Lamentations 2:1-5 says,...Bible reading week 17, day 3

Today's verses are Lamentations 2:1-5, which read,

1 - How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger!  He has cast from heaven to earth the glory of Israel, and has not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger.

2 - The Lord has swallowed up; He has not spared all the habitations of Jacob.  In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.

3 - In fierce anger He has cut off all the strength of Israel; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy.  And He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire consuming round about.

4 - He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His right hand like an adversary and slain all that were pleasant to the eye; in the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire.

5 - The Lord has become like an enemy.  He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all it palaces, He has destroyed it strongholds and multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and moaning.

God is angry.  Why is God angry?  It is because the people of God are not following after Him and rejecting the instruction He has given through His prophets.  What happens when God gets angry?  God acts.  There is a cloud; there is a not remembering of His footstool; there is a swallowing up and not sparing; there is a throwing down what was strong; there is an attack like what would come from the enemy; there is a wrath like fire; and there is mourning and moaning because of all of this.  I am sure I missed some of the others in this passage too.

Israel is feeling a large measure of God's anger.  It is now taken out of the stronghold of Jerusalem and carried away by their enemy to the city of Babylon.  They are not pointing their fingers at themselves for the situation they are in but pointing their fingers at God of why He is doing this and harming the prophets who are warning them.  They are not seeing that this display of anger from God is actually Him calling out to them to return.  They haven't responded so He is following through with the consequences of their sin.

We have all felt the consequences of our sin.  What we have excused and rationalized, we now try to pin on God to why we would receive this punishment and discipline because we have been so good the other times.  Don't we get a break on sin and its consequences because we have been so good for so long?  The answer is an empathetic "no."   We say that God is turning on us but really He is staying His ground to what He has said.  He is loving us by not budging.  We just don't see it at first.  We think that if He loves us He would bend a little or He would make an exception for us.  We think and that is the problem, we are thinking and a better word would be "feeling" instead of responding to what He has already said and done.   We are not in charge here, He is and what He says goes even though it might not look fair on our end or happen when we think it should.  This is what makes God who He is, God.

The feeling of God's anger to submit should be the proper response.  Don't see it as God hates you but that God loves you to inflict some pain into your situation.  He clouds up what you are doing.  He takes away the footstool and makes it uncomfortable what you are doing.  He swallows up what you thought was a sure thing.  He shoots some arrows into the balloon of sin you have been protecting.  He starts multiplying the consequences so that it is plying up on you.  God does not hate you but He is showing that He loves you and wants you to turn back to Him.  Be like the Prodigal Son, come to your senses and return home.

He will be looking for you.  He will be running toward you.  He will throw open His arms and restore you who have a repentant heart.  He will throw a party that the lost sheep has been found.  He will show you His love just like you saw His anger through the consequences you were experiencing when you continued in sin.  You will again be at peace because obedience to God produces it.  Your mourning and moaning will be turned into delighting and dancing!

Are you feeling God's anger in your life?  Are you pointing your finger at God and saying, "Why are You doing this to me?"  Turn your finger around and you probably already know what is happening in your life that shouldn't be happening.  You probably know what you have swept under the rug, a sin that you are allowing to linger.  You are doing your best to hide something from others but it isn't hidden from God.  Confess and repent.  Admit and turn.  Submit and surrender to feel again His arms of love that was woken up in you because you felt His anger.  Let us pray.

"Lord, Your anger is justified.  It always is.  Your anger has a purpose for us to seek again and experience Your love.  The consequences are for our good and help us to see that consequences can lead to contrition.  May we take steps toward You and gain all the opposites of how Scripture describes Your anger.  Amen."

Pastor Adam