Lamentations: A Survey

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So, our study today is sort of a survey, really, of the

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Book of Lamentations. I'm giving credit where credit is due.

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I borrowed some of the content for some of these slides from my seminary course on the

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Introduction to the Old Testament, being taught by John Miller at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary.

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And I'll be quoting from guys like Miles Van Pelt, Peter Lee, and O.

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Palmer Robertson. So, how many people read the book at some point in their life?

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Try to get everyone's hand up, maybe, perhaps. Didn't mention it's Sunday, and then haven't heard the book, right?

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Maybe there's a verse in there you've heard, right? So, it starts off, chapter one, verse one, how lonely sits a city that was full of people.

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How like a widow has she become. She who was great among the nations, she who was a princess among the provinces, has become a slave.

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So Lamentations is a book of lamentations. But it's a book that probably most of us don't spend a lot of time in, don't reflect on much.

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It's short, but it's dark. If it's quoted from at all, it's usually from Lamentations 3, perhaps verse 22.

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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. And if you read that entire book, you'd be like, how did that verse get there?

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Talking about how great the Lord is and how great His love and His mercies. And the book is talking about the absolute devastation that came upon what city?

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Jerusalem, right? The apple of the Lord's eye. Why would we avoid a book like this these days?

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Just to get you thinking, these are some softball questions. That's true. That's true. Even the people of Israel, that was part of their problem, right?

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Speak to us smooth things, right? They want to say, peace, peace. And what does the

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Lord say? There is no peace. So yeah, there's a few reasons why we probably avoid this book, and I think you've touched on all of them.

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Part of it is it's also from the Old Testament, an entire section, more than 50 % of the

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Bible that's actually just ignored already for the most part. Some may view it as maybe it's just merely historical.

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They might think there's no theological value to a book like this. It's just a collection of poems mourning a tragedy.

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What's the theological significance of that? What can we learn from that? And then yeah, what most of you touched on was the depiction of pain and suffering is not something we prefer to dwell on.

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So why should we study this book? Well, is it important?

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Can it help us in our Christian walk? Obviously, I think so, and that's why we're studying

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Lamentations today. That's why I had you all read it or try to read it, or I'm sure you'll read it this week.

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Like, oh, I missed, but I'll catch up. It is Scripture.

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It is God's revelation to us. It is Him revealing something about Himself and something about how

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He works in the world that He created. He doesn't turn a blind eye to sin, to iniquity.

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And we need to remember that. You know, in our day and age, we don't like to focus on the negative, right?

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I mean, some of you probably remember, you know, even as we have people who pass on and we have a wake.

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And what is it now? One day? One day for a wake? Whom remembers when it was several days?

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It was three or more? I mean, that's what I remember being as a kid, probably at least three,

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I think. And then it was two, and then it was one. Yeah. We're about the same age, or close.

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So yeah, three days, I mean, it used to be that they would have the deceased laid out in the living room of the home, right?

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I was talking with a brother the other day who was saying how he didn't want to, before he got saved, he didn't want to go to wakes, he didn't want to go to funerals.

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He hung out in the back. The whole idea of death scared him. The idea of sleeping in a bed that someone had passed in, a family member of natural causes at the end of their life, just scary.

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But we've so sanitized our lives to try to exclude death and put it over there so that we don't have to spend much time thinking about it.

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And yet, what does the Bible say? We'll get into it a little bit more. Yeah? Yeah, in the days of the patriarchs, it would be a month -long time of mourning, you know?

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Sackcloth and all that at times. Okay. But it is Scripture, it is

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God's revelation to us. That alone should demonstrate its value. If God has deemed it worthy to express in words and give it to us, we should realize there is value.

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And it's not—there's nothing in the Scriptures that are unnecessary for today.

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Everything in the Scriptures, even those neglected genealogies, are important and have a purpose. for us today.

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It reminds us of the devastating consequences of sin. It's something we need to reflect on more.

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These were the people of God, you know? This wasn't just the pagan nations like Canaan that were, you know, wiped out because they didn't obey

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God's law. And now Israel was being brought in because they were being cast out.

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They were told, this will happen to you, right? The apple of His eye. They were warned continually of the consequences of sin.

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They refused to repent. They continued to engage in idolatry, to refuse to live morally as God instructed them.

