A Grief That Cannot be Ordered

There is none to deliver us from their hand. We get our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is as hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands and no respect is shown to the elders.

Young men are compelled to grind at the mill and boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music. The joy of their hearts has ceased, our dancing has been turned to mourning, the crown has fallen from our head, woe to us for we have sinned. For this our heart has become sick. For these things our eyes have grown dim.

For Mount Zion which lies desolate jackals prey all over it. But You, O Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures to all generations. Why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us for so many days?

Restore us to Yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored. Renew our days as of old unless You have utterly rejected us and You remain exceedingly angry with us. So far, the reading from God's word. So I mentioned last week a book that I've been reading recently by a fellow named Nick Ripken. And Nick was a missionary in Somalia during the upheaval of the early nineties, and he uses the phrase, his travel there, the first chapter of the book, he talks about it as a descent into hell.

It was a terribly devastated place. He talked about how, as they handed out food to the dying, to the starving, they were also had to hand out burial cloths as well, because in their culture to honour their dead they needed to bury them with a particular white cloth, and so that was one of their needs. So many people were starving and dying that handing out burial cloths was just part of the handout. He talked about how young children held rocket powered grenades. He talked about how different militant groups were killing each other and even hunted down some of the very few Somali Christians that he knew.

He talked about leaving this country and not knowing whether they'd even accomplished anything because chaos would ensue again. And as he was leaving Somalia, his firstborn son died tragically. Nick Ripken knows the desolation of the darkness and the pain of this world well. And my question is, how does someone like that even pray to God? When you're seeing such confronting, dark, difficult things that don't seem to be getting better, how do you even talk to God?

Maybe you haven't been to Somalia, but you've got your own devastation that you're dealing with, or your own sickness, or your own relational breakdowns, or whatever it might be. And you're wondering how you too can turn to God in prayer. You're wondering how, in the midst of everything that's going on, how God can still be good, how He can love you. Or maybe you're here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian yet, or maybe you're joining us online and you're seeking, you're exploring, and this is one of the things that you're wrestling with about faith. You wonder whether people's prayers are just kind of floating into the air to nothing.

You wonder if sometimes faith is actually just a crutch and there is no God and people just need to deal with the brutal reality of that. Well, if anyone knew the difficulty of turning to God in prayer, it was the people that Lamentations was written to. They were utterly devastated. Their city had been under siege for more than a year. Famine struck the city.

People were starving. People were dying. There was cannibalism in the city just to survive. The royalty fled but were caught and slaughtered, when the Babylonians finally came in, they killed, they raped, they enslaved. The distress, the horror of that situation, it is unimaginable.

And that's why if you're visiting for the first time today, you can understand why we've called this series Words When There Are None. Because this is a situation where it just feels indescribable. How do you depict the pain that the people were going through? But the gracious thing is, the beautiful thing is, is that God inspired a prophet in the wake of that destruction to put words to paper, to give words to the people, words to actually begin to seek God in the darkness to express their pain, their questions, their prayers, their complaints, and this is what we get in the book of Lamentations. We're in the fifth and final week of our series in perhaps the darkest book of the Bible.

And some of you are going, praise God, we're at the end of this series. Now just to remind us of some of the terrain we've covered so far, chapter one, we opened it up, and we saw that Jerusalem was personified as a lady. Lady Jerusalem, Lady Zion. She's sitting there in the ashes in chapter one. She's called a widow.

She has been decimated, and she's calling out to everyone, look, look at my pain. She wants us to see, she wants someone to care for her and her suffering. But then she doesn't just say, look at my pain, she also confesses her sin. See, the suffering of Jerusalem wasn't the suffering of an innocent person, it was the suffering of a guilty sufferer. So she confesses and says she's been very rebellious, rebelling against the Lord in chapter one.

She confesses that. And then the chapter ends with an imprecatory prayer, these difficult prayers that have been scattered all throughout the book where the prayer, the person talking to God, is asking God to judge their enemies. And we've looked at that, we've wrestled with that against the teaching of Jesus to bless those who persecute you and so on. And we talked about how well the person that's praying the imprecatory prayer, they're not actually plotting revenge, they're praying to God. They're leaving vengeance in the Lord's hands. They're asking for His just will to be done, not their own.

