The Prophets Tears

My own personal bible study of late has been in the Book of Jeremiah. In this book, at a time of brief and relative peace, just prior to the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, false prophets abound in Israel, preaching that all is well. Peace, peace, peace they preach. By contrast Jeremiah (the weeping prophet), is the sole source of God’s message of displeasure with his people. God has long endured the fickle backsliding nature of His chosen people and His sorrow is revealed through Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 8:18-9:2:
My sorrow is beyond healing,
My heart is faint within me!
Behold, listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land:
"Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her King not within her?"
"Why have they provoked Me with their graven images, with foreign idols?"
"Harvest is past, summer is ended,
And we are not saved."
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken;
I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?

Oh that my head were waters
And my eyes a fountain of tears,
That I might weep day and night
For the slain of the daughter of my people!
Oh that I had in the desert
A wayfarers' lodging place;
That I might leave my people
And go from them!
For all of them are adulterers,
An assembly of treacherous men.

Continuing on, the long period of idolatry just reads as if it builds to the preverbal “straw that broke the camels back”, prompting God to send a much stronger message of condemnation to his people:

Jeremiah 18:13-17:
"Therefore thus says the LORD,
Ask now among the nations,
Who ever heard the like of this?
The virgin of Israel
Has done a most appalling thing.
Does the snow of Lebanon forsake the rock of the open country?
Or is the cold flowing water from a foreign land ever snatched away?
For My people have forgotten Me,
They burn incense to worthless gods
And they have stumbled from their ways,
From the ancient paths,
To walk in bypaths,
Not on a highway,
To make their land a desolation,
An object of perpetual hissing;
Everyone who passes by it will be astonished
And shake his head.
Like an east wind I will scatter them
Before the enemy;
I will show them My back and not My face
In the day of their calamity.'"

The fall of Jerusalem and the Great Deportation of Israel, is of course, what results from God’s broken heart. It is very sad and difficult reading, especially in light of the wayward world we live in and the arrogant responses we hear all around us to God’s loving plans and the TRUTH revealed in His Son. In 2006, in a radio address on the National Day of prayer, John F. MacArthur revealed his own concern that God may have already turned his back on the United States of America for similar responsiveness. The Battle for defining Marriage in California following the recent California Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage may be reason to believe that John MacArthur was correct.

I fear that more than a weeping prophet is needed, I remain His. I remain ALL IN!