Sermon on Lamentations 1–2: Honest lament before God in times of despair
A sermon by James de Costobadie, Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, on the first two chapters of Lamentations.
Summary
James de Costobadie opens a three-week series on the book of Lamentations, focusing in this first instalment on chapters 1 and 2. He argues that lament — specifically the kind directed to God in times of affliction — is not a failure of faith but a God-given grace. He draws on the historical context of Jerusalem's destruction in 586 BC, likely through the eyes of the prophet Jeremiah, to show how the writer pours out honest grief, confusion, and even confrontation with God over what has happened. De Costobadie emphasises that lament is honest rather than correct, and that God is big enough to receive us even when it is He we do not understand. The sermon closes by pointing to Jesus himself lamenting from the cross as the ultimate example that crying out to God in despair is not only permitted but modelled by Christ.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: When you come to the end of your own strength
Live long enough in this world and you will face times when you come to the end of your own strength and understanding. You can't see a way out, you can't comprehend why this is happening, and all you can do is look on in despair. Many of you may know what I'm talking about. Some of you may have faced it, some of you may have faced it recently, some of you may be going through it right now. And in many ways, believing in God at such times doesn't make things easier. It can even make it harder, more complicated. You think, how can God allow such things? Or how can God ordain such things? And you might think, how is a faithful follower of God to act at such times? Are we simply to grin and bear it? Is this the time for the typical British stiff upper lip? What do you do if you desperately need God's help but you can't see it?
What lament is — and why it matters
James de Costobadie: Over the next three weeks we're going to be looking at the book of Lamentations, which, as the name suggests, contains a series of cries, laments to the Lord. Now in the Bible there are at least two types of lament. The first, which you might call the lament of mourning, is the feeling and expressing of grief and sadness at loss in this world, particularly in the face of death, the final enemy we face. This is a familiar lament. We can express this sort of lament in lots of ways and to lots of people. It is a shared thing.
But the second kind of lament is that which we see in this book. This sort of lament contains more than simply grief. It has a broader emotional base, it engages the mind a lot more, but it only ever has one specific target that it's directed to, and it is a cry to God. This lament is a prayer. Sometimes called the lament of affliction, because it flows out so often from difficult circumstances and situations imposed from outside itself, where the one praying can't understand and or can't do anything about what's happening — facing both the unknown and or the inescapable.
And friends, if this lament is anything at all, what it is is honest. This is one of the main things I want you to hear today. Lament is honest. That's not the same as saying it's right. It's not always correct as a true reflection of reality, but it's totally honest in that moment. Lament doesn't pretend understanding when it hasn't got any. It doesn't put on a brave face or a false confidence when it doesn't feel any. It doesn't paint a facade on feelings to make them less than they are, nor does it hide from difficult questions because it's afraid of the answers.
Lament takes an honest look at ourselves, an honest reflection on the given situation and circumstances. It makes an honest admission of sin — and we'll see that really clearly through Lamentations. It speaks honestly of what we don't understand and what we struggle with, even if that struggle is with God himself. It honestly asks the tough questions about God, about his judgment and human suffering. And it's honest about the feelings that come with all of that. It's sad, or it's angry. It's often confused, and it's sometimes defeated.
And while all of that may sound very depressing, what it actually is is a wonderful gift of God's grace. Because the Bible here, and in other places, gives permission and space for us to cry out to our Heavenly Father, even when it's him we don't understand or perhaps don't agree with. God is big enough to take us when we're at our worst, or when we're facing situations which are at their worst.
Now, I think we should learn that we don't need to wait until times are at their worst to be honest and to cry out to God. We can cry out to him earlier — all the better. But the comfort of the Bible shows us that even when things are at their worst, God is always there and he's listening. We don't have to filter our feelings to God. For one thing, you can't hide your feelings from God — the God who knows all things and sees all things. But more than this, and we'll particularly come to this in the coming weeks, God, and specifically in Christ as we will see, fully understands our struggles and he desires that we take and give ourselves fully to him no matter the situation. In fact, I think the Bible shows us that he even drives us into those situations in order that we would cry out to him and depend on him for everything.
To lament is a God-given grace — to cry out for God's attention, to cry out for God's action, and to cry out for God's answers. Now, and this is also very important for today, lament doesn't always get answers, but it is a gracious, God-ordained space to give voice to the asking. I think even the very fact that Lamentations is in the Bible as God's Word shows us that God gives us this space, an honest outlet to turn to him.
Overview of the five chapters of Lamentations
James de Costobadie: So let's turn our attention to Lamentations. A couple of introductory remarks. The book can be very simply broken up into the five chapters we have in the Bible — each chapter in Lamentations is its own distinct poem. Now, there's a lot of overlap in content, but there's a definite flow as they build one upon another.
