Amen, Lamentations chapter number three is my favorite chapter in the book of Lamentations.
It's a great book, and when we're studying the book of Lamentations, I want to keep in
mind the genre of the book of Lamentations is poetry, although it's not in the section
with the other poetic books like Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon.
It is a poetic book.
It just is placed here after the book of Jeremiah because Jeremiah is the author, and it has
to do with the subject matter that we just finished up with in Jeremiah.
But it's very similar to the book of Psalms in its style being a poetic book, and one
of the things that makes it a poetic book is the fact that it is an acrostic poem.
So an acrostic poem is where each line of the poem begins with a different letter or
a certain letter.
Sometimes modern acrostic poems maybe will spell something.
You'll see sometimes people will have a poem like this on their wall in a frame, and it'll
spell a word going vertically, and it'll have a sentence here and there across saying something.
So when you're reading Lamentations, it should jump out at you.
Chapter one has 22 verses.
Chapter two has 22 verses.
Chapter three has 66, etc.
So you can see that it's based on the number 22, which is how many letters there are in
the Hebrew alphabet.
There are other poems like that in the book of Psalms, and usually the telltale sign is
when you see a psalm that has 22 verses, a lot of times that's what it is.
It's an acrostic poem.
Also, the famous virtuous woman passage in Proverbs chapter 31 is 22 verses long, starting
in verse 10 going to verse 31.
And guess what?
It's an acrostic poem.
So the first verse about the virtuous woman starts with A, B, and so forth.
On the list, obviously, Hebrew letters, aleth, bat, gimel, daleth, etc.
So what's interesting is that chapter three is the same length as chapter one, because
each verse in chapter one has three statements, whereas in chapter three, you have each statement
getting its own verse.
So you have 66.
And I remember when I was a teenager, I wondered, why are these numbered differently when chapters
one and chapter three both have the same number of statements?
But the reason why is that chapter one is a 22-line poem, meaning that the acrostic
starts at the beginning of each verse.
So verse one is aleth, verse two is bet, etc.
Whereas in Lamentations chapter three, verse one starts with aleth, verse two starts with
aleth, verse three starts with aleth.
Bet, bet, bet, gimel, gimel, gimel, daleth, daleth, daleth.
So that's why they broke it into 66 verses, because it's a 66-line poem.
So some of the verse divisions in the Bible are just arbitrary verse divisions, but some
of the verse divisions actually come from the original text.
So in this case, the chapter and verse divisions in Lamentations are from the original text,
meaning if you were reading this in the original Hebrew, you'd have the exact same divisions
naturally there, because it's five separate poems and the lines are dictated by the acrostic.
So that helps you break this up into the size bites that God intended for it to be taken
in.
When you're reading chapter one, it's a little bit bigger of a bite, and then in chapter
three, it's little tiny bites.
So let's jump into this passage here.
The first 20 verses of Lamentations chapter three are very negative.
So he starts out just really negative and lamenting, but then starting in verse 21,
he starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel and talk about the positive and the
hope and so forth.
So we're going to start out in the really negative section here in chapter three.
It says in verse one, I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
Now here's the thing, on one level, this is just a dramatic statement, because by saying
the man, instead of just saying, well, I'm a man that has seen affliction by the rod
of his wrath, that would make more sense, right, to say I'm a man, because guess what?
Everybody's going through hard things.
Lots of other people have suffered affliction and gone through hard times.
So one reason why he's saying this is obviously just because when we're going through something
really hard, it's different than hearing about someone else going through it.
So his suffering is unique to him.
He feels like basically he's going through something unparalleled by saying I am the
man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
But we need to remember that there is no temptation taken us but such is his common demand, and
that the same afflictions are accomplished in our brethren that are in the world, the
same things we're going through, other people are going through.
That's just right on the surface.
But let me give you a deeper, more important meaning why he says I am the man is because
chapter 3 is the chapter of Lamentation that really points us to Jesus Christ more than
any other chapter.
We have to realize that Jesus is in every book of the Bible.
To him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him
shall receive remission of sins.
So I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
Who is that one man that could say that and mean it would be the Lord Jesus Christ because
no one went through what Jesus went through.
Now I just said earlier, hey, you know, anything we go through other people have gone through
it.
That could be said of anyone except Jesus.
Obviously Jesus is the one who really is the only one who went through certain things.
And so he truly is the man that has seen affliction by the rod of God's wrath.
Folks, the correct way to read the Bible when you're reading the Old Testament is to be
looking for Jesus Christ.
Some people try to de-Christianize the Old Testament.
If you were to study the Old Testament in an academic setting, the whole thing is just
we've got to look at it, it is Jewish, this is a Jewish book, you know, the Hebrew scripture
is wrong.
If you de-Christianize the Old Testament, you fail to understand the Old Testament.
You have the veil over your eyes.
When you turn to Christ, when you have the Spirit of Christ, you will interpret the Old
Testament by seeing Jesus Christ in the Old Testament.
That's the correct way to read it.
That's why the academics are missing it when they study the Old Testament.
We need to, but I've even seen it amongst Christians.
I've even seen it in churches.
The dispensational crowd will often mock this idea of taking a passage and taking it to
the cross.
Hey, that's the right way to preach the Old Testament.
Because the Old Testament is pointing us to Jesus.
And so when we see these statements about the man, it's Jesus, clearly.
And we get into some stuff that's more explicitly messianic later on in this passage.
So he says, I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
Jesus Christ actually was on the receiving end of the wrath of God the Father.
And it pleased the Lord to bruise him.
