Dennis Tuuri

# Lamentations 5: Remember O Lord

Sermon text for today is Lamentations chapter 5. This is the concluding chapter of the book of Lamentations. And as you’ll notice when we read it, it’s really a prayer—very explicitly at the beginning and at the end this prayer is seen. You can follow along with your handouts or just listen or read in your own Bibles, of course.

One note before we actually read it: in verse 22, I’m going to read “even though” instead of “but” for the text. I would just say that there really is no consensus among commentaries exactly how to translate that particular word. I think “even though” is the right way, but understand that in Jewish history, frequently the last two verses of chapter 5 are reversed when they read it, or they’ll repeat verse 21 at the end of verse 22. And that’s because of the unusual ending that Lamentations 5 has. I think it’s actually there specifically to show us the great hope and faithfulness of the people praying this prayer. But we’ll talk about it more specifically when we get into the actual sermon.

That’s why I’m reading it that way. It’s a perfectly legitimate reading of that particular Hebrew term, and I think it fits with what a lot of commentators do with the sense of this great concluding prayer from the book of Lamentations.

So please stand for the reading of God’s word, Lamentations chapter 5. You’ll see, as we’ve been saying, it’s the shortest—66, 66, 66, 44, now 22 lines in this text. So it’s a third shorter than each of the first three chapters and half as short as the one just preceding it.

All right, Lamentations 5. You’ll notice—sorry, again—we’ve noticed that the beginning line of each of these five poems, the four we’ve dealt with so far, is significant. It sort of captures the sense of the whole thing. And the same thing is true here. Lamentations 5: “Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us. Look and see our disgrace.

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. We have become orphans, fatherless. Our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink; the wood we get must be bought. Our pursuers are at our necks. We are weary. We are given no rest. We have given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria to get bread enough. Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities. Slaves rule over us.

There is none to deliver us from their hand. We get our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion. Young women in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands. No respect is shown to the elders. Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate.

The young men their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased. Our dancing has been turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned. For this our heart has become sick. For these things our eyes have grown dim. For Mount Zion, which lies desolate, jackals prowl over it. But you, O Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures to all generations. Why do you forget us forever? Why do you forsake us for so many days?

Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old. Even though you have utterly rejected us and you remain exceedingly angry with us.”

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we bless your holy name for your scriptures. Open this text to us by your Holy Spirit. Fill us with hope and confidence. Make us a prayerful people informed by this text. We thank you for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that indeed turns our mourning into joy. Bless us, Lord God, as we look for the gospel in Lamentations and particularly here in chapter 5. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

That’s really what every time we preach God’s word, it is a gospel proclamation, and the gospel is found in Lamentations. When we get over to the communion table later in the service, we’ll see all kinds of parallels between what’s going on in chapter 5 and the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ—his work on the cross for us and his road to that cross. And that’s been true of all of Lamentations, of course. The gospel is there in the sense of Jesus dying for our sins.

Right at the center, of course, is the man, the man who weeps for Jerusalem—Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. But we know, of course, that ultimately that’s a picture of Jesus Christ, right? Who weeps and laments over Jerusalem even as he moves toward the cross.

So the gospel is what we’re talking about. But the gospel is broader than that—broader than just that our sins are forgiven. Our sins are forgiven as part of it. But if we read Lamentations and if we pay attention to what’s going on here, we see a much more comprehensive understanding of what Jesus came to accomplish.

I’ve been beginning to read a book—I’ve skimmed it before, now I’m actually listening to it on audiobooks—called Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. And Wright talks about major themes in human life. You know, there used to be this expression that everybody has kind of a God-shaped vacuum or hole in their hearts because everybody wants God. Well, Wright says there are these things that are common to humanity, and they’re echoes, as it were, of a voice—the voice of God.

People want justice. We see that just in the last couple of days with that shooting of a teenager in, I think, Florida, right? People want justice, and we all want justice universally. So this is a common theme of what we want, and the gospel provides justice. We all want beauty. What we’ve seen in the course of Lamentations is the disintegration of beauty.

If you’re a visitor here today, we don’t always have dead trees up here. It’s Lent. And so what we try to do is focus on essentially looking up to the suffering of Jesus on the cross—to pay for our sins and also to transform the world with the fullness of the gospel. It’s a time to meditate on the sufferings of the Savior and also on the sufferings justly due us, and actually the sufferings we suffer as well. We learn through the book of Lamentations, for instance, how to lament. Today we’re going to learn again how to pray, and we’ll look at that in a couple of minutes.

So there’s a loss of beauty, and throughout Lamentations there’s been a deterioration of beauty. Last chapter went from colors to black and white. There’s been a deterioration of justice, right? Even in this text, you know, women being mistreated in Zion, in Judah of all places—there’s a tremendous lack of justice for women as an example. But throughout this there’s been the loss of justice, there’s been a loss of beauty.

