Are Worldly Pleasures A Necessary Sacrifice For or Unto Salvation?
The Lord Jesus Christ told stories, called “parables.” In one of a later of those in Matthew 22, Jesus uses the story of a certain king and the marriage of his son. The “certain king” is God the Father and “his son” is God the Son, Jesus. The point of the story revolves around those who get into the wedding ceremony as a guest. Getting into the wedding ceremony is getting into the kingdom of heaven, which is the same thing as getting into heaven. Why don’t people get into heaven (compared to getting into a wedding as a guest)?
I think anyone reading here understands the concept of not getting into something you want. Something was sold out or a no vacancy. Nothing could be worse than not getting into heaven. It would be great to find out why you won’t get in. Not everyone will get into heaven. Jesus teaches this exclusivity. The Bible explains who gets into heaven and who doesn’t. In the parable of Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus tells a story that explains why people won’t get in.
Maybe you missed an event for some reason. Maybe for some reason you didn’t get a hotel you wanted on a particular night. Perhaps you tried out for a team and didn’t make it for some reason. You interviewed for a job, even your dream job, and you didn’t get it for some reason.
Jesus gives a few reasons for someone not getting into heaven. Jesus knows more than anyone about why people won’t get into heaven. Of all the reasons, His last reason is more important than any of the others. However, in the passage with the parable at least three verses explain one of the reasons people don’t get into heaven. That reason is worldly pleasures.
Someone who wants the kingdom of heaven, who wants Jesus Christ, can’t also want worldly pleasures. Verses 3-5 read:
3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. 4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are] killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage. 5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise.
A parallel passage to Matthew 22:1-14 is Luke 14:1-24. Concerning the reason of worldly pleasures, Jesus says there in verses 17-20:
17 And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. 18 And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. 19 And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. 20 And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.
Jesus presents salvation as a choice for which someone cannot have it both ways. Jesus earlier in Matthew (6:24) said, “No man can serve two masters.” In the next chapter He says you either take the narrow road or the broad road. When someone chooses the narrow road, having counted the cost, he is not choosing the broad or wide road that leads to destruction. Some of those on the wide or easy road choose worldly pleasures over Jesus Christ. This is akin to choosing self over Jesus.
Worldly things that keep someone from the kingdom of heaven are their own ways, their farm, and their merchandise (Matthew 22:1-14). It’s also represented as a piece of property, five yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:1-24). These are all things, worldly things, pleasures or lusts, that someone puts ahead of the Lord and His kingdom. The passage is saying you’ve got to make a choice and choosing the narrow, instead of selfish pursuits, worldly ones, is part of that choice. You can’t serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:24).
An eternally fatal flaw of new evangelicalism is that you can take both the world and Jesus Christ. One does not need to give up one for the other. No. The Apostle John echoes what Jesus taught in this parable and others, when he wrote (1 John 2:15): “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” In His high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus says believers will not be “of the world.” That’s what Matthew 22 is saying in addition to many other passages. Worldly pleasures can and will keep you out of heaven.
The Gospel on Public Transportation
Today my wife and I ducked onto public transportation. The doors opened and only two seats were free. I squeezed next to an older man on the left with some luggage and my wife beside me. The man moved his big case a little, and I apologized for the inconvenience.
The man next to me on public transportation, who seemed to be my age, said it wasn’t luggage. It was a musical instrument. It was a saxophone. He was on his way to a gig with a band.
I told the man my sister played the saxophone. We talked about the saxophone. I mentioned someone I knew who played the tenor saxophone. He said it was difficult to play, hard to stay in tune.
The man couldn’t play saxophone with my sister, if she even still played, because she’s in North Carolina. I was from California. He had family in California. His grandmother married an American, a war bride.
When I looked up and commented on the direction of the train, he said it was fine. He affirmed my wife and I were going the right direction. I thanked him. He asked where I was going. I told him, church, a Baptist one. I asked if he knew about the Baptists.
Since Christ there have always been churches separate from the state church, known by different names. During the Reformation, their enemies called them Anabaptist, because they rebaptized adults sprinkled as infants.
Baptists baptized believers. No one is sprinkled in the Bible. This is how I headed into the gospel.
The day before my wife and I took a taxi from our car rental to a train. I talked to him about the local Cathedral. I went to the gospel. I had explained that by the time we arrived. I left him with a gospel tract.
The saxophone player wouldn’t take a gospel tract, but he was thinking. He did that because what I preached was clear. It was clear enough that he could understand.
What’s Wrong with the Russian Army?
