“When God Feels Like An Enemy”

~ Lamentations 2 ~

A Sacred Sorrow

Studies in the book of

Lamentations

~ The Season of Lent 2017 ~

Finding Your Voice When Life Doesn’t Make Sense

The events of September 11 hit America and the West at a time when

intellectual and moral responses to evil are weaker, more contro-

versial, and more confused than they have

been for centuries.

Put simply, we no longer have a shared under-

standing about whether there is any such thing

as evil. Some even question whether it is

proper to speak of anyone as our enemy.

“When God Feels Like An Enemy”

~ Lamentations 2 ~

Nicknames of Israel

Zion

Judah or Jacob

The Daughter of Zion

Jerusalem The Daughter of Jerusalem

The Daughter of Judah

1 …how the Poet describes God as the one who is responsible

2 ….the downward direction of his words describing the fall of the city

Be on the lookout for...

3 ….who is described as the enemy

The…first verses pound our ears with a relentless salvo of twenty-eight verbs

portraying destruction on a blockbuster scale, and every one has God as the subject.

”~ Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations

“

“And it came to pass after Israel had gone into captivity, and Jerusalem was laid waste, that Jeremiah sat

weeping and composed this lament over Jerusalem….”

Introduction to the Septuagint(the Greek Translation of the OT in 2BC)

01 How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!

He has cast down from heaven to earththe splendour of Israel;

he has not remembered his footstoolin the day of his anger.

Lamentations 2

02 The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the inhabitants of Jacob;

in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonour the kingdom and its rulers.

Lamentations 2

03 He has cut down in fierce angerall the might of Israel;

he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy;

he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob,consuming all around.

Lamentations 2

04 He has bent his bow like an enemy,with his right hand set like a foe;

and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes in the tent of the daughter of Zion;

he has poured out his fury like fire.

Lamentations 2

05 The Lord has become like an enemy;he has swallowed up Israel;

he has swallowed up all its palaces;he has laid in ruins its strongholds,

and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

Lamentations 2

06 He has laid waste his booth like a garden,laid in ruins his meeting place;

the Lord has made Zion forgetfestival and Sabbath,

and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.

Lamentations 2

07 The Lord has scorned his altar,disowned his sanctuary;

he has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces;

they raised a clamour in the house of the Lord as on the day of festival.

Lamentations 2

08 The Lord determined to lay in ruinsthe wall of the daughter of Zion;

he stretched out the measuring line;he did not restrain his hand from destroying;he caused rampart and wall to lament; they languished together.

Lamentations 2

09 Her gates have sunk into the ground;he has ruined and broken her bars;

her king and princes are among the nations;

the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord.

Lamentations 2

10 The elders of the daughter of Zionsit on the ground in silence;

they have thrown dust on their headsand put on sackcloth;

the young women of Jerusalemhave bowed their heads to the ground.

Lamentations 2

“The Lord has become like an enemy….”~ Lamentations 2:5

The Report

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me

a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”~ Exodus 19:5-6

“Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord

has made with you in accordance with all these words.’”~ Exodus 24:7-8

You shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations…., lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation

that was before you.~ Leviticus 18:26-28

“Therefore, Jeremiah, go and warn all Judah and Jerusalem. Say to them, ‘This is what the

Lord says: I am planning disaster for you instead of good. So turn from your evil ways,

each of you, and do what is right.’”

But the people replied, “Don’t waste your breath. We will continue to live as we want to,

stubbornly following our own evil desires.”

~ Jeremiah 18:11-12 (NLT)

God’s Dilemma

“But how patient should God be? The day of reckoning must

come, not because God is eager to pull the trigger, but because

every day of patience in a world of violence means more violence

and every postponement of vindication means letting insult accompany injury…. …God’s

patience is costly, not simply for God, but for the innocent.”

For forty years [Jeremiah] had painted in advance and in

detail the very scenes described in this chapter (to his own weeping agony in

doing so) — for the purpose of urging Judah to take a different

path and avoid such a fate. The point is: Lamentations 2

need not have happened.

Israel had declared war on God. Her high crimes against humanity

were an act of cosmic treason against God.

“…we were God’s enemies.”

