"Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions"; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen oracles that are false and misleading (a paraphrase of Lamentations 2:14).

The prophets were proclaiming peace and prosperity rather than judgment for the injustice and idolatry that plagued Judah in its last days. They had not received visions from the Lord but spoke from their own imaginations. So their prophecies were false and misleading, causing people to trust in lies and leading them to experience the just punishment for their folly.

The primary message of the Old Testament prophets was the same: a call to repent of sin. When John the Baptist and Jesus began preaching in the New Testament, their message carried forward the prophets' call to repentance (Matthew 3:1–2; 4:17). When the church was inaugurated in Acts, the apostles also began preaching repentance (cf. Acts 2:38; 3:19, 26). I believe New Testament prophecy had this primary aim: to convict people of sin and lead them to repentance. Paul writes that if an unbeliever or outsider enters while all are prophesying, "he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all" (1 Corinthians 14:24).

When Paul preached the gospel in Athens, he showed that the message to the Gentiles was the same as the message to the Jews — that they needed to repent: God overlooked the times of ignorance, "but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30; cf. 26:20).

Friends, repentance is both biblical and necessary in our gospel preaching. Its absence from many pulpits, revival meetings, and gospel tracts has made the message of grace cheap and weak. It has made conversion simply an insurance policy rather than a total transformation. Just as we cannot take faith out of the preaching of repentance, we must not take repentance out of the preaching of faith. Sadly, gospel messengers today have too often failed to strengthen their preaching of faith with a clear call to repentance.

John MacArthur, an outspoken critic of what he calls cheap grace, has expressed deep concern about the contemporary church. In summary, he has written that biblical Christianity has lost its voice; that the church too often preaches a gospel meant to soothe rather than confront sinners; that it has turned to entertainment to win the world, which may draw crowds for a time but is destined to fail; and that the church is being infiltrated by professing believers who have never repented or embraced Christ as Lord.

Just as the prophets of old were exposed as false because they departed from the consistent message of repentance, I believe today's self-proclaimed prophets may be exposed by the same failure. Rather than acting as God's messengers, they focus on pleasant predictions, leading people to prize good feelings and success rather than humility, sorrow over sin, and repentance.

Friends, can anyone be saved without contrition over their sins? Can anyone be saved without turning from their false beliefs and dead works to their only hope, which is in Christ? Can anyone be saved if there is no willingness to turn from their sins, even as they acknowledge their helplessness to attain the perfect obedience God requires? No — salvation necessitates repentance.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Lamentations 2:14 identifies a precise failure: the prophets "have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes." Exposure of sin was meant to be the first step toward restoration. By refusing to name the people's sin, the false prophets closed the door to repentance and so to healing. Lamentations is itself a model of the alternative — honest grief and confession: "The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word" (1:18). And in the center of the book stands the great turning point of hope: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end" (3:22–23).

The comment's emphasis on repentance in gospel preaching reflects a theme that runs through the New Testament. Jesus began His ministry with "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17) and ended it by commissioning His disciples to proclaim "repentance for the forgiveness of sins... to all nations" (Luke 24:47). Paul summarized his ministry as testifying "of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 20:21). Christians across traditions affirm that repentance and faith belong together; the New Testament also presents repentance itself as a gift of God (Acts 11:18; 2 Timothy 2:25) — a turning that God's kindness makes possible (Romans 2:4).

"But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope": the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never end; they are new every morning; great is His faithfulness (a paraphrase of Lamentations 3:21–23).

The line "they are new every morning" is the one that stands out to me and is most precious to me. It is a truth that spans both the Old and New Testaments and is especially meaningful for the Christian.

This reminder of hope arises from the promises of God. The word "steadfast love" (or "lovingkindnesses") translates the Hebrew hesed, which I believe always refers to God's faithfulness to keep His covenant promises. It is these covenant promises — especially those He made to Abraham (cf. Genesis 12), to David (cf. 2 Samuel 7), and through Isaiah and Jeremiah (cf. Jeremiah 31:31–34) — that "never cease." On this basis Jeremiah can write that "his mercies never come to an end." They do not fail because they rest on unconditional and eternal promises. They do not depend on the successful obedience of His people, but on the strength of God's Word and the reach of His grace.

