What We Learn From Lament, Part 1

Introduction

Lament leads us to God.

Or it should

Lament leads us through grief and heartache.

Or it can

Lament is how live between the already and the Not Yet

At least, how we live WELL and GOD GLORIFYINGLY

Lament is how we mourn.

Lament is how we mourn in such a way that are not consumed or broken by it.

Lament is how we trust.

Lament can teach us to trust.

At the same time....

Lament is how we learn and grow.

We can learn from lament.

Pastor Mark takes the time in his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, to expand upon this reality.

He points out FOUR WAYS lament can teach us (if we are willing to learn)

Series Outline

Big Idea: “Lament allows you to hear the lessons God intends to teach you through pain.”

A Broken World and a Holy God

Hope Springs from Truth Rehearsed

Unearthing Idols

A Road Map to Grace

Sermon Outline

Big Idea: “Lament allows you to hear the lessons God intends to teach you through pain.”

A Broken World and a Holy God

Lament Teaches

Never Forget

Lamentations 1-2 - A Broken World and a Holy God

Broken by Sin

A Turning to God

The Wisdom of Lamentations

Sin is the Real Problem

My Suffering and Sin are not the only problems

Lament awakens the soul

Sermon Body

Lament Teaches

Ecclesiastes 7:4.

Ecclesiastes 7:4 ESV

4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

A wise person is going to use (and allow God to use) suffering, sorrow, and lament for His glory and their benefit.

Pastor Mark notes...

…there is another way lament can help you. It allows you to hear the lessons God intends to teach you through pain. C. S. Lewis famously said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Suffering—at every level—is an opportunity to learn. However, we must be willing to listen. As Nicholas Wolterstorff says in his book Lament for a Son: “I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.” Lament can be a prism through which we see a path for growth.

Lament can be a teacher, instructing our hearts to wisdom; instruction our hearts in truth as we TURN, as as ASK, and as we CHOOSE TRUST.

As we learn to RENEW OUR MINDs upon truth, lament can teach and instruct.

Lament can teach

Lament can remind

It can also be a memorial, helping us to remember the truths we learn along the way.

Why do you think that we have the lament Psalms preserved for us?

Why do you think that Israel SANG these lament songs together on a corporate level?

These lament songs teach, they instruct, the remind, they lead us to God.

Lamentations, this sad and mournful book is anything but bright…and it does not end on a positive note.

But it can be instructive to us.

The book of Lamentations is, as Pastor Mark puts it, “...the most intense and comprehensive minor-key song in the Scriptures.”

It covers the whole gambit of lamenting, mourning, remembering, trusting, and worshipping.

It is a book that invites to reorient our hearts to what is really important.

It both shocks and awes us.

It calls us back to GOD.

It calls us to never forget.

Never Forget

Lamentations is written by the weeping prophet, Jeremiah.

It was written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem in 586BC.

A destruction, by the way, that was right and good, and true.

God was in the right because the people were terribly in the wrong.

Course, God is never in the wrong.

But even Jeremiah notes in the lament, in chapter one, that God was right. He worships God for His rightness in bringing it, even while he laments their state.

The lament of Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations is a reminder.

Writer and Philosopher George Santayana is famous for coining the phrase “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

This phrase has taken on slightly different wordings and forms over the years, though the thought and intent of the statement has remained unchanged.

And the point is, we need reminders, lest we forget and fall back into the same fatal traps that we have found ourselves in time and time again.

Lamentations is a memorial, a reminder of what happens when we cross the holiness and righteousness of God.

It is a teacher, instructing us what happens when our sinfulness crosses with God’s righteousness.

ONE OF THE LESSONS WE CAN LEARN, AND SHOULD LEARN, IS THAT OF OUR SIN AND GOD’S HOLINESS, THE BROKENNESS OF THE WORLD AND A HOLY GOD.

Lamentations, like Psalms, is a collection of poems.

Chapters 1-2 introduce the theme. Chapter 3 is the climax of the book. Chapters 4-5 form the conclusion…one, which I may add, does not end in a Hollywood, happy ever after ending. It does not resolve, but the lament is left hanging open ended.

So, what do we learn?

Lamentations 1-2: A Broken World and a Holy God

We see the book opening with the questions, the frustrations.

HOW is the key word. In fact, the original Hebrew title was the word HOW? And it certainly is the tone of the book.

Lam 1:1.

Lamentations 1:1 ESV

1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.

Lam 2:1.

Lamentations 2:1 ESV

1 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.

