A Sure & Steadfast Hope | Lamentations

Introduction:
The sorrow expressed in the book of Lamentations is something foreign to us.
There are different kinds of sorrow.
In some respects, a broken heart is a broken heart, but there are some things that will be unique to each one of us in our particular sorrow.
There are tears that we will shed, at some point in our life, that no one but our Great High Priest will ever be able to fully understand.
We do our best to comfort one another in the love of Christ, but we sense, even as we desire to be ministers of mercy, our great limitations.
We sense our own limitations in trying to help those who are hurting, and we sense the limitations of others when WE are hurting.
And when you have tried to pour your heart to another human being who hasn’t faced your particular trial, you can appreciate their love toward you, but there is also a loneliness felt in knowing that they really don’t completely understand.
What the prophet Jeremiah describes in this book, we read, and we benefit from, but in a sense, we can only sit in silence and listen as he tells us what he feels, and as he tells us what he has seen. For we have never seen anything like what he saw.
For over 40 years this prophet gave to his people the warnings from God. He told them that destruction was coming. They despised him for it. They mocked him, they persecuted him, and they rejected him.
But what he was given to proclaim - arrived. Everything that God said, through the prophet Jeremiah, one day came.
And what came was horrific.
Jeremiah writes this sometime between the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., and when he was forced to depart to Egypt in 583 B.C. (Jeremiah 43:1-7)
Throughout the book he tells us of his sorrow in 5 poems. You get a taste of the entire book and a context for our verses by paying attention to his 3rd lament which is found here in this 3rd chapter.
In chapter 3 he is the afflicted man. He is telling us of his overwhelming grief.
*He is in absolute darkness with the hand of God turned against him again and again all day long. (vs.1-3)
*His flesh and skin waste away, and God has broken his bones, and enveloped him with bitterness and tribulation and made him to dwell in darkness like the dead. (vs.4-6)
*He is a man who is walled in without escape, and his chains are heavy. He calls and cries out for help but God shuts out his prayers and his ways are blocked, and his paths are crooked. (vs.7-9)
*His despair makes him feel like God has become like his enemy. Like a bear that has ripped him to pieces, or a lion. He has been reduced to desolation. He is the target for the bow and the arrows of God and the arrows have gone right to his innermost parts. (vs.10-13)
*He is a laughingstock. He is taunted. (vs.14)
*His life feels like nothing but unending bitterness and misery (vs.15-16)
*He is so sorrowful that he can find no peace, and he can’t remember goodness, he has forgotten what happiness is. (vs.17)
*His mindset is that he cannot endure anymore and he has no hope. All he can think about and remember are his afflictions. (vs.18)
And before you think Jeremiah to be a bit dramatic, realize what he has seen. His people, God’s people, have been conquered by Babylon. The city walls are broken down. The walls, the towers, the homes, the palace, and the temple have all been destroyed.
It was in mid-July when the city fell and it was in mid-August when the temple was burned. (MacArthur Commentary - 883) It is the HEAT OF THE YEAR time in Jerusalem. So conditions would have been miserable.
The enemies of God have triumphed, and they are gloating. The children of Zion are treated like trash. Many, many have been slain by the sword, and in fact their bodies lie in the dust. Many have been carried away captive, and those who live and remain are in misery.