Lamentations 5

Thank you worship team for leading us during this time.

Thank you everyone for being able to come tonight to encounter as we finish our Lamentations series, new morning, new mercies. If y’all have come today to hear a pick me up good message, I have really bad news. If you haven’t been listening in the last few weeks as we’ve been going through Lamentations, the series is not a, the book is not a very happy, is not a very happy book. And I was thinking like, it would be much easier to preach through like Lamentations 3:1-66 where there’s like some hope of like something getting better. But the way that Lamentations 5:1-22 kind of ends and how this chapter kind of ends, it’s like one of those like it gets bad to worse and you just kind of have to like live in the uncomfortable kind of like situation there. Let me know if I need to switch over to a wireless.

But okay. So I did want to start off with at least a little bit of, I think God has like a little bit of a sense of humor here. We’re like, at least in like my, I think because of the position of media deacon, I like do a lot of like reflecting and we have like access to like a lot of like archive things and stuff. So I have like a weird, I guess, history with the book of Lamentations since like COVID happened. If y’all remember back in 2020, when the whole world was shut down, there is one day back in March where our family was like, hey, like we should get together and to pray and to spend some time together, like in the word and in prayer and worship and stuff. And so I had just put up like, yeah, like let’s meet or someone had put up like, hey, let’s meet. And then I was like, okay, that’s great. Ah, yes, the cousins are here, hello. And so I was like, I can prep a passage real quick, just like what you want. And I put like Romans and 1 John and Ecclesiastes and Lamentations and Ecclesiastes and Lamentations, like both one, I think it was just like the mood during COVID. And then someone commented below this, it’s not on this picture, but someone commented, it’s like, hey, I had a really rough week. Can we not do Ecclesiastes, I can’t be sad. Not knowing that Lamentations is just as intense as Ecclesiastes was at the time.

And then also I have this portion from April, 2022. If y’all remember all the stuff that was going on during like the very beginning of our church, there’s a clip in the English sermon that we had referenced Jeremiah and Lamentations. And I want us to listen to that as well. But before we do, one kind of thing that I think we haven’t done really well in this series or like that we need to emphasize a little bit more is like when you read Lamentations, like it’s not like an intellectual, like I need to understand the theology behind what’s going on kind of book. It’s one of those, like there’s a lot of like feeling and pain and you need to, you can’t just like read this poetry. Like you need to like experience this in like a very like emotional kind of way. And one thing that’s like really challenging for us is like, I think, especially in the age that we’re in, we look for distraction instead of living in like this uncomfortable kind of like tension that’s there of, instead of like engaging with pain, I will like, you know, I can distract myself. I can go to YouTube. I can hang out with friends. I can like do all these things. And like, we don’t really like sit in, you don’t really like sit in that like uncomfortableness.

So my encouragement kind of like for us tonight is like one, like if there are things that are around you, if you have like a, if you have something going on like outside of this room, like that can cause that distraction from the tension, like here’s the encouragement to like really, when those thoughts or ideas or whatever, those worries pop up, like take that captive and like understand like that’s gonna be there afterward. And so like, I really want us just to like press into like, as we go through Lamentations, as we end, it is uncomfortable and like we shouldn’t try to like run or shy away from that kind of thing. 

So if y’all remember April, 2022, a lot of confusion and chaos, uncomfortability in that situation. But this is what we heard from the pulpit that day. Probably no one has suffered more in their life in ministry than Jeremiah. But as we come to the book of Lamentation that is filled with so much pain and discomfort, he says something so beautiful. He says, this I recall to my mind and therefore I have hope. His circumstance had not changed, but he chose to do something. He chose to recall certain things in his life, which is what he recalled. The Lord’s mercies we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I hope in him. Verse 25, the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. Church, wait upon the Lord. Seek his face. Get rid of all the filth in your life. Comfortably, no one has suffered more in their life in ministry than Jeremiah. But as we come to the book of Lamentation that is filled with so much pain and discomfort, he says something so beautiful.

