LAMENTATION AND DEPTH

T. L. Waite

2 Samuel 1: 17, 18, 24 (to “over Saul”), 26 (to “Jonathan”); 2 Chronicles 35: 24, 25; Lamentations 3: 21–24; Acts 8: 2

What I am thinking of, beloved brethren, in these scriptures will be pretty clear; it is the matter of lamentation. I find that what has marked me much is what is superficial and insensitive in the things of God, whether in my home life or amongst the brethren; areas that should draw out depth. All this bears on our conduct in relation to the house of God. In saying that I have been superficial it may not be going too far to suggest that others maybe feel the same. It is still worse if I have been superficial and do not realize it. I think superficiality is one of our greatest enemies. In Ephesians Paul speaks of breadth and length and then depth and height. I may know a few things, I may know the Scriptures and the teaching, I may have been in the area of it for a long time: I may know the breadth and length and may know something about the height, but I may be very defective in depth. But I cannot really touch the height genuinely unless there is an underlying quality in depth.

Each of these scriptures bears on lamentation. Someone might say, Are we going to have a gloomy word? We are not; a Christian’s life is not gloomy, nothing of the kind, but lamentation is something that should enter into all our lives if we are to reach anything other than what is superficial.

Perhaps I may just refer to our coastline here and all the wrecks that have littered it; the New Zealand coast is known for that; shipwrecks are everywhere. The spiritual coast is covered with shipwrecks; persons have made shipwreck and some do not even know they are stranded; they are proud so that they cannot be helped. How did they get there? Well, we have to look at each wreck, and it is right to review a disaster, and we have had to do this.

One thing that bears upon lamentation is that grief can be of two kinds; there is the grief that just works death, the sorrow of the world; it just brings persons into bitterness, complaint, and hopelessness. But grief according to God works repentance. Lamentation seems to bear not only on grief but the matter of being rightly able to assess matters in a feeling, sensitive, and powerful way. Lamentations in the Scripture, written by men of God, bore upon the quality of what was coming out of the sorrow that was of God.

We know something of the history of Saul, his departure from the word of God, his opposition to the man God had raised up, and his murderous spirit, and then his final overthrow. Then we have the man of God’s choice, David. Even with him there was failure, but there was a spirit in him that comes out in this lamentation that was worthy of God. So it is recorded, and it was to be rehearsed in Israel. What comes out in it, in spite of Saul’s ruin, is a valuation of what was of God. So David says to the daughters of Israel, “Weep over Saul”. I wonder how much we have wept over things, over the disasters that have been in our midst, and which we have come through—if we have. I believe that what underlay the prosperity that came out in David’s reign was the quality of manhood, for I believe that as a man he was greater than Solomon. Solomon had a certain outward glory, and David said to Solomon, “Be a man”. David was

a man, a man of God, and in spite of all that happened in his history he knew how to assess things before God. He was a man who was constantly repenting, getting himself right, and he comes out clearly as a man after God’s own heart.

He says, “Weep over Saul”. You may say, Well, Saul deserved what came, but David did not say that, he says, Weep over him. I wonder, beloved, how much we have wept. You might say you look to see the overthrow of certain things, you might look for the overthrow of persons. If that happened would we weep about it or would we rejoice in it? Would we rejoice if somebody that had been at enmity with us was overturned? The spirit of this lamentation is not like that—this is another kind of man; it is not man according to the flesh at all. David sets out a beautiful line in lamentation. Then you see the discrimination with him too, as he speaks of Jonathan he says, “I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan”. What do we say, beloved brethren, in the presence of things like this? We might say that it serves a person right, and forget about it. But we cannot forget about things that are happening and have happened; we have to be with God and there are to be tears in relation to these things.

This is the only way in which we can rightly approach them, and the only way we shall get through to depth in our souls.

