Let us turn to God's Word and
turn into the portion of Scripture that we read at the end of the
third chapter in the book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.
Lamentations chapter 3 and I'll read verses 53, 54 and 55. They have cut off my life in
the dungeon and cast a stone upon me waters flowed over mine
head, then I said, I am cut off. I called upon thy name, O Lord,
out of the low dungeon." And in particular, our text is to
be found in that 55th verse, Lamentations 3, verse 55. I called upon thy name, O Lord,
out of the low dungeon." I want us then to consider the prayer
of Jeremiah. The prayer of Jeremiah. And first
of all, the place from where he makes this remarkable prayer. He says it was out of the low
dungeon. And certainly that chapter that
we read in his prophecy, chapter 38, does appear to give us the
historical context of the words that we have before us tonight,
how that he was literally put in the low dungeon. We see that quite clearly there
in the opening verses of that 38th chapter. Remember what he
says, what we're told concerning him there at verse 6, how they
took Jeremiah, it says, and cast him into the dungeon of Malchiah,
the son of Hamalek, that was in the courts of the prison.
And they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon there
was no water but mire. So Jeremiah sunk in the mire. Isn't this the very place that
he refers to here as the low dungeon? And how he was made
to feel these things, as he says in the previous verses, they
have cut off my life in the dungeon and cast a stone upon me. waters flowed over my head then
I said I am cut off he clearly felt that this was the end twice
here in verses 53 and 54 he speaks of his life being cut off no
more would he come up from that awful miry dungeon. And yet, in all of the experience
that he is passing through, it is evident that he is still conscious
of God, and even in these things he can discern something of the
hand of God, as we see from what he says at the beginning of the
chapter. I am the man that has seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath, he says. Verse 6, He hath set me in dark
places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about,
that I cannot get out. He hath made my chain heavy. Also, when I cry and shout, He
shutteth out my prayer. This man is not simply writing
theoretically, he is writing out of his own deep experiences,
conscious of God and the dealings of God with him. We know that
this was also the case with a man like Job, very much the case
with Job. Now the saints in the Old Testament
certainly knew something of the mysterious dealings of God with
their souls, with their lives in general. Now Job can cry out
there in chapter 12 and verse 14 concerning God, He shutteth
up a man and there can be no opening. And so too now with
Jeremiah, he is shut up. He is cast into the low dungeon. Think also of the language of
the Psalm. It's there in the 88th Psalm.
I am shut up and I cannot come forth. Now why are these things
recorded here in Scripture? Are not these things written
for our learning? All of the Old Testament is written
for the people of God. There is profit for us if we
will but consider God's ways with his saints. In that Old
Testament dispensation written for our learning says Paul that
we through patience or more literally endurance and comfort of the
Scriptures might have hope. There is that to be endured.
And how these people of God had to endure many things that were
so contrary to them. And is it not true even under
the gospel in this day of Christ? How do we relate to these experiences? There is In the experience of
the people of God today, that that we might refer to and do
refer to as a law work, when God shows a man what he is, when
God teaches us our true condition, our real state before him, the
Holy One of Israel. That law which is spoken of as
the ministration of condemnation, that ministration of death. We often refer to those words
in Galatians 3.23 where Paul says, before faith came, before
saving faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up to the
faith which would after would be revealed. God shuts us up
and shuts us up to what we are, shuts us up to our unbelief. Again there at the end of Romans
11 Now Paul declares it, God has concluded them all in unbelief
that he might have mercy on all. If he will have mercy upon a
man he will begin by shutting that man up in unbelief, concluding
him in his unbelief, making him feel what an unbeliever he is
and the impossibility of him ever coming to faith. And John
Newton, John Newton certainly knew something of it. when he
cries out in the hymn could I but believe then all would easily
be I would but cannot Lord relieve my help must come from thee all
the believers help comes only from the Lord God nothing of
himself God brings us to believe in what we are to believe in
our total depravity our utter inability And yet what a strange
experience it is. What a paradox. It's when we
feel so lifeless in ourselves that we're those who are really
alive to God and to the ways of God. And this certainly was
the case with this man Jeremiah. Yes, it's a real physical experience
that he is describing, being shot up, being cast into that
low dungeon. And at the same time he feels
these things in his soul. He feels that God, as I've said,
is in these things. And this, in a strange, paradoxical way,
is such an encouragement to his soul. Look at what he says earlier
in verse 39, Wherefore doth a living man complain? a man for the punishment
of his sins. Let us search and try our ways
and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with
our hands unto God in the heavens. He is describing a man whom he
says is a living man. Oh, there is spiritual life here.
