WEBVTT 00:00:02.541 --> 00:00:07.584 If you find Isaiah, keep going, find Jeremiah, keep going, find Ezekiel. 00:00:07.584 --> 00:00:11.227 Back up there you go and you'll find Lamentations. 00:00:11.227 --> 00:00:35.552 On display at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta is a marble statue by William Westmore Story and it's titled Jerusalem in Her Desolation. 00:00:35.552 --> 00:01:02.951 William Westmore Story was a Harvard graduate, turned to a lawyer, but later in life wanted to give himself more to his artistic side and went to Europe for a decade and studied and fell in love with the artistry in Europe, particularly in Italy, and just fell in love with Europe and he began to craft figurines in marble. 00:01:02.951 --> 00:01:09.382 Began to craft figurines in marble. 00:01:09.382 --> 00:01:25.774 He was particularly noted for using biblical and historical women in his marble works, and this work is a marble of a regal and yet despondent woman who is sitting in her dejection on a pile of rubble. 00:01:25.774 --> 00:01:28.941 It's quite a striking thing. 00:01:28.941 --> 00:01:30.867 You can look it up and you'll see it on the internet. 00:01:30.867 --> 00:01:35.049 It used to be on display in Philadelphia but now it's down in Atlanta. 00:01:35.049 --> 00:01:42.227 William Story took his inspiration for this figure from the Book of Lamentations. 00:01:42.227 --> 00:02:00.216 He crafted this woman as a personification of the city of Jerusalem, depicting in the women's features and in her dress and the things around her, this city of Jerusalem still numb in its grief and shock over what had happened to it. 00:02:00.216 --> 00:02:13.645 The crumbled bits of mortar that the lady is around and sitting on suggest a city in ruins and unless you look very, very closely you won't notice. 00:02:13.645 --> 00:02:17.790 But at her feet is a very tiny serpent. 00:02:17.790 --> 00:02:31.246 The serpent signified sin and that the cause for her despondency and dejection and the rubble around her was because of her own personal sin. 00:02:34.693 --> 00:02:43.050 Lamentations Probably not a book that you turn to quickly for a little like pick-me-up in the morning or a little inspiration for the day. 00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:45.445 It's not that kind of book. 00:02:45.445 --> 00:03:03.592 Its plaintive tone shows up right in the first verse, where striking images of isolation and desertion, widowhood and slavery hit you before you even get to verse two. 00:03:03.592 --> 00:03:09.550 How she sits alone, the city once crowded with people. 00:03:09.550 --> 00:03:13.530 She who is great among the nations, has become like a widow. 00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:21.520 The princess among the provinces has been put to forced labor Boy. 00:03:21.520 --> 00:03:30.832 When you read that first verse you feel how vivid it is and you wonder what kind of calamity have I just stepped into when I opened up this book? 00:03:30.832 --> 00:03:45.933 Well, it's written by probably an eyewitness of the fall of Jerusalem and the depictions of that terrible event are very fresh and vivid here in Lamentations. 00:03:45.933 --> 00:03:49.127 Just a little context. 00:03:49.800 --> 00:04:11.729 As we know, after David, solomon reigned over a combined Israel, but when he passed away, the reign was given to his son, jeroboam, who listened to the counsel of his friends rather than the wise counsel of older men, and decided to increase the taxation on the people. 00:04:11.729 --> 00:04:21.533 And they rebelled under Jeroboam and the ten northern tribes, splitting off into Israel and Judah, remaining with Benjamin. 00:04:21.533 --> 00:04:44.769 And over the course of time, the kings in Israel were all wicked and most of the kings of Judah were wicked, and God, sending these warning prophets to Israel of a coming calamity, finally culminated that by bringing the Assyrians over the Israelites and they being drawn off into captivity. 00:04:44.769 --> 00:05:01.709 Judah didn't heed that very vivid lesson of their fellow countrymen and neighbors and continued on in their downgrade of iniquity, again giving the same kind of warnings that they too would fall prey to the same trouble. 