Will you please turn to Lamentations?
Lamentations—the first lamentation, verse 1:
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations;
She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!
The third lamentation—we will read from verse 19 through verse 33.
Lamentations 3:19:
Remember mine affliction and my misery,
The wormwood and the gall.
My soul hath them still in remembrance,
And is humbled in me.
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore have I hope.
It is of the Lord’s lovingkindnesses 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.
The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him,
To the soul that seeketh Him.
It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait
For the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man that he bear
The yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone and keep silence,
Because He hath laid it upon him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust,
If so be there may be hope.
Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him;
Let him be filled full with reproach.
For the Lord will not cast off for ever.
For though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion
According to the multitude of His lovingkindnesses.
For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve
The children of men.
The fifth lamentation, verses 19 through 22:
Thou, O Lord, abidest for ever;
Thy throne is from generation to generation.
Wherefore dost Thou forget us for ever,
And forsake us so long time?
Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned;
Renew our days as of old.
But Thou hast utterly rejected us;
Thou art very wroth against us.
Shall we pray?
Dear heavenly Father, how we do praise and thank Thee for Thy mercy, for Thy grace, and for Thy love towards us. We thank Thee that Thou, through Thy beloved Son, hast redeemed us and hast drawn us unto Thyself, that we may enter into the holiest of all and be in Thy presence to behold the glory of the Lord.
O our Father, how we are thankful for all that Thou hast done for us in Christ Jesus. We do thank Thee for giving us Thy Word, Thy precious Word, Thy living Word. We do look to Thy Holy Spirit to quicken Thy Word to our hearts, that Thou mayest speak to each one of us this morning, to the praise of Thy glory.
We commit this time into Thy hands, trusting Thy Holy Spirit to do His work. In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen.
This morning, we are on Lamentations.
In Hebrew, this book is usually called How? That is the first word in this book. Just as we find in the Hebrew manuscripts that Proverbs and the books of Moses are called by the first word in the book, so this book is sometimes called How?
Occasionally, it is called Lamentations. The rabbis call it Lamentations, and in the Septuagint—that is, the Greek translation of the Hebrew manuscripts done in Alexandria—it is called Lamentations.
Now, even though this book is anonymous in the original—that is, no author is given—according to old tradition and according to the Talmud, people generally believe that it was written by Jeremiah.
As a matter of fact, in the Septuagint this book is prefaced by these words:
And it came to pass, after Israel had been taken captive and Jerusalem had become desolate, that Jeremiah sat and wept, lamenting with this lament over Jerusalem.
So it is now believed that these five lamentations were actually written by the prophet Jeremiah.
Now, lamentation was a very common practice in ancient days. People would compose and sing lamentations over a deceased friend or relative, and we find this is true even in Scripture.
We find how David lamented the death of Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1. Again, in 2 Samuel 3, he lamented the death of Abner, the captain of the host of Israel. We also find in 2 Chronicles 35:25 how Jeremiah lamented the death of King Josiah.
It was not only that they lamented over the death of deceased persons, but lamentation was extended also to the destruction of a city or a nation. We find that in the Old Testament too.
For instance, in Amos 5:1, Amos lamented over Israel. In Jeremiah 7 and Jeremiah 9, he lamented over Jerusalem and Judah. In Ezekiel, we find how he lamented over the city of Tyre.
So in Scripture, you will find that lamentations were very common. Whenever something happened, there would be lamentation.
These five lamentations were over the destruction of Jerusalem and, of course, the captivity of the people of God.
If you look at these lamentations, you will find that the first four lamentations are arranged in an alphabetic acrostic manner.
By that, it means that in the Hebrew language there are twenty-two letters. In the first, second, and fourth lamentations, you will find twenty-two verses, and each verse begins with a Hebrew letter in normal order.
In the third lamentation, you find there are sixty-six verses, and every three verses begin with the same Hebrew letter. So these are called acrostic poems.
The fifth lamentation is not acrostic, and yet it is also a poem because it uses parallelism. So all these five are actually poems.
It is very interesting when you remember that, in the Psalms, there are a few psalms written in the same acrostic manner—especially Psalm 119.
In Psalm 119, you find there are twenty-two divisions of eight verses each. All these twenty-two divisions begin with a Hebrew letter, and it is acrostic.
Someone made a comment, and I think it is very good. We know that the Hebrew language is composed of twenty-two letters. In other words, it takes all human language, in its fullness, to sing the praise of the law of God. That is Psalm 119.
