Our scripture reading this morning is Lamentations chapter 1. Lamentations 1. Hear the word of God. How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Bitterly she weeps at night. Tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers, there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her. They have become her enemies. After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations. She finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed feasts. All her gateways are desolate. Her priests groan, her maidens grieve, and she is in bitter anguish. Her foes have become her masters. Her enemies are at ease. The Lord has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe. All the splendor has departed from the daughter of Zion. Her princes are like deer that find no pasture. In weakness they have fled before the pursuer. In the days of her affliction and wandering, Jerusalem remembers all of the treasures that were hers in days of old. When her people fell into enemy hands, there was no one to help her. Her enemies looked at her and laughed at her destruction. Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean. All who wanted her despise her for they have seen her nakedness. She herself groans and turns away. Her filthiness clung to her skirts. She did not consider her future. Her fall was astounding. There was none to comfort her. Look, O Lord, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed. The enemy laid hands on all her treasures. She saw pagan nations enter her sanctuary, those you had forbidden to enter your assembly. All her people groan as they search for bread. They barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I am despised. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is there any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me that the Lord brought on me in the day of His fierce anger? From on high He sent fire, sent it down into my bones. He spread a net for my feet and turned me back. He made me desolate, faint all the day long. My sins have been bound into a yoke. By His hands they were woven together. They have come upon my neck and the Lord has sapped my strength. He has handed me over to those I cannot withstand. The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst. He has summoned an army against me to crush my young men. In His winepress, the Lord has trampled the virgin daughter of Judah. This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me. No one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed. Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. The Lord has decreed for Jacob that his neighbors become his foes. Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them. The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Listen, all you peoples, look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into exile. I called to my allies, but they betrayed me. My priests and my elders perished in the city while they searched for food to keep themselves alive. See, O Lord, how distressed I am. I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed, for I have been most rebellious. Outside the sword bereaves, inside there is only death. People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my distress. they rejoice at what you have done. May you bring the day you have announced so that they may become like me. Let all their wickedness come before you. Deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all my sins. My groans are many and my heart is faint. This ends our reading of God's Word. There can be little doubt that Lamentations is a very dark book. If someone was to ask you for a suggested reading, someone who was looking for a word of encouragement, a word of comfort and hope, you almost surely would not point them to the book of Lamentations. Here we read this long first chapter of Lamentations. There are many cries out to God, cries of mourning, cries for help, and God never wants answers. Never gives any positive response. And certainly as we consider this book, we ask the question, why do we study Lamentations? Why would we preach the book of Lamentations? Well, we know that it is in the Scripture, so God has put it here for our instruction, for our edification. But why is it, and how is it, that Lamentations can give a word of encouragement to us today? One part of the answer to that question is surely the fact that the book of Lamentations forces us to reflect upon and wrestle with one of, if not the most decisive and momentous event of the entire history of the Old Testament, the fall of Jerusalem. You're familiar with the larger history in which the fall of Jerusalem takes place. God brought His people out of Egypt and into that promised land. But after He brought them out of Egypt, He gave them His law. And His law contained many warnings. God's law had said that if you violate My law, if you disobey My commands, I'm going to bring a foreign nation among you whose language you don't understand, and they're going to wipe you out and take you into exile. And during Israel's long years in the land, the prophets came again and again and they warned Israel because of their sin that the judgment is coming. God was forbearing. God was patient for many years. But there's a day coming, those prophets said. And then finally, in 587 B.C., the Babylonians came and they destroyed the city of Jerusalem. They leveled the temple and they brought hordes of people out to exile in Babylon. Many books in the Old Testament speak about the people in exile and their struggles there. Books talk about people coming back from exile. But even after they came back to the Promised Land, back to Jerusalem, things were never quite the same. And even in those long years following their return, the people cried out to God. They struggled with their lot in the days following that great event of the fall of Jerusalem. Here, the book of Lamentations, written shortly after this fall of Jerusalem, written by unnamed prophets who mourn, who lament over the state of Jerusalem and call us, call us