Lamentations 3 as Preached by Lee Tankersley

Approaching God In Our Pain A few years into her marriage, she really decided she was going to seek to honor the Lord. She knew she shouldn’t have married an unbeliever, but she was turning her life around. She read all the right books, began praying for him, and she was certain he was going to change. Her marriage was going to be another glorious story to be told. But he didn’t change. Instead he was unfaithful and abusive. They divorced shortly thereafter. Full of bitterness and anger against the Lord, she hasn’t stepped foot inside a church since. They did everything right. Found someone who seemed godly. Kept themselves pure. Remained virgins until their wedding night. And shortly, thereafter, got the glorious news that she was pregnant. They were going to be parents. But late in the pregnancy something went wrong. Something was wrong with their baby. Delivery was shortly followed by standing at a graveside, laying their child in the ground. Through their tears and confusion, they left the church—and the Lord. These aren’t made-up stories. I wish they were. They’re people I know (or have known) well. And you and I both know that these stories—even if we limited ourselves to individuals we personally know—could be multiplied. We could fill the rest of the day telling them. And it’s stories like these that draw me so deeply to a book like Lamentations. Because when we’re in the midst of suffering, disappointment, and hardship (even if it is caused by our own sin), we are at a vulnerable place. And because so much of life is marked by suffering, disappointment, and hardship, we find ourselves at such vulnerable places often. But I also believe that these vulnerable moments are also points in our lives when we can know fellowship with our Lord at a level of great depth. There’s a certain intimacy to be found before the Lord in suffering that is simply hard to duplicate in times of ease and blessing. There’s a reason why Paul can speak in Philippians 3:10 of knowing Christ and sharing in his sufferings in the same verse. Hardship often becomes the means by which we find ourselves knowing God more deeply than we otherwise would. So what marks the difference then between walking away from the Lord and growing in knowledge of him in those moments? I think one key is learning to come to the Lord in lament, as I noted last week. If you don’t have a means of approaching the Lord in the midst of your pain, then you’ll (at best) ignore the Lord in your pain or (at worst) run from him and grow bitter against him. And this is one reason why the Lord gave us the book of Lamentations. Written by the prophet Jeremiah (most likely) after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, the prophet writes these poems as he’s immersed in his pain, in the midst of hardship, and full of lament. But—and this is key—he runs toward (not away from) the Lord. We see, for example, in our text this morning how Jeremiah says to the Lord, “You have seen the wrong done to me, O LORD; judge my cause” (v. 59). You can read the rest of the transcript here: https://cccjackson.org/sermons/lamentations-3-approaching-god-in-our-pain