The following is a lightly edited transcript and may contain errors.
Contents
Hesed in the Book of Ruth
Hesed in Action
Hesed in the Community
Contrast: Ordinary and Hesed
Yahweh’s Hesed
Hesed Requires a Response
He Abounds in Steadfast Love
Closing Prayer
How’s everyone doing? Those of you that are here, you’re not sick. We’ve got some sick people out this week, so we need to be praying for them. Hey, we got something for each of the adults, so anyone 18 and older, and they’re just notebooks that have our theme on the front, Make Truth Your Home, with the picture. And then it’s blank paper, but it’s spiral bound, so you can use it. You can grab one there on the offering, next to the offering plate as you head out today. You can use it for prayer requests, for taking notes during the sermon. That’d be a great idea, right? For Re:formation Wednesday or anything like that. So if you’re 18 or older, you can grab one of those. If we have any extras, some younger kids, maybe in a couple weeks, can grab them as well. All right, oh, also on the inside, it also has our vision and our verse for the year, so. All right, let’s turn to the book of Ruth, chapter 1. Chapter 1. Let’s pray.
Father, we want to come before you this morning. We want to intercede for the different families that are dealing with sickness. We ask that you would heal them up. We pray, Father, your word would go forth in power this morning. Let us hear it, Lord, as it rightly is, your word, and let us receive it. Father, thanks for the blessing of children that you’ve given this church. So many children, so many born last year. Let everything go smooth with the deliveries, and let each of those children grow up to know you, to fear you, to love you, to serve you. We ask you to be gracious to save them at a young age, and we pray, God, that our families here would be difference-makers for the kingdom, and that whatever little sphere you give us, we would exert our influence, that it would be a godly influence to exert in that sphere, that your kingdom might come, that we might shine your light, and that we might be salt and light in those areas and to people that need you, Lord. We pray, Lord, you continue with us now. Thank you for the time of worship, that we can sing your praises, we can exalt you, we can talk about how amazing you are. Let us continue on now to worship you as we hear and get into the word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Hesed in the Book of Ruth
All right, so for the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at this word, hesed, in the Old Testament, and it can mean one primary thing, but it’s so much of a loaded word that different translations use different words to translate it. Loving-kindness is one. Kindness is another word that’s used. Sometimes mercy, all of those things, the idea encapsulated there is the idea of covenant faithfulness, covenant loyalty, covenant love. Now, if you remember when we started the book of Ruth, I said there was one Hebrew word that was key to understanding the book of Ruth. And this is what we’ve been looking at. So today we’re really going to talk about, as we’ve been looking at the hesed love of God, the book of Ruth. The entire book actually focuses on the concept of God’s hesed love. And I want you to notice two resounding themes as we’re going through the sermon today. I want you to notice two resounding themes. The first is that there’s this theme of faithfulness to God’s people. We’re going to see it and get into it in a little bit. But if you think of Ruth’s faithfulness, Ruth’s faithfulness isn’t just to Naomi. No, it’s really her faithfulness to Naomi’s people. There’s a second theme that we’re going to see, and it’s faithfulness to God. Ruth, as we see in the very first chapter, she’s faithful to Naomi, to Naomi’s people, but she’s also faithful to Naomi’s God, and it’s also her God. So, not just Naomi, not just Naomi’s people, but Naomi’s God. We’re also going to see the particular use of the word hesed appear a few times, but we’re also going to observe hesed in action. So we’ll see the word used a few times. It’s a short book, just four chapters, I think around 85 verses. But then we’re going to see examples of hesed, and we’ve noted them previously, but we’ll note them again. We’re going to note those examples of hesed. So let’s first look at the use of the word hesed in the book of Ruth, starting in Ruth chapter 1. But Naomi, we’re in verse 8, Naomi said to her daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” So the first instance of this Hebrew word in the book of Ruth, we find it right here in verse 8, and it’s that word “kindly.” The NIV says “show you kindness.” The other versions, “kindly.” So where it says, “May the Lord deal kindly with you.” So what’s the idea there? Well, Naomi is saying, hey, may God give you this hesed as you have given this hesed to me. Now notice. Notice when Naomi says this. We’re way at the beginning of this book here, right? Naomi’s getting ready to go back to Israel. She’s like, hey, you can stay with your people. You’ve shown me hesed