Renew Us Our Days

Renew Our Days as of Old

March 23, 2003 / Sunday a.m.

Lamentations 5:19-22

19 Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.

20 Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?

21 Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.

22 But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.

KJV

This is passage from the book of Lamentations that serves as a tremendous comparison between God and mortal men.

Verse 19 says that the "Lord remainest forever, thy throne from generation to generation".

This means that God is:

1. Forever faithful

2. Forever steadfast

3. Forever what he has promised to be

We, on the other hand, are quite different.

Verse 21 the writer begs God to "renew our days of old".

It’s because we are quick to change our passions, alter our promises, and cast aside our responsibilities in our relationship with God.

There are not many of us that haven’t said, or heard it said, "Let’s go back to the good old days!" How many of you are guilty of that?

Those were the days without washing machines and dryers, or telephones with party lines. Those days where gas for your car was only 5 cents, yet you worked all day for not much more than that.

Maybe you want to return to the days where there was no air conditioning, and only the rich people had an electric service in their homes, but not me!

Things might have been simpler 50-60 years ago, but it was because there wasn’t as much available to complicate and fill the lives of people.

There was no such thing as stopping by the convenience store for a loaf of bread on the way home because the wife called her husband on his cell phone.

It’s because there were no cell phones, no Jiffy Stores, no loaves of bread to buy and because your husband most likely was out on the farm with the mules working the fields.

However, there were some things wonderful about those "good old days", and that was the faith and character of people.

For the most part, people believed in God and worshipped God. The generation before us wouldn’t dream of missing a church service, for no excuse other than being exceptionally sick.

Being tired, weary, aching muscles were a way of life, so missing church for any of those reasons would have been laughable to them.

There were very few atheists, and those that were, were so outnumbered that they kept quiet.

Faith ran high in that generation, when they were sick; they knew how to pray or how to get someone to their house that could pray. If they needed rain, they talked to the one who sends rain, and they expected Him to answer.

This past generation loved the Word of God, and loved the one who

preached the Word of God to them.

However, our generation today has so many different versions of the Bible that they can just pick the one that says what they want it to say, and one they can easily understand without digging and searching.

Our generation today can do well without a preacher, and certainly does not want someone giving them counsel on how to live their lives according to the Word of God.

We have learned to live our lives in such ease, such comfort and such fruitfulness, that we have become religious instead of being passionate believers.

This is what I am hearing in the voice and tone of this prophet named

Jeremiah.

You need to do some background study into the book of Lamentations before you will really understand the writings of this man named Jeremiah.

When Jeremiah cries out "Renew our days of old", he is recording his sorrow over the fact that Israel, who was so wonderfully blessed of Jehovah over all the other nations, yet they had forgotten their Creator and Redeemer.

Israel, who had been protected by a divine arm, loved with a heavenly love, and directed by powerful and anointed men; now have given way to a sin-marked generation which has cast aside their only hope.

Sounds like our world today, does it not? It certainly does. No wonder the prophet cries out, "Renew our days of old!” The man of God cries out from his spirit, it is more than just his flesh hungering for the nation of Israel to return to God, it is the God inside his flesh that cries out.

The bible says that the scriptures are given to us over the years as "holy men of old were moved upon by the Holy Ghost". This makes us know that it is the power of the Holy Ghost moving in and through this prophet that we are hearing.