Through the Bible - Lamentations

It is nothing to you all, you that pass by. Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. (Lamentations 1:12) > > It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22–23)

When everything burns, one truth remains: God is still on the throne—and that throne calls us to repent.

The Weeping Prophet and His Lamentation

The book of Lamentations follows Jeremiah in our English Bibles because it was very likely written by Jeremiah. The Septuagint even includes a preface: "And it came to pass after Israel was led into captivity, and Jerusalem was laid waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said..." From there it moves into this five-chapter lamentation.

When you read the book, you notice its poetic fashion. It was written as Hebrew poetry often was—in acrostic form. Each of the five chapters is a sorrowful poem mourning what Jeremiah witnessed as his own countrymen in Judah were led away into captivity.

After seeing the city destroyed and the temple torn down, Jeremiah went and sat on a mountainside. Jewish tradition holds he sat at the north end, outside the walls of Jerusalem. There's a place there today—now covered by a bus terminal—called the place of Jeremiah's Lamentations. Fittingly, it sits at the foot of the hill we call Golgotha, the very hilltop where Jesus would later be crucified. Jeremiah likely had the same view of the city that Jesus would have years later when they rejected Him.

A Judgment That Could Have Been Averted

Jeremiah looked at this city—perhaps still smoldering, perhaps still surrounded by the dead from famine and the Babylonian sword—and he cried out. And it all happened exactly as he had foretold. It could have been averted. He had prophesied to the people: turn from your sin. God had said in 2 Chronicles 7 that if His people would turn from their sin and seek Him in prayer, He would heal their land. But the land would not be healed, because they would not turn.

There are several places in Lamentations where you can hear words similar to those of Jesus. "All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem" (2:15)—much like those who passed by the cross, wagging their heads, saying, "He saved others; himself he cannot save." And chapter 3 speaks of "the wormwood and the gall." The sorrowful cries of the prophet over the city mirror the cries of the Messiah on the very same mountain.

Destruction Because of Sin

This book covers the depths of sorrow, the thoroughness of God's judgment, and the total destruction of a city that had departed from God—all because of their sin. Chapter 1 makes it plain:

Her adversaries are the chief... for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions... (1:5) > > The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment. (1:18) > > Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress... for I have grievously rebelled. (1:20)

This was exactly as God had told them through Moses in Deuteronomy. "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; choose life, that you might live." God had given them everything—cities they did not build, crops and trees they did not plant. All they were to do was be a witness of God on the earth. Yet as soon as they could, they departed from Him.

The Cycle of Rebellion and the Land's Rest

As soon as Joshua died, a generation arose that did not know the Lord (Judges 2). They did evil, were sold into the hands of their enemies, cried out, and God sent a deliverer. They would follow for a time, then turn back as soon as that judge died. The cycle repeated until its worst point under King Manasseh, who built high places to false gods throughout Jerusalem, even within the temple.

So God allowed His people to be sold to the Babylonians. Jeremiah told them exactly how long the captivity would last—seventy years. Under the law, they were to give the land a Sabbath rest every seventh year. For 490 years they didn't obey, so God required an accounting: seventy years of captivity to give the land the rest it deserved.

It is amazing that God would command His people to rest. He knows us because He created us. Six days the Lord worked, and on the seventh He rested, and He calls us to that rest too. Yet His people wouldn't do it. Every sixth year God provided a double crop so they could survive the seventh—but they figured they could be more profitable by working straight through. Our minds often work the same way. The Lord says, "I want you to rest," but they would not, so He forced them into captivity to give the land its rest.

Chapter 1: The Depths of Sorrow

Chapter 1 has 22 verses, matching the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, each beginning with the corresponding letter from the first to the last, tov. Chapter 2 follows the same pattern. Chapter 1 gives us the depths of sorrow, and chapter 2 the thoroughness of God's judgment.

Chapter 2: The Thoroughness of God's Judgment

God was completely just, but also thorough in His judgment. A theme keeps surfacing—His anger and His wrath:

How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger... The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied. (2:1–2) > > Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied... so that in the day of the Lord's anger none escaped nor remained. (2:21–22)

Sometimes we cannot comprehend a God who is angry. But we can only see His anger in the light of His love. Hebrews 12 tells us God chastens those whom He loves. These people had wholeheartedly departed and would not receive His correction through the prophets.

Slow to Anger, but Just

Remember Exodus 34. After the golden calf, Moses asked to see God's glory. God said no man could see His glory and live, but He would pass by and declare His name: "The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." I love that the very first thing God uses to identify His character is mercy. He is slow to anger, with a long fuse. But notice what follows: "and that will by no means clear the guilty." There is a time when all those great attributes we love to sing about come to an end, and God says, "Because I love you, I will have to judge you."

God struck the northern ten tribes during Isaiah's time, then warned Judah He would do the same, because they learned nothing. Even after God miraculously killed 185,000 Assyrians and spared Jerusalem, the people did not turn wholeheartedly to Him. For another 150 years they departed, until Jeremiah came preaching repentance—and no one listened. They heaped up false prophets who tickled their ears, saying, "The Lord will protect you." Now, as a result, they go into judgment, and none escaped or remained.

