Lamentations 4-5 as Preached by Lee Tankersley

Lessons in Lament In 2011 Crossway published a little booklet by John Piper titled, Don’t Waste Your Cancer. He originally wrote the book after being diagnosed of prostate cancer and prior to having successful surgery to remove it. Obviously the title of the booklet is meant to be shocking. We typically think of not wasting good opportunities that come along in life, and we don’t often think of cancer as some glorious opportunity that doesn’t need to be wasted. But at the same time, we definitely know what Piper is getting at, don’t we? After all, it’s not lost on any of us that times of disappointment, pain, and suffering are almost always times when we learn and grow more than those times when we find ourselves in ease and blessing. But before we look more deeply at these last two poems of lament and the lessons we learn in them, let me remind you again of the context of the book so that we are re-oriented to its setting. These five poems of lament are written most likely by the prophet Jeremiah after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The Babylonians laid siege to the city, preventing anyone from going in out, and so the people started to starve. It was a terrible situation, and then after about eighteen months of that siege, the Babylonians broke through the wall, killed many, took many away into exile, destroyed and burned every major building, and left the city of Jerusalem as a smoldering pile of ruins. And Jeremiah was witness to all of this, even prophesying for years prior to Zedekiah, king of Judah, not to rebel against the Babylonians lest this happen. But he rebelled against Jeremiah’s words, just as the people as a whole had been rebelling against God’s Word for years. And so the Bible makes clear that these terrible events were nothing less than the Lord’s judgment against his rebellious people. Jeremiah, then, writes these five poems of lament in response to seeing the judgment of God against Jerusalem, and today we look at his last two poems—Lamentations 4-5. What lessons do we then learn as we eavesdrop in on Jeremiah’s suffering and lament before the Lord during this time of great travesty? First, we see that suffering can reveal our misplaced hopes and idols. You can read the rest of the manuscript here: https://cccjackson.org/sermons/lamentations-4-5-lessons-in-lament