What does this man do? He calls, he cries, he seeks.
He breathes out his prayers onto God from the low dungeon. Yet he's life here. And that
life is evidenced even as he is speaking of himself as one
who is altogether cut off. Cut off without any hope at all. We see it in the experience of
that good king Ezekiah. when so much seemed to go against
him. It was earlier than the days
of Jeremiah, it was in the time when the great threat came not
from the Babylonians but from the Assyrians. As the Assyrians
had poured into the northern kingdom of Israel and destroyed
it, taken them away, scattered them. and as the Syrians then
came south to little Judah and besieged Jerusalem and Jerusalem
seems as if it must fall but God grants a great deliverance
only for the king subsequently to be told by the prophet Isaiah
that he must set his house in order he's not going to live
he's going to die Oh, what strange experiences
that godly man Hezekiah had. How God seems to go against him. And yet he turns his face to
the wall and he pleads with God and his life is spared and 15
years are added to his days, he says. And then he says this
in his great prayer of thanksgiving unto God. In Isaiah 38, 19, the
living. the living he shall praise thee
as I do this day in the midst of all his troubles is a living
soul just as was the case with Job just as was the case with
Haman in Psalm 88 just as is the case here with Jeremiah in
the midst of all his troubles there is life in his soul but
remember our Hezekiah goes on to say something more in that
prayer. He says, O LORD, by these things
men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit. Where
is the life? It's in his soul and it's there
in spite of all these things that seem to be against him,
that seem as if they're going to cut him up. Instead of that
he brings real spiritual life to the fore in the soul of the
man. and so too here you see in the
dungeon all the life of God was so real in the soul of this man
Jeremiah and it's evident it's evident in his prayer verse 55
I called upon thy name O LORD out of the low dungeon or when
he is at the lowest what does he do? he calls upon the name
of the gods of the Covenant. He calls upon the name of the
Lord. And this is how God deals with
men, I say. He brings them into that place
where they have such great need that none is able to help but
the Lord God Himself. Wasn't this also the case with
Jonah? When God dealt with him because
of his disobedience, cast overboard, swallowed by the great fish,
there in the depths of the seas. And then his prayer. He prays
out of the fish's belly. But what was the fish's belly
to him? The beginning of that second chapter. Then Jonah prayed
unto the Lord his God. It says, out of the fish's belly. and said, I cried by reason of
my affliction unto the Lord and he heard me out of the belly
of hell. Or the margin says, out of the
belly of the grave cried I and thou heardest my voice. That's
where he was. And this is where Jeremiah is. This is the place where he makes
his prayer. Out of the low dungeon I called
upon thy name O Lords, out of the low dungeon." Well, having
sought to say something with that place where he is brought,
and that place from whence he prays, let us now turn more particularly
to his prayer. And what can only be described
as the power of his prayer. What a remarkable prayer it is. And in it, what do we see? Well,
we see his weakness, we see the believer's weakness so clearly. In verse 56, thou hast heard
my voice, he says, hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry,
What was his voice? Was it some wonderful, well-constructed
prayer? Was he a man so articulate, so
able to express himself? No. He speaks of his breathing. Hide not thine ear at my breathing,
he says, at my cry. He's so weak. He can scarce utter
a word, and yet he sighs after God. Now the words are failing
him here in the low dungeon. Or was he not the same also with
King Hezekiah when he turned his face to the wall? He says,
like as a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter, I did mourn
as a dove. That's how he felt, you see.
He couldn't speak. It was just the chattering of
a bird, the mourning of a dove. My noise failed with looking
upward, he says. I am oppressed. Undertake for
me. Or the weakness of Hezekiah,
the weakness here of Jeremiah. the weakness of David time and
again as we have his Psalms and so many of David's Psalms as
you know that they are prayers and how he has to call upon God
and he can scarce utter a word all my desire he says is before
thee my groanings are not hid from thee how he sighed in his
heart how he pants after God in his soul unable to really
say proper words at all the weakness in a sense the weakness of the
man in his prayer we sometimes sing the words of the hymn though
to speak they'll be not able always pray and never rest prayer
is a weapon for the feeble weakest souls can wield it best, or we
can pray best, when we do feel that we're all weakness, when
we have nothing of ourselves, why then we realize how important
that gracious ministry of the Holy Spirit is, how we need Him,
how we need Him to come and to assist us in our praying, and
remember Paul speaks of Him helping us in our infirmities, when we
know not what to pray for as we ought, and the Spirit itself
maketh intercession for us, he says, with groanings that cannot
be uttered. And yet, that is real worship,
that is giving God the honor and the glory that is due to
his great name. We think of the words of dear
John Berridge in his hymn on worship, where he contrasts the
formalist, the hypocrite, with his parade. He looks to all his ceremony
as if that is something that he's going to please God as he
performs his different duties in so-called worship. I think
of the language here in M884 And then at the end he says,
and this is true worship, for thee my soul would cry and send
a laboring groan, for thee my heart would sigh and make a pensive
moan, and each for thee would daily pine and would be always
only thine. So different to the to the vain
services that the ritualist will seek to present to God and imagine
that he is doing God some sort of service. Although this is
a real worship when we come in all our weakness. We come then
as those who are utterly dependent and only dependent upon the Lord
God Himself. And we can contrast this, the
weakness of man and the power that we discover here
in the Word of God. I remember when recently, or
last year, we published that little book of Martin Luther's,
his exposition of the Lord's Prayer. And I remember being
struck by a number of things, but one thing in particular,
a single sentence that we find at the end of the book, where
the Reformer says, it is the word and promise of God, not
thy devotion that makes the prayer good. What makes our prayer a
real prayer in that sense is nothing of ourselves, nothing
of our devotion. What makes the prayer good, says
the Reformer, is God's Word and God's promise. We're all weakness
but all our strength, all our help comes from the Lord and
we discover the Lord and we discover the ways of the Lord when we
come to His Word. This is where God makes Himself
known to us. This is where God makes Himself
so real to us. And what do we see here in the
experience of this man in his prayer? Our text says, I called upon
thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon. Now see what follows. What does he have here in the
low dungeon? Well, there are a number of things.
He has the promise of God. He has the promise of God. Verse 57, Thou drewest near in
the day that I called upon thee. Thou cest, fear not. Isn't that a promise? Isn't that
a comforting word from God when he speaks it with authority to
the soul and says to that poor soul in the low dungeon, fear
not. Oh, there are many fear nots.
and why are there so many fear nots because God's people are
such a fearful people we are a fearful people and you know
we find a multitude of these fear nots in the book of the
prophet Isaiah there in Isaiah 41 for example verse 10 fear
thou not I like that it's not just a fear not It's more personal
than that. The pronoun is placed between
the two words, fear and not. So emphatic, it's a singular
pronoun. God says to us as individuals,
fear thou not, for I am with thee, be not dismayed, for I
am thy God, I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee,
yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
How comforting this word must have been to poor Jeremiah, there
in the low dungeon. Again at verse 14 there, or verse
13 and verse 14. I, the Lord thy God, will hold
thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, I will help thee. Fear not thou worm, Jacob, and
ye men of Israel. I will help thee, saith the Lord,
and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Here is where we draw
our strength. It's from God. It's from the
Word of God, the promise of God. Those fear not, so God speaks.
And he is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he
should repent. Or hath he said it, shall he
not do it? Hath he spoken it, shall he not make it good? What
a comfort we have then here in the promises of God, the Fear
Not's. And we have it in the New Testament.
When the Lord Jesus Christ Himself says to His disciples, Fear not,
little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom. There is the source of comfort,
the good pleasure of the Father. What is God's good pleasure?
That's His sovereign will. That's His great eternal purpose
of grace. His determination to save His
people. And none can frustrate God's
gracious design. Although we be but a little flock,
fear not little flock. Those words that we just referred
to in Isaiah 41.14, fear not thou worm Jacob the
margin says and ye few men not just ye men but few men ye few
men of Israel such a little company all we need the fear not of God's
words because so often we are fearful and often we alas find
ourselves in fear where no fear is That's our folly, is it not? But here you see they were dreadful
days. Yes, the Assyrians had come previously
in the days of King Hezekiah, but God would not give Judah
over to the Assyrians. No, God's judgments would come,
but it would come later by another great empire that would replace
the Assyrian Empire. It would be the Babylonians or
the Chaldeans. They would come. and they would
overthrow that kingdom of Judah. Jerusalem was to be destroyed
and the people were to be taken away into exile, taken into captivity. And now Jeremiah faithfully speaks
of that terrible event, that terrible judgment and he does
it in the face of all the false prophets who say peace, peace,
when there is no peace. And how Jeremiah was so hated
and despised because of his faithful dealings. Or we see it, how that
God would preserve a remnant, a little remnant, there in Babylon. And how Zechariah is ministering,
another of the prophets Zechariah, ministering at the time of the
restoration of that remnant. They would eventually, after
70 years, come out of Babylon. The Babylonian Empire, like the
Assyrian before it, would be overthrown. The Empire of the
Medes and Persians would come. And Cyrus, the great Persian
emperor, would issue his decree permitting those Jews to return
to Jerusalem. And there, Zechariah also speaks
of a fear not. To those who were to return,
Zechariah 3, 16, in that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem,
Fear thou not. All that little remnant. Those
few men of Israel were not to be afraid. The remnant would
be preserved. Why wasn't Isaiah himself assured
of these things all those many, many years before ever the captivity
came? Remember when he receives his
call from God there in the 6th chapter, at the end of Isaiah
chapter 6? Then he said, I Lord, how long? And He answered, until the cities
be wasted without inhabitants, and the houses without a man,
and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord hath removed men
far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the
land. But yet in it shall be a tent,
and it shall return. There will be a returning, or
there will be a deliverance, a coming out. God will not utterly
destroy His people. And Jeremiah is assured of this.
He has the promise of God. God says again through another
prophet, Zephaniah this time, I will also leave in the midst
of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust
in the name of the Lord. Zephaniah 3.12. Oh, what a word
is that, that poor people, that afflicted people. that God is
pleased to live in the midst and they are trusting. This is
Jeremiah. He will trust. O thou drewest near in the day
that I called upon thee, thou saidst, Fear not. Fear not, little
flock. It is your Father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. It's the Word of God. It's those
things that God says in His Word. Oh, but ultimately observe this,
that all those promises of God, they center in the person and
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we come to the words inscripturated,
we discover Him who is the Word incarnate. As Art says, the scriptures
and the Lord their one tremendous name the written and incarnate
word in all things are the same and we're coming to the word
we're coming to the Lord Jesus Christ who said to the Jews himself
search the scriptures in them you think that you have eternal
life and these are they that testify of me and what do we
find here in this prayer Jeremiah is brought to acknowledge
the intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ. I called upon thy
name, O Lord, he says, out of the low dungeon. But look at
verse 58. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the
causes of my soul. He's not just praying for himself. He is sure of the prayers of
the Lord Jesus Christ, that one who ever lives to make intercession. Jeremiah says it there in his
book in chapter 50 and verse 34, their Redeemer is strong,
the Lord of hosts is his name, he shall truly plead their cause. All the Lord Jesus is that one
who was entered now into heaven itself. Now of course, when we're
reading here in the Old Testament, we're reading of events hundreds
of years before Christ has come and accomplished his great work
of redemption and return to heaven, and entered into that within
the vial, and yet they're sure of those things that would come,
as we can be sure of them as we look back upon them as accomplished
things. These who were the true saints
of God, they were persuaded that the Lord was the one who would
intercede on their accounts. Well, if they could look forward
with such certainty, cannot we look back with an assurance that
the Lord is that One who even now appears in heaven and His
very presence there at the Father's right hand having accomplished
all the work that the Father has given Him to do is entering
into heaven His presence in the presence of God is a constant
play on behalf of His people John says if any man sin we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous,
and He is the propitiation for our sins. He is an advocate.
What does an advocate do? Well, an advocate, we would call
that a barrister. He stands there to represent
his client, to plead his cause, and that's what the Lord Jesus
does. On behalf of all those that the Father has given to
Him in that eternal covenant, He has now entered into heaven,
and there He ever lives to make intercession. Remember how that
priestly office of the Lord is a two-fold office. He prays. He is a praying priest. And that
is the particular aspect of his priesthood that we know he is
now engaged in. But he's always been engaged
in that part of his priestly office. As I said, even in the
days of these Old Testament saints, it was to him that they must
look. And so we see it with Jeremiah,
O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul. He has entered
now into heaven itself. now to appear in the presence
of God for us," says the Apostle. But that pleading, that praying
aspect of his office is but one part. Previously, do we not see the
Lord Jesus as a priest here upon the earth when he came to make
the great sacrifice for sins? When We read of the priests of
Aaron and their duties in the book of Leviticus. It's so evident
that their great business was to be serving God in the tabernacle. They were there about the brazen
altar. They were offering the different
sacrifices unto God. And Christ is that one who has
come as the great antitype of the priestly office. He has come
to make that one sacrifice for sins forever. And by making that
sacrifice, He has offered Himself. He's not only the priest, He
is also the sacrifice. He's the Lamb of God, slain from
the foundation of the world. The Lamb of God that takes away
the sin of the world. Gentile as well as Jew. And what
does Jeremiah plead here in his prayer in that 58th verse? He
doesn't just speak of the Lord pleading the causes of his soul. He says, Thou hast redeemed my
life. Thou hast redeemed my life. The
Lord has paid the great sacrifice for sins, redemption, the ransom price,
that that the holy, righteous and just law of God so solemnly
demands, without the shedding of blood, no remission of sins. The life must be given, the soul
that sinneth, it shall die. The wages of sin is death. And
the Lord Jesus has come and died. And He's done that as the Great
Substitute in the place, in the room, in the stead of all those
that were given to Him by the Father. He has made one sacrifice
for sins forever. He has died for the unjust to
bring sinners to God. This is the power of the Word
of God that Jeremiah is pleading here from the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice, he
says in verse 56, hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.
Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon Thee, Thou
saidst, Fear not. O Lord, Thou hast pleaded the
causes of my soul. Thou hast redeemed my life."
Oh, what a great work this is, the work of redemption. Christ,
that great High Priest, shedding His precious blood and dying
for His people. You see, That promise of God
is a promise that has been sealed with blood. The testator has died. Isn't
that what it says? Isn't that the language of the
apostle when he writes there in that ninth chapter of his
epistle to the Hebrews? He speaks of Christ as the testator
or the mediator. In verse 15 of chapter 9, for this cause he is the mediator
of the New Testament or the New Covenant that by means of death
for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament
they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance
For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the
death of the testator. For a testament is of force after
men are dead. Otherwise it is of no strength
at all while the testator liveth." And Christ has died. The testator,
the mediator has died. The testament, the covenant stands.
Though it is all now secure, it's been sealed, and sealed
in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does
Jeremiah do then, there in the low dungeon? Well, how he's made
to feel his utter weakness, he couldn't get out of the dungeon.
there was no way whereby he could deliver himself as we saw in the reading they
had to come and they had to haul him, heave him out of that dungeon had they not done that he would
have died but there in that dungeon he
cries, he calls He pleads with God, all weakness in himself,
unable to do anything for his own deliverance, but all his
comfort lies in God's Word, the promise of God, and the great
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, as that One who is the High Priest,
who has made the great sacrifice who has redeemed his people from
their sins, and who is the one who now lives to intercede on
their behalf. And so we have it here. His great
prayer, I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon.
Thou hast heard my voice, hide not thine ear at my breathing,
at my crying. Thou drewest near in the day
that I called upon thee, thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, Thou
hast pleaded the cause of my soul, Thou hast redeemed my life. Did we not sing of this just
now in our praises when we took up the Psalter and sang those
opening words of the 40th Psalm? And I'll close with those verses. I waited for the Lord my God
and patiently did bear at length to me he did incline my voice
and cry to hear. He took me from a fearful pit
and from the miry clay and on a rock he set my feet establishing
my way. Ought to be those whose feet
are established upon that rock which is indeed Him of whom the
Prophet speaks, even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The Lord
bless to us His Word. Amen.