We are back in the little book of Lamentations this evening, right between the major prophets of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Page 686 in your pew Bibles. Lamentations chapter 2.
Derek Kidner, in his commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes, wrote that, “The shrug is the most hopeless of all comments on life. To shrug one’s shoulders is to not even take the time to care. It is to be indifferent to whether or not things will ever get any better.” There’s an emoji for that, and even before that there were emoticons, those combinations of parentheses and dashes and colons that represent different expressions or emotions. I read somewhere recently that someone was saying that the shrug emoticon – which is the sermon title by the way in case you were wondering – that it is superior to the shrug emoji which you see on your text messages sometimes. This person said that they think that it is the hint of a smug smile of the emoticon that in some way adds to the expression of a snarky attitude. “Whatever. Meh.” Sometimes grief can be like that and apathy can set in and indifference. And maybe, maybe the feeling of numbness might just be a better option than the intensity of the pain of the loss. And so, “It is what it is. Just shrug it off.”
But Lamentations does not do that, and God doesn’t do that. One of the things we find in the book of Lamentations and what we will see here in chapter 2 is the sovereignty of God. And it’s the sovereignty of God that is both unsettling and deeply comforting. The sovereignty of God means that God is not indifferent to how we live. He is not indifferent to our sin. There are consequences to our rebellion against Him. But do you know what that also means? It also means that God is not indifferent to our suffering. He is not indifferent to our sorrows either. He can sustain us. He can help us in our pain. We can and we should fight the urge to apathy and instead steward our grief wisely because of the sovereignty of God.
And so there are two things that I want us to see from this lament, Lamentations chapter 2, this evening. I want us to see first the uncomfortable truth of God’s sovereignty. But then secondly, the comforting refuge of God’s sovereignty. Both the uncomfortable truth and the comforting refuge of God’s sovereignty. Before we read this chapter, let’s pray and ask God’s help and blessing.
Our Father, we need You and there are many here tonight that need You in their grief and in their sorrow. We pray that You would uphold and sustain them, that You would uphold and sustain all of us, and that by the reading of Your Word and as we give our attention to it, that Your Spirit would work and bring grace and mercy and peace to all our hearts. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Lamentations 2:
“How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers.
He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.
He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe; and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes; in the tent of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his fury like fire.
The Lord has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel; he has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
He has laid waste his booth like a garden, laid in ruins his meeting place; the Lord has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
The Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary; he has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they raised a clamor in the house of the Lord as on the day of festival.
The Lord determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion; he stretched out the measuring line; he did not restrain his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to lament; they languished together.
Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars; her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord.
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.
My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city.
They cry to their mothers, ‘Where is bread and wine?’ as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom.
What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you?
Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.
All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: ‘Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’
All your enemies rail against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: ‘We have swallowed her! Ah, this is the day we longed for; now we have it; we see it!’
The Lord has done what he purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago; he has thrown down without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.
Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite!
‘Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.’
Look, O Lord, and see! With whom have you dealt thus? Should women eat the fruit of their womb, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity.
You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side, and on the day of the anger of the Lord no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
Number one – the uncomfortable truth of God’s sovereignty. And I would argue that the most disturbing word in this chapter, and there are many of them, but the most disturbing word in this chapter is the pronoun, “he.” Now there are other words that strike fear. There’s anger, wrath, fury, indignation, but they all point to one source. They all point to the Lord. He is the one who has brought all this disaster on the people of Israel. And the most repeated word in this chapter in English is the pronoun, “he.” “He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel,” verse 1. Verse 4, “He has bent his bow like an enemy.” Verse 5, “He has laid in ruins its strongholds.” Verse 8, “He did not restrain his hand from destroying.” He, He, He. Almost every verb in the first nine verses of Lamentations chapter 2 is in the third person masculine singular. In other words, He did it. The Lord is responsible for what had happened to Jerusalem. And that’s horrific.
