THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 16 – RESTLESSNESS AND NO PEACE IN DEFEAT. REMEMBERING IS THE START TO RETURN. STRENGTH, HOPE, AFFLICTION - CHAPTER 3:16-20
We are in a descriptive passage of the sorrows of Judah. This great devastation resulted from the nation’s foul sins in the departure from the Lord. Today’s world is similar and can only wait for the judgement of God to come. Most assuredly it will come on a God-hating, God-blaspheming world that has corrupted itself. History has confirmed that over and over.
The last verse spoke about drinking wormwood and partaking of bitterness. Now we have the broken teeth.
[14]. PERSONAL AGONY AND LAYING LOW IN DEFEAT
{{Lamentations 3:16 “and HE has broken my teeth with gravel. HE has made me cower in the dust.”}}
The very thought of that puts one’s teeth on edge. How does gravel break the teeth? It can happen when you are forced to chew down all the time on gravel. It can happen when gravel is forcibly crashed into the mouth. I can imagine the feeling of crunched and smashing gravel would be horrible, as would be the damage. This is as strong a description of displeasure as one can get.
Judah was forced into submission to cower in its own dust by a foreign power that crunched Judah’s teeth with the gravel of destruction. It portrays great power and force being used against the people.
When Adam and Eve fell from the glorious position they had, the snake was cursed (Satan) – {{Genesis 3:14 The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, CURSED ARE YOU more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field. On your belly shall you go and DUST SHALL YOU EAT ALL THE DAYS OF YOUR LIFE.”}} The curse brought the dust of judgement for the serpent, and the dust of judgement for Judah. The survivors were made to grovel in the dust. They were beaten down so badly it seemed they would never rise again.
This verse ends the 20 mentions of “HE” in the passage. All understood it was God who brought these pains on Judah because of its own gross wickedness and rebellion. The devastated nation was broken, and in great sadness and confusion. It was down but not out. The Lord has preserved His earthly people down through the past 2500 years because His great, glorious plan for then is soon to be laid out. Israel will be restored and become the chief nation in the world. If only people would read and understand Isaiah, Jeremiah and the Minor prophets to know God’s plan for His earthly people. If only these scriptures of the early church were not dismissed as they are by preachers.
Cowering in the dust is the greatest humility, the type of position an enemy is subjected to in defeat. All dignity is removed and the soul is reduced to utter shame and loss. That is what sin will do to a person and a nation. We are fast moving towards national humiliation right now because the departure from God is greater than it has been since before the Reformation. To depart from God, is not going to separate one from the judgement of God. Some think they can be like Adam and hide from God but all will be found, and sin always has its accountability.
Sin is like a pear on a tree. It develops as it grows to reach maturity. When it is ripe, it is picked or it falls to the ground to decay. The picking of that fruit is what the LORD will do in the great Tribulation that comes, the wrath of God against the world – {{Isaiah 13:9-11 “Behold, THE DAY OF THE LORD IS COMING, cruel, with fury and burning anger to make the land a desolation, and He will exterminate its sinners from it. The stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light. The sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light. THUS I WILL PUNISH THE WORLD FOR ITS EVIL AND THE WICKED FOR THEIR INIQUITY. I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.”}}
You can not concentrate on judgement from the LORD and not look at the other side of the coin. Israel was destroyed by God who brought Judah down in the dust in a great destruction but that is not the end of the matter. Look at this – {{Jeremiah 31:28 and it will come about that as I have watched over them to pluck up, to break down, to overthrow, to destroy, and to bring disaster, SO I WILL WATCH OVER THEM TO BUILD AND TO PLANT,” declares the LORD.}} The whole national Israel will be restored as the LORD plants them and builds them into the world’s leading nation in the Millennium. Meanwhile the LORD watches over His chosen people in the world today, for His purpose will soon be put into operation.
National Israel today is much wider than the land of Israel. There are more Jews outside the land than the residents there. God’s purposes will not be frustrated by the unbelief in the church and the sad rejection of His earthly Jewish people by some under Covenant Theology. Messiah saves His people soon in the future. All is now set, just waiting for the removal of the Church from the scene when the LORD’S hand will turn to Israel once more.
