Lamentations 2

Lamentations 2:1-22

THE PROPHET’S Lamentations 1-5 WE are quitting the Book of Jeremiah, but not the Prophet, and we are leaving the greater volume of Jeremiah, not because we have exhausted it nor because we have touched even its high points in passing. But having promised our readers forty volumes on the whole Bible, we are beginning to realize the extremely limited discussion we can give to the Books that remain, and yet stay within the number of volumes agreed upon with the publisher. Jeremiah should have at least another volume similar in size to this, and alone should claim five chapters instead of one.However, we hope in this discussion to get before you the essential suggestions of this volume. It is correctly supposed to have come from the pen of the great Prophet. Modern criticism, to the contrary, will but poorly impress those students of Biblical history who know that in the septuagint version this volume was introduced in the following words:“And it came to pass that after Israel had been carried away captive Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented this lament of Jerusalem”. Three hundred years, then, before Christ, the scholars had no doubt whatever that these five chapters, constituting the volume of , were from Jeremiah, and voiced his exceeding sorrow at the sight of his people conquered and carried away into captivity. The Prophet had lived to see his direst predictions fulfilled, and to deeply grieve the fact that his warnings to Judah and Israel had been disregarded and the day of judgment had come.In order to present something like a bird’s eye view of the Book, we have elected to discuss it under four heads:The Complete Subjugation, The Conquering Sin, The Consequent Sorrow, and, The Comforting Assurance.THE The Prophet views this subjugation as a true loyalist might be expected to see it. He looks upon it as it is related to Jerusalem, as it has affected the land of Judah, and as it has depressed the spirits of the people.As it related to Jerusalem!“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! “She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies” (Lamentations 1:1-2). The first thing that affects and profoundly moves Jeremiah’s feelings is the city itself. He loved Jerusalem. Either a man is very unpatriotic or else the metropolis, in which he has elected to live, is very unattractive if he does not come to love it.When one goes to London and listens to the roar of that great city and looks on its narrow crowded streets, endures its ever-repeated rains and its almost endless fogs, he may wonder that any one loves London; but speak a word against it to a Londoner and you will speedily learn that London holds a large place in his heart.Think of New York or Chicago, over-grown, bestial, dirty; and yet practically all New Yorkers and most Chicagoans have an abiding affection for their city.Jerusalem even in Christ’s day was far from a Minneapolis in beauty; but Christ loved it and wept over it.A citizen who has no affection for the place of his residence is a poor patriot, and the citizen who is not grieved when his city is subjugated to the vicious, has no right to a residence in it, and even less to its protection of either his person or property.As it affected the land!“Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits” (Lamentations 1:3). This also is the voice of the patriot. His interest exceeds municipal limitations. They reach to the limits of the state. It is not enough to be a good Minneapolitan; it is absolutely essential to be a good Minnesotan, and a loyal American. We sing sometimes: My country! ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing: Land where my fathers died! Land of the Pilgrims’ pride! From every mountain side Let freedom ring! If we are true patriots, we will find even more pleasure in the second verse: My native country, thee, Land of the noble free, Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills; My heart with rapture thrills. Like that above. Jeremiah was equally concerned for the spirit of his people, and he wrote:“The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: Her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. * * “Her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture” (Lamentations 1:4-6). It is a pathetic picture. To this good hour, America has never learned the meaning of this Scripture. Our people have never been subjugated; in our wars we have never been defeated, much less carried away captive to slave in other lands; and these lamentations are but superficially understood of us.When the Russian-Japanese war of some years since was on, the great Russian general Stoessel, seeing that their defeat was imminent, since the Japanese had already occupied Keekwan Mountain and Q. fort and heights south of the forts, wired to the Czar: “I now bid you all good-by forever. Port Arthur is my grave!” For days following he fought on against impossible odds. Says the correspondent of the Associated Press: “The hospitals are now in the rake of the Japanese fire. The wounded who can leave, are doing so.

They can be seen in the streets on heaps of debris, exposed to the bitterly cold weather, and some staggering back to the front defying the Japanese and desiring death. They know that the stock of ammunition is about out, and that they are in the relentless grasp of the enemy.”When General Stoessel ordered them to fight they answered, “We can’t fight: we have nothing left with which to fight. Our men cannot move. They sleep, standing. They can see nothing but bayonets at their breasts. Their morale is gone!” They were doomed and they knew it.When a day like that breaks over a people, hopelessness takes possession.That’s what Jeremiah saw, and that’s the ground of his grief, and this Book is the expression of it.

