Dennis Tuuri

# Lamentations 3: Memory and Hope at the Center

Well, we kind of left off in the middle of that psalm there, didn’t we? Didn’t finish singing the psalm with the second half, the answer of God’s deliverance, ultimately of Jesus. Well, that’s a good thing to do to sing that first half because that’s frequently where we find ourselves in life, not yet finding the deliverance and struggling. And the book of Lamentations is a great place to turn to understand how to respond to trials and afflictions. So we return to the book of Lamentations again.

As we read it, it looks real long. It’s 66 verses, but actually it’s the same length as the first two chapters. I explained this before—that while in the first two chapters, each stanza of three verses began with the same Hebrew letter moving through the sequence of the Hebrew alphabet, Psalm three—each of the three verses in each stanza have the same first letter—and so it’s versified in that way: 66 instead of 22 times 3, but it’s the same length. As we read through it though, I want you to notice the arc of the text as we move through it. So now we have a big change in perspective. We now have a singular person speaking—a man—and a man who, as we’ll see as we move through the first number of verses, completely loses hope. And then we’ll see a pivot from that man as he remembers the right things and he regains hope. And that portion of this text is where, of course, we have that great song “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” and when we sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in the future, I hope that we’ll remember this particular text. Yes, we’re singing it for the offertory today, and hopefully we’ll sing it with a little more understanding of the significance of it.

We’ve reached the middle of the book of Lamentations, the third of five chapters, very distinctly marked out. And I think at the beating heart of the entire book are those verses about God’s character. Not at the very center of the 66 verses, but at the center theologically and in the way the book is laid out—the very beating heart is that turn from the man. So start with the manual here as we read: Great problems, loses hope, finds new hope—not the same old hope, finds new hope—then leads the congregation, leads the daughter Zion in a prayer of asking God to remember all their afflictions, and then at the end of the chapter prays his own confident prayer for God’s judgment on the enemies.

And I will suggest a way to interpret that concluding imprecatory prayer in a way that may not seem obvious to you, but I think it’s how we’re supposed to look at it given the flow of the text. All right, so let’s stand. It’s only the same length as the other sections of 22 verses. So please stand and notice the flow, the arc of the text from complete trouble to hope of deliverance. And not just deliverance, but that God’s justice would fill the whole world.

Okay. Okay. Lamentations chapter 3. I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely he has turned his hand against me time and time again throughout the day. He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe. He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago.

He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out. He has made my chain heavy. Even when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with hewn stone. He has made my paths crooked. He has been to me a bear lying in wait like a lion in ambush. He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow and set me up as a target for the arrow. He has caused the arrows of his quiver to pierce my loins.

I have become the ridicule of all my people, their taunting song all the day. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drink wormwood. He has also broken my teeth with gravel and covered me with ashes. You have moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity. And I said, my strength and my hope have perished from the Lord. Remember my affliction and roaming, the wormwood and the gall.

My soul still remembers and sinks within me. This I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust. There may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him and be full of reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though he causes grief, yet he will show compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. To crush under one’s feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the justice due a man before the face of the Most High, or subvert a man in his cause—the Lord does not approve. Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass, when the Lord has not commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that woe and well-being proceed? Why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?

Let us search out and examine our ways and turn back to the Lord. Let us lift our hearts and hands to God in heaven. We have transgressed and rebelled. You have not pardoned. You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us. You have slain and not pitied. You have covered yourself with a cloud, that prayer should not pass through. You have made us an off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

Fear and a snare have come upon us. Desolation and destruction. My eyes overflow with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes flow and do not cease, without interruption, till the Lord from heaven looks down and sees. My eyes bring suffering to my soul because of all the daughters of my city. My enemies without cause hunted me down like a bird. They silenced my life in the pit and threw stones at me.

The waters flowed over my head. I said, “I am cut off.” I called on your name, O Lord, from the lowest pit. You have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my sighing, from my cry for help. You drew near on the day I called on you and said, “Do not fear.” Oh Lord, you have pleaded the case for my soul. You have redeemed my life. Oh Lord, you have seen how I am wronged. Judge my case. You have seen all their vengeance, all their schemes against me.

You have heard their reproach, O Lord, all their schemes against me, the lips of my enemies and their whispering against me all the day. Look at their sitting down and their rising up. I am their taunting song. Repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. Give them a veiled heart. Your curse be upon them. In your anger, pursue and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you for the revelation it is to us of your character and the nature of your judgments and your intent and purposes for your people and indeed for all the world. We thank you, Father, for this text. Open our eyes to it. Open our souls to it. May we learn how to lament properly in times of difficulty, trial, and affliction so that we might indeed comfort others by your comfort. So that this world that cries out to you in pain and tribulation might receive comfort from the windows of heaven. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. So we’ve said that what we’re trying to do in this series of sermons on lamentation is find our voice in times of difficulties, trials, and tribulations. And not just for us—in fact, not even primarily for us—but so that we can help the world find its voice of lamentation.

