Finding Hope When Your World is Broken

The Backstory of Lamentations

• The author is not identified, but some think Jeremiah.
• Written after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in B.C.
• Five intricately connected .
• It is “a collection of , or melancholy dirges, for a ruined society. The poems in the book could also be termed elegies or funeral orations, in which the author expresses deep personal and communal grief for the dead and for all the suffering that surrounds their loss.” (ESV Study Bible, p. 1,476)

Lamentations 1
1 How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
has become a slave.
 ² She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
they have become her enemies.
³ Judah has gone into exile because of affliction
and hard servitude;
she dwells now among the nations,
but finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
in the midst of her distress.

1. We should not assume days of peace and prosperity will . 

⁵ Her foes have become the head;
her enemies prosper,
because the Lord has afflicted her
for the multitude of her transgressions;
her children have gone away,
captives before the foe.

¹⁸ “The Lord is in the right,
for I have rebelled against his word;
but hear, all you peoples,
and see my suffering;
my young women and my young men
have gone into captivity.

2. God will eventually bring judgment on individuals and nations that persistently, flagrantly, and without repentance against him and his word. 

Lamentations 2
¹⁴ Your prophets have seen for you
false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity
to restore your fortunes,
but have seen for you oracles
that are false and misleading.

3. Courageous spiritual is necessary to call us to confession, repentance, and restoration. 

Lamentations 3
3 I am the man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
² he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
³ surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.
⁴ He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
he has broken my bones;
⁵ he has besieged and enveloped me
with bitterness and tribulation;
⁶ he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead of long ago.

4. about our circumstances and spiritual condition is essential – be authentic, don’t pretend. 

⁷ He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
he has made my chains heavy;
⁸ though I call and cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer;
⁹ he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
he has made my paths crooked.
¹⁰ He is a bear lying in wait for me,
a lion in hiding;
¹¹ he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces;
he has made me desolate;
¹² he bent his bow and set me
as a target for his arrow.
¹³ He drove into my kidneys
the arrows of his quiver;
¹⁴ I have become the laughingstock of all peoples,
the object of their taunts all day long.
¹⁵ He has filled me with bitterness;
he has sated me with wormwood.
¹⁶ He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
and made me cower in ashes;
¹⁷ my soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
¹⁸ so I say, “My endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord.”

5. God is over the depth and duration of our sufferings.

¹⁹ Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
²⁰ My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
²¹ But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
²² The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

6. is when I call to mind and trust in the character of God – his steadfast love, his mercies, and his faithfulness.

Lamentations 5
²¹ Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old—
²² unless you have utterly rejected us,
and you remain exceedingly angry with us.