8-25-13 (Revised 10-16-2022)
HELP ME GOD, I'M SAD!
Lamentations 3:19-58
This morning, we are going to be taking a look at the book of Lamentations which has the sad lamentings of the prophet Jeremiah. Have you ever had to pray, “Help me God, I'm sad”?
The actress, Brooke Shields, has been known for her beauty. One may not think that she has had to deal with sadness just like everyone else, so this quote from her may surprise you: “My father's death, my move, and my frightening and difficult delivery created a tremendous amount of stress, pain, and sadness for me. I was practically devastated beyond recovery.”
Sadness almost always accompanies loss. We all feel sad sometimes. When we say goodbye to a loved one, we usually feel sad. The sadness is even deeper if a close relationship has ended or a loved one has died.
But sadness is a normal emotion that actually can make life more interesting because much of art and poetry is inspired by sadness and melancholy. And sadness can actually help us appreciate happiness. If and when our mood eventually changes from sadness toward happiness, the sense of contrast adds to the enjoyment of the mood.
Experts say that if you are sad, you should allow yourself to be sad. If you force those feelings underground, they can do more damage over time.
But rather than staying sad, one should try to discover the cause of the sadness, or at least try to understand the factors involved. Because sadness can be an overwhelming feeling that drags us down into despair. Therefore it is wise to look for help, help from God.
The scripture that deals with sadness the most, and in the most agonizing way, is the book of Lamentations written by the prophet Jeremiah.
It is called “Lamentations” after the word “lament,” which means to cry. Jeremiah was crying, he was lamenting, because his country had just been destroyed by a foreign nation.
There is an oil painting done by Rembrandt in the year 1630 titled, “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.” In the background you see people running from a city that is in flames.
With Jeremiah being an eyewitness to the fall of Jerusalem, in Lamentations 1:16 he says, “For these things I weep; My eye, my eye overflows with water.”
This book does tell us about God’s faithfulness, but it doesn’t gloss over the evil and suffering that we have to endure here on earth.
Lamentations describes just about every evil that people have ever had to endure: war and destruction, rape and pillaging, human trafficking, starvation, and even cannibalism … all of these are described and lamented.
• Chapter 1 describes the destruction of city of Jerusalem.
• Chapter 2 explains God’s righteous judgment against Judah.
• In Chapter 3 Jeremiah expresses his own personal suffering.
• Chapter 4 focuses on the specific suffering of the Jerusalem’s citizens.
• Chapter 5 gives a plea for God’s mercy.
The book of Lamentations is read in the synagogues each year
on the 9th of Ab (in July or August on the Roman calendar) a Jewish national holiday that commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonians in 587-586 B.C.
The book is actually a series of five dirges (funeral poems). Hebrew poetry is different from most western poetry which tends to rhyme at the end of lines. Hebrew poetry used alliteration at the beginning of each line.
If you look at the book as literature you see something interesting. The poems are divided by the five chapters. Four of the five poems consist of 22 verses each, using the Hebrew acrostic style.
If you could read it in Hebrew, you would see that each verse starts with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet –aleph, beth, gimel … and so on.
This is true for all but chapter three, the central poem. Chapter three is three times as long – 66 verses – and uses triple acrostics (each letter is used three times in succession). And 1/3 of the way through it, you find the PIVOTAL verse of Lamentations.
To see the significance of this verse, which is at the center of the book, we’ll start with Lamentations 3:19-20. “Remember my affliction and roaming, The wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers And sinks within me.”
It sounds as if he is saying, “God help me, I'm sad, really sad!” Then in verse 21, Jeremiah suddenly changes direction. He says: “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.”
This is the “hinge” of the book, where Jeremiah’s thoughts take a sudden turn --- from SADNESS to HOPE.
We will focus on these verses in the middle of Lamentations. Because this is the central message of Lamentations: No matter how bad life gets, God can give us HOPE in the middle of deep sadness.
Why, in the midst of sadness can Jeremiah set his mind on hope? In verses 22-23 he writes: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
Jeremiah found help to overcome his deep sadness because …
1. God’s mercies are new every morning
In this book of Lamentations, Jeremiah has been singing the blues. In fact, if you look at the first verse in chapter 3, he says, “I am a man who has seen affliction…”
It brings to mind that song “Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...”
Maybe you’ve been singing the blues lately. That can happen when you take into account the current condition of our country, politically and morally. There are great concerns for those who know what could be if we were faithful to God.
But then, sometimes people give up on God wondering if God is really faithful. Feeling like God has forsaken them and everything they care about has been taken away, no one understands their pain. And they can’t find release.
