Lamentations 2: Light through darkness

CIT: The lord has caused the pain of Israel

CIS: Expressing the darkness through lament, we receive the light.

SO: That the Soldiers may feel free to explore and express the darkest part of their emotions because of the work of Christ.

Last Sunday I spoke to you about what lament is, why we as christians should lament, and how to lament. And we really focused on the importance of being honest with God. That God wants all of you, not just the positive emotions but the negative as well.

Today I want to speak to you about the darkness that we all experience from time to time and how lament can help us through those times.

In Lamentations 2, we get a glimpse of the pain and darkness that Jeremiah was in after the destruction of Jerusalem. How he felt that God or Adonai, the savior of his people, was the cause of this destruction and pain.

Have you felt that way before? Have you felt betrayed by God or someone you felt who was supposed to be on your side? Have you felt as Jeremiah did in verse 5? Adonani, the one who delivered them from Egypt, out of slavery and the slave masters who inflicted so much pain is now the source of pain?

In verse 7 we read that it felt as if God even rejected the altar, the very place where God and man met. The place where man went to make sacrifices and restore their relationship with God, is now not a place of forgiveness and mercy but a reminder of the painful past.

There is so much pain in these verses that it is hard to imagine the dark place Jeremiah was in to pen these words.

And this type of suffering is not left in the Old Testament. Many people today still experience such suffering. The suffering inflicted by an abusive family member. The very person or people who were meant to protect us and deliver us from such sufferings are the source. Not giving us light but covering us in darkness.

One of the worst affects of such suffering is the voicelessness that comes with it. The darkness is one thing, having no one to hear us is another. Feeling like you want to scream but even if you did, no one would listen. And one of the beautiful things about lament is that gives space to the sufferer to be heard. Notice how it’s not speaking for the sufferer. Many other things that people have tried to do for those who suffer are on behalf of sufferer. On behalf of the homeless I will speak, on behalf of the widow… the abuse victim… I will speak. That is not what we who suffer need. We don’t need someone to speak for us. We need a space to be heard.

And that what lament offers. Through turning to God, naming our suffering, asking for God to act, and trusting in God, we are given that space.

1 John 5:14-15 “14 This is the confidence we have before him: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of him.”

Now in english this is a little hard to understand why I went here but in the greek its much clearer. in the greek, this doesn’t mean that he will give us anything we ask for. It means that we have the privilege before God, as his children to have a freedom of speech in his thrown room. That is the kind of father we have through Christ his son, that we are blessed with the privilege to be in his presence and we can ramble, vent, cry, scream and ask god to act. And we can trust that he not only has heard us but we can trust that he will act.

Benediction:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.