How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
How like a widow is she,
Who was great among the nations!
The princess among the provinces
Has become a slave!
She weeps bitterly in the night,
Her tears are on her cheeks;
Among all her lovers
She has none to comfort her.
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into captivity,
Under affliction and hard servitude;
She dwells among the nations,
She finds no rest;
All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits.
Lamentations 1:1-3
From the opening verses of Lamentations, we would have no idea that by the middle of the third chapter, we would find some of the most comforting scriptures that the Word of God has to offer. The very title of the book, Lamentations, is not at all enticing to the reader. To lament, according to our English dictionaries, means to express deep grief or sorrow, and is often used in poetry or song. In the Bible, and particularly here in the book of Lamentations, it carries the idea of crying out loudly.
The theme of God’s looming judgment over the nation of Israel, due to their unfaithfulness, is a very familiar one to the prophets of the Old Testament. Here, the prophet Jeremiah is in deep grief over the devastation to the city of Jerusalem during the Babylonian captivity.
But God, in all His righteous indignation, still loves His people, Israel. Jeremiah expresses that so well in verses 22 and 23 of Lamentations chapter 3.
The sharp contrast seen in Lamentations between God’s wrath on His people and His love for them is similar to the book of Nahum, where we see the prophet Nahum lamenting over the city of Nineveh. Though the people of Nineveh had turned to the Lord during the preaching of Jonah, they had reverted to their evil ways, and God’s judgment was just around the corner. Nahum’s prophecy is filled with despair throughout the book, and yet offers this gem in the very first chapter: “The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.”
Though Lamentations is filled with sorrow and gloom, we still find in the third chapter these words of solace:
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
26 It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
29 Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
30 Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
33 For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
Lamentations 3:22-33
The most familiar of these verses are verses 22 and 23. Let’s look at three ways that these two verses describe our God.
He Is a Merciful God
God’s mercy is a constant theme throughout the Bible, though it often surprises us to find it in the Old Testament. The church age in which we live has often been called the Age of Grace, which seems to carry the connotation that God was not gracious or merciful in the Old Testament, and yet, there are an abundant number of references to God’s mercy in these scriptures. Psalm 100 ends with “His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures through all generations.” Psalm 136, which details God’s dealings with Israel, ends each verse with the phrase, “His mercy endures forever.” The prophet Joel implores his readers, “Return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful.”
David, when being asked to choose between three judgments for him to receive for a sin that he had committed, pleaded for God’s mercy, “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercies are great.” Mercy, according to Micah, is something that the Lord requires us to love: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
Continuing the theme of God’s mercy in the New Testament, Jesus taught us that God’s mercy is also something we should emulate and incorporate into our lives when He said, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We read in Ephesians 2 of God, who is “rich in mercy.” In this chapter of God’s Word, Paul describes a destructive course that all of mankind is pursuing until God steps in and saves us by His grace. As believers in our daily walk with the Lord, we are told in the book of Hebrews to come before the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need.
In calling men to receive God’s gift of eternal life, the hymn writer, John Stockton, wrote, “Come every soul by sin oppressed, there’s mercy with the Lord.”
Thomas Chisolm, the author of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” wrote a song about God’s mercy after the Lord had met a great financial need in His life.
The mercies of God What a theme for my song
Oh I never could number them o’er
They’re more than the stars in the heavenly dome
Or the sands of the wavebeaten shore
Chorus
For mercies so great, What return can I make
For mercies so constant and sure
I’ll love him, I’ll serve Him with all that I have
As long as my life shall endure
According to Jeremiah, God is not only merciful, but he is also full of compassion.
He is a Compassionate God
Through His compassion, He saves us. Lamentations 3:22 and 23 make it abundantly clear that God’s mercy is available to us because of His great compassion, and therefore, we can be saved from the punishment we deserve. “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed because His compassions fail not.”
Perhaps this compassion is most clearly and famously seen in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Notice the parallel from Lamentations 3:22 and John 3:16. In our English Bibles, we have the word “consumed,” and John 3:16 uses the word “perish.” In Lamentations, we read about compassion, and John talks about God’s love. The Christian Standard translates the verse in Lamentations this way: “Because of the LORD’s faithful love we do not perish.”
