Good evening. Would you turn with me and your Bibles to Lamentations Chapter 3? While you're finding your place, I'll say a few words by way of introduction. The problem of evil, succinctly stated, is this. If God is good and God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why does the world have evil? Why is the world full of sin and suffering if God is a loving God and God is almighty? Well, it's a rather academic question, but for the people of God, it comes to us in a slightly different way. We don't ask the question as if to prove to ourselves that God exists. We know He exists. But we're also the people who've received and believed His promises. And so when we think on those promises, it's not just that we assume that God is good. It's not just that we assume that God is loving. We know that to be the case. We know that God is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. And yet we look around us. We look at a world that's full of sin. We look at our own lives. and the sin that we've committed, the sins that have been committed against us. We know how we've suffered and how others have suffered. And we wonder, how can this be? Why is the world the way that it is? We should not think that we're the first generation to ask these questions, nor should we think that we're left without answers. But when we look at the scriptures, we don't usually see philosophical or logical treatments of the issue, but rather what we see are pictures and portraits of men and women who lived their lives by faith. And in those pictures, we see God proving himself to be faithful, assuring us of his love for us. We're going to come tonight to one such passage in Lamentations chapter 3. We're going to see a person, a man, in the midst of great and intense suffering, and yet he finds hope, and we'll see where his hope is rooted as he looks to the Lord. So if you found your place, would you follow along with me in Lamentations 3? I will read the first 24 verses. I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely he has turned his hand against me time and time again throughout the day. He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and woe. He has set me in dark places like the dead of long ago. He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out. He has made my chain heavy even when I cry and shout. He shuts out my prayer. He has blocked my ways with hewn stone. He has made my paths crooked. He has been to me a bear lying in wait, like a lion in ambush. He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces. He has made me desolate. He has bent his bow and set me up as a target for the arrow. He has caused the arrows of his quiver to pierce my loins. I have become the ridicule of all my people. They're taunting song all the day. He has filled me with bitterness. He has made me drink wormwood. He has also broken my teeth with gravel and covered me with ashes. You have moved my soul far from peace. I have forgotten prosperity. And I said my strength and my hope have perished from the Lord. Remember my affliction and roaming, the wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I hope in him. Father in heaven, we come to you tonight and ask for your grace as we read your word, that you would illumine our minds and open our hearts to receive it. that we might believe these truths about you, that you are the faithful God who keeps covenant with your people forever and ever, not just as an academic exercise, not just as a mental footnote, but that we would say in our soul that you are our Lord, that you are our portion, that you are the faithful God, and we will hope in you. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, before we begin, let me briefly outline our approach tonight. I want to begin broadly, and what we're going to do is we're going to zoom in, we're going to narrow in on a particular portion of the passage which I read, but we're going to start by setting and establishing the context of this passage in its historical context as well as its biblical context. And from there, we're going to narrow down to the Book of Lamentations to ask ourselves, what are these laments? What are these poems that we encounter in this short book of the Old Testament? And then from there, we're going to narrow in on Chapter 3 with particular emphasis on verses 19 through 24. And finally, we're going to conclude by applying these truths to our context, asking how we can apply them in our own lives, in our own situation. So with that said, let's begin by looking at the historical context. The century before the destruction of Jerusalem was marked by political turmoil. Judah existed in a geopolitical situation where they were no longer influential as they used to be. They no longer had the power in their region. But now you had Assyria and Egypt on one hand, who began the century in their especially with Assyria in their prime, in their strength. And they begin to wane, and Babylon begins to rise. And Judah's caught between all of these rivalries that are going on within this ancient Near Eastern context. From a human perspective, we look at the histories that we read in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and maybe we can understand the way that some of the kings operated, some of the policies that they executed. They looked beyond their borders and they saw great nations, great empires, strong kings with great armies. And they figured, well, let's ally ourselves with one of these