Sermon on Lamentations 3: Hope remembered amid judgment and suffering
A sermon from Latimer Church working through Lamentations chapter 3, exploring the themes of crushed hope, remembered faithfulness, repentance, and rescue.
Summary
This is a solo sermon from Latimer Church, most likely delivered by James de Costobadie (Costa), working through Lamentations chapter 3 as part of a series on the book of Lamentations. The sermon identifies four movements in the chapter: hope crushed (verses 1–18), hope remembered (verses 19–39), a call to repentance (verses 40–51), and a call to the Lord for rescue (verses 52–66). The central argument is that the famous verses about God's compassions being new every morning (verses 22–24) were almost certainly spoken through gritted teeth rather than with easy joy, and that genuine hope requires deliberate, effortful recollection of concrete truths about God — not a skip to good feelings. The sermon draws a direct line from Israel's pattern of forgetting and remembering God's faithfulness, through the probable authorship of Jeremiah, to the Christian's greater anchor in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate concrete reality to hold onto in suffering.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Why Lamentations is not an easy book
It's fair to say that Lamentations is not an easy book. I'm sure you can hear that as it was being read. There's a lot going on in it. It's not easy because it speaks about events in history that we're sometimes less familiar with. It's not easy because it raises issues we're often uncomfortable with, particularly about God and his judgment and its severity. And then it's not easy because it's a genre and a style of writing we're just not used to — a genre which is far less concerned with giving answers than it is with raising them. And I don't know about you, but I like answers, all wrapped up in a nice neat bow. Lamentations doesn't necessarily provide them. It often leaves you hanging. And we're going to see that in even greater measure next week.
We had a helpful reminder from Ryan earlier. Last week we saw that lament as a form of prayer is an earnest prayer — it's a gracious space to be honest with God. Even when God is at the centre of our troubles, our confusion, or our trials, we can be honest with God, and God is big enough to take that cry, that honest lament. That's a wonderful, gracious gift from the Lord.
Overview of chapter 3's structure
Today we're focusing on chapter 3, which in more ways than one lies at the heart of Lamentations. More than any other part, it does provide some answers, but there's still a lot to wrestle with in there. So I hope you've got your brain switched on and in gear — there's a lot to get going, so we're just going to plough straight into the text.
We're going to look at it in four sections. The first one sets the scene, and then the other three flow out of it from there. The first section, the scene is set in verses 1 to 18. If you've got your Bibles open, that'll be really helpful as we go through.
Hope crushed: verses 1–18
Verses 1 to 18 give us a hope crushed. Verse 1 begins with a blunt and personal statement: I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord's wrath.
Now, if you were here last week, you might remember the circumstances. Under a series of progressively more terrible kings who ignored God's repeated warnings — that if they don't stop and turn back, God's judgment will certainly come — well, God's judgment has certainly come. It's come by the hand of Babylon, the superpower of the day, who have crushed Israel's armies, deported their king, destroyed their city, and burnt down their temple. All that had made Israel great has been crushed — yes, by Babylon, but at the call and judgment of the very God who provided all those things for Israel.
Far more so than in the first two chapters, this becomes very personal to the writer. With those two chapters it's easy to see the depths of despair felt and the severity of the suffering experienced, and a continued wrestling with the fact that it is his Lord who has brought all this upon him. And so he continues from verse 1:
I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord's wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light. Indeed he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long.
As you go on, you can feel how trapped and crushed he feels. Verses 5 and 6: He, the Lord, has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. It's this oppressive weight which closes in and squeezes the strength out of him. Even to the point of saying in verse 8: Even when I call out or cry out for help, the Lord shuts out my prayer. Hope seems lost.
The last few verses drive the point home. Verse 16: He, the Lord, has broken my teeth with gravel. He has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace. I have forgotten what prosperity is. So I say my splendour is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.
