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Lamentations |
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| Chapter 1 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 4 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 2 | Prayer | Devotional | Chapter 5 | Prayer | Devotional | |
| Chapter 3 | Prayer | Devotional |
Prayers
Great God, we are in need. We cry out to You. Send forth Your Comforter, the powerful Spirit of Holiness. We suffer bitterly in this great battle. We have faced horrible defeat in warfare all around us. We have spirits, but we also have bodies. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. What has happened to our homes and our places of worship? Where are our children? How have we come to this sad place? Father, we have felt something of Your discipline. You are in the right. Yet, look upon us in our suffering. Our young men and women are gone. Many have died. Others are far from Your sanctuary. We do not pretend to be strong. Our groans are many. Our hearts are faint. Send forth Your Comforter, and rescue us.
Glorious Father, have You utterly forgotten us? In Your just wrath, You send Your devastating judgments. What must the cross have been like for Your Son? You came upon Him with the fullness of punishment. He was the spotless temple of Your presence. He had no sin. Yet He took all our filth and rebellion upon Himself on that awful day of atoning death. Your wrath came upon Him for us. Lord, we are in horrible trouble now. We are in need of basic things so that we can stay alive here and now. Feed us from heaven. Though false prophets may have been removed from our midst, our enemies are still all around us. They think that they have complete victory over us. What can we say to You? Our cries are too deep for words. We are in distress. We have had such trouble beyond anything we ever expected. There is terror on every side.
Sovereign Lord, we have faced great tribulation. We cry for help. Do You not hear us? Where is Your help? O God, we hate our sin. Father, we feel no hope in our hearts. Yet we remember Your steadfast covenant love, Your mercy, Your great faithfulness. We should wait patiently for You when it seems like we have no future. Help us to take this affliction now. This will not last forever. You are not vicious toward us, O God. You must have a purpose in this day of testing. Help us to turn now from all sin. Grant us a very large repentance. Surely there is something good that will come from all these tears. There must be some good in this horrible loss. Do not close Your ear to our cries for help. Through Christ, You have surely redeemed our lives from complete destruction.
Lord God, what has happened to Your church? We were precious stones in Your holy temple. Where are our children? Where have our companions gone? Where are those who once professed faith in You? How is it that they have gone out from us? Were they never part of us? Have mercy on us, O God. Your people are deeply bruised by an enemy that we cannot see. Brutal men and angels must be all around us. How could we have become a people that seem to be cursed by You? We look for help from far off. Where is our help, O Lord? The enemy seeks the ones He may devour. Yet His day of punishment will surely come. Help us, O Lord.
Father, we face the truth of our affliction with brutal honesty. Food, shelter, safety, life… these are things we need. Celebration is only a bitter memory. Yet You are still the Lord. You will reign forever. Restore us, O God. Our confidence is in Your Son, for He was utterly condemned for our transgressions, and rose again for our justification.
Devotionals
How lonely sits the city of Jerusalem! She was once full of people. Where are they now? Leaders and important people have been killed or deported. The walls of the city are destroyed and so many buildings have been burned or demolished. It would seem that the worst has happened, and the godly man offers up a sad lament to the Lord.
There is much to mourn. The city can weep about her current condition. So many people have died. There is devastation in every direction. A foreign power has taken charge of the lives of everyone. Citizens stay in the land or go off to Babylon at the pleasure of the invaders. In fact, once-powerful people live or die according to the wishes of outsiders. There is no group that has escaped indignities and misery. There is no food. There is no way to make a life again, or so it may seem. The facts are overwhelming.
She can weep about her former condition. Things were not always as they are now. Great times of former days can be easily remembered, but these memories bring pain. She was a princess back then. Where are her beautiful clothes? Where are her friends and companions? Where is her pride and her amusements? There is simply no way to return to former days of happiness, and memories do not seem to heal, but injure the hearts of those who cannot help but think about better times that can never again be recovered. There were once times of solemn religious assemblies. Where are the festival throngs now? Where are the joys of the presence of God in His appointed sacraments? Even the place of worship is gone. Now those who would not have even been admitted into the temple are in power, and God’s people are full of shame.
She can weep about her sin. Jerusalem was warned concerning the consequences for rebellion and transgression. Why were they so foolish? Where are the idols now that were thought to be of some help in the past? God had spoken clearly, but His prophets were treated with great disrespect. Many proud people would not lead in righteousness. Where are they all now? In Babylon? In the grave? How can Jerusalem rediscover joy? She is plainly guilty.
