“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.
“So I find this to be a principle: when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. For I delight in the Law of God in my inner being, but I see in my body a different principle waging war with the Law in my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin that exists in my body” [ROMANS 7:14-23 ISV]. That’s the dreadful condition that holds each of us captive, forcing us to struggle against the downward pull of the old nature!
Our educated elite here in the west no longer believe in sin, and thus they excuse sinful actions and sinful attitudes as mere foibles, a minor flaw to be ignored as we progress toward an ever-better condition. Unfortunately, their view is largely adopted by default throughout most of society. However, we who are twice born know that we struggle against the downward pull of our own brokenness. It is as the Apostle has stated in another passage in the Letter to the Christians in Rome. Paul has written, “God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
“For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit. For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace, because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” [ROMANS 8:3-8 NET 2nd].
Wow, that is dark! Few occupying the pews of our churches want to hear such negative talk. We console ourselves that we are nice people. We set a standard for ourselves and we assure ourselves that we aren’t so bad. We compare ourselves to others whom we deem “bad,” and we are hard-pressed to imagine that God would not accept us. But the Apostle has set the standard that destroys our excuses, telling us that if our outlook is informed by the old nature we cannot please God. In fact, our old nature is hostile to God! We are sinful at our best!
And yet, for all this, few in our contemporary world are willing to admit that our society has a “sin problem.” We no longer accept responsibility for the actions that we know to be harmful to society. Alcoholics are not responsible for drunken escapades—they are sick and can’t help themselves. Drug addicts just need help; they’re not responsible for the cravings that drive them to destroy themselves. People destroy their marriage to pursue the artificial world created by porn, but they are only acting as they do because they can’t be satisfied with the spouse with whom God blessed them. Language degenerates daily because we just can’t express ourselves as strongly as we want.
Our children suffer from strange diseases that were unknown a generation past—we excuse their unwillingness to discipline themselves. Teachers are too busy caring for the social condition of students and thus unable to teach life skills such as reading and writing. Politicians promote deviance while ignoring commonsense safety features endangering all of us. “Woe to us, for we have sinned.” Our society is broken and our culture has degenerated leaving us exposed to disaster that must surely fall upon us.
Knowing our condition, knowing our brokenness, knowing our bent to walk away from God, what else can we say other than, “Woe to us, for we have sinned.” I could gain considerable sympathy for this statement if I was to apply it exclusively to those who are outside of the Faith. Certainly, most professing Christians would agree, howbeit such agreement would be given reluctantly by some, if the statement was restricted to those outside the Faith. However, it is startling to note that the woeful cry escapes the lips of God’s prophet and is delivered on behalf of all who were then dwelling in Judah. Thus, the statement that I have delivered must be applicable to each of us, especially we who call ourselves by the Name of the Son of God.
THE THREAT ARISING FROM SIN AGAINST HOLY 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!”
[LAMENTATIONS 5:15-16]
“Go to hell!” This is the ultimate dismissal delivered by any individual. It is as though the one making the rude dismissal is severing from that individual to whom the crude remark was made any possibility of grace. To make such a statement, one is saying that he or she wants no mercy ever to be shown to the one being demeaned, wishing rather than the recipient of that disrespectful wish will be forever banished from the goodness of God. And the words are usually spoken in the white heat of anger at something another person may have said or done. Speaking thusly is not only the epitome of harshness, but also a statement of extreme hopelessness. Speaking in such a graceless manner reveals our arrogance, as though we have appointed ourselves to be the Judge of mankind, attempting to usurp the position of God.
We do well to remember the teaching we have received from James, the half-brother of our Lord, who has written, “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor” [JAMES 4:11-12]?
And we know that the One Judge is the Son of God. You may remember that Jesus testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” [JOHN 5:25-29].
I caution all who are saved to be cautious to avoid even imagining that we can judge another. We are not even capable of judging ourselves! Do you not remember how the Apostle said, “With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God” [1 CORINTHIANS 4:3-5].