Wright talks about spirituality. What we see in the prophets leading up to this time is that there was a loss of spirituality that was behind all of this, and they had become fairly materialistic. But spirituality comes back—even in our own times, more and more people are craving spirituality. There is that desire. And finally, Wright says everybody wants community. We all want to live together with other people in our homes, in our churches, in our communities, in our villages, whatever it is. And everybody wants these things, and all of these things are affected.

The conclusion of chapter 5, just before the last two lines, is the isolation. Did you notice that? It’s the isolation again of the city. If you look at verse 18: “So 19 starts the prayer back up. ‘But you, O Lord, reign forever.’ So there’s a transition. The conclusion of the sufferings is given in verse 18: ‘Mount Zion, which lies desolate. Jackals prowl over it.’ Do you remember the beginning of Lamentations? Remember Lamentations 1: ‘How lonely sits the city,’ right?

So isolation and removal of community is a huge theme throughout this book. So everything we want—everything that the human soul kind of craves for instinctively, even though it’s not acknowledging Jesus as the answer to all of these things—they all go away in times of judgment or even in times of just suffering. They’ve gone away here.

The gospel—okay, the gospel that they ask for: “Restore us to yourself so that we’ll be restored.” And what they’re looking for is a restoration of all those things they’ve lost. They’re looking for a restoration of beauty. They want colors again, right? They’re looking for a restoration of justice. They don’t want to be unjust anymore to their own people in the context of their land. They want justice paid to those, you know, marauding hordes that came in and raped their women and killed their young men and enslaved them.

They look for justice. And they look for justice in their city and really universally as well. They look for community. They look for justice. They look for the return of beauty and community—of course, is what’s been taken away. They look for the return of that, and they look for a return of true spirituality. That’s the basis for the prayer: “Restore us to you,” right? They’re not praying for stuff back first and foremost.

They’re praying for a restoration of relationship to the Lord himself. And that restoration of relationship to the Lord is true spirituality. And that produces then God’s movements in history and in his people that bring about the kind of community, justice, and beauty that we all crave. That’s the gospel that Jesus has come to bring—rejoicing community, to bring and enhance beauty, to bring justice to the world.

You know, Paul told the men in the book of Acts—the pagans—he said, “You know, God winked at your sins in time past. No more. Don’t think that the gospel means the times are easier for the world.” The world times are going to get easier, but they’re going to get easier by God judging the injustice of humanity. That change has happened with the coming of Jesus Christ, and there is justice now. And you know, if you think about it, there is a tremendous amount of justice in the world. Yeah, there’s lots of injustice, but think of how much justice we have. I’ll leave that for another time.

So the gospel—the gospel is found in Lamentations. And as this great concluding prayer pounds forth, it asks for a restoration of those things and it asks it on the basis of being restored to God. You know, if you understand your desire for beauty, community, and justice, understand that the only way those things really come in fullness is when you’re restored to the Lord God, to the Father, through the work of the shed blood of Jesus on the cross. And then he inaugurates his kingdom.

Now, this is what the gospel is. Things that are lost are restored.

We said that Lamentations could be seen as kind of a counseling manual, right? Because Jeremiah asks the question in chapter 2: “How can I comfort you? You know, you’re under the judgment of God.” We look at these things, we can see some parallels to our own time perhaps, but not so much. This is like the suffering of all suffering. But of course, it leads up to the suffering of Jesus on the cross and then the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

But this is really bad times. And Jeremiah says, “How can I comfort you?” But then he answers his question. He finds a way to comfort God’s people who are under judgment. And he points them in chapter 3—in his very personal chapter where he’s “the man”—he points them to God, to remember God and what God does and accomplishes. He gives them hope. And you know, if you’ve ever known anything about counseling, the very first thing it’s important to establish by the time somebody gets to you to ask for counsel is hope. Hope is what they need.

And Jeremiah gives them hope here, not based in themselves. He gives them hope because he points them back to the God who is faithful, whose heart is love, and who doesn’t afflict willingly. He doesn’t want to do it, really. So it’s a counseling manual. It’s also a bit of a prayer manual, particularly this last chapter.

You know, if you understand what’s happening here, what we’ve got is this prayer, right? That’s why the first line is important. The first line calls on God to remember their plight. It’s a prayer: “Remember, O Lord.” Now, this is a prayer that’s led by Jeremiah. No doubt it’s in first person plural. So it’s probably Jeremiah that’s leading, really, the people of God in this prayer. And many people think this is actually a liturgical document—was actually used, you know, for worship of God in times of trouble.

And so they’re gathered together in this corporate prayer by the one who leads them in to God. And this prayer can be looked at then as kind of a model for our prayers. How do we pray when we’re in times of judgment or affliction or suffering? Well, this prayer is interesting. You know, it is, first of all, a very insistent prayer. Some people have said it’s one of the most insistent prayers in the Bible.

You notice that in that first verse there: he says, “Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us. Look, see our disgrace.” So it’s a very insistent prayer. Our prayers are to be insistent. Our Savior tells us that, right? Like the widow who keeps knocking at the door of the judge. It’s an insistent prayer for God to hear, which means to respond and act.

Secondly, it’s a very honest prayer. You know, there’s no whistling past the graveyard here. Look at what’s happened to my life. And they list the specifics of what has happened. It is a very honest prayer. It is a prayer of lament and crying out: “Lord God, don’t you see what’s happened to us? Please see and act.” Now, they confess their sinfulness in it. So they’re not, you know, calling God’s judgment into account, but it is a very honest prayer about their personal pain, their affliction. And there is nothing wrong with that.

And in fact, if this book is telling us what we’re supposed to do to find our voice in times of suffering, then how we’re to train other people—the way Jeremiah trains the people of Israel to find their voice in times of suffering—that voice is found in a full-throated honest prayer to God of the pain, the difficulties, the trials that you’re going through. So, you know, none of this “I know you’re sovereign, God. I’m not going to bring my pain and my difficulty to you. Just, you know, please be with me.” None of that in this prayer.

It is full-throated lament. It says, “Look what’s happened to my life. Look what’s happened to our community. Look what’s happened to our nation.” So it’s a very honest prayer.

Third, it’s a faithful prayer. Maybe that sounds a little odd, but you know, faithfulness is just being full of faith. And this prayer looks to God for the answer. Now, you know, this has been their problem up to now. They’ve looked everywhere else. They’re looking for love in all the wrong places. They’ve looked to Egypt to come in and rescue them from the Babylonians, specifically in this context. For centuries, they had looked to foreign alliances to be, you know, they played real politique and they’ve done balance of power stuff with the nations around them for their security rather than trusting in Yahweh.

But now—now faith has been restored and they go to the one, and they acknowledge, they confess his sovereignty once more. Sovereignty is given as a source of comfort, as a source of comfort, not as a source of, you know, lording it over. But God’s sovereignty is called upon here, and the people are full of faith. So we lament, we cry out insistently to God, but we believe that he is sovereign. We believe and affirm our faith. We confess that faith to him in our very prayer.

Fourth, it is because of this faithfulness—appropriately centered. Appropriately centered. What they ask for again is not stuff. “Please give us our homes back. Please give us our name.” That’s in there. But what does it say in the conclusion of it? It says, “Restore us to you.” The appropriate center to our prayers should be informed by this passage—verse 21: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old.”

They get to wanting, expecting God to bring justice and community and beauty. But it’s based upon restoration to him. It’s appropriately centered. It’s asking for a renewed relationship with God. That should be the appropriate center of our prayers as well. We should always acknowledge that whatever difficulties we find ourselves in, that the source is not the nations around us. The source isn’t our credit cards. The source of security isn’t survivalism. You know, it’s interesting here.

It says we seek our food in the wilderness and we die. Jeremiah 1 actually tells us that they had hidden stores of food in different places because he knew that times might get tough, and they try to go out there to those things. And the Lord God, like an eagle from the sky, directs those pursuers—those Babylonians—after them like heat-seeking missiles and just kills them on their way to that store of food. Because ultimately, our restoration is to Yahweh, as our source of everything else.

Now, we do what he wants us to do. We fulfill his requirements of us as responsible men and women. But ultimately this prayer—insistent, lamenting, faithful prayer—is appropriately centered on restoration of relationship to Yahweh. Very significant.

And then finally—and I’ve already alluded to this—but it’s appropriately exhaustive, right? I mean, it asks for a restoration of everything essentially being placed where it is. The great culmination of this book: it’s asking for a restoration of relationship to Yahweh. But that expects then that God will so move, and they ask him to move, to then restore us—restore our justice, restore justice to the world, restore beauty back to our lives, restore community, bring us out of the horrific isolation that sin or just suffering can produce. Bring us out of those things.

It’s appropriately exhaustive. So it’s appropriately centered in the person of Yahweh himself and our need to see him as our great center. But it’s appropriately exhaustive. It takes into account the whole idea of, and in fact, they’re remembering the entire earth in their prayer because this prayer refers to Egypt and Assyria. It’s a national prayer, but it looks for international results to what’s going to happen.

Remember earlier—twice—the chapters ended with a call for God’s justice having begun in the people of God to move out then to Egypt and Assyria. And you remember these names, right? Egypt, Assyria, even the Edomites specifically identified in the land of Uz, right? Uz. So these were formerly faithful nations. I mean, Job was an Edomite—a king in all likelihood—but he certainly lived in Uz, and he certainly was a man of prominence.

Faithful people used to live in Uz. And even before that, there’s some consideration that Esau himself might have repented of his sins as Jacob comes back. But in any event, we have Job. Egypt, of course, God had sent Joseph to Egypt, right? And he had ended up converting the nation. Pharaoh certainly, as a representation of the nation, Egypt had been faithful, you know, for a period of time—faithful believers.

Assyria—same thing, right? God threw Jonah into that pagan nation, and what happens in Nineveh? They repent. They become faithful. Now, what happened? How did they apostatize and then become the cruel, barbaric nation that God uses to chastise the northern people of Israel? We don’t know. But we know it was faithful. And we know that God, even in the book of Isaiah in this very time period, points forward to the time when Assyria and Egypt would be a third and a third along with Israel—that they’d be referred to as “the work of my hands.”

