Good morning. We're going to get started in adult Bible study. I have a handout. We're actually studying the book of Lamentations, and I hope this will be a good study. We introduced it a week ago, but we're going to dive in a little more into the first chapter of Lamentations. And, you know, I put some notes in here in the margin, things I had largely said last time about about grieving. Everybody has grief or sorrow, but the grieving process is what Lamentations is about, and that's a choice. It's not something everybody actually does. They can just be stuck in a place where they're experiencing the sorrow, but not working through it. So, some notes there in the margin from, you know, largely from last time. I'll ask a few questions, and we raised these last time, but they're good to keep in mind. How long should someone grieve a loss? What's the time parameter for going through a process of mourning or grieving a loss? What do you think? Yeah, that's a good point. talks about Abraham grieving his wife, and he seems to have set aside a specific purpose for doing that. In fact, you can look throughout the Old Testament. Joseph would do the same thing, you know, associated with the death of his father in Genesis. David would grieve the loss of the child he had with Bathsheba, the first one that just lived seven days. And he has this grieving period. There's something to that about being purposeful about a grieving, especially a severe loss like the loss of a loved one. And note number four on this list is something about that, kind of a practical exercise for people who are actually grieving the loss of a person. It could apply to other things, but it's a severe loss. It's called a grief inventory. A lot of therapists will recommend doing that, actually writing down a list of the things you've lost, how you feel about it. When you read Lamentations 1, that's what's happening. They're contemplating the loss because the opposite, that is when someone doesn't go through the grieving process, We want to stop the pain and we'll take efforts to do that. Maybe a medication. Some people will deal with their pain by spending money, by shopping. Someone I knew pretty well would deal with his pain by eating. I mean that's just, people do these things. But that's not grieving, that's trying to stop the pain. And grieving takes you through the pain and limitations begins with this idea of contemplating the full scope of the loss. And for us as an application, if you're going through it, Writing it out is a way that can be done, at least in part. So we talked about the first seven verses last time. We're going to start in verse 8 of Lamentations 1. And we talked a lot about structure and how these poems, the first four, Lamentations 1 through 4, are acrostics. Lamentations 5 is a prayer. Limitations all the whole book is kind of a chiasm where where chapter 3 is the centerpiece It's the focal point. We'll see that when we get there, but these are poems. They're highly organized Jeremiah would have spent some time putting them together in a certain way with a certain purpose. And remember, the acrostic purpose, we would think of it as going from A to Z, where every stanza starts with a different letter, A, B, C, D, except it's the Hebrew alphabet. it's to deal with this in a complete way and to bring it to a point of completion. And so we'll see that in limitations. One, with, because we're starting in verse eight, which is, you know, the, yeah, I should have said stanza eight, because really what it is, it's verse eight, but it's the eighth stanza, the eighth letter of the alphabet. They're going to acknowledge the cause of their pain. This doesn't apply every time we've got a loss. That is, it's not always the case that we had a role in bringing about the loss. But even if you didn't have a role bringing about the loss, you could have guilt related to the loss. Can you think of how that would happen? How you would have, you ought to be guilty if you stuck a knife in somebody's back, but then if you did that, you're probably not going to grieve the loss. How would you have guilt associated with the loss if it's not objectively your fault? Think about how that would happen. Survivor's guilt. Well, especially if somebody puts the blame on you. You know, right? That could bring about some guilt. The survivor's guilt's an interesting thing because you see that when you read any history of men that were, and usually men, I know it could be women too, but often at war, because there seems to be no rhyme or reason when you read their accounts for who died and who didn't. It wasn't like, I mean, it almost seems random and arbitrary, just how some are lost and some aren't. And you read that a lot, this heavy guilt associated with simply being the one that lived. And in other contexts you can have that. What if, what would be some other instances where you might have some guilt associated with somebody's passing, even though maybe objectively it's not your fault? Yes? and she passed away two months later, you know, there's a part of me that wonders if it's because she had to. No, it's a good example. So you make a decision that it's, you know, the place that can provide the best care at that point in somebody's life is in some kind of assisted living center. They die fairly shortly after that. You can have guilt associated with that. Miscarriage is another example