Lamentations 3 (Hope In A Dark World)

All right, good morning.

Am I on? I am.

OK.

Good morning. My name is Scott Griffin. I was a pastor of a church in Newton Junction, New Hampshire for the last 4 and 1⁄2 years until the end of 2020. And at that point, my wife, my family, and I, my wife and three daughters there, we decided to come here and be a part of Shepherds Church until we move on to our next ministry position, which is coming up in, well, for me, May.

For our family, September. I'm actually heading into the Army to be an active duty chaplain. May 19th, I head to training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. And then in September, September 1st, actually, we move to North Carolina.

So I don't know if some of you guys are from down there, but it'll be warm at least when the winter comes along. And we're really excited for that ministry opportunity. But we're also really excited for these next intervening months to be here as a part of Shepherds Church.

I've known Kendall since we spent time in seminary together.

Time in seminary together.

It sounds like we were in a penitentiary or something like that. Spending time in those dungeons studying. So I've known Kendall now for, when was 2013?

Seven years ago? Seven years.

My gosh.

We're all getting old.

Anyways.

So again, I'm very, very glad to be here, to have an opportunity to preach the word to you guys today. And I would be remiss, and I'll be punished if I also don't say Happy Valentine's Day,.

Everyone.

And I really don't know. I thought about looking up the history of Valentine's Day. So I know that there's some kind of thing about some Bishop Valentinist or something like that. Loving love, and helping people get married, and stuff like that.

I'm sure it's a wonderful story. It's based on something true. But I just, Valentine's Day is great. It's wonderful.

It's awesome.

I'm not really a Valentine's Day guy, but it's, you know. I like, you know, so for instance, a little aside. Sometimes I go on these tangent things, I'm sorry. But we watched The Notebook a few weeks ago, or whatever it was, a month ago.

And I had watched it way back when, when it came out. And I remember it being terrible. So I thought that maybe, OK, I'll watch again.

I'm married now.

We have kids. We have love, and all this stuff. So now I'm going to, now maybe I'll enjoy it.

Movie's terrible.

It's awful. I have no idea why it's loved so much. It's a terrible movie.

It's atrocious.

Nicholas Sparks is not a good writer. I'm just going to say that. All right, so now, if you despise me, it's too bad. Today we're going to be in the book of Lamentations. And so Lamentations, it's right after the book of Jeremiah.

I don't know exactly what page it's on. I meant to look that up, and I didn't. So if someone wants to shout out, because it's easy to skip over. It's right after the book of Jeremiah. And the reason I want to mention for you to turn to it is the only passage I'm going to show up here on the screen is Lamentations chapter 3, verses 19 through 24.

But I'm going to be referencing other verses that you can just easily flip back and forth to, because it's such a short book. It's only a few chapters. So if you want to turn there, put a little bookmark or paper in there, or your thumb, or something like that, so you can flip back and forth, you're more than welcome to do that.

We won't be going all over the place a ton of times, but we'll be moving back and forth a little bit. But as I said, the focus of today's message is going to be on Lamentations chapter 3, verses 19 through 24, and really actually verse 25, which is a fantastic concluding verse to that section.

And this is a little high for me.

I'm going to do this. Oh, there we go.

So much better. I feel like I'm a little kid at a bank or something like that, looking over the edge. So now I feel freer.

Oh, this is beautiful.

OK.

So that's where we're going to be at mainly today. But I'm not going to get to the exegesis of that until the latter half of my sermon. And so what I want to do is read through it so it's at the forefront of your mind.

Then we're going to ask you to take it and shove it to the back of your mind, and then we'll bring it back to the forefront when we get to the concluding section of the message today. Because we're going to look at why this passage, which seems to be straightforward and simple, and it is.

It's a simple song of praise, and greatness, and the mercy of God. The fact that it's here in this book, in the book of Lamentations, is extraordinary. It's right on par with Job saying, the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Or Job in the middle of his skin rotting off of him, and falling off of him, and his friends berating him, and him feeling totally isolated and alone, because he has nothing left in life.

