In his sermon, Eric Bechler provides an overview of the Book of Lamentations, historically attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. Bechler explains Lamentations' place within the five Megilloth, highlighting its reading during Tisha B'Av, a Jewish day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem temples. The book's acrostic structure aids memorization and emphasizes themes of judgment and grief. Bechler discusses the historical context of Lamentations, relating it to the numerous tragedies faced by the Jewish people on the 9th of Av. He outlines the content of each of the five poems within Lamentations, focusing on themes of affliction, repentance, and hope. Bechler draws parallels between Jeremiah's lament and modern-day challenges, urging a return to faith and reliance on God amidst societal upheaval.

Welcome back to Burnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Mr. Beckler gives an overview of Lamentations. Good afternoon. Today we're going to take a look at the book of Lamentations.

I decided Over the next number of sermons that I'll give, I'll go through the Book of Lamentations, through the whole book. Today will be just an overview of the whole book, and then the next time I'm up, I'll just pick up from there and go verse by verse through the different chapters. But there's a lot here in the Book of Lamentations that is very interesting. I think it's worth the time to take a look at how it's structured in its background and what's here with this book. Let's go ahead and start in prayer.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this day. And we thank you for your word. We look back in history at times where people just would tear out pages and would be so joyful to have even just one page of scripture. And here we in our homes have Bibles upon Bibles even getting dusty on the shelves. And we just are so thankful to have them in abundance and pray that we would use them, pray that we would put them on our hearts, that there come a time in the future where we don't have them, that we would remember your words from our studies and memorizations and reading.

Lord I pray that your spirit would be here among us, that Lord you would speak through me, that we would learn more about one of these books in your word, that Lord we would just be amazed and marvel Lord at your words. All these things we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The Book of Lamentations, not your most favorite book to preach upon in the Bible. It's tucked in between the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the major prophets.

Originally it was actually part of the book of Jeremiah. I don't know exactly why they broke it out but they actually use it in what's called the five megalith which means five scrolls And there are five books that they incorporate in these scrolls, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Esther. Each of these scrolls are publicly read for a particular feast in Israel. The Song of Solomon, each year when they have the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is Passover, they'll read the the scroll of Song of Solomon. The Book of Ruth, they're actually reading now for the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Harvest, which is in the timeframe of Pentecost.

The Book of Lamentations is read, it's not really a feast, it's called Tisha Ba'av, and I'll go over that here in a minute. Ecclesiastes is covered in the Feast of Tabernacles. Esther is read each year in the Feast of Purim. In the Hebrew world, the Feast of Purim is their only joyful and happy time and festival. It's kind of unusual.

But anyway, they'll read that book completely publicly. And so Lamentations is one of those. I mentioned Tisha B'Av is not necessarily a feast day in Israel, but it is called or considered the Jewish Day of Mourning. Why is that? It's a fast commemorating the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, both in 586 BC, the old temple, and in 70 AD, the new temple.

In Hebrew tisha ba'av means the ninth of Av. Tisha is what the number nine is so if you learn to count in in Hebrew tisha is nine. Av is the fifth month in the Hebrew calendar. It lays in somewhere late July, early August. Their calendars and our calendar are not exactly the same, so there's some overlap year to year.

I want to touch on the ninth of Av. I'm not sure if anybody's really familiar with the significance of the ninth of Av. It's a, I guess it's a sad day. It's unusual throughout history that many, many tragic events happened to the Jewish people on the 9th of Av. This is why it's the Jewish day of mourning.

I'll list out a few. If you're interested, you can Google it and look up all the different things through history that happened on the 9th of Av. Here are a few of them. In 1312 BC, the spies for Moses returned with a bad report about the promised land, of course except for Joshua and Caleb. Of course in 586 and 70 AD, the destruction of the temples.

In 1096 AD, this is when the first crusade was declared with that declaration about a quarter of the Jews were killed in Germany and northern France. In 1290, the Jews were expelled from England. About 17, 000 Jewish people had to leave England. In 1306, the Jews were expelled from France by King Philip IV. In 1492, a familiar year, Queen Isabella from Spain banished the Jews.

