Dennis Tuuri

# Lamentations 4: How the Gold Has Darkened

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Tuuri, March 18, 2012

of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 and 586 BC. Ultimately it also can be seen as having its fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. World changing event, and also we can see scattered throughout the book of Lamentations pictures of the death of the true Israel, the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ for us to accomplish our deliverance.

In today’s chapter, the prayers are finally answered at the very end of chapter 4. For the first time, you’ll notice as we read through it that we get to a declaration that God’s punishment for iniquities has been accomplished. And so, while we have one chapter left, this chapter does move the book continually forward in a description of the horrors. And the description of the horrors actually increase in this chapter, but then also a description of the conclusion of God’s judgment and the reversals that will happen as a result of that.

There’s an old prophetic song that I shared on my Facebook page Friday, late Friday evening, or afternoon rather, late as I was preparing for the sermon. Still there will be more. Still there will be more. You’ll cry out for mercy, but still there will be more. Excellent song. Hard song, hard lyrics. But as we read in Lamentations 4, there are still more horrors to be described in the events of the siege, starvation, eventually the conquering of the city and the temple itself. And we’ll read in the next chapter of the ravishing of women, which we know implicitly throughout these four chapters, that this is what happens in siege warfare when the walls tumble.

So still there’ll be more. Let’s read about it in Lamentations 4. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

How the gold has become dim. How changed the fine gold. The stones of the sanctuary are scattered at the head of every street. The precious sons of Zion, valuable as fine gold, how they are regarded as clay pots, the work of the hands of the potter. Even the jackals present their breast to nurse their young. But the daughter of my people is cruel like ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of the infant clings to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The young children ask for bread, but no one breaks it for them.

Those who are delicate, who ate delicacies, are desolate in the streets. Those who were brought up in scarlet embrace ash heaps. The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment with no hand to help her.

Her Nazerites were brighter than snow and whiter than milk. They were more ruddy in body than rubies, like sapphires in their appearance. Now their appearance is blacker than soot. They go unrecognized in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones. It has become as dry as wood. Those slain by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger. For these pine away, stricken for lack of the fruits of the field.

The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children. They became food for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people. The Lord has fulfilled his fury. He has poured out his fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion and it has devoured its foundations. The kings of the earth and all inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests who shed in her midst the blood of the just.

They wandered blind in the streets. They have defiled themselves with blood so that no one would touch their garments. They cried out to them, “Go away unclean. Go away. Go away. Do not touch us.” When they fled and wandered, those among the nations said, “They shall no longer dwell here.” The face of the Lord scattered them. He no longer regards them. The people do not respect the priests, nor show favor to the elders.

Still our eyes failed us, watching vainly for our help. In our watching, we watched for a nation that could not save us. They tracked our steps so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end was near. Our days were over, for our end has come. Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens. They pursued us on the mountains and lay in wait for us in the wilderness. The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was caught in their pits. Of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.”

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. The cup shall also pass over to you, and you shall become drunk and make yourself naked. The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion. He will no longer send you into captivity. He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom. He will uncover your sins.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your ways in history. We thank you for the maturation of man. We thank you for the coming of the man, the Lord Jesus Christ, 2,000 years ago. And we thank you for the establishment of his kingdom in ways that seem like the destruction of his kingdom to us. And yet, you’re building, always building. Bless us, Lord God, in our afflictions and our trials and our troubles that we may turn away from sins, or if not sins, that we may trust patiently for your mercies which are new every morning.

To that end, bless us with an understanding of this text and its message to us. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

I’m going to use a euphemistic word for urination here, so I’m going to move away from the pulpit. So, I didn’t do this from the pulpit, but the lyrics of that song go, “I’ll blacken your Christmas and piss on your door. You’ll cry out for mercy. Still there will be more.” Still there’ll be more.

The rest of the lyrics get worse, not better. And this text shows us that’s the way it is. Still there’ll be more. Now we come to women, women boiling and eating their own children. Horrific. And behind all of this is the great pursuer, God himself, because of the sins of the people.

We have as our theme this Lenten season the loss of beauty. And these structures that we’ve looked at in Lamentations show that you know, we’ve had a series of acrostics and we have another acrostic here. The last one, chapter 5, won’t have it—it’s fading away. But this acrostic doesn’t consist of 66 lines. The first three are 66 lines, right? And a little different structure among chapters 1, 2, and 3, but 66 lines. This one is 44. This one’s 44. And chapter 5, my work is easier next week—I only have to study 22 lines, because chapter 5 is the shortest of the chapters.

And what is happening is the word, the song, the poetry is fading away. You see, and so it’s part of this movement from beauty to the fading of that beauty. That’s what happens when you die. That’s what happens when you get old. That’s what happens when things wear out. And that’s what happens when God’s judgment comes. You hear all the color imagery in the text today. You know, from the very beginning, right?

So chapter 4, like chapters 1 and 2, it begins with the “how” statement, right? “How desolate the daughter” in chapter 1, right? And another “how” statement in chapter 2—”how God has covered…” One who suffered not for his sins but for us, the man of all men, Jesus Christ, who will come and he’s the center of everything. And so the pivot point in Lamentations is this center. And then we get to another “how” phrase here: “How the gold has become darkened,” tarnished. Well, gold can’t tarnish, so it’s a visual imagery of something that’s quite important, as we’ll look at in a couple of minutes. But it’s using color. And the Nazerites were white, and they were like milk, and they were like sapphire, which is like a heaven blue, a heraldic blue. The definitions say beautiful colors to the Nazerites. Now what are they? Like black. Their color has faded.

