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Good morning. If you will take
your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Lamentations. We're going to take a little
bit of a break from 1 Thessalonians to look at a passage in Lamentations
chapter 2. Our Scripture reading this morning
was from Romans chapter 10. It's at one and the same time
one of the most comforting chapters and one of the most terrifying
chapters. The Lord is near. We don't have to go to heaven
to drag Him down here. But with confession, we can have
Him. With confession, we can be saved. And yet, He concludes that chapter
with the dreadful reality that many hear. He stretches out His
hand to many and yet they will not come and will not hear. And
that's some of what we see in our verse this morning in Lamentations. Just to give you a little background,
Jeremiah, the prophet you know, prophesied for many, many years,
calling out to the people of God. After many generations of
wandering away from God, he's calling to them over and over
again to come, repent, and truly worship the Almighty. And they
reject Him, and they reject the Lord, and the Lord brings judgment. And in the book of Lamentations,
Jeremiah is now weeping over the judgment that comes. And
so that's what I want to speak to you about this morning, about
a most serious subject. I want to speak to you about
the awful and dreadful condition of mankind who receives the offers
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. hardens their heart and refuses
to come. Our text is the last part of
chapter 2 and verse 13. Lamentations 2, the very end
of verse 13 you see, for your ruin is spread wide as the sea,
who can heal you? For your ruin is spread wide
as the sea, who can heal you? Oh, God, we thank you for the
call of the Lord Jesus Christ to salvation. We thank you for
the reality of the gospel. We thank you for the life and
death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we thank
you that the word is near to us. And that you are faithful
to save all who call upon you. And we confess to you that our
hearts by nature are hardened and refuse to hear your call. And so we ask this morning, with
all sincerity, that your Holy Spirit would come and unstop
our ears and soften our hearts, give us new hearts, that we may
respond to your call and come to you as you have desired. In
Christ's name we pray, amen. Most people give little thought
to what an awful condition they are in because of sin. Hardly
giving any thought to the danger that they're in. And fewer still
give any thought to how they may be delivered from such an
awful condition and an awful state. I suppose if you were
to do a man-on-the-street type interview, most people would
say that they're not in so bad a shape and so bad an estate
and so bad a condition, but that with a little help and a little
religion and maybe a little civic goodness, everything will be
okay in the end. I'm not really so bad. There
are things that aren't exactly as they should be. But they're
not so bad that with a little help, everything will be okay. No great calamity. No great punishment
will affect me. That in the end, we will escape
the searching eye of Almighty God. That somehow my goodness
will outweigh all that's wrong with me. And God will take it
easy on me. that in the end he'll turn a
blind eye to our sin and overlook our transgressions. You might
hear answers from those man on the street interviews like, God
is like a gentle and kind grandfather. He sees no wrong. He indulges
the sins of his creation. God, they may say, will not deal
with us in anger and wrath. After all, everyone knows God
is love. So we'll be okay in the end.
There's no real need or urgency to deal with the sin in our life. But what I want to tell you this
morning is that all those who have not dealt with sin, even
the least sin in a biblical manner, are in a most dreadful condition,
a most dangerous place, a most deadly estate. wallowing in sin
and covered in the filth of sin, you are in a very dangerous place. Now I know as I speak to you
this morning that you're not as bad as some other folks. And
I know that you're not as bad as you could be. I know that
many of you do many, many good things. And many of you are kind
and loving towards your neighbor friends and co-workers. I understand
that. I understand that you're not
as bad as you could be and you're not as bad as others that you
know. My point is not to say that you
are the most evil or that you don't do some good. What I want
to tell you this morning is that the least sin, the smallest sin,
creates a great breach between you and God. It creates a gulf
that is unspannable. It creates a distance between
you and God that no mere man could walk across. Notice what
our text says at the end of verse 13. Your ruin, he says, is spread
wide as the sea. It's a huge gulf between you
and God when you have sin undealt with in your life. And so the
first thing I want us to see this morning is It is your ruin. It is your ruin. God lays the blame squarely on
your shoulders. God places the blame for your
sin upon your back. It is your ruin. You are responsible. You are to blame. It is your
guilt and it is your shame. And this is not insignificant
in the passage. The nation of Israel for many,
many, many generations had had a pattern of walking in sin,
forgetting God, going to the nations, seeking prosperity in
the world and from the surrounding cultures. Their fathers and grandfathers
had committed the same sins of idolatry. In the very foundation
of the nation, they had gone astray. with the golden calf. For generations, they had had
this pattern of forgetting God, ignoring God, and seeking help
elsewhere, that they had always, all their whole existence conformed
to the culture around them. And so we might be tempted to
think at this point, surely God will go easy on them. They had
learned it in their homes and in their families. Their grandfathers
and great grandfathers had all done this. This was the pattern
of their life. This is my family. This is what
my family does. This is who we are. Surely God
would say, you're not to blame. You've learned it in the home.