But Jeremiah saw another thing, namely,THE SIN He knew why these disasters had come. For months and years he had predicted them. But like the warning of Lot to his children in Sodom, he had seemed to them as “one that mocked”, and as it was sin that necessitated that Sodomic flame, so sin had fruited again and “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death”.Judah’s transgressions were a multitude.“For the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of Her transgressions” (Lamentations 1:5). Sin is like a pestiferous seed. It has great ability to multiply itself. Give Johnson grass a single start and it is with the greatest possible battle that you can keep it from taking the entire field. Let one seed from the Scotch thistle fall into good soil, and in a few years you will be fighting this enemy of fields on a thousand acres.There is in Australia, a weed called the Australian weed, the seed of which, if sown in the water, multiplies with such rapidity that it soon chokes the flow of the stream itself.Such a seed is sin! People of America are wondering about the increase of crime and are attempting to account for it in various and sundry ways, but there is nothing mysterious involved. Sin produces sin, and concerning its children, there is no practice of birth control, and its kind rapidly increases; so the life giving streams of decency are being choked by its fungus growth.

The current of law is being turned out of its course and the fountain of righteousness itself is being clogged.The character of sin also increases. Mild sins are somehow able to give birth to malignant ones. “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned” (Lamentations 1:8), was the lament of the Prophet.

That’s always the result. A little sin to begin with; a grievous sin to end with.A while ago a very popular modernist minister of New York told his shallow and admiring audience a very palatable thing, namely, “Sin and hell have now been put in the museum!” If so, then the museum itself is safe no longer.It is quite interesting to go to the Smithsonian Institute and look on those magnificent specimens that Mr. Roosevelt and his sons and other Nimrods have brought to earth, and finally by the aid of the taxidermist placed in apparent life, but perfect death, before the public gaze.If, however, the day should come when suddenly those great and ferocious beasts became as intensely alive and voraciously alive, as are “sin and hell”, I should want to be a long remove from the museum.Down in Brazil there is a vine called the Matador or murderer. Its slender stem, very harmless looking at first, creeps along the ground until it strikes a tree, when it at once begins to climb the side of the same and throws out tendrils and takes deep hold, embracing the tree at a thousand points. Up and up it goes until the topmost limb, though it be a hundred feet away, is within its embrace and then a writer says, “As if in triumph over its victim, this parasitic vine brakes into a huge beautiful blossom, as if joyfully conscious of victory, for that tree is doomed, and from its height above the same the vine scatters its seeds far and near to undertake, at another point, until whole forests are helpless victims within its deadly grasp. Such is the conquest of sin!It leaves its victim destitute of sympathy. Listen to Jeremiah,“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me”? (Lamentations 1:12). This is Judah’s lament when once she realizes that she is doomed, and the neighbor nations do not care. It is hard for any man or woman to be treated with contempt, but it is hardest for that man who has held the high position, and for that woman who has known the greatest beauty and charms. Such had been Judah’s experience. She had been princess among the nations, and now none so poor as to do her reverence.We may imagine that Germany was embarrassed when the war ended in her defeat, but that embarrassment was as nothing to the embarrassment of this time, when the creditor nations look upon her with contempt because she does not, and perhaps cannot, meet her pledged obligations. Anything is easier to bear than public contempt.As we saw in our last sermon, self respect is difficult when popular respect has departed. The stricken demands sympathy and to withhold it from them is to crush them!Do you remember that, in the Marble Faun, Hawthorne presents poor Miriam conscious of her guilt, and yet craving the sympathetic and loving touch of a friend?

In her loneliness and remorse, that was her mightiest need. In Hilda she hoped, but alas, Hilda, in her purity and Phariseeism, turned from Miriam as from some contaminating thing, and as she went, walked on Miriam’s heart, and, with a high and doubtless haughty look in her eyes, crushed the same.If there is one lesson that we poor mortals need to learn above another, it is the God-like compassion for another, compassion for the poor, tenderness for the sick, and even sympathy for the sinful. The cruelest men in the world are the priests and levites that pass by on the other side; to whom the sight of suffering is naught, and in whom sense of brotherhood is not.But I am dwelling too long on this first chapter, and consequently must only touch those that remain. We can do this by studying next theC SORROWIt was felt most deeply by the Prophet himself.The third chapter is the expression of it. It is too lengthy for reading. I will leave it to you for your quiet hour.It opens in such a way as to indicate the deeps of Jeremiah’s soul.“I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. “He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. “Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. “My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. “He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. “He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. “He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. “Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. “He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. “He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. “He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate” (Lamentations 3:1-11). It is almost uniform for a sinful people to imagine that the Prophet among them is the one man exempt from sorrow. They think that because he warns, he has a conscious superiority, and that he never desires or deserves any sympathy. On the contrary, the Prophet suffers more than the people to whom God hath sent him. When Jesus Christ, the Prophet of Prophets, looked on Jerusalem He saw them happy when His heart was heavy; He saw them giddy with mirth when His heart was broken; He saw them given to frivolity while He was in the mountain in prayer, bedewing the sides of the same with His tears.Their sin was not only His sorrow, it was also His suffering. Campbell Morgan, speaking of Jeremiah, says, “It would have been easy for him to miss the persecution, and the prison. A modification of his message by accommodation to the desire of the princes, a softening of its terrible roughness, even a general denunciation of sin, a mild discourse upon their falsity of their hopes from Egypt, and the certainty of the victory of the Chaldeans; any of these changes would have saved him.

