All right, Lamentations, chapter number five, and our last part of Lamentations. We'll finish this up tonight, and we'll be going into the book of Amos after this. And Amos is a time frame that is before the book of Lamentations. And the book of Amos will be Amos the prophet warning the northern tribes about kind of the same way Jeremiah warned the southern tribes. attacks Israel during that time and pretty much wipes them out. And then later on, Nebuchadnezzar goes to Jerusalem and Judah, the southern part. So it's been good for me. I've enjoyed it. Kind of puts the Bible pieces, the puzzles together more, learning where things connect together. And so we'll finish up these verses tonight starting in verse 15. And then we're gonna kind of recap just a little bit about the chapter. But if you'd like to get into Amos and read, that's where we're headed in our next part of the series. When we call it the nickel and dime series, we're looking at every book in the Bible that has five or up to 10 chapters. And so that's the next one in the line as we move on down. And so hope you keep up. That's on our sermon audio, the sermon audio app. If you download it on your smartphone, you can load up our church or anybody by churches or speakers. But those verse-by-verse series are some of the most viewed and listened to that we have. It's been a challenge, but it's been good. I've enjoyed studying. I hope you have too. Verse number 15, chapter number 5. Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah says, The joy of our heart is ceased. Our dance is turned into mourning. The Hebrew culture, especially, was known for dancing. Now, our modern-day dancing, and I'll say modern because I'll go all the way back. We'll go way back to the 20s, okay? That's pretty modern compared to several thousand years ago. Some of y'all are looking at me funny. But the dancing that the Western culture embraced in and has created over the years is far away from the people of God and the Hebrew people of how they danced. They danced in wedding celebrations. They danced at ceremonies having to do with holidays and things like that. But they never did the boot scoot. They never rubbed on top of each other. They didn't get into what we'll call the sexual things that connect to the dancing of modern cultures. When we look at the word dance, you know, I want you to make sure you get the right image in your mind there. They would dance and hop around and jump around and other kind of clapping and who knows what's going on. I guess the closest we probably have that may have, but I'm not still saying that it was quite like it, but the way people used to have square dances and have big barn shindigs and things like that in communities, even that's different than what people have now when they go clubbing, if you know what the phrase clubbing is, amen. But anyhow, the world is definitely always messed up. Everything that people used to do under the Lord, and they did it in joy and applause and hopping up and down and bouncing around and praising the Lord. And they were known for a joyous culture, just to put it in a nutshell. And people would hear them celebrating from far distances. When the tabernacle in the wilderness was moving around, Brother Carl, before it became a permanent building, they would erect it and they would take it down. And as it moved around, as God told them to move, the pillar of cloud by day, fire by night. And when they would sacrifice unto God, fire would fall from heaven and it consumed those sacrifices. Everything about the Jewish culture, if you weren't a part of it, you knew something was distinct about it. They had a different joy. They also had a very serious side of them, of the sacrifices unto God. And when they obeyed God, they had unity, they had joy, they had peace. They could rejoice, their sins would be forgiven, God would protect them and provide for them. But as we know in this book, they disobeyed God in many, many ways. They ignored God generationally over and over so many years that there's 70 years worth of one year Sabbaths that they never gave to God. And so Here he recalls that the joy of their heart is ceased. So don't make it a shallow little lie. I mean, this was a joyous culture, these people. And they would celebrate. There were times when the Word of God was hidden from them so long and then they would break it out and read it. There were times when prophets could stand for hours and read the scriptures and people would receive it and they would respond. Everything connected to that, their heart is ceased of that joy. Their dance is turned into mourning, a time of sadness. When there's more deaths than there's anything, it's not a time to celebrate marriage and unions and you're not celebrating anything in their culture. And you think about what we celebrate in our culture and holidays that we have and things we take for granted sometimes, but they were not able to celebrate births because if anybody was born, Their outlook was starvation and no one was getting married, no one was worried about those such things. They were at war, besieged, people were fleeing, people were dying, many were already captive. This