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Summary
We are reminded that suffering and grief are real—and that God never calls us to deny them. Through Lamentations 3, we are walked through Jeremiah’s journey from utter despair to renewed hope, tracing how he moved from mourning the destruction of Jerusalem to declaring God’s faithfulness. We are called to follow that same path: remembering God’s character, rehearsing His truth, and responding with waiting, seeking, and resting in Him.
Key Lessons:
- God never calls us to deny our suffering—our emotions are real, God-given, and meant to be brought honestly before Him, not hidden behind spiritual clichés.
- Tragedy and grief can distort our view of God, making Him seem like a predator or enemy rather than a loving Father—but this distortion does not reflect reality.
- Jeremiah’s path out of despair began with *remembering* God’s character, then *rehearsing* His truth aloud (even preaching it to himself), and finally *responding* through waiting, seeking, and resting in God.
- God’s covenant love never ceases—His compassions are new every morning—and even when circumstances seem to make His promises impossible, He remains a promise-keeping, covenant-keeping God.
Application: We are called to meditate on Scripture and dwell on God’s character daily—not just in moments of crisis—so that when suffering comes, we are already ready to remember, rehearse, and respond in faith rather than despair.
Discussion Questions:
- Have you ever hidden your suffering behind phrases like ‘I’m too blessed to be stressed’? What would it look like to be more transparent with God and other believers about what you are truly going through?
- Can you recall a time when grief or tragedy distorted how you saw God? What helped you recover a clearer picture of who He is?
- Of the three responses Jeremiah models—waiting, seeking, and resting—which is hardest for you personally, and what is one practical step you can take to grow in that area?
Scripture Focus: Lamentations 3 is the central passage, showing Jeremiah’s movement from despair (vv. 1–20) to hope (vv. 21–26) through remembering God’s character and His mercies that are new every morning. Supporting passages include Psalm 42:3, Psalm 3:1–2, Joshua 1:8, Philippians 4:8, Isaiah 40:30–31, Psalm 37:7, and Psalm 73:26.
Outline
- Introduction
- Historical Background: The Fall of Jerusalem
- Understanding Lamentations
- God Never Calls Us to Deny Our Suffering
- Grief Can Distort Our View of God
- Three Things Jeremiah Does to Escape Despair
- First: Remember God’s Character
- Preparing to Remember: Meditating on Scripture
- Guarding What We Consume
- Second: Rehearse God’s Truth
- Third: Respond in Faith
- Conclusion: Stay Ready
Introduction
Amen. Well, good morning again.
I definitely appreciate those songs in light of the passage that we’ll be looking at. Thank you, Pastor Gray again, and the worship team. This passage in Lamentations 3 is actually a difficult one, I believe, to preach through and to read through because of some of the language that Jeremiah uses, some of the imagery that he uses to capture what he’s going through, what he’s dealing with, and even the perspective that he shares.
But before we get to that, I think it’s good for us to have an understanding of what was going on when he wrote the book. What was he dealing with? What was the nation dealing with? So we’re going to spend a couple minutes in Second Kings 25. You can turn there to kind of follow along. I’m just going to give a summary of it.
And while you’re turning to 2 Kings 25, I’m going to have a word of prayer. Our eternal and everlasting God, we just want to thank you right now for your wisdom. We thank you, God, for the church. We thank you for how you’ve called us out of darkness into your kingdom.
We thank you for how you’ve called us from every corner of the world to come together to be your body, to be your bride. I pray, God, that as we open your word today, that you would speak to us, that you would use me as your vessel, that we all would be drawn closer to you. We all would better understand you and better respond to what happens throughout our lives.
I pray, God, that you would be with us right now and allow us to hear your word and to hear you speaking. In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen.
Historical Background: The Fall of Jerusalem
So 2 Kings 25, what you have happening there is Babylon laying siege to Judah, to the southern kingdom of Israel. The siege lasts for two years and you can kind of walk through and see that kind of early on.
You start off in the ninth year of the king and then we move to the 11th year of the king. There was a siege in verse two it says until the 11th year. So we see for two years Jerusalem in particular, the capital city was under siege, meaning that the foreign army had come and surrounded the city.
So nothing could go in and nothing could come out. Meaning people couldn’t come out either.
So anything that they couldn’t grow there, anything that they had to trade, anything that they had to import could not make it to them. Anything that they had to do, even to build, to get supplies to other parts of the land or other parts of the kingdom couldn’t happen because this army had them surrounded.
The Siege and Its Devastation
So at the end of the two years there was a severe famine. The Bible tells us there was no food left in the city.
King Zedekiah and his army, all the men who were there to protect everyone, they get a great idea and they just run. They just leave everybody behind essentially and they say they’re going to escape. You have to assume that they were the most fit as well. So if anybody’s going to run for freedom, it’s going to be them over some of the women who are there caring for the children, some of the very little ones, the elderly.
They said, “Okay, we can make a break for it.” But that didn’t work because the whole city is surrounded. Where are you going?
So they get captured, they’re overtaken, and this army, many of them are destroyed. The king is captured and then in one of the most horrific and brutal acts that we would read about, he has to stand and watch his sons be put to death. And right after they fall dead, they put his eyes out.
So the very last image that he saw in his life were his sons being slain right before him and him being powerless to do anything about it.
Then he’s put in chains and taken to Babylon to be a prisoner. Then the entire city is burned down including the temple. Many of the people are killed and most of the ones who survive are taken into captivity. They’re taken to Babylon and the king of Babylon leaves the very poor behind so that they can take care of the land.