You've not known anything else. Some of you may be tempted to
think that God will overlook your sins simply because you
learned this pattern of behavior as children. Because your father
was a wretch, therefore God will take it easy on you. because
somehow you inherited certain sinful patterns and sinful ways
of life because you were surrounded by bad examples. Maybe God will
take it easy on you. You may be tempted to minimize
your guilt because after all, it's all you've ever known. This
is how my family has always been. As far back as I can remember,
I've never known anything else but whatever those family sins
are. But that's not what we find in
the text. That's not the God that we find
in the text. God says, this is your ruin. This is your fault. I'm pointing
my finger at you. This is on you. You cannot point
to your fathers. You cannot point to the founding
of your family. You cannot look at any of those
things. This is on you. You may not look
back at your parents. You may not blame it on the way
that you were taught. You may not lay the blame on
the surrounding culture and the pattern of the world today and
all the media and information that comes for your sins. He
says, it is your ruin. It's yours. Jeremiah had told
them as much in Jeremiah chapter 31, saying to them, in those
days they shall say no more. The father shall have eaten a
sour grape and the children's teeth are set on edge, but everyone
shall die for his own iniquity. It's your sin. It's your ruin. It's your guilt. Friend, that
day that Jeremiah prophesied has come. We live in it. And it is no excuse that you
had a bad childhood or that you learned these sins from others,
that you didn't have good examples, that you weren't taught better
than you were taught. God this morning is pointing
to you personally, looking at you and saying, this is your
ruin. It is your sin. You are guilty
of it and you bear the weight of it. It is no one else's fault
but your own. whatever example they may have
had and whatever their history as a nation was. For however
many generations this sinful pattern had continued in their
life and in their family. They themselves chose to continue
in this way of life. They made a choice to continually
reject the call of God. They made a choice to continually
forget God and walk away from God. It may be a fact. It may
be a true fact. And it may be a great struggle
that you never had a better example. That all around you, all you
had were bad examples. It may be true that you learned
these behaviors from the womb. But it is also true that you
choose to continue in them this day. That your DNA does not force
you to be a continuing sinner. Your past does not force you
to continue in that way. If you continue in sin, it is
your choice, and therefore it is your ruin. When you sin, you
make a choice to do it. You choose it. And therefore
God holds you guilty and points His finger and says, this is
your ruin. It's also their ruin because
they had refused so many offers of grace from God. Jeremiah had
appealed to them over and over and over again to turn from their
wicked ways and return to God, to love God, and to be reunited
with God. And yet they refused to listen.
They refused to hear. They refused to believe the message
that Jeremiah proclaimed. He told them over and over and
over again, you live in a city of destruction. Destruction is
coming. And they refused to believe it.
Listen to what Jeremiah tells them in chapter 7 of Jeremiah. I spoke to you rising up early
and speaking." This is God Himself speaking through Jeremiah. I
spoke to you rising up early and speaking, but you did not
hear. And I called to you, but you
did not answer. And again He says, They did not
obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and dictates
of their evil hearts, and went backwards and not forwards. I
have sent to you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up
early and sending them. Yet they did not obey me or incline
their ear, but stiffened their neck and did worse than their
fathers." It was their ruin. And if we refuse to deal with
our sin, if we refuse to heed the call of God, it is our ruin. It is your ruin. My friend, there's
no one else to blame. When you stand before God, you
may not look around for someone else to point the finger at.
