Lamentations

Jeremiah sat in the dust of a city in its death throes. The streets, once packed with people and activity, were now mostly silent. The stillness only being broken by the occasional wail of grief or agony, the garbled cries of the dying for the dead. The smell of the market place, once rich with the smell of fruits, spices, and bread, now bore only the stench of rot.

"Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; You have slain them in the day of your anger, you have slaughtered and not pitied." The corpses of his people littered the streets like refuse. Jeremiah had to cover his face for the smell of them and gather his robes to step over them. He saw them, like skin and bones, dead by the sword, by hunger, and by disease. He said the Yahweh had done this. His God whom he served had slain his own people. God had given their bodies to the birds.

"You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side, and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed." Jeremiah saw his friends die. He saw them perish by the sword in the streets; he saw them die desperately in their homes of hunger; he watched them waste of disease and die in their own filth with no one to help. God invited him to survey the slaughter, and his God moved his pen to write of the horror he beheld.

"See, O LORD, and consider! To whom have You done this? Should the women eat their offspring, the children they have cuddled?...the hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people." They ate their own children. They boiled them for food. Jeremiah bore witness. "I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light." God thrust him into the horrors. His God, whom he loved, compelled him into the darkness, into the nightmare of Jerusalem, to see the gaping mouths of the dead. The disfigured forms of the starved and maimed, eyes transfixed in horror. The Lord made him look, see, and write.

Such sights might drive a man insane, but this man Jeremiah recorded what he saw in a poem. It is called the Lamentations. He wrote it under the inspiration of the God who brought the slaughter. God did this for at least two reasons. One is for you and me. That we may see the just recompense for wickedness, and the hellish consequences of a life lived in abandonment of God. Secondly, he writes that we may read this, "The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD...Let him sit alone and keep silent, because God has laid it on him; let him put his mouth in the dust---there may yet be hope. Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him, and be full of reproach."

Christian, have you read the Lamentations and pondered upon the terror that God brought upon Israel? For what? It is very important that you ask yourself this question, lest you get swept up into the hysteria of this age and forget what is important. God did not judge Israel for running up a national deficit. God crushed his beloved, his own garden, because the men were not faithful to the wives of their youth, because they were swindlers and cheats, because they exploited the poor, because they perverted justice for a bribe, and because they pursued their own lusts with abandon. And why did they do these things? They did them because they did not love God with all their heart, he who is lovely above all things, and because they chose a lesser glory, they became objects of contempt.

Behold the end of a people who claimed a form of godliness and denied the power thereof. Behold the end of a people who pay lip service to God, but are inwardly ravenous wolves. Read the Lamentations, and then pray that God would drive the idols that you pursue far from you.

To the Work!

Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us (2 Thess. 3:6).

Christians are not to be an idle folk. If someone claims to be a Christian, and they do not seek gainful employment, then we are told in the strictest of terms to have nothing to do with this person. Paul says this is not the "tradition" which they received. The tradition they received was this, "We were not ilde when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate" (2 Thess. 3:7-9).

Hopefully, you are not serving in a church with a great number of household heads who are unwilling to work to pay the bills and feed the family. If you are, then these people need a stern rebuke. I am more concerned with what we are teaching our young. My observations of the young adult population leaves much to be desired in this area.

Children of Christians ought to learn to work like Christians. A child ought to learn to do chores around the house as soon as they are able to do so. It teaches two things: Responsibility and Authority.

They learn responsibility by understanding that it is not mom's job to keep their room clean. And they learn that house-keeping is a family effort. Learning to take active stewardship over things is an essential part of a mature Christianity.

Authority is as important a lesson as learning responsibility. I seriously doubt that any child but Jesus cleaned his room without great threats and punishments. Teaching a child to work will positively teach them about the joy of a job well done, and negatively about a job ignored. Depending on the age, two things will result from neglect of duty: a red fanny or a loss of privilege. The end result should be the same: a clean room, like it or not.

I write this because one of the constant complaints from local companies is the inability to get young people who are willing to work. I believe this complaint is a serious reflection on our society as a whole, and it is a complaint that should never be leveled against Christians. We are, by nature, slothful creatures. One of the duties of the parent is train this tendency out. It is no easy task, but it must be done if we do not want to raise a generation of flakes.

