God Centered Podcast - Episode 17 - Jerusalem Sinned Greatly - Lamentations 1:7-9

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Hello there and welcome back to God -centered Bible study. This is not a replacement for preaching, but I don't get to preach as often these days, so I certainly seek opportunity when it comes my way through the local church that we attend,

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Calvary Baptist. In fact, the pastor there has a wonderful name. His name's Andy, too.

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Not Andy, like number two, like he's second, but Andy, T -O -O -T's Andy, too.

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And so there's always, when I do get to preach there, I always get up and say, you know, the best thing about this is it could be a complete train wreck.

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We could all blame Andy and nobody will think about me. So anyway, yes, we serve there as much as we can in whatever capacity

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Andy needs help and the elders and leadership need my help there. It's a good place for my family to be and to be serving and to have that local church that you serve, but also enjoy teaching.

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So in the times that I have, we'll do some Bible study here, slash preaching, whatever it ends up being.

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But Lamentations, we've been going through Lamentations. We've gone through the first six verses here.

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Now we pick it up in verse seven. It says, in the days of her affliction and homelessness,

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Jerusalem remembers all her precious things. So in the days of her affliction, in the days that Babylon has come and they have destroyed the city and killed many of the people, killed the prophets and the so -called leaders, taken who was left off to Babylon.

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And so now in this affliction and now, you know, they literally have some place they're living in Babylon, but they are homelessness because it's not their land.

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You know how if you're staying somewhere else, you might can be somewhat comfortable.

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You might even can acclimate to a certain degree, but it's not really home. Same thing for them.

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They're in a foreign land, around foreign people, around foreign pagan practices.

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And so in a great way, they feel very homeless. Like they're not where they should be.

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And they remember Jerusalem because this is Jerusalem that was taken off. The Northern Kingdom, Israel had already been, you know, dealt with,

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I think it was back to 700s. And so they had their issue. Now Jerusalem's been dealt with. And now they're remembering her precious things.

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You remember the great reversal of fortune we talked about, who they were, the status they had.

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And now all of that is gone. They remember these precious things that were from days of old.

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They remember not just what they experienced, but what generations before them had passed down and told them about.

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And they're remembering all these things, remembering what it was like, remembering what it should be like.

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And so there were all these things from days of old, and now they're thinking on these things. If you think about it, when you sin and consequences come, part of the thing that drives us to repentance is remembering what was, remembering how we had it.

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Not remembering and wanting to go back to the environment of the sin, but just you think about like a child, if they get in trouble and their toy gets taken away and they're sitting there, all they can, they might have a hundred other toys, but all they can think about is that one toy that got taken away.

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And so hopefully it drives them to repentance and an understanding of not sinning in the way that they did so that that consequence won't come again.

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Sort of similar here. They're understanding and looking and thinking, look at what we've lost.

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Look at what's been taken away. Look at where we are now versus what we were.

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And they're thinking on these things. They've had this great reversal of fortune, as we looked at last time in verses four through six.

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Sin affects you far more than you realize. And so now here in verse seven, it goes on and says, when her people, and if you remember, we looked at this in the first six verses, and we pointed out that the author here uses the female pronouns, she and her, very often to metaphorically describe

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Jerusalem and its people. So when it says her people, it's talking about the people of Jerusalem here.

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Her people fell into the hand of the adversary. And in this case, that adversary is

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Babylon. God and his sovereignty raised up Babylon to come and take over and destroy

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Jerusalem, destroy the temple, destroy the people's way of life and cart them off into slavery.

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And you think about how this is compared to the book of Joshua, all the conquests of the book of Joshua.

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And you get down to, I think it's chapter 21 in Joshua, when it talks about how God fulfills all his promises to Israel.

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And he put her in the land that he promised to give her and they dwelt securely. They dwelt peacefully.

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They didn't have to worry about anyone coming in and taking them over. Why? Because they were living righteously.

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They were living obediently to their God. And as a result, he gave them everything he promised to give them.

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And you compare that to now, they had been sinning for years and generations and been warned and told, you know, if you don't stop sinning, judgment's going to come.

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Babylon's going to come and you're going to be judged. And now here it is, instead of defeating their adversaries, they have been defeated by their adversary.

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They have fell, fallen, been defeated by their adversary.

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And notice it says, and no one helped her. No one helped her think about this.

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Imagine, you know, you're either going into a war or you've got a war in your hands and you, you think about, you know, in America, we have certain allies we rely on and so on and so forth.

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But imagine being in a situation where an adversary is attacking you or your family or your city.

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And it's not just that you can't overcome them on your own, but no one around you will help you.

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None of your friends help you. And, you know, their adversary saw her.

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Now these adversaries here are other adversaries, not Babylon. The main adversary, when it says her people fell into the hand of the adversary, it's looking at Babylon.

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Down here in this phrase, when it said the adversary saw her, this is talking about other peoples, other countries, other nations that would love to take

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Jerusalem out, would love to do the same thing that Babylon did. But they're looking on and it says, and they're laughed.