nations. Let's put our hope in them, perhaps Assyria or Egypt or Babylon. And so in those histories, what you see is the kings going from one alliance to another, at different times rebelling and seeing an opportunity to seize their own independence. And it all makes a great deal of sense from a human perspective. But what they never did was they never put their trust in the Lord, with the exception of one king, Josiah. From Manasseh to the end, they trusted in themselves or they trusted in other rulers. They took on the gods of these other nations and worshiped them, perhaps thinking they're much stronger than ours. See how strong their nation is. And so that last century in Judah's history was one that was marked by decline, with a little bit of reform in there, but mainly decline, until in 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar and his armies came and destroyed Jerusalem. After about a year and a half laying siege to the city, they broke through the walls, the army of Judah scattered, the king fled, people were carried off into exile. The people who left suffered intensely. They saw the walls of their city torn down, their temple burned, and all of the treasures that were in it taken away to Babylon. And that's the historical situation that we come to when we come to the book of Lamentations. But we're not looking at this from the perspective of a king. We're looking at this from the perspective of the average everyday person. From the people who were left in Jerusalem. who lived through the suffering that ensued, who lived through the siege, who experienced the hunger and the constant threats and saw their neighbors killed by soldiers from Babylon. That's the historical perspective and the context when we come to Lamentations. And in this book, we see five poems, five poems of lament. And each one uses vivid imagery to describe the situation that the people of Jerusalem experienced. So, for example, Lamentations Chapter 1 personifies their experience in a picture of Lady Zion, a woman who was once great, who was once a princess, who is now a widow. And she mourns. And she has no comforters. People just look at her. They're either silent as they watch her mourning or they mock her. And you see a picture of one who is isolated, one who feels betrayed, one who feels hopeless. And so throughout the book of Lamentations, we see imagery like this that shows us the experience of the people in Jerusalem, the survivors who are living through the experience of Babylon's rule and the destruction of their city. Well, so we come to Lamentations 3 then. And what we see in Lamentations 3 is a man, he calls himself the man who has seen affliction, expressing his suffering in physical terms. It is not, it's certainly not just physical, but he uses imagery of having his bones broken and his flesh wearing away to describe the pain and the suffering that he's going through. And in a sense, he represents all of his countrymen. But one thing that we see in chapter three, that we would see in chapter one and two, is that he never indulges the question, he never indulges the thought that God's not in it. You see, in our own day, when we experience suffering, when we experience difficult times, it's our tendency to distance God from it. We wanna say, well, God really doesn't have anything to do with that, as if that's going to be some sort of comfort. It seems the right thing to say that we don't want to ascribe our difficulties to God. God is a God of love. And somehow these things seem to us incompatible. But it's an idea that the author of Lamentations never indulges. You see, for example, in chapter 2, verse 17, he says, the Lord has done what he purposed. He has fulfilled his word, which he commanded in days of old. He has thrown down and has not pitied, and he has caused an enemy to rejoice over you. He has exalted the horn of your adversaries. So, too, chapter 3 begins by noting that it's the rot of God's wrath, it's the rot of his wrath that the author has seen, that he has witnessed. He doesn't distance God from it because he understands something. He understands that there's no comfort in the idea that God had nothing to do with it, that God is powerless somehow, or God is just not caring. That's not the picture we see in scripture, and yet it's one that we commonly indulge, one that we commonly embrace. The other day, my wife and I were watching a movie that was about immigrants in the early 1900s after World War I. And the woman from Germany spoke very little English, and she came to marry a Norwegian immigrant and they're farmers in Minnesota, and you see their suffering. You see how they're mistreated by their community because she's German, and in the wake of the war, they don't trust her, and they won't let them get married because of it. And they go through all these challenges, and it causes her to question whether God really exists. At one point, she says to her future husband, do you believe in God? To which he responds, someone makes the corn grow. She says, not the corn, not God. She denies that it's Him. And the point being is that it's a very short step from saying that God is not in my suffering to saying that God is not in the everyday blessings I experience also. The author of Lamentations, in spite of his intense suffering, never says that God is not in it. Rather, he ascribes all of their judgments to God. God is sovereign over it. Babylon only conquers Judah because God is in it. It would be cold comfort