The next verse we read relates to Josiah. This is not a great shameful public exposure as with Saul. Josiah started off rightly with God at eight years old, and then we are told what happened in his twenty-sixth year and so on; we get different dates, and then he died at the age of thirty-nine, only a young man really, but his history was remarkable. God brought about a revival of the Passover in his reign, this is a basic matter and since the time of Samuel there had

been nothing like it, though Israel was about to go into captivity, and we get the lamentation that he had died. There had been a certain departure; he had made an error, good man as he had been. Right through that short reign everything had been beautifully done, and he executed God’s will wonderfully, then he began to interfere with a matter that was not his, and the word of God comes in. Now, I say this, it may even be the lot of someone here. I may be involved in something that is not right, and God may be speaking through a most unusual quarter. Do not worry wherever the word may come from, if it is the word of God it will reach its mark. I do not think Josiah had any doubt about it, but he went right against the word of God at this point. Now I would say as to this that should any of us go against the word of God, knowing that it has been the word of God, it is suicidal. That is just what happened—Josiah was slain by Necho the king of Egypt. You might say, Well, how could he have the word of God? But God brought it about that way; it is with God as to how it comes in, and if I get into a wrong condition, or if I act as Josiah did at this point and go against the word of God, it will overthrow me. I say that by way of tender warning, that we have to observe the word, wherever it comes from, and whoever it comes through; if it is God’s word I must recognise and heed it.

So you get this lamentation. I am quite sure that the lamentation would be largely about what had been in Josiah’s life. I do not think there would have been much in it about the departure at the close, serious though it was. There had been a lifetime that was so pleasurable to God and the recovery brought about was so excellent that the lamentation would dwell on that. It says, “Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah”.

Jeremiah’s lamentations are magnificent, and you can count on it that what Jeremiah lamented for Josiah would be according to the mind of God. So we in sorrows and disasters that come in can get through to God’s mind and what He is saying in it, and what He has valued. It may be in a person; whatever may have come in, and whatever may have deflected them, can we value what has been of God? So this lamentation is to be carried forward; the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah and it says they lamented “to this day”; so there was something very beautiful that was carried through, even though Israel went into captivity, and God always carries through what has been of quality. There was a quality and a depth in this lamentation, and it was worthy of God.

Now when we come to the lamentations of Jeremiah I think there is something that runs parallel with the exercises of Romans 7 that we really need to go through if we are to arrive at divine thoughts, to get through to settled peace and a substantial base in our souls. You can see things that come in at times and you look at them, and some of them you could just say are high things, high thoughts, ever so firmly pursued perhaps, but are they in the grace of Christ? Are they according to the spirit that He is working out through discipline? “The spirits of just men made perfect”; is that what is marking my spirit? Am I getting through to a quality and an underlying depth that is worthy of God? or do I maintain a certain superficiality? I am not laying this upon anybody; you and I know whether it applies to us.

Well, this book refers to depth; it finishes on an almost hopeless note, but as you read through it you can see the point of it, the quality that is coming out that could not have been produced any other way. The man here was going through depth, it speaks of the wormwood, the gall, and so on (Lamentations 3: 19), and then he says, “It is of Jehovah’s

loving-kindness”. I would like to say this, beloved; I do not know very much, but 1 can see that this could be one of the issues in many places; it is a question of whether we are really getting through. I referred to shipwrecks; if I come up through a shipwreck and get ashore, if I really come ashore I should come ashore with a thanksgiving, with a sense of mercy that God has preserved me when maybe others have been lost. And now how can I turn round and accuse another shipwrecked person just coming ashore? Now am I getting through to things like this, am I getting through in the mercy of God? Am I tracing that if I am here today it rests not upon anything that I have done, any attainment or performance on my part at all, but purely upon the mercy and the loving-kindness of God, as it says here, “It is of Jehovah’s loving-kindness”? You see, there is no other ground we can stand on; if anyone is standing on any other ground it is going to come down. We see wrecks all round the place, persons who have not maintained faith and a good conscience; that is one of the reasons why persons make shipwreck. Why have I not been consumed, or you? We are here today, thank God, on account of Jehovah’s loving-kindness, that is the only ground I can stand on, “the sure mercies of David”.

“It is of Jehovah’s loving-kindness that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not; they are new every morning”. They have maintained us in our souls and only in this way can we get through. They are fresh and new, they come into our souls every day and we are to be bathed in them. This whole chapter is very beautiful—indeed the whole book—and we want to spend our time here so that we can get through to depth and be delivered from superficiality.

