God Centered Bible Study - Protection And Strength Removed - Lamentations 2:3-5

Hello, welcome back to God Center Bible Study. This is Andy Cain. Today we're continuing in Lamentations chapter 2, looking at verses 3 through 5, continuing the theme of the unmistakable judgment of God.

There is no question where this judgment comes from, why it has come, and the actions of God in bringing this judgment.

And so we continue here in verse 3. It says, in hot anger, he has cut in pieces all the strength of Israel.

Now, if you'll remember, we're going to continue to notice here the repetition of, he has, he has, all the way through 3, 4, and 5.

You know, he has swallowed up, he has brought, he has bent his bow, he has set his right hand.

You know, verse 6, he's violently treated the tabernacle, the Lord has rejected the altar. All throughout these verses, we see this.

Verse 8, Yahweh determined to bring this ruin. So all throughout these verses, in this first part of this chapter, all the way through verse 9, it builds on this theme that there is no other origin or source for the judgment.

It has one place, it has one person that it has come from, and that is

God Himself. That is Yahweh, the Lord. It is the Lord who has been sinned against. It is the

Lord that sent His prophet Jeremiah to warn that if you did not repent, stop listening to these false prophets and these false people saying, you know, peace and safety.

You need to listen to my man, the one who's giving my word to tell you that you need to stop sinning.

You need to stop profaning my holy tabernacle. You need to turn to me and obey me or else judgment is coming.

That judgment comes in the form of Babylon in the 70 -year captivity. And so here in this hot anger,

He, God, has cut in pieces all the strength of Israel. You see, this is a way of different metaphors and different illustrations and there's different ways of bringing this to light.

And one of those ways is it pictures here something that is whole and now has been completely decimated and broken into pieces.

And not where, okay, maybe he had a 10 ,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and we messed it all up into pieces, but you know, all the pieces will go back together.

Or like a big piece of ice where an ice sculptor can chip away parts and something beautiful remains.

No, this is destructive. This is a demolition. This is like the idea of taking a whole building and it's not even like a scheduled demolition, you know, where it falls all perfectly, all this.

This is an obliteration, completely cut into pieces, meaning all this strength that Israel had, their standing in the world, their standing as it pertains to other nations, all the strength they have within themselves with the

Word of God, the strength of God, the power of God, all that strength, all that power obliterated, gone, is no more.

And the Lord has done this to them. Everything Israel thought of themselves in terms of how they were, their standing, you know, how strong we are.

When we do this in our pride, pride puffs up people, pride puffs up nations, makes them think untouchable.

How many times have we watched a movie and the bad guy, you know, he's so brazen and, you know, he always has to tell the good guy his whole plan.

You know, this is what I'm going to do. This is why I'm doing it. You know, in my mind, you can't stop me.

You're at a point where you're done. And whatever, what happens each time, the good guy gets out of it and he defeats the bad guy.

And the bad guy looks like a joke because he thought in all his pride and power that he'd be okay when he was not.

And that's what we see here. We see Israel who is in the place of the bad guy now because they disobeyed

God. They disobeyed His Word. They have turned to, you know, idols and all these things.

And now they're all their alleged, supposed strength. What made them whole, what made them strong, completely decimated to pieces.

Says He has turned back His right hand from before the enemy. This is noting that not only has

God brought the destruction, but the protection is gone. He's turned back

His protection. He's turned back His right hand, which is, you know, the hand of power, the hand of protection.

And this hand that was before Israel in between them and enemies, in between them and four nations that was protecting them with that right hand of power has now been turned back from before the enemy.

Now it's on to or towards Israel. He is burned in Jacob like a flaming fire, devouring, devouring round about.

So often in scripture, the judgment of God, the wrath of God is described as being fire, burning furnaces, anger burning like flaming fires.

We don't know what it's like to be an eternal God that has been sinned against by His own creation, not just once, but continually.

