THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 47 – RESTORATION OF THE DISPLACED PEOPLE – HAD GOD FORGOTTEN THEM FOREVER? Lamentations 5:20-22
This is the second last message in Lamentations. I believe these last three verses to be Jeremiah speaking to God in regard to the people. The prophet was wondering how long the rejection was going to continue in that immediate timeframe and was asking God about it. I also think he was asking not just for himself but knew people were altering their lives when they realised they had sinned.
It is amazing what changes take place when we remember we are sinners and then allow God to take the helm of our lives. All things change – our behaviour, attitudes, expectations, hope and our whole demeanour.
We do not have a God who hates people. God is not willing that any should perish but that all might come to the truth (that truth being that as sinners all must repent and turn to God for conversion). People refuse because the sinful nature hates God and hides from Him often in open rebellion.
We have seen the change with these people displaced by conquering Babylon in Lamentations 5:17. BUT WHAT OF THE FUTURE? That is what was occupying Jeremiah’s thoughts as he closes off this writing. Let us look at that for a while now.
[20]. JEREMIAH SPEAKS BOTH ON BEHALF OF HIMSELF AND THE PEOPLE
{{Lamentations 5:20 “Why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us so long?”}}
God forsakes for as long as it takes. His longsuffering tolerated Judah’s sin for centuries but the time of reckoning came. Sins will produce their fruit to be harvested. His time of restoration comes in its own time.
God was not going to turn around judah’s deprivations immediately. How much of this questioning came from Jeremiah and how much from the nation? I think this time it is Jeremiah. The severity of Judah’s overthrow was God’s long time promised judgement against them, but in reality God had never forgotten them nor forsaken them. His watchful eye was still over them but their time had not yet come for their re-gathering or restoration.
God’s timing was with Cyrus the Great and in fulfilment of the following verses against Judah – {{Jeremiah 25:8-11 (8) “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Because you have not obeyed My words, (9) behold, ‘I will send and take all the families of the north,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will send to NEBUCHADNEZZAR KING OF BABYLON, MY SERVANT, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations round about; and I WILL UTTERLY DESTROY THEM, AND MAKE THEM A HORROR, AND A HISSING, and an everlasting desolation. (10) ‘Moreover, I WILL TAKE FROM THEM THE VOICE OF JOY and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. (11) ‘And this whole land shall be a desolation and a horror, and these nations SHALL SERVE THE KING OF BABYLON SEVENTY YEARS.”}}
Verse 8 is the ultimate verdict against Judah for what it had become. Verse 9 was fulfilled with the destruction of Judah. Verse 10 is the result, and Lamentations speaks to that. Verse 11 is the prophecy of the 70 years captivity. Jeremiah 25:8 “Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT OBEYED MY WORDS. . .”
The Edict of Cyrus is dated around 539/538 B.C. and the Jews came back. In Babylon God preserved the Jews as He did in Egypt. He does it today, and the hate of the United Nations and the absolutely corrupt ICC will not overcome God. The world’s nations turn against Israel with a current short reprieve from the United States because of Donald Trump, who is God’s man for this time (whether he is converted or not it is not for me to say). The Lord has not forgotten nor forsaken His earthly people but the time of their restoration is not now. It bursts into all its glory at the Second Coming. I have written on this and it is in SermonCentral.
As the LORD will never forsake His earthly people, nor will the Lord forsake His heavenly people. When we find ourselves in the valley of the shadow or in a maze with no apparent escape, and the pressures of life are closing in, then we need absolute assurance. How is your faith? Can you hold on to the promises God gives?
For that situation of great despair, here is the verse you need – {{Hebrews 13:5 Let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have, for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU,”}} [[KJV – {{Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”}}
I wrote a poem when considering the way God has been faithful to me. Often His faithfulness is in the background but in time we come to realise it. {{1 Corinthians 1:9 “GOD IS FAITHFUL, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”}}. I am quoting three stanzas but the whole poem is here - https://sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/102994/080-a-message-from-a-poem-faithfully-he-is-watching-by-ron-ferguson
FAITHFULLY HE IS WATCHING
Not forsaken nor abandoned -
Not left destitute at all;
Not as orphans will He leave us,
Blindly in this world to fall.
