Lamentations 1
McGeeCHAPTER 1THEME: Elegy 1The first elegy in Lamentations opens on a doleful note. Jeremiah is singing in a minor key.
Lamentations 1:1
The great city of Jerusalem has fallen. What is the explanation? Jeremiah makes two tremendous statements that will help us understand.
Lamentations 1:8
“Jerusalem hath grievously sinned"this is the first explanation for the fall of the city. Her nakedness was revealedwhat a picture!
Lamentations 1:12
People don’t like to hear about the fierce anger of God today. That aspect is often left out of the gospel message, and I have observed this particularly in the religious programs that are shown on TV, even by so-called gospel churches. In one Christmas program I saw, they did say that Christ was born of a virgin and that He was God manifest in the fleshI rejoiced in that. But the program was a travesty of the gospel because it said that Christ came to give you a new personality, to bring peace and loveand oh, how insipid it was! It was a message for comfort and for compromise. The excuse that is often given for such an approach with the gospel is that it is trying to reach the man of the world.
Jeremiah, too, was trying to reach a lost world, and he wasn’t very successful; but at least he gave God’s message as God had given it to him. God judged Judah because of her sin, and He still will judge sin today.
Lamentations 1:18
Jeremiah mourned the destruction of Jerusalem alone. He stood among the ashes weeping. Why had the city been destroyed? The city had sinned. The second explanation is “The LORD is righteous.” God did it, and God was right in what He did. This is difficult to understand, and I must say I feel totally inadequate to deal with this. I merely stand at the fringe of the sorrow of this man and find I cannot enter in. I can merely look over the wall into his garden; I am not able to walk up and down in it. He has revealed two things to us, the bitter and the sweet: Jerusalem has sinned, yet God loves Jerusalem. “Jerusalem hath grievously sinned,” and “the LORD is righteous.” God loved them, He said, “with an everlasting love.” He brought this upon them because He is righteous. A statement from G. Campbell Morgan may help us to understand this. Of the revelation of God’s anger, he said: “This is a supreme necessity in the interest of the universe. Prisons are in the interest of the free. Hell is the safeguard of heaven. A state that cannot punish crime is doomed; and a God Who tolerates evil is not good. Deny me my Biblical revelation of the anger of God, and I am insecure in the universe. But reveal to me this Throne established, occupied by One Whose heart is full of tenderness, Whose bowels yearn with love; then I am assured that He will not tolerate that which blights and blasts and damns; but will destroy it, and all its instruments, in the interest of that which is high and noble and pure” (Studies in the Prophecy of Jeremiah, p. 248). You and I are living in a universe where there is a God, a living God, a God whose heart goes out in love and yearning over you. But I want to say this to you: if you turn your back on Him, He will judge you even though He still loves you. He is the righteous God of this universe. I am sure I understand all that, but I know it is what He says in His Word. Someday He will make it clear to us that hell is actually there because He is a God of love and a God of righteousness and a God of holiness. The whole universe, including Satan himself, will admit that God is righteous and just in all He does. My friend, God is so great and wonderful and good we dare not trifle with Him. Jesus could say to the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of His day, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Why did He call them hypocrites? Because “…ye devour widows’ houses …” (Mat_23:14)that was one of the reasons. My friend, if your Christianity does not affect your heart, your life in your home and in your business, and your social life, then you are a hypocrite. I didn’t say it; He said it, my beloved. And He is the One who wept over these men. My eyes are dry, but His eyes are filled with tears for you and for me today. Oh, my friend, don’t turn your back on the God who loves you like this! It will be tragic indeed if you do. God does what He does because He is a righteous God. He cannot shut his eyes to evil. When His own children disobey Him, God must discipline them, even though it breaks His heart. Jeremiah reveals to us the heart of God: when Jeremiah weeps, God is weeping; when he sorrows, God is sorrowing. When we don’t understand what is happening, the important thing is to trust in knowing that God is righteous in what He does. Although it broke His heart, He was right in letting Jerusalem be destroyed and in letting the people go into captivity. G. Smith wrote a poem about Jerusalem that gives us some insight into this man Jeremiah: I am the man sore smitten with the wrath Of Him who fashion’d me; my heart is faint, And crieth out, “Spare, spare, O God! Thy saint”; But yet with darkness doth He hedge my path. My eyes with streams of fiery tears run down To see the daughter of my people slain, And in Jerusalem the godless reign; Trouble on trouble are upon me thrown. Mine adversaries clap their sinful hands The while they hiss and wag their heads, and say, “Where is the temple but of yesterday The noblest city of a hundred lands?” We do confess our guilt; then, Lord, arise, Avenge, avenge us of our enemies! Jeremiah cries outhe wants to know why, and God assures him that He is righteous, right, in what He is doing to Jerusalem. Another anguished question that Jeremiah has is this: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” (v. Lam_1:12). In other