Lamentations 1:12-22. Today we will finish the second half of the first poem of sorrow. If you read the “Intro to Lamentations” you know that Lamentations is made up of five poems by Jeremiah expressing his feelings after the destruction of Jerusalem. In the beginning of the poem Jeremiah uses ideas like “widow”, “lovers”, and “prostitution” to describe the decline of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was to be the center of a people who would help the world see the goodness and greatness of the one true God, Yahweh. The nations around were seeing the greatness of God but not in the form of what we might think of as good. The nations were seeing the greatness of God through his judgment and punishment, Israel had defected, they were a cheating wife, and they were being punished for that.

In verses 12-16 and 18-22 Jerusalem is personified, it’s like the city has come alive and is talking. And the city is talking about the pain it is suffering from the siege. In verse 7 we saw that people who were witnesses to the destruction made fun of Jerusalem, in verse 12 Jerusalem asks, “You think this is no big deal?” Then the city goes on to say that the suffering is very great, it is fierce anger from Yahweh. Some people don’t like the idea of God being angry but yesterday we saw why he gets mad. The consequences of turning away from God and staying that way are severe. There are consequences here and now for violating the way God designed us but more serious is the eternal consequence if we reject God; forever without him.

In verses 13-14 The city uses several pictures to describe the suffering she is going through. There is fire, which was probably literal. When a city is under siege it is difficult if not impossible to get thing from the outside. In those days the water source for most cities was outside of their walls and when under siege water would be very scarce. About 100 years before the destruction of Jerusalem King Hezekiah prepared for another invasion by building a tunnel from a spring outside the city to a pool inside. This made some water available during that attack, I’m sure the water was still available in 586 BC but you still would have a limited amount and fire could still be a problem. We also see the idea of traps or snares (a net), God also created scarcity, there wasn’t enough of stuff that was needed, food for one thing, so the city was faint and had no strength to keep going (turned me back). We also see the picture of a yoke. A yoke is the thing you put around animals necks to hook them up to a wagon or plow. In this picture we see the weak city unable to pull the yoke. We also see that the yoke is made up of the transgressions of the people (Transgression has the idea of rebellion, revolt or trespassing, the people had broken God’s rules). At the end of verse 14 the city tells us that Yahweh (LORD) has given her into the hands of her attackers.

Verse 15 continues this picture of judgment or punishment from Yahweh. The young strong men in Jerusalem will not be strong enough and will be crushed. Also the women will be trampled and crushed like grapes in a wine press. The idea of pressing grapes to get their juice is a common picture used on the Bible for judgment and punishment from God. In Revelation 14:19-20 the crushing seems to be literal since blood comes out not grape juice. This particular “crushing”, by the way, is of armies assembled against Jesus outside of Jerusalem when he returns to rule the world.

In verse 16-17 we see sorrow in the city, unfortunately the sadness seems to be all about the suffering of the city. The city’s soul is sad, her children are wasting away. Keep in mind that “the city” is being used poetically to represent the people in the city. Zion is another name for Jerusalem. The city, or people, are reaching out looking for someone to help them up or out. There is no one. At the end of verse 17 we learn why there is no help, Yahweh has commanded that Jerusalem’s neighbors should now be here enemies, and we are given a reason, Jerusalem is “unclean” among them.

The word unclean has the idea of “separated” or “put aside”. It is used in the Law of Moses for things that are not allowed in certain places and activities that are supposed to represent God or his presence. At our church we have a gym. The gym is used for all sorts of activities. Years ago we though that the floor needed to be upgraded so we put in a special carpet that was good fro playing basketball. It also made the gym a nicer place for banquets, wedding receptions, and other events. Some of those event involve food, or more importantly punch and drinks. Pretty early on we discovered that red drinks made stains that were very difficult to remove. Eventually the Deacons (guys at church responsible for taking care of the buildings) decided that red drinks should not be allowed in the gym, those drinks must be kept way, separated for the carpet. Those drinks were “unclean” with respect to our gym. Jerusalem needed to be kept away from the other nations because her people had become a bad influence, their God was Yahweh, but the didn’t honor or obey him. If Jerusalem got away with that it would tell the world that Yahweh has no real standards. That is not true though, God does have standards, and breaking his rules makes us “unclean” and separated from him.

In verses 18-19 Jerusalem finally gets it. Yahweh is righteous, his actions are fair and right. Why? Because Jerusalem had rebelled and disobeyed (sinned). The city then asks those around to check it out; she is in pain, her children have been taken captive, her lovers (false gods) have tricked her, and the religious and political leader have perished in the city. This is the kind of life you get when you turn your back on God.

In verses 20-22 the city then turns to the LORD (Yahweh) and describes her emotional and spiritual pain, the results of her rebellion. She hasn’t forgotten the physical trouble swords in the streets and death (probably from disease which is common during sieges) in the houses but the emphasis now seems to be on the heart and spirit. In verse 21 the “they” are the people around her that have not helped, the ones that God told to stay away. But we also see that those nations were glad for the trouble that Jerusalem was in. The city asks that God would bring the same trouble on them.

