Well, as we're moving through our series in the book of Lamentations, you can turn there now if you haven't yet, but the book of Lamentations is a reminder that we can never one day in heaven, not that we would, but tell God that you never told us about the difficult stuff. You never warned us about the hard times. You never told us how to manage difficult things. And one of those difficult things that Scripture does lead us to understand and work through and process, is not necessarily random suffering. Although the Bible has a lot to say about that. None of it is actually random. But what seems random, But especially those things in your life that cause pain or suffering loss that is due to personal sin. There's other kinds of loss. There's other kinds of pain. There's other kinds of suffering. But there is that category of suffering that is induced by our own behaviors. And rather than turning a blind eye to it, rather than going, just think on positive things, Scripture sometimes wants us to take a time out and lament. Thus the book of Lamentations. That's what it's for. The Psalms invite us to do this. Prophets invite us to do this. And this book sort of has that in concentration. Pain caused by sin can feel like you're living life among the wreckage of a disaster. Kind of like when you see the footage on TV of a camera that's roving through the streets of a town that's been devastated by a storm or destroyed by an earthquake. Sin can cause major damage in your life and can leave things that were once intact, things that once stood tall in your life, are now torn down. and smashed to bits. Lamentations chapter four. Lamentations is five poems, we call them chapters, but there are five poems in the original Hebrew. And Lamentations poem number four, or Lamentations chapter four, focuses more now on the brokenness, on the disaster, on the depths of devastation. And It seems that when you read it carefully, lamentations, even the book itself is breaking down. Even the book itself, the way it's written, is starting to display, is starting to match the content of what it's talking about. We looked at how beautiful it is. It's written in poetry, it's written in an acrostic style, it's written in triplets, and there's this beauty to, even though it's lament, and even though it's dark, and even though it's a difficult topic, it's laid out, it's careful, it's methodical, it's beautiful, kind of like God is still God, and there's still order in the universe. and that there's a proper way to lament. It's not just random. It's not just throwing things at the wall and throwing tantrums. Lament is focused, and lament is theological. But even by now, chapter four starts kind of structurally suffering a little bit. It departs from the first three chapters in a couple of ways. It's a little shorter, and it's a little less poetic. This chapter has two lines per verse instead of three lines like the other chapters do. That's not that big of a deal, but when all the other chapters have three and then one suddenly has two, it's kind of like, did you not have more to say? I think he's running out of gas. It's hard. Lament is tough. It's tough to think about hard things. And so I think he's writing in a way to reflect that a little bit. And then in this chapter, rather than the acrostic applying to the first line of every verse, of every line, it's the first line of each verse. So it has less of the poetic beauty to it. It's a little less polished. It's a little less thought out, less acrostic, less poetic, shorter. Why? Because more than the other chapters, this one focuses on the devastation of sin. A little bit less refined, because life can be ugly. Because it's naturally difficult for us to reflect on the harsh realities of sin's consequences in our own lives. It's not a beautiful subject. And so the poet is slowing down. He's backing off the beauty of the writing a little bit here. Why does that matter? It matters because Scripture does the opposite of helping you ignore pain. Scripture wants you to face pain. I mean, we're wimpy, right? We don't like to go to the doctor, because we feel like if there's not something wrong, they're going to make up something wrong. Like, there's no way I'm coming home with not something wrong. Okay, well, maybe there's charlatan doctors, but if you go to a good honest one, don't you want a report if there is something wrong? Because it will get worse if you ignore it, right, is the thinking. And that's what Scripture does. Scripture holds up a mirror to show you what's up. And sometimes we make a mess of things because of our own sins, and it's not good to ignore it. That would be the mistake. The mistake would be to ignore what's happening in your life. The mistake would be to skip past it quickly, to move on. The mistake would be to say things like, you know, it doesn't do any good to stew on the problems. Just buck up and ride onward, man. Be positive. Push through it. No, the biblical model of lament It's not to stay stuck in the mire of consequences. It's not about wallowing in sorrow forever. But it doesn't rush past it either. Face it. Recognize it. Count the ways, as this book does with its acrostic. So Lamentations, especially Chapter 4, teaches us to face the music, so to speak. To face the consequences. To notice it. To really get it. So the first thing we see is that biblical lament. biblical lament, the right way to lament, it's to take stock. Look around you, take stock of sin's consequences for what it is. Don't glaze it over, don't ignore it, don't stuff it in a closet, don't excuse it, don't blame other people. Look at what's going on in