How could this have happened? How could God allow this? Do this? How could we survive? Will we survive? How are we to look at or consider the future?

So many questions....many we can relate to at times right?

These questions stem from an understanding that God is behind their calamity.

Lam 1:5.

Lamentations 1:5 ESV

5 Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.

Babylon is the invading, destroying force. And yet, Jeremiah knows the true hand behind it.

Lamentations, lament, awakens us to the reality of a broken world and yet there is still a holy God on the throne.

We are reminded that sometimes suffering comes because of the juxtaposition of our sinfulness and his holiness.

How can such evil exist when there is such a good God on the throne?

Of if God is so good, why does he allow sin bad things to happen?

There is a juxtaposition here…a broken world and a holy God.

Reconciling this is problematic for people.

There is a failure to realize, to see, to understand the reality of our broken world and God’s holiness. There is a failure to see where the true fault lies for our brokenness. There is, at times, a failure to see the glory of God’s holiness that permits the ongoing catastrophe of this worlds brokenness BOTH as a punishment for sin AND a call away from it.

We live in a broken world with sin and death.

In my own processing since my parent’s death’s, I came upon this same meditation and truth.

I ended up at my parents grave yesterday. On a whim. It was not planned. Driving by on my way home, I swung in. At the time, I could not explain why I wanted to be there, in that moment. They were not there, in that plot of grass, in the open field that is the Hephzibah graveyard. It is only their physical remains. And yet, I am physical. Looking back now, a day later, I realize that I am missing their touch, their presence. As crazy as it is, the physicality of their bodily remains being there, and my being where those remains are, makes me feel closer to them. I realize this is not new. This is why so many find comfort in visiting the graves of loved ones who have died and gone before them. But it is new to me. And I had never pictured myself as one who would want to visit the grave of my loved ones. Not because they would not be/were not missed, but rather because truth tell me they are not there. And yet, I am human. I am physical. I was made for connection and intimacy. A reality now absent with my parents. A reality that I had grown used to and delighted in these past two years. So, it was hard. I both longed to be there at the grave, and yet I struggled to get out of the car and walk over. The longing to be near them mixing with the stark reminder, that they are not there and I cannot touch them. I know truth. Why is this so hard? Because death is not natural. It is the sign of brokenness and is the mark of the curse. And it creates in us a longing for eternity and redemption.

Romans 8:22–23 (ESV): 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. This death, this grieving, this suffering has a purpose; to creating longing for that which is to come. It presses us into God and sets our sights upon Him. It keeps us from getting too comfortable in a land which we are sojourning in. We are passing through. This is not our home. Death is a reminder of this. We can and we do hope in this…death’s time is limited. Death’s power is limited. Death’s duration is limited. The God of all things has already overcome it. So, we set our sights and our hope to Him and for the joy set before us, persist. Abba, give us strength to walk in this tension of imminent loss and eternal glory. You are worth the struggle to find and live within that tension. Our hope is in you.

Death, suffering, brokenness, lament is meant to teach us that death is not natural, nor is it final. It is intended to cause us to look beyond this broken world to the Holiness of God; to the one who made it and keeps it.

Lamentations, like other places, awakens us and teaches us about the brokenness of the world.

Broken by Sin

Lamentations 2:2-3.

Lamentations 2:2–3 ESV

2 The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers. 3 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 flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.

God’s anger and wrath over the people’s sin and rebellion is source of their destruction. Lamentations 2 exposes this reality.

Pastor Mark notes...

The picture in the first two chapters of Lamentations is not pretty. The destruction of the city, its culture, and its people is disturbing, but Lamentations is not silent as to why it happened.

Lam 1:5

Lamentations 1:5 ESV

5 Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.

Lamentations 1:8 ESV

8 Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away.

Lamentations 2:14 ESV

14 Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

Sometimes, lament can lead us to the source of our brokenness…and sometimes…it is because of our own sin.

Do not misunderstand me…not ALL our suffering is the result of OUR sin, but all suffering IS the result of SIN.

HOWEVER, it IS possible that some of your suffering IS the result of your sin and it is calling you to acknowledge God’s holiness and our sin…and calling us to repent.

Ricky Chellete’s sermon about the man living in a same sex relationship....who repented…and wanted out…and when he went to move out, the man he had been living with showed up and killed him. “If I cannot have you, no one can.”

He repented and made the right decision to leave, but the sin that put him there in the first place had DIRE consequence.

In the case of Lamentations, their suffering IS the result of their sin and Jeremiah, in his lament exposes that.

Pastor Mark...