They didn’t want the land to just stay a wasteland, but if anything is going to grow, they wanted them to till the land. But any of the ones who had nobility, any of the ones who had education, who had promise, they took them. And if you’re familiar with the story of Daniel, the book of Daniel, this is how Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego made it over to Babylon.
“Any of the ones who had education, who had promise—they took them.”
So the Babylonians appoint a governor. But then he gets killed by some rebels. And all of this is happening throughout the chapter.
A group of survivors decide we’re not going to make it here. It’s better for us to run. At least the city’s not surrounded this time. But they run and they go to Egypt.
Now, Jeremiah decides to go with them. He didn’t agree that they should leave Jerusalem, but he knew they would need a prophet. They would need someone to still be speaking to them the words of God. So Jeremiah goes with them down to Egypt to try to care for them.
Exile, Displacement, and the Crisis of Faith
In the middle of this running and hiding and hoping that Egypt will protect them against Babylon, you have these people who are there. Then these questions naturally start to arise.
One would be about the promises made. Well, more than one because there was a promise that was made to David that he would always have someone on the throne. One of his descendants, someone from the house of David would always sit on the throne forever. Well, how can someone from the house of David sit on the throne forever when the throne itself has been burned down?
When the temple has been burned down, how are any of the promises that were made to Abraham going to still hold up if the land has been burned? And remember about 200 years earlier, the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians.
So now it’s like we’re totally wiped out. They have nothing there and they’re looking and saying, “What about these promises? Are we even God’s chosen people? Because these nations have come and destroyed us pretty easily.”
Everyone that would have been serving God is gone. The temple is gone.
“Everyone that would have been serving God is gone. The temple is gone. What do we do?”
And so as this is happening, Jeremiah writes these lamentations.
Understanding Lamentations
And lamentations are described or defined as passionate expressions of grief, sorrow, or mourning.
These lamentations are this woeful crying out. The first time I ever heard the word lamentations, it wasn’t in the most holy place. It was actually watching a movie called Conan the Barbarian. That’s what it was. It was the first Conan movie.
But they asked him what is best in life, and then he says this thing about destroying your enemies. He said, “Destroy your enemies and hear the lamentations of their women.” That was the thing. I cannot do it with an Arnold voice, but that was what he said. As a warrior, the thing I want to hear most in life are the women screaming these lamentations because their husbands and sons have been destroyed in battle. That’s what I want.
They were training him and grooming him to be just this kind of machine only for destruction. That was the thought. So I heard that, and that’s what I always think of—just the anguish and the crying out from your soul that when something happens that you can’t bear, you can’t fix, you can’t do anything about.
“The anguish and the crying out from your soul when something happens that you can’t bear, you can’t fix, you can’t do anything about.”
Many of the people were killed. The ones that weren’t were taken captive, and the ones that didn’t seem to provide value to the foreign army were left there to take care of a land that just got burned down.
This is where we get our lamentations from.
So as we go, if you want to read all the details, you can look through all of 2 Kings 25. But as we turn to the book of Lamentations, I want us to walk through very quickly chapters one and two to understand what’s happening.
Now the book of Lamentations is a collection of poems. Each chapter is a poem. They use each verse starting with a subsequent letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So for us, you would say kind of like A is for apple, B is for banana. It’s kind of like that. The poems go down with each verse happening like that.
Our chapter we’re going to be looking at has 66 verses. So he repeats it three times. He describes this in these poems, these lamentations. Everything he’s saying is in this kind of poetic, musical form.
Chapters 1 and 2: Surveying the Suffering
In chapter one he looks at a couple of things. He looks at Jerusalem’s suffering from his point of view and also from Jerusalem’s point of view.
The couple of verses we look at is verse 5. Lamentations 1:5 says, “Her adversaries have become her masters. Her enemies prosper for the Lord has caused her grief because of the multitude of her transgressions. Her little ones have gone away as captives before the adversary.”
In Jeremiah 40:3, he says, “And the Lord has brought it on and done just as he promised because you people sinned against the Lord and did not listen to his voice. Therefore, this thing has happened to you.”
There was an understanding that this was God’s punishment because they had disobeyed God continually. We’ll see that as a theme that gets mentioned often and then gets forgotten, or at least gets put aside and then gets picked up again. That’s kind of important for how we look through this.
Verse 10 says, “The adversary has stretched out his hand over all her precious things. For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, the ones whom you commanded that they should not enter into your congregation.”
Not only did these foreigners who were banned from worshiping with Israel enter the land, but now they actually entered the temple, took out the things that were valuable, and then destroyed the rest. He kind of points that out here to say, “Look, these people weren’t even to be part of our worship community, but now you sent them to come and destroy the very house of worship that originally they weren’t even supposed to be in, but now God sent them into it to be weapons of destruction.”
Verse 16 says, “For these things I weep. My eyes run down with water because far from me is a comforter, one who restores my soul. My children are desolate because the enemy has prevailed.”
Verse 18 says, “The Lord is righteous for I have rebelled against his command.” So even in the middle of this judgment, even in the middle of the land being destroyed and him having to flee to another land where people were Gentiles that were seen as ungodly, he says, “The Lord is righteous for I have rebelled against his command.”
This brought me back to when I was a young kid. We had to get tested for something called scoliosis, which is a kind of curvature of the spine, an excess curvature of the spine. In order to do that, as little children, you’d have to take your shirt off and the nurse would look at your spine and say, “Okay, you look good,” or you’d have to go get further testing.
