He Remembered, He Replied, He Reigns

Lamentations 5:1-22; Ezra 3:10-13
November 29, 2020
Abraham Hong

Sermon Script

So here we are at the end of our time in the book of Lamentations. And what a journey it has been.

We learned about what the fall and exile of Jerusalem meant. We thought about sin and all the suffering and misery that comes with it. We saw a picture of what hell will be like. We rejoiced in the fact that Jesus took the judgment that we deserved.

We received a wake up call as a church. We were called to test and examine our ways. We were invited to repent and return to the Lord. We were reminded to take the discipline, knowing that our Father loves us.

We were shown our before and after picture in Christ. We were reminded that the covenant of grace is still in play. We were told to not be afraid because of the Lord’s buyback and payback. We were invited into a life of lamentation and prayer.

We were reminded about our union with Christ Jesus our Lord. We thought about his humiliation and suffering and his righteousness and exaltation. We considered how we are to share in his suffering today. We realized that we never weep alone.

Praise the Lord. I am thankful for our time in the book of Lamentations. I hope you are too.

The way that the book of Lamentations ends is really sad. The narrator prays that the Lord would remember his people in the fall and exile of Jerusalem. He prays for the Lord to look and see their disgrace. And he prays for the Lord to restore them to himself.

But the book of Lamentations closes without any response or answer from the Lord. There is no more from the narrator. It is as if the narrator has given up all hope. The narrator masterfully and artistically structured the previous four chapters of this book so that all verses or stanzas start with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet and are arranged in alphabetical order. But he does not do that in this fifth and final chapter. This prayer is written without structure or strength, without alphabetical order or any sense of forward progress. The ending of Lamentations is so painful that Jewish synagogues traditionally do not end the book with the final verse, verse 22, which reads, “… unless you have utterly rejected us, and you remain exceedingly angry with us.” Instead, they end the book with the penultimate verse, verse 21, which reads, “Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old —”

So here then is the drama of Lamentations. If the Lord is king of his people, if it is true that he reigns forever, then where is his answer? Why did he forget them forever and forsake them for so many days? For the narrator, it really felt like the Lord utterly rejected them and remained exceedingly angry with them. Perhaps the book ends in the way that it ends because in the mind of the narrator, the Lord does not answer his prayer.

I think that many of you can understand this drama. We go to the Lord in prayer and we often do not receive any answers to our questions. Our sad and heartbreaking questions. Questions like: When will this pandemic end? How am I going to get through my trials and spiritual testings? Why did this or that happen to me in my life? Why did he or she die? We pray. We lament. And we wait in silence without any answers. Sadly, some people eventually turn away from the Lord. They come to the conclusion that there is no God, or that there is a God but he isn’t able to help or he doesn’t care. This drama is very real.

In one sense, it is true that the Lord did not answer the narrator’s prayer. He did not answer his prayer in the scope of the book of Lamentations. That is true.

But in another sense, it is true that the Lord did indeed answer the narrator’s prayer. He answered his prayer in the scope of the fullness of time. This is true.

Because the Lord remembered.

The Lord remembered his promises, his covenant of grace. This does not mean that the Lord forgot and then remembered something. This means that the Lord kept and then fulfilled something. He remembered his promise from long ago to save his people from sin and eternal death - a promise that he kept with Noah in the flood, a promise that he unfolded before Abraham’s eyes as he looked up at the stars in the sky, a promise that he loved Rachel with when he opened her womb, a promise that he blessed David with when he setup his throne to one day be taken by the final and ultimate King. The Lord remembered his promises, his covenant of grace.

And the Lord remembered his people, his church and his kingdom. He remembered the orphans and the fatherless. He remembered mothers who were like widows. He remembered those who were thirsty and beggarly and weary without rest. He remembered the women who were raped. He remembered the elderly who lost respect. He remembered the men who were compelled to grind at the mill. But most of all, he remembered his people, even though they sinned against him.

Brothers and sisters, this remembering, this covenant of grace is amazing. We do not deserve to be remembered. We deserve to be forgotten. What promises have we kept before the Lord? Please do not try to answer that question. None of this is about your promises to God. All of this is about God’s promises to you. Through all the centuries and sins of the Old Testament, the Lord was faithful to his covenant of grace. He showed us grace. He did not forget us. He remembered us. He kept his promises. You may not remember everything that you prayed to God for throughout your life. But God remembers. He remembers your prayers well after you’ve forgotten them all. You may not remember or even know the exact moment when you repented and believed in Jesus. But Jesus remembers. He remembers your birthday. Being forgotten is one of the worst things that could happen to you. Hell is the place where unrepentant sinners are forgotten. But the Lord said that he will not remember your sins. The Lord has promised that he will never forget you. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” I get asked the following question a lot as a pastor: If you forget about the Lord Jesus because of Alzheimer’s Disease and you lose all memory of him and his gospel, then do you lose your salvation? The answer is no. Because the covenant of grace does not depend at all on whether or not you remember the Lord. The covenant of grace depends completely on whether or not the Lord remembers you.

The Lord remembered. And the Lord replied.

After seventy years of exile and discipline, the Lord brought his people back home. The Babylonians, the ones who conquered them and exiled them, were overthrown by the Persians, who were led by Cyrus the Great. And in order to fulfill his word by the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up Cyrus’ heart so that he would proclaim the return of God’s people to Judah and Jerusalem. The Lord brought his people back home.

But that was not the Lord’s ultimate reply. In Ezra 3, there is a very interesting story about how the saints of old who came home rebuilt and restored the temple that was destroyed in the fall and exile of Jerusalem. When the builders laid the foundation of the temple, there was great fanfare. There were vestments and trumpets and cymbals and thanksgiving. Many of the saints of old were so happy. But some of them were not. Those who were old enough to remember the first and original temple were not happy. They were sad. They actually wept and lamented with a loud voice because of what they saw. Because what was present was much lesser than what was past. The new did not match the old in terms of glory. And more importantly, they wept and lamented because it seemed that this was not what they had hoped for. This was not the answer to the narrator’s prayer of Lamentations that they were looking for. And so they wept and lamented. But no one noticed. Because the shouts of joy drowned out the tears of sadness and disappointment and hopelessness.

But this story makes perfect sense. The temple, the land, the throne, the nation of Israel - none of it was ultimate. None of it was what he ultimately promised. It all pointed forward to the ultimate temple and land. It pointed forward to the ultimate throne and nation of Israel. Earthly and temporal realities pointed forward to heavenly and eternal realities. Cyrus the Great did not lead to the ultimate restoration that the narrator of Lamentations prayed for. What happened in Ezra was not the ultimate reply of the Lord.

The Lord ultimately replied when he came took on human nature and when he himself became the temple of the Lord by virtue of the simple but mind-blowing fact that he himself was the Lord (John 1:14; John 2:18-22). The Lord ultimately replied by creating and preparing a new land - the new heavens and the new earth that will soon and very soon replace the old heavens and this old earth (John 14:3; 2 Peter 3:12-13; Revelation 21:1). The Lord ultimately replied when he ascended into the new heavens and sat on his throne at the right hand of the Father (Hebrews 8:1-2). The Lord ultimately replied by transferring us into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13) and making us into a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9).

The Lord replied. He did not immediately reply to the prayer of the narrator in the book of Lamentations. But the reason why was because he had the best answer many centuries later. His answer was his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. His reply was his body and his blood. His answer was his redemption. His answer was his love. His answer was him.

Brothers and sisters, this reply, this answer to the prayer of Lamentations 5 is the true gospel. Do not live according to false promises that the Lord never made. The Lord never promised you a good life on this old and fading earth. He never promised you that you would make it through this pandemic. Having wrong expectations before the Lord is a strange game to play. But more importantly, we must not live in light of what is earthly and temporal. We must live in accordance with what is heavenly and eternal. It is truly a game-changer when you realize more and more that you are a pilgrim that is waiting in an old and fading earth that is actually disappointing and hopeless, when you hear less of the shouts of joy and more of the tears of sadness all around you, when…, and when you look forward, above all other things, to the promise of seeing Christ Jesus face to face.

The Lord remembered. The Lord replied. And the Lord reigns.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was and is and always will be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. His reign is forever. But he reigns according to his plan, not ours. His sovereignty is often mysterious and beyond our human wisdom and comprehension. Because of this, there were times back then and there are times today when things may not look like Jesus is reigning. For the saints of old who went through the fall and exile of Jerusalem, it was easy for them to think that the Lord was not in control and was not reigning over all things. But the narrator of Lamentations confessed what God’s people needed to remember. The Lord reigns forever. His throne endures to all generations. His kingdom cannot be shaken. Nothing can change that fact. And nothing can separate us from his love.

The book of Daniel is about the Lord’s reign over history and over empires - empires like the one that led to the fall and exile of Jerusalem. In Daniel 2, there is a story about how the king of Babylon, king Nebuchadnezzar, the villain, so to speak, who was basically behind everything that we read in the book of Lamentations, had a bad dream and he asked Daniel, a prophet and a servant of the Lord who was captured and exiled, to interpret the meaning of his dream. And Daniel said these awesome words:

“You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, … you are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron…. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these…. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure (Daniel 2:36-45).

You know the kingdom that Daniel was talking about. You know it because you are a citizen of it. And you know the king of this kingdom that Daniel was talking about. You know him because you are saved by him, you are united with him, and you are loved and protected and blessed by him. The Lord Jesus Christ reigns.

Brothers and sisters, this reign, this victory and majesty is central and foundational to how you live on this old and fading earth and how you wait for the return of Christ. Everything is happening for his glory. Even this pandemic. Even all the sad and terrible things that happen in your life. Jesus reigns forever over you. Jesus reigns over your time here on this old and fading earth. Jesus reigned over everything concerning you before you were even born. Jesus will reign forever over us in the new heavens and new earth. This is such a wonderful encouragement to us for when we suffer and lament. When you arrange the funerals for your parents, remember that the Lord reigns forever. When you go through persecution because of your faith in Christ, remember that the Lord reigns forever. Everything that is going to happen this week is going to happen this week because the Lord reigns forever. Believe this. Accept this. Talk about this. Pray and keep going because of this. Love this. And do all of this knowing that we already - and at the same time we have not yet - taken part in the Lord’s reign. Yes, the Lord’s Supper is a feast that we already have. But it is not yet the banqueting table of the marriage supper of the Lamb. Yes, you are already a citizen of heaven right now. But you have not yet walked the streets of the new heavens and new earth. Yes, you can have real joy already in this life before death. But you do not yet have the life after death that truly knows nothing of lamentation.

Dear Highland, know that the Lord remembered, the Lord replied, and the Lord reigns.

Soli Deo Gloria