But it also takes the whole of human language, though in a lesser degree, to lament the neglect and the violation of the law of God.
Now, Lamentations, as we have already said, is poetry. It is not history. It is not prophecy. It has a historical background, and it does have a prophetic outlook; yet these lamentations are actually poems.
Poetry, like music, is something that you really cannot analyze. If you try to analyze a poem, you miss the point. Poetry is something that you have to feel.
That is the reason why, when you study Lamentations, even though you can analyze it in a way, the best way to approach Lamentations is not by analyzing it, but by trying to enter into its spirit. That is the way to study Lamentations.
We thank God for Lamentations in the Bible. You know, among the sixty-six books of the Bible, there is a book called Lamentations. It is the Word of God. It has a very definite and very important place in the Word of God.
Why? Because in Lamentations, it shows that our God is not unmindful of our sufferings. He is not unmindful of our sorrows. He listens to our cries.
As a matter of fact, He stores up our tears in His vessel. Our God is not one who is hard, cold, or distant. He is One who is warm and sympathetic, who is for us and who loves us.
So you find that Lamentations, as it is in the Word of God, really gives us great comfort and encouragement, knowing that our God is One who is very near to us and that we are very dear to Him.
As a matter of fact, in our afflictions, He is afflicted with us. When we go through water and fire, He goes through with us.
It is not that we are suffering while God is there just laughing at us, or that it has nothing to do with Him. But when we go through pain, sorrow, and suffering, we find that He actually goes through it together with us. He feels how we feel.
This is our God.
Furthermore, we find in these lamentations the Spirit of God—the Spirit of Christ—speaking and expressing Himself through the spirit of the prophet Jeremiah.
There we find God suffering so much in the suffering of His people. It is like parents: when their children are suffering, the parents actually suffer more than the children.
God so loves His people. He desires to bless His people. Yet, because of the iniquities of His people, He has to discipline those whom He loves dearly. In disciplining them, it actually hurts Him more than it hurts the people themselves.
So, brothers and sisters, here in the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah, you can see the heart of God. You find that every letter is written with tears, and every word is the sound of a broken heart. Here you find God heartbroken over His own people.
It is the Spirit of God; it is the Spirit of Christ. Do you remember when our Lord Jesus walked on earth? He came to declare the Father. He came to tell us how much God loves us. God is love.
Yet we find how He was misunderstood and rejected. In spite of that, we find how, in His last entry into Jerusalem, our Lord Jesus looked over that city and wept over it.
Not only did He weep over Jerusalem, but on His way to Calvary He even told the women, “Weep not for Me; weep for yourselves.”
Here you find the heart of God, so full of love and so full of compassion. Because He loved us so much, He went to the cross and died. He knew that, in order that we might be redeemed, He must die.
The prophet Jeremiah actually represented three parties.
On the one hand, you find Jeremiah was in full sympathy with God. He knew how God loved His people, and yet he also knew that, being righteous, God had to discipline His own people.
So Jeremiah stood with God, declaring that God is righteous in punishing, disciplining, and chastening His own people. Yet it is the chastening of love, not of hate.
On the other hand, you find that the prophet Jeremiah represented the people—the people who suffered so greatly. You find how Jeremiah wept, how his tears ran down like a river.
Thirdly, you find that he represented the godly remnant among the people of God. When God’s chastening came upon the nation, many people’s hearts were still hardened.
Yet there was a godly remnant. They acknowledged that God was righteous in disciplining them, and they submitted themselves under the mighty hand of God in repentance, looking to the mercies of God. Jeremiah represented these people.
Brothers and sisters, God needs Jeremiah today. God needs people who are in full sympathy with Him.
How much God is misunderstood today. When people suffer for their own iniquities, they put the blame on God, as if God were a cold, hard, harsh God. Yet they do not know that God suffers more than the people do.
He needs people who understand Him—people who understand that God is love, and that sometimes He has to discipline especially His own people. But it is out of love, not out of hatred.
We also need people like Jeremiah who are sympathetic with the people themselves. When we see people suffering in the world, and especially in the household of God, sometimes people stand by and say, “Well, that is what they ought to have.”
But we need people like Jeremiah, who will join, as it were, with the sufferings of people and suffer together with them.
