Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: justice

Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.

Psalm 89:14 KJV

Ayin
Psalm 119

English Standard Version (ESV) Another brief review:
- Zayin: Remember your word to your servant
- Heth: The Lord is my portion
- Teth: You have dealt well with your servant
- Yodh: Your hands have made and fashioned me
- Kaph: My soul longs for your salvation
- Lamedh: Forever, O Lord, your word
  is firmly fixed in the heavens.
- Mem: Oh how I love your law!
- Nun: Your word is a lamp to my feet
  and a light to my path.
Continuing now from v.121
Ayin

121 I have done what is just and right;
do not leave me to my oppressors.

The KJV, once again is more to the point: I have done judgment and justice:

Is man supposed to judge?

Yes. And we must judge rightly, as God judges, executing justice and showing mercy.

Isaiah speaks of justice more than any Prophet. Hear what he says of the One to come:

Isaiah 62:2 The nations shall see your righteousness,
and all the kings your glory,
and you shall be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will give.

Here the Psalmist pledges loyalty to do good and asks God’s protection.

122 Give your servant a pledge of good;
let not the insolent oppress me.

Malachi [4:1] says of these:

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

123 My eyes long for your salvation
and for the fulfillment of your righteous promise.
124 Deal with your servant according to your steadfast love,
and teach me your statutes.

Again, the KJV states it a little differently.

Deal with thy servant according unto thy mercy.

Have you considered how God’s steadfast and unfailing love for us is so often demonstrated by His mercy? Should we not also have mercy on our fellow sinners?

125 I am your servant; give me understanding,
that I may know your testimonies!
126 It is time for the Lord to act,
for your law has been broken.

These testimonies are the witness of God’s several written laws. It is a call to justice. The laws have been broken and the offense is against the righteous. What will the Lord God do?

127 Therefore I love your commandments
above gold, above fine gold.
128 Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right;
I hate every false way.

I esteem the precepts of God. God’s laws are right, pleasing and agreeable; therefore I hate what is NOT right.

Is it OK to hate? Yes. The Psalmist hates lies, deception, disappointment, falsehood, deceit, fraud, and anything wrong in the eyes of the Lord.

Should we?
January 31, 2014
In God We Trusted – 5

The political ‘spin’ has been spun.

The gradual fall is begun.

How? lament the People…

Why? In God we trusted.

“Lamentations” was derived from a translation of the title as found in the Latin Vulgate (Vg.) translation of the Greek OT, the Septuagint (LXX), and conveys the idea of “loud cries.” The Hebrew exclamation ekah (“How,”which expresses “dismay”), used in 1:1; 2:1, and 4:1, gives the book its Hebrew title. However, the rabbis began early to call the book “loud cries” or “lamentations” (cf. Jer. 7:29).

Lamentations 5

English Standard Version (ESV)

Restore Us to Yourself, O Lord

5 Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;
look, and see our disgrace!
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans, fatherless;
our mothers are like widows.

Before their cry of How? …while they were yet falling…

Hosea 14: Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
2 Take with you words
and return to the Lord…

Micah 6:12 Your rich men are full of violence;
your inhabitants speak lies,
and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
13 Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow,
making you desolate because of your sins.

Isaiah 58: “Cry aloud; do not hold back;
lift up your voice like a trumpet;
declare to my people their transgression,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek me daily
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that did righteousness
and did not forsake the judgment of their God

Zephaniah 3:

Woe to her who is rebellious and defiled,
the oppressing city!
2 She listens to no voice;
she accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the Lord;
she does not draw near to her God.

3 Her officials within her
are roaring lions;
her judges are evening wolves
that leave nothing till the morning.

Habakkuk 2: “Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—
for how long?—
and loads himself with pledges!”
7 Will not your debtors suddenly arise,
and those awake who will make you tremble?
Then you will be spoil for them.

Obadiah

The Day of the Lord Is Near

15 For the day of the Lord is near upon all the nations.
As you have done, it shall be done to you;
your deeds shall return on your own head.

Lamentations 5:15 The joy of our hearts has ceased;
our dancing has been turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head;
woe to us, for we have sinned!

19 But you, O Lord, reign forever;
your throne endures to all generations.
20 Why do you forget us forever,
why do you forsake us for so many days?
21 Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
Renew our days as of old—
22 unless you have utterly rejected us,
and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

Remember Israel? Remember Judah? Remember the Nations? Remember Rome?

Remember Great Britain? Remember America?

Do the Nations and Empires and Peoples remember God?

Are we not a falling people in the hands of an angry God (as Jonathan Edwards once warned)?

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Enfield, Connecticut
July 8, 1741

Their foot shall slide in due time. Deuteronomy 32:35

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as vers 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. — The expression I have chosen for my text, their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

[READ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God]

Will it be blessing? Or will we reap curse?

For once, in God we Trusted.

October 18, 2013
In God We Trusted

Lamentations 1

English Standard Version (ESV)

How Lonely Sits the City

1 How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become,
she who was great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
has become a slave.

2 She weeps bitterly in the night,
with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers
she has none to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously

with her;
they have become her enemies.

5 Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her

for the multitude of her transgressions;
her children have gone away,
captives before the foe.

9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future;

therefore her fall is terrible;
she has no comforter.
“O Lord, behold my affliction,
for the enemy has triumphed!”

10 The enemy has stretched out his hands
over all her precious things;
for she has seen the nations
enter her sanctuary,
those whom you forbade
to enter your congregation.

11 All her people groan
as they search for bread;
they trade their treasures for food
to revive their strength.
“Look, O Lord, and see,
for I am despised.”

16 “For these things I weep;
my eyes flow with tears;
for a comforter is far from me,
one to revive my spirit;
my children are desolate,
for the enemy has prevailed.”

18 “The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word; but hear, all you peoples and see mysuffering; my young women and my young men have gone into captivity.

21 “They heard my groaning, yet there is no one to comfort me.

All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it.
You have brought the day you announced; now let them be as I am.

22 “Let all their evildoing come before you, and deal with them as you have dealt with me
because of all my transgressions;
for my groans are many,
and my heart is faint.”

Disclaimer & claim: WE the PEOPLE of the LORD trust God.

Nations rise and nations will fall.

The Prophet Jeremiah had warned Judah of their impending fall. Lamentations is the record of their fall from the grace and mercy of God.

Lamentations is indictment of rulers who did not heed the cries of their people

or the leadership of God, the foundation of their former trust.

This world is fallen. Rome fell though it ruled over the land of the King of Kings.

The Lord will return to restore the good stolen from the people in nations no longer free.

Isaiah 59

English Standard Version (ESV)

Evil and Oppression

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;
2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.

8 The way of peace they do not know,

and there is no justice in their paths;
they have made their roads crooked;
no one who treads on them knows peace.

9 Therefore justice is far from us,
and righteousness does not overtake us;
we hope for light, and behold, darkness,
and for brightness, but we walk in gloom.

October 14, 2013