Him saying, and yet I know my Redeemer lives. That's where this passage is on par with. It's on par with Job sitting there and praising God in the midst of great darkness. That's where these verses are.

So we're going to read them, and then reflect on Lamentations as a book as a whole, and then come back to it to draw some exegetical concluding aspects from this. So let's start reading in verse 19. Jeremiah, the one who wrote Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah, says, remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

He's praying this out to God right now. He says, surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, so therefore I have hope. The Lord's loving kindness indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. Heavenly Father, as we turn to this book, that is hard reading.

It's bitter reading. It is an herb that quakes the stomach, shakes the mind, quivers the soul, shatters expectations sometimes. Father, I am grateful, thankful that this passage stands right at the center of it, right at the apex of the theological meaning in this book, that your faithfulness indeed is great.

Your mercies and compassions, they are new every morning. Our portion is you, Lord, and it is good to be patient and to wait for you, Lord, to wait for your salvation and to know that no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world around us, no matter the reasons for it, whether it's because of something that we've done and it's a consequence of a sin that we've committed or it's consequences of sins that others have committed or society as a whole has committed, whatever it is that leads to this despairing or any despairing or any depression in our lives, Lord, your faithfulness is still great.

Your mercies are still the goal and the end and the point. And I pray that we would cling to that hope. Pray this in Christ's holy and heavenly name, amen. So again, the book of Lamentations is one of the most beautifully composed writings, I believe, in all of scripture.

There's a few reasons for that. First of all, we are invited in this book to behold a deep, visceral experience of a God-honoring man, Jeremiah, brought into the pit of despair. Jeremiah, the prophet, is witnessing quite literally his entire world burning down in flames and crumbling around him.

Not only is that happening around him, but in the very depths of his soul, he's being torn asunder. See, in 586 BC, after centuries of warning, and we read one of those warnings from the book of Leviticus today, the Lord executes a final, ultimate judgment against the city of Jerusalem.

Not only has he given warnings and writings, but he's also led armies right to the gates of Jerusalem before, almost as, again, a precursor, a pre-warning. Remember what I said in Leviticus? Remember what I said, Deuteronomy chapter 28?

The Lord also says these things as well. He says that I'm going to knock down the walls. I will wipe out the place where I put my presence. I will evacuate you. I will evict you from the land. That I give to you.

The Lord puts those warnings and writings, and then almost all of Israel's history, and Jerusalem's history, it's as though he brings that warning to life with army after army after army marching into the land, and sometimes right up to the gates of the city, and then the Lord gives a miraculous deliverance in many cases.

One of the great stories I love, I can't remember what chapter it is in 2 Kings, but it's about King Jehoshaphat bowing down to face the ground and praying, and the Lord delivering miraculously. It's a wonderful moment in the history of the Old Testament, the history of Israel.

But in 586 BC, the Lord does not demonstrate his grace in miraculously delivering the people of Jerusalem from their enemies.

No.

Judgment comes against the city. Babylon, the superpower of that day, lays siege and destruction against God's people. In the end, there is nothing left, including the temple built by Solomon, including the Ark of the Covenant constructed in the days of Moses, with the two tablets engraved by the finger by the hand of God in the middle of it.

And this image basically displays to the whole world that the Mosaic Covenant made between God and his people, which was a covenant that was contingent for them to receive the blessings of that covenant, was contingent upon their obedience to the Lord.

They had failed completely. The people had failed completely. And as a result, the Lord brings destruction upon Jerusalem. And the truth is, there's no recovery, at least in the sense of bringing it back to pre-destruction days.

The Israelites, the people of Judah, do return to their land. They do reconstruct a new temple, twice, actually. But in the process, they never bring the Ark of the Covenant back. And the glory cloud of the Lord never descends upon the temple like it did in the days of Solomon.

So there's no return to the city of David in the way that it was supposed to be, or the city of Solomon, the temple of Solomon, the way it was supposed to be. 586 marks a changing point in the history between God and his people.

So Jeremiah's descriptive eyewitness testimony recreates vividly in our imaginations the downcast masonry, the smoldering ashes, the wailing of the inhabitants. Jeremiah's not the first man to write a lament.

