Lamentations 3
v.8
Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.
v.16
He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.
What a figure to express disgust, pain, and the consequent incapacity of taking food for the support of life; a man, instead of bread, being obliged to eat small pebbles till all his teeth are broken to pieces by endeavouring to grind them. One can scarcely read this description without feeling the toothache.
v.19
I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
God also remembers our wanderings. See v 8.
v.20-21
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 21Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
It is evident that in the preceding verses there is a bitterness of complaint against the bitterness of adversity, that is not becoming to man when under the chastising hand of God; and, while indulging this feeling, all hope fled. Here we find a different feeling; he humbles himself under the mighty hand of God, and then his hope revives.
At the south of Africa the sea was generally so stormy, when the frail barks of the Portuguese went sailing south, that they named it the Cape of Storms; but after that cape had been well rounded by bolder navigators, they named it the Cape of Good Hope. In your experience you had many a Cape of Storms, but you have weathered them all, and now, let them be a Cape of Good Hope to you.
v.22
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
See where Jeremiah gets his comfort; he seems to say, ‘Bad as my case is, it might have been worse, for I might have been consumed, and I should have been consumed if the Lord’s compassions had failed.’
v.23
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Each dawning day gives mankind hope in fresh mercies and compassions from God. We need a constant supply and God has promised to send them without fail. No matter how bad the past day was, God’s people can look to the new morning with faith and hope.
Our treasures, which we lay up on earth, are the stagnant pools; but the treasure which God gives us from heaven, in providence and in grace, is the crystal fount which wells up from the eternal deeps, and is always fresh and always new.
v.24
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
The poet said in effect, that he has had so little of this world’s goods and pleasures because his share has been the Lord.
v.25
The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
All the misery of God’s people had come because they would not truly seek God and wait for Him. They rejected and rebelled for generations, then looked to others for rescue. Seeking Him again would bring renewed expressions of His goodness.
Do not be in a hurry; do not expect to be delivered out of your trouble the first time you begin to cry unto God. Oh, no: ‘the Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.’
In these three verses, each beginning in the Hebrew with the word good, we have first the fundamental idea that Yahweh Himself is good, and if good to all, then especially is He so to those who being in adversity can yet wait in confidence upon His mercy.
My cynicism used to justify itself by my experience in waiting upon God amidst my sufferings in life. I questioned God much when I played sports throughout junior high and high school, when I processed family members’ funerals, when EFCLA fired Andy, and when Edward left the faith. Yet, this verse illuminates the heart of God amidst our sufferings: He is good to those who are in the thick of it all. He is good. Especially in the waiting. This season of Spring Quarter 2022 my senior year at UCI has also been one of waiting. I’ve taken on so much this last quarter - especially oap. And I remember on week 4 feeling the weight of all the burdens I was carrying. Yet, the Lord is good to those who wait upon Him. Even as I’m writing this at the end of week 9, I remind myself: the Lord is good to those whose hope is in him and seeks him.
v.26
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.
v.27
It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
There are seasons of adversity, and sometimes it is better to have those seasons when one is young. If God disciplines us when we are young, it is to train us for a fruitful future.
Early habits, when good, are invaluable. Early discipline is equally so. He who has not got under wholesome restraint in youth will never make a useful man, a good man, nor a happy man.
By bearing a yoke in his youth, i. e. being called upon to suffer in early age, a man learns betimes the lesson of silent endurance, and so finds it more easy to be calm and patient in later years.
Thank you Lord for teaching me so much about character and godliness through team sport at RHP. Thank you for teaching me how to love the youth well at Banner Church. Thank you for sharing your burdens with me at UCI. Thank you for humbling me in oap to depend on you wholeheartedly.
See also v 1.
v.31-33
For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.32Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. 33For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.
It is no pleasure to God to afflict men. He takes no delight in our pain and misery: yet, like a tender and intelligent parent, he uses the rod; not to gratify himself, but to profit and save us.
Is it not evident that the Lord Jesus is angry with us when we sin in order that he may convert us through fear of his indignation? His indignation, then, is not the carrying out of vengeance but rather the working out of forgiveness, for these are his word: “If you shall turn and lament, you shall be saved.” He waits for our lamentations here, that is, in time, that he may spare us those that shall be eternal. He waits for our tears that he may pour forth his goodness. So in the Gospel having pity on the tears of the widow, he raised her son. He waits for our conversion that he may himself restore us to grace, which would have continued with us had no fall overtaken us. But he is angry because we have by our sins incurred guilt in order that we may be humbled; we are humbled in order that we may be found worthy rather of pity than of punishment. Jeremiah, too, may certainly teach us this when he says, “For the Lord will not cast off forever; for after he has humbled, he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, he who has not humbled from his whole heart or cast off the children of humankind.” This passage we certainly find in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and from it, and from what follows, we note that the Lord humbles all the prisoners of the earth under his feet, in order that we may escape his judgement. But the one who does not bring down the sinner even to the earth with his whole heart is also the one who raises the poor even from the dust and the needy from the dunghill. For he does not wholeheartedly bring down those he intends to forgive. But if he does not wholeheartedly bring down every sinner, how much less does he wholeheartedly bring down someone who has not sinned with his whole heart! For as he said of the Jews, “This people honors with me with their lips, but their heart is far from me,” so perhaps he may say of some of the fallen, “They denied me with their lips, but in their heart they are with me. It was pain that overcame them, not unfaithfulness that turned them aside.” But some without cause refuse pardon to those whose faith the persecutor himself confessed up to the point of striving to overcome it by torture. They denied the Lord once but confess him daily; they denied in word but confess him with groans, with cries and with tears; they confess him with willing words, not under compulsion. They yielded, indeed, for a moment to the temptation of the devil, but even the devil afterwards left those whom he was unable to claim as his own. He yielded to their weeping, he yielded to their repentance, and after making them his own lost those whom he attached when they belonged to Another.
v.38
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
v.39
Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins?
If I hate sin because of the punishment, I have not repented of my sin, I merely regret that God is just.
v.44
You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through.
v.48
Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed.
v.51
What I see brings grief to my soul because of all the women of my city.
v.57
You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.”
How powerful is this word when spoken by the Spirit of the Lord to a disconsolate heart. To every mourner we may say, on the authority of God, Fear not! God will plead thy cause, and redeem thy soul.
oap
v.64
Pay them back what they deserve, O LORD, for what their hands have done.
What a chapter: from deep anguish to aspiring hope to a concluding imprecatory prayer. Jeremiah is GOING THROUGH it.