I often think that when you are healthy it's hard to remember what it feels like to be sick, but when you're sick the opposite is true — you can never remember what it feels like to be healthy. You can't even imagine what life would be like without that suffering in place. Well, here this man has forgotten what prosperity is. He's been under the hammer for so long. His splendour is all gone, and so is all that he had hoped for from the Lord. It is a hope crushed, and it has been crushed under the weight of God's judgment.
This echoes much of what we got in the first two chapters. And if this was simply a repeat of those, this would indeed be a lamentable book. But then comes this turning point.
Hope remembered: verses 19–39
It comes from verse 19. Out of a hope crushed comes this hope remembered, verses 19 to 39. We'll spend a bit more time on this point before moving on to the other two, because it's this hope remembered which prompts two calls. There's a call to the people for repentance in verses 40 to 51, and then there's a call to the Lord for rescue in verses 52 to 66.
And so if the word which summarised chapters 1 and 2 — which we looked at last week — was look, it started with an honest look at the situation at hand, and an honest look at the sin that caused it, and an honest look at the God who brought it about in righteous judgment, even landing with a cry for God himself to look at what was happening — at the heart of this chapter 3 is this key word: remember. Remember.
Verse 19 continues: I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them and my soul is downcast within me. Josh had a wonderful pause as he read this, didn't he? And yet: this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.
I love verse 21. I feel like it has a power all of its own. And so before we get on to what the writer remembers, I want to take a moment here and dwell on how he goes about remembering, because it's really important for how we use and understand these verses.
Because between verses 20 and 21 you'll notice nothing has changed. Nothing's gotten better. There's no external influence. This verse and the following are a deliberate and intentional calling to mind of something which goes against his own state of mind and goes against his own current experience. Did you notice? I well remember my affliction and wandering, and my soul is downcast within me, and yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.
Christians often, I think, jump very quickly to verses 22 to 24. They say them on their own, or they sing them with great joy — as we heard from Colin Buchanan — and I would never denigrate Colin Buchanan. These are wonderful truths that we should sing with great joy and remember with great hope and remind ourselves of and sing and shout and whatever. But if you put these verses in their context, the likelihood is they were not said with great joy or a bit of a dance. They were probably said through gritted teeth.
I reckon the writer has to close his eyes and take a deep breath at this moment. It takes him a bit to drag his mind away from the situation at hand, what he's been going through, and then he has to remind himself of a truth that he remembers but he can't feel, because he can't see it. I well remember my affliction and wandering, yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.
The late great preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that sometimes you have to stop listening to yourself and you have to start talking to yourself. You have to tell yourself and remind yourself of truths even when you don't want to hear them. But friends, that often requires great strength at the time that it happens. It's not an easy thing. And if we pretend that sometimes we can skip that bit to the joy, I think sometimes we do ourselves a disservice. If you skip to the feelings, you've skipped the truth that drives you there. You have to start with the truth.
But what does that need? Even that needs something. That means you need concrete truth to remember and hold on to. You can't remember what you don't know. And so in these times you need something solid to hold on to — a fixed anchor to cast out to hold you steady. And friends, the best time to learn these things isn't when you're in the middle of it. You need to learn these things now so that when those trials come, you've got those things close to hand, ready to recall. It won't make the pain go away, as we'll see shortly, but it will give you more tools at your disposal as you go through those things.
The time to learn those things isn't in the midst of the suffering. Suffering teaches its own things, but learn those things when you're in your right mind, when you can come to the Lord and his word and understand those truths and bury them deep down so that you know them in and out.
What the writer calls to mind
So what does this man call to mind? Well, here we come to those wonderful verses that he turns to as a lifeline. Verse 22:
Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him.
From verse 31: For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.
It's worth pausing here for a moment, because I think if you stop and think about these verses, they are extraordinary things to say out of the present circumstance that he's facing. Not only has he just spent two and a half chapters going on about the fact that it was God's deliberate judgment that did this — so how can he then say that God doesn't willingly bring affliction to anyone? That question gets raised. But I also find it a little unconvincing that a simple one or two liner saying "God is good" is enough to persuade someone in that state of mind to change their mind.
