1. Empty Streets (chapter 1)
2. Broken Buildings (chapter 2)
3. A Living Hope (chapter 3)

Open your Bibles to the book of Lamentations. This is a small book of the Bible, found deep in the Old Testament. It is found just after the book of Jeremiah, because Jeremiah wrote the book.

The book of Lamentations gets its name from the type of literature that it is. It is a “lament.” That is an expression of deep anguish of the heart, which comes about because of some great experience of suffering. A “lament” will often contain confusion about the circumstances of life, and a “lament” will often offer up complaints toward God, all the while seeking hope from God. The greatest, longest lament in the Bible comes in the book of Lamentations.

My message this morning is entitled “The Ghost Town,” because that is what Jeremiah was experiencing. He was experiencing a city that was once full of people, but now was deserted and destroyed.

Look at the first verse of the book.

Lamentations 1:1
How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
    How like a widow has she become,
    she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
    has become a slave.

This is what Jeremiah was dealing with. He was in the city that he loved, which was once a thriving city, the capital of Israel. It was once the wonder of the world. People from all of the ancient world would travel to visit her.

Do you remember the queen of Sheba during the days of Solomon? She had heard about the wealth and the beauty of the city. She had heard about the temple. She had heard about the wisdom of Solomon. She didn’t believe it, so she came to see for herself.

1 Kings 10:2-10
She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. And Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the LORD, there was no more breath in her. And she said to the king, “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard. Happy are your men! Happy are your servants, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! Blessed be the LORD your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the LORD loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.” Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again came such an abundance of spices as these that the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.

Such was the city that Solomon had built.

But now, some 400 years after the glory days of Solomon, Jerusalem was a “Ghost Town.” It was a Ghost Town because Babylon had come and destroyed the city in 586 B.C. Babylon had carried away many people into exile. Not everyone; the poorest of the land were left. But they were few in number.

Listen to the biblical account of this destruction.

2 Kings 25:8-12
In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month — that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon — Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen.

Jeremiah was one of the poorest of the land who was left in Jerusalem. He saw the fall of Jerusalem. He saw the killing of many of his friends in the battles. And he grieved the loss of the city, and he tried to make sense of it all, and he tried to look for hope somewhere after all of the devastation he witnessed. He was confused and in anguish. And that is why he writes this lament.

If you have been here at Rock Valley Bible Church over the past few weeks, I trust that you know why we are looking at the book of Lamentations this morning. A few weeks ago we finished our exposition of the gospel of John, and are headed into the book of Job. Over these past few weeks, I have sought to put some categories of thought into your mind about “When Life Doesn’t Make Sense.”

Three weeks ago, we looked at Psalm 73, in which Asaph was looking at the prosperity of the wicked, how their lives are filled with ease, and they die in peace. This didn’t make sense to him. He was faithfully serving God with little reward. He was longing for the “Greener Grass” on the other side of the fence. But what changed Asaph was entering the sanctuary of God and seeing the end of the wicked. He came to see clearly that God is indeed good to those who are pure in heart (Psalm 73:1). And when we come to the book of Job, we will see something similar. Job had been faithfully serving the LORD, and yet his reward was suffering. It was not until Job saw a divine perspective that he understood God’s goodness to those who are pure in heart.

Two weeks ago, we looked at the life of Joseph, who was living the life that we all want to live, driving along a beautiful winding road through the rolling hills. But through no fault of his own, Joseph’s life hit a detour. He was hated and betrayed by his brothers, who sold him into slavery. He was wrongly accused and thrown into prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He was forgotten. His detour through life was difficult. And I’m sure that sitting in a prison, life didn’t make much sense to Joseph. But God had a plan for his detour. In the end, Joseph could see that plan. What his brothers meant for evil against him, God meant for good (Genesis 50:20), to save his family from the famine, to preserve God’s covenant with the people of Israel. When we come to the book of Job, we will see a similar detour in Job’s life, only resolved at the end of the book when he sees the sovereignty of God.

Last week, we looked at the book of Habakkuk. We used the metaphor of the “Prairie Fire,” the intentional, controlled burn of the prairie, which though painful, in the end brings the prairie back stronger than ever before. In the book of Habakkuk, we saw the prophet arguing with God about the fire he was bringing upon Judah. God had a little talk with Habakkuk about his sovereign power to deal with the wicked. Such a talk transformed Habakkuk, who resolved to trust in God’s plan and even embraced it, though he might lose everything. He said.