And so this basic theme—that for our sins, typically, but when we go through suffering we’re going through the loss of beauty—is not something kind to paste onto our lives. It’s central to who we are, and the center of our being is related to beauty. And so beauty fades when God’s judgment comes. And that’s pictured in our theme verse as you come into the foyer. It’s pictured back here, right? Where’s the color? Well, the only color is in that gospel of Jesus there, in that beautiful wine. Otherwise, you’ve got, you know, no blossoms. The beautiful color of the throne room window has been pasted over because Lent reminds us of the loss of beauty, and it’s a warning to us that for our sins we lose beauty. We lose beauty for our very sins.

So this book is moving ahead, and now we get to another “how” statement. But the book is fading away. Now, there’s another meaning to that, right? There’s lots of two-meaning stuff in the scriptures, and the beauty that is fading away of the poem. We’ve lost the chaining that happened in chapters 1 and 2. No chaining in 3, 4, and 5, where verses are chained together in interesting ways. We will shortly lose the chiasm. We’ve lost the three-line verses. They’re now two-line verses. So there’s a fading of beauty. But in the midst of that, what we also see fading is judgment, right? Because this is a series of poems about judgment. And so the judgment is starting to fade away as well.

And in fact, by the end of chapter 4, the declaration comes—it’s over. It’s over. So chapter 4 has its own little arc. It moves from “how horrible it is that the gold,” which we’ll read in a minute—the sons are the gold. Your children are worth their weight in gold and then some, right? And that’s what they are. And we’ll see that in a couple of minutes. But it starts with that judgment. “Still, there’ll be more.” And we have a description of women actually eating their children in the middle of the chapter.

But it comes to an end with the judgment being finished now, and God will no longer exile his people. So even as our beauty fades, we know that the judgment of God, or the simple providence of God that’s maturing us as people—maybe not for sins—as the beauty in our lives fades, we should relate it to lamentation so that we know that what’s happening as well is the judgment of God is fading. Right? That’s what’s happening here. And not only is the judgment of God fading, it’s going to take on new life as he reaches out now and starts dealing with the Edomites, which we’ll talk about at the end of the passage, because that’s the last thing that happens—an assurance that as judgment fades upon his people, justice doesn’t fade. Justice doesn’t fade, because the last verse is asking for God’s justice to be meted out on Edom.

So justice doesn’t fade. God’s judgment fades. God is controlling everything, and he’s doing it so that we’ll become more beautiful. Now, he does it through loss of beauty, right? As we said last week, you got to go dark to get light. You had to bring down the lights on days 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 for the lights to come back up and the world to be more and more beautiful day by day. Now, there’s an end to that, too, though, right? That fades away when Revelation—when Jesus returns. There’s no night there in the heavenly city, the city garden of God. He’s the light. There’s no night left.

So it’s not that history is cyclical. It’s moving to a conclusion, but it’s moving in a beautiful structured way that’s hard for us, you know, to deal with. The pains and sufferings are real. And what Lamentations is about—I tried to say this the first sermon—is us finding our voice of lament, of suffering, when we go through things, right? Whether for our sins or not. And then helping the culture around us find its voice as it goes through things.

Now, you know, interestingly, we have a lot of people that think that what you do with suffering people, how you help them find their voice, is to give them food. Well, that’s true. There’s a degree of truth to that, right? It says in the text that the little children their mouths dry out and their tongues cling to the roof of their mouths, right? You notice that as we were reading through. Well, that means he can’t speak. Your tongue is clinging to the roof of your mouth. You can’t talk anymore either.

So you got to give him water, right? You got to give him food. But remember that the center of the turning, the central part of our voice that we’re to find in our sufferings—either for our sin or just through the tribulations of life that the Lord God is using to mature us—the center of our voice, the center of the book is in the middle of chapter 3, which says, “Great is God’s faithfulness.” And if we don’t minister the faithfulness of God, if we don’t lead people in their voice—not just to get voice back and to get strength back through food and health and all that stuff, but if we leave them without a voice that includes a reliance and a trust and a desire to serve God—we have not brought them the comfort of the book of Lamentations. We have not helped them to find their voice according to Lamentations.

You know, we want to help people find their voice. Jeremiah said in chapter 2, “How can I comfort you? You’re under the judgment of God.” He said, “You’re going to have to die.” Not only that, but these Babylonians are going to siege you. You’re going to starve to death in here. Women are going to eat their own children. And then they’re going to break down those walls. Some of you will try to run out. The king will. He’ll be caught. The last thing he sees is his sons being killed. And then they poke out his eyes, leave him in a prison to think about that image for the rest of his life.

That’s what’s happening. “How can I comfort my people?” And he finds a way. He finds the way in chapter 3 to bring them and point them to the God whose mercies are new—not the same old mercies. They’re new every morning, like at creation. That’s the voice of Lamentations. That’s how we comfort ourselves. That’s the voice we must bring to people to truly comfort them with biblical hope and comfort.