“Assyria, the work of my hand.” See, that’s special language usually in the Bible, right? “The work of my hands.” That’s us. That’s Israel. That’s God’s people, right? Now he says Assyria is the work of his hands. And Egypt is “my people.” See, God is not a nationalist, okay? I mean, he creates nations, but ultimately our prayers are comprehensive because God’s claims are comprehensive.

And you remember how Jeremiah comforts them—he gets them to remember God, what he’s done. “Remember Uz. God converted those people. There were faithful leaders in Uz. Egypt, he saved Egypt. Assyria, he saved Nineveh. What’s he going to do in the future? Just wipe them all out? No.” And we have the prophecy of Isaiah specifically, but we have the general picture of what’s happening in God’s word. We have this grand plan.

Ultimately, of course, this exile that we’re talking about—you know what? What’s the grand exile? The grand exile is Adam, right? Adam being kicked out of his homeland into the howling wilderness. And that’s really—you see—that’s the appropriately comprehensive nature of our prayers. It’s not just, you know, “God restore our family unity, our church, our city, our nation.” Now, we’re ultimately praying, “Now, you don’t got to articulate it every time, but ultimately our prayer is that all men would be restored to Yahweh and justice and beauty, community, true spirituality would cover the face of our world.”

That’s that. And we have every reason to believe that is precisely what happened—happens when Jesus comes and he accomplishes the actual fulfillment of the return from exile that he does. He announces the kingdom, right? “Hey, got justice, beauty, and community back. The kingdom’s here.” He’s the ultimate answer to these prayers. Yeah, there was a return seventy years later, and there was things going on, but ultimately the exile isn’t really over. Adam isn’t restored until the second Adam comes along and brings men back from exile into that garden. Appropriately comprehensive.

And that’s what we expect. That’s the hope of Easter, you know? When we see these kind of colorless things—you know, fruit out, as it were. The trees blossom out and other things happen up here, and colors are restored to the sanctuary for Resurrection Sunday. That’s the imagery, right? That resurrection of Jesus Christ brought humanity home and brought humanity back to a home where justice, beauty, and community wouldn’t be betrayed in all of its events, but rather would be buttressed. That’s what Jesus has accomplished. And that’s what Lamentations 5 is all about. That’s, you know, the suffering ends with this prayer for that kind of comprehensive redemption—rest, restoration, newness of life.

So, you know, when you think about the gospel and you think about evangelism, boy, don’t cut God short by just thinking about it in terms of, you know, people getting saved so they can go to heaven. Justice is not a dream that will only be realized in heaven or in the restored state when Jesus returns. Justice is what these people are praying to God for. Beauty—the restoration of beauty, the restoration of community—and their prayer is confident based upon God’s historic actions in the past and his plan for the future.

Well, let’s talk a little bit about these details of the text. And as I said, it’s the simplest book, shortest book, quite simple to structure, right? So you got this opening explicit prayer: “Remember.” And then you got that closing prayer—the affirmation of who God is—and then asking him to save them. And in the middle, you got a whole long list of the problems that they’re going through. So we’ll deal with it that way.

Part number one is this “Remember, O Lord”—this insistent prayer. And I would just note here, as we think about that first verse, the insistency. But remember as well that when Jeremiah gives hope to the people, he talks about prayer at the center of it being heard. Remember in Lamentations 3, actually at the conclusion—verses 55-58 of Lamentations 3—Jeremiah says, “I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit.” So these people are calling from the depths of the pit.

Jeremiah was in a literal pit. They threw him in a pit. But anyway, so, and you know, how can we miss the—you know, all of this—Jesus in the pit? Well, in any event: “I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit. You heard my plea.” So they’re asking God to remember. But remember in the Bible means to remember and do something based on it. God doesn’t forget things, right? God is omniscient—that big word we use to say he knows everything.

So we’re not asking to remember in the sense of, you know, like he’s forgotten. But he is, in the sense of his actions. They’re asking him to remember to act on the basis of what they’re putting before him. Our prayers are a call for God to act in the present based on his character and the sufferings of his people—and properly our repentance from our sins, which is part of this text as well.

And you’ll remember that what Jeremiah said was: “You heard my plea. Do not close your ear to my cry for help. Insistency. You came near when I called on you. You said don’t fear. You took up my case and you redeemed my life.” A five-fold action of God that is all kind of put together in this request to remember. That’s what they’re asking God to do—to hear and act, and to bring the announcement of the absence of fear.

That’s what Jesus says, right? In his resurrection: “Don’t fear.” The prayers that are uttered here are ultimately answered in the Father sending his Son in our stead to suffer for our sins. And what Jesus says as he brings the exiles home in his resurrection is “don’t fear.” He comes near to us. God sends his Son to live amongst us. The Son suffers for our sins and says “do not fear.” And then he takes up our cause. God took up Jesus’s cause by resurrecting from the dead, and God takes up the cause of his people, and he redeems our life. So all those actions are involved here.

