Help Me God, I'm Sad Series

8-25-13 (Revised 10-16-2022)

HELP ME GOD, I'M SAD!

Lamentations 3:19-58

This morning, we are going to be taking a look at the book of Lamentations which has the sad lamentings of the prophet Jeremiah. Have you ever had to pray, “Help me God, I'm sad”?

The actress, Brooke Shields, has been known for her beauty. One may not think that she has had to deal with sadness just like everyone else, so this quote from her may surprise you: “My father's death, my move, and my frightening and difficult delivery created a tremendous amount of stress, pain, and sadness for me. I was practically devastated beyond recovery.”

Sadness almost always accompanies loss. We all feel sad sometimes. When we say goodbye to a loved one, we usually feel sad. The sadness is even deeper if a close relationship has ended or a loved one has died.

But sadness is a normal emotion that actually can make life more interesting because much of art and poetry is inspired by sadness and melancholy. And sadness can actually help us appreciate happiness. If and when our mood eventually changes from sadness toward happiness, the sense of contrast adds to the enjoyment of the mood.

Experts say that if you are sad, you should allow yourself to be sad. If you force those feelings underground, they can do more damage over time.

But rather than staying sad, one should try to discover the cause of the sadness, or at least try to understand the factors involved. Because sadness can be an overwhelming feeling that drags us down into despair. Therefore it is wise to look for help, help from God.

The scripture that deals with sadness the most, and in the most agonizing way, is the book of Lamentations written by the prophet Jeremiah.

It is called “Lamentations” after the word “lament,” which means to cry. Jeremiah was crying, he was lamenting, because his country had just been destroyed by a foreign nation.

There is an oil painting done by Rembrandt in the year 1630 titled, “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.” In the background you see people running from a city that is in flames.

With Jeremiah being an eyewitness to the fall of Jerusalem, in Lamentations 1:16 he says, “For these things I weep; My eye, my eye overflows with water.”

This book does tell us about God’s faithfulness, but it doesn’t gloss over the evil and suffering that we have to endure here on earth.

Lamentations describes just about every evil that people have ever had to endure: war and destruction, rape and pillaging, human trafficking, starvation, and even cannibalism … all of these are described and lamented.

• Chapter 1 describes the destruction of city of Jerusalem.

• Chapter 2 explains God’s righteous judgment against Judah.

• In Chapter 3 Jeremiah expresses his own personal suffering.

• Chapter 4 focuses on the specific suffering of the Jerusalem’s citizens.

• Chapter 5 gives a plea for God’s mercy.

The book of Lamentations is read in the synagogues each year

on the 9th of Ab (in July or August on the Roman calendar) a Jewish national holiday that commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonians in 587-586 B.C.

The book is actually a series of five dirges (funeral poems). Hebrew poetry is different from most western poetry which tends to rhyme at the end of lines. Hebrew poetry used alliteration at the beginning of each line.

If you look at the book as literature you see something interesting. The poems are divided by the five chapters. Four of the five poems consist of 22 verses each, using the Hebrew acrostic style.

If you could read it in Hebrew, you would see that each verse starts with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet –aleph, beth, gimel … and so on.

This is true for all but chapter three, the central poem. Chapter three is three times as long – 66 verses – and uses triple acrostics (each letter is used three times in succession). And 1/3 of the way through it, you find the PIVOTAL verse of Lamentations.

To see the significance of this verse, which is at the center of the book, we’ll start with Lamentations 3:19-20. “Remember my affliction and roaming, The wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers And sinks within me.”

It sounds as if he is saying, “God help me, I'm sad, really sad!” Then in verse 21, Jeremiah suddenly changes direction. He says: “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.”

This is the “hinge” of the book, where Jeremiah’s thoughts take a sudden turn --- from SADNESS to HOPE.

We will focus on these verses in the middle of Lamentations. Because this is the central message of Lamentations: No matter how bad life gets, God can give us HOPE in the middle of deep sadness.