Sermon Tone Analysis

O Lord, Great is Thy Faithfulness,

(But, What About Mine?)

 

Keeping your yesterdays

Out of your tomorrows

 

Lamentations 3:22-24

 

    The book of Lamentations begins with an obscure word and in an obtuse way.

In the original language we understand that the author begins by simply asking, how?  Upon further examination, we come to understand that maybe this is not such an obscure or obtuse way to begin at all.

The most widely accepted authorship is given to the prophet, Jeremiah.

We find Jeremiah in the city of Judah, witness to a spectacle.

In chapter 1 and 2:  The plight of the People:

God had sent this terrible judgment on His people because His people had rebelled against Him and rejected His warnings; Warnings that had been given to them through the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.

The people were experiencing this judgment because they failed by choice to take heed to

 

Jeremiah’s warnings.

He had warned them that if they persisted in rebelling, God would send the Babylonians.

In chapter 1:1-3-18:  Describes “hopelessness”

    They had three problems, namely:  1) the rod of discipline - Babylon, 2) darkness - picture of defeat and despair, and 3) Jeremiah looked very old, felt hemmed in by walls; felt God had slammed the door on him; his splendor was gone, there was no hope in the city or in the prophet’s hearts; everything hoped for was lost.

Then, they were experiencing God’s judgment because they had held to three false hopes:

q       The Davidic dynasty

q       The sacred temple

 

q       Help from Egypt

 

    From these three false hopes and the error of these people, we get three points that we should

 

 

consider to prevent the demise of our faithfulness to God, namely:

1.     Retreat from your sin actions

2.     Recognize your covenant responsibilities

3.     Revamp your focus

    Faithfulness has been described as a certainty or dependability.

It certainly describes who God is.

No matter what you do, God cannot be unfaithful because He cannot deny Himself ({2 Tim.

2:13}.

He is steadfast and trustworthy.

He keeps His promises {Heb.

10:23}.

Jeremiah had the reputation of being the weeping prophet, and rightly so.

He had much to weep about.

Jerusalem was in a mess.

Not much unlike God’s people today.

In Lamentations we find that the cause of many of their problems stemmed from just plain bad teaching and leadership from some of their priests

 

and prophets.

The author said that the prophets said so many foolish things that were just false to the core.

They did not point out the sins of the people.

Instead, they painted false pictures and filled them with false hope.

They had itchy ears and wanted their fleshly desires satisfied, so they were opposed to the truth of Jeremiah and Isaiah.

These two were not popular; they were not funny; they were not playing with God’s Word.

Some prophets fed the people false hope.

False hope is fake hope; false hope is misleading hope; false hope is deceiving hope.

Not so unlike today.

Paul told Timothy that the people would flock to the preachers who told them only the thing that they wanted to hear.

People, and by people I mean those who call themselves people of God, they don’t want to hear that the soul that sins it shall surely die.

You don’t believe me?  Watch this:

   

    The church has bought into the world’s redefined definitions of sin:

q       When you drink yourself into a stupor, beat up on everyone in the house and show nothing but disregard for your fellow man, that is no longer called sin; those are actions resulting from a disease called alcoholism.

q       When American Baptist, Episcopalian and Methodists church conventions embrace, promote

  or protect homosexuality, that is not sin, that     is allowing for an alternative lifestyle.

A     lifestyle that would seek to corrupt the minds   of our young children, confuse and distort the   clear teaching of the Word of God, a sinful     lifestyle that now promotes itself as “a gift   from god”.

q       When a State Superior court judge is removed from his court, stripped of his career and humiliated publicly and labeled a lawbreaker

 

because he chooses to display The Ten Commandments in the court building, and the judge that brings the order against him is called a do-gooder; that is calling good evil and evil good in the Bible, a sin.

But the world calls it separation of church and state.

So we come to Lamentations where the author is mourning and wailing and asking how?  How was he going to cope or deal or continue after the terrible tragedy of the destruction of Jerusalem?

Let’s look at the tragedy through Jeremiah’s eyes.

God had made a covenant with David that his house would never perish and that one of his descendants would forever sit on his throne {2 Sam.

7}.

We know that this covenant was fulfilled in Jesus Christ as Joseph was from David’s line.

The people thought that this meant that nothing could happen to David’s throne.

They expected the Lord to protect the Royal dynasty and keep the

 

covenant he had made with David, but they didn’t want Him to keep the covenant He made with the nation before they entered the Promised Land.

Israel’s title to the land came through the Abrahamic Covenant, but their possessing and enjoying the land depended on their obedience to the covenant; serve the Lord and Him only!

Secondly, they believed that the Lord would not permit anything to happen to His holy temple.

Jeremiah warned Judah not to trust in lying words, but they did not believe that fat meat was and is greasy.

They were proud of the city and the temple.

It set on a hill and they thought it to be impregnable, mostly because the Lord’s house was there.

It was called the daughter of Zion, the daughter of Judah and the daughter of Jerusalem.

But now she was desolate.

Once she was a princess

 

who had collected tribute from other nations, but now she was a needy nation herself and forced to give up her treasures just to get the everyday necessities.

So bomber out - count pennies; consider joining the “spare change” people.

Instead of trusting God, Judah had trusted many nations (lovers and friends), but now she was forsaken.

(Say:  Friends have limits).

Judah even worshipped the gods of other nations.

She had rejected the Lord, her allies had abandoned her, and therefore, she had no comfort.

And lastly, the people believed that Egypt would come to their aid.

Hoping for the intervention of Egypt was:

q       Pure illusion

q       Abraham sought refuge in Egypt and got into trouble

q       In the wilderness journey, Israel repeatedly wanted to go back to Egypt, but whenever

 

Israel put faith in Egypt, the nation always proved to be a broken reed.

Simply, they looked to the world for help instead of seeking after God with all their hearts.

They forgot that God’s chastening is an expression of His love, a tool He uses to mature His children.

A judge punishes a criminal in order to uphold the law, but a father chastens a child in order to build character into the child and to secure the child of his love.

The leaders of Judah and most of the people had replaced living faith with dead superstition.

They ignored the covenant and depended on the presence of the temple and its sacred furnishings.

Even Jeremiah focused on himself instead of the Lord.

He was in pain over God’s wrath on the nation.

He had proclaimed God’s message and warning for 40 years, but the people had not listened.

Even as his proclamations came to past,

 

the people still did not respect or listen to him.

Instead they sang disrespectable songs about him.

The prophet experienced no “shalom”.

He cried out “My splendor is gone.

Everything I’d hoped for from the Lord is lost.”

Utter despair.

Chapter 3:19-39:

    But this was the turning point for Jeremiah.

His lament caused him to retreat from sin, recognize his covenant responsibilities and to refocus on the Lord.