Before the recent war between Russia and Ukraine, I heard a general assessment of the Russian army, it was dominant. Military experts feared that the Russian army could steamroll through Europe. I heard this from connected people, reporting what leaders told them.
Vladimir Putin projected high confidence. He talked big. He gave a fearsome impression of what his military could do. Russia seemed a weak economy and shrinking, depressed population with a still very competitive military capacity.
The war with Ukraine tells a different story about the Russian military. It has inflicted damage on Ukraine, but it looks like it’s losing to what most everyone calls an inferior power.
What is wrong with the Russian army? The ineffectiveness relates to the Russian culture. Atheistic communism devastated Russia. Before that and after, Russian Orthodoxy is an empty false religion that does not preach a true gospel. God’s Word is not the authority for the Russian Orthodox and it rejects salvation through Christ alone by grace alone.
Russian beliefs undermine Russian character. The personal traits needed for military strength come from the internal, spiritual fortitude of the soldiers. Russia does not fight out of true conviction, substantiated by transcendent values. Soldiers need a basis for laying everything on the line. Without an inward confidence that someone possesses through righteous motivation, he will lack the necessary components to succeed in such conflict.
As I describe to you what’s wrong with the Russian army, the same undermining attributes characterize nations of the West, including the United States. People in the UK lack confidence in the overall quality of their men to stand and fight. These nations lack the masculinity and moral authority to maintain their military strength as well. Internal corruption portends the decline and fall of any nation more than external reasons. They rot from the inside out. Without God, no nation can sustain itself.
The Tale of Two Archbishops of Canterbury
Most, I believe, would argue that Thomas Becket is the most famous archbishop of Canterbury. More than any other figure, he put Canterbury itself on the map in England. Fame came from his brutal death at the hands of knights of King Henry II.
In his late thirties, early forties, Becket, not even a Roman Catholic priest, served Henry II as the chancellor of England. When the opportunity came to insert a new Archbishop at Canterbury, Henry was happy to choose Becket. Henry II brought many important features to English civil rights and a just legal system. He had no jurisdiction over the misbehavior of Roman Catholic leaders. He expected Becket to help him with that.
Becket instead defended the power of Roman Catholicism against state intervention, even in criminal cases. Years Becket antagonized the King. Then Henry said aloud in his knight’s presence, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Whatever their original intentions, four of the knights killed Becket on December 29, 1170.
Monks took blood of Becket poured out in the Cathedral, mixed it with water, and used it for the anointing of the sick. Apparently men witnessed miracles. In stain glass at Canterbury is a portrayal of a death bed where the man drank the concoction and vomited out the cause. He walked away well.
The Pope venerated Becket as saint and martyr. Thousands took a pilgrimage to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Becket. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about these pilgrims in Canterbury Tales. King Henry did penance of hundreds of blows with a rod. A memorial still decorates the place where Becket died in Canterbury Cathedral. A candle remains perpetually lit where Becket’s shrine once sat.
Almost no one cares about the death of another Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. He held that office during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and shortly Mary I. Cranmer opposed the power of the Roman Catholic Church. He led the English Reformation. He wrote the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, the official liturgy for the Church of England. If you try to find the place in Oxford where Queen Mary, Roman Catholic “Bloody Mary,” executed him, it will not be easy.
Shortly before his execution, Cranmer said:
And now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death and to save my life if it might be; and that is all such bills which I have written or signed with mine own hand since my degradation: wherein I have written many things untrue. And foreasmuch as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall first be punished, for if I may come to the fire, it shall be first burned. And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy and anti-Christ, with all his false doctrine. And as for the Sacrament. . . .
As he died in the flames, burnt at the stake, he cried: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” Whatever Cranmer may have believed, he attempted to distinguish himself from Roman Catholicism at least and wrote the following in the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.
I don’t write this to advocate for the Church of England, just to provide a distinction between the way England treats these two Archbishops, even though the former was Roman Catholic.
The True God Versus a Made-Up One
God made man, but men also make their own god or gods. Only one God made man, but men have made many gods. The Bible also talks about this, listing names of various fictional gods invented by men. Among these are
Asherah, Astarte, Astaroth, Baal, Chemosh, Inanna, Marduk, and Moloch. There is a reason the first of the ten commandments (Exodus 20:3) says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Men make-up gods. The Bible shows that men make up separate gods, very often regional ones, who represent a local people. Since the completion of scripture, men made up other gods, very often representing separate religions. Among these are Allah, Brahma, Eshwara, Krishna, Shakti, Shiva, The Tao, and Vishu. Roman and Greek mythology presented Jupiter and Zeus.