Chapter 3: The Compassionate Heart of God

Chapter 3 is also an acrostic, but every three verses follow the alphabet—66 verses in all. Here Jeremiah contemplates the devastation and gives us one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture:

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. (3:21–24)

He continues: "He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach"—words that point us to Jesus. "For the Lord will not cast off for ever... for he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men." It is not God's desire to punish in this way. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all would come to repentance. Yet many will not repent, and for them there is His anger and His justice—all in righteousness.

So what should our response be? "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord" (3:40). Romans 3 tells us the same thing: it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance. We see His mercy even through judgment—look how long He waited before bringing it.

Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do Right?

We see this pattern throughout the Old Testament. Before Sodom and Gomorrah, God revealed His plan to Abraham, for "surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). Abraham stood in the gap, asking, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"—fifty righteous, forty-five, thirty, twenty, ten. God agreed to spare it for ten. Yet there was only one righteous man, so God destroyed the city but saved the righteous man.

That is a powerful question. Every person who has ever lived will stand before God for judgment, and shall not the Judge be righteous in the way He judges? When we look at the judgment on Jerusalem and think there were innocents there—women and children—the truth is there was no innocence. "There is none that seeketh after God... all we like sheep have gone astray." From the newborn to the oldest adult, we are all fallen. It is by God's grace we are not consumed.

The only way a person stands before God on judgment day is having repented and received Christ, His blood covering them, because the wrath of God was poured out upon Jesus. Romans 8 says God "spared not his own Son." If He did not spare His own Son when sin was placed upon Him, do not imagine you will stand before God and say, "You're a loving God; surely you'll just forgive me." He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might receive the righteousness of God in Christ. But if you are not in Christ, you will receive the same punishment Jerusalem received.

Five Things Lamentations Shows Us

In the light of judgment, God's grace is seen, and our response should be repentance—but the people would not. Chapters 4 and 5 continue the laments as Jeremiah considers God's full judgment and the people's utter humiliation.

Five things stand out. In chapter 1, the great desolation—we see God's righteousness, for He was just. In chapter 2, the judgment in His wrath—we see God's faithfulness, for He kept His word. Parents sometimes promise a punishment and never carry it out, but these people thought they could take advantage of God's love. God said, "I will spew you out of the land," and He was faithful. In chapter 3, Jeremiah's personal pain—we see God's compassionate heart, for His compassions fail not even in judgment.

Chapter 4: Judgment for Purification

In chapter 4, the thorough judgment of God ends with something interesting:

The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins. (4:22)

Who is Edom? The descendants of Esau—a type of the flesh in Scripture. After the judgment is complete, God says He will no longer send Zion into captivity, but He will bring destruction upon Edom, the flesh. The judgments of God in the Old Testament always have a purifying purpose: to remove Edom, to get rid of the flesh.

Sometimes we think, "I am being judged of God." If you are—and I doubt it—it is for the purpose of removing your flesh and purifying you. James says no one is tempted of God, but God does allow the enemy to come against us at times, as with Job, for the purpose of His glory and our purification.

Chapter 5: The Enduring Reign of God

In chapter 5 we see the enduring reign of God:

Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation. (5:19)

When we go through trials, we must remember this: God's throne endures forever. Though everything in this life burn and be consumed, God is still on the throne. Psalm 46 says the earth shakes and the nations rage, yet a river runs through the city of God; God is in the midst of her, and she is not moved. If we are in Christ, we are not moved either.

A Vision for the Church

As I prayed over this book in Germany, I asked the Lord what He wanted us to see. I believe He answered through chapter 2:

Her gates are sunk into the ground... her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence. (2:9–10)

The prophets found no vision, and the elders kept silence. Look at much of the church in the West today—there seems to be no vision among those in leadership, and those who should challenge them say nothing. "Where there is no vision, the people perish." The Pew Forum recently reported a major decline in evangelicalism; 80% of churches in America are stagnant, and over 3,000 churches close their doors each year. Why? Because those who should have vision don't, and those who should challenge leaders keep silent. As a result, the people stumble, crying out, "Where is the bread and the wine?"—where is communion with the Lord? It's gone.

Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity. (2:14)

There was a great breach in the wall—no protection—because the false prophets saw vain things and would not call the people to repentance. They simply said, "Continue on your way; everything's okay." And so the people were destroyed.

Arise and Cry Out

But then comes the call:

Arise, cry out in the night... pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street. (2:19)

This is the call to you and me—to arise and pour out our hearts before the Lord on behalf of a dying world. Jesus, seeing the multitudes, "was moved with compassion... because they were as sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9). Look around our own town of Escondido and see people scattered and fainting, chasing vain things, digging wells that hold no water. And what are we doing? We sit idly by while hundreds of thousands go to hell every day.