So this chapter moves on from there, and we’ll see more of our voice and more of the sins of the people. It looks a little odd, but actually there’s hope. There’s a chiastic structure to the entire book. On your handouts, I’ve given you, I think mostly the corrected form of David Dorsey’s outline of the whole book. And you’ll see that he matches up the sections that we’re dealing with today back to earlier sections in the book. And you probably already thought about that yourself, right?

You remember in chapter 2, it talked about children again and then the sins against children. Remember we said the question isn’t “Why would God do this to his people?” The question is “Why would parents do this to their kids?” Because the parents have done this stuff that brings the judgment of God, right? “Why would parents do such a horrible thing to their kids?” And that was in chapter 2. And then we had chapter 3, the center. And now we’re in chapter 4 with kids again, right? In fact, we have the same people groups kind of mentioned in both sets.

And David Dorsey points this out. The punishment for iniquities—God’s specific things that he does in terms of wrath and anger—Dorsey brings these parallels together from chapter 2 to chapter 4. But remember that in the scriptures, when you have these structures in the scriptures that move to a center, they’re not just—it’s not like you take a piece of paper, fold it over, and ink the second half exactly like the first half. That’s not the idea. Biblical chiasms typically can be, but that’s not usually the deal, right? It’s not just a carbon copy.

Because if we start here and we start with a description of things, and we come to this middle point—the hinge—it changes things. And then we end up over here, and things are different. They’re connected to show that there’s some movement, but now they’re different. So over here people were awful to our kids, and God’s judgment was raging in chapter 2, et cetera. But then we get to the pivot—the man, Jesus—and God’s goodness and faithfulness. That he doesn’t afflict from his heart. An amazing statement. Remember that all the rest of your lives, please.

Some of us are so prone to think that God is always angry at us and he hates us, and his wrath is just as real and powerful as his love and just as much as his character. And what God said is no, it isn’t. He says it doesn’t afflict from his heart. His heart isn’t in it. Now, it’s an expression, right? I mean, of course, God’s will is in it. But the point is his wrath is a result of his love, not the other way around. So love is at the center. God, who is love, and the demonstration of that is the work of Jesus on the cross for us. That changes everything.

So that now over here, we’re still talking about even horrible things that mothers are doing to their kids. But now there’s a mitigating factor. Now there’s hope, because specific sins are identified. And then the movement is—by the end of chapter 4—the judgment is over. Why is the judgment over? Because of the man. Why wasn’t it over here? Because we were moving into a consideration of Jesus. And that hinge changes the last half. And that’s what brings us to the conclusion of judgment.

And then in chapter 5, the writer will build on that declaration—that her sins have been fully punished. Now he’ll move on then into a prayer which, look, has a lot of judgment still in it—ravaging of women, et cetera. But it’s a prayer in which the people are building upon the hope that came because of the central hinge of the book, which is the man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So there’s these beautiful structuring elements that are given to us here, and that’s what’s happening here. Now, what I want to do is I want to go over the five particular sections the way I’ve outlined it. This is my outline. Nobody agrees with this. There are lots of different ways to structure the book. But let me read this quote though, first. Before I do, this is a quote on this color thing. Again, I just think this is so interesting for lots of reasons.

“This chapter is one of the most graphic,” and this is from the Word Biblical Commentary. “This chapter is one of the most graphic in the book, and its description of the physical suffering of the people of Jerusalem. And what makes it especially vivid is the use of color. In fact, color is one of the striking features of this chapter. Gold and scarlet in verses 1, 2, and 5. White, red, sapphire, and black in verses 7 and 8. Bright colors represent the earlier conditions. As the famine progresses, the colors are erased from the picture, and all that remains is dullness and blackness. So color imagery is one more way the book stresses the reversal of fortunes for the people. Their wealth and hopes faded. Their hopes faded as surely as bright colors diminish over time.”

That’s nice, huh? For all you artists and people—color. We should buy a colored copier, get rid of black and white outlets. No, but color is very significant. And if that’s the way God, you know, demonstrates things is through the diminishment of color in terms of fading of beauty, that means it’s a pretty important thing for us to remember.

All right. So let’s move in now to a consideration of this section of the book. And I’ve got on your outlines, I’ve got five basic structures. And I tried to read it this way. Read the text in these five blocks as well. And so the first one is: Golden Children Are Not Valued.

Okay? So if you look at the text, right in your Bibles, or you could just listen. But if you look, see: “How the gold has become dim. How changed the fine gold. The stones of the sanctuary are scattered at the head of every street.” So gold, dim, changed, fine gold. The street is a big deal here—the public. Maybe on Palm Sunday I’ll try to wrap these street references into a Palm Sunday sermon as we go into the streets of the city.

But in any event, then it says, “The precious sons of Zion.” So see, he’s been talking about gold, valuable, precious gold, and these precious sanctuary stones by implication. Then he says, “The precious sons of Zion,” and then directly ties them in as “valuable as fine gold”—”how they are regarded as clay pots, the work of the hands of the potter.”

