RTW 2023

The LORD in his angerhas cast a dark shadow over beautiful Jerusalem.The fairest of Israel’s cities lies in the dust,thrown down from the heights of heaven.In his day of great anger,the LORD has shown no mercy even to his Temple.

Lamentations 2:1

The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

Lamentations 3:22-23

• The city of Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
• God sent prophet after prophet to urge His people to repent and return to Him.
• They did not listen.
• They did not repent.
• God uses a pagan nation to discipline His people and take them into exile for seventy years.
• Jeremiah writes a lament over what he witnesses.
• Lament: a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.
• It is written in the Hebrew poetic form of an acrostic.
• Jeremiah witnesses the very destruction and judgment that he prophesied.
• Jeremiah is grief filled through the book.
• Yet, he is not without hope.
• He knows that hope is found in the Lord.
• God remains faithful even when we do not.
• In a world that lacks hope and can quickly get us off task, we need Lamentations.
• We know that God will restore all things.
• We know that we have a living hope….His name is Jesus.

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When the world looks dark, and life looks hopeless….Lamentations gives us a place to cry out and remember the faithfulness of God.