{{Romans 11:25-27 Brethren, I do not want you to be uninformed of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own estimation, that A PARTIAL HARDENING HAS HAPPENED TO ISRAEL UNTIL THE FULLNESS OF THE GENTILES HAS COME IN, AND THUS ALL ISRAEL WILL BE SAVED just as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion. He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” And “This is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”}}
[15]. NO PEACE AND NO HAPPINESS
{{Lamentations 3:17 “My soul has been REJECTED FROM PEACE. I have forgotten happiness,”}}
Verse 16 ended the series of “He” where God was described as imposing all these afflictions on Judah. Now the thoughts become more personal. Chapter 3 is a long chapter of short verses that contains so much.
There are two matters the nation takes to heart. It lost its peace and lost its happiness. Those two qualities go hand in hand, for a people not at peace, has no happiness. The “My” and the “I” in this verse is the nation’s lament, though the prophet’s heart would also express these thoughts.
Sin pays its wages and there is no peace in wickedness – {{Isaiah 57:20-21 The wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud. THERE IS NO PEACE,” SAYS MY GOD, “FOR THE WICKED.”}} Before its overthrow Judah was so wicked and had no peace. That was an internal peace. Now after its defeat internal peace has gotten worse but there is no external peace either. If only people would return to the Lord in repentance and respond to the gospel; then they would enter into the peace of God, from the God of peace.
Happiness is an emotion that is relatively arbitrary. It is affected by circumstances. Much has been written to distinguish between happiness and joy. Happiness relates more to feelings and circumstances but joy is a spiritual gift, which is listed as one of the fruit of the Spirit. Judah had been battered down in the dust, its teeth broken by crushing gravel, and there was no happiness. Joy was non-existent, for the nation was putrid in God’s sight with no righteous person living in it.
There is an old chorus we used to sing as teens on camps, this one, although the words we sang were a bit different from these -
[[You ask me why I'm happy, so I'll just tell you why,
Because, my sins are gone;
And when I meet the scoffers, who ask me where they are,
I say, "My sins are gone."
Chorus
They're underneath the blood on the cross of Calvary,
As far removed as darkness is from dawn;
In the sea of God's forgetfulness, that's good enough for me,
Praise God, my sins are gone!
From the time of Judah’s overthrow until the present, there has been no peace for the nation of Israel or for the Jewish people. For almost 2 500 years they have wandered the world in disquiet always persecuted. Since they regained their nation in 1948, there has been no physical peace in the land as we very well know with satanic enemies everywhere including the United States President before Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet of Australia.
When Messiah reigns from Jerusalem there will be a universal peace in the whole world, and Israel will be fully redeemed. To get a glimpse of this read Zechariah 14 for a start.
[16]. TWO ITEMS THAT HAVE PERISHED
{{Lamentations 3:18 so I say, “MY STRENGTH HAS PERISHED, and SO HAS MY HOPE from the LORD.”}}
This verse is a continuation from verse 17. Peace and happiness had gone, SO strength then perished, and so too did hope. These two verses are critical aspects of a godly life. For the Christian, his strength comes from the Lord, and His hope is based in spiritual character and experience.
In a sermon on the end of Romans 4, I mentioned that the great Christian word “hope” is not a gift of the Holy Spirit that is listed in the fruit of Galatians 5. Hope is a vital subject and Abraham is examined in the Romans chapter. Also in Romans, Paul spells out a progression leading to hope that in a way means hope is earned through trial – {{Romans 5:3-5 “Not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, and perseverance, proven character, and proven character, HOPE, and HOPE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”}}
There is no disappointment in hope because it is supported by the love of God poured out to us. Hope is a settled assurance, not some “maybe” wishful thinking for something not apparent. Remember Paul’s great certainty in the verse “I KNOW WHOM I HAVE BELIEVED . . .” Such a positive affirmation of hope is what we all should have.
Sin will abolish hope and Judah had no hope to begin with; certainly not the scriptural godly hope that we see in the great men of God. Sin and lust have their own hope, godless and wicked. That was the nation. Now in defeat, there is no hope even for the future. There was a dark wall separating them from reality and even from their God. Sin had corrupted the nation and there was no godly resource found in them. Their strength had perished and they were weaker than helpless. Thus there was this lament that applied to strength and hope.
