GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 4:1-2
Click to listen to this devotion.
In the fourth chapter, the poetic verses get shorter once again. Each single verse is headed up by successive letters of the alphabet. Also, our prophet once again begins the chapter with the word “How!” as he did in chapters 1 and 2, and even inserts a final “How!” at the beginning of the second half of verse 2. This chapter is about how much the people, the nation of Israel has been reduced by the exile. They once thought of themselves as precious like gold and jewels, but now they are dingy, tarnished at best, and more like gravel than gemstones. The chapter ends with the prophet foreseeing the coming punishment on Edom.
4:1 How dull is the gold!
The fine gold has changed.
The sacred gems are scattered
outside in every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion,
once were worth their weight in gold.
Now, how they are considered like jars of clay,
the work of a potter’s hands!
The people of Judah in the captivity had thought of themselves as being like gold. The nations? They were nothing– lead, or iron, or some other worthless metal. But Judah was like gold, the best gold. But now? The gold was all tarnished, as if it had rusted or had gone black with age, the way silver can tarnish over time. Or if they were gemstones like emeralds, rubies, and diamonds? Now they were just so many pebbles scattered out in the street at every doorway. Not precious at all. Not noticed. Not valued.
As for their glorious sons? They were like the most ordinary everyday pottery. Old wine jars, the kind that were broken up to be used to write out grocery lists and receipts. This was the gloom and the dismal outlook of the Jews suffering under the first cross, the cross of the exile in Babylon.
Under the second cross, the cross of Jesus, the words take on an even more tragic meaning. Who was this man who was more priceless than any man ever to live, but was treated like tarnished, rusty junk? If ever there was a truly sacred gemstone it was Christ, and there he was out in the streets of the city, suffering under the burden of a cross, suffering under the burden of the taunts and jeers of the people, suffering under the pain of the beatings he had already taken, the flogging, the blows to the face and head, the crown of thorns that made the blood flow from his scalp all over his face and down his stripped, shamed, and disgraced body, and leaving a trail of blood on the ground wherever he stepped. “The day for you to be slaughtered has come,” Jeremiah wrote. “You will be shattered, and you will fall like fine pottery” (Jeremiah 25:34). And David prophesied: “My strength is dried up like broken pottery, and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). This is what Christ the Lord suffered on account of our sins. “He gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Galatians 1:4).
This chapter of Lamentations illustrates the third cross, the daily suffering of the Christian, in striking new ways. We might think of ourselves on a great day as being glorious in God’s sight, like the best gold, like sparkling jewels, or a beautiful pillar of the church. But then we read in the Bible what we truly are in God’s sight. “I am the utter contempt of my neighbors; I am a dread to my friends– those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery” (Psalm 31:11-12). We are the ones who are tarnished and rusty, not Jesus! We are the ones who are gravel and dirt, not Jesus! We are the ones who are broken and dried up old clay, not Jesus!
The third cross, the cross of the Christian, means doing what Jesus told us to do long before he himself lifted up his own cross. He said to a big crowd of people, “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). Part of carrying our cross is denying ourselves. Denying our overblown opinions of ourselves. Who am I, really, before God my Creator and Judge? I am a poor, sinful being. There is no worth in me; gravel, broken pottery, flecks of rust– these things are treasures compared with me, because I am sinful through and through. If sin were truly a visible stain of some strange color– let’s say, green– and you sliced me open, I would be nothing but green all inside and out. Green with sin! And I only say “green” because most any other color would be bound to offend someone in the world. But the one we need to truly worry about offending is God, not the touchy or the snowflakes or the other easily-offended people of the world. No, only God’s eyes matter in this, and our sins offend him. So we must let go of our ideas about ourselves, and run straight to the cross of Christ. There we come to the only color that really matters at all; the red of his blood on the cross. Our crosses hurt us, disturb us, and break down our high and lofty self-worth. We are not worthy of anything but death, judgment, and hell. But he has given us value, and love, and hope, all in his blood shed for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Listen or watch Bible classes online. https://splnewulm.org/invisible-church/
Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2025
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Lamentations 4:1-2 Tarnish and rust