A Lament of Our Own
Scripture: Lamentations 3:18-26
Before we get into this scripture and how it applies to our lives today it might be good to identify the author of Lamentations and learn a little about his background. Knowing these details will help us better understand what the writer is sharing with us today.
Lamentations was written by Jeremiah who is well known in theological circles as the weeping prophet. A lament is a funeral song or poem recited for someone who had just passed away. In the song it usually emphasized the good qualities of the departed and the tragedy or loss felt by those mourning their death. Lamentations is Jeremiah’s sorrowful songs and poems over the tragic “death” of the city of Jerusalem and the nation of Judah. He was weeping over what used to be, to what now is. It was the painful results of the nation and city’s demise which was being experienced by the people that he writes about. Jeremiah uses the form of this funeral lament to also convey the feeling of sadness and loss being experienced by the survivors of the invasion. An invasion that Jeremiah had warned the people concerning saying, “If you don’t change your ways, God is going to let your enemies come and destroy you.”
In a burst of vivid images the prophet gives us a description of his afflictions. He was mocked and laughed at by his fellow countrymen. They didn’t believe him. This filled him with bitterness. This is why he mentions bitter herbs and gall, the most bitter-tasting plant in Judah. He felt trampled underfoot, deprived of “peace and prosperity,” and he felt led to despair.
Jeremiah’s condition paralleled that of Judah. His outward affliction and inward turmoil pushed him toward despair. This is why he says, “My soul is downcast.” One thought he called to mind crowded out the hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm him. He said, “Because of the Lord‘s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.” He was down, but not out. Judah was down, but not out. God was punishing Judah for her sin, but he had not utterly rejected her as His covenant people. The word for God’s “great love” in the Hebrew is ḥeseḏ, which has the idea of a zealously loyal love.
God was sticking by the people He had chosen. The covenant made with Israel had not been forsaken. In fact God’s zealous and loyal love could be seen in His faithfulness in carrying out the curses He had promised, while at the same time preserving a remnant of people who returned “hesed” to God with their own loyal and faithful love. The judgment itself was a witness to the fact that God had not abandoned His people.
God’s “compassions,” a word that comes from the Hebrew word reḥem, “womb,” is spoken in the plural “wombs” and is meant to explain to the reader that it is an intense compassion. This reveals His gentle, but strong, feelings of concern for the people who belonged to Him.
When we think of a baby in a womb we think of a child growing, being nurtured and protected by the very flesh and lifeblood of the mother. We get the sense of God’s viewpoint of His relationship with His people.
Could Judah push God so far that He would finally abandon her forever? Was God’s supply of loyal love and compassion limited? Jeremiah’s answer was no. God’s “loving-kindnesses” are new every morning.
God offers a fresh supply of loyal love every day to His covenant people. Much like the manna from heaven that he fed to his people as they wandered in the wilderness, the supply could not be exhausted.
This truth caused Jeremiah to call out in praise, “Great is Your faithfulness.” (sing a verse of “Great is thy Faithfulness”) He was taken back; he was stunned by the limitless supply of God’s grace offered to him. Because of this, Jeremiah resolved to wait for God to act. He was content in waiting for God to bring about restoration and blessing. He could trust God despite his circumstances, because he understood how inexhaustible God’s supply of loyal “hesed” love was.
This past Friday the U.S. Capitol was briefly evacuated, and the White House was locked down after an airplane was reported to be heading into restricted Capitol airspace.
At the White House, reporters and photographers were not permitted to walk outside the press working area. A short time later, the lockdown ended.
A Capitol Police spokeswoman said a plane had been headed toward Capitol airspace, prompting the terrorist threat level to be raised to orange from green. Authorities were able to contact the pilot and he agreed to change course, she said. The pilot was then escorted by other aircraft (probably F-16’s) and landed at nearby Indian Head Airport.
I would hate to be that guy. He probably went through the interrogation of his life. Hopefully he was spared a body cavity search.
I wonder what going through people’s minds when all this was happening. Were they thinking, “Is this another 9/11.” Were they wondering if their lives would soon be in danger of ending? Did flashbacks of the day when the United States was robbed of her peace flood their mind? Did it remind them that the peace, the comfort and safety that the people of this nation had once experienced would never be fully restored for the people of the generation who had lived through it?
Let us lament the loss of our nation’s peace.
Now let us move to another incident this week that sparked headline. This week the chief financial officer of money-losing mortgage giant “Freddie Mac” was found dead in his basement early Wednesday morning in what police said was an apparent suicide. He was found hanging from one of the support beams.
Kellermann worked for Freddie Mac more than 16 years, starting out as a financial analyst and auditor. He was named acting chief financial officer last September when the government ousted former CEO Richard Syron and Kellermann’s predecessor Anthony S. “Buddy” Pizsel.
Neighbors said Kellermann had lost a noticeable amount of weight under the strain of the new job. Some neighbors said they suggested to Kellermann should quit to avoid the stress, but Kellermann responded that he wanted to help the company through its problems.
