Jeremiah saw it all coming and there was nothing he could do about it. When he first became a prophet Josiah was king in Jerusalem. Josiah was one of the good kings. He’s the guy who told the priests to go and clean up the temple because it was in disuse and disarray and while they were doing that they found the book of the Law of the Lord, the books of Moses, which had been so forgotten that nobody could remember having read them. And Josiah had his secretary read it and then he tore his robes in grief over how far they had strayed from God. And then he went to work setting things right. He did so much that it says of him in 2 Kings 23 “Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, according to all the Law of Moses, and after him no one like him arose.”
Wouldn’t we all like to be ruled by people like that? Good rulers are rare and godly rulers are even rarer. But it was during this good and godly ruler Josiah’s rule that Jeremiah was called to be God’s prophet. And the message Jeremiah was called to deliver was not a good one. Jeremiah was called to be God’s prophet in Jerusalem and to witness Jerusalem’s fall. The beginning of the end was when Josiah died. He died in battle at only 39 years old. He had ruled for 31 years, ever since he was eight years old.
Josiah’s sons were not like their father. The middle east was falling into war. Before too long the land of Judah was in total ruin. Jerusalem was besieged and conquered. Many people were deported and taken as captives. A puppet government was installed. And still Jeremiah warned, “Repent of your sins and turn to God. If you do not this city will be utterly destroyed.”
He saw what was coming, but they didn’t listen. Instead, they decided to take their fate in their own hands and rebel against Babylon. And so Babylon came back and laid siege to the city until the conditions there were so bad that you can’t even imagine. It was during this time that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. The book is a short book, a series of five poems. I highly recommend reading the whole thing beginning to end. It won’t take you long at all. But that doesn’t make it an easy read. It’s difficult to read because it’s just so sad. “How lonely the city sits, which once was full of people!” That’s how it begins. Jeremiah talks about weeping nonstop over the state of Jerusalem. He talks about how their allies have turned against them. Speaking for the city he says, “Outside, the sword takes away my children. Inside, there is death. … In the streets young and old lie dead on the ground.”
Jeremiah’s anguish overflows in this book. What a hopeless situation! He saw it all coming. He warned them about it. But he couldn’t force them to listen and he couldn’t stop the disaster from falling down on them. And he couldn’t escape from it either. There was nowhere to go. He suffered it all right along with them. Reading it you feel for him. You feel for the people around him, even though they’re all long gone. And maybe you think about some of the terrible conditions and war zones in the world today where people are living in absolutely horrible conditions.
But Jeremiah’s book isn’t really about the worst extremes of the human experience. It’s about how, in the worst extremes, we should think about God. And that’s something that’s extremely important for all of us to consider, because I might never be in a city under siege. I might never live through famine and squalor and death brought on by war at my doorstep. But there might be other things I live through, that at least to my perspective, seem about as bad as they can get. And it’s then that I need to know the answer to the question: Where is God when all hope is lost?
One of the things that is very clear in Jeremiah’s book is that this wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t as if God had accidentally left the stove on and now the pot was boiling over. The problem here was not an absent God, and it was not an incapable God. What they were seeing was God’s wrath that comes as a result of sin.
Jeremiah doesn’t describe this like karmic justice. In fact, many of the people who were suffering the most were the ones we might say deserved it least. The children were starving to death in their mother’s laps. The virgins and young men were enslaved or killed by the sword. They weren’t the ones who had led the people in many acts of rebellion against God. Why should they suffer? Why should Jeremiah suffer, when he had spent all his life proclaiming God’s truth to a stubborn people?
And why in chapter 3 of Lamentations does Jeremiah write
22By the mercies of the Lord we are not consumed, for his compassions do not fail.
23They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
24My soul says, “The Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will hope in him.”