The desire to see the nations around here suffer the same way she did may seem like revenge or vengeance but I think verse 22 shows us that the request isn’t about Jerusalem any more but about God. Jerusalem realizes she has sinned and is being punished for it and asks god to deal with those around her in the same way. The example that the nation of Israel failed to be by not living for God was fulfilled through God’s punishment. The story of sin and it’s consequences was going to be told one way or another (see “The Old Testament Connection”). Of course people are people and verse 22 ends with Jerusalem telling God that she hurts. This could be a little bit of feeling sorry for herself or it could be a statement of fact; sort of a “look warn them so they won’t go through this”. Probably a little bit of both. The point is, sin has consequences, and God want’s to help us avoid some of those consequences, especially the “God to hell and miss out on an eternity in Heaven with Me” consequences.

John 3:16 tells us that God loves the world so much that he sent his son to become one of us and then be separated from him for a time to pat the price for our “transgressions”.     In John 14:6 Jesus told his followers that he is the only way back to God. Life is full of trouble, all of it is the result of our disobedience and rebellion toward God. Sometimes it is our rebellion here and now, sometimes it is because of something we did a long time ago, sometimes it is because of the rebellion of other here and now other times it is because of the rebellion of others a long time ago. Finally it can be a result of the general decay God put in our universe to teach us what happens when there is disobedience and rebellion in our world. God has a plan for the Israelite people and for Jerusalem. The punishment at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t to destroy them but to inform them and to push them to return to Him. That is how God was “dealing” with Jerusalem. I hope that is what Jerusalem’s prayer was about in verse 22, a request for God to move the nations closer to himself. That certainly is the heart of God and should be the heart of his people. In Leviticus 19:18 one of the rules God gave to the Israelites was to “love their neighbor”. By the time of Jesus someone had added their own little twist to the rule and people would tell each other that they should “love their neighbor but hate their enemies.” Jesus’ response to that saying was that we should love our enemies and pray for people who hurt us (Matthew 5:43-44). We need to be real about our failure toward God. We need to focus on our relationship to God and not so much on our own suffering. We need to focus more on Heaven and less on Earth. And we need to be concerned with the people around us and their relationship (or lack of one) with God.

God help me be realistic about my own sins. If some of the trouble in my life is because of them don’t let me feel sorry for myself help me turn back to you.   If I am truly following you and still suffering help me realize that I live in a world distorted by sin, one that will only be fixed when you return and take control. While I wait for that day (v. 21?) help me lead others to you. Let me pray for them and encourage them to return to you, through my actions and my words. On the day you return I know I will be a part of your forever kingdom I hope all of my enemies are a part of it too. Thank you for Jesus, the way, the truth and the life and the path back to you.

Lamentations 1:1-11. Be sure to check out the “Intro to Lamentations”. In verse 1 the author observes the city after the destruction brought on by Nebuchadnezzar and his general, Nebuzaradan. For those who doubt that Jeremiah was the author, who better that the faithful prophet who stayed behind to minister to the remaining inhabitants, to write such words of sadness. Jeremiah spent over 40 years trying to get the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah to honor God and now this.

The city of Jerusalem is compared to a widow in verse one. It once was a great city. In the days of Solomon (the last king of the united nation of Israel) the city was so prosperous that silver was almost worthless, and Solomon was so famous for his wisdom that royalty would come great distances to give him lavish gifts and sit in his courtyard and listen to him speak. Jerusalem was like a princess among the nations. Now there were no more gifts and the people of Judah who were left were there to tend the neglected fields. They were alone like a widow and worked like slaves.

In verse 2 we see the idea of loneliness continue. The verse uses the idea of “lovers”. Judah had been abandoned by her “lovers”. It is interesting when you take the ideas of widows and lovers together. God designed humans to find the closest kind of love in the marriage relationship. A man and woman were to make a lifelong commitment to each other and live as a unit (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). It was one man with one woman forever. In Genesis 2:25 Moses points out that the husband and wife were “naked and not ashamed”. The close physical relationship that God included as part of marriage reflected the absolute bond between the husband and wife. In the law of Moses being physically involved beyond your marriage (adultery) was condemned and had harsh penalties (like death) and a physical relationship before marriage required the couple to become married immediately. Human marriage is more that just a convenient way to have a close friend or lots of fun it was also created by God to serve as an example.

In Ephesians 5:22-32 Paul is instructing husbands and wives about their relationship to one another and then he tells us that that relationship is also an example of the relationship between Jesus and his followers. Now Paul wasn’t talking about the physical part of a marriage he was talking about the love, care and dedication parts. But maybe the physical part of a marriage, with it’s complete surrender to the other person (that’s the way God designed it anyway, 1 Corinthians 7:3-4) mirrors the complete sacrificial dedication Jesus has to us and the complete sacrificial dedication we shouldd have to him.   God told the Israelites that they were to have one God and one only, his name was Yahweh. Jesus is the human embodiment (literally “God in a Bod”, God incarnate) of Yahweh. John tells us in the “Beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. And the word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:1, 14). John goes on a few verses later to identify Jesus as that “Word”. Human marriage is a great and awesome thing here and now but it is also a way we can understand the possibilities of our relationship with God, that is why the exclusivity part is so important. And God built us so that we understand that. Ignoring God’s plan for marriage not only messes up the spiritual example it messes up our lives too.