He was wounded for our transgressions and so forth.
Verse 2, he had led me and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
Surely against me is he turned.
He turneth his hand against me all the day.
My flesh and my skin hath he made old.
He hath broken my bones.
Now when we're reading this and he says, my flesh and my skin hath he made old.
Think about how people when they live a hard life, they start looking old before their
time, right?
People who've lived a stressful life or people who've used drugs or alcohol or people who've
gone through intense pain, suffering, illness, accidents, they're going to get old before
their time.
So he's saying, look, God has punished me, turned his hand against me, he has poured
out his wrath on me, and my flesh and my skin has he made old.
You know, you think of people going through a stressful situation and their hair going
prematurely gray.
He had broken my bones.
Of course we know that was not literally fulfilled in Jesus because Jesus Christ literally had
no bones broken.
But whenever we say, oh, so and so is a picture of Jesus, we don't want to understand that
that everything about that person pictures Jesus.
Because remember, you know, David pictures Jesus, but what about the sinful things that
David did?
We're not going to attribute those to Jesus, are we?
So we have to understand what we mean by symbolism and typology in the Old Testament.
So it says in verse 5, he hath builded against me and compassed me with gall and travail.
He hath set me in dark places as they that be dead of old.
Now much of this could easily be applied prophetically to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Obviously him enduring affliction by the rod of God's wrath.
He turned against him, right, because God the Father went from being in sweet love and
communion with the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and actually turning on him, right?
And Jesus experienced that darkness on the cross and cried out, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?
Compass me with gall and travail.
You know, Jesus Christ was going through travail.
He was given gall to drink.
He was given gall as a thirst quencher.
And then it says he set me in dark places as they that be dead of old.
This envisions Jesus Christ descending into hell for three days and three nights.
The Bible says in verse 7, he hath hedged me about that I cannot get out.
He hath made my chain heavy.
Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
Again, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone.
He hath made my paths crooked.
He was unto me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places.
He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces.
He hath made me desolate.
He hath bent his bow and set me as a mark for the arrow.
Now let's go back to talking about Jeremiah because obviously the literal here is Jeremiah
saying, I'm the man.
But then there's a prophetic layer of Jesus Christ truly is that man that saw affliction
by the rod of his mouth.
You know, when we think about it from Jeremiah's perspective, also when I cry and shout, he
shutteth out my prayer.
He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone.
He hath made my paths crooked.
Verse 10.
He was unto me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places.
He had turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces.
He had made me desolate.
He had bent his bow and basically just targeted me, he's saying.
You right?
He bent the bow.
He set me as a mark for the arrow.
He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.
Now obviously there are lots of layers of meaning here because it's Jeremiah talking,
but he's also talking from the perspective of he's being Judah.
He's being Jerusalem.
He's being the nation and talking about the nation.
Did God really do this?
You know, did God actually shut out his prayer?
Yes he did.
He absolutely did.
Because if we study the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is told by God repeatedly, do not
pray for this people.
So Jeremiah is praying, oh God, please spare us.
Please save the nation.
And he says, pray not for this people for their good.
Don't pray for them.
You know, and he says, for I will not hear.
So you see how we use scripture to interpret scripture and say, okay, Jeremiah is saying
you've shut out my prayer.
Okay.
Does he just feel that way or did God really shut out his prayer?
Well, we go to Jeremiah and what do we see?
God saying, well, I'm not going to hear you.
I'm not going to listen.
Because of the fact that a person who turns away their ear from hearing the law, the Bible
says, even his prayer shall be abomination.
So when you have the nation of Israel turning away their ear from the law of God and then
you have a man like Jeremiah praying for them or them praying for themselves, yeah, God
will not hear that.
Even their prayer is abomination, the Bible says.
So it's very important to God that we actually obey his word and follow the word of God.
You know, it doesn't work to just go through life, just living however you want, breaking
God's commandments and then you're just praying to God and God's just going to say, well,
but you prayed so, you know, I'll just overlook these things.
Folks, we need to be praying and following God's word.
Both.
Okay.
Because you know what the Bible says in 1 John and there are multiple things we could
point to in 1 John that tie in with this, but in the book of 1 John it says, and whatsoever
we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things which
are pleasing in his sight.
You know, it sounds to me like if we don't keep his commandments and we don't do the
things that are pleasing in his sight, we're not going to have this assurance that whatsoever
we ask, we receive of him because we do his commandments, because we do the things that
are pleasing in his sight.
So here we see an example of a city, a nation, obviously Jeremiah personally is right with
God, but the city and the nation that he's praying on behalf of is not right with God.
He shuts out their prayer.
He becomes an adversary under them.
You know, look, God can either be your greatest ally, helping you succeed everywhere you turn
like Isaac sows and he reaps a hundred fold in Genesis, you know, because God's with him.
You know, Joseph, whatever he does, prospers.
Daniel, whatever he does, prospers.
Or if God works against you, he'll just make everything you do fail, okay?
So we need to make sure that God doesn't become our adversary.
We don't want God pointing his arrow at us.
We don't want God to be like a bear lying in wait for us or like a lion lying in wait
for us.
We want God on our side.
And so again, we've got to get the three layers as we're reading the Book of Lamentations.
Layer number one is Jeremiah himself.
Layer number two is Jeremiah speaking on behalf of his people.
And then layer number three is the Lord Jesus Christ, the messianic component here.
And we see that in this passage because of the fact that, you know, Jesus Christ, when
he's on the cross, his prayer is shut out.
Now it wasn't that he hadn't done things that were pleasing in the Father's sight because
Jesus specifically said, I do always those things which please him.