already. So Naomi says this before Ruth even says what Ruth is about to say. What does Ruth say? Well, let’s read it. Verse 16, let’s start in: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” So Naomi says, you show me great hesed, and Ruth is basically like, oh you think that’s hesed, check this out, and she goes extreme and shows hesed. So what does she say? She’s like, I’m going to be faithful to you, Naomi, and I’m going to be faithful to you. She says it right there. I’m going to be faithful to your people, your people are going to be my people. Not only I’m not just going to be faithful to your people. I’m going to be faithful to your God, your God is my God. That’s a very—this might be one of the strongest statements in the entire Bible. I mean, Ruth at this point, Ruth is a part of the covenant, clearly. Now it [audio unclear] the message of who Yahweh was, because if you just think about that for a moment, if they were like, oh, he’s going to, if you come back, like, he’s going to like destroy you and you’re going to, it’s not going to be good for you, she’d be like, okay, I’m not interested in that. No, like they had made the covenant people of Israel very appealing to her in some shape or form, and they had made Yahweh appealing to her in some way, shape or form. They had talked to her. They probably were essentially witnessing to her. And what does she want? Well, she wants a part of that. Listen, when you really see God for who he is, that is very appealing. And what does Paul talk about? You know, in 2 Corinthians, people have the blinders, they can’t see the Son, Jesus. Like God is there. He’s revealed himself through his Son, Jesus. The truth is right before them. And do people see? Like sometimes we’re like, you know, to unsaved people, it’s like, wow, it’s so obvious, how do you not see this? I mean, have you ever thought that to yourself? It was because there’s blinders. They are blinded. So they can’t see the spiritual reality right in front of them. But when they see it, what happens? They want it. They want that. Who God is in his fullness, how he reveals himself through his Son Jesus, that is very appealing. What an amazing and gracious God to do that for us through his Son Jesus.
Hesed in Action
Ruth displayed hesed better than just about any Old Testament person. Think about that. Let’s not let the foreigner outdo us, right? Like, let’s be like Ruth, the foreigner who was brought into God’s covenant and displayed it and displayed it and displayed it and displayed it. She was walking in hesed. And from a worldly point of view, from a worldly point of view, she probably has every reason to despise and spurn Yahweh, to turn away from him, to reject him. Like all these things have gone wrong in her life. But what does she do? She trusts. She trusts. That takes a lot of faith, but she trusts. Hesed, this hesed, this covenantal, faithful love, trusts. So think of the actions of Ruth. She takes care of the widow Naomi, both in the foreign land and here. But she also, once she gets to Israel, what does she do? She listens to the advice of Naomi. She’s not like, okay, boomer, you can move on, right, right? No, she’s very much interested in the wisdom and counsel that the older have to give her. And we could learn something from that. True? Does our culture and society have a respect and honor for the elderly? No. Like what do we end up doing when people get too old and they become too old? They become a convenience. We stick them in a nursing home, right? Maybe we visit them once a month. I mean, that’s not showing honor. But what is Ruth? She’s showing honor. She’s showing respect. And so what does she do? She takes care of Naomi and provides for her. And she also listens to the advice of Naomi. Second, we can see hesed in the person of Boaz. One, we see it in his actions. What does he say? Look at Ruth chapter 2, verse 8. He says, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women.” So we see the hesed, like he knows like, oh, I know I have to follow the law. And I can’t glean all the way to the edges, and if anything, you know, falls off the wagon I got to leave it there for poor people. But what is he? He’s like, you know, he’s like stay here because I’ll make sure you’re taken care of, and then what do we see? Like he provides an overabundance of the harvest for her. If you remember we added it up, and if she made it all the way through the harvest, which she did, she would have enough to last two-thirds of a year all the way up to a year. Why? Not because she was like working so hard, but because Boaz was helping her out and being so gracious to her. Something that was more than the law requires, and that’s something that hesed does. Like, it’s not about meeting the minimum. It’s not about doing the bare minimum. It’s going beyond. And if you think about it, like, that’s what the Lord does for us. Does he just do the bare minimum? Like, praise the Lord, no. Like, he goes way, way, way, way beyond. Showers us over and over with his mercies. His mercies are new, what, every month, every year? No, every day. His mercies are new every day. So, you know, the spout of the Lord that’s flowing out, like he doesn’t turn it off. He’s very generous. He’s very gracious. So we see it in how he tells her, hey, only glean in this field. Look what he says to her in verse 11. Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.” So he knows, I mean they’re having this conversation. He’s already aware of her history. He’s like, hey, “The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” Like people are realizing like who Ruth is, but they’re also realizing like who Ruth’s people are and who Ruth’s God is. Notice again in the verse we just read. What does he say? “A full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” Is Ruth looking for cheap and free handouts? Not from Boaz and not from the Lord. What does she want? She wants to enjoy the covenant blessings. She wants to be under his wings. And then Naomi says, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead.” Again, that word kindness, here’s the second use of it appearing, this word hesed, and most versions use it. “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness, whose hesed has not forsaken the living or the dead.” So Naomi recognizes. So Naomi recognizes it first. She recognizes it in Ruth, right? Back in chapter 1, she’s recognizing Boaz also has hesed. And she’s commending him for that. Now, sometimes people read that and they’re like, well, is the hesed there being actually, is it the kindness of Yahweh, or is it the kindness of Boaz? Linguistically, the support there is for Boaz. So it’s referring to Boaz there. And then notice how Boaz talks to Ruth. So she goes to the threshing floor. She listens to the advice of Naomi, goes to the threshing floor. We’re in chapter 3. And so she’s laying at his feet, verse 9. He wakes up and he’s like, who are you? And she answered, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.” And he said, “May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter. You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich.” Again, this is the use of the word hesed, the last kindness, the last hesed greater than the first. Right? And what’s the first? Well, it’s probably quite a few things because one, he recognizes and acknowledges what she’s sacrificed to come back to Israel. She’s left her mom and dad, which is there any verse in the New Testament about talking about putting Jesus before mother and father? Right? You guys awake today? Okay. I mean, you hear echoes of the covenant faithfulness, not just in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament. So Ruth has to make a decision. What is she doing? Oh, do I want my earthly mother and father? Or do I want the covenant God of the universe? She has to make a choice just like every single one of us. What does she choose? She chooses Yahweh. So here he’s like, the last kindness greater than the first. What’s the first kindness? Well, everything that she’s done so far, that she’s shown really primarily to Naomi. And then he says this is also hesed. So notice what he does here. He does four things. One, in verse 10 he blesses her, “May you be blessed by the Lord.” And then he commends her. Why does he commend her? And why is he saying that’s a great kindness? Because she still has Naomi in mind. She’s doing this in large part for the benefit of Naomi. I mean think about that, because what does he say, “You have not gone after young men.” We don’t know the age of Boaz. We don’t know the age of Ruth. We know that Naomi is old enough that the timing wouldn’t work out and she couldn’t have a kid to try to provide for Ruth. But the fact that he says you haven’t gone after young men, what would that indicate? He’s a little bit older and she hasn’t been concerned about poor, rich, you know, the whole thing that she was pursuing is what honors the Lord the most and how can I bless others in the way that I live. What great questions to ask.
Hesed in the Community
Let’s look at it in Naomi’s life. Remember in the very beginning again, a lot of people think the book is about Ruth, a lot of people think the book is about Boaz, it’s really about Naomi. Ultimately, it’s about Jesus and pointing to the need for everyone to have a Redeemer. In one sense, he’s in the foreground, but he’s also in the background. But if we talk about characters mentioned in the story, it’s really Naomi. She’s receiving this hesed, and what’s her response? Now initially, if you remember, what did she change her name to? What does that mean? Yeah, bitter, right? Okay, so you ladies that are pregnant, you don’t have to go the Mara route, right? You got to choose your name, Naomi, Ruth, that’d be awesome. But she changes her name, I mean, you got to be in a bad way if you change your name. But what do the Scriptures keep referring to her as? They’re like, nope, we’re not accepting that name change. You’re still Naomi. You’re still Naomi. So but what happens? That hesed starts to work on Naomi and it ends up changing Naomi. And my guess is, it doesn’t say, but my guess is she goes back to her original