of a loss where often there's guilt associated with it. Again, it's not your fault, but people start rolling in their head, could I have done something different? Did I do anything that contributed to this? And that's like with Karen's example, and I think with a lot of the examples we would have, we question if we could have done something different that would change the outcome. If I had been there like I should have been, But I wasn't. But if I could have been there, then maybe this wouldn't have happened. That kind of thing. And my point is, you can read this and think, well, this isn't me. You know, it's not that I disobey God's word and then these things happen to me. But if you've got guilt associated with it, that guilt has to be part of that grieving process, kind of working through that. Often, I mentioned this one a week ago, the last memory someone has of the person when they were alive was not a positive memory. It was an argument, a fight, something like that. And then they're gone, and then you have this guilt. So when you're looking at verses 8 through 11 here, sort of this little subsection, there is an application. And it doesn't have to be that your situation is exactly this. you know, although that's possible. That is, when we disobey God's Word, He usually lets us reap the consequences. And we like to trick ourselves into believing that the consequences don't impact other people. They almost always do. We just don't have the sense to see it. People will say, well, I can do this and that, and it's a victimless crime, it didn't hurt anybody else. And it's so obvious that it does. For one thing, when you have a situation where there's children involved, they're watching. And they blame themselves for your decisions often. I mean, it's just the children, you know. And I'm just saying, so there's often a cost. And so there are times when we disobey God's word and consequences are reaped and even impact people around us. So with that thought in mind, though, let's look at these stanzas. So I call this acknowledging the causes of the pain they're suffering from verses 8 through 11. Remember that Jerusalem was personified. So was Judah and so was Zion in the first seven verses. So Jerusalem continues to be discussed here as a city, but it's really, you know, the city's in ruins from what the Babylonian army did to it, though really the whole nation is in this point of mourning. Jerusalem has sinned grievously. You'll see four things that sin has caused. And I've noted these in my note number one. The four things sin has caused is shame, we'll see that in verse eight, defilement, so from a Jewish perspective, kind of being unclean. That seems foreign to us, although it's a New Testament concept as well. It's dealt with, I'll talk about it in a minute, and then I'll contextualize it for you. But defilement is something Christians can do themselves. desecration of the temple. They lost the temple. That's in verse 10. It's also in verse 4. And then famine. I mean the land, they just, they're trading their valuables for bread. And that's verse 11. So sin has caused these things and God has allowed it to happen. But this wasn't from something that they inadvertently did. They were told if you do this, you're going to have to be punished. And they put it in your way and now you're They're reaping exactly what God told them they would reap. And we do it all the time. The problem is we don't do a good job of connecting the dots between our behavior and our consequences. Other people have a PhD in doing that for us, but we're not very good at it. And just because you caused it doesn't mean that there's not a loss to be grieved. But within the pain, and we're going to see this in a minute, When you're in the grieving process, and you've got personal sin involved, God is using those consequences and the grieving process to bring you back to Him, to turn you around. That's what's going to happen. But yeah. He has not abandoned them, but they feel abandoned. Yeah. No, he's, he just, he has this, they, they, they feel the way they feel and they feel lonely, but that in itself is to try to turn them to God. We'll see it. The, the, the, the, the chapter ends with some prayers, very interesting prayer. We'll have to deal with that in a moment, but there's movement. And we'll see that. So, they've sinned grievously. And what you'll see as the result of that in this stanza is the shame. Therefore, she, the city of Jerusalem, personified, has become the object of scorn. Now, previously, the city was a beautiful city, glorious in many ways, and had the temple, which was an architectural marvel. Even the enemies couldn't help but but admit that the city was a sight to behold, and now it's an object of scorn. All who honored her in the past now despise her, reputation lost, for they have seen her nakedness." Now that's an Old Testament expression. I think it first comes up with regard to Noah. after the flood, but you'll see this in a number of places. Within the prophets, though, as we get closer in time of the Bible writings to when this happened, this was a punishment for prostitutes. Everything was, you know, everything is seen. Now there's no more secrets. And it's a metaphor, okay, for what's happened to Jerusalem. It is interesting, though, because when you read Ezekiel, The prophet, God speaking through him, calls her out as a prostitute, basically. How