What this text shows us is that lamentation isn’t just a crying out in pain. It’s to a particular end. This book is to a particular end. And of course, this side of the cross, the great reveal has happened, right? And we read this text and we see all kind of references to our Savior in it. And ultimately, of course, the man—why is he anonymous? Well, because ultimately, I’m sure it’s Jeremiah in context. We could take time and show all kinds of similarities between the book of Lamentations, specific language used, etc., and Jeremiah’s book—actually identified with him. So we’re sure it’s Jeremiah. We’re sure it’s about the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And yet these events aren’t specifically described so that it can be applicable to all times, but beyond that, so that we can see ultimately the man is Jesus, right?

The great reveal happens. He’s the one whose own people turned against him the way they did against Jeremiah. And so we can look at this text and say this is absolutely a Christian gospel text. This is a text that teaches us how to get hope and what hope is—how hope is renewed and built into new hope, not just the return of old hope. We can see great gospel messages and we can see great comfort for ourselves and for people that we love. We can help them. That’s what Jeremiah does here. He seizes—remember in chapter 2, “How shall I comfort you?” How can I comfort this city that is so rebelled against God and is under such judgment from him? And Nebuchadnezzar is at the door again. And this time he’s not just going to take away a few of us. He’s going to destroy this city. Maybe even written after the destruction—looks like that. The walls are crying. You know, you can imagine bricks falling out of the windows of the walls. The walls are crying and the city is being destroyed. “How shall I comfort you?” Well, here’s the answer. He’s going to lead them to comfort in this text. He’s going to talk about his own experiences and then he’s going to talk about the basis for his hope—the character of God. And then he’s going to remind them—this is the way you should pray to God in times of trouble. Then he’s going to pray himself confidently. He’s moved from complete loss of hope to total hope and confident prayer and even prayer that extends to the enemies being judged as well. So he’s going to show them, he’s going to say, “This is how I comfort you. Get to the end of yourself and you’ll find God’s faithfulness.”

Now 2 Corinthians 1 says this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” Lots of comfort going on. And we recognize there that we go through trials and tribulations, difficult times, so that we can receive the comfort of God, so that we can then help people who are going through trials and afflictions that they might be comforted with the same comfort we have. That’s what Jeremiah does here. That’s exactly what is going on in this text. This text is almost—we could say—a counseling manual of how to help people in great distress and particularly if you’ve been through the same sorts of things.

Now, before we get started, I need to—I felt guilty late last night about not having—I thought of Zain telling me he really likes these. So I felt guilty last night and threw one together. So if we could have people pass these out. These are the children’s fill-in sheets. And I know adults like to do it, too. And I actually like putting them together because it kind of, you know, makes the message coalesce in my head and the important things I want to have indicated. So if I get a couple of people to pass these out to people that want them, that’d be great. Thanks, Howard L. Okay.

So what we’re going to do is work our way through this text. First I want to talk about the overarching arc of the text again, which I’ve already done a little bit, but I want to say it a couple more times so it’s kind of in our head, and then look at some particular distinctive elements of this text that are interesting and unusual. Before I continue, while this is being passed out, there are prayer cards in your pews. And what Jeremiah does is he moves the people to pray—that God would remember their pain. That’s kind of toward the end. And then he himself prays confidently. If this is ever a series when I would expect prayer cards being submitted so that the congregation here can corporately come before God for particular things, this would be the series I would think. So I think we made a little change today. We’re going to pick up the prayer cards from you a little bit earlier so that the elders have time to look at them during that prayer preparation song. They’ll start moving, coming through pretty early during that. So during the offertory or at the very first verse of the prayer song, even through in the context of my sermon, fill out the prayer cards if you want to bring us collectively to pray. And I think this is really a good thing to do, particularly in light of this sermon because that’s kind of what happens in its context.

Okay. And remember our basic theme is the loss of beauty. And clearly, you know, part of the description of Jeremiah’s pain is obviously related to that loss of beauty. There’s the fading beauty of the poetry of the book. I mentioned here a couple of names: Dr. Kai Soltau and Robert Jones. Kai Soltau wrote a big thesis on the book of Lamentations and its structure, and some of the material I’ve handed you out over the last couple of weeks actually comes from him. And one other interesting thing that he’s done—this has been on the handouts, but I haven’t mentioned it, and it’s the only thing that’s on today’s handout because we lose now the acrostic thing. And we lose the chaining thing. The poetry is fading away even as the city is being destroyed. Its beauty is diminishing. But today’s text tells us that’s so that it might come back more beautiful. And we’ll get to that. But beauty is fading. And when beauty fades, it doesn’t do any good to whistle past the graveyard and say that it’s not fading. It is fading and it actually fades in terms of the structure—the beauty of the poetry of this particular book.