Christ’s very mission on earth was “to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). As He dealt with the people that He healed, the scriptures say that He was moved with compassion, and when Jesus saw the crowds that came to see and hear Him, He looked on them with great compassion, because they were like sheep without a Shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
Jesus loved us so much that He bore our sin in His own body on the cross that we might be saved from eternal punishment. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). The word “propitiation” carries the idea of satisfaction, especially relating to God’s wrath concerning our sin. A phrase from the modern hymn expresses it well: “For on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” Some liberal theologians have expressed concern over that phrase of the hymn and have suggested it be changed to “For on the cross as Jesus died that love of God was magnified.” Most certainly, we can see that the love of God is most magnified in the fact that God’s wrath was satisfied.
The indescribable love of God, which is beyond our understanding was very well expressed in these lyrics, “Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.”
His Mercy and Love Keep us
Notice in Lamentations 3:22, not only does God’s love keep us from perishing, but it never ceases to sustain. In Romans 8, Paul tells us that God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all. Paul then asks and answers the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of God, shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” The triumphant conclusion of the passage is that “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
He is a Faithful God!
With such mercy and compassion as constant as the morning sunrise and as consistent as the waves of the ocean, it is no wonder that Jeremiah’s prophecy explodes into praise with the phrase, “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
There are numerous other scriptures that proclaim God’s faithfulness. For instance, in Psalm 36, King David describes God’s faithfulness as reaching to the clouds, and in Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezrahite declares, “with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations.” Both Psalms begin by mentioning the mercy of God. Then Paul, in his second epistle to Timothy, describes God as remaining faithful even when we are unfaithful (2 Timothy 2:13).
Jesus Christ is called a merciful and faithful high priest in the second chapter of Hebrews, and in 1 John, with grateful hearts we read that “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
When we consider the mercy, compassion, and faithfulness of God as described by Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:22 and 23, I believe we can find no better summation of this passage than the lyrics that Thomas O. Chisholm wrote many years ago. Using this passage and a few words from the book of James, he wrote:
“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow—
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Refrain:
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”
That was full of people!
How like a widow is she,
Who was great among the nations!
The princess among the provinces
Has become a slave!
She weeps bitterly in the night,
Her tears are on her cheeks;
Among all her lovers
She has none to comfort her.
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into captivity,
Under affliction and hard servitude;
She dwells among the nations,
She finds no rest;
All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits.
Lamentations 1:1-3
From the opening verses of Lamentations, we would have no idea that by the middle of the third chapter, we would find some of the most comforting scriptures that the Word of God has to offer. The very title of the book, Lamentations, is not at all enticing to the reader. To lament, according to our English dictionaries, means to express deep grief or sorrow, and is often used in poetry or song. In the Bible, and particularly here in the book of Lamentations, it carries the idea of crying out loudly.
The theme of God’s looming judgment over the nation of Israel, due to their unfaithfulness, is a very familiar one to the prophets of the Old Testament. Here, the prophet Jeremiah is in deep grief over the devastation to the city of Jerusalem during the Babylonian captivity.
But God, in all His righteous indignation, still loves His people, Israel. Jeremiah expresses that so well in verses 22 and 23 of Lamentations chapter 3.
The sharp contrast seen in Lamentations between God’s wrath on His people and His love for them is similar to the book of Nahum, where we see the prophet Nahum lamenting over the city of Nineveh. Though the people of Nineveh had turned to the Lord during the preaching of Jonah, they had reverted to their evil ways, and God’s judgment was just around the corner. Nahum’s prophecy is filled with despair throughout the book, and yet offers this gem in the very first chapter: “The Lord is good, A stronghold in the day of trouble; And He knows those who trust in Him.”
Though Lamentations is filled with sorrow and gloom, we still find in the third chapter these words of solace:
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
26 It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
27 It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
29 Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
30 Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
33 For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
Lamentations 3:22-33
The most familiar of these verses are verses 22 and 23. Let’s look at three ways that these two verses describe our God.
He Is a Merciful God
God’s mercy is a constant theme throughout the Bible, though it often surprises us to find it in the Old Testament. The church age in which we live has often been called the Age of Grace, which seems to carry the connotation that God was not gracious or merciful in the Old Testament, and yet, there are an abundant number of references to God’s mercy in these scriptures. Psalm 100 ends with “His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures through all generations.” Psalm 136, which details God’s dealings with Israel, ends each verse with the phrase, “His mercy endures forever.” The prophet Joel implores his readers, “Return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful.”
