Great is Thy Faithfulness

BBC opening announcement

BBC Radio 4. Sunday Worship this morning marks the beginning of this year’s “Virtually Keswick” Convention. The leaders are Anna Putt and John Taylor who introduces the service as the first hymn begins

MUSIC: Rejoice the Lord is King: from album “Longing” (Track 3, 2019)

Welcome and Introduction to Service: John & Anna (over music

John :Good morning and a warm welcome to the Keswick Convention. 

Anna: … we have both loved being involved in the Keswick Convention for a while now, as team members and more recently asTrustees. 

John: The Keswick Convention was established in 1875, and this year for the first time since the second world war there won’t be a Keswick convention actually in Keswick. But the convention isn’t cancelled, we moved online and Virtually Keswick Convention kicks off tomorrow morning,.

Anna: For Keswick regulars of course it won’t feel the same, it’s one week instead of three, we’re engaging via a screen, instead of standing shoulder to shoulder in the tent with over a thousand others, but it’sgreat that we can still delight in hearing God’s word from the bible, longing to become like God’s Son and still giving ourselves to God’s mission in the world.

John: In light of the events of 2020 our theme, for this service and Virtually Keswick is hope – chosen because of this time of great uncertainty. Whatever’s going on in the world, and there’s plenty, there’s unique hope to be found in Jesus Christ.

Let us begin in prayer;

As our New Testament reading from 1 Peter says later; ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’

Father God we do indeed Praise you oh Lord. We praise you for your great mercies to us, mercies that are new each and every morning. We praise you that in your great mercy you have given us new life, you have made us new, washed us clean and brought us into a living hope. Hope that is alive, that never spoils, fades or perishes, hope for the future, for a life lived in eternity with you and a hope for each day, of life lived in unity with you. Thank you, oh Lord for the resurrection of your son, our saviour Jesus Christ, through whom all this has been made possible. Amen

Most of Our music this morning has been taken from recordings of previous years sung at the Keswick Convention by the band EMU. EMU is a collaborative music ministry, originally from Australia but also working in the UK... They bring us our next hymn as we continue in praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation..

Hymn - Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (special recording made available to the BBC) Words: Joachim Neander, Trans: Catherine Winkworth, Music: Lobe den Herren

Arrangement © 2018 Alanna Glover,CCLI No: 7125857

Introduction to New Testament reading:

Our first reading is from a letter written by one of Jesus’ closest followers, Peter. These opening words from the letter state that the Christian hope isn’t like anything else. Christian, hope is no mere aspiration because it’s anchored in the historical reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Kathryn Hope, a local from Keswick, will bring our first reading from the first letter of Peter Chapter 1, starting to read from Verse 3.

Reading: New Testament 1 Peter 1:3-9

Introduction to Hymn: Anna

 The great hope of the Bible is that even in the midst of brokenness we can indeed have joy. That is what our next song is about, it might well be new to many but sings of the hope we can have even in the midst of hurt and difficulty.. Because we know that Jesus has overcome we can take heart.

Take Heart - (special recording made available to the BBC)

© 2019 Liv Chapman and Michael Morrow

CCLI Song No. 7145086

Introduction to testimony: John

What wonderful words: “waiting one, take heart”! 

We’re going to hear now from Duncan Forbes, a Pastor from London as he shares a bit of his experience as someone waiting in hope.

Testimony: Duncan Forbes Urban Ministries

Introduction to Hymn: Anna

As Duncan has spoken about, one of the great aspects of the Christian hope is the hope of heaven, in Revelation 21 John describes a place where everything broken will be made new, where God will lovingly wipe away every tear from every eye of each of his children. While now we may see things we had hoped for go unfulfilled or perish, and we may have to suffer all kinds of trials. Yet, the Lord is still King, as our reading from Lamentations will say his compassions will never fail, he is faithful and his mercies are new every morning.

Hymn - Great is thy faithfulness

Writer - Thomas O Chisholm

©1951 Hope Publishing Co. Admin by Copycare

(Track 10, The Best of Keswick Praise)

Lord your word, is living, it is enduring, it is truth, it is light. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear, and hearts that willingly respond. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen

Reading: Lamentations (ESV) 3:17-24

Our preacher is the Rev’d Doctor Chris Wright, International Ministries Director with Langham Partnership, an organisation that’s committed to helping the global church by enabling pastors from the majority world to train.

Sermon: Chris Wright

“Great is thy faithfulness,’ – it’s a favourite hymn for many of us, I’m sure. “Great is thy faithfulness; morning by morning new mercies I see…”

Yet, many of us who love the hymn probably have no idea where the familiar lines come from - which is right in the middle of the darkest book in the Bible - the book of Lamentations.

And that book comes out of the darkest moment in the story of Israel in the Old Testament. It was about 600 years before Christ, and the tiny state of Judah had rebelled against the mighty empire of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had besieged Jerusalem, and the city had held out for 18 months – a terrifying lockdown that led to starvation and disease and death. Finally, the walls were breached, the enemy soldiers poured in, ravaging, raping, slaughtering old and young, women and children, in an orgy of bloodshed and destruction that left the whole city a burning heap of rubble.

And the poet of this book of Lamentations describes that moment of national trauma in gut-wrenching horror. He pours out the city’s lament and grief again and again – until he reaches a climax in our the middle of Chapter 3 with these words “all my hope from the Lord has perished.”

Our theme at this year’s Virtually Keswick is that great biblical word, Hope. And yet here in the Bible itself, is a moment of hope perishing. A moment when everything seemed utterly bleak, when there was nothing but bitterness and exhaustion, when life itself had become literally hope-less. What then?