00:05:01.709 --> 00:05:12.286 And then, in 587 BC, solomon's temple was destroyed and the people were taken away to Babylon in a series of three ways. 00:05:12.286 --> 00:05:21.805 So Lamentations is the eyewitness account of all of that occurrence. 00:05:21.805 --> 00:05:25.374 The very end of the people in the land of Israel. 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:37.487 Jerusalem and the people of Judah fell victim to the Babylonians because of three key things they had abandoned God. 00:05:37.487 --> 00:05:45.130 Now, they didn't cease to believe in God, but they ceased to consider God as having anything relevant to say to their lives. 00:05:45.130 --> 00:05:50.788 They continued on with the forms of worship, without a sense of the heart of worship. 00:05:50.788 --> 00:05:57.968 They were really like true pagans, simply giving lip service to God. 00:05:57.968 --> 00:06:01.581 The temple worship was formal, unsatisfying. 00:06:01.581 --> 00:06:10.814 The religious leaders were catering to the people's felt needs, saying peace, peace when there was no peace and there were only a few people interjecting. 00:06:10.853 --> 00:06:19.971 Truth, like Jeremiah was, they had not only deserted God, they had, by default, also deserted God's word. 00:06:19.971 --> 00:06:38.178 When they considered God to be irrelevant, certainly they were going to stop paying attention to anything that he had to say, and so any of the statements in the book of Deuteronomy, for instance, that talked about covenant, blessings and curses, they simply passed off as old fables that had no meaning in their life whatsoever. 00:06:38.178 --> 00:06:43.595 Most of the people had stopped reading the Mosaic law at all. 00:06:43.595 --> 00:06:57.091 In fact, in the book of Jeremiah you can see an account of that when he is speaking about Josiah, who happens to find the scriptures and becomes alarmed at what he reads. 00:06:57.091 --> 00:07:14.982 And you can tell just by the way that account is written in the Chronicles of Kings and also mentioned in Jeremiah that these kings had not been paying attention to God's word whatsoever, not even acknowledging its existence or knowing any of its content. 00:07:14.982 --> 00:07:38.471 And because of all of this, they had transferred their trusts to, to political allies like Egypt and Babylon, and even, for a little time, to Assyria, when it profited them, rather than looking to Yahweh for their source of strength and guidance. 00:07:38.471 --> 00:07:44.211 They also had a very false view of the temple. 00:07:44.211 --> 00:07:59.855 Because the temple had been built and because God had shown false view of the temple, because the temple had been built, because God had shown his presence in the temple, they had assumed that as long as the temple exists, it will exist Because God had put his presence in the temple. 00:07:59.855 --> 00:08:05.144 That means he's okay with it and okay with us, no matter what we do. 00:08:05.144 --> 00:08:07.666 And so they had hearts of presumption. 00:08:07.666 --> 00:08:23.346 They thought that God would be faithful to them forever, again, ignorant to the fact that God's judgments of covenant curses would come upon them if they departed from the living God. 00:08:23.346 --> 00:08:35.592 So lamentations is a response to the judgment that came upon the people after warning, after warning, after warning had been given and unheeded. 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:39.288 Let's take a look at the book of Jeremiah. 00:08:39.288 --> 00:08:42.370 Just have a look at the book itself. 00:08:42.370 --> 00:08:44.279 You can see some interesting things about it. 00:08:44.279 --> 00:08:47.576 Would look at the book itself, you can see some interesting things about it. 00:08:47.576 --> 00:08:57.644 You might be seeing, interjected in between the verses in chapter 1 and chapter 2 and also in chapter 4, these strange words, right, what are those? 00:08:57.644 --> 00:08:59.109 Well, that's the Hebrew alphabet. 00:08:59.109 --> 00:09:08.149 You'll notice in chapter 3 that it's a little different Instead of in between every verse, it's in between every three verses. 00:09:08.149 --> 00:09:10.332 You see that, right? 00:09:10.332 --> 00:09:15.071 And then when you go to chapter 5, you don't see them. 00:09:15.071 --> 00:09:24.672 But one thing you will know is there's 22 verses in chapter 5, just like there's 22 verses in chapter 1 and chapter 2 and chapter 4. 