So he’s saying that the gold and the stones ultimately are pictures. And there’s literal stuff that might be going on in the time of Rehoboam. Solomon’s gold shields were taken by God’s enemies, as Rehoboam was not too good, and he replaced them with bronze shields. So there was a literal “the gold has dimmed.” Oh, look at that. Look at our country now. Now we don’t have gold. Now we got bronze. And the stones of the temple really do come down at some point. Not all of them at this time, but some do come down. And in AD 70, they’ll be ripped apart.

But what’s important—and that’s kind of stupid if that’s all we think here—because the temple is a microcosm of the universe. It’s a person. That’s why, and it was always intended to be that way. It has ribs. The Hebrew word for the supports are ribs. It’s a human body, and ultimately it’s a picture of Jesus and it’s a picture of his people incorporated into him, right? You’re the temple. Jesus: “Tear down the temple. I’ll raise it in three days.” He is the temple. We’re the stones. You know, Peter says that in the New Testament—precious stones and gold and stuff. We comprise the temple.

Well, that was just as true in the Old Testament. Okay? The temple was a manifestation of the people who really are the dwelling place of God. God doesn’t sit in a temple made by human hands. He dwells in the context of his people. And the temple is a model. We need a model. So it’s kind of a model, right? It’s more than a model, but it’s a model. And the temple’s stones are its people again. And the gold in the temple is supposed to be seen as valuable, like the people are valuable.

And here specifically, the children are valuable. Now, think about this a little bit, right? So you got these stones, and later he’ll talk about the foundations, right? The foundations of the temple or the world. And then he’ll then here he’s talking about the gold. So I believe what he’s linking it to is—he’s saying the foundations of the temple, the structure of the temple, and the value of the temple—the beauty of it, right—are kids. Kids. It’s the future.

The temple is never a static point in time because we know that children are identified as these valuable gold and stones of the temple. Children represent the next generation, and they’re our future, right? They’re the future of that body. That body is representative of all those people. And in the context of people, we should highly value children, right? Our nature tells us that. But theologically, we should highly value them because what does he say? He says, you know, “Why did God make the two one? Because he desires a godly seed.” He desires kids. He desires future because he wants mankind to mature and be transformed to exercise dominion in all the world.

And that can’t happen, you know, in 60 years, right? Hasn’t happened in my 60 years. But it does happen long term. So children are incredibly valuable.

But in a time of judgment—why? Why has the judgment come? Because the women have lost compassion for their own kids. It says the jackal will, you know, feed its young with its breast, right? But not these mothers in Israel. They’re uncompassionate toward their kids. And then we’ll hear in the next section, they’re actually boiling and eating them.

And man, you don’t get off because this is one of the covenant curses laid out in Deuteronomy 28, that this will happen. And by the way, there’s a historical account in the time of Elisha where it did happen. These women are arguing over boiled kids. I mean, they really did this. I’m sorry. It’s not a nice thing, but that’s what the Bible says. And in the Deuteronomy account, it says, “Men are doing the same thing. The best of the men, the best of the women have lost compassion for their kids, and they’re eating their own children.” They’re eating their future. They’re eating their future and the future of the church, more importantly, right?

God—they’re eating the holy seed that God had them come together into marriage to affect and to bring it to pass. And they lose compassion for this task. Now, that is in the beginning of this chapter. Then it sets out the great sin, a great sin that we have to avoid. I mean, unless you want to end up with “blackened Christmas” and some guy urinating on your doorstep and savaging your wife, which is in another verse of that prophetic song.

Unless you want to end up the way Lamentations talks about, if you don’t want to end up that way, I suggest that we all need to properly value our children and the future. We need to see them as worth their weight in gold. What would you do, you know, to have a 10-year-old—I don’t know how much he weighs, 100 pounds. What would you do to have 100 pounds of gold? How would you—how well would you treat that 100 pounds of gold? Would you try to protect it from people that would steal it or from things that would hurt it? You bet you would.

Now, I think, you know, not to step on anybody’s toes here, but generally speaking in the Christian culture, certainly in the American culture, you get the sense that when it comes to the value of children, they’re really not valued that highly because people don’t want them. They don’t have very many of them. They don’t like it if you’ve got very many of them. We got abortions going on left and right, right? Nearly a million a year, 700,000, whatever it is. Children aren’t valued. This is a culture under judgment from God because it’s doing just what that text says. Women are eating up their kids.

Nah, they’re not boiling them alive. But what are they doing? They can’t afford a child. They want that money for themselves and their purposes rather than to use that money self-sacrificially to raise the next generation. That’s consuming, you know, essentially the future, right? Or we’re so interested in the present moment that we’re not thinking of what we’re going to do with our resources in the future. We’re eating everything up as we go. We’re spending our inheritance now, right? And that’s the same thing as not properly valuing the foundation of the future economically and then in terms of our children.

And it’s funny how people express there is a lot of concern for kids in the country, right? So people don’t want them to eat sugar and they don’t want them to drink stuff that might have this or that or the other thing in them. And we hear the latest health buzz every couple of weeks and we change our habits once more because that’s just the way it works every few months. Or some of you drop out of that ride and you say, “Well, okay, I’m just going to stay with what I knew in 1972 because I know it’s going to change from then on. But I’m at least going to try that.” And we get very, you know, we—a lot of people get very diligent about what they feed their children, okay?