was not a place where hearts had joy. This is not a place where dancing was occurring and celebrating of anything. It was all turned into mourning. Then in verse 16, He said, the crown is falling from our head. This crown symbolizes the kingdom and the majesty of the kingdom and the throne. And we took time. at the very beginning of this study in the introduction to talk about King Solomon and talk about them as a nation and talk about the temple and the majesty of all those things. So this is symbolic of that crown just falling to the ground, everything having to do with that reign, everything with them having to do with them being as a nation and the nation as they followed God and their God was the only God, Jehovah God, all of that's fallen away. The crown is falling from their head. no one respects their king and I've repeated this so many times but you know Zedekiah he fled he left he abandoned his throne he abandoned his people with his little band of soldiers that left and then of course they were captured and and taken And, you know, he had his sons killed. His eyes were plucked out. And that was the end of his, that was the ending of his life. The timeframe of his life was blind. The last vision was his sons dying, running as a coward and everything having to do with the throne and what you would want as a king to defend and fight for you and have courage for you. They had none of those things. Israel, or excuse me, I would say Judah, the distinct between the northern tribes, Judah, Jerusalem, the city, Jeremiah as the prophet, the crown has fallen from their head. And he says, woe unto us that we have sinned. All these things are reminding him and them that sin is the cause of this. Now if God can bring our hearts to realize and acknowledge that sin's the reason he's chastising, sin's the reason the judgment is there, and even to take it a step further, if we could remember that sin's the reason Jesus had to die on the cross for our sins, we would never take those things for granted. But we would also never come to a place to say that, well, this is not fair. This is not right. God's treating us this way. And we're better than this next door nation. And we're better than this person on this side of the church. And we compare ourselves amongst ourselves. It's a great day. Isaiah did it many times as well. Woe unto us. In the book of Isaiah, Isaiah did a lot of preaching where he said, woe unto them that did this. Woe unto them that did this. Woe unto them that did this. But the Bible says King Uzziah died, and the year that King Uzziah died, Uzziah was very close friends with Isaiah. When he died, it seemed that Isaiah had his mind on the king and the kingdom, and Uzziah was around the same time as Jeroboam was, and he was the king over northern tribes, and they had a prosperous reign going on. It seemed like things were going well. and they were looking to their king. But God took Uzziah, he died. And Isaiah said in that scripture that he said, in the year that king Uzziah died, he said, I said, woe unto me. I mean, he changed it. It's one thing, you know, when he's like, everybody else is sinning, everybody else is wrong, and everybody else is the fault. But when you start turning it internally and say, it's us, and that's what Jeremiah, as he's speaking on behalf of them as a nation, this is the end towards the end of the book. They have not forgot that. Acknowledging it again, woe unto us that we have sinned. For this, for this cause, it'll be the previous verses and also the ones following. For this, our heart is faint. You know, when your heart is faint, And the Bible says goes on for these things our eyes are dim when the heart is faint. It's hard to find faith. You're weak. You're discouraged. Even though you know God's doing what he's doing and he's promised and as I said before be kind of hard to think you know most generational people they have no hope. I mean can you imagine being in your teens. 70 years captivity, if you embrace it, if you accept it, if you understood it at all, what God was doing. Can you imagine being taken captive to and not even know what's going on, but God raises up prophets like Daniel and he reminded them what was going on. And yet in the midst of that, when they submitted and surrendered to what God was doing, God touched them and helped them, protected them, elevated them. But those who resisted and fought against it, there was death and such destruction and discouragement. Their hearts were faint and he's speaking on behalf of the people. And I think Jeremiah's heart was faint too. I think he was discouraged as well. The heart was faint, wanting to fall out, wanting to quit, wanting to give up. And then he says, for these things, our eyes are dim. Your eyes can get dim because you've been crying so much. Your eyes can get dim because you got physical problems. Your eyes can get dim because your hope is fading. And you just don't even want to look forward anymore to much. They were in very bad condition. And he says, For this our heart was faint, for these things our eyes are dim, because of the mountain of Zion. Mount Zion is the symbolism of Jerusalem and the people of God and