In the sermon titled 'Jeremiah's Affliction,' Eric Bechler delves into the Book of Lamentations, focusing on Jeremiah's profound grief over the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people of Judah. The Book of Lamentations, traditionally read during Tisha Ba'av, is a series of five poems expressing sorrow and lament. Bechler highlights the acrostic nature of the text, which facilitates memorization and symbolizes completeness. He discusses the themes of suffering and divine punishment found in chapters 1 and 2, emphasizing Judah's acknowledgment of their rebellion against God and the futility of trusting in earthly alliances. Jeremiah's vivid imagery of affliction and isolation is explored in chapter 3, verses 1-18, where he uses personal pronouns to convey his and Judah's collective suffering under God's judgment. Bechler encourages the congregation to reflect on their own responses to trials, urging trust in God's sovereignty and the power of prayer. The sermon concludes with a reminder of God's enduring love and faithfulness, even amidst chastisement.

Thanks for joining us at Barnet Bible Church. This week, Mr. Bechler continues his teaching series in the book of Lamentations. Let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your holy word.

Lord, we thank you for each and every book that's in your holy scriptures. Lord, every word, every phrase has so much to teach us. Lord, we thank you for this time in a book that is not so frequently studied, Lord, but has value. Lord, they're your holy words and they have things to teach us. Lord, I pray that your spirit would be on me and on this congregation.

Lord, that you would open up our minds and our hearts, Lord, to see your teaching. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. It's been about eight months or so since the last time we got together to look at the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. So I'd like to spend a few minutes reminding you of some of the special details associated with the book of Lamentations, read through a short overview of the chapters we've covered already, and finally give a short overview of each of the chapters and then give a brief summary of the chapters that we've already covered. Some background.

Jeremiah is recognized as the author of this book, the Book of Lamentations. They're his lamentations, his expressions of grief. They're written in the form of five poems, as he watched firsthand the destruction of Jerusalem and the people of Judah, exiled to a far distant land. It actually used to be considered as part of the book of Jeremiah. It was actually placed just at the end of it.

It wasn't a separate book. The Book of Lamentations is read publicly by the Jewish people each year on a Jewish day of mourning called Tisha Ba'av. It's a fast commemorating the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem in 586 and 70 AD. Tisha Ba'av means the ninth of Av. Nine in Hebrew is pronounced as Te'sha.

That's where Te'sha comes for, and Av is the fifth month in the Jewish calendar and corresponds to, in our calendar, to late July and early August. That timeframe, it varies from time to time. Well, what makes the 9th of Av so unique and why is it tied to this special day of mourning for the Jews? If you look through history, there's a multitude of tragedies that were experienced by the Jewish people on that specific day. It's quite astounding how many things bad happened to the Jewish people across the different nations all on that particular day.

If you're interested, I recommend you look, pull it up on your search and take a look at the Ninth of Av and see what are all the things that took place on that day. Truly a day of mourning for them. One last point of interest. Most people are aware of Psalm 119 being an acrostic, meaning in Psalm 119, it has eight verses, each tied to one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Book of Lamentations is similar.

There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and chapters 1, 2, and 4 have 22 verses corresponding each verse to one letter in the alphabet. Chapter 3 is a little bit different. It has three verses per letter, giving chapter 3 66 verses. Chapter 5, although it has 22 verses as well, doesn't use the alphabet structure, it's not an acrostic. But why did Jeremiah use an acrostic such as this?

Perhaps to aid in memorization, perhaps to indicate completeness in the poems, perhaps to force himself to complete his process of grief from beginning to end, from Aleph to Tav in their alphabet, from A to Z. If we look at each of the poems, each of the five chapters, we see a theme in chapter one. We see Jerusalem's misery and desolation. In chapter two, the Lord's anger against His people. In chapter three, we have Judah's complaint and basis for consolation.

In chapter four, the contrast between Zion's past and present. And in chapter five, Judah's appeal for God's forgiveness. So let's take a moment to go back and do a quick review of chapter one and chapter two. In chapter one, the main points we discussed were the great suffering of God's people through the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the exile of her people, through the abandonment of her friends and allies, not only offering neither comfort nor support in her time of distress, but becoming her enemies. Through this great suffering, Judah acknowledged her great rebellion against God, that she deserved the punishment God afflicted her with.

Note that their sin against God was not singular, is not a one-time event. Judah had rebelled against God and his commands for centuries. One of the applications we touched on was the futility of putting trust in earthly alliances for security. It does not yield security, and it never has. We see that played out in our world today in many ways.