And that imprecatory prayer is a resource for those not who have been cut off in traffic, but those who have been deeply, unjustly treated in this life. We see the martyrs in Revelation praying an imprecatory prayer to God, asking when He will avenge their blood. It's in the New Testament as well. So that was chapter one. Chapter two was one of the most difficult chapters to look at because we're just confronted with the anger of the Lord.

It's repeated again and again and again. And it's the anger of the Lord, the fury of the Lord that has brought this judgement against the city. And we learned about how God was like an enemy to this city. I mean, He really was the enemy of the unrepentant and the wicked who didn't turn back to God. He did punish and judge them.

We saw that a slow to anger God does eventually get angry. He does judge. But then we looked also at Jeremiah's language there about how God has become like an enemy. Because for people like Jeremiah who were on God's team, who weren't rebellious, they were caught up in the judgement against a guilty city. And so to people like Jeremiah, God felt like an enemy, but clearly God is not Jeremiah's personal enemy.

Jeremiah was God's servant. And sometimes when we wrestle with pain and suffering like this, sometimes God will feel like an enemy even though we know He isn't because Jesus was treated like God's enemy so we can forever be God's children. Chapter three is the heart of the book. All the other chapters have 22 verses. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.

But chapter three is 66, three times the amount because there are three verses for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And right at the heart of chapter three, we saw how the Lord says that He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men. You see, the Lord delights in justice, but He does not delight in pain. The pain that it caused, even the guilty. The Lord loves to bless, to comfort, to give, to cause people to rejoice.

So even in judgement, He said that He did not afflict them from His heart, something He doesn't delight in because of the pain that it causes. And so that gave the people a note of hope that even a God whose punishment could be so severe, they could hope in Him that His compassions never fail, that His mercies are new every morning, they could keep praying to Him in the wake of the devastation. But their present circumstances were what they were. So chapter four returns to lament, and we saw last week the painful undoing of fallen leaders, how it was the leaders who were particularly culpable, who were particularly to blame for what happened, because it was people like King Manasseh, and the priests and the prophets, they allied themselves to him. He was the one who brought pagan worship into the city.

He was the one who burnt his own son alive as an offering. He was the one who filled the city with blood as he sacrificed innocent human beings, the poor and the helpless to false gods. They were particularly the ones who were to blame for this judgement. And so we learned last week that every human leader, including ones in church, are affected by sin, and that we are fallible. But we have a great leader in Jesus, who is the perfect leader, who will never fail us, who got down off His throne to serve us, to die for us in our place.

We can trust Him with our whole heart. Now we come to chapter five, the final week of the series and the final lament of this letter. And I just want to point out a couple of things that are unique about this chapter before we get into the detail of it. First of all, it still has 22 verses like most of the chapters, because chapters one, two, three, and four were alphabetic acrostics, if you can recall. So the Hebrew alphabet is 22 letters, and so for the first Hebrew letter Aleph, the first sentence would start off with Aleph, and then the next sentence would start off with Bet, the second Hebrew letter, and so on.

That's why there's 22 verses. But in chapter five, the acrostic disappears. It's as if this A to Z of grief that we've been given in chapters one to four, even this alphabetic comprehensive treatment of grief is not enough to contain the grief and the sorrow of the people, and so it breaks out of the acrostic in this final lament, breaks the bank, so to speak, and the people just pour out their hearts in this final lament. And that's why we've actually called this final sermon a grief that cannot be ordered, because it cannot just be kept to this orderly A to Z structure. It breaks out that the pain is too great for the people.

Something else that's different about this chapter, as well as it takes a different rhythm. If you're reading in Hebrew, chapters one to four have what we call the kinah rhythm. It's this beat of three by a beat of two. It's like that. But the sound, what it's trying to get across to us is that the third beat is lost, it's like it falls short every time, and it's meant to be a mournful rhythm in the Hebrew language.

But in chapter five, the kinah rhythm is gone. It's more like what we call a staccato in music theory. Not that I'm a musician, I've just googled this. But in staccato, in music theory, it's short sharp notes, if I'm right, I'm looking at some of the musicians, rather than legato, which is smooth, you know, into each other. It's just short, sharp, punchy.

And that's what we get in this final chapter. Each verse is very short, very punchy, but still very direct. We get like a catalogue of pain in the first 18 verses. So the chapter seems to have that split in it. It takes a different note in verse 19, so I'm gonna split it into two, and we're gonna look at the first section of the chapter under this title, a remembrance of covenant curses.

