Introduction: The Bible clearly states, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23) Death is the ration divvied out to those bent toward sin. Quite literally, what is given for sin is destruction. For the lost man, the final destruction is in Hell; but sin pays an immediate wage as well. Sin's immediate wage is the destruction of the life.
God's people in Jeremiah's day never really took God seriously. In fact, for nearly 500 years, they laughed in God's face over the wage of sin. Finally, God's judgment came, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people were taken captive by the Babylonians. They experienced the wages of sin in their lifetime. They did not fear God; they did not take Him seriously at His Word. Thus, the consequence of their sin was realized in their generation.
Jeremiah's final lament forgoes the acrostic form of the first four and becomes a great two-part prayer. The only connection it has with the other acrostics is that it has 22 verses corresponding with the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Jeremiah's last lament turns to prayer. The weeping prophet pleads with the Lord to remember His people's desperate condition and to restore them once again to Himself.
1. Jeremiah prays, "Remember us."
- Jeremiah reviews Jerusalem's pitiful condition after the Babylonian destruction.
- He asks the Lord to remember His people's suffering.* Remember the homeless, "Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens." (Lamentations 5:2)
* Remember the fatherless, "We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows." (Lamentations 5:3)
* Remember the hungry, "We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us...We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities...We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine." (Lamentations 5:4, 6-7, 9-10)
* Remember the persecuted, "Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest...Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand." (Lamentations 5:5&8)
* Remember the women, "They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah." (Lamentations 5:11)
* Remember the noble, "Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured." (Lamentations 5:12)
* Remember the old and young together, "They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick." (Lamentations 5:13,14)- Jeremiah also reminds the Lord of the people's great sadness, "The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning...Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." (Lamentations 5:15&18)
* Notice that their dancing had turned to mourning.
2. Jeremiah prays, "Restore us." - Lamentations 5:19-22
"Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation. Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us."
- Jeremiah states that the Lord "remainest for ever." This is a picture phrase in the Hebrew and pictures the Lord sitting and presiding as King forever. In all of this, Jeremiah still recognizes the supreme authority of God.
- Jeremiah pleads with God not to forget them and asks God not to forsake them.
- This is quite a prayer when you consider how many years Jeremiah prayed and preached concerning God's destruction of His people for their sins.
Conclusion: It will be interesting to note here that in the public reading of the Lamentation's 5 Hebrew text, verse 21 is always repeated after verse 22 so that the reading ends on a positive note. Thus, it is read,
"Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us. Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old."
The mighty prophet reveals his tender side throughout the entire book of Lamentations. In our previous study of the book of Jeremiah, God had told the prophet that even if Moses and Samuel prayed for these people's deliverance, God would not hear their prayers. God told him repeatedly not to pray for their deliverance. So, Jeremiah now asks the Lord to remember what has happened to His own people and to restore them once again.
I believe this principle is borne out in the New Testament in Paul's writings to the church at Corinth. In 1 Corinthians, a man had been taken in a particular moral sin and had been removed from the church membership. After this young man got right with the Lord, Paul encouraged the church family to receive him back lest he become discouraged through constant rejection, "So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him, and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow." (2 Corinthians 2:7)
God did not throw the baby out with the dirty diaper; rather, He took care of the problem and gave them hope for the future. Perhaps all of us could learn this lesson on compassion. Sure, judgment must come for wrong doing, but after repentance should come restoration.