Maybe you’ve had some of those feelings. If so then you can empathize with Jeremiah. And you can learn from Jeremiah that’s it’s okay to be brutally honest with God. It’s okay to honestly express your feelings … just like Jeremiah did.
But it’s not okay to stay there. It’s healthy to express your true feelings to God, but don’t get stuck there!
One minister told about a woman years back who used to come to him about once a month … to rehearse her troubles. And he used the word “rehearse” on purpose, because that’s what she did.
Every time, she’d tell him the same set of complaints over and over and over again. She had her misery memorized where she could recite it the same way every time.
He said that he was young and inexperienced back then, but it didn’t take him long to realize that endlessly rehearsing her troubles wasn’t getting her anywhere!
Like a computer that defaults to a certain setting, some of us have a “despair default.” If we don’t reset our minds, we’ll spiral down into despair. We need to take a cue from Jeremiah and snap out of it. He says, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: God’s mercies are new every morning!” (NIV)
The word “mercy” comes from the Hebrew word for “womb.” It indicates gentle concern and care, nurturing, sustenance, and pretty much everything that is needed for life!
If that isn’t good enough, notice … it’s not just mercy, it’s mercies – plural. Everything we need for life and then some! And these mercies are new every morning!
God never stops working, never stops blessing, never stops caring, never stops protecting – even during those times when it seems as though God has failed. There is no such thing as a “God-failure”.
What if you woke up every morning to find your wallet full of money, your car full of gas, your refrigerator full of food, and your body in perfect condition?
That’s the way it is spiritually with God’s compassion and mercies … you can never use them up.
Just like the apostle Paul told the people in Philippi, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
The world says, “When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up”; and there is some truth to that. But the Christian should say, “Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom so that you will discover that He is the Rock at the bottom”.
God's greatest mercy to us came when Jesus died on that cross to take the punishment we deserve for our sins.
As it says in Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
But in reality, there’s a bit of a catch to this. The catch is: What is the response that we give to God's mercies that He makes available every day? Our response makes a difference.
Jeremiah addresses this in the next verses, Jeremiah 3:24-26, “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
You see …
2. The LORD is good to those who seek Him
God’s blessings may not come early, but they aren’t late either.
God’s blessings come when we need them - not earlier and not later. We may struggle, but God gives strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
If we needed more, He would give us more. When we need something else, He will give us that as well. Nothing we truly need will ever be withheld from us.
God is faithful, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have to endure seasons of grief. C.S. Lewis, who wrote Chronicles of Narnia, described his own painful experience of grieving after the death of his wife.
He said he discovered that “There is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it” (A Grief Observed page 38). And he describe grief as “The monotonous treadmill march of the mind around one subject.” ( page 10)
He also described the times when he felt as if God had abandoned him. That is the way Jeremiah felt.
He says in Jeremiah 3:28-29, “So let a man sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust.” (NIV)
Jeremiah found himself in a “Catch 22” situation --- he needed God to comfort him in his grief, but he couldn’t feel God’s comfort because of his overwhelming grief.
In spite of this, Jeremiah continued by saying in verse 29, “There may yet be hope.” And in verses 31-32 he says, For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
The NIV translates it, “he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” We can have HOPE in the middle of DESPAIR and DEEP SADNESS because of …
3. God’s unfailing love
We can have HOPE and PEACE even in the middle of disaster because of God’s unfailing love for us. This short poem sums it up:
Look at yourself and you’ll be depressed;
Look at your circumstances and you’ll be distressed;
Look at the Lord and you’ll be blessed.
Verse 33 says that God “does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.”
When we have to go through troubles, we need to remember this: no matter how we feel at the moment, we are never alone. Our loving Heavenly Father is always with us, even in times when we don’t feel His presence.
Peace comes from focusing on God’s faithfulness. In Lamentations 3:52-57, Jeremiah describes an experience that reminds him he can trust God. He wrote:
“52 Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird. 53 They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me; 54 the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish.
55 I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. 56 You heard my plea: 'Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.”' 57 You came near when I called you, and you said, 'Do not fear.' You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.”
When we go though troubles, grief, and sorrow today, let this sad book, Lamentations, lift our spirits. There is HOPE to be found even in the middle of despair.
We can wait with confidence, if we put all our hope in our great God. His Mercies are new every morning and His love is never fails.
CLOSE:
I heard of a minister who was visiting a hospital when the nurse told him about a patient that had just been transferred from a nursing home because her condition was worsening.
The nurse said, "Someone really ought to visit her. She is very deformed and her body has been twisted since childhood. I think she really needs someone to go by and try to cheer her up."