Ironically enough, the first lament we have written is from ancient Babylon, when they lamented the city of Ur being destroyed, which again, ironically enough, is the place where Abraham himself comes from.

And it might have been the destruction of that city that ends up being one of the impetuses for him to move, to move west. Just interesting little ironies that the Lord weaves together in history. By the way, this is the most famous lament in history.

It's the most impactful lament in history. No question about that. It's a man desperately crying out to God, pleading for mercy, pleading for justice, begging for deliverance, all while confessing and accepting the guilt that the city and its inhabitants have heaped upon themselves.

So for anyone here who has wrestled in deep, guttural prayer with God over a terrible, sinful situation, Jeremiah has run the gauntlet before us, and we can learn much from him. Another reason for the beauty of this book is the way that it's constructed,.

The grammar of it.

And it's not as easily seen in our translations, although we can actually kind of see it in the way that it's been versified for us. But in the original Hebrew, there's a couple of things that Jeremiah does that creates this beautiful weaving and construction together.

So he uses something called an acrostic. An acrostic is when you use the letters of the alphabet in order to start each line or to start each segment. So for us, it would be saying, apples are wonderful, bees are better, cats aren't the best, or something like that.

I don't know. But we go all the way from A to Z. And so what Jeremiah does is he does that in each and every chapter, except for chapter five, which is really interesting. And so here's, I believe that the reason he does this is for two reasons.

Number one, he wants to demonstrate from A to Z the destruction of God and the judgment of God has been complete. There's a totality to it. And so we can see that from the way that this is even constructed.

And then the second thing that I think Jeremiah wants us to see is that even in the destruction and the chaos, there's an order to it because God is sovereign and providentially in control the entire time.

And Jeremiah doesn't shy away from this in what he actually teaches us, but he demonstrates it in the construction of this book as well. And I believe that the reason chapter five doesn't have that acrostic structure is because Jeremiah is hoping that the people of Israel, the people of God, will end up praying.

If you notice chapter five, if you go back and you read this on your own, when you get to chapter five, the verse changes from kind of a third-person perspective where he's the narrator to a first-person perspective where he's experiencing the pain himself.

And then when he gets to chapter five, it turns to a first-person plural where there's a lot of we's and there's a lot of ours. And what it is, it's a prayer to God to restore them. It's a prayer to God to get justice against the enemies, against the Babylonians.

And I think the reason he doesn't use the acrostic is because he's not certain if people will join him in that prayer, but he's hopeful that they will. And perhaps if they do join him in that prayer, he could rearrange it to be an acrostic.

That's a bit of speculation on my part, I admit. The third reason this is a great book to read, and I believe this is the main point of the book in and of itself, is there's a blunt force theological truth that runs like a rebar beam throughout the text.

And this theological truth can be summarized in three simple words. Sin has consequences. I believe that this is, if not the main point of the book, and look, we all know that the main point of every single book is the main point of all of scripture is redemption, redemption, redemption.

We know that, we understand that, we're clear about that. But if Lamentations wants to point us and veer us in a kind of another main point perspective, I would say that it can be summarized in those three simple words, sin has consequences.

Now, Lamentations is a book that's been around for a long time, and Lamentations isn't, obviously isn't the first place in scripture that we behold this truth. And it starts right with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are told that if you disobey me, if you twist my words, if you go about your own path, if you grasp at that fruit and try to attain moral principles and moral basis, and you try to take ownership yourself apart from me and apart from dependence upon me, the Lord warns them, if you do this, you will have consequences.

And the Lord carries those out. Sodom and Gomorrah experience the consequences of sin. The entire world in the all-encompassing deluge in the days of Noah realizes the consequences of sin. We go on and on, Egypt, Samson, Saul, David, the entire Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, about 100 and, what is that, I'm terrible at math, 150 years or so before Jerusalem is destroyed, the whole Northern Kingdom is wiped out by the Assyrian Empire.

Sin has consequences. This is a truth that simply cannot be glossed over. When God's people willfully choose to disregard God's word, his commands, and his cautions, his prophetic utterances, there will always and inevitably be consequences.

