Daily Lesson for March 28, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Lamentations chapter 2 verses 5 through:

5 The Lord has become like an enemy;

   he has destroyed Israel.

He has destroyed all its palaces,

   laid in ruins its strongholds,

and multiplied in daughter Judah

   mourning and lamentation. 

6 He has broken down his booth like a garden,

   he has destroyed his tabernacle;

the Lord has abolished in Zion

   festival and sabbath,

and in his fierce indignation has spurned

   king and priest. 

7 The Lord has scorned his altar,

   disowned his sanctuary;

he has delivered into the hand of the enemy

   the walls of her palaces;

a clamour was raised in the house of the Lord

   as on a day of festival. 

8 The Lord determined to lay in ruins

   the wall of daughter Zion;

he stretched the line;

   he did not withhold his hand from destroying;

he caused rampart and wall to lament;

   they languish together. 

9 Her gates have sunk into the ground;

   he has ruined and broken her bars;

her king and princes are among the nations;

   guidance is no more,

and her prophets obtain

   no vision from the Lord.

Today’s Lesson is a sobering one. It is one full of the judgment of the prophets and a warning to all the nations of the world.

Here is a word of caution against all hubris and arrogance and sense of self-importance.

The LORD left the Temple. The spirit went out from the holy place and the the Holy Land was left desolate.

Nothing is too big to fail. Nothing is too cherished or too important or even too sacred to be above judgment. The LORD left His holy Temple. That means no other church or house or nation should think of itself as beyond reproach. No one is beyond reproach. No nation is above God’s moral plumb line.

It is one thing to be great; but we must also be good. We know what the LORD does require of us: to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. 

On this Wednesday of Holy Week, we pray we will hear the words of the Lesson, take it to heart, and let its lamentation change is, that we might be found pleasing in God’s sight and without charge amidst the righteous of the nations.