So the minister went by to visit her. He always carried around a little booklet that he gave to people to read who were very depressed because it was such a cheerful and uplifting book.
Thinking that the woman needed this encouragement he told her, "I have something for you. It’s a happy book, an uplifting book, an encouraging book, it’s a good book. I want you to read it because I believe it can give you strength."
The woman looked at the book he gave her and she smiled and said, "I really ought not to take that book sir." He replied, "Why not? Have you already read it?" She said, "I not only have read it. I wrote it!"
This woman, her body twisted and deformed since childhood, wrote a book that spoke of encouragement and hope.
Friends, our happiness and joy are not dependent upon our physical condition, or the circumstances around us, but upon the Lord and his grace and mercy.
It is called “Lamentations” after the word “lament,” which means to cry. Jeremiah was crying, he was lamenting, because his country had just been destroyed by a foreign nation.
There is an oil painting done by Rembrandt in the year 1630 titled, “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem.” In the background you see people running from a city that is in flames.
With Jeremiah being an eyewitness to the fall of Jerusalem, in Lamentations 1:16 he says, “For these things I weep; My eye, my eye overflows with water.”
This book does tell us about God’s faithfulness, but it doesn’t gloss over the evil and suffering that we have to endure here on earth.
Lamentations describes just about every evil that people have ever had to endure: war and destruction, rape and pillaging, human trafficking, starvation, and even cannibalism … all of these are described and lamented.
• Chapter 1 describes the destruction of city of Jerusalem.
• Chapter 2 explains God’s righteous judgment against Judah.
• In Chapter 3 Jeremiah expresses his own personal suffering.
• Chapter 4 focuses on the specific suffering of the Jerusalem’s citizens.
• Chapter 5 gives a plea for God’s mercy.
The book of Lamentations is read in the synagogues each year
on the 9th of Ab (in July or August on the Roman calendar) a Jewish national holiday that commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonians in 587-586 B.C.
The book is actually a series of five dirges (funeral poems). Hebrew poetry is different from most western poetry which tends to rhyme at the end of lines. Hebrew poetry used alliteration at the beginning of each line.
If you look at the book as literature you see something interesting. The poems are divided by the five chapters. Four of the five poems consist of 22 verses each, using the Hebrew acrostic style.
If you could read it in Hebrew, you would see that each verse starts with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet –aleph, beth, gimel … and so on.
This is true for all but chapter three, the central poem. Chapter three is three times as long – 66 verses – and uses triple acrostics (each letter is used three times in succession). And 1/3 of the way through it, you find the PIVOTAL verse of Lamentations.
To see the significance of this verse, which is at the center of the book, we’ll start with Lamentations 3:19-20. “Remember my affliction and roaming, The wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers And sinks within me.”
It sounds as if he is saying, “God help me, I'm sad, really sad!” Then in verse 21, Jeremiah suddenly changes direction. He says: “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.”
This is the “hinge” of the book, where Jeremiah’s thoughts take a sudden turn --- from SADNESS to HOPE.
We will focus on these verses in the middle of Lamentations. Because this is the central message of Lamentations: No matter how bad life gets, God can give us HOPE in the middle of deep sadness.
Why, in the midst of sadness can Jeremiah set his mind on hope? In verses 22-23 he writes: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
Jeremiah found help to overcome his deep sadness because …
1. God’s mercies are new every morning
In this book of Lamentations, Jeremiah has been singing the blues. In fact, if you look at the first verse in chapter 3, he says, “I am a man who has seen affliction…”
It brings to mind that song “Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...”
Maybe you’ve been singing the blues lately. That can happen when you take into account the current condition of our country, politically and morally. There are great concerns for those who know what could be if we were faithful to God.
But then, sometimes people give up on God wondering if God is really faithful. Feeling like God has forsaken them and everything they care about has been taken away, no one understands their pain. And they can’t find release.
Maybe you’ve had some of those feelings. If so then you can empathize with Jeremiah. And you can learn from Jeremiah that’s it’s okay to be brutally honest with God. It’s okay to honestly express your feelings … just like Jeremiah did.
But it’s not okay to stay there. It’s healthy to express your true feelings to God, but don’t get stuck there!
One minister told about a woman years back who used to come to him about once a month … to rehearse her troubles. And he used the word “rehearse” on purpose, because that’s what she did.
Every time, she’d tell him the same set of complaints over and over and over again. She had her misery memorized where she could recite it the same way every time.
He said that he was young and inexperienced back then, but it didn’t take him long to realize that endlessly rehearsing her troubles wasn’t getting her anywhere!