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They laughed at her ruin. They're laughing at Jerusalem. And this word ruin here means a cessation, a ceasing of activity, a ceasing to be what you were.

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So all these pagan nations that hated Jerusalem, hated the one true God, would love to see them defeated.

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They're standing back and mocking God. Dig the fall of Jerusalem.

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Oh, look at them. They got defeated. Oh, it's almost as if I feel, wait, no,

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I don't feel bad for it. So the sarcasm, the laughing at their ruin and their ceasing to be, everything that verses one through six outlined that they were.

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If you remember, verse one, once great among the nations, a princess among the provinces, the one that was great, the one that was, you know, had the gates of Zion where all the activity was and all these things that happened.

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And now you have a situation where the main adversary Babylon has taken them over and all the other adversaries that are out there that wouldn't come in and do what

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Babylon did are taking or having fun and poking at and laughing at Jerusalem for their ruin and for what has happened to them.

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And if that's ever happened to you in your life, you know, that is a sad place to be.

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If you have not only the sadness and the devastation of loss, but then to have other people that lie in wait and watch you and just to borrow a term from Christianity to pray for your downfall, to pray that you would come to ruin and then to see it happen.

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Why do you think it is every time a well -known pastor or well -known Christian leader falls into sin?

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The world just loves it. I mean, they will break their necks.

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They will trip each other. They will push you out of the way. They'll do anything they can to get to the camera first to say,

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I told you. Ha ha ha. I knew those Christians were hypocrites. I knew they'd all fall.

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They like to stand and say, oh, look at me. I'm Christian. You shouldn't do this. Blah, blah, blah. And now look at you.

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Look at you. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. That's, they'll trip over themselves to get to the camera first to say it.

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And this is what's going on here. Their adversaries are laughing at them. They're mocking them. They're loving this.

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Notice verse eight, Jerusalem sinned greatly. Now notice here after it's brought out that their adversaries are laughing at them and mocking them for what has happened.

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The onus or the reason for why this has occurred is not anything that excuses

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Jerusalem. Scripture puts the accountability, the reason for this happening right back squarely on the shoulders of Jerusalem.

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It is Jerusalem that has sinned greatly. Yes, it is true. These adversaries are sitting by mocking

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Jerusalem. Yes, it is true that Babylon has sinned by doing what they've done in taking them into captivity.

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And we know that God had said he would deal with them and he did. However, we need to remember that the ultimate reason for Jerusalem's downfall, the ultimate reason that they have been taken into captivity, the number one reason they are now dealing with what they're dealing with and being laughed at and everything is because of their sin.

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No one else's says, therefore, she has become an impure thing.

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All who honored her now despise her because they have seen her nakedness.

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Even she herself sighs and turns away. So if you think about all the law that talked about needing to have the clean animals for sacrifice, being clean versus unclean, how we are called to be pure and righteous and holy, and now it was a very bad thing to be considered impure or unholy.

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And now it's saying that all of Jerusalem has become an impure thing.

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They become unholy. And all who would have honored her before, it's not just that they've stopped honoring them.

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You know, you'll see this sometimes where people say they'll distance themselves from something. If someone, especially see this in politics, someone sins or something and they might've honored them before or endorsed them.

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And now all of a sudden they're like, well, I haven't really, uh, you know, endorsed them. I just said what

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I had to say, but now I don't have any ties with them. That isn't what we're talking about here.

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It isn't just that it's, they've gone from one way to the other. We honored you.

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Now we despise you. We despise that we even knew you. We despise that we ever supported you.

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We despise you. Think about this in real time. Think about if you experienced this, if you went through a situation where you may have had a place of honor, a place of prestige, and maybe a certain amount of people loved you and cared for you and honored you.

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And you did something to cause them to look at you with derision and think, man, I just despise what they've become.

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I can't be around them. I can't support them. I have to have this boundary now.

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It's like that only more here because you're dealing with pagan people looking at them and hating their

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God, hating them and loving what's happened to them. They've seen their nakedness.

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And this is, this is spiritual here. They've seen who Jerusalem truly was.

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There was times when Jerusalem was very righteous, very holy, very obedient. This people here had been sinful.

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They had been sinful and turned on God and hadn't listened, hadn't obeyed them. And so it's like that their clothes they would put on that would hide their sin.

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They would put on a good face. They'd put on the clothes and the mask and whatever would hide their sin.

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And, you know, Christians do that today. They, they put on good clothes. They put on a tie to go to church. They put on the good face.

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They talk the right game. They say the right things, do the right things when the cameras are on, so to speak.

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But those cameras go off and the nakedness of their true spirituality comes out and their sin.

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That's what's being said here. These adversaries, even though they're, they have their own sin, they've now seen the true nakedness of Jerusalem.

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They've seen who they really are. The mask has come off. They've seen how they've been judged where it says even she herself sighs and turns away.

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Think about the sadness of this situation. It's so bad.