to say anything otherwise. There's a second point that he establishes in Lamentations 1 and 2, which he carries forward into Lamentations 3. In chapter 1, in verse 18, he says, The Lord is righteous, for I rebelled against His commandment. Hear now, all peoples, and behold my sorrow. My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity. The Lord is righteous. The two fundamental truths, the two foundational truths that we find in Lamentations 1 and 2 is this. God has done it, and God is right. The people of Judah had been judged for their sin, for their rebellion, for years and years of obstinacy. They refused to worship God. They went after idols. And now God had brought judgment against His people. God had done it, and God was in the right. Well, all of that would be enough to cause us despair. It would be enough to cause us to wonder, well, if this is true, has God abandoned His people? Has he made a full break? Has he cut them off? Has he gone and found some other people to make his people? But chapter 3 introduces a turning point for us. In verse 19. As we come to verse 19 of chapter 3, we see that the author introduces a new idea. Remember my affliction and roaming, he calls out to God. The wormwood and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me, but then he recalls something else. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. As we look at this passage, what we're going to see, what I want you to see are three things. First, we'll call him the prophet. The prophet remembers that God is a God of love and faithfulness. He is the God who is merciful to his people. Second, the prophet observes in his own experience at that moment fresh mercies from the Lord. And last, he puts his hope in God and trusts in His continuing faithfulness to fulfill His promises for His people. So first, we'll look at the eternal love and mercy of God. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. In this passage, we see reference to the Lord's mercies and His compassions. The terms here are seen frequently throughout the Old Testament. Sometimes you see them translated steadfast love and faithfulness. The idea is one of God's covenant love, the love that he has shown to his people throughout their history. We see that all the way back in Exodus chapter 34, when the people of Israel turned away from God that first time and worshiped the golden calf. And Moses went on Mount Sinai and interceded for them. and asked God to forgive his people and to remain with them. At that time Moses also asked that the Lord would show him his glory. And God responded, I will make all my goodness to pass before you and I will declare my name to you. And when he did, he hid Moses in the cleft of a rock and he showed him the trailing edge of his glory and he proclaimed to him, I'm the Lord, the Lord, the God gracious and merciful, full of steadfast love and faithfulness. He declared both His justice and His mercy in that moment. This is who He is. That's essential to who He is. And throughout Israel's history, He shows it again and again. As again and again, they turn from Him and wander. And again and again, He restores them. like a father restoring his children. Again and again, he delivers them from their trials. He delivers them from the oppression of surrounding nations. Again and again, he forgives his people. He shows his love to them. But it's not just that he's shown a pattern, as if the author of Lamentations is saying that, well, he's done this in the past, so I can expect he'll do it in the future. But rather, he's revealed something of who he is. He is love. He is the God who abounds in love and mercy. He is the God who by His very nature is full of merciful compassion toward His people. It's who He is. He doesn't change. Just because Israel has come under His wrath, it doesn't mean that He has changed. For God cannot change. That is what the author of Lamentations is recalling. He's reminding himself of who God is. He is the God of eternal love, whose love never fails, whose mercies are renewed every morning. And so even in this trial, he knows that he can hope in this God. He remembers who God is. Second, he observes his own situation. In some translations you might read that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. In the New King James we read, through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed. And the difficulty there is, what does the verb apply to? Not to get into too technical the details, but the question is, is the author saying that God's love never ceases, or is he pointing to the fact that he and his countrymen have been preserved in spite of Babylon's conquest? And the New King James has it as the latter, and so do most of the commentaries, and that's what we're going with tonight. Now understand that if your translation says, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, of course, that's true. And he says it essentially in the very next line. But here it seems that what's correct, the correct translation is to identify the Lord's mercy as the basis for the fact that though they suffer and though they've been conquered by Babylon, yet they continue, yet they're preserved. And so even in the midst of his suffering, he observes in his own circumstance mercy from the Lord. He recognizes that he doesn't deserve this, nor do any of his countrymen. They don't deserve to be preserved. They don't deserve to be spared from God's complete judgment from being entirely cut