She can weep about her current prospects. How will they every organize any opposition against a power like Babylon? Is there any hope for some other helper who can deliver the people from such a sad life? There are still enemies around from other nations who look at Jerusalem and shake their heads in disbelief at such thorough destruction. Can the promises of God still be believed?
Especially she can weep about the lack of a comforter. There may be no way to go back in time and to recover an earlier moment. There may be no way to write an alternative history with a different ending. This is what the mourning soul longs for, but it is simply impossible. There can be no health until we stop trying to recover what can never be found again. There is a new life that needs to be embraced, and it is not an easy life. The people of the city must live under the subjugation of the Babylonians. Perhaps this misery could be lessened if a comforter could be found. There may be no way to recover the past. There may be no way to hold on to dreams of the future that were once precious. So many of the people who were in those dreams are now dead or removed from the land. But if there could be someone alongside God’s people as they mourn, if there could be a comforter, perhaps they could carry on. But no such comforter seems near according to the author of this acrostic poem.
The righteous man knows that these trials are not random things. They are from the hand of Israel’s God. Their problems are not going away any time soon. The next six hundred years would be marked by difficulty, as Canaan is under foreign powers, and the righteous remnant is longing for a return of the people to the land, a rebuilding of the temple with a resumption again of Old Testament worship, and the enthronement of a good and powerful descendant of David to rule the kingdom. These things would not all happen, and this was a cause of profound lamentation.
It is no small news that after those six centuries passed, an answer to the righteous longings of the godly was supplied in the gift of Christ our Savior. The objective facts of His Kingdom are worthy of Your sincere meditation. There is surely occasion for mourning still today, but the facts of the gospel demand the most wonderful celebration. Atonement for our sins has been accomplished through the death of Christ. A new kingdom has been established that has gone far beyond the extent of the best Old Covenant situation. The people of God have been granted the best Comforter in the great gift of the Holy Spirit for all who would believe. The justice of God has been completely satisfied in the death of Christ, and the hope that we have is not in a desolate city with some minor improvements. We have been promised the city of God, and this perfect city will surely be ours.
Let us rejoice in the blessings of the New Covenant era. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us, and gave Himself up for our salvation. The promises of God are certain in the resurrection of Christ. We are even made co-laborers in the progress of the Kingdom. Blessed be God forever! There is plenty of room for an honest lament concerning the sufferings of this present age, but we must admit that our situation in Christ is truly wonderful.
When God was rescuing His people out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, He appeared to them as a pillar of cloud by day. This glory cloud of God’s presence protected them from the pursuing army of the Egyptians. Now, so many years later, when God was angry with His people and sent them into exile, destroying Jerusalem and the temple, we read again of a cloud in the midst of His people. This time God is not with them to protect them, but to come against them in wrath.
Their honor and their might have been taken away. He was once a pillar of fire by night to help them. Now he burns like a flaming fire against them, consuming everything all around. It is a frightening thing to have God in the posture of an adversary against you. The land is full of mourning and lamentation. They are not utterly consumed forever, but they are clearly facing great trouble from the one who once was their Protector.
Once He met with them in their festivals and on their days of Sabbath rest. Once kings cried out to Him and He heard them, and priests represented the people before Him as they offered sacrifices and blessed the people in the name of the Lord. Now His altar and sanctuary have been destroyed. The sound of enemies fills the places where festival throngs went to the Lord’s house. The city walls are demolished, and her gates are ruined. Adversaries can go in and come out at their own will. There is no way to do what the law commands, and prophets have no word for her people. People are dying everywhere, and those who still live are left to weep.
We want to fix every problem, but the Lord can bring a problem that no man can fix. When our ruin is as vast as the sea, we cannot expect to repair our problems one cup of water at a time. The people were all too willing to listen to the words of false prophets who spoke pleasing words. Where are those men now? All we see are enemies who laugh at the Lord’s people. When the Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem in the days of Solomon she could not help but be impressed with what she saw. Now foreigners look and laugh. Enemies are happy about what they see, and they mock the people who are called by the Lord’s Name.
This was what the Lord had announced long ago. In the days when God brought His people through the wilderness by the cloud and the fire, in the days when the Lord spoke through Moses, God announced that he would bring a curse upon them if they turned away from Him. He warned them for centuries through faithful prophets, but they would not listen. Finally He spoke through Jeremiah in days of the last kings of Judah. He told them what to do in order to save the city. But they would not consent to follow the Word of God. Now they are destroyed.