the people of Judah there. And he says it's desolate, which means it's dry and there's no life, there's civilization. Things have been burned, things have been destroyed, crops have been taken and things have been taken to Babylon. They pretty much just ravaged the land and took the people captive. And he uses this little phrase, the foxes walk upon it. The wild animals are just walking all over the place now. These animals, there's so little activity that reminded them of the kingdom and reminded them of the joy that they had. Now they got these little wild animals just going around everywhere. I don't know if you've ever had anything, an old home place that you went back to or something and it got let go and got abandoned over the years or someplace you remember that was fond in your childhood back in the day and you go by and say, Let that place go. It's all grown up. Things are broke down. Looks like no one lives there. That's what this looked like. It looks like God abandoned them. Now, I know they feel that way, but the whole understanding is, no, if God would have abandoned you, there would be no hand, no movement, no hope, no chat, nothing. He would have just left them to the hands of man. But we understand in the scriptures that later on, But right now they are walked upon, their hearts are faint, eyes are dim. Verse 19, he says, Then thou, O Lord, remainest forever, thy throne from generation to generation. There's a little bit of spot in the middle of that where he's praising God, even right after he admitted his sin, a complaint, a factual statement of the condition that they're in. He mustered up that thou, O Lord, remainest forever. Everything we have's fallen apart, animals are taking it over, eyes are fading, heart is fainting, but you remain forever. And that's the truth, amen? Even if we all get eat up with cancer and all die, or we all die of old age, the Lord remains forever. And this 70 years, he'll be there at the start of it, he'll be there through the whole 70, and at the very end, and thousands of years in the future, God will remain. That's an eternal God that we serve. That little muster of statement there resets the mind for a little while anyway. Thy throne from generation to generation. And then he brings this, then he comes back to a place of complaint. Wherefore dost thou forget us forever? He felt forsaken forever. Now we know the Scriptures, we've read them, we've labored at this over and over and again. Seventy years was meticulously kept up. It was prophesied how long it would be. They went through it, he gave it. Jeremiah knows how long it's been. But when you're in the midst of all this hurt and this chastisement, And I know maybe you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes there's just some bad days, bad storms we're in. It seems like it goes on forever. And he says, wherefore dost thou forget us forever? I tell you, I know it's a statement that he gives, but could you just really grab our minds around that? What it would mean if God ever forgot us for one second? just one second abandoned by God. There would be no second second. I'd have been done. He does not abandon us at all, even though it feels like, and that's a critical place to be because if you buy into that disparity and you buy into the devil's lies, you give up hope. But he, he says, um, Wherefore dost thou forget us forever and forsake us? Look at this, so long time, question Maury. It seemed like such a very long time. I've heard, I've talked to people, some very good godly people, went through some long seasons of storms, and they, one, Miss Gravy told me this one time, she said, She went through some, of course, she lost a child, was, I think it died about two or three hours after it was born, and very difficult time. You know, they didn't diagnose the postpartum stuff and all that really back then, but she was in a dark, dark place in the hospital, and then she got, had a lot of physical issues there with the birth, and then she went home, and a very dark place. People would come to pray for her and see her, and she was almost non-responsive to the spiritual things. It's like she was just despair and almost dead spiritually. And people come back later and say, boy, you could feel God in that room so powerfully. She said, I couldn't feel nothing at the time. Many times in the time of the heat of where you are, you do feel despair, you feel abandoned, you feel like it's so long a time. And she looked back after that happened, and she said, I look back, it's like a dark dream in the night now. Seemed like it was just a dream, not even a real thing she went through. But in the midst of it, it seems like such a long, hard, suffering time. And here Jeremiah expresses that in chapter 5, in verse 20, where he feels forsaken in such a so long time of being forsaken. Then in verse 21, turn thou us unto thee. And he's saying, use this to turn us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old. Now, let me read this. This is Psalms 80 verse 3. Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. This is a Psalm of David that no doubt Jeremiah had read, and that whole idea of asking God to turn towards us again is like the sun turning back when it has turned away, like you were in darkness, and now the sun is shining again. And then in verse 7, turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. under thee, O Lord. And if you'll turn us, we will be turned. It'll be something real. It'll be something lasting. Renew our days of old. Take us back. Revive us. Set things back. Well, I'll say this, as he closes out, but thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very wroth against us. That's how he closes out the book. that they've been utterly rejected, and God is very mad, very angry, wrath against them. But could we step back at verse 21, and could we all, I think, maybe agree, isn't that really what God is doing, trying to turn them back? He doesn't have to take time to chasten anybody. He could just cut us off. He could have said, I'm done with Israel, Southern and Northern tribes. Even before the Book of Lamentations, he could have said, you're gone. You know, there are civilizations that they excavate in archeology all the time if you watch some of the news. You ever wonder why those civilizations are completely laid waste and buried under hundreds of feet of sand and the civilization's gone and nobody even knew it existed? till 1800 or 1900 or even recently. Look what we discovered. Well, God was there when he counted them off, when he cut them off, when he allowed them to be completely wiped away where no one even remembered them. God never allowed that to happen to Israel. There was never a time he ever forgot them. Never a time that he completely rejected them utterly and stomped and just threw them down and destroyed them. This was chastisement. It was prophesied what would happen. It was even prophesied that they would return. It was prophesied that God would punish those like Nebuchadnezzar according to how he treated them during the chastisement. God supervising it all. Here in verse 21, he's asking to be turned and believed. If God didn't turn them, they would be turned and wanting to be turned all the way back to the days as of old when Israel was walking for God and obeying God in sincerity and purity and following him. Well, that's what God is doing. Now, you and I have the snapshot because many of you were here. We've already gone through the book of Ezra. And that book of Ezra gives us that picture where they were in captivity. They desired to go back and start the temple. And they got allowed by Cyrus, the king of Persia. Nebuchadnezzar's already gone. Babylon's not even on the throne. Babylon's not a thing anymore. But there's God still remaining. Here comes a new empire. Here comes Cyrus. And then God allows them and he helped support them and provided for them so they could go back and rebuild the altar and the temple. And I'll say this, we got it much better now in our New Testament age of grace. And when it comes to the fact that we do fail and we all have failed, that only God can turn us back and he's the only hope that we have. And he will not utterly cast us off. He's very gracious to us. His spirit will not depart from us because he abides and lives within us. And he is so long suffering and so gracious. And if he takes time to chasing us, The scriptures in Hebrews remind us he is trying to yield or produce the peaceable fruit of righteousness. That's what he's doing in verse 21. The very reason they have gone into captivity is God's movement to turn them. And he closes out, but thou hast utterly rejected us, thou art very wroth against us. I'm closing out the book reminding you there was hope coming. He didn't sound very hopeful, did he? Even though he knew what was prophesied, he knew, he felt that the opportunity for him to be alive to see it and to know that it was going to happen and what was going on in the middle. You know, when you hurt and suffer in the present and every time you get up in the morning you see death around you and starvation, it's hard to get that hope built up. And he closes out this book with a lamenting mentality of the scripture. And I want, as a recap, I want you to go back to chapter one. We're gonna read the first five verses and kind of recap just what the book was about, what it says. Lamentations 1.1. How does the city, now as we read this I want you to reflect, if you've been here every time we preach this every night, you've heard the verse by verse preaching we've done, see if you can imagine this in your mind, I remember that, I remember we covered that, I remember seeing that, I remember the Lord showing that, I remember reading that. How does the city sit solitary that was full of people? How has she become as a widow She that was great among the nations, and princes among the provinces, how has she become tributary? She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on the cheeks. Among all her lovers, she hath none to comfort her. So you remember some of those things we're talking about nations that forsook them? The Edomites we preached a couple weeks ago, the Edomites were related to them, Esau's family, and how they actually Kind of, hey, they're over there and they blocked them from going and leaving and they even cried out at one time, race