Preface: Two or three times a week I search for a Charles Spurgeon sermon to listen to on YouTube while either exercising or walking....so I'm pretty familiar with the titles....but today a title came up near the top of YouTube offerings that not only had I not seen before....but I believe that it must have been moved up there because of the coronavirus pandemic. The sermon title is....The Voice Of The Cholera....and the message was given at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on August 12, 1866. It indeed is a sermon for today as Spurgeon was commenting on the 1866 cholera pandemic in London. Spurgeon also focuses in the sermon on two 'ills' that plagued society of his day. They may not be the specific ills that plague America today but you could substitute two of your own choice and the message would be the same. Cholera and coronavirus aside....it's a sermon you may want to think about listening to. If you are not familiar with the 19th century London Prince of Preachers....most Christians I believe are....you might want to know in advance that Spurgeon's sermons went around the world....and his influence in the church was and is still enormous.....but also that towards the end of his life in 1892....fighting with everything that he had....and warning of the modernist liberal doctrines taking over much of the church....he was was censured by the Baptist Union for that ardent defense of the gospel....which would be like the Southern Baptists if they were to have censured Billy Graham for his crusades. Spurgeon's warnings went on deaf ears...and the 20th century came fast and furious upon Great Britain.
It certainly must be one of the least read books of the Bible.....Jeremiah's Lamentations....five chapters....that most of it must have been dictated through tears....on what Jerusalem looked like after the Babylonians were done with it....but in the middle of the book are some of the most moving words of repentance and hope in the Bible...."It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him." (verses 22-25) The words seem almost out of place in the midst of the torrent of tears over the destruction of Jerusalem.
There is the temptation to read Lamentations....that is if one applies judgments like this to other nations in the history of the world.....particularly America....to read the descriptions as if they are for the future or even near future....but I don't think that we have to wait for that in America....for although we don't yet have wild animals strolling on Capitol hill.....(vs 18...."Because of the mountains of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it)....we are indeed right here and now in America....desolate.
The sports may start again....and the stock market may even rise.....but as a people we are torn apart....rudderless....and powerless as a hurricane approaches. We are tearing each other apart right now....over the wearing of masks. The one side acts as if one might drop dead just by walking by someone without a mask.....and the other side acts as if the masks have 666 written in bold letters on them.
We appear to have no ability to learn....as both sides....utterly unable to think for themselves....or use any common sense....seem to live on talking points....unable to even consider or read about any evidence at all that the other side might have....in effect acting like nothing more than cult followers of gurus.
A great general awakening is one hope....(a unity of the remnant another....a renewing of our minds....should there not be an awakening)....not to make America great again.....perish that thought if 'great' is only the strongest military....a good economy....bull market....and professional sports....but rather to have the LORD with us through the storm that is indeed ahead. Ah.....there I said it again....judgment is coming to this world.....a real downer if there ever was one....but this is not something new that God is warning us of for the first time....for he has sent his Jonahs to us for longer than I have been alive.....and now it is the words of Nahum that we are plugging our ears to.
As for these words in the middle of Lamentations....for with all of the havoc around us....they are but a part of what is written in God's Word that should give us hope.....but read alone.....without Jeremiah's tears before and after them....without vs 40 of the same chapter...."Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD".....without a humbling through this introspection....seeing ourselves in the mirror of Scripture....they cannot have the power towards repentance that God has given them.
