From Darkness To Light, From Sorrow To Hope: Lessons From Jeremiah And LamentationsSample

"First Sunday After Christmas Day: How Deserted Lies the City"

The destruction of Jerusalem is described with the words of a forlorn poet in the book of Lamentations:

How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!...

Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are on her cheeks…. (1:1a, 2a)

The same events are described rather differently by the scribe who wrote the epilogue to Jeremiah. With a historian’s eye for detail, he describes how Jerusalem’s troubles began with the rebellion of King Zedekiah, and then how the Babylonian army laid siege on Jerusalem for more than a year. One can scarcely imagine how desperate things became inside the city at the very end. Just as the food ran out, the Babylonians breached the city walls. Jerusalem’s army lost its nerve and fled. The Babylonian army pursued Zedekiah, slaughtering the king’s sons before his eyes and then taking him into captivity. The Babylonians tore down the city walls, torched civic buildings, and desecrated the temple. They executed members of the royal cabinet and exiled about 20,000 Jews to Babylon. 

What spiritual lessons can be drawn from the terrible fall of Jerusalem? The most obvious is that God “does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:7). He is a righteous judge who brings people to account for their misdeeds. After all of the sins of Judah—idolatry and adultery, ingratitude and injustice—there was only one suitable way for Jeremiah’s book to end. Siege, famine, invasion, fire, looting, and captivity were no more than the citizens of Jerusalem deserved for rebelling against Almighty God. 

The fall of Jerusalem is also a caution to us to remain faithful to the Lord. Jerusalem had every spiritual advantage. It was built to be God’s chosen city. Yet it was lost to the Babylonians because God’s people did not remain faithful to him. Like Jerusalem, the church in America has received a spiritual inheritance from its fathers and mothers in the faith. Yet the day may come when God forecloses on his spiritual loan to the evangelical community. 

Is there any hope? Can anything be done to save the people of God? There is hope—the hope of a king to rule God’s city, the Christ whose birth we celebrate this season. It would be too much to expect Jeremiah to have a happy ending. But when we consider the promises that Jeremiah made about the coming of Christ, at least it has a hopeful ending.