Sermon Tone Analysis
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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.
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.
Lam 2:1.
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.
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