Perhaps something more sinister than different gods is using the biblical names for God, except with a different one. God is more than a name. Many of you reading know that sects in Christianity have different beliefs about who God is. They all use the same designations. For instance, they might say, “Holy Spirit,” but they mean an active force in the world, not a Person. Joseph Smith, first prophet of LDS, taught that God was once a man on another planet before being exalted to Godhood.
Professors of Christianity today conform a God in their imaginations to their own liking. In Colossians 3:5, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Mortify . . . covetousness, which is idolatry.” Their God has the same name as the biblical God. So does Jesus.
Instead of abstaining from lust, professing believers make up a God who permits it or wants it. He desires it in worship. This is another way of changing “the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like to corruptible man” (Romans 1:23).
Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:16, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” True saints are a “holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).
Among Many Great Prayers by David in Psalm 119: Related to Affliction
Many verses of Psalm 119 are prayers from David to God concerning the Word of God. The psalms were sung, but they are prayers sung, which provide examples or wording for prayers to God. You can put your finger down in almost any section to find these prayers.
119:10, “O let me not wander from thy commandments.”
119:18, “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”
119:26, “Teach me thy statutes.”
119:35, “Make me to go in the path of thy commandments.”
119:36, “Incline my heart unto thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.”
I ask you to consider Psalm 119:49-50 as another example.
49 Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope. 50 This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.
David asks God to remember what He had said in HIs Word to David, his servant, that had caused David to hope. In other words, “Dear Father, fulfill the promises you made to me, the ones that help me get through difficult situations.”
Having faith in God is having faith in what God said. David could continue steadfast in living for God based upon what He said.
Those promises gave David comfort in his affliction. During affliction, what God said comforts us. They give the affliction meaning or purpose. They provide a right way to think about the affliction.
God’s Word quickened David in his affliction. It revitalized him, got him going, kept him on track, or gave him the boost he needed to continue steadfast. God uses His Word to raise up His saints from a deadness of depression during affliction.
Eras of Miracles and Divine Interventionism
Where my wife and I are staying, we have waited at one spot four different times for someone to pick us up and every time there on the top of a short brick wall sat a tiny toy figure. Three different days and four rides the same toy person was there. I guessed it was a Star Wars figure. Looking more closely, it seemed a young woman in a Star Wars-like outfit. In what I know of the Star Wars story, it was probably a jedi and maybe the one the story calls “the last jedi.”
If you don’t know the Star Wars story, because you’ve seen none of it, good for you, but let me explain. In a fictional cosmos, the jedi are warriors with supernatural power, who fight for what is called the light side of the force as opposed to the dark side. This fiction hearkens to God on the light side and Satan on the dark side. According to the fiction, the force connotes to something like a pantheistic view of God in which he is not a person, but some kind of mystical power. The fiction speaks of an existence of God, albeit a false one. This supernaturalism is crucial to the explanation of everything that happens in Star Wars fiction.
In the Star Wars story, only a few characters possess supernatural power to use either for evil or for good. Those without that power find themselves often in need of the abilities or gifts of those special individuals. Over aeons of time, certain ones through the story uniquely, even more greatly tap into the light side or the dark side of this supernatural force. These individuals come along once in a very long time with very special significance and they are usually prophesied. The needy natural ones place their hope in the coming of those to deliver them.
Fictional prophet-like characters predict the coming of the few supernatural characters, very often just one, with very special power. These prophets receive revelations from the same supernatural power, which is apparently God, and they know what will happen in the future. The spread of these prophesies over a fictional cosmos results in its people looking for the coming of these superior, supernatural figures, which will change the course of history.
I write all this to say that in general people who know the Star Wars story accept eras of supernatural intervention in their fictional cosmos. It makes sense to them. They agree both with the existence of supernatural power that works through men and that once in a great while this same supernatural power raises up a prophesied person who can use the power. In other words, they accept eras of miracles. They recognize the continuity of a natural world accompanied by rare times, moments, periods, or ages of supernatural intervention.
In a fictional Star Wars world, the divine always works to maintain and sustain, but also intervenes in a unique way. An unprecedented person comes along, who is not normal. He is far from normal and no one has been seen like him in ages. The maintaining and sustaining are continuity. They are normative. The rare one, however, is not. This is discontinuity.
Scripture gives (see especially 2 Peter) as a major reason for apostasy, a departure from the faith and the truth, the scarcity of evidence of divine intervention. God gives every good thing. He always intervenes in a providential manner, His good graces seen everywhere and at all times. God also though intervenes at times in unique ways. Men say because of the sparsity of the latter, they can’t receive the Lord. He must show Himself more to their liking. I call these showings, crown performances. If God doesn’t bring them a crown performance, they have their excuse for not believing.