It's sort of like the perhaps well-meaning, perhaps even correct, but ultimately unhelpful thing people say when Christians are struggling. Often you hear in times of trial: "Don't worry, God works all things for the good of those who love him." Now that's true, but it's not really helpful at that point. It's not enough of a truth to get you out of that.
And so what I think is more likely is that these words are a trigger point, and they represent for the writer a whole series of times that God has acted — both in Israel's history but also out of his own experience. They tell the story of God's great love, his mercies new every morning, and his great faithfulness to his promises.
Remembering as a biblical pattern
Remembering is a major theme for God's people in the Bible. God often commands Israel to remember, and he does it again and again and again, because they're so bad at it. We should take that as a warning — we're not any better at times, if we are at all. But it's important to note that when commands to remember come from God about who God is and what he's like, they're always tied to a concrete reality of what God has done. God is gracious. He doesn't just tell us that he is faithful and loving. He demonstrates it over and over and over again so that we can remember it.
Now in the Old Testament, the most obvious and repeated example of this is God's rescue of Israel from Egypt, recorded in the book of Exodus. They're repeatedly reminded of this throughout their history for centuries, but the command was the same right from the get-go. You find it in Exodus 13:3, where God reminds them through Moses: Remember this day in which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, because the Lord brought you out of it with a mighty hand. Note there that they're to remember two things: the terrible situation itself, and the Lord who brought them out of it with a mighty hand. That's important.
There's a whole long list we could think about with these, but for our purposes there might be an even more relevant example. After God brings Israel out of Egypt, but before they get to the promised land, Israel immediately forget God's faithfulness. They immediately turn away from him. They are absolutely useless — it's shown time and time again. And so God, in judgment for their sin, has them wander around the desert for 40 years. The 40 years come to their close, and in Deuteronomy 8, as they stand on the brink of the promised land, Moses says: Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness for these 40 years.
Why do I make this point? Well, at least part of the point is that God didn't abandon them even in his own judgment. He did that so that they would turn back to him, and he sustained them until such time as he rescued them a second time. And it's examples like these that happen over and over again in Scripture that were ingrained into the memory of every one of God's people, so that they might remember who the Lord is because of what the Lord has done.
So they're not remembering just general concepts about God. They're remembering concrete examples of God's faithfulness, concrete examples of his love and compassion, even in the face of overwhelming and persistent sin and God's righteous judgment in that moment. Because still, God's love shines through the darkness and carries them through to receive his promises ultimately.
The writer in Lamentations remembers the affliction and the wandering. He well remembers the bitterness and the gall, and his soul is downcast. And yet this he calls to mind, and therefore he has hope. Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail — they never have, have they? They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. He prays to the Lord, telling himself that the Lord will be faithful now because he always has been, that he will rescue them now because he always has done in the past, for those who wait for him, for those who put their trust in him. Here is this hope remembered — concrete examples of God's faithfulness and goodness.
Of course, now he has two things in mind. He has the faithfulness of God and God's love to sustain. But there is this ongoing tension that God's judgment is totally righteous. And so the section closes — verse 38: Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? Why should the living complain when punished for their sins?
And so he must remember one more thing. What is it that prompts God's rescue in every single case? It is that his people repent and turn back to him and cry out to him.
A call to the people for repentance: verses 40–51
And so we move from this hope remembered to a call to the people for repentance. We're into verses 40 to 51. We're going to move through these next two points pretty quickly so we have time to wrap it all up at the end.
The writer never downplays or brushes aside the fact of the people's sin, nor his own part in that. It is up front and centre all the way through. And while the word "repent" is nowhere in these verses, the opening two verses describe exactly what true biblical repentance is, and the call is clear for the people from verse 40:
Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven and say, we have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven.
