Lamentations 3 - Complaining: A How to

Victories: 1. Awana is coming to an end this week 2. Sunday evening - Biblically addressing self-harm

Prayer: Upland Community Church - Mark Biehl

Missionary Prayer: Doug & Jenny McGee / China - Pray for the women of the Starfish Project

In Jesus’ Name I pray.

Intro

Have you ever been hurt or wronged and then blown up in anger at someone or something totally innocent because of it? When I picture this I see baseball players and golfers. You see when baseball players are upset at a call or at their own performance they quite publically blow up and since they have things like bats and helmets at their desecration they use them to destroy water jugs, cups or pretty much anything else in their way. Golfers do similar things but it usually includes breaking clubs or throwing them into the nearest pond. When we see this happen it can be amusing because it is almost like watching a kid throwing a tantrum, it’s cringy but hard to take your eyes off of.

The harder part is when that anger is pointed not at something but at someone. When we are hurt we can tend to lash out and hurt others who are in our path. Sometimes we excuse these outbursts as just us being Hangry, they’re just blowing off steam but there is the saying, “hurt people, hurt people” and while we may not mean to our words or our actions to hurt they do. Our words and actions cause much pain when we allow them to get out of control. We spoke this last Sunday night about letting our emotions run away with us, because when our emotions are strong they tend to overwhelm every other part of our lives. One of the metaphors used by this is an orange. When you squeeze an orange what comes out? The juice right? Is the squeeze to blame for the juice? No, the squeeze just brings out what is already in the orange. The correlation then is that when we are squeezed what comes out of us. If we are are allowing our emotions to drive our lives then guess what happens when our lives are squeezed? Those emotions come spilling out and more often then not they end up on everyone around us. However, it is not like we can say that emotions are always bad because they are not. The truth is we are created to have emotions and we can’t suppress them like Vulcan’s, we feel things and those things cause us joy and pain, gladness and hurt, happiness, and worry. When we do this or we experience these moments of trial, trauma and stress our outbursts can be passed over as being excusable because of the situation; but is it? The emotions in themselves are not the problem it is how we let them influence our lives that matters.

When I brought you the message from chapter 1 a couple of weeks ago we looked at the first symbol the U-Turn which was meant to take these moments of sadness and mourning and turn us to God. Now we are going to take on the second of the logos and that is this one (circled x). This one we are calling the complaint symbol because when we are squeezed complaints naturally spill out of all of us, but complaint isn’t or at least shouldn’t be the end of our journey. Our scripture today is Lamentations chapter 3 and we are going to see Jeremiah’s emotions spill out of him in the form of complaints and we are going to see how he deals with those emotions. Join me as we read Lamentations 3:1-18.

Different ways to Complain

Jeremiah is sad in these verses. Jeremiah watched as God allowed his country Israel to fall apart. Jeremiah watched as his friends and family were taken away. Jeremiah watched as his beloved city of Jerusalem was destroyed. And then Jeremiah was given the task by God to tell the people why this had all happened. Jeremiah had to tell this people who had just lost everything that it was all their own faithlessness, their own evilness, their own hatred of God that had caused it all. Imagine the trauma he endured during this time! He was squeezed and the emotions came tumbling out.

His words speak of this, Lamentations 3:1 “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.” It is this affliction that is causing Jeremiah to throw an all out fit and he is placing all the blame on God. As we look at these choice words that Jeremiah has for God in these first 18 verses I don’t necessarily fault him as he says them through the tears of trauma, remember “Hurt people, Hurt People”. In fact, I can hear in these verses my own words which have come out of my mouth when I am in pain. Remember Jeremiah was known as the weeping prophet and when I read these words I cannot help but hear them through tears, through gritted teeth and through fits of rage. It is the type of emotional outburst we don’t exactly expect out of a mature adult let alone a religious leader but in much the same way we wouldn’t turn the channel when the manager is kicking dirt and yelling his head off at the umpire we can’t really turn away from these words either. Jeremiah is complaining to God and his complaints... and let me stop and let you hear me say this… His complaints aren’t wrong and they aren’t sinful.

