The Anatomy of Godly Grief Text: Lamentations 1:16
Introduction: When the Comforter is Far Off
We live in an age that is terrified of grief. Our culture treats sorrow like a disease, something to be medicated, managed, or distracted from. We are told to look on the bright side, to find our silver lining, to keep a stiff upper lip. But the Scriptures do not treat grief this way. The Bible is a book that is honest about the deep sorrows of this life. And the book of Lamentations is perhaps the most potent and concentrated expression of that honesty. It is a funeral dirge for a city, a post-mortem on a nation that has been judged by a holy God.
But this is not the undisciplined, chaotic grief of the unbeliever, which is a grief without hope. This is godly grief. The book itself is a masterpiece of structure, with its acrostic poems. This tells us that true sorrow, biblical sorrow, is not a mindless puddle of emotion. It can be, and should be, thoughtful, structured, and theological. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, is not simply venting. He is catechizing himself and the remnant in the grammar of judgment and repentance.
Our text today is the raw nerve of this entire book. It is the cry of Jerusalem, personified as a weeping woman, a desolate mother. And in her cry, we find a profound diagnosis of what happens when a people forsake their God. They find themselves weeping, and the one true Comforter is far from them. This is a terrifying place to be. And as we look at our own nation, teetering on the brink of its own judgments, we had better pay close attention. This is not just ancient history. This is a prophetic warning. When God is rejected, comfort is removed. This is the simple, brutal calculus of covenantal consequence.
The Text
"For these things I am weeping;
My eyes run down with water;
Because far from me is a comforter,
One who restores my soul.
My children are desolate
Because the enemy has prevailed.”
(Lamentations 1:16 LSB)
The Fountain of Tears (v. 16a)
The verse begins with the cause and effect of sorrow:
"For these things I am weeping; My eyes run down with water..." (Lamentations 1:16a)
The weeping is not for nothing. Jerusalem weeps "for these things." What things? The previous verses have laid it out in excruciating detail. Her gates are desolate, her priests groan, her virgins are afflicted, her children have gone into captivity, and her glory has departed (Lam. 1:4-5). This is not a vague, free-floating anxiety. This is a grief that is firmly tethered to reality. The city is in ruins because the nation has been in rebellion. The tears are the logical, inescapable result of sin.
This is the first lesson of godly grief: it must be honest about the cause. Our therapeutic culture wants to treat the symptom of sorrow without ever acknowledging the disease of sin. We want to stop the weeping without stopping the wickedness. But Jeremiah will not allow it. The tears are appropriate. The flowing water from the eyes is the external sign of the internal reality that the covenant has been broken. When a people sows sin, it will reap judgment, and the harvest is a bitter one, watered with tears.
Notice the language: "My eyes run down with water." This is not a delicate, dignified tear rolling down a cheek. This is a torrent. This is the breaking of a dam. This is what happens when the consequences of generations of apostasy finally arrive. The bill has come due. And we must not miss the corporate nature of this. The "I" here is Zion, the mother city. This is a corporate lament. When judgment falls, it falls on the whole body. We in the modern West, with our radical individualism, have forgotten this. We think our sins are private. But they are not. They contribute to the corporate character of our people, and they store up a corporate judgment from God.
The Absence of Comfort (v. 16b)
Next, we come to the heart of the anguish, the central reason for this inconsolable grief.
"Because far from me is a comforter, One who restores my soul." (Lamentations 1:16b)
This is one of the most chilling phrases in all of Scripture. The ultimate terror is not the Babylonian army. The ultimate horror is not the destruction of the Temple. The ultimate devastation is the absence of God. God is the Comforter. God is the one who restores the soul (Psalm 23:3). And He is now "far from me."
This is the essence of covenantal curse. God's presence is the great blessing of the covenant, and His absence is the great curse. When Israel was obedient, God was their comfort, their shield, their very present help in trouble. But when they turned to idols, God turned from them. He did not leave them immediately. He sent prophet after prophet to warn them. But they would not listen. And so, He gave them what they wanted. They wanted to be like the other nations, so He let the other nations devour them. They wanted to be without Him, so He withdrew His comforting presence.
This is hell in miniature. Hell is not just fire; it is the eternal, agonizing absence of the Comforter. It is to be utterly alone with your sin and its consequences, with no one to restore your soul. Jerusalem is getting a taste of that here. And it is a righteous judgment. They had sought comfort in their political alliances, in their false gods, in their material prosperity. They had looked for soul-restoration everywhere except in the God of Israel. So when the crisis came, their false comforters were exposed as frauds, and the one true Comforter was, by their own invitation, far away.