Pathways may track desert wastelands;
Clouds obscure the light at times.
We may think our God’s forgotten
When our path through heartache winds.
Often frailty wants to surface -
Shows the weakness of our trust;
We may be so fickle-minded,
But our God is always just.
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Mighty God who rules the nations,
Who controls the world’s affairs;
God, who upholds all creation,
Watches o’er His children’s cares.
How He loves me with compassion;
With a tender Shepherd’s love.
Comforter - He tarries with us,
Sent through love from Christ above.
Gracious Saviour, we adore Him,
In our lives the centrepiece.
You, the tender-hearted Shepherd -
Never will Your mercies cease.
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God revealed His endless wisdom,
Executed perfectly.
Rescued me when hope was fading,
Carried me so tenderly.
Can I doubt Him even slightly?
What a shame if that be done!
He has gone in strength before me
To prepare a victory won.
Let us lift our hearts in worship,
Let us raise His standard high,
For He hears His children’s heartaches
Hears each feeble, hurting cry.
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These survivors thought God had forgotten them but that was not so. It is us who are unforgetful, not God. I wonder if the term “REMEMBER ME” also contains a certain element of forgetfulness. We ask God to remember us in a variety of matters as if the Lord has forgotten.
YES! We are forgetful and for this very reason Jesus asked us to remember Him for He knew we are so weak that we do forget. {{1 Corinthians 11:24-25 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, “This is My body which is for you. DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.” In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME.”}}. That is a special reason why the Lord’s Supper should be weekly, so we keep remembering Him.
[21]. RESTORATION CALLED FOR UNLESS THE LORD REJECTED THE NATION UTTERLY
{{Lamentations 5:21 Restore us to You, O LORD, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old,
Lamentations 5:22 unless You have utterly rejected us, and are exceedingly angry with us.”}}
RESTORATION TO WHAT?
In coming to the final two verses of the book we see a prayer of Jeremiah for his displaced people. The prayer is for restoration.
When we see this word restoration being used, naturally we ask, “Being restored to what?” That can have both a bad or good restoration according to your own philosophy. Many of us older people who grew up in a Godlier society in the past, wish to see a restoration to what we knew in the past. This world is going downhill so fast – as the bible predicts it will – but when we see justice overturned and the rapid progression of evil, then we want to see the olden days restored.
Many of us lament our current society as it is wicked and heads towards disaster and in this regard we can almost place ourselves in the time of Isaiah. I believe much in the following verses is fitting for the conditions some of us live under. There is such a thing as programming when people gradually get used to the increase of wickedness and slowly begin to accept that as fairly normal (like the frog in slowly boiling water). It is that very condition Christians must stand against. Just one example of that – the left media terms what was just the normal beliefs of people some decades ago now as “far right wing”. Here are the Isaiah verses –
Isaiah 59:12-15 “Our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us for our transgressions are with us and we know our iniquities: TRANSGRESSING AND DENYING THE LORD, AND TURNING AWAY FROM OUR GOD, SPEAKING OPPRESSION AND REVOLT, conceiving in and uttering from the heart lying words. JUSTICE IS TURNED BACK AND RIGHTEOUSNESS STANDS FAR AWAY FOR TRUTH HAS STUMBLED IN THE STREET, and uprightness cannot enter. Yes, TRUTH IS LACKING and he who turns aside from evil makes himself a prey. Now the LORD saw, and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice.”}}
Those verses from Isaiah could have been penned just yesterday, so apt they are to our world. My nation opens Parliament with demonic invitation in what is known as “a smoking ceremony”. Homosexuality and abortion are promoted above biblical standards. Anything Christian has been removed from schools. New laws disadvantage Christians. What Isaiah wrote long ago now applies to some of us; in fact to all of us in what we call the developed western world.
We want to see a restoration to a better society. I would love this nation of mine to have the justice and biblical standards it held in the 1950s. I know it won’t happen because we live in the last days when evil progresses rapidly. However we long for that restoration to what we know was better.
