How to Grieve Part 3

How to Grieve Part 3

Sovereignty

Lamentations 5:1-22

Intro

We are in the final week of a three-week series on the book of Lamentations. It’s a collection of five poems strategically chosen and put together during a time of terrible grieving and sorrow for the Jewish people. They had experienced all kinds of death at the hands of the Babylonian empire: literal death with the loss of countless of their people, death of their nation, death of their freedom, and the death of their temple. They are a devastated people. At first glance, it can seem like it’s just a collection of depressing poetry, but it serves an incredibly important purpose.

Lamentations teaches us how to grieve. Our culture tends to keep things bottled inside; we praise people who “keep it together.” But part of what we talked about last week is how unhealthy that is.

Story 1

A story of me going through grief

It would have been far wiser of me to let my grief out, to process it with some trusted friends. There are so many things that can cause us to grieve: a friend betrays you, you’re humiliated at school, a class goes horribly wrong, parents’ divorce, a friend or family member dies, you’re cut from the team, etc.

Application 1

Lamentations is a book that models healthy grief for us; it gives us tools for being sad in a way that sees our becoming stronger. All of us are going to have difficult times, if we haven’t already, so these poems from 2,600 years ago are incredibly valuable to us today.

Lamentations Themes: God’s Judgment, God’s Compassion, God’s Sovereignty

There are three major themes throughout Lamentations; the first one is God’s judgment, which we looked at two weeks ago. We spoke of how God’s judgment came in the form of the Babylonians’ conquering and destroying their nation, the temple, and stealing their young people. They were devastated; but at the same time, they recognized their sin brought that judgment, and that God was sharing in their sorrow with them.

The second theme is God’s compassion. Lamentations is not a book with a happy ending; it begins and ends with them in sorrow. Yet, throughout the book there is this thread of compassion from God. It drives home the point that God is like a parent seeing His child suffer; He suffers with His child, He has compassion on His child like a loving parent would.

The third theme is God’s sovereignty, which is a big word for “God is in control of everything.” It communicates the reality that everything happens because God allows it to happen, or because God makes it happen.

The Lord does as He plans. Nothing can happen without God’s permission. This theme is repeated throughout the book. It’s amazing. The Jewish people hated what had happened to them, the grief was overwhelming, yet amid all that they kept acknowledging God’s complete control of everything that happened.

Scripture

This brings us to chapter five. Pull out your Bibles to follow along. There are a few things to notice about this lament, this poem;

Lamentations 5:1-22

22 verses

Begins and ends with a plea to God

It is a collective lament

The lament ends with a paradox

Like chapters 1, 2 and 4, it’s 22 verses. For this final lament, it’s a straightforward poem. It begins and ends with a plea to God. The language has changed again. The first chapter used feminine language to communicate a family relationship with God, while the third chapter used first person language to communicate their unity as a nation. The fifth chapter uses words like “us,” and “we,” to communicate a communal tone, a united voice.

Lamentations 5:1-3 (NLT)

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.

They were so blunt and honest with God in what they experienced and felt. We can learn from that! I think sometimes we don’t realize how direct we can be with God without sinning. Pay attention to the words they used, the things they said;

Lamentations 5:4-7 (NLT)

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 submitted 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!

Part of their frustration and heartache is that they suffered for the sins of people who were long gone! They essentially said, “why do we have to still suffer?”

Lamentations 5:8-9 (NLT)

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 danger they experience was real. Wherever they went, they were at risk of being killed.

Lamentations 5:10-22 (NLT)

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 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 angry with us still?

And that’s the end of the book. Wouldn’t it be nice if it ended with verse 21? One last plea for help? Instead, it ends with verse 22, where they basically said, “maybe you’ve forgotten us, maybe we just don’t matter anymore.”

Application 2

Maybe this is a weird reaction, but I love that the book ends on that note. I think we’ve all had times where we’re deeply disappointed, deeply hurt, and we find ourselves wondering, “Is this it? Is this just the way I’m going to feel from now on? Is this my life now?” We’ve all had moments of hopelessness, or we will. I appreciate reading this and seeing I’m not the only one that has been trapped in those feelings before.