So I know the clip repeated, but the way the audio ended was, church, get rid of the filth in your life and then come and repent before the Lord. That was the ending statement that was there. So, yeah, that’s all the humor that I have for us tonight. The joke that I told my small group in preparing for today is if you take notes and you type in your message, the title of the sermon is sometimes things don’t get better they get worse and then you die. So, welcome.

All right, so Lamentation.

If you want a summary of the whole book, what we’ve been talking about the last, I wanna say like three months since we started the series, this is the overview. Jeremiah is lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem, the captivity of the people by Babylon, and he is pleading with the Lord for forgiveness and for restoration, right? That is all five of these poems, that is the gist of all of them.

And so as we’re reading through the book, the first four chapters are poems that go into an acrostic. Jewel gave that kind of summary of like an acrostic poem is like A, B, C, D, you have a line starting with the letter A, then you write a line that’s starting with the letter B. This is the Hebrew alphabet that it does this poetic structure as the author is grieving and lamenting and processing all of the sorrow that he is feeling. It’s a structure that acknowledges his pain and his pleading and his lamenting before the Lord, but also it’s like putting his trust in God in those poems as well.

But then you get to chapter five, and it goes from this acrostic structure that’s been there for the entire book, and it breaks. This is a poem that has no, it’s like free flowing in the nature of what it does. If you watch the Bible Project survey videos, this is what Tim Mackey says about chapter five. All this poetry, all this structure is there. And then when you get to chapter five, it’s as if the poet can’t hold it in anymore, and the grief has exploded into chaos, right? So he’s like, I can kind of make sense of this. I can kind of make sense of this. I can kind of make sense of this. I can’t make sense of this anymore, right?

So we get to chapter five, and this is the lament that Jeremiah has before the Lord. And I’ll read for us:

“Lord, remember what has happened to us. See how we have been disgraced. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. We are orphaned and fatherless. Our mothers are widowed. We have to pay for water to drink, and even firewood is expensive. Those who pursue us are at our heels. We are exhausted, but are given no rest. We submit to Egypt and Assyria to get enough food to survive. Our ancestors sinned, but they have died, and we are suffering the punishment they deserved. Slaves have now become our masters. There is no one left to rescue us. We hunt for food at the risk of our lives, for violence rules the countryside. The famine has blackened our skin as though baked in an oven. Our enemies rape the women in Jerusalem and the young girls in all the towns of Judah. Our princes are being hanged by their thumbs, and our elders are treated with contempt. Young men are led away to work at millstones, and boys stagger under the heavy loads of wood. The elders no longer sit in the city gates. The young men no longer dance and sing. Joy has left our hearts. Our dancing has turned to mourning. The garlands have fallen from our heads. Weep for us, because we have sinned. Our hearts are sick and weary, and our eyes grow dim with tears, for Jerusalem is empty and desolate, a place haunted by jackals. But Lord, you remain the same forever. Your throne continues from generation to generation. Why do you continue to forget us? Why have you abandoned us for so long? Restore us, O Lord, and bring us back to you again. Give us back the joys we once had. Or have you utterly rejected us? Are you still angry with us?”

And then the book ends, right? These are the last words that Jeremiah writes in this chapter. Have you utterly rejected us? Are you still angry with us, right?

What an uncomfortable, like, imagine you’re reading a book that’s not a textbook this time, and this is how the story kind of ends, and you don’t really know what the plan is, right? And for Jeremiah, this is kind of where his story ends, right? Like, we know in church history what happens, and we know because of scholars and archeological finds, but like, this is like, kind of like, I think the last words that Jeremiah writes in the scriptures that’s here. But there are actually like several books of scripture that like, when we read through the Bible, they don’t really end on like a good note, right?