And we know that Jesus was totally without sin.
So Jesus always kept the commandments and did those things that were pleasing in his
sight.
But when Jesus Christ is on the cross, he took upon him the sins of the whole world.
And so he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him.
And so when Jesus is on that cross, that sin is what separated him from God.
The Bible talks about in Isaiah, your sins have separated you from God.
And so Jesus Christ experienced a separation from God the Father where he's saying, why
have you forsaken me?
And that was due to the fact that he took the sins of the world upon him.
And so that's why God shut him out.
Just like he shut out the children of Israel when they're sinful, he shut out even the
Lord Jesus Christ because of the fact that he took upon him the sins of the world.
So all of those layers are here in this passage.
So let's keep reading.
Verse 13, he has caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reigns.
Verse 14, I was in derision to all my people and their song all the day.
What does he mean by their song?
He's saying that they're singing songs to make fun of him, basically.
They're mocking him and they've made up little ditties and songs about him.
Again, the literal meaning here, we're talking about probably some of the surrounding nations
that are glad to see Jerusalem get invaded.
They're glad to see Judah fall.
They're probably making up songs about it and making fun of it and so forth.
And then, of course, we know that Jesus, when he was on the cross, was mocked.
He was despised.
They made fun of him.
They laughed him to scorn as he hung on the cross.
He had filled me with bitterness.
He had made me drunken with wormwood.
He had also broken my teeth with gravel stones.
He had covered me with ashes.
And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace.
I forget prosperity.
I mean, look, it's been so long since I've been prosperous or I'm so far from that, he's
saying, I don't even remember what that's like to be prosperous because I'm in such
bad shape.
And I said, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord, remembering mine affliction
and my misery, the wormwood and the gull.
My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me.
Let me just quickly point out in verse 20 that going through hard times humbles us.
It humbles us.
Part of why we have to go through hard things in our life is to keep us humble.
If we went through life and everything went well for us, we would become prideful, arrogant,
bad people.
Guaranteed.
I mean, I guarantee, you know, I think about just my life and the different troubles and
hardships I've gone through in my life growing up and now.
And you know, I don't feel like my life is really that different from other people's
lives.
You know, we're all going through similar trials in our lives.
You know, I just remember just things that I struggled with growing up and just, you
know, having to switch schools all the time and, you know, I didn't like the fact that
every year I would switch to a different school and so it made it harder to make friends and
stuff like that.
Or just when I was in fourth, fifth and sixth grade, I was like several inches shorter than
everyone else in the class.
You know, I hit seventh grade.
I grew up to normal white guy height.
But when I was in elementary school, I was the shortest kid in the class and I didn't
like that.
When I was a teenager, my face was covered in acne.
You know, then when I was 12, you know, I joined the sports team and I was all excited.
You know, I was going to play basketball, JV basketball, went to all the training, did
all the wind sprints, threw up along with everybody else, got in shape, ready to go.
I would go to the first game and I think I got to play for like a matter of seconds
or something because I wasn't on the first string.
And then before I could even go to the second game, my mom got a job and it's like, oh,
sorry, you can't go anymore because it's on the wrong night.
You know, we can't get you down there.
You don't have a ride.
And it's like, ah, you know, it's just like, it's just things like that you go through
just, just, and those sound dumb now looking back because it's like, who cares, right?
They don't matter anymore.
But guess what?
The stuff that you're stressing about right now, it's going to be just a dumb who cares
10 years from now.
Just like me as a 38 year old man, I look back at these things and it's just like, well,
I'm glad.
I look back and I'm like, I'm glad that all those things happened because what if everything
would have gone well for me?
What if I would have had the perfect grades and been the star athlete and been the best
looking tall, dark and handsome guy?
You know what?
I'm not the biggest self-centered jerk in the world because it's our afflictions.
It's our suffering.
It's things going wrong.
It's our failures that keep us humble.
And looking back, we don't care about those things because it's all water under the bridge
now.
But you know what?
We're glad that we're a humble person and not some kind of an arrogant jerk.
So you know, we need to understand that part of the purpose of God letting us go through
hard things is to keep us humble because our human nature, if everything goes perfectly
for us, would be to get puffed up and prideful and arrogant and start thinking more highly
of ourselves than we ought to think.
So here's a life hack, okay, spiritually.
If you want God to bless you, if you want God to prosper you, stay humble on your own
because if you can actually stay humble on your own, then God won't think to himself,
okay, I have to put all this affliction on you because you're just right on the edge
of being prideful all the time.
If you just live on this edge where you're just starting to always get a little too big
for your britches, then God's going to always have to keep taking you down a notch.
Whereas if you actually live over here where you're very humble, God can see, okay, you
know what?
I can bless this guy a little bit and he can handle it.
I can give this guy some power.
I can give this guy some blessings and prosperity.
I can help things go his way because it's not going to go to his head or her head, you
know.
I can actually allow her to prosper because she stays humble no matter what and then he
can bless.
But God has to cause bad things to happen to us sometimes to humble us.
The Bible says in verse 20, my soul have them still in remembrance.
What does he have in remembrance?
The misery, the suffering, the wormwood, the gall, and you know what?
It still keeps me humble, right?
It's humbled in me.
My soul is humbled in me.
Then he says in verse 21, here's where the tone begins to change.
So the first 20 verses are just doom and gloom.
In verse 21, the tone changes.
He says, this I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope it is of the Lord's mercies that
we are not consumed because his compassion's fail not.
