sarah, works full-time as a fourth grade teacher, and on top of that, she loves to coach and teach dance team for the studio and for the high school.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and on top of that, uh, she's also in grad school, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And there's no parade for that.
SPEAKER_00: There's no confetti when she opens her laptop again after a full day of work.
SPEAKER_00: Uh most nights look the same.
SPEAKER_00: She, you know, comes home tired.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we make dinner, we sit down uh with the reading that she hasn't got to yet.
SPEAKER_00: Uh nobody's cheering it on.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the next assignment and the next one and the next one.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I've noticed that watching her do this month after month after month, that is exactly what faithfulness looks like.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a single heroic moment.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, it's a thousand remark unremarkable ones strung together that nobody was watching except the people who depend on her.
SPEAKER_00: We we tend to picture faithfulness as something loud and dramatic and and you know, a dramatic rescue, a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: But most faithfulness, God's included, doesn't look like fireworks.
SPEAKER_00: It looks like showing up again and again and again, especially when no one's applauding for it.
SPEAKER_00: Just a few weeks ago, we taught my my daughter Lucy to ride her bike, and she's seven, so she's a little bit behind on the curve for that.
SPEAKER_00: But but um but we we made it our goal not to have a big, gigantic moment of you're finally doing it, because I think she would get scared.
SPEAKER_00: But but it was a steady, gradual practice after practice for short stints of confidence, falling, getting back up again, persistence and resilience, and a little bit of bribery with ice cream.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm honest, watching that kind of steady faithfulness in my own home has really convicted me.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not always that consistent.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not that consistent with God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, you know, if I'm honest, I'm not always that consistent with the people that I love the most.
SPEAKER_00: And just like all of us, I can be faithful when it's convenient, when I'm motivated, when the feeling to be faithful is there.
SPEAKER_00: But real faithfulness doesn't take a day off just because the feeling did.
SPEAKER_00: Faithfulness is rarely allowed.
SPEAKER_00: It's just showing up again and again when no one's plotting.
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you a question this morning.
SPEAKER_00: What has changed on you this year regarding your faithfulness?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your health.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a diagnosis that you didn't expect, and your body's not doing what it's exactly supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Someone you counted on didn't come through.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your finances, your job, or your plans for the next five years.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that changed all without your permission.
SPEAKER_00: Change is not rare in this life.
SPEAKER_00: Change is the water that we swim in.
SPEAKER_00: Change is always happening.
SPEAKER_00: And if everything around you is subject to change, you need something, or rather, someone to depend on who is unchanging.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who isn't going to change.
SPEAKER_00: Someone, some of you are also carrying something that's that harder to say out loud, that you've you've also been unfaithful.
SPEAKER_00: You've been unfaithful to God.
SPEAKER_00: You've been unfaithful to a promise.
SPEAKER_00: You've been unfaithful to a person.
SPEAKER_00: And the voice in your head says, Why would God, who is a faithful God, who never fails, who is always always there, why would he still be faithful to me after I have been so unfaithful?
SPEAKER_00: Hold that question because we're going to answer it directly this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Because if everything around you can change, you need someone who can't.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we read our text this morning, I have to tell you where it comes from.
SPEAKER_00: We are, we're, because if you don't know the context of the verse that we're going to be in, I promise that you will misunderstand it and why we're even talking about it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us know that the phrase in the song, Great is Thy faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we sing it, and where it actually comes from is not necessarily a mountaintop or, you know, having an organ play behind it.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually in a war zone.
SPEAKER_00: The book is called Lamentations, and the name tells you the content of that book.
SPEAKER_00: It's five poems of grief.
SPEAKER_00: It was written after the year 586 BC, the year the Babylonian army finally broke through the walls of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to what was lost.
SPEAKER_00: The temple, the very place God's presence dwelled, the place that Isaiah saw, filled with the train of God's robe, was burned to the ground.
SPEAKER_00: The city walls were torn down stone by stone.
SPEAKER_00: The king was captured, his sons were killed right in front of him, and then his own eyes were put out, so the last thing that he ever saw were his sons dying.
