Oftentimes, we hear in today's churches an emphasis upon the love, grace, and mercy of God. And to be sure, these are wonderful attributes of our Lord that should be celebrated passionately and frequently. However, no one will ever appreciate the magnitude of God's grace, if he is unwilling to fathom the tremendous judgment of God upon the abhorrent sinful treason of man against God's rightful reign.
In the case of the Israelites of Jeremiah the prophet's day (ca. 598 BC), God had endured enough of their chronic rebellion and wicked behavior to the point that He in fact had become their enemy. From the very beginning of the book of Lamentations, one reads of the Israelites that they
once had been prosperous, but now had become a wasteland
once were esteemed, but now they were enslaved to their enemies
once had been supported, but now they were betrayed
once had been at home, but now they were far away from their homeland
once were at rest, but now they had become restless
once inhabited celebration and ceremony, but now were full of misery and hopelessness.
And as the people wasted away in the horror of their besieging and captivity, they thought of the prior days of glory when God had showered them with blessing and treasure. Once they had been called the "perfection of beauty" and the "joy of the whole earth." Now, the days of their future looked like an abysmal reality of shameful loss and destitution, for the hand of God's favor had been removed from them, and their enemies now had free reign to wield oppression and destruction upon the once favored people of God. God, who once inhabited the sanctuary of His people and received their altar sacrifices, now had withdrawn from them, leaving them to the consequences of their betrayal of surrender to Him as their sovereign Lord. And the greatest tragedy in all of the oppressive aggression of the evil nations around Israel was that God was using these pagan people as the instrument to bring His wrath upon His once chosen people. The graphic nature of the severity of His judgment is recorded in Lam. 2:12:
"They (the children) say to their mothers,
'Where is the bread and wine?'
as they faint like wounded men
in the streets of the city,
as their lives ebb away
in their mother's arms."
God had become the Israelites worst nightmare . . . their greatest enemy.
As difficult as this passage is to read. It is a sobering reminder of the effrontery of sin in the eyes of God. God will judge sin, and the sternness of His judgement is evidenced in the example found in Lamentations. Still, God is rich in grace and mercy. He will forgive us of our sin, if we would repent of our wicked ways, capitulate our selfish pursuits by submitting ourselves to His lordship over us, and receive His gift of His own death and resurrection to satisfy fully His righteous requirements for the atonement of our sin.
So let us not forget from that which we have been forgiven through the blood of Christ. Let us appreciate the grace, love, and mercy of God, but let us also be reminded of the severe wrath of God that should be poured out upon us were it not for His forgiveness, afforded through the cross and the resurrection. The more we see the gravity of that which we have averted because of His love, the more we in fact will appreciate His grace.
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