INTRODUCTION

His sin is perhaps one of the most well-known sins of all those who follow God. This man in leadership gave in to his carnal desires and ruined the lives of himself, his family, and many others. This godly man who is known for his love for the Lord, had allowed his passion to control him, and they took him to a place he probably never considered going on his own. His passions led him to an incredible depth of unfaithfulness. It led him to immorality. He perhaps used his power and authority to fulfill his fleshly desires and it worked. He thought everything was hidden and secret until he learned that the woman he had slept with had become pregnant with his own child. How would he ever keep this sin hidden when it has such public ramifications? He and the woman decided to continue to keep their secret hidden and hoped that everyone would assume the child was her husband’s and not the result of marital unfaithfulness. But this plan was also thwarted. His sin left him no choice; there was but one option if he were to protect his reputation and position of honor. He needed to get rid of the husband. And in a further act of depravity and corruption, this leader of men allowed himself to be led by his own sin and he arranged for the murder of this faithful husband. After the husband’s death, our perpetrator married the woman with whom he had committed adultery, and it was only by divine intervention that their scheme failed, and their sin was discovered. Who was this infamous couple who so deceitfully schemed to cover and hide their sin? You know them as David and Bathsheba. This infamous couple will forever be remembered for their sin and deception.

And their sin had results. Their unfaithfulness had many affects. The most well known is the loss of their baby. But there were other results as well. The death of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. The pain and heartache that must have caused Bathsheba. There’s the mistrust and lack of confidence in David as the leader of Israel. There’s the trauma this must have caused Nathan the prophet as he went in to confront David. There were all kinds of results and ramifications from the sin. And perhaps as they saw the affects of what they did, they began to wonder—is this it? Is God done with me? Can I ever be used again? Did I blow it for the last time? How can God forgive this? Perhaps they began to allow themselves to be defined completely by their sin and their past would not stop rearing its ugly head. You can imagine how the results of sin could have seemed too heavy for them to bear. And maybe they began to lose hope—how could God ever be faithful to such unfaithful people?

Maybe you have felt similar feelings in your life. Perhaps you’ve been unfaithful, and you struggle with how you can experience God’s grace in your life. Maybe it’s in reference to a specific sin that you’ve committed, and you can’t move past it. Could be some moral issue that maybe you’ve committed—like David and Bathsheba, and you just can’t move past your previous sin. Perhaps it’s some other sort of unfaithfulness to God—deceit toward your family; dishonesty at your job, cheating at school, hiding things from your parents. Maybe for you it’s a certain set of sins that you struggle with that you just can’t seem to find victory over. You know what God says and you keep failing and it gets discouraging; it’s frustrating to you that you can’t seem to pull it together and it is easy for you to throw up your hands in despair—how can God love someone like me! I just keep failing and failing and failing again!  Sin can be a huge burden for us. We might begin to wonder: where is there hope amidst all the sin in our lives?

And as we come to our passage this morning, Lamentations chapter 4, we see that God’s people Israel were in the same place we often find ourselves. They had given into sin. They experienced it’s consequences, and perhaps they were beginning to lose hope. How will they ever be as they were? How could God restore them to their former glory? Was there any hope for a people who had given so far into their sin? And Lamentations chapter 4 reminds us that there is hope for sinners. Despite present failures, there is future grace. From this text we see that sin is never the end for believers. And we learn one key truth which I want you to take home this morning:

Big idea: God is faithful to unfaithful people

And our passage starts out by rehearsing the unfaithfulness of God’s people and the affect it had on them, and it lets us feel the weight of what sin had brought about in their lives. And then it changes gears in the last few verses to point us to the fact that there is hope for sinners—God is faithful to unfaithful people.

As we begin here, we see God going through and reminding them of where they are at and how they got there. And he walks us through this focus of sin and it punishment and lets us feel the weight of it. And this morning we’re going to wade our way through it. It’s not a pretty picture! It’s heavy and weighty, but it serves to remind us of the painful reality of sin. And once we’re aware of that, only then can we turn and find hope in God. So let’s walk through this chapter together and we’ll find the punch line—our big idea, at the very end.

Section 1: The Sin of the people (vs. 1-10)

Explanation: As we examine the first section of chapter 4, we see the sin of the people.  In vs. 1-10—we see the horrible condition of Israel.  Boys and girls, you can draw Israel’s sin.  Let’s walk through these first 10 verses together.

•     Verse 1—Notice the phrase—the gold is dark. Gold doesn’t tarnish, so this is a very descriptive picture. It it is talking about what God’s people were—Israel was God’s pristine people, but not anymore. How the gold has changed—sense is to become tarnished. You can see the irony here—the non-tarnishable has become tarnished.  God’s people are no longer who they used to be. Sin had destroyed their shimmer. They were a very precious thing to God; now they’re in a horrible situation.

