The Unflinching Pivot: From Ruin to Throne Text: Lamentations 5:19-22
Introduction: The Sanity of Sovereignty
We come now to the end of this bleak and sorrowful book. We have walked through the smoking ruins of Jerusalem, we have heard the cries of the starving, and we have felt the weight of a nation's sin brought to its terrible and just conclusion. The book of Lamentations is not for the faint of heart. It is a raw, unflinching look at the consequences of covenant rebellion. And in our therapeutic age, which prizes comfort above truth and sentimentality above righteousness, this is a necessary and bracing medicine.
Modern evangelicals often don't know what to do with a book like this. We want to skip to the happy ending. We want three easy steps to a blessed life. But the Holy Spirit has given us this inspired funeral dirge to teach us something profound about the character of God and the nature of true repentance. He is teaching us the discipline of godly grief. He is teaching us that before there can be any true restoration, there must be a full accounting of the ruin. You cannot heal a wound by pretending it isn't there.
And so, after five chapters of detailed, heart-wrenching lament over the desolation, the prayer of the people comes to its final, crucial pivot. It is here, at the very bottom, that the only true foundation is sought. When your city is gone, your temple is rubble, your children are starving, and your leaders are disgraced, where do you look? When every earthly support has been kicked out from under you, what is left? The answer of the prophet, the only sane answer, is to look up. It is to pivot from the collapsed throne of David to the unshakable throne of Yahweh. This is not a pivot to wishful thinking or cheap optimism. It is a pivot to the hardest, most glorious reality in the universe: the absolute, eternal sovereignty of God.
The Text
You, O Yahweh, sit enthroned forever;
Your throne is from generation to generation.
Why do You forget us forever?
Why do You forsake us so long?
Cause us to return to You, O Yahweh, that we may be returned;
Renew our days as of old,
Even if You have utterly rejected us
And are exceedingly angry with us.
(Lamentations 5:19-22 LSB)
The Unshaken Throne (v. 19)
The final appeal begins not with a plea, but with a declaration of theological bedrock.
"You, O Yahweh, sit enthroned forever; Your throne is from generation to generation." (Lamentations 5:19)
This is where all true prayer in the midst of suffering must begin. It must begin with God. Before we bring our complaints, before we voice our anguish, we must first establish who it is we are talking to. The people's throne in Jerusalem is a heap of ash. Their king is a captive in a foreign land. Their national glory is a ghost. But God's throne is untouched. The Babylonians could sack Jerusalem, but they couldn't lay a finger on the heavenly throne room. This is the fundamental confession that separates the people of God from every pagan religion. Their gods rise and fall with their empires. When Babylon conquers Israel, it looks like Marduk has defeated Yahweh. But the Bible's claim is that Yahweh is the one who sent the Babylonians. He is not a tribal deity wringing his hands; He is the sovereign Lord of all history, using pagan empires as the rod of His anger (Isaiah 10:5).
Notice the verb: "You... sit enthroned." This is a statement of present reality. It's not that God will reign one day. He is reigning now, over the rubble, over the exile, over the weeping. His reign is not contingent on our circumstances. Our suffering does not put His control of the universe into question. Rather, His control of the universe is the only thing that gives our suffering meaning. If God is not sovereign over the disaster, then the disaster is meaningless, a tale told by an idiot, and we have no one to appeal to. But if He is sovereign, then even this horror has a purpose, a telos, and we can cry out to the one who is actually in charge. This is the sanity of sovereignty. It is hard, yes, but it is sane. The alternative is a universe of blind, pitiless indifference, which is infinitely harder.
The Honest Complaint (v. 20)
Having established God's eternal reign, the prayer moves to a raw and honest question. This is not the whining of a spoiled child, but the cry of a son to his father.
"Why do You forget us forever? Why do You forsake us so long?" (Lamentations 5:20 LSB)
This is the language of the covenant. Because God is our Father, we can ask Him "why?" The pagan can't do this. To whom would he complain? The impersonal machinery of the cosmos? But we are in a relationship. And in that relationship, God invites our honest anguish. Look at the Psalms. They are filled with this kind of language. This is not a questioning of God's right to do what He is doing. It is an appeal based on how things feel from the ground. "Lord, we know your throne is unshaken, but down here it feels like you've forgotten us. It feels like you've walked away."
This is a crucial lesson for us. We are often taught a kind of stoic piety that believes it is unspiritual to cry out to God in this way. We think we must always have a stiff upper lip. But that is not biblical faith. Biblical faith is robust enough to tell God exactly what is on its heart. The man of faith is not the one who pretends he isn't hurting. The man of faith is the one who takes his hurt and his confusion and directs it all toward the unshaken throne. He wrestles with God, as Jacob did. He knows that God is big enough to handle our questions. The problem is not asking "why." The problem is asking "why" with a clenched fist of rebellion instead of a broken heart of submission.
The Sovereign Request (v. 21)
Here we come to the theological heart of the prayer, and it is a stunning display of reformed theology, centuries before the Reformation.
"Cause us to return to You, O Yahweh, that we may be returned; Renew our days as of old," (Lamentations 5:21 LSB)
Pay very close attention to the grammar here. This is everything. The prayer is not, "Lord, we promise we will return to you if you will just bless us again." It is not, "Lord, give us the strength to return to you." It is far more radical than that. It is, "Cause us to return." The Hebrew is "Hashivenu Yahweh elekha, v'nashuva." Literally, "Turn us, Yahweh, to Yourself, and we will turn."
This is a confession of total spiritual inability. They have learned the hard lesson of their sin. They know that the problem is not just that they made bad choices. The problem is that their hearts are bent, broken, and rebellious. Their wills are in bondage. They cannot, on their own steam, generate the repentance that is required. So they ask God to do the very thing He requires of them. They are asking for the grace of repentance. They are asking God to sovereignly intervene and turn their hearts, because they know that if He doesn't, they will never turn on their own.
This is the essence of regeneration. It is a divine initiative. God doesn't just throw us a rope and hope we grab on. He reaches down and ties the rope around us. He gives us the will to repent and the faith to believe. As Paul would later say, we are saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8). Here, in the depths of Old Covenant despair, we find a crystal clear understanding of monergistic grace. "Turn us, and then we shall be turned." Only God can fix the problem that our sin created.
The Final, Flinching Hope (v. 22)
The book ends on a note that is both unsettling and profoundly realistic. It is not a neat and tidy conclusion.
"Even if You have utterly rejected us And are exceedingly angry with us." (Lamentations 5:22 LSB)
This last verse can be translated in a few ways. Some versions render it as a question: "Or have you utterly rejected us?" But the sense here seems to be a subordinate clause, a recognition of the grim reality of their situation. The prayer is essentially this: "Lord, turn us, renew us... even though we know that, right now, it appears you have utterly rejected us and your anger against us is white-hot."
This is not a statement of despair. It is a statement of faith in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are saying that their hope is not in their circumstances, which are screaming "rejection." Their hope is in the character of the God who sits enthroned forever (v. 19). They are acknowledging the reality of God's wrath. They are not downplaying their sin or the justice of their punishment. God's anger is not a temper tantrum; it is the holy, settled opposition of a righteous Creator to all that is unrighteous. And they are feeling the full force of it.
And yet, they pray. This is the point. The book ends with the people of God on their knees, with no guarantees about the immediate future, but with their faces turned toward the throne. They are casting themselves entirely on the mercy of a God who they know has every right to be angry with them. This is the posture of all true faith. It does not demand. It does not bargain. It simply appeals to the mercy of God, acknowledging that His justice is being fully served, and pleading for the grace that they know they do not deserve.
Conclusion: The Unfinished Prayer
Lamentations ends without an answer. The prayer hangs in the air. And this is intentional. Because the answer to this prayer is not found in the next chapter. The answer is found in a person. The answer is Jesus Christ.
The question is asked, "Why do you forsake us?" Centuries later, a man hangs on a cross outside the very walls of this ruined city, and He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). He was forsaken so that we would never have to be. He endured the utter rejection and the full heat of God's anger against our sin, so that we could be accepted.
The prayer is, "Cause us to return." And God answered that prayer by sending His Son. Jesus is the one who turns us. He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one lost sheep and carries it home. Through His death and resurrection, He secured the gift of the Holy Spirit, who alone can perform the heart surgery necessary to turn rebellious sinners into willing sons.
The book ends in the ashes, but it points to the throne. And it points to the one who would descend from that throne, walk among the ashes of our broken lives, and endure the ultimate lament on our behalf. He did this so that He could "renew our days as of old," not just back to the glory of Eden, but to something far greater: the eternal glory of the new heavens and the new earth, where the Lord sits enthroned forever, and His people will never be forsaken again.