THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 45 – AT LAST THE PEOPLE OWNED THEIR SIN BUT IT HAD CAUSED SUCH PHYSICAL SUFFERING - Lamentations 5:16-17
Lamentations chapter 5 is a whole set of laments from the people and possibly from Jeremiah himself. In the main they are quite unpleasant for most of the chapter but now there will come a change.
In the last message we saw that there were no more elders in the gates of the cities to administer justice and wisdom, and there were no men playing music because the whole social fabric had been ruptured and mourning prevailed. In the messages before that, we learn that the elderly were not respected and the women were raped and the youths stumbled under their loads and were slave labourers. Princes were hanged, food was scarce and dangerous to get, and the people showed great signs of starvation.
All that seems very cruel and the cynic would want to take issue with a God of love but the cynic is wise in his own deceits. God did not spring all that calamity on the people without an immense number of warnings and appeals over more than 200 years. Isaiah and Jeremiah preached their hearts out for the love of their people but not only did the people ignore the prophets’ messages, they severely persecuted them.
Isaiah was sawn alive in two by a demonic mob and Jeremiah was locked up in a filthy cistern. Men hate God’s messengers because they hate God’s message. It has never been any different since the time of Noah and probably even earlier. Unfortunately God’s truth is absolute and what man has sown, that he shall also reap. What we see in Judah’s defeat is the reaping of their godless and idolatrous sowing.
Let us look at this pivotal verse in this Chapter 5:-
[16]. AT LAST PROPER RECOGNITION OF SIN IS ACKNOWLEDGED
{{Lamentations 5:16 “The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, FOR WE HAVE SINNED.”}}
I see in the last 6 verses a section of “wrapping up”. Much has been covered in the book, a lot of it unpleasant, but now it is being drawn together with fact, prayer and doubt. We will see all that in the verses that will follow.
When a person comes to the end of his/her life and all has to be wrapped up, how will that be? It should be different for the Christian than it is for the non-Christian. The Christian has the hope of heaven, or could we say, more to the point, the hope of the Lord’s presence, the closeness that the disciples knew in their private times with Jesus on earth. The things and activities that have occupied the person’s life should take a back seat as the curtain is descending on his earthly life. There should be no regrets.
For the non-Christian, especially the denier and atheist and worldly sinner, it is not a pleasant time. He has remorse and regrets at what is being left behind and no hope for what lies ahead. In fact from second hand accounts there is even some apprehension and a fear. That is so sad because in God there is life and light. Outside of God all is despair and regret.
Verse 16 speaks of two things. The first is the crown falling from the head. This is a verse of conclusion, signing as it were, the lawyer’s statement. The crown no longer is prominent, as it has fallen. What is this crown?
In context this is not referring to the king of Judah as we understand and speak these days of “the crown” in the British Commonwealth meaning the administration under the monarch. Of course the kingship in Judah had fallen because the kings (sons of Josiah) were as wicked as the people and priests and prophets, as we saw many times in working through this book.
What it does mean is that the glory and honour of Judah has evaporated, and in fact is non-existent. The splendour and dignity have gone along with any respect the nation achieved when in self-rule. The great glory days of Solomon were but a past dream, now vanished in shame and remorse.
Since the time when I was young I was always intrigued by the verses from Solomon's time, ones of description of the majesty; the splendor of his kingdom. I found it amazing that all these things could be found and brought into Jerusalem.
{{1 Kings 10:22-23 “The king had at sea the ships of Tarshish with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years the ships of Tarshish came bringing gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks. King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom.”}}
{{1 Kings 10:26-27 “Now Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen and he had 1 400 chariots and 12 000 horsemen, and he stationed them in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. The king made silver as common as stones in Jerusalem, and he made cedars as plentiful as sycamore trees that are in the lowland.”}}
All that came about through godly David, but Solomon ended up in ruining it by his paganism and licentiousness. The survivors of the Babylonian destruction left in the land suffered greatly including the disgrace of their situation. They had been greatly humbled and brought into servitude under a ruthless regime. Many think what the book of Daniel details was the norm for the Jews, but not so. It was the exception. There was a huge difference between those taken captive and in appointed positions of prominence, and those remaining.
The crown had fallen so Jeremiah declares it to be WOE to the people. Indeed it was! AT LAST THE REALISATION HAD COME UPON THEM THAT THEY WERE GREAT SINNERS and this was the result of their sin. Jeremiah always knew that as his prophecy contained warning after warning, appeal after appeal, but to no avail.
Now the people had to acknowledge their sin. There is no start to the restoration of God until the heart realises what you really are in the sight of a holy God. That applies to a sinner entering the grace of God in salvation for the first time, and it applies to a righteous one of the Lord’s, coming yet again for cleansing and restoration.
King David, when he committed that great sin, and returned to the Lord in repentance and forgiveness, said this pivotal thing – {{Psalm 51:3-4 “for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. AGAINST YOU, YOU ONLY, I HAVE SINNED, and done what is evil in Your sight so that You are justified when You speak, and blameless when You judge.”}}.
ONLY THEN, could the problem be resolved and it was because the next step was this - {{Psalm 51:1-2 “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your loving-kindness, according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.”}}
{{Psalm 51:7 “Purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”}}
What applied to David applies to any Christian who sins. That is always the only way back for the poor sheep that fell into the ditch. It was also the way back for the survivors in Judah. The first step was the requirement of acknowledgement and confession of sin for that has to be when they start to come back to their LORD.
It is almost a relief to hear the people say FOR WE HAVE SINNED as the Lord is gracious and never turns away a repentant sinner. I know it was written by Jeremiah but I believe him to be echoing the survivors’ cries of repentance.
[17[. “THIS” AND “THESE THINGS” AFFECT US
{{Lamentations 5:17 “Because of THIS our heart is faint. Because of THESE THINGS our eyes are dim;”}}
I will not detail “this” or “these things because we have done them in detail already. It is a great list but can be very briefly summarised as this – “The people who sinned against the Lord fell under His judgement. They have suffered enormous persecution and abuse and their physical and spiritual states are unimaginable. What they have sustained affected their whole beings for the worse. They are undone and poured out.”
People in great physical and spiritual trauma experience physical and mental symptoms. For those in the overthrow they were faint, meaning they had become as rag dolls with no more spirit in them even to think aright or to act accordingly. These symptoms are evident in people who are greatly depressed. They don’t even have the will to live in a lot of cases. They mope around and sometimes stare vacantly.
Being faint of heart is a surrender of the will and purpose of life to a hopeless resignation. Only those who have been there can understand. In the silence of personal grief the mind recalls and recalls, and the heart gives up on help. Often in this modern world people go through that but too many times others don’t know it is happening to their friends or family members.
When a suicide happens, people ask why, but too often there was a failure to recognise the indications of its looming possibility. Isn’t it tragic when people see no hope; no future and no source of help? The caring Christian has the answer to all that but the answer has to be linked up with the sufferer and that is where we run into problems.
The Methodist Church of Sydney back in the 1960s and later, ran what was known as Lifeline. Lifeline was founded in Sydney in 1963 by Alan Walker after a call from a distressed man who three days later took his own life. Determined not to let loneliness, isolation and anxiety be the cause of other deaths, Walker launched a crisis phone line, which initially operated out of the Methodist Central Mission (now known as Wesley Mission).
Desperate people could phone to get counselling help, and the gospel was shared and people found hope and the Saviour. Then the Government got involved and provided funding but over time Satan used the Government to shut gown the “religious stuff” in the provision of counselling. It became illegal to talk about religion. Counsellors can speak but not “preach” (that means can not share the gospel message).
What use is counselling without incorporating the great Counsellor Himself? It is worthless and is no more than an expression of humanism. We hear today of some tragedy and then it is said, “Counselling is being provided.” What use is that without sharing Christ. Lifeline did a great service for the Lord once before Satan put his stamp on it to excise the gospel.
The faint heart and dim eyes of the survivors are merely symptomatic of the bigger picture they faced with no relief in sight. However they had taken the first step which was to own their sin! It can only get better from there. “I am a sinner,” must always be the bottom rung in the ladder leading to God.
Recently there have been persecutions of Christians who have been witnessing on the streets in Britain. Some terrible things have been happening in Scotland and England but in recent times in Wales. The British police are trying to chain the gospel and are arresting those who speak the gospel publicly. You will find all that in a search and some YouTube postings prove it. The same is happening in Australia against Christians, but NOT a thing is done about Islam preaching its hate in Australia unrestricted and even at times with the protection of the police. They rally in mass protests and block bridges and streets. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has brought up to a million Palestinians to Australia and mayhem will result.
How can people get healed spiritually if the word of God is not preached? When preachers are stopped and arrested and their signs of bible verses confiscated it is just another indication of the rapidly declining state of our nations in the last days. As I understand it, freedom of speech is still doing well in the United States (perhaps not California) but is fast dying elsewhere. Australia is governed by a communist Prime Minister who hates Israel with a vengeance and Canada and Britain and France are run by leaders almost the same.
Before closing off this verse 17 in our study I want to cite a few examples of physical and spiritual torment the Lord went through. To understand all that better we need to look into Psalms 22 and 69, but first look at this verse – {{Luke 22:44 “and being in agony He was praying very fervently, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling down upon the ground.”}}. Much has been written about that but we will never understand what Jesus went through for us. Are you overwhelmingly grateful?
Psalm 22 and 69 are both Messianic Psalms – they speak about the Messiah, Jesus and contain the prayers from the cross (silently) and all else in association. As we are writing here about the sufferings of the survivors, and the crown falling from the head and the physical body suffering, I will quote some of the sections here where the Lord entered physical and mental suffering more than we will ever know. They all apply to the Lord.
PSALM 22
*** {{Psalm 22:11 “Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help.”}}
*** {{Psalm 22:14 “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me.”}}
*** {{Psalm 22:15 “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws, and You lay me in the dust of death.”}}
PSALM 69
*** {{Psalm 69:3 “I am weary with my crying. My throat is parched. My eyes fail while I wait for my God.”}}
*** {{Psalm 69:15 “May the flood of water not overflow me and may the deep not swallow me up and may the pit not shut its mouth on me.”}}
*** {{Psalm 69:20 “Reproach has broken my heart, and I am so sick, and I looked for sympathy, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.”}}
*** {{Psalm 69:29 “I am afflicted and in pain. May Your salvation, O God, set me securely on high.”}}
Do not think lightly about those verses just quoted. Think hard about them. Your attitude to these speaks of your devotion to Jesus Christ. Treated lightly, light is the devotion. Treated seriously, deep is the devotion. The survivors of Jeremiah’s time were suffering for their own sin, but the Lord Jesus suffered for your sins.
