Sermon for HCBC (Apr 26, 2020). To listen click here. Also available on your favorite podcast app.
Introduction
Lamentations isn’t a popular book among Christians. I suspect many of us have never read it. It’s not a pleasant book. It’s deeply disturbing in fact. The book reflects on the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon in 587 BC.
I’m convinced Lamentations has something to say to us. I planned to preach this for other reasons, but here we are amid a global pandemic and what many of us are feeling is grief. We’ve lost any sense of normalcy. Then, there’s so many of us in our congregation who are mourning greater losses like deaths in our family. Some of us have been mourning for years. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s devastating. It’s OK. There are challenges we face as a church as well. Lamentations, then, is a good book for us, because it schools us in the language of grief, of despair, of pain, of sorrow. It teaches us that life can absolutely overwhelm us, and it gives us permission to be honest about that. Sometimes people have the impression that Christians never grieve. This is simply not true. Scripture is replete with examples of deep, agonizing grief.
Lamentations shocks us with horrible images so that we can face up to the sorrow of a sinful world. But in the middle of all this horror is a glimmer of hope. The hope is not necessarily that things will get better. The hope is in the character of the Lord. While the Lord is just and holy and powerful and mighty, he is compassionate and constant in faithfulness. Hope is grounded in God’s character.
Lamentations 1
Today, we look at Lamentations 1. The first verse is like a cinematic opening with the camera panning across the devastated city of Jerusalem. There she is with her buildings smoldering in ruin. Look at v. 1.* We find a common theme throughout Lamentations 1. The idea that Jerusalem has no comforter is repeated five times ( vv. 2, 9, 16, 17, and 21). This is the striking feeling as devastation sets in. “I’m alone. There’s no one to comfort me, to help me”
The first six verses of the chapter describe the devastation of Jerusalem. Once she was prosperous and secure. Now she is pitiful and shattered. Her glory is gone. Listen to the language. Verse 1: “She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.” Verse 2: “All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.” Verse 6: “Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.” All of these vivid images point to the reality of her devastation. According to v. 7, she can recall the good days, the glory days, but those are in the past. They are gone.
Why has this happened to her? Take a look at v. 5.* “The LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.” Verse 8.* “Jerusalem sinned grievously.” The City, Jerusalem, speaks in v. 18: “The LORD is in the right for I have rebelled against his word.” She has sinned against the LORD. Now, here we need to talk about a few things.
The Lord’s Covenant with Israel
First, we need to talk about Israel’s unique relationship with the LORD. The LORD made a promise to Abram in Gen 12. He said, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:2–3). We call this the Abrahamic Covenant. The LORD enters into a covenant relationship with Abram. This is the LORD’s choice, not Abram’s doing. Throughout Scripture, the LORD is described as constant in his steadfast love. The Hebrew word translated steadfast love refers to covenant faithfulness. Because the LORD is always faithful to his covenant, the LORD continues to care for Abraham’s descendants. This leads to the story of the Exodus. Because of his covenant faithfulness, the LORD sets Israel free from slavery in Egypt. Now this is critical: Did Israel do anything to earn it? No. God does this by his own good pleasure. We call this grace. Then, after God has taken Israel to himself as his people, he gives them the law. I can’t emphasize this enough: the law did not come first; the law is the response to God’s grace. God acts first. The law is not the way to enter into God’s grace. In the law, Israel is given covenant obligations—these are the rules for life in the covenant. It’s very similar to marriage vows. Violation of the covenant vows could lead to serious consequences. Leviticus 26 explains all this out clearly. There, the LORD repeats that covenant violations will result in sevenfold punishment. The punishment is severe because the violation is serious. Listen to Lev 26:14–17:
But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies. Those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.
I expect we are troubled by this. Where’s the gracious loving God? Let me say a few things about that. The LORD has been gracious already by freeing Israel from slavery. Furthermore, his rules are not burdening but life-giving. Additionally, if there’s really a God, we should expect that that God would not be like us, so it shouldn’t be surprising that we find this offensive. We just need to remember we aren’t really in the position to call him into judgment for it. Finally, there is grace in this warning. There’s the grace of the warning itself. That shows patience. Then there’s the reason given in Lev 26:18 that all these things are done in order to turn Israel back to the covenant. There’s restraint and fatherly care in that. Finally, there’s the promise in Lev 26 that the LORD does not ever break covenant. Listen to v. 44: “Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God.” This is exactly what the Bible means when it says, “The steadfast love of the LORD endures forever.” Covenant faithfulness is his character. So, that’s the first thing, Israel has a unique relationship—a covenant relationship—with the LORD. We make a mistake when we start applying the law and the covenant stipulations to other nations and peoples, except for the Church. Applying the covenant law to America for example is a sure way to misunderstand the Bible.