You might summarise them as follows. Chapter 1 is an honest look at the situation at hand — that is, as it feels in the present. Chapter 2 is an honest look at God. It wrestles with the fact that it's God who's brought about the situation, in this case in his righteous judgment on Israel's sin. Chapter 3 keeps moving forward. This chapter sort of repeats an honest look at the situation, but includes a reminder of God's other qualities, the fullness of God's character. So other than his righteous judgment, we also look at his ongoing love and goodness and intentions to fulfil his promises. Chapter 4, then, with a slightly more humble assessment — more nuanced in light of the reminder — reflects on the truth about God more broadly and incorporates those reminders into the present understanding. And then chapter 5 closes with this heartfelt cry. In view of all of these things, it's a heartfelt cry for God to restore and return and remember what has been lost, and the goodness that he's promised to fulfil.
That's a sort of picture of Lamentations as a whole. Today we're just going to focus on the first two chapters, and by focus I mean we're going to take a broad look at them. Chapter 1: an honest look at the situation at hand. Chapter 2: an honest look at the God who has brought it about.
Chapter 1: The historical context — Jerusalem destroyed
James de Costobadie: If you come right into the beginning of chapter 1, it drops you straight into the middle of a story, beginning with this observation: "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people." Questions will immediately arise — who's writing, what city, and why is it deserted?
Now, the writer of Lamentations is anonymous. There's nothing explicit in the text. Tradition holds that it was Jeremiah who wrote it. Jeremiah is a well-known prophet of the Old Testament — he wrote the really big book just before this one. And there isn't much to dissuade me from that conclusion, although it is ultimately unknown. The reason Jeremiah is such a good candidate is because the historic situation surrounding Jeremiah lines up exactly with what Lamentations lays out for us. But more than that, the writer understands the situation and why it's come about, and Jeremiah was one of very few people who actually understood the whys and the wherefores — not just what was happening but why it was happening. That's why Jeremiah is a really good candidate for who wrote it.
And it helps if you put yourself in Jeremiah's shoes to understand what's led up to this point and why it's so bad. So at the point of writing, it's probably about, or just after, 586 BC. We know that specifically because that's when Jerusalem was destroyed. Now, by this stage, Jeremiah has spent 40 years speaking the word of the Lord to God's kings and God's people in Israel — or the last two remaining tribes of Israel, now called Judah.
And think of what he's gone through. Jeremiah looked on as the last good king of Judah, King Josiah, came and went. And all the good things that Josiah had implemented as king — the return of God's law and the worship of the one true God — were not only reversed by subsequent kings, they were made worse. There were only four kings who came after Josiah. Two of them only lasted three months. Both of those were deposed by foreign powers, carried off to foreign lands, and other kings put in their place by those foreign powers. The other two, barely puppet kings at best, repeatedly rejected and ignored the word of the Lord brought by Jeremiah. They rebelled against the new up-and-coming superpower of the day, Babylon, and bad things ensued.
So the first time this happened, Judah's king ignores God's warning and rebels against Babylon. The armies of Babylon come in. They come against Jerusalem. They besiege the city. They defeat its armies, and they deport huge numbers of its population back to Babylon as slaves. That was around 597 BC. Jeremiah remains behind. He watches on as it happens again. Zedekiah, now the last king of Judah — almost cliché by this stage — ignores the word of the Lord which Jeremiah spoke to him, rebels against Nebuchadnezzar, that's the king of Babylon at the time, and Babylon returns to finish the job once and for all. They besiege the city of Jerusalem, they defeat them, they deport more of its inhabitants, but this time they destroy it. They break down its walls, they destroy its temple. Jeremiah remains behind.
Jeremiah has now looked on as the kings and people of God have continued to ignore and reject God's word, and they have now suffered under God's judgment brought upon the nation through Babylon. Jeremiah now looks at a broken city — Jerusalem — a city bereft of most of its inhabitants, now taken into slavery. Jeremiah looks at his home. It's destroyed and it's empty.
What would you do? What would anyone do? The writer, be it Jeremiah or whoever has seen the exact same things, naturally mourns the loss of what has been taken or destroyed. And so he cries out in lament.
Chapter 1: An honest look at the situation
James de Costobadie: And now I hope you can understand him as he cries. "How deserted lies the city, once so full of people." More literally it reads, "how alone lies the city" — lonely, as the ESV puts it. Not just empty. Isolated. And if you've ever experienced any form of suffering or distressing times like these, even if it's not to the same degree, you'll understand the devastating power of that word: alone. Often the worst thing about times of hardship and suffering aren't just the circumstances themselves, but that you feel alone as you face them. It's not hard to see how alone this writer feels.
He continues: "How deserted, lonely lies the city, once so full of people. How like a widow is she who once was great among the nations. She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers" — that is, the other nations — "there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her, they have become her enemies."
