Lamentations picks up an important theme. I think it's a theme that all of us would like to deny. In fact, I think every human being has told the lie to himself or herself that Lamentations confronts. I know I have and it's this, "That I can do what is wrong in the eyes of God and it will be okay, that sin doesn't have consequences."
And Lamentations is a very, very sad portion of Scripture. The content of Lamentations is five mournfully sad poems; because what Lamentations puts in front of us, in ways that are impossible to deny, is the horrible consequences of rebellion against God, the horrible consequences of acting like you know better, you're smarter, your way is better, the consequences of rejecting God's Law and writing your own.
We find these consequences in the life of Israel. We now see the suffering of Judah and Jerusalem under the siege of Babylon. The unthinkable has happened; in terms of biblical history, it's unthinkable. Jerusalem is destroyed; the temple is gone! How could this happen? God warned His people; they denied His warning. Remember, a warning is never judgment; a warning is grace. If all God is going to do is judge you, He wouldn't warn you first. And yet those warnings were ignored.
As you're reading those sad poems, it looks like God has been defeated; it looks like His promises have failed; it looks like all hope is lost. But that's not what's going on. What's going on is God's people are experiencing the consequences, the seriousness of sin.
Listen, even that experience is grace because it confronts the lie in us that we can do whatever we want to do and it will be okay. It's not okay to scream at your wife; it's not okay to look at pornography; it's not okay to mistreat your children; it's not okay to misuse your money; it's not okay to cheat on your taxes; it's not okay to be a prideful, arrogant person; it's not okay! Sin is serious and has consequences!
I would title Lamentations, "The Exiles," because God's people are now living in horrible exile. And Lamentations reminds us that there are three exiles in Scripture. The first one is in Genesis 3 where Adam and Eve are exiled out of the garden because of their sin. The second one is the exile in Lamentations and these prophets that talk about God's exiled people. The third one is when Jesus, the Messiah, is exiled, driven out of the walls of the city, put on a mountain of death, treated as a criminal, so that exiles could finally be brought home.
You see, all of us are born as exiles, separated from God, outside of His kingdom of love and grace, and we need to be brought home, not by our righteousness, but by the righteousness of another; not by our goodness, but by His grace. There's hope for exiles because Jesus was willing to be exiled so that we would be brought home.