And so we have no frame of reference to understand what it's like to have a righteous, burning anger like this.

But this is the anger of God. This is what He does. And this goes all the way back to when we first started this book about the great reversal of fortune.

Everything about who Israel is, who they were, who they were supposed to be, is completely reversed, completely turned upside down.

They're in no position now compared to what they used to be. And so this great reversal is shown here in that God, not only in His hot anger, cuts in pieces all their strength, but then in that state that they're left in,

He's now turned His hand back, and there's no protection. So they're doubly in trouble here.

And it's not just that He has cut their strength in pieces and turned His hand back and is not protecting them.

But now verse 4 notice it says, He, God, has bent His bow like an enemy.

God says, I'm your God. I'm your strength. I'm your protector. But now because of your sin,

I've become your enemy. You don't need to worry about those other nations. They can only do to you what

I allow them to do anyway because God is sovereign and they are not. Now God has bent His bow like the enemy.

He has set His right hand like an adversary. So notice the change here. The right hand of power, and this is obviously metaphorical here that, you know, the right hand, the right hand of God is the seat of power, the place of power, this right hand of power that was used by God to protect them, not only is turned back away from them to cease from protecting, but God Himself has now set

His right hand like an adversary toward Israel 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. And so we see this similar language used in Revelation where it talks about pouring out bowls of wrath.

We have to interpret Scripture in light of how

Scripture uses certain words and phrases. And so Scripture, when it talks about the wrath of God, the anger of God, it's pictured as being bowls of, you know, wrath and anger being poured out.

And this is what happens when He brings judgment. That's why it's unmistakable and unmistakably from God because He has stopped protecting.

He's become like an enemy. He has now turned His attention toward Israel. All of His anger is being poured out like wrath, like fire.

And now in verse 5, it says the Lord has become like an enemy. So not only has it got the action of, you know,

He's drawing His bow and His arrows are now aimed towards Israel and He sends

Babylon in time to carry out this judgment, but now 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 into the daughter of Judah, mourning and moaning, lamenting, mourning and moaning.

See, without God, without faith, without obedience, without repentance, without the right relationship with God to be justified before God, without peace with God, which all that we get through Jesus Christ, we are left with mourning and moaning and lamenting over our sin.

That's all that's left. We could either be friends of God, we could be children of God, or we could be slaves of sin, enemies of God.

There's only two people in this world. There's enemies of God, friends of God, unsaved, saved, slaves of sin, slaves of righteousness, children of darkness, children of light.

And so those are our two main categories. Now, of course, we've, you know, got men and women, different ages, and a whole bunch of different ways those two categories are expressed.

But in a sense, every single human being is in one or two categories. And so now they're in a place of mourning and moaning because this is what the sin and the judgment for their sin has brought them.

And that is what the unsaved have to look forward to, is that the Lord will be like an enemy.

And notice he swallows it up, and this is like guzzling down a drink. This isn't like, you know, if I took my little electrolyte drink here and just, you know, kind of sipped a little bit, you know, yeah, it tastes pretty good.

Wait a few minutes. I'll take another drink. Yeah, that's pretty good. No, this is like turning it upside down, guzzling it down, chugging it down, all in one sip, it's gone.

And this is what is pictured here. This is a overwhelming thing that has happened.

Swallowed up Israel, swallowed up its palaces. So swallowed up the people that have sinned, swallowed up every remembrance and every indication, every example of what their sin, how it was represented and how it was manifested because they profaned the temple.

They used it in ways they had not been commanded. The priests and the elders and all these people that were supposed to be representatives of God completely profaned it, lied, claimed to be speaking for the

Lord when they had not. And so he swallows it all up. It's kind of like his

Lord saying, look, I warned you. You're not using it in the way I have commanded you. So I'm gonna take care of it.

It's gone. He has brought it strongholds to ruin and multiplied in the daughter of Judah, mourning and moaning.