A remembrance of covenant curses. Now for those who are new to church, covenant, that's a big word, in the Bible, it refers to something I think Timothy Keller is the one who says it's more binding and strong than a mere promise, but more warm and relational than a contract. Because most of us, when we think of covenants, we think of land covenants and so on, and building covenants, we think of contracts. Yes, a covenant with God is binding. It's as strong as death, but it's also deeply relational and personal.

And God, in Scripture, He's the one, unlike the other nations, He actually enters into personal covenants with His people and binds Himself to particular promises and ways of relating to them, which is a gracious thing. What we're gonna see in these first 18 verses is that when they ask God to look at their pain, they're not just saying, look at all these random difficult things we've been through, they're actually cataloguing some of the curses that are in the covenant. In the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, we call it the Pentateuch, there are these curses in the covenants that God says, if you disobey Me, I'll bring these curses and punishments. And in these first 18 verses, it's as if they're remembering everything they've been through, and they're saying, look, all these curses have come down on our heads. That's why we've got that heading there.

Alright. So let's just jump into verse one. Jeremiah writes this first verse and he says, remember, O Lord, what has befallen us. Look and see our disgrace. That word remember there is the Hebrew word zachar, and it's a covenant flavoured word.

The first time it shows up in the Bible is to do with Noah and the covenant that God is remembering with Noah, and He promises to remember with the bow in the sky and so on. It's a covenant flavoured word. So already, we're getting this covenant feel to this opening section. It's no surprise that he says, O Lord, O Yahweh, that is the covenant name of God. So when He revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, He used the name Yahweh.

It's His covenant name. So we've got a covenant word, a covenant name. Remember, O Yahweh, what has befallen us. Look and see our disgrace. This first verse has got all these imperatives, these requests for God to remember, to look, and to see.

Remember what Your covenant says, God, and how You promised to curse us for disobedience, and as if what they're going to do now is catalogue all the curses that have fallen on their heads because they're getting ready to make a request. They're getting ready to say, You've done as You've said, You've punished us, now we want You to restore us. That's what they're doing. They're getting ready for that. And remember last week in chapter four, when we finished the lament, Jeremiah said your punishment is complete?

Well, they're just bringing that home again now and saying, You've really punished us to the full. Every curse has fallen on our heads, and they're getting ready for a request to make to God. So we're gonna run through the verses, one by one, and just I'll explain them, slowly as we go. Starting in verse two. This is their catalogue of pain, the remembrance of covenant curses.

They say, our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. That is literally one of the curses in the covenant that God said would come. We have become orphans, fatherless. Our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink.

The wood we get must be bought. They don't own the land anymore. They have to pay to use the resources of the land. Verse five, our pursuers are at our necks. We are weary.

We are given no rest. We have given the hand to Egypt and to Assyria to get bread enough. Now that's a reference to history. The people had formed these unholy alliances with Egypt and with Assyria. The Bible kept warning the people of God not to go back to Egypt, but they made these alliances with Egypt.

It's part of the reason why they're in this situation. And the superpower before the Babylonians came and destroyed Jerusalem, the superpower before them was the Assyrians. So they'd made an alliance with the Assyrians before that to try and get bread enough instead of trusting in God and making their ultimate alliance with God. That's what it's referring to. Verse seven, our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities.

I think this is a reference to the generation under King Manasseh, that wicked king I keep mentioning. He was the one where God finally said, okay, I'm gonna destroy this place, because he's the one that sacrificed his son, who introduced human sacrifice into Judah, who did lots of wicked things. And the people here, what they're doing is they're complaining to God. They're saying, our fathers were the ones who really sinned, and we're bearing the punishment for it. But don't be mistaken, they're not claiming to be innocent because in a few verses, they will confess their sin as well.

But they're complaining that this is an unbearable situation to be in. Verse eight, slaves rule over us, there is none to deliver us from their hand. We get our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. They weren't a strong people anymore. When they went out into the wilderness to search for food, they could be attacked, they could be killed, and so on.

Verse 10, our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. And that might not be merely metaphorical. There's a sickness called typhus, which has been called famine fever. Cities that have been put under siege has been historically documented that people in those conditions, when they're severely starved, their immunity lowers, and sanitary conditions and hygiene lowers in the city and they contract diseases, and one of those diseases is typhus, famine fever, it actually causes a terrible fever and rashes to break out in the body, people get delirious and so on. So they seem to be referring to the effects of a famine.

Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion, young women in the towns of Judah, princes are hung up by their hands, probably refers to the Babylonian practice of killing people and then impaling them on poles outside the city, hanging them up to shame their nobles and so on. No respect is shown to the elders. Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, that was a job that was normally for slaves, and boys stagger under loads of wood. These young boys are doing slave like labour.

Verse 14, the old men, or fully translated, the elders, have left the city gate. Normally, the elders would be at the city gates in Jerusalem, and they give wisdom and judgements on things, but they're gone now. The young men and their music is gone. The joy of our hearts has ceased. Our dancing has been turned to mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us for we have sinned. There's the confession. For this, our heart has become sick. For these things, our eyes have grown dim.

For Mount Zion, which lies desolate, that's the mount that the temple was built on, synonym for Jerusalem. Jackals prowl over it. Difficult words to hear, painful words for a very dark and painful situation. And that's why I've often called lament in this series the poetry of pain. These are words that are trying to express and communicate the experience of profound suffering.

And sometimes communicating that, you can't do it in just straightforward prose, saying, I'm in pain at the moment. Sometimes you need poetry to try and express the richness of what you're going through. Did you know that at least a third of the Bible is poetry? God likes poetry. He loves Paul's letters.

Paul is a master, you know, master of logic and orderly arguments and so on. But the Bible is also full of poetry. Normally, think of Psalms when we think about that. Proverbs are probably poetry. It's wisdom literature.

But there's a lot of poetry in the Bible. One of the reasons God has given us the poetry of Lamentations in the Bible is because each of us will endure seasons of desolation where we'll need to draw on the poetry of lament. And sometimes, we'll need to draw on that language because it's our brothers or sisters who are in the dust of desolation, and we'll want to draw near to them and sit with them and pray for them. When devastation just hits someone's life, normally, they're not in a place to receive a long theological lecture. I think about seasons of pain in my own life.

I remember seasons where I just couldn't pick up a big systematic theology and read through that. I just needed to stay in the Psalms, just short Psalms of poetry and prayer to God and express my heart to God. I read poems by William Cowper, a beautiful poet, Christian poet, who writes poems about faith and so on. Sometimes in the devastation of suffering, logic and arguments and so on isn't really what a person can take in in that time. Sometimes it's just the poetry of lament.

The Psalms are poetry, poetic prayers that provide you with words when your mind is muddled with pain. I think it's Tyler Staton, who's an American pastor, who was diagnosed with advanced stage cancer in his mid thirties. And one day, the chemotherapy took all of his hair away, his three young boys, I believe, and this one particular day, finally, eyebrows, his beard, it all fell out. And he went to go and see his son after work at baseball practice, so his son didn't know that this had happened. And as he's there at baseball practice and cheering his son on at the third base, his son looks at him quizzically.

That's my dad's clothes, but who is that man? He didn't recognise his dad because his hair had finally completely fallen out. And the next morning was Good Friday, and Tyler was sitting down and spending his time with the Lord, and he felt moved to write a poem, a poetic prayer to God, and this is what he wrote. I think it's a beautiful example of using poetry and prayer in times of pain. He wrote this, it's called Good Friday by Tyler Staton.

Is that my dad? Hank asked from the third baseline. That's his son. As I approached the field where the boys practised, he's got the same shirt as my dad, same shoes as my dad, but that doesn't look like my dad. Losing the hair on my head was one thing, but now it was unrecognisable to my own son without a trace of hair left on my face.

Save the quickly thinning eyebrows, the last remaining vestige, after another round of chemotherapy's cruel pillaging, not just defeating but humiliating its subject in the process. Is that my dad, the boy struggled to make sense of the familiar voice coming from the unfamiliar man who cheered him on as he approached third base. Is that my rabbi, saviour, Messiah, king? The disciples must have asked. As the one they'd seen stump the priest with every word suddenly sat silent in the courtroom of their accusation.