So even in a period where he feels like God is my enemy, God is my adversary, he's like
a lion, he's like a bear, he's just pointed his arrows at me, he's just filling the whole
quiver into me, he's just unloading all of his artillery into me.
He says even in the midst of God shutting out his prayer, you know what?
He knows that God has this unchanging attribute of being compassionate, and that never changes.
God is compassionate, so he knows that there's hope.
He knows, you know what?
If I straighten up and fly right, even if God's not listening to me today, even if God
is still punishing me, eventually God is going to fix this because he's compassionate, he's
merciful.
He's not going to punish forever.
He's not going to remain angry forever.
It's of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed, and why are we not consumed?
Because his compassion's fail not.
The Bible says in the New Testament, charity never faileth.
So there are going to be things that we can't count on in life, but God's compassion is
something that we can always count on.
He's not going to change his nature.
His nature is always going to be loving, merciful, compassionate.
He's always that father waiting for the prodigal son to come home, and you know that he's not
going to change.
If you're his child, that's a guarantee.
Now obviously the unsaved can cross a line with him where he's done, but here's the thing,
it's impossible for a child of God to ever get to that point because the Bible says that
nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He will never leave us or forsake us, so that's a non-issue for the Christian.
So it says, it's of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed because his compassion's
fail not.
They are new every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness.
And of course this beautiful psalm has been the inspiration of one of the most famous
psalms in the hymnal, great is thy faithfulness.
And it even uses some of these other lyrics from the original song, like I'm trying to
think of how that part goes, you know.
It's hard to jump into a song midstream sometimes, but you know the song of course, great is
thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see.
Thou changest not thy come, passions they fail not.
So you can see how this goes, it's basically just kind of a rewording of this whole little
section.
Thou changest not, thy compassion's fail not, right?
And what does he say here in verse 22?
His compassion's fail not.
Verse 23, they're new every morning, morning by morning new mercies I see.
So that song was inspired by these couple of verses here.
So even though we sing hymns out of the hymnal, and we also sing King James Bible Psalms put
directly to music, some of just our standard hymns, they kind of classify a little bit
as a psalm sometimes when they do quote parts of scripture.
Like we think of, you know, I know whom I have believed, that's an entire Bible verse.
The whole chorus is just a pure King James Bible verse.
So some of the songs in the hymnal are paraphrases of scripture, and this is one of them.
Great is thy faithfulness.
It says in verse 24, the Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him.
Now the word portion in the Bible a lot of times has to do with an inheritance.
Like where the prodigal son says give me the portion of the inheritance that falleth to
me now.
A synonym of this in the Bible is the word lot, lot, portion, inheritance.
He's saying the Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in him.
The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
It's good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
Why?
Because you know it's coming.
Now obviously this is not talking about going to heaven here when it says, you know, just
quietly wait.
You know, I know you guys want to be saved, but you just need to sit back and just quietly
wait for that.
That's not what this is saying.
You get saved not by quietly waiting, but by calling upon the name of the Lord by faith
one time.
You don't have to beg God to be saved and keep begging and begging and begging and then
find, okay, I guess, you know, pray harder or something.
But some people believe that.
Some people, they call it praying through and they have a weird doctrine about that.
But the point is that, you know, the Bible is saying here the salvation of the Lord,
meaning God to save you out of your distresses, your afflictions, the hard things that you're
going through right now, temporally speaking, you know, you're going through a bad time
and you want God to save you out of that or help you out.
And the Bible is saying we can take it to the bank that eventually God is going to,
if we're doing right, if we love him, if we're keeping the commandments, you know,
God is going to pull us out of that situation because his compassions don't fail.
We know that he's good unto those that wait for him.
We know he's good to the soul that seeketh him.
And it's just good for a man that he both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of
the Lord.
You know, you just, you got to just hang in there, be patient.
God is going to deliver you.
And then it says in verse 27, it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
So it's good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
He put his, excuse me, he sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon
him.
He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.
He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him.
He's filled full with reproach for the Lord will not cast off forever.
This is a powerful passage here.
Let me try to break this down here a little bit.
It's good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
You know, our youth is a time when a lot of times people will just squander it and waste
it.
You've heard the saying, youth is wasted on the young.
And especially in our society, a lot of times young people, it's like they turn 18 and they
don't do anything productive with their lives, they a lot of times will just spend time just
kind of partying and just kind of just fooling around, just wasting time, playing a lot of
video games, drinking, partying, just hanging out, smoking pot, whatever.
And then they kind of just think that they'll get serious about life later.
And you see a lot of these young people today that are in their 20s that are just sort of
these overgrown juveniles.
They're in their 20s but they're living at home, they don't have a full time job or they
don't have a career, they have no motivation, they have no plan.
They're living in mom's basement, they're playing video games, they're just fooling
around and just trying to just extend childhood as far as they can until finally they get
to be 26 years old or something.
It's like, hey, you can't be on the insurance anymore or you need to get out there and make
something out of yourself.
You know, you ought to be doing that when you're 18, not 26, okay.
You know, you ought to get serious about life in your youth.
Even when you're a teenager, you should be serious about life and starting to prepare
for the future, you know, study to show yourself approved, learn, study, work, gain job skills.
I mean, you ought to be just chomping at the bit to go to work as a man and you ought to
be studying and before you're ready to go to work, you ought to be studying hard and
working hard to learn because I'm constantly telling my kids, look, this is your job.
Your schoolwork is your job right now.
If you're not going to take this seriously, how are you going to take a job seriously
someday because you know what, jobs can sometimes be as tedious and boring as schoolwork.
