Introduction

Pain has a way of sobering us, doesn’t it? Life can be going smoothly and well and all of a sudden something happens—someone dies; you get that diagnosis; you bend over to pick something up and your back lets loose; or you break a bone or smash a finger. Pain has a way of bringing us back to reality—doesn’t it? How do you respond? Perhaps it’s something simple like smashing your finger in the car door, and your response is—Ohhhhhh! Ouch!!!! And you’re hopping around screaming owwwwww! Perhaps it’s a different type of pain—the pain of the diagnosis you didn’t expect, or the news that a loved one is not going to be around for too much longer, or some poor choices you’re watching a loved one make, and your response is to cry and weep. Pain has a way of giving us a reality check.

I can see this in my life. In the fall of 2019 I was training for my first 50-mile trail race.  It’s been
a while since I’ve been an active runner and I hope to get back into it, but I did a lot of running back then, before getting COVID and all those things.  But I remember finishing a 23-mile training run a few weeks before the race, and for the last few miles I began having some pain in my knee. When I was done, I got in the car and drove home, and I could hardly get out of the car. My knee was so stiff and in pain every time I bent it I would suffer pain. I couldn’t even think about bending down or kneeling on the ground. I began to get worried—do I have an injury? Will it heal before the race? Will I be able to finish the race? What’s going to happen? I had my own reality check. I knew what the issue was, it was a patellar tracking disorder—basically, my kneecap was being pulled to the outside because of all the running on hills and rugged terrain, and it wasn’t tracking right. So what did I do? I had to get back to the basics. I had to first of all ice and heat to get the inflammation down, but then I had to do some things that I had let slide in my routine. I got back to foam rolling—foam rollers help work out the kinks in your muscles, and they are very helpful, but can also be very painful on a sore muscle. I got back to stretching—hadn’t been doing very well with that. I got back to some simple strength training exercises so that I could strengthen my knee. Within a few days, I was fine. It wasn’t an injury, just more of a muscle imbalance. But pain has a way of slowing us down and causing us to take inventory. It has a way of giving us a reality check.

This is true in our spiritual lives as well. Whenever we face pain, suffering, or trials in our lives, it serves as a spiritual reality check. “What’s going on? What’s out of balance? What do I need to do to get through this spiritually?” But what we often times fail to realize is that God uses trials as a reality check in our lives. Trials are a way for God to do something in our lives. Sometimes it’s in the form of discipline—trying to bring us back to him. Other times it’s in the form of instruction—to try to teach us something or grow us in some way. Either way, God has a purpose for our suffering! But so many times we fail to approach suffering with a purpose in mind. Oftentimes, our response is not to view it this way. We want to play the victim card—why is this happening to me? How will I survive this crisis? Whatever will I do? We give into discouragement; we become depressed; we have worry and anxiety, or give up in despair. And we begin to look to ourselves and our own efforts to cope with the sorrow over what might be going on in our lives. Have you ever been there? Have you been so burdened by the trials and struggles in your life you just want to throw up your hands in despair and defeat? Maybe you want to turn your back on God—“God, how could you let this happen?” You want to wallow in your misery “Oh woe is me, life is miserable?” God wants so much more from us in response to our suffering!

And as we come to the book of Lamentations this morning, we see that God gives His people their own reality check. God sends some hard times their way and they are faced with the choice—are they going to turn to God, repent, and follow him? Will they embrace God’s purpose in their suffering? Or will they turn away from Him and keep going their own way? It’s the same decision we have to make when God sends a reality check our way—how will you respond? From this episode in the book of Lamentations, we learn some very important truths for our lives when it comes to suffering. We learn how God uses suffering to give us a reality check in our lives, and how God expects us to respond when he allows suffering in our lives for His purpose.

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

As we look at Lamentations today, we’re going to do a one-week overview of the book, looking at how God uses suffering as a reset or reality check in our lives. As we work through our text today, we’re going to see:

Five reality checks for our lives when we’re faced with suffering:

Before we get there, however, let’s do some background.

