EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
Lamentations 3:18. This reads like an account of the climax to the trials undergone. I said, as if talking to myself, My strength is perished, and my expectation from Jehovah. The future is void of good. I am unable to look for anything from Him. In Jah Jehovah is everlasting strength, but I do not perceive it. I have lost the direction towards Him.
This recalling of the name at last seems to turn the current of thought. I must not let go trust in Him. I must tell Him the desires of my heart.
The sorrow according to God is a product of His wisdom and love. “Sorrow is God’s last message to man; it is God speaking in emphasis. He who abuses it shows that he can shut his ears when God speaks loudest. Therefore heartlessness or impenitence after sorrow is more dangerous than intemperance in joy; its results are always more tragic.… God’s wrath is an ennobling, not a stupefying doctrine” (Smith). Nor is it discouraging to leal-hearted men, though menacing.
(ז) Lamentations 3:19-21. The name of Jehovah is as a rallying-call to reject the rash expression of despair just heard, and stirs up thoughts of what God’s character is. The author begins to feel that he can have recourse to a prayer to be remembered, and so these verses mark the passage from hopeless bafflings with no small storm to the hopeful sound of a favouring breeze.
Lamentations 3:19. Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the gall; a reminiscence of salient points in the sufferings he had passed through, and which might evoke the compassion and power of the All-merciful.
Lamentations 3:20. The correct translation of this verse is uncertain, and preference is given to this. Remembering, thou wilt remember all those things; also [that] my soul is cast down in me. I am heavy laden. I have no might. Either I shall be overwhelmed and sink into deep mire where there is no standing, or else out of weakness be made strong by Thee. It would be like Thee to make haste to help me.
Lamentations 3:21. This I will bring back to my heart, this thought, that Thou wilt not be always wroth, for the spirit would fail before Thee and the souls which thou hast made, has taken full possession of my inner man; therefore I will hope. There must be a blessing in store, for God pities and God rules in exhaustless grace. Out of the darkest depression He can lift to a light in which I may walk and never be ashamed of my hope.
HOMILETICS
THE DAWN OF HOPE
I. Begins to appear when the soul has reached the verge of despair. “I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord” (Lamentations 3:18). When things get to the worst they begin to mend. For some time the affairs of the prophet had been sinking into ever-deepening gloom. His peace and happiness had departed, the memory that they ever existed had perished, and now dark doubts about the Divine goodness had finished the degenerating process. It was a critical moment. The soul oscillated between utter collapse and the beginning of recovery. It is a mercy the soul is not left to itself in its weakest moments. Help was at hand, and hope began to dawn. All the time the soul was expressing the utmost despondency, it was struggling against despair, and feeling for some ground of confidence and hope. It begins to appear that, after all, trouble is God’s method of making known His righteousness and love. A way out of the dungeon is opening.
II. Indicated by the prayer of the soul for the Divine pity. “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall” (Lamentations 3:19). Remember. It is a prayer to Jehovah, beseeching compassion for the soul that has supped its fill of misery, which it has found as bitter as wormwood and gall. There is hope for man, for the worst of men, when he begins to pray. It is the first step upward in the pathway of deliverance. It may seem a cry of despair, but it is a cry that appeals to the Divine pity, and not in vain. The powers of Omnipotence are put into operation for the soul’s rescue.
III. Evident by the fact of the soul’s voluntary humiliation. “My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me” (Lamentations 3:20). It is borne in upon the sufferer that his extraordinary afflictions are the consequences of sin. The mind oppressed and crippled by a morbid contemplation of its miseries is now transferred to a consideration of their cause, and reflection upon its transgressions bows the soul in conscious shame. A change of theme is a relief to the mentally distressed. The moment the soul becomes concerned about its sins, it becomes anxious about their removal. This anxiety is the dawn of hope.