God warned our first parents that sin brings death. As a follower of the Son of God, as one who is born from above, I would do a disservice to grace if I failed to warn all who hear that this is serious business. Neither may I minimise the eternal consequences of sin. We are created to live forever, and yet the Creator warned Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” [GENESIS 2:16-17].
I suppose someone could argue that our first parents didn’t die. But it is obvious that a great change took place immediately when they disobeyed the Lord GOD. Listen to the divine recounting of what happened that awful day. “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.’ He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.’ Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate’” [GENESIS 3:6-13].
Immediately, they experience separation from the God Who gave them life, the God Who loved them. And that is the definition of death; death is separation. Physical death is separation of the spirit from the body. Spiritual death is separation of the soul from God Who is life. Eternal death is separation from God, separation from all that is good and holy forever and ever.
God longs for communion with mankind, but our sinful condition separates us from God. He cannot permit in to come into His presence. Therefore, it will be necessary for God Himself to make a way for man to come into His presence. Man cannot make himself righteous; we cannot be good enough to set aside our sinful condition. What we could not do, God has done for us, sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh with the task of presenting His life as an atonement for sin. Christ Jesus, the Holy Son of God, presented His life as a sacrifice for sin so that any person can be forgiven of sin, cleansed from all unrighteousness, and brought into the Family of God.
Listen as the Spirit of God explains what has taken place. “When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
“Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.’ And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
“Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” [HEBREWS 9:11-28].
THE HIGH COST OF SOCIETAL SIN AGAINST HOLY GOD —
“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.”
[LAMENTATIONS 5:17-18]
Okay, we have talked about the ultimate disposition for those who leave this life without hope and without grace, pointing out the provision God has made to deliver anyone from judgement, teaching us “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [ROMANS 10:13]. Freedom from guilt, freedom from judgement, freedom to be all that God meant you to be is offered through faith in the Risen Son of God. But what is the cost of sin to us here and now? What is the cost to the nation that exalts their own importance over honouring God? What is the cost to the society that so esteems their own being that they neglect the Lord?
I waded through the morass detailing the destiny of the lost and cautioning against pronouncing judgement as though we are the Judge, to emphasise the ultimate threat to all who die without having received the salvation offered in Christ the Lord. We remember the terrifying warning Jesus delivered early in His ministry in Judea. He taught, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” [MATTHEW 7:21-23].
It is one thing to warn someone that he or she stands in danger of being judged and sent to hell by the Judge of all mankind; it is quite another thing for any of us—especially if we are a follower of Christ—to wish that anyone would be sent away from the love of God. We may have heard someone say, or we may have found ourselves saying, something to the effect that Adolf Hitler is in hell. Or perhaps the name the name of some other notorious person who is now dead was given, indicating assurance that the individual is in hell. In light of the Scriptures cited and others that could have been given, I will remind you that you and I are not the judge. Christ the Lord is the judge of the heart, and He shall pronounce that ultimate sentence on those who pass into eternity having never received the grace of God and having rejected the mercies that are extended to all who will receive those mercies. We do well to possess a strong measure of humility about this business of judgement and the destiny of anyone.
There is an ultimate cost to sin that has never received forgiveness, but what is often overlooked is that there is an immediate cost to sin that is often ignored until it is too late. The text speaks of the absence of joy that was perhaps once known, speaks of dancing that has been transformed into mourning, and speaks of the crown that once graced the head having fallen. The prophet is describing a woeful state of affairs for the nation. Sin had destroyed the people.
We do not need to imagine how sin destroys individuals—we know how sin destroys individuals! Gluttony imposes a health risk on us, many times removing us from the joy of life far sooner than we should be taken. Drinking alcohol can saddle us with the threat of addiction that will destroy relationships, or perhaps it will expose us to health risks such as esophageal cancer, colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, and multiple other cancers. [3] Sexual promiscuity destroys intimacy and exposes us to a host of diseases, some of which are incurable. The warning given by the Apostle still holds true, “The wages of sin is death” [ROMANS 6:23a].
