Will you open again to Lamentations
chapter 3? Now the holy temple, all the grounds were considered
holy. From the walls, from the outer
walls into the innermost sanctuary, It was all the holy temple of
God. And yet, there were portions
of it considered more holy than other portions. The first room of the actual,
what we might call temple proper, the building that was inside
the walls, was called the holy place. And the priests went in
there. Sons of Levi that were charged
with carrying on the work of the temple. And then behind a
curtain was a smaller room called the Most Holy Place. And only
one man went in there, a high priest. And he went in there
only once a year. And every time he went in there,
he took blood with him. Because when he would go back
into that most holy place, he was going into the presence of
God upon his throne. Now, I realize that it was a
symbolic presence of God. We don't have any real description
of what it was like. They have called it the Shekinah
Glory. I don't think the word Shekinah
ever appears in the scriptures, but it was a word the Jews gave
to it. A brilliant light, I suppose, but the high priest went in there
and he would pour out the blood of atonement on that lid, traditionally
called the mercy seat, But actually, strictly speaking, the words
mean the atonement cover. And that is where God is said to be enthroned. It says that the Lord is enthroned
between the cherubim, and on that ark of the covenant were
two cherubim, and he was, as it were, seated between them
right over that atonement cover. Now all of the scriptures are
holy. They are called the holy scriptures. But I don't think it would be
out of place to say that some are more holy than others. And just like the various levels
of holiness found in that old temple, We see in this scripture,
I believe, at least what is to me, the holy of holies or the
most holy place. And well, could it be called
that? Because it is a description of
what our Lord Jesus Christ endured when he went into that holy place,
not made with hands, and there offered himself without spot
to God. Now, we can read in the Old Covenant
instructions, we can read about the sacrifices and how they were
to be conducted, and we can read about what the high priest did
back in the most holy place, and we can be educated in our
minds about that event. Yet, in all of history, at any given time, there was
only one man in the whole earth who really knew what went on
behind the veil, and that was the high priest at any given
time. for that roughly 1,500 years that the old covenant was
in place, there was only one high priest at any given time. And he was the only one who'd
ever been back there and actually witnessed what happened. And we have here in this book
of Lamentations a description Our Lord's description of what
it was like for him to go into that most holy place, not made
with hands, the true presence of God, and there pour out his
soul unto death and make his soul an offering for sin. Now, we would be in water way
over our heads if we ever got the idea that we really can come
to understand what our Lord endured on the cross. He has been the high priest over
the house of God forever. He's the only one there ever
was and the only one that there ever shall be. And he's the only
one who knows by experience what it's like to go beyond the veil and sacrifice himself in behalf
of his people. He's the only one. Yet what the
Lord Jesus Christ was pleased to say by the prophet Jeremiah
in this book of Lamentations will get us closer to understanding
what happened and what the experience was like. It'll get us closer
than reading the histories recorded in the four gospels or any apostolic
description given of them. For these are the gut-wrenching, emotional utterances
of someone who experienced what it is you and I try to understand. It says, I am the man who has
seen affliction. Now about everybody here, well,
everybody here has seen affliction. We've all taken our turns going
through trouble, all kinds of trouble, some of it more serious
than others. We have witnessed some of our
brothers and sisters go through trials, and we try to think of
ourselves, put in their place, and we wonder, I don't know if
I could handle that. And we're not, and nor is the
Lord, making light of the afflictions that God's people, you and I,
suffer in this life. But he doesn't say, I am one
Among many men who have seen affliction, he said, I am the
man that has seen affliction. Why could he present himself
as the one and only who has seen affliction? The next few words,
by the rod of his wrath. You and I have seen affliction,
but no one in this building has yet suffered the wrath of God. Never. It's a sobering thing to consider
that some who are here this morning may at some time in the future
suffer the wrath of God. But so long as you are alive,
you have not yet experienced within yourselves what it is
like for God to pour his wrath out on you in response to your
sin. There is only one man on earth
to whom this happened, only one man to whom this happened while
he was on earth, and that's our Lord Jesus Christ. He says, I
am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. Our
Lord Jesus existed in glory and bliss before the worlds were
made. He shared glory with the Father
and he maintained that glory until in due time God sent his
Son into the world. And the book of Philippians chapter
2 teaches us that he made himself of no reputation. There is a word in there, it's
translated empty. He emptied himself and made himself
of no reputation. And what does all that signify?