even today, to think about this event, to take it to heart. This leads us to the second and really main reason why we must continue to study and reflect upon the book of Lamentations. We are called together as God's people, God's redeemed people, those who have been released from our sin and misery and been called to live grateful lives before our God. But if we are to understand our redemption and if we are to understand the lives which we are called to live in response to God's redemption, then we have to understand from what we are saved. We have to understand the judgment of God from which we have been released. And perhaps there is nothing in Scripture which focuses our minds upon the judgment of God and upon the misery that our rebellion has brought in this world in the fall of Jerusalem and the book of Lamentations as it reflects upon that great event. So let us look together at Lamentations 1 as we consider this misery of sin as we reflect upon how we respond to it as those who are redeemed through the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to look with you first at verses 11 and 12. It may seem strange to begin our look right in the center of the first chapter of Lamentations, but there's a good reason for doing so. Each of the five chapters of Lamentations is a distinct poem, a self-contained poem. Now, they all reflect upon this similar theme of the fall of Jerusalem, But each of these chapters is a self-contained unit. Now, this first chapter of Lamentations is what is called an acrostic poem. In other words, there are 22 verses to this chapter, and there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Each of these verses begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So the first verse, the first word of the first verse, begins with the letter Aleph, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The second verse begins with the letter Beit, which is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and so on. Now, in these sorts of poems, what is often the case is that the main idea, sort of the summary of the entire poem is found in the center. And the center of this poem is verses 11 and 12. There are really sort of two stanzas in this poem. The first, verses 1 through 11, and the second, verses 12 through 22. Verse 11 is the climax of that first stanza. Verse 22 is the beginning of the second stanza. And together, they give us this poem in a nutshell. So let's look at verses 11 and 12 and see how this poet focuses our minds on a couple of the main ideas in this opening chapter of Lamentations. Now, verse 11. Verse 11 focuses our minds upon the utter desolation of the city of Jerusalem, of God's people of old. Let me read again verse 11. All her people groan as they search for bread. They barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I am despised. The people of Jerusalem, Those that are left after this great disaster are in desperate straits. These people are trading what is most precious to them for bread, to keep themselves alive. It's one thing to go to Vaughn's and to spend a dollar or two for a loaf of bread, but how would you like to give what is most valuable to you for that? How would you like to trade a family heirloom for a loaf of bread? To trade your house, to trade your business, to trade your 401k for a loaf of bread just to sustain your life for the day. That is the situation of the people of Jerusalem. And this brings us to one of the central themes that I hope you noticed as we read the entire chapter. It is this idea of the reversal of fortunes. Fortunes have been entirely, entirely flipped from head to toe. It's one thing to go out into the city and to see someone begging for coins. It's a sad thing to see. And yet it's another thing to see someone who was wealthy beyond compare out begging for daily necessities. You can imagine what you would think if you went out into the streets of Escondido and saw Warren Buffet begging for coins. If he went out and saw Bill Gates picking through the dumpster to find his lunch. That would be unsettling. It would be startling to see someone who was on top of the world now simply trying to survive day by day. But this is what Jerusalem is like. Jerusalem was at the top of the nations. Jerusalem was blessed by God abundantly and now she has fallen and to the bottom. You see, this fall of Jerusalem is so momentous in part because it is like a second fall from the Garden of Eden. When God brought His people into the Promised Land, there are so many ways in which Scripture indicates that this is like bringing them into a new Garden of Eden. Even the very ways that the Scriptures describe the Promised Land harkens back to Genesis 2 and the descriptions of that original garden. The promised land was to be a place with many waters, a place with abundant food, a place with precious metals. God was in a sense, in a small way, restoring His special people to the previous glory of the human race. And yet there has been a second fall as Adam despised despised the good things that God had given him turned his back on all that God had intended so the people of Israel had turned their backs on the good things God had given they had rebelled against him and now had been brought to these terrible straits we should remember Romans 3.23 a verse I read earlier in the service all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We can hear about all the misery of this world and sometimes we can become so callous to it. We can begin to think of these things as normal. We can hear about disease and war and poverty and mourning and death. And yet we need to remember that this is not the way that God made the world to be. He made the world destined to enjoy the glory of His own presence. And yet, mankind by his sin has rejected that high calling. And here, as our minds are taken to Jerusalem, we are reminded of the glory of God's covenant people and how far, how desperately they have fallen. Here at the end of verse 11. Here at the end of verse 11, there is a cry out to God. Look, O Lord, and