Sermon Tone Analysis

One of life’s most puzzling problems has been the enigma of the presence, persistence, and power of the evil, pain, and suffering experienced by mortals.

‘Why’, we all seem to ask, ‘is this happening to me?

Why is all of this necessary?

Will there never be an end to the mental distress which comes from suffering?’

One of life’s most puzzling problems has been the enigma of the presence, persistence, and power of the evil, pain, and suffering experienced by mortals.

‘Why’, we all seem to ask, ‘is this happening to me?

Why is all of this necessary?

Will there never be an end to the mental distress which comes from suffering?’

The difficulty is only sharpened all the more for the believer who attempts to explain how a good God can permit hardship and suffering that weigh so heavily on even the most faithful of His children.

What can be done to avoid suffering, if anything?

What is one to do when he or she is in the midst of such anguish?

Can anything be said to comfort and aid a friend or loved one who is deep in the throes of suffering?

The Old Testament contains one of the most comprehensive surveys of the problem of suffering found anywhere.

However, the emphasis of those writers fell on the purpose and result of suffering rather than on the definition, origin, or even rationale for suffering.

They were fully persuaded that ours is a moral order guided by a merciful, benevolent, and gracious Lord who is actively involved with the current plight and daily affairs of all men, nations, and events.

Although believing men and women might have grown impatient and perplexed over what appeared to them to be disparities and inequities between the prosperity of the wicked and the grief of the righteous, still the Old Testament was firmly convinced that God’s moral order in the governing of the universe would be vindicated.

In the book of Lamentations, more than perhaps anywhere else except for its individualistic expression in the book of Job, we are led into an experience of suffering and communal pain on a scale seldom endured by many individuals or nations.

All too frequently the subject of suffering is avoided, or the realities of human sadness and divine involvement are minimized.

Lamentations will not yield to any of these cheap ‘cures’.

Instead of cure-all’s, it will direct us to the faithfulness and gracious character of our God.

No book of the Bible is more of an orphan book than Lamentations.

The results of this neglect is a church that is weak and shallow.

A church membership that is ripe for the enemy of our souls to plant seeds of heresies or doubts.

Kaiser, W. C., Jr. (2004).

Grief and pain in the plan of God: christian assurance and the message of Lamentations (pp.

7–8).

Fearn, UK: Christian Focus Publications.Depression begins with discouragement.

Discouragement altars the way we look at life.

Many people look into the future and all they feel is a suffocating darkness.

This feeling keeps them from even wanting to get out of bed.

Their feelings tell them that life is bad now and it’s not going to get better.

The Lord created us with emotions, and He has given us the book of Lamentations to teach us how to handle our emotions.

The Lord created us with emotions, and He has given us the book of Lamentations to teach us how to handle our emotions.

The book of Lamentations is a book of 5 laments from the prophet Jeremiah.

These laments are poems about how bad everything is.

Though the book is dark it is a work of art.

There are 5 chapters with 4 having 22 verses (1,2,4,5) and 1 having 66 verses (3).

Each of the poems is an acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet where every verse corresponds with a letter of the 22 letter Hebrew alphabet.

The exception to this is chapter 3. It is a triple-acrostic with each letter has 3 verses associated with it thus the reason for its 66 verses.

Jeremiah uses this method to show us that he is describing suffering from A-Z.

Jeremiah communicates another emotion in his structure of chapter 5.

While it contains 22-verses it is void of the acrostic scheme of the previous four chapters.

Why has he changed his form of writing?

I believe his abandonment of structure shows us that his life has totally come off the rails.

He has lost all sense of rhyme and reason.

Eugene H. Peterson has captured this truth most poignantly:

One of the commonest ways to deal with another’s suffering is to make light of it, to gloss it over, to attempt shortcuts through it.

Because it is so painful, we try to get to the other side quickly .

Lamentations provides a structure to guarantee against that happening.

The structure is from aleph to tau or, as we would say, from A to Z.

It contains the alphabet of suffering.

Lamentations is being attentive to suffering.

It is important to pay attention to everything that God says; but it is also important to pay attention to everything that men and women feel, especially when that feeling is as full of pain and puzzlement as suffering.

The acrostic is a structure for taking suffering seriously … (Lamentations) repeats the acrostic form.

It goes over the story again and again and again and again and again—five times.

The first three chapters have the same grouping-patterns that involve three lines to a stanza.

In chapters 1 and 2, each three-line stanza begins with the next letter of the alphabet.

A crescendo (an increase in loudness and intensity) is signaled in chapter 3 when each of the three lines begins with the same letter of the alphabet and is given separate verse numbers.

The fourth poem only contains two lines to each stanza and thus indicates a decrescendo (a gradual decrease in loudness or intensity).