All this is wonderful, but what truly tugs at my heart is the line "they are new every morning." It tells me I am not relying on something old, outdated, and unreliable, meant only for a past generation. It tells me that as long as there are mornings, these promises, this hope, this compassion are newly given. It tells me that my failures after receiving this grace will again be covered by a fresh outpouring of grace. So it tells me that not only my past and present sins but even my future sins are covered by this grace.

What is more, "every morning" is a metaphor for the unceasing nature of God's grace. We do not have to wait for the next morning to experience a fresh outpouring of God's grace; it is available to us every moment. Have you just messed up? God's compassion is available to you now. Have you messed up again? It is available to you again. And every time you receive this grace, you receive it as if for the first time. It is NEW every morning. God does not bring up your old sins, even if they were committed a moment ago. As the psalmist writes, "as far as the east is from the west," so far does He remove our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12).

Rather than north and south, which represent the polar limits of the earth, east and west are used to represent a limitless distance, for traveling east you never reach west on the ever-turning globe. So God removes our transgressions an infinite distance from us. Isaiah also writes, God is the one "who blots out your transgressions for my own sake," and He will not remember our sins (Isaiah 43:25).

This does not mean that God forgets our sins, for He cannot forget anything; He is omniscient. But using such language of God shows how thoroughly He disposes of our sins. He will never call them to mind again so as to hold us accountable for them.

Friends, we can claim this promise of unceasing hope and unfailing grace because of what Christ Jesus accomplished for us on the cross: God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, "so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

We have become the righteousness of God in Christ. Every moment we are in Him, we are the righteousness of God. The death Christ died happened at one moment in history, but its application to every believer continues to this day, newly applied to bring forgiveness moment by moment, until we reach full sanctification in heaven. Hallelujah!

AI-Expanded Reflection

The setting of these famous verses is what gives them their power. Lamentations is a series of five poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, and chapter 3 begins in the depths: "I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath," driven into darkness without any light (3:1–2). For twenty verses the poet describes God as an adversary — a bear lying in wait, an archer, a wall that shuts him in. Then, in verse 21, he makes a deliberate choice: "But this I call to mind." Nothing in his circumstances has changed. The city is still in ruins. What changes is what he chooses to remember.

The structure of Lamentations reinforces this. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 are acrostics with one verse per letter; chapter 3 triples it, with three verses for each letter, making the hope of verses 21–33 sit at the very center of the book. The great hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" (1923) was written from these verses, and many who sing it have found, like the poet, that the declaration of God's faithfulness is often made in the dark rather than after the light returns. The comment's joy in "new every morning" is the right response — and the book reminds us it was first sung by someone still standing in the ruins.

Last year I highlighted the mixed acrostic in Lamentations. I shared an article that showed how the very arrangement of the acrostics reflected the emotions of Jeremiah as he observed the destruction of Jerusalem.

Today, I want to draw your attention to another interesting tidbit. As you read this book, try to observe the changing of points of view, what we term "person" in grammar.

Chapter 1 - Third person plural "they" becomes first person singular "I"

Chapter 2 - All of it is in the third person plural "they"

Chapter 3 - All of it is in the first person singular "I"

Chapter 4 - Most of it is in the third person plural "they" but a bit of it is in the first person plural "we"

Chapter 5 - All of it is in the first person plural "we"

What Jeremiah seems to be doing in this interplay of "persons" is to describe the sin and suffering of the city and the people and then to personally identify himself with their sin and suffering. Therefore, he is not simply sympathizing with the people of God from afar but empathizing with their plight, making it personal by embracing it as his own. It reminds me of Paul's command to believers in Romans 12:15, "Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn." Jeremiah is doing what Christians are also called to do in the church. So for example, we are not called to necessarily run from problems in a given local church, but to identify with them, confess them and repent of them as members of the one body of Christ, for God sees us wherever we are and wherever we go.

Jesus taught, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick" (Luke 5:31). It has been my mission to encourage and challenge the congregation of believers and its leadership to become biblically healthy, especially so by every member getting into the Word for themselves.

