Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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How Lonely Sits the City
1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.
2 She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
3 Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; she dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.
4 The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.
5 Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.
6 From the daughter of Zion all her majesty has departed.
Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.
7 Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old.
When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her; they mocked at her downfall.
8 Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away.
9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible; she has no comforter.
“O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”
10 The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation.
11 All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength.
“Look, O Lord, and see, for I am despised.”
12 “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.
Hudson Taylor Requested to Pray Because of Cannibals Nearby
When Hudson Taylor went to China, he made the voyage on a sailing vessel.
As it neared the channel between the southern Malay Peninsula and the island of Sumatra, the missionary heard an urgent knock on his stateroom door.
He opened it, and there stood the captain of the ship.
“Mr.
Taylor,” he said, “we have no wind.
We are drifting toward an island where the people are heathen, and I fear they are cannibals.”
“What can I do?” asked Taylor.
“I understand that you believe in God.
I want you to pray for wind.”
“All right, Captain, I will, but you must set the sail.”
“Why that’s ridiculous!
There’s not even the slightest breeze.
Besides, the sailors will think I’m crazy.”
But finally, because of Taylor’s insistence, he agreed.
Forty-five minutes later he returned and found the missionary still on his knees.
“You can stop praying now,” said the captain.
“We’ve got more wind than we know what to do with!”
The assurance that God can and will do … confidence even when we can’t see …
Lamentations is “. . . the cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved Jerusalem, ruined, pillaged, and dishonored after his desperate efforts to save it.”
Lamentations is a book where by Jeremiah’s own admission, he struggles with the crisis of faith.
We are often motivated by the consequences of sin … our own, our communities, the sins that have happened to us … but too often our responses lead in the wrong direction:
Renewed effort at self-righteousness - I’ll make myself pure
Denial of truth -
Reframing of … as long as we are nice … good humans is good enough
Our modern culture interprets this crisis and says that what we need is to return to innocence, which is impossible.
We need to shed our orthodoxy, which is the foundation of truth, and believe in our humanity - particularly our self, which is the essence of the problem, we are our own biggest problem.
Lament: Expressing, Interpreting and Listening
Expression:
A lament is the heartfelt cry of sorrow.
It is a prayer through which a believer pours his or her heart out to God because of the struggles and the tension of the pain of life.
-Lament wrestles with the gap between what the Bible says about God, what we know about Him, and what we experience in the real world.
In lament a believer asks God, “Why?
How? Who are you?”
-A lament is a God-given expression of our pain, wherein we look to Him for answers, relief, and hope.
Interpretation:
Lament also interprets pain.
In its expression, a lament acknowledges that there is more to life than pain or difficulty.
-A Christian lament, therefore, deals with more than just the “thing” that happened, but also with what lies underneath.
It laments the specific issue but also the reality of brokenness which is a part our world, and it laments the delay in God’s final deliverance.
Listening:
Last week we learned that lament also serves to tune the heart.
Entering into lament can serve to awaken us to the needs around us, to the remaining brokenness in our world, or to circumstances that should break our hearts or serve as a warning.
Lament gives voice to tragedy, and in so doing, it reminds us about who we really are and what life is all about.
It is, in that respect, a wake-up call.
The book of Lamentations was written both to give voice to the pain of the destruction of Jerusalem and to remind future generations that Judah had reached the point of “no return.”
Lamentations expresses sorrow, but is also serves as a warning.
Lamentations, especially chapter 1, shows us the brokenness of the world and the holiness of God.
It tunes our hearts to the reality and the sorrow of divine judgment.
It shows us that grace is only amazing because judgment is real.
Chapter one of Lamentations serves as an introduction to the central themes of the brokenness of the world and the holiness of God.
Let’s walk through this poetic chapter and see what we learn.
The Scene of Lament
The very first word of the book actually serves as its title in the Hebrew.
It’s the word “How,” and it is meant to be read both as a question and as a shocking statement.
The author, who I believe is the prophet Jeremiah, even though he is not named, expresses his sorrow at what has happened.
In English, we might express it this way: “How did that happen?”
Or, if I hear my wife say while on the phone, “What!? How!?” I know that something is terribly wrong.
That is the intention of this word and title.
2 Chronicles 36, the situation in the city of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom of Judah is devastating.
After multiple kings were set up and removed,
after multiple deportations, and
after a brutal siege of the city,
the walls of Jerusalem were penetrated, and
the Babylonian army sacked the city.
The temple was stripped of all its gold and vessels of worship, and
it, along with the rest of the city, was burnt to the ground.
The city, the nation, and the people of Israel were devastated.
That is the context for the book of Lamentations.
This first chapter introduces us to the theme and tone of the book.
Each chapter is an independent lament, and the book reaches its climax or turning point in chapter three.
However, chapters four and five do not end with a rosy picture.
Instead, they end with the pain still lingering.
Lamentations does not resolve in a neat tidy manner.
It expresses hope in God’s mercy while the suffering is still happening.
One other thing that you need to know about this chapter:
There are twenty-two verses, and there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Each verse starts with a word whose first letter is the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
It is as though Jeremiah wants us to see suffering from A to Z.
The book is a work of poetry whose language and form are designed to emphasize the comprehensive nature of Jerusalem’s destruction.
This book is more than just a historical record of what happened to the city.
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