Friends, here is a man who understands the means to receiving God's salvation and rescue. The pattern never changes in the entire Bible. And it's never by doing enough things to please God. But after honestly examining ourselves, it's acknowledging our sin and our shortfall — to know that we never can save ourselves or please God — and it is then to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, lifting up our hearts and our hands and saying, "We have sinned and rebelled."
Now some people are a little disturbed by the end of verse 42, when it says the Lord has not forgiven. But put it in its context. The writer is surely correct to say at this point of writing Lamentations that the Lord has not forgiven, because at this stage the people still haven't repented. They're still stuck in their forgetfulness and their sinful rebellion. The call is still out there. It hasn't been heard and it hasn't been heeded yet.
And this reality brings the man back to the despair of a people who are still suffering under the weight of God's present judgment. And so in verse 48 he says: Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed. He continues: My eyes will flow unceasingly without relief until the Lord looks down from heaven and sees.
Now he knows that's the fault of the people, and he knows that won't come without repentance, but he's still in utter anguish and he is crying out to his Lord. That hasn't changed. And yet there is now a slight shift in tone, because whereas chapters 1 and 2 stopped at a cry for God to look, he still cries for God to look, but now he continues and he cries out for God to act.
A call to the Lord for rescue: verses 52–66
So after a call to the people for repentance, he now calls to the Lord for rescue. And even here, the remembering doesn't stop.
The writer falls back into speaking in the first person — as "I" and "me" — instead of the "us" and "we" he's just been speaking in. And the way he recalls what has been happening lends even more weight to the probability that it's Jeremiah the prophet who is writing. He was one who was literally thrown down in a pit, as these verses describe. And so if it is Jeremiah, just to give you some context, it seems as if he's describing Israel's plight at the hands of Babylon, but describing it in terms from his own personal experience — his own situation that he has faced and been rescued from. Maybe he's drawing on his own recollection of personal rescue for a people who have no experience of their own.
And so verses 52 to 54 remember this past rescue, where he was hunted and his enemies tried to end his life in a pit. In verses 55 to 57, when he called on the name of the Lord from the depths of that pit, he notes that the Lord heard his plea and came near when he called, and God responded with those wonderful words: Do not fear. Again, if it's Jeremiah, you can look back to Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 8, where he was told by the Lord: Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and I will rescue you. That's a great promise.
And so he cries out for the Lord to do it again, from verse 58: You, Lord, took up my case. You redeemed my life. Lord, you have seen the wrong done to me. Lord, you have seen. Uphold my cause. And he's crying this out on behalf of the people of Israel. You've seen the depth of their vengeance, all their plots against me. And he closes by demanding justice be brought about on the enemies in Babylon who have brought about this present situation.
Connecting chapter 3 to the present
Now there are a few more dots we have to connect to fully understand some lingering questions in Lamentations. That'll be next week's problem — not least of which is why, after this chapter, chapters 4 and 5 take a downward spiral again. But we'll come to that next week.
This week, how do we connect and think through chapter 3? Well, if you're familiar at all with the Bible, thankfully it doesn't take too much legwork to understand that we can find ourselves in an almost identical situation to this writer even in the 21st century. And yet we have a leg up on this lamenter, because as those who know the Bible and the salvation available in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have one more thing to remember — a concrete example of God's gracious salvation, a full and final reminder in the coming of Jesus.
Jesus, in himself — and we'll get to this more again next week — draws together this ongoing tension and answers it. The Old Testament struggles to hold God's supreme justice alongside his desire to save those who can't save themselves from themselves, never mind anyone else. And so on the cross, as that concrete reality and history that we can recall, it's Jesus who ultimately takes the just punishment of God's righteous judgment, which at the same time is the very thing which allows him to offer free forgiveness to those who turn to him in repentance and to continue on in his love. And so, like the writer, we have all the reminders of the Old Testament, but we have something so much greater. And centrally we have Jesus as the final and central concrete reality which we can remind ourselves of — to remember who God is and what he is like because of what he has done for us.