How can I say that when it appears that Jeremiah is blaming God for every bad thing that has ever happened in his life? I mean just look at verses 16 - 18. Let me say these words from Jeremiah one more time, “My strength and my hope Have perished from the Lord.” This seems pretty concrete that Jeremiah has stopped believing, but has he?

When we are squeezed in this life we can take our complaints to God in 1 of 3 ways, we can Blame and Deny, be Pious for Jesus, or Lament and Trust.

Let’s take a look at that first one.

Blame and Deny

This is where most people get caught up when they look at religion as a whole. The idea of religion is great as long as God always does exactly what I want Him to do. When things are going well we can look at our religious beliefs and we can feel pretty confident that God is good, “I am well taken care of, and therefore I can trust God with my future.” However, when things aren’t so good or maybe they are absolutely horrible then our penchant is to place blame. Remember we just got squeezed and now what starts coming out is the emotional juice. We are angry that God would allow this to happen to me. Lets use the language that Jeremiah uses, Lamentations 3:3–6. God in these verses is to blame for everything from aging to death and as we read earlier this just keeps going on and on. This is where we see Jobs wife in Job 2:9 “Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!””

What happened to Jobs wife and anyone who believes that God is only God when good things are happening quickly goes from blaming God to denying his very existence or at the very least denying that he holds any power. Pain and suffering aren’t just words they are powerful emotions that cause us to rethink our lives and rethink what we believe in. When we are squeezed by the bad things that happen to all of us what are we going to hold onto. If your version of god is only good when there is no pain and when there is no suffering then you will probably blame Him for everything that has gone wrong and in the same instant you will deny that He ever existed.

Is this what we see happening here in Jeremiah’s life. Is he on the verge of blaming God and then denying God’s power and maybe even existence? If all we looked at were the first 18 verses then you might come to that conclusion. But let’s read a little further. Lam. 3: 19-21

Pious for Jesus

These 3 verses mark a turning point in this chapter because Jeremiah turns from his complaining to remembering God once again. He doesn’t deny in these verses that the bad stuff has ever happened but he hasn’t exactly figured everything out just yet either. We are going to see Jeremiah take a significant step towards trust in God in the next few verses but I want to camp here for just a second.

When our lives are squeezed the emotional juice comes out and in some cases what comes out is the sickly sweet saccharine side of Christianeeze. What I mean by that is sometimes when the hard stuff of life hits there are those people who have every Christian sounding cliche they can say ready at the drop of a hat. Nothing is ever really wrong because “God never let’s you down” and “Everything is going to be OK”. Their version of life begins and ends with denying that anything is wrong. And even if there is something truly wrong it is just their cross to bear and they are going to be OK. They don’t really live in the real world where bad things happen and it sucks to have to go through it sometimes. We don’t live in a “Leave it to Beaver” type world where every problem can be handled in 30 mins or less and never includes anything hard than a stern talking to by Dad and the opposite is that we aren’t monks who have take vows of suffering and grief. We can both be angry that bad stuff happens and we can deal with it without putting on our “pious for Jesus” attitudes.

Life is hard! Stop expecting it to be any different, but that doesn’t mean that you are doomed to live a life of solitude and hopelessness.

Lament and Trust

If we take a step back from the situation, we have to ask ourselves if God deserves what Jeremiah is throwing at Him. Does God deserve our complaints? Has God made Jeremiah walk in darkness? Has God surround Jeremiah in bitterness and woe? Has God ambushed Jeremiah like a lion? Has God broken Jeremiah’s teeth with gravel and sapped all of strength, peace, and hope? In a way, Yes. God has done all these things to Jeremiah because God has allowed all of Israel to fall. This is one of those really hard questions that we tend to shy away from but if God is all knowing and all powerful as He says that He is then… John 1:3 states, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” God doesn’t get to claim that He knows everything and causes everything to come into being and then get to deny that the hurt and pain that is in this world is out of His purview. But God doesn’t deny that He has allowed the bad stuff to happen to us. Isaiah 45:6–7 says, “That they may know from the rising of the sun to its setting That there is none besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things.” This tells us that God is God over all and nothing happens that He is not aware of. But don’t for a second think that this proves that God is not good, or that God is the author of evil.

