A Shepherd's Concern for the Future, Part 2

God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil (King Solomon).

When God's Blessings End

In August, 1996, I packed up my wife, new baby, and house and headed off to Kansas City to attend Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In so many ways, seminary was a seminal experience for me. Never before had I experienced such deep teaching, mature Christian leaders, and life-changing insights! One such insight came from our study of the book of Jeremiah.

The country of Judah considered herself to be a big deal. The Temple of God was in Judah; the wealthy lived among ivory palaces filled with fine linens, exotic animals, and gold and silver decorations. Allied with Egypt, they considered themselves invincible from the threatening ways of the Babylonian Empire. Due to these powerful alliances, influence in the Fertile Crescent, and wealth, Judah considered all of this as evidence that she was the recipient of God’s many blessings. She forgot one thing, however; God’s continued blessings are based upon a continued life of seeking God (see Jeremiah 3 and 5, for instance). When God is forgotten, His blessings end and His judgment begins. Proverbs 30:8-9 concisely states what Judah forgot—

Remove falsehood and lies far from me

do not give me poverty or riches;

feed me with my allotted portion of bread,

lest I become satisfied and act deceptively

and say, “Who is the LORD?”

Or lest I become poor and steal

and demean the name of my God.

This same over-reliance on human alliances, dependence on wealth, and power and influence as evidence of God’s blessings while simultaneously living in opposition to His teachings is what I see in the contemporary American Church (A Shepherd's Concern for the Future of the Flock). When God wearied of Judah’s infidelity and unwillingness to listen to His prophets, He commenced His judgement upon Judah. Here are the questions I have:

• when does God’s judgement of His Church begin and what will that look like?

• How should we pray now?

A Possible Future of Destruction

Lamentations 2 has four sections. The theme of the chapter is destruction, and (spoiler alert!) this destruction originates FROM God's Hand!

1. Verses 1-9 are shocking in what they show. All that Judah experiences—humiliation, protection withdrawn, the Temple’s destruction—come from the hand of God Himself. God actively worked against Judah, to the extent that even the sacred was not spared. ALL protection was taken away—leadership, city walls, guidance, and prophetic vision (remember Proverbs 29:18).

2. Verses 10-18, 20-22 illustrate the results of God’s anger. They are terrifying and traumatizing pictures of death.

a. The paragons of wisdom—the elders—are in mourning;

b. The pictures of innocence—young women—are distraught;

c. The children and infants are fainting from hunger and dying slowly;

d. The prophets--those who were to speak truth to power--spoke worthless words and failed in their duty to “expose” and therefore “restore” their futures;

God shows no mercy to His non-repentant, adulterous children ....

What to pray

Frankly, these are not images I want to see and neither are these experiences I want my family and friends to encounter. So, how do we pray? How do we ask the Lord to stay His hand? The author of of Lamentations shows us in 2:18-19.

1. "Cry out from your heart to the Lord" (note the subject is the Lord not your favorite political/pastoral/philosophical leader!);

2. "Make your tears flow like a river";

3. "Do not rest";

4. "Cry out in the night" (especially pertinent for those of us with insomnia);

5. "Lift you your hands to him for your children's lives ..." (this is perhaps the biggest reason; we do not want our children and grandchildren to suffer from OUR idolatry, do we?).

Prayer

Our Father, who is in heaven, we come to You at this time. We confess that there is no one else in heaven but You! Only You have the words of life.

We see our own idolatry, our own lust for power, our own creation of a different Jesus, and we confess that we have strayed from Your path. Please bring us back to the way of life everlasting, O Lord. Remove from us the ways of falsehood and lies and bring to us honesty and truth. We ask for life, and not for death. We ask for creation and not destruction. Help us to be satisfied in You and You alone, Father, and not in the ways of this world. Remove from us the lust of the eyes and fill us with Your glory alone.

Our Savior, we lift our hands to You for our children's sake. Save us from ourselves, lest our children and grandchildren bear the destructive consequences of our actions. We desire ... we plead ... that they be able to sit under their own vines and fig trees with no one to frighten them (Micah 4:4).

We pray these things in the loving Name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.