00:09:24.672 --> 00:09:28.148 We'll explain that in just a moment. 00:09:30.701 --> 00:09:43.611 The book of Jeremiah, like I said, is a factual account of the last days, desperate days of Jerusalem, closely related to those events that Jeremiah finishes his book with. 00:09:43.611 --> 00:09:51.191 And it's not so much a part two of the book of Jeremiah as it is a response of the things that have happened. 00:09:51.191 --> 00:09:56.903 The Septuagint gives us a little understanding about this book. 00:09:56.903 --> 00:10:18.171 It has a little preface that's not found in the Hebrew Bible and it says this and it came to pass after Israel was taken captive and Jerusalem laid waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem and said and then it begins, verse one. 00:10:18.171 --> 00:10:27.373 When you read 2 Chronicles, you realize that these weren't the only lamentations that Jeremiah gave. 00:10:27.373 --> 00:10:35.629 In fact, in 2 Chronicles, 35, verse 25, it says Jeremiah composed laments for Josiah. 00:10:35.629 --> 00:10:41.011 To this day, all the men and women singers commemorate Josiah in the laments. 00:10:41.011 --> 00:10:44.427 These became a tradition in Israel and are written in the laments. 00:10:44.427 --> 00:10:46.933 These became a tradition in Israel and are written in the laments. 00:10:46.933 --> 00:10:59.971 It's possible that some of those words in the laments that were in Josiah's time had been sort of transferred over, might even populate the book of Lamentations. 00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:11.379 Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet and when you read Jeremiah 14, verse 17, you find him crying in a lament. 00:11:11.379 --> 00:11:14.710 Speak this word to them. 00:11:14.710 --> 00:11:24.731 Let my eyes overflow with tears, night and day, without ceasing, for the virgin daughter of my people has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow. 00:11:24.731 --> 00:11:29.952 For the virgin daughter of my people has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow. 00:11:29.952 --> 00:11:34.700 Lament is not a word that we use very often. 00:11:34.700 --> 00:11:38.375 It's one of those words that seems to have gone out of our vernacular. 00:11:38.375 --> 00:11:52.610 When my dad passed away, I put together a slideshow and underneath it was when my dad passed away, I put together a slideshow and underneath it was a violin solo that was called A Lament. 00:11:52.610 --> 00:12:10.933 And as it moved picture by picture, through the biography of my dad in pictures, it played underneath all of that as something of a remembrance, but with a sorrowful tone, that life is fleeting and it comes to an end. 00:12:12.860 --> 00:12:14.827 A lament is something like that. 00:12:14.827 --> 00:12:19.611 It's a passionate expression of grief and loss. 00:12:19.611 --> 00:12:27.851 It can take a couple forms it can be an individual lament or it can be a communal lament. 00:12:27.851 --> 00:12:41.528 If you think of the book of Job Job crying out on his own on top of the ash heap, that's an individual lament as he bemoans his state and the trouble that he's in. 00:12:41.528 --> 00:12:53.868 And when you think of the book of Lamentations the personification of the city, that woman sitting on the heap of rubble we have a corporate lament. 00:12:53.868 --> 00:12:59.830 This is not just one person lamenting, this is the whole city lamenting. 00:12:59.830 --> 00:13:08.511 And this lamentation, like I said, is found in five different songs. 00:13:09.700 --> 00:13:13.706 Each chapter in our English Bible takes up one of those songs. 00:13:13.706 --> 00:13:19.201 In chapter 1, we see the misery of Jerusalem's citizens. 00:13:19.201 --> 00:13:25.163 In chapter 2, we get the impression of God's punishment upon Jerusalem. 00:13:25.163 --> 00:13:35.919 And then in chapter 3 is a series of corporate responses to the trouble, however written as if it were one person. 00:13:35.919 --> 00:13:44.495 The whole city is so unified in their emotion that they speak as one voice. 00:13:44.495 --> 00:13:51.442 And then in chapter four, once again God's severity of judgment. 00:13:51.442 --> 00:13:55.260 So chapter two and chapter four sort of dovetail with each other. 