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They broke both tables of the law, right? Their responsibility towards God, their responsibility towards man. They were constantly in rebellion to what

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God had called them to. Their warnings are our warnings, though. I mean, think about Revelation in the opening chapters, how

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Jesus Himself is speaking to the churches and warning of judgment on the church.

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Judgment begins with the household of God. We think, well, that's Old Testament. God doesn't deal with His people in that same way.

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Yes and no, right? There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ, but He also chastens whom

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He loves, right? And those who claim to be His but are not will suffer the consequences of that as well.

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So it's Scripture. That's reason enough. It reminds us of the devastating consequences of sin.

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Another vital thing that we need to consider, and we will as we go through this. One more thing.

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I want to venture a guess what that third thing might be that I've, I'd say I randomly picked out, but I didn't.

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I'm following along with some brilliant commentators and their way of seeing this, and I think they're absolutely right.

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What else could we learn from something like lamentations? How about how to weep? Do we ever think about that?

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How to weep? When we think about emotions, how much do we think that they should be governed?

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They actually ought to be governed by God's law, right? By God's ways.

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There's a right way and a wrong way to weep. And I don't know if we appreciate that because I don't know if you've ever been dealing with someone, or perhaps you've said this yourself, in struggling with circumstances going on, and you're like, well,

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I feel this, and I feel that, and are you going to tell me that my feelings are wrong?

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Could it be? Could it be that our feelings are wrong? Yeah. They can.

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All right. So I'm going to share some quotes, and I'm going to share some things that, some things you might see in your reading, if you're trying to read and study regularly, you might recognize it.

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Some things you might not, unless you're familiar with the Hebrew, and don't worry, neither am I. I haven't taken that class yet, and even then, it's more introductory.

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But there are certain things you see in the original languages that help to highlight and illuminate things for us.

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But Robertson says, many people are brought into crisis situations respecting their faith because they fail to grasp a proper biblical view regarding calamities that come into their lives.

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Failing to recognize that life's circumstances may bring times of weeping, as well as times of rejoicing, can foster serious disillusionment.

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Sincere believers may mistakenly assume that their faith will free them from all earthly troubles.

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He says, but the book of Lamentation teaches God's people how to weep. Inevitably, weeping over tragedies will come into the lives of all people.

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Yet there is a proper way and an improper way to weep. In the gracious purposes of God, the book of Lamentations has provided directions regarding how the

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Lord's people should weep in response to the tragedies that come into their lives. Its central message explains how to weep.

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You know, we hear about the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, and we think, oh, those guys over there, you know, and they're so disillusioned that if they pray for something and it doesn't happen, then somehow

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God has let them down, where they've just simply ignored clear biblical data, right, that says we're not going to have all these things.

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In fact, there's going to be times of persecution. There's going to be times of trial and tribulation and affliction, and we should expect it.

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But that's not even part of their theological concept. They have no concept of that.

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That's all regarded as a lack of faith. And so there are those who say, well, I have faith and God is letting me down.

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And if it was just them, you know, if it was just that camp that dealt with that, then we'd say, all right, well, yeah.

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But how many of us in our heart of hearts feel that, well, if I'm following God faithfully, shouldn't

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I be protected from some things? Aren't there some things that are off the table? You know, like God will bring, he'll try me, there'll be difficulties, but he's not going to bring the worst of the worst, right?

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I'm one of his. That's not fair. Job. Job should be the reminder.

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Another book we don't spend a lot of time in, you know, get to the first couple chapters and like, man, this is dark.

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And then there's a lot of, you know, speeches, monologues, you know, there's a back and forth with it, but they're going on, it's poetic, and it's difficult.

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And we don't want to reflect on those things, but yes, Job is a perfect example, and we're actually going to tie him in at the end of this.

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So just a little historical context. I think everyone knows, why was

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Lamentations written? At what time was it written? You may not know the time, but 586

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BC, right, is when Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, right?

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Jeremiah had been warning for years about the coming destruction, and they refused to repent.

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Isaiah, other prophets had warned them of what was going to happen, and it finally happens, and the devastation is brutal.

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It's hard for us to imagine, but if you read Lamentations, you get a picture of what was going on.

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I mean, infants and children are suffering, you know, there's rape, there's murder, there's devastation as far as the eye can see.

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The only thing that can give us sort of a hint of it that we can identify with as far as how bad this was would be what?

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AD 70 is actually, yeah, and even another greater fulfillment. It's interesting.

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I'll share that in a minute. Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm talking about us, though, because we read about these things, but it's hard to appreciate sometimes in reading, unless you really are thinking about it, meditating on it.

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What devastation in our lifetime are we familiar with? There we go, 9 -11, where the towers came down, thousands are killed in a moment.

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Men, women, and children murdered, right, on planes, in buildings. You know, the

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Oklahoma City bombing, you know, that predated a federal building that had a daycare in the middle of it.

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Men, women, and children just killed, right? Communities devastated.

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We can, if you're old enough to remember 9 -11 and to remember where you were, sort of like our generation's

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JFK, do you remember where you were when you heard the first plane hit the building, right, and then when the tower collapsed?

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That gives us something of an idea of what they were experiencing. I'd still say it's still small, even by comparison, because we're sort of, even while we identify with it, and I think we all were impacted by it, those who were alive for it and remembering of it, unless we were in the city, and even the city,

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I mean, those people who were commuting in and out. I mean, you're talking about a town, a city, where people are on foot.

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Everyone knows each other. Everyone knows about each other. And this is, everywhere you see, everyone that's dead, everyone that's suffering, everyone that's been raped or starving to death, you know them.

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That's what they're seeing. And I don't know if we fully appreciate that. So there's, 9 -11 is an idea,

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COVID gives us a little tiny taste of it, because, again, we feel isolated. And what's the first, how lonely the city sits, right?

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The loneliness, the isolation. So this is what's going on, it's 586, time -wise here.

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There's a threefold division of the Old Testament. Who's familiar with what the threefold division is?

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You're thinking of the law, and you are correct. But the threefold division of the entirety of the

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Old Testament would be what? The Tanakh, the Torah, the law, the prophets, and, this is part of it, the writings.

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Which is, yes, the wisdom stuff. So this was all about covenant, right? If you're a

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Reformed, if you're Reformed, you're covenantal. Because it's all about recognizing that God deals with mankind in covenant, right?

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So the law contains all the covenant regulations that stipulate and govern life for God's people.

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The prophets was the history of those people living under the covenant administration, and the prophetic interpretation of that history.

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God was speaking about, I mean, imagine, we live out, we're living, history is always here, right?

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We're living at it, someone's going to write about it, someone's going to look back and think about, oh, look what happened during 9 -11, look what happened during COVID, and it'll be history.

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We have that history of the Old Testament people interpreted by God. This is what they did good, this is what they did bad.

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That's what the prophets are providing us, along with the, they're often the prosecuting attorneys, right?

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Telling them that they weren't being good, that they were being evil. The writings teaches us how to think and live by faith in the covenant.

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And you think about that, you think about how the Psalms express life, and viewing things rightly and viewing things wrongly.

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Proverbs giving us wisdom. But even things like Lamentations, Ezra, Nehemiah, these are a couple other books.

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Chronicles are considered in the writings, they are telling the people how they ought to be living, where they're at, in light of the fact that God has provided a covenant,

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He's given covenant, He's given a law to show us how we ought to live. So that's just a very general overview of that, but this is part of it.

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The writings contain a number of books, but there's five, like a subset of five books, that's called the

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Megaloth, and that's Hebrew for scrolls. And the other four scrolls are

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Song of Songs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Ruth. And each of those books got associated with a different Jewish holiday, and that they would be read on those holidays.

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So Song of Songs is read at Passover, Ruth is read at Pentecost, Lamentations is on the ninth of Ab or Av, Ecclesiastes is the

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Feast of the Booths and Tabernacles, and Esther, you're probably aware, you heard me talk about Esther before, that's read on Purim, when they're celebrating

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Purim, because that's, Esther is the origination of the holiday of Purim, right? The ninth of Av was basically commemorating the fall of Jerusalem in 586

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BC. You know what's interesting? Do you know? You'll know by me saying it.

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Um, you know when Jerusalem fell in 70 AD? The ninth of Av.

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Fascinating. That on that date, Jerusalem fell again, right?

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And so, in Judaism, they still celebrate and recognize, remember, and so it became first for 586

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BC, then it became for 70 AD, and then it became for basically everything that's ever fallen on them, things like the

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Holocaust and all the tragedies that they've experienced, this is their day of remembrance, and so they read through Lamentations as part of their remembering.

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So, like I mentioned, we don't like to dwell on this stuff. We have days of remembrance here in the

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U .S., and you know, if you're following the news, you're like, oh, the president went here, and he gave a little speech, and he laid a wreath, but how many of us actually think about those days of remembrance?

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How many take them as a solemn assembly? Unless we're personally touched by those events, we're generally not thinking about it.

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Is that right? Is that wrong? Is that good? Is that bad? What would you think? Human nature, right?

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We want to get away from thinking about those thoughts. Yet what does Ecclesiastes 7 .2

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tell us? Better to go to a house of mourning than a house of feasting.

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Why? For this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Yes, indeed.

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You know, Psalm 90, verse 12, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

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It is good to reflect on these sobering realities. Go ahead, Tom. It's part of our responsibility to pass that down to them, and we often don't.

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So part of the problem is we don't remember enough. And even when we do, we don't often bring

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God into the center of it. You know, 9 -11 happened, and what did the president say?

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We will rebuild. On the one hand, great. On the other, I think at those times there were vigils, there were prayers.

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A lot of people were going to church at that time. A lot of people were going to the liquor store. Others were going to church. Everyone was looking for their way to cope and deal with the reality that had descended upon them.

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But some went to both. I see you laughing, I don't know. Covering their bases.

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I saw you laughing, and I know my brothers. But how often do we bring

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God into the center of it? I mean, we had in our past as a nation days of fasting and prayer, right?

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I mean, I remember when we first started going out to Patchogue and doing some open -air preaching and handing out tracts, and it was coming around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I remember reading some of the proclamations that had been given by the first president, you know,

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President Washington, compared to what I think at the time President Obama was saying.

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And what a stark contrast as to who we are giving thanks to. For what?

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How do you give thanks if you don't believe in a God who's provided all things? If everything's just random chants and stuff like that, it's just sort of sentimentality, you know?

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The problem is too many of us, even if we are honoring God with our Thanksgiving, it's only superficial, right?

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We honor him with our lips and yet our hearts are far from him for some. But this idea of remembrance,

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I would submit to you that the presence of lamentations and the similarly themed psalms, you recognize that about a third of the book of psalms either are just straight -up lamentations, laments, or contain significant portions of it.

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A third of our songbook from God contain laments in addition to this short book, right?

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I would submit to you that their presence demonstrates that suffering and mourning are to be expected in this world, this side of glory, and that we should look to the scriptures on how to navigate those feelings.

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Again, Robinson talks about the fact that an inspired portion of the scriptures given over to lamentation has great significance.

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The tragedies that they experience in Israel will be reflected in different ways in every generation.

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Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward, as Job says, right? There'll be wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes.

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Men's hearts will fail from fear. We have our parallels today of plagues and murder, theft, rape, suicide bombing, tsunamis, invasions, wars that continue unabated.

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Pandemics and epidemics, right? We have all these things today. There's a right way to respond to it, and it's not just a

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Pollyanna. It'll get better tomorrow. There's times to weep. So God's people must learn how to weep, for there's a wrong way and a right way, he says.

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There's a God -honoring way to respond to the deepest tragedies of life, and there's a seriously harmful way for the people of God to react to their calamities, both as individuals and as a body.

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And so he goes, every previous generation, the book was needed, the message was needed, and it will continue to be needed to keep with balance.

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So the question is, how does Lamentations teach us to weep, right?

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And there's a couple of ways. And again, this is stuff that we sometimes fail to see because we aren't familiar with the original languages, and things don't always translate fully over to the

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English. For one, the acrostic style is part of the structure of Lamentations.

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Who knows what the acrostic style is? That's an easy one, right? We know Pastor Anthony knows.

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The guy is Baptist minister, the day he was born. What's an acrostic?

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By the first letter, right? And the alphabet acrostic is one of the most well -known ones.

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Psalm 119 is a mega acrostic, right?

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Each one of those sections is starting off with the same Hebrew letter for each section, and then it goes all the way through the alphabet and back, right?

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What we have in Lamentations is four of the chapters are given to us as an acrostic.

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There's actually 22 lines, I believe, in each one that says, first consonants of each poetic unit join together to form a specific pattern.

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So Lamentations 1 is a perfect acrostic all the way through, right? It's made up of 22 poetic units made up of three lines each with the first line following the

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Hebrew alphabet. Lamentations 2, the alphabet acrostic with 22 units made up of the three lines each, but there's a reverse of two of the letters.