David, when being asked to choose between three judgments for him to receive for a sin that he had committed, pleaded for God’s mercy, “I am in great distress. Please let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for His mercies are great.” Mercy, according to Micah, is something that the Lord requires us to love: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
Continuing the theme of God’s mercy in the New Testament, Jesus taught us that God’s mercy is also something we should emulate and incorporate into our lives when He said, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We read in Ephesians 2 of God, who is “rich in mercy.” In this chapter of God’s Word, Paul describes a destructive course that all of mankind is pursuing until God steps in and saves us by His grace. As believers in our daily walk with the Lord, we are told in the book of Hebrews to come before the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need.
In calling men to receive God’s gift of eternal life, the hymn writer, John Stockton, wrote, “Come every soul by sin oppressed, there’s mercy with the Lord.”
Thomas Chisolm, the author of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” wrote a song about God’s mercy after the Lord had met a great financial need in His life.
The mercies of God What a theme for my song
Oh I never could number them o’er
They’re more than the stars in the heavenly dome
Or the sands of the wavebeaten shore
Chorus
For mercies so great, What return can I make
For mercies so constant and sure
I’ll love him, I’ll serve Him with all that I have
As long as my life shall endure
According to Jeremiah, God is not only merciful, but he is also full of compassion.
He is a Compassionate God
Through His compassion, He saves us. Lamentations 3:22 and 23 make it abundantly clear that God’s mercy is available to us because of His great compassion, and therefore, we can be saved from the punishment we deserve. “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed because His compassions fail not.”
Perhaps this compassion is most clearly and famously seen in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Notice the parallel from Lamentations 3:22 and John 3:16. In our English Bibles, we have the word “consumed,” and John 3:16 uses the word “perish.” In Lamentations, we read about compassion, and John talks about God’s love. The Christian Standard translates the verse in Lamentations this way: “Because of the LORD’s faithful love we do not perish.”
Christ’s very mission on earth was “to seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). As He dealt with the people that He healed, the scriptures say that He was moved with compassion, and when Jesus saw the crowds that came to see and hear Him, He looked on them with great compassion, because they were like sheep without a Shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
Jesus loved us so much that He bore our sin in His own body on the cross that we might be saved from eternal punishment. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). The word “propitiation” carries the idea of satisfaction, especially relating to God’s wrath concerning our sin. A phrase from the modern hymn expresses it well: “For on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” Some liberal theologians have expressed concern over that phrase of the hymn and have suggested it be changed to “For on the cross as Jesus died that love of God was magnified.” Most certainly, we can see that the love of God is most magnified in the fact that God’s wrath was satisfied.
The indescribable love of God, which is beyond our understanding was very well expressed in these lyrics, “Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.”
His Mercy and Love Keep us
Notice in Lamentations 3:22, not only does God’s love keep us from perishing, but it never ceases to sustain. In Romans 8, Paul tells us that God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all. Paul then asks and answers the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of God, shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” The triumphant conclusion of the passage is that “nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God, that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
He is a Faithful God!
With such mercy and compassion as constant as the morning sunrise and as consistent as the waves of the ocean, it is no wonder that Jeremiah’s prophecy explodes into praise with the phrase, “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
There are numerous other scriptures that proclaim God’s faithfulness. For instance, in Psalm 36, King David describes God’s faithfulness as reaching to the clouds, and in Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezrahite declares, “with my mouth will I make known Your faithfulness to all generations.” Both Psalms begin by mentioning the mercy of God. Then Paul, in his second epistle to Timothy, describes God as remaining faithful even when we are unfaithful (2 Timothy 2:13).
Jesus Christ is called a merciful and faithful high priest in the second chapter of Hebrews, and in 1 John, with grateful hearts we read that “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
When we consider the mercy, compassion, and faithfulness of God as described by Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:22 and 23, I believe we can find no better summation of this passage than the lyrics that Thomas O. Chisholm wrote many years ago. Using this passage and a few words from the book of James, he wrote:
“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow—
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Refrain:
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!”
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