Day 19: A Disrespect for God

Lamentations 4:7-10 :

Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries
all her pleasant things that were from the days of old;
when her people fell into the hand of the adversary,
and no one helped her.
The adversaries saw her.
They mocked at her desolations.

Jerusalem has grievously sinned.
Therefore she has become unclean.
All who honored her despise her,
because they have seen her nakedness.
Yes, she sighs and turns backward.

Her filthiness was in her skirts.
She didn’t remember her latter end.
Therefore she has come down astoundingly.
She has no comforter.
“See, Yahweh, my affliction;
for the enemy has magnified himself.”

The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things;
for she has seen that the nations have entered into her sanctuary,
concerning whom you commanded that they should not enter into your assembly.

Here in Lamentations, there are three main ideas that keep repeating over and over again and are expressed using various comparisons. The three ideas are that Israel’s enemies and supposed friends didn’t help her when she was attacked but instead mocked her, that Israel’s sin was the cause of all her problems, and her enemies defiled the temple.

In this passage, Israel’s sin is, once again, compared to sexual promiscuity. In a sense, there is a confession here that the reason those who used to honor Israel turned away, was because they saw her sin. That’s actually a good reason to turn away from someone. Sin is pretty gross. The problem was that many of these other countries were being gross too. Their sin wasn’t yet exposed like Israel’s was.

One of the biggest sins was that these nations defiled the temple. It’s one thing to show disrespect for Israel because they sinned. It was another thing to show disrespect for the God of Israel. The God of Israel is perfect. In that sense, He really is holy. Remember that the word holy means separate. God is separate from Israel and her sin, and He is separate from the Gentiles who were unrepentant and unwilling to follow God’s law. This disrespect for God is really the main issue. If Israel, with all of her advantages, were unable to follow God’s law, the Gentiles actually had no hope at all. Their arrogance against Israel only confirmed that they were God haters.

Lamentations really exposes the human condition doesn’t it? God is holy, but mankind is prone to evil just like a person who is prone to sexual promiscuity. We may try to avoid our own guilt by pointing out the guilt of others, but the fact still remains that we don’t measure up to what our Creator expects.

Day 16: Complicating Things

Lamentations 3:52-57 :

They have chased me relentlessly like a bird,
those who are my enemies without cause.
They have cut off my life in the dungeon,
and have cast a stone on me.
Waters flowed over my head.
I said, “I am cut off.”

I called on your name, Yahweh,
out of the lowest dungeon.
You heard my voice:
“Don’t hide your ear from my sighing,
and my cry.”

You came near in the day that I called on you.
You said, “Don’t be afraid.”

As I read this passage again, I realized that enemies of Israel walk a very thin line. There’s only one good reason to be Israel’s enemy, and that’s if the God of Israel tells you that you must. Any other reason is not a good one. This passage tells us that Israel had “enemies without cause.” That tells me that they were attacking Israel for their own reasons without regard to God’s will. I’ve talked about this quite a bit as we have read the prophesies against Israel’s enemies, but it is very revealing that God tells us that they were taking advantage of God’s will to do their own, rather than simply being obedient to God in the matter. That’s something that we should also avoid. Our flesh can deceive us and make us think because something is good to do, that we are doing it for the right reasons. Even when we do something good, we must continue to rely on God’s power to do those things, otherwise we may fail to actually be doing those things with the right attitude.

The most wonderful thing about this passage is the fact that God was listening to the cry of His people. It clearly says here that “You came near in the day that I called on you.” Obviously, God wasn’t ignoring His people as was written just a few lines earlier. It just felt that way.

One of the most common messages that God brings to man is repeated here. It is: “Don’t be afraid.” Rarely a day goes by that I’m not afraid of something. The fact that God says this to us so often, tells me that fear is a serious problem for all of us. That’s one of the interesting things about sheep. They are pretty easily spooked. We are like sheep to God and He kindly reminds us to not be afraid, even after we have done wrong. In a sense, Lamentations has been an expression of fear that culminates in this wonderful three words. When we worry, we can really make life complicated but God shows us that the way forward is to simply keep trusting in Him.