I was talking to one of my former seminary professors the other day and he was saying how, in the Hebrew Bible, in the order of the Hebrew Old Testament, that Lamentations comes right before the books of Esther and Daniel. And what he was saying is, here’s Lamentations and it’s describing the almost unutterable destruction and devastation of Jerusalem, the carnage, and the beginning of the exile of the people to Babylon. And then you have Esther and Daniel. And those books are there to show us how God’s people are supposed to live faithfully during a time of exile. How to live faithfully as strangers and sojourners in this world. And here’s the thing – and this is the thing that struck me. When was Daniel taken captive to Babylon? Daniel was actually taken captive to Babylon before the fall of Jerusalem, before the events that are described here in the book of Lamentations. Now remember who Daniel was. Daniel was promoted as an official in King Nebuchadnezzar’s court as a young man. And so he was an official of King Nebuchadnezzar when King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. Now Daniel, he was very much for Jerusalem. Daniel prayed for Jerusalem, and yet he worked for Babylon. And that, if you were in Jerusalem and heard something like that, that would have sounded a lot like treason and betrayal.
Well there’s something like that tension, something like that conflict that we find in Lamentations chapter 2. The Lord was supposed to be for Jerusalem, right? The Lord was for Jerusalem. He was for Israel. And yet what do we find in verse 17? “He,” the Lord, “He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.” And here’s what had happened. These are the events that Lamentations is describing – disease, starvation, bloodshed, cannibalism. There are bodies left on the ground to be devoured by the birds and the wild animals. The walls of the city were broken down. The temple, it was looted of everything of value, and then itself was burned along with every great house in the city. And all but the poorest people of the land were taken away captive into Babylon. It was terrible.
And I think about the journalist, Ernie Pyle’s last column from the front lines of the Pacific in World War II. “There are so many of the living who have had burned into their brains forever the unnatural sight of cold, dead men, scattered over the hillsides and in the ditches. Dead men in one country after another. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer. Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous. Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them.”
That’s a lament in its own sort of way. And these are the gut wrenching conditions that the book of Lamentations is describing for us.
And this book of Lamentations, it has made its way into the historical consciousness of the Jewish people so that, at a particular time every year, the ninth day of the month of Av, the Hebrew month of Av, every year at that date the book of Lamentations is read. The ninth of Av is the day every year when the people remember, they remember certain historical events such as the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BC. They remember the fall of Jerusalem again to the Romans in 70 AD. They remember the horrors of the holocaust in the 1930s and 40s. These are disasters of unthinkable proportions, and that’s why Lamentations talks about, verse 10, “dust on their heads and sackcloth.” The writer in verse 11 talks about “bile that is poured out on the ground,” “weeping,” in verse 11, and the “gnashing of teeth,” in verse 16. This is the lowest point in the whole of the Old Testament. This is the worst case scenario for the people of Israel. It is the unimaginable. They could never imagine that something like this could have happened to them.
And what does the writer of Lamentations say in verse 17? “The Lord has done what he purposed. He has carried out his word which he commanded long ago.” The Lord did it. The Lord did it. He was responsible for the devastation. And that might sound to our ears, to our minds, like blasphemy, maybe heresy, except, except that the Lord is sovereign. God is sovereign. And God, from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. And yes, He is not the author of sin nor does He remove free will from His creatures. God is in control of everything, in other words. And of course God’s sovereignty, it is a great mystery. It is more than our minds can comprehend on this side of heaven. “But where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?” as the Lord questioned Job in Job 38. In Lamentations chapter 3 next week, Lord willing, as we study the next chapter of this book, we will read these words – “Who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord commanded it?” Jesus, in Matthew chapter 10 verse 29, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Nothing escapes God’s notice. Nothing falls outside of His jurisdiction.
That means that the peoples’ sins, that means that our sins, the sins that the prophets rebuked, the true prophets, the sins that were committed in defiance of God’s Word, the sins for which they thought they were immune to God’s judgment, those sins are an offense to God. Those sins were deserving of God’s wrath and His indignation, and those sins were the reason that God had crushed them. You see, the Lord is not indifferent to how we live. He knows our secret sins and our misdeeds dark, and He works according to the holy counsel of His own will to exact judgment and to bring about the consequences that our sins deserve because He is holy, because He is just, and because He is almighty. Because He is sovereign, you see. That’s awful. The sovereignty of God is terrifying and fearful and deeply unsettling. It is an uncomfortable truth. And it should be. It should be.