00:13:55.260 --> 00:14:06.282 Chapter one and chapter five also have a similar theme and if you've been through this Route 66 series you know what's coming. 00:14:08.250 --> 00:14:28.293 There's a movement toward the middle, called a chiastic structure, which means that the center is really where the main message lies, the cries of the people, the judgments of God, and something in the middle is where the main message of the book lies. 00:14:28.293 --> 00:14:30.335 And we'll get there in just a second. 00:14:30.335 --> 00:14:37.014 But one thing I want you to see here first of all is this structure that I've talked about. 00:14:37.014 --> 00:14:50.780 Four of these five laments are what we call an acrostic, an alphabetic acrostic, and it begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and goes all the way to the last letter of Hebrew alphabet. 00:14:50.780 --> 00:14:57.275 It would be like going from our A to Z or A to Z if you're from England. 00:14:57.275 --> 00:15:00.214 What is this? 00:15:00.214 --> 00:15:11.958 Why this form, this elaborate artistry of starting every verse with the consecutive letters from the beginning to the end of the alphabet? 00:15:11.958 --> 00:15:26.326 Well, we're not given divine commentary on why that is, and so we're left to maybe surmise, but I think we can make some judicious guesses. 00:15:26.326 --> 00:15:28.414 I guess is probably the best way to put it. 00:15:31.571 --> 00:15:46.419 What we learn here is that these lamentations are not just disorganized cries of the heart, and sometimes, when life is very, very difficult, that's just how we do cry, right? 00:15:46.419 --> 00:15:59.614 Sometimes it is just raw, disconnected, absolutely jumbled up, but these aren't like that Most of them aren't. 00:15:59.614 --> 00:16:04.081 Anyway, there seems to be some order. 00:16:04.081 --> 00:16:04.808 There is order to it. 00:16:04.808 --> 00:16:06.096 Why? 00:16:06.096 --> 00:16:23.581 I think it's because there is in this not only the attempt but the instruction to try to reflect on the meaning of the suffering and to try to get some shape to it. 00:16:23.581 --> 00:16:51.259 If you have anything of an organized kind of mind, you know that it's helpful, when you have a lot of data in front of you, to try to find groupings and categories and listings of this data that's in front of you, trying to see the connecting points of various things that you're looking at and draw them off into various classifications and columns. 00:16:51.259 --> 00:16:55.580 And all of that, try to find these unifying points. 00:16:55.580 --> 00:17:10.826 I think the writer is doing something like that, but with our emotions, he's seeking to gain perspective in the middle of the suffering. 00:17:10.826 --> 00:17:16.342 And this order is what helps give him perspective. 00:17:19.055 --> 00:17:21.951 These five laments communicate something. 00:17:21.951 --> 00:17:31.939 In their framework and in their form, the writer wants us to do more than just vent our feelings when things are horribly hard. 00:17:31.939 --> 00:17:37.481 He wants us to gain perspective in the middle of that. 00:17:37.481 --> 00:17:45.580 And so, because of the contours here, what I see in this are three different things. 00:17:45.580 --> 00:17:50.101 First of all, the freedom to express our grief. 00:17:50.101 --> 00:17:55.954 The freedom to express it, not to hold back. 00:17:55.954 --> 00:17:57.816 It's there from A to Z. 00:17:57.816 --> 00:18:01.217 It's there, the whole thing is there. 00:18:01.217 --> 00:18:05.034 There's not one part of the alphabet that's left out. 00:18:05.034 --> 00:18:10.471 There's not one part of our grief that we have to hold back from God. 00:18:10.471 --> 00:18:25.730 We can say it all A, b, c, d, all the way to C, and God hears us. 00:18:29.501 --> 00:18:31.789 But there's also something else that we can learn here. 00:18:31.789 --> 00:18:41.019 We can trace the steps from A to Z and feel not only the freedom to express it all, but to know that we can exhaust it in the telling. 00:18:41.019 --> 00:18:43.383 It goes from A to Z. 00:18:43.383 --> 00:18:49.836 It doesn't go from A to infinity, wherever that might be, that. 00:18:49.836 --> 00:18:55.300 There is a sense of fullness to it as well as freedom to speak. 