Lamentations 2:10–18
“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have cast dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the maidens of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.”
The entire book of Lamentations, unbeknownst to Jeremiah, the author, was a long prophecy about the passion of our Lord Christ. Every reference to Jerusalem has the hidden meaning that it is about Christ. Many times through the Old Testament is Jerusalem used in this way, as a depiction of the suffering of our Lord. For that city when through many trials and tribulations, but only because the Israelites forsook the way of the Lord, so it is with us. Christ went through a horrible, torturous death because we have forsaken the way of the Lord. We have sinned, and the only way for us to be pardoned from our iniquity, before a Holy and Just God, is for someone to take our place. This is exactly what Christ did. He took the punishment for our sins, even though “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth.” He did not deserve to die, but He was willing to do so. He was willing to go through hell on earth, for a time, so that we do not have to go through hell for all eternity. For “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and “There is none righteous, no not one.” We deserve to be punished. Imagine there is a criminal who has broken many, many laws and is before a judge. We should think it right that the judge condemn him to a long time in prison for his murders, his kidnappings, his dealings, and the judge would be quite justified in sending him to jail. However, the criminal’s lawyer, a good man, has been talking to his client, and finds out that he is truly sorry, his spirit is broken and he has a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). The lawyer goes up to the judge, as the criminal is about to be sentenced, and says ‘Let this man go. He deserves to be in prison, but he has turned from his ways and now desires to live in righteousness.’ What would we expect the judge to do? Probably laugh at this last ditch effort to help the lawyer’s client and sentence the man anyway. But that is not what he does. He says, ‘If what you say is true, then I will let him go. However, someone must be punished for this man’s crimes, the law must be fulfilled.’ ‘I will pay for them,’ says the lawyer. And he takes the punishment the criminal richly deserves upon his back. Christ is our advocate in the Holy Court of God, and when our case comes before the Lord at the last day, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will read out all our crimes and begin to sentence us. Jesus, however, will stand up and cover us with the cloak of His righteousness. “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” We can never live up to the standard of the Lord, for it is in our very nature to sin and do wrong, but He takes our sins, (He has already done it!) and washes them away with His blood. He has made us clean, He has made us righteous before the Lord of Hosts. Through His almighty sacrifice on the cross we can be made clean and claim the righteousness of Christ that He has given to us! Through no effort of ours we have been saved, all thanks, all praise, and all worship should be given to our Lord for saving us from our desperate state, for rescuing us from the pits of sin where we once wallowed.
“My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult; my heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city.”
Christ was called a man of sorrows, for all His life He knew what was coming at the end. He knew when, where, how, He was going to die for all His life. This would bring mixed emotions, but mostly sorrow. It would bring a slight twinge of joy, knowing that His beloved creations would be saved from their sins, but I have to imagine that this small amount of joy would have been mightily overshadowed by the incredible weight of grief. For eternity He had never been separated from God, for only sinful beings are separated from the Lord, and He had never sinned. But His work on the cross would have made Him the most sinful human to ever walk the earth. For all of our sins were placed upon Him, every wrongdoing was now blamed upon Him. There is a reason He cried out “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani! My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” For He was separated from the Lord, His Father had placed all the sins of the world on His shoulders, and His body was wasted away from the grief, the pain, the anguish of being struck down by the Lord.
However, this is not all dark, dour, depressing. Yes, He was tortured on the cross for our sins, but that was only for a time. It was the most horrible experience that any man ever had to endure, it was literal hell on earth, but at the end, He cried out “It is finished!” The debt has been paid, the work is done, the pain and suffering is over. The almighty work of salvation had been completed. Now anyone who desires to know the Lord, to bask in His shadow, to be protected by His wings, can come to Him and receive all the promises found in the Bible. Christ restored our relationship with the Lord, may we praise His Name on high! May we sing it from the rooftops what Christ has done for us! May our witness never end, may we shine the light of the Gospel to all whom we see, so that they may know the joy of the Lord, the wonderful gift of salvation of sins that He has given to us! Praise the Lord, dear Christian, for he has done it! He is our Lord and savior, He is our King, and a “day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