And quite often those are harsh. Ridiculing disobedience of his creation. Jeremiah makes certain the reader understands this. He talks about the Babylonians as they're the ones carrying out the judgment of God.

But Jeremiah, in this book, always knows, and always makes sure the reader knows that the Lord is the one who is behind all of it and in control of all of it. One place we can see that is in chapter four, verse six and verse 11.

Let me read verse six and then I'll read verse 11. We'll see it. So Jeremiah writes, for the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands were turned toward her.

So sin has become the identity of the people of Jerusalem at this point. It's tragic. It's terrible. This isn't the first time in history, but it has been continuously building up to this generation after generation after generation.

The people continue to turn from God to idols. They continue to disregard the word of God. They don't take the Sabbath and the feast day seriously. They don't treat widows and orphans the way that they're supposed to.

They're usurers. They have usury as a part of their life. They gain interest against their brothers. They take their brothers and sisters of Israel and throw them into slavery,.

Which they're not supposed to.

They break literally every single command that the Lord gives to them. Generation after generation after generation after generation. And again, the Lord continues to be compassionate and send warnings and cautions to them.

This is the story of the Old Testament. But the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom. Just let that sink in. It's greater than the sin of Sodom. So then again, we look over to verse 11.

And we see that because this iniquity is so great, and even though the Babylonians are the one carrying out the judgment, Jeremiah says, the Lord has accomplished his wrath. He has poured out his fierce anger and he has kindled a fire in Zion, which has consumed its foundations.

Chapter two and chapter four, especially chapter two, talks all about the Lord is the one whose hand is behind the judgment, the one who is in control of the judgment. It is the Lord himself that is tearing down the temple, tearing down the walls, bringing about wrath.

So we have seen the short survey and summary that the vast majority of the texts in the book of Lamentations is woeful, despairing, and painful in tone. It hurts simply to read the words of this book.

Again, let's go back a couple of chapters to chapter two. I'm just gonna read two verses here. It was in reading these two verses, it made me pause. It just, it struck me, it hit me. I felt as though for some reason I was standing alongside Jeremiah as he's going through this pain and he's not only personally experiencing it, but he's seeing it.

And that's what's causing the pain inside of his soul. It really felt I was alongside of him. Jeremiah writes this in chapter two, verse 11 and 12. He says, my eyes fail because of tears. My spirit is greatly troubled.

My heart is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. And then this part coming up is when, boy, this struck me. He said, when little ones and infants faint in the streets of the city, they say to their mothers, where is grain and wine, as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom.

Just think how painful it was to see that and to experience it on a citywide level. You know, mothers and fathers whose responsibility, whose obligation, joyful obligation it is to provide their children with sustenance, protection, roof over their head.

These children can't provide those things for themselves. And so we see here, they're calling out mommy, daddy, especially mommy. Mommy, where's food? I'm hungry. Mommy, where's drink? I'm thirsty. And then that last picture, that last image there of children, infants, dying at the bosom of their mother, the very place where life is supposed to sustain them for the first years is the place where those infants die.

Just in that, at least Jeremiah, I mean, I get it. I understand it. When he's saying my eyes fail because of tears, can you not imagine? I mean, I feel like I'm about to tear up now and I'm just thinking about this, but imagine seeing there, being there.

He's saying I'm going blind because my eyes have been crying so much. His spirit is troubled. His heart is poured out on the earth. He is experiencing an incredible amount of pain in the middle of this.

This is a complete reversal of the goodness that was supposed to be God's creation, the beauty and the blessing that was supposed to be God's people. Israel was supposed to be a light to the nations. They were supposed to have prosperity, peace and safety all around them.

They were supposed to have an abundance around them. Their mothers weren't even supposed to miscarry. That's one of the blessings that God promised to them. He told them, if you just keep my covenants.

And the other thing is the Lord never called for Israel to be totally perfect. He just called for them to obey certain covenantal components. He said, if you do these, you will be blessed and that blessing will extend as a light and as a beacon.