When they took off my shirt, the nurse looked at my back and she noticed some other things there. She’s like, “Oh, what happened? Why are those marks on your back?” Instead of responding with what happened for me to get the marks on my back, I was like, “Oh, I don’t remember what it was.” I didn’t do my homework or there was something that I did that was bad, and then I got disciplined by my father. She saw the marks of the correction that I received on my back.
Back then we had an agency called DFCS. I think it’s a different name now, but literally I had to get interviewed by them. They had to come to the house and everything. I remember being so shocked because I’m like, but I did it.
In my mind, this was deserved. This is just what happens in life. I did something wrong. The punishment was explained ahead of time. If you do this thing, this is what will happen. I did it and then the thing that was promised happened.
So I’m like, what are you talking to my parent for? What are you asking? Why are you asking me if my parents feed me and how often do I bathe and all of these things? They literally came to the house looking in the cupboards and everything.
I have to ask my parents—I know they probably remember that—but I have to ask them if they remember even saying, “Well, if you think you can do better, you’re telling us we can’t discipline them that way. We’ll pack his bags right now and send them with you.” That was the shock for me.
But all the while in my mind, I’m defending you when you offer to give me away. But all in my mind was they didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one who did something wrong. So why are we looking bad at them? This is what Jeremiah does here. He says the Lord is righteous.
We earn this. We deserve this. In fact, we probably deserve much worse than this. We deserve to be completely annihilated. But God even had mercy in the way that we were judged even now.
“The Lord is righteous. We earned this. We deserve this.”
So we move on to chapter two. But we see the despair in the prophet/poet.
We just see two things. I’m not going to read a lot here because I want us to get into our text. The first 10 verses show the destruction from God’s perspective.
Matter of fact, if you have captions and headers in your Bible, it may even say something like God’s anger or the Lord’s anger. That’s what he’s really expressing. God’s anger in doing this comes from God’s perspective in the first 10 verses, and then from 11 through 19, you see either Jeremiah or Jerusalem’s perspective. He kind of goes back and forth there, but still just talking about this destruction that overtook them almost suddenly.
While the siege was two years, once they decided they were going to run, everything just happened almost instantly. They went from being God’s people, this wonderful nation, to where people were coming to them. You remember when Solomon was reigning, the Queen of Sheba came to learn of his wisdom and you had others that would come just to look at the splendor of the temple. And now it’s no more.
It’s no more. And it seems hopeless.
“They went from being God’s people, this wonderful nation—now it’s no more. And it seems hopeless.”
This is where Lamentations 3 comes in.
God Never Calls Us to Deny Our Suffering
And we can make several observations about this. There are other laments in the Bible as well. I wanted us to read through it ahead of time because there’s so much here that he says.
One of the things that we see as we walk through this is that God never calls us to deny our suffering. In this case it was because they sinned. But even when we don’t know why we are suffering, such as in the case of Job or even some of the psalmists, we’re never called to deny our suffering, to act as if it doesn’t exist or it’s lighter than what it really is.
Our suffering is real. If we go through some type of tragedy, it’s real. If we are grieving, that’s real.
God gave us those emotions that we are feeling. They’re to be subjected to his word and accomplish his will. But these emotions are from God. Emotions themselves, the idea of emotions, it’s not sinful. In fact, it’s what helps us relate to God and makes us more like God than some of the animals that just go on pure instinct.
God doesn’t command us to put on a happy face or always say there’s going to be a light at the end of the tunnel or there’s a silver lining or all of these other phrases that we have to pretend like there’s nothing wrong in life. I’m not saying all we do is complain about what we’re going through or murmur, but we have to acknowledge when we’re going through some type of suffering.
When someone asks what do you want me to pray for and we say, “No, I’m fine. I’m too blessed to be stressed,” but you’re stressing every day. In fact, you’re probably seeing a therapist, but you’re too blessed to be stressed. When an actual believer comes and says, “Let me pray for you,” we feel like I’m going to show some type of weakness or immaturity spiritually if I say that I’m suffering or I’m going through something or that I’m even questioning God right now.
But God calls us to be transparent, especially with each other. Jeremiah and others like Job, Asaf, David, Paul, and even Jesus we see asking that the cup pass from him if at all possible. They express when there is anguish in their soul and they express the true extent of their suffering.
Just look at some of the verses here that were read earlier in Lamentations 3. Verse 1 says, “I am the man who has seen affliction.” Verse 3, “Surely against me he has turned his hand.” Verse 4, “He has caused my flesh and my skin to waste away. He has broken my bones.”
Verse 8, “Even when I cry out and call for help, he shuts out my prayer.”
This is Jeremiah, God’s spokesman, saying that I cried out for help. I asked for help with this suffering and God has shut out my prayer.
In Psalm 42:3 we read, “My tears have become my food day and night while they say to me all day long, where is your God?” Whatever this depression that he is going through, this despair he finds himself in, he says my day and night, I’m just crying over this. He doesn’t say, “No, everything’s all right. I’m a Christian. I know in the end it’s going to work out.”
Our emotions get stirred up and God never asks us to hide them. Psalm 3:1-2 says, “Oh Lord, how my adversaries have increased. Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, there is no deliverance for him in God.”
Notice in those two cases and we even see lamentations with the state of all of Israel at the time. People from the outside see the damage, the destruction and the suffering and are saying in Psalm 42, “Where is your God?” In Psalm 3, there is no deliverance for him in God. People from the outside are watching the suffering.
Suffering as an Opportunity to Glorify God
And so even in our suffering, we have opportunity to glorify God.