We should put our trust in God and in God alone. Another application that we saw was related to the reaction of the people of Judah. Jeremiah uses very emotional language and imagery in describing how shocked and in disbelief the people of Judah were at the destruction of Jerusalem in their temple. Jeremiah and others had prophesied God's punishment on his rebellious people for years, for decades. They had been told this was about to happen.

This should not have been a surprise. So how do you handle tragedy and attacks? Are you surprised? Are you shocked? We read from 1 Peter 412, Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing had happened unto you.

We're told not to be surprised. Trials are not some strange thing that happens. They happen regularly to everyone, even Christians. And do your eyes in these trials and thoughts turn to Jesus or to yourself? As in chapter 1, chapter 2 also begins with the word how, but we find that it's used differently.

Rather than a question of how could this happen, it's used in a sense of look how the Lord is punishing his people. In the first half of chapter two, Jeremiah focuses on 26 actions the Lord undertook against Judah. 26 actions that come from God's fierce anger. For hundreds of years, God waited patiently for the cup of wrath to fill. And the time had finally come.

The cup of wrath was full. It was time to pour out God's cup of wrath. It was time for Judah to experience God's chastisement, to experience God's fierce anger. God was correcting Judah for the sins she had committed against him, But was every Jew rebelling against God? Probably not.

So it's good to remember that in times of judgment, the righteous will feel the pain as well. Life is not fair. Life is hard. God was correcting Israel out of love with a view to restoring them. Again, how do we respond?

Do we get angry with God for our difficulties? In the second half of Chapter 2, we read about Jeremiah's intense grief over Jerusalem's destruction. Jerusalem was the center of Jewish life, the religious center, the political center, the financial center, the center for everything Jewish. Now, it's utterly destroyed, including the temple, God's temple. It's gone.

For them, this was catastrophic. And we see the sense here of deep sorrow, the sorrow that shakes Jeremiah to the core. Furthermore, it seems that there is much rejoicing by Israel's enemies. They clap, they mock, they taunt, they offer no compassion, no comfort, rather they pile on even more bitterness. They had been dreaming of this day and now it was here.

They boasted by their arms, by their strength and might that they accomplished this great feat. But it was not the greatness of the armies of the Chaldeans. It was the Lord. Jeremiah brings his lament to the main point in verse 19 where he calls Israel to pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord. Do you recognize what this is?

This is called prayer. When we feel we've been destroyed or conquered by the wicked or even just attacked, what is our best response? It's to pray. Our best response is to cry out our hearts to the Lord, to pour it out like water, like a river. God hears our prayers, even when we can't express what we feel, and the best we can do is groan.

Have you ever just groaned? It's a hard place to be, but God hears it and He understands what it means. God is sovereign and His will is perfect. His ways are perfect. His timing is perfect, and we need to be in a place to accept that.

Thy will be done, as our Lord Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane. We need to humble ourselves and fear the Lord. We need to trust Him, to trust that He will work it out for His glory and our good. Now for chapter 3. As we find in chapters 1, 2, and 4, chapter 3, as I said, is an acrostic, differing only in the number of verses per Hebrew letter.

I'll break the chapter eventually into four different sections, and what we're covering today will be Jeremiah's afflictions, verses one through 18, verses 19 through 36, Jeremiah's hope, verses 37 through 54, God's justice, and verse 55 through 66, a prayer for deliverance. We'll just focus on the first part today. I'd like to read the verses that we're going to cover today, verses 1 through 18. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me and brought me into the darkness, but not into the light.

Surely against me is he turned. He turneth his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old. He hath broken my bones. He hath builded against me, encompassed me with gall and travail.

He hath set me in dark places as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out. He hath made my chains heavy. Also, when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone.

He hath made my paths crooked. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait and as a lion in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces. He hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow and set me as a mark for the arrow.

He hath caused the arrows of his quivers to enter into my reins. I was a derision to all my people, and their song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes, and now hast removed my soul far off from peace. I forgot prosperity.

And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord. We see here in the writings that Jeremiah is focused on himself, yet these are also the expressions of others that witnessed alongside Jeremiah God's righteous judgment of Jerusalem and his people. In fact, we could say that he's describing Judah's suffering as if it were his own. I'll be going through each of the verses but not rereading them each time, so if you wanted to follow in your Bible, that's probably helpful. In these 18 verses, Jeremiah uses the word I six times, the word me 15 times, the word my 14 times.

And who is a source of this affliction? God. God was. We see this in the use of he 21 times and his 4 times in these 18 verses. In verse one, I am referring to Jeremiah, that he has seen affliction, indicating that he was there, that he was an eyewitness, and he saw the punishment God inflicted upon Judah and by the rod of his wrath.

