Why doesn’t the book of Lamentations end with Lamentations 3? Why not end on the high note of Lamentations 3? Why not stop at Lamentations 3:22-23? The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness! Why can’t we end on the faithfulness of the Lord? Why not sing the song that Annie sang, “The sun will come out tomorrow” and proclaim that tomorrow is only a day away? Jeremiah is teaching the people that even with a renewed hope in God’s faithful love and mercy, the reality is still the reality. Real hope needs to accept the real situation. The people of God are living a new reality and must prepare for the new direction God’s hand will lead them. Life goes on. But life is changed. This is where Jeremiah and the people are in the mountain of lament. While we maintain our hope in God’s love, we must forge forward in the new reality. Open your copies of God’s word to Lamentations 4 and we are going to look at how Jeremiah teaches the people to accept their grief in the new reality.
Accepting The Reality (Lamentations 4:1-10)
As you read the first ten verses of Lamentations 4 you can tell that Jeremiah is observing the new reality that the people must accept. Jeremiah speaks about what was then and what is now. He speaks about the way things used to be and how those things are no more. The gold has lost its luster and the precious stones are scattered in the streets. The holy city with all its grandeur has now been treated like clay pots. The people look around and simply see the ruins and the pain of their sins. The words you read in verses 8-10 are hard to read. But we see the need to accept the new reality like in the book of Job. Even after Job proclaims that he will bless the name of the Lord through all his loss, he is still left sitting in the ashes scraping his sores with broken pottery (cf. Job 2:8). The hope for a return to the way things used to be become dashed and a new wave of grief arrives. Jerusalem will never be the same and the lives of these people who lived through this destruction are now forever changed. Their lives will be just as turned upside down tomorrow as they are today. This is the new normal. This is the new way of life. You will notice through these first ten verses that there is no prayer or request. Jeremiah is simply observing with the people that this is the new way of life. The hopes you had are dashed. The goals you longed for are now gone. When our daughter was born with Prader-Willi syndrome 20 years ago we had great hopes that there could be great advancements in medicine in those years that would potentially help or cure her. We thought that 20 years was so long in medical terms. Think about how much has changed in medicine in the last 20 years. Maybe something would change. But many of those hopes and desires have been dashed and their grief from accepting the reality of what things are and what things will never be.
Accepting The Cause (Lamentations 4:11-20)
The message of verses 11-20 is that the people would look and consider how they got to this point. How did they get into this situation? What decisions were made that brought us here? For the people of God in Judah, the answer was clear and Jeremiah would remind them of that answer. In verses 11-12 we read that no one believed that God would judge his people. But he did. God judged his people and this happened because of the sins that the people committed (Lamentations 4:13). We can unfortunately live with the belief that there will not be consequences for our actions. We like to think that God does not see and will not act in justice against our sins. But there is nothing in the scriptures that teaches that we can get away with our sins or use the grace of God as a license to sin. The people did not think this judgment would come. Notice that Jeremiah says that the world did not think such a judgment would come. But judgment must come. Do not mistake God’s patience and lovingkindness as overlooking the sins we commit. We noted in a prior lesson that we need to examine ourselves and consider our ways, as the scriptures teach us to do.
But one of the important points that Jeremiah is making is that grief teaches us to not put our hope in the wrong things. Up to this point we see that the people had trusted in the false messages of the prophets and priests (cf. Lamentations 4:13). But we also see that when the people realized that they were in trouble, they still looked for help in the wrong places. Look at verse 17 where we read that the people looked in vain for help for other nations to save them. But no help came. The condemnation is not that no one came to help them. The condemnation is that they thought they could be saved and be secure if they called to other people to help them. The people thought that the help they needed was somewhere out there rather than in the Lord. This is the very nature of idolatry. Idolatry trusts in someone else or something else rather than in the Lord.
What I want us to see is that Jeremiah is asking the people in their grief to look back and where they failed to trust God but to trust in other things and other people. Look back. In your trial, did you look to God or did you trust in yourself? Did you look first to your Father or did you look first to others or other things? Trouble requires reflection. Back in 2020 we were put to the test to see what or who we trusted in first. Did our fear of health cause us to not trust in the Lord in whom the Lord says we live, move, and exist (cf. Acts 17:28)? Did the lack of food on the shelves cause us to be afraid that God would not provide the food or the things that we need? Jesus taught us to pray that the Father gives us the bread we need today (cf. Matthew 6:11). We are so used to having full refrigerators and full pantries and full bank accounts that it is hard to imagine having enough just for today. But God expects his people to trust him for today and let tomorrow worry about tomorrow (cf. Matthew 6:34). Please remember that the people of Israel when they were in the wilderness were expected to trust God to take care of them today. God would send them food and they were to gather enough for their household just for today, trusting that God would give them what they needed tomorrow. If the people tried to reach for more for tomorrow, what they gathered would rot. God was trying to teach his people that we do not live by food alone but by every word that comes out of God’s mouth (cf. Deuteronomy 8:2-3). Throughout every difficulty, God begs his people to rely on him. In the wilderness, Moses tells the people to depend on the Lord and trust him. The prophets came to the people and told them to trust in the Lord. Trusting in the Lord means that we will continue to obey him even with life falls apart.
So when life fell apart, did we trust him? Did we rely on the Lord and continue to obey him? Not only this, but now that we are presented with the new normal, are we now going to rely on the Lord and obey or continue to make the same mistakes from the past? Will we accept where we are now and trust the Lord? Will we learn from our past failures and trust God to take us through our new situation and into this new direction that he has for us?
Accepting The Teaching (Lamentations 4:21-22)
This brings us to the final point for this fourth lamentation. Justice and vindication will come. Jeremiah looks at those who have been rejoicing and mocking Jerusalem’s fall and notes that they will be judged for doing so. We have been recently studying the book of Job. In the same way, we see Job’s three friends saying things to Job that made them miserable comforters. Rather than helping Job, they were hurting Job with their counsel. We see in Job 42 that God’s anger burned against these three friends. They were worthy of judgment and Job would be vindicated. When we suffer, we may have other helpers fail and comforters flee. But these final two verses encourage God’s people to start looking to the future. Start looking at what God may do now that you are in this new condition. So often what God must do is kick out the stool legs of false hope so that we will be left with looking to the Lord’s hand. But the hope of Lamentations 4 is not that things will be better tomorrow. Nothing in this lamentation says this. Rather, the hope for the people is simply that the Lord will act. We do not know what God will do. But we do know that he loves his people and will do what is right towards us and others.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. 18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. 19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. 20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. (Psalm 34:17-20 ESV)
The afflictions of the righteous are many. Deliverance does not mean avoidance from the pain and grief of life. Delivering us from our troubles does not mean that we will never have any troubles. Rather, our hope is that God will carry us through in our new situation. Real hope must first accept the real situation. Sometimes we only hope in things going back to the way they were. Sometimes we only hope that things will be fixed. But what if this is the new normal? What if things in your life do not get better? What if this is the reality that God has given to your life? Can we accept the life circumstances we are in and know that God will deliver us out of our troubles? Can we believe that God does walk with his people through the valley of the shadow of death? Will we rely on him by obeying him when the pillars of what we wanted in this life have been torn down?