your life. The things that are there, that are negative because of your foolish behavior, because of your not listening to what God said. And over a time of persistent rebellion, reaping consequences for sin. So to see that, we're going to look at the first 10 verses to begin with. As we read through it, I want you to note As we read through the first 10 verses, how the Prophet, he's like looking around. He's looking around and he's just noticing the damage. He's noticing the wreckage. He's like the reporter in the street showing you what the earthquake did. Right? Look at this. Here's this building. Here's this. Here's that. Right? And I want you to know how the way he frames it is to put it in terms of this has turned into that. We had this, and now look at it. Because of our sin, now it's turned to this. It was A, and now it's Z. It was up, now it's down. It was big, now it's shattered. Let's see this in the first 10 verses. This is how you take stock of the mess in your life, in those times where you've brought it upon yourself through sin. starting in verse 1, how the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed. The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street. The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are regarded as earthen pots, the work of a potter's hands. Even jackals offer the breast they nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel like the ostriches in the wilderness. Just a quick note, when you read the book of Job, he talks about how ostriches, they don't pay attention to their young. They're kind of dumb. They just kind of leave their young out there. That's what he means. This is what we've become. Can't even take care of our children. Verse 4, The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst. The children beg for food, but no one gives to them. Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets. Those who were brought up in purple embrace ash heaps. For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk. Their bodies were more ruddy than coral. The beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now their face is blacker than soot. They are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones. It has become as dry as wood. Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of the compassionate women have boiled their own children." Not a metaphor. They became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people. Well, if you came in here and you thought, boy, he's going to bring up the tough stuff in my life, at least you can be thankful it wasn't to that point. Have you been tempted to eat your own kids yet? Okay, it's not as bad as what he's talking about. But still, we have the things that are in front of us that are difficult to face, and ignoring it is not the way to go about it. He talks about looking at it, and recognizing there's a loss of blessing. It was this and now it's this. This blessing that was brought to them is now taken away and they've gone from best to worst. A city that used to be characterized by fine gold is now just shattered clay everywhere, the Prophet says. A people that used to feed their children now feed on their children. Even the descriptions of color in this chapter and texture demonstrate the loss. How they used to be described as wearing purple garments, or pure white snow, or pure white milk, or coral and sapphire. What are they now? An array of bright colors has now given way to ash and the blackest soot. and bones and dry wood. You see textures and colors that went from a beautiful ray to bland, dry, dark. This is what sin does. This is what sin does. And if you're not in a place in your life where you're looking at the wreckage around you and you think things are pretty good, then take this as a warning. That the good things in your life can go away really fast. if we reap consequences of sin. Sin tears down. Sin doesn't build. Sin destroys. It's destructive. It's a poison. It's a parasite. Someone has a marriage, fools around, and what was once a marriage is now a divorce, and a custody battle, and remarrying, and stepmoms, and stepdads, and double the in-laws. Someone has a good job, but wants to get ahead, so compromises a little bit. Compromises some of those good morals, and ends up not being trusted, and then caught doing something illegal. Now she can't work in that field anymore, and she lost the advantage of her contacts, and she lost her references, and she has to start all over from scratch. The Bible has all sorts of warnings against all kinds of sins and their destructive consequences. We're not talking about, to be clear, with lamentations, we're not talking about something bad happens in your life and you come to Christian Fellowship Church and you say, hey, I've got this mess of stuff in life and our first reaction is like, well, what sin did you do? It's not usually that hard to figure out. You cheated at work, they caught you, they don't want to hire you anymore. It's usually not that hard to figure out if you're just honest about it. If you look around, not everything bad in your life is your fault, but to say nothing is my fault, that's a problem. Sometimes things are your fault. Sometimes, always, I think, the price of sin is great. and you may not pay for it in the moment. And usually God doesn't unleash those consequences until you have a long-standing pattern, because his wick of patience is really long. But the wick does have an end. The stick of dynamite of his anger goes, boom, ends. There's a mess in your life. And rather than being angry with God about it, or blaming somebody else about it, we're supposed