[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: One of our family traditions anytime we're on our way to a sporting event is to play some pump up music.
And to the chagrin of my kids, I'm usually in charge of the playlist.
And so I feel like I have some good tracks in there that get them fired up and pumped up. And so we were on our way about a week ago to some of Cam's games. And when we're on the way, usually again we get on Spotify and I play that playlist. But then I was like, you know, buddy, Daddy has kind of a heavier sermon next week. I'm trying to get my mind prepared for it. So would you mind if, like, on the way we listened to a podcast on Lamentations 2, and I think when we got to the part where the kids crying in the street or the destruction, he wasn't really sure how this was supposed to pump him up.
But I will say, though, on a serious note, that I was so grateful for the conversation that ensued as we were listening to that podcast.
See, we're about to read a very, very heavy text.
But the heavy text brought up a very needed conversation.
See, the commentary I was listening to was basically this guy where he reads the text and then verse by verse, kind of gives an explanation.
And I'll never forget, we got to the part where it talks about the destruction. We got to the part where it said that the children were crying in the streets for Mom. They were asking, where is the bread?
And there were some questions, as you can imagine.
Well, what's going on? Why would something like this happen?
And of course, as we talked about it, it was a good time for me to talk to him to say, well, buddy, you know, this is kind of one of those books of the Bible that is kind of easy to skip through. And I don't know if y' all have kind of done this with Lamentations like, if I've gotten, like, gone through my reading and I get to Lamentations, I'm like, okay, okay. Oh, got through that and then kind of move on. I sought to kind of understand it, but it's really meant to be felt.
And so I said, we know, buddy. It's kind of one of those things that we all need to be reminded of, of what brought all of this lamenting in the first place.
One of the things that if you kind of look at the background, God gave them a warning. 900 years before this, in Deuteronomy 28, one commentary pointed out that it was probably 500 years of idolatry that led to this moment.
And so I began to explain that if Daddy or mommy or you one day choose to do something wrong over and over and over again, you choose to deny it.
You choose to act like it doesn't exist, but it doesn't just hurt you, it hurts other people.
What I'm saying is that, I guess, needed conversation that we had in the car, I think is a needed conversation for all of us of the reality of the weightiness of sin.
But the beauty of Lamentations, it shows us that there is an opportunity of hope through lament.
Lamentations was written as a songbook or a prayer book.
It was meant for people like us to pick it up, especially them at times when they saw something wrong in their world or saw something wrong in their lives, to not just grieve about it, but to join God's heart in what breaks God's heart.
And so I want to make sure from the very beginning we understand what we're reading. Because this book is not Job.
Job is about maybe seeing this blameless, upright God, and then all these bad things happen to him. And sometimes we ask, well, why do bad things happen to good people?
This is not that.
This is.
There are a group of people, God's people, that knew better, but for years chose to not repent of their sin. For years chose to kind of sweep that idolatry under the rug. But just as we talked about in the car that day, it's also a picture of what happens to other people when we do not address the sin of that's in our lives.
And so what I want to do from the beginning is I want to try to make this personal for all of us and not just seek to understand it. Not just to make this historical, but to make it personal. And I want us to all think about right now in our lives, what would be something we would say we like them, maybe for a long time, might have idolized.
And as you think about that, maybe for some of you to kind of maybe jog our memory, maybe it's a job, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a person, maybe it's a thing, maybe it's a status.
And the challenge for them is they had idolized something so long and let their hearts wander and their eyes look around for what's next for so long that they, little by little, took a step away from God.
And so as we read this, I told you from the very beginning, it's true, it's heavy, it's hard to read, but it's very symblomatic, though I think of the heaviness that sin brings in our lives when it's not dealt with.
But also this text is a picture of what happens when we break covenant with God.
It doesn't just impact us, impacts those who are around us and those in the future.
So I want to start with a question. As we think about that one thing we've maybe idolized.
And I want us to ask this because I think we could all agree we have. But to what extent maybe, do we sometimes seek comfort in denial?
What I mean by that is we might deny. Well, it's not really that big of a deal.
Or sometimes our denial shows up as a delay.
And to me, if the delay is rooted in disobedience, that's a denial.