Or in our day and age, I hear it’s the strangest thing. I hear these stories—I don’t actually see them, but I guess on Facebook a lot of discussion about organic diapers, Pampers, I don’t know. You know, to me, when you got a culture that is putting all this time and effort and money into making sure the diapers might not possibly hurt the kid and the carefulness of this or that chemical or this or that deal, and yet they then, you know, dress Johnny or Susie up, put the cap on them and send them down to the public school—knowing, if they do like I do and you do, that the majority of Christian kids that go to the public school for 12 years are going to apostatize. They’re going to leave the faith. That’s the statistics.

And the ones that don’t, you know, a number of them are going to end up with—they might claim to be Christian, but their worldview now is pro-environmentalist, anti-business, it’s socialist, you know, it’s pro-homosexual. You know, it’s all those things that the Bible says are bad deals, right? So where is our consideration for our children? Where is our concern for them?

I know other families, you know, where dads work forever, all these hours. Now, I’m big on long hours. I think Doug Wilson’s right. If you’re, you know, if you’re working less than 40 or 50 hours a week, you’re a sluggard. And if you’re working more than 60, then you’re a workaholic. And so there’s ditches on both ends. But you know, if work combined with your own personal pleasure when you get home from work ends up with you not seeing your children as worth their weight in gold and as being the foundations for the future of the Christian church and the health of the world—if you don’t put that kind of time and energy into their discipleship—well, get ready. Get ready for the pissing on your door, because it’s coming.

And in fact, it’s probably already there in a lot of lives. People that do that—things have already fallen apart, and they just don’t know it yet. They’re just still blind. You know, you can have a drunkard who’s so drunk you kick the guy, he has no idea he’s being kicked. Proverbs says that. Wake up. Wake up. Judgment may be in your home.

I know another thing. You know, parents—such a common phenomena in households, Christian households, for parents, you know, to homeschool, good Christian schools, got the right kind of diapers and food that’s good, everything’s going great, and the mom and dad can’t stand each other anymore. Happens over and over and over. It’s hard, you know, it’s just hard doing the kind of thing we’re doing in the midst of a culture that’s going completely the other way. It’s hard and it’s taxing and it’s tiring on everybody.

So I’m fully sympathetic, you know, with all the problems. But understand that what your children see happening in your home is of tremendous significance in the way they’re being molded and formed. And if you highly value those children—as worth their weight in gold, and if you understand that they’re the foundational building blocks of the city of God, the transformation of the world—then, you know, clean up your act, okay? Start working, talking with your wife or your husband or whatever it is. Work out your difficulties. Call me if you need to. Call somebody. We make referrals. Work on it, because it’s just not fair to those children to grow up in a home that’s being modeled lovelessness. It’s just not right.

So in this first section, that’s the sin: disregard for children. And the judgment comes to these people because of that. So that’s what the text talks about. Even the jackals, jackals are more compassionate than mothers. It’s an amazing thing. Ostriches in the wilderness—well, Job tells us there that ostriches bury their eggs and then they forget about them. That’s what it says in the book of Job. And you know that has direct significance, I suppose, to a lack of concern for one’s eggs now, not hatchlings—to abortion itself, et cetera.

“Tongue of the infant cleaves to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The young children ask for bread, but no one breaks it for them.” We’re going to break it for them right here today, right? Then we’re going to give them something to drink, too. “Children, those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets, those who were brought up in scarlet embrace ash heaps.”

Now, I could be wrong here. I’ve got a little different take on this than any commentator I read. Some people say that what’s going on here is that now we have this verse. So we got them, from the lowest to the highest. These are the royal—these are the royals, right?—who are dressed in scarlet and ate great things. I’m not so sure about that. I’m not so sure this isn’t just one line thrown in for them, if it is, which may be okay.

But he’s going to return in the second section to mothers eating their children. So it seems like the eating of the kids is the dominant thing going on. And in opposition to that, these—whoever is being spoken about in this verse here—eat delicacies and they’re dressed in scarlet. I’m not at all sure of this, but I think that verse is referring to our children again. They eat delicacies. They eat temple food. I mean, what greater food can you give them than this, right? And so they ate, you know, remember the Jewish way—God set up the Jewish system where food was a really big deal.

So I’m not sure at all if the delicacies aren’t being referred to as the children’s inclusion in the feast of Passover or whatever it is. And “dressed in scarlet” is simply an image for princely people, and you know God said that he had made them a nation—a kingdom of kings and priests, a nation of kings and priests. I’m not at all sure. I think that what’s happening here is we’re also to consider our children as royalty. And even if that isn’t the direct meaning of the text, that’s a pretty darn good application, because our children are princes and princesses. They should think of themselves that way. They should think of themselves as having divine blessings upon them of food and clothing. They should think of themselves the way a prince would have thought of himself under a king, okay?

And now immediately you have to add that means the responsibilities that you instruct a prince. And right, the bigger head here. But again, I think it’s a reinforcement of the value of children in terms of their value as gold, the future of the country, and the royalty that will exist in the context of the transformation of the world and the growth of the kingdom of Jesus.

So I think that’s what’s going on here in that last verse. And look, you know, now they’re embracing ash heaps. So a picture of death and destruction again, okay?

