Talk of JESUS .com

Category: Prophets – Warnings for 21st century ‘christians’

stone carving of the prophet Jeremiah reading Bible - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel are major Prophets of the Old Testament
Jeremiah by Michelangelo

Old Testament Prophets WARNED Israel, Judah, and neighboring nations about what GOD has planned IF they did NOT REPENT (and they usually didn’t).

How does this speak to 21 c. ‘christians’ in these last days? Are you bold enough to WARN your SOCIAL ‘Friends’ of what Jesus Christ warns? Does the message of a Prophet apply even more to them and US, now? SHARE your scriptural warnings from the Prophets and WITNESS for our LORD, WHO IS and returning… soon.

  • Our Lament and Weeping -2- Judgment

    Our Lament and Weeping -2- Judgment

    Previously, we asked of Jeremiah’s lament for Jerusalem, “For what hope have any who have turned against the Lord?” He has just said, “For my groans are many, and I am sick at heart. – Lamentations 1:22b And now his elegy will address a just judgment on Jerusalem by the Lord.

    Judgment on Jerusalem

    Lamentations 2

    אֵיכָה֩ יָעִ֨יב בְּאַפּ֤וֹ׀ אֲדֹנָי֙ אֶת־בַּת־צִיּ֔וֹן הִשְׁלִ֤יךְ מִשָּׁמַ֙יִם֙ אֶ֔רֶץ תִּפְאֶ֖רֶת יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹא־זָכַ֥ר הֲדֹם־רַגְלָ֖יו בְּי֥וֹם אַפּֽוֹ׃ ס

    איכה 2 The Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC)

    The Lord [אֲדֹנָי ‘Adonay] has overshadowed Daughter Zion with his anger!

    How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion
    with a cloud in his anger,
    and cast down from heaven unto the earth
    the beauty of Israel,
    and remembered not his footstool
    in the day of his anger!

    Lamentations 2:3 AKJV

    His daughter is Zion, Jerusalem, ‘the parched place.’ She receives the cloud of His anger over her beauty, as if she had never dwelled in the Light of His heavenly Throne as His beloved footstool. She no longer worships Him!

    2 … In his wrath he has demolished the fortified cities of Daughter Judah…

    Judgment on all of Judah

    And now another beloved daughter. So the Lord punishes not only Jerusalem but all of Judah. He cut off ‘all the horn of Israel,’ its strength and its rays of light on the high places.

    ה He
    5 The Lord is like an enemy;
    he has swallowed up Israel.
    He swallowed up all its palaces
    and destroyed its fortified cities.
    He has multiplied mourning and lamentation
    within Daughter Judah.

    ו Waw
    6 He has wrecked his temple
    as if it were merely a shack in a field,
    destroying his place of meeting.
    The Lord has abolished
    appointed festivals and Sabbaths in Zion.
    He has despised king and priest
    in his fierce anger.

    ז Zayin
    7 The Lord has rejected his altar,
    repudiated his sanctuary;
    he has handed the walls of her palaces
    over to the enemy.

    Can you imagine this happening to our nation, our religious and political leaders and to the security of our homes and families today?

    Jeremiah describes the dismay of their leaders.

    י Yod
    10 The elders of Daughter Zion
    sit on the ground in silence.
    They have thrown dust on their heads
    and put on sackcloth….

    Then Jeremiah points back to their former sin of hearing false prophets who predict with deceptive visions and do not mention our iniquities. Yet he laments, “Who can heal you?” So this is his intercession on their behalf.

    Hope through God’s Mercy

    I am the man who has seen affliction
    under the rod of God’s wrath.
    He has driven me away and forced me to walk
    in darkness instead of light.

    Lamentations 3:1-2

    Jeremiah recalls his own suffering when leaders of Jerusalem and all of Judah and Israel refused to listen to the Lord’s warnings spoken by him. And he asks for God’s mercy.

    19 Remember my affliction and my homelessness,
    the wormwood and the poison.

    Then he prays: “The Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him.” He then encourages others to hope in the Lord, even in their distress.

    Waiting for Judgment

    ט Teth
    25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the person who seeks him.
    26 It is good to wait quietly
    for salvation from the Lord.

    Can you wait for the Lord in your suffering?

    Sin so often destroys us – the sin of others and our own sin. Do you listen to the rebukes of the Lord before your fall?