One other thing that he looks at: if you look at the change of speakers. So today it’s real obvious—first time a man, an individual man, speaks at the beginning of the chapter, and then there’s plurals later on and back to individual. So it’s quite obvious. Well, he has painstakingly looked through these five units, looked for changes of speakers, and he is convinced that what we have, if we do that, is 22 sections—22 verses, 22 Hebrew alphabet. And so it makes sense that the thing would be drawn up in 22 acts, you could say, right? Like a play, 22 sections. Not only that, but Soltau—Robert Jones is the one who has given myself as pastor of this church free access to the Theological Research Exchange Network where I can actually access these kind of doctrinal dissertations, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them, download them for free. So thanks to Robert. But Soltau in his dissertation then takes each of those sections and he looks at the word count. He’s convinced that the word count is another structural device in Lamentations. Exactly 70% of the words, for instance, are actually spoken by the prophet. And the other two voices—the congregation and then Zion—exactly 15% a piece. But in any event, in each of these 22 sections, he finds a central phrase or verse that is at the exact center of the section if you count Hebrew words, and it reflects the purpose or the meaning of that particular section. So on your handouts, we’re not going to take time to look at it now, but that’s why I’m giving you that stuff. The stuff in italics from those three chapters—those are Soltau’s centers of each of the 22 acts.

Okay. Wow. Are we in the woods now or what? But it’s very interesting and what it can do for you is to remind yourself of the flow of Lamentations. You can read those centers and you sort of get the whole flow of the whole thing. And it’s one more aspect of the beauty of the text that I wanted to point out to you. I’ve had it on your outlines the last couple of weeks and I just wanted to point that out. And then also on your handouts today, I’ve given you a chiastic structure of the entire book by Dr. David Dorsey, and we’re not going to talk about that either except that from his perspective this text that I mentioned today of God’s character at the center—that gives Jeremiah hope. From Dorsey’s perspective that is the beating heart of the book, that is the center of the book. So chapter 3 is the center of the five chapters, of course—five poems—and Dorsey thinks that if you look at the entire book, the actual center of the book, the beating heart, is this description of God’s character.

Jeremiah remembering who God is and his past actions as the basis for his hope, the basis of how he comforts dying Judah, the basis for the comfort this book brings to us, and the basis for how we’re to comfort others in their affliction. We find our voice by calling people to focus back on the person of God himself and what’s happening as a result of that understanding. So Dorsey in the handout, we’re not going to talk about it today. We might in the next couple of weeks, but not today—it’s not actually finished. I haven’t underlined everything he’s underlining. When we OCRed, it didn’t all come across. I’m working on it, and you’ll look at it more, but you can look at that today in your Lord’s Day readings if you’d like or whatever. So there’s another thing: Dorsey’s structure of the book in terms of this chiastic overview.

Now, another way to look at the book as we’re moving from chapter 1 to chapter 2 to chapter 3: what we’ve had is the isolation, the solitariness—how solitary in chapter 1, beginning chapter 1. And then, you know, how God has enclosed—of course, at the heart of the book, this side of the great reveal when Jesus comes, we know that I am the man ultimately refers to the man who suffered for us the way no one else did, Jesus, who we will remember at this particular table. So there’s this movement from chapter 1, 2, and three. Just by the first couple of words of each chapter, we see this progression.

And as we said, chapter 3 then can be seen—and it’s an intensely personal chapter, right? We’ve talked about Zion, the people being personified as an individual, and we’ve talked about the congregation, but now we’re talking about a particular guy, Jeremiah. So this is an intensely personal chapter. At the middle of this book, helping us to find our voice in suffering is intensely personal prayer to God—at the end and crying out in his pain and suffering at the beginning.

And that’s the way it begins. It begins with pain. This intensely personal center, but it moves to faith and hope. It begins with no hope. It moves to faith and hope and then it moves into a period of instruction. What’s good? What is good for people to do while they’re suffering? He says, “This is good. This is good. This is good.” What kind of justice is God doing in the world? And he’ll identify three aspects of justice. If we want to talk about doing justice, which is one of the central things we’re to do as Christians, this instructional part of the book will tell us what justice is in broad statements, of course. So he moves through instruction and then he gets to prayer—both the corporate prayer that he urges them to join him in and then his own particular prayer. So and all this is done to the end—as we said in 2 Corinthians 1:4—that we might have comfort so that we can comfort others.

This is kind of a counseling manual. No name. Another reason why there’s no name for Jeremiah is maybe it’s because name is kind of a beautification, right? You have a person and you beautify him with a name. And in Jeremiah, the name has gone away. So it’s part of this fading glory thing, the loss of beauty. But then, as I said, it ultimately points forward to Jesus.

Now, Jeremiah hits bottom. He gets to the place of no hope. And frequently, you know, when we counsel with people, you know that they’re not really going to turn until they hit bottom. And we see that happen here in this thing—the minor fall, the major lift. Leonard Cohen, comment from “Hallelujah.” I think that if we looked at this as music, we have the minor fall—you know, the loss of hope of Jeremiah—but then the major lift, incredible statements about the person of God that brings him way up higher than he had been before, okay? And that’s a very important aspect of this chapter. We’re not going back to something. History isn’t cyclical. It’s moving forward. It’s spiraling, but it’s moving up, okay? And Jeremiah will hit these new heights of confidence about God as a result of the minor fall. He’ll engage in the major lift.

So and this is helpful to us in very practical ways. Another summary here: he moves from practical observations to collective prayer. He moves into praise and petition—by the he goes to the praise at the middle of the book to petition at the end of the book. And I think that we can say this is death and resurrection. He completely dies to hope to find new hope, resurrected hope. And we’re in the third song, the third poem in this set of five. And the third day is the day of resurrection. So it’s really beautiful how at the middle of Lamentations, in the third section, we find this movement from death to new life.

Focusing on the person of God, he expresses great pain. Then in this arc of the chapter, he talks about the nature of God. He then lays out the way forward for the whole nation and he utters a prayer of personal confidence in Yahweh. So it moves from personal pain to personal faith and then to instruction to others and finally to a prayer for full deliverance. And that’s the arc of the book—or this chapter rather, I’m sorry—this chapter moves that particular way, and we’ll look at it when we look at the specific texts of it.

We’ll notice—you did notice, I hope, as we read it—that we have some obvious theological truth at the center of the thing. And in most of the book of Lamentations, we don’t see that. What we have here is an emphasis on the character of God. And it’s the character of God that is the pivot point for Jeremiah himself and is then used as his calling Israel to that pivot point. It’s the pivot point for us as we lament in a way that’s godly, not in a way that just cries out in pain. But the pivot point for us in our lamentations to move us into that rise is a consideration and a description of the character of God. And seeing then—seeing then—his punishments, his difficulties, not even punishments, the pain we go through in relationship to the overarching character of God, which is that God is love. God is love. So that’s the beating heart of this book. That’s the arc.

Lamentations becomes then a way of probing our relationship with God that we might have renewed relationship that isn’t like returning to what we had before but is deeper, better, and is redemptive for us and becomes redemptive for the whole world. So you know the arc here is that Lamentations is a book about redemption and it’s a book about redemption that comes through a consideration of how relationship with God breaks, but then God in his sovereignty restores us, and in his character he calls us to sing that redemptive voice to the world that’s suffering. There is no outlet for the world that is suffering other than what we see here. The basis for hope is the character of God as reflected in the gospel of Jesus Christ. To try to relieve pain and suffering without doing what this chapter tells us to do is to miss the point. It’s to miss the point for ourselves and it’s to miss the point for others. The whole purpose is a reflection of the character of God and what he is doing in the world.

All right. Now what we’re going to do is just move through the second page now of your handouts, which is an outline. And I credit here Paul House, Word Biblical Commentary. Pretty good outline, I thought. Well, I can’t do better than that probably, at least in the time I’ve got to study. So I’m just giving you his basic outline. You can do it different ways. Dorsey does it a little bit different, but I think it’s a pretty good outline. And what we’re going to want to do is just sort of move through the text according to this outline in the time that we have left. And I want to focus on a couple of portions of the text particularly, but this outline is the basic idea, okay.

So you can either follow along in your own Bibles or follow along in the handout that’s been provided and we’ll just look at some of these sections. And so the first section is this darkness idea. And I, you know, this is significant that in verses 1-6, the basic theme is darkness. So Jeremiah’s pain is put in the context of darkness, right? He has led me and made me walk in darkness, not in light. Surely he has turned his hand against me time and time again. He’s beating me over and over and over again in the context of this darkness. So even though it’s day, it’s darkness. He has aged my flesh and my skin, loss of beauty. He’s broken my bones. He has besieged me, surrounded me with bitterness and woe. He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago. So darkness is this theme.

Now, when we get to the center of the book, what does he say about “Great is Thy Faithfulness”? Your mercies are what? New every morning. Morning. So he’s moving from darkness to morning. Does that sound like a familiar theme in the Bible? Well, I think it does because, of course, that’s where all this came from, right? I mean, all this came out of darkness. The world is formless. It’s dark. And when God creates things, he says, “Let there be light.” Okay. So and then what does it say? Evening and morning, right? Next day. So in the seven days of creation, darkness happens so that the world can come back better, more beautiful, more developed, more glorious. So in the basic idea of creation, apart from the fall, you have this idea of darkness being a time of preceding—not a return of light like it was before, right? No, because the next day things are cooler, things are more beautiful. The world is a better place. It’s more beautiful. It’s great. Every day. Oh, this is good. This is good. This is very good. Very good. Now, things are developing. You see, that’s I think the underlying theme set up by this first six verses that form a structure of darkness as what Jeremiah experiences, right?