About 200, 000 Jews were kicked out of France. These were some of the days they would come back and then they would be kicked out again multiple times over history. In 1648, there was a massacre. It's called the Chilmeneke Massacre. The Cossacks murdered about 100, 000 Ukrainian and Polish Jews.

In 1914, Germany declared war on Russia on the 9th of Av. In 1941, August 2nd, Himmler received approval for the final solution of the Jews, a program that Germany came up to as far as what to do about the Jews. And then in 1942, July 23rd, Treblinka extermination camp became operational on the 9th of Av. So these are some of them. It's unusual, it's kind of amazing that so many bad things have happened to the Jews, specifically on that date throughout history.

This year, keep your eyes open, it's on July 18th. I'm not saying anything bad's going to happen, but it seems like if something bad happens a lot of times it's on that particular day. Anyway, so Tisha B'Av and Lamentations. So let's get back to the Book of Lamentations. Historically, Jeremiah has been recognized as the author of the Book of Lamentations.

More recently, there's been scholars who've been arguing that it wasn't, that differences between the chapters are so strong that it really needs to be different authors. I don't agree with that. And for our purposes, we'll stick with the fact that Jeremiah was the author. So Jeremiah, let's talk briefly about Jeremiah, who was he. We know that he was a prophet and that we know that he wrote the book of Jeremiah.

From my dictionary of Bible names, Jeremiah means Jehovah will cast forth. Jehovah the victor will cast forth or throw. He comes from a small town about three miles north of Jerusalem called Anathoth. It's from the tribe of Benjamin that was set aside for the priests. Two of David's mighty men, as Abbeazer and Yehu, were from Anathoth.

Jeremiah's father, his name was Hilkiah. That's probably familiar with you. He also was a prophet and was the high priest. Jeremiah began his ministry in the 13th year of King Josiah. He was the last good king of Judah.

He continued his ministry through the reigns of Josiah's two sons, Jehoahaz and Jehoahakim, and then two other kings, Jehoahakim and Zedekiah. So roughly about his ministry was around 50 years long. Jeremiah, his calling was a little bit unusual in that before he was even born, God writes that he appointed him a prophet. And from Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 5, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. And before thou cameest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

I think we're all pretty familiar with that particular verse. He also, when he was called, expressed his unworthiness to speak for God. This was very similar to Moses. Like Moses, God reminded him who created his mouth and that God was capable to help him. Jeremiah's message was primarily one of judgment upon Judah.

We see that in Jeremiah 1 10. And as he was present to see the events before, during, and after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. He was known as the weeping prophet. It was difficult for me to, it was hard for me, I was not successful to find an analogy or some way to express the full impact that Jeremiah experienced as he saw Jerusalem and the temple be destroyed. Some way to come up with how can we better relate or understand the level of grief that he and the Jewish people felt.

I was not able to come up with some kind of example. The temple in Jerusalem, there are very prominent parts of their daily and spiritual life. Jerusalem being the central point for Jews everywhere. The temple designed by God being the central point of Judaism. This was where they worshiped.

As Christian Americans, we really don't have a central point like that that we can look at in our lives, that we, you know, we have in our church, we're using someone else's church, we don't even have our own church building. So it's in some ways difficult to understand. Furthermore, if we look at our culture, the Jewish culture was one of very strong interdependence within their community. Community there was everything. If you got kicked out of the community, this was like a really, really big deal.

Our culture is very different. We're very independent. I would say we're very strongly independent. So it's just difficult to be able to appreciate the grief that we read through the Book of Lamentations. And you can see the emotion, you can feel the grief, it's just difficult to relate to those levels that they experienced.

But we can at least say they're extremely sad, distraught, and overwhelmed with grief. And Jeremiah brings this to us in his book of Lamentations. The book of Lamentations is a book of poetry. It's one of six poetry books in the Old Testament. Three of the poetry books are teaching poems, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job.