What was he talking about? He was talking about becoming
a man. The word translated man here
is just a man. Now think of that for a minute.
that for the sake of his people, the Lord Jesus Christ willingly
stripped himself of all the rights and privileges that were due
to him because he is God. When people of this world go
to do charitable deeds, they go to places that are impoverished,
they don't impoverish themselves in order to do it. They don't become like those
whom they go to help. When I went to India last November, I didn't cease to be an American
and dress like an American. I didn't go there and become
poor, abjectly poor like some of them are. It was not necessary
that I do that in order to give them whatever it is I was able
to give them. But the Lord Jesus Christ, in
order to bring salvation to his people, must descend and become
what they are. Because he will do this work
by substitution, by taking their place. Therefore, he becomes
a man. And as a man, He experienced the affliction
that comes by the rod of his wrath. If you look back at Lamentations
chapter 1, the portion that Eric read to
us expresses the same thing. Verse 12, is it nothing to you,
all you who pass by, look around and see Is there any suffering
like my suffering that was inflicted on me? Now, this is referring to more
than the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the nailing of
his body to a cross. Why? Well, because even on that
day, there were two other men, at least, who were experiencing
the same suffering he was. Crucifixion. There may have been
other crucifixions going on in other places in the Roman Empire.
But we know there were at least two others beside the Lord on
that day who were experiencing the same suffering that he was
so far as the suffering of the body is concerned. But he says,
I'm suffering something unlike anything anyone has ever experienced
before. And note this amazing thing. The last bit of that verse, Lamentations
1.12 says that the Lord has brought on me in the day of his fierce
anger. Now those two thieves crucified
with our Lord, All that they were bearing at that point was
what Rome inflicted on them, for crimes against Rome. Neither one of them at that point
were bearing the wrath of God. Later on, one of them did. You think on that. What our Lord
was experiencing Hanging on that cross, the thief on his left
began to experience after he died and has been experiencing
it ever since. There was one, though, who was
not experiencing the wrath of God at that time. And after he
died, he still did not experience the wrath of God. He has never
experienced it and he never will. Why? Because this one speaking
here suffered it for him in his place, right there as they hung
side by side on a Roman cross. The Lord inflicted something
on our Lord Jesus Christ, and it's described this way, verse
13 of chapter one. From on high he sent fire. He sent it down unto my bones. I can't, the pain of fire. You ever been burnt real good?
Real bad, that's the way we ought to say it, burnt real bad. Just
a sunburn hurts awful. A scorching, something that raises
a blister. But he says here, he sent fire
from on high and went clear down into my bones. Into his inmost
being. Our Lord Jesus Christ was consumed
like the sin offering was. Entirely burnt up on the altar. Says he spread a net for my feet
and turned me back. He made me desolate, faint all
the day long. My sins, verse 14, have been
bound into a yoke by his hands. They were woven together. I have seen some argue in social
media over whether the sins that Christ bore were his sins or
whether they are sins. And they get mad at one another,
call one another either a false prophet or lacking an understanding
of the gospel, depending on which side of the issue you are. Friends,
both of them are true. Both of them are true. Now, every
time I think of the Lord Jesus Christ, bearing sin in the presence
of God. My thought is he bore my sin
in his body on the tree. Christ died for my sins, according
to the scriptures. But when we hear our Lord talk
about it and describe his experience, he says, my sins have been bound
into a yoke. Now, I would never say without
context, Jesus Christ bore his sin. I wouldn't say that, but
I'll say this. Jesus Christ said, I bore my
sin. And what does that mean? It means
what the hymn writer wrote. He took our sins and our sorrows
He made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary
and suffered and died alone. I can't make my sins his sins. They are forever in my mind,
my sins. But Jesus Christ, so much would
he be the substitute of his people, was willing to bear those sins as his own. He did not come before the Father.