They can sometimes be as monotonous and unrewarding as math or English or science or whatever
you're doing.
You know, so when you're a young person, learning is your job.
You know, that's, it's your job to get through that and to study and to learn all the math
and the English and the science and the history and whatever you need and so you ought to
take that seriously.
The Bible says even a child is known by his doings whether it's work, be pure, and whether
it be right.
It's good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, not the beer pong in his youth,
not partying in his youth, not sowing his wild oats in his youth, but bear the yoke
in your youth.
You know what, if you work hard as a young person and bear the yoke, you know what, you're
setting yourself up for success later in life.
You know, if you work hard and pay your bills and buy your vehicle and get started in life,
you know, I thank God that he allowed me to get married when I was 19 years old and start
having children and start doing something with my life because I think that kept me
out of a lot of trouble that I would've gotten in when I was 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, if I would've
just been kind of floating through life not really knowing what I was going to do, not
having any direction.
It's important that a young person work, what does it mean to bear the yoke?
Let's just break this down.
Work, work hard, and when you think of bearing the yoke, you think of hard work that might
be painful to perform, right, working hard, not using that, because I mean, what is it
that the young have that we don't have as we get older?
I'm still fairly young, but you know, as a 38-year-old man, let me tell you the biggest
difference between, physically, between being 38 and being 18 is that my body does not recover
the way it did when I was 18.
You know, when I was 18, I could go out and do super strenuous work, next day I'm a little
sore, second day I feel totally normal.
Now if I go out and do hard physical work, my body will be sore for an entire, you know,
for an entire week you're feeling the delayed onset muscle soreness.
If I go to the gym and do a hard workout, for the next six days, those muscles will
feel sore, but when you're a teenager, it's just gone, you just recover.
You have energy, you have strength, you just, you just get a little bit more tired as you
get older, you know, your testosterone levels go down after you turn 30 years old, and you
just don't have that same recovery and just, so look, young people are built for hard work
is what I'm saying.
I mean, their bodies can handle strenuous work, and the Bible's saying, hey, it's good
to bear the yoke of his youth, and then it says, he sitteth alone and keepeth silence
because he had borne it upon him.
You know what I take from that verse is that sometimes the biggest loud mouths are the
people who have achieved the least.
The Bible says a fool's voice is known by a multitude of words, and so sometimes the
biggest blowhards, loud mouths, just arrogant people just kind of blowing off their mouth
about things that are over their head and things that they don't understand and they
talk a big talk, often have the least achievements.
Because the one who has borne the yoke in his youth sitteth alone and keepeth silence
because he had borne it upon him.
And then the Bible says he putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope.
You know what he's saying?
He's saying he'll do whatever it takes to get through it.
He'll do whatever it takes to get it done.
He'll put his mouth in the dust, crawling on his face to get it done, is what it's saying
here.
So we're picturing here hard work, struggle, travail, just extremely hard work.
Going through a hard time for that light at the end of the tunnel.
That's what the Bible's saying here.
Now why bring this up at this time in this poem?
Because he starts out talking about all the bad things that have happened to him.
He talks about how, you know, God has just really punished him and the city and everything
like that.
But then he talks about God's mercy and his compassion and how there's hope and that it's
good to just hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
And then I think he's basically bringing this in as an illustration.
So he's talking about everything about his current situation up to verse 26.
But he ends on, in verse 26, sort of this general statement that just in general it's
good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.
And then I think he's basically bringing up an example, like for example, for example,
it's good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
You know, when you're young, you go through hard things.
You go through challenging things.
You work hard basically because you're paying your dues so that you can enjoy the fruit
of that later in life.
And he's comparing it to like we're paying our dues right now.
We're suffering now.
We're going through something really hard right now.
But just as the young man that bears the yoke in his youth in the end has hope, in the end
God blesses.
He's saying, you know, that's what we're going through something hard and there's light at
the end of the tunnel and in the end we're going to be blessed, we're going to be better
people, we're going to be more humble, and God's going to fix this, we can rebuild, and
it's going to be good once again.
Because these verses seem a little out of place, like why are we all of a sudden talking
about young men bearing the yoke in their youth?
But I believe he's just tying it in as an illustration.
He's putting it side by side with what they're going through as an example, okay.
And look, this is the way life works.
Sometimes when you're young you have to kind of pay your dues a little bit.
You know, I can remember times when I was young and starting out that I had to work
two jobs, that I had to work a hundred hours a week literally at times, and just doing
without things, you know, when you're first married and you have a couple kids and you're
having to really just work hard, you know, just to get started in life.
And then after you get through that, you build up your seniority, you build up your career,
you build up your skill set, and then you can actually take it a little bit easier.
And it's good because your body can't handle what it used to anyway.
But imagine the opposite.
You spend your 20s out drinking, partying, smoking pot.
You get to be 30 years old and it's like, okay, now it's time to get serious about life.
Now you got to bear the yoke in your 30s, that's going to be harder than bearing it
in your early 20s.
So it's better to be smarter when you're young and kind of pay your dues.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
Get the hard stuff done when you're younger, right?
Get that stuff done.
Get that stuff out.
Don't put that stuff off.
You know, we have this attitude that says, hey, let's just rack up our credit card now.
Just party and enjoy and we'll figure out how to pay for all this later.
So then we have fun, fun, fun.
And then it's like all the suffering of having to pay the price for what we've done.
But what's better is to go through suffering on purpose in the beginning and then enjoy.
Then enjoy.
Because here's the thing, if you suffer first and enjoy later, then while you're suffering
you have something to look forward to.
