Our text this morning will be Lamentations Chapter 2.

And as is customary, we will stand to read it, but I want to say a couple of introductory

remarks about why I pick this passage. So as you're looking that up in your Bibles,

I'm going to take just a few minutes here to explain myself. Why did I pick this passage?

We live right now in a time of judgment.

God is judging individuals, God is judging nations, and God is judging his people.

It is good to ask, what should we do as faithful followers of Christ in times of judgment? How should we live?

As I look at the state of the church in America, who ostensibly is God's people, I'm grieved by the fall of the evangelical and the Protestant church.

I'm grieved by the fall of Christendom. I'm grieved by the fall of Christendom.

I'm grieved by the collapse of public religion.

At best, what we have now are Orthodox churches

doctrinally who still maintain their worship of God

only privately.

The church is in decline.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America lost about 30% of its congregation and closed 12.5% of its churches in the last 15 years.

Even before the debacle recently with the affirmation of gay pastors, the United Methodist Church,

had already lost 16.7% of its congregation and closed

10.2% of its churches. The Presbyterian Church was the hardest hit. It's lost over 40% of its congregation

and 15.4% of its churches closed between 2000 and 2015.

The Southern Baptist Convention, while more solid, has also experienced decline.

Between 2006 and 2020, it lost 2.3 million members.

It's not a coincidence that as this is happening, these churches and denominations are moving

...