Now in the last scripture we have the death of Stephen, a remarkable matter. He was a young man, and was not an apostle. He qualified in deacon service, that is, he was prepared to do the most menial and lowly thing. There was a murmuring amongst the widows and he and six others were put over the serving of tables, a menial and very difficult matter with persons murmuring about the way they had been treated. They said they had been overlooked—persons maintaining their own line, and how they had been treated; everything for them centred round themselves. Stephen and the other six are set over the matter and the word of God goes on; there is not a word more said about the murmuring. He was able, and the others with him, to meet it—these seven men, well reported of, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom. Stephen proceeds in power as the others also do apparently—we get Philip, at least, named again and the seven are mentioned later in Acts 21: 8. Stephen purchases to himself a good degree; he was a deacon who qualified and did the work of the Lord well, and in his final service he is before these persons whom he convicts, and he loses his life. You might say that comparatively young life was attuned in every way to God; displaying what God looks for in a man; morally he was like Jesus, and portrays the kind of life, the kind of manhood, that the Lord desires to reach in us all. He sets out something in his path that we too in our measure are to reach so as to be a model of the believers. Stephen was a model. You say, ‘Well, think of that life being lost. Why did God allow it?’ So readily we say, Why has God allowed this circumstance? God knows what He is doing, and I do not doubt that this has been repeated many times, first in the early martyrs of the dispensation.

But out of this there is a lamentation. I would like to have heard it and we can be assured

it was a marvellous matter. It says, “great lamentation” was made. It is another lamentation which comes out of a most sorrowful matter, and an apparently hopeless situation, and yet it meant a turning point in the testimony, and I think it was probably the point where God began to turn to the Gentiles, and this meant our blessing. You just get a glimpse of the marvellous ways of God; we cannot question His ways, and who would want to? Let us not question His ways but let us justify Him in all that He does. I think that line of things is set out here. God allowing Stephen to be slain, allowing Saul to see it, allowing for a moment the ravaging to go on; then the man who was ravaging the assembly is brought down and becomes one of the greatest vessels of testimony for God. So we get a glimpse of the glory of what God is doing, and He is doing it in a day of departure and a day of ruin, a day of apostasy. I believe that this matter of lamentation would bring about depth in our souls, would help us to justify God in all that He does in His ways. His ways that are past finding out, and it would deliver us from superficiality. I believe it is one of the things that the Lord would draw attention to so that depth is developed with us, giving an underlying basis so that we can proceed in power in His testimony.

Now that goes along with joy; it says, “They that sow in tears shall reap with rejoicing”, Psalm 126: 5. It is one of His promises and Paul writes to Timothy—and we are in 2 Timothy days now—“remembering thy tears” (2 Timothy 1: 4); they were tears in relation to God’s testimony, tears in relation to what had come into the Christian profession, and in relation to what God was looking for. Timothy reached through to something very fine, and we can reach it too, and I believe it must be along the line of lamentation. There is joy beyond the lamentation but we cannot reach it

except by this way. I believe we must go through things feelingly, and unless we reach them through depth we do not reach them at all. We have seen persons in the testimony, and some of our older brethren have seen more than I, who looked like great stately ships, they were prominent amongst the brethren, and yet we have seen them make shipwreck. Well, what will save us is that we are drawing daily from God, allowing His loving kindness to come into our souls. It says His foundation is in the mountains of holiness (Psalm 87: 1), and we want to see, beloved brethren, that our foundations are right. I suggest to the beloved brethren and commend it to them that we will reach that along the line of sorrow according to God, going through things with Him, in His presence, and not allowing superficiality to overthrow us and bring in ruin.

I tremble lest this kind of thing should still be amongst us. You see, I may thoroughly condemn a thing on the one hand and yet be building it up on the other. May God preserve us all, and may we go through together on the line of what is according to Himself in the spirit of lowliness and meekness, and may the brotherly covenant, the brotherly spirit, be maintained among us. God can only support us as we are going through things feelingly with Him. You think of things that have happened in this country. Have we been through them with God, and traced through what is to be learnt in them, and have we felt things according to Him? I just commend this as feeling myself very shallow in it, but may He help us as we approach matters feelingly and dependently in His presence, taking everything there and looking at everything there. Thus we shall acquire depth and there will be something fragrant come out in our lives. May it be so, and may we all be encouraged and helped to reach through to this for His name’s sake.

Substance of address in Auckland, N.Z.
21 May 1983