We, like, I think we get to the gospels, and we’re like, Jesus is resurrected, and he commissions the disciples to go and to baptize, and like, it’s like this victory parade into the Pentecost that we started in Acts. But for these like Old Testament books where we don’t have the hope of resurrection, or we don’t have the hope of Jesus, they end in like, really, really like, uncomfortable, tense, like, unresolved conflict. Like, the book of Judges has this spiral of continued moral failure of the people, as everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and then they do something horrible to this Shulamite prostitute, and then the book ends with like, but everyone did what was right in their own eyes, right?

First Samuel ends with the death of Saul. Second Kings ends with the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and then the whole Old Testament ends in this curse in Malachi, where he writes, those who are faithful to God, he will deliver, but if you do not repent, you will be cursed, and then the Old Testament ends, right? And then for the Old Testament reader, there’s 400 years of silence as no prophets are given to the land. So for us, we get to cheat a little bit, and we know the whole picture of the story, but for the people at the time as they’re reading through this, like, there is this like, overall narrative, or like, this overall story that the scripture is showing, right? Of like, there’s someone coming who is promised, who will come to save the people, and so these like, weird tension-filled endings or unresolved conflicts are supposed to remind us of that bigger picture story that’s there, right?

And so the Lamentations ending is part of that story, right? We see and we have read about the loss of economic stability as homes are taken away, there’s very little food and water, their submission into debt to Egypt and Assyria as they’re paying off, as they’ve given money for the people of Israel to buy food. Orphans, widows, litter the streets, people are being slaved, women are being trafficked, the rulers and authorities of the people are being taken into captivity, and there’s absolutely no rest for the people, there are enemies everywhere. They can’t even leave the city walls for fear that they’re gonna be killed, if not by the enemy, by wild animals.

So, where does that kinda like leave us in the story of Lamentations? In this chapter, I just wanna kinda point out three major things that’s happening there, and I hope it’s not new information for anyone, but just a reminder for all of us. First and foremost, the consequences of sin are so much worse than we think it is, and it’s really important for us to get that, right? If you’ve been joining us for this series, like, you’ve heard sermon after sermon, as we’ve been talking through the consequences of sin, right? How the city is being destroyed, people are being abused, and they’re hopeless, the situation is not gonna get any better. It feels as if, like, it is better for, and we would understand this, right? It is better for us to be killed right now, than to continue living like this, because it’s unbearable to deal with what is going on.

But we have this false idea of, like, what these, like, God’s consequences, or punishment, kind of is, right? And that should be the reminder as we read through Lamentations, as we read through this portion of scripture as well, right? We have this idea, and no book kinda shows us better than the book of Job, of like, if I do good things, this is the false idea that we have. If I do good things, I should deserve good things back. And if I do bad things, I should deserve bad things back, right? And the person that will give me the good and bad things is God. But the reality of what’s actually happening is God is saying, it’s not your behavior, it’s not whether you do good or bad, whether these things are gonna happen to you or not, that’s a consequence, right?

But what’s actually happening is, God is the good thing, and all the goodness surrounds Him. And God is saying to us, if you don’t want me here, I’m not gonna force myself to be here for you, right? But if I leave, I’m not taking anything away, goodness just follows where I am. I’m reminded of back in high school, years ago, I’m reminded of my friend, Honorud, who, he was a South Asian guy, he was valedictorian of our class. We were stuck in this English lit class together, and the teacher at the time was like, for your first group project, I’m gonna assign you groups, and then if you like your group, you can stay in it. But all the other group projects we assigned this semester, or that year, you can pick whichever group you’re in. So Honorud, being the valedictorian of the class, is gonna do well, and unfortunately for him, he got stuck in this group of people that didn’t care about school. Maybe you’ve experienced this, maybe you are that person.