~ The Apostle Paul in Romans 5:10

“The slightest sin is an act of defiance against cosmic authority. It is a

revolutionary act, a rebellious act where we are setting ourselves in opposition to the One

to whom we owe everything.”

…the city that had forsaken God was now utterly God-forsaken.

”~ Christopher Wright

The Message of Lamentations

“

11 My eyes are spent with weeping;my stomach churns;

my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the

daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint

in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 2

12 They cry to their mothers,“Where is bread and wine?”

as they faint like a wounded manin the streets of the city,

as their life is poured outon their mothers' bosom.

Lamentations 2

“My eyes are spent with weeping…”~ Lamentations 2:11

The Grief

Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem by Horace Vernet (1844)

“My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me….

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me…. O 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… They go from one sin to

another; they do not acknow-ledge me,’ declared the Lord.”

~ Jeremiah 8:21; 9:1, 3

11 My eyes are spent with weeping;my stomach churns;

my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the

daughter of my people, because infants and babies faint

in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 2

13 What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem?

What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you,

O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea;

who can heal you?

Lamentations 2

“Your ruin is as vast as the sea; who can heal you…?”

~ Lamentations 2:13

The Diagnosis

14 Your prophets have seen for youfalse and deceptive visions;

they have not exposed your iniquityto restore your fortunes,

but have seen for you oraclesthat are false and misleading.

Lamentations 2

15 All who pass along the wayclap their hands at you;

they hiss and wag their headsat the daughter of Jerusalem:

“Is this the city that was calledthe perfection of beauty,the joy of all the earth?”

Lamentations 2

16 All your enemies rail against you;they hiss, they gnash their teeth,

they cry: “We have swallowed her! Ah, this is the day we longed for;

now we have it; we see it!”

Lamentations 2

17 The Lord has done what he purposed;he has carried out his word,

which he commanded long ago;he has thrown down without pity;

he has made the enemy rejoice over youand exalted the might of your foes.

Lamentations 2

“…if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and

will forgive their sin and heal their land”

~ 2 Chronicles 7:14

18 Their heart cried to the Lord.O wall of the daughter of Zion,

let tears stream down like a torrentday and night!

Give yourself no rest,your eyes no respite!

Lamentations 2

19 Arise, cry out in the night,at the beginning of the night watches!

Pour out your heart like waterbefore the presence of the Lord!

Lift your hands to himfor the lives of your children,

who faint for hungerat the head of every street.

Lamentations 2

20 Look, O Lord, and see!With whom have you dealt thus?

Should women eat the fruit of their womb,the children of their tender care?

Should priest and prophet be killedin the sanctuary of the Lord?

Lamentations 2

21 In the dust of the streetslie the young and the old;

my young women and my young menhave fallen by the sword;

you have killed them in the day of your anger,

slaughtering without pity.

Lamentations 2

22 You summoned as if to a festival daymy terrors on every side,

and on the day of the anger of the Lordno one escaped or survived;

those whom I held and raisedmy enemy destroyed.

Lamentations 2

“…my enemy has destroyed….”~ Lamentations 2:22

The Sentiment

It is a standard part of the genre of lament to cry out to God: ‘God, this suffering is

intolerable! This evil is an atrocious, violent offence against your whole created order!

Why do you allow it? Why do you inflict it?’

“”

~ Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations

God has broad enough shoulders to cry on and a big enough chest to beat against.

God even provides words in his Scriptures to permit us, indeed to encourage us, to do so.

”~ Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations

“

How do we process this?

“I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could

one worship a God who was immune to it. I turn to that lonely, twisted figure on the cross, nails

through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth

dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged into God forsaken darkness. That is the God for me. He set

aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death.”

~ John Stott

“The God on whom we rely knows what suffering is all about,

not merely in the way God knows

everything, but by experience.”

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me

when you seek me me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord.”

~ Jeremiah 29:11-14

Image Credit: Hoach Le Dinhhttps://unsplash.com/@hoachld?photo=5DJqsjAYlmkhttps://unsplash.com/license

Image Credit

other images used for educational purposehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah

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Image Credit: Christopher Brownhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/7853490@N07/3531948937/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

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