to take stock and go, man, it used to be purple, now it's soot. The Bible warns against all kinds of sins and their destructive consequences. Just examples. Drunkenness. Lots of warnings about that. Lots of warnings about how destructive drunkenness is. That wine is a brawler. It makes you want to fight. It makes you this. It makes you that. You could put here, getting high. You're not quite yourself when you do that thing, when you take that hit, when you insert that syringe, when you take that pill. You're not quite yourself and that's not good. And not being quite yourself is not good. And a pattern of that is going to reap consequences. There will be consequences in your life. The botchery, which is extreme indulgence and physical pleasures, will catch up with you. It will catch up with you. Even if you keep it to yourself, on your own laptop, on your own phone, in a dark corner, when the rest of the family is away. It will mess you up. And it is a lie to believe that it won't. Take it as a warning. Taking counsel from ungodly people will mess you up. Psalm 1, the whole book of Psalms, 150 Psalms, starts off with, don't take your counsel in the wrong place. It will destroy you. Take your counsel in God's Word. That's like a plant, that's like a tree planted by a flowing stream, drinking it up and growing and bearing fruit. But take your counsel not in God's Word, take your counsel from your friends, your college buddies, your co-worker, random people who don't, they don't even know Scripture. Yeah, that's like the dry chaff. When the wind comes, it blows it away just like the fall leaves. How long do we want to ignore God's Word, not spend time in it, not really know it, and think that's not going to catch up with us? So consequences abound when sin goes unchecked. clear sin, things that God calls out in Scripture that we know about, we've heard of it, we just ignore it, we don't check it, we don't fix it, we don't stop it. God's advice goes ignored, consequences erupt. And what they're experiencing here in Israel, it feels like the worst consequences than even what wicked people received. Did you catch that line about Sodom? Sodom didn't even get it this bad. At least they got wiped out like this. We got a lot of wiping out, but there's a lot of us left, and we're left to starve, and we're left to feed on our children, and all this craziness. It would have been better to just wipe us out completely. Maybe you have, at some point, looked around in your life and thought, man, I've sinned. I get it. Well, boy, I haven't sinned as bad as that person, and that person's better off than I am. That's when we get upset, right? We get upset not because I sinned and there's massive consequences in my life, but so did that guy. He cheated worse at work. I started doing it because he was doing it. He was doing it for five years, and he did it to this level. I just did it one time at this level. And now I'm fired. He gets a raise. sometimes that happens guys and this is what he's saying look at Sodom they were way worse than us and we seem to be having a worse punishment the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom which is overthrown in a moment and no hands were wrung for her well it seems like that but there was no remnant left in Sodom There was nobody there to lament. There was nobody there to look around and learn from any consequences. No learning. The learning is over. Sodom is done. It wasn't actually better. It just feels like that in the moment when you're in pain. And of course, Sodom's condemnation is forever because there is no chance to turn around. So biblical lament looks around and takes stock of sin for what it is. What is it? Well, it's in great part God's wrath. It's not today's most popular Christian doctrine, but to take the Bible and snip out all the wrath pages, you're going to end up with a huge pile of clippings. Let me just tell you that. And you think you're going to stop in the Old Testament? You're going to leave a bunch of stuff from Jesus on the table clipped out too. Of course God has wrath. It's righteous wrath. It's true anger. But biblical lament takes stock of consequences for what it is. It's due to my sin, and it's due to God's wrath over my sin. And it is right that He's wrathful over my sin. He told me not to do it. He told me a thousand times not to do it. I ignored it. I kept doing it. And this is This is what I'm getting now. This is what I sowed into my own life. That's biblical lament, not excuse-making. Biblical lament recognizes that sins, consequences, are God's wrath, not just like random events. No, it's purposeful in your life. Look at verses 11 through 19. The Lord gave full vent to his wrath. He poured out His hot anger. We're not going to clip this out. The Bible is telling us who God is. He's not off the hinges. He's not in a bad mood. It is tethered to actual things that He said. You do this, you get that. They did it, they're getting this. But it is wrath. It is hot anger. And He kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations. The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem." There was a time where everybody thought, no one can touch Jerusalem. As long as God is protecting it, no one can do it. But when God lifted His protection, they were like, oh, let's sack them. Now the Lord's anger is righteous because of sin, especially the sin of the very people that were supposed to represent God to everybody else. Of course He's going to be angry. Verse 13, This was for the sins of her prophets, for not doing their job. We talked about that before. And the iniquities of her priests, for not