The other three poetry books are devotionals, the Book of Psalms, Song of Solomon, and Lamentations. The Book of Lamentations is comprised of five separate poems. Their design and layout are very unique. You might even call exceptional. So I want to highlight those for you today.

Some of you may be aware of this. Some of you may not. I just am fascinated by it. It's really interesting how someone can have such control of the language to structure things like this. If we look through the five chapters, or the five poems in the Book of Lamentation, chapter one, two, four, and five, all of them have 22 verses.

Chapter 3 has 66 verses, so they're coupled by threes. In chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, the first letter of every verse falls in line with the Hebrew alphabet. So you're familiar with Psalm 119, how you'll have eight verses together and in your Bible they have the words of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph beth, beth gimel dalet hey. Lamentations is like that as well. One verse instead of eight, one verse in chapters one, two, three, and four.

This is called an acrostic, where that first letter. There's really, I read that someone had made a translation, I couldn't find it, but it's difficult to find a translation that actually would keep that acrostic in the English. I have an interlinter Bible that will actually show the Old Testament in Hebrew. And you could go through and hold up the alphabet on one hand and go through and you could find it. Sure enough, the first letter of each verse was the Hebrew alphabet in sequence.

So that was kind of neat. Chapter three. Chapter three is different with its 66 verses. It also is an acrostic, but instead of one letter per verse, it uses three verses. So the first three verses would all start with the letter A, or Aleph.

And so it went through the 22 letters of the alphabet, but grouped by three. Again, like 119A is grouped by eight, so this is by three. Chapter five, It's different. It doesn't use the alphabet structure. It's not an acrostic.

Those verses, they don't start with the alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet. But it does have 22 verses. It does have what's called a miniacrostic. So in two of the verses, in verses 19 and 20, if you break that out in 19a, 19b, 20a, and 20b, what you'll find is 19a starts with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, 19b, the second half of the verse, starts with the 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. 20a starts with the 12th letter of the alphabet and then 20b starts with the last letter of the alphabet.

So it kind of, it's kind of a miniature cross took where it does the first half on verse 19 and the second half on verse 20. For what it's worth, to me it's kind of clever how they do that. Why would they do that? Seems like a lot of trouble to engineer your language to line up like that, but so much of communicating in the past was memorizing. You know, if you wanted to read the Bible, you went to the synagogue and they read the scrolls.

So an acrostic is a way that you could help aid you in memorizing. If you always knew it started with a particular letter, it might help you remember. Also, if it's structured that way, you can more easily see when you, if you've missed a part, you know it, or use, let's say, a sign of completeness within the poem. One other feature, actually there's a lot of features. I'm not going to cover them all, but another feature that I thought was very interesting is in the first chapter, apparently the Hebrew alphabet over history has not always had the same sequence of the letters.

There are two letters, I think it's the 16th and 17th letter, Iean and Pei. In the first chapter they're in the order of what we would see the alphabet today. In chapters two, three, and four, they actually switch those letters. Why is that important? Well, there's a lot of arguments and complicated things that some people try to explain it.

What made sense to me is each of the, let me take a step back on the Hebrew alphabet, unlike our alphabet, the Hebrew alphabet has numeric values for each letter. So the letter A has a numeric value of 1 and 2, 3, 4, you know all through, then a 10, and then it would be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 90, then 100, 200, 400, 300, 400. So the numeric value of Ieam, this letter that was switched to order, its numeric value was 70. And so some people suppose, and this is in the Matthew Henry commentary, he quoted a Dr. Livingston or somebody that suggested that the fact that they swapped these letters was a way to highlight to the Jews reading or hearing the scroll and said, this letter's changed, let's focus on it, what is it, 70, okay, that's the length of the exile that is taking place.