And though individual sin brings immediate and lasting consequences, contaminating relationship and imposing impacts far beyond our own being, there are cultural sins that contaminate entire societies, subjecting those societies to immediate judgement and crushing, long-term consequences.
In “The Message,” we see a dire warning. “Remember our history, friends, and be warned. …But just experiencing God’s wonder and grace didn’t seem to mean much—most of them were defeated by temptation during the hard times in the desert, and God was not pleased.
“The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did—'First the people partied, then they threw a dance.’ We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them.
“These are all warning markers—DANGER!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were” [1 CORINTHIANS 10:1, 5-11].
Don’t overlook the dreadful truth that those nations then occupying the Promised Land were to be destroyed because of endemic sin, ubiquitous and of the grossest nature that was tolerated by those societies. Long before those ancient societies were destroyed, the LORD promised Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age” [GENESIS 15:13-15]. Take special note of what follows this promise was delivered to the patriarch, “And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” [GENESIS 15:16]. God holds societies, entire cultures, to a standard of righteousness. When societies fail, judgement falls.
This responsibility will continue until the final judgements are meted out on the earth. Listen as the pronouncement against Babylon is pronounced toward the end of the Great Tribulation. The Revelator writes, “I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
Pay her back as she herself has paid back others,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,
since in her heart she says,
“I sit as a queen,
I am no widow,
and mourning I shall never see.”’”
[REVELATION 18:4-7].
The judgement poured out on Babylon in that coming day is delivered because that world entity will be revealed to be unrepentant, continuing in arrogance that leads that world power to imagine that that world entity is the final arbiter of what is, and what is not, worthy of judgement. Like all who imagine they will never be held accountable, they discover at last that God alone is the Judge.
God held to account the societies that had long inhabited the Promised Land, using Israel to execute judgement on them. Speaking through Moses, the LORD said, “When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall serve the LORD your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you” [EXODUS 23:23-33].
As Moses was preparing the people of Israel to enter into the land that God had promised, he commanded the people, “In the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God” [DEUTERONOMY 20:16-18].
Almost sixty years ago, Ruth Bell Graham, wife of the well-known evangelist, Billy Graham, whilst reviewing the manuscript of a book he was then writing, “World Aflame,” commented, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” [4] If conditions in the United States were that bad then, how much worse are the conditions defining the nation today!
In 1965 there was no government sponsored efforts to induce the youth of the nation to declare themselves to be a sex different from when they were born.
In 1965 language had not degenerated to the point the people could openly use the most intimate act of love as an explicative.
In 1965 men respected women and would not use coarse language in the presence of a woman.
In 1965 openly advocating for and engaging in simulated sexual activity in public would have ensured arrest and conviction on a morals charge.
In 1965, open mockery and ridicule of the Christian Faith would have brought swift censure from almost any citizen. Churches did not need to lock their doors or put bars on the windows because people respected a church as a sacred place.
In 1965 teenagers could still take a rifle to school, leaving the firearm unattended in the back of their pickup because they planned to go hunting after school. They were allowed to do this because school shootings were non-existent; youth were trained to respect one another.
In 1965 parents ensured that their children showed respect to their elders, to their teachers, and to those who served as public servants. The child who did not show such respect for others would not go unpunished for disrespect.
In 1965 movies and television shows still had standards debarring debased language and refusing even to show suggested immoral actions.
The difference between that distant day and this present day is perhaps exemplified by referral to something that the Apostle wrote in his final missive to the pastor of the church in Ephesus. Paul wrote, “Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” [2 TIMOTHY 3:1-7].
