The Terrible Faithfulness of God Text: Lamentations 2:17
Introduction: A God of His Word
We live in an age that wants a manageable God. We want a God who is a divine butler, a cosmic therapist, a celestial grandfather who winks at our faults. We want a God of unconditional love, but we define that love as unconditional affirmation. We want the promises of blessing, but we treat the promises of judgment as though they were written in disappearing ink. We want to stand on the promises of God, but we want to pick and choose which ones. We want the Sermon on the Mount, but we would rather skip the parts of Deuteronomy that talk about cannibalism during a siege.
But the God of the Bible is not a God who can be edited. He is not a God who equivocates. His integrity is a single, seamless piece. His promises of grace and His warnings of judgment are woven from the same divine thread. A God who is not faithful to His warnings is a God who cannot be trusted to be faithful to His promises. If He might be bluffing about hell, He might be bluffing about heaven. The terrible, awful, glorious truth that confronts us in the smoking ruins of Jerusalem, as described by the weeping prophet, is this: God keeps His Word. All of it.
Lamentations is a funeral dirge for a city. But it is more than that. It is a covenant lawsuit in which God has been vindicated. It is the necessary consequence of centuries of high-handed, stiff-necked rebellion. And the verse before us today is one of the hardest and most important in all the Scriptures for the modern Christian to understand. It tells us that the horror was not a tragic accident, not a failure of God's plan, but rather the very fulfillment of it. This is not God wringing His hands in heaven; this is God bringing His hand down in judgment, precisely as He said He would.
The Text
Yahweh has done what He purposed;
He has completed His word
Which He commanded from days of old.
He has pulled down without sparing,
And He has caused the enemy to be glad over you;
He has exalted the might of your adversaries.
(Lamentations 2:17 LSB)
The Sovereign Purpose (v. 17a)
The verse begins with an unambiguous declaration of divine agency.
"Yahweh has done what He purposed..." (Lamentations 2:17a)
The destruction of Jerusalem was not a geopolitical event that took God by surprise. Nebuchadnezzar was not a rogue agent who managed to outmaneuver the Almighty. The text is plain: Yahweh did this. This was His purpose, His plan. We must banish from our minds any thought of a God who is simply the cosmic clean-up crew, reacting to the sins of men and nations. No, He is the author of the story, the king on the throne, and He works all things according to the counsel of His will. That includes blessing, and it includes calamity.
The prophet Isaiah says it with bracing clarity: "I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). This is the bedrock of a robust faith. If God is not sovereign over the disaster, then He is not in control at all. But if He purposed it, then even in the midst of the rubble and the tears, there is a purpose. This was not chaos. This was a controlled demolition.
The Fulfilled Word (v. 17b)
And why did God purpose this? The next line tells us. It was not arbitrary. It was a matter of covenant integrity.
"He has completed His word Which He commanded from days of old." (Lamentations 2:17b)
This is the central nervous system of the entire book. The horrors described in Lamentations are not random acts of wartime violence; they are the itemized invoices of the covenant curses coming due. When God established His covenant with Israel at Sinai, He set before them blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. He did not hide the fine print. For chapters on end in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, God detailed with terrifying specificity what would happen if they abandoned Him for idols.
He warned them of siege, of famine, of being defeated by their enemies, of their land being laid waste. He said, "But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments... I will set my face against you, and you shall be struck down before your enemies" (Leviticus 26:14, 17). He said, "The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away... a nation of fierce countenance who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young. It shall eat the offspring of your cattle and the fruit of your ground... It shall besiege you in all your towns" (Deuteronomy 28:49-52). This is exactly what happened with the Babylonians.
For centuries, God sent prophets to His people, holding up the covenant contract and pleading with them to read it and return. They refused. They killed the prophets and pursued their idols. The judgment, therefore, was not God losing His temper. It was God keeping His promise. He was completing His Word. His character was at stake. A God who does not enforce the terms of His own covenant is not a righteous judge; He is a liar. The destruction of Jerusalem was a terrible, awful, and necessary demonstration of the faithfulness of God to His own Word.
The Unsparing Judgment (v. 17c)
The nature of this fulfilled Word was severe, as it had to be.
"He has pulled down without sparing..." (Lamentations 2:17c)
The judgment was total. The temple, the city walls, the houses, all were pulled down. There was no pity, no sparing. Why? Because the sin was not a minor infraction. It was centuries of spiritual adultery. God is described in Scripture as a jealous husband, and Israel had played the harlot with every pagan god on every high hill. The time for patience had run its course. The warnings had been ignored. Now came the sentence.
This is a terrifying thought, and it should be. We must not create a God in our own image, a God who would never be so severe. The God of Scripture is holy, and His opposition to sin is absolute. When His own covenant people presume upon His grace and trample His law underfoot, His restorative judgment must be thorough. It is like a surgeon cutting out a cancerous tumor. The cutting is violent and painful, but it is done to save the patient. God had to pull down the corrupt kingdom of Judah in order to preserve a remnant through which He would bring the Messiah.
The Ordained Enemy (v. 17d)
This last part of the verse is perhaps the most challenging to our modern sensibilities. God was not a neutral party in the conflict.
"And He has caused the enemy to be glad over you; He has exalted the might of your adversaries." (Lamentations 2:17d)
Think about that. God did not just permit the Babylonians to win. He actively caused them to rejoice. He is the one who lifted up their horn, their symbol of strength and power. The Babylonians thought their victory was due to their own might, or the power of their god Marduk. But they were mistaken. They were simply a tool in Yahweh's hand. They were the axe He was wielding (Isaiah 10:15).
God gave them the victory. He orchestrated their triumph. He did this to utterly humble His people. He stripped them of their pride, their military strength, and their false sense of security in the temple. He wanted them to know that their enemies had no power except what He granted them for His own purposes. This is the absolute sovereignty of God in its most bracing form. He raises up nations and He casts them down. And sometimes, He raises up wicked nations to be the rod of discipline against His own rebellious children.
The Cross and the Curse
This verse is a black diamond of theology. It is hard, but it is precious. So where is the good news? Where is the gospel in this ruin? It is found when we see that this terrible faithfulness of God finds its ultimate expression not in the fall of Jerusalem, but in the cross of Jesus Christ.
At the cross, God once again did what He purposed. He once again completed His Word, commanded from days of old, the promise of a substitute who would bear the curse. At the cross, God pulled down His own Son, and He did it without sparing. "He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all" (Romans 8:32). All the covenant curses, all the holy wrath that we deserved for our rebellion, were gathered up and poured out onto the head of Jesus.
At the cross, God caused the enemy, Satan and the forces of darkness, to be glad over Him for a moment. He exalted the might of His adversaries as they put the Son of God to death. But it was all according to His purpose. God used the wickedness of men to accomplish our redemption.
The same divine faithfulness that guaranteed the destruction of a rebellious Jerusalem is the very same faithfulness that guarantees the salvation of all who are in Christ. Because God was faithful to His Word of judgment and poured it out on His Son, He will be faithful to His Word of promise and grant us the blessing of eternal life. Our security does not rest on a sentimental, flimsy deity who might change his mind. It rests on the terrible, unshakable, covenant-keeping faithfulness of the God who always, always does what He has purposed and completes His Word.