He's brought down the strongholds. We think of strongholds as these powerful structures, powerful pillars and beams that hold up walls, hold up buildings, metaphorically holding us up, spiritually speaking, holding us up, what gives us power and strength.

And this is all representative of that. So what you see here in this unmistakable judgment that has come from God in these verses 3 through 5 is how the protection is gone.

The strength in the protection has been pulled down. And now the source of the protection, the source of their strength is now been turned against them and is now actively against them.

God brings down these strongholds to ruin. He didn't just make them temporarily out of order.

Like when you go in a bathroom and the thing says temporary out of order or something along those lines, that means, okay, yeah, it's not working right now, but we've got a plan in place to fix it.

No, this is completely to ruin. It's not coming back. It's done. It is. And this is what we look at when we talk about the extent of God's judgment, when we talk about the afterlife for the unsaved.

And that's sort of the debate that's going on right now. And good Christians can disagree with this, despite the heresy hunters that love to call everything heresy.

There is a good argument to be made and call me a heretic if you want. I'm still studying through it and asking questions just like many are, you know, is the nature of God's judgment in that you are punished for an eternal amount of time?

Or is the sense of the finality of the judgment in that you suffer for a period of time and then you cease to exist and you're wiped out of existence?

It's still a finality to the judgment. There's still a finality to the extent of it because you're being wiped out of existence or the conditional immortality or annihilationism, whatever you want to call it.

When it's carried out, that judgment's still final. It can't be reversed. So whether you believe in the eternal conscious torment, which can't be reversed, or if you believe that there is a period of time in which there's some payment for sin, because if Christ hasn't paid for your sins, you have to pay for your sins, whatever duration that is for each person.

And then if you're wiped out of existence as a final piece of that judgment, no matter how you come down on that, it's both of them are consistent with the nature of God and the nature of God's judgment.

When God brings judgment, it is final. It is complete. It is unmistakable.

And that's what's going on here. It's so unmistakable that in a sense they could almost literally feel the right hand of power and protection of God being taken from them.

And you know, it'd be bad enough if God's hand of protection was taken from them and just simply wouldn't protect them anymore.

That's not what's going on here. He not only brought back the hand of protection, but then

He turns it around and puts the active judgment and pouring out of wrath and His burning anger on Israel, on their palaces, on the temple, on everything that is of their life, brings down strongholds to ruin, and now mourning and moaning is multiplied.

And what we know about multiplication, say 1 times 2 is 2, 2 times 2 is 4, 4 times 2 is 8, 8 times 2 is 16, times 2 is 32, so on and so forth.

And He knows as you get up there, the number starts growing very quickly as you continue to multiply. So He didn't just add a little bit of mourning,

He's multiplying it. And this mourning and moaning over their, well, their mourning and moaning is ultimately right now at this point over their circumstances, what has happened to them.

But the keys that we're going to see as we move through this book, and it turns to repentance and hope and restoration, is that our mourning has to go from being lamenting over our consequences to recognizing,

I have sinned, I have been rebellious, I have sinned against the Lord, and now

I need to be mourning over my sin against God. Yes, adverse circumstances, consequences, all those things, they're bad, we don't, we really don't want them, but we deserve them.

And we need to let them be used as an instrument to turn our attention towards mourning over our sin.

And that's what Israel is going to have to come to terms with. That is what we need to come to terms with.

We need to recognize we are sinners. We have sinned against God, and we deserve the just wrath and judgment for our sins.

And we have to mourn over it. We have to repent of it and turn from it and put our faith in Christ for salvation.

Amen? And that's what we see here. And so as we continue this study, like I said, it could be depressing, kind of sad and down because, you know, we've got a lot of bad stuff here.

But you're going to see as we move through the book here, this turning and this understanding of mourning being turned into gladness and joy when we recognize sin in our life and deal with it properly in obedience to God.

Well, thank you for joining me on this God -Centered Bible Study of Lamentations. I hope you enjoyed this book. I'll be back with you next time.