Difficulty and suffering from the Lord are designed to draw us to the Lord and His faithful devotion...

This week, we have been looking at two letters that are recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. These letters were both written by the prophet Jeremiah and are the next letters that were written by a prophet chronologically, which is not necessarily the order that they are found in the Bible, where they are organized by size.

During the forty years the Jeremiah served as the Lord’s messenger, the Jewish people responded to Jeremiah by beating him, placing him in stocks, and on one occasion, throwing him in an empty cistern to starve to death. During the 40 years that Jeremiah served as a messenger of the Lord, no one from the Jewish people turned to the Lord. Instead, the Jewish people pursued false gods instead of the Lord and punished Jeremiah and the other prophets of his time for proclaiming the message of the Lord.

In 586 B.C., as Jeremiah sat in a Jewish prison, and after another rebellion by the Jewish people against the Empire, the Babylonian Empire would conquer Jerusalem and the Jewish people would be taken away into exile. The Babylonian Empire would raze the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord to the ground and remove most of the Jewish people, through death or deportation, to Babylon. And it is in this context that the prophet Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations.

As a messenger of the Lord who faithfully proclaimed the Lord’s message to the Jewish people, Jeremiah was not insulated from the consequences that came upon the Jewish people from the Lord. Instead, Jeremiah, living in the besieged and then conquered city, was exposed to the same circumstances as his fellow Jewish people. Jeremiah witnessed and experienced the results of the Lord’s right and just response to the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people. And here we see Jeremiah record his raw emotions as he attempted to process all that happened to him as he served the Lord.

As Jeremiah processed his circumstances of outward affliction and inward turmoil and bitterness, he was brought to a place of despair. However, in his despair, Jeremiah recalled something that provided him hope, or the ability to wait with a confident expectation for the future. Jeremiah would wait with a confident expectation for the future because of the Lord’s steadfast love and faithful devotion to His people and His promises. Jeremiah would wait with a confident expectation for the future because the Lord’s faithful devotion and compassion was offered every day, day after day. Jeremiah would wait with a confident expectation for the future because he viewed the Lord as faithful. Jeremiah would wait with a confident expectation for the future because he viewed the Lord as His portion, or as the source of his life who would provide.

And because the Lord was the source of his life, Jeremiah would wait upon Him to act in the midst of difficulty, with a confident expectation the He would act out of His steadfast love and faithful devotion. These verses are often viewed as a promise from the Lord that the Lord, in His steadfast love and faithful devotion, will deliver us from times of difficulty and suffering in our lives. However, while we may be very familiar with these verses, most of us are not familiar with the verses that follow. However, it is in the verses that follow that may cause us to look at these verses much differently. So let’s look at these verses together, beginning in Lamentations 3:25-40:

²⁵ The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good that he waits silently For the salvation of the LORD. ²⁷ It is good for a man that he should bear The yoke in his youth. ²⁸ Let him sit alone and be silent Since He has laid it on him. ²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust, Perhaps there is hope. ³⁰ Let him give his cheek to the smiter, Let him be filled with reproach. ³¹ For the Lord will not reject forever, ³² For if He causes grief, Then He will have compassion According to His abundant lovingkindness. ³³ For He does not afflict willingly Or grieve the sons of men. ³⁴ To crush under His feet All the prisoners of the land, ³⁵ To deprive a man of justice In the presence of the Most High, ³⁶ To defraud a man in his lawsuit-- Of these things the Lord does not approve. ³⁷ Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, Unless the Lord has commanded it? ³⁸ Is it not from the mouth of the Most High That both good and ill go forth? ³⁹ Why should any living mortal, or any man, Offer complaint in view of his sins? ⁴⁰ Let us examine and probe our ways, And let us return to the LORD.

Now some of you as soon as you finished reading these verses, your response is “My God is not like that, my God is not like that, my God is not like that”. If that is your response to these verses, here is my response: Yes, God is like that, that is why these verses are in the Bible. That is why we have the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations as part of the letters that make up the Bible. For forty years, Jeremiah was faithful to the Lord and faithfully proclaimed the word of the Lord to the Jewish people.

And what did Jeremiah get for his faithfulness. For his faithfulness to the Lord, Jeremiah was beaten, placed in stocks, and thrown in a cistern and left to die by the Jewish people. For his faithfulness to the Lord, Jeremiah was left in prison, starving like the rest of the Jewish people during the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire. For forty years, Jeremiah was never delivered from times of difficulty and suffering.

And Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that difficulty and suffering should be endured with a hope in the Lord’s ultimate rescue and deliverance, not a hope in the Lord’s immediate rescue and deliverance. Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that difficulty and suffering is ultimately only temporary and is tempered by the Lord’s steadfast love and faithful devotion. Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that the Lord does not delight in difficulty and suffering.

Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that if difficulty and suffering comes because of injustice, the Lord sees it and does not approve of it. Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that difficulty and suffering is always in relationship to the reality that God is sovereign and in charge of it. Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that difficulty and suffering ultimately came as a result of the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people. Jeremiah’s response to never being delivered by the Lord from difficulty and suffering over forty years was to proclaim that difficulty and suffering should accomplish the greater goal of turning or drawing God’s people back to Him.

Now I recognize that these concepts seem foreign to us; these concepts are downright un-American to us. And the reason that these concepts may seem so foreign and un-American to us is due to the tendency and temptation that we have that leads us to forget that our roots as followers of Jesus are not in the American Revolution. Our roots as followers of Jesus are in the early church of the first century. And the roots of followers of Jesus throughout history are rooted in God’s character and activity in the history of His people. And throughout the history of the letters that make up the Bible, we discover that, unlike the rampant individualism that is prevalent in American culture, in the culture of the letters that make up the Bible, the people of God had a communal and corporate view of life. We see this in what Jeremiah says next in verse 41-47:

We lift up our heart and hands Toward God in heaven; ⁴² We have transgressed and rebelled, You have not pardoned. ⁴³ You have covered Yourself with anger And pursued us; You have slain and have not spared. ⁴⁴ You have covered Yourself with a cloud So that no prayer can pass through. ⁴⁵ You have made us mere offscouring and refuse In the midst of the peoples. ⁴⁶ All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. ⁴⁷ Panic and pitfall have befallen us, Devastation and destruction;

Now did you notice the choice of pronouns by Jeremiah here? We, not they or them. You see, Jeremiah recognized the reality that, in spite of his faithfulness to the Lord, he was as part of the Jewish people who demonstrated their faithlessness to the Lord.  Jeremiah recognized that, in spite of how he faithfully lived his life individually, he was a part of a community of people who rebelled against the Lord. Jeremiah recognized that as part of that community, He would experience the consequences that came upon that community.

And because of that reality, Jeremiah urged the Jewish people to confess their selfishness and rebellion that resulted in the difficulty and suffering that they were facing from the Lord. Jeremiah urged the Jewish people to run to the Lord instead of continuing to run from the Lord in the midst of the difficulty and suffering they were experiencing from the Lord. In 586 B.C., upon the fall of Jerusalem, the Babylonian Empire released Jeremiah from prison and gave him the opportunity to go wherever he wished.

Jeremiah, however, chose to remain with the Jewish people and to continue to proclaim the Lord’s message to the Jewish people.  And just as it had been for the past forty years, the Jewish people continued to reject the word of the Lord through Jeremiah and mistreat the prophet. Jeremiah was never delivered from times of difficulty and suffering; instead Jeremiah was delivered through times of difficulty and suffering into a deepening relationship with the Lord that was totally dependent upon the Lord.

And it is here, when God speaks, that we discover a timeless truth about the nature and character of God and God’s activity in history. And that timeless truth is this: Difficulty and suffering from the Lord are designed to draw us to the Lord and His faithful devotion. Just as it was for Jeremiah, just as it has been throughout history, difficulty and suffering from the Lord are designed to draw us to the Lord and His faithful devotion.

You see, the point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering should be endured with a hope in the Lord’s ultimate rescue and deliverance, not a hope in the Lord’s immediate rescue and deliverance. The point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering is ultimately only temporary and is tempered by the Lord’s steadfast love and faithful devotion. The point of the book of Lamentations is that the Lord does not delight in difficulty and suffering. The point of the book of Lamentations is that if difficulty and suffering come because of injustice, the Lord sees it and does not approve of it.

The point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering is always in relationship to the reality that God is sovereign and in charge of it. The point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering ultimately came as a result of the selfishness and rebellion of humanity. The point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering is designed to accomplish the greater goal of turning or drawing God’s people back to Him. The point of the book of Lamentations is that difficulty and suffering is not something that we will always be delivered from. Instead difficulty and suffering is something that we will always be delivered through.

So here is a question to consider: How are you responding to the reality that there is difficulty and suffering?  And how are you responding to the Lord’s invitation to turn away from your selfishness and rebellion so as to turn to the Lord in the face of difficulty and suffering?

Because, as we have discovered, difficulty and suffering from the Lord are designed to draw us to the Lord and His faithful devotion.