    Listen to some of Jeremiah’s encouragement, even in this lament.

    28 Let him sit alone and be silent, for God has disciplined him. 30 … let him be filled with disgrace.

    How we take an attitude against the Lord and against any who suggest that who ought to endure deserved scorn and reproach.

    We refuse to be shamed for punishment we rightfully deserve. Yet He will judge – He will judge if we protest our rebuke and He will judge even when we sit silently hoping in our Redeemer. May the Lord have mercy on us.

    Unless the Lord has ordained it

    מ Mem
    37 Who is there who speaks and it happens,
    unless the Lord has ordained it?
    38 Do not both adversity and good
    come from the mouth of the Most High?
    39 Why should any living person complain,
    any man, because of the punishment for his sins?

    Jeremiah’s question to fallen Israel could well apply to one fallen in our own sin today.

    So sit alone, be silent and consider the Lord’s discipline.

    Even we do not willingly allow our deserved shame and disgrace. Neither will we sorrowfully thank Christ for carrying our reproach to the Cross.

    I called on your name, Lord,
    from the depths of the pit.
    You heard my plea:
    Do not ignore my cry for relief.

    Lamentations 3:55-56 CSB

    59 Lord, you saw the wrong done to me; judge my case.

    Can you ask judgment (without Christ’s grace), as Jeremiah plead?

    66 You will pursue them in anger and destroy them under your heavens.

    Will the Lord also pursue you in your sins and iniquity, overshadowing all hope of deliverance from death?

    O, contemporary christian, how like those who would not listen to Jeremiah are we, when turning from the Lord.

    To be continued...
  • Our Lament and Weeping

    Our Lament and Weeping

    Our Lament and Weeping is a 5-part series taking most text from the Prophet Jeremiah as a lament for Lent in these last days. READERS may continue to the NEXT post at the bottom of each post by clicking NEXT.

    Table of Contents

    Have you ever considered the connection between Jeremiah’s two books or the cause of our lament and weeping?

    lamentations scroll page 1 - the lament and weeping of the Prophet Jeremiah after his predicted fall of Jerusalem takes place

    You may know Jeremiah as the weeping prophet. And perhaps you realize that he is also the author of Lamentations. “Why has this happened,” he would seem to ask the Lord? Yet to consider Jeremiah’s calling and the failure of God’s chosen to hear him shows both good reason for his lament and our weeping.

    Jeremiah’s Call as a Prophet

    4 The word of the Lord came to me:

    5 I chose you before I formed you in the womb;
    I set you apart before you were born.
    I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

    Jeremiah 1:5

    6 But I protested, “Oh no, Lord God! Look, I don’t know how to speak since I am only a youth.”

    7 Then the Lord said to me:

    Do not say, “I am only a youth,”
    for you will go to everyone I send you to
    and speak whatever I tell you.
    8 Do not be afraid of anyone,
    for I will be with you to rescue you.
    This is the Lord’s declaration.

    Prophesies Fulfilled

    These are the people Nebuchadnezzar deported: Altogether, 4,600 people were deported.

    Jeremiah 52:28a,30b CSB [WLC hebrew on link]

    Jeremiah’s unheeded warnings from the Lord caused him much lament and weeping. And well he should have wept for those lost souls and the defeated chosen people led from Jerusalem into exile.

    He had first warned them in his early days during Josiah’s reign in about 626 B.C. Jerusalem would finally fall nearly four decades later to Nebuchadnezzar, in 587 B.C. Plenty of time to repent, but they do not.

    Lamentations

    lamentations scroll page 1 in Hebrew
    איכה

    INTRODUCTION

    The commentary by A. R. FAUSSET explains:

    In the Hebrew Bible these Elegies of Jeremiah, five in number, are placed among the Chetuvim, or “Holy Writings” (“the Psalms,” & c., Luke 24:44 ), between Ruth and Ecclesiastes. But though in classification of compositions it belongs to the Chetuvim, it probably followed the prophecies of Jeremiah originally.

    He also helpfully explains the form of this poetic cry of lament and weeping later incorporated into synagogue worship on the ninth month Ab.

    How?