Interesting thing too, by the way—and I guess gets into the second section—but do you notice their summation of their problems? “Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us. Look and see what our disgrace.” Our disgrace. Now, that’s a header verse. And the disgrace then is articulated with all the specifics that follow. But ultimately, you know, it’s disgrace—which is sort of interesting to me, at least. You know, that our ultimate suffering is disgrace.

And again, this is a very honest prayer. You know, that isn’t necessarily a politically correct thing. We’re supposed to be tough guys, right? Tough people. But what they ask God to remember is their disgrace.

Now, I know that some of us get pretty upset with the GCB shows—the attacks on Christianity, the mocking of Christianity that happens in our culture increasingly. But folks, if we’ve forgotten God, if we haven’t remembered God, if the church has forsaken God by forsaking his law—which they have, I mean, they’ve even gotten to the place now of forsaking his worship—if that’s what Christianity is in America, then in a way, we should be happy about GCB, right? I mean, not happy. It’s real pain to see the faith being so represented, you know, as hypocrites. But you see, that’s the judgment of God.

And the end result of the judgment of God is people finally, at the end of that judgment, coming to their senses and saying, “Lord God, look at our disgrace. Please do something about it.” I mean, God brings the disgrace to restore his people to himself. We don’t want an absence of disgrace if that’s just going to harden us in forgetting God, do we? I don’t.

So it’s okay. It’s okay these things are happening. And the answer to these things is not boycott movements, okay? Well, it’s fine to do sometimes. I do all that stuff, you know, get involved politically. But what’s the answer to disgrace? The answer to disgrace is to say the Lord God is judging his people, and we need to return to him. Cry out in insistent, appropriately centered prayer to him for restoration of relationship to him so that then the disgrace might be removed, right?

We don’t cry out for the disgrace to be removed without understanding that the purpose of it is a restoration of relationship back to God himself. So in any event, that’s a summary statement for all the judgments that then happen here.

So the second part of the prayer—verses 2 to 18—is the specific sufferings. And as I’ve got in your outlines, disgrace is a summary term. It’s kind of a transition to 2 to 18 at the end of verse one. Disgrace. Inheritance is the first thing that’s listed. And I don’t know—I didn’t, I can’t spend the hours I would like to, you know, looking at these texts—but it seemed to me kind of at first glance that there’s this kind of sevenfold chiasticstructure in those next seven verses.

And if you don’t see it, that’s okay. It doesn’t bother me. But it seemed, you know, there are some repetition of terms—not just here in these seven verses, but later in the chapter itself. And you see these things being repeated and you think, “What’s going on? What’s God want us to think about?” You know, so for instance, if you look on your handout, I’ve got this structure. So it starts with inheritance, right?

“Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.” And then verse 8 says, “Slaves rule over us. There is none to deliver us from their hand.” The next verse—three—we have “become orphans, fatherless. Our mothers are like widows.” Down in verse 7, it says, “Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities.” I don’t know—I see those kind of phrases and I just match them up. It’s what I do.

Verse 4: “We must pay for the water we drink. The wood we get must be bought.” Verse 6: “We have given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria to get bread enough.” So bread, water, wood to cook—it seemed to match up to me. And if that’s true, then the center is: “Our pursuers are at our necks. We are weary. We are given no rest. We are given no rest.”

And rest, of course, is being removed from a people who won’t acknowledge him. And rest—you know what I’m going to say, right?—rest from the Christian church has gone away, right? We have no rest much anymore. We’re working a million miles an hour, connected everywhere. Now, the Lord’s Day, if we happen to be able to make it, is an hour or two on Sunday. And even that isn’t a whole lot of rest because we’re working in the context of the liturgy, and the rest of the day we got to work or whatever it is we got to do—shop, whatever it is.

Where’s the rest? Where’s rest? It’s about time, you know, that we ask God to restore our rest and to recognize the removal of that rest. Again, ultimately, is judgment from God.

So these verses are kind of the first little set, I think, of what’s happening here. And the very first verse is this loss of inheritance. And I won’t necessarily read the text, but I think I’ve got—yeah, I do have the text listed on your outline. It’s interesting because Israel is said to be God’s inheritance. We are God’s inheritance, okay? And so the inheritance he gives to us represents our relationship to him—that we’re his inheritance.

Our inheritance is land. And so the inheritance being removed is because we stopped being the inheritance of Yahweh, okay? So we broke covenant. We walked away from being his people, his inheritance. And what’s he going to do? He’s going to, you know, bring lex talionis judgment. He’s going to take away our land.

Interestingly, but—and I know that this is different—but you know, do you see some echoes in these verses about our times, our inheritance? How many of us own land? I mean, own it? Well, okay, I’m not going to belabor that point because I know it’s ridiculous to compare the sufferings we’re going through with what happened with the fall of Jerusalem in 586 and 587.

But you see, I think these texts are given in a way that helps make them applicable to different times of suffering and trials. And if we can’t see the reversal of the status of America as a Christian nation by reading these texts and thinking about us, I don’t know. I know it’s—I’m not trying to overplay the difficulties we live in. I know there’s no comparison to what happened in 586 and 587. But there are these echoes, I think, that we could identify, which are reminders to us that we also—I think—as a church have moved away from God.