Let this be a stark warning to us. When we seek comfort in anything other than God through Christ, we are setting ourselves up for this same desolation. When our politics, our entertainments, our ideologies become our functional saviors, they will fail us, and we will find ourselves weeping with no one to restore our souls.
The Desolation of the Children (v. 16c)
The grief then turns from the self to the next generation.
"My children are desolate..." (Lamentations 1:16c)
The wages of sin are paid by the children. This is a constant biblical theme. The consequences of a father's rebellion are visited upon his household. The consequences of a nation's apostasy are visited upon its sons and daughters. This is not unjust, because the children are not innocent. They are born into the covenantal culture their parents created, and they participate in it. But it is a profound tragedy.
The word "desolate" means to be forsaken, abandoned, made solitary. The children of Jerusalem, who should have been her joy and her future, are now the emblem of her shame and her ruin. They are either dead or in exile. The future has been foreclosed upon. This is what happens when a generation abandons the covenant. It devours its own young.
Can we not see the parallel? Look at our own nation. We have taught our children that they are meaningless accidents of biology. We have told them that there is no truth, no God, no law above their own desires. We have slaughtered millions of them in the womb. And we are now chemically and surgically mutilating thousands more in a fit of insane rebellion against their created nature. We are creating a generation of desolate children. And the grief that is coming for this sin will be a fountain of tears indeed.
The Triumph of the Enemy (v. 16d)
Finally, the verse concludes with the immediate cause of the destruction.
"Because the enemy has prevailed." (Lamentations 1:16d)
The Babylonians have won. The siege is over. The city is sacked. The enemy has prevailed. But the careful reader of Scripture knows that this is only a surface-level reading. Who is the real power behind the Babylonian army? It is God Himself. God is the one who called Nebuchadnezzar "My servant" (Jeremiah 25:9). God is the one who strengthened the hand of the enemy against His own people.
The enemy did not prevail because he was stronger than God. The enemy prevailed because God used him as His rod of discipline. This is a crucial theological point. If the enemy had prevailed on his own strength, then God would be weak and the universe would be a chaotic struggle between rival powers. But that is the pagan view. The biblical view is that God is absolutely sovereign, and He sovereignly uses even wicked nations to accomplish His good and righteous purposes. He is the one who raises up empires and the one who brings them down.
This means that Jerusalem's ultimate problem was not military or political; it was theological. Their fight was not with Babylon, but with God. And when you fight God, you lose. The enemy's victory was simply the visible manifestation of God's verdict against their sin. This is hard doctrine, but it is the only doctrine that contains any hope. Because if God is the one who sent the judgment, then He is the only one who can remove it. If God is the one who wounded, He is the only one who can heal.
The Gospel for the Desolate
This verse is a black canvas of despair. Weeping, a distant Comforter, desolate children, and a triumphant enemy. If this were the final word, we would have no hope. But it is not. This entire scene of judgment is a foreshadowing of another, greater judgment that would take place on a hill outside this same city.
On the cross, the Lord Jesus Christ became the truly desolate one. He cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). In that moment, the Comforter was truly far from Him. He was experiencing the ultimate covenantal curse, the full force of God's wrath against sin, which Jerusalem only tasted.
He wept, not just for Jerusalem, but for all His people. The enemy, Satan, death, and sin, appeared to prevail over Him. His followers were scattered and desolate. But His desolation was not because of His own sin, for He had none. He was desolate for our sin. He took our judgment upon Himself.
And because He prevailed in His resurrection, the entire dynamic of this verse is reversed for those who are in Him. Because He was forsaken, we will never be forsaken. Because the Comforter was far from Him, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, has now been sent to be near to us, to dwell in us. Because He entered into desolation, we, His children, are no longer desolate but are adopted as sons and daughters. Because the enemy appeared to prevail over Him for a moment, He has now prevailed over the enemy for all time, making a public spectacle of him (Colossians 2:15).
Therefore, when we experience grief, when we weep for our sins and the sins of our nation, we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Our tears of repentance are met not with an absent Comforter, but with a gracious Father who restores our souls for the sake of His Son. The enemy may appear to prevail for a season, but we know the end of the story. The King has come, and He is putting all His enemies under His feet. And He will one day wipe away every tear from our eyes.