And what we find here in this book in Lamentations, it is clear that the devastation of Jerusalem was God’s judgment on sin. We saw that back in chapter 1, last chapter, verse 18 says, “The Lord is in the right for I have rebelled against His word.” What do we read in chapter 2 verse 1 – how “the Lord in His anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud.” This is coming as the judgment of God, but even when it’s not, and oftentimes it’s not the judgment of God – “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Even when it’s not, even when suffering is not the judgment of God, to think, to think that when hard times come into our lives they are sent by the hand of God. Again, what did Job say? “Shall we receive good from God and shall we not also receive evil?” God’s sovereignty, God’s sovereignty in our suffering, His sovereignty even in sending that suffering, yes it is disturbing, it humbles us to the ground, but it is also deeply comforting. And here’s why. It’s because the God who is not indifferent to how we live also is not indifferent to our sorrow.
And so first we see the uncomfortable truth of God’s sovereignty, but we also see in this passage the comforting refuge of God’s sovereignty. Do you remember the story that comes to us right at the very end of 2 Samuel? It was when David wanted to take a counting of Israel and Judah. We don’t know why he wanted to do that, we don’t know why it was sinful for taking a census. Maybe it was for prideful reasons. Maybe it was because it indicated something he was relying on human resources and the number of people and the number of soldiers that he had. We don’t know, but it was sinful, and David realized that, he recognized it, but he recognized it too late and God threatened judgment, three options of judgment. Number one, three years of famine. Number two, three months pursued by enemies. And number three, three days of pestilence on the land. And do you remember what David chose? What he said? He said, “I am in great distress, but let us fall into the hand of the Lord for His mercy is great, but let me not fall into the hand of man.” And what happened? The land experienced a pestilence. There was death by plague until the Lord relented and David offered a sacrifice.
But something like that is going on in the book of Lamentations. The hand of the Lord is against Jerusalem, but isn’t that better than falling into the hand of man? Verse 17 again, “The Lord has done what He purposed. He has thrown down without pity.” The Lord did it. But what do we notice in this chapter? To whom do the people cry, over and over again? They cry to the Lord. They cried to the one who had made all of this happen in the first place. And what is that? It’s because their only hope, their only comfort is in the sovereignty of God. They know that the Lord had done what He had purposed, but they also know that the Lord will do what He purposes for them. And they know that the Lord will keep His promises to them, even in spite of their current circumstances, even though it looked like everything was against those promises. And so what do they do? They cry out to Him. They lament to the one who caused their lament.
Look at verse 18. “Their heart cried to the Lord.” Verse 19, “Arise, cry out in the night. Pour out your heart before the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him.” Verse 20, “Look, O Lord, and see.” You see, the Lord is the subject of each sentence about judgment, but He is also the object of their cries. He did it, but they cry to Him. And they know, they know that ultimately their lives, their pain, their rescue, all of it, all of it rests in the hand of the Lord and not in anything they can do, not in the hand of man, certainly, of anyone else because God is sovereign.
Tim Challies is a familiar name as a pastor and a blogger. Maybe you’re familiar with his name. He posted a blog post on November 3, 2020. It was an election day in the US and it contained a series of links on all different matters of theology and Christianity. One of them was “Three Ways to Be a Christian on Election Day – November 3, 2020.” The next day, November 4, 2020, the headline of his blogpost was, “My Son, My Dear Son, Has Gone to Be with the Lord.” And his son, Nick, a twenty-year-old college student, was playing games on the college campus with his fiance, with his sister, and died unexpectedly, out of the blue. It was devastating. And yet later, as Challies thought on that, reflected on it, and wrote about it, about dealing with the unthinkable, he wrote something of what he called a manifesto. This is from his manifesto. He says, “By faith, I will accept Nick’s death as God’s will, and by faith, accept that God’s will is always good. By faith, I will be at peace with providence, and by faith, at peace with its every decree. By faith, I will praise God in the taking as I did in the giving. I will grieve but not grumble, mourn but not murmur, weep but not whine.” You see what he was saying? He was saying for one thing that God’s sovereignty was his comfort in dark, dark days.