    The title more frequently given by the Jews to these Elegies is, “How” (Hebrew, Eechah), from the first word, as the Pentateuch is similarly called by the first Hebrew word of Gen 1:1. The Septuagint calls it “Lamentations,” from which we derive the name. It refers not merely to the events which occurred at the capture of the city, but to the sufferings of the citizens (the penalty of national sin) from the very beginning of the siege; and perhaps from before it…

    The lament and weeping heard in each Hebrew letter:

    Referring to the alphabetical Hebrew letters beginning each stanza of the lament, Faussett continues quotes of an 18th c. scholar most pointedly:

    “Every letter is written with a tear, every word the sound of a broken heart.”

    Robert Lowth, Bishop of London


    Lament over Jerusalem

    א Aleph
    1 How she sits alone,
    the city once crowded with people!
    She who was great among the nations
    has become like a widow.
    The princess among the provinces
    has been put to forced labor.

    ב Beth
    2 She weeps bitterly during the night,
    with tears on her cheeks…

    Jeremiah’s cry for the lost glory of the Lord’s own chosen people and fallen city continues. So we hear the heart of this former priest and persecuted Prophet as he wails out words of lament and weeping.

    ד Daleth
    4 The roads to Zion mourn,
    for no one comes to the appointed festivals.
    All her gates are deserted;
    her priests groan,
    her young women grieve,
    and she herself is bitter.

    ה He
    5 Her adversaries have become her masters;
    her enemies are at ease…

    And how has this happened? Why?

    Because the Lord’s own worshipers failed to listen to the Lord.

    … for the Lord has made her suffer
    because of her many transgressions.

    Lamentations 1:5b

    We understand the relationship between transgressions and our sin, right?

    Our sins are punishable offenses. Consequently our rebellions against God justify our punishment, pain, suffering and even death.

    ח Cheth
    8 Jerusalem has sinned grievously…

    Is there any pain like mine,
    which was dealt out to me,
    which the Lord made me suffer
    on the day of his burning anger?

    Lamentations 1:12B

    Isn’t that how we finally feel once the Lord allows our punishment? Yet in fact, look around you as did Jeremiah. Many suffer. Therefore others weep with you, even for you.

    ע Ayin
    16 I weep because of these things;
    my eyes flow with tears.
    For there is no one nearby to comfort me,
    no one to keep me alive.
    My children are desolate
    because the enemy has prevailed.

    Why

    צ Tsade
    18 The Lord is just,
    for I have rebelled against his command.

    Justice requires fair punishment. But this lament and weeping cries out to the listener pleading for mercy:

    Listen, all you people;
    look at my pain.
    My young women and young men
    have gone into captivity.

    ק Qoph
    19 I called to my lovers,
    but they betrayed me.
    My priests and elders
    perished in the city
    while searching for food
    to keep themselves alive.

    ר Resh
    20 Lord, see how I am in distress.
    I am churning within;
    my heart is broken,
    for I have been very rebellious.
    Outside, the sword takes the children;
    inside, there is death.

    The Holy City cries out to the LORD!

    Their own lament and weeping with sorrow now includes confession.

    We brought on our own demise, therefore our lament and weeping have cause.

    Punishment for sin and death will surely follow as justice.

    For what hope have any who have turned against the Lord?

    To be continued...

  • Disaster From Disobedience, A Savior From Before Eden – 3

    The Fall before the Fall

    … so also the Messiah, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

    Hebrews 9:28 HCSB

    In ‘Disaster From Disobedience 2’  we considered the ‘In the beginning’ creation narrative. Genesis continues with the creation of man. We know that the fall of mankind and our expulsion from Eden will follow, but consider first an earlier significant event, the fall of angels.

    The Fall Of The Rebel Angels Painting by Gustave Dore

    Luke 10:

    … “Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name.”

    18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a lightning flash.

    19 Look, I have given you the authority … over all the power of the enemy; nothing will ever harm you. 20 However, don’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

    Christ Jesus instructs followers of what only the Son of Man from before creation can know. Angels disobeyed God, Creator and Master of all He Created.

    Yet witness here Christ’s authority over fallen angels. Demons submit to God by the Apostle.s command in Christ’s authoritative Name.

    Angels – Other Beings who Serve

    Angels were created also to serve God. When? We can’t be certain, but we do know that it was prior to the fall of man. And like us, they were also given freedom for obedience. 

    I suppose it is possible that angels and man were created at the same time, since Adam and Eve may have lived many years in Eden until the fall. Yet the presence of the serpent in Eden would seem to indicate an earlier creation of angels.