And that phrase, "there is no one to comfort her" — we hear that five times in this one chapter. Verse 9: "her fall was astounding, there was none to comfort her." Verse 16: "This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit." Verse 17: "Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her." Verse 21: "People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me."
And friends, when you're in the depths of despair, in the midst of that, this is often exactly what it feels like. You feel like there's no one to comfort you, no one to help you. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like God is there. Remember — lament isn't always correct, but it is honest.
You see it even clearer in verse 12. The writer says, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me?" You may have thought, if you've ever been in the middle of such things, not only does no one care, no one seems to have it as bad as I do — everyone else's life is easy. Now, I'm sure if this writer were to take a step back and you were to ask him clearly, when he wasn't in that situation, he would freely admit that he's not saying that no one in history has ever suffered as badly as he has. But it doesn't negate how he's feeling in that moment, does it.
Now, interestingly, despite his feelings, the writer maintains enough of a sense of reality that he knows that it was his and the people's own sin which caused this whole debacle. Now, as a slight aside, it's worth noting that the Bible is very clear that not all suffering is a direct result of a particular sin — personal, corporate, or otherwise. We should be really careful before making any sort of statement that says that a particular circumstance is the result of a particular or even a general state of sin. That's been done, and very badly. Of course, sin by its very nature brings about its own consequences, but not all suffering is tied directly to a particular sin. The Bible's clear on that.
However, in Lamentations, that's exactly what it is. We've already seen that Jeremiah has been bringing the word of the Lord as a warning to the kings and people of Israel about this very thing for decades — 40 years. And everyone ignored it in favour of nicer-sounding, false promises from other so-called prophets. And so the writer, sounding more like Jeremiah at every turn, speaks of the sin that caused what happened. Verse 5: "The Lord has brought grief because of her many sins." Verse 8: "Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean." And in verse 14, speaking again as if he is the city and its people: "My sins have been bound into a yoke by his hands — they were woven together, they have been hung on my neck — and the Lord has set my strength aside." And because of this he says, "the Lord has given me into the hands of those I cannot withstand." Verse 18: "The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against his command."
And so he says, "Listen, all you peoples, look on my suffering." There is nothing held back as the writer pours out his heart into these words. He expresses an honest look at the situation, even the sin that led there, and he invites others to look and see his suffering — presumably to understand the sin that caused it as a warning.
And what's more, as he looks at this dire situation and asks others to look also, he also cries out for the Lord to look. Did you notice that? Verse 9: "Look, Lord, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed." Verse 11: "Look, Lord, and consider, for I am despised." Now, not just asking God to look, but asking him to consider — to think about what he's done. The nerve. Again, in verse 20, he cries: "See, Lord, how distressed I am. I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed, for I have been most rebellious."
Now, again, I take it that if the writer took a step back, he knows that God knows all things and sees all things — he seems to have a fairly good theological grasp on how God works. But that's not the point here. He's suffering, and he wants God to look and to see, to take note and to take action. He's distressed, and he's pouring out of that distress to God.
Chapter 2: An honest look at God
James de Costobadie: As you move into chapter 2, the writer now shifts his entire attention to look at God. And he ramps up his questions and his reflection on God's judgment in this chapter. It's worth noting that the writer no longer speaks as if he is the city, as he did in chapter 1. Now he speaks more as the one who is pleading for Jerusalem and its people. Jerusalem is referred to in this chapter interchangeably as Israel, daughter Zion, daughter Jacob, daughter Judah, daughter Jerusalem — they're all the same thing.
Chapter 1 begins, "How lonely lies the city." Chapter 2 now begins with a shift in focus: "How the Lord has covered the city called daughter Zion." And so the full attention now is on God, and again the writer really doesn't hold anything back as he takes an honest look at God and his judgment and the effect it's had on the people.
So chapter 2, verse 1: "How the Lord has covered daughter Zion with the cloud of his anger. He has hurled down the splendour of Israel from heaven to earth. He has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. Without pity, the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In his wrath he has torn down the strongholds of daughter Judah. He has brought her kingdom and its princes down to the ground in dishonour."
A little bit later on, verse 5 — and note, Babylon was the enemy, but now: "The Lord is like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for daughter Judah."
It goes on and on. Verse 7: "The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary." Verse 8: "The Lord determined to tear down the wall around daughter Zion." Verse 9: "Her gates have sunk into the ground, their bars he has broken and destroyed. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations. The law is no more, and her prophets no longer find visions from the Lord."
It's so clear that the Lord has brought all this upon them, and the writer cries out. Now the writer knows that the Lord has done this in righteousness — he's been really clear on that, in the face of Israel's sin. Does this help? Well, not so that you'd notice. Verse 11: "My eyes fail from weeping. I am in torment within. My heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city." He despairs that he can't do anything for the city or its people.
Verse 13: "What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, daughter Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?"