God has intervened in a special, unique, and miraculous way throughout history. However, this kind of dealing is far less frequent. The word “miracle” is most often the same Greek word translated “sign.” Something isn’t a sign if it is the same as anything else that occurs on an everyday basis.
Through scripture, you can see eras of miracles. They mark extraordinary times and people, and these occasions, which are very rare through history, make a unique point, one that stands out very much. Certain names are associated in the Bible with these eras, including Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles.
One figure stands out above all of those functioning with supernatural power in an era of miracles: the Lord Jesus Christ. If these operations were normal occurrences, they would not stand out, and neither would Jesus. Jesus must stand out and He does stand out. He will show Himself in even greater glory when He comes the second time and in fulfillment of further prophecy. He is the greatest figure in all of world history.
Ballot Harvesting, the Big Lie, and the 2020 Election
Just to be clear to you reading, I don’t think President Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Even if I can’t show you the evidence yet, it’s still what I think. Most who join me in thinking the same thing don’t have access to what they would need to prove it. Others are already proving it. I hope they do.
I did not take the tack of blaming computerized voting systems, the Dominion voting machines. It sounded very fishy and I still think people might prove people rigged that too. However, I pointed to the ballot harvesting made easier with the use of the Pandemic, the strategy of not letting a good crisis go to waste.
President Biden received 81 million votes, but I don’t think he got them legally. Like many others, I say “no way” he got that many votes. He did the least I’ve ever seen to win an election. William McKinley had his “front porch campaign.” Joe Biden had his basement camera campaign. Trump filled arenas and Biden very often couldn’t fill classrooms. How did President Biden get enough votes? Ballot harvesting.
So much corruption went into a Biden win in 2020. The media concealed and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. The media and big parts of the government helped and promoted the Russian collusion hoax. Tech giants like Zuckerberg helped Biden in likely illegal ways. The Trump impeachment was a fraud. The media shielded the country from Biden family crimes. Without all of those, even with ballot harvesting, maybe Trump wins. On the other hand, with all of those and also without ballot harvesting, probably Trump wins.
I’m not saying President Trump ran the perfect campaign, but those who blame the election loss on Trump, this including recently Attorney General William Barr, I think they’re very wrong. The things that Barr and others like him say lost Trump the election are also what won Trump the election. You can’t separate the two. People come out for Trump because they like what others say lose Trump an election.
In the background of Elon Musk buying Twitter is Trump ousted from Twitter. The bigness of the conversation about Musk and free speech connects to Trump canning by social media. This doesn’t even start with the search algorithms that send people to biased locations, helping promote the choices of the tech titans.
To remind you, ballot harvesting occurs when operatives essentially vote for massive numbers of people who would not vote otherwise. They fill out the ballots for people who would not vote. Many more votes could come from nursing homes and other large institutions. This also explains the opposition to voter identification by those who want ballot harvesting. They call this Democracy. If you do not like the corruption, you oppose democracy or better, you’re a threat to democracy.
Part of hiding the crime and corruption came and comes by calling the investigation of or even accusation of crime and corruption, the Big Lie. Those who say people stole the election are co-conspirators of the Big Lie. If someone says the other side stole the election, they join the Big Lie. The allegation of the Big Lie is a Big Lie. The Big Lie isn’t a lie. The lie is the claim of a Big Lie. It is just another lie among many.
Even if entering the capital on January 6, 2020 was the wrong move, the treatment or coverage of January 6 is part of the cover-up of a stolen election. Many reading here probably know the possibly true story that government operatives joined and helped lead the crowd into the capitol that day. Whatever happened, they helped push it into something they could use to conceal all the real corruption.
You may have heard the terminology, “useful idiot.” It is technical for being used, really manipulated, by the wrong side in propaganda necessary to promote the wrong cause and ideas. If you cooperate with those accusing the Big Lie, you’re useful to them. You help them silence those uncovering the truth.
Like me, you might be thinking there’s no way Joe Biden got 81 million votes in the 2020 election. Maybe he got those votes. It’s just that someone else filled out the ballots than those whose name was on them.
Simeon and Anna As Examples of Looking and Waiting for the Coming Lord
Believing in Jesus Christ is looking for Him. If you are not looking for Him, then you are not believing in Him. He is real. What is looking and waiting for Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ is coming back. That is His plan for the earth. True believers fit into that plan. They want that.