Background: Lamentations has been called the “Mournful postscript to Jeremiah.” Tradition teaches us that Jeremiah was the author of the book, though he never claims authorship. There seems to be some internal evidence in the book that points at that as well, such as the reference to his eyes flowing with tears and some parallel ideas found also in the book of Jeremiah. In this book, the author mourns over the fate of Jerusalem because of Israel’s sin. Lamentations was written after the exile of Judah to Babylon and the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C. You remember how God was patient and longsuffering in waiting for Israel, His chosen people, to turn back to him and stop pursuing false gods. His patience had run out over this situation and now we see God responding with judgment for His people. This was a mournful and discouraging time for Israel where their capital city was in ruins and their people captive in a country not their own. You remember, in the Old Testament, a people was associated with its land. We hear often times references to the land of Egypt instead of simply Egypt, or the land of Canaan instead of just Canaan. A people were associated with their land—that’s why it was such a big deal when God gave Israel the promised land. But we come to Lamentations, and the people we not in the land—they were captives. And the land was in ruins, including their capital city Jerusalem, which was supposed to be their pride and joy. That’s where we pick up this story.

Title: The title is taken from the first word of the book—how. The Hebrew word here ekah is a term of lament. It means how, or alas—it’s a sign of mournful woe! This word occurs several times throughout the book, and the book begins by lamenting the effects of sin on Jerusalem.

Genre: It’s important to note that Lamentations is poetic in nature. There are 5 lamentations in this book—one for each chapter. Each of the first four chapters uses a specific type of Hebrew poetry called acrostic. It is based on each letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Chapters 1-2, 4 have the verses grouped together under each letter of the Hebrew alphabet—aleph through tav, producing 22 verses. Chapter 3 is unique in that it has 3 verses grouped under each letter, giving it 66 verses in total. Chapter 5 breaks the structure and does not follow the rigid form.

What are lamentations? They are poems of lament; they are basically funeral dirges lamenting various aspects of judgment upon Israel.

There are three purposes for Lament—

1) Form of protest and drawing attention

2) Processing emotion

3) Voice confusion

Lament is an appropriate way to carry one’s concerns before God. And as we see Jeremiah carrying his concerns to God in this text, we learn the truth which will be our big idea for today:

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

Lamentations is all about suffering. In this specific context, it’s suffering for the point of judgment. But God uses suffering in our lives for so many other things as well.

So let’s start to look into this book, and I want to take each lamentation—there are 5—one for each chapter, and draw some principles that we can learn from them for the suffering that might take place in our own lives.

1) Sin always has a cost

Explanation: in chapter 1 we see the utter cost of sin. Boys and girls, you can draw the captivity. We see the reality of what sin had done to Jerusalem. We get a mental picture described for us—Jerusalem is described as a widow. The city’s destruction has been brought to a level of trauma in Israel that can only be expressed by the picture of a funeral; of someone losing their spouse. It’s a mournful picture—God’s people have become a pitiful mess! We learn in verse 3 that there is no rest for Judah. Verse 5 says her enemies are her masters. Verse 6—her majesty has departed. What a horrible thing for God to see this happen to His special people! We find in verses 8-9 that God’s people are like something unclean. The result of her living for the immediate and not the future is there is no comfort. We have this utterly despicable picture! This is God’s people; remember how they started? All the way back in Exodus—God delivered them and made his covenant with them, and they said “all that the Lord says we will do.” Now they’ve been living in sin so long that it totally ruined them. We see the pain and grief. We learn the hard lesson that sin always has a cost.

Illustration: perhaps you’ve lived this chapter in your life. You know firsthand that sin has a cost in your life. You’ve seen it and experienced it. You can identify with the misery of God’s people here. We can see examples of this in the Bible as well. I think of Moses, who was not allowed into the promised land because of his pride; Saul who was replaced as king of Israel because of his disobedience; David who lost a child because of his adultery. Lamentations teaches us the high cost of low living—sin always has a cost in our lives!

