EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ט) Lamentations 3:25. Such an acceptance suggests more knowledge. Good is Jehovah to them that wait for him, to a soul that seeks him. He is ready to respond to those who feel need of Him and foster longings after Himself.
Lamentations 3:26. So when the graciousness of the Lord is perceived, and its proffers yielded to, blessedness is not far off. Good it is both to wait and be silent for the salvation of Jehovah. There is to be no striving, nor crying, nor causing the voice to be heard in the street. Confidence in His power to save hushes fears and doubts, and enables us calmly to meet the events of life. He will in no wise leave or forsake those who wait for Him.
Lamentations 3:27. Good is it for a man to bear a yoke, that is, anything by which he will be trained for his Owner, and to do his Owner’s work. Teaching may do so; affliction may do so. Both the one and the other show to a man what he is—ignorant, weak, with more that is bad than he had believed he had. God speaks in both methods as issues of His love, and to obtain vessels unto honour, sanctified, meet for the Master’s use. The phrase in his youth does not mean that the poet was still a young man. He might be an aged man, looking back on the experiences of his life, and conscious of the value of the discipline he had been subjected to when the dew of youth was upon him. He is blessed who, in earlier years, has been drawn or driven to look into the face of realities, and to learn something of the afflictions of Christ before he has been in grip with temptations from the clamant lusts of the flesh and of the mind.
HOMILETICS
THREE GRADES OF GOODNESS
I. There is the goodness of Jehovah to those who cling to Him. “The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him” (Lamentations 3:25). God is absolutely and supremely good—good in Himself, good in all things, good at all times. If He is good to all, then He must be especially so to those who wait on Him in conscious dependence and earnestly supplicate His help. There are mysteries about the Divine procedure which we cannot fathom, and we are sometimes tempted to question the goodness of God. But clearer light dispels our doubts, and the more completely we trust in Him the more real and tender and potent does His goodness become. We never know God aright till we trust Him fully.
II. There is the goodness of patient and uncomplaining waiting for God’s time of deliverance. “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:26). To indulge in querulous complaints only increases the irritation of our sufferings. Murmuring begets murmuring, and we are apt to blame every one but ourselves. The more we grumble, the farther are we away from goodness. It is only when we are silent and abstain from complaining that we begin to see that our deliverance must come from God, and that it is our wisdom to bide His time and humbly submit to His method. The soul attains goodness by exercising an active and larger faith in the Divine goodness. A clearer apprehension of goodness in God begets a corresponding goodness in the soul that sees it.
III. There is the goodness of being accustomed to the harden of suffering early in life. “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (Lamentations 3:27). Youth is the period of enjoyment, and it has a pleasure all its own, with its bright and gay romancing, its poetic dreams of beauty and delight, its relishable love of work, its daring enterprise and bold ambitions, its soaring hopes and confident prophecies, its sparkling wit and brimming fun—brilliant and harmless as tropical lightning; buoyant, radiant, joyous youth-time, when every sense is steeped in the intoxicating nectar of innocent rapture, when the whole world shines with the golden glory of perpetual summer, and when life is one long, sweet poem, set to the enchanting movements of exquisite music. But youth has also its burdens and responsibilities, and its happiness is not destroyed but intensified when it learns to bear with bravery the disappointments and afflictions of life. The youth who has known little of suffering is ill prepared for the stern realities of ordinary life. Early sorrow brings early comfort and peace and strength. The best that is in man is tested and perfected by misfortune.
LESSONS.—
1. God is good in Himself inherently and essentially.
2. Man is good only in the degree in which he receives Divine grace and submits to the Divine discipline.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 3:25. The Divine goodness.
1. A grand reality.
2. Continually manifested.
3. Specially revealed to the earnest seeker.
Lamentations 3:26. The advantages of a state of expectation.
1. It seems implied that our incapacity of looking into the future has much to do with the production of disquietude and unhappiness.
2. And yet the possession of this power of anticipating the future would be incalculably more detrimental.
3. Our ignorance of what shall happen stimulates exertion. We are so constituted that to deprive us of hope would be to make us inactive and wretched.
4. It is for our advantage that salvation, instead of being a thing of certainty and present possession, must be hoped and quietly waited for.
5. If true believers were withdrawn from earth at the moment of their becoming such, the influences of piety which now make themselves felt through the mass of a population would be altogether destroyed, and the world deprived of that salt which alone preserves it from total decomposition.
6. No fair explanation can be given of the text unless you bring into the account the difference in the portions to be assigned hereafter to the righteous.
7. The continuance of the justified on earth affords them opportunity of rising higher in the scale of future blessedness.
8. Being compelled to hope and to wait is a good moral discipline, so that the exercises prescribed are calculated to promote holiness and ensure happiness.
9. It is good as affording time in which to glorify God.
10. Religion gives a character to hope of which otherwise it is altogether destitute. Hope is a beautiful meteor; but nevertheless this meteor, like the rainbow, is not only lovely because of its seven rich and radiant stripes; it is the memorial of a covenant between man and his Maker, telling us that we are born for immortality, destined, unless we sepulchre our greatness, to the highest honour and noblest happiness.—Henry Melville.
