When God Abandons His Own House Text: Lamentations 2:7
Introduction: The Terrifying Jealousy of God
We live in an age that has domesticated God. We have turned the consuming fire of Sinai into a decorative fireplace, something to warm our hands by, something that adds a bit of ambiance to the room. We want a God who is manageable, predictable, and above all, affirming. We want a divine mascot, not a sovereign King. But the God of the Scriptures will not be tamed. He is holy, He is just, and He is jealous for His own glory. And nothing provokes this divine jealousy more than the corruption of the worship He Himself has instituted.
Modern evangelicals have a very difficult time processing a text like the one before us. We are conditioned to think of God's presence in His house, the church, as an absolute, an unconditional guarantee. We slap verses about "where two or three are gathered" onto our buildings and assume that this binds God to us, regardless of what we do in that gathering. We think His house is a safe zone, a sanctuary from His wrath. But Lamentations is a bucket of ice water thrown into the face of such sentimentalism. It teaches us a terrifying and necessary lesson: judgment begins at the house of God. Before God judges the Babylonians for their wickedness, He first judges Judah for her unfaithfulness. And His judgment is not simply an external affliction; it is an internal, liturgical demolition.
The book of Lamentations is a funeral dirge for a city, but it is more than that. It is a post-mortem on a corrupt religious establishment. Jerusalem did not fall because the Babylonian army was stronger than God. Jerusalem fell because God Himself handed her over. He dismantled His own house. He rejected His own altar. He abandoned His own sanctuary. This is not the action of a defeated deity, like the gods of the pagans whose temples could be overrun by a superior foe. This is the action of a holy husband divorcing an adulterous wife. He is the one tearing down the walls, not because He is weak, but because He is righteous.
This verse is a stark reminder that the forms of worship, the place of worship, and the rituals of worship are no protection at all when the heart of the worshiper has gone astray. God is not interested in the smell of incense if it is offered by hands stained with idolatry and injustice. He would rather His own house be filled with the drunken shouts of pagan soldiers than the hypocritical hymns of His own covenant people. That should sober us up.
The Text
The Lord has rejected His altar;
He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has delivered into the hand of the enemy
The walls of her palaces.
They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh
As in the day of an appointed time.
(Lamentations 2:7 LSB)
The Divine Rejection (v. 7a)
The verse begins with a shocking statement of divine action:
"The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary..." (Lamentations 2:7a)
Let the weight of this settle in. This is not the enemy desecrating the altar. This is the Lord rejecting it. The Hebrew word for "rejected" here means to spurn, to treat as loathsome. This is the altar that God Himself designed. This is where His covenant people were to bring their sacrifices to find atonement and fellowship with Him. This was the very heart of their religious life. And God says, "I'm done with it. I find it disgusting." Why? Because it had become a lie. It was a stage for religious play-acting. The people would bring their sacrifices to the altar in the morning and then go worship idols on the high places in the afternoon. They would perform the rituals of atonement while continuing to oppress the poor and the widow. They were using God's own altar as a cover for their spiritual adultery.
The prophets warned them of this constantly. Through Isaiah, God said, "What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams... Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me" (Isaiah 1:11, 13). Through Amos, He said, "I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies" (Amos 5:21). The people thought that as long as they kept the liturgical machinery running, God would be placated. But God is not a vending machine. He desires truth in the inward parts. He desires justice and righteousness. When the ritual is divorced from reality, the ritual becomes an abomination.
Then we are told He has "abandoned His sanctuary." The Temple was the place where God had chosen to put His name, where His glory dwelt in the Holy of Holies. The prophet Ezekiel describes this abandonment in a terrible, slow-motion vision. He sees the glory of the Lord departing from the cherubim, moving to the threshold of the temple, then to the east gate of the city, and finally lifting off the mountain entirely (Ezekiel 10-11). God packs His bags and leaves His own house. This is the ultimate act of judgment. He is not driven out; He departs. He leaves them to their empty rituals and their hollowed-out religion. And when God's presence departs, the building is no longer a sanctuary; it's just a building. It is just stone and timber, and it is ripe for destruction.
The Divine Surrender (v. 7b)
The consequence of this divine rejection and abandonment is a divine surrender. God is the active agent in this destruction.
"He has delivered into the hand of the enemy The walls of her palaces." (Lamentations 2:7b LSB)
Notice the grammar. God is the subject of the verb. "He has delivered." The Babylonians are merely the instrument, the axe in the Lord's hand (Isaiah 10:15). Nebuchadnezzar thought he was conquering Jerusalem for his own glory, but he was simply God's appointed tool of judgment. This is the absolute sovereignty of God over history, even in its most tragic moments. God is not wringing His hands in heaven, surprised by the turn of events. He is orchestrating them to fulfill His own holy purposes.