[17]. NOW THE LIGHT BEGINS TO SHINE
{{Lamentations 3:19 “REMEMBER MY AFFLICTION and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.”}}
Man’s very first step in change is to acknowledge his lost condition, and realise there is nothing in himself that can save him or is worthy of God’s praise. It is then he turns to God, utterly undone, and in repentance receives the life from God in his heart. We call that conversion when a man becomes a new creation in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Judah needed that reality check. The nation has been acknowledging its complete poverty and destitution but now the supremacy of God’s graciousness is to be their portion. It starts with remembering from where it has fallen. The verse asks God to remember (notice) the affliction, wandering, wormwood and bitterness. That is the start. Why has this happened to me, O God? The answer comes back personally and the application in repentance is personal.
No man or woman will connect with God or advance with God without realising what each of us is in the sight of the Lord. That is where we begin. Imagine a man who has fallen over a slope and lies at the bottom in an injured state. He could lie there and bemoan his fate and that will get him nowhere. Above him there is help to lift him up, but what use is it unless he accepts the help available.
Judah lay at the bottom of the slope and God was there to provide all the healing and restoration needed, but what use was it to that people unless they responded. The first step in response is repentance and that is what the next few verses focus on. God has all His graciousness available, but man must start at the bottom. We are going to see some wonderful truths in the verses following.
[18]. RECALL IS NECESSARY FOR A VIBRANT CHRISTIAN LIFE
{{Lamentations 3:20 “Surely MY SOUL REMEMBERS and is bowed down within me.”}}
The previous verse asked God to remember the affliction, the sad condition of the destroyed people, but this verse is the opposite side of the coin. The heart and soul of the vanquished and humble person now recalls his position. In other words he reflects on why he is in that state and what sin he did to merit that.
To bow down is to express contrition and humility and to acknowledge grief. It does not matter what condition any man or woman is in, there can be no repentance or rightness with God unless the true problem is addressed. The person has to recognise what he/she is in the sight of God, then claim that in honesty as his/her condition and then turn in repentance and belief. That is the gospel. There is so much false gospel around, an easy believeism, the power of positive thinking, and infused humanism. None of that will save anyone!
Those who forget God will be forgotten by God as God can do nothing for the person “on leave”. When the sinner remembers and accepts that righteous judgement hangs over his life, then that is where the journey to God starts. It is an eternal journey.
“MY SOUL REMEMBERS” begins this Lamentations verse, but God judged the nation because it did not remember and shut its ears as it pursued the foreign gods. Here is what Ezekiel recorded – {{Ezekiel 16:43 “BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT REMEMBERED the days of your youth but have enraged Me by all these things, behold, I in turn will bring your conduct down on your own head,” declares the Lord GOD, “so that you will not commit this lewdness on top of all your other abominations.”}}. All that happened and the penalty of sin did come upon Judah’s head.
Chastisement is correction, and in their downfall, they remembered from where they had fallen and they returned to the LORD. God took the next step - {{Ezekiel 16:42 “I shall calm My fury against you, and My jealousy will depart from you, and I shall be pacified and angry no more.”}} Prophetically, God declares what will happen leading to the people’s return – {{Ezekiel 36:31 “THEN YOU WILL REMEMBER your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations.”}}
God is very gracious to those He loves. He is not willing that any should perish and He is ready to welcome all to Him. Today, it is the same while God waits for man’s repentance and return from sin, but the current world is so far down the path of no return in the western nations. Praise God that there are wonderful revivals in some nations such as Iran.
In the next prophecy of Zechariah he is looking to the future, to the times still ahead when God restores His people Israel.
{{Zechariah 10:9-10 “When I scatter them among the peoples. THEY WILL REMEMBER ME IN FAR COUNTRIES, and they with their children will live and come back. I will bring them back from the land of Egypt, and gather them from Assyria, and I will bring them into the land of Gilead AND LEBANON, until no room can be found for them.”}} All this will happen straight after the Second Coming when Israel returns and is restored with her Messiah reigning in the midst.
It is extremely interesting that it is said the returnees will also settle in Lebanon. Lebanon will become Jewish territory and that is not surprising because God promised Abraham the land from the river of Egypt to the River Euphrates. Today, Lebanon is a war zone and Israeli military action is happening there.
All the blessing of God must begin with what this Lamentations verse teaches. Man must REMEMBER and return with his head BOWED in repentance and humility.