The darkness of Jonah in the whale and the darkness of Joseph. Who threw Joseph in the pit? Was it those nasty Egyptians? No, it was his brothers. Who threw Jeremiah in a pit of darkness? Was it the Babylonians? No, it was his own people. Who put Jesus in the darkness, right, for three days? It was, you know, the Jews. It was his own people again. So there’s this consistent theme that this oppression happens and it has to do with darkness. But what happens is new life. What happens to Joseph when he gets taken out of the pit? He brings salvation, ultimately, to the whole world through Egypt. That’s what he does. What happens to Jonah when he comes out of the darkness? He brings salvation to this huge nation, Nineveh. Gives the message. They repent. They turned. What happens to Jesus when he comes out of the pit? Well, we’re supposed to see this as what he’s doing. What happens is nothing short of salvation for the world. That’s what’s happening here. And all that’s kind of set up for us here in Lamentations 3 by this opening theme where Jeremiah is describing his difficulty and trouble in terms of darkness.

Now the next verses are in terms of walk. Okay. So in the time of Adam, the lightness is now reversed and he goes into darkness. Verse 7: he’s hedged me in so that I cannot get out. He has made my chains heavy. Even when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with hewn stone—stones that are cut in such a way as to block his ways in, right? So he has made my paths crooked. Okay? So he—the way that God had opened up when he brought his people out of darkness in Egypt, he opened a way through the sea. He opened a way to move forward into their own land. And that Mosaic covenant is now reversed by God hedging up the way of his people. These are covenant reversals that happen that Jeremiah is discussing.

He has been to me a bear lying in wait like a lion in ambush. Who killed the bear and the lion? You kids know? Anybody know who killed the bear and the lion? David, right? Yeah. The deliverance of David is reversed here. Now the bear and the lion. God’s like a bear and a lion to Jeremiah. The reversal of the Adamic covenant, the reversal of the Mosaic covenant, the reversal of the Davidic covenant—or we could say the judgments that really in each of those covenants are ultimately renewed in a more glorious state, light, darkness, and light. But that’s what’s happening here. Everything’s being reversed again.

He has turned my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow. He has set me up as a target for the arrow. We talked about this last week. The bow—again supposed to be hanging up there. God’s not going to shoot it anymore. Now he takes it down and starts shooting at his own people, right? So the bow, of course, was the sign he gave to Noah. So here’s the Noahic covenant being reversed. Okay? To some degree, the covenants are falling apart and God is going to change things. And of course, think about this in context. What is God doing? I mean, in the history of the world, he’s bringing—he’s preparing ultimately Jeremiah, Israel, Judah—they’re all Jesus. He’s preparing the world. He’s taking down all the other covenants to establish the new covenant in Jesus. And what’s different about that covenant is that there’s no Jew or Greek anymore. No Jew or Gentile rather. Right now, the whole world becomes the covenant people of God—those who are in relationship with him all across the world without distinction. So again, that’s what’s happening here and being set up as we have this description from Jeremiah in these first few verses.

I become the ridicule of my people, their taunting song all the day. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drink wormwood. We’ll talk about that at the table. He has also broken my teeth with gravel, covered me with ashes. You moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity. I said, “My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord.” How do we comfort people? We tell them that they have to get to the place, you know, where they have to rely—they have to get to the bottom of the barrel. They can’t rely on themselves anymore. And even they lose hope in a sense from the Lord here. That’s the depths of despair. Soltau amongst that is the be the middle of this particular section. But that’s what happens to Jeremiah. And so often that’s what happens as God prepares a people for deliverance. It’s like they just plain get to the end of their rope. They give up and then it seems like God is—the way we so often see in counseling is that’s where somehow the spirit of God is pleased to move, you know, mostly dead, right? And then you’re going to come back to life. And that’s where Jeremiah does. He hits bottom. He hits bottom here. His hope even is perished because his hope is built upon an observation of himself and his realities of his suffering.

As we’ll see, he changes that. “Remember my affliction and roaring, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me. So he moves in memory now—is this is the key here—but he’s remembering the difficulties and meditating and know how often isn’t that true—you get in hard times, troubles, it’s all you can think about. That’s all you can think about. But Jeremiah thinks about something else. “This I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope.” Okay, now he’s hit bottom. Now we’re headed up. Now we’re get the minor fall. The major lift is happening here. We’re headed into new bright territory.

“This I recall to my mind. Therefore, I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. The character of God is not, you know, utter judgment and wrath forever. His compassion is the beating heart of the character of God—is he has this compassionate nature and his compassions don’t fail. They are new every morning. Jeremiah realizes, wait a minute, we’re in darkness. But what that means is his mourning is coming. God isn’t going to keep us in darkness forever. He’s not going to keep you afflicted forever. You’re not going to be depressed forever. Light will come. A new reality will dawn. And as I said, this is not some kind of cyclical reference to, you know, evening and morning and just things go on and on and on. No, what it says here doesn’t say that they’re there every morning. He says his compassion is new every morning—new every morning. Every day ultimately in the progression of history is better than the day before.