Because when someone says, “Where is your God?” we can show them that we still have assurance. We can show them why we have peace. Why I can have peace and tears at the same time. It allows us to highlight the strength of God, the compassion of God. It allows us to highlight the gospel and knowing God’s plan and the assurance that we have of salvation.
Sin was and is the greatest problem of humanity.
And for us who believe in Christ, that was solved on the cross.
And while our suffering is great, no suffering is greater than the reality of a Christless eternity. The reality of being separated from God. So while I’m saying we have to acknowledge our suffering, we also have to remember that there is no suffering greater than what has already been taken care of for us.
And so that will always give us peace even in the middle of the suffering.
“No suffering is greater than the reality of a Christless eternity—and that has already been taken care of for us.”
But the Bible never hides the afflictions of mankind.
Not even the children of God. The Bible never hides that we go through affliction, that we may go through suffering. And in fact, the Bible says things like those who are godly always suffer persecution. If you’re godly, expect to be persecuted.
In 1 Peter 2, the whole chapter is dedicated to how to glorify God in suffering and then goes into chapter 3, holding Christ up as the example of how to suffer in a way that brings glory to God.
So suffering is part of our reality and it’s not something that we need to ignore. It’s not something that we need to pretend doesn’t exist for some reason.
Grief Can Distort Our View of God
Another thing that we see from some of these is that tragedy or grief can distort our view of God.
One of the things we see here with Jeremiah is that he describes himself as prey being hunted by God. This is the one who trusts in God and says he rests in God. He describes himself as prey.
In Lamentations 3:10, he says he is to me like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in secret places. He describes God here like a bear that’s just waiting for his prey to come so he can just pounce on him and rip him to pieces.
Then he says, “Oh, he’s like a lion. He’s like a lion hiding and waiting for the exact moment to jump out.”
This is the God. This is the one who, if you were ranking prophets, some may say this was the most faithful because he endured so much suffering publicly in his ministry. Yet now he is saying I’m like prey. He’s talking about himself here.
This is one of the times that he’s putting himself in the place of Israel and saying like the whole nation, we were like prey. He says, “Oh, I’m like prey.”
In verses 12 and 13, he says, “He bent his bow”—talking about God—”and set me as a target for the arrow. He made the arrows of his quiver to enter my inward parts.” So not only is he a predator and I’m his prey, but now I’m the game and he’s the hunter.
God is hunting me. He’s there with a bow and he’s just releasing his arrows and they’re hitting me and piercing my inward parts. They’re sinking deep into my organs. I don’t even know if I’m going to make it.
This is coming from God. Who can help me? Who’s going to stop the hand of God if he is coming at me like this?
Jeremiah sees the suffering that’s coming from God’s hand as a predator or as a hunter, rather than coming from the hand of a loving God. This is correction and even God’s mercy.
“Jeremiah sees the suffering as coming from a predator or hunter, rather than from the hand of a loving God.”
Many other times I think we can relate to that, and we see this in the Psalms as well. If we had a few hours to sit here and look, we can look at Psalms like Psalm 3, Psalm 120, or Psalm 77—different ones that have this kind of feature. There are almost 40 psalms that have what you call laments in them, passages or even entire chapters where the psalmist is just crying out about their suffering.
Here we see many of the sentences in this passage start with “he,” and it’s what God is doing to Jeremiah. He has driven me, or he has turned his hand. He has besieged me. He has made me desolate. That’s besides the ones we just read before—what it is that he is to me like a bear lying in wait, he bent his bow.
All of these things are what God is doing to me. Now this is Jeremiah who just said two songs ago, two poems ago, that the Lord is righteous. But when he starts to really think about his suffering and feel it—and maybe he has physical suffering as well, I mean there was a famine—this suffering makes him stop and just think, “Wow, what is happening?”
God, I think God is against me. I think God is attacking me. You have all these phrases. It’s one thing after another, right? That’s one, especially, or it’s always something. These phrases that we use to describe the fact that when things happen, it just seems almost relentless. When it rains, it pours, right? We have so many of these that just say when something starts, it doesn’t let up.
We know that God is sovereign, and so that means God is just beating on me and beating on me and beating on me. That’s what it looks like. That’s what it feels like when we’re enduring this type of suffering, when we’re enduring any type of tragedy that comes, when we have multiple people we know going through very difficult times even with their health or things that happen. It’s like, man, it’s always something. It’s one thing after another. It’s always something that happens.
People even have a saying when it comes to celebrities. When they know a celebrity passes, they’ll say, “Well, it comes in threes,” so we know two more people are about to pass away. If one actor passes, we know two more are coming. We’re just expecting this. We’re expecting this thing. Murphy’s law. We’re expecting these things constantly.
We have to make sure that we recognize that our minds may not be operating optimally when our emotions flare up. They may not be operating spiritually.
When we are dealing with suffering or affliction or even just disappointment, when we’re in these moments of despair, it’s very difficult. The first thoughts we reach for often aren’t the ones that are going to glorify God. They’re going to highlight our suffering because that’s where our flesh wants to live and that’s where the enemy wants us to live.
Anything in this world, anything that could come up that reminds us of our suffering and makes us feel like we’re a victim of an abusive God or a vindictive God or just an angry, out-of-control God—that’s what’s going to come up a lot of times. It will come from our own hurt too, not just from the outside.
When All We Can See Is Our Suffering
All that he can see right now is his suffering. He doesn’t see what he’s being protected from. He doesn’t see how God right now is working for his good. He doesn’t see what he’s being kept from.