Application: But notice the grace in the midst of this. Sometimes God uses suffering in our lives to bring us back to him. All the grief and pain mentioned here is for a purpose—to bring Israel to the point of confession of their many sins. Consider:

Lamentations 1:5 NASB95

Her adversaries have become her masters, Her enemies prosper; For the Lord has caused her grief Because of the multitude of her transgressions; Her little ones have gone away As captives before the adversary.

Here we learn that the grief brought was because of their sins. Look at:

Lamentations 1:20 NASB95

“See, O Lord, for I am in distress; My spirit is greatly troubled; My heart is overturned within me, For I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword slays; In the house it is like death.

It talks about the turmoil and distress brought by sin, yet Israel doesn’t repent. The grace here is that all of this is God’s attempt to bring his people back to himself. Even after they’ve abandoned him, he still tries to bring them back! Like fish on a line, he reels his people back to himself.

Application: maybe, God is trying to do this work in your life. Consider the suffering you may be going through even right now. Have you stopped to consider that this might be suffering for the purpose of judgment? Perhaps God is trying to bring you back to him through judgment. Many times we read a book like this and we distance ourselves from Israel—”I’m not like them. They should have obeyed God.” We become the “holier than thou” third party to this story. The truth of the matter is, that we’ve all rebelled against God. We do this every single day! We are always chasing after other things that don’t satisfy and leaving behind God, the only one who can satisfy us. We do this all the time! If this same heart tendency that was in God’s people is in us as well, isn’t it possible that God could be using the sorrow in your life to bring you back to him?

Maybe your suffering isn’t judgment, but God is refining you. He is showing you things in your life through your suffering, and this is an opportunity to confess and obey him. Don’t view your suffering as a burden. In a sense it is, but it is more than that. It is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to see what’s in your heart and to take care of issues that come to light. Sin always has a cost. But God always uses the cost of sin in our lives to make us what he wants us to be.

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

2) Judgement comes from God

Explanation: chapter two gives us the second reality check that judgment comes from God. He is in control over the judgment that happens in our lives. Chapter 2 focuses more on the actual punishment given to Israel. We learn that the fall of Jerusalem— the consequence of Israel’s sin was brought about by God’s wrath. Boys and girls, you can draw the broken walls. Wrath is a key word in Lamentations. This is not spontaneous volatile anger, but God’s justice. Now God is slow to anger, but eventually, God does get angry and brings his anger in the form of judgment. For Israel, this is Babylon taking them captive.

We see that suffering brings the opportunity to remember our divine judge—judgment comes from God. Consider the destruction of the city—vs. 8-10. This was a horrible place for God’s people to be! But the writer of Lamentations recognized that all of this came from God. You can see in your copy of the scriptures everything that is written there. The Lord did all of this. God is the divine judge here. And even later on Israel is called to recognize God as the judge:

Lamentations 2:17 NASB95

The Lord has done what He purposed; He has accomplished His word Which He commanded from days of old. He has thrown down without sparing, And He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you; He has exalted the might of your adversaries.

Chapter 2 reminds us—judgment comes from God. Suffering comes from God. And he uses suffering many times in our lives to judge us and bring us back to him.

Illustration: you know, the things that happen in our lives aren’t just mere coincidence. They don’t just happen. Many times we approach life like that. But suffering in our lives is brought about by God; Scripture teaches that. God is over everything that happens in our lives. So many times we want to recuse God of any control over bad things. We create a dichotomy in our minds—God is over the good and Satan is over the evil. But here we learn that God is over both. God controls everything that comes into our lives because he is the judge, and many times he uses suffering to judge our sin in our lives. This brings us back to the difficult question: how can God be good with all the evil in the world? Lamentations talks about that, and we’re going to have to address it in the weeks to come.

Application: it can be easy to have an out-of-proportioned view of God. We readily focus on his love, grace, and kindness. And we should, those are part of who he is. But they are only part. He is also our divine judge. And this should cause a certain level of healthy fear. We don’t want to displease him or disobey him. And he has the right to judge our sin. He has the authority to send suffering as judgment, and sometimes he uses suffering, and even evil as an instrument to bring us back to him.