As the one they'd seen slip away from the angry mob countless times lay taking a lashing. As the one they'd seen strong, staggered, too weak to carry the beam. As the one they'd seen raise the lame, was Himself raised on a cross, a death of cruel pillaging, not just defeating, but humiliating its subject in the process. Is that the one over whom we shouted, Hosanna? Surely, that question ran through at least eleven minds, reduced from men, ready to reign in glory, to sheepish boys with their tails tucked, squinting quizzically from the ancient equivalent to the third baseline, squinting at the God man who'd suddenly become unrecognisable, beard ripped out by hand, thorns rammed round His scalp, saliva of the crowd's spit mingling with the blood and sweat running down His naked body.

Dying, yes, but not just dying, pillaged, humiliated. Is that my God? I ask, squinting from the crowd. And if it is, can He make this, even this, good news? Or are there some places on earth His kingdom cannot rule?

Those are the kinds of words that Lamentations gives to us, poetic prayers to God. When suffering is at its darkest, many people can't take a theological lecture, but many people can connect with the soulful depth of poetry. And if you're suffering, if you resonate with that kind of situation, then can I commend the Psalms to you? Can I recommend that you just make that a home, make that a dwelling place, read the Psalms, especially Psalms of lament? Let them form your prayers to God.

Let that poetry help you express your own pain and sorrow. This first section of the final lament has been a catalogue of pain, a poetic account of unspeakable suffering. But the devastated community weren't just asking God to look at random incidents, they were asking Him to notice that their suffering was the fulfilment of His promised covenant curses. They were asking Yahweh, the ever faithful God, to remember His covenant, not because He has a memory problem, but because they're asking Him to look at the covenant, to draw on His promises there. Not just the curses for disobedience, but the promise of renewal that comes from repentance.

Look at Leviticus 26 with me for a moment. It catalogues some covenant curses, but then it talks about covenant promises of renewal. It says in verse 44, Leviticus 26, yet for all that, God says, when they are in the land of their enemies, at this time it's Babylon, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them, so as to destroy them utterly and break My covenant with them, for I am the Lord, that's Yahweh, their God. But I will for their sake remember, there's our Hebrew word, zachar, the covenantal word again, for I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations that I might be their God. I am Yahweh.

Jeremiah knew about the covenant curses, and he knew about this promise of renewal and repentance, and so he pastorally shepherds the people into praying a covenant shaped prayer, a lament. And that's why the community makes their boldest requests yet in the next section. So let's take a look at the last few verses under a request for covenant renewal. So they paved the way in the first section. They've said all these covenant curses have come down on us, and now they're moving towards this hope of covenant renewal.

They're gonna request that. After cataloguing pain and confessing sin, the moaning stops for a moment for a confident declaration in verse 19. But You, O Yahweh, reign forever. Your throne endures to all generations. So the community still believed in God.

They still knew that Yahweh reigns. The dilemma was not so much about whether God existed, but whether God still loved them. Verse 20, why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us for so many days? Again, Lamentations, it teaches us about honesty in prayer, doesn't it?

God already knows our hearts. We can come to Him honestly in prayer. This question in verse 20, it's not a disrespectful finger pointing accusation at God. It's a deeply honest aching question directed to Him. The people are saying, why?

We know You're on the throne, so why are we still in this situation? Why do we go on like this? Isn't Your judgement complete? This feels like forever. It's been so long, God.

Why do You still forsake us? You don't pray to God like that if you think He's indifferent. The other pagan gods that surrounded them, we've got ancient artifacts that show us that the surrounding nations, some of their beliefs were things like they believe the gods created them to be menial slaves to take care of the tasks that the gods didn't want to deal with. Very different to our creation one account about how God made us in His image to rule over creation. Right?

So they had accounts like that. They've also got stories of how the gods are fickle and they get angry over nothing. So one of their gods was said to have caused a flood because human beings were too noisy and they were interrupting his sleep. So that's another account. Some of the pagan peoples would pray to their house little household gods, kinda like lament a little bit, I guess, but they would never pray to the big gods who really controlled things.

Because you see the difference between the pagan gods and the one true God of Israel is that the one true God actually personally entered into covenant with His people. He actually gave us His word, is such a blessing, to actually know who He is, to know how to live, to know what He's promised. And when you know God's heart, even in the wake of devastating suffering, you can bring your pain and requests to Him because He's not like this pagan god that's just gonna strike you down for complaining. He's not power that we have to appease. He's a relationship that we appeal to.

Israel had a personal relationship with God who had bound Himself by promise. That's why we can ask why and not just say please. Because Yahweh isn't merely being asked to notice them, He's being reminded of who He personally committed to be for them. Remember, it's the fact that Yahweh is a covenant making and keeping God that they make perhaps the most direct request in the book next, in the next verse. See, up until this point, there have been requests.