But he was stuck in that kind of group of people that didn’t care about school, and wasn’t gonna really try. He, being competitive, and just wanted to stay valedictorian, he did the work for class, and he got a good score for their group. And then immediately afterward, he went to the teacher, and he was telling me this earlier, later than I remember, but he was like, yeah, I talked to Mrs., I think her name is Saccone, I was sorry, I talked to Mrs. Saccone, and I said, I’d rather do every group project by myself than be in a group with these people again. And she said, yeah, that’s fine. So like, he was literally like, you know, he brought the good things to that group. He brought the grade that they needed in order to pass. But he was like, I don’t wanna be here, because these people are acting in a way that is completely opposite to who I am as a person, and I’m not gonna force myself on them. And he didn’t want them forced on him either, right? But he just ended up doing every group project the rest of that year by himself, right?

That’s, I think, the picture of God’s presence and His goodness, right? We take for granted, oh my gosh, we take for granted the air that we breathe. We take for granted, like, we just have this natural assumption that we wake up, that the sun is gonna be there, right? But God, if He didn’t want to be here, like, the earth will like, crumble apart, right? It is Him holding all things together. And that’s what we’re seeing in the scriptures as well, right? Romans 1:20-24 says, “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities, His external power and divine nature, so that they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship Him as God or even give Him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. And as a result, their minds become dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead become utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.” Right?

And as a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies, right? They’re like, we know who God is. We will not worship the actual God and we’ll build our own version of God. And so God said, if you don’t want me here, I’m not going to be here. And as a consequence, they degraded their bodies. Romans 2, Paul continues and says, “Even Gentiles who do not have God’s written law show that they know about His law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it,” right? There’s something in the creation that knows who the Creator is, that instinctively follows the voice of the Creator, right? It is open rebellion when we choose not to follow what this natural instinct is, right? Even the unredeemed, like even someone who is not saved, has like the pricking of the conscience when they do evil, right?

Or even more scripture about how the world is going to come apart. Second Thessalonians 2, Paul’s writing to the church and he says, “Don’t you remember that I told you all about this being the day of judgment when I was with you? And you know what is holding him back for he can be revealed only when his time comes for this lawlessness is already at work secretly and it will remain secret until the one who is holding it back steps out of the way,” right? At the day of judgment, this man of lawlessness, this antichrist is gonna come and he is going to destroy the world, but what’s stopping him? God, right? The

 one, the Holy Spirit that’s here on earth present with the believer is the one holding back the lawlessness that is about to come, right?

And then we get to Revelation and what we’re seeing is like, yeah, we’re definitely seeing God’s judgment on evil, but also we’re seeing the consequences of the Holy Spirit, like we’re seeing the consequences of the rapture, right? Because God’s people are no longer here on earth, His grace is no longer here on earth the same way that it was before. And so even now, as you look around the world, much of the evil that we’re seeing in the world right now, if you think the news is bad, like if you think it’s horrible out there, it could be so, so, so much worse, right? But God is there holding back evil for the sake of His people that are still here on earth.

We need to understand that the consequences of sin are so much worse than we expect and we need to understand that in us, there’s nothing good, there’s nothing righteous, all the goodness is from God and from Him alone. And so for a lot of us, at times we definitely have moments of weakness and rebellion, we have moments of weakness and we backslide into whatever thing that’s there, right? But for some of us in the room, like you may be actively running away from God or even myself, like I know there are times in my life where I’m actively running away from God and I’m like, I know this is not God’s will or His design or His best in this situation, but I want to indulge in whatever that thing is instead of trusting in God for His plan and His sovereignty in that situation, right?

And in those moments, it’s like, hey, I, sorry, hey, I did something bad, but nothing bad happened to me, right? Oh, I cheated on a test, I ended up passing my class and I ended up graduating. Hey, I ended up going somewhere I shouldn’t have gone to, been with someone I shouldn’t have been with, done something I shouldn’t have done, but no one found out and things are pretty comfortable here and we can lie and deceive ourselves and think that we’re getting away with it when in reality, we’re confusing God’s patience with His permission, right?