So I like that idea that it switched just to make you remember that, oh, the exile of the Jews in Babylon was 70 years, and here's the way in the lamentations that would remind people. So you know, it could be, it could not be, but I don't know, I thought that was more interesting than the other things. So anyway, now I want to go through each of the poems and just kind of briefly go through what we see in them. At a future date I'll kind of go through verse by verse and look at it in more detail, but today we'll just kind of summarize them. In chapter one, this, this, in my Bible, the sorrows of Jerusalem, sorrow, the affliction, the desolation of Jerusalem, there's, there's no one to comfort her.

In the first 11 verses we have a lament for the city of Jerusalem. In verse 1, Jerusalem was great, it was filled with many people, now it's a widow, the people are gone, they're exiled, Jerusalem is now no longer mighty, it's a tributary under the control of others. Look, there's no one to comfort, there's no rest. Verse 5, the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions. As we see Jeremiah as he writes these Lamentations, we can see some parallels between Jeremiah and Jesus.

We read in Matthew and Luke how Jesus would look at Jerusalem and would grieve. He was saddened because he could see the future impending destruction that was coming. This is Jeremiah as well, looking at Jerusalem in the temple, feeling grief and sadness at the impending destruction that was going to happen and that he witnessed. Verses 12 through 15, Jeremiah focuses on the Lord's fierce anger, gives some descriptions there. 16 and 17, Jeremiah weeps for what he has seen.

God is comforter as far from him. The last few verses, 18 through 22, Jeremiah remembers God is righteous and prays that God would do to their conquerors what he has done to them, that there would be vengeance. In chapter two, God punishes Zion, the source of the affliction. In the first nine verses, we see God's just judgment upon Judah. We see these lists, some of them listed out.

He has swallowed up, not pitied, thrown down strongholds, polluted the kingdom and princes, cut off the horn of Israel, drawn back his right hand, slew all that were pleasant to the eye and the tabernacle. He poured out his fury like fire. He goes on and on with descriptions of the judgments upon Judah there. In verse 10 through 14, we see the weeping and shedding of tears, very dramatic descriptions of weeping and mourning. Verses 15 and 17, their enemies rejoice at the destruction and the judgment upon Jerusalem.

And then in 18 and 20, we see Jerusalem's prayer. Their heart cried unto the Lord, poured out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children. A call to the Lord. In 19 and 20, I guess these are out of order, we get a picture of the severity of God's judgment and acknowledgement that this was from God's hand.

We see a contrast here between the extent of hunger, I guess not a contrast, but the extent of hunger, the fact that there was consuming of offspring. We see the young and old dead on the streets by the sword. Really no one escaped the Lord's anger. Regardless of how it happened, everybody was judged. Moving on to chapter three, repentance and hope and affliction.

The first 18 verses, Jeremiah expresses his own grief with dark terms of darkness and derision, bitterness and affliction. We see in the following verses 19 and 21 Jeremiah despite all of this expresses his hope. It's the first indication of a hope there. In verse 22 and 23, his eyes get back on God. God is merciful and compassionate, he's faithful.

Verse 34 and 41 through 41, we can't complain forgetting what we deserve. We should repent and turn back to God." And then 42 through 66 we've transgressed, we've rebelled. Jeremiah prays and calls out to the Lord to judge thou my cause, render unto them recompense and give them sorrow of heart and curse them." So we see a different approach. We still have a lot of grief and mourning described here in the third poem, but now we see a glimmer of hope and an understanding that God's judgment here is not unjust. Years and years of rebellion.

The cup of wrath, as we say, was finally filled and poured out. Now, Chapter four, the results of the siege by the Lord's anger, verses one through 12. 12 gives a contrast between how Jerusalem was changed, pictured as a place like fine gold. Now it's more like earthen pictures, whiter than snow before, now blacker than coal. Such a change that kings and all the people of the world would not have believed it.

Just a shocking and dramatic change for the city of Jerusalem. Verses 13 through 16, judgment has come for the sins of her prophets and iniquities of her priests. In 17 and 20, watching for vain help, no one could offer help. And then in verse 21 and 22, passing the cup of wrath to Edom, God will punish those he used to punish Israel. Chapter 5 and the last chapter, Jeremiah prays for deliverance.