And that's what God is speaking for all the nations. Babylon wasn't supposed to be coming to destroy the city. They're supposed to be coming to see the praises of God and then to join in those praises.

That was supposed to be the goal. That was supposed to be the plan. That was supposed to be what Israel and what Jerusalem especially was supposed to be. But instead, siege has led to starvation. Battle has brought destruction.

Despair, death and abject chaos hang over the city of Jerusalem in a scene that makes a dystopian film look like Candyland. And worst of all is what this represents is that God has totally removed his protection and care over his people.

Now, again, this is God's just, righteous and holy response to the sins of Israel, to the sins of Jerusalem. And they are multitudinous and they are generationally expansive. And even though Jeremiah can see this and he knows this, he's read this in other prophets, he's read about this through the book of Judges.

Jeremiah received oracles saying that this was going to happen, even though he knew all of this was coming and he could conceptualize of it, still when the moment came, he is struck and shaken to the core.

So as you turn to chapter three, right before we get to verse 19, which again, I hope you're seeing that verses 19 through 25 stand out like how in the world can someone write this when all of this is happening around him?

Well, right before verse 19, Jeremiah shows his depression and his despair. Let me read verse 17 and 18. He says, my soul has been rejected from peace. Excuse me, I'm gonna start in verse 16. He says, he, God has broken my teeth with the gavel.

He has made me cower in the dust. My soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness. So I say my strength has perished and so is my hope from the Lord. Just zoom in there on verse 18. Jeremiah says this right before verse 19, which picks up this wonderful song of praise.

He says, so I say my strength has perished and so is my hope from the Lord. Behind that word strength is a military style term. Basically something that a soldier would have that you could basically translate as battle endurance.

Battle endurance means that a soldier, even though he is in the midst and in the thick of a fight and all of his strength is just being spilled out in blood and sweat and tears, yet he can still muster the endurance to carry on in the battle because he knows that there's still hope for victory.

Even if that soldier perishes in the fight, he's going to keep on fighting because he knows that there's hope in the battle. What Jeremiah is saying here is, I'm a soldier who has lost all hope of victory.

I'm a soldier in this war who doesn't think that there's any reason to have hope for the future of our city, of our nation. And then that last line in verse 18 says, and so has my hope from the Lord. Now, perhaps you can empathize with Jeremiah because you too have found yourself in what John Bunyan calls in his wonderful allegorical writing, The Pilgrim's Progress, he calls it doubting castle.

In that section of the book, Christian, who's the pilgrim on Pilgrim's Progress, he ends up getting caught up in this despairing, doubting, depressing state. It's an allegory for spiritual depression, although Bunyan uses the imagery of a giant who enslaves him and beats him and basically drives Christian, the pilgrim, to even think about, consider suicide.

And what Bunyan's talking about there, again, is this allegory of being in this pit of total and utter despair. Now, we see the reason that Jeremiah is in that place right now. Perhaps you've been there too.

Maybe your life has crumbled around you. Maybe you've looked out at the state of the world at certain points because if you watch the news, all you're gonna think is that the end is coming tomorrow morning.

And that causes you to lose all hope and to despair. And you go to, and believe me, I can raise my hand on this one. I'm someone who can wake up on a Monday morning or a Tuesday morning or whatever. You know, I wake up in a happy state because I had a good dream or whatever it might be.

And I wake up and I turn on the news and I say, all hope is lost. It's done, it's over. We had a run. Now we're just gonna go to a gulag.

And we're all gonna die.

This is great.

I can get there. I've been there. And I'll be back. That's where Jeremiah is at right now. So maybe you can empathize with him because you've been there. Maybe even something that you've done in your life has brought you to that point.

A consequence of a sin or a season of sins or season of iniquities has brought you to that point. And that's one of the harsh realities that we have to exist with in our day is that sins we commit on a personal level can lead to these consequences that end up resulting in despair.

You know, if we have a sin of mismanaging money, gambling especially, if we have a sin of lust that leads especially to action, if we have a sin of anger or hate that leads to harsh words,.

Difficult words,.

It can lead us to getting into debt,.

Getting fired from jobs,.