Furthermore, we need people like Jeremiah who represent the godly remnant. The hope is there: that there will be a godly remnant who will submit to the mighty hand of God and look to Him for mercy.
That is the way that God will show mercy—not only to the remnant, but even to all the people.
This book is composed of five lamentations. The first lamentation begins with How?
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!
She that was great among the nations is become as a widow;
The princess among the provinces is become tributary.
This lamentation tells of the woes, the sorrows, and the sufferings of God’s people.
The second lamentation also begins with How?
How hath the Lord in His anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud!
He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel,
And hath not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.
This lamentation speaks of the source of their woes. In other words, it tells us that all these woes come from none other than God. That makes it even more difficult.
Of course, the third lamentation is the turning point. Here we find a godly remnant. Through the discipline of the Lord, they submit themselves under the mighty hand of God, acknowledging that God is righteous.
Yet they look to God for mercy, knowing that He is a God of mercy. So here you find the turning point.
We are all familiar, especially, with verses 22 through 24. In verse 22, it says, “It is of the Lord’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed.”
Now, brothers and sisters, if God should deal with us according to our iniquity, where would we be? We would all be dead. That is what we deserve.
But it is the lovingkindness of the Lord that we are not consumed. Our God is full of mercies, and that is the only reason why we are not consumed: because His compassions fail not.
He loves us. Because He loves us, therefore He is merciful to us.
You remember in the New Testament, in the Gospels, again and again you find the Lord saying, “I have compassion.”
When the Lord saw the multitudes, they were like sheep without a shepherd. Even though He was tired, He was leading His disciples to a retreat to rest for a while. Yet because of the crowds, His heart was touched. He was full of compassion, and He gave Himself to these people.
When they had been with Him for three days and had nothing to eat, the disciples said, “Send them away, that they may get food.” But the Lord said, “No, I have compassion upon them.”
Again and again, when people came to Him, the Lord had compassion. A leper came to Him and said, “If Thou wilt.” The Lord had compassion on him, touched him, and said, “I will.”
Our God is full of compassion. He is full of love.
“They are new every morning.” The compassions, the love of God, are new every morning. New not in the sense that they must be novel, but new in the sense that they are always fresh and living.
His new compassion is over our old problems; His new compassion is over our new problems. Every morning, you will find His love there, waiting for you, prepared for you, provided for you.
As the psalmist said:
For His anger is but for a moment;
His favor is for a lifetime:
Weeping may tarry for the night,
But joy cometh in the morning.
Psalm 30:5. This is our God.
So, brothers and sisters, whatever may happen in the night, in the morning look up. You will find His compassion there, waiting for you. He is the resurrection and the life.
“Great is Thy faithfulness.” Our God is faithful. He is faithful to Himself.
In 2 Timothy, we are told that we may be unfaithful, but He remains faithful. Why? Because He cannot deny Himself. He is faithful to Himself.
We sometimes are not faithful, but our God is always faithful to Himself. He is faithful to His Word. He is faithful to His promise. He is faithful to His covenant with us. He remains faithful. Great is Thy faithfulness.
When we look back, we can see how faithful He is to us.
“The Lord is my portion,” saith my soul. This soul is in suffering—tremendous suffering. Think: the city is destroyed, the temple is destroyed, and the people are taken captive. What suffering!
Yet, in suffering, that soul can rise up and say, “The Lord is my portion; therefore will I hope in Him.”
Now, brothers and sisters, everything may go, but there is One who will never go, and that is our Lord. We may lose everything, and yet the Lord is still our portion.
Because He is our portion, our inheritance—because He is ours—therefore we have hope. Our hope is not in our environment. Our hope is not in the things that we can see. Our hope is in Him.
Because He is with us, we know there is hope. So, brothers and sisters, never give up hope.
We can hope against hope, just like Abraham. He was in a hopeless situation. He was one hundred years old, and his wife was ninety, beyond the age of having a child. Yet Abraham and Sarah hoped against hope.
Why? Because they hoped in God. Their hope was in God.
So, brothers and sisters, here you find in the third lamentation that, in a time of deep suffering, the soul rises up, looks at God, confesses sin, and trusts in His mercies. That is the turning point of the whole matter.
In the fourth lamentation, it also begins with How? It tells us the reason, the cause, of their woes.
It is true that they are in deep tribulation, and these sufferings were God’s discipline. But why were they so disciplined? In the fourth lamentation, it tells us how.