We’re orphaned, right? “We have become orphans.” Verse 3: “fatherless. Our mothers are like widows.” You know, there’s this beautiful picture. So—so, or what does it mean? Well, it means some of the dads were actually killed or taken away into captivity. And so the kids are actually orphans—literally orphans, right? It means that. But it also means that—they’ll talk here about the princes being hung up and the elders in the gates ceasing.

You know, the political fathers are devastated as well. We’re orphans in terms of the political fathers we should have. And ultimately, of course, they’re orphans because they ran away from God, right? They turned away from God the Father.

Here’s how God describes himself in Hosea 11, verses 1 to 4. When Israel—this I just love this. “When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son.” See, we immediately put in the relationship to Jesus. That’s good. That’s proper. There’s theology here. But look at the beauty of this: “When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms. But they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love. And I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.”

Isn’t that a wonderful picture of what a father, a mother does raising children? To take them by the hand, to bend down to them, to condescend to them, to feed them, to care for them, to bandage them up—even though they don’t know it’s you that’s doing it. God is this wonderful father to us, but we’re prone—kind of prone to be like our little two-year-olds. We just go running away, you know, not recognizing what we’re running away from.

But these people had been brought to the full realization that they had rejected Father Yahweh, okay? They had moved away and they had tried to find other people to feed them and to bandage them and to take care of them. And God said, “No, not going to let those folks be to you what I am supposed to be to you.”

Our nation is marked by fatherlessness, right? Neither—you know—no actual fathers in the home to certain communities particularly, or fathers who are completely distracted by work, or fathers who are unjust because of the tenor of the times and the loss of true spirituality. You know, these verses are always so piercing to my soul as a father. I hope they are to yours as well. But recognize that ultimately, here these references are to the Father in heaven, who never acts like you or I when he disciplines. It’s not from his heart. It’s not out of the kind of rage or anger that men sometimes do with their kids. It’s never like that. It’s always to the end of healing and binding up his children—who, what—we are.

There was this wonderful movie—Trip to Bountiful—which was all about rest and no rest in the city. And the very opening and closing sequences have this mother and a child, and they’re in this field, and the child is running away from the mother. You know, and then after the movie plays out—and there’s a woman and there’s her son—their relationship has been quite strained and difficult. The woman wants to go back to Bountiful. She wants to go home. She wants out of exile in that city. She wants to rest.

And she acknowledges when she gets there that we were kicked off this land because we wouldn’t give the land its Sabbath rest. And at the end of the movie, her and her son and her daughter-in-law become reconciled. And so the very closing scene of the movie has the child turned, the mother gets the child, and they embrace. They embrace.

So that’s who God is. He’s calling us home. And the difficulties and trials and troubles we go through—they are completely real. I’m not trying to get you to just ignore them. But understand they’re not the kind of trials and tribulations that your biological fathers or your political fathers put you through. These are trials and tribulations that are going to eventuate in embrace—in a going home—back to God himself and to mother, right?

Says we’re motherless. Our mothers are like widows. The mother is probably a reference to the church, to Jerusalem, et cetera. And we could talk more about that, but this is poetry and it’s using analogous material. It’s not just, you know, some kind of literal thing, although these things are literally happening as well. But they’re put in a context that makes them universal and become part of the eternal word of God. And that’s important to remember.

Pursuers are at our neck. Oh no. Verse 4: “We must pay for the water we drink. The wood we get must be bought.” Water and wood. Do you remember what part of the story of Israel with water and wood is? The Gibeonites, right? The Gibeonites—you know, God—they had tricked Israel into staying alive in the conquest of Canaan. And they became servants. They became hewers of wood and drawers of water.

And so this is part of that great reversal that’s going on here. This reference would cause anybody that was part of Israel, that knew the Old Testament, you know, and had been raised on the stories of where they were in the land, and how it happened. This is an indication that they’ve been—as throughout this chapter—that they aren’t in control. They’re servants. They’ve been made slaves in their own land. And as I said, the centrality of the absence of rest here is significant as well.

“And this is because we’ve given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria to get bread enough.” Now, this is a difficult verse to translate, but we know that in other portions of Lamentations, you know, Israel—those who looked to the wrong people for help. They were looking for love in all the wrong places. Lamentations 1:2, the second verse of the entire book: “She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks. Among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies.”

Now, we can put that at the personal level and identify and sympathize and say, “We’re not going to be like people that turn in our friends.” That’s okay. That’s a good application of the text. But what the text is talking about is that, as I said earlier, as the problems mounted—the international relationship problems mounted for them—they decided to have these relationships with these other nations around them that they would deliver them.

And then later in Lamentations, you know, you looked for them, you looked for your lovers, they didn’t show up, and in fact, they turn on you. The Egyptians aren’t going to come and rescue you. And so we’re like Israel this way. Now, it doesn’t have to be Egyptians. What are you looking for sustenance, comfort, safety, and protection? You see, ultimately, yeah, there’s things we got to do. Understand that. But the base, the foundation for all these things must be our relationship to Yahweh.

