Lamentations 2 -- Sinning Away The Day of God's Grace

“That the God of Israel would ever permit the Gentiles … to enter and destroy Jerusalem and the Temple was something inconceivable to the Jewish people.  By ignoring the covenant and depending on the presence of the temple and its sacred furnishings, especially the ark, the leaders and most of the people had replace living faith with dead superstition,” my commentary said.  I don’t think those actions are exclusive to the Jews at that time.  We can fall for that belief today, believing that our nation or our city is special to God and therefore protected, regardless of the sins of the people.

The people had been freed from Egyptian slavery only to allow themselves to be enslaved by the idolatrous worship of the former inhabitants of the Promised Land.  “Sin always promises freedom, but brings bondage.”  How I’ve seen that in the lives of kids who get hooked on drugs!  Rather than paying attention to God’s Word to keep trouble from coming, the Jews had waited until it was too late, ignoring His Word.

The Israelites had once followed God’s cloud of glory to reach the Promised Land, but now God had sent them a cloud of anger, my commentary said.  “He also put a cloud between Himself and His people so that their prayers would not reach Him, and He even told Jeremiah not to pray for the people because they were so wicked that they were beyond His intercession!”

“The elders sat on the ground mourning, too overwhelmed to utter a word … famine was so severe that mothers even killed and ate their own children.”

“What had caused such calamity and tragedy?  The spiritual leaders had given the people a false message and they had believed it!... The false prophets refused to expose the sins of the people and call the nation to repentance.”  They preferred to “whitewash the wall instead of exposing its weaknesses and repairing it.”

“They had sinned away the day of God’s grace … God’s ear is open to the cries of His people, but He doesn’t answer until His hand is finished with the discipline He promised.”

Father, where there is sin, don’t let us whitewash over it but instead guide us to expose our weaknesses so You can repair them.  Open our hearts to any Word You have for us and remind us what will happen if we ignore You.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford