CHARLO, New Brunswick, May 15, 2024 – Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations was written during the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the first temple in 586 B.C. It could just as aptly have been written for the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the second temple in 70 A.D. or the fall of Christendom and destruction of the worldly church, which is happening now, albeit in slow motion. I assume the date that will eventually be hung on the fall of the worldly church will be the date when Vatican City is annihilated.

I will not be lamenting that annihilation, but I will also not be rejoicing. We are not to rejoice over God’s vengeance but to quietly stand back and let it happen.

If you haven’t read Lamentations for a while, I urge you to read it again. Moses in Deuteronomy 28 warned the children of Israel of the curses that will befall them if they purposely turn their back on God, and Lamentations describes the fulfillment of those curses in gory detail. (For a description of the destruction of the second temple, read Josephus.) In a nutshell – God himself fights against his own people. You do not want to be at the receiving end of God’s perfect weaponry. You do not want God as your perfect enemy. There is nothing and no-one worse than that.

But Lamentations is not all doom and gloom. Like Deuteronomy 28, there is a glimmer of hope in remembering the blessings that are poured out on the obedient and on the sincerely repentant. There is hope in repentance if the repentant humbly accept their punishment as justified and follow up their repentance with sincere and enduring obedience, but only if they don’t leave it too late. We see in the utter annihilation of the two temples that “too late” is not an empty warning but rather a promise that is delivered to the many. The vast and overwhelming majority of what were once God’s people have perished, are perishing, and will perish as eternal enemies of God. In the end, they will be no more, just as the first and second temples are no more.

Lamentations is a sobering read, as is Deuteronomy 28. I read them both frequently as reminders not to veer to the left or to the right, but to walk straight on. I do not want God as my enemy; I want to keep him as my Heavenly Father forever. The kings and princes and prophets portrayed in Lamentations thought that God would defend them against their enemies because after all they were God’s people, weren’t they, and he’d fought for them before, so why wouldn’t he do it again? In thinking this way, they added the sin of presumption to all the other sins they’d piled higher than the idols of Egypt. They thought that “once God’s people, always God’s people”, but they were wrong.

It is not “once God’s people, always God’s people”, any more than it’s “once saved, always saved”. As Paul warns us, we’re to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, not with boasting and presumption. We’re to fear the Lord, not our enemies, lest we make an enemy of the Lord, because for us born-again believers, there’s no coming back from that.