Yet he never faltered, but steadily, in spite of the anger of men, spoke what God had given him to say. This brought upon him the suffering described.This has been repeated in all ages. In the days of the Old Scotch Covenanters a wee laddie, one Jamie Douglas, for refusing to play traitor to the truth was one day held over a steep and rough precipice by a brutal soldier, and given the option of disloyalty or death. Looking up into the face of the man, with eyes bright with the light of true heroism, he said, “Drop me down, then, if ye must; ’tis ne’er so deep as hell!”In this sorrow his people share.“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22). He changes from the personal “I” to the plural “we”.“It is of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed”. “Let us search and try our ways” (Lamentations 3:40). “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God” (Lamentations 3:41). “We have transgressed and have rebelled” (Lamentations 3:42). “Thou hast made us as the off scouring and refuse in the midst of the people” (Lamentations 3:45). Here he identifies himself with the people, and the people with himself. “No man liveth unto himself”. We can’t even suffer alone. Had it been so, Moses would have suffered even unto death for Israel’s redemption; had it been so, Jeremiah would gladly have gone to the cross for Judah. Only Christ is. the adequate substitute. He alone can stand in the sinner’s stead. On Him only can God lay “the iniquity of us all”.This leads also to an additional thought.This judgment was divinely visited.“The Lord hath accomplished His fury; He hath poured out His fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof” (Lamentations 4:11). People wonder sometimes why God judges sin; why God executes wrath against iniquity; why God punishes the sinner. If it were not so, what a world! We are fast coming to the time when judgment against sin is no longer popular. The superficial thinking, the unbiblical thinking, the shallow reasonings of men are fast ruining and wrecking the world. We have almost as many parole boards as we have police courts, and most of them sit quite as constantly. Some of our Governors in recent years have granted more reprieves than all the judges of the state rendered convictions and what is the product—the land is filled with violence!

Lawlessness is triumphant; banditry is the biggest of American businesses; murder is almost as common as birth. If the nations continue they will have to turn and learn again from God, re-establish law, and visit sin with judgment.But from this unpalatable train of thought we turn to the prophetic conclusion:THE God is always a compassionate God. Jeremiah didn’t forget that fact, but in his sorrow he reverts to it and says,“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. “The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him” (Lamentations 3:22; Lamentations 3:25). “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word; What more can He say than to you He hath said— To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled. “Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed! I am thy God, and will still give thee aid; I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand. “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, The waters of sorrow shall not overflow; For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. “The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose I will not, I will not desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” God’s ears are ever open to penitent cries. Jeremiah says,“I called upon Thy Name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. “Thou hast heard my voice: hide not Thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. “Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon Thee: Thou saidst, Fear not” (Lamentations 3:55-57). How like God! This Old Testament truth is beautifully illustrated in the New Testament story of the publican who “would not lift up so much as his eyes to Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner”, and he “went down to his house justified”.“With broken heart and contrite sigh, A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry; Thy pardoning grace is rich and free: O God be merciful to me. “I smite upon my troubled breast, With deep and conscious guilt oppressed; Christ and His Cross my only plea; O God, be merciful to me! “Far off I stand with tearful eyes, Nor dare uplift them to the skies; But Thou dost all my anguish see: O God, be merciful to me! “And when redeemed from sin and hell, With all the ransomed throng I dwell; My raptured song shall ever be, God hath been merciful to me.” God’s power is adequate for salvation.“Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21). He alone is our hope.Down in Illinois some years ago there was a cave-in in a coal mine. Sixty men were imprisoned hundreds of feet deep; but there was a small opening left between where they stood and the mouth of the cave. Fred Evans, a little boy, who was his mother’s lone support, stood at the mouth of the cave when the foreman said, “Fred, you are probably small enough to make it through this hole and carry down a pipe-line to the men and if you can do it you can save the lives of those men, for through it we can pump them fresh air and send them milk and water with which to sustain them. Will you try?”Without a moment’s hesitation, the little lad said, “I will do my best, Sir!”Taking the line, he started on the long six hundred foot crawl. Again and again the line ceased to move, and the people without were filled with fear lest he had struck an impassable place or more probably still, coal or stone had fallen on him. But after a minute it would pick up again and by and by there came back through the tube the glad announcement that Fred had arrived.For a whole week milk and water and air went through that tube to the men and Fred, and the whole sixty of them were eventually reached by the men and saved.Gov.

John R. Tanner, then Governor of Illinois, hearing of the deed of heroism sent for the lad. “Youngster,” said the Governor, “the state of Illinois wants to recognize your pluck. What can we do for you?” To which the lad finally answered after a bit of embarrassment, “I would like to learn how to read.”The result was that he received a fine education free from the state of Illinois, and today he is a successful man.Hear me! When we were caught, not in the accidental cave in a coal mine, but in the consequence of our own conduct; when the sentence of death against sin had been justly passed, God’s Son carried to us the life line. It cost Him, not the long anxious moments of Fred’s crawl, but rather the cruelties of the Cross, the shedding of the last drop of His precious Blood; but He failed not, and by that Blood we are redeemed.