Supporting Scripture

Job is an interesting character to me; I think a lot of people talk about Job and his suffering without actually studying the book of Job. People will encourage each other to suffer like Job, and it comes across as suggesting Job suffered silently, with patience. That somehow, he was righteous in his suffering, because he kept his mouth shut. But the truth is something far different. It’s shocking how bluntly Job speaks to God repeatedly, and God’s response is, “yes, my servant Job is honorable, Job is good.” He was able to bluntly communicate his pain to God without sinning.

Job 3:20-26 (NLT)

“Oh, why give light to those in misery, and life to those who are bitter? They long for death, and it won’t come. They search for death more eagerly than for hidden treasure. They’re filled with joy when they finally die, and rejoice when they find the grave. Why is life given to those with no future, those God has surrounded with difficulties? I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes.”

Job said, “I would rather be dead,” and God was okay with his bluntness. The key is that Job didn’t disrespect God, but he was brutally honest with where he was at. We have something, though, that Job didn’t have. We have something that the Jewish people didn’t have when they would recite Lamentations. Something changed when Jesus died on the cross and rose again, forgiving our sins and restoring us to God. He gave us the Holy Spirit. If we’re believers, now we have God living in us, which gives us a different kind of hope!

Philippians 1:29 (NLT)

For you have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him.

Before Christ came, before we had God living in us, when suffering happened, the natural question was whether God even cared anymore. But Jesus taught something different: that just as He suffered, we will have suffering. Following God does not give us a guarantee that we’re going to be safe, but it does give us a guarantee that God will be with us.

Over and over the New Testament warns believers that following God is not an easy road. It’s almost as if God isn’t so concerned with our physical safety; God is concerned with our eternal safety. Our suffering now is part of the reality of following God, part of the reality of God’s promises for our eternal safety. One of my favorite passages deals with exactly this.

Romans 8:38-39 (NLT)

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Application 3

We have reassurances the Jewish people never had when Lamentations was written. Nothing we suffer can separate us from God; nothing can disrupt His love for us! God’s sovereignty guarantees His love for us even during difficult times, which gives us five big takeaways that we can learn from Lamentations today.

Lessons for Today

We will suffer

God is in control

The promise of a relationship with God

Bible can give us hope

God promises to protect our eternity

The first is that we will suffer. It’s not exactly an exciting thing to teach, but it is a necessary truth for us to understand. Sometimes Christians act like suffering means we’re somehow failing at following God, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Bible promises we will have difficult times. We need to be open about our pain; we need to speak about it truthfully the way Job did. Pretending we’re okay only makes other people feel less safe to admit their suffering. We need to support each other, not hiding our pain.

God is in control. Sometimes things happen that we just don’t understand, and there are no easy answers. The question of “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is too big to tackle today, but what we can take hope in is that God is in control, and God has a plan that ends with us restored to Him. We may not understand all the moments of the plan, but we can trust that it will end the way God intends.

We have a promise of a relationship with God. Even in our worst suffering, we can know that nothing will separate us from God’s love. Like a parent, God feels the pain we are suffering; we are not alone in our difficult times.

The Bible can give us hope. Reading about the Jewish people’s suffering in Lamentations, looking at how Job handled his pain, seeing the countless other stories of suffering throughout Scripture gives me hope. Not because I enjoy suffering, but because I can identify with the people I read about in Scripture. They were not perfect, they had doubts, they had struggles, they suffered, and God stayed with them. If God was able to carry them through suffering, it gives me hope that He can carry me as well.

Finally, God promises to protect our eternity. The passage we looked at in Romans is one of the most exciting passages in Scripture. No matter what we go through, no matter what we do, no matter how we feel, nothing can come between us and God’s love. Our eternity is secure. Nothing can take that away.

Conclusion

Before we close in prayer, let’s take some time to discuss Lamentations together.

Discussion Questions:

Lamentations describes horrible suffering. What stands out to you about the Jewish people’s response to God? What can you learn from it?

The Jewish people would gather every year to recite Lamentations together. In what ways would this be helpful in the grieving process? How would this help them to follow God?

Lamentations 5:19 and 21 describe God as their only hope for restoration and forgiveness. How were they able to see this during the suffering they experienced?

How can we support each other today in times of suffering? How can grieve in healthy ways? What does that look like?

Pray