Jeffrey Martin, a lawyer and high school classmate of Kellermann said he wanted to be “Alex P. Keaton,” the television character played by Michael J. Fox on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties.”
Kellermann “knew he wanted to climb the corporate ladder, and he climbed the corporate ladder,” Martin said.
Kellermann had lost his peace. His peace may have been wrapped up in the prosperity of company, and the prosperity of a great nation that had taken a great financial turn for the worse. His peace, which probably rested in this prosperity, should have indeed been found in the great Hesed of God, the great faithfulness of God that exists despite the appearance of current circumstances. Many of us know what happens when the prosperity of a nation has been lost. We feel it when we lose our jobs, when our neighbors lose their jobs, when we feel the loss of our business, our pay, and our financial security.
We ought to lament the loss of our nation’s prosperity.
There are two things that we should recognize in Jeremiah’s lament. First is how we got to where we are today. All we have to do is look at Judah to find the reason why. Judah had forsaken the ways of God. They had forgotten financial integrity, the decent and fair business practices that God calls for in His word. They had strayed from God’s Holy precepts. It’s pretty evident that this has happened to some great degree when the President of this Nation, a nation founded upon the Christian principles that made it a great and shining light to the world, says, “We are no longer a Christian nation.” Not only did he say this, but he said it “matter of factly,” and with a sense of pride, as if to say, “See how wonderfully diverse and accepting we have become.”
This is evident when we look at the H.R. legislation 1913 that is before the House this week. It would make it illegal for the church to preach and teach that God rejects homosexual and transgender life styles and calls it an abomination. It is a denial of their falleness and their need for God’s grace and healing.
Our nation has come to the place where people are doing what is right in their own eyes, the same condition of Judah when it was overrun by its enemies. It has come to the place where God’s word is seen as irrelevant, as if God’s truth becomes less truthful for our lives as time passes on. When the people begin to think they are the measure of truth, then they place themselves as god in their own hearts and minds, and they set themselves up for a journey. It is a journey to the place where they lose their peace and prosperity. Not only do they lose it in this life, but they stand to lose it for eternity.
We ought to lament the turning away of a nation from the ways and precepts of God.
Jeremiah lamented for all of these things concerning the condition his people and their land in relationship to God, but Jeremiah also teaches us that even when all these things should be lamented in our own hearts concerning our nation, we have a reason to hold on to hope.
This week 3, 300 clergy from every kind of church imaginable met together and committed to preach the gospel and the word of God without compromise and with integrity. They committed to removing idols in their lives and helping their congregations to live free from the chains and spiritual prisons of the world.
This conference and this service this morning stands as reason for hope. It stands as evidence that God has not utterly abandoned this nation. A Remnant committed to the Lord remains. We must not back down, we must not compromise the ways of the Lord, we must seek God’s face, and we must heed God’s call, because God’s hesed, his loyal and great love is never ending.
We must hold our heads up high despite what we see and what we have experienced, because of God’s great compassion, his nurturing womb like care for His people, and remember that His mercies are new every morning. (Morning by morning new mercies I see).
Jeremiah teaches us that we must be Content to wait on the Lord.
But do we know what this means?
Jeremiah lived through a long siege on the city of Jerusalem. During this time, as the enemies of Judah lay outside of their gates waiting for food and water to run out, He tried to tell his leaders that the path they were choosing and the leadership they were trusting were leading them outside of God’s peace and prosperity.
They wouldn’t listen. After many months the enemies stormed the city, burned the temple of God to the ground, and took into exile the people of the land. Jeremiah was eventually taken to Egypt where he spent the last of his days.
We know that our country is under siege, but the enemy we fight is not flesh and blood, but the spiritual forces and systems that have taken people prisoner to turn from God and reject His precepts, and His salvation through Jesus Christ.
Christian leaders are calling for the people to not place their trust in the human leaders, but for the leaders and the people to place their trust in God almighty. To be a nation that sincerely means, “In God We Trust.” I can’t tell you what will happen next, but if there is no change, then things may become worse. But as Jeremiah’s faith believed, there is still hope. Not because who we are, but because of who God is. God is the God who is faithful to His covenant and has compassion for His people, even when his strong hand lifts to correct them.
Jeremiah’s faith believed that God would restore the nation, but Jeremiah did not live to see that day. Jeremiah’s faith would reveal its wisdom many years later, but Jeremiah was content in waiting for God to change things. Jeremiah’s faith kept him calling the people of God to turn back to the one who loves them with a loyal and zealous love. The God whose compassion covered His people as the womb of a mother covers her infant child.
We may not see the day when God ultimately turns this nation back to the right. God may choose to return before then and set the whole world in right order. Our call is the same. Give “Hesed” love towards God and keep calling the people back the Holy ways of the Lord God almighty through the grace and mercy made available through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is the source of any persons and any nation’s peace and prosperity.