THE SPECIFICS OF NATIONAL RESTORATION
Jeremiah prayed for restoration, but what did he mean by that? The first thing we must notice is the way verse 21 is framed. It is NOT a restoration to a condition, but to a Person. “Restore us to You, O LORD”, is what the prayer is. We can not have godliness without having God at the centre. Jeremiah’s people had turned from God in the most horrible sinfulness, sacrificing their children to Moloch, the god of the Canaanites, and serving and worshipping the queen of heaven, that putridness of the Babylonian religion.
There can be no progress until we return to the source of our failure. Judah’s failure was their abandonment of God and their pursuit of paganism. When we act in self-dependence of our Maker and determine to map our own course in life, God says, “Go your own way,” or to use a biblical term – used three times in Romans:-
“GOD GAVE THEM OVER in the lusts of their hearts” (Romans 1:24)
“For this reason GOD GAVE THEM OVER to degrading passions” (Romans 1:26)
“GOD GAVE THEM OVER to a depraved mind” (Romans 1:28)
We live in a society today where God has given them over. Jeremiah lived through that. He saw all that unfolding in Judah until God said “Enough!” He saw the destruction that had resulted from the continual departure from God. We are living in the prophet’s time and certain destruction is coming upon the world as it did 2 500 years ago.
The catastrophe hit Judah like an exploding bomb and the misery was unbelievable. In Lamentations we looked at misery over and over as sin produced its ripened fruit. God is not mocked and His promises will not fail. All the warnings in Jeremiah came to fruition, and all the details of Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation will come to pass, and it is so close. Praise the Lord that His own children will not be part of that and will be removed from the earth before the great Tribulation bursts forth, just like Noah was removed before the judgement of the flood came.
Restoration is PERSONAL; it is RELATIONSHIP. There are steps in restoration and these are –
(1). The RECOGNITION of the current conditions. “Why are we in this mess?” This is not a blame game of others but is the analysis of consequences.
(2). OWNERSHIP of those conditions. “I/We suffer this catastrophe because sin has caused this to happen. It is MY/OUR sin which has instigated all this. The survivors dealt with all that a few verses back. It must be the fundamental step in moving forward.
(3). REPENTANCE must follow. True repentance is from the heart, spurred on by conviction else it becomes a pretence; non-genuine and worthless. I believe these survivors reached that point and also those in captivity in Babylon did the same.
(4). That opens the door to RESTORATION. Only in a penitent heart can God work to restore. What is restored? It is relationship. One on one relationship where everything has its correct perspective and authority.
Those 4 steps can be found in one of the greatest examples of biblical restoration, that of David we find in Psalm 51. Let us look at that.
STEP 1. RECOGNITION. {{Psalm 51:3 “for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.”}}. For 9 months David lived in denial but reached the point of realism when God sent along the prophet Nathan.
STEP 2. OWNERSHIP. {{Psalm 51:4 “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.”}}. David had no excuses. The ball was in his court. It was his sin.
STEP 3. REPENTANCE. This process in David’s life flowed out of ownership and I place the next three verses in that process, and a verse a little further on. {{Psalm 51:5-7 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom. Purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” }} {{ Psalm. 51:9 “Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”}}
STEP 4. RESTORATION. These are the verses – {{Psalm 51:10-12 “Create in me A CLEAN HEART, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. RESTORE to me the joy of Your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.”}}.
What will be restored here? These are in the verses – It will be back to the position of -
(a). A clean heart;
(b). “Renew a steadfast spirit within me.” That is getting back to a spiritual walk in righteousness.
(c). “Do not take Your Holy Spirit from me”. The removal of the Holy Spirit applied to the pre-cross days. For the Christian after the cross, the Sprit abides with us forever.
(d). “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation”. Restoration always comes with peace and joy for we are clean and the relationship is righteous. Just to add a verse in this regard - The WALK in restoration is this – {{Psalm 51:14 “Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, You, God of my salvation. Then my tongue will joyfully sing of Your righteousness.”}}
The next message will be the last in the Book of Lamentations.