You may not blame another. It is your ruin because you have
continued in it. It is your ruin because God has
called you. Some of you, many, many times,
God has called to in the Gospel, and you've refused to heed the
call. It's your ruin. Some of you have
sat in this very place and heard God calling to you and have refused
to come. It is your ruin. You have stiffened
your neck and resisted His call. How long and how persistent will
you be in refusing to come to heed the call of God when He
talks to you, speaks to you, drawing you to Himself? And will you then blame others?
Will you then look around to say, well, it was my daddy's
fault. This is how he lived. This is
what he taught me. Friend, God calls you. And he's
putting his finger on your sin. And he's drawing you to himself.
And it's not daddy's fault if you refuse that call. It's your
ruin, it's your sin, it's your guilt. Notice, secondly, the
severity of this ruin that is yours. It is spread wide as the
sea. It is a great gulf. Simply put,
the distance between The people here in Lamentation and God was
a gulf that no man could span. It was an incurable breach on
their part. They were hopeless in themselves
to fix this problem. The gulf was so large they could
not span it, like standing on the seashore of the Pacific Ocean
and unable to see a way across. The ruin was spread as wide as
the sea. It is a great gulf between them
and God. It is a breach like no other.
There's nothing comparable to it. That's what He's teaching
them in the passage when He asked them, to what shall I liken you? Or what shall I compare with
you? What is like this ruin of yours? What other people have
had so many a call of the Gospel and have refused and continue
in their sins? There's no ruin like this ruin. There's no other calamity. There's
no other catastrophe that can be compared to this distance
between you and God. There's nothing like it in all
the world. Not cancer. Not stage five cancer. Not the loss of a spouse. The
loss of a child. Great though those losses are.
There is no calamity and no ruin like the ruin of being separated
from the Almighty. Your ruin is spread wide as the
sea, he says. What could I compare to the danger
that you are in? What is comparable to such a
catastrophe that you find yourself in? The distance between you
and God is so great that it cannot be healed by religious observance. Verse 14 tells us that these
people had not completely thrown off religion. Your prophets have
seen for you false and deceptive visions. They gave heed to the
prophets. They listened to what the false
prophets said. They went through the outward
motions. All the outward aspects of religion
were in place. They had not become irreligious.
They were not atheists. They were not pagans. They were
all still going through the motions. Jeremiah 7 tells us again that
they were quick to say things like, the temple of the Lord,
the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. They took
pride in their temple. They took pride in the place
where God put His name. They still used His name. They
still used religious speech. Jeremiah 7 goes on to say, they
still, God says, come and stand before Me in this house which
is called by My name. They were religious. They delighted
in all the religious services. They went to the house of God.
They stood in that place before God, in the place that was called
by God's name, and they thought that that was enough to heal
the breach. They thought that that would
span the gulf between them and God. That if we can just go through
the motions, take pride in the temple, use religious speech,
show up at His house in the place where His name is, therefore,
we'll be okay. In the end, it'll all work out.
There'll be no great calamity to us. But you remember what
God had said through Amos the prophet. Though you offer me
burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I'll not accept them,
nor will I regard your fatted peace offerings. Take away from
me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of
your streamed instruments. He had had enough of their outward
devotions. Their ruin was so great that
a little religious observance, a lot of religious observance,
could not span the gulf between them and God. What Jeremiah is telling us is
that religion cannot fix your ruin. It is wide as the sea. No stringed instruments, no songs,
no amount of devotions, no amount of using religious speech could
heal the breach. It is too great a breach for
that. They had sought to heal the breach through the false
counsel of the false prophets. Verse 14, the prophets see false
and deceptive visions for them. They don't speak the truth to
them. They don't uncover their sins. And very often when we
find ourselves at odds with God, we go to friends. We think friends
who we know will tell us all the right things. You're okay.
You're not perfect, but you're not bad. You're justified in
this. Whatever sin it may be, we look
for false counsel. That's what they did. We think
we're being so spiritual. Oh, I'm receiving counsel. I
want to hear. And yet we selectively choose
that counsel to tell us what we wanted to hear in the first
place. We cannot heal the breach because
so many of our friends tell us that you're right and everything's
OK. Be careful who you listen to.