doing their job. who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous." The people that spoke up, like, wait a minute, priest, I don't think we're supposed to be doing that. Kill him. Kill him. Wait a minute, prophet, I don't think that's what the Lord said. Execution. So that they could do things their way. Kind of like when you look back in your life and you shut out all the truth speakers in your life, and you only kept as friends the people that enabled your foolishness. That's like killing all the priests and prophets in your life and just accruing to yourself false priests and prophets who are like, oh yeah, good, yeah, no, no, break up with him, you're gonna be happy, God wants you to be happy, just break up your marriage. No, that's devastating. It seems that these clergymen, they were persecuting everyone who dared to speak the truth. So verse 14 says, they wandered blind through the streets, they were so defiled with blood, that no one was able to touch their garments. Away, unclean, people cried at them. Away, away, do not touch. The people reject them now, and they resent them now. It says, So they became fugitives and wanderers. People said among the nations, They shall stay with us no longer. But back to verse 16, back to the point. The Lord Himself has scattered them. He will regard them no more. The Lord is doing it. out of his wrath. No honor was shown to the priests, no favor to the elders. They get it worse because they were the ones that were supposed to speak up, they were the ones that were supposed to get Israel on track, and they didn't. They didn't do their job. So, moms and dads are more responsible. Teachers are more responsible. Pastors, elders, we're more responsible. That doesn't let everybody off the hook, but we're more responsible. So then the Lord used another nation, somebody that's not Israel, not to come in and save them, but to come in and wreck them. 17-19, Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help. In our watching we watched for a nation which could not save. They dogged our steps, so that we could not walk in our streets. Our end drew near. Our days were numbered, for our end had come. Verse 19, our pursuers were swifter than the eagles in the heavens. They chased us on the mountains. They lay in wait for us in the wilderness. The consequences of sin upon believers. is often the direct hand of the Lord, especially when it is what He had warned us about, and then we've chosen to ignore it, and then ignore it, and then ignore it, and especially when even the people in your life that are supposed to call you out on it, they embolden your sin or enable it, and then we shush the people who contradict it. I think this happens in every generation. We could look at, why is Israel doing this? It's a pattern in humanity. Every generation, no less our own. Pastors realize that there are certain kinds of messages that keep people comfortable and keep people coming back. So they massage the message. They cherry-pick the verses for the sermons. They're not going to walk through Lamentations. They'll pick a couple verses out of Lamentations, like in the middle of chapter 3, Great is thy faithfulness. Mercies are new every morning, but kind of leave out why you need that morning, because the night is so stinking dark. Why is it dark? Our sin, guys. They're not going to do that, because that's yucky poo. I'll go to another church. Pastors realize that. cherry pick the positive verses, never say corrective things, and then the people reinforce it with their attendance and their wallets. They do a lot of things, these churches, they sing, they build friendships, they evangelize, they serve the poor in their communities, they go to the hospitals, maybe they build a couple of hospitals, but they're never corrected, and they never correct. They don't hear or preach the whole counsel of God's Word. And so then they enter these kinds of churches, they enter a kind of idolatry actually, where they worship God in their own image, they worship God in their own likeness, a wrathless God, a God who'd never get angry, a God who'd never say a harsh word, a Jesus who only cuddles. God on their own terms. God without any edges. God without any intolerance. God without clear standards. Is not God. And therefore a made-up idol. If you're a guest here, I'm not tooting my own horn. It's not like I wake up one day and I'm like, I want to preach about God's wrath. Yeah, yeah. It's hard for me too. I preach Lamentations. Lamentations makes me take account of the stuff in my own life, and the mistakes that I've made. Why am I preaching Lamentations 4? Because it's after 3. God inspired this chapter to be here. I dare not skip it, or take it away, or snip it out. It's what God reveals about Himself. But once we see it, don't we see, when we really look at what Lamentations is saying about God, don't we see that this means God is loving, and that snipping that out would be a God who is less loving? A God with no wrath, no anger, no jealousy for His own people is less loving. Imagine you have a best friend. Your best friend's married, and you're out, and you catch your best friend's spouse sneaking around with a love interest. All right? You catch an affair in the act. And then you approach your best friend with the information. It's really hard for you to get it out. You know, this is so devastating. But you eke it out. You just say it. You get it out. They're like, what? What's bothering you? And you just say it. You caught your best friend's spouse having an affair. And your best friend goes, hmm. Oh, well. Now, what would be your conclusion about how your