He did not come before the judge of all and say, I come before
you in sin, but you and I know these really aren't mine. He says, my sins. And it says, by his hands, by
God's hands, they are woven together. Now, why would it be that these
sins were woven together? We read in Isaiah 53 that God
has laid on him, or you could say more strictly, has caused
to meet on him the iniquity of us all. All God's wandering sheep,
their sins were gathered up and caused to meet on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And here we have it described
this way, they were woven together. In other words, all the sins
of all God's people were brought together and collected together
and connected together as one huge mass of sin and every one
of them and all of them were charged to the Lord Jesus Christ,
and he accepted the charge and says, these are my sins. Friends, there's some things
that I've done. If you ask me if I did them, I'd lie to you
and tell you I didn't. That's just so. Things so bad,
I'm not gonna admit to you I've done them. Our Lord never did anything wrong.
And then he confessed my sin before the Lord as his. All those things I would never
tell you, he openly before the Father declared them to be his. says, of these sins they have
come upon my neck and the Lord has sapped my strength. He has
handed me over to those I cannot withstand. Our Lord, had he maintained his
divine rights, had he exercised them, he could have easily bore these things, he could have
easily withstood those who arrested him, who nailed him to a tree. He could have prayed to his father
and his father would have put an end even to the suffering,
the divine suffering that he was undergoing. He had all those
rights and privileges as the divine son of God, but he did
not exercise any of them upon the cross. Rather, he willfully
willingly, purposefully, and dare I say gladly, surrendered
himself to death, even the death of the cross. And confining himself
to nothing other than human strength and power, he was unable to withstand
what the Lord laid on him. And he died. In Lamentations chapter 3, we
read it. We'll not go through all the
points. But he says in verse 2, he's
driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light.
Oh, we've never experienced that. We were born in darkness. We
were born alienated. But you and I, at the present
time, God says, come. Turn, look unto me, all ye ends
of the earth and be saved. Come unto me and I will give
you rest. That's what God is saying. But
that day on the cross, God drove his precious son away from his
presence, so to speak. And he who is the light was made
to walk in darkness. I don't like darkness, that is
complete darkness. And I've been in caves, you know,
you take those tours in caves and state parks and sure enough
while you're down there, they'll say, okay, now for just a little
bit, everybody turn off your flashlight. And they all go out
and you find out what darkness really is. Not dimness, darkness. You can go like that and you
can't see your hand. And you suddenly, you don't dare
take a step. You don't dare move. And in fact, in such darkness,
you can even lose your balance a little bit because our balance
is not only based on what our ears tell us, they're based on
what our eyes are telling us. And all at once, the eye's got
nothing to say. That's darkness. I don't like it. There's always, when I go to
bed, there's always a little bit of light so that if I wake
up, I can see enough to move around. We go to a motel. It's
time for lights out. We have all lights but one. I
always leave the bathroom light open and the door cracked open
just a little bit. Doesn't take much, but I want
something so I can see. Our Lord was in darkness. Absolute darkness. In fact, to
illustrate that, it says for the last three hours of his suffering,
which we take to be that time which God carried out that transaction
of justice against him, even the sun went dark. Verse three, he has turned his
hand against me again and again all day long. Child of God, God's hand has
never been against you. Never. His hand has always been
held out to you. It's always been there to sustain
you. It was there to protect you.
