WWUTT 2624 God Covers With His Wrath (Lamentations 2:1-9)

When God punished Israel because of their sin, he didn't just lift his hand and let the enemy come in. It was by his hand, the enemy afflicted them. And this was so they would feel sorrow over their sin.

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This is when we understand the text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we feature New Testament study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q and A on Friday.

Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky.

Lamentations as a Lament Over Jerusalem and Judah

In our study of the Old Testament that we've been doing on Thursday, we've been in the book of Lamentations. The sorrowful lament that is expressed over Jerusalem and Judah and Israel, which has come into judgment because they betrayed God and worshiped false gods.

And here in chapter two, which we're looking at today, we hear of God's wrath being poured out upon them. Now, like chapter one, chapter two has 22 verses in it. As a matter of fact, the only chapter in Lamentations that doesn't have 22 verses is chapter three.

It's a much longer chapter, but chapter two here repeats the same sort of poetic pattern that we saw in the previous chapter, where each one of these stanzas begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Let me begin by reading verses one through nine. Hear the word of the Lord. Aleph, how the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger. He has cast from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel and has not remembered the footstool of his feet in the day of his anger.

Beth, the Lord has swallowed up. He has not spared all the habitations of Jacob. In his wrath, he has pulled down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He has brought them down to the ground. He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

Gemal, in hot anger, he has cut in pieces all the strength of Israel. He has turned back his right hand from before the enemy and he has burned Jacob like a flaming fire devouring roundabout. Dalet, he has bent his bow like an enemy.

He has set his right hand like an adversary and killed all that were desirable to the eye. In the tent of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his wrath like fire. Hay, the Lord has become like an enemy.

He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all its palaces. He has brought its strongholds to ruin and multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and moaning. Vav, and he has violently treated his tabernacle like a garden booth.

He has brought his appointed meeting place to ruin. Yahweh has caused to be forgotten the appointed time and Sabbath in Zion. And he has spurned king and priest in the indignation of his anger. Zion, the Lord has rejected his altar.

He has abandoned his sanctuary. He has delivered into the hand of the enemy, the walls of her palaces. They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh as in the day of an appointed time. Het, Yahweh determined to bring to ruin the wall of the daughter of Zion.

He has stretched out a line. He has not turned his hand back from swallowing up and he has caused rampart and wall to mourn. They have languished together. Tet, her gates have sunk into the ground. He has destroyed and broken her bars.

Her king and her princes are among the nations. The law is no more. Also her prophets find no vision from Yahweh. And let me stop there. This chapter divided into two parts. One through nine is about the wrath of God.

And you probably pick that up from what we've read this is about God pouring out his wrath on Israel because they had gone after other gods and forgotten the Lord, their God. Then the next section, verses 10 to 22, which is the section that we will get to next week.

We hear about the need for spiritual healing and that God will be the one to bring that healing. We especially hear that in chapter three, that God will show mercy and he will restore Israel. And that's something that we keep in mind as we read this song of lament, we keep in mind that God will deliver and he will provide a savior and his people will be restored.

And that savior is Christ. So even all these events that have happened to Israel are still serving toward a greater purpose that God means to achieve in redemptive history through his son, whom he is going to send and all who believe in him will be saved.

We will not perish in our sin for all those who believe in Christ. Let me come back up to the top here in verse one, how the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger. Now, this is pretty startling as we come into chapter two with that statement at the very beginning of the chapter.

Since we in chapter one had read this lament over Jerusalem and how Jerusalem had been manipulated and abused by her lovers, and now her lovers are nowhere to be found, they've abandoned her. And this once beautiful esteemed city is now wallowing like a prostitute widow in the mud.

And there's kind of this expression of pity upon Jerusalem, right? Like sad to see her that way, somebody grab a garment and cover her up. But then you get to chapter two and it starts with, oh, the Lord has covered her with a cloud in his anger.

God has covered Jerusalem in his wrath. This is not letting Jerusalem off the hook here. There is indeed going to be forgiveness and restoration that will come to Jerusalem, but it's almost as if this statement is being made here in Lamentations chapter two, as though to say you have not cried enough over the evil that you have done.

You are not yet ashamed enough. Before you get the resolution of how God is going to spare you and love you and clothe you again, you need to remember how you got here. And it's not because of circumstances.

Oh, if only our diviners had seen this coming, they just didn't see the future of what was gonna happen for us. We had asked them to inquire of the dead, the voices just didn't know what was going on.

We didn't have the army, the Babylonians were too strong. This isn't the reason why you fell. You fell because you sinned against God and God brought this against you. You know, the thing especially that we need to recognize when we come to salvation in Christ is that we sinned against God.