They've asked God to look at their pain. They've asked God to judge their cruel enemies, but here's where they get to the biggest request, the crescendo request of the book, where they ask God to do what they really long for. Let's take a look at it together. Verse 21. They say, restore us to Yourself, O Yahweh, that we may be restored.

Renew our days as of old. That's the big request in the second last verse of the book. Now those words for restore, it's the Hebrew word shuv. And the reason I'm telling you about that is because shuv normally is the word that we use for repentance. It means to turn around or turn back.

And I think this teaches us a little bit about something about what repentance is. You see, in repentance is restoration. Even that little ending of Leviticus 26 we read before, the context is in repentance, and they're asking God to restore them. It's almost like they're saying, turn us back to Yourself, O Lord, that we may be turned back. I heard one pastor say it once, I think it was Ray Ortlund, that restoration only comes through repentance.

No. No. He said, you can only repent your way into restoration. You can only repent your way into healing. I think there's a beautiful lesson there for us.

If you're in a situation where you're trying to hide your sin, or there's an issue where you need to own up to but you just want to put it under the rug and move on, restoration doesn't come from putting things under the rug and then trying to make up for it and do penance for that person. Restoration only comes through repentance and confession. We only confess and repent our way into healing. We own it with God. We own it with others, and we find restoration in that way.

In repentance is restoration. But notice that even repentance is a gift. They're asking God not just restore us to Yourself, but turn us back to Yourself. Even repentance is a gift for the people. See, our salvation as Christians, it's all gift.

It's all gift from God. God granted us repentance. God granted us faith. God is the one whose Spirit opened our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus, to recognise His beauty and His grace, and to actually come back to Him. Even repentance is a gift.

That's what we learn by just having a look at those two words. So when they say, restore us to Yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored, they're saying, lead us into lasting repentance. Restore us to relationship with You because it's in right relationship with You that everything is turned the right way up again. Blessing and wholeness and joy is found in relationship and friendship with You, God. We're not asking for the gifts without the giver.

You are the ultimate gift. We want You, and we want life with You again. And then they say, renew our days as of old. It's a bit like saying, bring back the good old days. But renew, that's a really unique Hebrew word.

It only comes up 10 times in the Old Testament, and only once in the prophetic books, in Isaiah 61. It's part of a prophetic promise to restore Jerusalem from the ashes. That's the context of Lamentations, isn't it? They're asking God to restore them from the ashes. Well, that word is used in Isaiah 61.

Let's take a look at that starting in verse one, and just gonna look at the first four verses. Isaiah 61 says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, in Jerusalem, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins, that's Jerusalem. They shall raise up the former devastations, they shall repair, that's our Hebrew word, the one that's renew in our verse.

They shall renew or repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. So here we have a prophetic promise that God will restore Jerusalem. But listening to that, some of those words might have been familiar to you if you've read your Gospels a few times. You see, because those words, hundreds of years later, a man took the scroll of Isaiah in a synagogue, and he read out some of these words aloud, which astounded everyone. We find the story in Luke 4.

It's about Jesus. And He, Jesus, came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to Him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

And He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. So Jesus was claiming to fulfil the promise of Isaiah 61, to bring liberty to the captives, to bring the oil of gladness instead of mourning, to repair the ancient ruins. But in Jesus' day, Jerusalem was up and running again.

The temple there was perhaps as impressive as it had ever been under King Herod. So what is Jesus saying, that He's fulfilling the scripture that would restore the city? What is He saying when He says, I've come to set the captives free, but He let His cousin John the Baptist die in jail? Didn't set him free. What was Jesus fulfilling?

Well, He came to set us free from a greater captivity, a captivity to sin, captivity to Satan. He came to rebuild the city, but not the literal physical city. He came to rebuild the spiritual city, the new Jerusalem to which we belong as Christians now. Think about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount when He called us a city on a hill. That's not random language.

That's how people referred to Jerusalem back in that culture. You are a city on a hill. You are spiritual Jerusalem. Look at Hebrews 12 on the screen. The writer says to the people there, and this applies to all Christians, but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.

