Lamentations: The Church's Funeral Lament

In the book of Lamentations is the wee word "how".  How, says Jeremiah, has it come to this?  A question that he then proceeds to answer.  The occasion of the writing of Lamentations (a lament, a wailing) was the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah by the Babylonians in 588BC.  Lamentations is the churches funeral lament.  The destruction, or chastisement of the old covenant church.  The destruction that Jeremiah preached on during his 40 year ministry, it had repeatedly been his sole message for 40 years.  It happened.  The ruin that he predicted in the whole book of Jeremiah, the ruin he spoke on was mocked by the false prophets, it was not believed and was scorned by God's people.  Jerusalem has now fallen and Lamentations was written.  Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon ordered that Jerusalem should be razed to the ground.  The temple was entered into, defiled and burnt as was everything else.  The fire burned for 3 days. 

To understand the message of Lamentations we must sit in the smoking ruins of the old covenant church.  We must sit in the rubble of Jerusalem in the desolation of Judah.  We must smell the stench of the thousands upon thousands of the dead.  The funeral pyres were like mountains as they burned.  Mountains of God's covenant people.  And then we may say like Jeremiah "How has it come to this" even though he knew the answer.  He knew the answer even before he commenced his ministry because God told him that the people would not listen to him, they would not repent..  At one point God told Jeremiah to stop praying for them.  After 40 years of preaching and after 40 years of being hated by the church of his day, when the judgment comes he still weeps for the church because he cares for the church and he is one of the very few people who does care hence his utter grief at the destruction of the church in his day.

The instrument of God's judgment:  Lamentations 1:1-7 "How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!  She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.  Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.  The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.  Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.  And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.  Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths."
 
 God does not send fire down from heaven, but he uses as an instrument of judgment, the church's enemies.  He uses the heathen, he uses her adversaries.  And this we will find as a scriptural principle that God's favored instrument for chastening his people when they sin is the heathen whom he brings into their midst.  And what happens?  They desecrate the worship of the church.  The heathen come in not to worship but to plunder, to get something for themselves.  But note, its the churches pagan enemies.  There are only two types of people in the world, God's people and pagans.  Everything that is not true Christianity is paganism.  The church's enemies come in and God uses them to chasten and corrupt the church.