We need to recognize that Jesus is our savior and we need to know how serious our sin is so that we look to Christ who is our savior. We look to him to save us because we know we need saving and we can't do it because look what I did, how wicked the thing was that I did and only Jesus can draw me out of that.

So it is necessary for us to have great sorrow over our sin. I will say that for me, and this may be the case for you, this has been the case for a lot of Christians in fact, that deep sorrow over my sin did not come until much later.

I understood that I was a sinner and needed a savior when I got saved, but the sorrow over my sin was a little bit down the road. And I think the further along that I get, the deeper and deeper, the more disgusted I am by my sin, the deeper I see that I am in because of my sinful state.

Now surely I've been clothed in the righteousness of Christ by faith, but like Paul says in Romans six, I know that there is nothing good in me. I'm sorry, this is chapter seven. I know there is nothing good in me that is in my flesh.

So I see that. I look at myself and I know where my thoughts go if I don't reign them in. And I know what I would allow myself to do if I had no morality, if I had no spirit and nothing holding me back, what my flesh would give into.

That dead man is still in there. Like he's trying to get back up out of the grave. And the more I grow in Christ, the holier I see God is, the more of a wretch I know that I am. So surely there is that kind of maturity that happens in the life of a believer.

Maybe you come to a knowledge of your sin much deeper in life, much later in life, but there still needs to be an understanding that we sinned against God. And we would grieve over that so that we would turn to Christ and be saved.

And this is being expressed here at the start of chapter two as though to say, you've got to grieve. You have got to grieve over what you did. You're lying naked on the ground because your lovers abused you and left you for dead.

Well, sure, I'll cover you in my anger, the Lord says. He has cast from heaven to earth the beauty of Israel. What happened to the beauty of Israel? Well, Israel whored herself out with the pagans around them, but ultimately the disgusting state that has come upon them like this is because God subjected them to judgment.

He has not remembered the footstool of his feet in the day of his anger. We go on to verse two, the Lord is swallowed up. He has not spared all the habitations of Jacob. In his wrath, he has pulled down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah.

He has brought them down to the ground. He has profaned the kingdom and its princes. You see all these different words that are being used for God's people. It's like the totality of the punishment that has come upon them.

It's as though the writer wants you to be sure of all the people that were affected, all the people that were afflicted by this. So we have Zion, we have Israel, we have Jacob, we have Judah, the names come up again and again and again and again.

Every name that they were known by, whoever it was that was in this kingdom, they have been swallowed up. He has not spared all the habitations of Jacob. This has been a total punishment over the entire land.

There was nowhere you could have gone to escape from the punishment that came upon this land. And so in verse three, in hot anger, he has cut in pieces all the strength of Israel. There is nothing left of Israel to fight back against their enemies.

There's no confidence. There's no feeling like that. They don't even feel like we can rise up out of the ashes. We will rebuild. No, all the strength of Israel is gone. He has turned back his right hand from before the enemy.

So God took his hand that would have been separating Israel from the enemy. God just lifted his hand, let the enemy come right in and take them. And he has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire, devouring roundabout.

Now, of course we have this picture of God just lifting his hand and letting the enemy come in. But we've previously heard in Isaiah and in Jeremiah, that the Chaldeans were very specifically a hammer or an ax in the hand of God.

So it wasn't just an action of God sort of removing himself and letting the enemy come in, although God did do that. But even more divinely, even more sovereignly over the situation, God is the one that is guiding the Chaldeans to come against Israel and afflict them with this punishment that they justly deserve.

And whatever it is that God does, he is just in doing so. In verse four, he has bent his bow like an enemy. He has set his right hand like an adversary and killed all that were desirable to the eye. In the tent of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his wrath like fire.

So this isn't merely a matter of God just sort of removing himself from the situation and letting a person get consumed. Though, as I said, he does do that. When we get to the book of Ezekiel, this is how Ezekiel begins, with God and his presence leaving Jerusalem and letting them get consumed by their enemies because God is not with them anymore.

But God still providentially and even sovereignly over the situation to even hold the Chaldeans in his hand as he brings them against Jerusalem. It's both things, both are true. God's presence has left Jerusalem so that they could be consumed by their enemies and God's hand even being upon the enemies to bring them as a weapon against the Jews to punish them because of their sin.

And the kinds of consequences that we will face because of our sin do come from God. They have been ordained by God. I mean, we don't want to acknowledge that sometimes. We want to think, you know, God's a loving God.

He wouldn't do anything to me. So if something's happening to me, well, it had to have been Satan. That had to be Satan that did something like that, right? So bind Satan. I rebuke you, Satan. These boots are made for walking all over Satan.

You know, whatever silly things we may say with regards to something bad happening in our lives or the consequences that come upon us because of the sin that we've done. Now, there may be a work of Satan in that somewhere because he is called the accuser.