Habakkuk 3:17-18
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

And when we come to the book of Job, we will see something similar. Job was complaining against God, but when he saw a glimpse of God’s sovereignty, he bowed in submission to the LORD.

Now, what Habakkuk was anticipating, the prairie fire that would come and consume, Jeremiah saw. Jeremiah saw when the fig didn’t blossom. Jeremiah saw when there was no fruit on the vines. Jeremiah saw the produce of the olive fail. Jeremiah saw the fields yielding no food. Jeremiah saw the flocks cut off from the fold. Jeremiah saw no herd in the stalls (Habakkuk 3:17). And the book of Lamentations was his response. The lament was Jeremiah’s way of dealing with the grief, trying to grasp it all, and trying to understand how this could happen to God’s people. And we will see such a similar lament in the book of Job.

So, let’s dig into the book of Lamentations, using this metaphor of the Ghost Town. This is what Jerusalem was. The buildings were destroyed. The people were taken into exile; only the poor were left. It’s difficult to catch here the depth of the hurt that the people of Judah experienced.

A good comparison would be the Holocaust, which took place during World War II. I’ll just give you one story of thousands that could be told. This testimony was given by Ben Stem, who spent six months in the Kielce ghetto in Poland. The Jews were forced to live in such ghettos in crowded living conditions. Many died of starvation in this ghetto. But Ben Stem survived, only to be sent off to Auschwitz.^[1]

I’d heard rumors that Jews were going to Auschwitz. But I didn’t know what Auschwitz meant. I didn’t know what “extermination camp” meant. People told me, but I couldn’t imagine or understand it.

We were rounded up and packed into cattle cars like sardines. We could not move our arms or legs. We traveled for two days — day and night. The heat was unbearable. Then one morning at dawn, we looked through the cracks in the cattle car. I saw the name Auschwitz. I was paralyzed. I got numb. I didn’t feel anything. When daylight came, they slid the car door open. All we heard was, “Raus, raus, get out of here, get out of here!” I had to crawl over people who had died from the heat and from lack of food and water.

When they opened the doors to the cattle car, we jumped off as quickly as we could because we were under orders. SS men with the skulls on their hats and collars stood in front of us stretched out at intervals about every ten feet. The SS officer in charge stood with his German shepherd. The officer had one foot propped up on a little stool. We lined up and filed by him. Right there the selection took place. As each person passed by him, he pointed left or right. Left or right was your destiny. The people sent to the left went to the gas chambers, and we went to the right.

They told us we were going to be given some new clothing, but before that, we were sent into the showers. Luckily, when we turned the faucets we saw water instead of gas. We started washing ourselves. We got out and stood there. We were deloused because we had lice. One guard stood there putting some kind of a chemical on our heads. Another put it under our arms. A third one shaved our heads.

Then we were given some prisoner’s uniforms, very similar to the uniforms a prison chain gang used to wear here. We got wooden shoes. We didn’t get the sizes we normally wore. We had to make do with what we got. Then we were lined up again in single file and tattooed on the forearm. My number was B-3348.

We were marched to a barracks in Birkenau. Birkenau was a part of Auschwitz. Above the entrance was an arch with an inscription which said in German, “Work Makes Men Free,” pretending that this was a work camp. There were two rows of barracks with a wide street between them. In front of us was a crematorium and gas chambers. We smelled the flesh of human bodies burning. We couldn’t mistake that smell for anything else.

Every day we were awakened by a German prisoner who served as the block or barrack captain. He woke us at 5:00 or 5:30 each morning. We slept in beds stacked three high and about three feet wide and three feet long. We laid on straw. We were told to get out of the barracks as fast as we could. We lined up and everybody was counted. Then we stood there and did absolutely nothing for quite a while.

We got a little soup at lunch time, around twelve or one o’clock. We got soup or just plain warm water in a metal tin like a mess kit. It wasn’t hot. We each had a spoon, and we were fishing all the time in the soup to see if there was anything in it to eat. Unfortunately we could never find anything in there. In the evening we got a slice of bread about a quarter of an inch thick. On Sunday we got something with the bread like a tiny piece of margarine and a slice of salami.

Sometimes I was too sick to eat my soup, but I treasured it so much that I hid that little soup behind my bunk. One day when there was an inspection, the guards found the soup I was hiding. We weren’t supposed to have any soup in the barracks. They took me outside and beat me. I passed out after three blows. A friend gave me coffee. He saved my life because I felt so sick I couldn’t even move. With the coffee I was able to stand up when the camp officials came into the barracks for the next inspection. Anybody who couldn’t move from his bed was taken away.