name, like she realizes the Lord. She realizes that. So she seeks a way to help Ruth. Like it’s a beautiful picture, brothers and sisters. Naomi is looking out for Ruth, but Ruth is looking out for Naomi. You talk about like a mutual love one another. Very beautiful picture. Ruth greatly, greatly, greatly loves Naomi. And Naomi greatly, greatly, greatly loves Ruth. So she seeks a way to help Ruth. She gives her the advice, hey, he’s one of our kinsman-redeemers. Here’s what you need to do. She’s wanting to look out for Ruth. But I want to bring up one more larger picture here. When we talk about hesed, there’s also a fourth, I’d say, concept or term, and that’s the community. There’s hesed in the community. Do we get the picture that Ruth is rejected by the community? No. If anything, we get the picture that she’s accepted by the community. Let’s, we’re going to jump ahead to chapter 4, and verse 13: “So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.’” I mean, notice they realize what a huge benefit that Ruth is to Naomi and to the family and to the community at large. Who is more to you? Your daughter-in-law is more to you than seven sons. And that’s pretty big. Those of you who are daughters-in-law, right? That’s pretty big. More value to you than seven sons. So the community comes together, the baby’s born, and what? Are they upset? No, they’re rejoicing. Like look at the amazing thing that God has done. The community shows hesed. The covenant family gathers around and rejoices. Hey, you know what? We’re going to be having some babies born this year. We should be doing the same thing. The covenant family gathering together and rejoicing. True? True, yeah. So the community acts with hesed in affirming this marriage and affirming the progeny from the marriage. So we could go on and on, right? Ruth refuses to abandon Naomi. Boaz goes beyond his obligation to show kindness. Naomi seeks a way to help Ruth. Ruth encourages Boaz to marry her and to become her redeemer, but in part for the benefit of Naomi. Boaz is extending care to Ruth and Naomi. Boaz goes beyond all that and marries Ruth. So this takes place in the period of what time in Israel’s history? The judges. And how does the book of Judges end? The last verse of Judges, chapter 21, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” But here, in one little slice of Israel, you have a proper community acting according to God’s law and God’s will. And what happens? People flourish. Was it the whole community initially? We’re not sure. But Ruth and Naomi and Boaz helped that concept flourish. And what do we see? Well, we see this whole chain of hesed, hesed after hesed after hesed. And what does it do? It brings about the restoration of a family. It brings about the redemption of a young lady. It brings the blessing of a new family. It brings blessings on the whole community. And ultimately, it leads to the birth of King David, which ultimately leads to the birth of Jesus. Hesed abounds.
Contrast: Ordinary and Hesed
Well, let’s do some comparison and contrast just for a minute. What does hesed look like in his people? Let’s contrast Ruth and Orpah, the other daughter-in-law. Let’s contrast Boaz versus the other landowners. Let’s contrast Boaz versus the kinsman-redeemer. The other daughter-in-law in chapter 1. Did she do anything wrong? No, she didn’t. She does the ordinary, she does the expected. So there’s nothing wrong with the way she acts, but it’s not hesed. She’s just going along. But it’s not hesed. She goes back to her home, her people, her decision. But it’s not hesed. Think about the other kinsman-redeemer. What does he do? He does the ordinary. He looks out for his own interests. In fact, it’s likely that his name is not mentioned because the writer of Ruth was just like, dude, you didn’t even do your job. Really? I mean, God had his plan, but he used this other redeemer, used an excuse to get out of it. So he didn’t even get the privilege of having his name put into the Scripture. He does the ordinary. He’s the goel who should have stepped up. Does he? No. And then what about Ruth? Well, we see Ruth, right, in contrast and comparison to Orpah. We know what she did. What about Boaz in regards to the other landowners? Like he steps up big time and he’s literally being like, hey, make sure she has enough, make sure she gets the water to drink. You better not mess with her, young men. Like he’s providing for her. And if you think about just Boaz, he’s willing to sacrifice his own means and way of life for two impoverished widows. Hesed is also according to God’s ways. Like if you think about it, Ruth followed the custom and law in the field while gleaning. She didn’t try to get any more than she knew was okay for her. She asked permission to be there. She’s following what God lays out. Hesed is according to God’s ways. She doesn’t try to seduce Boaz on the threshing floor to enhance her plan of getting what she wanted. No, nothing in the text indicates they were impure. In fact, the wording suggests the exact opposite. She doesn’t try to circumvent the other relative.