This devastation is what the wickedness of men deserves. What must the cross have been like? How can we understand hell, when we will never experience it? We look at the destruction of the city of the Lord, and consider the punishment of our sinless Messiah. Surely what happened to Him was worse even then the horrible fire of judgment coming upon Jerusalem.
Christ knew no sin. He did not deserve the curse that Moses had announced. From the moment of His conception through to His final words saying, “It is finished,” the Lord never violated the Law of His Father. We were told to love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. We were also instructed to love our neighbors as ourselves. These were just and holy commandments, and our Lord never violated them in the slightest. He was bruised for our iniquities.
How big was the bruise? What were the stripes like that He took which brought healing to us. We can look at Sodom and Gomorrah and see the destruction of the land that Lot once saw as the choice property. We can think of the destruction of the world that once was in the days of Noah when the rain kept on coming and coming, and the door of the one ark had already been shut by God. We can also look to the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and read Lamentations. This may give us some sense of the misery that accompanies the wrath that we deserved for our sins.
All illustrations given to us surely fall short of what Christ has taken for us. We will never know the full extent of suffering. That is a good thing. We know all that we need to know from the intrusion of judgment days into the lives of the people of the Scriptures and in the events of history. One of the most profound of these events was that described to us in Lamentations. May God grant to us an appropriate appreciation for the suffering of His Son, and may we be rightly moved by the fact of God’s love for us, for He sent His Son to die for us.
The discipline of God against Judah was experienced by the nation as a group, but such corporate trials are ultimately felt personally. In the central chapter of this book, the writer picks up again the first person account of a suffering believer. They have all suffered greatly as a people, but now he writes, “I am the man who has seen affliction.” The problem is not only the pain and the darkness. The problem is that God seems to have turned against the righteous man. It feels like God has shut His ears from hearing the suffering one’s prayer.
It seems to him that God is actively against him, determined to see trouble come upon him. If there were any way out of difficulty, that way is being blocked by God. The suffering one is the target, and God is shooting the arrow. There are mocking observers. That is part of the pain of it all, but the real problem is not them, but God Himself. This righteous suffering man was a person who hoped in the Lord. Now it feels as if that hope is gone. This is a person who received endurance from the Almighty, but now he feels like he cannot keep on going.
In the midst of the depths of despair, in this setting of a horrible low point in the history of God’s dealings with His people, at the center of this central chapter in this poetic book comes a cry of faith that is deeply impressive. He remembers that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Even when it feels like God’s love is utterly gone, he reminds himself that the Lord’s mercies never come to an end. He speaks out the word to God himself: “Great is Your faithfulness.” When all is taken away from the man of faith, what can he cling to? “The Lord is my portion. I will hope in Him.” This is a gift that no enemy can take away.
From this center of faith come reflections that encourage the most weary soul. It is good that we don’t get everything we want immediately. How would we ever learn to wait upon the Lord in faith if we had no trials? This is an opportunity for the righteous man to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. This is a chance for a young man to learn how to bear the yoke that is his portion, and to grow through this time of personal and national horror.
The fact is that the Lord will not cast off His beloved child forever. Yes, He does cause grief, but isn’t He the one who has compassion in the end? His end goal is not to afflict his beloved child. This is not what we find in the depths of the heart and will of God. The Lord is just. The Lord is good. He does not approve of oppression. He does not want to see brutal people pursuing hatred to have the final word. He is the Author and Finisher of His own good purposes. If we face a bad time at some moment, and we will, then surely this is yet from the hand of the one who ordains good and bad, and there shall be a good day yet ahead of us. Do we really have a right to complain against Almighty God?
Let us do something different with this affliction than murmuring. Let us examine our ways and discover some good pathway ahead of us – some way of obedience and love. Let us turn to God with more zeal and sincerity. Surely God is showing His people something very important through this time of pain and sorrow.
This does not negate the pain of what an individual suffers during a period of divine chastisement of His church. The tears are real. The taunts of the godless are infuriating. The righteous suffering man cares not only for himself but for the trouble of others all around him. He is moved with compassion as one who has come to know grief. Were the ways of evil enemies justified? Not at all. Surely God will hear the cries of His righteous servant and will deliver him from trouble. Surely the vengeance of the Lord will come against those who wickedly abuse the Lord’s own beloved one.