IV. Strengthened by the recollection that prayer and penitence are the conditions of deliverance. “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope” (Lamentations 3:21). He has seen his error in murmuring against the bitterness of his adversity. Complaints only increased his misery, but did nothing towards removing it. He now recalls how a sight of his sins had humbled him, and led him to pray for mercy, and knowing that God hears the cry of the sincerely penitent, he begins to cherish the hope of pardon and deliverance. It is in this way that God deals with the sinners of to-day. While men concentrate their thoughts upon their misfortunes, and rail against the Providence whose laws they have so recklessly broken, they shut themselves off from God and from hope; but when they acknowledge and grieve over their sins, and pray to God for the mercy provided for all men in Christ Jesus, they receive not only the hope, but the assurance of salvation.
LESSONS.—
1. Hope is the last link between sanity and utter mental collapse.
2. The greatest sufferer is never wholly without hope.
3. All true reform must begin in hope.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 3:18-19. Lost hope restored. I. Hope has its highest realisation in God. II. When sin divorces the soul from God, its hope perishes. III. Only as the soul returns to God is its hope restored.
Lamentations 3:20-21. The office of memory: I. Plays an important part in our mental and spiritual history. II. Helps us to realise the nature and aggravation of our sins. III. Should lead us to a wise and timely humiliation on account of sin. IV. Prepares the way for a brighter and more hopeful future.
Lamentations 3:21. Memory, the handmaid of hope. Memory is very often the servant of despondency. She stands like a handmaiden, clothed in sackcloth, presenting to her master a cup of mingled gall and wormwood. Like Mercury, she hastes with winged heel to gather fresh thorns with which to fill the uneasy pillow, and to bind fresh rods with which to scourge the already bleeding heart. There is, however, no necessity for this. Wisdom will transform memory into an angel of comfort. She need not wear a crown of iron; she may encircle her brow with a fillet of gold, all spangled with stars. We lay it down as a general principle, that if we would exercise our memories we might, in our darkest distress, strike a match which would instantaneously kindle the lamp of comfort. I. Apply this principle to the believer in deep trouble. The chapter contains a list of matters the recollection of which brought comfort to Jeremiah 1. The fact that, however deep our affliction, it is of the Lord’s mercy we are not consumed. When you are kindling your household fire, before which you hope to sit down with comfort, you do not expect first to kindle the lumps of coal, but you set some lighter fuel in a blaze, and soon the more solid material yields a genial glow; so this thought, which may seem so light to you, may be as the kindling of a heavenly fire of comfort to you who are now shivering in your grief.
2. His compassions fail not. This again is not a very high step, but still it is a little in advance of the other, and the weakest may readily reach it.
3. The Lord is my portion. One of our kings, high and haughty in temper, had a quarrel with the citizens of London, and thought to alarm them by a dreadful threat that would cow the spirits of the bold burghers, for if they did not mind what they were at, he would remove his court from Westminster. Whereupon the doughty Lord Mayor begged to inquire whether his Majesty meant to take the Thames away, for so long as the river remained, his majesty might take himself where he pleased. Even so the world warns us, you cannot hold out, you cannot rejoice; this trouble shall come and that adversity shall befall. We reply, So long as you cannot take our Lord away, we will not complain. We have now advanced to some degree of hope, but there are other steps to ascend.
4. The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. Let Him smite never so hard, yet if we can maintain the heavenly posture of prayer, we may rest assured that He will turn from blows to kisses yet. Bunyan tells us that when the city of Mansoul was besieged, it was the depth of winter and the roads were very bad; but even then prayer could travel them. No enemy can barricade the road to the King. We are getting into deeper water of joy; let us take another step.
5. It is good that a man should bear the yoke in his youth. Why should I dread to descend the shaft of affliction if it leads me to the gold mine of spiritual experience? Why should I cry out if the sun of my prosperity goes down, if in the darkness of my adversity I shall be the better able to count the starry promises with which my faithful God has been pleased to gem the sky. Many a promise is written in sympathetic ink, which you cannot read till the fire of trouble brings out the characters. One step more, and surely we shall then have good ground to rejoice.
6. The Lord will not cast off for ever. Who told thee that the night would never end in day? Who told thee that the sea would ebb out till there should be nothing left but a vast tract of mud and sand? Who told thee that the winter would proceed from frost to frost, from snow, and ice, and hail, to deeper snow and yet more heavy tempest? Knowest thou not that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, the spring and summer succeed to winter? Hope thou then! Hope thou ever, for God fails thee not. Thus memory may be, as Coleridge calls it, “the bosom spring of joy.”
II. To the doubting Christian who has lost his evidences of salvation:
1. Call to remembrance matters of the past. At the south of Africa the sea was generally so stormy when the frail barks of the Portuguese went sailing south that they named it the Cape of Storms; but after that cape had been well rounded by bolder navigators, they named it the Cape of Good Hope In your experience you had many a Cape of Storms, but you have weathered them all, and now let them be a Cape of Good Hope to you.
2. Recall the fact that others have found the Lord true to them.
3. Remember that if you look within you will see some faint traces of the Holy Spirit’s hand. The complete picture of Christ is not there, but cannot you see the crayon sketch, the outline, the charcoal marks? Where God the Holy Ghost has done as much as that, He will do more.
4. Recollect that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. If I am not a saint, I am a sinner; and if I may not go to the throne of grace as a child, I will go as a sinner.
III. A few words to seekers. Oh, that I had a voice like the trumpet of God that shall wake the dead at last! If I might only have it to utter one sentence, it would be this one, “In Christ is your help found”. As for you, there never can be found anything hopeful in your human nature. It is death itself, it is rottenness and corruption. Turn, turn away your eyes from this despairing mass of black depravity and look to Christ.—C. H. Spurgeon.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—The misery of hopelessness. Abraham Lincoln, when a young man, was subject to terrible fits of depression. In one of his letters he writes: “I am now the most miserable being living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better.”
Hope presupposes faith. They cannot exist apart. Hope is the balloon of the soul, soaring majestically into the heavens, scanning scenes of beauty and grandeur never beheld by our earthbound senses, and faithfully reporting to the soul the state of affairs in the skies; but it is a captive balloon, and the connecting cords are firmly held in the hand of faith. The loftiest flights and the swing of what may seem the most eccentric gyrations of hope are held in check by the friendly, the sympathetic, and unswerving grasp of faith. “My dear Hope,” says Faith, “it is very nice for you to be up there basking in the cloudless sunshine and drinking in the melody of the ascending lark as it ripples up the heights; and I like you to be there. I could never get there myself; and you tell me of things I should never otherwise know, and they do me good. But remember, I cannot let you go. We are necessary to each other, and cannot do without each other. If you were to break away from me, you would vanish like vapour into space, and I should be left forlorn and powerless”.
Hope clings to us to the last. When John Knox lay dying, one of the friends around his death-bed asked the question, “Hast thou hope?” The veteran reformer was too weak to speak—the moment for speech was gone; but the expiring saint raised his finger and pointed upwards, and so passed triumphantly to the skies.
Prayer a preparation for conflict. A soldier in the Confederate army was once asked what was the secret of Stonewall Jackson’s influence over his men. “Does your general abuse you, swear at you to make you march?” “Swear!” answered the soldier. “No; Ewell does the swearing; Stonewall does the praying! When Stonewall wants us to march, he looks at us soberly, just as if he were sorry for us, and says, ‘Men, we’ve got to make a long march.’ We always know when there is going to be a long march and right smart fighting, for old Jack is powerful on prayer just before a big fight.”
Memory of victory inspiring. During the last days of William IV. the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo occurred. Rousing himself upon remembrance of it, the dying King requested that some of the French standards taken there should be brought to him, which when he looked at and handled he said, “I feel much better.”