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Lamentations 3, it's a trifold. If you read the first, if you notice the verses in the chapters, there's 22 verses, 22 verses, and then 66 verses, but it's still 22 lines, 22 units, rather.

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And with that, there's three lines in each of those units, and each one of them, A -A -A, B -B -B,

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C -C -C, each one of them has that in there, right? And then the fourth has that alphabet acrostic, two lines each, and then the five is non -acrostic, but it's still 22 lines, still giving a picture of it.

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Now, there's all sorts of stuff that could be talked about here. You know, they talk about, you know, if you were reading this out loud, if you were doing this publicly, how you might have readers set up, and how there shows something of a breakdown that can show the devastation coming on the city, even in the formulation of that.

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We're not going to get too far, and I just want to give you just a taste of, there's an acrostic there that our Bibles don't even mention.

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You know, you might see what Psalm 119, it'll show you those letters. Here, we don't have it, so you don't know unless you're looking up some notes.

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What's the purpose of an acrostic? Here's a couple here. For the sake of time,

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I'll just give it to you, right? Peter Lee points out a couple of possible purposes.

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It says, within all the chaos, and again, I try to give you a picture, a little bit of what you, these people, everyone they know is suffering, right?

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Chaos, shame, obliteration, described within the book. A sense of order, control, and precision is sustained at a literary level.

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As there's a modicum of hope found in the Lord, whose mercy is renewed daily, Lamentation 3, so the same hope is expressed in the literary steadiness that reflects the true divine poet of the book, right?

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So even though there's all this chaos going on out here, even in the morning, there's some order, right?

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God, as he is divinely inspired, and is breathing this out, and using the prophet

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Jeremiah, we suspect, to say, he's giving them something orderly to reflect on, to sort of center their mind, okay?

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He says, this well -stylized and cyclical use of the acrostic in Lamentations 3 causes the reader to slow down and encourages deeper meditation upon each poetic line.

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Again, that's the one that has three lines, and they're each starting with the same letter. So it's actually kind of slowing you down, you're thinking about it even more.

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And he goes, and that's effective and interesting, because the message of hope, the primary message of hope, is found in Chapter 3.

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O 'Palmer Robertson says, it has been proposed that the acrostic form serves as a means of making possible the easier memorization of the entire book of Lamentations.

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And if you've heard any Old Testament survey classes and stuff like that, it often talks about how there's different structures that help to make it easier to memorize, right, because they're supposed to be hiding it in their hearts, but they're not like us, where we have several

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Bibles and different translations getting dusty on our bookshelves, right? We have all this right at our fingertips.

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We can pull out our phone and have a thousand versions of it. They had scrolls in a central location, and it was meant to be taught and memorized, committed to memory so that you could share it with your children and your family and all those on your house.

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So there's that aspect that helps with memorization, because in addition, the form would demand an expression of emotions that would be disciplined and restrained, despite the depth of the tragedy.

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He also says it has been proposed that the acrostic form would encourage completeness in the expression of grief. He says the

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Judean tradition that Adam transgressed the whole law from Aleph to Ta, A to Z, and that Abraham kept the whole law from Aleph to Ta, supports this understanding of the use of the acrostic form.

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The idea is by using the whole alphabet, there's restraint, but there's a completeness.

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It's not just going, all right, just come on, mention it and get past it. No, it's giving a full orbed expression to what they are feeling and what they are seeing, what they're going through.

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So he says, Lee talks about that there's hope found within, and it brings steadiness in the midst of the tumult.

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The increased level helps to focus in on the message of hope. And again, these five chapters, dark as they are, hope is still at the center of it.

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And keeping restraint, you know, Robertson says, encouraging discipline and restraint, he says, the nation's grief could be properly expressed only within the restraints of appropriate repentance and faith.

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An irrational or excessive expression of despair would never be appropriate for God's covenant people.

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Think about when we were talking about Nadab and Abayu and the strange fire and being wiped out, right?

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They instantly put to death for their transgression because God is holy and he's going to be regarded as holy.

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And what's Aaron told? Be silent. Don't mourn.

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Don't show an expression of grief, right? Because you have to keep the primary things primary.

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God is holy and he was completely just in what he did. And we don't want to say, oh, this poor sinner who has been judged because they are an example to the congregation, the entirety of the people.