So when you do something wicked, yeah, some sort of demonic presence may be there to remind you, hey, look how awful you are. There's no way you can come out of this now. God would never forgive you for this.

Who would love you after you did something like that? You may have some sort of demonic feeling in your spirit, this sorrow that gets weighed down as the devil wants to try to keep you from seeking Christ to get forgiveness.

So it is true that the devil may do something like that and that be a result of the consequences. But the consequences that we face because of our sin, it's not because the devil did it, it's because God is sovereign even over this situation.

Remember what's said in Galatians 6, beginning in verse 7, "'Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.

Whatever one sows, that will he also reap.'". God is not mocked, okay? And that's what's said there. God is not mocked. He's not going to allow you to continue to do something to mock his name or say something like God's grace will just cover over me.

He'll just forgive me of whatever it is that I've done. That's not the way that God operates. He is a just God and he will punish the wicked. Scripture is very clear about that. So when we are punished because of our sin, that is by God's hand, that punishment came upon us.

Now, we also need to recognize, as said in Hebrews 12, that when we are punished by God to be convicted and turn from our sin back to Christ, well, that is a punishment that God has done to us in love.

It's because he loves us. He treats us as sons and daughters, that he disciplines us, that we would be convicted and repent over our sin. If that kind of thing wouldn't happen, then we are illegitimate children and we would not be sons and daughters of God.

So this kind of discipline God gives to his children because he loves us. And this kind of discipline he is bringing upon Israel for that same reason. Still, we shouldn't just look at sin and shrug at it and say, ah, it'll be okay, because there were still many that fell.

And the New Testament is clear about that as well. As said in the book of Hebrews, keep watch on yourselves, lest there be found in us an evil and unbelieving heart. So in verse five, the Lord has become an enemy.

He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all its palaces. He has brought its strongholds to ruin and multiplied in the daughter of Judah, mourning and moaning. You see, all the times it's mentioned that he did this, the Lord became an enemy.

He swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up its palaces. He brought its strongholds to ruin. And it is again so that God would be glorified even in his wrath. He will be glorified in the ways that he delivers us.

He will also be glorified in the punishment that he pours out on the wicked. Romans nine is clear about that. Verse six, and he has violently treated his tabernacle like a garden booth. He has brought his appointed meeting place to ruin.

The very place where God dwelled there in Jerusalem, the place that was holy and was not to be profaned. This was talked about in chapter one as well. And yet those who were unclean came into that place that was supposed to be clean and God allowed that to be destroyed.

It wasn't just allowing it to be destroyed. He is the one who destroyed it. He has brought his appointed meeting place to ruin. Yahweh has caused to be forgotten the appointed time and Sabbath in Zion.

He caused it. That the Sabbaths are not even being celebrated anymore in Jerusalem. There are not appointed feasts being kept in the land that God had given to his people. And he has spurned king and priest in the indignation of his anger.

This is God who has done this. It's not incidental. It's not just God turning his back. It's not God being that deist God that kind of just lets things play out as they will. No, his hand has been in all of this.

Even the very punishment of his people. Verse seven, the Lord has rejected his altar. He has abandoned his sanctuary. He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh as in the day of unappointed time.

So this is talking about the enemy. The enemy came in and where the Jews should have been celebrated God, instead the enemy came in and they made a noise. It wasn't a song of praise. It was a song of blasphemy.

But this was allowed by God to punish Israel. Verse eight, Yahweh determined to bring to ruin the wall of the daughter of Zion so that Jerusalem would be exposed to the enemy. He has stretched out a line.

He has not turned his hand back from swallowing up. As said in the book of Isaiah, I have purposed and I will do it. Who can turn back my hand? God's hand has done this. He has caused rampart and wall to mourn and they have languished together.

And finally, verse nine, her gates have sunk into the ground. He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her King and her princes are among the nations. The law is no more. Also her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

There's no law and prophet. The law is not being followed there. The prophets are not speaking in the name of God. And so Israel being punished is wallowing in her sin, sorrowful over the wickedness that she has done so that she will repent and return to the Lord and the Lord will restore her.

So what we read about next time as we continue on in chapter two and finish up chapter two is we read about Israel's need for spiritual healing and God is going to provide that healing. And he has provided that healing for each and every one of us in Jesus Christ.

Turn to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. As said in 1 John 1, 9, if we ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness in Christ alone.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read. I pray that it would be something that we take to heart. We would grieve over our sin. We would turn from it and desire to walk in holiness. And let us not get these ideas in our heads that sin is not a big deal.

It is a very, very big deal. The very reason why we die is because of sin. The reason why Jesus died is because of sin, but he died for our sins, that by faith in him, we would be forgiven and have everlasting life with God.

Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Closing Ministry Information

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