He doesn’t see the mercies that he is receiving even in his grief and suffering, that he is still the object and recipient of God’s mercy, God’s love, his compassion, and his care. He just doesn’t remember. He doesn’t see. He’s not thinking of that.
This is the one who was beaten many times in public because of his willingness to stand up for God. Other prophets would come and he’s like, “No, those prophets are lying.” Prophets are beating him. A prophet slaps him. “Why didn’t God tell you? Why don’t you prophesy about that? How come God didn’t warn you there? God said that I was a liar, but how come God didn’t tell you I was going to slap you?” He dealt with all of this in public.
We know that this is temporary. We know that he’s a believer. We know that he’s faithful. We know that he has the truth of God in his heart. He is the one who ate God’s word when he was little.
We know he has God’s word. It’s not a matter of knowledge. But here, his heart was just so pulled down and his situation was so hopeless. It distorted how he saw God. And that can happen to any of us.
“Tragedy can distort how we see God. And that can happen to any of us.”
It may have happened to many of us at one time or another, causing sinful action or just these sinful thoughts. But many times it would break our ability to see God.
What does he say in verse 17? He says, “My soul has been rejected from peace. I have forgotten happiness.” In verse 18, he says, “My strength has perished and so has my hope from the Lord.”
He said, “My hope is gone.” Because one of the things that he hoped in, even though he was prophesying about their destruction because of their disobedience, he was hoping that God would change their hearts. He was hoping for a revival in the land and ultimately he is hoping for the promises that God made to the Jewish nation to be fulfilled.
He’s hoping. He knows God is true and he would do these things. Now it looks like it’s impossible for those things to be done. The land has been destroyed. Two foreign armies came in and wiped them out and took different parts of the nation into exile. This is hopeless.
We may begin to ask even when we go through something traumatic: Has God abandoned me? Where is God? In the good times, he was there. When something small happens, he was there. We may trust him if we lose a job. What about losing a spouse? It’s difficult to trust him then.
“We may trust him if we lose a job. What about losing a spouse? It’s difficult to trust him then.”
As we walk through the rest of this passage, we’re going to see how do we develop that? How do we get to a place where even in tragedy, we can still hold on to God and we can still trust him.
Three Things Jeremiah Does to Escape Despair
There are three things that Jeremiah does to bring himself out of this despair, out of this destruction.
First: Remember God’s Character
Starting at verse 21, he says, “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.” Now, he just said in verse 18, “And so has my hope from the Lord perished.” He said, “My hope has perished. My hope is gone. It is wiped out.” Not just my hope is low. It has perished. It has been destroyed. It’s been taken from me. I no longer have hope.
And then three verses later he says, “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.” The first thing is to remember.
So look at the contrast between verses 19 and 20 and then 21. That’s why I purposely skipped them. Verse 19 says, “Remember my affliction and my wandering.”
Verse 20 says, “Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me.”
So in verses 19 and 20, he’s remembering his tragedy. He’s remembering his situation. He’s remembering everything that he lost. He’s remembering what he put his hope in that was wiped out.
And those are the things that he’s remembering. That is why he is in despair. That is why he’s hopeless. That is why he’s depressed. Because what he remembers, what he is focusing on are the earthly things that he put his trust in and his faith in at this moment.
But then verse 21, he says, “This I recall to mind.” And we’re going to see what in a second. But he remembers—that’s the first thing. He remembers God’s character.
And that gives him hope.
“He remembers God’s character—and that gives him hope.”
Preparing to Remember: Meditating on Scripture
And what are things that he that I believe we can do to make remembering easier? We were talking earlier today, the elders were with someone. One of the things I mentioned was a phrase that I said that comes from my culture: if you stay ready you won’t have to get ready.
Right? We say this about a lot of different things. But in this case, this is what the Bible is calling us to do. This is what God even says.
So the first thing we can do to make remembering easier, so that we’re always ready for these moments, is to meditate on scripture and make that a constant part of your life today. Even if everything is beautiful in your life, even if there’s not a tragedy or a bit of suffering on the horizon that you could imagine coming, you should be meditating on scripture.
This is a constant. Joshua 1:8 says, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success day and night continually.”
This is essentially what he’s saying: that you will always be meditating on God’s word and we will always be thinking godly things.
Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellent and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
Dwell on them. Don’t just think of it five minutes in the morning before you take a shower or right before you go to bed and you’re just nodding off and you can’t think straight.
But you should be dwelling on these things. The scripture should be meditated on day and night. Anything that is praiseworthy, you should dwell on those things. That’s where our mind should live. That’s what we should be focusing on. That’s what we should be consuming.
“Dwell on these things. The scripture should be meditated on day and night.”
Guarding What We Consume
And many of us, I think, should be convicted here because the world wants to serve us nothing but destruction, death, and conflict. Many of you have heard of the phrase “rage bait,” where you basically get more people to engage by saying something that’s going to upset a lot of people. I know that’s what’s going to cause you to engage with me. If I say I can’t stand this certain group of people or these people act this way, I know everybody who’s part of that group and everybody who supports that group is going to come after me.
So I’m going to get more likes. I’m going to get more exposure. What I said is going to be shared over and over. I can go and speak at different places. I can do all of this stuff.
And so we are inundated. It’s not just social media. It’s news in general. It’s politicians. It’s anyone who wants your attention for anything.
They know the easiest way to do it is to get you upset.
And so we have this world that is feeding us conflict and strife constantly. I was reading something probably like ten years ago now. It was made by a believer who was just talking about our minds and saying that we probably weren’t created with the capacity to endure the suffering of the whole world all at once.