It's a plea for mercy. In verse 1 through 15, he says, consider and behold our reproach. Our fathers have sinned, judgment is hard, the joy of our heart is ceased, our dance has turned to mourning. Again, more, a lot of grief and mourning pictured throughout the whole book. In verses 16 through 18, the crown has fallen, the heart is faint, the eyes dim, Zion is desolate.

In 19 through 22, Jeremiah prays for restoration, Turn now us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old." Now, I like the, I like this prayer there, turn now us unto thee. He's relying on God to do that. Jeremiah knows it must be a work of God and praise for his mercy. The judgment wouldn't last forever.

In each of the five poems we see a great amount of weeping. We read a lot of emotion regarding the judgment that just occurred. Again, it's difficult to, we can read it, it's difficult to own it and relate to it. Some maybe can do better than others, depending on their experiences in life. But each of these, through that, each poem ends up with some type of prayer.

In verse 20 of the first poem, Behold, see us Lord, how pathetic we are. He's calling out to God to see us, to do something. In chapter 2 verse 20, Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom now has done this. In the third poem, Behold, render unto them a recompense. It's a prayer to judge those who are their enemies.

In chapter four, another call out to to avenge us, eat them, he will discover thy sins. And in 21, restore us. Jeremiah just calls out to God to just help us turn back to you, O God, O Lord. When Israel asked for a king earlier in the Old Testament, we see that God directed Samuel to anoint Saul as king. With this appointment, Samuel addressed the people and called them to follow the Lord your God.

And then he warned the people in 1 Samuel 12, 15, but if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord then shall the Lord be against you as it was against your fathers and in verse 25 continuing but if he shall still do wickedly you shall be consumed both you you and your king Samuel called Israel to fear the Lord and serve him with all their heart. Unfortunately, the history of Israel is one of a rebellion. We can look at the northern kingdom of Israel. They had 19 kings. It spanned about 200 years.

All 19 kings were evil, and the kingdom of Assyria conquered them and exiled the Northern Kingdom. We had not heard of anything, they never returned. Judah, the southern kingdom, also had 19 kings with addition of one queen, eight of which were good. Its kingdom lasted about 340 years. This proves what God promised in 1 Kings 3.14 to Solomon, and if thou will walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments as thy father David did walk then I will lengthen thy days." So we see the same number of kings for Israel versus Judah and yet we have 140 years difference between the kingdoms so we see that word of the Lord coming true.

Yet, despite the good kings in the kingdom of Judah, there were twelve evil kings. Well, eleven evil kings and one evil queen. Samuel's warning came to pass as Babylon came and consumed them. And in God's mercy, 70 years later, he returned a remnant back to Israel. What Jeremiah saw was heartbreaking.

Yet he brought to the people a message of hope and a plea for God's mercy. We need to remember God is in control. It's not Nebuchadnezzar, it's not the Republicans or Democrats, It's not the UN. God is in control and we need to keep our eyes focused on him. In our world today, big changes are underway.

Things that I thought I'd never see in this country in my lifetime are happening. We see churches closing, persecution of pastors, the finding of churches, masking of people, lockdowns in your house, the extent of lying and confusion, rampant wickedness in government, the possibility of real persecution as we see in other places in the world. On and on, it's disturbing. At some point, the cup of wrath that our country deserves will be poured out on us. Let's use this book of lamentations as an example.

A destruction, it seems, has not a political solution that I see for our country, but we need as a spiritual solution. If that cup of wrath is poured out, let's not fear. Let's not waver in our faith or recant our faith. Let's be strong and courageous as God exhorted Joshua when they entered the promised land in Moses' past. As with Jeremiah, we need to plead to God for his mercy.

We need to realize that we do have hope, real hope. God is in control. He is sovereign. We need to remember Samuel's call to Israel and take it as our own to fear the Lord and to serve him in truth with all your heart. We need to live it out each day.

Amen.