Second Peter says this, “The Lord isn’t really being slow about His promise as some people think, no, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.” And then verse 15 says, “And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved,” right? The patience and lamentations that’s there, right? It feels as if this is the really sticky part of that, of these Old Testament books of like, we read through and we’re like, the patience of God has run out for these people and they’re being destroyed and this is the judgment of God, right? But the patience of God is still there because Lamentations ends, or Lamentations all throughout Jeremiah’s writing, remember us again, remember us again. Look, see, please find it again to be in our presence, right? Will you forgive us? Will you restore us back to you, right? God still gives them that margin in the midst of destruction and desolation for them to cry out to Him again.

So your sin is a lot worse than you think it is. And we need to understand that we need to turn back to God before it’s too late, right? Even in the midst of sorrow and suffering and destruction, there’s still enough margin for us to turn back.

But second, what we need to know and what we have to understand for a good perspective of who God is, is if God wanted to, He could have, right? If God wanted Israel to be preserved, He could have done it, right? If He wanted to protect the people and wanted them to live in comfort and luxury, He could have allowed that to happen. They would continue to sin and rebel against Him, but He could have prevented the enemy from taking over the land. If God wanted to, He could have. And I want us to know this for us as well. If you’re going through, when you go through suffering and sorrow and persecution, right, in God’s character and sovereignty, He could have stopped it from happening. And that’s such a painful, painful thing to live with.

If God wanted our loved one to live, He could have healed. If God wanted to, He could have made it where I got into my program. If God wanted to, this prayer request that I have been pleading with the Lord for years and years and years, He could have given it on day one. Right? If God wanted to, He could have. He would have. But to have an accurate understanding of who God is, we need to know that the reason He doesn’t give everything that we ask or everything that we need, or everything that we think we need, rather, is for a better purpose.

Lamentation ends on this truth in verses 19 to 22, right? This is Jeremiah’s cry: “Lord, you remain the same forever. Your throne continues from generation to generation. Restore us, O Lord, bring us back to you again. Give us back the joys we once had,” right? God’s throne is established forever and ever. It’s not being shaken. And the sorrow and the hardship and the pain that the Israelites, that the Hebrews are facing in that time, like God’s throne was established there. In our sorrow and pain, God’s throne is established there too.

So the fact that God allows all of these things to happen reveals what about God’s character? His priority is not Israel’s happiness or its comfort. His priority instead is the people’s holiness and devotion to righteousness, right? Jewel talked about this in her message. And when we went through the Deuteronomy passage of like, there’s given promises for obedience, but also like the curses of disobedience, that’s there in Deuteronomy 18. But if God wanted to, He could have been like, hey, actually the second part, I was kidding, right? Like, you’re my people, of course, I love you forever. I’ll give you whatever you want. But God didn’t, because He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t lie about Himself. He doesn’t lie about the pain of sin. He doesn’t lie about the consequences of disobedience or rebellion. He is true in all that He says.

The passage that we read earlier in John 11, like I know for sure the Holy Spirit told John to write this, to keep this in our mind, right? Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. And because He loved them, He stayed, right? Jesus allows Lazarus to die. But even in the life of Jesus, as we read through that passage, we get later on at the tomb, Jesus sees their weeping, and it says that He sees their weeping, He sees those who had come along to weep with them, and He was deeply moved in spirit, and He was troubled, right?

I’ve only really read that passage in Antioch 8, and so that was kind of like my understanding of like, Jesus was troubled. Actually, I had the false interpretation of like, Jesus was troubled because He saw people weeping, right? And He is like, you have very little faith. Didn’t I say Lazarus is not gonna die, right? That’s, I think maybe that’s your interpretation at times as well. That was definitely mine for years until I heard this sermon, and this word moved in spirit. The Greek word is embryomae, right? It literally means to snort like an angry horse or like a war horse preparing for battle, right? And so when Jesus sees the people weeping, He’s not like confused, or He’s not acting as if like, you should have more faith kind of thing. He’s angry because death is the ultimate consequence of sin.