But I can go on my phone right now and tell you every flood that happened in every country in the world in the last week. I can tell you everyone who was brutally murdered or had any other type of brutal traumatic experience. I can read about teachers who took advantage of their authority and position of power with children. I can read about all those things. I can hear about all of this negative stuff, every conflict everywhere in the world.
And I don’t know if God really built us to carry that besides praying for them. You can’t do anything about it. But many of us have what’s been described as a morbid curiosity and we go after those things.
And the Bible actually warns us in several places about that. We don’t have time to look at them all now, but the Bible warns us about that. So the remedy for that is Philippians 4:8, right? And Joshua 1:8 and many other places. The Bible talks about that, even talking about affliction in Psalm 119:67 and 71. It talks about the blessing of affliction and how it was good for me to be afflicted.
But we can’t say that if all we’re absorbing and all we’re dwelling on and thinking on is the suffering of the world. Now it’s like me too. I’m not even exempt from this, God. When does it end? When does the suffering end, God?
But instead, we should focus and dwell on the things God calls us to.
“Instead, we should focus and dwell on the things God calls us to.”
So that remembering won’t be a task that we have to undertake while we’re under the weight of the depression and despair. How many of us are going to do that? When we are feeling hopeless, that is when this book becomes its heaviest.
It is so difficult to pick this up in those moments if you aren’t exercising those muscles and grabbing this and reaching for this in the good times. When you have the weight of the world on you, you’re not going to be able to pick this up on top of it unless you’ve been doing it all along. What’s described as muscle memory.
I want to bring these verses back to my mind. I want to recall them. And even if you’re someone like me who is horrible with words and very difficult for me to memorize scripture, I’m pretty good with numbers. So I can tell you exactly where something is, but I won’t be able to quote it. I’ll stumble on the words.
If I try to quote a verse to you now that’s more than John 11:35, which says Jesus wept, I’m probably going to get a word or two wrong. Especially because I studied in the King James version for about fifteen to twenty years before I switched over. So I have a lot of that in my mind. But I remember that reference.
So even if you are saying I struggle with memorization, you’re dwelling on it, reading it every day. And the thing is, you’re not doing it alone. It’s not just your strength. The Holy Spirit is going to bring those things back to your memory.
And that’s what I believe happened here, that God intervened. God saw what was happening in the heart of his servant and brought those things to his mind. I don’t believe that was just the strength of Jeremiah here. I believe this was God helping him to remember the words that he already preached about hope.
Everybody wants to quote Jeremiah 29:11. And I, you see, I’m going to get it wrong if I try to quote it. But it’s about the plans that I have for you to prosper you and hope and all of that, right? So that was the same Jeremiah who says my hope is gone. He wrote what many people say is their life verse about hope and about the future and why they’re confident in what God is doing, and he lost hope. So I believe it was God that brought it back to his mind.
And if we continue to feed on and feast on the word of God, and we continue to think on things that are excellent, things that are about God, we continue to talk to people about how God is working in their life and how God got them through a traumatic experience, how God got them through suffering. Something as simple as, “Hey, when you lost your job, how did you keep your hope? How did you continue to see God as a provider?”
When you unfairly, unjustly lost your job, how did you keep seeing him that way? Not because I lost my job, but because I want to know the strength that was in you. I want to know what God brought to your mind. I know what God did.
And then if I lose my job six months from now, I can be like, “What? This is what this person said to me,” and I remember that. I can go here. I can talk to them. We’re constantly thinking about spiritual things. We’re praying for each other.
And so when these times come, we won’t have to get ready because we’ll already be ready.
Psalm 77:11 says, “I shall remember the deeds of the Lord. Surely I will remember your wonders of old.” Even rehearsing the blessings that we have received from God can help us in those times. This is the same God who brought me out of this, the same God who did this for me. The same God who brought Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of a fiery furnace is the same God that is working on my behalf today.
“The same God who brought Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of a fiery furnace is the same God working on my behalf today.”
So the first thing he does is remember.
Second: Rehearse God’s Truth
The second thing he does is rehearse.
Verses 22-24 says, “The Lord’s loving kindnesses indeed never cease. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I have hope in him.” He didn’t just stop at simply remembering something good about God, but he begins to preach this truth to himself.
I love that in the middle of him preaching to himself and realizing how great God is, he had to stop and start talking to God. He’s saying he’s talking about the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. And his mercies are new. Then he stops. God, great is your faithfulness.
“God’s faithfulness—the very thing I was doubting and questioning—is one of the strongest characteristics of God.”
He’s writing this poem, writing this song about God. And in the middle of it, he had to stop because God is just so amazing that he was even taken back and said, “Wait, God’s faithfulness.” It wasn’t just God, you’re great. He said no, his faithfulness—the very thing I was doubting and questioning—is one of the strongest characteristics of God.
He rehearses these truths, thinking about them over and over. He’s preaching to himself. What are the things that he tells himself? He says God’s love is unfailing. Now the phrase is translated here as “loving kindnesses” and I have to keep remembering that it’s plural. So he is saying kindnesses. If you have the NASB, it’s often translated as “steadfast love” in the Old Testament. The fact that it’s plural here is just emphasizing the unfailing nature of God’s love.
Then he says, well, he remembers also this covenant that he had, that he had his hope in, that he thought was this promise that could not fail. But now I can’t believe in this covenant that you had with Abraham because the whole nation just got wiped out. So how are you going to keep your covenant?