When the time had fully come, God sent forth, not just any righteous man, not just any suffering servant, but His beloved only-begotten Son. He knew what He had come to do. He knew that it involved a fulfillment of passages like Lamentations 3. He would face horrible trials, and the wicked hatred of cruel oppressors. This He did for a purpose. It was necessary for the accomplishment of our salvation. What this One Man suffered was about more than Him. He gave His life for the nation, and not just for the Jews but for the scattered household of God who would be brought back home.
When He suffered, He entrusted Himself to One who was faithful. He offered up loud cries and tears. He prayed and He was heard. In His resurrection, He has achieved a tremendous vindication of the faithfulness of the Lord through the worst personal suffering. His suffering was for us. We were in Him in His death, and we are in Him forever in His resurrection. Great is Your faithfulness. In view of the mercies of God toward us in Christ our Lord, let us bear the trial that comes to each of us today with a quiet confidence in God our Father, and let us offer up our lives as living sacrifices to our God who has redeemed us through the blood of His Son.
What is gold compared to one human life, and what are the rocks that formed the foundation of the temple? The large stones of the temple were impressive to the disciples of Jesus, but not one would be left on top of another. More precious than gold, of far more worth than the stones of any physical temple on Mount Zion, God has made His people living stones in a new temple, where Christ is the cornerstone. This temple will never be demolished.
In the days of the exile of Judah, the old temple was destroyed. This was a cause of horrible grief for the Lord’s people. The sons of Zion were treated as worse than nothing. The normal tenderness of family relationships, even of mother and child, was removed from the people of God. There was no food. There was no living hope, only pain and grief.
It had not been very long ago when the people of wealth had what they wanted. They had the opportunities that riches afford to develop refined tastes for good things. Now a crust of bread would have been a treasure. The gold was very dim now.
It might have been better to have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities were destroyed so quickly. Judah faced a lengthy siege, the slow consumption of any stored foods until virtually everything was gone, the sounds of the Babylonians beyond the gates; the inevitable destruction was so near to them. There was too much time to think. There was the debilitating anxiety which attended the anticipation of a coming horror.
Now it had all happened. What a sight to see strong young men and women in such bad condition as they drew near to death. The sword was better than this. All civility and order seemed to be gone, as unmentionable acts of desperation took place among God’s own people.
What could it all mean? It was the Lord. This was the hardest thing to face. It was for the sins of the prophets, the priests, the elders, and the people. Now the people of the covenant were treated like some unclean thing that no one would want to be near. It was the Lord who scattered them. It was the Lord.
They had longed for some rescue even up to the last moment. They placed their hopes in foreign armies who would force the Babylonians to go away. Their hope was in vain. When the enemies breached the wall, and the rulers and warriors attempted to escape, their pursuers were swift in capturing them. Even the king, the Lord’s anointed, was captured. He would not be able to help his own sons or his highest officials. He would certainly be of no help to the weak.
Despite all of this pain and trouble, the day would come when God’s discipline of His people would be accomplished. Then the remnant of Jacob would be brought back into the Land. Even as the temple was being torn apart, and as young men and women were dying in the streets, as the king of Judah was captured and humiliated, God still loved Jacob. Esau was another story. Their day would come. They would face their own time of reckoning. The cup of God’s wrath would be passed to them, and their sins would be uncovered.
In such a situation it is best not to rejoice in the defeat of God’s children. This world of trouble is filled with unknown providences. Today’s peace and security can be gone in a moment. The greatest king can be quickly defeated. The richest nobles can soon be begging for bread. The strongest young men can be wasting away and afraid. You do not know the secrets of the Lord. You only know what He has revealed.
This is what He has spoken. There will be a descendant of David who will reign forever and ever. His kingdom shall never fail. There will come a New Covenant, not like the old one which Israel and Judah broke, though God was a husband to them. The day would come when He would write His Law upon their hearts. This would be not only for the Jews, for the Lord had promised that through Abraham, all the families of the earth would be blessed. There would come a seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.
God spoke to the fathers through the prophets little by little and in various ways. When Lamentations was written, they were not yet finished with the Old Testament story. Their remained still Daniel, and he would add some new insights, as would Ezekiel and some of the other prophets. There was still some history of the faithfulness of God to be recorded. All of that would finish out the Old Covenant book. Then, after four hundred years of silence, God would speak to us through a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe. In His death and resurrection a cornerstone would be laid in Zion, and no man would ever be able to tear down the temple of living stones that would be built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets. The King of Glory has come, and the Jerusalem of God has finally been rescued from all her foes. No one will ever take that victory away. Wait for the Lord. Trust Him. He will accomplish all His purposes.
