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.”
a. The word “how” is often used to begin a question, but in this case it is used as an expression of shock.
b. How she sits alone, the city once crowded with people! (Lam. 1:1).
c. How the Lord has overshadowed Daughter Zion with his anger! (Lam. 2:1).
4. Actually, in the original Hebrew, “How” is the title of the book.
a. It reflects the struggle and questions of lament: how could this happen? How can God allow this? How can God’s people survive? How do we think about the future?
b. These are the kinds of questions we often ask when we are facing the dark clouds of grief and suffering.
5. And so, the first two chapters lead with this shocking sorrow.
a. Jerusalem is portrayed as a lonely widow and as a princess who is now a slave (1:1).
b. The city weeps with “tears on her cheeks,” being abandoned by her former lovers and opposed by friends (1:2).
c. The once-glorious nation is now scattered “among the nations” with no resting place (1:3).
d. And central to the pain is the triumph of the enemy and the fact that God did not intervene.
6. But then Lamentations presses the suffering even further by pointing to the fact that it is God who has afflicted His people – there is no doubt that Babylon was the means God used to destroy Jerusalem, but it was God who was orchestrating the whole thing.
a. 2 Without compassion the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In his wrath he has demolished the fortified cities of Daughter Judah. He brought them to the ground and defiled the kingdom and its leaders. 3 He has cut off every horn of Israel in his burning anger and withdrawn his right hand in the presence of the enemy. He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything (Lam. 2:2-3).
7. And so the picture of the first two chapters of Lamentations is not pretty.
a. The destruction of the city, its culture, and its people is disturbing, but Lamentations is not silent as to why it has happened.
b. The people of God are facing the judgment of God because of their sin – “Jerusalem sinned grievously” (Lam. 1:8).
c. Their sinfulness has led to their brokenness.
d. While God values His people, there is something more important than the preservation of the city of God, and it is God’s righteousness.
e. Therefore, Lamentations mourns over more than the destruction of Jerusalem, it laments the problem that lies underneath – the sinfulness of God’s people.
8. What happened to Jerusalem is an important example of the devastations sin always creates.
G. Whenever we face suffering and loss of any kind, it provides us the opportunity to lament the fallen state of the world, and our own sinfulness.
1. And in the midst of the pain, brokenness and rubble, we can learn wisdom if we slow down, listen and learn.
2. Lament is an uncomfortable teacher and yet a helpful teacher.
3. Please don’t misunderstand me, by saying this, I’m not suggesting that every negative circumstance or all suffering we experience is directly connected to a specific sin in our lives.
4. Sometimes bad or sinful choices are the problem, and God lovingly allows the consequences of our poor or sinful choices to come upon us.
5. Other times, the suffering we experience has nothing to do with our own personal sin, but may be the consequence of other people’s sinful choices and actions, or just the fallen state of the world in general.
6. The first two chapters of Lamentations remind us that there is something wrong with the world.
7. Lament has the potential to turn our hearts toward God as we sing in a minor key about our individual and collective need for God’s mercy.
8. Lament reminds us that the problem in the world is sin, and that God is the only one who can make it right.
H. Now, let’s turn our attention to chapter 3 of Lamentations.
1. Chapter 3 is the climax and the summit of the book.
2. Lamentations reaches its crescendo with two contrasting sections on hardship.
3. The first part of Lamentations 3 (verses 1-20) is dark and hopeless, but the second part (verses 21-66) reflects an emerging level of trust.
4. Look at the contrast:
a. Lamentations 3:18: Then I thought, “My future is lost, as well as my hope from the Lord.”
b. Lamentations 3:58: You championed my cause, Lord; you redeemed my life.
5. The key to the change and contrast is found in verses 21-24: 21 Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for his mercies never end. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness! 24 I say, “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him” (Lam. 3:21-24).
6. It is so important that we see these wonderful and powerful words in context.
a. Mark Vroegop wrote about an experience he had at a Christian conference center when he noticed a picture on the wall.
b. The picture featured a painted scene of a small English cottage tucked between two mountains with a flowing stream and a small garden surrounded the house.
c. The picture resembled a Thomas Kinkade painting with pastel colors, soft lines and a bright sky – the kind of art you find in a Christian bookstore (like the picture before you).
d. We would all love to spend some time in that beautiful, peaceful spot.
e. Beneath the painting was the quote from Lamentations 3:22-23.
f. The artist connected that well-known verse with that idealized scene.
7. But we must keep in mind that that English cottage by the stream was not the scene of the 3rd chapter of Lamentations.
a. Rather, Jeremiah wrote “his mercies are new every morning” in the midst of a dark and tragic landscape.
b. Instead of looking out of the window of an English cottage, Jeremiah looked out the window and saw the city of Jerusalem laying in ruins.
c. The reality of what Jeremiah saw was more like the Gulf Coast after a hurricane, not a tranquil cabin in the Rocky Mountains.
d. Instead of a peaceful scene, Jeremiah was living in a war zone.
e. And yet, as Jeremiah laments this destruction, he still says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.”
8. Even during the leveling of Jerusalem, Jeremiah believed that God was still in control and that God’s faithfulness was still great.
a. Here is something to note: hope springs from the truths about God being rehearsed and remembered.
b. In the midst of our fear and confusion during suffering, lament leads us back to what we know to be true: “Despite what I see, despite what I feel, God is good.”
c. As we have been discovering, the power of lament is the opportunity to express the sorrow we feel while also anchoring our hearts in the truth we believe.
d. While the ruble of the city of Jerusalem smoldered, Jeremiah was able to announce, “His mercies never come to an end.”