Right, so as one commentary says, evidently as Jesus viewed the misery that death inflicts on humanity and the loved ones of those who die, He thought of its cause, sin. Many of the Jews present had come from Jerusalem when Jesus had encountered stubborn unbelief. The sin of unbelief resulted in spiritual death, the source of eternal grief and mourning. Probably Jesus felt angry because He was face to face with the consequences of sin and particularly the sin of unbelief, right? If Adam and Eve had just believed, right, and didn’t doubt, death would not have entered into creation. All death, all death is a consequence of not trusting God in that moment, right? The sin of unbelief that’s there.

And Jesus looks at the situation and Jesus looks at your sorrow and Jesus looks and God looks at what’s happening in Jerusalem, the Lamentations, and He is not happy about what’s happening, right? He is furious, right? Because death is not supposed to exist. In the eternal plan of God, it’s us and Him forever and ever, eternal life, no death, no pain, no separation, no hardship, no trouble, no heartache, none of it, right? That is the vision of what eternity is supposed to look like, what life is supposed to look like. None of those things, none of that hardship is supposed to exist.

But Jesus allows a consequence and God allows the consequences of sin to happen. So we know while we’re here on earth, this is not it, right? It could be so easy if we have a good life. And I’m trying to remember, there’s like a religious podcast where someone from, I think the Hindu faith or whatever, was like, I don’t mind being reincarnated. Yeah, I think it was Hinduism. I don’t mind being reincarnated because this life was pretty comfortable and I did pretty good. So I don’t mind coming back, right? If I can come to a comfortable life again. But for us as believers, like we never get to lie to ourselves like that, right? When we experience suffering and pain and hardship and toil and persecution and all these things, like it’s a reminder, like we don’t belong here.

My dad, who like literally went to high school here growing up, still says that he is an immigrant. He’s like, dad, it’s been like 30 years, bro. But that’s the mentality we should have here. Like I was born and raised in Texas. I don’t belong here. We do not belong here. Our home is not this, right? And so the pain is a reminder of what home actually is.

Matthew 7 goes like this: “Which of you, or parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?” We talked about this passage last night at All Night Prayer. “If you ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him,” right? Or James, “Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God, our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He shall never change. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow,” right? Suffering, persecution, hardship. Like there are horrible, horrible situations, but God allows it. God gives it, right? It is a reminder for us.

And so if we know God’s character, if we know who He is as an eternal being, right? We don’t, or we shouldn’t doubt the questions or actions or motivations that He commits. We aren’t super suspicious of like, does…well, maybe. Does anyone think there’s like an evil firefighter just generally out there? Or like a nurse who like wants to cause ill will? There are, right? But generally, when you go to a hospital, like you don’t think the nurse is out to get you, right? Or like when there’s a fire at your house and the fire truck pulls up, it’s not like, oh, they’re gonna make it so much worse, right? Because we kind of trust like the authority that’s there that they’re gonna come in to fix those things, right?

We know of like the one-offs here and there of like, there are definitely firefighters that cause arson. There’s definitely nurses that try to kill. But generally like the role of authority that’s there, we trust in that thing. In the same way, like we know that there’s bad kings. Actually, there’s horrible, horrible kings all over the world, right? But like, God, the authority of King of Kings, why do we constantly doubt His plan and will and His sovereignty? Why is it that we question every single thing that God does when He literally spoke creation into being, right? And we’re like, man, God, do you know? Do you know what’s going on? Do you see? Yeah, man. He does. And He understands it better than us, right?

He has been there from beginning to end of creation. He knows everything that’s gonna happen in detail. And He allows these things to happen because it’s in His will and plan, right? If we really, and this is such a crazy thing because it’s for me too, in my moments of doubt, it’s not that I don’t think God can

 do it or God won’t do it, it’s because I don’t trust God to do it for me, right? Like in my pleading, I know that God can resolve X, Y, Z, whatever that is. And I’m not questioning God’s ability to do it. I’m questioning His character. God, are you really good enough to do this for me? God, do you really care enough to do this, right? Do I trust you enough, even if you don’t do it, that I will rely on you and you alone?