Be careful that you do not surround yourselves with people who will
not uncover your sins and tell you the truth. Thirdly, it's your ruin. It's a great ruin. Listen carefully. If undealt with, it results in
a shocking, severe, and complete judgment. That's what's at stake
as we speak this morning. The ruin that Jeremiah tells
us about in Lamentations was far worse than he was prepared
for. Jeremiah, a true prophet of God. Jeremiah, who had prophesied
about this judgment for years and years and years and had written
it down in his book. He had a knowledge of it from
God. He didn't make light of it. He
took it serious. He proclaimed this judgment with
tears in his eyes to the people over and over and over again. And yet for all of that, and
all that he knew about it, when it came, he sickened, and shocked,
and dismayed at the reality of it. He wasn't prepared for it.
Whatever his idea of it was, a true God-given idea, It was
far more than he ever could have imagined. And I don't know what
your ideas of judgment are. I don't know what your ideas
of the final day will be. I don't know what you picture
it as when you stand before God, what will happen. But when judgment
comes, it will be far worse than you have ever imagined. Jeremiah
lost control of his bowels, he said. My bowels ran out on the
ground. I was sick in the virgins, he
says, and the young men hung their head in shame and wouldn't
speak a word. I don't know what defense you
have in mind for that day when you stand before God. I don't
know what you think you'll say as you lay on your bed and ponder
these things, but I'm telling you, you won't speak a word. It'll be worse than you can imagine. Jeremiah was unprepared for the
severity of it. He came undone. He was sickened
by it. He tells us in verse 1, that
the Lord had covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud of His anger. God was thick about them in anger
and wrath and judgment. God, their Creator, God, their
Redeemer, who had brought them out of Egypt, God who had formed
them into a nation, God who had blessed them over and over and
over again, was now their enemy. God was now pouring out His wrath. God was now bringing them down
to destruction. Verse two, he says, the Lord
has swallowed up and has not pitied all the dwelling places
of Jacob. He has thrown down in his wrath. The God who had pitied them in
the wilderness and carried them like a father carries his children,
he says, was now without pity for them. He was against them.
He was an enemy. Notice that verse four describes
him this way. Standing like an enemy, he has
bent his bow. With his right hand, like an
adversary, he has slain all who are pleasing to his eye. On the
ten of the daughter of Zion, he has poured out his fury like
fire. The Lord was no mere spectator
sitting back watching the destruction that the other nations brought
upon His children. He was the active party. He was the one moving. He was
the one pouring out His wrath. And it was shocking. And Jeremiah
was completely unraveled by it. They had thought a little worship
in the temple might spare them in the end. And now they were
face to face with the reality that they were wrong. And they
had nothing to say. And God was standing against
them with his bow drawn. And what I've come to tell you
this morning is that there's a day of judgment appointed for
each one of us. And if we have not dealt with
our sin biblically, it will be far worse than you can imagine.
And no amount of religious devotions will spare you. No amount of
knowledge of the Scripture, no amount of good that you've done
in your life will bring about any reprieve, any relief. God
will be there as an enemy, and He will have no pity in that
day. God will remove all His grace,
and He will stand in fury And those who have refused his call
will suffer unimaginable torments. It is a great ruin. It will be thorough and complete.
No one will escape unnoticed. God will not miss you in the
crowd. God will not overlook you in the crush of people. Young
people, listen. You may be tempted to think that
because you are young, therefore God will take it easy on you.