SPEAKER_00: The people marched off into exile in chains.
SPEAKER_00: The famine inside the walls that were left was so severe that the book describes mothers who could not feed their own children.
SPEAKER_00: It's brutal and it does not look away.
SPEAKER_00: Have a good morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'll see you later, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: But we really have to understand that traditionally this book is written, it's said to be written by Jeremiah, the prophet who spent 40 years warning the Israelites that this was going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: If they didn't turn away from their idols, if they didn't uh go back to God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here is a detail that I that I found in this book that's pretty remarkable is that these are four of these five poems are acrostic poems.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that there was intention with talking about the sorrow and grief that Jeremiah was writing about.
SPEAKER_00: There is intention there.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, I'm going to take you through this pain from A to Z.
SPEAKER_00: Every letter of it.
SPEAKER_00: And chapter three, where we're going to be today, sits at the exact center of that book.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that connects us right back to last week.
SPEAKER_00: We have to understand why Jerusalem fell at all.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't because God was weak.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't because God was absent.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't because God had lost a war to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem fell because God is holy.
SPEAKER_00: He is holy.
SPEAKER_00: For centuries, he had warned them plainly, if you abandon me, this is what will come.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that as the writer sits in those ashes, it sits and seeing what is happening and the city burned down, he is looking at evidence that God does exactly what he promises will happen.
SPEAKER_00: That is a terrifying thought.
SPEAKER_00: That he promises that.
SPEAKER_00: And then if you sit with it long enough, it turns into the most comforting thought of the entire book.
SPEAKER_00: Because the same God whose warnings come true is the same God whose promises also come true.
SPEAKER_00: If he kept his word in judgment, he will keep his word in mercy.
SPEAKER_00: One thing before we go on.
SPEAKER_00: Our verse is in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: But look what becomes before that.
SPEAKER_00: In Lamentations 3, starting in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath.
SPEAKER_00: He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light.
SPEAKER_00: And it gets darker by verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: Says, My soul is bereft of peace.
SPEAKER_00: I have forgotten what happiness is.
SPEAKER_00: So I say, My endurance has perished.
SPEAKER_00: So has my hope from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear that?
SPEAKER_00: My hope from the Lord has perished.
SPEAKER_00: It's not I'm discouraged or I've had a bad week or you know, I I got a flat tire this week, or you know, they ran out of my favorite drink at Starbucks or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: No, it is my hope is gone.
SPEAKER_00: It's perished.
SPEAKER_00: It's dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's not there.
SPEAKER_00: I have no hope.
SPEAKER_00: So four verses later, starting in verse 22, it says this when all of this hope is gone, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
SPEAKER_00: His mercies never come to an end.
SPEAKER_00: They are new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is my portion, says my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I will hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: Right after, verse 21, right after my hope is perished, it says, But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
SPEAKER_00: Now watch careful what does what does not happen right here.
SPEAKER_00: He does not say that the siege of the city has been lifted.
SPEAKER_00: He does not say that the rubble got cleaned up or that he woke up having better feelings about what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: What changes that he deliberately, the writer, deliberately called something to mind.
SPEAKER_00: He called it to mind.
SPEAKER_00: He reached back and grabbed a hold of a truth that he already knew.
SPEAKER_00: At the exact moment, his feelings were screaming the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: That is what faith looks like in the hardest seasons.
SPEAKER_00: It is usually not the discovery of something new, it is the deliberate remembering of something old.
SPEAKER_00: When everything in you wants to forget, your feelings will tell you that God has left.
SPEAKER_00: The circumstance of the world will say, forget about it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't think about it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, look to other idols, look to other things that will comfort you, that will make you feel much better.
SPEAKER_00: Your circumstances will testify against the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What is happening and the trauma and the drama and things that are happening in your life are going to say, Don't recall that God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: We have so much that works against us in this world that we have to be deliberate.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be assertive.
SPEAKER_00: We have to be intentional and sober-minded to recall who God is and what he does for us.
SPEAKER_00: So what does he call to mind?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 and 23.
SPEAKER_00: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
SPEAKER_00: They're new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: New every morning.
SPEAKER_00: God's faithfulness toward you today is not leftovers from yesterday's batch of faithfulness or mercy.
SPEAKER_00: It is fresh this morning.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be fresh again tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: That means yesterday's failures doesn't get the final word over today.
SPEAKER_00: If you had faithlessness yesterday, if you failed yesterday at all, that means that today is new.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't carry over.
SPEAKER_00: And remember where he is when he's writing this.
SPEAKER_00: He's not standing on top of a mountaintop.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just had a grand experience with God.
SPEAKER_00: He is in the midst of ashes.
SPEAKER_00: He is in the midst of rubble.
SPEAKER_00: He is watching his city be torn down and burned.
SPEAKER_00: There's suffering happening all around him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he recalls that the mercies are made new.
SPEAKER_00: Which tells us something that we desperately need to hear and understand.
SPEAKER_00: This verse, this verse, verse 22 and 23, are not a promise, your circumstances will always be good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to repeat that.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22 and 23 is not a promise that your circumstances will always be good.
SPEAKER_00: It is a promise that God's character does not rise and fall with your circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: That his character remains steadfast, that he is unchangeable.
SPEAKER_00: God's faithfulness does not run out.
SPEAKER_00: It restocks every morning, even in the ashes.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the verse I really want you to hear.
SPEAKER_00: If you're carrying any sort of guilt this morning, if you're feeling like, okay, I've I've I've really messed up.
SPEAKER_00: My unfaithfulness is there.
SPEAKER_00: I experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: I feel that in my soul.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you this.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Timothy 2, starting in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read verse 11 and 12, and then we'll have 13 on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him.
SPEAKER_00: If we endure, we will also reign with him.
SPEAKER_00: If we deny him, he will also deny us.
SPEAKER_00: If we are faithless, he remains faithful.
SPEAKER_00: For he cannot deny himself.
SPEAKER_00: If we are faithless.
SPEAKER_00: Not if we mess up, faithless, fully inconsistent.
SPEAKER_00: The very thing that you're ashamed of, he remains faithful.
SPEAKER_00: But his faithfulness was never actually resting on your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: His faithfulness in us, his faithful character is not dependent on our faithfulness in him.
SPEAKER_00: He cannot deny himself.
SPEAKER_00: For him to stop being faithful would mean he would have to stop being God.
SPEAKER_00: That is not on the table.
SPEAKER_00: He is going to remain the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all things, the author and perfecter of our faith, the Alpha and the Omega.
SPEAKER_00: He will remain.
SPEAKER_00: And this faithfulness isn't just for you to do today.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you we're going to sing about it.
SPEAKER_00: The faithfulness of God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him to a thousand generations.
SPEAKER_00: A thousand generations, which means that the faithfulness holding you up today is the very same faithfulness that will still be holding your children and their children and the people who are going to be coming to this church year after year after year, generations after generations after you.
SPEAKER_00: What if someone were unfaithful?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Does their faithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God?
SPEAKER_00: By no means.
SPEAKER_00: Our failure never cancels his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: But it does leave us with a debt that we cannot pay.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is honest about us.
SPEAKER_00: We have all broken our faith with God.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us.
SPEAKER_00: We have chased other things.
SPEAKER_00: We've made promises that we didn't keep.
SPEAKER_00: We loved ourselves more than we have loved Him.
SPEAKER_00: And a faithful God cannot simply pretend that nothing ever happened.
SPEAKER_00: His justice is as unchanging as his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: So here is what is the unchanging faithful God did for us.
SPEAKER_00: He kept a promise, as he always does, as he always will.
SPEAKER_00: It's the promise that he made all the way back in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: When we sinned, when we fell short of the glory of God, that he would send someone to crush what had broken us away from him.
SPEAKER_00: He kept a promise to Abraham, he kept a promise to Moses, to David, across a thousand years of prophets, that a rescuer was coming.
SPEAKER_00: And at the exact right time, he sent his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus lived the faithful life that no one ever could live.
SPEAKER_00: And then on the cross, he carried the full weight of our faithfulness on himself.
SPEAKER_00: Our unfaithfulness was punished there on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: So that it would never punish us.
SPEAKER_00: And on the third day, God kept his oldest promise of all that death would not have the final word and Jesus rose from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: If you ever want proof that God keeps his word, you don't have to look further than the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're carrying shame with you this morning over the ways that you have been unfaithful, hear this clearly.
SPEAKER_00: The size of your failure has never been the size of his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: His faithfulness is bigger.
SPEAKER_00: It always has been.
SPEAKER_00: Turn away from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Trust in Jesus, the one who kept every promise ever God ever made.
SPEAKER_00: And receive a faithfulness that was never dependent on you keeping up your end first.
SPEAKER_00: That is the most important decision you will make in your entire life.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: Now that we've turned from this sin, now that we have walked towards God, we need to know something, we need to feel something, we need to do something.
SPEAKER_00: We need to know this in our mind that his faithfulness isn't a mood.
SPEAKER_00: It's not circumstantial.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's nature.
SPEAKER_00: This is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: So stop waiting to see if God will be faithful this time, like it's uncertain.
SPEAKER_00: Like you have to bet on it.
SPEAKER_00: It is not uncertain.
SPEAKER_00: It is who he is.
SPEAKER_00: God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Your circumstances are the variable.
SPEAKER_00: He is the constant.
SPEAKER_00: So know that in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And then feel this in the depths of your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Trust, comfort, comfort, and confidence.
SPEAKER_00: Trust, comfort, and confidence.
SPEAKER_00: And feel that not because life is easy, but because He is steady.
SPEAKER_00: He is steadfast.
SPEAKER_00: You may be sitting in your own version of Lamentations this morning, where you're feeling that in the ashes, in the rubble, in the smoke.
SPEAKER_00: You're not on a mountaintop right now.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to pretend that the pain that you feel isn't real.
SPEAKER_00: But you still have the opportunity to say, but this I call to mind.
SPEAKER_00: Let yourself feel both.
SPEAKER_00: The weight of what's hard and the comfort of a God who has not moved ever.
SPEAKER_00: And here's something honest about this book that I think some of you need.
SPEAKER_00: That lamentations doesn't end tidy, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We read the hope in the middle of the book, and it does not end that way.
SPEAKER_00: It says at the end, restore us to yourself, O Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The hope of this book is in the middle, not the end.
SPEAKER_00: Which means you don't have to be out of your hard season to hold on to God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You can live in both.
SPEAKER_00: You can be right in the middle of it with nothing resolved and understand that He is still faithful.
SPEAKER_00: So we need to know this.
SPEAKER_00: We need to feel this.
SPEAKER_00: And then we need to do something this week.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you something to take with you today.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a rock.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you guys all had a stone on your seat, a rock, a small thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing special about it.
SPEAKER_00: You could pick up a hundred of these on any any any day on the beach.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's what me and my kids did yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: We picked these rocks up for you so that you could take these with you.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to tell you why you're holding it.
SPEAKER_00: If you hold it in your hand.
SPEAKER_00: In Joshua chapter 4, Israel had just crossed the Jordan River on dry ground.
SPEAKER_00: God held back the water, and an entire nation walked across the riverbed.
SPEAKER_00: And then when they reached the other side, God's very first instruction is not build an altar.
SPEAKER_00: It's not sing a song.
SPEAKER_00: It's this.
SPEAKER_00: Go back into that riverbed, pick up twelve stones, carry them out, and stack them up.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he ask us to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Joshua 4 says, When your children ask in time to come, what do these stones mean to you?
SPEAKER_00: Then you shall tell them.
SPEAKER_00: God is building a memory into the landscape.
SPEAKER_00: Because God knows something about us.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that we forget stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember what I had for breakfast, okay?
SPEAKER_00: He knows that in six months, when the water is high, when when life is down in the dumps again, when life is hard again, we will need something solid in our hands to hold to make sure that we recall the story.