What to remember: three things
But the things that we have to remember are the same in principle as this chapter, even if we have a greater reality to map them onto in Jesus.
First, you have a reminder of the reality of God's judgment. So clear. God's judgment is real. It is certain, and it is something you never want to face. Read again these chapters and the frightening images that come out. Even more, it's hinted at in this chapter, and it comes even clearer in chapters 4 and 5 — you start to see that there is a fuller and more final picture of that judgment to come. More than this, this chapter is clear about the fact that God's judgment is just, it's right and proper, and so more personally, it's something that we all deserve. And that's a tough pill to swallow.
But even more than this again, the reminder so key in chapter 3 is to remember that God is also compassionate and faithful to his promises, and will rescue those who know that and wait for him.
Two applications: for those without faith, and for believers
So the call from chapter 3 is to remember, to repent, and to turn to him. And as we close, there are at least two situations where this clearly applies.
First, to anyone here who doesn't yet know Jesus — who doesn't know the good news of the full forgiveness which is freely available in him. The persistent picture presented by the Bible shows that God doesn't demand that we earn his favour or goodness. The clear claim of the Bible is that we can't, and we've got to get that really clear from the outset. And so the call is never to do enough things to please God and so to earn our way into heaven somehow, but to realise that God has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. In Jesus, God has come down to die the death that we deserve so that we might live eternal life in him, as those who put their trust in him. And so no matter your past actions or attitudes, you can take hold of that salvation right now simply by trusting in Jesus alone.
True, God then shows you the better way of life, of living. Following Jesus is not without change and its own trials — there's no fine print in the Bible about this either. But the offer of forgiveness in Jesus isn't dependent on what you can do. It's by trusting in what he has done already. And if you want to know more about how that works, ask someone around you or come and ask me after the service. I'd love to talk to you about it.
Secondly, for those who have already put their faith in Jesus and know this forgiveness — what's here for you? Well, there's probably a number of things.
There should rightly be times in our lives where we as Christians are confronted by the reality of our ongoing sin. Being forgiven doesn't mean we're perfect — that still waits until Jesus comes back in his final judgment. We can all be a little blasé with sin sometimes. I'm definitely guilty of it. We know we're saved by grace and so we forget to take our sin seriously. But friends, we should never downplay the gravity and the persistence of our own sin. In many ways it should drive us to our knees often and regularly in renewed anguish at the state of our own hearts and the situations which that sin brings into our lives. Sin is never without consequence. Sin is an awful reality which we will continue to live with until the Lord Jesus returns. Never take it for granted. Take it seriously.
On the other hand, I know many people who don't need that reminder — many people who often feel crushed and defeated when reminded of their own sin. It comes to their mind quite often. And sometimes it can even feel like one is again condemned as a failure in God's eyes, maybe thinking that God's love has somehow been removed from us. In your head you know you've been rescued and forgiven, but you still feel like you're down in that pit. Surely, you think, God has given up on me — I'm such a horrible person.
But here is where we stand with the writer of Lamentations, with the people of Israel. We might remember our affliction and wandering. We will remember them. And our souls may be downcast within. And yet this we call to mind, and therefore we have hope. Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, O Lord. And I love how the ESV phrases verse 24: The Lord is my portion, says my soul, and therefore I will hope in him.
And friends, we know this hope even more than the writer, because we know it in Jesus — fully, finally, forever. And so even an honest look at our own sinfulness becomes an even more wonderful reminder of God's grace and the power of the forgiveness that is in Christ Jesus. The greater salvation that we have in him.
Closing: Romans 5
I want to close with a few words paraphrasing Paul in Romans 5. He says this: For if, while we were God's enemies, still sinners, at that point we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life? And so we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received this great and sure salvation.
And friends, that is worth remembering.