Or because you are young, therefore you have no responsibility here
at this point. That somehow this is for your
parents and maybe one day it will matter to you. That somehow
because you are young and in church, God will take it easy
on you. But notice verse 11. The children and infants faint
in the streets of the city. It's complete. It's total. Verse
12, their life is poured out in their mother's bosom. As they
draw nourishing milk from their mother's breast, their life fades
out of their hands. Verse 21, young and old lie on
the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have
fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day
of your anger. You have slaughtered and not
pitied. It matters not if you're young
or old. What matters is, what have you
done with your sin? And that day he will slay and
not have pity, because it is a horrific, a complete, and a
thorough, and shocking judgment. And this ought to produce horror
and dread in every one of us, that the Almighty could be provoked
to such wrath through our lack of repentance, choosing our sin,
rejecting his offers, not believing his pleas to come to him and
receive mercy. But we must turn our attention
to the question at the end of the verse. Who can heal you? For your ruin is spread wide
as the sea. Who can heal you? That may at
first seem a terrifying question, a rhetorical question. There's
no one that can heal. And yet, it's a wonderful question,
really. because it causes us to keep
searching until we find the one that can heal. Your ruin is wide
as the sea. Who can heal you? Where is there
hope found? We've seen already that men and
women that seek to soothe us with comforting words, they cannot
heal us. False teachers and preachers,
they cannot heal us. Religious devotions, they cannot
heal us. Mothers and fathers cannot heal
us. They could not spare their children,
even as they drew them into their breast to love and care for them,
their very life faded away. So the question is, who can heal
us? If mothers and fathers can't
heal us, that have the greatest drive and desire to heal us,
if they can't heal us, who can heal us? Who then is left? You see, it's a wonderful question,
because it's meant to make us look outside of ourselves. is
meant to make us look away from all these things that had failed
them. It's meant to cause them and it's meant to cause us to
look up to God, to look up to Jesus Christ. It's a wonderful
question because it's a question that must lead us to Jesus Christ
Himself. Look at verse 19. Jeremiah says, arise, cry out
in the night at the beginning of the watches, pour out your
heart like water before the Lord, lift your hands towards him.
Jeremiah has just said this God is your enemy. He's got his bow
drawn. He's casting arrows of fury at
you now. Pour out your heart to Him. Lift
up your hands to Him. What is the answer to the question,
who can heal you? Jeremiah says it's God only.
It's the Lord Jesus Christ alone. You can't look to any of these
other things. They've all failed you up until
this point. Now that the judgment has come,
there's only one place to look, Jeremiah says. Look out of yourself. Look out of your family. Look
out of the nations, away from the nations around you. Look
away from the temple that you take so much pride, and look
at the God whose name is there. In the face of such dreadful
judgment, such an awful punishment, you have two choices. You can
seek to hide from God in various ways, Or you can run to God seeking
mercy. That's your two choices. You
can be like Adam and Eve and seek to cover yourself in fig
leaves of religion and all of those things. You can hide yourself
amongst the trees, amongst all the people and hope that God
will pass you by and miss you and not notice you. Or you can
run to God. God didn't miss Adam and Eve.
He drew them out. He put his finger on the problem.
When Adam pointed the blame at Eve, the sentence still came
upon Adam. God in His great mercy calls
you yet again this morning to come to Him with the realization
that He has slaughtered His sacrifice, that He might take away those
fig leaves, that He might put upon you garments of righteousness,
that you might be covered in the very righteousness of Jesus
Christ. He calls you again this morning. What will you do with the call?
You have two choices, run and hide or run to him seeking mercy. You may be asking, why? Why in the world would I run
to a God who is standing like an enemy with His bow drawn,
pointing at me? Why would I run there? That's
not a safe place. And I want to answer it this
way. Because though He is your enemy if you are outside of Christ,
though His bow is drawn and though judgment is coming, He does not
desire to be your enemy. He takes no pleasure in being
your enemy. Look at chapter 3, verse 31 and
following. It's a most wonderful passage.
For the Lord will not cast off forever. Though He causes grief,
yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
For He does not afflict willingly. His justice requires that He
deal with your sin. but he takes no pleasure in your
judgment. Why should you run to the one that judges you in
this way? because he doesn't take pleasure in judgment. God
tells us in Ezekiel 33 these words, I have no pleasure in
the death of the wicked, but that the wicked should turn from
his ways and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways,
for why should you die? That's God speaking. I have no
pleasure in being your enemy. I have no pleasure in your destruction. God desires to be a friend and
to be a savior. Why should you come to this God? Because Lamentations 3.25 says,
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to those who seek
Him. If you come to Him, He'll put
down the bow, He'll put down the arrows, and He'll be good
to you. He'll be a friend to you. He'll
be a Savior to you. He is an unwilling enemy. He
does not desire your destruction. He desires that you turn to Him.