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

3) Mercy is available for those who suffer

Explanation: chapter 3 is where we find a shift. Chapters 1-2 were kind of morose. Kind of dark and somber, focusing on judgment and sin. And the truth of the matter is we need that because we are all sinners. But chapter three gives us a different perspective, in chapter 3 we find the hope. We learn that suffering brings the opportunity to hope in our merciful God. Suffering and mercy are not mutually exclusive. What a blessing! Boys and girls, you can draw Jeremiah crying out to God.

Chapter 3 gives us hope amidst suffering. The first half of this chapter is all about the affliction brought by the Lord. Look at vs. 1-8; 12-13; 17-18. This is a horrible condition here. Do you feel the pain and anguish of what’s going on in the life of Jeremiah? He is suffering under the real heavy weight and burden of the life situation that he’s been given by God. I use verse all the time in counseling when I want people to see how Jeremiah went through similar things that we go through and he found hope in God.

Application: Maybe you can relate to some of these feelings in your life—walking in darkness, my flesh and skin wasting away, bones broken (obviously imagery here), walled me in so I can’t go out, made my chain heavy, shuts my prayers. Maybe you can relate to Jeremiah here. This is real! And if you’re here today and you know someone like this, don’t minimize that, this is real stuff here, they need your empathy.

Explanation: But Jeremiah experienced that here, but you know what? He also recognized that there was hope. The second half of this chapter is all about the hope and relief found in God’s mercy. Look at vs. 19-26:

Lamentations 3:19–26 NASB95

Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers And is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him. It is good that he waits silently For the salvation of the Lord.

We see that God’s justice—the very thing that brought the sin and judgment in chapters 1-2, is what gives the poet hope. He reasons here—here’s his logic: if God is consistent enough to bring his judgment when his people sin, he’ll be consistent enough to keep his covenant to his people. God’s judgment is the seedbed of hope for the future. What an incredible thought! I think in common vernacular we would simply say “it’s not all bad.”

Illustration: and notice what we see Jeremiah doing here. Here we see Jeremiah giving himself a counseling session. And we all need to have counseling sessions with ourselves every so often because if we don’t speak the truth to ourselves we might begin to believe something that is not true. But here in the midst of utter despair, he counsels himself with hope! He cries out to God—“God remember me!” And notice how he overcomes his feelings of anxiety and despair. Vs. 21—this I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s loving kindnesses never cease. What great hope to someone in the midst of despair! His compassion never fails. Great is your faithfulness. Notice how he solves his despair—he rehearses the character of God! And folks that’s what we all need to do in times of despair! Notice he finds God as his true treasure—The Lord is my portion, therefore I have hope. You know what he’s saying? I treasure God above everything in my life and that’s where I find my hope!

Application: and friends, it’s the same way for us today. In the midst of our despair, fear, or troubling problem, or whatever it is we’re struggling with today, we need to treasure God. He needs to be our true treasure. And if we can’t find hope in the midst of our struggles, then it’s likely we are treasuring something else—because God promises hope. He promises to meet our needs even in times of trouble, and if you aren’t experiencing that, then chances are you aren’t treasuring God the way Jeremiah was. Jeremiah reminds us that suffering brings the opportunity to hope in our merciful God—mercy is available for those who suffer.

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

4) God is faithful to the unfaithful

Explanation: We cross into chapter 4 and we learn that God is faithful to the unfaithful. This chapter is about the people. We see the toll their sin took on them. We have a description of the 2 year siege of Jerusalem. Jeremiah contrasts before and after—what things had become in Jerusalem. Children used to play in the streets, but now are begging. Boys and girls, you can draw this picture of the children. Rich used to feast, but now are eating whatever scraps they could find. City leaders are now dirty and cast aside. A horrible situation. But look how it ends in 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!

Israel will not always be in exile. There is an end to the judgment of Israel. God will punish their sin, but one day Edom, one of the nations that were raised against Israel, will suffer God’s judgment as well. In the end, God would be faithful to unfaithful people! God would be faithful to his promises to Israel, and he will keep his word.