In other words, it was because of the iniquity of the people. So in the fourth lamentation, it says, “How is the gold become dim!”
God’s people, in God’s eyes, are gold—precious to Him—and they should shine. Yet you find that the gold has become dim; the most pure gold has changed.
God has not changed. The people have changed. God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has a name called “the Same.”
Who has changed? We have changed. The people of God have changed. “The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the top of every street,” and that is the reason why there is such destruction.
Finally, in the fifth lamentation, it is a prayer:
Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us:
Behold, and see our reproach.
In other words, here you find the soul turning to the Lord and asking Him to remember and to be merciful.
It says:
Thou, O Lord, abidest for ever;
Thy throne is from generation to generation.
You never change. You are there. You sit on the throne. Your throne is from generation to generation. You are ruling, controlling, overruling everything. Therefore, we look to You for mercy.
Here you find the prayer: “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned.”
Now, brothers and sisters, sometimes we find that we are unable to turn back to the Lord. He is the only One who is able to turn us.
How will the Lord turn us to Him, that we may return and that He may return to us? This is the way: the way of chastening.
Sometimes we do not understand why God should chasten us. Just like children, they do not understand why their parents should chasten and discipline them. If their parents love them, they think their parents should let them go.
Well, this is the only way to turn us back to God. If He does not chasten us, if He lets us go, brothers and sisters, we are finished.
But He will not let us go. He will discipline us. Why? Because through discipline, we may turn. We may be turned to Him, enabling Him to return to us.
This is actually the way that God wants to show mercy to us. Brothers and sisters, if you refuse discipline, you will not turn back to God, and you hinder God’s returning to you.
In other words, the whole of the five lamentations can be summed up with Hebrews 12:5:
My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord,
Nor faint when thou art reproved of Him.
Our problem is that we despise the chastening of the Lord. In other words, we do not want it. We reject it. We fight against it. Do not despise it.
Sometimes we faint under it, as if it is too much for us. Do not faint under His reproof. Why? Because it is His hand, and He measures His discipline.
Sometimes earthly parents can discipline a child out of uncontrolled anger and overdiscipline. But not our heavenly Father.
When He disciplines us, He measures everything. He knows how much we are able to take, and He knows just how much—and not much more—is needed.
So do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint under His reproof.
I would like to draw your attention especially to the word How? Three of the five lamentations begin with that word.
In a sense, it is the characteristic of the book of Lamentations.
Life is such that there will be problems, difficulties, tribulations, trials, sufferings, sorrows, despair, depression, and death. This is what life is, because we live in a cursed world.
You cannot expect your life to be a smooth sailing, full of roses. Even after we believe in the Lord and are redeemed, remember: we are redeemed, but we still live in an unredeemed world.
Because of this, when we go through life and are confronted with many problems, difficulties, and unexplainable things, naturally we ask, “Why?” We want an explanation.
We always ask, “Why?” But do you know that sometimes, when we ask why, our spirit is ugly? It is a spirit of defiance, of unbrokenness.
The whole story of Job—the oldest book in the Bible—shows us this. Job was faced with the problem of life, with suffering, and Job asked, “Why? Why should I suffer? I am such a good man.”
His three friends seemed to know why, so they told him why. The more they tried to explain, the worse the problem became.
When finally God came in, God did not explain why. Job was never told why. God just revealed His majestic greatness, His sovereign greatness.
When Job saw the Lord, he capitulated. He fell in dust and ashes and repented. He did not need to know why. He was restored.
Now, brothers and sisters, we may never know why. If you want to know why for every problem and everything, perhaps you will have to wait until you see the Lord Himself. Then you can ask why—and perhaps, at that time, you will not ask why.
Brothers and sisters, we should not ask why; we should ask how.
How is a different question. How is asked not with a spirit of defiance, but with a spirit of humility and submission.
How is to find out what has happened. How is to face the facts and not try to evade the problem. How is to try to go back to the beginning of the problem and find out the cause.
When you know how, then you know how to repent and to return, looking to God for mercy.
Our problem is that, when we are in a situation, we do not actually know how we got into that situation. Sometimes we are so blind that we do not even know where we are.
That is the church in Laodicea. They are in a desperate, desolate, dead condition, and yet they think that they are rich, lacking nothing. They think they are fine.
Yet the Lord says, “You are blind, you are poor, you are naked, but you do not know it.”