And when hard times come, it’s to remind us that somehow we’ve slipped. We thought we were still going to church and worshiping Yahweh, but you know what? We become practical atheists. We’re not asking Yahweh to protect us from the Babylonians. We’re asking the Egyptians to do that. What are we doing this for? You know, practical atheism—it seems like it’s absolutely, you know, the rage in our country. Practical atheism is what many of us engage with.

You’re going to do it probably tomorrow to some extent. You know, you—we’re looking for deliverance from wrong sources instead of being focused on the person of Jesus Christ and the Father as our source for these things.

We could go on, but the text—we want to move through this quickly. Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities. A troublesome verse. Let me clear it up for you real quick.

In Daniel 9:16, and now this is Daniel’s prayer, okay? And it kind of connects up with this prayer. Daniel was one of those guys taken into captivity in Babylon. And then as they get to the end of that period of captivity and the exile, they’re going to come back. Daniel has this prayer. Well, here’s what Daniel says: “O Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city Jerusalem, your holy hill. Because for our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all who are around us.”

Okay? And then he says, “Listen to the prayers—not for, you know, our own sake, but for your sake, because of your mercy. Not because we’re not sinners, we are.” So Daniel says explicitly kind of what this verse is implying. It doesn’t mean here that our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities. It’s not that you’re paying for the price of your fathers. If you would have broken off that iniquity—if Israel would have broken off the iniquity through doing acts of righteousness and justice—that’s what the Bible says. That’s what Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar: “Break off transgression through acts of righteousness and justice.”

If they had done that, then this wouldn’t be what we were describing here. Now, the point is their fathers’ sins have been picked up by the sons, okay? That’s what’s happening here. And Daniel makes it quite clear. And so there’s this multigenerational practical atheism of looking for help and deliverance from wrong sources other than from Yahweh. And as a result of this, what do we have? Slaves rule over us. None to deliver us from their hand. Our Egyptians never showed up. They just didn’t do it.

So we’ve been oppressed, and as a result of that, we turned to God. “We get our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Skin is hot as an oven, burning heat of famine.”

One thing that’s happening in this concluding poem is they’re picking up—Jeremiah is picking up—major themes from the first unit to show us that this book moves from one unit to the other—matching up in chapter one and chapter five. There’s specific duplication of terms used on your handout. David Dorsey’s outline points this out, but we’re not—we can’t take time to look at them. But that’s one reason why some of these things are being brought up is to match this poem out to show us that the great conclusion of it is that last two verses where the confession of who God is works out and then their prayers are heard.

Women defiled in Zion, in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands. No respect shown to the elders. And of course, as I say, these things—their hands. Why their hands? Well, the hand is the hand of power. And it’s a disgrace for people to be hung up by that hand. It shows you’ve conquered their power. And so, no matter what class of people it is, all people—the community has been affected.

Young men are compelled to grind at the mill like sons, right? And boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city. The young men—they left the city gate, the young men their music.

That’s the complete collapse of community. The city gate wasn’t just the place where decisions were made and justice was meted out. It was economic transactions. It was dancing and making music, you know, city festivals. It was where people would greet one another. They’d go to the city gate and talk about things. It was like downstairs here on Sunday or out in front of the church on nice days.

And that city gate now is desolated, and the music has been gone. The young men have left their music.

Verse 15: “The joy of our hearts has ceased. Our dancing has been turned to mourning.” And now this is probably a reference to liturgical singing and dancing. I mean, it has implications for their lives. They’re not very happy anymore. But worship—the kind of joyful, celebratory worship that’s supposed to exist—has been gone because now worship is lamentation before God.

“The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, we have sinned.” So this isn’t, you know, it’s a complaint, but it’s an acknowledgment of their own sinfulness. And the end result is dominion is removed. The crown is removed from their heads. And the result—and this is a result of their sin—”this our heart has become sick. For these things our eyes have grown dim. For Mount Zion, which lies desolate, jackals prowl over it.”

So the conclusion of the woes. “But you, O Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures to all generations.”

Now, that’s a hard thing to pray when you’re in the middle of trials and tribulations of the sort that these people are. And yet, that’s exactly what this model prayer reminds us to do in the darkest hour—is to not doubt. You know, “Don’t curse God and die.” Acknowledge the faithfulness of God and live. And so that’s what these people do as the prayer reaches its conclusion. It does so with an affirmation of the goodness of God, and they ask for restoration to God, right?

So God confesses—they confess God’s goodness, his reign, his dominion, his sovereignty. And then they still complain. “Why do you forget us forever? Why do you forsake us for so many days?” You know, that’s what’s beautiful about this conclusion. This is not a prayer that gives you a fairy book ending to things. It’s a prayer that continues.