    Like mankind, some angels rebelled against the purpose for which the Lord God created them. God created angels as several, specific types of spirit-creatures. Angels are not the spirits of those who have died, but were created as beings in heaven. And like the creatures of earth, not all angels are alike. 

    Picture angels as many individual and diverse spirit-beings just as the creatures of this Earth vary.  Visualize their lives in a real and existing, unseen dimension, separate of this visible place.

    Unlike the Lord, no spirit rules over the day or fills flesh with the power of life! Angels are messengers for good or for evil, depending on who they serve.

    The Fallen Star 

    Satan is just one of the disobedient angels of darkness, posing falsely as hope for mankind.

    Returning briefly to a time after the fall of Jerusalem, the Prophet Isaiah had predicted Israel’s return after seventy years of captivity. Isaiah also interestingly described hell and the fall of Satan.

    Isaiah 14:

    12 “How you are fallen from heaven,
    O Lucifer, son of the morning!
    How you are cut down to the ground,
    You who weakened the nations!
    13 For you have said in your heart:
    ‘I will ascend into heaven,
    I will exalt my throne above the stars of God…
    14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
    I will be like the Most High.’
    15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
    To the lowest depths of the Pit…

    Disaster is not punishment for sin, but consequence of the fall.

    Job chronicles several conversations between the Lord and Satan. Here Satan comes before the Lord asking for permission to inflict evil upon Job, even though God sites Job as blameless. The common scene is Satan as prosecutor, accusing and condemning the criminal to death for some sin; even tempting man to turn again God and follow his own demise into eternal punishment.

    Job 1

    6 One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord asked Satan, “Where have you come from?”

    “From roaming through the earth,” Satan answered Him, “and walking around on it.”

    Beware of the tempter

    Beware of what you cannot see, for Satan roams the earth for the prize of sinners tempted into disobedience against God.

    Satan rules unseen spirits and principalities of darkness. Whether original sin, where the tempter is mentioned as the serpent or in Isaiah, where Lucifer appears as false light, Satan seeks disobedient sinners.

    Even now that prince of devils opposes righteous men and women who seek to serve God and Christ faithfully.

    8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.”

    9 Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

    The entire saga of Job begs the question from his wife, his friends and the reader, “Why would God allow this to happen to ‘a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil?’” 

    The Lord even permits Job to question the intentions of the Almighty! However the LORD answers Job and the readers at length.

    HE IS THE LORD! … and man is not. 

    Nor is Satan, or angels; kings or idols. God IS God and we are not. Yet we would do well to remember the tempter’s appeal to our own desires, even as in Eden and since the inherited evil of ‘adam.

    Angels who serve God

    Much more is written of angels serving the fallen prince of the darkness and angels who remain messengers and worshipers of the Lord God.

    Though our series addresses our disobedience, let’s close with a brief description by a Prophet of spirits near to the Living God. And like other descriptions of heaven, our mortal minds can barely take-in the immense glory of the scene.

    Ezekiel 1

    4 I looked, and there was a whirlwind coming from the north, a huge cloud with fire flashing back and forth and brilliant light all around it. In the center of the fire, there was a gleam like amber. 5 The likeness of four living creatures came from it, and this was their appearance:

    They looked something like a human, 6 but each of them had four faces and four wings. 7 Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the hooves of a calf, sparkling like the gleam of polished bronze. 8 They had human hands under their wings on their four sides. All four of them had faces and wings. 9 Their wings were touching. The creatures did not turn as they moved; each one went straight ahead.

    10 Their faces looked something like the face of a human, and each of the four had the face of a lion on the right, the face of an ox on the left, and the face of an eagle. 11 That is what their faces were like. 

    Their wings were spread upward; each had two wings touching that of another and two wings covering its body. 12 Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the Spirit wanted to go, they went without turning as they moved…

    Throne of the LORD

    lapis lazuli

    25 A voice came from above the expanse over their heads; when they stopped, they lowered their wings. 26 Something like a throne with the appearance of lapis lazuli was above the expanse over their heads.

    On the throne, high above, was someone who looked like a human…

    Read on if you like, or read other descriptions of the awe of the Lord and of the heavenly servants which include angels. 

    Man is fallen and sin has consequence. Next, we will return to the fall of man.

    To be continued…