does that make any sense here? How is Jerusalem a prostitute who's now suffered the expected consequence of that? Yeah, right. It's like she's married to God, but now she's got all these allies, Egypt and others, the surrounding nations, and their gods as well, right? It's a picture of apostasy. So this is, when you get yourselves within the prophetic writings, it's almost expected, but that's the idea. It's profound, a shame as a consequence. And it's one of the things to grieve through. When we do, there's sins you can do where you can't undo them, and you can't undo the consequences, and there can be a lot of shame and stuff. associated with it. And I'm not saying that's bad. It's a lot of times it says it should be. But she herself groans and turns away. So shame is one of the consequences. And often the prophets like Isaiah, Isaiah 47 and Hosea chapter 2 are chapters that talk about nations, you know, metaphorically the nakedness being seen. So verse nine, the next consequence is defilement. See, if you're gonna apply this to yourself, though, and you know either you have some guilt or maybe you did do some sinful course of action that's caused the suffering, you gotta kinda connect the dots between the suffering and the conduct, and that's what Jeremiah's doing. Her uncleanness, the city's uncleanness, You can be a believer, especially in the Old Testament context, this is common language, a believer could become unclean. Her uncleanness stains her shirts, it's not a pretty metaphor, but you get the idea, and this uncleanness has a consequence. She never considered her end, in other words, she didn't see it coming. And if you go read the prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel who are preaching to them just in the decades ahead of the destruction of the city, they reject the message because they don't like it. Jeremiah gets tied up, beat up. Ezekiel, they don't listen to him. And then everything happens exactly the way the prophets said. They never considered their end. They didn't see it coming. Her downfall was astonishing. If you put it in the context of the other writers at the time, there's no reason to... How could she possibly be astonished? Well, to be fair, they didn't think that the temple would ever fall. You're right, they didn't think it would ever fall, but the point is God told them very specifically, especially through Ezekiel. I mean it spins over a dozen chapters saying this is fixing to happen and I'm saying it's dated You know Ezekiel dates his writings. He's starting out and it's just it's just you know, it's it's it's a handful of years in the future then he's preaching right up to like a couple of years before it's gonna happen and They don't believe it, right? and for simple reason right we often as Christians do this we decide to believe what we want and and we either ignore or twist around scriptures to fit what we want to do, because I want to do what I want to do, instead of being radically changed by God. And they did that, and then when it happened, they're like, you know, what's going on here? They had people to tickle their ears, which is Ezekiel chapter 13 is a long explanation for how the false teachers work. But we have them now. They're out there. And then the consequences happen. There was no one to comfort her. No one to comfort her. So this uncleanness, but let's talk about that for a second. In an Old Testament sense, why is a person become unclean? There's a lot of ways that can happen. But why does it matter? What's the significance of being unclean? So we have a believer who all of a sudden is unclean. There's some things they can't do now. But what specifically? It's hard for us to think in this way, but go back to Old Testament. Where's the center of worship for the Jewish people? Yeah, the tent or the tabernacle early on, and then once Solomon had constructed the temple, that's where you go to worship. Right. The temple is the place where you can make the sacrifices to go so that you could deal with your uncleanness. And that's Leviticus chapter four, purification sacrifices. Now, the point, though, of those, right, is that you're a believer, but you are outside of fellowship with God. And as long as you remain unclean, you can't go to the temple to worship, except for that purpose of those purification sacrifices. And I think in the New Testament, do we have an analog to that in the New Testament, where a Christian is, quote, unclean, if you want to use that word? What do you think? 1 John 1.9. 1 John 1.9 says that... Let's read it. Think about what it says. It's got some very peculiar language. It's got Old Testament language, because in God's economy, There's really not an old and a new in the sense in which we sometimes rigidly separate the first 75% of the Bible from the last 25%. But 1 John 1. The key verse of 1 John, and we did a study on 1 John, I guess, a year ago, but 1 John 5 is the key verse in the whole book, okay? It's the theological principle, I should say. It's the key theological principle, and that is that God is light, and there's absolutely no darkness in Him. So if God has absolutely no darkness in Him, and you want to have fellowship with God, this isn't about whether someone's a Christian, but you want to have fellowship with God, you can't approach Him with your sin. I mean, that's kind of the problem. It defiles you. And when you look at 1 John 1, 9, if we confess, that's less about verbalizing it and more about coming into agreement with God as to what our actions were that are sins. If we confess that He's faithful and righteous, Faithful, you can count on him. Righteous, because he's not winking at your sin. Jesus' blood has dealt with this. So faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. And what's that next word? cleanse us. That's the purification. This is, a lot of Christians struggle with this because they can't get past the idea that, wait a second, Jesus died for all my sins and now you're telling me to confess my sins and he's faithful, forgive us. Jesus in the model prayer says forgive us, right? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, that kind of thing. And it's largely, and this confusion has caused a lot of people to twist 1 John around and say it's not even for believers, it's evangelistic. They don't understand Leviticus. And it's a shame, as Christians, we don't spend enough time with Leviticus, but the blueprint's there. Leviticus 14 is about purification offerings to restore fellowship, to cleanse the defilement, the uncleanness, that now Jerusalem's experiencing. The other passage, the background passage for 1 John 1, 9 is John chapter 13. Jesus washed feet, and we get the idea that he demonstrated humility, and that's a part of it, because James and John and Peter and all of them, they were fighting among themselves, kind of like they thought Jesus didn't know what they were fighting about, but at that very moment in time, Jesus is getting arrested that night. He's dying the next day. But when Jesus isn't in sight of them, they're fighting about who's going to be more important in the kingdom. And so he teaches about humility. But remember what Peter said, when Jesus brings the basin of water, it was used in the Seder mill to clean your hands, but Jesus has now changed all that. And it's not used to clean your hands, it's used to clean your feet. And he brings it there. What does Peter say? You'll never wash my feet." Because he's viewing it from the standpoint of a servant and a master. He's still focused on who's first. And Jesus says, if I don't clean your feet, you'll have no part of me. Let's read it real quick. I'm quoting or alluding to it from memory, but let's just read this real quick, because this will help us understand. This will help us understand lamentations and not see it just as an Old Testament kind of concept here. But John 13, when Peter tells him he doesn't He says lord, are you going to wash my feet? Peter asked him jesus says what i'm doing to you You don't realize now, but afterwards you'll understand And they understood later when like john wrote first john You will never wash my feet peter said jesus says if I don't wash you you have no part with me Simon peter said lord not my feet, you know only but also my hands and my head. I mean watch the whole thing And Jesus says, one who has bathed. Now, the illusion is you took a bath before you went to the Seder mill, but on the walk, you've got some dirt on your feet. It's a metaphor. You're already clean in that sense because you took the bath. but the part on your feet needs to be washed away. One who is bathed doesn't need to wash anything except his feet, for he's completely clean. You're clean, but not all of you." This is a picture of this ritual cleaning. It's a metaphor for a picture of it, of this purification in our daily walk. So you have placed faith in Christ, you're eternally secure. You're adopted into the family, but you can't interrupt the relationship from the standpoint of fellowship Not from the standpoint of your eternal destiny by sin, and that's exactly what Jerusalem has done Jesus's blood deals with all of our sins and But there's a different aspect to the sin when we do it that's separate and apart from the fact that because of Jesus' work on a cross, God has not brought the charge against us, to use the language of Romans 3 and 4. Yet the sin there is there, and God doesn't just ignore it. It's where the confession comes in. It's where the cleansing. In the Old Testament, they would take a sacrifice, and it was a different sacrifice depending on who you were, it's all Leviticus 4, but they would take a sacrifice to deal with that to restore fellowship, and that's the key for us. And Jerusalem feels like, and they're verbalizing this, they've lost the fellowship. So that's important for us to see and not think of this uncleanness as just kind of an Old Testament thing. On the one hand, Jesus says, You're clean, you bathe. On the other hand, though, I got to wash your feet. And that goes beyond the humility lesson. And it's a picture of this maintaining of fellowship. The blood is still doing the washing, but there's an acknowledgment between us and God about the sins that we know about. And that's part of the walk. You're right. In the context of limitations, they feel hopeless because none are there to comfort her. And how can they deal with this? Well, if we poke a little further here, She says, the city in verse 9, look on my affliction for the enemy boasts. She calls out to God, Lord Yahweh, to look on her affliction. She'll say the same thing in verse 11, Lord look and see. No one else looks and cares, so she turns to God to look and to recognize her affliction. I think when we're hurt, there's a lot of things people can say