best friend feels about their spouse, actually? Eh, hmm, meh. Meh. No anger, no fury, no indignation, just, huh, weird. I think you would rightly conclude that your best friend does not love their spouse. Biblical lament recognizes not just that consequences due to sin are a part of God's wrath, but that it is right. That's actually good. If God weren't upset by it, He wouldn't love Israel. If God weren't upset by it, He wouldn't love me. If God did nothing about it, He'd be a big wimp. or powerful but unloving. So biblical lament oversees consequences, it looks at those consequences squarely, and it doesn't rush past it, doesn't ignore it, sees it for what it is. It's God's response to repeated, unchecked sin, and it is right for God to dispense His anger through consequences. That's what we learn in Lamentations, especially this chapter. However, His anger is not to prove that he's right. It's not God's grand way of saying, I told you so. It's a mechanism for getting you on track. He loves you enough to not just be angry about your sin, but to use consequences to shock you into obedience. You don't want that, guys. You want like, oh, Psalm 1? I'm going to read the Bible. Okay, long pattern of ignoring the Bible? Yeah, things are going to happen, but hopefully it happens to get you back to Psalm 1. That's not the route you want to take, but that's better than never arriving at the destination that God wants you to arrive to. So He's not trying to just say, I told you so. He's using the consequences to course correct That's not true for all unbelievers the way it's true for believers. Because for unbelievers, God's wrath is condemnation. So it kind of depends on where you are right now, how this sermon should be landing. Biblical lament, you know, it looks at consequences of sin for what they are. God's pouring out His righteous wrath in circumstances, in cases where He made it clear that sin would produce these consequences, and we went ahead and did it anyway. But God's wrath is not the same toward believers as for unbelievers. And this is the last point that I think this poem, this chapter ends on, with the last few verses. that biblical lament recognizes that God's wrath for believers it's right it's right for unbelievers too it's right but it's temporary and it's formative whereas God's wrath for unbelievers is damning check out how this ends verse 20 The breath of our nostrils, the Lord's anointed, was captured in their pits." Whose pits? Well, the enemies, the pursuers, the captors, who were not Israel. So you've got God's people and people that are not God's people out there, right? And they're the ones that have in their pits. That's what he's talking about. "...of whom we said, under his shadow we shall live among the nations." Rejoice! and be glad, O daughter of Edom," he's talking to not Israel, okay, "...rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz," these are the non-Israelites, "...but to you also the cup shall pass. You shall become drunk and strip yourself bare." So here's the contrast. The difference between God's wrath upon His own people for correction and God's wrath upon people who are not His people as condemnation. The author of Lamentations is going for four chapters now, basically, he's going, here's all the consequences that we've wreaked on our own lives, and it's from God's hand, and it's right that He did it, and it's messed up, and our lives are messed up, and we shouldn't have done it, but we did, and we did it really, really bad. We did it over and over again. We even did it to the point of killing everybody who tried to tell us anything different. It was really bad, but it's true, and it's right, and God has done this. And the way He's doing it is by the person that the people who aren't in covenant with God, who don't read Scripture at all, they're the ones delivering this upon us, and they're gloating. Yeah, keep gloating, man. Keep gloating. Eat them. Rejoice and be glad. Sure. But eventually the cup will pass to you. We'll get past this. But for you, if you don't get in covenant relationship with God, it'll just be over for you. Because for us, God is course-correcting. For you, it'll be condemnation. Verse 22, the punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, talking now to Israelites, right? So now this in-house talk. The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, is accomplished. He will keep you in exile no longer. Well, they were in exile for a long time. Anyone read about this? The history of Israel? It's not like this lasted a couple years? For a really, really long time. Many will argue they're still not back. Sure, there's a physical land, and there's a nation, and there's a flag, but is that the restoration of Israel the way that God is asking for restoration in Scripture? This is debated. I'm not going to go down that path. I'm just saying, when He says He will keep you in exile no longer, He doesn't mean the next day, but He does mean it won't be forever. If you're a child of God and you're in Christ, God is not putting wrath in your life because He condemns you. It's because He's being a father, a father who disciplines. Right? Only an idiot father would ground you for life. Maybe that comes out of our mouths sometimes. No, I'm grounding you for life, man. We don't mean for life. First of all, we don't want to pay for an in-house inmate for the rest of our lives, bringing food to your door. Grow up and start acting like you shouldn't be grounded. But that's what a good father does. He's not condemning for life. He's not even condemning. He's course correcting. Israel is being spanked really