March 28, Lamentations 4
The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, is accomplished; he will keep you in exile no longer; But your iniquity, O daughter of Edom, he will punish; he will uncover your sins. - Lamentations 4:22
Everything about the fall of Jerusalem and Judah was terrible. The neighboring countries knew what God had done for Israel in the past and did not imagine that Jerusalem could fall into enemy hands. But it did happen. When the wall was breached, the Chaldean soldiers poured into the city. The invaders killed thousands and deported thousands more. They looted and ransacked and destroyed the city, as God used them to punish his wicked, apostate people.
But the horror began long before the wall was breached. Nebuchadnezzar's forces laid siege to Jerusalem for eighteen months before the doomed city fell. The same city walls that had defended Jerusalem for centuries became prison walls in the city’s last days, trapping the inhabitants inside, cutting off the supply of food going into the city. Starvation reduced the high and mighty nobility to homeless street people, looking for scraps of something edible in trash piles. Starving mothers were not able to nurse their babies or find food for their weaned children. In a real-life nightmare, some mothers boiled and ate their own children, driven by starvation to do the unthinkable.
Why did all this horror and suffering come upon Jerusalem and the rest of Judah? The people had become desperately wicked, worse than the ancient city of Sodom that the Lord destroyed in the days of Abraham. Judah had to be punished, and the severity of the punishment fit the excessive sinfulness of its people.
Judah's wicked kings, apostate priests and false prophets failed as shepherd leaders of God's people. They practiced and promoted idolatry and immorality associated with it. Zedekiah had been appointed by Nebuchadnezzar, but he rebelled against the Babylonian king, ignoring Jeremiah's godly counsel to submit and survive. The king and some of his people tried to escape when the Chaldeans came. But they didn't get far before the invaders captured them.
Nebuchadnezzar made Zedekiah watch as he killed Zedekiah's sons. Then he blinded him and imprisoned Zedekiah for the rest of his life. Despite the severity of Judah's punishment, God did not completely destroy the entire nation. The Lord always keeps his word and he had promised Abraham centuries before that he would bring Messiah into the world through his descendants. So he spared a remnant of the people and returned them from captivity after seventy years had passed.
But God showed no such mercy and restraint to Edom, the nation of Israel's neighboring cousins. Edomites hated Israelites with a passion that dated all the way back to their ancestors, twin brothers Jacob and Esau. Obadiah and Amos described how the Edomites cheered and celebrated the downfall of Israel and Judah. There's a special dark hatred that is happy when an enemy suffers, and that's the kind of hatred Edom had for Israel. The Edomites stopped cheering the Babylonian armies when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Edom and completely destroyed them, bringing an end to their existence as a nation.
So the good news/bad news tone of the text verse was the result of God's merciful restraint that kept the last remnant of Israel from death and brought them back from captivity. God did that because of his promise to Abraham, not because the Israelites were any less sinful than Edom. Judah's sin was punished, but God deemed the punishment accomplished and brought a remnant of the people back to their land. As sinners, we also deserved the wrath of God. But the gospel is that Jesus died for our sins, taking our punishment on himself, so we could be forgiven and live. We may still suffer consequences and live with unpleasant realities in this fallen world. But God has promised that the redeemed in Christ will live with him forever and receive an eternal inheritance.
But the fate of the Edomites reminds us that the fate of all sinners who will not come to Christ will be complete destruction and eternal ruin. Impenitent sinners cannot hide their sins from God, and God's holy justice demands that sin's wages must be paid. All those who reject Christ's death for themselves face the awful prospect of paying their own way, and that way leads to an eternal dead end. Oh, God, grant us grace, to humble ourselves and surrender to the Lordship of Christ while the choice is ours to make!
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—March 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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