Number 3 The Faithfulness God Series

Last week we covered the holiness of God and what it should mean to us…….

for GOD to be HOLY……….

And so…. This morning I want to introduce you to a man named …. Jeremiah……..

We’ve all heard of him…… Im sure that some of you have possibly even read his book…….

But do we really know that much about him???

As we are working on our 3rd message here…. in our series on….. …

Knowing the GOD we worship……..

You might wonder …. what in the world does Jeremiah’s life…. have to do with any of Gods … Characteristics???

What does Jeremiah have to do with… Who God is…..

Well…. as we dig through the life of Jeremiah this morning….

Our main scripture is gonna be in Lamentations chapter 3

Even though Lamentations is one of the hardest books of the bible to read……

By the time you finish reading it… You almost want to just…. GIVE UP on life…..

But in reality….. I think this is gonna explain a whole lot…… about….

WHO GOD IS……

Things are gonna look really really bad for Israel……

Everything…. is literally falling apart all around Jeremiah….

Yah pretty much think its the end for Gods people…..

But as we continue to plug along through Jeremiah’s life……..

we’re ultimately gonna see that…… the God we worship…

Is not only Holy…… but he’s FAITHFUL as well……………

Even in some of the absolute worst times in your life…..

GOD is faithful……..

And thats going to be the .. key message today…..

The faithfulness…. of the GOD we worship…

And why that should be important to us as christians…….

Now the book of lamentations has been described as…. the saddest book in the bible……

And if you have ever read it through… Your gonna know that i aint stretching the truth at all……

So how are we gonna get some sort of an…. uplifting message..…… out of the saddest book in the bible……

Well…….

If you ever thought at one time or another…. that you’ve lived a rough life??? …

Jeremiah lived an excruciatingly difficult life…….. and this book is literally…… his conclusion…

Its basically what he thought… about his Life….…..

Its how his life… unravels around him……….

But… before we look at chapter 3 here …

I want to back track just a little bit in order to give us kind of a better look at Jeremiah’s life……..

And why he writes… the things he writes……

We have to truly be able to understand his life a little more..

In order to understand where he’s at … when he writes the saddest book in the bible……..

So Lets flip back a little bit here to Jeremiah…..

The book directly in front of lamentations………and were gonna be in chapter 11……. and verse 19…

from a worldly perspective…… Jeremiah’s life is an entire failure …..

He has spent his whole life…. trying to warn Israel to respond to God….

and before his ministry is actually over………..

We learn that…..

no one listened to any of his preaching…….

No one ever showed up to church on Sunday…..

During visitation…. not one person let him in the house to talk with them…….

Every single door he came to….…. was just another slammed door in his face….

but he never gave up….

he never let go……….

He kept right on preaching….. No matter how others treated him….

In 586 BC…… Babylon military raided Israel

They took … everything of any value whatsoever……

and they killed ….All MOST…. everyone there………

One of the things they did… was they completely leveled the beautiful temple that solomon built…….

The church was nothing but rubble….

But God …made sure that Jeremiah was left alive at the end of all these military raids that were going on…………

So that he could see…. the complete destruction of the city……

So that he could see… that everything he warned people about…. .was true…

His sad… pitiful life… wasn’t for nothing…… Everything that God had told him… was right…..

But Absolutely nothing that Jeremiah did…. seemed to help not even 1 single person………

Jeremiah was kinda labeled as the….. crazy street corner preacher…. that everyone in town hated……

I mean… lets pick up in Jeremiah chapter 11 there….. beginning in verse 19…….

Jeremiah 11:19 (NKJV)

19 But I was like a docile lamb brought to the slaughter……

and I did not know that they had devised schemes against me, saying….

“Let us destroy the tree with its fruit….

and let us cut him off from the land of the living…..

that his name may be remembered no more.”

Yeah know sometimes people believe that Jeremiah is talking about Jesus here but he wasn’t….…

he’s literally talking about himself…. Jeremiah was hated and despised ….

His entire ministry was 40 years…