Now, some of those days were spent in darkness. We saw that with Jeremiah’s confession at the beginning of the book or the chapter. But what turns him around and what we have to remind ourselves of and what we have to remind other people about and what we have to call a lamenting culture to remembrance of is the character of God—that he is compassionate—and that character of God finds its expression in the history of men. So that every morning he’s advancing things. Yes, it’s dark for a season, but it’s always a precursor. Not to the same old thing. Not to the same old thing. Not “one darn thing after another.” Not that philosophy of history. The biblical philosophy of history is that his compassions are new every morning. Just like the seven days of creation, things are getting better and better, more wonderful and beautiful.

Now, you know, it’s not on a daily basis. There are long wings to some of these things. But that’s what Jeremiah recalls to mind. That’s what gives him hope in the present is remembering God’s character and specifically God’s actions in the past.

“The Lord is my portion.” Boy, that’s important to remind ourselves of—you know, when the economy falls apart, recession happens, depression happens, you lose your house, you go bankrupt, whatever it is, right? The Lord is my portion. How significant is that for helping ourselves have a sense of peace and hope. You know, Luther, right, in that great song, “A Mighty Fortress,” you know, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also—the Lord is our portion”—that provides us with absolute, you know, hope in the context of any situation. And how often, you know, think of it that it’s such an easy thing to say, “The Lord is my portion.” But you know, when you have troubles and trials and depression and affliction, it’s very difficult to cling to that. But that is what Jeremiah puts at the heart of this book in terms of how he moves into hope.

“The Lord is my portion, says my soul. We speak to ourselves. We remember God’s character. Therefore, I hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. Now so there’s the center, the character of God as has reflected in human history, his involvement in the affairs of man, that his compassions are new every morning, that the world is making progress. Then he lists three things that are good here. Good that one should hope and wait quietly. Well, the Lord is good first of all for those who wait for him, the soul who seeks him. It’s good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It’s good for a man to bear his yoke in his youth. Now those things are all good. So now Jeremiah moves to tell us, to give us a little instruction on what are the three good things put here. And actually in those verses, good is the first verse. Good is the Lord. Good it is to wait silently. Now in chapter one, the elders are sitting there silently with dust on their head. There’s two ways to wait silently. One is resignation, depression, just, you know, no hope. But Jeremiah is now saying that hope doesn’t mean everything’s changed, but it means it’s good for you now to wait quietly for God to act.

And that’s all you can do. That’s all you can do. But you don’t have to wait in vain. You’re waiting silently with great hope in God.

“Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him. Let him put his mouth in the dust. There may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who smites him and be full of reproach.” Now, what does that remind you of? Cheek to the one who smites him. Sermon on the Mount. This is all stuff that Jesus picks up in the Sermon on the Mount. He’s telling us what to do good in a particular circumstance. What was the circumstance of the Sermon on the Mount? Well, the Romans were in control. They were hitting people and demanding this that and the other thing. And Jesus picks up language, you know, from Job or from Jeremiah rather, to remind us that in those situations, this is what you got to put up with. To what end? Because that’s what the Christian life is. No, Jeremiah says that the reason you do that is because you know that the darkness will fade. The morning light will come and God will move history ahead. It’s not some kind of stoic Christian resignation to the difficulties, trials, and tribulations. It is rather a confident hope that history is progressing. That the one who strikes you on the cheek will himself be judged by God. Even if he’s striking you for judgment, as was happening in Jeremiah’s time, as was happening in Jesus’s time, he as well will be judged.

To what end? That God’s mercies are new every morning. Maybe even for Rome. Maybe even for the Soviet Union. Okay? Maybe even for the Babylonians. You see what I’m saying here? People read this book, they get to that imprecatory prayer at the end. They say, “Well, you know, it’s a book of revenge and judgment because, you know, Jeremiah just wants his Babylonians killed and that they’d become that blood squirting out from God’s feet.” But what happens to a people when God judges their injustice? What happens? He’s not using it ultimately so that darkness prevails. He’s bringing light around the entire globe through these judgments. And what happened to Babylon? Well, in the life of Nebuchadnezzar, that’s exactly what happened to him. He went nuts. He’s out there eating grass like a llama or something, right? And as a result of that, what happens? He’s in great darkness, mental darkness, and he comes to the bright light of confidence and faith in Yahweh. You see, this thing isn’t just about God saving some part of the world. I’m convinced that these texts are about God saving the world. That Jesus came to accomplish nothing short of saving the world. And so the waiting that we do, the Sermon on the Mount stuff that you have to do in particular seasons, right? It’s to a particular end. You’re not supposed to then say, “Well, isn’t that great? They’re hitting me.” No. If you follow Jeremiah, you recognize probably there’s some sin involved in your part. And even if there isn’t, God’s in control and he’s working out things, but he’s working them out for salvation for you and then ultimately for your oppressors. That’s why you do it. You see, you do it waiting—not waiting passively. Well, you’re passive, I suppose—not waiting, you know, without view of any kind of future change. You’re waiting for God to change what happens in history. Why? Because verse 31: “For the Lord will not cast off forever. Okay, these times will come to an end. Morning will come.