hard right now. But it's for the future. Not that they don't have a future. And that's what the prophet is banking on. Yeah, you're laughing at us now. I get it. It's like when your parent comes outside, and all the kids that were throwing rocks at the neighbor's window or whatever, all the kids of the cul-de-sac that were doing it, they're not all in trouble. Mom came out, who's in trouble? You're in trouble. And the other kid's like, you got caught. Who learns from that lesson? And the other kids that are not corrected for it, are they better because of it? This is what the prophet is saying. God is being our father, man. He's being our dad. So let's learn from it. Let's learn from it. Let's stop this stuff. Let's stop killing the people in our lives that are truth sayers. Surround yourself with people who point you to God's Word. Not constantly negative. Everything you do is wrong. That's not the point. But who act as mirrors. Show you what's there. And that you can return the favor to them. And as a community we course correct each other. Because God's wrath poured out in the Christian's life are temporary examples or temporary lessons that we're supposed to learn from. And when I say temporary, it might be for the rest of your earthly life. We don't come back from some of these consequences. The toothpaste can't always be shoved back into the tube. Some stuff happened and you can't erase it. You can't delete this and just go back in time. There's no time machine. And so some things don't come back. But you won't suffer that forever. There is an eternity to look forward to. Where there are no more consequences of sin. Where we don't wear the lashings anymore. But unbelievers do not have that to look forward to. Who cares if you got fired and that guy got a raise? If the firing taught you to stop cheating, it made you a better Christ follower. Who cares if that guy becomes the CEO and then goes to hell? What is the point? To gain the whole world and lose your soul. But that course correction helped you understand what it means. to have your soul rescued and redeemed and to become conformed to the image of Christ. And that is worth more than any job, any position, anywhere. Zion's punishment wasn't going to last forever. They're not going to be in exile for all time, it's temporary, because God's people have a future. But for Edom, wrath is coming in a different way. So here's how it works, quickly. No matter what consequences you face right now in your life, if you're a Christian and you're in a covenant relationship with God through Christ, then not only are these consequences temporary, but they are formative. And there are things that we have to put up with in this life, some of these for a little while, some of them for a long time, some of them for the rest of our earthly lives, but not forever. But for those who are not in Christ, there's only condemnation, and that condemnation remains forever. The difference is not one group is better than the other group. The difference is one group is forgiven in Christ. One group has been adopted as children in God's family. And if you want to cross over from lost to found, if you want to cross over from orphan to adopted, from dark to light, you do that by recognizing that the things in your life that are disobedient and foolish and rebellious to the Lord, they really are. And you repent. You don't make excuses for it. You don't ignore it. You repent. You come to Christ. And He is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. That is your hope. Now, as you assess the damage in your life, I think what this is helping us learn is to do that assessing early and do it truthfully. Don't ignore it. When your check engine light comes on, it's probably already late. Something already has been ignored. Oil changes have been skipped already. There's already something going on before that light comes on, let alone riding with the light. You become accustomed to the light. It's just another light on your dashboard. You're not even sure what it means. You don't want to ask because it sounds expensive. Well, no. You should address it when? Right away. Why? Because if you keep putting miles on the engine without addressing your problems, you can get to the point of destroying the car. That's why. So with sin in your life, you look around you, like the prophet, and you go, okay, here's what I've done, and here are the various consequences to it, right? I can blame God, or I can blame other people, or I can take stock of how I have introduced these things into my own life, and I can be honest about it. That's where you begin. That's what biblical lament does. It owns the situation, takes stock of it, notices how what once was, is no longer, and that's due to the things that I've done in my life. Blessings have been replaced with consequences, and rightly so, because I've been stepping out of line. I remember the first book I ever read on marriage to help me get ready for premarital counseling sessions. The first book I ever read, there's one line that I remember where it stated that the general rate of divorce for second marriages was much higher than the divorce rate for first marriages. You would think you learn the first time, fix it the second time. So I looked into this briefly because it's been a long time and the details are really complicated. Statistics are always ultra complicated. But it seems that this is still generally true across the board, that second marriages dissolve at a higher rate than first marriages. Why might that be? You're older. The first one, ah, you were too young. The first one, ah, I turned a blind eye to