Look, O Lord, for I am in distress; my stomach churns; my heart is wrung within me, because I have been very rebellious.
– Lamentations 1:20
Thus begins this book, Lamentations, which laments the pain and the suffering that sin brings. So this book is different than Job, for example, where we see Job’s suffering in a fallen, sinful world, but not directly because of any particular sin in him. Actually, Job is suffering in spite of his righteousness. But here in Lamentations, we see suffering for sin. This is the aftermath of God’s people being driven into exile, destroyed by the Babylonians who’ve taken over Jerusalem and invaded the temple.
Lamentations 1:20 is a picture of the result of sin in our lives.
And this verse, verse 20, is a lament over the effects of sin. “Look, O Lord, for I am in distress; my stomach churns. I am emotionally, spiritually, physically, in distress. My heart is wrung within me. Why? Because I have been very rebellious.” This verse is a picture of the effects, the consequences, the result of sin in our lives.
Just think of moments when you know you have sinned and you feel so horrible for it, and you feel the effects of it in your own life, in others’ lives. How sin has hurt you, how sin has hurt others. This is such a necessary part of repentance, to experience sorrow for sin before God. And it’s so important to express that, to realize how dangerous sin is, so that you grow to hate it all the more and so that you press into God’s grace and mercy all the more.
It is actually a very dangerous thing when we sin and we feel no remorse, no sorrow over it when we don’t lament our sin and its consequences. So let’s pray for this in each of our lives and in the lives of people around us, so that we and they might turn from sin, might hate sin, and might run to the mercy that’s available to us in Jesus. Oh God, we pray that you would help us to see sin in our lives as you see it. God, help us to hate it. Help us to turn from our rebellion, from choosing our ways over your ways. God forgive us for all the ways we have done that, for all the ways we have offended you, rebelled against you, defied you in ways that have led to such harmful consequences in our lives and in others’ lives.
Lamentations 1:20 points to God as our only hope of attaining righteousness.
God, we praise you for your mercy. We praise you for hearing our laments over sin, for looking to us when we are in distress, to use this language from Lamentations 1:20. Jesus, we praise you for paying the price for our sin on the cross, for your conquering sin and death and your resurrection from the grave. You are our hope. We want righteousness that you’ve made possible for us. We need your forgiveness, oh God. And we need you to make us holy as you are Holy.
So please help us today, all day long. And we are tempted to hate sin, to turn from it. God, when we fall prey to sin and we give into temptation and our thoughts, our desires, our words, our actions, our motives, God, we pray that you would help us to be sensitive to that sin. Confess it quickly with sorrow over it and turn from it by the mercy you’ve made possible.
God, help us to not treat sin lightly, but to treat sin seriously and to run from it, to run from rebellion against you, and to live today in righteousness by the power of Jesus in us. And God, we pray for people around us who don’t know the forgiveness that you’ve made possible. Jesus, God, help us to share the good news of Jesus with people around us today that they might experience forgiveness from their sins.
Prayer for the Idaksahak People
And God, we pray for people like the Idaksahak people of Mali, 175,000 of them, maybe none of them having heard and believed in the gospel of Jesus, the one who can save them from their sins.
God, we pray for the Idaksahak people of Mali. Please cause the good news of your love to spread to them. Help us as your church to spread it to them. We pray, so that they might experience your mercy, your grace, and your forgiveness to cover over their sins and restore them to relationship with you. God, we pray all of this according to your word in Lamentations 1:20. In Jesus’ name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
