Call for the Wailing Women - Part 1

With a woman I had never met on the phone, I'll call her Sandy, she just told me that she was falling in love with a married man who was not her husband and as we talked I knew we didn't have much time. I said to her, Sandy, if my neighbor's house were on fire I wouldn't worry about offending them, hurting their feelings, or waking them up in the middle of the night. I would go and I would not be nice, I would not be kind, I would not be calm, I would not be soft, I would go screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs to warn them of the danger and try and help them get out of that house.

I said, Sandy, I've got to tell you, you are in a burning house and I want to help you get out. My words today, because this is a message that God has just been putting on my heart within the last several days, may not be polished or refined, but I feel compelled to wake us up to the fact that we are in a burning house and to do everything I can to rescue as many lives as possible before it is eternally too late. If you've been following the news at all in recent weeks, you will agree that we are living in troubled and troubling days.

From the White House to the schoolhouse to the church house to many of our own houses, we have ignored and rejected the Word of God and as a result the fabric of our society has unraveled, the foundations have eroded, and we are being swept away in a torrent of corruption and violence and fear. In the wake of the Littleton massacre just a month ago, we've been hearing a lot of commentary and analysis from the so-called experts, but I want to tell you like Humpty Dumpty that sat on a wall, our culture has had a great fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men and all the politicians and all the educators and all the sociologists cannot put Humpty back together again. The truth is, we don't need to hear what one more expert thinks.

These are days when we desperately need to hear from heaven, to hear what God has to say to our generation. I want you to know that God does have a word for our day. I'm holding it in my hand, and this word is as true, as relevant, as power, and as necessary today as it was when it was first penned.

Recorded in this book is a bold message delivered by two courageous men of God to the people of God more than 2,500 years ago. Isaiah and Jeremiah, two prophets of God, lived and ministered in a time of great moral and spiritual decline among the people of God. They confronted the people with their hypocrisy, proclaiming to worship God while at the same time practicing gross idolatry.

This was not a message primarily to the pagan nations, but primarily to the people of God in the nation of Judah. They cried out against the pagan practices that God's people had come to justify and embrace, practices as vile and corrupt as child sacrifice. Those were dark days, and they culminated in the destruction of the nation of Judah by the Babylonians, always in the Scripture a picture of the world system.

The prophets wanted the people to realize that God was in control of the historical and the political events of their day, and that He was using adversity to chastise His people, to warn them of even greater judgment to come, and most important, to give them opportunity to repent. Their message was never a popular one, but these faithful, fearless men of God never wavered in their relentless proclamation of truth. Day after day, year after year, they confronted God's people with their sin and begged them to repent.

This was a message of judgment, of dire, cataclysmic judgment that was certain if God's people refused to repent. I want to tell you this was also a message of hope, a message of grace, of restoration, and of the final triumph of God over evil. I want to read two passages, one from the book of Jeremiah, one from the book of Isaiah.

I'm going to give you the references and you may wish to jot them down, but then I'm going to ask you to just listen as I read these passages that I believe speak to us with as much relevance as the day in which they were first written. The first one will be from Jeremiah chapter 9, verses 17 through 22. Jeremiah 9, 17 through 22.

And then I'm going to move to the book of Isaiah, chapter 32. Isaiah 32, verses 9 through 18. And I want you to hear the word of the Lord.

In fact, let me ask if you would, just as we give honor to the word of God, would you join me in standing as I read these two portions from the word of God in Jeremiah and then Isaiah. Jeremiah said, this is what the Lord Almighty says, consider now, call for the wailing of the great women to come. Send for the most skillful of them.

Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion. How ruined we are.

How great is our shame. We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins. Now, oh women, hear the word of the Lord.

Open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail. Teach one another a lament.

Death has climbed into our windows and has entered our fortresses. It has cut off the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares. Say, this is what the Lord declares.

The dead bodies of men will lie like refuse on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper with no one to gather them. And then the prophet Isaiah says, you women who are so complacent, rise up and listen to me. You daughters who feel secure, hear what I have to say.

In little more than a year, you who feel secure will tremble. The grape harvest will fail and the harvest of fruit will not come. Tremble, you complacent women.

Shudder, you daughters who feel secure. Strip off your clothes, put sackcloth around your waist and beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines, and for the land of my people, a land overgrown with thorns and briars. Yes, mourn for all houses of merriment and for this city of revelry.

The fortress will be abandoned, the noisy city deserted. Citadel and watchtower will become a wasteland forever, the delight of donkeys and a pasture for flocks. Until the spirit is poured upon us from on high and the desert becomes a fertile field and the fertile field seems like a forest.

Justice will dwell in the desert and righteousness will live in the fertile field. The fruit of righteousness will be peace. The effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.

My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest. And so I hear a fourfold message from the prophets, simply these four phrases, wake up, wail, warn others, and wait on the Lord. O Father in heaven, we come and cry out to you and pray that you would give us ears to hear, that you'd give us sober-mindedness and hearts to respond to what you would say to us as your chosen women in this hour.