00:18:55.300 --> 00:19:03.280 But there's also underlying that reminder that there's a finality to our grief. 00:19:03.280 --> 00:19:20.155 It goes from A to Z, then stops, and this is helpful for us to understand as freely as we can speak our grief, as fully we can speak our grief. 00:19:20.155 --> 00:19:22.539 One day, grief, grief will end. 00:19:22.539 --> 00:19:24.824 One day it will come to an end. 00:19:24.824 --> 00:19:39.355 Now, again, those are just my guesses, but I think there's some reason why God would structure this this way around the idea of a lament. 00:19:39.355 --> 00:19:56.548 And if you want to add some more to that for my learning, or disagree with me to my instruction, I'd be glad to hear it, but I think those might be helpful ways to think about what we face here. 00:19:58.810 --> 00:20:03.892 So, instead of looking fully at the book of Jeremiah, I'd like for us to go to chapter 3 and just sort of center there, like I said, there's this movement to the middle. 00:20:03.892 --> 00:20:07.852 1 and 5 are similar, 2 and 4 are similar. 00:20:07.852 --> 00:20:10.599 Chapter 3 is unique and it's unique. 00:20:10.599 --> 00:20:14.058 It's similar with the first four chapters. 00:20:14.058 --> 00:20:21.919 And then it goes from the first to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, but it puts three verses under each of those letters rather than just one. 00:20:21.919 --> 00:20:27.538 And in this we're taught something. 00:20:27.538 --> 00:20:44.684 We're taught first of all to acknowledge our suffering, which I've stated already Whether that suffering be persecution or alienation, or the tragedy of our own sin. 00:20:46.871 --> 00:21:01.365 In chapter 3, the city laments by crying out to God and, like I said, it's dominated by a first person reference, the language of I and the language of we. 00:21:01.365 --> 00:21:12.001 It's as if the voice of the whole city could be summed up with one person's cry. 00:21:12.001 --> 00:21:20.015 And what they're taught here is that they can come to God weeping. 00:21:20.015 --> 00:21:22.083 They can come to God weeping. 00:21:22.083 --> 00:21:33.337 They can come to God with their tears streaming that they don't need to clean up their mess before they can seek out their Heavenly Father Right. 00:21:33.337 --> 00:21:38.151 And how often we might tell ourselves that we have to do that. 00:21:38.151 --> 00:21:48.251 How often we feel hesitant to do that Because there's something within us that says we better be better before we talk. 00:21:51.181 --> 00:21:54.671 Jeremiah, the Word of God doesn't speak that way here in Lamentations. 00:21:54.671 --> 00:22:05.292 It's raw and it's's real and it's spoken, and God is not absent in this travail. 00:22:05.292 --> 00:22:10.063 Look at verses 1 to 3 of chapter 3. 00:22:10.063 --> 00:22:21.715 He says here in chapter 3, I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of God's wrath. 00:22:21.715 --> 00:22:26.391 He has driven me away and forced me to walk in darkness instead of light. 00:22:26.391 --> 00:22:31.372 Yes, he repeatedly turns his hand against me all day long. 00:22:31.372 --> 00:22:46.652 He sees God intimately involved in this trouble they're experiencing and, like I said, the context here is one of their own making by rejecting the Lord and his word and his ways. 00:22:46.652 --> 00:23:05.869 So, finally, after ignoring God and ignoring his word and ignoring his worship, they're starting to realize this is a living God who interacts with human history, and he's interacting with me now in this. 00:23:05.869 --> 00:23:18.220 Verses 4 to 9, he speaks about being walled in, as if the fate of the city and this person is the same say. 00:23:18.220 --> 00:23:30.079 And in verses 10 to 12, god is seen as a lion or a bear or a menacing archer taking aim at him. 00:23:30.079 --> 00:23:35.022 He now realizes that God has come as his judge. 00:23:35.022 --> 00:23:47.163 God has come and is refining his people, and so he's acknowledging the suffering that he's under and how difficult it really is. 00:23:47.163 --> 00:24:00.351 But there's something else that he learns here and expresses here Not only to acknowledge the suffering, but he also turns to self-examination, self-examination, to self-examination. 00:24:02.819 --> 00:24:06.823 Take a look at verse 39 for a moment. 