How Long, O Lord? How Long? Series

When the child of God sins, that child knows that God does not ignore that sin. Because He loves us, the LORD disciplines His people, and His discipline will not be pleasant. God’s discipline was never intended to be pleasant. Divine discipline is intended to impose … well, discipline! Indeed, we who follow the Christ do well to recall what is written concerning God’s discipline in the Letter to Hebrew Christians. That writer instructs the one who would serve the Risen Lord of Glory, “Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

nor be weary when reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,

and chastises every son whom he receives.’

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” [HEBREWS 12:5-11]. [1]

And the truth is that we who are called by the Name of the Lord do forget the exhortation that addresses us as sons. We do forget that discipline is unpleasant at the time, and we become so focused on the discipline that we cease looking to what discipline accomplishes in us. We quit anticipating what results following training through the arduous process of divine discipline.

For all who have been trained in God’s School, we receive a degree that shows that we excel in the peaceful fruit of righteousness. We don’t receive a framed sheepskin that we can hang on the wall, but those who know us recognise that we have earned standing in their estimate and in the eyes of God because we completed the training. One who wears the uniform of a US Marine demonstrates to everyone who sees him that he earned the right to wear that uniform. The Marine who wears a Medal of Honor ribbon around his neck is recognised as one who performed heroically and meritoriously under fire against a determined enemy. Those who know the significance of this ribbon recognise that the one wearing the ribbon has earned the right to the honour.

In a comparable manner, the child of God who has endured God’s discipline will be recognised as one who earned the right to be respected by fellow saints. That one will never demand respect, and because he has completed the divine course of discipline, that one will never be overbearing or oppressive. Others will recognise that the one who has endured discipline is indeed worthy of respect.

NATIONAL TRAGEDIES FALLING —

“Remember, O LORD, what has befallen us;

look, and see our disgrace!

Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,

our homes to foreigners.”

[LAMENTATIONS 5:1-2]

Jeremiah provides a detailed recounting of the tragedy that befell Israel because the LORD had delivered the nation into the hands of the Chaldeans. These poems do this through a series of vignettes looking at the suffering of the people, always keeping the reason for their suffering in the forefront of the reader’s mind. The nation had brought this suffering down upon their own heads through refusing to honour the Lord God while pursuing wickedness. It is not pleasant to think about an enemy conquering the nation, to think of our culture being overthrown, to imagine our world turned upside down. Whether the culture is defeated by a foreign military, or whether economic ruin is visited on our culture, or whether the nation loses stature in the eyes of other nations, the inevitable loss of freedom is never a desirable prospect. And if merely thinking about being bested by a foreign power is distressing, how much worse must it be to suffer defeat!

In this concluding chapter, God’s prophet is not ignoring the reason these multiplied tragedies have been visited on the people, he is simply recounting the tragedies the nation has had to endure following the Babylonian conquest and the subsequent occupation of the land. It is not as though God was unaware of all that had happened—God had caused these tragedies to fall upon Israel because of national sin. And the people knew that what had happened was their own fault. When God judges a people, they do not need to guess at the reason they are suffering. And in this instance, the people were suffering because divine judgement had been visited on the nation, as they well knew.