The music and dancing within
the city of Jerusalem were gone, and no one was in a mood of
celebration. Where they once enjoyed their lives freely, the
residents of the city were as those who were mourning at funerals.
Sorrow replaced joy, and sadness was their emotional venue. Everyone
who lived in the city was affected by the overthrow from the
Babylonians, and in chapter five and verse sixteen of Lamentations
Jeremiah describes more of the reasoning for their great fall where
he wrote:
The crown is fallen
from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!
The
verse begins, “The crown is fallen from
our head:” The “crown”
was a symbol of “glory and diadem”. Those who wore it were as
royalty, exalted, and lifted up among the people. When Babylon and
it's armies came into Jerusalem, a new reigning entity was put in
place, and the people within Jerusalem's walls saw their “crown”
“fallen” which means “cast
down, caused to fail, fell, thrown down, knocked out, laid
prostrate” to the ground. Glory was replaced by shame, and as Job
wrote in the nineteenth chapter and
ninth verse of the book after his name,
“He has stripped me
of my glory, and taken the crown from my
head.”
The
verse goes on to say, “woe unto us, that we have sinned!”
Jeremiah states the reason their
glory or “crown”
departed was “we have sinned”
which means “to miss, miss the way, go wrong, incur guilt, forfeit,
purify from uncleanness”, and he emphasizes his grief by writing
“woe unto us”
which means “alas and oh” and denotes a “passionate cry
of grief or despair”. Sin, and the results of sin, removed the
people of Jerusalem's grandeur and honor and substituted contempt and
humiliation.
As we consider the great
fall from glory for the people of Jerusalem, we may be or know those
who once enjoyed celebration and honor who now suffer with guilt and
shame. Sin produces that effect, and great “woe” is upon
those who have been influenced by it. When we ponder the condition of
the people in Jerusalem we may wonder why they did not simply turn
themselves toward the Lord before they suffered such great loss. If
only they would have turned from their sinful ways, God would have
protected them, guarded them, and kept them in their places of glory
and crown. But alas, they did not, and sin netted them their shameful
state. Perhaps we currently enjoy a “crown” of glory but
are indulging in sinful and shameful ways that left unchanged will
strip us of our exalted state. Let the people of Jerusalem serve as
an example for us to examine our lives and turn to the Lord Jesus
before our unheeded warnings bring us unbridled dishonor and great
“woe”.
Next
time we learn how these things affected their heart and eyes, so read
ahead, and we shall join together then.
Until
tomorrow...there is more...
Look
for the daily devotional book “Equipped for Battle – From
Generation to Generation”, the marriage book “So, You Want to Be
Married”, and the new devotional “One Year in the Sermon on the
Mount” in all major bookstore sites, www.amazon.com ;
www.barnesandnobles.com ; download to e-books, and find it locally at
www.mrzlc.com/bookstore
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