Sermon Tone Analysis

*Inscription: Writing God’s Words on Our Hearts & Minds*

*/Part 58: Wrath and Mercy/*

*Lamentations 3:21-33*

*/August 14, 2011/*

* *

 

Prayer

 

*Scripture reading: Lam.

3:21-26*

 

A neglected book

 

Q   Did you recognize that verse from the *worship* song?

 

/The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases/

/His mercies never come to an end,/

/They are new every morning/

/New every morning/

/Great is Your faithfulness, 0 Lord/

/Great is Your faithfulness/

/“The Steadfast Love of the Lord”/

 

It is a moving, encouraging passage, yet like last week’s sermon, it’s context makes it much deeper and richer.

Q   How many of you have read Lamentations?

It’s not a *popular* book; it has the distinction of being the most *depressing* *book* in the Bible.

It is a collection of five poems of lament.

·         They were probably written by *Jeremiah*, as he walked through the *utter* *destruction* of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, 586 BC.

 

*Lamentations 1:1-4 * How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!

How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations!

She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.  2 Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks.

Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her.

All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies.

3 After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile.

She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place.

All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.

4 The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts.

All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.

This is about *11* *years* *after* last week’s passage when Babylon conquered Judah, exiled the elite and put their man on the throne.

Judah since rebelled (against God’s instruction) and Babylon decided they had enough of this troublesome nation and *laid* *siege* to Jerusalem.

For almost *two* *years*, Jerusalem was cut off.

The city simply ran out of *food*.

Around that time, Babylon broke through the walls and destroyed the city.

Lamentations remembers the scene:

 

*Lamentations 4:5-10 * 5 Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets.

Those nurtured in purple now lie on ash heaps.

6 The punishment of my people is greater than that of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment without a hand turned to help her.

7 Their princes were brighter than snow and whiter than milk, their bodies more ruddy than rubies, their appearance like sapphires.

8 But now they are blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets.

Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as a stick.

9 Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food from the field.

10 With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed.

I *cringe* reading this passage, especially out loud.

It is awful, upsetting, leaves you feel dirty.

No wonder it’s ignored!

Q   *How* do you *preach* on this?

And why would you?

 

 

schindler’s List

 

But as I read it, I caught up in its *poetry*, its *raw*, *brutal*, and *graphic* power and realized that we have a *modern* *equivalent* of Lamentations in the American Arts:

 

Q   How many of you have seen “Schindler’s List“?

That is one of the most powerful movies made.

It is *graphic* in every way possible – *death*, *nudity*, *injustice*.

It is *poetry* on film, *mixing* of *horrors* and *beauty*, and it ends with hope – that even with such *evil* there is *goodness*.

·         I consider showing the *trailer*, but think I couldn’t handle it; it was all I could do not to cry watching it in Starbucks.

If you *understand* *Schindler’s* List, then you are half of the way to understanding *Lamentations*.

It’s one thing to *describe* a *horrific* scene – lots of movies do that, but to do it well is another.

Schindler’s List didn’t win an Oscar because lots of people died, but because we as the viewer were *swept* *up* in the emotions of the event.

Remember how Schindler’s List was filmed in *black* and *white*, as if to somehow *mute* the *horrors*?

And remember the one little girl in the *red* *coat*, forcing us to shift our focus from a nameless mass to one specific person and to follow her story?

Lamentations is *carefully* *written* poetry.

It is made up of 5 separate poems.

Four of them are *acrostics*, not like those silly Facebook “let’s see what your name means,” but starting at aleph and ending at taw, it is all of their *suffering* from “*A to Z*.”

And is uses a unique *structure* to reinforce the pain: it alternates between *3 and 2 words per line*.

As you read it in Hebrew, it almost feels like you are *limping*.

·         I actually put on the *soundtrack* to Schindler’s List while I read Lamentations and was swept away by the *harsh* *beauty*.

Divine wrath

 

Like all great art, Lamentations has a *point*.

In Schindler’s List is the *power* of *one* *man’s* *compassion*.

But Lamentations is a showcase of God’s *mercy* and *wrath*.

·         It’s significant *Babylon* is *never* *mentioned* in Lamentation; that’s like not mentioning the Nazis in Schindler’s List.

NIV *Lamentations 2:5-7* The Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel.

He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds.

He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

6 He has laid waste his dwelling like a garden; he has destroyed his place of meeting.

The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and her Sabbaths; in his fierce anger he has spurned both king and priest.

7 The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary.

He has handed over to the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast.

*God* has risen up against his people.

All this has happened to them in *punishment* of their *wickedness* and *idolatry*, just as they were warned.

Not just that, but also for this *ongoing* *disobedience*.

In Jeremiah, God kept saying that he was punishing them by allowing the Babylonians to rule over them, but they could lessen the pain by submitting to it, yet they refused.

Misunderstanding wrath

 

Again, *preaching* this stuff is a *challenge*: How does this apply to us?

Does this mean that *natural* *disasters* are still God’s *judgment*?

 

“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.

To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s charioteers...” Jerry Falwell

 

Jerry Falwell, after 9~/11: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.”

Or Pat Robertson saying that the Hurricane Katrina was judgment for abortions in America and the Haiti earthquake (in which up to 200,000 died) was because they had made a pact with the Devil.

Q   Could they be *right*?

Remember what I said about *errors* *traveling* in *pairs*?

We tend to go to one extreme to avoid another.

We tend to either *misunderstand* God’s *wrath* or his *mercy*.

These men misunderstand God’s wrath: They were not *prophets*, God did not appoint them.

They seem to me to be *opportunistic* *crackpots* who used tragedy to promote their own *agenda*.

There is a huge problem with their pronouncement of judgment: It completely *misses* the *Biblical* *pattern* – God warns, warns some more, then warns some more with specific threats, then follows through, then explains.

·         God is not like a *abusive* *father* that smacks his kid then makes up a reason, which is how some of you view him.

These guys are looking at it after the fact and saying “it must have been because of this *personal* *soapbox* of mine.”

Without *revelation* from God (such as the prophets had), we *lack* the *perspective* to know what God causes and what he allows.