During the day sometimes, German guards on trucks ran back and forth telling prisoners to jump on. One time I was taken to do a little work carrying steel beams. It was winter time, very cold. Fifteen or twenty guys were lifting each side of the beam because it was a wide beam. Eventually they told us to place it somewhere. But when we tried we couldn’t tear away our hands from the steel because they were frozen to the beam. The skin came off and started bleeding. They didn’t permit us to put any kind of cloth over our hands. We had to carry it bare. The next day we put this same beam back in the original spot.

We stayed there until the end of 1944 when the Russians started pushing the Germans from the eastern front back to the west. The SS loaded us into cattle cars and took us to a forced labor camp in western Germany called Sachsenhausen. There was no crematorium, so it was by far a better feeling. I was there about a month or six weeks.

At the end of 1944 I was moved again. This time I went south to a German concentration camp called Dachau, closer to the Austrian border. By this time I was just a skeleton. Shortly after I arrived, camp officials decided it was time to leave. We could hear the machine guns and the heavy artillery booming and they told us to march. The Allies were getting closer. I marched for about five kilometers to Allach which was a tiny little camp. Then I fell. I couldn’t walk anymore. The rest of them continued walking. The Germans killed all the people who kept walking. That was the death march. I survived because I could not walk.

Now, the experiences of Ben Stem were a bit different than the experiences of Jeremiah, but the pain was every bit as real. As their friends and relatives were taken away to Babylon, some to their deaths, many to incredible hardship, it is the suffering of people who are greatly and deeply loved.

When we consider the great suffering in this world and what happened during Jeremiah’s day, it doesn’t make much sense to us. How can there be so much suffering in this world? It seems so unfair. It seems harsh and difficult. Why did they suffer, but not me?

The application of the book of Lamentations comes in our lives when we face similar hardships. It is almost silly to try to compare their hardships and ours; we aren’t going to face the extent of the hardship that Jeremiah faced. But to the extent that you can relate with your own life, embrace the lament. When you think about a “Ghost Town,” think about the things in your life that you spent building, which have come crashing down. Perhaps it’s a bankruptcy. Perhaps it’s a divorce. Perhaps it’s a foreclosure. Perhaps it’s a chronic illness. Perhaps it’s the death of a loved one. Perhaps it’s a loss of relationship. Whatever the loss, for whatever the reason, Lamentations has something to teach us.

So, let’s look at how Jeremiah laments. Here’s my first point:

1. Empty Streets (chapter 1)

That’s what we see in chapter 1. We see the streets empty. Again, verse 1.

Lamentations 1:1
How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
    How like a widow has she become,
    she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
    has become a slave.

Babylon had come and had wiped away the city. Those who were left were enslaved to the rulers of Babylon. Now, it’s true that the Babylonians installed Gedaliah to rule over the remnant in Judah, but he was a vassal to the king of Babylon. If they rebelled against Babylon in any way, they would certainly be cut off. They were essentially slaves to Babylon.

Lamentations 1:2-3
She weeps bitterly in the night,
    with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
    she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
    they have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into exile because of affliction
    and hard servitude;
she dwells now among the nations,
    but finds no resting place;
her pursuers have all overtaken her
    in the midst of her distress.

Jerusalem is alone. Her friends have deserted her. She has none to comfort her in her distress. She finds no rest in her loneliness. Proverbs 19:4 says, “Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend.” This is Jerusalem. When the wealth was flowing, Jerusalem had many friends. But when the wealth was gone and the city was devastated, they were deserted, even by their friends.

This is so different than it was! In the law of God, it was commanded that the Jews would come and appear before the LORD three times in the year (Exodus 23:14-17): to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which remembered their redemption from slavery in Egypt; to celebrate the Feast of the Harvest, giving the firstfruits of their labor to the LORD; and to celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, rejoicing in God’s provision. These were always times of great joy and celebration and happiness. As David said, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD’” (Psalm 122:1). When the people made their way up to Jerusalem, they sang the Songs of Ascent along the road, Psalms 120 to 134. They sang “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from whence shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD” (Psalm 121). They sang, “Had it not been the LORD who was on our side, let Israel say — had it not been the LORD who was on our side when men rose up against us” (Psalm 124). All these songs that they would sing as they traveled were now silent.

But now, that gladness was all gone. The temple was gone. Nobody came anymore. The streets in Jerusalem were empty and the roads leading to Jerusalem were silent.

Lamentations 1:4
The roads to Zion mourn,
    for none come to the festival;
all her gates are desolate;
    her priests groan;
her virgins have been afflicted,
    and she herself suffers bitterly.

There is nobody around to give her joy. There is nobody around to comfort her. And it is almost as if their access to God has been cut off. The good news for us in Christ is that our access to God is never cut off. Jesus always lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25). They wanted to go worship, but their church was gone. Not so for us.

The Jews loved Jerusalem. In Psalm 137, the people of God are in a foreign land, and their captors say, “Sing us one of those songs.” And they say, “How can we sing the song of Jerusalem when we are here in Babylon?” They just couldn’t even sing. Their hopes were dashed. And when Nehemiah, years later, heard that the city was in upheaval and the walls were broken down, he wept and mourned for days.

Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever been without friends? Have you ever been deserted? Have you lost a close loved one? It’s difficult. This is what Jerusalem was facing. They were overtaken and abandoned by all of their friends. Many of their relatives were killed or exiled.

But not only this, but God also abandoned them.

Lamentations 1:11-12
All her people groan
    as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
    to revive their strength.
“Look, O LORD, and see,
    for I am despised.”
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
    Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
    which was brought upon me,
which the LORD inflicted
    on the day of his fierce anger.

God abandoned them because of their sin. Judah deserved everything that they received. The book of Lamentations is not a book of unjust suffering, as we will see in the book of Job. But it is a book of suffering because of sin. And we will see plenty of suffering in the book of Job. Yet the pain here is real. It is real because they have "1. Empty Streets." It’s also real because they have, 

2. Broken Buildings (chapter 2)

Chapter 2 of Lamentations brings the physical devastation into focus. It brings God’s wrath into focus. As I read these verses, I want you to notice something: it is the LORD who is attributed with this destruction. The book of Lamentations doesn’t say the LORD allowed Babylon to come and destroy them. No, no, no: it is the LORD who broke down. And if the LORD breaks down, the LORD can also heal. Your hope needs to be in the sovereignty of God. Look at what the LORD did to Jerusalem.

Lamentations 2:1-2
How the LORD in his anger
    has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth
    the splendor of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool
    in the day of his anger.
The LORD has swallowed up without mercy
    all the habitations of Jacob;
in his wrath he has broken down
    the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
he has brought down to the ground in dishonor
    the kingdom and its rulers.

Lamentations 2:5
The LORD has become like an enemy;
    he has swallowed up Israel;
he has swallowed up all its palaces;
    he has laid in ruins its strongholds,
and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah
    mourning and lamentation.

Lamentations 2:7-8
The LORD has scorned his altar,
    disowned his sanctuary;
he has delivered into the hand of the enemy
    the walls of her palaces;
they raised a clamor in the house of the LORD
    as on the day of festival.
The LORD determined to lay in ruins
    the wall of the daughter of Zion;
he stretched out the measuring line;
    he did not restrain his hand from destroying;
he caused rampart and wall to lament;
    they languished together.

This is all talking about the physical destruction of Jerusalem. This is talking about the physical things that Babylon came and destroyed. The application for us: an accident takes away our car; a fire burns our home; some tornado comes and takes our place of business. This is the level of suffering in Lamentations. The pain is very real for them. In chapter 2, we read of their weeping.

Lamentations 2:11
My eyes are spent with weeping;
    my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out to the ground
    because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because infants and babies faint
    in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 2:18-19
Their heart cried to the Lord.
    O wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears stream down like a torrent
    day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
    your eyes no respite!
Arise, cry out in the night,
    at the beginning of the night watches!
Pour out your heart like water
    before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
    for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
    at the head of every street.

The book of Lamentations is a difficult book for us. Some of you have known such pain and anguish in your soul. But many of us have not. I was talking to a pastor this week, telling him about how we are going to be preaching on Job, and he said, “Job is teaching us that we’ve got trouble in our life or trouble’s coming. We need to prepare ourselves for this.” Know that this is the human experience. It is filled with sorrow and hurt and crying and pain. So, where is the hope in all of this? I’m glad you asked, because it comes in chapter 3. 

3. A Living Hope (chapter 3)

The first part of chapter 3 has to do with Jeremiah’s own hardship. As the people suffered, Jeremiah suffered all the more. He wasn’t exiled to a concentration camp. He wasn’t killed along the way. But the suffering he experienced was immense. He says.

Lamentations 3:1-6
I am the man who has seen affliction
    under the rod of his wrath;
he has driven and brought me
    into darkness without any light;
surely against me he turns his hand
    again and again the whole day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
    he has broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
    with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me dwell in darkness
    like the dead of long ago.

I think this is a little bit like parents when they have a suffering child. They themselves hurt far more than the child does. That is Jeremiah feeling this as the prophet responsible for the people of Judah. So goes the entire chapter, line upon line of Jeremiah’s great suffering. He hasn’t been exiled. He has merely watched the suffering, and it has been an anguish to his soul.

This is surprising to us. This doesn’t make sense. Why is the prophet suffering so much? He didn’t do anything wrong. He was a righteous man! Yet, because he was prophesying to a sinful people who refused to hear him, he himself was suffering as well. Skip forward to verse 16.

Lamentations 3:16-18
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;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
    so has my hope from the LORD.”

This is the prophet! This is the one who has lost hope! He is supposed to be the one filled with encouragement. He is supposed to be the one to find his joy in the LORD, but he has forgotten what happiness is. If today finds you like Jeremiah in verse 18, your endurance perished and your hope from the LORD gone, just know that there is hope in Christ. There is hope that Jeremiah is going to find. And the turn comes in verse 21.

Lamentations 3:21-23
But this I call to mind,
    and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.

I trust that many of you have heard these words before. These words are at the heart of our Christian lives. That God’s mercy will endure and never cease. And every morning, we can anticipate new mercies to come upon us. I know that often when Yvonne and I pray at night together, these verses come to mind. We just thank God for his faithfulness throughout the day and pray that his mercies tomorrow would be fresh. And that is exactly what is happening here.

But catch these words this morning in context. Jeremiah is about as low as you can go. His city is wiped away. His home is wiped away. He knows many that have died at the hands of the Babylonians. And yet he says, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Here is the pinnacle of Jeremiah’s hope. It is in the character of God. The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; like waves coming upon the sea shore, God’s lovingkindness continues to pass over us. His mercies never come to an end; like the pull of gravity upon our body, God’s compassions are always upon us. If you ever get to the ocean, just watch the waves. That is God’s mercy, coming wave after wave after wave.

When the sun rises in the morning and when we awake from our sleep refreshed, so also are God’s lovingkindnesses and compassion new and fresh. The shelves at Walmart get stocked every night with new merchandise. So also does God’s kindness and mercy get stocked every night, so that when the morning dawns, it’s a new day and the LORD comes to us with grace. And when the sun goes down at night, we can reflect upon his faithfulness to sustain us for another day.

Aren’t these verses good? Don’t they bring joy to your soul? Please realize this, church family: in your greatest hour of need, there is hope in the character of God. There is hope in the promises of God. Charles Bridges wrote, “Difficulties heaped upon difficulties can never rise to the level of the promise of God.”^[2] If your difficulties seem to be mounting upon you, please realize that they can never stack higher than the promises of God.

The message of Christ and his mercy to us just continues to come. He is ready to take and welcome anyone who is sorrowful and laboring and heavy laden. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He is the prodigal father, waiting with arms open wide for the son to come. Such are the mercies of God.

At the end of our service, we will sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” taken from these verses of Lamentations 3. I have a friend who told me he loved the words of that song, but he said, “I don’t like the tune. It sounds like a funeral dirge!” But that’s the point! It is a funeral dirge! It is to be sung in the hour of your greatest pain. When in your greatest hour of despondency, this is what you need to sing. Difficulties heaped upon difficulties can never rise to the level of the promises of God.

I remember hearing the story of a preacher who went to visit a young couple who had just given birth to a stillborn child. As he came into the room, the dead baby was in her mother’s arms. With tears, she said to the pastor, “Let us sing the doxology!”

That’s what verses 22 and 23 are! Despite the troubles. Despite the hardships. Jeremiah reminds himself of the truth. And so he can say.

Lamentations 3:24
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

These are amazing words. It’s not like there is any hand of deliverance that Jeremiah sees on the horizon. The situation is completely helpless. Babylon has come in and wiped out the city. They have wiped out the army. They have wiped out the government. They have taken many of the leaders and influential people back to Babylon. His city is decimated. Buildings are burned down. People have been killed.

And yet: “The LORD is my portion, says my soul, therefore I will hope in him.” The hope is even better for us today. Because Jesus is better than Jeremiah. Jesus provides a better hope because he actually died and rose again from the dead. Our hope is in him. The resurrection of the dead promises that we will be with him if we but trust in him.

This sermon was delivered to Rock Valley Bible Church on June 14, 2026 by Steve Brandon.
For more information see www.rockvalleybiblechurch.org.

[1] Ben Stem, Holocaust testimony, USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

[2] Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry (London: Seeley and Burnside, 1830), p. 175.