This is so important. It’s a prayer that continues in the midst of tremendous suffering, okay? The suffering continues. Now, if all we want to do in prayer is just kind of get forgiveness from God and things are restored, and I’m going to heaven after I die, and all that stuff—that can be a pretty quick prayer, and you can be assured of that right now. But if you’re talking about praying for the gospel, you’re talking about the restoration of justice and beauty and community and proper and true spirituality. You’re talking about rebuilding a city and a nation and a world. That is a long-term effort, my friends. And that doesn’t turn around today.

That’s long work. Now, there’s joy along the way. We have rest after the turn has been made, but it’s long work. We pray this way in the midst of difficulties. And that’s what makes this prayer so wonderful and applicable to us—is we can pray the same thing. And we know that God answers these prayers. We know that his reign is forever. He brought, you know, he brought Adam into exile and he promises his return. He, you know, had a great king in Uz. He sent Joseph into Egypt, right? He sent Jonah into Assyria as reminders to us that we’re supposed to remember these historical acts.

This is what he’s doing. But, you know, it’s hard work. It’s long work. And what we created with our hands isn’t cleaned up at the rapture. The house is dirty. It needs to be cleaned. That’s long hard work. And in the meantime, there’s a lot of pain and trials and tribulations along the way. But that’s okay because we are praying that God would restore us to himself. And as a result of that relationship, everything is restored.

“Even though God has utterly rejected us and he remains exceedingly angry with us”—even though that is the present state in which their prayers go up. You see, they’re not, you know, some kind of rice Christians who are praying because they want something and God gives it to them and that’s that. They’re saying, “Even though our lives are a living hell, our only source of hope is the one who reigns over everything and who has brought this upon us because of our sin. And he’s done it because we’re his people. We’re Ephraim. And he’s bending over and ratting us somehow. And then he’s taken us by the hand now, and he’s bringing us home. He’s bringing us home through this.”

You see, that’s the beauty. I think that’s why the thing ends kind of ambiguously, you know? Are they saying, “Well, you know, restore us to yourself—we will be restored—but you know, we still suffer”? Is that a prayer of doubt? It is for some people. It could be your prayer. But that’s not these people. They become faithful people because of the very trials and tribulations that they acknowledge honestly and appropriately to God—even as they’re praying for restoration.

They know it’s going to be a long time because what they’re praying for is the gospel—the good news—that Jesus will come and that the world will be restored to justice and beauty and community. And not just restored, we don’t go back to the garden. We go to a garden city. Things get better and better and better.

You know, it’s interesting. Psalm 89 concludes the third book of the Psalter. “Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked. How I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations with which your enemies mock, O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed.” And then it concludes: “Blessed be the Lord forever and ever. Amen and amen.”

That’s what it is. That’s the wonderful, you know, hope that Lamentations reminds us of as well. That in the midst of these things, God teaches us how to find our voice in trials and afflictions. He teaches us to pray insistently to him, to pray acknowledging our own sinfulness, to pray with hope and faithfulness, to pray honestly about the things that we’re enduring, and to pray ultimately—with that appropriate center—that what we need more than anything else is restoration of relationship to the Father, who will take us home, and then to pray comprehensively that he does indeed take us to that home.

That’s the gospel that Jesus came to end the exile and to begin and inaugurate his kingdom—a kingdom that continues to grow and become manifest in terms of justice, beauty, and community.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we pray for the manifestation of these truths in our lives. We pray, Father, that you would encourage us to be a praying people. Help us to think about how this prayer works. Help us to be people that pray in like fashion—even as we’re a people that increasingly are shamed and mocked in the country in which we live. And we’re ruled over by foreigners, and we’re ruled over more often than not by servants who have kind of a bitterness in their hearts, Lord God, against the very nation that has provided such opportunities.

Father, we see echoes of our lives in Lamentations chapter 5. And we pray that you would cause us, as a result of that, to be a praying people to you. That we would look not for things ultimately, but for our restoration of relationship to you, that justice and compassion and community and beauty would once more fill our land. And in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. Before our Father’s throne, we pour our ardent prayers. Our fears, our hopes, our aims, our own, our comforts and our cares. We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear, and often for each other flows the sympathy of care. It gives us inward pain, but we shall still be joined in heart and hope to meet again. This glorious hope revives our courage by the way. While each in expectation lives and longs to see the day from sorrow, pain, and sin we shall be free, and perfect love and friendship reign through all eternity.

O thou that hears when sinners cry, O let my crimes be bid from thy sight. Behold them not with angry, Lord, but blot their memory from thy book. Create my nature pure within and for my soul lovers to sin. Let thy good spirit never depart nor hide thy presence from my heart. I cannot live without thy light. Cast out and banish from thy sight. Thy holy joys, my God, restore and guard me that I fall no more. Broken heart, my God, is all the sacrifices I bring. The God of grace will never despise a broken heart for sacrifice. My soul lies humble in the dust and owns thy dreadful sentence just. Look down, O Lord, with pitying eye and save the soul condemned to die.

Then will I teach the world thy ways. Sinners shall learn thy sovereign grace. I’ll lead them to my Savior’s blood, and they shall praise a pardoning God.