Learning From Lament Series

A. One Sunday, a minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his sermon, so as he stood before the congregation, he placed four worms into four separate jars.

1. He explained he was putting the first worm into a jar with alcohol, the second worm into a jar filled with cigarette smoke, the third worm into a jar with chocolate syrup, and the fourth worm into a jar with good clean soil.

2. The minister continued with his sermon, saying that at the end of the sermon, they would take note of how the worms were doing.

3. At the conclusion of the sermon, the minister reported the following results: The first worm in alcohol was dead. The second worm in cigarette smoke was dead. The third worm in chocolate syrup was also dead. But the fourth worm in good clean soil was alive and well.

4. The Minister then asked the congregation, “What can you learn from this demonstration?”

5. A little old man in the back quickly raised his hand and said, “What we learn from this demonstration is that as long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!”

6. I doubt that that was the lesson that the minister had hoped the people would learn from his little demonstration, but I hope I will be more successful than that preacher was in helping us learn some lessons today.

B. Today, as we continue our series “Good Grief: Expressing Grief, Finding Grace,” we want to turn our attention to the lessons we can learn from lament.

1. We have spent the last five weeks learning how to lament as we used the Psalms to learn the 4 steps of the lament – turning, complaining, asking and trusting.

2. Learning this process of lamenting can bring us great help and blessing, but there is another way that the lamenting process can help us.

3. The lamenting process also allows us to learn the lessons that God wants to teach us through our pain and suffering.

4. C.S. Lewis’ well-known statement is true: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

5. But in order for us to learn these lessons, we must be willing to listen.

C. Today, I want us to do a brief survey of the book of Lamentations.

1. As we do this brief survey of Lamentations, we will notice the lessons that God wanted His people to learn through the crisis they were experiencing when Lamentations was written.

2. Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah to reflect upon the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.

3. Jeremiah wanted the people of God to never forget the lessons learned from this dark moment in Israel’s history.

D. You will recall that after the reigns of Kings David and Solomon, which were the golden years of Israel, the nation was divided into two kingdoms.

1. The northern kingdom was called Israel, and the southern kingdom was called Judah.

2. The northern kingdom was led by one wicked king after another.

3. Then after ignoring repeated warnings from many prophets to turn back to God, Israel was conquered by Assyria in 722 B.C.

4. The fall and captivity of the northern kingdom should have been enough warning for the southern kingdom, but it wasn’t.

5. Over the next 150 years or so, Judah followed the same spiritually downward path of the northern kingdom that included idolatry, injustice and immorality.

6. The Babylonian Empire staged a 3 year siege of Jerusalem, the capital city of the southern kingdom, during which time the people of Jerusalem nearly starved to death.

7. Eventually, the city wall was breached and the Babylonians sacked the capital, burned the temple, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, and took everything and everyone of value back to Babylon.

E. Just like the psalms of lament that we have been studying, the book of Lamentations is a collection of poems.

1. The first two chapters introduce the theme of the book, and then Lamentations reaches its climax in chapter 3.

2. Chapters 4 and 5, bring the book to completion, but do not conclude with a “rosy picture.”

3. Instead, Lamentations ends with pain still lingering and the city in ruins.

F. One of the interesting things about chapters 1 and 2 of Lamentations is that they are written as an acrostic where the first letter of each verse begins with a successive character of the Hebrew alphabet.

1. This is designed to emphasize the comprehensive nature of Jerusalem’s destruction.

2. Jeremiah wants us to understand that the suffering of God’s people was complete from A to Z.

3. The first word of chapters 1 and 2 reflects the tone of the entire book, and in English is translated “How.”