Knowing you are lost is an important first step in the process of salvation. Without an awareness that you are separated from God, you will not seek a remedy to the situation. “God does not want to have to bring hardships into peoples lives, but he may do so in order to teach, convict, and bring them into a right relationship with him” (note on Lamentations 3:33). It is often through suffering that our need for salvation becomes most evident to us. That is why God uses suffering to bring us to the point where we realize we need to get right with him.

Jeremiah was an eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem. In his book of Lamentations, “Jeremiah alternates between accounts of the horrible aftermath of the destruction of the city and the confessions of the people’s deep sins, and then to the appeals to God for mercy” (Introduction to Lamentations). Jeremiah recounted, “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. They cry to their mothers, ‘Where is bread and wine?’ as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mother’s bosom” (Lamentations 2:11-12).

Jeremiah encouraged the Jews to cry out to God for help. Jeremiah urged them, “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” (Lamentations 2:19). The phrase pour out your heart refers to a prayer that expresses dependence upon God (H8210). Jeremiah wanted the people to admit that they needed God to rescue them from their circumstances.

Jeremiah suffered along with the rest of the people of Judah. Jeremiah said, “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” (Lamentations 3:1-3). Jeremiah knew that God was sovereign over the events that were taking place but still expressed his confusion over the fact that God had allowed the suffering (note on Jeremiah 3:1-20). Jeremiah lamented, “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” (Lamentations 3:16-18).

In Jeremiah’s darkest moment, when his endurance was gone and there was nothing good left for him to hope for, Jeremiah turned his attention toward God. Lamentations 3:21-27 states:

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.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.
It is good for a man that he bear
    the yoke in his youth.

Jeremiah’s statement “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” refers to a person submitting himself to God. Jeremiah linked this to receiving salvation from the LORD. Jesus was also talking about submission to God in the context of salvation when told his followers, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

Jeremiah concluded that the LORD would not cast off his chosen people forever (Lamentations 3:31). God told Jeremiah, “I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety. And they shall be my people, and will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them” (Jeremiah 32:37-40). The New Covenant was instituted the night before Jesus’s crucifixion during the Passover feast. It says in Matthew 26:27-28 that Jesus took a cup, and after he had given thanks he gave it to his twelve disciples, stating, “Drink of it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

God’s compassion is “a deep kindly sympathy and sorrow felt for another who has been struck with affliction or misfortune accompanied with a desire to relieve the suffering” (H7355). Jeremiah said the LORD would not cast off forever, “but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love” (Lamentations 3:31-32). The abundance of God’s steadfast love means that his kindness toward us has no bounds, it is a countless amount or something that can be multiplied by the myriad, a historical unit of ten thousand (H7230/7231). Paul said in Romans 5:8 that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Jesus explained to the religious leader Nicodemus that God’s love was so abundant that “he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16), and then, Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Jeremiah’s account of his own suffering included the solution that all of us need when we become aware of our lost state. Jeremiah said, “I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, ‘I am lost'” (Lamentations 3:52-54). The Hebrew word that is translated lost, gazar (gaw-zarˊ) has to do with separation (H1504), and in this instance refers specifically to Jeremiah’s separation from God in the sense of him not having received salvation. Jeremiah said, “I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you, you said, ‘Do not fear!’ You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life” (Lamentations 3:55-58).