Do you know the pain of failure -- with children, with a marriage, with a career, or with your walk of faith? More than once in my life I have heard the haunting lyrics of a sixties pop song, "I've had beautiful beginnings, but beautiful beginnings are all I've had."

To have had beautiful beginnings and painful endings?! To have been like Israel?! To begin with promise and joyful expectation and then to face desolating failure?! Do you know the feeling?

I have a friend who manages a retail store at a local shopping mall. A year ago the shopping center had extensive renovation and the crowds flocked to his store. Though he was new in the business my friend's store was a huge success and he set all kinds of company sales records. But after the Christmas crowds diminished, local gangs moved in. Then there was a murder at the mall. As a result of local fears about more gang violence the shopping crowds have stayed small at the mall. Some of the store owners recently speculated that it would simply take another murder to ruin them all. And then there was another murder. In one year my friend has gone from being a phenomenal success to being a dismal failure.

Whether it's in your family, or in your career, or even in your faith, I would guess most of you also know what it is to have begun well and then to have had things go wrong. I will not tell you that what I am about to say will make the problems melt away, but you have to listen to me: God can use insignificant failures for His purposes. Nothing is more true of Him. You may have given up on yourself, but as long as the God of Israel lives, so do His purposes. He has not given up on you. If He had no purpose for you, you would not be here with the ability to learn from His Word today. If you are here it is because He is preparing you for His purposes tomorrow. I do not know what they will be, but I do know this: in a new day is new hope. In new days there will be new responsibilities, and new opportunities to serve Him -- possibly, to address past failures. But even if past failures cannot be addressed we are able to move on from those negative experiences with greater wisdom for positive contributions to the people and purposes God will yet put in our lives. Our God encourages us in this passage by showing He uses earth's failures for heaven's purposes.

God underscores His ability to use that which may even be despicable to itself by showing that He can even use those whose shame is their own fault -- draping the despicable with his purposes.

II. God covers the unfaithful with unfailing love.

The promise to the people of Israel is all the more remarkable when you realize that their plight is a result of their own sin. Why are they being cut down? Because of their own rebellion. The failure to live up to past glory and to future potential is not somebody else's fault. Unlike my store manager friend at the shopping mall, no one else is to blame. They are. Yet God promises to bring from this unfaithful people a branch who is Christ the Lord. From their failure will come the Savior who will cover their sin. God promises to cover a faithless people with unfailing love.