“Though he causes grief, yet he will show compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he does not afflict willingly.” Wait a minute. That word willingly—a better translation, “he does not afflict from the heart.” That’s what it says in the Hebrew. What do we do with that? What do you do with that? Well, I think we got to take it at face value. I think from a particular literary way of putting it, you know, when the parent spanks his child, his heart isn’t in it. I mean, he does it. It has to be done. But it’s not ultimately what he wants for that child. His heart isn’t in it. And that’s what it says here. It says that God’s heart is not in these judgments. It says that ultimately the judgments won’t be the final word. Ultimately, what God is bringing about is the demonstration of his compassion and his mercy to a rebellious people. His heart isn’t in it. In the same way, let’s put it this way, God’s heart is not in demonstrations of vengeance and anger and wrath. The same way his heart is in demonstrations of compassion, loyal love, mercy, and kindness. God—and you know, I repent. I think I said this many years ago from this pulpit—God is not wrath in the same way that God is love. That’s what this text is telling us. That his wrath is connected to his primary attribute, which is love. And because he loves us, he brings that wrath upon us. But his heart isn’t in it. Because what he desires for you, what he has plans for you, what he’s going to accomplish for you is your redemption through that very suffering. Beautiful. What a beautiful text this is, isn’t it? You talk about gospel. This is gospel—capital G, capital O, capital S. This is gospel.

Now he then tells us what injustice will not be tolerated by him. “To crush under one’s foot all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the justice due to a man before the face of the Most High, or subvert a man in his cause—the Lord does not approve.” So now that we’re told that, you know, God doesn’t approve of three particular forms of injustice. You know, when that guy slapping on the cheek. God doesn’t approve of that. And understand that you’re not just supposed to say, “Well, that’s okay long term.” No, it’s not okay. You’re to get to the same point that Jeremiah does where you ask God’s vengeance against him because God loves him. Because God loves him. You want God to deal with his injustice. And this is really, you know, we—I’ll probably return to this text after Easter because, you know, justice is what it is, such an important part of what Christians are to do. “Do justice, do justice.” And what does it mean? Well, these verses tell us. Gives us three things, three forms of injustice that God does not approve and he won’t countenance long term.

And one is to crush under one’s foot all the prisoners of the earth. You know, in Amos, he says—I can’t remember, is it Edom with Moab or Moab with Edom. I always get them confused. But in Amos chapter 2, he says, you know, “Hey, you burned the king of Moab’s bones to lime and therefore I’m coming after you, Edom. I’m going to destroy you.” Okay, Moab, Edom, they’re burning the king’s bones. Who cares? God cares. It’s a form of injustice. You know, you got to take care of business and you have to punish sin. But it’s a different thing from punishing somebody and then crushing them. Now, I think as an example of where I want to go after Easter, that this first one, you know, what is happening in our jails? Isn’t it just this very thing? People sin in some particular way. They get thrown in jail. They don’t pay for their sin. They don’t get, you know, make repentance and all that restitution. They get thrown in prison. They get thrown in a cage like an animal, okay, for years and years, maybe all their life. I think that, you know, I think there’s something to consider in terms of doing justice in Oregon City to think about the jail. And what’s the justice of that? Now, we don’t let everybody go. It’s not what I’m talking about. But the Bible, you know, has this system of, you know, restitution and the death penalty. Those things work together in the scriptures. And that’s, I think, a model of social justice. And I think the model we have is a model of injustice. It’s crushing the prisoner underfoot.

And, you know, then you—well, we could talk about it. We’ll talk about it more later—but these are three instances of injustice that God does not approve. And when we talk about doing justice, this is a good text for us. This is a great text.

“Let him sit alone and keep sight.” Well, that’s not the right verse. Okay. So, “to turn aside the justice of the man before the face of the Most High. That’s number two. Subvert man and his cause is number three. So we don’t have time now. But, you know, those are things that God says he doesn’t like. We shouldn’t like them. He doesn’t approve them. He’s going to do something about them. And so should we. And so should we.

All right, verse 40 gives him more instruction. “Let a man search out and examine one’s ways and turn back to the Lord.” So ultimately what’s happening here is there—”Let him sit alone and keep silent because God has laid it on him.” Oh, that’s the wrong verse. Sorry. Moving ahead, verse 41: “Lift our hearts and our hands to God in heaven.”