This is a hard truth, but it is the only foundation for true hope. If Jerusalem fell because Marduk was stronger than Yahweh, then there is no hope. But if Jerusalem fell because Yahweh Himself, in His holiness and justice, handed it over, then there is hope. The same God who was sovereign enough to judge His people for their sin is sovereign enough to restore them when they repent. His judgment is not arbitrary; it is covenantal. He is keeping His promises, the curses of the covenant sworn in Deuteronomy 28, just as surely as He will keep the promises of blessing.
The "walls of her palaces" are included with the sanctuary. God's judgment is comprehensive. The corruption of worship always leads to the corruption of the state. When the church goes rotten, the culture follows. The political and religious leadership were intertwined in their rebellion, and so they are intertwined in their downfall. The palaces fall with the Temple because the kings had followed the priests into apostasy.
A Profane Liturgy (v. 7c)
The verse concludes with a bitter, ironic twist. The house of God is still filled with noise, but the choir has changed.
"They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh As in the day of an appointed time." (Lamentations 2:7c LSB)
This is a gut-punch. The "noise" is the shouting of the Babylonian soldiers, the clang of their weapons, their drunken victory songs. And Jeremiah says this profane racket sounds just like the noise that used to fill the Temple on a feast day, an "appointed time." What a devastating indictment. The boisterous, joyful praise of the Passover or the Feast of Tabernacles had become so hollow, so detached from true holiness, that in God's ears it was indistinguishable from the pagan uproar of His temple's destroyers.
This forces us to ask a hard question. What does our worship sound like to God? We can have the best music, the most eloquent prayers, and the most passionate preaching, but if our hearts are far from Him, if our lives are filled with unrepentant sin and compromise with the world, what is it all? It is just noise. It might be aesthetically pleasing noise, but it is noise nonetheless. God is telling us that He prefers the honest blasphemy of the pagan to the hypocritical piety of the apostate. At least the pagan is being true to his nature. The apostate is dragging God's holy name through the mud by associating it with his rebellion.
The enemy's shouts are a parody of true worship. They are celebrating their victory in God's own house. But in a deeper sense, they are unintentionally performing a liturgy of judgment. Their noise is the "Amen" to God's verdict against His people. God has turned the house of prayer into a theater of judgment, and the enemy soldiers are the unwitting actors.
The Cross as the Ultimate Temple Judgment
As Christians reading this, we must see it all through the lens of the cross. For the ultimate act of God abandoning His sanctuary happened not in 586 B.C., but in A.D. 33. Jesus Christ is the true Temple, the place where God's glory dwelt bodily (John 2:19-21, Col. 2:9). He was the perfect altar and the perfect sacrifice. And on the cross, what happened?
The Father "abandoned His sanctuary." Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46). In that moment, the Father turned His face away. He rejected His own Son, who had become sin for us. The Father "delivered Him into the hand of the enemy." The Roman soldiers, the corrupt priests, the mocking crowd, they were all instruments in the Father's hand to crush His Son according to His perfect plan (Acts 2:23).
And in the house of Yahweh, in the person of Christ, the enemy "made a noise." They shouted, "Crucify Him!" They mocked Him, spat on Him, and celebrated their apparent victory over the Son of God. The noise of their profane victory party echoed the noise of the Babylonians in the Temple. It was the ultimate desecration.
But here is the glorious reversal. God abandoned His Son for a moment so that He would never have to abandon us for eternity. He delivered Jesus into the hands of the enemy so that we could be delivered from the hand of the Enemy. The judgment that fell on the Temple in Jerusalem was a type and a shadow. The judgment that fell on Christ at Calvary was the reality. He absorbed the full force of God's holy wrath against corrupt worship and covenant-breaking.
Because of this, the warning of Lamentations comes to us now with a solution. The answer to corrupt worship is not to try harder. The answer is not to polish up our liturgy. The answer is to flee to Christ. He is our sanctuary. He is our altar. He is our sacrifice. And when we are found in Him, we are eternally secure. God will never reject the altar of Christ's body. He will never abandon the sanctuary of His Son. And for those who are in Christ, judgment is a thing of the past. For us, there is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1). God's house, the church, is now built of living stones, with Christ as the cornerstone, and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it, because its foundation was laid in the fires of God's ultimate judgment on the cross.