Lamentations 4:14

The Bible says in Lamentations 4:14-15, “They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments.[15] They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there.” One of the terrible consequences of not walking in fellowship with the Lord is given in verse 14. Without the Lord you will wander “as bind men.” Jesus is the Good Shepherd. One thing that a shepherd does is guide the sheep. If you do not have the Shepherd to guide you, then you will go the wrong way. You will wander as a blind man. If you are not rightly related to the Lord, everyone will know it sub-consciously. They will somehow know that you are not protected. What happened to the Israelites is that they were no longer allowed to live in the Promised Land nor in Jerusalem. God can shut the doors that no man can open. Once God shut the doors, people were allowed to say to the Israelites, “Depart ye,” and they had to depart their beloved land.

The Bible says in Lamentations 4:16-20, “The anger of the LORD hath divided them; he will no more regard them: they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the elders.[17] As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.[18] They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets: our end is near, our days are fulfilled; for our end is come.[19] Our persecutors are swifter than the eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness.[20] The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen.” Among the sins of the Israelites, it is said in verse 16 that they “they respected not the persons of the priests, they favoured not the elders.” The fact that they did not respect the persons of the priests shows that they had no respect for God nor for the religion that God established on the earth. In the Old Testament God’s religion for the earth was the Jewish religion which was centered in Jerusalem and where the priests performed the duties in the temple, especially the animal sacrifices which symbolized the death of Christ that would eventually happen. Now that the crucifixion of Christ has happened, instead of priests God has given pastors and teachers to spread the Gospel and teach the children of God. If someone is called of God to do this work, be very careful how you treat them. You should treat them with the proper amount of respect because of the work for Jesus that God has called them to do. And you should also respect your elders. The older people in your family and in your community should be highly respected because that is God’s will. It starts with children. God says to children in the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother that it may go well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.” Older means wiser, or it should. If someone is older than you, they probably know a lot more than you on certain subjects, and you should respect their grey hairs. It is a great sin to treat older people without the proper respect.

In verse 17 Jeremiah said, “we have watched for a nation that could not save us.” If God decides to chastise you, you are not going to find help anywhere. That is why it is very important as a Christian to remember First John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If you know Jesus as your Savior, you can stay in fellowship with Him every day by confessing your sins every day. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are staying in fellowship with Jesus because of how good you are. Every step of the way, you are dependent upon His forgiveness. You must realize that.

The end of verse 20 is a sad statement. Jeremiah reminded us of what it was once like in his nation: “Under his shadow we shall live among the heathen.” Those were very comforting words. God’s promise was that God would take care of the Israelites even though they were a minority in the midst of the heathen. They saw that promise realized as they kept God as their God, but once they turned away from Him, they were on their own. That did not have a good ending, as Jeremiah so sadly saw.

The Bible says in Lamentations 4:21-22, “Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.[22] The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins.” These two verses are telling Edom that they are going to suffer the same fate that Israel suffered. Every nation is under God’s authority, and every nation must give account of itself to God. Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Every nation will be judged during the time of the Great Tribulation when the worse sufferings ever shall come upon the whole earth.

The Bible says in Lamentations 5:1, “Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.” Jeremiah called out to the Lord. That is exactly what we should do when we suffer. Instead of getting mad at people or upset with circumstances, call on the name of the Lord and He will surely help you. If God brought the sorrows, then He can certainly take them away. Plus, He is God. He can do anything. The wise person will call upon the name of the Lord. When you call upon the name of Jesus to save you from your sins, Jesus will save you. And so that event should just be the start of calling upon Him every day for all things that happen in your life.

In the rest of chapter 5 Jeremiah once again recounts the things that the Jewish people in the name of Israel suffered. It was terrible. Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 5:2-11, “Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.[3] We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows.[4] We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.[5] Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest.[6] We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.[7] Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.[8] Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.[9] We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.[10] Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.[11] They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah.” The list of sufferings are: losing their homes, children losing their parents and becoming orphans, being in need of the basic necessities of life, being persecuted, overworked just to survive, selling their land to foreigners, suffering for the sins of their fathers, being lower than servants, being in constant danger, starving, and their women being raped. Turning away from God did not work out well for them.

Let’s look at verse 7. It says, “Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.” This is a verse that shows the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. There is a difference because there is a difference between law and grace. The Old Testament is based upon law and the New Testament is based upon grace. Therefore, there are principles of the old covenant that do not apply to those of us who are under grace in this new covenant that was given to us through Jesus. The law of the Old Testament presents a judgment that can fall upon families that some call a generational curse. For example, it says in Exodus 20:5, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” Of course, this is part of the explanation of one of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” That is the way the law works: any breaking of the law brings a curse. That is why the law or the keeping of the law cannot bring salvation. The law is strict and unforgiving. Grace is just the opposite. Grace forgives all and any failures. There is no curse in grace. There is no curse in the New Covenant. Wait, there is one curse: the curse that fell upon Jesus when He was on the cross. One of the wonderful results of trusting in Jesus is that you will never be under a curse. It says in Galatians 3:11-13, “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.[12] And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.[13] Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:[14] That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

The Bible says in Lamentations 5:12-17, “Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured.[13] They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.[14] The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick.[15] The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.[16] The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned![17] For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim.” In these verses Jeremiah lists one of the very important qualities of the heart that any believer will lose if he or she is out of fellowship with the Lord: joy. Joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Of course, Christians have a lot of reasons to be joyful. We are saved, we are forgiven, we have eternal life, and Jesus loves us with His great eternal love. We have all the promises of the Bible, and much much more. But sin will take your joy away, and you will suffer terribly if you lose your joy. Jeremiah wrote in verse 15, “The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.” David wrote in Psalms 51:12, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.” One of the things that you will get back if you confess your sins: your joy, wonderful joy, overflowing joy.

The Bible says in Lamentations 5:18-22, “Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.[19] Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.[20] Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?[21] Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.[22] But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.” Of course, Jeremiah has been in great anguish over the destruction that had come upon his beloved country. But then Jeremiah remembers an important truth about God. Jeremiah said to the Lord, “Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.” The way that Jesus put this truth in the book of Revelation was, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” You might lose everything, but if you still have the Lord, then you still have everything that He is and that He can do.

Jeremiah asked a question in verse 20, “Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?” Jeremiah is hoping that Israel will be restored, and he knows that only God can do it. And so Jeremiah prayed for the Lord’s help. And the Lord did restore Israel, and the Lord will yet restore Israel beyond its former glory. The reason that God will restore Israel is that the Lord always keeps His promises. God made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob about the future of the land of Canaan, and God always keeps His promises.

In verse 21 Jeremiah said to the Lord in his prayer to the Lord, “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” They had the same critical need that we have in our country: the need for many people to turn to the Lord. Only the Lord can work in hearts and change them. Only the Lord can convict of sin. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth of Jesus Christ the Savior of the world, the Son of God, and the King of kings.

Jeremiah ends his writings in the book of Lamentations by making the following statement in verse 22, “But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.” We would never end any subject in the age in which we live with such a statement. Jesus will never reject anyone. That is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. That is the difference between law and grace, and if you know Jesus as your Savior, you are not under law.

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