Men Have Forgotten God

“The joy of our hearts has ceased;

our dancing has been turned to mourning.

The crown has fallen from our head;

woe to us, for we have sinned!

For this our heart has become sick,

for these things our eyes have grown dim,

for Mount Zion which lies desolate;

jackals prowl over it.

But you, O LORD, reign forever;

your throne endures to all generations.

Why do you forget us forever,

why do you forsake us for so many days?

Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored!

Renew our days as of old—

unless you have utterly rejected us,

and you remain exceedingly angry with us.” [1]

“Woe to us, for we have sinned!” These words must surely qualify as being among the saddest recorded in the entirety of Scripture. Immediately before giving voice to this sorrowful confession, the writer had cried out, “The crown has fallen from our head.” Israel had enjoyed a privileged position, a warm relationship with the Lord GOD, a relationship marked by God’s rich blessings. As so often proves to be the case, they did not realise, or at least appreciate, the blessing they had received. The people had taken that relationship for granted. They had treated God casually at best, setting Him aside as though He was unimportant or inconsequential. In acting thusly, they had begun to presume against God.

In the film “Judgment at Nuremberg,” there is a closing scene showing the great stadium where Hitler had held so many rallies for the German people. As one of the judges presiding over the Nuremberg Trials is pictured walking through the now empty stadium, the thought kept intruding into my consciousness, “Woe to us, for we have sinned.”

More than forty years before this present date, the justly celebrated Russian author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, presented the Templeton Prize Lecture. In that lecture, entitled “Godlessness: The First Step to the Gulag,” [2] Solzhenitsyn revealed a startling truth. He opened that lecture with these sobering words. “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Solzhenitsyn’s words were startling because they were a pointed warning to his western listeners.

Solzhenitsyn hit a raw nerve with this speech. What he said in that lecture was vigorously rejected by many of the educated class; few leaders in the west wanted to grapple with the destructive seeds they were planting. Western elites appear to have expected to hear a speech that spoke of their superiority to the dire conditions found behind the Iron Curtain. Instead, they were forced to look into the depths of contemporary western culture where they would witness the soul-destroying void that holds sway in the halls of power. Such compelling views were unwelcomed then, and the situation has only intensified, having created even more resentment in western elites in the ensuing years.

The Apostle of Love has written, “This is the message we have heard from [Jesus Christ] and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” [1 JOHN 1:5-10].

We are sinful creatures, sold under sin. Even when we are redeemed by the Saviour and His Spirit lives in us, we struggle to do what is right and honourable. You will recall Paul’s review of our brokenness when he writes, “We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am merely human, sold as a slave to sin. I don’t understand what I am doing. For I don’t practice what I want to do, but instead do what I hate. Now if I practice what I don’t want to do, I am admitting that the Law is good. As it is, I am no longer the one who is doing it, but it is the sin that is living in me.

“For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. For I don’t do the good I want to do, but instead do the evil that I don’t want to do. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am no longer the one who is doing it, but it is the sin that is living in me.