that aren't very helpful. But to simply acknowledge our pain, I think, can be helpful. Does that make sense? Yes, it makes a lot of sense. It's one of the only things that the Disney people have ever gotten right. And now I'm trying to think of this show. It's the Pixar movie where it's got all the characters in the little girl's head. Inside Out. Inside Out, right? So the first one, Joy wants to, when this girl has suffered a loss in the show, Joy wants to sort of cheer up. But there's another character who just sits down and acknowledges the reality of her pain. So we make a mistake when people are mourning to start talking about silver linings and stuff when really being present sometimes is helpful and just acknowledging the pain. And now the city would just like God's acknowledgment of the pain. Verse 10, your adversary has seized all her precious belongings. That's the stuff in the temple. And probably their wealth in general. I mean they were looted. She has even seen the nations enter her sanctuary. Gentiles came where they weren't allowed within the actual temple complex itself. So this is a third consequence of sin. It brought shame. It brought uncleanness or defilement. It brought desecration of the temple. But think about this loss. It's sort of an ironic loss because you saw fit to engage in every kind of sin and worship all the other gods and do all these things that for a couple hundred years God was telling you not to do it anymore. Bad things would happen. And now you're feeling the sadness of the loss of the temple that you yourself had such disdain for by your conduct, not by your words. Does that make sense? I think you're right. It's a personal insult, but it reveals a spiritual problem. Your heart was polluted And you were okay with that. Now that the temple's polluted, you're feeling the loss. But it took that extraordinary measure, that insult, like you said, to bring these people, to bring them around. I mean, if God could have done it an easier way, I think he would have. Verse 11, all the people groan while they search for bread, so famine is there. The next little section, verses 12 to 17, talks about God's purposes. And I just want to focus us in on how, for them, God's using their working through the pain and also the consequences for what they did to turn them around. And there's a particular metaphor that's helpful. There's really four. I think four metaphors here in 12-17 for their suffering. God's going to relate, or really they're going to relate their suffering to fire, the net that a hunter would use to bag an animal, a hunter's net, a yoke that's put on an animal's neck so it can carry a load or pull a load, a yoke. Jesus would say my burden is light and my yoke is easy right because the Pharisees put up a heavy burden a yoke We know that that expression and then the wine press the wine press of the wrath of God These are the four metaphors between 12 and 17. I've noted them in note number two, but you just see this In verse 12 is this nothing to you all who pass by those uninvolved in the pain are called to look and see their affliction. And what I've suggested, and I have a little, it's the second hash line under note two, from Jerusalem's position inside the pain, no one else could possibly have suffered like they've suffered, because when you're inside the pain of something like this, you can't even imagine the possibility of it being worse. And it doesn't work on you. How could any loss, any suffering be any worse than this? And so they're inside the pain. And they call to those who would pass by. It's rhetorical. But those who would pass by to look and see this, is there any pain like mine? The answer is no. From being inside the pain, this is as bad as it gets. Probably no one who passes by has had this kind of pain. That's the feeling. This is the honesty and the truth of the emotion that the city and the people feel. Look at the acknowledgement, though, which the Lord made me suffer, verse 12, which the Lord made me suffer. We'll see that a little later. It's going to come back up. But at least, you know, they view it as God brought this. Now, they're going to take some responsibility in this chapter, but they view it as God brought this. On the day of his burning anger, when we studied Zechariah, I talked a lot about the day of the Lord. There was a day of the Lord when God allowed Babylon to take Jerusalem. There's a coming day of the Lord when all of the enemies of God will be dealt with. They're going to refer to that in a minute because they're going to pray for God to hasten that day to deal with their enemies. But there was this day of his burning anger when God had allowed them to take Jerusalem. So he, God, in verse 12, sent fire from on high that reminds us of like Sodom and Gomorrah stuff. It's a metaphor. The fire went into my bones, the bones of the city, right? But that's the most severe pain you can have when it's all the way down to the bone. And that's what the city has. And it came from the fire from God. So that's your first metaphor that gives you a poetic view of the intensity. You know, the poem's somewhat repetitive here, but it's intensified. The verbiage is, and this is part of the cycle, as you continue to contemplate the pain. He spread a net, verse 13, so that's another metaphor, like a net for hunting somebody. He spread a net for my feet, but also, and here's probably