God has chosen a rod to deliver his wrath to discipline his people. Just as God used Assyria, we read in Isaiah 10-5, to punish the northern tribes, He used the Chaldeans or Babylon to punish Judah. This was his rod. In verse two, Jeremiah contrasts the darkness with the light, perhaps contrasting this calamity with past prosperity of Jerusalem and Israel. When we are in the darkness, we feel alone.

We're in a place we cannot see where we are going. We're in a place where we must rely on someone else to lead us. We must learn to trust. Spurgeon comments on this verse, This seems to be the hardest part of our lot, that God should lead us into darkness. He hath led me and brought me into darkness.

Yet, brethren, that is, on the other hand, the sweetest thing about our trial, because if the darkness be in the place where God has led us, it is best for us to be in the dark. This is a good lesson for us all to be content with where God has us, especially when we don't understand it or we don't like it. In verse 3, Jeremiah complains that God is against him, not just here or there, but all day, in essence, all the time. And David in the Psalms expresses the same sentiment in Psalm 73, verse 14, for all the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning. Jeremiah has forgotten the words of Solomon in his Proverbs 3, verses 11 and 12, my son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father the son in whom he delights.

Jeremiah should take comfort that this discipline from the Lord is occurring because God loves Judah, his people. We all struggle with this when we feel the Lord is against us and when times are hard. In verse four, the King James reads, My flesh and my skin hath he made old. Other versions translate this made old to waste away, consumed, worn out, which for me helped me understand that a little bit better. Jeremiah laments that his flesh and his skin are wasting away, being consumed because of God's punishment.

Even his bones are broken. Jeremiah in this verse includes the suffering of both the outward appearance of his flesh and skin, as well as the extreme pain and discomfort caused by inward damage, the inward damage of broken bones. There is no part of him that is free from the suffering that he's experiencing, the Judah is experiencing. His suffering is all-encompassing. In verse 5, the NSAB version, American Standard Version, reads, He has besieged and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.

Jeremiah had witnessed the Chaldeans surround Jerusalem, put them under siege, and eventually conquer Judah. He witnessed the tremendous hardships that were endured by the people of Judah within the walls of Jerusalem. Jeremiah uses this fresh picture in his mind to express the way he feels God is punishing his people. Surrounded, no way of escape, no means of relief, only bitterness and hardship. In verse six, we see again the dark places in his description of his sufferings.

The reference here is the grave. He has set me to the grave, the grave of those who were dead long ago, long forgotten. We recall in the Psalms of David, him crying out to God for guidance and deliverance. Psalm 143, verses 3 and 4, for the enemy has persecuted my soul and has crushed my life to the ground. He has made me dwell in darkness like those who have long been dead.

Therefore, my spirit is overwhelmed within me. My heart within me is distressed." In these past three verses, Jeremiah has focused on his distress in terms of his body, wasting away, broken, surrounded by bitterness and woe, and set in the grave, abandoned and long forgotten. In verse 7, Jeremiah uses the imagery of a hedge surrounding him that he cannot get through. It has him trapped. Furthermore, he is bound with a heavy chain that prevents him from moving around even a little.

Imagine trying to walk around with a heavy chain and a ball attached to your ankle. The picture here is one of being locked up and chained in prison. From a commentary from R.K. Harrison, he saw this as a picture of cruel imprisonment. The walling up of prisoners within confined spaces so that they died very quickly was a form of torture made popular by the Assyrians.

In verse eight, Jeremiah expresses his frustration that not only does he feel imprisoned, but not even his prayers get out to reach God. God refuses to hear his prayers, and Isaiah tells of this as a consequence of the people's sin. In Isaiah 59, too, But your iniquities have separated you from God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear you." In verse 9, Jeremiah repeats the idea of being imprisoned, enclosed with hewn stone. No matter which way he wants to go, he cannot. His way is blocked or at least restricted.

A commentator from Benson states this on this verse. That is, I traverse to and fro, to the right hand and to the left, to try to get forward, but I am still turned back. Observe, reader, if we walk in the crooked ways of sin, crossing or swerving from God's laws, it is just with God to make us walk in the crooked paths of affliction, crossing our designs and breaking our measures. In these past three verses, Jeremiah paints a picture of being chained and imprisoned, locked away, no way out, and no one to hear his cries for help. In verse 10, Jeremiah describes God's punishment to be like a bear lying in wait and a lion hiding to pounce him and tear apart.

Lion hiding, waiting to pounce him and tear him apart. Years ago, Molly and I went camping in a campground in California, and as we pulled up to the headquarters to check in, we were amazed at the car next to us. Apparently, a bear had come by and smelled something inside and kind of ripped the doors off and completely mangled and shredded everything inside, either looking for a piece of gum or a chapstick or something that smelled good. I was quite amazed at the damage that a bear could do to a car. It was very amazing.

We decided to park somewhere else in case he came back. But when camping in California, bears are something to pay attention to. You had to be very careful with your food or anything that might smell good to them. Bears and lions are ferocious beasts. None of us would like to encounter them, especially alone.

So Jeremiah chose these two animals to express his fear and dread, his continual fear of being attacked, not ever believing to be safe. In verse 11, because of the threat of a bear or lion lying in wait, he departed from the path he was on and yet still fell into the hands or paws of his enemy, torn to pieces. He was desolate, brought to a place of ruin and destruction, just like the Jews exiled in Babylon. In verse 12, Jeremiah continues the theme of being hunted. First it was by bears and lions.

Now it is with God, hunting him down with a bow and arrows. There's no way to escape, no place to turn, no refuge. Throughout the Bible, the bow is often used as a symbol of God's judgment. Job uses this imagery when complaining his friends weren't very comforting. In Job 16 verses 13 and 14, his archers surround me.

He pierces my heart and does not pity. He pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with wound upon wound. He runs at me like a warrior." In verse 13, we see the imagery of the hunter continued, but the hunter is not to save or protect. He is there to destroy.

These arrows represent the ills and sorrows appointed by God. We can look at Deuteronomy chapter 32 verses 23 through 26 to get a picture of these arrows. I will heap disasters on them. I will spend my arrows on them. They shall be wasted with hunger, devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction.

I will also send against them the teeth of beasts with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword shall destroy outside. There shall be terror within. For the young man and virgin, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs, I would have said, I will dash them in pieces. I will make the memory of them to cease from among men.

Hunger, pestilence, wild beasts, and the sword or the arrows shot that pierced his reins or inward parts. Since we have Jeremiah describing not only his own suffering, but also that of Judah, his reins could also represent for Judah the land, the people, Jerusalem itself, even the temple. Again, we see a similar statement from Job in chapter 6 verse 4, for the arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks their poison, The terrors of God are arrayed against me." In verse 14, the English standard version puts it in a way that's a little bit more understandable than the King James. I have become the laughing stock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long. We saw back in Lamentations 1, 7, and 2, 15, and 16, the laughing and mocking of Judah's enemies at her destruction, just like we read here in verse 14.

There is no compassion, no comfort offered, just abuse. Jeremiah continues this idea in verse 15. John Gill comments here, he has filled me with bitterness or with bitternesses instead of food, bitter herbs. The illusion perhaps is to the bitter herbs eaten at the Passover, insignifying bitter afflictions, sore calamities, of which the prophet and his people had their fill. He hath made me drunken with wormwood, with wormwood drink.

But this herb, being a wholesome one, though bitter, some think that something called henbane or wolfsbane is rather mint, which is of a poisonous and intoxicating nature. However, it is no unusual thing for persons to be represented as drunk with affliction. Thus, we can say that he is filled with bitternesses and drunk with affliction. They have been utterly defeated by the Chaldeans. They have been mocked and taunted by their neighbors and by the Chaldean soldiers.

They have been pillaged. They've been shamed. They've been led away, exiled into a distant land. In verse 16, Jeremiah continues the metaphor of food and describes the effects of grit in his bread, as if made with sand rather than flour. Matthew Poole comments, these are but mere metaphorical expressions signifying the unpleasant, difficult condition in which God had brought his people.

They were like men that lived upon gritty bread, more fit to break their teeth than to nourish them. In the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, they render the second part of this verse as, He hath fed me with ashes rather than covered, which goes better with the first part of the verse. David, in his prayers for an afflicted man for mercy on himself in Zion, cries out in Psalm 102, verses 8 through 11. Mine enemies have taunted me all day long. Those who made a fool of or derided me have used my name as a curse, for I have eaten ashes like bread and mixed my drink with weeping because of your indignation and your wrath, for you have lifted me up and thrown me away.

My days are like a Lincoln's shadow, and as for me, I wither away like grass." In verse 17, John Gill comments, from the time the city was besieged by the Chaldeans, there was no true peace. And now the people being exiled could have no true peace being in a foreign land, in an enemy's country, and out of their own, and far from the place of divine worship. Nor could the prophet have any peace of soul in the consideration of these things, the city, the temple, and nation, being desolate, though he himself was not actually in captivity. When Jeremiah comments that he has forgotten prosperity, it had been so long since he had had any that he has forgotten. He is not expecting to see it again, in fact, acting like he had never had prosperity before.

