The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Sermons
I. THE PICTURE OF DEGRADATION. It is highly figurative language which the prophet here employs; but it is not exaggerated, it is not unjust. 1. The head is uncrowned. Judah's independence and freedom was as a crown to the head; but the Chaldeans tore it off and flung it away. They who defy God must lose in so doing all that is most honourable, most sacred, most precious. 2. The heart is faint. Judah's joy was turned into mourning, her hopes were dashed to the ground; how could the heart be other than faint? The ways of sin are ways of disappointment, weariness, and distress. The heart of the transgressor sinks within him when he sees the fruit of his doings. 3. The eyes are dim with watching for deliverance, with tears of woe. II. THE CAUSE OF DEGRADATION. Judah may have been unwilling to admit the truth, and may have been disposed to attribute calamities to second causes. But the prophet was just, and laid his hand upon the true explanation when he confessed on behalf of his countrymen, "We have sinned!" Trace up human misery and national disaster to the source, and this is to be reached only when we come to defection and departure from the righteous Lord. III. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DEGRADATION. "Woe unto us!" is the cry of the prophet. When men sin and suffer but fail to acknowledge their own ill desert, the intentions of Providence are as yet unfulfilled. The sin must be taken home; the punishment must be acknowledged just; the confession must be penitent, sincere, and frank. IV. THE LESSONS OF DEGRADATION. 1. Let the virtuous and obedient abjure self-confidence and cherish trust in God. 2. Let the tempted beware of the foe, and watch and pray lest they sin and come into this torment. 3. Let the smitten sinner repent and turn unto the Lord and seek pardon and renewal. - T.
The elders have ceased from the gate. 1. It is a grievous plague unto a people when the seat of justice is overthrown from among them.(1) Reasons.(a) (b) (c) (a) (b) (c) 2. The overthrow of magistracy among a people taketh all occasions of rejoicing from all sorts of people. "The young men from their music."(1) Reasons. (a) (b) 3. Honest recreations and delights are to be esteemed among the good blessings that God giveth His people in this life.(1) It is here accounted by the Holy Ghost a grievous thing that they are deprived of them.(2) Neither body nor mind can continue able and apt to their duties without some intermission, but it is never lawful to be idle. (J. Udall.) The joy of our heart is ceased, our dance is turned into mourning. This is the condition of these distressed creatures in the land of Babylon; whilst they were in Judea, they used to rejoice in their harvest, and to shout at their vintage (Isaiah 16:10). They had the mirth of tabrets and their harps melodiously sounding in their streets (Isaiah 24:8). But now there is a crying for wine in all quarters, their joy is darkened, and the mirth of the land is gone (Isaiah 24:11). All causes of joy are sometimes taken from God's: precious saints; thus it fared with Israel upon the pursuit of Pharaoh, when she was passing out of Egypt into the land of Canaan (Exodus 14:10). Neither was it better with Job in the time of his affliction (Job 30:17, 18, 31). Do but look upon the sweet singer of Israel, and you shall find him in as bad a condition; for the sorrows of death encompassed him, the pains of hell got hold upon him, and he found nothing but trouble and sorrow (Psalm 116). The Lord takes away all cause of rejoicing from, that He may the more deeply humble them for the evil of their ways. Great afflictions effect the like submissions, with strong cries to the God of heaven (Judges 6:6; Judges 10:13-15). God's great design in thus dealing with them, is to purge them from their dross (Isaiah 27:9), to make them cast off the sin of their souls; you know gold, that it may be refined, must as it were be encompassed with flames (Zechariah 13:8, 9). The best are prone to rest upon the reeds of Egypt, to rely too much upon worldly vanities, therefore God makes the joy of their hearts to cease, that He may take them off from dependency upon creature comforts (Jeremiah 3:22, 23; Hosea 14:2, 3). Beware of sin, it will cause both sad looks and heavy hearts (Genesis 4:7; Amos 8:8-10). Keep your eye upon heaven (2 Chronicles 20:12), it is only a ray of His favour that can cheer your hearts (Psalm 9:9, 10). Disclaim help from others, trust not to yourselves (Isaiah 30:1-3; Isaiah 31:1; Psalm 20:7; 2 Corinthians 1:9). Created substances are but vanities.I. The precious sons of Zion may be much discouraged in their sufferings. And when Zion was in affliction, did she not as one in despair cry out, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord (Lamentations 3:17, 18)?(1) Sudden and boisterous storms sometimes make stout-hearted seamen to give up all for gone (Psalm 88:3-8; Isaiah 54:11; Matthew 27:46).(2) Feeble things are soon thrown down, they want strength, it is weakness of faith that dejects their spirits (Matthew 8:24-26). Give a check to the heaviness, to the sadness of your souls, when you are in afflictions (Psalm 43:5). The apostles carried themselves gallantly with much cheerfulness in the worst of times (Romans 5:3; Acts 21:13).Now that you may come near them in the same spirit, consider —(1) That the sorrows of our Saviour were very dolorous (Matthew 26:38; Luke 22:42).(2) That what befalls you is incident to the best of saints (1 Corinthians 10:13; Song of Solomon 2:2).(3) That death will put a period to all your troubles.(4) That God hath promised to deliver His chosen ones (Psalm 126:5, 6; Job 16:33). Brag not of what spirit you will be when you come to suffer; you have but a little strength in yourselves, your hearts may come to deceive you, to fail you when troubles come with a strong current upon you; thus did Peter, yet denied his Master (Mark 14:29, 31, 68, etc). 