25The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
26It is good to hope quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Jeremiah’s words on their own here are beautiful. They’re the sort of words that you could imagine people using today as an inspirational phrase on a shirt or as a theme for a retreat. But in the context in the middle of Lamentations they’re almost jarring. Look around you, Jeremiah. Is this what you call compassion? Is this what you call great faithfulness?
But the truth is that while these words would be wonderful words to meditate on while relaxing in a hammock beside a peaceful lake, they’re no less beautiful, perhaps even more strikingly beautiful, in the midst of the horror of a hopeless city under siege. Because it’s in precisely that moment when we truly realize that the Lord is my portion. I will hope in him, because I cannot put my hope in anything else. Jeremiah could not put his hope in his food. He was barely keeping from starving. He could not put it in his friends. He had none. He could not put it in the failed leaders of his nation. He could not put it in the city that would soon be utterly destroyed. He could not put it in himself because he had no way of knowing if he would live or die. And so he put his hope in the Lord.
This isn’t a hope of desperation that comes only after all other hopes are exhausted. And it is not a delusional opiate of the masses. It’s a sure hope that permeates all parts of life, good and bad, and is based on the Lord – on his compassion, on his faithfulness, and on his goodness.
This is certainly something that can be a struggle for us today. “God is faithful and merciful and good, but what could possibly be good about this?,” we ask. The problem is that we don’t always know what “good” really is. We define good as being happy and carefree and without any pain. We define good as being successful in everything we want.
But at the same time, some part of us recognizes that isn’t really what good is. If a child makes demands and throws tantrums in a store and the child’s parent’s give in to everything, that’s not good. If what makes me happy is living an unhealthy lifestyle that destroys my body and grieves those around me, that’s not good either. If success for me means means exerting my will over others, it certainly can’t be good for everyone. We all know that good things often take effort. Good things often come with struggle, and discipline, and pain.
Jeremiah says that too. He says, “It is good for a man that he bears a yoke early in his life.” To be sure, there’s practical wisdom here. There’s a saying that hard times make strong men. But this is really about the soul. By showing us the faultiness of our earthly hopes, God teaches us to hope in him. By crushing our will he teaches us to love his will. By the cross he brings us to salvation.
Jairus didn’t have much hope when he came to Jesus. He wasn’t living through a war. He wasn’t watching the end of his city. But with his daughter sick and near death he and his wife must have felt like there was no hope left. None except for Jesus. And what little hope there was in a natural recovery ended completely as they were on the way and the messengers met them saying, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher anymore?” But Jesus did not abandon him. “Don’t be afraid. Only believe.” And he went to Jairus’ house and he raised that girl from the dead and gave her back to her amazed parents.
“The Lord is my portion. Therefore, I will hope in him.” The hope that we have in Jesus is a hope that goes beyond all hopelessness. It is a hope that goes beyond even death. As Jeremiah watched his beloved city dying he knew that God’s love for that city was greater than his could ever be. God was the one who had promised to give his own Son over to death for the sake of their sins and the sins of their fathers. He was the one who promised not peace on earth, not escape from hardship and pain and suffering, but eternal salvation, and perfect peace with God.
And that’s the hope that you have too. In the darkest and most hopeless of times, you have the sure and certain hope of Jesus. You have the one who forgives your sins. You have the one who gave his life for you on the cross and who lives and rules eternally. You have the one who has sealed you to himself in baptism and who gives you for saving food his own body and blood.
A time will come for each and every one of us when there is truly no hope left for this life. The wages of sin is death. Death might come suddenly and unexpectedly, or it might come slowly and agonizingly. But on that day when you have no earthly hope, no tomorrow left in this world the Lord is your portion. Put your hope in him. What is death to him who conquered death, who conquered it for you? He will raise you again on the last day, just as he did with the daughter of Jairus. He will seat you with him in his heavenly kingdom, where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
Do not put your hope in this life, whether this life is filled with many pleasures or with many lamentations of evil. Put your hope in the Lord. Wait patiently for his salvation. His compassions do not fail. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson