Is it Nothing to You?

            How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was the queen among the provinces has now become a slave!    (Lamentation 1:1)

This is Jeremiah, the man known as the “weeping prophet”

. He reminds us of another who sat weeping over Jerusalem. The only difference is that Jerusalem was in ruins and the temple already burned as Jeremiah gazed upon the debris. Jesus wept over the same city about six centuries later because of what was going to happen to her. To Jeremiah, the destruction of Jerusalem was a matter of history. To Jesus the destruction of Jerusalem was a matter of prophecy. The key verse in the Book of Lamentations explains the reason Jerusalem lay in ruin:

“The Lord is righteous, yet I have rebelled against His commandment: listen, all you peoples; look upon my suffering, my young men and maidens have gone into exile” confesses the city. But it is too late. (Lamentation 1:18).

The great city of Jerusalem has fallen. The famous temple was grazed to the ground. The city’s walls and gates were burnt out, its grand buildings wantonly destroyed by the marauding Babylonians rendering it unfit for human habitation. It would remain like that for seven decades. Its people have been taken captive to distant lands. Jerusalem has sinned greatly, and so has become unclean. All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness: she herself groans and turns away. (Lamentation 1:8). All her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. For the LORD has brought her grief because of her many transgressions. Jerusalem has sinned greatly; therefore she has become an object of scorn.

Is it nothing to you, all who pass by?  Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that the Lord brought upon me in the day of His fierce anger? (1:12)

Day after day the ‘love’ of God has been drummed into our ears that we have forgotten His wrath. People don’t like to hear about the fierce anger of God today. That aspect is often left out of the gospel message, and I have observed many religious programs that are shown on TV, to be messages of comfort and for compromise. The excuse that is often given for such an approach with the gospel is that it is trying to reach the man of the world. Jeremiah, too, was trying to reach a lost world, and he wasn’t very successful; but at least he gave God’s message as God had given it to him. God judged Judah because of her sin, and He still will judge sin today. Jeremiah mourned the destruction of Jerusalem alone. He stood among the ashes weeping. Why had the city been destroyed? Was it not because of her disobedience and rebelliousness?

      The divine wrath is the natural expression of God’s divine nature, which is absolute holiness, manifesting itself against the iniquity of mankind. God's wrath is just, proper, and natural expression of His holiness and righteousness which must always, under all circumstances, and at all costs be maintained. The element of love and compassion is always closely connected with God's anger; if we rightly estimate the divine anger we must understand it as the expression and measure of that love; He is also righteous; as we think of an affectionate, sentimental Fatherhood of God, we must bear in mind of the manifestation of His just, righteous and holy anger against sin and the sinner because of his transgression; remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He is not some Celestial pushover we can manipulate and get our things done. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” (1Peter 1:17). 

      We are living in a universe where there is a God, a living God, a God whose heart goes out in love and yearning over you. But if you turn your back on Him, He will judge you even though He still loves you. He is the righteous God of this universe. It is what He says in His Word. Hell is actually there because He is a God of love and a God of righteousness and a God of holiness. God is righteous and just in all He does. 

      Jesus could say to the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of His day, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Why did He call them hypocrites? Because “… you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers” (Matt. 23:14). He rebuked them--"Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes (Luke 10:13). If your Christianity does not affect your heart, your life in your home and in your business, and your social life, then you are a hypocrite.  He is the One who wept over these men. His eyes are filled with tears for us today.

     

      God does what He does because He is a righteous God. He cannot shut his eyes to evil. When His own children disobey Him, God must discipline them, even though it breaks His heart. Jeremiah reveals to us the heart of God: when Jeremiah weeps, God is weeping; when he sorrows, God is sorrowing. When we don’t understand what is happening, the important thing is to trust in knowing that God is righteous in what He does. Although it broke His heart, He was right in letting Jerusalem be destroyed and in letting the people go into captivity. Jeremiah cries out—he wants to know why, and God assures him that He is righteous, right, in what He is doing to Jerusalem. As perfect is His righteousness, so complete shall be the destruction of every form of wickedness. Jeremiah is not unaware of what caused Jerusalem’s catastrophe.

