Introduction

Why study a book of laments?

First, this is life. Unlike made-for-TV movies, real life rarely resolves itself cleanly. The paper-thin veneer of “a perfect Christian life” is a modern invention crafted with the tools of Western consumerism. The idyllic life, untouched by pain, is simply not in the Bible or in the long history of the church. That’s good news. The incongruence we find in our lives is what God knows. After all, it is only comforting that God is with us if we are in fact walking the valley of the shadow of death.

Suffering is in the Bible. It’s clear. In Scripture, real haziness is seen more than pretend clarity. Nothing hidden. A whole book dedicated to regretful weeping, Lamentations is not an appendix to Scripture; it is Scripture. Lamentations is Scripture because lament is not tacked on to our lives as something to be hidden. It’s right out there in the middle. God chose not to hide the plaintive cries of the confused. This illustrates that the inspired Word of God is bent toward human suffering. Therefore, understanding this book honors the great suffering that took place by a displaced nation, and Lamentations gives us the rhetorical tools to weep with displaced people around the world today. Lamentations: this is their story, this is their song.

It would not be too much to say that I have found myself in this book. It’s not that I can identify with the deep agony of the prophet but that in my own suffering I find a surprising comfort in knowing that life in God’s world is not all so neat. The untidiness of this book is therapeutic. It reminds me that the unresolved questions of life are in a sense an answer in themselves.

Second, this is God’s work. What we see in this passage is the heavy hand of discipline on those he loves. I serve that God. I love that God. I have given my life to the God who caused tragedy to fall on those he loved and, what’s more, allowed the journals of those who resent him to be in his book. The book that guides my life is filled with complaints! We’ve got to understand this. And this understanding leads to so many questions: What kind of God is this? Does God still discipline his children like this? Will we ever feel like Jeremiah felt in this lament? Am I insulated from the lament? Am I insulated from what caused the lament? We need to wrestle with the questions in this book.

But there is a third reason I also find strangely comforting. Lament is an experience of everyone God is using to fulfill his covenant promises. Let’s think about this in terms of the old and new covenant.

Dealing with Discipline

If one were to look at the whole swath of the Old Testament, the story could be divided into the story of two great oppressions: bondage in Egypt and exile at the hands of Assyria and Babylon.

Genesis to Exodus

In the first two chapters of the Bible, we have the people of God created, the fall, the flood, and then God starting over with a new chosen race of people. He makes a covenant with Abraham that would provide God’s people with a blessing, offspring, and land. The promise was overwhelming. Not realized at the time was that this would come after 430 years of bondage in Egypt. This was not in their plan. Thousands of years removed, modern pilgrims talk about this bondage clinically. However, for Israel this was their reality for more than 400 years. They were not in bondage due to sin; they were in bondage due to God’s fulfilling his promise to Abraham. In other words, the covenant had two sides: God’s great completion and the suffering needed to accomplish it. Sometimes the completion of God’s promises for us brings suffering to us. Covenant brings hardship and causes us to weep. Weeping is not always out of his will.

Joshua to Nehemiah

God kept his promise to give them a land, and they entered it under the leadership of Joshua. When they were finally in the land, they had the potential to prosper under the rule of godly leaders, but they ultimately fell into horrific idolatry under the rule of Solomon. This led to a divided kingdom and eventually to captivity and exile. The exile, unlike the bondage in Egypt, was self-inflicted.

Yet God graciously delivered them from both Egypt and exile. For Egypt there was Moses, and for the exiles there was Nehemiah.

In New Testament terms we could loosely compare this to the discipline of the Lord. In the same way God delivered his people to keep his covenant in Egypt, God still today helps his people through times that they are suffering through no fault of their own. The New Testament also teaches us that God still allows his children to suffer for things they have done. God still disciplines us.

We could refer to the first type of suffering as the instructive discipline of the Lord and the latter as the corrective discipline of the Lord. The instructive discipline of the Lord is when the Lord allows us to suffer for reasons that, whether we understand or not, he ultimately is going to use to glorify himself. The corrective discipline of the Lord is suffering the consequences of our sin.

Romans 8:28 helps us understand the instructive discipline of the Lord: all things will ultimately shape us into the likeness of Christ, even things we do not understand or do not enjoy. More precisely, the writer of Hebrews states in Hebrews 12:11, “No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” This is the best way to understand how God works in our lives. He works to train us. This is the instructive discipline of the Lord.

The Scriptures also teach that God disciplines us in response to our sin. The same chapter in Hebrews states that we are to “endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?” (Heb 12:7). So the discipline of the Lord can be instructive, but it can also be corrective.

Christians are so loved by the Father that they will be instructed and corrected. Neither of these is enjoyable. This is why they are called discipline. They are hard. They are the kind of trials that make you want to weep.

This leads us to the book of Lamentations.

In the Old Testament we have Egypt and exile. In the New Testament we have instruction and correction. They both lead to the keeping of the covenant promise, and they both demand lament.

Yet the tone of the book, not to mention the title (!), is off-putting. It discords with modern and postmodern thinking to suggest we should weep. Perhaps the reason this is so is because we tend to see suffering as immediately two-sided.

• Fall, then covenant
• Egypt, then promised land
• Cross, then resurrection
• Death, then heaven

This is gloriously true. Yet to so quickly understand them as couplets can subtly suggest an immediacy to suffering that is misleading. Sometimes lament is a life. It also suggests that we will see both sides in this life. The far reach of Western prosperity preachers and their perpetual distance from New Testament teaching should jolt the church back to the Scripture, where we see that suffering is part of life for the believer. Therefore, so is lament.

One of the features of this book, like the book of Jeremiah, is the remarkable verses that spring from the desperation. The book is so dark. It is genuinely depressing. At its worst there is no escape; the people have turned to desperate cannibalism, and Jeremiah, the one who is to be leading them out, feels like God is his enemy. It is altogether sad and depressing.

Yet in this desert the faithfulness of God shines through. In this darkness literary expression gives eyes to faith. Jeremiah writes,

Remember my affliction and my homelessness,

the wormwood and the poison.

I continually remember them

and have become depressed.

Yet I call this to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

Because of theLord’s faithful love

we do not perish,

for his mercies never end.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness!

I say, “The Lord is my portion,

therefore I will put my hope in him.”

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,

to the person who seeks him.

It is good to wait quietly

for salvation from the Lord.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke

while he is still young. (Lam 3:19-27)

The words are both beautiful and haunting. How could something so comforting and beautiful come from a situation that is so dark? What is more interesting still is that these words have brought comfort to millions through the poetry of Thomas Chisholm when he wrote,

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;

There is no shadow of turning with Thee,

Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not,

As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.

Chorus:

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above;

Join with all nature in manifold witness,

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside. (“Great Is Thy Faithfulness”)

My prayer is that in these five short chapters you will find both a full expression of lament and a hunger for the healing that is only provided in the new covenant.