And clearly it was for the writer of Lamentations as well. Even though it’s not spelled out here for us as any sort of manifesto, but why else, why else would the people cry out to the Lord? Why else would they have any hope in light of all of these things that we just read about? And here are two ways, two ways that God’s sovereignty is a deep, deep comfort in dark days like these. I heard someone say it this way recently – that lament, lament is asking boldly in the belief that God is great and able to do something about it, and God is good and willing to do something about it. You see, God is great. And there’s a comfort in this destruction coming from the hand of the Lord in that it was not random. It’s not out of control. It’s not perpetual. And even as Babylon was the instrument of inflicting the pain and bringing the ruin and taking the people captive, even as it was Babylon who was doing all that, Babylon itself, Babylon was the most powerful, the most unstoppable force in all the world, but even Babylon’s power was a limited power. It was chained in some way. She could go only so far and no further.
You see, the enemy can do no more than what God allows. And that’s it. Period. First Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation, no temptation, no testing has overtaken you that is not common to man, but God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted or tested beyond your ability, but He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.” You see, we’re not helpless and we’re not left to the whims and the reigns of brute power or random forces. No, God is sovereign. He is in control of all things. He is able to help you. He is strong to deliver. And God is good. He is willing to help. The Lord, yes, the Lord does what He purposes, and in other words, He has a purpose. There is no such thing as meaningless suffering. There is no such thing as pointless pain. “No, but in all things, in all things God works together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” No promise of God falls to the ground. There is no wasted word or work in God’s economy. What He has begun, He will complete. His strength is made perfect in weakness and suffering produces endurance, endurance, character, and character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
And so back to Tim Challies and the death of his son and the sovereignty of God. He said in an interview later that he came to view Nick’s death as a stewardship, a stewardship received from God. Here’s what he said again. He said, “If we truly believe that God is sovereign, then nothing happens in life that isn’t a call to stewardship in some form. Whatever providence directs has been given by God for a purpose. In that way, grief is a stewardship. By this we prove to the world that Christians won’t turn away from God when things don’t go our way.” That’s what Lamentations teaches us as well – a stewardship of grief. You see, this writer, he’s not wasting his trial. No, he is putting it to good use. And if nothing else, he is putting it to good use to glorify God and to say, “This is the God who is sovereign and God is holy, God is just, God is righteous. God is God and we are not.” There is a Godward posture throughout all of this challenging book of Lamentations.
And so in light of all that, he takes the opportunity to examine himself and he repents. He takes the opportunity to develop humility and a greater clinging to God’s promises, a greater dependence upon the Lord. We would say that he is participating in the sufferings of Christ and thus he is growing in Christ’s likeness as he laments the suffering and the grief that has come into his life. And then he’s also using it in a way to bless other people. Because what’s he doing if not pointing others to the Lord and trying to help others in their grief to find comfort. The comfort with which he is comforted that he might also comfort others. To give them words to pray even, ways to lament. By writing these things, this writer is entering into the suffering of those around him and doing so with sympathy and understanding. That’s his stewardship – looking for God’s purpose in the frowning providences that He sends into our lives.
Now finally, the uncomfortable truth of God’s sovereignty and the comforting refuge of God’s sovereignty, and also of the cross, the cross of Jesus. Because the cross is horrific. It’s blood and sweat and tears and scorn and death and wrath and judgment on sin. The cross is and it should be disturbing to us. But it’s also salvation. “Upon a life I have not lived, upon a death I have not died, another’s life, another’s death I stake my whole eternity. Not on the tears that I have shed, not on the sorrows I have known, another’s tears, another’s griefs, on these I rest, on these alone. O Jesus, Son of God, I build on what Thy cross has done for me. There both my life and death I read, my guilt and pardon there I see, there I see, on the cross and resurrection.” That’s Jesus. That is both the uncomfortable truth and the comforting refuge of the cross of Christ. That’s Jesus for you, the dear refuge of your soul.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we bow before You in all the wonder of Your Word, that it would speak to us, minister to us in the ways that we need tonight, that You would send us out for Your glory. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.