Hope and patience. I. What is meant by the salvation of the Lord? God’s salvation is used very frequently in the Bible for His interposition to save the soul of man from sin. It is not this salvation which is here spoken of, for though a man may be encouraged to hope, he cannot be urged quietly to wait for it. The language of the chapter is not that of a man ignorant of God. It is the salvation which a man needs in any crisis of life, where he suffers under trial, or is threatened with it. Our strength and resources, all possible expedients, have been brought into exercise. The last reserve has been thrown into the battle, and yet it goes against us. It is then the case rises distinctly into the salvation of the Lord. A man who has faith only in worldly resources is powerless here. He must give up in despair, or cast himself on a blind chance. But, for a believing man, there is still a duty and a stay. When he cannot take a step farther in human effort, there is a pathway to the skies, and his heart can travel it. II. What is meant by these exercises of the soul towards God’s salvation—to hope and quietly wait?
1. The foundation of hope lies in desire. But desire may pursue things that can never be objects of hope to us. We can only hope for that which is felt to be possible and reasonable. The next element is faith. But we believe in many things in regard to which we do not hope. Hope is faith with desire pointing out the objects. A third element to make our hope strong is imagination. While sin has made this world a charnel-house of corruption or a storehouse of vanities, purity can fill its treasury with divine aspirations which are as grand as they are transcendently real. II. Quiet waiting. It is termed in the Bible patience. It is the part of hope to seek the future; it is the duty of patience to rest calmly in the present, exercising faith, and giving calm attention to duties. The tamest and most insignificant of daily duties may be made noble and divine when the thought of God and the will of Christ are carried into them. III. Consider the benefit of uniting these—both to hope and quietly wait.
1. The one is needful to save the other from sinking into sin.
2. To raise the other to its full strength.
3. It is good now in the depth of the soul, in the conscious assurance that it is better to rest in the hardest of God’s ways than to wander at will in our own.
4. It is good in the enhancement of every blessing for which we have to wait. Between your use of the means and the result which you desire there is still a gulf of separation, on the brink of which Patience must sit and look across, waiting God’s time and way to pass it.—John Ker, D.D.
Ver.
Lamentations 3:27. Youth the proper season of discipline. I. In the principles of true religion. II. In the arts of honest industry.—Berriman.
The best burden for young shoulders. The bullocks have to bear the yoke. They go in pairs, and the yoke is borne upon their shoulders. If the bullock is not broken in when young, it will never make a good ploughing ox. So it is good for us when young to learn obedience, to acquire knowledge, and to encounter difficulties and troubles. I. It is good to be a Christian while you are young.
1. The man whose heart is conquered by Divine grace early is made happy soon.
2. Is saved from a thousand snares.
3. Is saved from having his shoulders galled with the devil’s yoke.
4. Gives him longer time in which to serve God.
5. Enables him to be well established in Divine things. II. It is good for young Christians that they bear the yoke of Jesus.
1. They render to Jesus complete obedience from the very first.
2. They attain clear instruction in Divine truth.
3. They serve Christ early.
4. It is good to meet with difficulties and persecution in youth. III. Practically we are all of us in our youth.
1. Bearing the yoke, the old Adam is kept in check.
2. We are helpful to others who have known affliction.
3. Will make heaven all the sweeter.—Spurgeon.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—The goodness of God experienced. A German just converted was greatly surprised at the goodness of God to him, which he now realised. One day he was overheard in prayer saying, “O Lord Jesus! I did not know Thou wert so good!” How general is this ignorance!
Patience conquers. Twenty-five years ago the founder of a college for negroes in America was hunted like a wild beast through the region where his name is now spoken by men of all parties with reverence. Lloyd Garrison was nearly murdered by an infuriated mob for championing the emancipation of the slaves, and years afterwards, in the same city, was made the recipient of its highest honours. Time fights against every tyranny, and in favour of the tyrannised. To endure is to conquer.
Fellow-suffering silences complaints. During one of the campaigns in the American civil war, when the winter weather was very severe, some of Stonewall Jackson’s men, having crawled out in the morning from their snow-laden blankets, half-frozen, began to abuse him as the cause of their sufferings. He lay close by under a tree, himself covered with snow, and heard all this; but, without noticing it, presently crawled out too, and, shaking off the snow, made some jocular remark to the nearest men, who had no idea he had ridden up in the night and lain down amongst them! The incident ran through the array in a few hours, and reconciled his followers to all the hardships of the expedition, and fully re-established his popularity.
Skill acquired in youth. Livy says that at the siege of Samé one hundred slingers were brought from Ægeum, Patræ, and Dymæ. These men, according to the practice of that nation, were exercised from their childhood in throwing with a sling into the open sea the round pebbles which strew the shore. Being accustomed to drive their missiles through circular marks of small circumference placed at a great distance, they not only hit the enemy’s heads, but any part of their faces they aimed at. These slings checked the Sameans from sallying out either so frequently or so boldly, insomuch that they would sometimes from the walls beseech the Achæans to retire for a while and be quiet spectators of their fight with the Roman guards.
A brave youth. William Hunter, a London apprentice, was in 1555 ordered by a priest to attend mass. He refused, and one day was found reading the Bible in Brentwood Church. He fled. His father was seized, and to release him the boy returned and surrendered. He was imprisoned for nine months, then offered a bribe by Bishop Bonner if he would recant. To all he opposed a courageous resistance, and was burned at the stake in his native village, retaining to the last his religious sturdiness and bravery.