      Another anguished question that Jeremiah has is this: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” (1: 12). In other words, how much are the people involved? Do they really care? Man does not want to accept the fact that God is angry with sin. Instead, the fact that God is love is played for all it’s worth. I agree that God is love, and the church certainly needs to learn to take the love of God into the marketplace of life. We have often failed to do that and  it has led to an overemphasis on the love of God in this generation. God is righteous, and God is holy, and God is just in what He does.

      

The virgin birth, the deity of Christ, His death and resurrection are all important, but the question is: Why did He die? That is the question raised in Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why did you forsake me? …” Our Lord said that while He was hanging on the Cross. We find the answer to that question in the same Psalm. ‘’You are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises’’ (22:3). He is holy. He is righteous. As warm as is His love for sinners, so hot is His hatred of sin.  He died on that Cross because you and I are sinners, hopelessly doomed sinners. He became sin for us, who never knew sin. ‘Christ, the anointed one’’ became a curse for us, by hanging from a tree. Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me? (Lamentation 1:12) Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer (Isaiah 53:10).

      Look at the cross; where they had crucified Him was a public intersection and passers-by stopped, looked, a few stopped to mock Him, the others passed on. They had scourged Him to an inch of His life, slapped on His face, spat on Him and mocked Him, crowned Him with thorns, made Him to carry His own cross across the streets and up the hill, nailed Him to the cross and hung Him between two notorious criminals, and allowed Him to die a slow, excruciating death.  He didn’t have to die, but He suffered as no man has had to suffer and died. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

      God forsook Him, but God will never forsake you as long as you live. He forsook Christ so that He would not have to forsake you. Have you come to Jesus to get some education and improve the standard of your life? To get a new personality? To find a good job and get rich? Is that the reason He died on the Cross? Bear this in mind, He died so that you won't go to hell. He hated wickedness, so much that He bled, to wound it to the heart; He died that it might die; He was buried that He might bury it in His tomb, and He rose that forever He might trample it under His feet. 

      The Holy Spirit has come into the world to reveal Christ as Savior, and He has come to convict the world of sin [John 16:8]. What kind of sin? Murder? Thievery? Adultery? Yes, but something worse than that: they sinned “The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in me”.  (John 16:9) God has a remedy for the thief. The thief on the cross was saved. Paul was guilty of murder, responsible for the death of Stephen, but he got saved. Moses also was a murderer. David was an adulterer and murderer. God has a remedy for the murderer, the thief, and the liar, the adulterer, but God does not have a remedy for the man who rejects Jesus Christ. That is the greatest sin you can commit.

      

            1John 5:16:  If you see a fellow believer sinning in a way that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I am not saying you should pray for those who commit it.

            Rejection of Christ is a state rather than an act. You can never commit the act of rejecting Christ, but you can gradually come to the place where Christ and what He has done for you is absolutely meaningless. Jerusalem reached the place where God told Jeremiah, “Don’t be disturbed that they are not listening to you. If Moses or Elijah or Samuel were here to pray for them, I would not answer their prayers either. It is too late; they have crossed over.” There are many living in our sophisticated day who have crossed over—who have deliberately positioned themselves beyond the reach of grace, who have become stone-deaf and cannot hear the call anymore.

      Now, we cannot decide who is that who has reached the point of no return having totally rejected Christ. People who have committed the most heinous crimes have reformed, repented, received forgiveness, and turned into marvelous, glorious, disciples of the Lord. The message of the Gospel has done wonders in so many lives, that it is hard to believe. Only, it bears witness to the power of the blood of Jesus.

             But in our day there is the danger of underestimating the importance of sorrow for sin.  There is not enough manifestation of sorrow for sin, nor do preachers stress this aspect. There is an urgent need today for us to come to the Lord’s feet in deep sorrow for sin, in self-humiliation, in self-abhorrence.

            Joel 2.12-13  “Return to Me with all your heart, And with fasting, weeping and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.” Now return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.

            Job 42.5-6 “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You’. Therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes’’.

      Jerusalem had rejected God. An individual can reject God. What does Jesus Christ mean to you? What does His death mean to you?

     

      Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

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