The seasons are changing, it is the season of weeping and woe

I hope this fine spring week has offered you beautiful glimpses of God's creative intellect and His wonderful power. We always enjoy the march of the seasons. "He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down." (Psalm 104:19, KJV). Wherever we are in the world, reading this newsletter, we see and understand the times and seasons. We look for the robin, the crocus, the ladyslipper. The orderliness and consistency of the seasons since His ordination of them is a comfort.

Yet in Jeremiah 8:7 Jeremiah says of the seasons, meaning God's season, "Yes, the stork in the heaven knows her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD." In the natural history of Israel, Barnes notes explains, "Jeremiah appeals to the obedience which migratory birds render to the law of their natures. The "stork" arrives about March 21, and after a six weeks' halt departs for the north of Europe. It takes its flight by day, at a vast height in the air ("in the heaven"). The appearance of the "turtle-dove" is one of the pleasant signs of the approach of spring."

As for the part of the Jeremiah verse which speaks to His judgments, Matthew Henry holds sway here: "Sin is backsliding; it is going back from the way that leads to life, to that which leads to destruction. They would not attend to the warning of conscience. They did not take the first step towards repentance: true repentance begins in serious inquiry as to what we have done, from conviction that we have done amiss. They would not attend to the ways of providence, nor understand the voice of God in them, ver. 7. They know not how to improve the seasons of grace, which God affords. They would not attend to the written word. Many enjoy abundance of the means of grace, have Bibles and ministers, but they have them in vain. They will soon be ashamed of their devices. The pretenders to wisdom were the priests and the false prophets. They flattered people in sin, and so flattered them into destruction, silencing their fears and complaints with, All is well. Selfish teachers may promise peace when there is no peace; and thus men encourage each other in committing evil; but in the day of visitation they will have no refuge to flee unto."

How perfect and prescient His Word is! What was true then is also true now. So many are in a season of backsliding sin, of wasting this season of grace. My statement goes toward the lost and Christians as well. The lines of demarcation are widening, and more Christians than ever are uncovered as pale, weak, lukewarm. It is the season of woe, because "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isiaah 5:20). It is the upside-down season. This is the season of proclaiming sin as good and Jesus as evil. Man becomes more like the animals every day.

In Numbers where God is dispensing instruction to the Priesthood, God said, "I am giving you the service of the priesthood as a gift." (Numbers 18:7b). It is a gift to serve Him. It is a gift to dedicate one's life to him. It is a gift to be close to Him. It was a gift to the people who needed priests. He also gave the Prophets as a gift and in the New Testament, the gift of prophecy is also a gift. (1 Corinthians 12:10; Romans 12:6).

I feel deeply for Jeremiah the Prophet, who was known as The Weeping Prophet. Jeremiah lived in a time when the People's pride was dragging them backward into sin and away from the LORD. (Jeremiah 13:15-27- "Pride precedes captivity".) He lived when the people's sins had piled up to the point where they were actually living in their last days. Jeremiah was the last prophet sent to preach to the Southern Kingdom. The searing effects of their sins had hardened them so much that no one ever listened to Jeremiah. He never had one convert. "Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward." (Jeremiah 7:24).

Unfaithful Israel, engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Jeremiah preached and spoke and prophesied, but yet he was hated and reviled. They did not listen. He had no friends. He had no wife even to weep with, for the LORD had forbidden him to marry, knowing the grievous deaths that would soon take place in His coming judgment of the southern kingdom. God was actually sparing Jeremiah THAT special kind of grief, but Jeremiah still cried out, "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah 9:1). He is saying here that he mourns so deeply for what he knows, that he does not have even enough tears to weep for the people.

"My mourning for the sins and desolations of my people has already exhausted the source of tears: I wish to have a fountain opened there, that I may weep day and night for the slain of my people. This has been the sorrowful language of many a pastor who has preached long to a hardened, rebellious people, to little or no effect," says Clark's Commentary.

This is how I feel. Is it how you feel? Do you weep for the people and nations that sin, who allow sin to drag their hearts to destruction? Do you rejoice in gladness for the warnings and grace the Lord bestows, but weep for those who refuse to heed? Knowing the brutality that awaits them in the Tribulation, punishment for living a brutal life of sin against Jesus? I do. I weep especially for all those who believe they are saved and are a sanctified Christian, but will discover to their horror at the rapture that they were not called up. They were left behind. "My sorrow is beyond healing, My heart is faint within me!" (Jer 8:18). Jeremiah could clearly see the people's pride and sin and he could clearly see the coming consequences, destruction of the nation and destruction of many hearts.

I ask you this, gently, lovingly: at prayer meeting, we weep and cry and mourn for Aunty Tilly's big toe, but do we weep and mourn for souls? Sob, tear our clothes, wish that our very head was a fountain that we could shed many tears for them? We speak of His love these days and His joy, of peace in knowing Him. All these things are good. But where is the grief? Where are our weeping prophets (Christians) today?

Jeremiah begged them not to succumb to the false gods who lulled them into security and which did not make them feel guilty or convict of sin. They did not listen, and they were destroyed. It shall be so again. Prepare your hearts. Jesus is coming soon. Don't be left behind.