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what the writer of Lamentations does in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Sitting in the ashes, hope is gone.
SPEAKER_00: He reaches back and picks up a stone, not a mental stone, a spiritual stone, it's a mental stone, not a physical one.
SPEAKER_00: He says, but this I call to mind.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want you to do with yours.
SPEAKER_00: Put that stone in your pocket or your purse or somewhere where you're going to feel it this week.
SPEAKER_00: And every time your hand brushes up against it, every time that you see it, every time that it's there, uh at your car, at a desk, in the middle of a hard conversation, say the line out loud or just in your heart, great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: New again this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And then when the week is over, don't throw it away, don't throw it back in Lake Superior where it came from.
SPEAKER_00: Put it somewhere where you'll see it.
SPEAKER_00: A windowsill, a desk, a dashboard.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and when your kids ask you what that rock is for, when your friends ask you what that rock is for, when your coworkers ask you, why do you have a rock right there?
SPEAKER_00: You can say that you are recalling what God has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: You are recalling God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: You can tell them about a God who has never once broken his word.
SPEAKER_00: That is Deuteronomy 7.9 happening in your own house.
SPEAKER_00: Faithfulness, handed down, generation to generation.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we want to be a thriving church that helps people put down deep roots to become lifelong learners of Jesus, not just Sunday attenders, it will happen in a thousand ordinary moments, just like that one.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing Jerusalem was a pile of stones that meant everything had fallen apart.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua's pile of stones meant that God had come through with his promises.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same material, but a completely different story.
SPEAKER_00: And the difference between the two is whether somebody remembers to tell it or not.
SPEAKER_00: God built a memory into stone because he knows how quickly that we forget.
SPEAKER_00: So let's bring this home a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: We need to remember that God never changes and God never fails.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever has shifted under your feet this year, he hasn't moved an inch.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't moved at all.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you failed to keep, he has never once failed to keep his word.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the God I want us to build on.
SPEAKER_00: Because a church only stands together in every season if it's standing on someone who doesn't move.
SPEAKER_00: And empowered by a spirit, we can never manufacture on our own.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a slogan.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the stone that's in your pocket.
SPEAKER_00: Before we pray and before we move on, uh you know, the the band is gonna come up here and I promise you we're gonna sing, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'll be done speaking in about 18 minutes, okay?
SPEAKER_00: That uh that we will, we're we're going to be singing a new song today.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's well, it's not really a new song, it's new to us, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's a song called He's Always Been Faithful.
SPEAKER_00: It's written by Sarah Groves.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna sing a different version of it today, but it's if you don't know it yet, that's completely fine.
SPEAKER_00: Just listen for the first verse or two and you'll pick it up by the chorus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a simple song about waking up morning after morning and finding once again that God's hand has not let go.
SPEAKER_00: Which is more or less exactly what we just read in Lamentations.
SPEAKER_00: New every morning.
SPEAKER_00: So will you stand with us right now as the band leads us?
SPEAKER_00: Let this be your prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you know the words yet or not, remember that he has always been faithful to me.
SPEAKER_00: And he always will be.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray and sing that together this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful God, thank you that you are not like us.
SPEAKER_00: You do not change, you do not tire, you do not break your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that your mercy toward us this morning is not few.
SPEAKER_00: That it is new, that it is not left over, that there are more and more and more to come for us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, thank you that you kept every promise that God ever made, living the faithful life we could not live, and carrying our unfaithfulness to the cross so that it would never have to be carried by us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you rose again.
SPEAKER_00: Proof that your word always holds.
SPEAKER_00: For every one of my friends in this room this morning, sitting in their own ashes this morning, I want to this to be recalled in our mind and find hope.
SPEAKER_00: For all my friends carrying shame over their own unfaithfulness, remind us that your unfaithfulness was never resting on theirs.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us and teach our children after us to trust a God who does not move.
SPEAKER_00: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercy never comes to an end.
SPEAKER_00: They're new every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Great is your faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.