Lamentations 4 – Good Friday

How long does it take for us to do the wrong things, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, to the wrong tune
until that wrong tune finally sounds “right”? In my experience, not very long.
We like to walk on the edge of sin, getting as close as we can and are increasingly drawn into that sin by becoming
familiar with it, like Eve and the forbidden fruit. Once acquainted, the wrong motivations and the wrong heart will
take care of the rest. Sin, like looking over steep cliff, can disorient you… with fatal consequences.
Doing a little bit of the ‘wrong’ thing is, hopefully, jarring and invites us to recoil and reset at a safe distance, but too
often and too quickly the human ability to rationalize our wrong behavior or wrong outcomes gives us justification
for slipping into any and all sins – even the sin of crucifying the Messiah!
Lamentations chapter 4 is the fourth poem in a series that starts with the fall of Jerusalem in Chapter 1, where a
covenant has been broken. Chapter two is more hopeful given that the Nation has a covenant with God and he is
merciful. Chapter three shows us that God’s wrath does not mean the utter destruction of hope, rather it provides a
seedbed of hope.
Lamentations 4 shows the depth of suffering that the Nation has experienced. Once children played in the streets,
but now they scavenge for food. Once there were wealthy people who ate sumptuously and now forage for scraps,
or worse. Once the ‘great and the good’ were robed in splendor but now they are in rags and the Anointed King – a
descendant of David – is taken away to captivity.
The Nation in captivity is Lo-Ammi (Not my people, Hosea 1:9) a temporary label of the Jews in captivity and
dispersion, but still one which is the worst of all possible scenarios for God’s Chosen People. The arrogance of
imagining that one is indestructible, even a Chosen One, is a fatal flaw and can turn preeminence into unthinkably
desperate or murderous impulses.
Just yesterday, I’m not sure if “yesterday” was my boyhood or 25 years ago or maybe 5 years ago, but I’m at that age
when “yesterday” is more of a feeling than a date… but just yesterday the West was unassailable. Sclerotic Europe
was not longer really Christian, but they were making progress and the USSR – Reagan’s Evil Empire – was
vanquished. America was the most powerful economic and military empire since Great Britain’s on which “the sun
never set” and was Christian, to boot!
Our children, for the most part, played care-free in the outdoors, walked the streets, and went to school in utter
safety. Our wealthy fed an economic engine that experienced no bounds and by 2014 had all but erased real
poverty in the world. Our leaders were the envy of the World with some moral sense of real right and wrong.
Today our young people experience burnout and teenage suicide is higher than any previous generation.
Today our economies and societies and military machines are showing the cracks and weaknesses of poor
leadership. We sacrifice children in the womb. We sacrifice women on the altar of Transgenderism. We sacrifice
morality on the altar of tolerance and diversity. We sacrifice so that the World, the Flesh, and the Devil will have
free reign, no bounds, no rules, no sin.
This is not new. Men have sacrificed the very most sacred thing of all – the Messiah – by thinking the wrong things,
marching to the wrong drum, speaking all the wrong lines, the wrong eyes on the wrong Prize, the wrong questions
answered by the wrong replies.
Today we have been playing the wrong “tune” of a godless World ruled by fallen Angel and we have kept on playing
it until it sounded “right”, but it isn’t “right” and the only hope we have is through God Incarnate: his death, his
resurrection, his gift of salvation, and his call to you and to me.
Don’t get this wrong: Answer the right and true and saving call of Christ Jesus… Right now.
Holy Week Devotional – Good Friday, April 7th 2023.
Closing Prayer: Father God, let us repent and leave our sin behind – renew our spirit – help us put on the New Man
and remember our calling to grow in the grace and knowledge of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Let all those in
the faith, strong or weak, far or near, gain courage and motivation from Christ’s example during his ministry, his
betrayal, his trial, his rejection, his death, and his resurrected glory! May we, too, be salt and light and grace as bring
his truth to a world determined to ‘buy the Lie’… and it is in Christ’s glorious name we ask these things. Amen.
New Testament reading: Colossians 3:1-17