And so now he begins to lead them in prayer. And we don’t have time to do a lot of detail on that, but that’s what he does. He leads the congregation then in prayer in the same direction that he has been going. He teaches them as well and then he moves to his own prayer. Let’s jump down to verse 50: “You do this until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees.” So God at first doesn’t hear prayers because you’re not—really he’s not done with your darkness. He’s not done reforming you and you’re probably not done repenting yet. So you meditate in your silence. You seek the Lord. You lift your hands and hearts to him in heaven. Then eventually he hears from heaven and he looks down and sees.

“My eyes bring suffering to my soul because of all the daughters of my city. My enemies without cause hunted me down like a bird. They silenced my life in the pit and they threw stones at me. The waters float over my head. I am cut off. I cried out, or I called out your name, O Lord. Called on your name from the lowest pit. Now, here’s what God does in response to that kind of prayer. Here’s what we can promise ourselves as we’re going through this and other people that we work with. Here’s what God does in response. He hears our voice. “You have heard my voice. Do not hide your ear from my sighing, from my cry for help. You drew near on the day I called on you.” So he hears our prayers, but then he moves and he comes close to us. We’ve been alienated and cut off. He draws near to us now to help, not to judge, okay. And then the third thing he does, it says, and he says, “Do not fear.” And he assures us that we don’t have to fear the situation we’re going through.

Fourth thing: “Oh Lord, you have pleaded the case for my soul.” And five: “You have redeemed my life.” That’s the summary state. So God pleads our case. Now he’s not against us. Now he’s our adversary for us. He’s our advocate with the enemies that we have and he redeems us from all our sins and misery.

What three things do you need to know to live and die happily in this comfort? The Heidelberg Catechism says first, how great my sins and misery are. Examine yourself. Second, how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. And then third, how I’m to be thankful to God for such redemption. And that’s what Jeremiah comes to here.

And then, as I said at the end, then there’s this last imprecatory prayer. “Look at their sitting down and their rising up. The last couple of verses: “I am their taunting song. Repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. Give them a veiled heart. Your curse be upon them, and your anger pursue and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord.” Period.

But what has this chapter set us up for. It’s told us that now, in reference to the enemies that crushed Israel, in God’s wrath against Israel—now God’s going to use, for instance, Moab to kill this person or that person. But what’s he doing when we pray? It’s to the end that God would save those people. The same way God’s justice comes against us, the same way God’s justice came against Jeremiah’s people, the same way then justice is called for against the enemies—to what end? I think to the end of redemption. I think that this is a redemption song from beginning to end. And it moves the individual. It moves the church. And ultimately, if the church understands this, it moves the world toward redemption. It helps us find our voice calling on the character of God, remembering his actions in the past, remembering that he is not wrath. He is love. That even when the judgments come, he doesn’t afflict from his heart. His purpose then is different.

The great statements of God’s sovereignty in this chapter, right? “Doesn’t good and evil both come from the Lord?” Jeremiah says. Why does he say that? We use this verse typically to talk about God being, you know, the one that brings bad things to happen. But Jeremiah’s point is if God isn’t in control of the Babylonians, we’re in big trouble, right? God has brought this to pass for his redemptive purposes so that his mercies might be new every morning, that the world might be renewed. So we find our voice in the character of God. We help the church and other people that we know. We comfort them with our comfort, focusing on what God’s plan is, what it’s been from the creation on. The darkness is a precursor to light. And it’s a light that says the world is getting better. The day is better. More beauty is coming. When beauty fades away, it is simply preparation for a more beautiful future than we have ever seen.

We don’t need to fear the events and the contemporary things that we’re going through. We need to see them not as the end of the road. We need to see what we’re going through as a nation and as a world as birth pangs. Birth pangs. Darkness is filling the earth. But it’s to the end that we’ll come out of that room of darkness. It’ll be painful. It’ll be difficult, but we need to know for ourselves to be comforted—we need to comfort others—and we need to help the world find its proper voice of lamenting by talking to them that the story of God’s word, the narrative from Jeremiah 3, is that these things are birth pangs. Isn’t that exactly what our Savior told us? When these things come upon you, it’s birth pangs. It’s birth pangs. Horrible judgments and yet birth pangs from the Lord.

His mercies are new every morning. When we sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” it is not some resignation to what’s happened. It’s some great understanding and comfort to our souls that wonderful things are coming in the future from a God who takes us through travail that we might come to more beauty and blessing from him. God doesn’t just renew the past. He brings us new hope, new future, a new day.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful center of Lamentations. Help us, Father, to remember these verses, to remember the truths taught in them, to meditate upon them. They’ll become so important to us individually, as a church, as a community, and for our world to find its voice in lamentation as we continue to go through the difficulties that we seem to be headed toward. Bless us, Lord God, with the assuredness of having our hope founded not upon ourselves or other people, but upon your ultimate sovereignty and your character, which is love. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Great is thy faithfulness, oh God, my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not…