All Bad Things Are Not Divine Judgment
Second, this should be clear from the preceding point, but we shouldn’t assume all bad things are a result of sin. Yes, that’s the case here in Lamentations because Israel has violated the covenant. But not all bad things are God’s judgment. Paul speaks of all creation being subjected to the curse of sin in Romans 8. Natural disasters, then, aren’t always God’s judgment, though we can always discern his hand in everything that happens in the world. Remember the story in John, where the disciples ask Jesus about the man born blind? They say, “Jesus, who sinned? This man or his parents?” (John 9:2). Do you remember what Jesus says? Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (9:3). We want to be careful pronouncing God’s judgment. Sometimes bad things are just the result of a sinful world. But in every case, there is opportunity to see God glorified.
Theological Truths
Third, what can we take away from the language in Lamentations that Israel is being punished for her sin? I think we have three big theological categories here. The first is the holiness of the Lord. When we talk about the God of the Bible, we are talking about the blinding purity of perfection. Habakkuk 1:13 says that he is “of purer eyes than to see evil.” We seem to forget his holiness sometimes, which leads to the second. The second is the seriousness of sin. The language of Lamentations shocks us, and it should. Literary and film critics talk about the function of horror novels and films. The horror genre shows us monsters and other disturbing things, in order to expose darkness. Lamentations is doing something similar. There’s the brutal reality of Jerusalem’s destruction. The language is horrifying. This reveals the horrifying reality of sin. Some people recoil at Lamentations and see God as a monster. But that is to fail to see the seriousness of sin. Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright notes, “That is, do they take seriously the account of the depth and depravity of [Israel’s] religious apostasy, social disintegration, economic oppression, judicial corruption, criminal violence and bloodshed, and political factions and folly? Every conceivable form of moral and spiritual wickedness was flourishing, with disastrous consequences for families, for the poor, for the victims of rampant inequality and greed, and for those caught up in the ritualized sexual abuse of the fertility cults.” Lamentations exposes the seriousness of sin.
Finally, the third category we should see is the Lord’s covenant faithfulness. Whereas Israel failed, the LORD remains faithful. The whole book of Lamentations is a testimony to this. Why else would the book cry out to God, appealing to the covenant? Robin Parry writes, “Crucial to understanding the hope implicit in Lamentations is the appreciation that the fire of divine punishment falls within a covenant relationship and does not mean the end of that relationship.” While things are utterly horrible in Lamentations, and they will be for some time, the Lord will be faithful. This isn’t to say that Lamentations provides the patronizing pat on the head, saying, “It will all be OK.” It does nothing of the sort. It clearly and boldly says, over and over, “This is terrible.” Yet, and yet, the Lord remains faithful to his covenant. He will not abandon forever. He will restore the violators.
Lamentations as Christian Scripture
That leaves us with one more thing to talk about. How do we read Lamentations as Christian Scripture? The holy God makes a covenant. The people violate the covenant. The seriousness of this covenant violation is exposed throughout the entire book. There is no comforter. That’s really the wakeup call to reality. The coronavirus pandemic has done a tremendous job waking us up to that. There is no cure. There is no vaccine. There is no promise of safety. There is no promise of security. Where do you turn? In 1 John 2, Jesus is called our advocate before the Father. The word advocate is the Greek word paraklētos. Sometimes it can mean something like comforter or helper as in John 14:16 when Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper (paraklētos).” Notice he implies that he himself is a helper when he says, “He will give you another Helper.” Now listen to 1 John 2:1–2: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate (helper/paraklētos) with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
The wrath of God is terrifying if we pay attention to Lamentations. We are so small. We are really powerless. We don’t have a lot of hope or comfort if we think about how vulnerable we are. But here’s what John has told us. There is one who stands in the gap, between God and man, a helper, an advocate, a defense attorney. His name is Jesus Christ the Righteous. And what can he do for us? He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. In other words, the seriousness of sin crushes him instead of us. “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). The good news of the gospel is that you and I don’t have to pay for our sins. Put it out of your head that you can do something to please God. Look how Israel violated the covenant. But here is what God does in his extraordinary commitment to his covenant. He comes to this world. Eternal God takes on flesh, and he fulfills the obligations of the covenant and bears the penalty of its violation for our sake. This is why Isaiah prophesied about him, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Jesus fulfills the covenant, and through his death and resurrection, you and I are invited into a covenant relationship with the living God—a relationship where he will pour his Spirit into our hearts and change us from the inside out so that we will delight to obey his commands. He will give us his Spirit so that in a world of despair and brokenness and evil, we will have hope, because he who is in us has overcome the world.
Conclusion
The language of Lamentations is shocking, and it should be. Apart from Christ, there truly is no comforter. There is nowhere to turn. But in Christ, in his perfect sacrifice, we are not left without a comforter. We have a great high priest who ever lives to make intercession for us. We have the Spirit who has sealed us for salvation, our eternal communion with the Lord, and our Spirit cries out not in total despair, but in hope. As Paul says about death, “We grieve, but not as those without hope.” The evil of this world, the evil in our hearts, the sorrows of this life, do not have the final word. Weeping my tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning. That joy is only possible because Jesus lied in the tragic darkness of the grave and then burst forth in glorious victory on Sunday morning. Our hope is grounded in God’s character. In Christ, God’s covenant faithfulness has been on display as he has acted decisively to overcome sin, Satan, and death.
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth is his name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.