And so maybe we'll say something like, well, in like five years or a few years or at this point in my life, then I'll start to get things right. That's what they said for years.
And so do you think sometimes we get a little bit comfortable denying?
Well, if you do, if you have, because we all have, I want to encourage us all that there's hope in this.
See, that's part of the beauty of what lament is.
Lament is supposed to bring us from a place of pain into a place of hope.
But I want to kind of give a definition as we move forward that it.
It's not just me grieving something, it's me grieving something that hurts God's heart.
So one definition is this, that lament is the practice of a heart that is authentically poured out before God in a time of pain.
But for me, one of the things I struggle with, when I was reading it the first time, kind of going through, I was like, oh, so it's being sad? Well, no, it's way more than being sad. It's not just grieving it's grieving with God. Okay, so let's think about it like this.
What has God basically told us to do? Think about Luke 10, when the lawyer asked him that question, made it pretty simple, right?
He wants us to love what he loves.
That's him, his son, and people, right?
And to hate what he hates. That's sin.
And so he has called us to that.
And so what lamenting is, is when we figure out what that thing is that we know that he hates. That's in our life.
What we do is we're not just sad about it. We're joining him in being sad about it. Or maybe it's something that's going on in our life, an injustice we hear about, and our heart breaks for that.
It's us not just being sad. It's our hearts joining with what God is sad about and bringing it to him because we know he will do something about it, and we know he will listen.
I thought was kind of neat timing. I had to do a paper for school on different spiritual disciplines. And there's a section on Lament.
And one of the people made a comment. His name's Kyle. He said this. I thought it was really good. He said focusing on silver linings is not always more faithful.
It's helpful to characterize lament as an expression of. Of faith rather than a lack of it.
I'm one of those kind of people that I love a silver lining, like the best of them.
I like to try to see, like, the good in everything, the beauty in it, the sunshine and the rainbows.
But not everything is always sunshine and rainbows.
That sometimes one of the most faithful things we can do is to join God in what breaks his heart.
And so as we read this today, and I've alluded to it over and over again, that I don't want us just to go through this text and seek to understand it.
I want us to feel it.
And the reason I want us to feel it is Lamentations was not just meant to be understood. It was meant to be felt. It was a songbook. It was a prayer book.
It was like in those moments where I don't know what to complain or how to cry it out. I know I've done wrong or this is wrong. How do I bring that before God?
That's what this is.
And so, as we have that in mind, let's get into the text. And from the very beginning, in verse one, we see so much neat symbolism from God. Notice what it says here. It says how the Lord in His anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud. He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel. He has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. If you remember last week, Brandon, let us know that what set up this whole book and the destruction that they're feeling, because it was kind of like he described. If you remember back to when the tornadoes came through, you got out of your house and you walked around and you saw that rubble, you're like, oh, my. Like, that's what they're experiencing. They're experiencing the weightiness. But this time, this weight is because of what they did.
And so they're seeing and they're looking around at it. And the cause of this was, yes, there's sin, but God allowed the Babylonians to come in and knock down all of their walls, to knock down their protection. They're vulnerable.
And if you are an underliner in your Bible, I want you to underline a few things. I want you to underline a cloud.
Because clouds, if you remember in the Hebrew narrative, were incredibly important.
Do you remember what a cloud did for God's people by day? What did it do? It guided them by day. It was a symbol of protection. By day, it was a picture of presence, that God was with them. But if you look in the Hebrew of this text, the way it's worded is like he's wearing clouds like a veil, like a widow going to a funeral.
So this is a completely different picture of what the cloud has been before. While the cloud used to symbolize security and presence, it's now a symbol of him mourning. And here's what he's mourning.
If you notice, it says. The next thing I would encourage you to underline is where it says he has not remembered his footstool. Back in Isaiah 66, what it says in verse one is that God is sitting on his throne and the earth is his footstool. It's a picture that God, yes, is up in heaven, but he's connected with creation. So he's basically doing this, like, moving his feet. I'm disconnecting myself from this people.
