Grieving is the natural result of us experiencing some type of loss. Well meaning people often say, “I know what you’re going through.” The problem is that it is truly impossible for any human being to know exactly what we’re going through. The reason lies in the fact that grief is a unique personal experience and differs from person to person. During these times of sorrow and grief it is completely normal and necessary for us to take some time to focus on ourselves and our pain. There’s a fine line here if the inward focus continues too long we run the risk of losing our perspective and hope. During these times questions flood our minds to which there are no easy answers. “Where is God in all of this? “Does He abandon us when we fall on bad times?” Listen to the words of the great Christian author CS Lewis following the death of his wife due to cancer: “When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be or so it seems, welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away.” How many of us can identify with Lewis’ feelings. However, if what we read in the Bible is true about God, then He is infinitely good and loving and He will never leave us high and dry. Even His discipline as unpleasant as it is works to make us into the person He desires us to be. God truly is never short on compassion. Jeremiah remembered the unfailing love of God while he was struggling with feelings of abandonment, humiliation, oppression and bitterness. What Jeremiah learns from God in his time of darkness can provide us with hope and encouragement during times of sorrow and pain in our own lives. Even when those times have come as a result of our own rebellion against God.
I. Jeremiah understood what it meant to be broken by affliction.
A. Jeremiah had suffered along with his people. He affirmed, “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.”
1. The Hebrew term used here is a word that can be literally translated as club, inferring that this was a weapon God used against Judah in judgment.
2. The actual inflicting of the wounds was done by humans, but they were simply acting on the Lord’s behalf.
3. He compared his experience to darkness, being smitten repeatedly, and the frailties of old age.
4. He likened himself to a city under siege, a dead man in eternal darkness, a prisoner, and a traveler forced to walk uncharted detours.
5. Jeremiah’s hopelessness reaches its climax when he says that he has lost his peace, or the sense of well-being that should have been the mark of a healthy relationship between God and his people.
B. Jeremiah felt as though God had built a wall around him and bound him with heavy chains to make sure there was no escape from his affliction.
1. Like a prisoner in a dungeon, his cries to God went unanswered. Like people seeking their way out of a maze, whatever direction they turned for relief was blocked.
2. One of life’s darkest moments is to experience the absence of God and have one’s prayers seem to go unanswered.
3. God is now compared to a wild beast that has pounced on his victim and is tearing him apart. Judah had been dismembered by its conquerors and was their helpless prey. God had not only cut off all avenues of escape but was actively pursuing his victim to bring about its total destruction.
4. The prophet was overwhelmed by the disaster. He had lost all inner peace. He had forgotten what prosperity meant. His confidence in Yahweh had been shaken.
II. Jeremiah was encouraged by God’s compassion.
A. Jeremiah’s prayer reflects a great deal of humility.
1. The sufferings were so deeply impressed in the heart of the victim that he found himself constantly thinking about them.
2. His “short-term memory” fixes his thoughts on his present sufferings. He seems incapable of thinking of anything else.
3. Jeremiah’s outlook on the situation is so bleak, his hope has been drained away and all his pride is gone.
4. Jeremiah is filled with remorse and a sense of total dependence upon God.
B. The very mention of the precious name of God helped Jeremiah regain a solid footing for his faith.
1. At the moment of his deepest despair and as he recalled his bitter affliction, a remarkable transition in his attitude took place as reflected upon the nature of God.
2. Suffering such as Jeremiah is experiencing is not eternal. What is eternal is the Lord’s love, his compassions, his faithfulness.
3. This suffering is like the darkness of the night; but just as the sun rises every morning, the Lord will faithfully show love and mercy to his people.
4. That any had survived the tragedy of 586 B.C. was due to the loving kindness of God. The daily provision of the necessities of life was evidence of his unceasing mercies. In the final analysis the faithfulness of God to his people was great beyond human understanding.
5. The knowledge that he possessed God, and God possessed him was the foundation of Jeremiah’s hope. He was confident that the Lord is always good to those who wait for him, which could be better translated place their trust in him.
6. Because love and compassion are the chief attributes of God, they are always fresh, ready to be proved and known again. For this reason, those who have been afflicted may always put their trust in him again, for their acceptance and restoration.
III. Jeremiah from his reflections discovers some practical tips on how to grow through adversity.
A. Jeremiah discovered that we must wait patiently on the Lord.
1. This is not to be taken as an encouragement to do nothing except sitting around licking our wounds but the kind that actively seeks God in prayer.
2. We are to patiently wait on God’s help patiently accepting what we are going through confident that it will strengthen our faith.
3. Those who truly trust in the Lord do not complain or despair even when in trouble.
4. Those who learn in youth to bear suffering are better prepared for the hardships that may come in old age.
5. Jeremiah shows that we need to be open to God in a way that we can discover what He would like us to learn through the suffering.
B. Believers should submit willingly to God’s will even when that means enduring pain and adversity.
1. Going through adversity is profitable only if it is done in the right way— without complaint or retaliation.
2. Affliction can be borne more easily when one knows that rejection and alienation from God, as well as suffering, do not last indefinitely since they are not God’s ultimate purpose for his people.
3. There must be a confidence that the trials will be replaced by God’s compassion because of the abundance of his “unfailing love”.
4. God punishes the guilty, but for a very short time, in comparison with his displays of love. Therefore, the sufferer must endure, realizing that the Lord will not show the one (anger) without the other (love).
IV. Regardless of our loss the message of Jeremiah has relevance for us today.
A. Regardless of what we have lost, the message of Jeremiah is that God will never abandon us.
1. The only way Jeremiah was able to make it through the pain of His circumstance was to reflect upon the character of God.
2. The Lord is always by our side faithfully and compassionately meeting our needs.
3. God’s great concern for His children may not always be the most obvious but the fact remains it is continually active.
4. We will never find any comfort or relief until we can personally rest in these truths.
B. There is a very important question that comes to mind as we reflect on this Biblical truth that we do not want to fail to deal with.
1. If God is always so loving toward us, why does He seem silent and strangely absent when we cry out for help?
2. The answer is that the problem lies with us and not Him. This has everything to do with perspective.
3. Our human nature makes us think that we are big enough to run the world but when confronted by pain and suffering we are humbled by our own helplessness and dependence.
4. As we discover in the account of the Garden of Eden we are wrong. God put man and woman in a world that was free from suffering and pain, and we chose against God.
5. Just like Adam and Eve we have a choice. We can trust God or we can blame Him, not ourselves for the pain we have to endure.
6. He is there! We just need to remember that.
I would like to share with you the rest of CS Lewis’ words on this subject. “You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. Now! Let’s have a real good talk reduces everything to silence. I must get a good sleep tonight ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. It is similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? And so perhaps with God. I have gradually been coming to feel that the door is no longer shut and bolted. Was it my own frantic need that slammed it in my face? The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just the time when God can’t give it: you are like a drowning man that can’t be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.”
So how can we regain our ability to receive God’s love when our sorrow is deep? Jeremiah gives the answer: Wait patiently, wait silently and submit willingly.