This final chapter of Lamentations is a cry for help. This is not the shout of an individual needing the Lord to answer only him. We may be familiar with that kind of cry from our own lives of prayer. A person can easily find himself in a critical moment of need where advice, knowledge, resources, friends, faith, hope and many other things seem absolutely necessary and almost completely lacking. There is something more in this chapter than even that kind of heartfelt cry to God for assistance. This is the cry of a whole people, not just the plea of one desperate person.
Will God remember us? The faithful remnant asks God to remember what has happened to them. Even a singular individual cannot help but remember a tragedy that has changed his life forever. If anyone brings up the uncomfortable topic of the particular loss, he does no harm, since the man is thinking about that loss all the time, and can scarcely do anything without returning to some consideration of the awful facts that have changed his life forever. How much more is this the case for a whole society in mortal distress. They call upon God to remember with them what has happened. They admit their disgrace. They consider themselves abandoned. They have no resources for life. They feel the weight of inheriting the awful fruits of ungodliness from those who have come before them, and they do not know how they could possibly get out from under the burden of this crushing debt.
It is very challenging for any people to face up to the fact of their subjugation by some foreign power, especially when they have reason to consider themselves superior to their oppressors. They would love to have a savior nation arise to liberate them. It would be dangerous to tempt them with credible relief from an ungodly source. They might be ready to listen to any god who might have a realistic message of immediate help. O how they long for that! There must be some army coming over the horizon that would change the entire situation! But there is no such force that could change the facts here.
Rape, starvation, murder, slavery… this is their current portion. How could they bear this quietly? They needed to follow the orders of others or they would surely die. There was no option to simply bear up under the stress of it all. There was mourning everywhere, and the slightest rebellion could mean death. All of this happened because of their sin.
The sin sickness that they had was not some surface issue. Their hearts had become ugly. Their eyes had grown dim. They could not seem to discern the right way to go. Was it possible that wild animals were prowling in the place where the temple once stood? Could this get any worse?
The problem was not in the character and actions of God, but surely He was the only answer to the trouble that His people faced. They dug the pit for themselves, but they could not get out by their own efforts, and every other arm was too short to rescue. God’s people were fatally stuck in a frightening and dangerous trap. Because of this they were sick with a great spiritual disease. They needed healing, and there seemed to be absolutely no one who could perform the necessary miracle.
God will reign forever. Nothing can remove Him from His throne. Had He forgotten His own people? This was a horrible but honest question. Were they so entangled in the mess of the world, that the Lord had utterly rejected them? Had His promises been overwhelmed by the ugliness of their failings? They cried out for renewal and restoration, but had God decided to treat them forever as an enemy nation?
Had the Lord utterly rejected them? It might have seemed like that to His people when loss was all around them. They began to hope only for survival. They once wanted to fly. Then they hoped to run. When that seemed impossible they thought that they might still walk. Now they wondered if they would even be left standing. Did they even have faith to stand? Flying was out of the question.
As the people of the Covenant of Grace today, these questions are very important to us. If God could not be counted on to keep His promises to Israel, what hope is there that He will be true to His church? The answers come to us through the provision of the Son of God as our perfect Substitute. God rejected His Son for a time that we might be completely accepted forever. We are not utterly rejected. We are sons of God, through Christ our Lord. His promises have not been forgotten or annulled. Every promise of the Father is “Yes” and “Amen” in His Son. We are not enemies of God. The blood of Christ has made a perfect peace between God and His elect, both Jew and Gentile, who turn to Him in fear and faith.
We most certainly will stand. We will walk again. We will even run one day. In fact we shall mount up with wings as eagles. We will live. Not only have we been redeemed, but there are many godly expectations that we can and must cling to based upon the sure word of the Lord. Some of these have already happened. Israel was restored from her Babylonian captivity. The Spirit has been poured out on a new Israel of God. Some of God’s promises are yet to fully arrive, but they are just as sure as the coming again of Jesus Christ. The Day of the Lord will surely come. By the Word of our Messiah King there will be a new heaven and a new earth. At the return of Christ, there will come a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. God will bring about a final judgment, and we will be openly acknowledged and acquitted through the blood of the Lamb.
How desperate is the situation we face? Is it as bad as Lamentations 5? Surely God saved His elect even back in that awful day. Not one of them was lost. Have no fear, little flock, it is Your Father’s good will to give You the Kingdom.