So not only does he have the veil on, not only has he moved his feet, disconnecting himself, allowing what is happening to happen, it goes on to say this, that he has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel. He has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy. He has burned like a flame, flaming fire. And Jacob, consuming everything around, he has bent his bow. And I want you to underline that phrase. Like an enemy with his right hand set like a foe, he has killed all who are delightful, who were delightful in our eyes. Notice that he's saying he went after who we thought were faithful.
So he's saying, listen, we're not the line of delineation of who is faithful and who's not. Like, well, we thought that was good.
Okay, that's great that you thought that it was good. It wasn't.
And said this in the tent of the daughter of Zion, he poured out his fury like fire.
I love the symbolism here, but it's a hard symbol to take.
The last time we hear about a bow, you remember in the book of Genesis, right after the flood, that one of the things that after God had, you know, gotten ready to dry up the earth and all that kind of stuff, the rainbow came in the clouds.
And the rainbow was a symbol of a covenant.
It was a picture, right, that God was going to no longer flood the earth again.
And one of the things that's interesting, that word bow in the Hebrew is actually the same word for, like, a war weapon.
And so a lot of people point out that the reason why the bow is pointed up is God's going to take that future judgment through Jesus. It's a symbol of him receiving what is supposed to be towards us.
So there's kind of some deep meaning here by him, like taking the bow. It's almost like he's like.
And God's not changing his covenant, but he's reacting to their disobedience. And there's a difference between the two of those. And so in Genesis, the bow was used as a symbol and a promise of mercy. Now, in Lamentations, the bow is a picture of judgment, and that judgment is facing down.
It says this that he laid waste his booth like a garden laid and ruined his meeting place. The Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
Now, notice who he highlights here. Part of the people responsible for the destruction are the leaders.
The leaders saw what was going on and ignored it. The leaders saw what was happening, just kind of swept it under the rug.
But there was nothing faithful about what they were doing.
And in fact, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is I found two studies that were. One was quantitative, one was qualitative, of different people in America, like evangelical church leaders, that when they decide to not be passive, but to be active about what is wrong, that there's actually healing, hope and mercy.
It's kind of like what happened with Nehemiah. Do you remember in Nehemiah, when Nehemiah heard, I think he was like 800 miles away from where the walls were down.
Do you all remember the very first thing Nehemiah did?
He lamented. The very first thing Nehemiah did was wept.
And technically, he didn't have anything to do with it, but his heart broke for what, broke God's heart.
But the lament opened up the door for the action.
So what's interesting is these two studies. One was done by Margaret Didoms, and the other one was several people.
But what they did is in these studies, they were looking at, all right, what happens when leaders, when we lament what's wrong? And I'm not talking about just church leaders, by the way. I'm talking about husbands and fathers and family members. I'm talking about when we see something wrong in our lives. What role can lament play? Well, here's what's really neat. The 2025 study that was on the slide before, it pointed out that leaders who engage in lament reported 88% improvement in emotional processing, honesty with God, and eventually a return to hope.
And in one of the other articles by Ruth Haley Barton, one of the things that she had talked about was, and I agree to me, the forgotten discipline might have been fasting. But lament is probably even more forgotten than fasting. And one of the things that she brought up is that she noticed that when people allowed their heart to break for things that were breaking God's heart, they were in their lives, but also in other people's lives.
Right after that, they usually joined God in what the transforming work actually was, took leadership in it.
There's power in lamentation.
And so then he gives another picture in verse seven. Look at verse seven with me. It says, the Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary.
He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces.
They raised a clamor in the house of the Lord, as on the day of festival. So here's basically what's happening. He's like, you know what? The place where you used to celebrate, where you used to have a good time. Well, you know what we're going to do now?
I'm just letting them have a good time in your area, right? They're celebrating where you used to celebrate.
I know this might be a weird example, but y' all remember when Terrell Owens, I think he'd been traded from the cowboys.
And one of the things he did is he caught a touchdown pass and he did what you're not supposed to do. According to a Dallas Cowboys fan, no one jumps on or stands on the Dallas Star.
Well, he's. And I think he did it not once, but twice. If I remember correctly, he scored a touchdown, went to the middle and did this. Talk about boos. People couldn't stand.