If we do not ask how, oftentimes we do not know where we are. We can be deceived, and because of that there is no salvation.
Even with the church in Ephesus, the Lord said, “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.” You need to know how you have fallen so you can repent and return to God.
So whenever we are in a situation, do not ask why. Ask how, that the Lord may reveal to you how you got into that situation.
You may learn the lesson, that you may go back to God in humility and brokenness and look for His mercy. You will find His mercy endures forever.
Another thing: reading Lamentations is very, very helpful.
We like to read from the Word of God things that we would call uplifting and exhorting. We like to read these things, and we do not like to read things that seem depressing.
Some people say reading Lamentations is very depressing. We do not like it. But we have to face life. Life is not all comedy; life is tragedy too. So we need to have Lamentations.
I thank God for Lamentations in the Bible. It is very, very helpful, especially because it shows us that there is a kind of sorrow that brings salvation.
You remember in the Sermon on the Mount our Lord Jesus said:
Blessed are they that mourn:
For they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4.
You also remember 2 Corinthians 7:10:
For godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret:
But the sorrow of the world worketh death.
There are two kinds of sorrow. The sorrow of the world works death, but sorrow according to God works repentance unto salvation. So Lamentations shows us the way of spiritual sorrow.
We need to learn how to be sorrowful according to God. We need to mourn over our sins. We need to mourn over the sins of this world. We need to be sorrowful in order that we may receive mercy.
These are spiritual exercises that we need.
Sometimes we like to go to the house of feasting and have a happy time—laughing, joking, jesting, and whatever. But the Bible says, “Go to the house of mourning,” because that will make you reflect and give you eternal benefit.
We need to have the Spirit of Christ in us.
This does not mean that we are always long-faced and give a depressed feeling to other people. No, not at all. As Christians, we should be joyful.
But being joyful is different from laughing and joking all the time. Deep down in our spirits, there is a joy. It is not a contradiction; actually, it is complementary.
On the one hand, the joy of the Lord is our strength. On the other hand, we need to have the Spirit of Christ in us to mourn.
Blessed are they that mourn:
For they shall be comforted.
If we have the Spirit of Christ in us, brothers and sisters, how can we not be mournful over our spiritual condition? We are not what we should be. We are not what God is able to bring us to.
If we love the Lord, we ought to be mournful over the condition of the church today. When we see the condition of the church today, how can we keep ourselves from mourning?
If our Lord Jesus wept over Jerusalem, should we not weep over the church of God today?
Not in the sense of aloofness, as though we are better, but in the sense of joining our spirit with the people of God, confessing our sins, and asking the Lord to be merciful and to return to His people.
If we have the Spirit of Christ, we ought to mourn for the world. Look at the world today—all these sufferings.
We need to cry to the Lord that He will shorten the days of these trials and bring His kingdom back to the earth, that righteousness may rule over the earth.
All the time, brothers and sisters, we need to submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God.
In 1 Peter, it says, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”
We need to keep a spirit of humility and submission. We need to acknowledge that God is righteous in whatever He does, and yet we look for His mercies.
If we have that kind of spirit in us, brothers and sisters, we will find that God will return to us and that He will be merciful to His people.
Think of David.
When David’s son rebelled against him, David had to flee for his life. He came out of Jerusalem and went over the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went.
Then you find Shimei, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, on the other side of the hill, throwing stones at him, cursing him, and saying, “Now, that is what you deserve.”
David still had his mighty men with him, and one of the mighty men said, “How can he curse the anointed? Let me go over and cut him off.”
But David said, “Let him alone. Let him curse. Maybe it is the Lord that hath bidden him curse me, and if the Lord shall see that I am being cursed, maybe He will have mercy on me.”
Now, brothers and sisters, this is the kind of attitude we should have.
Instead of rebelling against the discipline of the Lord, we should, as it were, prostrate ourselves on the floor in dust and ashes.
When the Lord sees that this is our attitude, He will return to us. That is the way to recovery.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the book of Lamentations. Shall we pray?
Dear heavenly Father, we do thank Thee for this book of Lamentations. Thou dost teach us to have the Spirit of Christ, that we too may sympathize with Thee, with our people, and with the world.
May we be able to weep when Thou weepest, and may we be able to stand in the gap, in the breach, and look for Thy mercies—for Thy returning to Thy own people.
So, Lord, do teach us these valuable lessons. At the end of this time, we pray in Thy precious name. Amen.