off. And yet, he says, we are not consumed by the Lord. And so in his own experience, in spite of his suffering, he observes that God is still showing mercy to his people. He has not made a complete end. So thirdly, he turns his hope to the Lord, who shows his mercy to them every morning in new and fresh ways, whose faithfulness is so great. And he declares, the Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I hope in him. About this passage, John Calvin writes, all our thoughts will ever wander and go astray until we are fully persuaded that God alone is sufficient for us, so that he alone may become our heritage. In other words, it's not a mental exercise. It's not something that we simply say in our minds, yes, yes, yes, God is our heritage, God is our portion. And then we go out the next day and we live our lives as if the world is our heritage and the world is our portion. It's not what he's saying. We see that because he uses the word soul. Calvin hones in on this word and he points out that it's not just something that he's saying that he believes academically. something he says in his soul, something he feels at the core of his being, that whatever I've lost, my city is destroyed, the temple that I worshipped at, that temple is gone. There's no king on the throne in Jerusalem anymore. And yet, the Lord is my portion. I have all I need. I have all I can hope for in the Lord. When I was a boy, I remember feeling struck by the fact that I didn't really want to go to heaven. I remember this was an important part in my conversion and coming to faith is being convicted about this. I had no doubt that there was a heaven and a hell, but for me it just seemed that there were two bad choices and one was less bad. I didn't want to be in heaven. I didn't want to live forever. I didn't have a sense of the joy of being with God forever. I didn't have a sense of what that meant. And so, for me, it was just something where I said, well, I guess I'll take heaven if that's what the other option is hell. And yet, as a boy, as I was coming to faith, I was convicted over that. It's not enough to simply say, yeah, I'll take that one. It's, you know, I guess I could tolerate it forever. But I couldn't just change my mind about it, and that's what struck me at my core in a very childish way at the time, but still in the true way. That I looked at my heart, I recognized there was something hopelessly wrong about me, that I didn't want to be with God forever, that I didn't want to enjoy His presence, that I didn't want to worship Him forever. You see, we often have thoughts about God as if heaven is just being on a cloud somewhere, some kind of boring experience that goes on and on and on, no fun forever. And we forget that God is the one who is merciful to us every day. All the joys that we experience in this life, they're nothing. They're just a little taste of the joy that we look forward to eternity. And not because God will give us more stuff. because we'll be with Him. We'll see Him face to face. I can't prove to you in a logical way that it's going to be wonderful. It's something that God impresses on our heart. It's a change that He makes from just saying with our mind, the Lord is my portion, to saying in our soul, The Lord is my portion. To agreeing with what John Calvin says here, all our thoughts will ever wander and go astray until we are fully persuaded that God alone is sufficient for us, so that He alone may become our heritage. So in the end, the prophet here puts his hope in the Lord. He puts all his trust in the Lord. And that's where he places all his desire. Well, I want to note two results of his remembrance and hope. If you look on in the passage, you'll see that it produces patient endurance and it results in repentance and self-examination. He goes on to say in verse 25, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. The idea here is that It's good to patiently wait for God's salvation, to patiently wait for God to bring us into His glory. We ought not to think that our life now needs to be full of all kinds of riches and material blessings if we're to trust in God. But rather, as we endure trials, as we endure momentary afflictions in this life, we know that there's a much better, more perfect glory that awaits us. we ought to endure with patience, waiting for the Lord, because the Lord is good to those who wait for Him. So a hallmark of the faith that understands that God is full of steadfast love and faithfulness, a hallmark of that faith is patience, endurance, and faith. Well, second, if you look down to verse 31, He says, For the Lord will not cast off forever, though he causes grief, yet he will show compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, for he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. And in verse 40, let us search out and examine our ways and turn back to the Lord. Let us lift our hearts and hands to God in heaven. We have transgressed and rebelled. You have not pardoned. You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us. You have slain and not pitied. You have covered yourself with a cloud that prayer should not pass through. You have made us an offscoring and refuse in the midst of the people. You see what he's saying here In both passages, first he remembers that God's compassion will ultimately be seen, that we'll ultimately experience the love of God. That when we look at the way in which God's justice and his love are reconciled, However they're