2. Keep up your heads, your hearts above the waters of sorrow, let them not sink your spirits, but under the worst of evils, retain your joy, and in patience possess your souls (Lamentations 3:26; Psalm 27:13, 14). (D. Swift.) The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! The secret of man's perfection may be summed up in these short words, Love to God. The secret of man's sin may be stated as shortly, Defect of love to God. As the former implied truth and holiness, and purity of motive, and unity of wilt with His will, so this latter implies the departure of all these graces. But not only this. The heart allows no vacuum: sin is not a negative only, but a positive condition; where love has departed, there the opposite of love enters, namely, selfishness, with all its baneful consequences. And the essence of selfishness is, that a man lives not for and in another, be that other his neighbour, or his God, hut for and in himself. Now notice, that this selfishness, arising out of defect of love to God, and in God to others, is not an act, or a series of acts in man, but a state, out of which spring, as the symptoms out of a disease, those sinful acts of selfishness, which we call sins. Selfishness has turned love into lust, dignity into pride, humility into meanness, zeal into ambition, charity into ostentation; has made the strong man into a tyrant, the womanly into the womanish character, the childlike into the childish; has turned family and friendly love into partisanship, patriotism into faction, religion itself into bigotry. It penetrates into, and infiltrates every thought, every desire, every word, every act; so that whatsoever is of it, and not of faith, is sin. And its seat is in the noblest, the godlike, the immortal and responsible spirit of man. So that it is no longer worthy of that noble title of the Spirit, reminding us of God; but they who are thus, are named in Scripture unspiritual, and their whole state is called "the flesh"; not that it springs from the flesh, but because it sinks them into the flesh. Another degrading consequence results from this usurpation by self of the place of God within us. Man placed under love, though in bond and covenant to God and his neighbour, was really and essentially free; a child of God's family; his will and God's will being one, law became to him liberty. But under selfishness, though he has broken loose from covenant with God and his neighbour, he is to all intents and purposes, a slave; in bondage to his own desires and passions, which he ought to be, and wishes to be, ruling. "The truth," declares our Lord, "shall make you free"; but all sin is a lie, It practically denies God, — whose being, and whose power, and whose love constitute the great truth of this universe: this is the negative side of its falsehood; and it sets up self and other creatures in God's place as lord and guide of man's being: this is its positive side. It apes the perfections and attributes of God, and makes man into a miserable counterfeit, betraying, by that which he wishes to appear, that which he really ought to be. Well then, it now comes before us as a solemn question, seeing that our whole nature, the nature of each man, is thus gone astray, and that every one of us has an abiding tendency to selfishness and to evil — Whence came this tendency? How had it its beginning? This tendency is a departure from God who made us; and cannot therefore have been God's work. And this departure can only have begun by an act of the will of man. God created us free, gave our first parents a command to keep, which very fact implied that they had power to break it. Now there was no reasonable ground for breaking it, but every imaginable reason against such conduct; the departure was not an act of the convinced reason, but an act of that which we know as self-will — a leaning to self in spite of reason and conscience. So that sin had its practical beginning in the will of man. And this beginning we read of in Scripture in the history of the Fall. At once man's personality, the inner soul of his nature, passes into a different relation to God: it is torn out of the covenant of His love; stands over against Him as His enemy; trembles at His approach. All peace, all innocence, is gone. The body, God's beautiful and wonderful work, becomes the seat of shame. Man, knowing that he is naked, flies from God and hides himself. And as the spirit of man has renounced its allegiance to God, so have now the animal soul and the body thrown off their allegiance to the spirit. Anarchy enters into his being, and holds wild misrule. The gravitation of the spiritual world is overthrown, its laws of attraction are suspended; the lower revolts against the higher, the lowest against the lower. And as in man, so in man's world. In a moment the poison spreads, electric, over the kingdom which he should have ruled; the elements disown him, the beasts of the forest glare upon him, the ground is cursed for his sake. The king of nature is self-deposed, — his palace is broken up, his delights are scattered, his sweet fellowship with his helpmate is marred, — and he is driven out a wanderer. Then first sprung forth the bitter fountains of tears, destined to furrow the cheeks of untold generations; then first the hands were clenched, and the brow grasped, and the breast beaten, — and the vastness of inward woe sought relief in outward gesture. Verily, the crown had fallen from his head; woe unto him, that he had sinned.(Dean Alford.) People Assyrians, Egyptians, JeremiahPlaces Assyria, Egypt, Mount Zion, ZionTopics Crown, Fallen, Ours, Sinned, Sinners, Sorrow, Wo, WoeOutline 1. A complaint of Zion in prayer unto God.Dictionary of Bible Themes Lamentations 5:16Library Whether an Angel Needs Grace in Order to Turn to God?Objection 1: It would seem that the angel had no need of grace in order to turn to God. For, we have no need of grace for what we can accomplish naturally. But the angel naturally turns to God: because he loves God naturally, as is clear from what has been said ([543]Q[60], A[5]). Therefore an angel did not need grace in order to turn to God. Objection 2: Further, seemingly we need help only for difficult tasks. Now it was not a difficult task for the angel to turn to God; because there was no obstacle … Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica Man's Inability to Keep the Moral Law Lamentations Links Lamentations 5:16 NIVLamentations 5:16 NLT Lamentations 5:16 ESV Lamentations 5:16 NASB Lamentations 5:16 KJV Lamentations 5:16 Bible Apps Lamentations 5:16 Parallel Lamentations 5:16 Biblia Paralela Lamentations 5:16 Chinese Bible Lamentations 5:16 French Bible Lamentations 5:16 German Bible Lamentations 5:16 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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