But what does he say here? His love and kindnesses indeed never cease. Even here he realizes God’s covenant love can still be relied upon, that judgment is not the final word.
We have the benefit now of knowing what happened and knowing that they were able to come back to the land. Jesus comes out of that people, born where it was promised he would be born. All the promises that came along with that—sending someone to die for our sins—happened.
God’s promises didn’t fail. What Jeremiah had his hope in—the coming of the Messiah coming through his people, coming through God’s people—still happened. We see that Jesus will be the fulfillment of even the Davidic covenant.
Even though that physical throne was burned down, even though that temple was destroyed twice, we now know that the extent of that promise was a spiritual one and it’s going to be a physical one in the millennial kingdom. But even without the physical structure there, God is a promisekeeping, covenant-keeping God.
If he can keep those big promises of sustaining a nation while they’re being destroyed, he can keep the promises that he made to us. He will sanctify you. That’s a promise that as you work out your salvation, you’re working with God in your sanctification. That’s just what the Bible says: work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
We have these promises. We know that he will provide for us. We know that he will keep us. We know that we will persevere to the end because God has promised those things.
No matter what we are going through, we know that we have the promise of a comforter. We know that we have the promise of a body that is equipped to serve us in those times of need because that was his design.
He is a covenant-keeping, promisekeeping God.
God’s Love Is Unfailing and His Mercy Is Sufficient
We see also God’s mercy is sufficient for each day. His loving kindnesses never cease. His compassions never fail. He says they are new every morning.
For those of us who are already made objects of his mercy, objects of his compassion, we can always trust in him. Even through our afflictions and tragedy and suffering, we can trust in a faithful God.
“His compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Even through affliction and tragedy, we can trust a faithful God.”
Jeremiah begins to remember these things. Remember, this is not about 10 years ago when he felt the way he expressed earlier in the chapter. We’re talking about probably within the same five to ten minute span.
Once he begins to remember the character of God and then to rehearse it in his mind, to keep thinking about who God is and consider it, God got so good to him that he had to then talk to God directly. When he got to that point, if you were able to read the entire chapter, it is just one song. We just don’t have time to go through 66 verses. But we see the passion that Jeremiah has, and it comes back and becomes even greater at this point.
God’s love is unfailing. God’s mercy is sufficient for each day. God’s faithfulness is perfect and he can always be trusted.
No matter what our circumstances tell us, no matter what we see, what we feel, what we experience, we trust in his word. We don’t trust in what we feel. When we were doing the Q&A last week, I forgot which one of the other pastors said it, but our feelings and our experiences are nothing but a data point that has to be evaluated by the word of God.
That is the way we look at our feelings. They don’t dictate the truth. We don’t ignore the emotion, but we have to evaluate it and it has to come under submission to the word of God because that is the standard of truth.
God Himself Is Enough
And then he declares God himself is enough.
He says the Lord is my portion.
Therefore I have hope in him. The Lord is my portion. He had nothing else.
He didn’t have a land anymore. He doesn’t have a home. He doesn’t have a temple. He has nothing but God.
So he has everything. He says, “The Lord is my portion.” And we can be content with him as our portion through our worst times in life.
Psalm 73:26 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And besides you, I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” That has to be real to us.
Psalm 73:26: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
That can’t just be some theoretical thing that you heard someone preach on July 5th, 2026. It has to become real to us because these moments are going to come, and we’ll see it in a moment. The way that we react to these things will impact how we live the rest of our life for God.
We want to make sure that when moments come that cause stress physically, emotionally, and mentally, we respond the way that God wants.
First we remember, then we rehearse.
Third: Respond in Faith
Last thing is to respond.
Yeah, they all begin with R, so it’s easier to remember.
Verses 25 and 26. I add that one on. It says, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him.” Verse 26: “And it is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord.”
So Jeremiah says the last thing that I do here is respond.
Here are the things that he mentions. He says waiting. Waiting is how he’ll respond to these truths.
Now waiting doesn’t mean that we’re sitting around doing nothing. Waiting is not an action, but it’s trusting in God even when God’s plan is unclear to us, even when we don’t know why what’s happening is happening. We commend Job for going through life-altering experiences: losing at least, yeah, losing pretty much everything he owned, losing his children, losing his wife who began to sound like the foolish women and told him to curse God.
So maybe not a complete loss, but he lost her as a spiritual supporter. She told him to curse God and die.
Just imagine getting to that place. I mean, I’m seeing a bunch of married couples here, and I just can’t imagine one spouse going through something so traumatic and the other one is saying, “You still trusting that God? You still trust him after he took our children away, after he took our land?”
Talk about when it rains it pours. While one person was bringing him one piece of bad news, somebody else ran in to bring him some more bad news. It wasn’t even over weeks or months. One person said, “Hey, your business got destroyed.” And while he was guarding the flock, they said, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, wait. Your sons were there and they all gathered together and everybody was coming and bringing him this horrible news.”
And then he says, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” He basically declares that everything he had was given to him by God.
But then he goes through periods of trying to figure out and question why he’s going through what he’s going through. Physical suffering came after that, and he wanted to die. We go through all of this, and the book is 42 chapters long. He has these people coming to comfort him, and they just keep telling him you sinned. That’s why you’re going through this. Just confess your sin. You had to have sinned. I know you sinned. I know you say you’re righteous, but I also know you sinned. Because the only way somebody could be going through all this is if they turned their back on God.
But in the end, he’s defending himself and he’s pretty much saying, “I want my day in court. I want to stand face to face with my accuser, talking about God.” Then God comes and humbles him. Job is humble and he repents for the thoughts he had about God, or even thinking he had a right to know why.