Made them mad. It made them fired up. That's what God's trying to do. He's like, I'm letting them in here. It's not because I don't love you. It's because I do. Like, I think about it, like, if my kid. Okay, this happens. So if one of my kids runs after a ball in the road, and I was like, hey, buddy, could you stop? Let's not do that. Got it. And then they go do it again. I was like, hey, buddy, could we not do that? Because that could be bad. Like, I could keep giving him a hey, buddy.
But eventually, guess what I had to do.
I had to lovingly pop his little leg to help him. Know that if you run after that, it's the pain of that is going to be far greater than that.
That's what's happening, and it's almost so. Don't mistake what God is doing as ungraceful or unmerciful. He's been graceful and merciful for 800 to 900 years.
It would be so incredibly unloving for him to do nothing.
And so he does something.
And so even in this, we see that God is trying to bring about something new. And so notice what it goes on to say in verses 8, 9, says the Lord, determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion.
He stretched out the measuring line.
He did not restrain his hand from destroying. He calls rampart and wall to lament.
They languish together.
Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has ruined and broken her bars. Her king and princes are among the nations. The law is no more. And her prophets find no vision from the Lord.
I'm going to try to explain this like this. Basically, what's happened is what Walls were. Yes, a symbol of protection, but walls were also a symbol of covenant. It was like God was saying, hey, listen, I'm going to put this around you, just so you know, so you have that physical reminder I got you. Okay?
But imagine for a second you are a dad that.
Well, let me just back up. Dads, have you ever put together a playground?
And even, like, while you're putting together the playset, you're like, why did I do this? You know, like, they take a long time to put together. It's a faith building exercise, no doubt, to put together a swing set.
And while you're questioning everything building that you put so much work and effort and time and love into that playset.
And imagine for just a second, you're like, you know what? I'm gonna put this nice little fence around it to keep everything together and, and to keep all the bad out. Maybe you're a mayor, you're like, I'm going to build the greatest playground ever. Kids are going to love it and they're going to enjoy it. And you love, just like that, watching them play in that playground.
You see them enjoying it, you see them loving it, you see them spending time together. They're appreciative of what they have.
But then all of a sudden they start trashing the thing.
They start hurting each other, despising each other, they start idolizing everything else that they don't need to idolize. They're spray painting the thing.
Then all of a sudden you're like, well, what's going on?
And so in essence, he's like, I'm gonna take the wall down.
You don't appreciate what you have. And so this is a form of his discipline. And just like sometimes the hard discipline leads you to not chase the ball that went in the middle of the road.
Just as in the Greek, the idea of padeia was if you didn't love, if you didn't discipline your child, it was a symbol that you didn't love them. God is lovingly disciplining his people.
See, the very thing that was around their life, that was intended for security is now a different picture.
It's a picture that this covenant has now been broken.
And so this is the verse I was telling you about. It was kind of heavy to read.
It says, my eyes are spent with weeping, my stomach is churning.
My bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Because infants and babies faint in the streets in the city.
They cry to their mothers, where's the bread? Where's the wine? As they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom.
You have to wonder that they might be thinking, how in the world did we get here?
Like, we were just having celebrations, we were just having festivals, and now we're having this.
But the same is true of us. Like, you don't just get there overnight.
It's little unrepentant sin after little, unrepentant sin after unaddressed sin after unaddressed sin that little by little by little creeps in.
And we wonder, how did we get here again? It wasn't overnight, but there is hope.
But before that hope gets here, there's one final piece of something that needs to be identified.
And, y', all, this one is a hard one.
Because what God's people did is what's easy to do is when we do something that we kind of like deep down know is not right, sometimes we try to find people that will affirm us.
We try to find people that'll agree with us.
Well, just because the crowd agrees doesn't make it right.
And just because the crowd agrees doesn't make their words true.
Because look what it says. Look in verse 13 and 14, because that was their standard of right and wrong. It says, what can I say for you?
To what compared you, O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you that I might comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea.
Who can heal you then notice where they were getting their validation from?
Your prophets have seen for you faults and deceptive visions.
They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.
Just as it is in our individual sin, in our lives.
It's very easy to find a group of people that will affirm what we're doing.
In fact, you don't really have to look far.
In fact, one of the things I remember from Jason's class is when you're living in a time of loves and likes, it's easy to seek out and to get affirmation and confirmation based off of that.
