Sermon Tone Analysis

Reference: I leaned heavily upon Mark Vroegop book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy to help provide clear, biblical wording when describing Lament.

Introduction

We very likely will not get to the book of Lamentations tonight.

To better appreciate Lamentations we need to consider the purpose and value of lament.

I could see some objections.

Why think upon these things?

The purpose of lamenting is not to dig a hole of deep emotion and fall into to it.

It is too dig in God’s Word until we find a solid bedrock.

It is to offer hope.

Introduction to lamenting and lamentations.

Lament is an important and biblical category that we need to understand and embrace.

We need lament not only because it is in the Bible, but also because there is far more pain in our church than we even realize.

To cry is human but to lament is Christian.

- Vroegop

Lament

A lament gives voice and words to emotions and questions that believers face in the midst of suffering, pain, and hardship.

Laments wrestle with at least two questions: “Where are you, God?” and “If you love me, why is this happening?”

Since the audience of a lament is God, every lament is really a prayer.

It takes faith to pray prayers of lament.

Lament is both an act of worship and a means of leading us to worship.

Lament keeps us out of two spiritual ditches: “You owe me” and “It’s over.”

Lament acknowledges the ultimate cause of suffering and longs for the promised resolution.

Christians can truly lament because they understand the full story of redemption.

You know the full story that teaches us in the darkest of days God is not absent but is on a cross.

Crying expresses sorrow over pain while Christian lament goes further; it interprets the cause and the trajectory of pain.

Let us look for these things in the example of a lament given in Psalm 77

Psalm 77 (KJV 1900)

To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of Asaph.

1 I cried unto God with my voice, Even unto God with my voice; and he gave ear unto me.

(element of trust in knowing where to direct our cause)

2 In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: My sore ran in the night, and ceased not: My soul refused to be comforted.

(acknowledging that there is a wrestling in the soul)

3 I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed.

Selah.

(pause and think upon these things - the great enemy of lament is a frantic pace to move on from hurt))

4 Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

5 I have considered the days of old, The years of ancient times.

6 I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: And my spirit made diligent search.

( wrestle honestly with the tough tension related to the mystery of God’s plans and purposes.)

7 Will the Lord cast off for ever?

And will he be favourable no more?

8 Is his mercy clean gone for ever?

Doth his promise fail for evermore?

9 Hath God forgotten to be gracious?

Hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?

Selah.

10 And I said, This is my infirmity: But I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.

11 I will remember the works of the Lord: Surely I will remember thy wonders of old.

12 I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.

13 Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: Who is so great a God as our God?

(wrestling two questions: “Where are you, God?” and “If you love me, why is this happening?”)

14 Thou art the God that doest wonders: Thou hast declared thy strength among the people.

15 Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, The sons of Jacob and Joseph.

Selah.

16 The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; they were afraid: The depths also were troubled.

17 The clouds poured out water: The skies sent out a sound: Thine arrows also went abroad.

18 The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: The lightnings lightened the world: The earth trembled and shook.

19 Thy way is in the sea, And thy path in the great waters, And thy footsteps are not known.

20 Thou leddest thy people like a flock By the hand of Moses and Aaron.

(Lament is both an act of worship and a means of leading us to worship.)

The opposites of lament are despair and prayerlessness, and they are often linked together as unbelief settles into the heart of a person in pain.

While laments may express deep emotions and ask painful questions, there is a difference between asking God and accusing God.

It is a sin to accuse God, as if you sit in judgment of Him.

Laments wrestle honestly with the tough tension related to the mystery of God’s plans and purposes.

Lamentations

Lamentations Gives Voice to Our Grief

Although we can’t draw a one-to-one application from Israel’s circumstances to ours, Lamentations can teach us to hear and speak the biblical language of lament, which is crucial to dealing with grief

Collection of five lament or “funeral” poems (poems of sorrow and mourning) that give voice to the grief of God’s people in the wake of Jerusalem’s fall and Judah’s demise in 587 BC.

The book mourns the day, warned of by the prophets, when God became like an enemy to Israel, giving them over to Babylon because of their chronic disregard for his covenant.

2 Chron 2 Kings 24-25, Jer 52 give you the facts; Lamentations gives you the emotions, emotions that are raw, honest, dark, and even volatile at times.

“Part of the horror of human suffering is to be unheard, forgotten and nameless, thrown aside…Lamentations is a summons to remember realities endured by real people like ourselves, to bear witness and pay heed to their voice” Christopher Wright

2 Chronicles 36:11–21 (KJV 1900)

11 Zedekiah was one and twenty years old when he began to reign, and reigned eleven years in Jerusalem.

12 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God, and humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet speaking from the mouth of the Lord.

13 And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel.

14 Moreover all the chief of the priests, and the people, transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen; and polluted the house of the Lord which he had hallowed in Jerusalem.

15 And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes (before time), and sending; because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling place:

16 But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.

Do not miss the weight of the words “til there was no remedy.”

The nation had strayed far enough and long enough.

God had reached a point where He could no longer allow the nation to continue.

The time for judgment had come.

17 Therefore he brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man, or him that stooped for age: he gave them all into his hand.

18 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon.

19 And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.

20 And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia:

21 To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.

Jeremiah has a difficult assignment in life

We only know of two converts from his ministry.

God commanded him not to marry

His own people plotted to kill him.

Jerusalem personified as the “daughter of Zion”

Lamentations 1:1 “1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!

How is she become as a widow!

she that was great among the nations, And princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!”

A widowed, childless, vulnerable woman who endured mistreatment, affliction, and starvation during the siege and capture of the city.

(They were surrounded and begin to eat their own children)

The narrator and the “daughter of Zion” begin to “dialogue” in chapter one, allowing us to hear her express her pain.

She cries to all who pass by her, looking for comfort amidst her affliction, though none is found.

She weeps with sorrow, her strength fails, she’s in distress, she groans continually, she cries to God, all to no avail.