until such time as you should come or did come to a knowledge
of the gospel. And it's still there holding
you up, protecting you until that day he's already set in
which you will depart from this world to be with him. His hand
has always been exercised in doing you good. But on this day,
God turned his hand against the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 8, even when I call out
or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. Have you ever prayed and thought
God wasn't listening? You might have thought so, but
that was just a thought. It wasn't the truth. Our God
always hears our prayers. He may not give us everything
we ask for because he's wiser than us and knows that what we're
asking for is not as good as what he has ordained to come
to pass. But he's always got an ear to
his people. The psalmist said, I waited,
my soul waited upon the Lord and he inclined his ear and heard
my cry. Not only is the Lord listening
to you, but the psalmist there gives us a picture of the Lord
going like this, that the faintest call will be heard. But our Lord
cried out with a loud voice, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? Why are you so far from the cries
of my groaning? And it was dead silence. He was given no answer, no relief. In verse 18, he says, my splendor
is gone and all that I hoped from the Lord. Our Lord Jesus here speaking
as a man. A man who had lived without sin,
never desiring it, never doing it. The one man in all of history
who could honestly say, the Lord is all my delight. The one who on the Mount of Transfiguration
shined with such a glory. that the disciples could not
bear to look at it. That one says, my splendor's
gone. And all that I hoped for, all
that delight, I've been stripped of it. It's gone. I have nothing
from the Lord. See, you and I whose hope is
in the Lord, that hope will never never be disappointed. We are not going to come to the
end of our lives and find out that that for which we hoped
from God through Jesus Christ, that somehow or another we're
not going to have it. But here is one who had every
right to hope for all good things from the Lord, and yet he was
deprived of any good thing from the Lord. So much so that the remembrance,
it says in verse 20, so much so the remembrance of those things
causes his soul to be downcast. Now I'm not saying that right
now our Lord, you know, if he's sitting there on the throne and
happens to remember that day, that suddenly he gets sad. No,
our Lord is filled with an endless and infinite joy. But as he hung there on that
cross and considered that which he was experiencing, his soul
was downcast in a measure that you and I cannot even imagine. I've experienced some of what
they call depression. I know what it is to feel like
there is no hope. There is nothing good. I know what it is to feel downcast,
but I don't know what this is. At my lowest points, I have always
turned to the Lord and called out and know that
he heard me. And therefore, I was never allowed
to go as low as this. For I was always buoyed up with
the knowledge that whatever I am experiencing, God has not turned
his hand against me. He has not withdrawn his mercy
from me. He has not deprived me of all
my hope. I just feel bad. Verse 21, yet this I call to
mind, and therefore I have hope. I have hope. Because of the Lord's
great love or mercy, we are not consumed, for his compassions
never fail. Now, this seems strange for the
Lord to say this immediately after he has described his suffering
in terms of compassion being withdrawn, of love no longer being expressed,
of literally being consumed as God sends fire from on high,
even into his bones. How can he now say this? Because of the Lord's great love,
we are not consumed. Now he's talking about more than
himself. He is talking also of those who
are carried safely within his bosom as he undergoes these things
we've mentioned. It says, it is written that when
the high priest would go into that most holy place, he had
a breastplate with 12 stones on it, bearing upon that the
names of the 12 tribes of Israel. All Israel went into that most
holy place with the high priest. And you and I who are in Christ
went through this in him and with him. And though he was consumed,
we are not. Because his compassions never
fail. We have compassion, kindness
toward one another, but it fails, doesn't it? We get mad at one
another too. We go back and forth because we're just men and women
of flesh. We fall out and reconcile and
then fall out again. What a mess we are. Not God.
You're one of the greatest blasphemies of what we often call free will
religion or Arminianism or any of that kind of thing that tells
people that God loves them. You know what they're saying
of God? That his compassions fail. Because there will come
a time when these people who have been told that God loves
them, they will come before God and God will consign them to
eternal torment. Where's the love in that? Where's
the compassion there? Friends, if God loves you, he
loves you with an everlasting love. And I like that word everlasting. I like it more than the word
eternally. You say, why? Well, when you're talking about
everlasting, you're talking about something that endures. And God's love endures and outlasts
all our provocations to wrath. You know your kids when you're
raising them. Oh, you think they're such wonderful. You bring them
home from the hospital and you begin to doubt total depravity.
It doesn't take long before you start to believe it again. But
you're just kind of taken up with that euphoria. This is mine.
This child's going to turn out good and all of that. And we
love them. And time goes by and they start acting up and acting
out or whatever. It takes resolve on our part
not to harm them. Our compassions even towards
our children can fail. Oh, brethren, but not God's compassions
toward his people. He loved them before the world
was. He will love them when the world
is no more. And he will love them for that
entire span of what we call time. And none of our sins, grievous
though they may be, will ever cause his compassion to fail. His goodness, his grace, his
love, All those good words about God in which we hope, they are
bigger than our sin. And our sin cannot wear them
out or use them up. They are new, verse 23, every
morning. Oftentimes I go to bed feeling
pretty bad. I mean, all of us do that. You're
wore out. And sometimes when you get tired,
problems seem bigger than they really are. That's why people
say sleep on it. Why? Because in the morning,
strength returns. It's why we need rest. And we
wake up in the morning with a fresh perspective on it, and things
don't seem so bad as they were when we went to bed the previous
night. And here, what it's saying to us, that just as we think
that quite possibly His mercies have run out, here comes a fresh
supply every day, all the time, unending, inexhaustible. I say to myself, verse 24, the
Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him Now, notice
this carefully. He doesn't say, the Lord brings
me my portion. That's how a lot of people see
salvation. They say, you know, the Lord is going to give me
heaven. Really? And you're satisfied with that.