words, How much are the people involved? Do they really care? Man does not want to accept the fact that God is angry with sin. Instead, the fact that God is love is played for all it’s worth. I agree that God is love, and the church certainly needs to learn to take the love of God into the marketplace of life. We have often failed to do that, but I feel that it has led to an overemphasis on the love of God in this generation. God is righteous, and God is holy, and God is just in what He does. The question remains: How do you feel about your sin and God’s anger toward it? Is it nothing to you? Jeremiah sat weeping over the city. There were not many others weeping with him. Oh, we are told in Psalms 137 that the captives who had been taken to Babylon sat down and wept when they remembered Zion. They cried out for vengeance, and I feel they had a perfect right to do that, but was there any genuine repentance? Or was it the repentance of a thief who is merely sorry he has been caught but does not repent of his thievery? The people who were carried into captivity wept. But Jeremiah, who did not go into captivity, wept also over the debris, the wreckage, the ashes, and ruins of the city. He was a free man, but he was moved, he was involved, and he was concerned. Again, may I refer to the religious programs we have on television in our day. They are often finished, polished, and professional in their presentation. I think it is a credit to the church to do something in a professional waythat is good and rightbut I am concerned that there was one word I did not hear: the word sin. Their message did not emphasize at all that God is righteous and He must punish our sin. The virgin birth, the deity of Christ, His death and resurrection are all important, but the question is: Why did He die? That is the question raised in Psa_22:1, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? …” Our Lord said that while He was hanging on the Cross. We find the answer to that question in the same psalm: “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel” (Psa_22:3, italics mine). He is holy. He is righteous. Christ died on that Cross because you and I are sinners, hell-doomed sinners. Look at the cross today"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” (v. Lam_1:12). He didn’t have to die. He suffered as no man has had to suffer. God forsook Him, but God will never forsake you as long as you live. He forsook Christ so that He would not have to forsake you. May I ask you, is it nothing to you? McCheyne was a wonderful man of God in the past who had a real experience with the Lord. He wrote a poem about Jehovah-Tsidkenu, which means “the Lord our Righteousness” (see Jer_23:6; Jer_33:16), and Dr. H. A. Ironside quoted it in Notes on the Prophecy and Lamentations of Jeremiah (pp. 315, 316). I oft read with pleasure, to soothe or engage, Isaiah’s wild measure, or John’s simple page: But e’en when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree, Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me. Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll, I wept when the waters went over His soul; Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree Jehovah Tsidkenu: ’twas nothing to me. When free grace awoke me by light from on high, Then legal fears shook meI trembled to die. No refuge, no safety in self could I see; Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be. My terrors all vanished before that sweet name; My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came, To drink at the fountain, life-giving and free; Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me. My friend, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” Have you come to Jesus just to get a new personality? To bring a little peace into your soul, or to create a little love on your altar? Is that the reason He died on the Cross? Will you hear me, my friend? He died on the Cross to save you from hell. The Holy Spirit has come into the world to reveal Christ as Savior, and He has come to convict the world of sin. What kind of sin? Murder? Thievery? Yes, but something is worse than that: they sinned “…because they believe not on me” (Joh_16:9, italics mine). God has a remedy for the thief. The thief on the cross was saved. I think Paul was guilty of murder, that he was responsible for the death of Stephen, but he got saved. Moses also was a murderer. God has a remedy for the murderer, the thief, and the liar, but God does not have a remedy for the man who rejects Jesus Christ. That is the greatest sin you can commit. Rejection of Christ is a state rather than an act. You can never commit the act of rejecting Christ, but you can gradually come to the place where Christ and what He has done for you is absolutely meaningless. Jerusalem reached the place where God told Jeremiah, “Don’t be disturbed that they are not listening to you. If Moses or Elijah or Samuel were here to pray for them, I would not answer their prayers either. It is too late; they have crossed over.” There are many living in our sophisticated day who have crossed over to that place. Now we cannot judge when a man has reached the point of having totally rejected Christ. I have seen the conversion of many folk whom I’m sure I would have considered to be hopeless cases. One man I know of who lived in the San Francisco Bay area was on drugs and was guilty of several crimes, but he was marvelously and wonderfully converted. So neither you nor I are the ones to say that someone has stepped over that line, but it does happen. Jerusalem had rejected God. An individual can reject God. What does Jesus Christ mean to you? What does His death mean to you? “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” (v. Lam_1:12).