But remember, he never got an explanation. He never got an explanation. He just said, “Okay, I’m going to trust God,” and that was it.
After that, God restored those things. But it wasn’t once you get it right, then I’m going to restore it. That isn’t a promise that will always happen. But I don’t want you to think that he got restored first and then he said, “Okay, I’m going to repent now because I’m feeling better.” In the middle of that, he never knew why, and he still trusted God.
“Job never knew why. And he still trusted God.”
Not perfectly, but he still held on enough that God was able to speak to him and humble him. So even with us, we may never know why something happens.
Remember, there’s this whole thing now, a popular phrase is someone thinking they’re a main character. But just remember there are about eight billion people in this world. Something you’re experiencing, you may not be the star of that story.
There are so many people who will say something like when the tragedy happened on September 11th, 2001. There are so many stories about people who were supposed to go in to work in the World Trade Center and they didn’t go in. They called out or they had a meeting somewhere else or they missed their train and they were late, or people who missed the flight. And when everyone tells it, it’s from their perspective, and it’s as if it’s their story only.
And there are many people who lost their life. There are some people who may have decided, “I’m gonna go in a little early today because I want to do something.” And that means they perished in that destruction. So things that happen, you aren’t always the main character in it. You may never know why.
This is a sin-cursed world. Because of that, tragedies come.
We all will pass if we’re not raptured first. We all will pass away. So if we live long enough, we’re going to lose people that we love.
And we can choose how we respond to it. That’s pretty much the only choice we have.
Waiting on the Lord
Everything else is happening because we’re not sovereign, but we can choose our response. Waiting is the first thing. Isaiah 40:30-31 says, “Though youths—I love that word—though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength.”
Now listen to how he describes them. He says, “They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary.” This isn’t inaction. This isn’t just sitting around like, “Oh, I’ll just wait for Jesus to come back because everything I love in this world is gone.”
There’s no hope in doing anything else. Just sit here and wait.
But he is saying that those who wait on the Lord will get this vigor. They will get this strength. They will get this energy so that it will look like they have wings. They will get up and they will be like eagles soaring. They’ll run and not get tired.
Isaiah 40:30-31: “Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles.”
Seeking and Resting
They’ll walk and not become weary from waiting. If we wait on the Lord, if we trust in him and walk with him and always seek the Lord, that’s what will happen. And that’s the second thing: seek. First, the way he responds is by waiting. The second way we should respond is by seeking.
This experience with tragedy and suffering typically presents two possibilities. It will either drive people away from God or draw people to God.
Make sure that you are seeking God above all else. This is one of those things that we continuously do.
When something happens, we just continue on the same path of seeking God. Maybe our load got a little heavier as we’re on that path, but we’re continuing down that same path of seeking God and communing with him.
Consider Jeremiah. You would think there’s no closer that he could get. He’s about as close to God as any human is going to get. And this experience drew him even closer.
And the last thing is resting.
It says, “It is good.” Verse 26: “It is good that he waits silently for the salvation of the Lord.”
So the last response we see here is resting. This allows us to be content no matter what we see around us.
We are content in what God has given us. We are content in knowing that he is in control, that he is sovereign, and that he is loving. And because he is in control and because he loves us, because the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord, we can trust whatever happens in this world.
We trust not because we trust the king, not because we trust our boss, not because we trust the landlord and the governors. We trust God, and he is ultimately in control. He loves us and he is working everything out for our good and his glory. Not just for our enjoyment, not just for our comfort. Working things out for our good. And what’s our ultimate good may not be comfortable. Often times it’s not comfortable.
“We trust God—He is ultimately in control, He loves us, and He is working everything out for our good and His glory.”
Psalm 37:7 says, “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.” There’s a theme in Psalms of looking at other people and saying, “Why are the wicked prospering? I’m struggling. I’m suffering.” But yet this godless person over here, everything is working out for him.
We’re able to rest because we know God. And we know God is the righteous judge of all the earth.
Conclusion: Stay Ready
Instead of waiting again for seasons of suffering and grief and tragedy to implement these things, we need to practice rehearsing, responding, and remembering daily. They’re a benefit to us when things are going well, and they will be of greatest benefit to us when we are suffering and our emotions try to pull us away from God.
When the world looks at us and says, “Where is your God?” and there is no hope to be found in God, then we can hold even tighter and be drawn closer to God. Let’s be like Jeremiah.
When these emotions come, they will come. When these thoughts come, don’t let them overtake you. Instead, be feeding on God’s word and on who he is. Be building your relationships with other believers so that when those times come, you’re able to stand strong, remember, rehearse, and respond all to the glory and honor of God.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
“When the world says ‘Where is your God?’—we can hold even tighter and be drawn closer to God.”
Our gracious God, we thank you for this word. We thank you for the transparency of Jeremiah so that we can see the progression. We thank you, God, that we were able to see his despair, his depression, and these thoughts that would have drawn him away from you. But we were able to see how he remembered you and your character.
Help us to do that, God. Help us to remember who you are and what you’ve done for us. Help us to remember your deeds. Help us to constantly be thinking of those things, dwelling on them, and meditating on your word and your character.
So that our response is one of waiting, seeking, and resting. Our response is one that would honor you and focus on you—not what we’ve lost, not what we wish would have happened, but our focus and trust placed on you as the ultimate sovereign king of the universe who loves us.
I ask right now that as we sing this final song, we will be meditating on your faithfulness. I ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.
Everyone, please stand.