Yahweh’s Hesed
But there’s one more thing and there’s a bigger picture that I want to make sure we don’t miss. We see Yahweh throughout this whole story. We see God’s fingerprints all over it. So while he appears in one sense to be in the background, the writer makes clear that God himself is practicing hesed throughout the story. Even at the very beginning, verse 6 of chapter 1, why does Naomi want to return? It says she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food, literally bread. So he visits his people. The famine ends. There’s safe travel back to Bethlehem. He leads Ruth to Boaz’s field. There’s this situation with the goel, the Lord knew what was going to go on there. He planned the whole thing. And Ruth ends up with Boaz. Ultimately, Yahweh redeems a foreigner who is outside the covenant. And if we take it one step, and we’ll look at it more in the coming weeks, but we take it one step further. We see the fullness of this in Jesus Christ himself, the only person ever truly to be loyal to the Lord and to his neighbor in every aspect of life in every single way. What happens? He’s treated as the covenant breaker and cursed for sin so that we, the real covenant breakers, [audio unclear] about our hesed. Hopefully as we’ve been looking at it through this, you know, short series within a series, it’s made you think about how you treat others and how you maybe have hesed or don’t. Listen, we should give hesed to others whether they give it back or not. I mean it’s neighbor love. Very similar with the concept, we won’t look at it, but the parable of the good Samaritan. Love your neighbor. Who is your neighbor? The people that the Lord brings into your path ultimately. But it’s not earned. Hesed is not earned. People don’t have to earn the hesed. And maybe you could say when we get to the New Testament, maybe a similar term might be agape. I probably would argue a little bit against that because there’s different words for love in the Greek, and in different contexts, those words are used, those different words for love are used in different contexts to actually mean different types of love. So we generally talk about agape being God’s love and that’s generally the case, but not always. So the concept of hesed, what do we see when it comes to the New Testament? The word that if you look back that you normally see if we try to say, well, what is that one word? It’d actually be mercy. So the Jews at the time were beginning to lose the ability to read their Hebrew after Jesus’ time, so they translated the Old Testament into Greek. That was the common language, the Koine language at the time. So they translated it into Greek so they would still have access to it, which was a huge gift to us today because word studies, we can be like, oh, well, hesed is here in the Hebrew. What did they decide to use in the Greek Old Testament? And that word that they use, at least in this particular case with the word hesed, is the word that is normally translated mercy in the New Testament, mercy. So if you wanted more of a correlation, it’d probably be that word mercy. And unfortunately we use mercy in such almost sometimes a watered-down way, it kind of loses the full emphasis. So I’ll continue to use hesed as we’re talking in the book of Ruth and today. But the point is, people shouldn’t have to earn your hesed. It’s freely given. Even more so with God’s children, we should show it to one another without hesitation. We should be loyal. We should be faithful. We should have a steadfastness about us towards one another.
Hesed Requires a Response
Think about it as well. Hesed requires a response. Wherever God displays his hesed love, it’s a call for us to respond. Sometimes in repentance, sometimes in faith, sometimes in adoration, but a response is required. Ruth saw the hesed displayed and she wanted to have it herself. She saw it displayed by God and she wanted it for herself. So what was her response? Well initially it would have been repentance, and what does she do? She forsakes the old ways. Forsakes it. I mean literally leaves her mom and dad, leaves everything she knows to go to a foreign land. So she forsakes all to be a part of the covenant. And isn’t that really what the Lord requires of us if we want to be a part of the covenant? We have to lay it all aside. We have to repent. And we have to turn in trust. What kind of trust did it take Ruth to leave? A lot. A great trust. Well, what does the Lord ask for us? He wants us to trust him, repent, and put our faith in him. The word trust, that encapsulates this idea. Trust in the Lord, right? Don’t trust in horses, don’t trust in chariots. What do we trust in? The name of the Lord our God. So, trust, a response is required. And also, I would say, adoration. Even hearing a story about Ruth, I mean, we should just be amazed at God’s goodness and his hesed towards Ruth, towards Boaz, towards Naomi, towards the covenant community back then. But also, it extends to us. How does the Lord use that? For King David, right? And the lineage. In the book of Ruth, that the way is open even for those outside Israel. And what do we see Jesus do? The message, and it took the Jews a while to get it in Acts. And they’re like, you know, about a third of the way into Acts, like, but it was there. You can see it all along. God wanted to offer salvation to all. That’s why he sends prophets even to foreign countries. Jonah with Nineveh, was he just like, oh, let’s just pick on the Assyrians today. Let’s see if what they can do is I’d like to wipe out like a 100,000 of them. No. He’s really calling them to repentance. And we are to share the gospel, to offer them, through Jesus Christ, by the power of the Spirit, eternal life. That’s love. So hesed requires a response.