The call is given again: "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens" (3:40–41). Ask the Lord to search you as David did in Psalm 139, and if there is any wicked way, confess it, knowing He is faithful and just to forgive.

A Generation Crying for Bread

The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them. (4:4)

The young in this generation are seeking food and drink, something to satisfy—and they will find something, but it won't satisfy. We have the words of eternal life and must extend them. The age group departing from the Lord, 18 to 29, wants nothing to do with the church, yet still seeks something spiritual. So they chase pseudo-intellectualism—a cheesy philosophy compiled from Philosophy 101, thinking they're Nietzsche, hanging their whole lives on a well that holds no water. They need the living water of Christ. But how shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they are sent?

Cross-Cultural Missionaries to Our Own Town

I was deeply convicted recently about our own community. We like to call ourselves a missions church because we send missionaries out. But Acts 1 says, "You shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem"—your hometown. Every one of us is a missionary to Escondido. We train people to be culturally sensitive overseas, yet there are a hundred subcultures right here. There are cross-cultural missions in our own town, and we're often blind to them.

We feel good sending someone overseas, but when we see the punk kid in town, or the kid in tight pants, we think, "I don't want anything to do with that person." Yet God has called you to be a cross-cultural missionary to that person. One of the biggest things God indicted His people for was failing to care for the strangers in their land. Remember the parable: the priest and the Levite crossed the street, but the despised Samaritan tended the wounded man. Jesus asked, "Which one was a neighbor?" It was not the religious.

They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field. (4:9)

This generation pines away, fainting for lack of sustenance.

Watching for a Nation That Cannot Save

As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us. (4:17)

It's striking to hear our political ranting as we head into a presidential election. The candidates speak as if they are saviors—"We're going to make everything okay; we're going to take care of you." But in a year and a half we'll find their words were vain. My generation truly thinks the government will answer the spiritual need. That's why so many are enamored with candidates who speak as if they are the savior. Jesus warned that many would come saying, "I am your savior."

Chapter 5 continues: "Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest" (5:5). "Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand" (5:8). "For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim" (5:17). They strive and labor but find no rest, no deliverer, no one to ease the pain.

The Only Answer: Repent

What is the answer? "Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation" (5:19). There is only one answer—God is on the throne. And so the call goes out:

Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. (5:21)

It is the same call John the Baptist gave, that Jesus gave, that Peter gave at Pentecost: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." When Peter brought the gospel to the Gentiles at Cornelius's house and the Holy Spirit fell, the church rejoiced that "repentance had been preached to the Gentiles."

Many churches today preach a "come to Jesus and just be happy" message. The baby boomer generation ate up that health-and-wealth message; this generation doesn't want it—because it doesn't work. The call must be repentance, because that is the only thing that brings the blood of Jesus and the remission of sin. They know they are sinners, whether they admit it or not. Give them the law and they'll see it.

Heed the Message Even If No One Listens

As I studied Lamentations, the Lord showed me that our nation stands in the same place as Judah and Jerusalem. God has been longsuffering and patient, slow to anger, but we have departed from Him, and I believe He will judge this nation. I believe we will see persecution in the United States. I don't know when. It may not come until I'm gone—and if I'm gone, probably all of you will be too—but it is going to happen.

Until then, we are called to be witnesses of Jesus in our Jerusalem. God may call you elsewhere, but He's called you here now. Get your hands dirty. If you don't know how to be a witness, that's okay—we'll equip you. That's why the church, the pastors, and the elders are here.

Over 500,000 people go to hell every day. Most of them are not condemned because they never heard of God, but because, though they knew Him, they did not want to retain Him in their knowledge. They harden their hearts and store up wrath against the day of wrath (Romans 2). We love the grace, mercy, and love of God, but many are storing up wrath—and we have the message of reconciliation. If we don't give it out, how miserable are we. It would be as if God gave you the cure for cancer and you said, "I think I'll just hold on to this." May we heed the message of this book, even if we end up like Jeremiah, and everyone we preach to refuses to listen.

Closing Prayer

God, You have ordained that we would be the ministers and messengers of Your powerful word and gospel here on earth. It's so hard for us to understand that You have chosen to use the foolishness of preaching to bring Your message to this world, and that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. You have given to every man, woman, and child enough faith within their heart to believe, and that faith is increased by the hearing of Your word.

So I pray You would stretch us to share Your word. We don't need to know all the answers; we just need to share Your word. Help us to do that faithfully and boldly, that we would see people come to You. We see that we are living in the last days, but You promised that in the last days You would pour out Your Spirit upon all flesh. We ask that You would cause a great revival in our day—begin here in this small room, and carry it out into our community in Escondido.

You've called us to be witnesses here, ambassadors sent with a message. We are cross-cultural missionaries here in Escondido. Help us to see and know that calling and fulfill it, because Your righteous wrath is going to come, and we want many people standing with us on that day when You return, praising and glorifying You. Help us to be bold in our witness of You. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.