Application: maybe this is your life. Perhaps you’ve given into sin; you’ve allowed it to overpower you, and now you’re a Christian who how has lost his luster and aren’t shining in the world as someone who follows God and shares his message This is not a good place to be!

•     Verse 2—says when weighed against gold are as earthen jars. We have a twist on the imagery—first they were tarnished gold, which doesn’t happen, now when weighed against fine gold, they don’t weight much—as clay pots. They are just used and abused—as a work in the hand of the potter. What a fitting description for sinners—worked over by sin! Have you been here?

•     Verse 3—says God’s people have become cruel, like Ostriches in the wilderness. Ostriches hide their eggs in the sand and leave them there, very vulnerable and easy to be trampled. God’s people have become like that. They don’t even properly care for their children.

Application: notice a principle here about sin: sin distorts our priorities. Sin is not just an isolated thing in our lives, it affects our whole person and even our relationships. Nobody ever sins in a vacuum. You can see here the horrible effects. The people have gotten into a horrible place: women not caring for their young.

Explanation: Continuing on we see the further effects of God’s judgement over sin. Verse 4—there’s no food for the hungry.

•     Verse 5—those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets—basically the rich are dumpster diving. It says those reared in purple embrace ash pits.

•     Verse 6 brings the harshest description of the condition of the people. It says their sin was greater than Sodom. That’s quite the comparison.

•     Verse 7—notice verse 7. It talks about her consecrated ones. The actual Hebrew word here is Nazarite. These were people who set themselves aside for service to the Lord and there were certain requirements and qualifications if you were to be a Nazarite. It says they were whiter than snow, they were more ruddy than corral—ruddiness was thought to be a sign of beauty in this time, and their polishing was like lapis lazuli, a type of sapphire.

•     Verse 8 tells us they are now black and barely recognizable. It’s as if God is saying no amount of spiritual service can make up for your sin. We talked about this a few weeks ago—God wants our hearts. It doesn’t matter how much we offer our lives in service to God, that can’t outweigh our sin which we may be harboring in our hearts. Many times we think that if we serve God with our lives he will overlook the sin which we might have—not so! Or we try to excuse our sin—we have a good reason to gossip, or a good reason to lust, or a good reason to desire wealth.  God wants our hearts and cares about our sin!

•     Continuing on, Verse 9-10 tells us it’s better to be slain by the sword than by hunger, that’s how bad things had gotten here. Women apparently were eating their children. What a horrible condition!

Application: Notice—principle 2 about sin: sin can cause us to do things we never expected to do. When we’re living in sin it controls our lives, and it can make us do things we never intended to do. It takes us places we never ever wanted to go.

Application: and God allows us to feel the weight of the sin of the people so that we can understand the weight of sin in our own lives. Sin can be so common to us that we don’t really comprehend how awful it is and how much it offends God. Lamentations 4 let’s us dwell there for a little, so that we can understand its weight before it gives us the hope.

Section 2: The sin of the leaders (vs. 11-20)

Explanation: As we transition to verses 11-20 we encounter the sin of the leaders. It wasn’t only the people who sinned, it was also their leaders. Boys and girls, you can draw the leader’s sin.  Their leaders failed to lead them in the proper way, and we see the results.

•     Verse 11—the Lord accomplished his wrath. He poured out a fire which consumed the foundations of the people.

•     Verse 12—nobody believed the enemy could enter Jerusalem. No one thought this was possible. Israel thought they were indestructible, and now they found out the were not.

Application: isn’t this so often how we are with our sin? We think “we can handle it; I’ll be fine; I can stop when I want.” The reality is we don’t even realize how much sin has corrupted us. Here we find principle 3 about our sin: sin always pushes us to self-reliance. This is where Israel was. Notice also that though Israel fell to their enemies—their gates and walls were destroyed, they fell long before this from the inside. They were destroyed from the inside out—their inside collapsed long before their gates fell. This is the case with us. Long before our lives fall apart on the outside, there has been an implosion on the inside. We let things go, we hide parts of our lives, and before we know it our whole world is falling apart. Often times we fall from the inside out.

•     Verse 13—gives us the reason for the judgement: because of the sin of the prophets and priests. The leaders of the people were corrupt, and Israel followed them. It says they were like unclean people who wandered in the streets shouting “unclean, unclean”. The ones who were supposed to be spiritual we actually defiling the people!