Well, let’s move to the second section. And here is a comparison of their sin to Sodom. So verse 6: “The punishment of the iniquity….” Let me just say something about the iniquity again. You remember, if you’ve been here, we actually have a prayer of confession that we use occasionally in the service. But you remember the difference between transgressions, sins, and iniquities? Do you remember? Transgressions are actual violations of God’s word. Sins refer to the impurity, uncleanness, you know, shame—properly—that transgressions create. Iniquities refers to the liability for punishment—the liability for punishment due to people that transgress God’s word. So you break the word, you have shame, and you have fear—what goes on is biblical shame and fear, okay?

And iniquities is the word that’s used over and over again—sometimes “sin” in the text of Lamentations—because what’s happening is they’re being talked about in terms of their liability for judgment. It’s happened now. Liability for judgment, okay?

“The punishment of her liability for judgment of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment with no hand to help her.” No, first—how much more? I mean, how? What greater contrast could he draw to show the people how horrible they’d become than to contrast them or compare them with Sodom? Your judgment’s worse because your sin is worse. Okay, that’s what he’s saying here.

How is the judgment worse? Well, it’s worse. I mean, what would you rather have? Would you rather starve to death—if you knew you got 12 months, which you’re not going to have any food and you’re going to waste away—or let’s make it three months? You’re going to starve to death. Or you’re going to go out there and fight the Babylonians. I mean, you’re going to take a sword and die for Jesus. Which would you rather do? Well, this text says if you choose the latter, you choose well, because it says that those slain by the sword are best off compared to those who die by the piercing pangs of starvation.

And so the Nazerites are warriors, right? They’re the ones who are supposed to go out there fighting. But see, it’s siege warfare and they can’t go out there to fight. They’re just starving inside the city walls. So the Nazerites, they lose their beauty. It says their appearance is blacker than soot. They go unrecognized. Why? Because they’re starving. Their skin clings to their bones. It has become as dry as wood.

That’s actually a look these days. Some people try to accomplish that look. Well, “those slain by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger.” Hey, that’s what it says. “These pine away, stricken”—the word means like deeply pierced—”for lack of the fruits of the field.”

“The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children. They became food for them in the destruction of the daughter of my people.” So again, they became food for them. To see our children as a means of consumption for us is what’s being talked about, and that can manifest itself in a lot of different ways.

So their sin is compared to Sodom, and it’s worse than Sodom. Their sin is worse. Their judgment is worse as well. Their color fades. And this is because I specifically identified the self-centered mothers who eat their own kids, which was prediction of both Leviticus and Deuteronomy. The covenant curses included that women would eat their own children. And then I said in 2 Kings during the time of Elisha it actually occurs as a historical account of this occurring.

So that’s what that verse is talking about. It’s covenant curses. And so sections one and two kind of go together. They’re both focused around children, to be esteemed, valued, fed, nourished, seen as the future, seen as the foundations of the culture, okay?

In the next section, verses 11 to 19, we have pursuers and the pursuer. Okay. So the idea here is pursuit. “The Lord has fulfilled his fury. He has poured out his fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion and it has devoured its foundations.”

Do you see that language? It’s devoured, eaten its foundations. That’s what the women had just done just a verse before this. They had devoured children. And the parallelism shows you children are like the foundations of the building as it moves into the future. We are the body of Christ. We’re the stones. We’re the gold. We’re to not be cast out in the streets. We’re supposed to inhabit those streets and expand the kingdom of Christ through us, the body of Jesus, united to him, moving into the world.

And so here, you know, he’s devoured the foundations. “The kings of the earth and all inhabitants of the world would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem.” So it’s like, well, how could we have ever been beaten by these guys? We thought that God was fighting for them all the time. Kind of like America. How can we believe how the mighty has fallen? Or kind of like the Christian church in America.

There’s a show on ABC called “Good Christian Bitches.” You know what that—good Christian b****es? Yeah. It’s a TV show. Sunday nights, women go to church and then they go mess around, you know, are unfaithful to their friends—to their friend’s husband. They have sex with their friend’s husband. I mean, it’s a horrific show. And these women are called “Good Christian Bitches.”

Can you imagine if there was a show on, you know, “Good Islamic Bitches”? Can you imagine that? Well, there’d be bombs blowing up all over the place. We don’t seem to, you know, we don’t seem to mind, or we—I guess we’ve just gotten numb to it. I don’t know what it is. But see, that’s what’s happening here is they’re like, you know, they become so shameful that nobody likes them. They can’t believe they could actually fall. We forget what America was. It was the shining city on the hill. Christianity was the great driving force. People recognized it. They loved it. They wanted to come live here. Now though, you know, it completely changed. That’s the kind of reversal that happens to a nation in judgment. And that’s what happens here in the context of this particular one.

Now, look at verse 13: “Because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities”—there it is again—”of her priests who shed in their midst the blood of the just.” Now, we had seen earlier in chapter 2 what the sins of these guys was. Look at chapter 2, verse 14. Remember the center, and then we got descriptions at either end. This matches up with 2:14, which says, “Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions. They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes.”