Losing close friends, loved ones, family, so on and so forth. Consequences happen as a result of sin. And those consequences can lead to despair and depression. But maybe even the harder part of this book, the lesson of this book is that Jeremiah himself was an obedient follower of God.

Jeremiah himself followed the commands of the Lord. He opened his mouth and he spoke the prophecies and the oracles that God gave him to the people. He was obedient. He did not get caught up and wrapped up in the iniquities of the people of Israel.

And yet, where is he?

He's suffering the consequences of their sins. So that's a hard lesson that we have to take from this book as well. On one hand, we can conceptualize ourselves as Israel, who if we commit certain sins against God's word and his holiness, it leads to consequences that can lead to despairing, depressing moments.

We understand logic and the progression of that. But there's that other aspect is, well, sometimes we get caught in despairing and destructive patterns where we find ourselves wallowing in depression because we're caught up in a society of sin.

We're caught up in a nation of sin. We're part of a church. And I use that church in a universal term, not necessarily in the local, but we're in a church of sin, the age of a church of sin. And those are difficult things to consider because God is very clear that he will bring judgment upon nations and churches and groups that continue to disobey him and continue to despise his word.

And now look, we don't have a covenant with God, like our nation, for instance, or our state that we live in. We don't have a covenant with God like Israel did. And so there's no such thing as we can look to a certain word that says, if you do this, then I will do this.

I will bless you. I will curse you or whatever like that. But we do have teachings and examples from scripture where God exercises judgment on other nations that don't have covenants with him. For instance, when the nation of Israel went into the land of Canaan the first time, and conquered the land, God was executing judgment against the Moabites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Hivites and the other ites.

There's a lot of ites.

But God is executing judgment against them even though he doesn't have a covenant with them. Eventually, God executes judgment against Babylon even though God does not have a covenant with Babylon. He executed judgment against the Assyrians.

He's executed judgment against the Egyptians. And the Syrians throughout history, even though he doesn't have a covenant with them. And so that lesson of scripture is quite clear too. God doesn't need to have a covenant with a nation to say that he will execute judgment when they wantonly and aggressively sin against his created order.

And so the more and more a nation descends into abject, decreative, God dishonoring behavior, actions and actions, like what we would see in Romans one, the lesson of scripture is quite clear. He might bring judgment down upon that nation.

Not saying that he will in a particular generation, but he just might. And he mostly eventually will since no nation has stood the test of time. So God has always executed judgment. And then perhaps even the harder lesson we find in Revelation chapter two, verse three.

Not verse three, chapter three, through chapter three. So in chapter two and chapter three of Revelation, Jesus is teaching the churches in Asia Minor of that day, that if they continue along the line of idolatry and apostasy and licentiousness and greed, that he's gonna bring judgment against those churches.

And even though there are faithful remnants.

In those churches,.

People who are being obedient to the word and the commands of Christ, even though they're sitting there, Christ's warning is that if the church as a whole does not repent, he's gonna bring judgment upon those churches.

He's going to snuff their torches out. He will vanquish them. He'll bring a sword of persecution against them. Though these are a couple of hard lessons that even, so we, again, we understand on the one hand that there's consequences to our own sins.

Yes, to our own sins, we understand that. There's consequences that can lead us into despair. But there's also consequences to the sins of society around us, the church around us, for others around us.

We don't live in a vacuum. We live in an interconnected relational group that kind of spans the entire world if we wanted to get into the weeds of that. But we live in neighbors, we live in towns, we live in a church community.

Shepherd's Church is part of the universal and the global church in the church in Massachusetts and the church in New England. And so if the church as a whole in the area is dishonoring to God, there's a chance, there's a possibility that Christ's judgment will come down upon the church as a whole and the Shepherd's Church will experience some pain because of that.

The nation that we live in, if we continue to go down a path where we reject God, we do not repent, we do not confess, we do not seek His grace and His mercy and cling to Christ, there is a possibility, according to God's word, that He will bring a judgment and we, even though if we are obedient and faithful and are a remnant that honors Christ, can experience the pain and the consequences of that like Jeremiah is here in the book of Lamentations.