I. As we turn to chapter 4 of Lamentations, we notice that Jeremiah contrasts the before and after experience of God’s people.
1. Before God brought His punishment and discipline upon them, they were enjoying the good life, and much of that had become idols in their lives.
a. But after God brought His punishment and discipline upon them, they found themselves as exiles with nothing and no one to depend on but God Himself.
b. The suffering we experience and the lament that it produces helps to shine a spotlight on the things of this world that we have placed too much hope in.
2. Mark Vroegop employs and illustration he first heard from John Piper.
a. Think of your life as a beaker full of transparent liquid with the sediment at the bottom.
b. If the beaker remains still, the solution looks clear, even pure.
c. However, if you bump or move the beaker, then the sediment is activated and the appearance of purity is gone.
d. Suffering bumps the beaker of our lives and stirs up the sediments we forgot about or have tried to hide.
e. Things like fear and pride, or covetousness and self-sufficiency lie dormant and hidden, but suffering and loss can reveal these enemies and idols.
3. Hopefully, you remember our sermon series from a couple of years ago about counterfeit gods.
a. During that series we discussed the fact that in the Bible an idol is simply an object of trust that takes the emotional and practical place of the one true God.
b. Timothy Keller wrote: “What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit God is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living.”
c. Keller makes a distinction between sorrow and despair: “Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others…Despair, however, is inconsolable, because it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.”
4. Chapter 4 begins by lamenting the loss of the security and the glory of Jerusalem’s wealth: How the gold has become tarnished, the fine gold become dull! The stones of the temple lie scattered at the head of every street (Lam. 4:1).
a. The city of Jerusalem was the economic and spiritual center of Israel, but now the city had lost its luster – the temple had been destroyed and the cherished symbols lay in a dust-covered heap of ruins.
b. Any trust in what the temple and its gold represented had vanished.
5. So many of the things that God’s people may have been idolizing were now described by Jeremiah as crushed and destroyed.
a. The wealthy were rummaging through the trash heaps (4:5).
b. Their dignitaries who were known for their beauty and strength were now deformed and unrecognizable (4:8-9).
c. Their king whom they thought would provide protection was captured (4:20).
d. Even the spiritual leaders were complicit in the decay of the nation and reaped the tragic consequences (Lam. 4:13-14).
6. We too can find ourselves putting our hope in the wrong things making them into idols.
a. We can be trusting in our wealth, trusting in other people too much, including political and spiritual leaders, even trusting too much in our nation or country, and losing them in part or whole, presents an opportunity to be reminded of where our affections should be placed.
b. The lamenting of our sufferings, whether it be physical or economic, or political and national, give us the opportunity to reorient ourselves and make sure we appropriately depend on our Spiritual King and put His kingdom first.
J. As we come to Lamentations chapter 5 and the conclusion of our brief survey of the book, we realize that there are no “and they lived happily ever after” moments in Lamentations.
1. The historic lament of Lamentations concludes without resolution and with questions lingering.
2. It ends by telling us where to look when in pain, but not by giving us the rest of the story.
3. We have to look elsewhere in the Bible to know what transpired after the destruction of Jerusalem and the period of exile, but even so, this lament, like other laments, is still filled with hope because of where it points.
4. The book of Lamentations ends with a hopeful prayer: 21 Lord, bring us back to yourself, so we may return; renew our days as in former times, 22 unless you have completely rejected us and are intensely angry with us (Lam. 5:21-22).
K. And so the longest lament in the Bible ends with a prayer for restoration.
1. As we’ve seen through our series, lament prayers cry out to God and ask Him for deliverance, saying things like: “God, this hurts! Please help me!”
2. The book of Lamentations ends with the same focus and tone.
3. The ESV translates verse 21: Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.
4. The words “restore” or “return” or “turn back” encompass the ideas of repentance and restoration, which bring renewal.
5. Jeremiah had long pleaded with the people to return to the Lord, but they did not, and so the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile were part of God’s plan to awaken the hearts of His people and bring them back to Himself - and it certainly worked to a large degree.
6. This final prayer for renewal agrees with God about not only what they needed but, also what God had promised.
7. God had promised that one day the remnant would return from exile and that He would give them new hearts and a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:33-34).
8. The prophet Ezekiel had given a similar promise in Ezek. 36:26-27 about a new heart and new spirit.
9. And so this prayer for restoration and renewal at the end of Lamentations points to something that God wants to do and something only God can do.
L. So, let’s review what we have learned today.
1. Now that we understand the process of lament that includes turning to God, laying our complaints and requests before God, and choosing to trust God, we can step back and see what other things God might have us learn during our times of suffering and loss.
2. Today I have highlighted two primary things we learn during times of suffering and loss:
a. First, we learn that sin in general has created a fallen world and that our personal sin contributes to suffering and loss, but all of this should cause us to realize how much we need God and the salvation God offers.
b. Second, we learn that we have often created idols in our lives that we are valuing and depending on more than God, but the striping away of those idols, by suffering and loss, helps us place our trust where it belongs.
3. It would be nice if we learned these lessons without having to go through suffering and loss, but many times we don’t learn these lessons until suffering leads us to that classroom.
4. But the most important lesson I hope all of us learn, one way or another is that our God is good, that He is loving, and that He is merciful – that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, and His mercies are new every morning.
Resources:
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop, Crossway, 2019.
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 93.
Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods (New York: Dutton, 2009), pp. 10-11, 17-18.