That is why it is interesting that the first two verses use the idea of a widow and the idea of ‘lovers”. Just as “lovers” are false partners for us as people (we should have one “lover”, our husband of wife) the “lovers” that the people of Jerusalem had, their false gods, were false too and of no help or comfort. Her friend had also deserted her. In the history of Israel both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom were warned not to trust in foreign allies, they were to rely on God for protection. Unfortunately they often turned to their neighbors for help. In fact Zedekiah looked to Egypt for help when he rebelled against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came and Egypt did not resulting in the fall of Jerusalem.

In verses 3-5 we see a lot of pain and suffering in Jerusalem. In verse 6 we see there is no longer any greatness to the city and that her “princes have fled”. That was literally what happened at the end of t siege. The army broke out of the city and fled with Zedekiah the king. But they were weak from the siege and caught 15 miles away near Jericho. In verse 7 we see the pain of remembering how great they had once been.

In verse 5 we are told that the pain and suffering that Jerusalem was experiencing was from the “LORD”, Yahweh. Their God was rejecting them, punishing them. God’s actions were not arbitrary though, the people had “transgressed”. That word means “rebelled, revolted, offended, or trespassed.” In verse 8-9 we are told more about how the people of Jerusalem had offended God, they had sinned greatly. The word “sin” means to miss the mark or bull’s-eye. The people of Jerusalem had missed the target by a lot. In these verses we return to the faithful marriage idea. Remember Jerusalem had had many lovers, false gods, and was now useless or dirty to God. Those who had such great things to say about Jerusalem now despised her. The word despised means to “pour out”, maybe we should think of this as “dumped”.  Jerusalem had been used and dumped by her sweet talking false gods. The picture goes from bad to worse in theses verses because the people of Jerusalem and Judah are being described like a prostitute from the streets.  Everyone had seen her nakedness, she was dirty, and only living for the moment.  She didn’t even have respect for herself. The middle of verse 9 tells us this was a huge step down, from princess to prostitute with no friend, no protector, a very sad decline.

At the end of verse 9 Jeremiah shares a little of his feeling about the situation. He cries out to Yahweh (LORD) and says, “Do you see what bothers me? The bad guy, the foreigner with his false gods, thinks he is “the man”, the king of the universe.” That really was the attitude of Nebuchadnezzar as you can see in Daniel 4:30. Jeremiah was bothered by the physical trouble in Jerusalem but he was more troubled by the bad name all of this was giving to God. In verse 10 Jeremiah is upset over what happened to the Temple. In the rules that God gave to Moses about the Tabernacle (the sort of portable church or temple that was used for centuries before the permanent Temple was built) there were strict rule about who could go where and who could touch what in the tabernacle. These rules were transferred to the Temple when it was built. Not even all Jews could go all places in the Temple and the part of the Temple that represented God personal presence was completely off limits except for once a year when the chief priest alone could enter and make a sacrifice showing a realization of the sins of all the Israelites. Jeremiah got to witness the unbelieving troops of the Babylonian army ripping the Temple apart and taking all of the stuff of value inside, breaking many of the items into pieces before taking them. Jeremiah is very very upset about God’s reputation in these verses.

Verse 11 returns to the people remaining in Jerusalem. These people are concerned about something completely different, lunch. All they care about is themselves and getting some food. Clearly they have missed the what is really important in life. They were trading eternity for another sucky day. Jeremiah now is the one who feels despised. This is a different word than the one translated “despised” in verse 8. This word means to be “insignificant, worthless, or light”. Jeremiah feels like his whole 40 years of messages have been for nothing.

It is important to understand that God has given us certain things in our lives to help us understand our relationship with him. Marriage is one of those things. Ideas like adultery, fornication, and prostitution lose their ability to help us understand the reality of our relationship with God when we destroy their meaning in our societies. God has gone a long way to make these ideas “stick” by hardwiring us for life the way he designed it, but he also has given us freedom and a will and we can override and perhaps even overwrite what he has told us. At the end of the day though, violating God’s design for our personal lives leaves us destroyed and empty whether we admit it or not. God is very serious about protecting the pictures he has given us to help us see and understand him. God made life the way it is not to limit us but to free us. Our lives, as they are, are headed for an eternity separated from God and all of his goodness. Because he loves us he wants us to understand and return to him. In the language of our day he wants us to see that we are cheaters and that we need to stop it. If we do he is willing to take us back and help us be faithful to him. God love is miraculous. We should all be as concerned as Jeremiah was with preserving a true picture of he one true God. Only when people truly see can the have that relationship with God fixed forever.

God help me be more concerned with your reputation that with my own rest. Let me live to help other see you not for my next meal. Let me remain faithful to you in all my life. Thank you for the lessons you have built into our existence. Help me learn from the life you have made for us about the forever life I can have with you. Thank you for your love and dedication.