Lamentations 3:1-33

We have come to the center chapter of Lamentations, the one with the amazing turn at 3:21.  And again we would say that Jesus Christ is manifested here.  This chapter is personal in the sense that it is Jeremiah expressing his own experience as he processes the events of the destruction of Jerusalem.  His life was spared by Nebuchadnezzar (actually, it was God).  The bad news about that is that he must see the terrible things happening to the people and to the great City of God.  To the east of Gordon’s Calvary north of the Old City in Jerusalem is a cave, the traditional sight called Jeremiah’s Grotto.  Supposedly Jeremiah sat there, weeping over the city as it burned.  Interesting.  Someone else wept over Jerusalem.  It was Jesus, of course.  He wept because He knew what was coming, which was another burning of the city, this time by the Romans (Luke 19:41-44).

·        3:1-21:  Jeremiah’s grief was very real.  He saw the suffering (3:1-3).  It was deeply personal, so much so he says he felt he aged in the process (3:4-6).  He could not get away from it; no matter how hard he prayed God would not listen and show mercy (3:7-9).  Jeremiah took it personally; he felt as if God had attacked him, not just the city (3:10-12).  All the while he was warning the people to escape by giving up, they were ridiculing him (3:13-15).  He has made me drink wormwood (v15).  He was so overcome he had no strength nor hope (3:16-18).  He had no hope of forestalling God’s wrath.  But he did have hope that, now that the fire was beginning to dwindle, that God would remember (3:19-21).  This is a hope based on God’s faithfulness, God’s promise made to Abraham. 

·        Before we move on do you not hear Jesus in the words of Jeremiah.  These two weeping prophets had the same experience for the same reason.  They truly loved the people of God, the people of Israel.  And they grieved deeply at what would happen to these rebellious loved ones.  There was one difference: Jeremiah watched the city burn; Jesus bore the burning fury of God in His body on the tree.

·        3:22-33: Hope rises from the ash and smoke.  Jeremiah has been brought to that place where he is stripped of all but God Himself.  The LORD is my portion (3:22-24).  It’s a new morning and the mercies are new.  Every day can be a new beginning for those who live with God is their portion.  Amazingly Jeremiah can say, the LORD is good (3:25-27).  After all, he and others are still alive; through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed (v22).  Jeremiah knows God does not cast off forever (3:31-33; Ps. 77:7-9; 94:14). 

Jesus, more perfectly than Jeremiah, but in the same fashion of Jeremiah, felt the grieving pain.  He drank the wormwood, and then committed His soul into the hands of a faithful Creator.  As God will not cast off Israel forever, so He did not cast off forever the Son He had forsaken.