The pastors of the churches in America have not, you know, they failed to expose your iniquities—your liability for punishment—because of the sins that are left ongoing in our churches and in our nation. Pastors are not here to make people feel comfortable. I mean, that’s part of it, but what’s the comfort? The comfort is knowing and understanding God’s judgment and an adherence to his salvation at the center of that judgment. We’re not here to tickle people under the chin when they’re doing a bunch of things wrong and sinful.

My job is to expose iniquity. Iniquity is liability for punishment. It’s to tell you and it’s to tell me, “Hey, be careful about sin, dude, because God punishes that stuff.” And this sin that is left going on, whether it’s sexual sin or sins of injustice—that’s Sodom’s problem, you know. I mean, if you look at Sodom, we’ll return to this after the Lenten series. We’re going to talk about social justice. But the problem in Sodom was twofold: sexual sin, homosexuality, and social injustice. They ate a lot of good food and stuff, and they didn’t care about the poor.

See, both those things work together. They’re almost always placed together in the Bible. Very interestingly, in any event, the job of pastors: women have lost compassion for their kids. And here’s the second reason for “still there’ll be more.” And the second reason is pastors have stunk at doing their job, and their job was supposed to warn people of the judgment that will come, the liability for punishment, of transgressing God’s law.

And pastors in this country for the most part have said, “There is no law. There is no law. There’s only grace.” Now, you know, why are we where we’re at? How could we not be where we’re at given that now? Praise God, I think there’s a turn. There’s a turn. But that’s see in this text that talks about the pursuers coming after us. They’re pursued. They’re like the eagles from heaven. You know, they’re as fast as the eagles of heaven.

You know what’s being talked about here is what’s being talked about here is you know, they’re trying to get out, right? So the idea is you know, they’re watching the walls. They’re in siege deal. They know they’re just going to starve to death. Their Nazerites are looking like, you know, withered-up black people, and in their context, their skins are all—not black from race—black from starvation. That’s what Job said he was like, too. I mean, what are you going to do? You’re going to try to find a way out of there.

And so people would start, you know, trying to find escape routes, and they’d run through. But, you know, the pursuers, those Babylonians and the Edomites out there, man, those guys were on you like that. It was like the eagles. It was like the heavenly help was given to them. They had like GPS tracking devices and drones that they would just hunt us down. The author says. And of course, that’s exactly right. The Babylonians are given heavenly help because God’s the pursuer, not the Babylonians. Ultimately, he hunts them down. God hunts them down. It said that explicitly prior to the hinge chapter earlier in the book of Lamentations. It says God pursued us. God pursues us.

The Hound of Heaven will find you out. He will hunt you down. He will bite you—bite you bad, make you bleed, make you hurt. Why? Well, if we remember the hinge, so that we can wake up out of that ridiculous dream that we can live apart from him and live primarily secular lives and not count our children as valuable and not think about the law of God and what we’re doing. He wants to wake us up out of that dream, and he’s going to have a way with us.

Remember what happens at the middle. You know, it’s interesting in chapter 3. It says, you know, good and evil both come from God. That’s what he says in chapter 3. And we take that verse Calvinist: “Oh, by the way, isn’t that cool? You know, a baby whose name, middle name is Sterling”—today—valuable metal, beautiful, right? That’s cool. God does that.

But we take that verse out of chapter 3: “Well, God, you know, he declares he brings to pass both good and bad things,” and we take it as some kind of theological statement about the sovereignty of God. It’s true. But why is it there in Lamentations 3? Do you remember why it’s there? Because he’s saying, “Look, his mercies are new every morning. Darkness is the beginning of the next day. And God is not punishing you from his heart. His heart isn’t in it, okay?”

He brings forth evil things, right? Bad things—starvation, raping, pillaging. But his heart isn’t in it. What he’s doing is he’s bringing you to repentance so that you can have the newness of the morning, and you can come back not like you were. You know, this half isn’t like this half. The hinge makes the message better. And the judgments upon a sinful people—or even a non-sinful people, right? I mean, if you’re suffering for things you don’t know what you did wrong—you can trust that great is his faithfulness, that he has absolute control over all things. Sovereignty is stated to bring us comfort in our afflictions.

What if he didn’t have absolute control? What if evil came from man and good came from God? Still, there’ll be more. And there’s no end to that song, then. There’s no end to it then, but still there’ll be more. In chapter 4, it begins that way, but by the end it says, “Your iniquities are over. God is finished.” Sovereignty is brought to bring comfort to us. God pursues us either because of our sins or for his own divine reasons, like with Job. He does these things to mature us, to cause us to become yet more beautiful, to go dark before we get bright. His mercies are new. Two different better things happen every morning in the providence of God, just like he did at creation. That’s what the spirit’s work does in our lives as well, all the time. Praise God, huh?

So he’s their pursuer. He’s hunting them down. And it’s for our well-being that he does these very things, okay?

Now, the culmination happens in the next few verses. So Roman numeral 4: The Death of the Anointed. So now you know, still there’ll be more—that’s preceded on—but now we come, we’re getting down to the end. We’re getting just before the pronouncement. And what happens to bring the horribleness to an end?

Well, it says, “The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was caught in their pits. Of whom we said, ‘Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.’”

