The Pain of Sin
10 Our skin is hot as an oven
with the burning heat of famine.
11 Women are raped in Zion,
young women in the towns of Judah.
12 Princes are hung up by their hands;
no respect is shown to the elders.
13 Young men are compelled to grind at the mill,
and boys stagger under loads of wood.
14 The old men have left the city gate,
the young men their music.
15 The joy of our hearts has ceased;
our dancing has been turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head;
woe to us, for we have sinned!
The book of Lamentations is the lament of the prophet Jeremiah has he sees his people (Judah) and his city (Jerusalem) destroyed by God’s wrath. God uses both the Babylonians and the Assyrians to destroy the nation and their capital city. What was, is not longer. Note an earlier description by Jeremiah about this destruction:
1 How the gold has grown dim,
how the pure gold is changed!
The holy stones lie scattered
at the head of every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion,
worth their weight in fine gold,
how they are regarded as earthen pots,
the work of a potter's hands!
To say things are bad is to make an understatement. God has totally destroyed His people. But why? According to these verses it is simply stated by Jeremiah, “... for we have sinned!” We do not count the cost of sin while we are in it. Notice what the writer of Hebrews states about sin, as describing the life choices of Moses:
24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
If we read the lament of Jeremiah in chapter five, we don’t read anything about the “pleasures of sin.” We read about the way sin destroys everything in its path. Judah was in a very bad place. They had turned from God to idols and that cost them their lives and livelihoods. God is a holy God and He does not tolerate permissiveness and sinful rebellion against His laws and character. Therefore, the “joy in their hearts” was taken away by God. It is God who controls our “joy.” When we sin, we lose the very things we think sin will provide.
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