He Abounds in Steadfast Love
A couple, I guess, last points I want to make. What’s being emphasized with this, we’ll [audio unclear] It’s kind of misappropriated. There’s this misconception like in the Old Testament, God’s all about wrath, [audio unclear] that’s God’s wrath on display. But other [audio unclear] But where does the iniquity get poured out on, and who does it get poured out on? Ultimately on Jesus. Why? So that the iniquity doesn’t have to be poured out on anyone. If you trust, if you repent, the iniquity is not poured out on you. So even where it’s talking about visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, Jesus took the iniquity. He took it. So it doesn’t have to be poured out. And this is what it gives us. So we don’t want to turn away from that. What do we want to do? We want to receive that. We need to receive truths like this and rejoice in it and praise the Lord for it and let it fill our own lives and then display it to others. Two, notice this. The Lord doesn’t just have hesed. Notice what it says back in Exodus 34, verse 6. You can just listen to it. It says, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” So he doesn’t just have hesed, he abounds in it. So your God and my God, Yahweh himself, he abounds in the hesed love. You need to let that sink in. Let that sink in. Meditate on it and fully take it in. You have a God who loves you, and the best way he could put that into words was to send his Son to lay down his life for you. That’s love. And then three, this hesed love of God, it never ends. It keeps going and going and going. Listen to Lamentations chapter 3, 22 and 23. You’ve probably heard it before. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” So this steadfast love, this hesed of the Lord never ends. It never ceases. All right, are you going to run out? Do you have an infinite supply of hesed? No, you don’t. And you know, you’re going to run out of it and then the Spirit’s going to fill you up and then you’re going to run out and then you’re going to be filled up by the Spirit. But the Lord, he’s got an endless supply. So wherever you’re at or whatever you’re dealing with, like the Lord has enough hesed to deal with whatever you’re going through. And even when his people, that would be us, sin against him and face the consequences of their sin, which we do, listen, we can still appeal to God’s hesed love. We don’t have to have everything perfectly in order because we never will. And if you’re walking in unfaithfulness, what does 2 Timothy say, he is faithful even when we’re unfaithful. So he doesn’t turn his back on his own children. He is faithful. He is faithful to the covenant that he’s made with you. Think about Lamentations. It’s written in the midst of the destruction of Jerusalem. So you know Jerusalem is being destroyed. What is, that’s why it’s called Lamentations. It’s a lament over the destruction of the southern kingdom. So, surrounded by the evidence of the Lord’s faithfulness to judge wickedness, rebellion, and sin, what does Jeremiah do who wrote Lamentations? He casts himself on the unchanging character of God. There’s destruction, everything horrible going on. What does Jeremiah do? He reminds himself of the steadfast love of the Lord. That’s what he’s holding to. That’s what he’s clinging to, leaning on. He’s saying the hesed of the Lord never ceases. That’s what he ends up writing. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. His whole kingdom is being destroyed and Jeremiah is clinging still to the promises of God. That’s a great faith, but how can he show that faith? Because he’s received the hesed. He’s seen it in action. He’s received it. He’s experienced it. So what is his response? Yes, Lord, I will keep trusting. I’ll keep trusting. It looks horrible all about us and I’m going to keep trusting. And did the Lord just snap his fingers and solve everything for Israel right then? No. It got worse. But the Lord was faithful. And the Lord now is faithful. And the Lord will continue to be faithful to us. That’s his commitment. So we can take confidence that this same Lord is still abounding in hesed, and he showers it on his people. Let’s pray.
Closing Prayer
Yahweh, we do thank you for the hesed love that you have shown and given to us. You are very, very, very faithful. You are abounding in faithfulness. You are abounding in steadfast love. And we thank you for your Son Jesus who took the iniquity reserved for us upon himself, that he paid the price. We thank you, Lord, that you show this hesed to us daily. You renew us daily. Your mercies never end. So Father, help us to be faithful like Ruth, like Boaz, like Naomi, to be faithful to the covenant, to you first and foremost, and then faithful to display that to others. May our love abound more and more because of your love for us. Amen.