Call for the Wailing Women - Part 3 — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Sinful Choices and the Remedial Judgment of God

Between our sinful choices, and I mean our sinful choices, and the consequences that we will surely reap. We don't see the choices have certain consequences that cannot be avoided. When we talk about the judgment of God, we think all this can go on forever.

That's what they said in Noah's day. There won't be a flood. They laughed at the thought. Well, I'll tell you, God has a kind of judgment that we're experiencing right now. It's the remedial judgment of God.

It's God just withdrawing His hand of grace and leaving us to our own devices. And the goal of that remedial judgment is to give us time to repent. That's the judgment we're under right now. But I'll tell you this, there's another certain kind of judgment.

The Coming Final Judgment

It is coming. It's a final cataclysmic judgment. And the day will come when God shuts the door on the ark, and anyone who is not in will be eternally damned and lost. Judgment is coming, and we need to wake up to the threat of impending judgment, the judgment of God.

For so many years, decades, we have rejected God. We have marginalized God. We've thrown Him out of our churches, our schools, our political life, our centers, our civic activity, and even out of our churches.

I heard a great preacher say recently, prayer back in the public schools, we need to get prayer back in our churches and prayer back in our homes. Four days ago, a 19-year-old friend in my town fell asleep at the wheel of his car as he was driving home from a late-night job.

He drove the car off the road to his death. His fiancee came across the wreck. Some of us, a lot of us, in this place are asleep at the wheel. And Jeremiah and Isaiah are saying to us today, Wake up. Wake up.

Waking Up to Judgment and the Call to Wail

Wake up to our condition. Wake up to the certain judgment of God. So you say, what do we do after we wake up? I know what's going on. I'm aware. I don't have my head in the sand. I have been awakened.

Then what do we do? There's a second instruction they give to us, and that's the call to wail. It's right in the text. Consider now. Call for the wailing women to come. A picture of professional mourners in those days.

Send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. Strip off your clothes, Isaiah says. Put sackcloth around your waist.

Beat your breast for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines. Mourn for all houses of merriment and for this city of revelry. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, the man who poured out his heart for the wayward people of God.

In chapter 9, the first verse, I didn't read this one earlier, but Jeremiah says, Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.

And when I read those words, I can't help but think of the heart of our Savior, who we read about in Luke chapter 19 as he beheld the city and wept over it. The word weep there is a word that means to sob, to wail aloud, a loud expression of grief, especially in mourning for the dead.

Ladies, this is not a time for playing games. It's not a time for partying. This is a time to wail, to mourn, to grieve over what is happening in our land, in our homes, in our churches. This is not just someone else's problem.

We've got to make it our problem. Now, Hosea tells us that there are two different kinds of weeping, and I think it's important we realize that. In Hosea chapter 7, verse 14, God says, These people do not cry out to me from their hearts.

Instead, they wail upon their beds. What's the difference? Those who merely wail upon their beds are remorseful, but they're unwilling to move or to change, whereas those who cry out to God from their hearts are genuinely repentant.

Remorse, Repentance, and Surrender

Those who wail upon their beds cry out for relief, but they're still defiant. They still insist on having it their way, whereas those who cry out to God from their hearts cry out in surrender. Those who wail upon their beds focus on their pain, on their woundedness, on their problem, but those who cry out from their hearts take personal responsibility for their own sinfulness.

They realize that the core issue of our lives is not ultimately our woundedness, but our estrangement from a holy God. Those who wail upon their beds blame others, but those who cry out from their hearts acknowledge their own responsibility.

Those who wail upon their beds are self-centered. Their consideration is, how does all this affect me? And those who cry out to God from their hearts are God-centered. They realize that ultimately it doesn't matter how it affects me, because it's not about me, it's about Him.

And they grieve over how a holy God has been offended. Those who wail upon their beds cry out for relief, but those who cry out to God from their hearts cry out for mercy. What should we weep about? What should we wail about?

Mourning Over Sin in the Nation and Society

Well, not just the consequences of our sin, but our sin itself. We ought to weep about the sin in our nation as it flaunts wickedness, and it calls evil good and good evil. I don't know how people can watch the television news today and keep their hearts and their minds from becoming defiled.

It's a wicked, dark, corrupt world. And you're seeing it on the television night after night, and some of us have heard it so much and heard it so long, we're desensitized, we don't even realize how wicked it all is.

We need to weep over the violence, weep over the perversion, weep as the things of God are mocked and scorned in our land. We need to weep over our families, the rebellion. Over and over and over again I'm receiving these prayer cards from Christian women in evangelical churches who are pouring out their hearts for their children, their grandchildren who grew up in the church, but have no heart for the things of God.

I spoke recently at a Christian school to some faculty and staff and parents, and the spiritual counselor at the school said to me, we need this message here because the kids in this Christian school, these are her words, she said, they hate God.

And it's true, I'm hearing, what has happened that in our homes, in our Christian homes, we've produced not just a few, but a whole crop of young people who cannot stand the things of God. We need to weep over the rebellion in our homes, the immorality, the culture of divorce.

I don't think we realize what has happened through this whole culture of divorce, and for the first time in recent years, the divorce rate inside the church is higher than the divorce rate out in the secular world.

Weeping Over the Church and Christian Women's Sin

We've got to weep and wail over the fact that we have broken covenant with God. We need to weep over our churches. We're playing church, we're so busy trying to be relevant to the world that we've become just like the world, and the world is not impressed.

We need to weep and wail over our sin as Christian women. And I know this is not politically correct, but we've got to get back to the Word of God, it's biblically correct, and say, oh God, we have sinned against you as Christian women.

Everywhere I go, I ask women when I speak on the subject of forgiveness, I won't ask it now, but I ask how many of you would be honest enough to say there's a root of bitterness or unforgiveness in my heart, and invariably 85%, 90%, 95 of the hands of Christian women go up into the air.

We must weep and wail over the fact that we are a bitter, unforgiving group of Christian women. I'm hearing Christian women express their anger. We're an angry, demanding group of women. We need to confess it and weep over it, to weep over our lack of submission to God's authority and the authorities that he's placed in our lives.

We've grown up in a rights-crazed generation, and many of us have bought into that bill of goods. We've been deceived. We've been deceived by the enemy into believing that we can have it our way, that we ought to be in control of our lives and our world and the people around us, so we've become controllers and manipulators rather than helpers.