consider, for I am despised. And this is a helpful reminder of another thing that we see through this chapter. Is that the residents of Jerusalem, their main problem is not their physical or financial deprivation. Their chief problem is not material, but it is spiritual. They have rebelled against God. God has afflicted them and they have been estranged from their Lord. Remember that their temple, their temple was in Jerusalem. The place of their worship. The place where God had put His name. The place where the priest ministered. Their temple was leveled, destroyed, taken away. The heart of their religious life had been laid waste by a pagan nation. here is the situation of Jerusalem desperate horrendous and now let's look at verse 12 in verse 12 we find the second part of this the center of this poem and here we find another major theme of all of chapter 1 and that is this cry out to others a cry out to strangers that they take notice and that they pay attention and that they respond. Let me read again verse 12. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by, look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me that the Lord brought on me in the day of His fierce anger? You see, in verse 11, Jerusalem has addressed God. They have asked God to see their affliction. And now in verse 12, they appeal to those who are passing by and they say, you, you must pay attention. You need to look at our affliction and respond. The scene here is if this poet is sitting outside Jerusalem, perhaps looking on from a bit of a distance. And here there are these people who are passing by the roads. They have their own cares. They have their own concerns. They have their own business affairs. But this prophet will not let them go by without stopping to look, without stopping to consider. Jerusalem's plight is so horrendous that no one can just ignore it. You know how it is. There are some times when things are so marvelous, in a good or bad way, that you just can't help but look. It could be in a good way. A time when you see a beautiful sunset and you can't not pay attention to it. You can't not stop and pause and take it in. But sometimes that's true with horrible things. Sometimes you may be riding down the freeway and you see a terrible accident on the side of the road and you shudder to think, what happened to the people who were in that car? And you know you're supposed to keep looking ahead. You know you're supposed to just keep driving. But it is so hard not to look to the side, not to try to look at what happened, horrible as it is. That's sort of what it is like here with Jerusalem. If you're passing by along this road, you can't just ignore it. Something has happened and you must take notice. People of God, God has given us this description of the destruction of Jerusalem. He has put it before our eyes. He has put it right before our faces. We cannot just ignore it. We can't pretend that Lamentations isn't there. The cry goes out. How will you respond to this description of Jerusalem? Will you try to ignore it? Will you be like the enemy nations who looked at Jerusalem and laughed and mocked her, who took it as an opportunity to stomp on her while she was down? Or will you look at Jerusalem and take it to heart? will you be struck in your consciences? Will you mourn with her and sympathize with her? For you see, we must respond because as verse 12 says, is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me that the Lord brought on me in the day of His fierce anger? It is the Lord who has done this. This is God's own judgment. one of the remarkable things about this chapter and indeed about the whole of the book of Lamentations is that the poets, the prophets who wrote these poems don't seem to care that much about the Babylonians. We would think that we'd find all this cursing of the Babylonians. And yet, if we didn't know from other places in Scripture that the Babylonians were the ones who destroyed Jerusalem, we wouldn't find it by reading Lamentations 1. The Babylonians were just an instrument. They were just a tool. The people here know that what really matters is not whether it was the Babylonians or the Egyptians or the Assyrians. What matters is that it was God. God brought judgment against His people. And the reason why we all need to pay attention then is that this destruction of Jerusalem was but a foretaste and a glimpse, a sneak preview of a greater and final judgment that is to come. You can't just walk by Jerusalem. You can't be confronted with her horror and act as if that's someone else's business. Here the message comes to us. How will you respond? Because God has brought this judgment upon Jerusalem and He is bringing a greater judgment upon this whole world, upon every people, upon every city. And if you think what happened to Jerusalem is bad, just wait to see what God is going to do on that last day. This is not someone else's business. This is your business too. And Jerusalem is put before our faces here as a warning to pay attention. This chapter comes to us and it grabs us and it shakes us and it says, are you ready for that great day? Are you prepared to meet that judgment that is coming upon the whole world. The good news for us is that the description of the suffering of Jerusalem here in Lamentations 1 not only points ahead to that final judgment, but it also describes for us the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. For was there ever anyone who was afflicted like our Savior? Was there ever anyone on this earth who was despised and rejected, who suffered like our Lord. Praise God that God's judgment has already broken into history in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the message that comes to us is that if we have found our shelter under the shadow of His wings, if we have found our refuge in Him as He has borne that judgment for us, and we will not endure that judgment, that fierce wrath of God on the last day. Let us pay attention and let us find our hope and our refuge in Christ. Well, with that summary of