This quote by Charles Spurgeon that I say so much, so much to myself and so much in public, “God is too good to be unkind, and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand,” right? “When we can’t see what He’s doing, we must trust His heart,” right? If God wanted to, He could. If God wanted to stop it, He could. The fact that we don’t know where His hand is or what He’s doing or how He’s moving doesn’t negate the fact that God is good and sovereign and perfect, that He only gives good gifts to His kids, that He is the Father of lights that does not shift like shadows, right? That is who He is. Waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, that’s who He is, right? All of eternity.

So if we fully understand that sin is so much worse than we think it is, and we fully understand in our understanding of God that if God wanted to, He could, when we want to meet with the true God, when we want to see Him as He truly is, these are not gentle encounters, right? They’re not soft-spoken words and like loving caresses or any of those things, right? We heard it last week with Justin’s message, right? Our God is a consuming fire, right? When you get close to Him, you will be burned. What was it? 2020, there was like a running joke of like, we all keep singing Refiner, and then we get angry with God and He starts to refine us and it hurts, right? But that’s who He is.

Encounters with the living God are not gentle things. When we truly see God for who He is—holy, righteous—there’s a reason why the angels cover their eyes and faces. There’s a reason why when people approach Him, they take off their shoes because it’s holy ground, right? There’s a reason why when God encounters Moses on the mountaintop, the mountain shakes. The mountain shakes. So much that when God says, come and meet with me, Israel says, nah, Moses, go. We are not going up there. We don’t know what’s going on up there. The mountain is shaking, right?

Encounters with God are not gentle affairs in our lives as well. Every year since 2021, I have been praying this prayer: “God, if I’m unwilling to bow to you, break my legs.” Every year since 2021, I’ve had some leg injury. So, the ACL being the latest one. Consider what’s going on in the scriptures as well. Consider the life of Job, right? Job was blameless, upright, feared God, shunned evil. He did what was right in His eyes. And so when Satan comes before God to accuse, Satan doesn’t accuse Job, right? What does the scripture say? God brings him up. “Have you considered my servant Job?” Right? “He’s an upright, righteous man.” And like Job’s whole world is turned upside down in a moment, but we come to the end of the book of Job. And what does he write? “I’d only heard about you before.” To God, “I’ve only heard about you before.” The guy who is giving sacrifices on a daily basis. “I’d only heard about you before.” The guy who God called upright and blameless. “I’d only heard about you before, but now what? I see you.”

God has never become more visible to us than in the midst of our persecution. I think we can only see God, like, or we see God the most clearly in the midst of our suffering. When things are good, we may end up just worshiping an idol that we built of who God thinks He’s like, right? But in our suffering, “I see you with my own eyes. I see you.”

Consider the life of Jacob, right? As a younger man, he wrestled with the Lord for blessing. And then as the morning hours are approaching, God touches his hip and throws it out of its socket. So does Jacob get the blessing? Yeah. But for how many decades does he live with hip pain? Right? It says in Hebrews that at the end of his life, as he’s giving the blessing to his kids, he is still leaning on this staff, right? Because he’s unable to move and to walk otherwise.

Consider the lives of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when they refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, right? Very boldly, they proclaimed, “We know that God can rescue us from your power, your majesty.” Still being respectful to this guy who’s about to kill them, or is trying to kill them, right? “We know that God can save us, your majesty, but even if He doesn’t, we want to make it clear to you, that we will never serve your gods or worship the golden statue that you have built up.”