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The sin is so bad that Jerusalem, these people have committed. They've lost their position.

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They've lost their status, lost who they are, lost their prestige and how people looked at them.

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The safety piece that came from being obedient to God. They've been taken into captivity. They've been destroyed.

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Their whole way of life is gone. Not only that, but adversaries are mocking them, laughing at their ruin and Jerusalem's going, yeah,

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I get it. Here we are.

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It's so bad that they don't even disagree with what's being said about them.

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They know it. We've sinned. We have sinned against God and we are rightfully getting what we deserve.

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Now, what is being said here and what will be said beyond this moving through the book, you're going to, you're going to see, if you remember the theme to the overall overarching theme to this book, the turn from sin, its consequences, and how it turns into repentance and then hope and peace and everything can be restored.

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No matter how great your sin is, God's grace is bigger. God's grace is more abundant.

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There is no amount of sin that God's grace can't deal with. Finally, in verse nine, her uncleanness was in her skirts.

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She did not remember her future. It's a key phrase there. We're to come back to that.

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Therefore, she has gone down astonishingly. This wasn't just a gradual decline over time where, you know, we can look at America and say, man, it's heading downward.

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You can see it happening. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. There's no cliff to fall off of.

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It's just a gradual decline. This was an astonishing downfall.

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This was a massive downfall. This was them walking blindly in their sin, not knowing the cliff was coming.

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And before they even know what's happened to them, they're halfway down the hole, halfway down into the canyon.

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She has no comforter. See, O Yahweh, my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.

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Now notice here, in this distress, they have no comforter in this moment because judgment's being poured out.

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But even in this moment, they know who the true comforter is. They know who can bring help, who to turn to.

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So they say, see, O Yahweh, see my affliction, how the enemy's magnified himself over me.

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And I want to go back to this phrase. She did not remember her future. This should be something you can know what it feels like when you are under stress, duress, suffering, affliction, whether self -inflicted through sin or just the natural suffering and affliction that happens in life.

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It can cause you to forget your future. It can cause you to forget who you are, whose you are, who you belong to.

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It can cause you to forget what God has done for you in the past, what he's still doing for you in the present, and what you know he'll do in the future.

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It is a, not so much an isolating thing, but it's a, it's a scary, fearful thing.

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It's sort of like if you were left out somewhere desolate in a place where it's dark, it's cold, there's no food, and there's not a single another, a single other human being for 500 miles in either direction.

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You've got nothing. It's just you and what's around you and it's nothing. Think about the fear you'd be going through because all you'd be thinking about is what am

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I going to do? How am I going to solve this? You don't have time to think about God's promises or what he's promised you or the promised future you have because all you can look at is what's in front of you.

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There's a lot to be taken away from this that, that applies to us in a sense.

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And now we weren't Jerusalem. We didn't get carted off into Babylon. We didn't have the same sins as they did, but we have sin that can make us feel cut off from God at times.

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But remember, that's just your emotion. That's how you feel. And some of it is a consequence of sin and our fallen nature to make us have doubts.

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But part of it is a way of God using that emotion to turn us to repentance, to turn us to him.

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So you should see and say, oh, Yahweh, look at my affliction. Look at where I'm at.

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But you've got to let this turn to repentance. And that's where it goes eventually. She's forgotten or she did not remember her future.

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This applies also to before Babylon came. When they're sinning and being told, you know, you need to stop sinning or judgment's going to come.

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They weren't thinking about God. They weren't thinking about their future. They weren't thinking about who they are, what they should be doing.

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They were thinking about their sin, how much they were enjoying it. And so when you don't remember your future, you don't think about what

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God said about a future judgment, because there was a literal in -time judgment here for this sin.

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But there's also the final judgment that's future when all sin will be dealt with.

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And that's primarily why you see the other worldviews acting the way that they do in our world. They have no fear of a future judgment.

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They don't know or remember or think about their future. They only think about the present and what they want right now.

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And they have no concern for what may come. And this is what they did here in Jerusalem. And they're facing consequences as a result.

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So we have seen so far in his first nine verses, how the great prominent people have been brought down.

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As it says here, they've gone down astonishingly because of their sin, not because Babylon did anything to make them sin.

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Although Babylon was brought in as a judgment on their sin, Jerusalem sinned greatly.

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And as a result, she became the impure thing. Your sin does that to you.

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Now, thankfully by the grace and mercy of God and his son, Jesus Christ, we are saved from our sin.

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We're made righteous in Christ so that when we sin as Christians, it just simply is a way for us to learn more about God and how we can repent and overcome that sin and become more holy, become increasingly righteous.

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But in terms of our spiritual standing, we are fully justified before God. We're forgiven.

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But sin can still affect your life. It can still bring you down in certain ways. And so you need to be turning to God, turning to him in repentance, turning to him for your salvation, turning to him for help when you have that time of need.

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And don't let sin become a consequence of a judgment in your life to where you feel like this, that you have no comforter, that you forget your future.

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Live victoriously in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well, thank you for joining me on this