Lamentations 1 before us, let us look in a lot less detail now at the opening and the end of this great chapter. Let's look first at the opening stanza, verses 1 through 11. Now, in verses 1 through 11, what I would particularly like to focus your attention to is this theme of the reversal of fortune. The poet-prophet really wants us to understand just how far Jerusalem has fallen. You have to remember that as a poem, we are meant to be drawn in. image after image is heaped up and the cumulative effect should be to cause us to be amazed at what has happened to Jerusalem. Note right from the very beginning the reversal of fortunes. How deserted lies the city once so full of people. It was once full and now it is empty. How like a widow is she who was once great among the nations. This was a great place and now she is a widow. which is a symbol for destitution and need. At the end of verse 1, she who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. You don't get higher on the social pole than to be a queen. And you don't get lower than being a slave. It continues in verse 2. Bitterly she weeps at night. Among all her lovers, none to comfort. All her friends have betrayed her. They have become her enemies. Jerusalem had friends. Jerusalem had lovers and now they are simply enemies. In verses 3-5, we are called back to God's warnings earlier in the Old Testament. In verse 3, we are reminded of Deuteronomy 28. Deuteronomy 28 said, If you disobey, you will go into exile and have no resting place. So here in verse 3, she dwells among the nations. She finds no resting place. In verse 4, the Old Testament law had said that three times a year the people were to throng to Jerusalem to worship their God. And now, the roads to Zion mourned for no one comes to her appointed feasts. In verse 5, we are reminded again of Deuteronomy 28. Deuteronomy 28 said that if the people obeyed, they would always be at the head. They would always be on top of the nations. And now, her foes have become her masters. Deuteronomy 28 warned that even the children would be taken into exile. And so verse 5 says, her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe. Verse 6 reminds us that splendor has departed from Jerusalem. She was once a city of majesty, but it is gone. Verse 7. Verse 7 is touching. It is moving. In the days of her affliction and wandering, Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old. Jerusalem is like the person who can only remember what is good. Has nothing left but memories. Perhaps verse 10 is the most striking of the images here in the opening stanza of this chapter. For here it describes how the pagan nations entered God's holy sanctuary and trampled it down. They defiled what was most holy. What a gift was this temple to God's people? And yet now these pagans had come and they had made it permanently unclean. They had laid this temple waste. They had brought it to the ground. Consider the heights. The heights from which God's people have fallen. God didn't make us to be this way. And yet here is the result of human sin. And that is something to note from verses 8 through 10. Because amidst all this lamenting, all this mourning, Jerusalem is not complaining. They are not whining. That's an important thing to note. Jerusalem acknowledges that they deserve what they're getting. God is righteous. God is just. Notice verse 8. Jerusalem has sinned greatly and so has become unclean. verse 9, her filthiness clung to her skirts. Probably a reference to all the sexual immorality that afflicted Judah. She did not consider her future. And how like sinful human beings that is. How is it like sinners? To give thought only to the moment. Only to the temporary pleasure. Only to the temporary advantage. And not to think about the damage that sin does. And so, here in this first stanza, verses 1 through 11, we are called to remember just how far Jerusalem has fallen because of her sin against God. But now as we turn to the second stanza, verses 12 through 22, we find many of the same themes continuing. But here, I would have you to consider how this chapter points us to the coming judgment upon the enemies of God's people. Now, in the first stanza, there is much focus upon the suffering that Jerusalem was enduring. But here, as we begin this second stanza, the focus seems to turn in some slight but noticeable way. It focuses away from the one who's suffering toward the one who is imposing the suffering. That is God Himself. God Himself is the one who is imposing this offering. Notice just a few examples beginning in verse 13. Notice how many times we are called to what God has done. From on high He sent fire. He spread a net for my feet. He made me desolate. By His hands they were woven together. The Lord has sapped my strength. He has handed me over. The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst. He has summoned an army against me. In His winepress, the Lord has trampled the virgin daughter of Judah. Time and again, our attention is called to the fact that God and God alone is ultimately the one who brings judgment. It is not the Babylonians. You see, this is not some random event in history. Perhaps we're tempted to look at this and to think, well, there are many cities that have been destroyed in human history. There have been many wars fought. There's been much suffering, much affliction. Why is this special? This is God's judgment against His covenant people for which He warned them and now upon which He is acting. We are tempted, aren't we, often when we hear about wars here or there, when we hear about financial distress here or there, when we hear about plagues or natural disasters in various places, we're tempted to sort of interpret God's providence. Did that people deserve those good things? Did these people deserve their bad things? How quickly we can get into trouble doing such things. But here we know, here we know without any doubt that this people is suffering because they have rejected God's covenant and God has brought His direct judgment upon them. Now in verses 16 and 17, the attention is brought back to others, to those passers-by, to Israel's neighbors. They have no comforters. Note in verse 16, no one is near to comfort me. No one to restore my spirit. Verse 17, Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her. Throughout the Old Testament, suffering and affliction, it deserved comfort. It called forth compassion and sympathy. Think even about the book of Job, a book that may remind us of lamentations in a lot of ways, being mysterious and being in some ways depressing and hard to understand. Even in Job, Job had comforters. Remember his three friends? They came. They came for the purpose of giving him encouragement, speaking a comforting word to him in his suffering. Now, they were very bad at it. But they came and yet Jerusalem is lying here and they have no one who even comes. No one who's even trying. No one is giving them a single word of encouragement. Verse 19, I called to my allies, but they betrayed me. Even their friends have turned and refused to stand beside them in their distress. Now again, as we reach this part of the poem, as we come towards the end, we are reminded again that this doesn't mean that Jerusalem has done nothing wrong. Notice again how she confesses her sins. In verse 18, The Lord is righteous, yet I rebelled against His command. Verse 20, In my heart I am disturbed, for I have been most rebellious. Again, not making any excuses. Not making any excuses for their sin. And yet, And yet, here at the end of this chapter, it doesn't get her neighbors off the hook. It doesn't give them an excuse to ignore Jerusalem or to persecute her. Verse 18, Look, all you peoples, look upon my suffering. You must pay attention. You must respond. And with that, we come to these final two verses. And they are a striking way for this rather striking chapter to end. It begins in a way that is familiar if we've been paying attention to the earlier verses. People have heard my groaning, but there is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my distress. But then note how it ends. They rejoice at what you have done. May you bring the day you have announced so that they may become like me. Let all your wickedness come before you. Deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all my sins. The prophet finishes his poem by saying, Lord, look at all my enemies. Look at all of those who have refused to comfort me and do to them everything that you have done to me. And we can understand that. There are many times if we fail at something, that we feel a little better if we see someone else failing in the same way. If we've been humiliated, sometimes we feel a little better if we see someone else humiliated. We have this saying that misery loves company. We understand that. And yet, that's not a part of human nature that we tend to think is admirable. We don't consider that a noble part of us, a noble desire. And when we see someone else acting like that, we don't think well of that person. So what do we do with these final verses? Here is the inspired prophet of the Lord saying, God, do to them what you have done to me. Is this petty jealousy? Is this some sort of vindictiveness that we see on the part of the prophet? To understand this, we need to remember that this call for judgment upon the enemies of God is another way for calling God to rescue and save His people. Calling God to rescue His people is inseparable from calling God to judge His and our enemies. We are trained in the New Testament to pray for the Lord's coming. Think about how Paul ends 1 Corinthians or how John ends the book of Revelation. Come, O Lord! Come! Rescue us. And yet, that call for the Lord Jesus to come again is simultaneously a call for Him to judge the nations. To bring His wrath against ungodliness and wickedness. We should remember that as we call for the Lord to come. It is no small matter. Throughout biblical history, when God rescued His people, He simultaneously brought judgment upon His enemies. God is one day going to restore Jerusalem. That is, He is going to restore the fortunes of His people. He is going to reverse the fortunes again that have been so lately reversed against His people. And on that day, God will put His enemies in their place. And the wrath that He has poured out upon Jerusalem will be poured out upon the enemy nations. Now, it is important for us to remember today that we are not called to bring that judgment ahead of time. That we are not called today to be instruments of God's judgment against those who rebel against the Gospel. The church's urgent mission for this time is to hold out that Gospel and to invite and to plead and to urge everyone to join us that they might escape that wrath to come. That is our task for the present. And yet we cry out to God come Lord Jesus and as we make that cry we are praying that judgment would come upon the nations and so as we come to the end of Lamentations 1 Lamentations 1 comes to us and it says on whose side will you be found on that last day are you ready to face the judgment of God that is coming upon this world for the longest time the people of Israel were lackadaisical. They did not heed the warnings and yet God's judgment came. The world is filled with those who are passing by, with those who see the destruction of Jerusalem, those who have heard the warnings of the Gospel and who do not pay attention. People of God, on what side will we be found on that last day? May we be not those who ignore Jerusalem, who despise Jerusalem in her day of suffering. May we be those who are cut to the heart. May we be those who confess our sins with the author of Lamentations 1. May we be those who even in the midst of our own suffering and trials and temptation cry out to God for deliverance, confident that one day He will answer. May we be those who are looking to the Lord Jesus Christ and finding our only refuge, our only hope in Him. He has suffered the judgment of God for our sakes. May we find our encouragement, our refuge, our only comfort in Him and His work. Amen.