it. Remember that? Just wipe them out and all this come to fulfillment. Nobody was on their side, it seemed. She weepeth sore, verse 2, she weepeth sore in the night, her tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction and because of great servitude. She dwelleth among the heathen. She findeth no rest. All her persecutors overtook her. between the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn because none come to the solemn feast. All her gates are desolate. Her priests sigh. Her virgins are afflicted and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries are the chief. Her enemies prosper for the Lord hath afflicted her. for the multitude of her transgressions, her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. When we started this study, I never realized as we closed it, how much this opening chapter pretty much stated the condition of what took place and what happened to them and why that it happened. It was kind of summarized even though I didn't quite know it yet going through the book. So he opens up and closes the book with questions and comments and complaints As I said before, the book was titled Lamentations. I think he gave it a good name, or we had preserved a good name for us to use in our day. It reflects to us the condition of Judah as a nation of people. It reflects to us the heart of Jeremiah as a prophet. And we covered this. a few weeks back. You know, Jeremiah tried to obey God. He warned him. He preached. They called him a traitor. They threw him in the dungeon. You remember that story I told about? He had the yoke around his head and they took it and broke it. They mocked everything that he did and all the while he was one of them. He never acted like he was above them and like, God's gonna judge you. He used the phrase us over and over. He spoke in that person. He spoke on behalf of them. And I believe, honestly, he lamented and suffered with them as they went through. He had that heart of the people, even though as a prophet, he was rejected. And the people wanted to hear only the good news. Oh, this is only two years long and this will be over soon. And God proved him right. Now, I know he would rather have been wrong. I know as a prophet with this kind of content, he would have rather God proved it wrong. He'd have been wrong and God had been true. But yet it was truth. Jeremiah is looked back as some call him the weeping prophet. Jeremiah is looked at as one of the greatest prophets of the word of God. and maybe encourage you. I know that we're not in the series of books right now where we're preaching, you know, 50 and 40 chapter books we might live to see that day one day. But Jeremiah is a long book as far as that goes. But I think, I'll just say this, I think if you were to reread Jeremiah, if you have already read it before, or if you've never read the book of Jeremiah, I think you'll have a better insight. I'll use this phrase that came to my mind today. You know, hindsight, you've heard that phrase, right? It's 2020. Something that's already happened and you can see it more clearly after it's already happened. Well, we've been in some of the books in the Bible that gives us hindsight at times. We are in a book that when we go backwards to Amos, Amos is gonna take place in timeline before the book of Lamentations. And so when Amos warns them as a people, It's Israel divided, but it's a different group, and it's going to be a different kingdom, Assyria, that will attack them and come after them under the judgment hand of God. It's very similar. As we look back in hindsight, what I mean by that is we've already looked at a book that will be in the future of what Amos will be preaching. It will be the future of them. So we can look back and say, hey, we already know what's coming. We already know what God can do, what He will do, what He will allow. And because of that hindsight, I think it gives us insight. It opens things up. I would think if you were to reread the book of Jeremiah, it would open up more to you, probably, especially since we went through the book of Lamentations. Now, some of you have been around a while. And you might have already done that. And it just opens up to you instantly because you've been around so long. You've read it and heard it preached over and over. But I am this many years old. Sadly, I wish 30 years ago that I could have really gotten into some of these books like this because it has really put the word of God the whole picture. Not saying I understand everything, but I understand so much more just by having trying to go through these books to preach them to you. So I have learned from them and I hope that you have as well. And I hope if you'll go back to some of those connections, you have an understanding now who Jeremiah is. When you read the book of Jeremiah, you understand, you will understand him. You'll have an insight into who he was, his heart. And when you go through that book and some of the things we even referred to, concerning the context of time, you'll go, oh, I remember we saw that. Oh, I remember that false prophet. I remember that scripture. And I wanna give you one more verse as we close. Jeremiah, excuse