Believing in Jesus Christ means believing in His Person, receiving Him as Lord, God, and Savior. John 20:31 explains it as “believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and the believing yet might have life through His name.” “Christ” carries with it the three: Lord, God, and Savior. You believe that “Jesus is the Christ.”
Part of being “the Christ” is coming back and setting up a kingdom on the earth as part of the completion of salvation. Salvation includes the kingdom. When a believer lives His life, He lives it looking forward to the Christ setting up His kingdom. The coming of Christ arrives between this life and the kingdom. No kingdom comes without the coming Lord.
How do we believe in the Christ? By looking and waiting for the coming Lord. We have examples of those looking and waiting for the first coming of the Lord. We don’t know almost anything about the life of Simeon except that he looked and waited for the coming Lord, which is described in Luke 2:25-35:
25 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.
26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,
28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,
29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.
34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;
35 (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.
Simeon looked for the “Lord’s Christ.” This is the true Christ, the one the Lord would anoint as King over all the earth in fulfillment of the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7:12-13). Simeon knew he would see Christ, but we should still take this belief as a model. We know that Simeon’s looking changed his behavior, because he was “just and devout,” the former being toward man and the latter toward God. True faith endures. Simeon kept looking and waiting for the Lord’s Christ, because true faith endures. Enduring faith in the coming Lord sustains just and devout living.
The Greek word “devout” is eulabes, a compound Greek word with eu (“good”) labes (from lambano, “taking” or “receiving”), which means “taking hold well.” This is to be careful and sure in the reception. Someone who stops looking and waiting for the coming Lord is not being careful or sure in his reception. He is not taking hold well. Simeon did take hold well and then he literally took hold of the Lord’s Christ in his own arms.
Looking and waiting for the Lord’s Christ in a major way means identification. Someone has to be right about who the Christ is. He must take the right view about the history of the world: how it started, what went wrong, and what the future plan is. This is the message of scripture and someone must acquiesce to the Bible as God’s Word and then surrender to its message. It centers on the Christ. If someone sufficiently ignores the message of the Bible, doesn’t humble himself before it, not adequately recognizing its divine origin, he will not look and wait for the Christ.
Looking and waiting for the Lord’s Christ is more than just identification, but it is at least that. If you get the wrong identification, then you will miss the Christ. Your Christ must be the true Christ. He can’t be a Christ of your own choosing, but the actual, true Christ predicted in scripture. That’s the one for which Simeon looked and waited.
Anna provides an example too for looking and waiting for the coming Lord in Luke 2:36-38:
36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity;
37 And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.
38 And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.
Even though Anna’s life dramatically changed with the death of her husband, when she was very young and only seven years married, she sustained purpose in life by looking and waiting for the coming Lord. Her life wasn’t over. She still had much for which to live. She “looked for redemption in Jerusalem.” Jesus was that redemption.
For Anna, looking for that redemption in Jerusalem meant not departing from the temple and serving God with fastings and prayers. Like Simeon, she instantly recognized the Lord’s Christ and gave thanks. Only those thankful for the future kingdom, which is under Jesus as Lord, will look and wait for the coming Lord and that coming kingdom.
Simeon and Anna provide two good examples and looking and waiting for the coming Lord. The Lord is coming back. That expectation should drive all of us to a right belief and practice and affection.
Does God’s Justice Make You a Victim?
While at the gym I was listening to Leviticus and knowing the book of Lamentations, something struck me at the end of Leviticus about the justice of God. The next to the last chapter, Leviticus 26:18-22, say:
18 And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19 And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
20 And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.
21 And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me; I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.
22 I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.
I mention Lamentations, because this warning was at least fulfilled at the siege of Jerusalem, chronicled in Lamentations. Here are examples from the five chapters:
1:5 Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.
1:16 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.
2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
2:19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.
4:4 The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.
4:10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
5:13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
Maybe nothing stands out more than consequences affecting children. God listed many in Leviticus 26. The heavens will be as iron, meaning no rain, which turns the ground to brass. Land will not bring increase. Trees do not yield fruit. Multiple plagues come. Wild beasts rob families of their domestic animals and their children.
The Lamentation quotes focus on one aspect of the judgment, what occurs to the children. All the rest are in there, bookending the list of expectations.
Why do these things occur? The people do not listen to God. They walk contrary to God. They do no obey Him.
The people are not victims. They caused this. They are responsible. The people suffer for unrighteousness.
Many times, thoughts begin with the imagination of victimhood. Before someone gets there, he should consider whether he listens to God, walks contrary to God, or does not obey Him. In Lamentations, God says through Jeremiah that He brings these consequences out of His faithfulness.
God’s justice doesn’t make you a victim.
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