some things that were wrong with him, but now I got a good guy. What's happening there? What could be happening there, and this is not going to be across the board, we're just dealing in general statistics, but what could be happening there is, that person's fault, that person's fault, this happened in my life. Rather than going, how did I mess up my first marriage? And so you go to the second marriage thinking, well, it's not those things. This person's not perfect, but at least they're not that. And then you realize one day, this is also going off the rails. If I'm not looking at my own stuff, the things that I contribute to the damage in my life, you ignore it, you don't learn the lesson, the lesson gets repeated. We can surmise all sorts of reasons for those kinds of statistics. But I think it's a failure to assess yourself. It's still the World Series. I think I'm allowed to use a baseball illustration. It's not over yet. But I often enjoy seeing a batter strike out. If it's my team, I don't enjoy watching them strike out. But a guy strikes out, walks back to the dugout, and sometimes a camera will point into the dugout to see what that guy's doing. And some of them are throwing helmets and throwing bats and whatever, complaining to the coach. But I think the best players pull the tablet out and watch the at-bat that they just failed at, pitch by pitch, to figure out what. where he went wrong, because he's going to be at bat soon again, and he wants to correct. So rather than stewing and throwing things around and blaming other people, a good athlete watches the tape, not to see how everyone around him failed, but to see how I can do better next time I'm on the field, so that I don't do that again. Lamentations is your tablet. Scripture is your tablet. You open it to see what is going on, what should be going on, what should not be going on, and you constantly allow Scripture to course correct the things in your life. You have a recipe that doesn't go right. You taste it in the end. You're like, that doesn't taste like mom's recipe. What should you do? Have her walk you through it again and see where you put too much this, not enough that, cooked it too long, pulled it too early. You fix it. Rather than just keep serving and going, oh well. Lamentations is not asking us to sort of just stew in the negative. It's asking us to learn from it. If you don't feel the pain of it, you won't course correct. Consequences should be painful. But if you ignore it, you won't change. If you don't discern what actually happened, you can't learn from it. And if you blame other people or you blame circumstances, you won't learn from it. And far from blaming God, we need to recognize that God is in the right, He's correct, His wrath is just. And then returning to the note that we might be tempted to wonder why others are suffering consequences, or why we're suffering these consequences for sin, and somebody else in our life seems like they've seen sin worse, and it doesn't seem fair that they seem to not be suffering consequences from it, maybe at all. We need to remember that for those who are not in Christ, there is a bigger problem than what you can currently discern in their life. And that should motivate you to pray for them, rather than wishing that they'd get theirs. You don't want them to get theirs. You want them to find the hope that you found. And so you pray for them. And then finally, we're thinking wrongly when we estimate how much worse others should be getting, rather than wondering why we aren't getting worse than we are. Why aren't the consequences in my own life worse? They could have been worse. They could have been much worse. But God and His mercy only allowed this many consequences. It might feel inundating, but it could be worse. The real question is, why isn't it worse? And we trust that he's a good father who's measured. He has a measured hand. He knows what he's doing. He doesn't overreact. He doesn't even react. He's sovereign and providential, wise, good, trustworthy, and faithful. So we trust God's wisdom that your sin, my sin, rightly deserves the consequences in our lives that are there. And we don't play the comparison game. God will take care of everyone else. We lament our own stuff and ask him to help us change by it. We take stock of our sins, understand them as consequences, understand God's wrath is righteous, and try to learn how they function to correct us, not do away with us. And we could be thankful that we can always turn to God, who's always faithful. He's always just to forgive and to cleanse. Final reminder, this doesn't mean our consequences go away overnight. Sometimes our consequences don't go away at all in this life. But it does mean you don't wear the guilt of it. That you don't receive it as condemnation. There's a difference. Correction and condemnation are not the same thing. And so, have you not been the greatest dad? Be a great dad now. Have you been a checked out mom? Well, check in, man. Check in and be a great mom now. Have you already established yourself as a rather rebellious child? Change your script. You don't have to wear that for the rest of your life. Oh, that's the naughty kid. Come to Christ. He changes you. Be a faithful son. Be a faithful daughter. But these changes have to begin with repentance, and they have to begin with turning to Christ, not just a promise that I'll be better. And then it takes diligence. It takes discipline to keep at it over and over to make yourself more mature every day. By God's grace, we don't do it. He does it. But God is faithful to do it in you if you'll turn to Him for it. Let's pray.