00:24:06.823 --> 00:24:11.866 He says in verse 39, why should any living person complain, any man? 00:24:11.866 --> 00:24:14.569 Because of the punishment for his sins. 00:24:14.569 --> 00:24:19.574 Let us examine and probe our ways and turn back to the Lord. 00:24:19.574 --> 00:24:23.836 Let's lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven. 00:24:23.836 --> 00:24:31.435 We have sinned and rebelled. 00:24:31.435 --> 00:25:02.798 He's starting to realize that repentance is an important part of his prayer, not just bemoaning his condition, but bemoaning his heart's condition and examining himself in the light of God's holiness, and returning not just with lip service, but with a mending of his heart, the lifting up of his hands in true worship and acknowledgement of who God is. 00:25:02.798 --> 00:25:08.269 And so he finds that repentance is more than just a concept. 00:25:08.269 --> 00:25:09.413 It's a reality. 00:25:09.413 --> 00:25:15.388 And so he's talking about taking steps of movement toward the God who's bruised him. 00:25:15.388 --> 00:25:28.549 But there's more here. 00:25:28.549 --> 00:25:30.440 There's also a reflection upon God's mercies. 00:25:30.440 --> 00:25:36.767 So an acknowledgement of the trouble, a call to self-examination and a reflection upon God's mercies. 00:25:38.209 --> 00:25:44.915 Now the writer of the lament here in chapter three asks God to remember some things. 00:25:44.915 --> 00:25:46.765 Take a look at verse 19. 00:25:46.765 --> 00:25:56.707 Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison. 00:25:56.707 --> 00:26:03.028 God look upon me in this place, look at how bad it is. 00:26:03.028 --> 00:26:06.928 But that's not all he remembers. 00:26:06.928 --> 00:26:15.021 Take a look at the next verse Now. 00:26:15.021 --> 00:26:18.205 I continually remember that and I become depressed. 00:26:18.205 --> 00:26:27.251 Obviously, that's what we do when things are excruciating Keep repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, over and over in our mind. 00:26:27.251 --> 00:26:31.820 But he doesn't stop there Yet. 00:26:31.820 --> 00:26:39.866 I hold this to mind and therefore I have hope Because of the Lord's faithful love. 00:26:39.866 --> 00:26:43.125 We do not perish, for his mercies never end. 00:26:43.125 --> 00:26:45.086 They're new every morning. 00:26:45.086 --> 00:26:47.205 Great is your faithfulness. 00:26:47.205 --> 00:26:48.301 I say. 00:26:48.301 --> 00:26:50.288 The Lord is my fortune. 00:26:50.288 --> 00:26:52.708 Therefore, I will put my hope in him. 00:26:53.599 --> 00:26:57.090 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. 00:26:57.090 --> 00:27:04.626 He remembers not only his suffering, but he remembers God's mercies. 00:27:04.626 --> 00:27:15.388 And one of the first things that makes him aware of God's mercies is that he looks at himself and he says I'm still here. 00:27:15.388 --> 00:27:18.583 I'm not completely annihilated. 00:27:18.583 --> 00:27:25.940 God's judgment wasn't total upon me. 00:27:25.940 --> 00:27:30.317 I have breath still. 00:27:30.317 --> 00:27:35.019 There must be a reason why I'm still here. 00:27:35.019 --> 00:27:38.803 It's by God's kind mercy that I still exist. 00:27:38.803 --> 00:27:43.671 There must be a reason, and if there is a reason, it's found in God. 00:27:43.671 --> 00:27:49.328 And if God has a purpose, I can have hope. 00:27:49.328 --> 00:27:51.419 So he looks forward. 00:27:51.419 --> 00:27:56.191 He looks forward and he begins to talk to himself. 00:27:56.250 --> 00:28:03.048 Now the first thing is to wait on the Lord, verse 24 to 26. 00:28:03.048 --> 00:28:07.090 I read into it, but let's read it as a little bit more separately. 00:28:07.090 --> 00:28:09.746 The Lord is my portion. 00:28:09.746 --> 00:28:12.626 Therefore, I will put my hope in him. 00:28:12.626 --> 00:28:18.347 The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. 00:28:18.347 --> 00:28:21.484 It is good to wait who wait for him to the person who seeks him. 00:28:21.484 --> 00:28:25.272 It is good to wait quietly, for salvation is from the Lord. 00:28:25.272 --> 00:28:57.928 He realized that the crushing blow of judgment wasn't fully absolved yet, but one day it would be, and that the trouble, through the acrostic in its movement, in its finality, would come to an end and the time would come when there would be a refreshment from the Lord, that there would be blessing from the Lord. 00:28:57.928 --> 00:29:16.212 He just needed to wait upon the Lord to acknowledge the Lord's glory, to worship him for what he deserves to be worshiped for and to patiently endure in hope for that day that's coming. 