Their sinfulness led to their brokenness. The cause of this destruction is central to the message of Lamentations. While God values his people, there is something more important than the preservation of the city: God’s righteousness. Therefore, Lamentations mourns over more than the destruction of Jerusalem. It laments the problem that lies underneath—the sinfulness of the nation. The people abandoned God in their worship, their actions, and even their hearts.

Lam 1:8-9.

Lamentations 1:8–9 ESV

8 Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away. 9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible; she has no comforter. “O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”

Lament, in this case, Lamentations, exists as a memorial to teach about the brokenness of sin and rebellion.

Pastor Mark notes..

Memorials help us remember by making us feel the weight of a tragedy. Without them, we are prone to forget and repeat the mistakes of the past. They remind us that there are lessons to be learned. The smoldering ruins of Jerusalem sent a message, and Lamentations is its memorial. The lesson is clear: God is long-suffering and merciful, but rebellion against his rule has consequences. Lamentations was written to mourn the scale of the brokenness in the world. The fall of Jerusalem reminds us of the powerful nature of sin and the sacredness of God’s holiness. Sin is that bad, and God is that holy.

These memorials are meant to turn us to God.

A Turning to God

Lam 1:18-19.

Lamentations 1:18–19 ESV

18 “The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word; but hear, all you peoples, and see my suffering; my young women and my young men have gone into captivity. 19 “I called to my lovers, but they deceived me; my priests and elders perished in the city, while they sought food to revive their strength.

Jeremiah declares God is right. The lament, the suffering is directing their attention back to God.

Of course, the intended attitude and focus is to be one of repentance and faith.

Though, we know that is not always the case. BUT, the intended affect is to bring about repentance and reconciliation.

So, what are we to learn from lament about a broken world and a holy God? In summary, we can note three things...

The Wisdom of Lamentations

These three things are essentially of summary of things we have already walked through today.

Sin is the Real Problem

All suffering is the result of sin. As I have already noted, Pastor Mark also notes...

I’m not suggesting that every negative circumstance or all suffering you experience is directly connected to a specific sin in your life. To be clear: I’m not saying that every painful calamity is a result of your or my bad choices. Sometimes bad choices are the problem, and God lovingly allows the consequences of our sinful actions to bear their ugly fruit—“The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Heb. 12:6). But we have to be careful not to over-apply the situation in Lamentations.

At the same point, it does not hurt to look at our lives and seek to discern whether or not our suffering is the result of OUR OWN sin.

In this way, lament can teach, and instruct, and lead us to God.

My Sin and Suffering Are Not the Only Problems

Pastor Mark notes...

Our natural bias is to individualize suffering. We might ask questions like “Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?” Pain can make a person rather self-focused. Additionally, it’s far too easy to keep the pain of others at a distance. I typically feel little emotion for tragedies that do not affect me directly. I need to be reminded that my pain is not the only pain.

Having walked the road I have for the past several months, I have seen and been reminded of this danger even more poignantly.

Honestly, I have asked the question, “How have I actually been qualified to shepherd and pastor these past 13 years without having had to endure this level of grief and suffering yet?”

All of my “comfort” walking with suffering people suddenly feels paltry.

It takes work, humility, and grace TO NOT GET LOST IN OUR OWN SELF CENTEREDNESS when pain and sorrow and loss descend.

God has reminded me often in our path of suffering that OUR suffering is NOT THE ONLY suffering.

It is humbling and convicting when it becomes clear our focus has been wrong.

Lament Awakens the Soul

Few things stir and awaken the soul like pain, sorrow, and lament.

It is one of the ways God corrects and reorients our perspective to His.

That is, if we are humble enough to permit Him to do so

Lament can awaken our souls to the suffering of others.

It can drag us out of our apathy and indifference.

It can help us empathize, sympathize, and show compassion to others.

Lament can teach us to see the world as God sees it.

Conclusion

Lament can teach us.

It can remind us

It exposes the broken world we live in and elevates the holiness of God.

And if we humble ourselves and believe, it will lead us to trust.

Application

What were your impressions of the book of Lamentations before reading this chapter?

What lessons have you learned from “the house of mourning”?

List some examples of the brokenness around you or in you that have become too common and unnoticed.

What are some ways that lament can reorient your thinking about the world and yourself?

How would this reorientation affect your view of your own suffering or the suffering of others?

Do you agree that we tend to over-individualize suffering? Why is that the case? How does Lamentations help us to change that?

What are some practical steps—like confession—that you could take to allow lament to remind you what lies underneath our lives?