A couple a generations before us, children had plenty of chores and responsibility. This was out of necessity as much as Biblical injunction. Presently, such labor is hardly necessary for survival. Indeed, the chores that we give our children may be trivial by comparison. And yet, it seems that parents have more problems getting children to comply with the trivial than our forefathers did with the intensive labors of old. We fuss with children over taking out the trash, they used to have to slop the pigs, feed the chickens, and milk the cow before school started. This mutiny against a clean room or trash duty is nothing but laziness and rebellion against authority.

A Christian child should be diligent in schoolwork and chores or whatever they put their hand to do. They ought to be an example of hard work and a willing laborer. Parents, we must teach our children to do this.

A Warning to Drifters

Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard him...Exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end. (Hebrews 2:1-3; 3:13-14).

When I was a kid, I used to love to watch old Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel episodes with my great-grandfather. Even though the man only had "bunny ears" for reception, he had the uncanny ability to pick up an old western anytime he wanted. After twenty years, I can still recall that the characters on those shows who were held with the greatest suspicion were the "drifters" that blew in and out of towns.

The problem with these dudes was that they weren't stable. They didn't have families, respectable jobs, or permenant abodes. Naturally, this indicated that they were men with no regard for responsibility, and as often as not, they caused trouble in the towns they wandered into.

The warning of Hebrews 2 begins with a warning against becoming a church drifter. The language used here harkens to a ship that isn't properly anchored, and so it slowly begins to be carried away by the current. That's a marvelous picture of what happens to a church drifter. They come in, they never really connect, and then they slowly drift away. Are you a drifter? Can you identify?

But is this text really speaking of drifting away from the church? Chapter One, admittedly, does not refer to the church. It speaks of the glory of Jesus Christ. So it is legitimate, perhaps, to say, "Bro. Brad, this text is talking about drifting away from Jesus, not the Church!" Very well, I grant you this point. However, let's look at how we came to Jesus Christ and how we stay in Jesus Christ.

Observe the end of 2:3. It says, "At the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him." So where did our knowledge about the Lord come from? The Lord told us about Himself, and when He ascended into heaven, His witnesses told us about Him. For me, that means that approx. 2000 years after the ascension, a man named Sgt. Wilson told me about he resurrected Savior on a bivouac. So does this mean after hearing one time and believing, we are therefore steadfastly anchored? Am I justified in my tying this passage to faithfulness to the local church?

Repeatedly hearing the gospel will not make the beleiver more justified, but it will make him more sanctified as he hears it and loves it more deeply. In the local church, I hear the gospel and the "salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord." And so I grow in faith.

So am I now arguing that local church attendance only helps for spiritual growth and has no effect on justification whatsoever? Well, not completely. Let's turn to chapter 3 to get the full picture. "Exhort one another daily...lest any of you be hardened throught the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end" (3:13-14). We are commanded to encourage one another daily. This is a command for intimate fellowship with those in the body of the local church. To what end? So that sin may not overcome us and harden us so that we cease to persevere. Here's the real point of all this and why the local church is crucial to our salvation: if someone has ceased to be encouraged, then their hearts may be hardened and they will not grow in faith. If they cease to grow in faith, then their justification is questionable. Because genuine faith has perseverance as one of its marks. Therefore, if someone is neglecting fellowship, it is likely that they are not in the faith. At best, they will grow weak, at worst, it reveals an unregenerate heart.

Look again at the implications of the text:

1) We are warned not to "drift away" from the things we have heard.
--->Application: We drift away from the things we have heard by not positioning ourselves to hear them.

2) These things which we heard have been passed to us from the Lord to his witnesses.
--->Application: Specifically, I believe these witnesses to be apostolic witnesses for the most part. Where do we go to hear their witness explained? The gathering of the Church!

3) We are to exhort one another continually.
--->Application: Where can we go to fulfill this command? The local church. And arriving on Sunday is not enough. The command is "daily." Therefore, we must develop relationships in the assembly of the Church and nurture them outside the assembly constantly. If you only do this once a week, then you are a once a week drifter.

4) If we are not encouraged, then sin will harden us.
--->Application: We need the nourishment of the body to aid us in our war against sin.

5) We are partakers in Christ if we continue to the end.
--->Application: We may have confidence that our faith is genuine as long as we are in a healthy relationship with one another in the Church. If we have, through neglect, removed ourselves from the body, then our faith has become weak at best and is non-existent at the least.

Conclusion: Thank God for the fellowship of the saints. Appreciate your local fellowship more, and realize that this group of imperfect people you hang with is instrumental in keeping you honest and faithful. Don't neglect the church, and if you are, repent and return immediately.