Friends, we must be faithful where God has put us and with what God has given us. This life is short, a passing shadow, a vapor that will soon pass away. Yet, what endures and always remains fresh is God's faithfulness to keep His precious promises to us. This was Jeremiah's unwavering hope in the midst of his sometimes thankless ministry:

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:21–26 NIV)

AI-Expanded Reflection

The observation about shifting voices is a fruitful way to read Lamentations. The book does not allow Jerusalem's suffering to remain a single distant report. Narration gives way to direct address, personified Zion speaks, an individual voice describes affliction, and the community prays together. The reader is repeatedly moved from looking at suffering toward hearing those who bear it.

The chapter-by-chapter outline in the original is too simple as a grammatical description. Chapter 1 begins by describing the city in the third person and includes Zion's first-person speech. Chapter 2 contains first-person lament as well as direct address and narrative description; chapter 3 includes communal exhortation and prayer alongside the individual speaker; chapter 5 combines the community's first person with second-person address to God. These shifts can be seen directly in Lamentations 1 and the movement from chapter 2 into chapter 3. They resist an account in which each chapter uses only one person.

The literary effect is richer than a technical classification. A narrator can describe a devastated city, but Zion's own voice makes the reader confront hunger, abandonment, and shame from within. The individual sufferer in chapter 3 can then articulate a hope that belongs within the pain rather than floating above it. Traditional attribution to Jeremiah may guide a reader's devotional association, but the book itself does not identify every voice as Jeremiah's personal speech.

The acrostic structure also gives form to grief without making it orderly in experience. Repeated patterns can hold suffering in language when life feels disintegrated. The existence of form should not be mistaken for emotional resolution; the book's final prayer remains painfully open. Hope and unanswered questions occupy the same collection.

Romans 12:15 offers a fitting Christian application: mourning with others requires more than explaining their condition from a safe distance. It may involve listening without interruption, sharing material burdens, and acknowledging communal failures. Yet solidarity does not require someone to remain in an abusive congregation or conceal wrongdoing for the sake of belonging. Identification with a community's need can include seeking protection and calling its leaders to account.

Lamentations 3:21–26 places hope in the Lord's compassion and faithfulness. The turn is an act of recollection amid distress, not proof that the preceding pain was unnecessary or quickly overcome. A community can learn to hold grief and hope together, making room for honest voices while returning to the God whose mercies are needed each morning. That practice can become a deeper form of care than either detached criticism or premature reassurance.

I mentioned briefly before that Lamentations is built around acrostic patterns. Bible teacher Donald E. Curtis has written a helpful structural analysis of how Jeremiah uses these acrostics to reinforce the book's shifting emotional tone.

Curtis's key observations: Lamentations' first four chapters are each built as acrostics, with each verse (or set of verses) beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet — chapter 1 has 22 verses, one per letter, each containing three related thoughts; chapter 2 repeats that pattern but with two of the Hebrew letters reversed in sequence, creating a subtle sense of things being "off," a literary signal of reversed fortune; chapter 3, the book's emotional center, expands to 66 verses, three per letter, with the same reversed-letter irregularity; chapter 4 returns to 22 verses with two thoughts each, again with the reversal; and chapter 5, the final chapter, has 22 verses but abandons the acrostic pattern altogether. Curtis reads this structural arc as mirroring the emotional experience of grief itself: tightly patterned control in chapter 1, subtle disruption in chapters 2 through 4 as intensity builds toward the raw, unstructured 66 single-thought verses of chapter 3, then a gradual loss of energy through chapters 4 and 5, ending in the quiet collapse of structure altogether by the book's close.

AI-Expanded Reflection

What's worth adding to Curtis's structural analysis is how deliberately unusual this technique actually is for the subject matter — acrostics elsewhere in Scripture (Psalm 119, Proverbs 31) typically convey order, completeness, and control, often used for topics like wisdom or a well-ordered life. Using that same tightly controlled form to frame raw grief over a demolished city creates real tension between form and content, and the gradual breakdown of that form across the book's five chapters lets structure itself narrate the story: not just the content of the laments, but the increasing loss of composure and control as unprocessed grief overwhelms even the most disciplined literary form available to express it.