Pastor John MacAuthor said this about the Gods role in the bad things that happen in this world, “God is certainly sovereign over evil. There's a sense in which it is proper even to say that evil is part of His eternal decree. He planned for it. It did not take Him by surprise. It is not an interruption of His eternal plan. He declared the end from the beginning, and He is still working all things for His good pleasure (Isaiah 46:9–10 “Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure,’”.

Lament

Therefore if God knows about and has planned for the evil that is in this world how are we as believers to deal with the squeeze of that evil on our lives. Well as Jeremiah points out it is OK to complain to God as long as it helps us to realize that we can’t answer any of our complaints but God can. This bring us back to this idea of Lament and in this case we start our lament with complaining because whatever it is that you are going through its rough and it hurts and you might feel alone and without hope. Pastor Mark Vroegop says, “Lament is the language of a people who believe in God’s sovereignty but live in a world with tragedy.”

Let me say that another way. Christians lament because they know that in this world there is going to be bad stuff but God is still good. How does this differ from the person who is Pious for Jesus or just sickly sweet oblivious? We don’t believe that God caused these bad things to happen to us but we do believe that in God’s sovereign will we will be made better through them and God will be there to help us get through it all.

I want you to hear this. God isn’t going to free you from all of life's hurts and pains this side of heaven. In fact, even as Christians you are going to struggle with the sins of your past and the desires of your present and it will continue on into the future. If you are looking out today at those around you sitting in the pews and thinking that you are the only one here today suffering with sinful thoughts or really hard lives, or depression, stress, anger etc. then you are fooling yourself. We are sinful human beings every last one of us including me and we are not and never will be perfect this side of those pearly gates but we serve the God who is and who gives us mercy. It is this mercy which Jeremiah finally turns to. Read Lam. 3:22-27

Trust

Jeremiah spent a lot that time complaining about all that had gone wrong, and yet here in these verses His complaints drew him toward God not away from Him. The same thing happens to David did in Psalm 13:1–2“How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?” but Davids complaints drew him to the promise of God’s salvation, Psalm 13:5–6 “But I have trusted in Your mercy; My heart shall rejoice in Your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, Because He has dealt bountifully with me.”

These complaints of David just like the complaints of Jeremiah are raw and harsh. Your own complaints for the suffering and pain you have endured or are enduring in this life might be equally as raw and harsh but that is not where our complaints should end. After all of these complaints Jeremiah remembered that God had remembered him and that God had not abandoned him. God showed Jeremiah great mercy and not just one mercy but mercies that keep renewing every time he needed it.

You see what Jeremiah teaches us in these verses is that life is even though life is hard, God can be trusted. Life is difficult but God is faithful. Our lives are marred by sin but God is Good. If we will wait and trust in the promises of God then God will show us His faithfulness and His goodness. God isn’t afraid of our complaining, and He isn’t afraid of our tantrums because He knows that if we really will seek Him out God will be there for us in our greatest times of need. Let your complaint be your means of remembering God’s promises. Let the squeeze of this sinful world drive you to your knees and let God spill out of you onto others. Lament and cry out to God and see if His promises are true, see if you to will be given mercies that renew and refresh. Lamentations 3:24 ““The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” And the greatest promise of all is God’s promise of salvation.

Gospel

Jesus died for our sins and because He did we can place our belief in that sacrifice. 1 John 1:9 says, “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have the promise of God that if we ask for forgiveness and believe in the saving power of Jesus we will be saved. And from the saving power of Jesus, we become new creations. 2 Cor. 5:17 states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” This means that as Christians we get a fresh start we aren’t who we used to be and we have the power of God behind us to change who we are becoming. Glory to God in the highest for He has saved my soul and He can save yours to if you will let Him. If you aren’t sure then you can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads.

‌Dear Lord, I know that I’m a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I repent of my sins and I ask you to come into my life and take control. I make a commitment to follow you, and I trust you as my Lord and Savior.

‌Friend if you prayed that prayer today I ask that you come and speak to me after the service.

‌Benediction: Colossians 3:15 “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful.” Amen: