He is our hope
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Lamentations 3:25-27 NIVUK
One of the reasons why we took that break with my wife's family that I referred to in the introduction was to see Sohoton Natural Bridge National Park. My wife had found it on the internet, liked what she saw and wanted to go. Her family took some persuasion. They had never been anywhere like this. But they eventually gave in and we went.
We booked a tour, picked up our tour guide in the village of Basey, drove down to a river and took a couple of Filipino bangka (outrigger boats with big floats) up the river and into the jungle until the bangka could go no further. Then we jumped onto a pontoon and eventually got into some canoes.
Now, I can't paddle a canoe. So my father-in-law said he would paddle me up the river.
I got into the canoe and quickly developed a respect for him. The current was against us. In fact, it reached a point where every paddler in our group of fifteen had to jump out into the water - which was chest deep - and walk through the current, pushing their canoe by hand.
This is how it feels to suffer, doesn't it? Everything seems to be against you and you are simply struggling to keep your head above water and stop yourself from drowning. Only, unlike that experience at Sohoton, you have no ambitions to press on to see something spectacular. No, you are just trying to survive.
If that's where you are right now, if this is how you feel, then you have company. Jeremiah is well and truly with you.
However, at Sohoton the paddlers had a good reason to lift their heads above the current and look in front of them. Behind the fast flowing water was a natural bridge - an incredible spectacle where the water has eroded an opening in a cliff to the point where it forms a short tunnel. And on the other side of that tunnel was the dense Samar jungle. It was quite an awesome sight.
In the same way, Jeremiah is encouraging us to lift our head, to see what lies before us and beside us. He mentions three surprising things that are good.
Firstly, this:
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;
Lamentations 3:25 NIVUK
So firstly he says that the Lord is good. This verse is quite extraordinary given what we see right at the start of this chapter:
I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord ’s wrath.
Lamentations 3:1 NIVUK
In fact, there is more. From verse 2 to verse 18 - seventeen verses in all - Jeremiah recounts the painful actions that someone he calls 'He' has carried out against the Jewish people. They are both horrific and violent.
You see, the person described as 'He' here could easily be said to be the Babylonian king. After all, he and his troops were absolutely barbarous towards the Jewish people. The slaughter, rape and destruction was truly devastating, both on an individual level and for the Jewish nation. It would actually be far simpler if this was who Jeremiah was referring to here.
But he isn't. The truth is far more shocking and disturbing for our modern notions of who God is and what He does.
He is referring to God. God is the One who Jeremiah sees as inflicting this harm on the Jewish people. Why? Because, as we saw earlier, they had sinned grievously against Him. The Babylonians were just a tool in His hands (2 Kings 24:2; 2 Chronicles 36:16-17).
What Jeremiah is saying here is that, no matter whether we are experiencing the Lord's goodness or his wrath, the Lord is always good. His fundamental nature does not change.
This is where Jeremiah's view of his suffering differs greatly from ours. He sees God's fundamental goodness as not just being expressed through times when we feel blessed and are experiencing good things. No, he sees God's goodness as being expressed through His wrath towards his nation's sin. Why?
Because since God is good, He has to also be intolerant. But not intolerant of people. No, He must be intolerant of things that are not good - of things that are evil (Habakkuk 1:13). If God were to tolerate evil, then He would be tolerating attitudes and behaviours that are ultimately harmful and destructive for His people. Therefore a tolerant God is not a good God. For God to be good, He must be intolerant of evil.
Think of it this way: if you had a child and that child developed a cancer, would you tolerate the cancer? Would you accept the cancer and let it do what it wanted to your child? Absolutely not! You would hate that evil condition with a passion and do everything you can to get your child treatment that will eradicate the cancer.
That's how God sees evil. And just as treatment for cancer is often deeply painful but utterly necessary, Jeremiah sees God's intervention in the life of his nation as deeply painful but utterly necessary and utterly good. Why? Because it is purging the evil cancer of sin from among them.
So even if our circumstances seem to be far from good, God is always good, as His intervention enables us to see the cancerous sin in us and get rid of it, even if the cancerous sin is not the cause of the suffering itself.
Jeremiah says something else, equally as surprising:
it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
Lamentations 3:26 NIVUK
This statement is even more incredible when we read it alongside these words from Jeremiah:
This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. ‘But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt,’ declares the Lord , ‘and will make it desolate for ever.
Jeremiah 25:11-12 NIVUK
This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place.
Jeremiah 29:10 NIVUK
Even Daniel was aware of Jeremiah's teaching:
In the first year of Darius son of Xerxes (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom – in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the Lord given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.
Daniel 9:1-2 NIVUK
So what Jeremiah is saying is this: it is good to wait on the Lord to come to your rescue even if it takes seventy years. Moreover, Jeremiah was already an old man when he wrote these words in Lamentations. He would likely never see the day when God would finally come to the aid of his people and bring the exiles home. In fact, there is no tradition or record of him returning back to his home town. Jewish tradition and Roman historians indicate that he was most likely stoned by his fellow Jews in Egypt because they were fed up with him constantly telling them what they didn't want to hear.
So Jeremiah states here that it is good to wait on the Lord to save His people, even if it takes seventy years and even if you never live to see it finally take place. But how can this be?
This is purely based on Jeremiah's belief that, despite the ferocity of the suffering he faced, God is still good. If God is good, then what He does is good. And what He does is good even if He makes us wait. Jeremiah is tracing out God's purpose for His people. Even if He can't always see the lines, even if everything He sees is so negative, He sees that God is still working His purposes out through the suffering and that this purpose is good.
This core belief has enabled many Christians to wait on God through extraordinary times, including crippling illness, apparently fruitless ministries, bereavement, issues with erring children or relatives, and countless other seemingly tragic situations. It can help us too, while we try to make sense of the horror of Covid-19.
The last thing Jeremiah says is good is equally as startling:
It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.
Lamentations 3:27 NIVUK
Animals bore wooden yokes attached to ploughs and dragged them through fields to make furrows to be planted with seeds. Slaves wore yokes to demonstrate their servitude - that they, as human beings, were being treated by their fellow human beings as nothing but brute beasts. And this, quite rightly, gets us hot under the collar with righteous rage. There is nothing good in this. It is quite simply wrong, full stop.
Yet the Jews were reduced to abject poverty in their own land by the Babylonians:
But the commander left behind some of the poorest people of the land to work the vineyards and fields.
2 Kings 25:12 NIVUK
But Nebuzaradan the commander of the guard left behind in the land of Judah some of the poor people, who owned nothing; and at that time he gave them vineyards and fields.
Jeremiah 39:10 NIVUK
And who do you think these poor people produced food for? The King of Babylon! The nation had been humiliated and reduced to utter poverty and slavery.
Yet Jeremiah says that it is good for someone to bear this dreadful burden while they are young!
Why?
For one thing, it seems evident that younger people would likely be mistreated less by their Babylonian overlords because they would have the energy and strength to produce for them what they wanted. But there is another aspect too. A younger person would be more likely to see the Lord save His people than an older one. Yes, it would take seventy years. Yes, many would very likely not to make it. But some would.
So we see here Jeremiah's three core convictions that saw him through this unimaginable suffering: that the Lord is good, that the wait is good, and that suffering in His hands is good, especially while we are young, even if this means utter humiliation and despair, because the Lord is good to those who hope in Him.
But this hoping should not be seen as passive. No, this is active hoping. This the hoping of those who seek the Lord, and His intervention, in seemingly impossible circumstances. And also around people who are doing exactly the opposite.
Jeremiah's contemporaries were clearly not great fans of hoping God would deliver them. The Babylonians set Gedaliah son of Ahikam over them as their governor. Some of their number murdered him and then fled to Egypt to avoid justice (Jeremiah 40 and 41). It's striking that the murderer was a member of the Jewish royal family (Jeremiah 41:1-2), as if he could regain through violent spite what his family had lost because of their sin.
Do you see what is happening? Jeremiah is saying that those who hope in the Lord are blessed, that the Lord is good to them. But those around him are not listening and just getting themselves into ever increasing trouble.
Jeremiah was able to hope in the Lord because he understood that the Lord is good, and what the Lord does is good even though we don't understand it that way. I can personally say this has been one of the main struggles I've had when I've been through hard times. When I attended my own father's funeral (he died from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma at the age of 48), when a close family friend committed suicide, when ten years of employment was cast aside in an instant, when my wife's family were affected by a giant typhoon - all of these things hurt and hurt badly. But I did not feel my recovery was complete until I could cry out to God through the tears say, "God, I really don't know what you're doing in the middle of this, and I have to say, it hurts, but I believe that you are good, that your purpose is good, and that somehow you will use this for my good too."
That is exactly what happens with Jeremiah. His suffering does not go away. It won't. Not for seventy years. Neither will the deep pain go away. But as his conviction in the goodness of God sinks ever deeper into his soul, Jeremiah's perspective on his suffering changes to the point where he can even see that aspects of it are good. And that is truly what it means to hope in the Lord.
So friend, what about you? Are you busy planning your protest or plotting your revenge? Or are you hoping in the Lord? Jeremiah sought the Lord and He changed Jeremiah's perspective. Who are you seeking out? Whose opinion do you want to hear?
These questions will determine how we react to our situation.
So we have seen that the Lord was Jeremiah's provision, so Jeremiah trusted in Him. We have also seen that the Lord was Jeremiah's hope, so Jeremiah sought Him. Lastly, and perhaps most poignantly, THE LORD IS OUR REASON.
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