What does the Bible keep saying in Lamentations 3?
All throughout this passage, hope, hope, hope.
That's what keeps coming up.
It's like, okay, things are bad, but there's hope.
Things are bad, but it's going to end.
Things are bad, but I know there's light at the end of the tunnel.
But here's the thing, when you have all the fun up front, like the prodigal son, right?
You're like the prodigal son, you have all the fun now, you don't have anything to look
forward to.
Then you go put your mouth in the dust, but there's no hope.
It's just, well, the fun's over, buddy.
And you just, your life just gets worse and worse and harder and harder.
I don't want to live that kind of life.
You know, I'd rather get some hard things over with, go through some pain, go through
some suffering, go through some hard things, and then I can enjoy.
Rather than enjoy, and then just misery afterward.
Get the order right.
Finish your vegetables, then have the dessert.
Okay, but you just want to eat the dessert, and then it's like, okay, now it's just, there's
nothing but vegetables on your plate, you know.
I'd rather take my vegetables, mix them in with the mashed potatoes and gravy, spread
it out into some early bites in the meal, and then get to the end of the meal and just
have the best stuff at the end, right?
But no, no, no.
This is, some people, they live their life like the guy who just eats, they just eat
everything as just all vegetables there, and just staring them down.
Now they're getting cold, all right?
So don't live your life that way.
Verse 30 again points us to Jesus, and this is why I said this is the chapter that seems
to point us to Christ more than any other chapter in Lamentations, says, he giveth his
cheek to him that smiteth him.
He's filled full with reproach.
Isn't that about Jesus right there?
Because Jesus definitely gave his back to the smiters, the Bible says.
He hid not his face from shame and spitting.
He gave his back to the smiters.
Here it says he giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him.
He's filled full with reproach, but why?
For the Lord will not cast off forever.
Why did Jesus have hope?
Well he told us in Psalm 16, he told us, therefore my soul shall rest in hope for thou wilt not
leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to seek corruption.
So why did he say he had hope?
He said I have hope because you will not leave my soul in hell.
And here he says, I have hope for the Lord will not cast off forever.
Look, Jesus wasn't going to be dead forever.
Jesus was not going to be in hell forever.
He knew that after three days he would rise again.
And of course that's what a lot of people are celebrating today, right?
With Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that he did not stay in the tomb, he did not
stay dead.
He had hope, but he knew that going in.
He told them in Mark chapter 8, Mark chapter 9, Mark chapter 10, he said the Son of Man
is going to be rejected and he's going to be beaten and scourged and crucified and the
third day he shall rise again.
He already told them I'm going to rise again the third day.
And so he had that hope knowing that God would not leave his soul in hell.
Just as he says here, you know, God's not going to cast off forever.
But though he caused grief, yet will he have compassion, verse 32, according to the multitude
of his mercies, for he did not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.
Here's what the Bible is saying.
God doesn't grieve us or afflict us because he just gets some kind of a joy out of watching
us suffer, like, oh, I just like to hurt my children.
Oh, I just want them to go through pain.
Is that what you think God is like?
God's not like that at all.
God does not afflict willingly.
It's not that he wants to hurt us.
He wants to bless us.
And folks, we understand this as parents.
I mean, we want to play with our children.
We want to give them gifts.
We want to give them special things and take them nice places.
We don't want to spank them and take things away from them.
We do those things unwillingly.
They force us to do those things.
And we force God to do these things to us.
God wants to bless us, but because of our pride, because of our sins, he ends up having
to do these things to us.
So he doesn't afflict willingly or grieve the children of men.
Verse 34, to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth.
He's not just trying to just step on us and just crush us to the earth.
He loves us.
To turn, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High, to subvert
a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.
We shouldn't go through life just trying to slow people down and hinder them and make
things harder for them.
And you know what God's saying?
He doesn't do that.
It's not good for man to do that.
And you know what?
God's not up in heaven trying to slow you down, ruin your fun, make you fail at everything.
He just doesn't want you to enjoy life.
You know, young person, he just wants you to be miserable.
That's why he gave you the parents that he gave you so you could be miserable.
He enjoys watching you squirm.
He likes to watch you suffer.
He wants you to just be single and alone and fail at every job and not have any money.
Is that what you think?
No.
Look, God doesn't just subvert us in our cause and just afflict us just for grins.
If he's doing it, there's a reason why he's doing it.
And we need to understand that.
So don't get this view of God like God's up there just to mess things up for you or
something.
You know, you always have a view of God that says, you know what?
God loves me and he takes care of me.
He's merciful.
He's compassionate.
What he does for me is what's best for me.
I may not understand it, but I need to trust that.
Who is he that saith, verse 37, and it cometh to pass when the Lord commandeth it not?
And he's saying, look, you know, if God decides that something's not going to happen, it's
not going to happen.
And if God decides that something's going to happen, it's going to happen.
Again, that's not everything.
God's not controlling every single event.
No way.
The Bible says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.
It doesn't say the steps of every man are ordered by the Lord.
Obviously there are a lot of things that are going on in this world that are not what God
would have.
Okay, that should be obvious to anyone.
But when God wants to stop something, he has the power to do that, and nothing can happen
that he doesn't at least allow to happen.
Because he theoretically could stop anything from happening.
He knows about everything, and he could stop anything from happening, and so therefore
everything that happens at the minimum was allowed by God in that sense.
And we can't fight against God.
We can't just say it and make it come to pass if God doesn't approve that, or if God decides
the opposite.
And verse 38 says, out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good.
You know, sometimes it's going to benefit us, sometimes it's going to harm us.
But you know what?
We've got to take the good with the evil.
Like Job told his wife, he said, you know, are we just going to only receive good from
the hand of the Lord and not evil?
We've got to receive both.
Wherefore why, verse 39, doth a living man complain a man for the punishment of his sins?
He said, look, we can't complain, but we're the ones who sinned.
So how can we complain and say, like, well, God shouldn't have punished me so harshly?
Yeah, well, you shouldn't have sinned.
And then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
You know, it's like a kid, like, you spanked me too hard, well, you know, you're the one
who committed that sin and got the punishment.
Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord.
Why?
Because God's there, he's ready to pardon, his mercies are new every morning, he's compassionate.
So let's search and try our ways, let's sit down and look at our lives and figure out,
you know, what we're doing that's wrong and not pleasing to God, and let's fix things.
Let's lift up our heart with our hands onto God in the heavens.
We have transgressed and have rebelled, thou is not pardoned, thou is covered with anger
and persecuted us, thou is slain, thou is not pitied, thou is covered thyself with a
cloud that our prayer should not pass through, thou has made us as the off scouring and refuse
in the midst of the people.
All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.
So you notice how we kind of took another turn again.
So he started out, the first 20 verses are just, oh man, it's so bad, doom, gloom.
Then he's talking about the hope and the mercy and, hey, it's actually kind of good for us,
it's sort of like a young person works hard, you know, they pay their dues and enjoys later,
you know, we're going through a hard thing, but things are going to get better, let's
turn to God, he's going to pardon, he's merciful, on and on.
So now he's starting to focus more on just how bad things are right now again.
You know, God's covered himself with a cloud that our prayer should not pass through, all
these different things.
Verse 47, fear and a snare has come upon us, desolation and destruction, might I run it
down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people, might I trickle
it down and cease it not without any intermission, till the Lord looked down and behold from
heaven, might I affect with my heart because of all the daughters of my city.
He's seeing things and it just makes him weep and he's so sad.
Mine enemies chased me sore like a bird without cause.
Basically like you'd go and hunt a bird without cause, basically if you're out hunting birds,
you're pretty much doing it for fun, right?
I mean it's not like that's providing some major source of meat for your family or something
if you're out.
You know, it's something that you do for fun.
And so he's saying basically, they are chasing me like a bird without cause.
They have cut off my life in the dungeon and cast the stone upon me, waters flowed over
my head, then I said, I'm cut off!
I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon, thou hast heard my voice, hide
not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry, thou drewest near in the day that I called
upon thee, thou saidst, fear not.
O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul, thou hast redeemed my life, O Lord,
thou hast seen my wrong, judged thou my cause.
Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me, thou hast heard
their reproach, O Lord, and all their imaginations against me, the lips of those that rose up
against me and their device against me all the day.
Behold, they're sitting down and they're rising up.
I am their music.
Now, do you notice how these are a lot of the same themes from earlier?
A lot of the same things, he's just rewording things from basically the first half, the
first part where he talked about, I am their song.
Now he's saying, I am their music.
He talked about God not hearing his prayer.
Now he's talking about, well, you used to hear my prayer, I called out in the past and
you heard me, you said, now, you know, now, what now?
Where are you now?
I am their music.
I am their song, he's saying.
Like we talked about earlier.
Verse 64, render unto them a recompense, O Lord, according to the work of their hands.
Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them, persecute and destroy them in anger
from under the heavens of the Lord.
Now, you could classify this as one of the imprecatory psalms in that sense.
You know, we talk about how there are 19 psalms out of 150 psalms, we talk about 19 of them
are the imprecatory psalms because to imprecate means to curse, imprecation is cursing someone.
And so we have all the psalms that say, you know, break their teeth, O God, in their mouth
or let them go down quickly into hell, destroy all the evildoers, all these different things.
Those are called imprecatory psalms.
Lamentations chapter 3 becomes imprecatory because Jeremiah is saying, give them sorrow
of heart, thy curse unto them, persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens
of the Lord.
So do we end on a negative note or a positive note?
I mean, it's a negative note, right?
It's just bad and he's begging God to punish his enemies, but God's not listening, you
know, right now.
So basically, the way I think about this poem in Lamentations chapter 3 is basically like
you start out negative and then it kind of reaches like a high point in the middle, right?
In the middle where you have all the really positive, you know, great is thy faithfulness.
And then it's just like kind of just goes downhill again at the end and gets very negative.
It's kind of like a sandwich, right, of just the negative, the positive, the negative,
right?
Because look, he's going through this right now.
So basically, he's feeling bad, he's expressing all of his sadness and sorrow and frustration,
his pain, his suffering, but then he has moments where, you know what, he stops and realizes,
you know what, we deserve this and you know what, God still loves us.
This is just a temporary thing we're going through, we're paying our dues, it's going
to get better, God didn't change, he's going to have to go back, hey, let's turn back to
him because you know what, it's not too late, God will still take us back and so forth.
But then, of course, he's just kind of, you know, back in the midst of the situation that
he's in.
Now look, one of the things that we can take from this is that, you know, when we're going
through life and we sort of learn why bad things happen to us and kind of understand
how life works and we get more mature in our faith and we can handle more, we have to understand
that this is not always just like a linear process of just like, you know, I started
out sad and I started out upset and angry and frustrated and then I wised up and, you
know, remembered the promises of God and you know what, ever since then I've just never
felt that way, you know.
I mean, about 10 years ago, I went through some hard things 10 years ago and I just,
you know, I learned how to take it patiently and so for the last 10 years I just never
get sad, I never get angry, I never get frustrated, do you think that's really true?