And when you turn to Him, you'll find Him to be a great friend
and a great Savior. One who is ready to drop all
His weapons against you and welcome you into His arms. This is the
God that Lamentations tells us about. The God that pours out
His fury without pity is the God who readily, quickly puts
down those weapons and gathers you in as a flock around Him. But you may be asking, how do
I come to Him? How do I do that? How does one
make up the breach? In the first place, you must
come just like you are. With all your filth, with all
your sin, with all your transgressions, with all those times you have
rejected His call, you've come just like you are. Jesus came
to save sinners, dirty and filthy with the world and polluted.
You must not delay coming until you fix things in your life.
I put in the worship sheet a section on the city of destruction, and
at the end of that little paragraph, little Christian desires to go
to the celestial city. But he noticed, he says, I had
played so long that my clothes were a little threadbare and
shabby, and I didn't think that they would hold together on the
way to the celestial city, so he sat down and cried. The king has better clothes.
You don't have to fix your clothes. You don't have to fix your sins.
You don't have to clean yourself up. You come. How do you come
to this God? You come as you are, in all your
ragged clothes, in all your filth, in all your sins. Acknowledge
your sins. Don't try to hide them or cover
them or make less of them. Jeremiah says in chapter 3 verse
40, let us search out and examine our ways and turn back to the
Lord. In other words, let us make them known. Let's find them
out and get them out into the open. Let's tell them to God.
Here is what I am. This is all that I am. And all
that I have to bring to You are these filthy sins. And that's
how I'm coming. Get all your sins out in the
open before God. Confess to Him. Not only that
you have sinned, but that you are a sinner. God lays all the
blame on you, as we saw earlier. Confess your sins that way, saying,
God, it's not daddy's fault. It's not the culture's fault.
I am what I am because I choose to be this way. This is what
I am. These are my sins. This is my ruin. How do you come? How then do you come to this
God? Come. in the hope and expectation of
receiving mercy. With faith, believe that God
will be merciful to you as He promised. Verse 26 says, it is
good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation
of the Lord. Remember as you come what chapter
3 verse 22 says, it is through the Lord's mercies we are not
consumed. His compassions fail not. You
come in the hope and expectation of mercy because there truly
is mercy for you. It's not a wish. It's a sure,
certain hope of mercy. He's promised it. He can't do
otherwise. If you come to Him, there's mercy
for you. To refuse to come is to call
Him a liar. It's to not believe Him. It's
to again, pump your fist at Him and say, I think you're deceiving
me. God is not a liar. He has said
He will be merciful to you if you come. So you must come with
the certainty and expectation of receiving that mercy. His
mercies, chapter 3 says, are new every morning. Great is His
faithfulness. We sang it. That's in this context. That comes from Lamentation chapter
3. That hymn was written based upon
this passage. Great is His faithfulness. Every
day there's new mercy. His mercy is not depleted. He
is not short of mercy. And you may have it. Be sure of this. And come in
the expectation of it. Do not stand back. Do not delay. Do not say in your heart, well,
I'm sure that that's true for other people. I'm sure there's
mercy for someone else. I'm sure there's others who aren't
quite so bad that they can get mercy. Again, don't call God
a liar. The mercy is for you. It's for
you. The Lord is my portion, says
my soul. Therefore, I hope in Him. Our
ruin is great. It's as wide as the sea. No mere
man could ever have spanned the gulf between us and God. But
the Lord Jesus Christ, by His righteous life, His death, His
resurrection on the third day, has spanned the breach. He's
made a bridge back to the Almighty. He's made it possible for God
to be our friend, to put down the weapons of judgment. And
in this Lord Jesus Christ, there is abundant mercy for every last
one of you. By Him you may come. By Him you
may confess your sins. By Him you may be assured that
God will receive you, forgive you, and welcome you. And God
will clothe you with His very righteousness. Who can heal you? The Lord Jesus Christ alone.
Let's pray.
Who Can Heal You?
Series Topical Sermons
| Sermon ID | 101523179277833 |
| Duration | 40:53 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Lamentations 2:13 |
| Language | English |
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