volume 12, number 20, May 16, 2013

For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, Lamentations 4:6.

Lament the Coming Degradation

After the Boston Marathon, Muslim jihadist, terrorist bombings of April 15, Ray Mey, a former FBI agent and expert on terrorism said, “These bad guys are not going away. They’re here. There’s going to be potentially more of them. I’m waiting for the next step—which is going to be suicide bombers.”1 Sports venues could become targets of such maniacs. How hard would it be for a suicide bomber to stroll up to a gate at Bryant-Denny stadium prior to the Alabama vs. Auburn football game and take several hundred people with him. It is not a coincidence these Boston bombers chose Patriots Day in Boston. Nor is it a coincidence that Osama bin Laden chose September 11 to attack the United States. The Muslims of the Ottoman Empire were repulsed on September 11, 1683 by the king of Poland, their furtherest move into Europe, thus thwarting their desire to conquer Europe. OBL chose September 11 as the symbolic date to begin the new Muslim jihad against the west.

After Yahweh had sent numerous prophets for a couple of hundred years, warning the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah to repent from serving idols and to worship Him, the only true and living God, He finally sent judgment upon the apple of His eye. The Assyrians came into Israel in 722 B.C. and the Babylonians into Judah in 586 B.C., bringing destruction, misery, and death. Most scholars believe Jeremiah wrote Lamentations, a series of five poems grieving the just punishment from Yahweh on His people who refused to heed His warnings. The poem found in Lamentations 4 is replete with graphic references to Judah’s degradation. “The gold has become dark or tarnished . . . the sacred, precious stones of the temple were strewn in the streets . . . the precious sons of Zion were like worthless clay jars . . . the mothers of Judah had become like ostriches who neglect their young . . . the infants had no water so their tongues cleaved to the roof of their mouths . . . those who ate delicacies, who lived in ease and luxury became desolate in the streets, they embraced ash pits,” (Lamenttions 4:1-5). Why did this happen? Because “The iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom.” That is a remarkable and devastating statement. The Hebrew word used here for sin is asham which means being guilty, doing wrong, missing the mark which results in impending judgment.2

It is used often in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 51:1-2, Numbers 5:7, Ezra 10:19). The Hebrew word for iniquity is avown which means perversion (Psalm 51:5, Exodus 34:7, Nehemiah 9:2).3 Referencing Sodom as the poster child of perversion and wickedness is a common theme of the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 1:10, Jeremiah 23:14, Ezekiel 16:46, Amos 4:11). And we know what Sodom was like. In Genesis 19 when the angels come to visit Lot, the men of the city tried to break down his door so that they could drag the angels from Lot’s house to have homosexual relations with them. So God very quickly and suddenly brought utter destruction upon Sodom with what appears to be a volcanic eruption. Don’t miss the significant word play in the text. Yahweh is calling the iniquity or perversion of Judah worse than the sin or guilt of Sodom. Sodom was perverse. Judah was more perverse.

My friends—if God judged Sodom which had no Bible, if He judged Judah which had an adequate, but incomplete revelation (they did not have the New Testament or the incarnation of Christ), then what does this mean for us who have had innumerable spiritual privileges rain down upon us for nearly three hundred years? Lament the impending degradation.

And what do I mean by this? As in the days of Judah’s judgment, I fear we will forfeit more and more of our freedoms. Is that not happening already? Try saying what you really believe about same sex marriage in your corporate office. Are you tired of some TSA agents who act like Barney Fife and harass you at the security gate? Open sporting venues like the Boston Marathon or the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta will no doubt experience heightened security, thus restricting our freedoms at such events. You get the picture.

And why the impending degradation? The fault is not with the world. Unregenerate people act in unregenerate and ungodly ways. There is, of course, God’s common grace, that holds back much of the evil. Things could be far worse. The bombs at Boylston Street could have been bigger. They could have killed and maimed far more people. The fault is with the church. Jesus says that we are the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). Salt is still used in developing nations to prevent putrefaction by rubbing it into the meat. So the church is to prevent putrefaction in the world by simply being the church of Jesus. When she fails, then the declension of a culture’s righteousness is soon to follow. To be more specific, the blame for decay of our culture should be laid at the feet of preachers in America. By this I do not mean all preachers, and I do not mean preachers only of our era. Our problems go back at least to 1800 when a different theology began to drive evangelistic preaching. The New Haven School of theology denied the imputation of Adam’s sin, that all people are born with corrupt, rebellious hearts. They also denied the penal substitutionary atoning death of Jesus (He bore the wrath of God for our sins, removing it by His shed blood), preferring instead a “kinder, gentler” atonement, Jesus as our guide or example of how to live. The result was a “watering down” of gospel preaching. Instead of proclaiming man’s total inability to call upon Jesus to be saved, the new view said that man holds the “ace card”, that he has the final say on the matter of salvation. Consequently “new measures” were used. Before long any means of generating crowds and making followers of Christ was justified. So now we have “cheap grace” where people can live in unrepentant sin of all kinds and still claim to be followers of Christ. And preachers also have generally refused to address the hot button issues of the day. The national church in Germany during World War II, when hearing the cries of the Jews for help as the trains went by to gas chambers, drowned out the cries with their organ music. Because preachers have largely jettisoned the Law of God from their ministries, the convicting work of the Spirit, used to bring people to the end of themselves, is truncated. Our churches, perhaps, are full of people who, though having a form of godliness, nevertheless deny the power of it.

But it does not have to be this way. We don’t have to lament a coming degradation. What, then, shall we do? We must repent, acknowledging the folly of our sinful rebellion and run to Jesus for grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. And we must seek the fullness of the Spirit. To be filled with the Spirit is the command of Paul the Apostle (Ephesians 5:18), and this is vital. But Acts also references Barnabas and Stephen who had the fullness of the Spirit (Acts 11:24, 6:5). Barnabas gave all his possessions away and Stephen gave away his life. The fullness of the Spirit connotes a life dominated by the Spirit, a life which cannot be explained apart from the Spirit working in and through it.. So, we must repent and we must seek the Lord while He may be found.

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¹ Sports Illustrated, April 29, 2013 “Standing as One,” by S.L. Price.

² Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament by Brown, Driver, and Briggs.