Did they get saved from the fiery furnace? Yeah. But they still got thrown in. And before they were thrown in, oh, right after this passage, it says the people that threw them into the fire died because the furnace was that hot, right? Those people died. And they called right at this part, “Even if He doesn’t save us, we will still not bow down.” And “We want to make it clear to you,” they said, “I’ll say it with my full chest. We’ll make it clear to you, we will not bow down to your idol,” right?

Consider the life of John in his old age on Patmos. He’s the only one that survives, the only one that survives to old age. He has seen all of his friends, or he has heard of all of his best friends growing up, like in this ministry, be killed, right? Hanging, crucifixion, stabbed, pierced, beheaded. Do you think John in his old age, like I’m confused on this one. And I think in those moments of his, in his nineties, he’s like, there’s this portion in John 21, where he talks about like, Jesus had said, Jesus had told Peter how Peter’s gonna die. And Peter’s like, oh, what about John? How is John gonna die? And Jesus was like, “Why do you care if John lives? What if John lives to see me again? That doesn’t, that shouldn’t matter to you. That’s not your concern.” But what if John in his nineties remembers that moment and thinks it a curse? Because he has to endure, he was called to endure. He has seen all of his friends killed. He’s seen generations of like two to three generations of Christians go through persecution as well. And in his old age, did he regret? Like, man, I wish I had gone before too. Old age is hard. Suffering, hearing about my friend’s suffering is too much to bear on Patmos.

Lamentations ends with the simple line: “Have you utterly rejected us? Are you still angry with us?” And maybe that’s the cry and plea of your heart today as well, right? In your situation, like, God, have you actually, like, have you actually turned your back? Your plea of relief and for restoration, for healing and for whatever else is being met with silence. And we know that God can and that if He wanted to, He would. We know that some of the things that we have brought into our own lives are the consequences of our own sin. But we should also know the character of our God that’s there, right?

Sometimes things don’t get better. Sometimes they get way worse. And then you die. But even in death, it’s not the end of the story, right? Even the cry here at the end of Lamentations, like, have you rejected us forever? Are you still angry with us? Jeremiah answered that question two poems ago, right? He has not abandoned us. He is not angry still, right? Jeremiah writes in Lamentations 3, “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed. For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. And so I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.” And the Israelites waited and they waited and they waited through 400 years of silence, through captivity, through destruction of the temple. They waited through all that. And the Lord did not abandon, right?

Christ, His entire purpose, we heard this last night too. His entire purpose of being born was to what? To die so that all may be restored. The story is not about restoration of a kingdom here on earth. It’s not about restoration of the temple. It’s not restoration of Jerusalem. Those who wait on the Lord will be reconciled to the Lord so that even through all the pain that’s here, the sorrow, the heartbreak, the trauma, all of it, we remember when we die, the next time we open our eyes, it is eternal peace, forever with Him.

So as we end today, as we end the series, as we end this book, man, will you wait on God? Will you trust Him? Even if you can’t see how His hand is moving, you can’t trace His hand, will you trust His heart? Will you wait for His timing and His will, no matter the season of life that

 you’re in, no matter what you’re hearing on the news, no matter the questions and the doubting and the fear that’s there, will you wait on Him? Right, because He is our portion forever. He has not abandoned us, right? Great is the faithfulness of our God for His mercies are new every morning.

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we just thank you, my God. We just thank you that even as we have read in this portion, even as Jeremiah is lamenting and his pleas are before you in the destruction of Jerusalem, and he has no evidence to have hope, he trusts you that he calls to mind again of your goodness and of your sovereignty, oh God, that your throne is established in heaven forever from generation to generation, and that we can trust as well, my God, your throne is still established here. Lord, help us, Holy Spirit, help us, convict us. We believe, but help our unbelief that it’s not our power or our plans, it’s not our idea of what is good, but we can rely on you and your word and your faithfulness from generation to generation, my God. Be with us, oh Lord, be with us as we go out from this place. Let us not build our kingdom here, but to rely on your word and your power. It’s in the name of your son that we pray, amen.