And finally, in verse 18, Jeremiah concludes that not only is his strength gone, but all hope has perished. Because of the misery he has witnessed and experienced, his heart has failed him. He has given up hope, the hope of safety and prosperity, the hope of enjoying divine favor, and the hope in the Lord. After reading through all of these descriptions of the misery experienced by Jeremiah and the people of Judah, one might think that they might be belaboring the point of their suffering here. We can even ask how many ways can Jeremiah describe his misery and desolation.

It goes on and on. But we must understand that everything that they held dear was taken. Their promised land, their wealth, their prized city, Jerusalem, their holy temple, their religious festivals, the sacrifices and other observances, their pride, even the survivors that were taken away and exiled to Babylon. God patiently waited until his cup of wrath was full and then poured it out completely on his disobedient people. This was not like the suffering of Job, in that God had allowed Satan to test him as someone God had lifted up.

Judah continued to disobey God's commands, continued to rebel and reject the Lord their God. Their punishment was a consequence of their bad decisions. Their judgment of a holy God was devastating. It's difficult for us to relate to what they were experiencing. Everything that was precious to them was taken or destroyed.

And it's reasonable that their mourning was extreme. The whole book of Lamentations is used to express their grief, to deal with their mourning. They were in a place where they felt abandoned by God, and He would not hear them. He would not save them. He would not comfort them because He was punishing them.

Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Matthew 5-4. In a commentary from Ligonier Ministries, the comment on this verse, reading this, we might immediately think that it refers to God comforting us when we mourn a loved one's death. Of course, as believers, we do experience God's consolation in times of loss, but this is just one way the promise of the second beatitude is fulfilled. There are other reasons that the Lord's people mourn in scripture, And his promise to comfort our mourning applies to these situations as well. First, we may experience the deep conviction of the Holy Spirit and mourn for our sin and its offense against our Holy Creator.

We see biblical examples of this in David's repentance for his sin with Bathsheba, and then the response of the Jewish pilgrims to Peter's Pentecost sermon when they were cut to the heart. This experience of mourning over sin is part of what it means to be poor in spirit, tying the second beatitude nicely to the first one. We may also mourn in the midst of suffering for the kingdom. Although we have a certain kind of joy in such trouble, scripture is on us that this pain is real. Jeremiah mourned over the prosperity of the wicked and the afflictions of the righteous remnant of Israel.

Even Jesus was a man of sorrows who mourned the wickedness of the Israelites and suffered for his people. God's comfort of his mourning people means that those who suffer for righteousness sake will receive an eternal reward. Again, we have here Jeremiah pouring out his heart in his lamentations. As a prophet, he had pleaded with his people to return to God. He had prayed for them.

He had prophesied their destruction, yet he was rejected and even persecuted. If we can look around in our world today, what do we see? We see churches are dying all around us. We see after COVID a tremendous drop in church attendance. We're no longer a Christian nation and just as Jeremiah was concerned for his people, we too must be concerned for the welfare of God's people.

Whether it is the turning away from Godly teachings or actual persecutions, we need to be praying for God's people every day. Jeremiah witnessed firsthand the punishment God laid upon Judah. He was devastated. His people were devastated. And sometimes God puts us in a place that we can feel overwhelmed or crushed.

We can find ourselves in despair, feeling helpless, hopeless, and alone. God does this sometimes to help us see where we are really placing our faith and trust. He does this perhaps to strengthen the faith we have or to remind us of the faith that we lack. Upon who are you placing your faith? Are you really trusting in the Lord?

Some trust in the government, some trust in their job or their own abilities. And maybe your pride is telling you that you have everything under control. When you feel overwhelmed or in despair, turn to God, cry out to God, and don't give up and don't lose hope. Never forget that God is always faithful. He hears you and He loves you.

Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for, again, Your holy word. We thank you for the lamentations of Jeremiah. Lord, we can feel from the words that He wrote, Lord, the deep grief and the suffering that they experienced, Lord, the consequences, Lord, the punishment of their sins.

Lord, we thank You for being such a loving God. Lord, you chastise us. You rebuke us because you love us. You loved your people and you wanted to restore them. Lord, whether we're suffering because of punishment or whether we're suffering at your good pleasure, because it's your will, Lord, to bring glory to you, whatever the reason, Lord.

Help us in our time of difficulty, in our time of being overwhelmed or in despair. Lord, help us turn our eyes to you. Lord, you're always there. You're ever faithful. And Lord, you love us more than we can ever know.

We thank you for being such a loving God. We thank you for your mercy and your patience that are so necessary in dealing with us. We praise you and we thank you. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.