What happens next in our text is a total surprise. He says “But this I call to mind, and therefore I do have hope.” It’s a deliberate act of the will. He’s forcing himself to remember something. And as he does so, he shifts, painfully slowly but deliberately from hope

perishing to hope remembering. Which is amazing, since just a few verses earlier he told us “I have forgotten what happiness is.” Well, he may have forgotten past happiness, but now he’s remembering hope. How?

What is - “this” - that he calls to mind? What is it that gives him hope when he thought he had no hope?

He gives us his answer in those rightly famous words of Lamentations Chapter 3:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

The city of Jerusalem may have ceased to exist, for the present at least, but God’s love? that had not ceased. King Solomon’s temple and royal palace had been obliterated, but God’s mercies? they had not come to an end. Israel the people of God, they had been faithless for centuries and had finally fallen under God’s judgment. But the faithfulness of God to his own promises? that was as great and eternal as ever.

But, How do you know all this? We want to ask. What grounds do you have for coming out with statements like that? Aren’t they a bit, well, optimistic to be honest, in the circumstances? Aren’t you just sinking into some pretty wishful thinking - “Oh I really hope that God will help us. I hope we’ll all get through this awful time together, somehow.” Is that all there is to this so-called ‘hope’.

Well no, of course not. It’s that word, “remember” that is the key. The writer knew the story of his own people. He remembers those great acts of God in the history of Israel: how God had promised Abraham that through him and his people, all nations on earth would be blessed ; how God had rescued the Israelites out of oppression and injustice in Egypt; how God had led and fed them through the wilderness and brought them into their land; how God had repeatedly defended and delivered them from past enemies. All that was there in the record, facts that had been witnessed and remembered and passed down through the generations. It’s all there, as the evidence of God’s love, as the proof of God’s faithfulness.

If this God, the God they know as the one and only living God - if this God himself has not “ended”, then neither have his love, mercy and faithfulness.

And so, he says, when I remember these great facts, I have hope, I have complete confidence that God will deliver – even if we have to wait.

And what about us? Well, none of us are going through anything like what Jerusalem suffered at the hands of Babylon. But some of us are coping with bereavement, loss of employment, with massive anxiety and stress, and very little earthly help, very little to give us hope.

Lamentations drew hope from what God had actually done in their history, and what that proved about God’s love and faithfulness. And our hope must rest on the same foundation – what God has done. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross bearing our sin, and was raised again from the dead as the guarantee of our resurrection to new life in the new creation. Those are facts of history – the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they are the solid ground for faith and hope.

And that’s why Peter says exactly that. “In his great mercy God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.

Our hope then, is not just wishful thinking, or ‘blind faith’. It is the sure and certain knowledge that the God who has kept his promise in the past is the God we can trust for all the future. God’s love and mercies never end. “Great is thy faithfulness!” And in that eternal truth lies our eternal hope.

Cathy Burton, SONGS OF HEALING

© 2009 Cathy Burton, Thankyou Music & David Gate, Trinity Publishing – recording made available to the BBC by the Keswick Convention.

Anna: That song was by Cathy Burton, a regular at Keswick Unconventional, our art-stream at the convention. We have a faithful God and so we have an eternal hope.

Lord, thank you for your great compassion for your people, compassions that never fail and are new each and every day. Help us to see your mercies in each day that you give us, help us to look for your gifts to us, turn to you and be thankful. May we be overflowing with thankfulness as you are in your mercies. Even if we have to wait to see bigger works of your hand or if you allow things to happen (choose to act) in ways we would not want please give us eyes to see you at work in the big and small things of our daily lives. Thank you for the opportunity that lockdown life has given us to slow down and contemplate what really matters. Thank you for the opportunities to see spring in our gardens and hear the birds singing in the trees, for creation singing praises to you, may we too cry out in rejoicing, no matter what our circumstances.

Cathy Burton, SONGS OF HEALING

Lord, for many of us 2020 has not been the year that we had expected or planned. For some, this has been just a strange year,for most, it has been a difficult year at times, and for too many it has been a year in which we’ve felt like our hope is perishing. Lord we have wrestled with fear and anxiety, we have been confronted by our powerlessness and mortality, we have been troubled by surrounding prejudice and inequality, we have mourned the loss of routine, the loss of financial security, the loss of face to face relationships and the loss of loved ones. This year it has been clearer to us than ever that we live in a world that is not as it ought to be, and we cry out to you in faith:

Cathy Burton, SONGS OF HEALING

We also confess to you that we aren't’ as we ought to be. At times we have been selfish, we have been impatient, we have been thankless, we have been faithless. We confess that we have not loved you and served you and obeyed you as we ought, and we haven’t loved our neighbour as ourselves, and for this we are truly sorry. 

Lord, because of your great love for us we are not consumed, because you loved us so much that you sent your son, our Lord Jesus Christ to die in our place, we can be assured of forgiveness. Thank you that we can have hope, sure and certain, as we stand before your throne, knowing that we stand not on our own merit but by your great mercy and deliverance.

John - So we pray together using the words your son taught us;

The Lord’s Prayer

As Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations, he had been deprived of peace, his soul was downcast within him, his hope was perishing. But what was it that restored his hope? As Chris has explained it was a deliberate act of the will, a recalling, remembering with sure and certain knowledge that the God who has kept his promise in the past is the God we can trust for all the future. God’s love and mercies never end, he is indeed faithful.

Rejoice (Come and stand before your maker) (Stuart Townend)
Stuart Townend and Dustin Kensrue Copyright © 2013 We Are Younger We Are Faster Music (ASCAP) / Dead Bird Theology (ASCAP) / It's All About Jesus Music (ASCAP) (admin by Music Services) / Modern Hymnal Publishing (ASCAP) / Townend Songs (PRS) (admin by CapitolCMGPublishing.com, excluding Europe, admin by Song Solutions copycare www.songsolutions.org. - recording made available to the BBC by the Keswick Convention.