00:29:16.212 --> 00:29:30.550 So he continues to look toward the Lord's faithful love and the outworking of his determinations in the midst of this grievous season. 00:29:33.040 --> 00:29:34.887 This is what Lamentations teaches us. 00:29:34.887 --> 00:29:39.949 It's a good book to read when we're going through trouble. 00:29:39.949 --> 00:29:47.484 It's a good book to read when we can't understand national tragedies or worldwide calamities. 00:29:47.484 --> 00:30:15.959 But it's also a good book to read when we're going through our own personal difficulties and sort of walking through its movement, following its form, so that we might feel the freedom to cry, to feel the fullness of our troubles, but to know that they come to a final end in the mercy of God. 00:30:15.959 --> 00:30:24.112 This book continues to speak forward. 00:30:24.133 --> 00:30:36.268 Because he was a desperately debauched and apostate nation that God continued to keep alive because there were promises he meant to fulfill. 00:30:36.268 --> 00:30:41.691 And Jeremiah is hanging on to those. 00:30:41.691 --> 00:31:05.969 The God to whom the poet prayed, the God to whom the poet brought himself in return, is the same God who promised, through the line of the people of Abraham, to bring a deliverer who would bring blessing not just back to this nation but to all people who called upon him. 00:31:05.969 --> 00:31:20.951 That revelation of lamentations is the covenant faithfulness of God in the midst of unfaithful people, to use even them to fulfill his good purposes. 00:31:20.951 --> 00:31:32.925 The key verses 22 and 23 of chapter 3, tell us just that, because of the Lord's faithful love, we do not perish, for his mercy is never end. 00:31:32.925 --> 00:31:34.846 They're new every morning. 00:31:34.846 --> 00:31:37.025 Great is your faithfulness. 00:31:38.601 --> 00:31:51.887 Unless the Lord had been faithful to his covenant promises, unlike Israel was unfaithful to its covenant promises, it would spell the end of Israel and it would mean no hope for the Gentiles. 00:31:51.887 --> 00:32:16.785 But here we are because there is a covenant-keeping, faithful God who will take even the most troubling people in their lowest point in life and continue to use and work through them to accomplish His good purposes and show mercy to more undeserving people just like us. 00:32:16.785 --> 00:32:20.978 Let's pray again. 00:32:20.978 --> 00:32:21.804 Father. 00:32:21.804 --> 00:32:25.849 We thank you for your glorious word that reveals who you are. 00:32:25.849 --> 00:33:05.827 We thank you that you're full of unfailing love and compassion, that you are faithful and that you have stepped again into human history, not like this time to bring Judah to its lowest point, but to step into human history to seek and to save the lost, to deliver the millions of undeserving sinners over these past many centuries, and certainly we can say this because of the Lord's great love, that we're not consumed, for your compassions never fail, lord. 00:33:06.608 --> 00:33:33.002 Help us also to learn the patterns and the structure of how to deal with ourselves before you when things don't go the way we would like them to go, when life is full of pain and agony instead of pleasure and joy, when our situation is turned on its head rather than putting us on the top of the heap. 00:33:33.002 --> 00:33:41.010 We pray, father, that we'd learn to express ourselves to you and to bring ourselves to you. 00:33:41.010 --> 00:33:48.693 That we'd learn to look at our own hearts and to acknowledge those things that we have contributed in our calamity. 00:33:48.693 --> 00:33:56.273 That we would remember mercy in the midst of judgment. 00:33:56.273 --> 00:33:56.615 That we'd learn to wait upon you. 00:33:56.615 --> 00:34:06.971 Mercy in the midst of judgment, that we learn to wait upon you and that we would have a hope in your faithful character. 00:34:06.971 --> 00:34:08.155 Help us, father, to do this for your glory's sake. 00:34:08.155 --> 00:34:10.625 We pray In Christ's name.