Sermon Tone Analysis

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Text: Lamentations 3
Theme: cry out to God
Doctrine: Ability to Lament to God
Image: crying out to God
Need: lament over death
Message: cry out to God, he is the one who can help
 
*Cry to God, He alone can help.*
Lamentations 3
*Read: Lam 3:1-20*
*Intro*
Just before Christmas time, my grandfather passed away.
He had cancer for a number of years.
It began in the prostate, but he was deemed too old to receive surgery and was put on hormone treatments.
The cancer's growth was slow, and he lived a productive life for quite a while.
The last couple of years it was obvious he was declining rapidly.
He was put on many medications, and they slurred his speech and confused his thinking.
The last month of his life was really quite awful.
He was brought to the hospital in Calgary with excruciating pain in his legs.
The cancer had spread into the tissue around his groin area, and had actually cut off the flow of fluid through the lymph system in his legs.
The fluid build up was severe and his legs ballooned to three or four times their normal size.
They were so full that the fluid began to seep through the skin, soaking the sheets on the bed.
Needless to say, he was confined to bed.
He was in so much pain that it was even difficult to take in a full breath.
His lungs began to fill with fluid as well, making his breath gurgle and rendering it impossible to speak.
They moved him to hospice care in Lethbridge where the family could go and say their last goodbyes.
My sister took my nephew, Spencer, who was four at the time, to see him and say goodbye.
They walked into the room where the only sounds were the incessant beeping and clicking of monitors, and the ragged breath of my grandfather.
It was hard for my nephew to understand how Grandpa got that way.
After they said their goodbyes and were leaving the hospital, Spencer turned to his mum and said, “Why does Grandpa have to suffer so much?
Its just not fair!”
*Page 1: The Israelites are in Babylon and are experiencing punishment for the sins of the past.
*
You can hear that complaint in the beginning of Lamentations 3.
You can hear the writer crying out to God, “Why do I have to suffer so much?
Its just not fair!”
These lamentations were written after the Israelites had been sent into captivity.
The Israelites were God's chosen people, yet here they were in captivity.
God had graciously brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery, yet here they were enslaved in Assyria and Babylon.
The Israelites had lost a lot when they were sent into captivity, as the psalmist says in Ps 137 “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy."
In Lamentations the writer is bemoaning his existence in Babylon.
He is complaining about what God has done against his people.
Look at how he describes God.  “He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light.”
“He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.
He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked.
Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help.”
“He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.” or as the English Standard Version puts it, "He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is."
This is the same God who brought the Israelites to the land of Canaan; who gave them peace, prosperity, and happiness.
The writer has heard all the stories of the wonderful things that happened to the Israelites in the old days.
He wonders why his experience of God is so much different from those stories?
Where is the God of the covenant?
Why is God being so mean to him?
Why is God doing this to his people?
What has he done to deserve this?
What has God got against him?
Can you hear the writer crying out to God, “Its not fair!
Why are you doing this to me?” just like my nephew Spencer?  
*Page 2: The people of God have been exiled from Eden since Adam and Eve, we are constantly experiencing the punishment for sins.
*
Can you hear those around you, crying out the same thing to God.  “God, its not fair!
Why did you take my son?
Why did you make my daughter handicapped?
Why did you give my father cancer?
Why did you end my sister's marriage so painfully?
Why did you make my husband suffer so much before he died?
Why did you slowly steal my wife's memory until she couldn't even remember me?
Why did you take my grandfather and grandmother so close together?
God, its not fair!
Why are you doing this to me?” 
Often when we ask others why there is so much evil in the world, they give us some pat answer about it all turning out to the good.
But that doesn't quite seem right, does it?
Did Grandpa have to lay in bed the last few weeks of his life, slowly suffocating from the fluid building up in his lungs?
Surely his suffering could have been reduced?
Surely there is evil in the world which is far worse than any good that can come of it.
It may be the case that contracting cancer would deepen your prayer life, but it seems cruel to think of God saying, “Hey Chad, you need to deepen your prayer life, how about a little cancer.”
Doesn't it?
We know that the world is the way it is because our spiritual parents broke faith with God in the garden, leaving us cast out of Eden.
We know that creation has been broken and we are constantly experiencing the punishment for their sin.
But what has that got to do with us?
We seem to be punished for something that we did not do.
Our spiritual parents broke faith with God, not us, right?
I remember when I was growing up my mum and dad would send us kids out into the shelter belt to how weeds.
Our home is only about a half hour from the mountains, and we often get days with sustained winds around 30-40 miles per hour.
To make our homestead a bit more liveable we planted five rows of trees a quarter of a mile long, each.
Southern Alberta does not get much rain either, so if you wanted the trees to live, you had to make sure to eliminate all competition.
This meant that we had to go out with a hoe and kill all the weeds which grew around every tree.
There were many a hot dusty day when I grew to hate Adam and Eve.
It was their fault all these weeds were in the soil.
If they could only have kept their hands off the fruit in the garden of Eden, I wouldn't have to hoe all those weeds.
That is so many of us feel toward the brokenness of the world.
Now, some of the punishment we experience is, at least in part, a result of the sins which we commit; people go to jail for criminal activity, people contract sexually transmitted diseases from promiscuous lifestyles, people get lung cancer from years of smoking.
But we also experience punishment for sins which we did not commit; natural disasters and disease which wipe out entire populations for example.
These are not punishments we can relate directly to sins, but we know they are punishment.
They result from the brokenness of creation which is a part of the curse which fell because of Adam and Eve's sin, just like those weeds I had to hoe when I was younger.
We know that much of what happens in this world is not how the world was meant to be.
We know that the world was not meant to be torn apart by war.
We know that the world was not meant to have millions of people die each day simply because they cannot get enough food to eat.
We know that the world was not meant to have differences between people escalate into racism or genocide.
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