That's right, I'm satisfied below with a little silver, with a
little gold, But someday yonder I will never more wander but
walk the streets that are pure as gold. Is that what you're
looking for? Do you think salvation is merely
God giving you things? Do you know what salvation is?
It's God giving you himself. That's salvation. Now I don't
mean, though this could be applied, I'm not talking about when Christ
gave himself for us, I'm talking that God gives himself to us. Abraham had been out to battle
to save his nephew Lot, and he refused to take any of the spoils
of that battle, because he says, I've raised my hand to God, I've
sworn, I'm not going to take anything, take anything from
those that have been defeated. I rely upon the Lord. And then
the Lord came to him shortly after and he said, Abraham, I
am your exceeding, I am your portion and your exceeding great
reward. Friends, we don't get heaven,
we get God. As a man gives himself to his
wife, so God, so our Lord gives himself to us. bound by an indestructible
union of love. The Lord is my portion. So I'm
just going to wait for him. I'm not going to look for relief
from somewhere else. I am not going to look for joys
to kind of drown out my present sorrows. I'm simply going to
wait until the one who is my portion shows up. "'cause I know
He will, and when He does, "'it'll be all I need and all I could
ever want.'" Quickly, three times the word
good is used. In the next few verses, the Lord
is good to those whose hope is in Him. Where is your hope? Is your hope in the fact that
you believe and your hope's in the wrong place. I believe God,
but I'm not going to try to get into his presence, accepted by
him, on the strength of my faith. It just won't get me there. I know some that argue for the
truth with such vitriol I mean, they argue for the doctrines
that we believe, but they get on there and they're firing bombs
at those that believe otherwise and condemning them to hell.
And they may be right in what they're doing, but it just seems
to me their condemnation of these people is simply a negative way
for them to pat themselves on the back because they believe
what's right. And I fear that some of them,
their hope is in their supposedly orthodox doctrine. Well, I think
orthodox doctrine's a good idea. We need to learn what we can. But knowing good doctrine is
not a good hope. The Lord is good to those whose
hope is in him. It is good to wait quietly for
the salvation of the Lord. There are some who seem to take
pride in talking about how sinful they are. as though by stomping
upon themselves and groaning and moaning, they are actually
exalting themselves in the sight of God. Oh God, see just how
much I hate my sin? You don't hate it near enough,
I don't care who you are. You don't hate it near as much as
he does. I know this. It's good just to
wait quietly, making no complaints against
God, and calling out to no one else
for help. And it's good for a man to bear
the yoke while he's young. Now, for years, I have tried
to figure out, what's that in there for? It doesn't even seem
to make sense. Can't say for sure that this
is the proper understanding of that text. But I think what it's saying
is, it's good for a man to bear up under this the knowledge of
his sin, the grief that it brings while he's still young. Why waste an entire life in darkness
when you can walk in the light from early on? Now God's grace is able to overcome
any kind of obstacle, but I know this, there are very few who
reach old years that come to a knowledge of Christ at that
time. Christ long rejected comes to mean nothing. It's good, it's
good to experience the conviction of the Lord, to see in Christ
and in his suffering To find in that image how great our sins
are. It's good to learn that while
you're young. Let him sit alone in silence.
You know, people start to come under conviction of sin and you
got these evangelists and soul winners who rush in and start
giving him steps to take and prayers to pray. No, leave him
alone. If God is revealing sin to him,
just leave him right there to sit in it for until such time
as God brings to him the word of salvation. We jump in, get in God's way. Of course, not that that's gonna
stop God. It might hurt us, but it'll never stop God. Let him
sit in silence. Oh, there's no more wonderful
sound from a sinner than silence. So stricken with the knowledge
of sin, they got nothing to say. And in that silence, God speaks. And he says, is there any suffering
like the suffering I have suffered? which the Lord has brought on
me, he sent fire into my bones. He has woven together my sins
upon my neck. But be of good cheer. Because
of the Lord's great mercy, you will not be consumed. His mercies are new every morning. His compassions never fail. Great is God's faithfulness.