me, Lamentations chapter three, verse number 21. Be reminded that this was written by Jeremiah during this time with that such a heavy heart, this I recall to mind, therefore have I hope it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. And you can cling on to those verses in this very day, and God is the same God as He was back then. And I'll tell you this, because His Son died on the cross for our sins, we understand that compassion more than they could ever comprehend it. We understand how much God can love, because He so loved, He gave His only begotten Son. And when we think about not being consumed, as I already said in chapter 5, they felt He was consuming them, Oh no, if God wanted to consume, Nobody would even know we were even been around. He could erase your history if he wanted to. He could bury nations under sand. But he said, I have this recalled to my mind. It came to my mind. It brought hope because it came to my mind. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fell not. They are new every morning. What a beautiful, it's a dark book, but what a bright little bulb shines right there in those few verses. And that's the hope that you can get through, even through such dark times of chastisement or troubles and trials that may come to your life that you don't even understand and cannot comprehend. And it may be that you are in the midst of something that you don't know why you went through it or going through it, but there is a bigger picture. Can you imagine being someone in this era and they didn't know all the prophets, they didn't know everybody got warned and everybody disobeyed for all the 490 years. It wasn't their fault, but they lived in that nation and they went through that captivity. You still need to look to God for your hope and your compassion and your strength and your grace. And as you read your Bible, think about going back to the book of Daniel and meeting Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Anybody know their real name? Joanna probably does. Hananiah, Meshach, and Azariah. That was their God-given Jewish names. But we know them more by their names given by Babylon, their Chaldean names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It's sad, but that's the most famous that we know about it. But those three young men were probably teenagers, and they were taken captive during the book you and I just went through. And they went into Babylon and their families were left behind. They probably never knew if mom and dad or sister or brother died. There'd be no way they'd ever be able to know any history of that unless they outlived it and found out later after 70 years of captivity what becomes some of their family. They were pulled up, names changed. They tried to change everything about them, their religion and all. And yet, even a man like Daniel in the midst of that, he's one of those that were taken captive. And you think about when you read that Bible and you read those stories again and you think, when he left his windows open towards Jerusalem, do you understand what that meant to him? He's praying to the God of Israel. He's praying to that city that was not even there anymore. There was no altar, but the God still lived in his heart. He knew God was still real and he prayed towards Jerusalem with all the hope of what would come one day when there would be a city again, there would be a temple again. And those men, God protected them, performed miracles for them, in the midst of that captivity and all the origin of that comes from this book we just read. And as we continue to put pieces together, I hope you'll become, you may not get a stamp about Bible college degree, but I hope you may know some more things about the Bible than a lot of people who get out of Bible college and graduate. I'll be honest with you, I know more now by studying these small minor prophet books than I ever learned when I went to those four years of Bible college. Because most of that stuff was just generalized studies. Not saying that they weren't good for me, but studying the Word of God is a lifetime journey. And what we have just gone through as a church, Please don't take it for granted. It is a very valuable thing if you'll glean from it. It'll put the Word of God together. Going into the Book of Amos, the plan will be next week. And I already got a long introduction probably that we've been working on. But I want to set it up for you a little bit. So we'll take time to do that. All right, let's go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer. Father, thank you for the study you've given us. Thank you for showing us things that we've never seen before. Thank you, Lord, for connecting dots that I never even knew that were there. And I pray you'll help us to grow in grace and knowledge. May, as we continue to study your word, I pray you'll shed light, more and more light upon it. Help us to understand the people within the book. the God of the book. Lord, help us, Lord, to understand your mercy and your grace and understand the idea of the love of God through the Old and New Testament lens. Help us to draw closer to you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.