Speaker: Brent Kercheville.

We are going to look at the final lament of this book. Please open your copies of God’s word to Lamentations 5. As you are turning to the final lamentation, I want to remind of us the grief journey Jeremiah has taken his people through. Lamentations 1 encouraged the people to honestly express to the Lord what has happened to them. Name and describe the suffering and give the hurt to the Lord. Lamentations 2 then helped the people with the struggle that they have in their grief. We looked at trying to reconcile how we can be going through what we are going through. We know that God loves his people and answers prayers. But things are not going the way we wanted or the way we expected. So our grief moves to trying to struggle with how these things could be. Lamentations 3 moves us to hope while in the darkness of grief. Lamentations 3 is not saying that everything is all better. The first 20 verses of Lamentations 3 continue describing the overwhelming pain of their circumstances. But the prophet tells us that when he is overwhelmed he sets his mind on the steadfast love of the Lord never failing. Every morning God’s faithfulness waits for us and is experienced. But the book does not end here. Lamentations 4 now moves us to accept our grief in our new circumstance. Though this is not the outcome we wanted, this is the outcome. This is the way things are going to be. Our hope is not that things must get better. Our hope is in God who will help us and deliverance through the many afflictions of this new reality. God pries the idols from our hands and compels us to trust in him alone. This sets us up for the final lamentation. How will Jeremiah end his series on grief and what will he teach the people now?

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