And so there will always be a group of people that will tell you, hey, everything's good. No crimes committed, Everything's all right. But it doesn't make it true, and it doesn't make their words right.
And so look, in verse 17, it says, the Lord has done what he purposed.
He carried out his word, which he commanded this a long time ago.
He has thrown down without pity.
He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes. When I read this now, I kind of read it as mess around and find out, okay?
And I'm not advocating for counting, but he's like, 1 2. I mean, he counted to a million.
He's been more than gracious. So who are we going to blame?
One of the things that I love.
I love watches, but those near and dear to me know I don't spend a lot of money on on watches. This watch, while it might look nice, was 888 from Walmart. And you too, if you want one, can find one for 888 at Walmart. The problem is it is 7:15. So according to this, I got a while to preach.
So we'll get into Lamentations 3 here in just a second. But I have another watch that was more of like your sporty kind of watch. And I got it for 888. And I think on the side of the watch it said like, do not go beneath like one foot of water or something like that. It was. It was not much. And so I got the thing wet. I was like, why in the world. It's not working well.
Okay, well, Andrew, who do you blame there?
You bought a $8 watch.
Like, what were you really expecting, right? So if the watch goes bad, who do you blame?
The watchmaker or the one wearing it?
That's kind of what he's doing here.
We don't blame the one that made it.
It's the wrongdoer, right? They knew better. That's what he's getting at. So what do we do? I told you, there is hope. Here it is, verse 18.
Their hearts cry to the Lord.
So remember what we talked about earlier. This is no more a superficial response.
My heart is crying out before the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let the tears stream down like a torrent day and night. Give yourself no rest, your eyes, no respite.
Arise. Cry out in the night at the beginning of the night. Watches, pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.
And look what it goes on to say. Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children who faint for hunger at the head of every street.
Remember what we said at the very beginning of why this is such a needed picture. It's a picture of what unrepentant sin looks like and its impact on us, but also as this text in verse 19 describes, its impact on other people too.
I hope we see the power, though, in Lamentation. It's not just being sad. It's being sad with God about what he's sad about, what breaks his heart.
And so this is much deeper than just a mere superficial response.
It's a heart that's connected with God. It's loving what he loves, people hating what he hates. And here's the cool thing, you can do both of those like Jesus does. And so as we think about this, I wanna give you just two or three quick points. Number one is this, that I hope we can see from this, that the lament is something that opens up the door for an honest acknowledgement to be real about the pain that we see over here, or maybe the pain that we see in here.
The second thing, if you look at this text, it talks about how there's healing that starts to take place. Notice how the honesty and the identification then opened up the door as they cry out to God for healing.
We've talked about this a lot here. James 5, 16, right? Confess your sins to one another, and there will be what? There will be healing.
The other thing is to make sure that our hearts break for what breaks God's heart.
So I told you at the very beginning, there is hope. And if you keep reading, I love how he's. It's almost as if he's sitting on the rubble.
He's cried out to God. He's like, look, God, this is.
I know. It's almost as if he's saying, I know you did this and you allowed this.
I know you can still do something.
And so in order for God to do something, he can do what he needs to do, but we also have to do our part. So I think we have to identify two things. Number one, what I asked in the very beginning about that one thing you might idolize, what would you say right now in your life is vulnerable? What in your life should have a wall around it but doesn't?
The second thing I want us to identify is this.
What is it that maybe we've been seeking comfort in, that we've been denying? Like, we know that it's an issue, but it's not that big of a deal. Or we're saying, well, one day, like in 10 years, five years, a few years, next month, I'll work on that.
Denials are disobedience. Delay is disobedience.
So if you're here today and maybe what you want to do is to lament something that's happening in your life, this is, to me, the best place this side of heaven to do that.
If you want to lament something that's going on in the world that you see, like, that's not right.
And I want to ask God to intervene in that.
This side of heaven, this is the best place to do that.
Or maybe you're here and you've never made the decision to put on Christ in baptism to give your life to him, to come out brand new. Let him be in the control center of your life. We can make that happen right here, right now. So whatever it is that you have in need of, please come while we stand and we sing this song.