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What they were doing was blasphemous and dangerous. And we have to keep things in perspective.

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So even in our mourning, even in our tragedies, we want to keep some restraint. Because if we give ourselves to despair and just the wailing and just losing ourself, we are at the same time saying

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God is not with us. And if we have no hope, how can we tell others about the hope that we have in Christ, right?

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And so there needs to be, even in our tragedy, even in our mourning, and we're not told not to mourn.

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We're given a whole book here, in addition to the other books of lamentation, the

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Psalms rather, of how to lament and how to acknowledge your experience and the tragedy and the suffering, but doing so in a way that's honoring to God.

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So there's another part of the structure before we get to the themes. And that's the chiastic structure.

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Who's familiar with the chiastic structure? There's a picture of it right here. We've talked about it a bunch of times.

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But the idea is there's these parallel ideas that are brought in. And so David Dorsey, he wrote a book called

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The Literary Structure of the Old Testament. And he shows there's chiastic structures all over the place in the

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Old Testament. And here's an example. But what we know about the chiastic structure is generally when you get to the center, that's the point, right?

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All these things are true. All these things are necessary. We want to remember all of them and dwell and meditate on them. But the point is,

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Yahweh has great love, right? So even in their affliction, even in their devastation, even in the middle of the consequences of their sins, remember,

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God is love. So by the acrostic, by the chiastic, even in how this is formulated and put together,

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God is giving us a picture of how we ought to weep and what we need to focus on.

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There's a few theological themes that we're going to mention. This is by help of O 'Palmer

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Robertson. He sees four primary themes. One, calamity has come, right?

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And so there's only a handful there from the first chapter, right?

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The city weeps. She's betrayed by friends. She mourns. Her priests groan. Her maidens grieve. Her enemies laugh at her destruction.

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She is bound in a yoke that saps her strength. After affliction and harsh labor, the people of God have gone into exile.

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Again, we're talking about all the death and destruction. They're kidnapped. They're taken away from their land, from their family, from their homes, and they're just dispersed into foreign lands, right?

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They are captive before the foe. Outside, the sword bereaves. Inside, there's only death. And so he says, most striking is the fact that it is

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God's city, the city of Jerusalem, the rural habitation of Zion, the focal place for the life of the chosen people of Israel that suffers these massive calamities, right?

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So calamity has come, and here's this recognition of it. He mentions the principal consequence of this tragedy is the aloneness of the city, the isolation of aloneness.

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And I think that's something that we can all recognize and identify. When tragedy comes, when suffering comes, even if you're suffering as a people, right?

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9 -11. Even if you're suffering as a family, a death in the family, you feel alone.

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You're not thinking about all the other people around you who are going through the same thing. You're in your own head, trying to process it.

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And what are we seeing a picture of here? How lonely is the city? Cut off.

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I mean, we talk about death. Death is separation, right? And primarily, we think of our separation from God, right?

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And so there's that isolation that's part and parcel of this. Go ahead there, Jerry. Yeah. So we're going to touch on some of that, you know, are we?

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We're going to touch on it briefly. We're going to fly through here to the end. But no, we'll get there.

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Again, this is a survey, and I'm finally going to do a survey and mean it this time. So this is just a picture of it.

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And Robertson reminds us that Christ should always be seen in every book, right?

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None have experienced aloneness with the intensity felt by the promised suffering Savior. Here's the one who was sinless, right?

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Here's the one who came to suffer for our sins, to take the penalty. Look at what

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Jerusalem experienced, right? Pales in comparison to eternity.

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And Christ took that for us, and he experienced that isolation in that moment.

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So in terms of learning how to weep, calamity has come.

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And so this is being expressed. It's definitely appropriate to articulate, to vocalize our situation, our experience, speaking about what happened, speaking about what we're going through.

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We're not expected to just grin and bear it. We're not expected to just, you know, that idea of the Stoics, you know, just, oh no, you know, stiff upper lip, that kind of thing.

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There is a time and place to speak about our sufferings. The next theme, sin has caused it, right?

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And this is something also that's brought up. Images, and again, just a couple, and there's many spread throughout.

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Jerusalem has filth on her skirt. She is altogether an unclean thing. God's people have become heartless, behaving like ostriches in the wilderness that leave their eggs behind and go off, right?

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And then there's confession of sin. And again, just a handful of them. Because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.

