Questions demanding an answer! — Part 1
“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Lamentations 1:1.
As Matthew Poole in his commentary says: ‘This book . . . hath its name from the subject matter of it, which is lamentation.’ It was written by Jeremiah, who afresh earns the title of ‘the weeping prophet’.
These questions in the opening verse denote the astonishing consequences of God’s judgment on an erring, stubborn, self-willed people! Their miseries can be dated I believe to after the defeat of the city by the Babylonians in BC 588.
We may see that the conquest of Jerusalem has passed from these words.
“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed,” Lamentations 1:14-16.
‘The whole book lets us see from what a height of dignity to what a depth of misery sin may bring nations, how much soever interested in God; and likewise directs us to our duty in such states of affliction and misery if we would obtain mercy,’ Matthew Poole (1624–1679).
In this first verse the prophet stands and speaks in awe and amazement at what has happened to the city of Jerusalem.
Three times the word “how” is uttered by Jeremiah
I. NO MATTER HOW SECURE OUR POSITION MAY BE, THE LORD CAN BRING US DOWN!
1. Jerusalem the city sat ‘solitary’. The word carries the meaning of ‘isolation’. The word first appears in Leviticus 13:43-46 and it refers to the imposed isolation of the many suspected of being a leper.
“Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the rising of the sore be white reddish in his bald head, or in his bald forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh; he is a leprous man, he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague is in his head. And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.”
The city once ‘full of people’ has been reduced to that loneliness and friendlessness of the leper forced without the camp! As Jeremiah looked upon Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Babylonian siege and conquest of the city, he marvelled that she that had been so secure, so prosperous and enjoyed such divine protection could be reduced to rubble!
This is what backsliding and sin will bring upon any people, irrespective of the privileges they rejoiced in and the enjoyment of God’s blessing they may have experienced in the past.
“For the wages of sin is death,” Romans 6:23.
“Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren,” James 1:15-16.
2. The downfall of God’s people has often been the result of a proud and improper sense of security. It is NOT wrong to rejoice in the wonderful care and protection God has promised to His redeemed ones BUT we must never presume that we may live and act as we wish and disobey God’s Law and still enjoy such security.
“And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. LORD, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled,” Psalm 30:6-7.
C H Spurgeon says of this opening phrase: “Ver. 6. ‘In my prosperity.’ When all his foes were quiet, and his rebellious son dead and buried, then was the time of peril. Many a vessel founders in a calm. No temptation is so bad as tranquillity.’ He continues: ‘I said, I shall never be moved. Ah! David, you said more than was wise to say, or even to think, for God has founded the world upon the floods, to show us what a poor, mutable, moveable, inconstant world it is. Unhappy he who builds upon it! He builds himself a dungeon for his hopes. Instead of conceiving that we shall never be moved, we ought to remember that we shall very soon be removed altogether. Nothing is abiding beneath the moon. Because I happen to be prosperous today, I must not fancy that I shall be in my high estate tomorrow. As in a wheel, the uppermost spokes descend to the bottom in due course, so it is with mortal conditions. There is a constant revolution: many who are in the dust today shall be highly elevated tomorrow; while those who are now aloft shall soon grind the earth. Prosperity had evidently turned the psalmist’s head, or he would not have been so self confident. He stood by grace, and yet forgot himself, and so met with a fall.
Reader, is there not much of the same proud stuff in all our hearts? let us beware lest the fumes of intoxicating success get into our brains and make fools of us also.”
Puritan
The great CHS quotes the Puritan, Richard Gilpin (1625-1700) on these words of the psalmist David.
“In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Our entering upon a special service for God, or receiving a special favour from God, are two solemn seasons, which Satan makes use of for temptation … We are apt to get proud, careless, and confident, after or upon such employments and favours; even as men are apt to sleep or surfeit upon a full meal, or to forget themselves when they are advanced to honour.
Job’s great peace and plenty made him, as he confesseth, so confident, that he concluded he should ‘die in his nest.’ #Job 29:18.
David enjoying the favour of God in a more than ordinary measure, though he was more acquainted with vicissitudes and changes than most of men, grows secure in his apprehension that he ‘should never be moved’; but he acknowledgeth his mistake, and leaves it upon record as an experience necessary for others to take warning by, that when he became warm under the beams of God’s countenance, then he was apt to fall into security; and this it seems was usual with him in all such cases — when he was most secure he was nearest some trouble or disquiet.
‘Thou didst hide thy face’ — and then to be sure the devil will show him his — ‘and I was troubled.’ Enjoyments beget confidence; confidence brings forth carelessness; carelessness makes God withdraw, and gives opportunity to Satan to work unseen. And thus, as armies after victory growing secure, are oft surprised; so are we oft after our spiritual advancements thrown down.”
Are there not lessons here for us Free Presbyterians? Did we not enjoy much of God’s blessings in the 1960s and 1970s, with many conversions and restorations of backsliders and new congregations started? But did not a carelessness, born of a false and sinful sense that we were ‘untouchable’ enter and the zealous obedience of former years dwindle and dull into complacency and resulted in the opening of the doors to worldliness and the promotion of the notions of men above the plain truth of God?
I do not hesitate to say such was indeed the case.
3. If such sinful confidence continues and no heed is taken to the warnings of God, disaster will be the result. Such was the case with Jerusalem!
“Then the LORD said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them. For I earnestly protested unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even unto this day, rising early and protesting, saying, Obey my voice. Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not.
And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers. Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them,” Jeremiah 11:6-11.
That which Free Presbyterians rejected and shunned most assiduously in former years, under the blessing of God, there are now some who are quite ready to embrace and engage with such! Fellowship with churches in the ecumenical movement is accepted and deemed correct by some. Engaging in evangelistic labours alongside ministers who support and justify their membership of churches which reject God’s Word and practise that which is abominable in God’s eyes, is growing more common and is apparently defended by Presbytery.
Thus it appears that we have those amongst us who believe we can engage in that from which God called us out in 1951 and still retain the blessing which we enjoyed as a result of our obeying God, back then. We once separated from and turned our backs on, in obedience to God, those whom now we see some Free Presbyterians embracing!
That will but bring upon us something of what it was Jerusalem suffered as a result of similar thinking!
There is a most vivid analogy used by Peter that illustrates just what is happening today amongst us.
“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire,” 2 Peter 2:20-22.
I don’t think that anything more vivid and telling could be put forth as a picture of what some in the Free Presbyterian Church would have us do.
Rejecting that which grace enabled us to ‘vomit’ up in times past and refusing to be ‘mired’ again by the disobedience and compromise that the Lord delivered us from, and for which obedience He so richly blessed us, ought not to be difficult for us to see as the proper thing to do today in the face of the follies some would introduce to our ranks and so rob us of God’s blessing and bring upon us His judgment instead!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
7th September 2024