Absolutely not.
So this isn't, so we ought to say this isn't linear, this isn't Jeremiah starting out in
chapter 3, he starts out a little bit immature in his faith and, you know, he's in the moment
and why me, I'm the man that's seen affliction by the rod of his wrath and it's like well
no, Jesus is that man but, you know, you feel that way in the moment and then we see Jeremiah
learning and growing and having all these great philosophical insights about how things
are going to get better and he's remembering the promises of God, he's remembering the
fact that God's merciful, that God never changes, that God loves him.
Look, we've all heard those sermons, we've all had those moments, we've all read our
Bibles and seen those promises and underlined them and said hey it's going to be okay, we've
all had those moments where even in the worst trials we're praising God, we've all had those
times when we're in the jail cell, you know, and we're singing like Paul and Silas but
here's the thing, don't just think that because you've been to that place you're never going
to go into that valley of despair again because you will go back there because even in this
chapter he starts out in despair, he starts out angry, he starts out, then he has peace
in the middle of the psalm, right, in the middle of Lamentations chapter 3 he's at peace.
He's just come to terms with everything, he understands God's plan, he understands the
bigger picture, he's having this moment of clarity, right, but then, you know, what does
he do?
He goes back to his, why, because we're human.
The great men of God in the Bible were sad, were angry, were frustrated, right, they didn't
just, they didn't just start out that way and then just learn their lesson and now they're
just happy every day from now on.
So even a mature Christian, even a mature Christian, even a great man of God like Jeremiah,
even a great man of God like David, you know, great men of God, and look David trusted the
Lord but what about low points that he went through like, oh man, someday Saul's going
to get me.
He should have just believed the promise of God that he was anointed to be the king but
he still had low points where he said, I think Saul's going to be, I just need to go to the
Philistines or whatever, right, and then we see John the Baptist at a low point in prison.
We see Elijah at a low point under the juniper tree when Jezebel puts out a warrant for his
arrest for him to be killed.
We see Elijah at a low point saying, just kill me now.
We see Jonah, greatly used by God, then turn around and run away from God and then be greatly
used by God again and then get sad and depressed for no reason.
In chapter 4 of Jonah it makes no sense.
He is sad and depressed and there's no reason, it doesn't make any sense.
Human beings, such as ourselves, are never going to be perfect and we're never going
to get to a point where we're always happy and where we always have perfect peace.
Now I do believe that as we grow in our Christian life we'll have more peace, more joy, we'll
have more moments like the middle of Lamentations 3.
We'll find ourselves more often being wise and look, I know that that's true in my life
that you know these days I'm a lot more peaceful and when bad things happen I take it better
now than I used to when I was younger.
But that doesn't mean that I still don't go through anger, sadness, sorrow, heaviness.
So have a realistic expectation about, for yourself and not just think to yourself like
well anytime I'm sad or angry or frustrated or something you know, what's wrong with me?
Well join the club because that's what, you know, look at this psalm.
It's not a linear thing.
It's not starting out at the bottom and ending up at the top, no, no, no.
It's starting out at the bottom and then you know what, praising God, being thankful, worshipping
Him, understanding the big picture, having moments of peace.
But then you know what, it doesn't change the fact that he's going through something
really intense and look, he's not blowing smoke in this passage.
He's not whining because of the fact that you know he's out of toilet paper or something,
okay, and Walmart's not carrying it.
Folks, he's seeing people starving and dying in the streets.
I mean he's, Jeremiah's the guy, we're talking about the guy who when he was put in prison
it was like a literal under an outhouse and he sunk into the mire.
We're talking about a guy who got a piece of bread every day from the bakery while he's
in prison until the bread ran out and then he just got no food, okay.
So this guy is going through serious things, serious trials and tribulations.
Look he's going to be feeling bad.
It's normal for him to feel bad.
It doesn't even mean that he's spiritually immature because he's not.
He starts out feeling bad at the beginning of the song.
He reaches that point of peace and understanding and then he's feeling bad again at the end.
That's just life.
You know you're going to go through ups and downs in life.
That's life and it's not going to stop until life is over, okay, and then there will be
no more sorrow and crying and things but until that day you're going to go through things.
So if you get this attitude of just I just want my life to be perfect and smooth, you
know you're just going to be constantly disappointed because you know life is going to throw some
stuff at you that's hard and you know do your best to live in the middle of Lamentations
3.
Well we're going to find ourselves in verses 1 through 20 from time to time and we're going
to find ourselves in these last few verses many times where we're just you know just
the only thing that makes us feel better is a few imprecatory prayers, amen.
You know just that the you know you can just you can just tell though that he's pretty
upset in these and these closing verses.
So anyway it's a powerful passage of scripture.
It's so deep.
This is my like I said it's my favorite chapter in Lamentations.
It's a beautiful book but especially chapter 3.
It's so powerful I obviously I can only just scratch the surface here you know as we go
through this.
You know you can keep reading this your whole life and and it's going to keep speaking to
you because God's Word is so deep.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father we thank you so much for this great passage Lord and help us to lay these things
to heart Lord and Lord when we go through times of grieving and sorrow Lord help us
to pour out our heart unto you and help us to have that peace and understanding that
came in the middle of the song Lord and help us to just remember your promises and always
focus on the fact that there's hope.
Now abideth faith hope and charity Lord help us to realize that as long as we're saved
and we're breathing air that there's always hope there are always better days ahead and
your compassion and mercies fail not in Jesus name we pray amen.