the key in this section, and turned me back. On the one hand, God sent fire and he sent a net. On the other hand, you were headed off the end of an abyss and he turns you back. And that's kind of the picture that you start to see realized here, is that there's a purpose, and that's why I've called note number two, seeing God's purposes in these verses. There is a purpose in his allowing these things to happen, and even indeed directing these things to happen. Verse 14 says, my transgressions have been formed into a yoke, The yoke is put around the animal's neck and it's used to carry the burden. It forces all the weight, all the pressure into that one point where that yoke is at. And it just sort of focalizes it. And that's the view here. Like I asked the question, how is grief like a yoke? It's all just so magnified and focused. And that's what's happening here. It's into a yoke fastened together by his hand. God's the one that put the yoke on their neck, as it were. They've been placed on my neck. The Lord has broken my strength. He's handed me over to those I can't withstand. So this yoke is the metaphor. Verse 15 has yet another metaphor, which is the winepress. The Lord has, and I'm not reading every verse, but the Lord has trampled the virgin daughter, Judah, like grapes in a winepress. That's a common Old Testament language, and we see it prominent again in the book of Revelation. where it talks about, you know, God, you can go to a winery and one of the things that people can do, right, and some of you probably have done it, is take your shoes off and stomp the grapes. That's what God's doing. It's the fierceness of the wine press of God. Sometimes there'll be a focus on the cup, the cup of wrath that you're going to, you're not going to drink one glass and say, no more things. You're going to drink it until you are fully drunk. And it's a metaphor for the coming judgment of, of God. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And later in revelation, a couple of places that uses it. Um, I, um, I noted it here, Revelation, this is my Bible, so I write on notes in it, Revelation 14, Revelation 19, Joel chapter three, Jeremiah chapter six, Isaiah, I mean, it's in a lot of places. Isaiah 63 is my favorite passage for this, but in that passage, it's Jesus coming with his, it's metaphorically, but with his garment stained with the blood, of dealing with Israel's enemies in the period of time we call the Tribulation. So it's a common picture, the winepress of God's wrath. you'll see there's none to comfort her, in verse 16, but also see that she weeps and there's a release of the emotion and that's healthy, right? Because to be the stoic isn't gonna be helpful. But there's none to comfort her, and verse 17 repeats that. In fact, it's a common phrase throughout chapter one, no one to comfort her. If no human being can bring comfort, And that's often the case when you're in this situation, especially early on. There's nothing anyone else can do to fix it. They can't no one can stop the pain, but it's pushing them to turn around toward God And it's where this where this first poem will lead us is at least to some level of prayer by the time you get to chapter 5 the whole thing's a prayer and and You know from where does your help come? All right, the psalmist talks about that my help comes from the Lord That's where they'll they'll turn because his mercies chapter 3 will tell us are new every morning. That's where they're being turned to because there's no person that can bring the comfort. I do think, you know, when people are mourning, we may be able to help in some way, but often we just, we maybe think we can do more than we can. You can't cheer people up, at least out of deep losses, but there's some things you can do. We talked about that earlier. The last section, 18 to 22, this is their confessions. This reaches a turning point. It's one thing to recognize God did this to you, Jonah did that in Jonah chapter 2. God's the one that got me into the water and into the fish. Jonah never, you know, repents in the whole book. He never admits he's done a thing wrong. That's what the whole book's about. Are you as a nation, United States of America, going to be like Jonah and talk the talk but never actually turn to God? And so it's easy to do that and you can get stuck in that place. And if you have guilt, you can get stuck in the anger and get stuck in reliving the moment and what you could have done different. You could spend a lifetime dwelling on that moment and how you might have done something differently or you can go through this process. And ultimately, it brings you to turn to God, and in their case, to confess. And there's two confessions. You'll see it here in verse 18 and verse 20, and two prayers. And I just want you to focus in. You'll see these sort of confessions. It's right there in verse 18, the Lord is just. There's nothing unjust, unfair about what they've witnessed, about what's happened. This is acknowledging When you think about 1 John 1, 9, it's kind of the same thing. Our sins cause some problems for us. Are we gonna say that God was unjust? Or are we gonna recognize that God, you know, you're just. Because I, it switched to first person, by the way. It actually did that earlier, and I should have mentioned that. There's an intensification starting in that last section of verse 12, where it goes to, like you