“Comfort in Lament” – FBC Morning Light (9/3/2024)

Well a good Tuesday morning to you, hope your holiday was good yesterday, had some time off and maybe got some rest and refreshment, perhaps got together with some family and some friends and just enjoyed the Labor Day holiday.

Well today we're reading the book of Lamentations, and you know this book gives us the divine justification, if you will, to follow on the heels with what we read yesterday. Yesterday we read in Second Kings how, you know, Chapter 25, I think it was, the Babylonian captivity, how the city of Jerusalem finally fell, was plundered, destroyed, the temple was destroyed and so forth, people were taken into captivity, it was a horrific, horrific thing.

And following on the heels of reading that, we come to the book of Lamentations, which is Jeremiah we understand, Jeremiah's record of lamenting all that has occurred and taken place in Israel, in its fall, in its destruction, and the grief that he feels himself personally.

And you know what you can get from this is, one of the things you can get, and you can get a lot, is that, you know, life is, life can be fraught with sorrow and suffering and woe. There is, I've never met anybody who's gone through life whistling Dixie the whole time, as if they've never had a, they've never had a care, they've never had a sorrow, they've never experienced a moment of grief, or even a season of grief.

No, this is, this is part and parcel of living in this fallen world. And lament is a very legitimate thing to do in the course of such suffering. But, but, we must not stay there, we must not keep our focus on the reason for our sorrow, and the experience of our sorrow.

We need to lift our eyes and look higher. And this is what Jeremiah does in chapter 3, right in the middle of the book of Lamentations, it's like the, almost like the center of the book, if you will, in verses 22 through 26.

I want to notice those verses. The verse 22, he writes, he says, through the Lord's mercies, and that word mercies is a translation of the Hebrew word hesed, in the plural. Hesed is a Hebrew word that speaks of God's covenant loyalty, His steadfast love and commitment to the covenant that He has made.

So he says, through the Lord's mercies, through the Lord's hesed, we are not consumed. Because His compassions, they fail not. They are new every morning. And then he makes this statement, which is of course the basis of a great hymn of the faith, great is thy faithfulness.

The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. This is the point to which we need to come in our lamentation, in our times of sorrow and suffering and grief and heartache. We need to come to the point where, in spite of it all, I am confident that the Lord is true to His covenant, and it's because of His faithfulness to His covenant that I'm just not totally consumed, I'm not eternally destroyed and doomed.

His compassions, they don't fail. That yes, I'm hurting, yes, I'm suffering, I'm grieving, but God's compassions don't fail. Even in this, He is compassionate toward me. I will see it eventually. Why?

Because His faithfulness is great. Great is His faithfulness. He will keep His promises. And then the next statement in verse 24, I can have hope regardless of my circumstances. I can have hope when the Lord is my portion.

Is the Lord your portion? Well, if you know Christ as your Savior, you are Christ's, and He is yours, and the Lord is your portion. And in that the Lord is your portion, therein you can have hope. I like the way the verses continue here, because here's the challenge in our times of lament.

It says, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. There's the key. We need to wait, patiently wait, for the Lord in these times of difficulty, and to seek Him. Seek to know more of what He is like.

Seek to be more conformed to what He likes. Seek Him. And the next verse takes the challenge a step further. He says, it is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. You know, it's one thing to wait, it's another thing to wait quietly.

I'm not too good at that sometimes, I don't know about you, but yeah, I can wait because I don't have any choice. But can I wait without complaint? Can I wait without bellyaching? Can I wait quietly? Or do I have to let everybody know just how miserable I am?

Can I wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord? Well, when I remember who He is, and I remember His compassions, that they don't fail, when I remember that He is loyal to His covenant, His steadfast love never fails, and it is of His steadfast love that I'm not consumed, when I can remember that great is His faithfulness, well, yes, I can wait and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

And so may we wait. Our Father and our God, help us to remember who you are, what you are like, and thereby wait patiently, we pray in Jesus' name. All right, well listen, I hope you have a good Tuesday, I trust the Lord will bless you in it.

Good day.