Like a computer that defaults to a certain setting, some of us have a “despair default.” If we don’t reset our minds, we’ll spiral down into despair. We need to take a cue from Jeremiah and snap out of it. He says, “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: God’s mercies are new every morning!” (NIV)
The word “mercy” comes from the Hebrew word for “womb.” It indicates gentle concern and care, nurturing, sustenance, and pretty much everything that is needed for life!
If that isn’t good enough, notice … it’s not just mercy, it’s mercies – plural. Everything we need for life and then some! And these mercies are new every morning!
God never stops working, never stops blessing, never stops caring, never stops protecting – even during those times when it seems as though God has failed. There is no such thing as a “God-failure”.
What if you woke up every morning to find your wallet full of money, your car full of gas, your refrigerator full of food, and your body in perfect condition?
That’s the way it is spiritually with God’s compassion and mercies … you can never use them up.
Just like the apostle Paul told the people in Philippi, “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19
The world says, “When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up”; and there is some truth to that. But the Christian should say, “Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom so that you will discover that He is the Rock at the bottom”.
God's greatest mercy to us came when Jesus died on that cross to take the punishment we deserve for our sins.
As it says in Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”
But in reality, there’s a bit of a catch to this. The catch is: What is the response that we give to God's mercies that He makes available every day? Our response makes a difference.
Jeremiah addresses this in the next verses, Jeremiah 3:24-26, “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
You see …
2. The LORD is good to those who seek Him
God’s blessings may not come early, but they aren’t late either.
God’s blessings come when we need them - not earlier and not later. We may struggle, but God gives strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.
If we needed more, He would give us more. When we need something else, He will give us that as well. Nothing we truly need will ever be withheld from us.
God is faithful, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have to endure seasons of grief. C.S. Lewis, who wrote Chronicles of Narnia, described his own painful experience of grieving after the death of his wife.
He said he discovered that “There is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it” (A Grief Observed page 38). And he describe grief as “The monotonous treadmill march of the mind around one subject.” ( page 10)
He also described the times when he felt as if God had abandoned him. That is the way Jeremiah felt.
He says in Jeremiah 3:28-29, “So let a man sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. Let him bury his face in the dust.” (NIV)
Jeremiah found himself in a “Catch 22” situation --- he needed God to comfort him in his grief, but he couldn’t feel God’s comfort because of his overwhelming grief.
In spite of this, Jeremiah continued by saying in verse 29, “There may yet be hope.” And in verses 31-32 he says, For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief, yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
The NIV translates it, “he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.” We can have HOPE in the middle of DESPAIR and DEEP SADNESS because of …
3. God’s unfailing love
We can have HOPE and PEACE even in the middle of disaster because of God’s unfailing love for us. This short poem sums it up:
Look at yourself and you’ll be depressed;
Look at your circumstances and you’ll be distressed;
Look at the Lord and you’ll be blessed.
Verse 33 says that God “does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.”
When we have to go through troubles, we need to remember this: no matter how we feel at the moment, we are never alone. Our loving Heavenly Father is always with us, even in times when we don’t feel His presence.
Peace comes from focusing on God’s faithfulness. In Lamentations 3:52-57, Jeremiah describes an experience that reminds him he can trust God. He wrote:
“52 Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird. 53 They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me; 54 the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish.
55 I called on your name, Lord, from the depths of the pit. 56 You heard my plea: 'Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.”' 57 You came near when I called you, and you said, 'Do not fear.' You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.”
When we go though troubles, grief, and sorrow today, let this sad book, Lamentations, lift our spirits. There is HOPE to be found even in the middle of despair.
We can wait with confidence, if we put all our hope in our great God. His Mercies are new every morning and His love is never fails.
CLOSE:
I heard of a minister who was visiting a hospital when the nurse told him about a patient that had just been transferred from a nursing home because her condition was worsening.
The nurse said, "Someone really ought to visit her. She is very deformed and her body has been twisted since childhood. I think she really needs someone to go by and try to cheer her up."
So the minister went by to visit her. He always carried around a little booklet that he gave to people to read who were very depressed because it was such a cheerful and uplifting book.
Thinking that the woman needed this encouragement he told her, "I have something for you. It’s a happy book, an uplifting book, an encouraging book, it’s a good book. I want you to read it because I believe it can give you strength."
The woman looked at the book he gave her and she smiled and said, "I really ought not to take that book sir." He replied, "Why not? Have you already read it?" She said, "I not only have read it. I wrote it!"
This woman, her body twisted and deformed since childhood, wrote a book that spoke of encouragement and hope.
Friends, our happiness and joy are not dependent upon our physical condition, or the circumstances around us, but upon the Lord and his grace and mercy.