Well, what does that mean? The anointed of the Lord is their king. We actually have historical account in other Old Testament books of what happened here. Zedekiah, who was the last king of Judah, is inside those walls, too. And he wants out, too. So him and some of the royals make a break for it. And they go run through the jungle, right? Run through the desert, whatever it is. But they’re caught. He falls into a pit. They get this guy, and then they take him, as I said earlier, they bring all his sons before him and they kill them all, making him watch.

And then the very next thing they do is they poke out his eyes so that his last visual memory is the death of his own children. No future, no value left to him. And they take him back to Babylon, throw him in a prison, a pit, and he dies there. So that’s that. That’s him, okay?

So what you have here—I’ve got the death of the king on your outlines. Why do I have that? Well, because remember these things are talking about Jesus. And Jesus is the one whose death produces the end of the sufferings of God’s people definitively, once for all, 2,000 years ago. And I’ve got “decreation” on here. Why? Because look at what he’s referred to.

“The breath of our nostrils.” The breath of our nostrils—you know, your nostrils is where life begins, right? You know that when you—your nose points into the future. And when God created man, he doesn’t give mouth to mouth. He gives him mouth to nose. He breathes the breath of life into man’s nostrils, okay? And that’s what this language—this is creation language here. He’s our very life. In other words, without him, there is no life. And they looked at their king that way, right? He’s a representation of the coming great Davidic king, David’s son, Jesus, right? And they looked at their king as that and as the hope for all that they had.

And when he is captured, it’s as if all hope has died. It’s the end of the line for the nation. Judah’s king is gone. Thrown into a pit—picture of burial, right? That’s what this is about. And that death of the king is what will then open the gate. Remember in the wilderness—death of the high priest, okay? Get to go into the promised land now. Why? Because when Jesus comes as the high priest, his death opens up the whole world now for the manifestation of the reign of Jesus Christ, for the preaching of the gospel, the changing of the face of the nations, all that beautiful creation imagery in the Bible. That’s what’s going to happen.

So we go through decreation here through the capture of the king and ultimately through the death of Jesus. And then we have the last two statements: “Rejoice and be glad, for now, daughter of Edom, you dwell in the land of Uz. The cup shall also pass over to you.”

Why is that there? Well, that’s where they lived. And it kind of goes back to old ideas of the old rivalry between Edom and Israel. But I’ll mention one other thing in just a moment. “The cup shall also pass over to you.” The cup’s going to be passed to you today. Cup of blessing. But if you’re here as a rebel, rebellious opponent of Jesus Christ, you’re here as some kind of Mossad agent or whatever, the cup that will be given to you to drink will be the cup that Edom’s going to drink here. It’s wrath. It’s wrath wine, okay?

He’s going to destroy Edom. He’s going to bring judgments. The cup will be—they’ve drunk the cup of God’s judgment. Now Edom is going to drink the cup of God’s judgment. “You shall become drunk and make yourself naked.” Now, here we go. So there they are. They’re going to be shamed. Iniquity is coming to them. They’re going to be punished for their iniquity.

“The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion. He will no longer send you into captivity. He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom. He will uncover your sins.”

Finally. Four verses of four chapters of bad news. Bad news. Bad news. And finally, the hope for an answer in chapter 4, verse 22. “He will no longer send you into exile. The punishment of your iniquity, your liability for punishment, is accomplished, daughter of Zion.”

And the last statement is, “He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom. He will uncover your sins.” Same two things that have been talking about in terms of Israel. They have shame because they transgress God’s law, and they’re getting—they have liability for punishment. Now, I know it’s Edom and I know this is the ancient, you know, enemy of God’s people, but you know, if God can refer to Egypt and Assyria as he does in the book of Isaiah as making up with his people Israel, as a third of his kingdom, and if he can say that Egypt is my people and Assyria is the work of my hands, which he does—what are we to assume about Edom?

Is this just a statement of destruction, or is this like I posited last week, the beginning of the renovation of the whole world and the reclamation of us? Why do I say that? Because we’ve got a very old book in the Bible. We don’t know how old. It’s called the book of Job. Where did Job live? He lived in Uz. Many people think probably was an Edomite or a king, a faithful one to God. Here’s a guy that God shows to Satan as perfect and just and all this stuff. Edomite living in Uz—Job. You think God just wants to write off Edom forever? I don’t think so.

I think the whole world is part of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think—and I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. You can argue with me, but I think that last verse, it isn’t like it’s supposed to be a pointer to us. We see the end of the movie, and these people are redeemed for their sins and iniquities, and then the judgment goes to the people that were beating them up, and God says he’s going to judge their sins and iniquities.

And I don’t know, I just think that’s kind of a clear, not so ambiguous, ending to say that the Lord God is in the process of maturing and developing the whole wide world.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we bless your holy name for your purposes in history, that you’re maturing your people united to Jesus. You’re maturing the man, the temple, the church. Bless us, Lord God, as we try to find our voice in the midst of struggles, trials, and tribulations. Bless us as we try to turn away from sins against our children or sins against the congregation. Bless us, Lord God, as we attempt to turn to you in repentance, that you might forgive us and bring us back into a position of blessing.

Help us to find our voice today and in this season, that we might use—when trials, tribulations, and troubles come upon us, that we might teach the world to sing this song with this voice: that our God reigns, our God is love, and our God is saving the nations. In his name we pray. Amen.