Now, part of me here wants to yell — God can! God can heal you. We know that to be true, don't we. But the writer is still wrestling with the fact that it was God who brought all this about, and the severity of it as he's confronted with it. And that the Lord planned this — verse 17: "The Lord has done what he planned. He has fulfilled his word, which he decreed long ago. He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you. He has exalted the horn" — that is, the strength and power — "of your foes."
There's no escaping it. In verses 18 and 19, he opens up his cry on behalf of the people and asks them to join in with him. Verse 18: "The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. You walls of daughter Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest. Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger at every street corner."
Jeremiah wants them to do that because it's their sin that has led them there, and he wants them to cry out, to repent and cry out to God.
But now, as he did at the end of chapter 1, again he cries out for the Lord to look — but even here he raises the intensity as he questions what God has done. Verse 20: "Look, Lord, and consider. Whom have you ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?"
Awful things are happening, and although he understands that this was God's righteous judgment, he still can't really come to grips with the severity as it's in front of his eyes. Can you see it? And it doesn't get any better as he closes: "Young and old lie together in the dust of the streets." He's speaking again as the city: "My young men and young women have fallen by the sword. You, Lord, have slain them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered them without pity. As you summoned to a feast day, so you have summoned against me terrors on every side. In the day of the Lord's anger no one escaped or survived. Those I cared for and reared, my enemy has destroyed."
It's as bleak a picture as you can get. It's as emotionally raw as you might imagine. And the question is, what are we to do with it?
What we take from this — for those not yet following Jesus, and for those who are
James de Costobadie: Well, firstly, if you're here tonight and you're not yet a follower of Jesus, you might be wondering what on earth you've walked into, and you're confused and you've got a lot of questions. Great. Welcome, and join the club — we all still have lots of questions. These are not simple concepts that we're dealing with. Questions are great. The good thing about God's Word and the Bible is that it doesn't wait for you to raise these questions. There is no question that you can ask that the Bible hasn't already raised in advance. There is no fine print in the Bible. And the goodness of God is that he gives us the space to come to him and to wrestle with those questions. So if you've got questions at the end, great, wonderful. Continue to come back and ask difficult questions of God and of the Bible. If God is good — and I am convinced that he is, because the Bible tells me and gives us a framework for understanding all those things — there are answers to be found. Keep coming back and keep asking those questions.
If you're here and you are a follower of Jesus, you might be in the same boat. Keep coming back and keep asking questions. But here are a few things to keep in mind.
Historically, we might learn something of God's people. We might note their continued sinful rebellion and the cycle of judgment that happens again and again and again. Every time it leads to people turning and repenting and crying out to God, and God having to once again deliver them, only to have them fail once more. This should probably teach us something of our own propensity to stray from God's way like God's sheep. But it will also lead us to the great shepherd. That's important. We're going to be thinking about that more in the next couple of weeks.
Theologically, this must drive us to think more about God's ultimate judgment. Whatever else these chapters show, they show that God's judgment is real and it is inevitable. When God says he will judge, he absolutely will. That is his right, because he is righteous and just, and he will not let injustice go unpunished. So Acts 17:31 says, "For he, the Lord, has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed" — that's Jesus. And the judgment of that day, friends, will be far worse than even what we've seen glimpses of today, because that judgment will be final and irreversible. We must hold that in mind. And again, we're going to be thinking about that more over the next couple of weeks, alongside the hope of salvation that God has provided in Jesus.
The permission and encouragement to lament
James de Costobadie: Now, all that being said, it's worth noting that nothing in these two chapters gives us answers of what that looks like just yet. Mostly it just cries out in pain and confusion. As honestly and plainly as it comes, our writer simply pours out the feelings and the hurt and the distress of the situation that lies before him, and the God who brought it about, and yes, the sin of the people who caused it. He wrestles with things beyond his understanding and struggles under a situation he can't control.
And so the thing I think we should take from this passage is the permission — maybe even the encouragement — that when we find ourselves similarly confused and despairing, we can pour that out honestly and cry out to our God. When we run out of answers, when we run out of strength, whatever it is, the Lord invites us to come to him, even when it's him we don't understand. God is big enough to take us when the situation and ourselves are at the most desperate — when we can't see, and when we can't understand, and when we can't escape. You don't need to filter your thoughts to God. He knows your thoughts better than you do. He wants you to cry out to him.
Now, lament isn't the only way of facing struggles and trials, and it's not the end of the picture. Keep that in mind also. But friends, even our Lord Jesus — Hebrews 5:7 — "in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death." Those famous words as he hangs on the cross and cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Even Jesus, from within his own human limits, laments. And as children of the living God, with your faith in Jesus, we can cry out like Jesus. We too can cry out to our Heavenly Father. It is a wonderful gift of grace to lament to our Lord.