Application: and the same is true for us today. You may be struggling right now. You may be suffering and going through a tough life situation. But your suffering is only temporary. Your suffering will one day end. Either in this life or when you leave this earth, your struggle will end. And the way to overcome your struggle in this life is to get your eyes off of yourself and begin to see the end. Begin to look at God’s big plan and picture. In the timeline of God from creation to Christ’s eternal kingdom you’re only a tiny speck. Your life, as James says, is a vapor. And so is your suffering. One day it will end, and there is so much more to look forward to after this life. Our present suffering is only a small thing in comparison to our eternity with Jesus. So Jeremiah reminds us that suffering brings the opportunity to trust our faithful God—God is faithful when we are not.

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

5) Justice is in the hands of the Lord

Explanation: we come to chapter five, the concluding chapter, and we learn that justice is in the hands of the Lord. Chapter 5 is an interesting chapter. It is a personal prayer of Jeremiah on behalf of the people. It breaks the pattern of alphabet acrostic—the order is gone. Almost as if the order goes back to chaos. Chapter 5 begins with a plea to God to remember His people. Jeremiah cries out to God and tells how horrible condition the nation is in. But at the very end, he remembers God, and he remembers that God is a king. He appeals to the sovereign rule and control of God—verses 19-21:

Lamentations 5:19–22 NASB95

You, O Lord, rule forever; Your throne is from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us so long? Restore us to You, O Lord, that we may be restored; Renew our days as of old, Unless You have utterly rejected us And are exceedingly angry with us.

But the book leaves with a tension unresolved—“unless you totally rejected us . . .” and ends on that note. It doesn’t end with a nice conclusion or happiness, much like our own pain and suffering experience. But he ends with the reminder that justice is in the hands of God. He appeals to God as king, but he leaves his life, and the life of Israel to God. He recognized that God will do what he wants. Justice is in the hands of the Lord.

Application: and we need to remember that as well. Our God is a king, and he reigns forever. And just because we experience suffering in our lives does not mean that God is no longer in control. He is in control, and he is a king. And we must remember and follow or sovereign king. But he will also do what he wants. He alone is the true and righteous judge. And we need to trust him.  Which leads us to trust him, and examine our lives, because:

Big Idea: suffering can be a reality check from God

CONCLUSION

We opened up by talking about pain. Sometimes pain is a reality check for us in our lives. Pain and suffering have a way of bringing us back to reality and taking care of what needs to be taken care of in our lives. We see this in Israel as well. Jeremiah saw what sin had done to Israel, and he was seeking God’s face to bring about an end to the pain. But God was using pain as a reality check. He wanted to use the pain and destruction he sent to Israel to produce repentance in their lives.

God works this way in our lives as well. Sometimes God sends suffering as a reality check. What are you going to do when you have suffering in your life? How are you going to respond? Are you going to respond like Israel responded? They were in desperation; they saw the effects of their sin—they lived the misery of it every day. But they hadn’t yet turned to God. They hadn’t repented yet and so were still suffering from their sins. Will you be like Israel and try to do it on your own? Wallow in your misery? Give in to despair? Or will you view suffering as a reality check? Whether it’s judgment or simply for the purpose of teaching, suffering can be a reality check in our lives, and our response can make all the difference.

Next Steps

Let me give you some practical next steps, something you can do as you leave today:

1) Look at your life–ask “what reality check might God be giving me through my trials?”

Be open and honest and ask—what is God trying to teach me?  Is there sin he’s trying to get me to confess?  Is God doing something else?

2) Spend time in prayer this week asking God to show you what he wants you to see in your life.

Take some time to get away this week and honestly ask God, as the Psalmist did, to search you and know you and see what’s inside—ask him to give you his eyes to see what he wants you to see.

3) Read through the book of Lamentations and look for God’s reality checks to his people Israel.

Read through Lamentations.  It’s not a long book—maybe you’d commit to reading through it once every week for the next six weeks we’ll be in the book.  Read and look for God’s reality checks to his people Israel.

Let’s be a church that embraces the reality checks in our lives. Let’s use them as an opportunity to look into our lives, see what’s there, and give ourselves to God. That’s how we can be the type of church that God wants us to be.