How do you handle circumstances when there seems to be no hope? What do you do when all seems lost? Philip Yancey in his book “Open Windows” shares the story of a teenager by the name of Elie Wiesel who tragically had his faith in God destroyed during his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp at Buna. The pivotal event that drove Wiesel to unbelief was the execution of a young boy. Wiesel and many others were forced to watch the Nazi Soldiers lead two men and a child to the gallows to be hanged. After the sentence was carried out Wiesel and the other prisoners were forced to march past the execution sight. Listen to the depth of the emotions as I share Wiesel’s description of what he saw. “The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. His tongue was still red; his eyes were not yet glazed. Behind me I heard a man asking: ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice within me answer: Where is he? Here He is…He is hanging here on this gallows.” Not everyone who endured the concentration camps found themselves pushed to the brink of unbelief. Many found hope to stand firm and a deeper meaning of life as result of their deep faith in God and strong inner convictions. Many saw God proving that He was still alive and well, caring for their needs, purifying their characters and judging their oppressors. So what does happen to us when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel? How can we gain perspective during these times to enable us to grow in faith and find the strength to persevere? Once again we can find the answers in Jeremiah’s words. Let’s once again turn to the pages of Lamentations and discover what lessons we can learn.
I. The tragic events of the siege and ultimate fall of Jerusalem.
A. Chapter four vividly describes the afflictions that have come upon the people of Judah.
1. The youth, the most valuable asset of the nation, lay dead and scattered about like broken bits of pottery.
2. The little children starved from the lack of bread and milk.
3. The wealthy, accustomed to the finest food and clothing, were forced to scavenge in the city garbage dumps.
4. The princes of Judah once had been the picture of health. Now they were nothing but skin and bones. No one could even recognize them in the streets. Better for them had they been thrust through by the enemy sword rather than waste away in the famine.
5. The once tender-hearted mothers of Judah had resorted to cannibalizing their own offspring.
B. Jeremiah once again in this chapter presents a reminder of why these tragic events happened.
1. The ultimate cause of Zion’s downfall was the burning wrath of Yahweh. Virtually no one considered it possible that God would permit the holy city to be destroyed.
2. Jerusalem’s elevated location and walls, which made it almost impregnable from military takeover, as well as its belief that it was a holy city under God’s special protection, gave Jerusalem a sense of false security.
3. The sins of the spiritual leaders. Because of the evil counsel of the priests and prophets, many innocent persons had been executed by the government.
4. The stubborn resistance of the city was the other reason cited for the severity of the calamity. The inhabitants rejected the light of divine revelation and stumbled on in four delusions:
a. That some foreign nation would rescue them.
b. That they could successfully resist the might of Babylon.
c. That they would be able to flee the falling city.
d. That King Zedekiah would be able to provide protection for them.
II. Jeremiah’s words present us with five characteristics that are evident in any tragedy.
A. The experience of unexpected turmoil.
1. Not only did the people of Jerusalem but many of the nations around them considered Jerusalem to be invincible.
2. The false sense of security felt by the people was further fueled by the fact it took the Babylonian Army eighteen months to conquer Jerusalem.
3. This enables us to get an idea of why Jeremiah’s warnings were not heeded. They simply thought it couldn’t happen to them.
4. To their shock, Jerusalem was not only conquered but burned to the ground.
B. Circumstances that feel absolutely overwhelming.
1. The priests failed to instruct the people in the law and did not rebuke them when they sinned. Therefore those leaders were blamed for the bloodshed that had overtaken Jerusalem.
2. The wicked prophets and priests had now been exposed and rejected by the people.
3. Once honored and revered for being responsible for the “law” and “visions,” they were now rejected and shunned as though they had leprosy.
4. The Lord had scattered them and they no longer enjoyed His protection or the respect of the people.
C. The absence of comfort.
1. During the siege Jerusalem placed its last desperate hope on help from Egypt, but Nebuchadnezzar quickly drove the invading Egyptian army away. No one else offered assistance.
2. False trust was also placed in alliances with other nations, which implied a recognition of the gods of those nations and a failure to trust in the Lord alone. Trust in those nations quickly turned to savage attack at their hands.
3. They were beyond human help and comfort. Only God was able to rescue them but He would not because they were being punished for their disobedience.
D. The discovery that the situation is inescapable.
1. Survivors were afraid to venture in the streets for fear of being arrested. There was no escape for those who fled the doomed city.
2. There was no escaping the fierce anger of the LORD. This anger is made more understandable when one steps back and notices the objects of the people’s faith in their moment of despair.
3. With no visible escape the people became despondent.
E. There was an involuntary exposure.
1. An important part of the Lord’s motive for this devastation was to help Judah see clearly their sin and disobedience.
2. Edom, Judah’s traditional enemy, sarcastically was urged to enjoy the hour of Jerusalem’s humiliation. The poet hastened to predict, however, that Edom shortly would be forced to experience God’s wrath.
3. Edom would soon be experiencing the same confusion and shame.
III. Three lessons from our text that seem to be quite clear.
A. There is a mixed array of feelings that we experience when all seems lost.
1. Fear: that overwhelming feeling of panic that clouds our judgment and prohibits us from making sound decisions.
2. Insecurity: the overwhelming feeling that we are not able to deal with the situation any longer.
3. Loneliness: the terrible feeling that we have been abandoned and no one is willing to help.
B. Tragedy and devastation is often the beginning of God’s rebuilding process.
1. The Lord will never build upon a foundation that is not good and solid.
2. Whatever the Lord cannot repair He destroys and rebuilds.
3. Both these processes can bring with them a tremendous amount of pain and grief.
4. In fact many times the processes feel downright brutal causing us to wonder if we are just a part of a tremendously cruel joke.
5. The truth that we so often fail to see is that the majority of the time this is the only way the Lord can mold us into the person He desires us to be.
C. When all seems lost, we can always count on the faithful presence of the Lord.
1. When everything begins to fall apart our question is, “Where’s God?”
2. During those times God seems so distant and even uncaring, but the truth is the God will never abandon His children.
3. As members of His family we can find comfort in the fact that nothing can separate us from His love.
4. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39—NIV)
CS Lewis in his book “The Problem of Pain” reflects on this subject rather beautifully. “We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest well pleased. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to makes us loveable. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities no more than a beggar maid could wish that King Cophetua should be content with her rags and dirt, or a dog, once having learned to love man, could wish that man were such as to tolerate in his house the snapping verminous, polluting creature of the wild pack. What we would here and now call our happiness is not the end God chiefly has in view: but when we are such as He can love without impediment, we shall in fact be happy.