Application: Perhaps you’ve been in such desperation due to your sin. Maybe you’ve felt like you could handle it, and it didn’t work out. Perhaps you’ve felt like you’re ok, you can stop whenever, and you didn’t even realize how much control sin had over you. And for you sin created such a helpless and hopeless state. Where is there hope when you live like that? Where is there hope for people who are like God’s people in Lamentations 4—sin has taken everything from them. Where is there hope for sinners in the midst of all this?

That’s where the last two verses of lamentations 4 come into play. The first 20 verses were heavy; they were weighty. They focused heavily on sin and its consequences. But it did that for a reason. Jeremiah wants us to feel the weight of sin in the lives of God’s people in order to bring us to the questions—where is there hope for sinners like that? Or the better question—where is there hope for sinners like us?

Section 3: God is The hope for sinful people (vs. 21-22)

Lamentations 4:21–22 NASB95

Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, Who dwells in the land of Uz; But the cup will come around to you as well, You will become drunk and make yourself naked. The punishment of your iniquity has been completed, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no longer. But He will punish your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins!

Explanation: these final verses remind us that God’s judgment will not last forever. Eventually, it will end. There is still hope for sinners because they can come back to God, and justice will be done. Boys and girls, you can draw God’s faithfulness.  God will have his day with the wicked nations. God will right all the wrongs. The nation of Edom is addressed here—this is one of the nations that oppressed God’s people. God will have his day with them. Jeremiah says “the cup will come around” to Edom. They will be punished for their sin as well. God’s judgement on Israel will not last forever. Despite God’s punishment and judgement over sin, there is still justice with God.

It’s as if God lets us feel the weight of sin and judgement for 20 verses so that he could bring us to the point of hopelessness and then give us the hope. And here’s the hope:

Big idea: God is faithful to unfaithful people

The hope is that none of what God’s people had done had thwarted the plan of God. God still had a plan. God would still be faithful to his promises. And even though God’s people had a time of judgement and suffering because of their sin, God would still be faithful to the promises he gave to Israel before any of this had happened. They hadn’t surprised God; they hadn’t changed his plan. He knew they were going to mess up and he allowed room for that in his plan.

Application: What a blessing to know that God is a God who is in complete control and nothing catches him by surprise! Aren’t you so glad that own foolishness doesn’t catch God by surprise? That’s what we find here. God’s plan accommodated for Israel’s mistakes, and God’s plan accommodates for ours as well. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how far you’ve wondered from God, what mistakes and sins you struggle with, God accommodates for our own foolishness. God makes provision for our own mistakes. And even though God may have to send judgement and suffering as a result of our sin, one day it will end. And God will be faithful to his promises to us.

Explanation: this is where our text points us to the Gospel. This chapter is almost a sort of parody of the Gospel story—we sin but God is ultimately faithful to us. This text points us to what we know now that God’s people didn’t have full knowledge of back them. That provision for their sin is made in Jesus. The provision for our mistakes is made available in the Gospel. That God knew we were going to be messy when he saved us, and it didn’t stop him! God knew we were going to be messy. He pursued us, and he made provision for us even when we keep on sinning over and over and over again.  And he even provided his Spirit as our comforter to help us in our struggle over sin. 

Many times, we try to appease God by our good works, and when we don’t do them—when we mess up and sin, we wonder how God can love us and if we’ve lost his love. And we know that doesn’t happen, but that’s really how we feel. And Satan can creep into our lives and produce false guilt and shame over our sin.  But here’s the truth: God could never love you more than he does already. God’s love isn’t based on what we do—that’s what legalism says.  I can earn more of God’s love by my works.  But God’s love is not based on that! God’s love is based on his character, that he’s a loving God.  And because of his love,

Big idea: God is faithful to unfaithful people

What a wonderful loving God that we have!

CONCLUSION

We opened up by talking about the illustration of David and Bathsheba. We saw the sin that was committed and the pain and heartache it brought. But that sin wasn’t the end for David and Bathsheba. There was still hope for them, because despite their sin, God was faithful even in their unfaithfulness.

We also addressed our own fears and worries amidst our sins. Maybe in reference to your sin you’ve begun to wonder—is this it? Is God done with me? Can I ever be used again? Did I blow it for the last time? How can God forgive this? How could God ever be faithful to such an unfaithful person?

This passage reminds us that these thoughts and feelings are not from God. Because God is faithful to unfaithful people. And no matter how unfaithful we have been, it doesn’t change God’s character and his faithfulness.

Next Steps

How should this text look in our lives? What would Faith Baptist church be like if we lived this text?

•     For one, we wouldn’t be afraid to get messy. Sometimes we are afraid to get messy. We’re afraid to deal with people who are sinners. We want our church to grow and we want more people to come but want “the right type of people.” We don’t want sinners. We don’t like having people with baggage from their sin. If that’s your mentality of church, then you don’t want what God wants in a church. And you don’t have the heart of Christ with your relationships, if your goal is to stay away from messy people.  If you’re too afraid that the church that you built will change by getting people who are messy, then you are not spiritually or biblically minded in your conception of church! Because God wants sinners! God wants sinners who come to him. Christ even said, he came for those who were sick not for the healthy. If we are to do ministry the way Jesus did, and the way God intends the church to do ministry, we need to not be afraid to get messy.

If your concept of church is that we put on a facade and hide what we’re going through so everything is nice and tidy and neat and clean, you’re going to feel uncomfortable in this ministry. Because I believe the word of God is designed to help hurting people.  Jesus didn’t come for those who have their lives all together on the outside; he came to put back together the lives of broken people. We see that in the interactions Jesus had with the pharisees.  Whenever Jesus was on the scene there were always messy people who were receiving his ministry and healing and the self-righteous spiritual people who were outsiders to Jesus. He didn’t really spend much time ministering to them. The time he did spend talking about them was to chide them for their facade of religion. There are too many pharisees controlling churches today. People who think they have “their life together” on the outside and they want to push out those who don’t yet have their spiritual lives together.

If that’s you today, as we move forward as a church and God continues to do the type of work I’ve already seen him doing, you’re going to become uncomfortable here. Because my vision for our church is that it becomes a hospital for sick people, and that’s messy!  If you can’t hack that, you need to change your viewpoint of church. Because our DNA at our church is wrapped up on that motto “Making More and Better Disciples.”  You can’t do that if you’re not willing to work with messy people. Because one thing we learn from Jesus is this:  Ministry is people and people messy! If our church lived this text, we wouldn’t be afraid of that, because that’s what ministry is about.  In addition, we’d realize that we ourselves are messy too! It’s not just us and them—sometimes church develop an us and them mentality; an insider and outsider mentality—the messy people and those who have it together. If we lived this text we’d realize that we are all messy and we all need the very same Jesus!

•     Second, if we truly understood and lived this text, we would take care of our sin, whatever the cost. We would understand the horrible place our sin puts us in, and we would want to get out of it no matter what. I think this would shape our church culture in that we begin to look to the church for help; we begin to look to other believers for help and accountability. I said it already—the church is a hospital for sick people. The problem is too many sick people in the church aren’t willing to check into the hospital. We’re far too private, and disconnected, and uninvolved in each other’s lives. This text should cause us to be mindful of the fact that we need each other, and we need to use the body as our place of help. Maybe this means you need an accountability partner. Maybe this means you need to ask someone for coffee so you can share what you’ve been going through. Maybe this means you need to get counseling—I’m so thankful for the hours I’ve been able to spend with our church people doing Biblical counseling—it’s such a blessing to me to be able to help people amidst of their struggles!  This text applied specifically to FBC means we need to be aware of our sin and get help.

•     Last, we need to help each other. So many times in conservative Baptist churches we have fought so hard to keep sin out of the church that we keep all sin out of the church—to the point that we can’t talk about it. We create this façade of spirituality in which we know we’re all sinners but we don’t talk about it. Therefore, there’s no discipleship. There’s no doing what Jesus did—picking a few and investing in them doing life together. We aren’t helping people individually live the life of faith. We think that coming to all the church services is the totality of discipleship—that’s completely wrong! There’s a place for church services—they’re edification ministries. They can encourage and facilitate discipleship, but discipleship is taking someone and doing life together and helping them become a better follower of Christ; it’s not about having a program and seeing who attends. Who are you doing that to? I’ve made it my mission to do this and am looking for more opportunities.  I have several men I meet with on Monday’s at noon for discipleship. I have multiple individuals I meet with for counseling as a means of discipleship. I’m committed to a discipleship type of ministry. Do you have this type of ministry mentality? Because the reality is that I can’t do it all, and quite frankly, I’m not called to do it all. Matthew 28:19-20—which we call the great commission, was given to all of us. I think a logical implication from this text at FBC is that we stop passing the buck to someone else in the church or “the more spiritual people”, and stop expecting others to do ministry for us and we do what God has called us to do—we invest in someone else’s life and help them learn how to better follow Jesus.  If God is faithful to unfaithful people, then we ought to be helping others in their relationship with our faithful God! 

This is what our church could look like if we really lived this text. I think another implication is that we would be in awe of the greatness of our God who is so faithful when we are so unfaithful. But Lamentations 4 reminds us that God is faithful to unfaithful people. What an incredible God that we have! As you leave today, take time to ponder the faithfulness of our God. 

Big idea: God is faithful to unfaithful people

Let’s celebrate that today!