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Jerusalem sinned grievously, therefore she became filthy. Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions.

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They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

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Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Let us test and examine our ways and return to the

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Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and hands to the God in heaven. We have transgressed and rebelled and you have not forgiven.

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In Lamentations 4 .6, for the chastisement of the daughter of my people have been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment and no hands were wrung for her.

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It's interesting if you see that section because in one of the commentaries it says the word that they use for chastisement actually should probably better translated sin.

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That the sin of our people is greater than Sodom and Gomorrah. And some people go, well, either way, is it really?

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Yes, because look at the revelation that Israel had, Jerusalem had compared to Sodom and Gomorrah.

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And their sin was greater, went on longer, idolatry, all the immorality that was going on.

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It was indeed greater. Would you say the punishment is greater? I mean, a little bit past that in chapter 5, it talks about how those who died by the sword were the lucky ones, right?

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You think of Sodom and Gomorrah, they're overthrown, fire and brimstone come down and they're out. It's just a heaping ruin.

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These people, not only were those who were killed by the sword, they died quick at least.

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The rest are starving. They're in isolation. They're being taken captive. All sorts of trauma is coming on them, right?

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But sin has caused it. Calamity is a result of sin, either directly or indirectly. We still live in a world that is experiencing the consequences of the fall.

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In the case of Jerusalem, we see that it was their continual sin that was directly related, directly responsible for the devastation that occurred.

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If you got the email, I told you, read Deuteronomy 32, the song of Moses, because he talks about how faithful God is to keep covenant, but that cuts both ways.

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And he talks about if they disobeyed, if they sinned, if they committed idolatry, if they committed rebellion, all this, he would visit all this judgment on them.

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That was a song that they were supposed to memorize and sing as a witness against themselves and a warning not to rebel.

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And so now all these things are coming true, right? So in that case, it's sobering reminder, you brought this on yourself.

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You still need to repent. As we'll discuss shortly, our trials may not always be a direct consequence of our sin.

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Again, think about Job, right? Think about the righteous remnant that are impacted by greatly the sins of the people around them, not themselves.

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But it's a good time if we encounter trials and tribulations, if we encounter devastation and destruction. I don't know if,

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I hope you remember, because this was important. When COVID -19 hit, and all we had were the initial reports of how much death was going on, and how there were churches who were meeting, and they were all of a sudden massive breakouts, and people were dying, and we were struggling with our stay open, meet, how are we going to go about that?

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Where I actually had an opportunity to preach, and I preached from Lamentations 3, let us examine our ways, right?

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When these things are coming, we can't just assume, that's someone else's fault, it's not me. It's a good time to take stock and examine ourselves and see, have we been living the way

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God told us? Would we deserve God's judgment, God's chastening, God's discipline?

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It's a good time to take stock. So it may be, it may not be, but it's always good to consider, and reflect, and confess any sin that you have before God.

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Because theme three is, God is the one who has caused it, right? He ordered it. The Lord has afflicted her.

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The Lord inflicted on his day. The Lord has done what he purposed. He carried out his word, which he commanded long ago. Remember, Deuteronomy 32.

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He has thrown down without pity. He has made the enemy rejoice over you, exalted the might of your foes. The Lord gave full vent to his wrath.

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He poured out his hot anger. He kindled the fire in Zion that consumed its foundations, right? This is something that many people don't want to recognize.

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They refuse to. Even in the church, that the God is sovereign, the Lord is sovereign, and he does indeed send judgment.

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Remember, this is not just Old Testament stuff. Read the first couple chapters of Revelation. The Lord Jesus sends judgment, right?

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Especially on his own, because we should know better. So in learning to weep, it is vital to recognize that the

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Lord's hand is in these hands. Because they remind us that these things aren't without purpose. That's where the hope comes in.

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It's not without purpose. This is not arbitrary. It's not accidental. God is behind it. And that recognition leads us to the next and final theme for Robertson that he wants to point out.

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There is hope nonetheless, right? If the Lord had disordered it, that means he can bring mercy. He can rescind some of that, and he can bring restoration.

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He can bring hope. And so he points out there's a few different ways that we see hope here.

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Modest hope in the form of prayers and pleas to the Lord. O Lord, behold my affliction. This is in chapter 1.

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Look, O Lord, and see, for I am despised. Look, O Lord, for I am in distress, my stomach churns.