Today, powerful politicians divert millions of dollars from programs meant to ensure safety for the populace even while encouraging non-citizens to ignore the law in order to take up residence in our nation. Cities burn from lack of water pressure while the fire departments spend precious resources to promote “woke” DEI policies. Homeless people populate even our northern communities and the taxes of the citizenry are misappropriated to keep a lid on the churning pot as the fire burns hotter and hotter. Powerful politicians use lawfare to beat citizens into compliance with the unjust dicta of parliamentarians who do not believe they serve the people but rather imagine that the people serve them. Politicians multiply petty rules and regulations that will ensure they can hold onto power. It is all played out before the eyes of everyone, and the media work overtime to ensure that the powerful remain in power and those deemed to be outsiders are kept away from the levers of power. But God sees! And the people get what they deserve as judgement draws ever nearer because no one cries out, “Enough!”
RESTORATION AFTER SINNING AGAINST HOLY GOD —
“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.”
[LAMENTATIONS 5:19-22]
Amid God’s judgement, the Prophet looks up to remind himself, and all who read his words, that the LORD reigns. God will not forget His beloved people, though they are permitted to suffer along with the unrighteous. Because of this confidence in the Lord GOD, the Prophet pleads for God to restore His people and to renew their days. In the midst of devastation, the people of God can be assured that God will not forget His people. He will remember His promise to bless those who look to Him.
Only a brief while before the judgements of God had fallen on Judah, another prophet of God was given a message of hope. Joel delivered that message in the little book he penned, and what he wrote encouraged the faithful in his day. But the message God gave reached far beyond that moment to provide hope centuries later. And the divine message gives hope to multitudes to this day. Listen to that ancient prophet and witness the hope God gives.
“Be glad, O children of Zion,
and rejoice in the LORD your God,
for he has given the early rain for your vindication;
he has poured down for you abundant rain,
the early and the latter rain, as before.
“The threshing floors shall be full of grain;
the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
I will restore to you the years
that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent among you.
“You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
and praise the name of the LORD your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I am the LORD your God and there is none else.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit.
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls” [JOEL 2:23-32].
God does not forget His own dearly loved people. God is in the business of empowering His people to this day. God still receives all who look to Him, granting them deliverance as they turn to Him. He does this, even though there is coming a day when His wrath will yet be poured out on an unbelieving world. Though the current dogma wants to believe that the natural world is governed by forces that are capricious and unpredictable, the Lord God warns us that the world lies under His purview. Moreover, God is just and He is righteous. Therefore, He must judge sin, holding all mankind to account for the sin they perpetuate.
Nevertheless, for all who will respond to His grace, the promise of the Risen Lord of Glory remains, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” [ROMANS 10:9-10]. Though judgements will fall on the godless world, the promise of merciful shelter and divine grace is extended to all who will receive it. All who believe the message of the Risen Saviour will be delivered from God’s ultimate wrath. The Lord promises, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” [ROMANS 10:13]. Amen.
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] Aleksandre Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag,” Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London), reproduced in: Chris Banescu, “Men Have Forgotten God – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn,” The Voice Crying in the Wilderness, July 5, 2011,. https://orthodoxnet.com/blog/2011/07/men-have-forgotten-god-alexander-solzhenitsyn/, accessed 20 August 2024
[3] Brant Jones, “Types of Cancer Caused by Drinking Alcohol,” verywell health, July 14, 2022, https://www.verywellhealth.com/types-of-cancer-caused-by-drinking-alcohol-513626, accessed 10 January 2025; Danielle Underferth and Gina Van Thomme, “12 things to know about alcohol and cancer,” MD Anderson Cancer Center, April 22, 2024, https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/does-alcohol-cause-cancer.h00-159383523.html, accessed 10 January 2025; Allison Aubrey, “Drinking alcohol increases the risk for at least 7 types of cancer, new report shows,” NPR, January 3, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/01/03/nx-s1-5246590/drinking-alcohol-increases-the-risk-for-at-least-7-types-of-cancer-new-report-shows, accessed 10 January 2025
[4] Billy Graham, “Billy Graham: ‘My Heart Aches for America,’” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, July 19, 2012, Billy Graham: 'My Heart Aches for America', accessed 10 January 2025