Or Galatians 4, Paul talks about which city we belong to. He talks about we belong to as Christians, the Jerusalem that is above. The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. See, Jesus' coming was God's ultimate answer to the bold request at the end of Lamentations. Jesus did bring restoration.

Jesus is renewing all things, not just one physical city. Jesus is drawing all of creation to Himself and healing the broken hearts of hurting people all around the world. And until one day, He will return to complete His restorative work. Creation will be renewed, and we will see the new Jerusalem in all of its splendour. We read about that incredible vision in Revelation 21 where John says, and I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

The city is also a bride. This isn't talking in literal physical terms. The city is the bride, is the church. It's the people of God. And then he goes on in verse 10, and he carried me away in a spirit to a great high mountain and showing me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal.

So this beautiful image is an image of what God is doing in these last days through Jesus, the one who came to restore Jerusalem. He has come to build up spiritual Jerusalem, a spiritual city. In Ephesians, it says that we are built up on the foundation of the apostles. We're like an end time temple that God is building up. A city.

We belong to God, and one day we'll be so beautiful. We'll be like that new Jerusalem as described in Revelation, radiant, not a widow any longer, but married to God. We'll be one with Him. That is what Jesus came to set in motion through His death and resurrection. He came to rebuild the people of God as a new Jerusalem.

You see, because of Jesus, even when we feel God forsaken, we know that God never breaks His promises, so we can bring our protests and our pleas to Him in prayer when life is dark. Right now, we live in the overlap of the ages. The age of tears exists alongside the age of no tears. Jesus' kingdom has broken in, but the domain of darkness is still here. The age of pain and sin exists alongside the in breaking age of comfort and righteousness.

So there will be times where we have no words, and tears stream down our faces freely. And that's why I think the ending of Lamentations is so realistic. The people make the bold request in verse 21, knowing that they're speaking to their covenant keeping God, but their immediate situation at the time was so severe, it didn't alleviate their distress. So they finished the book with these lines, verse 22. They make the request, and then they say, unless You have utterly rejected us and You remain exceedingly angry with us.

Now it's not a Disney movie ending, is it? To have that as the last line of the book. But in this overlap of the ages, you can believe in hope, but you won't be free from pain and devastation that inevitably comes in this broken world. I think it also encourages us that even if you do believe in who God is as a promise keeper and in His promises, that you don't need to feel guilty if you're still in pain and distress because of your situation. Lamentations hasn't been teaching us that with the right theology, you won't feel pain.

It gives us good theology about the loving kindness of God, but it teaches us to turn to God in honesty and vulnerability. The theology about God in this book is what makes unsettled prayers safe. Resolution will come to all God's people. Jesus secured it. He will restore us.

This is why we keep praying and speaking with God even when our present circumstances are painful. Nick Ripken lived in a land not too unlike the ruins of Jerusalem. In Somalia, he saw desperately hungry people. He gave burial cloths to grieving mothers and fathers. He saw hatred and violence in the streets as soldiers slaughtered fellow countrymen.

How could someone like Nick turn to God in prayer? How could he keep believing that God's kingdom was breaking in when everything looked so dark? He writes about the disturbing questions he had to wrestle with in his book. He wrote, can God truly overcome evil? Is love really more powerful than hate?

How can a person maintain even a small hope in a dark place? How is it possible for faith to survive in an insane environment like Somalia's? Nick wrestled, but by some miracle of God, Nick didn't turn away. He didn't stop believing or praying. He resonated with the words of Peter who said to Jesus, where else would we go?

Now Nick might seem like a fool to some, but God always keeps His promises. Jesus did come, and He will come again. Keep turning to Him in prayer with all of your protests and pleas, because even in times when you feel like there are no words, there is hope. God will hold you up, and God has given you words in Lamentations and the Psalms, and the Spirit Himself prays for you when you don't even know what to pray. Let's pray to God together now.

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for Lamentations. As difficult as it is to hear the words there, we thank You for the lessons that You teach us. We thank You, Father, that we don't need to hide behind fig leaves with You, but that we can be totally honest and vulnerable, that You are a good God worthy of our trust even in situations that seem to point and say otherwise. Father, we ask that You would convince us of Your heart, that You keep pointing us to Jesus, that You would help us to keep trusting in You when there is pain and difficulty, and to sit with one another and pray with one another.

Lord, we thank You for this time in Your word, and we pray all these things in the name of King Jesus, who has secured all of Your promises for us. Amen.