see in verse 14, my. It becomes more personal. It's more first person. I have rebelled against his command, not Jeremiah, but the city speaking personified. I have rebelled against God's word. So God is just what happened to us is what he told us would happen. Listen, all you people look at my pain. This is repetitive. You know, my the young girls and the young men are gone. Grieving doesn't tell the story once. Because when you're grieving a severe loss, that story doesn't quickly become an old story that everybody's heard. For you, it's always a new story. It's always today. It's always present. That's what makes it challenging. And so she tells the story again. Her lovers, in verse 19, that's the allies that used to be her friends, they've betrayed her. The priests, the elders, have left the city searching for food. And she calls out to God another confession, which is, this is more of a prayer, really, in verse 20, for God to witness her suffering, which she's done earlier. And the idea is that God would witness it and then maybe do something about it. Lord, see how I'm in distress, verse 20. I'm churning within this internal turmoil. My heart is broken, but also the admission, I've been very rebellious. Outside, the sword takes the children. Inside, there's death. This is the city talking. There's the physical pain, the physical losses, and there's the internal losses, which is this feeling of just this death. But look at this last. This is where we'll end up, which is with this prayer. She again says there's no one to comfort her, verse 21. All my enemies have heard of my misfortune. They're glad that you, God, have caused it. The enemies are having a celebration. Go look at videos from 9-11. It's some of the people that we're so concerned about now and see what they were doing on 9-11 People of peace that we're giving lots of money to We're dancing in the streets. That's what was happening. Okay, they were celebrating the pain and the suffering and so here's the prayer and Bring on the day, I mentioned the day earlier, there was a day of the Lord in 586 when the city fell. Bring on the day you've announced. And we're not gonna go through all the prophets, but it's throughout Zechariah. It's the theme of the book of Zephaniah, which is one of those short little minor prophets. You go through there and highlight every time you see the day of the Lord. Go to Joel, day of the Lord. Amos is prominent about the day of the Lord. This prayer is that the day you've announced, this day of the Lord, this final sort of dealing with God's enemies would come. So that they may become like me. God, go get them. You know, David's got some prayers in the Psalms that God would crush his enemies. So here's, and verse 22 kind of brings that to a close. Let their wickedness come before you. Go look at their wickedness and do to them what you did to me. And that's what he says deal with them as you've dealt with me. Here's my question as we think about this Jesus said in Matthew 5 Love your enemies and yet if I read the Psalms and I read Lamentations 1 There's a prayer in this case being led by none other than presumably a prophet of God named Jeremiah That God would take out their enemies. What do we do with that? I Leave vengeance to God and not take vengeance ourselves. And that was Jesus talked about turning the other cheek. We don't have to retaliate. Are there different kinds of enemies? I mean, in other words, you can have a personal enemy in kind of a personal sense, for whatever reason, they don't like you, you don't like them. We've all got those people. Don't rejoice when I take action against your enemies. That's right. And so where do we fit in this kind of prayer? That's it. The attack is on God. That is, it's a strange thing. God raised the Babylonians. He makes that clear in the book of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, that he raised them up, put them in power. Romans 9, he says he raised up the Pharaoh that was alive during the time of the Exodus. You know, God put him in power. That's the point. And then God punished him later for some of the things he did. You can have an enemy that's a personal enemy, and you've got your personal grievance. And then you can have an enemy that they're against you primarily because of your faith. They're the persecutors who are ultimately against God and His church. I wonder if the prayer could be different for the one than the other. Not that for both you would pray hopefully for change, for conversions, that kind of thing, but maybe there's a difference. That's kind of my closing thought about this is that, because I would tell you a common view is just in the New Testament it's different. We would never pray for God to deal with our enemies. I don't think it's changed, but I think we want to be monolithic and put all the enemies together in one basket. There's a difference between a personal grievance sort of enemy, y'all just don't get along, right? And then there's the enemies that are really enemies of God, and you've been caught up in their war with God. And there may be a difference there where it makes sense, because the day of the Lord that they're praying about isn't a day of wrath poured out on the enemies of Israel, but of God and His program. And it's clear that everybody who's joined to the Lord in that day will survive it, but the others are going to face that punishment.