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If you're familiar with the rest of the Old Testament, you recognize that there's times where God, especially in the sin cycle of judges, where God would see the oppression of his people.

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Oppression he sent because they were in sin. And he would take pity. And he would raise up a judge to deliver them, right?

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And so the idea that God is saying, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, look, O Lord, and see, is that he might actually see.

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And he might actually take pity. And then there's hope through urging, constant pleading, right?

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We're told through lamentations to pray without ceasing. Where have we heard that before? Oh, is that just Old Testament?

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No, of course not, right? So, Lamentations 2, their heart cried out to the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a torrent, day and night.

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Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite. Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the night watches. Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the

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Lord. Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

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And so, what is he telling us? To pray because God would observe.

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And by observing that, he would have pity. If we're praying and we're acknowledging our sin, we're confessing our sin, and we're bringing about repentance,

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God can bring hope. He can bring restoration. So, even in the middle of catastrophe, keep in mind the context.

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This is not just Daniel plead before God day and night. He's telling all the people, all of the city, plead before God, cry out.

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In the middle of the catastrophe, hope in the Lord. Even when you're suffering from the consequences of your sin, call out to the

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Lord. That's the hope that we have, that even in our sin, though we don't deserve it, and we never deserve it.

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We never deserve his mercy. We never deserve his grace. We are objects of it because of what God has done.

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And yet he tells us, call out to God, that we would have hope. And remember is, what they're experiencing, as terrible as it is, pales in comparison to the eternal judgment to come.

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So, while it's yet today, look to the Lord. Look for forgiveness. Look for that hope.

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A couple more themes. This was pointed out by Peter Lee. Mourning and suffering.

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How does this help us? What are we learning here in learning to weep? The silent sufferer, this book provides what they desperately need, a voice to express their pain.

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If they suffer due to their transgressions, lamentation provides a voice for confessors who acknowledge their wayward heart and seek covenantal restoration from the

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Lord, whose mercy is new every morning. For the broken and destitute, lamentation gives them the lyrical setting to finally verbalize their pain.

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It's a collection of elegant prayers that have been scripted for the sufferer. And basically to relate their state of misery, to verbalize their struggles, and to appeal to him for relief.

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And then the righteous sufferer. Again, if you look through Lamentations 3, it doesn't seem like that it's always a case of this is the person who's guilty.

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This might be a person who is suffering. If you read through Lamentations 3 and you read through Job, you'll see many parallels of descriptions of what the

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Lord has done and how he's afflicted and how he feels blocked in. And we see the same things being shown in Job.

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And we know that Job didn't suffer because he was sinful, but because he was righteous. And the fact of the matter is, as Jesus tells us in the

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Beatitudes, you know, blessed are those when you're persecuted for my name's sake, right? You're going to suffer because you're righteous.

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The apostles, Paul and Peter, in their letters tell us, we are going to suffer. We are going to endure persecution.

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We're going to endure dealing with this world. And there's still hope, right?

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The man who has seen affliction. So, though we experience suffering due to our righteousness, think about Daniel and his friends, right?

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At this time, they're being exiled to Babylon, made eunuchs in the king's court. They're suffering, not because of their sin, but because of the sins of the others, right?

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And yet their hope is in God. They keep their eyes fixed on him. So, there will be times when we suffer as the righteous remnant, right?

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Lamentations is not about just suffering for your own sin. It could be just suffering in general.

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But what's the true message? What's the primary message? It's hope. And it's sprinkled throughout, again, through the prayers and those and recognizing that God sees and He'll deliver.

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And then primarily in chapter 3, we get it more heavily given to us.

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We may suffer. We may weep. But let us remember that to do so while keeping our hope in the

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Lord. And take comfort in the fact that Christ, who suffered for our sins, we will have eternity with Him.

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Christ has gone through this. Christ is a suffering servant. He suffered for others.

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He did not deserve it. And yet He used it. He took the suffering that we deserve, the fullness of it, the eternal judgment of it.

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He took it upon Himself that we might be reconciled and have life with Him. We have to remember to keep our eyes fixed on Him, to have our hope in Him.

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And that's the message of Lamentations. Okay, so rush through.

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Again, it's a survey. I wanted to give you a brief analysis to show you just how valuable Lamentations is.

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Are there any questions before we are past time? Any questions or thoughts that are pressing?