Forbidden Fruit and Sorrow!
Lamentations 1:12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which has been brought on me, which the LORD has inflicted in the day of His fierce anger.
This life is a life of contrasts. It has hills and valleys. It has joy and sorrow. We have joy when a healthy child is born even though pain and sorrow are involved and we have sorrow when years later that child that has grown up and lived life and done many things and that has loved friends and family, dies.
Why is there Sorrow?
The Bible says that sorrow is the result of willful disobedience against God. Eve had it good in the Garden but she believed Satan and ate forbidden fruit. The fruit that was to make her wise and like a god and that was to give her pleasure, ultimately caused her to bear children in pain and sorrow. Her husband became a man of toil who worked ground that brought forth thorns and thistles. When we see sorrow, we are always reminded of the reality of sin.
The Sorrow of Jerusalem
Our passage has to do with Jerusalem and Jeremiah’s lament or cry of sorrow over her destruction. Jerusalem had been a city to be envied by all other cities. God had placed his name there. Solomon had a prosperous peaceful reign that was the envy of the kingdoms of the world. There was a beautiful temple there. The people had been blessed by the God that they said they worshipped. But unfortunately, they ate forbidden fruit and thought that the “grass was greener” on the other side of the street. So instead of being faithful to the God of creation who had become their deliverer from the bondage of Egypt, they began to worship the gods of the land that they had entered. Instead of realizing that the God is a jealous God and does not want the things He has created to be worshipped as god, the people turned to idols that were for the most part the worship of nature. They sacrificed to the Queen of Heaven and to Baal’s among other gods. Because the nation as a whole turned away from the worship of Jehovah, God turned away from them. Ultimately, God became so angry that he had Babylon destroy the city and the temple. And now this once majestic city is sitting naked and destitute. Jeremiah now laments, “Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?” In other words, he is saying that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple should make people realize that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a God who blesses those who worship Him, and He takes vengeance on those who turn their back on Him.
The Sorrow of the Cross
If the sorrow of the city of Jerusalem makes the traveler sit up and take notice, what should the sorrows of the cross do to those of us who are traveling through this life? The only man who never sinned, the one who had compassion on the multitudes, who healed lepers, who turned water to wine, the one who knew that each of us needed to turn from our unbelief to a living faith in Him, is the one who died on an old rugged cross. The religious bullies of his day decided that they would show Him who was boss. But now we get to pass by the cross in a figurative way as we read about the Lord who was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). As we pass by, “is it nothing to us?”
The Sorrows of Those eating Forbidden Fruit Today
If God would destroy His beloved city Jerusalem and if He would send His son to a cross to save those of us who deserve to be destroyed, what is going to happen to those who in pride set themselves up as gods who know good and evil today? What is going to happen to those who know the story of the Gospel and still refuse to bow in humility before the One was willing to bear the punishment that they deserved? The consequence of rejecting the Lord caused Jerusalem to be destroyed. What will be the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit by not being obedient to the truth of the Gospel? What will happen to those who believe that God will not or cannot deal with that pride and unbelief?
We eat forbidden fruit when we believe the lies of Satan and turn away from the worship of the One and Only True God. What is going to happen to those who know the Truth but who turn away from it because they think they are themselves gods who know good and evil? Their sorrows are going to be eternal and indescribable. But their sorrows will not change any one’s mind because by then it will be too late.
Bruce Collins
Meditation for the week of November 22, 2014