reconciled, we don't see it here in Lamentations, but however they will be reconciled, we see that that reconciliation makes his wrath temporary, his discipline temporary, but his loving kindness eternal, the blessing eternal. And in that light, he calls his countrymen to search out their ways, says let us search out and examine our ways, let us return to the Lord, let us repent. When he says that our prayers have not been heard, the idea is that our prayers for salvation, our prayers for deliverance have not been heard, but what is the solution? The solution is not to abandon prayer, but the solution is to go to God in repentance, that their prayers may be heard. And so there's two things there. The importance of that self-examination that leads to a repentant heart. and the importance of recognition that the repentant believer, the person who comes to God in faith, may experience trial in this life, but the trial is temporary. The blessedness of eternity awaits. And so there are two results of the remembrance and hope, patient endurance and repentance that leads to faith. Having said all that, how should we apply this in our own context? We should recognize that Judah's situation is unique in a few ways. First, it was a mixed community. What I mean by that is not all in Jerusalem and not all in Judah trusted in the Lord. By and large, many did not. And not all would return to Him in faith. And yet they were all God's covenant people under the Old Covenant. But as the new covenant people of God, we're all united in faith. Now, in a particular church you may have unbelievers, of course, but those who are God's covenant people have come to Him in faith and repentance. And so, the judgment that they experience, we should not expect to experience similar judgment. It's true that sometimes the Lord disciplines unrepentant believers, but the discipline is designed to bring them back to repentance. Most of the time, I suspect, believers live in repentance. And so we don't experience judgment as we see it so severely in Lamentations and throughout the Bible when we read about the destruction of Judah and the destruction of Israel. It's a unique judgment. But what I want to point to is that we don't experience it because one experienced it for us. And think of the language that the prophet uses to describe the suffering of his people. The language of personal, physical suffering. My bones are broken, my flesh is wasted away. Later he speaks of bearing insults. He speaks of injustice, as they're oppressed by other peoples, in many ways unjustly, in spite of their sin. We think of Christ. We think of Christ who was persecuted, who was hated, without having done anything wrong. And yet, justly, he endured the wrath of God for our sake. And in so doing, the isolation that we see in Lamentations, which begins with how lonely is the city that was once people, we see Christ isolated on the cross when he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But all the judgment that we see poured out on Judah by Babylon, that infinitely more poured out upon Christ on the cross. And it's there that we see that reconciliation, how it is that God's justice can be reconciled with His mercy, so that whatever trials we experience in this life are only momentary, but we look forward to an eternal future, an eternal hope in Christ. And so note that the judgment that Judah experienced is not a judgment that we experienced because Christ has borne it for us. But in that we also find hope and we find the greatest proof that God indeed is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. He's the God who keeps his promises forever and ever. He's the God who loves his people with an unfailing love because he loved his son. And he did not abandon his son to the grave. As Peter points out in Acts 2, when he says, quoting David, you did not abandon his soul to Sheol. And seeing in the resurrection and the ascension and the exaltation of Christ, a proof that the God who loves, loves forever. We have this proof. We have this to rest on, to know that God, His love will never fail. For He is love and He does not change. So let us put our whole hope in Him, that God will deliver us through our present sufferings to an eternal glory. Let me close with one more quote of John Calvin. As he reflects again on these passages, he writes, the best and only true remedy for sorrows is when the faithful are convinced that they are chastised only by the paternal, the fatherly hand of God, and at the end of all their evils will be blessed. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we remember the suffering of Your people, of Judah, so many years ago. We read about it in Your Word. We see the repentance of many. We see the anguish that they experienced. We also remember how You poured out Your wrath not just on them, but you poured it out in a final fuller measure, in a complete measure on your son for us. He bore that wrath for us. Father, again we pray that you would make us say these things in our soul, that our hope is in you, that you are our portion, that we wouldn't just say it as a mental exercise. that it would truly be at the core of our being, that it would animate us, that we would be characterized by faithful trust in You, the God who is full of steadfast love and faithfulness, who is eternally just, and yet who loves Your people with an unfailing love. We thank You, O Lord, for these great truths. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.