Tag: rejected

  • Our Lament and Weeping -4- unless You have completely rejected us

    Our Lament and Weeping -4- unless You have completely rejected us

    We began by outlining his Lament over Jerusalem and continued with Judgment on Jerusalem and Hope through God’s Mercy, where Jeremiah pleas for mercy based on his own suffering. After the four elegies he described the suffering of God’s people.


    Terrors of the Besieged City

    Judah refused to listen to God’s warnings through Jeremiah and other prophets to repent.

    Other nations battle over control of Jerusalem, which is eventually destroyed. Jeremiah then writes four acrostic elegies.

    He gives a defeated people songs crying out to the LORD.

    “Why,” they ask, has the Lord rejected his defenders of Jerusalem, his holy altar and chosen people?

    Aidan Bartos photo unsplash
    9/11/2001

    Lord, remember what has happened to us.

    Lamentations 5:1a CSB

    We should have expected it! This evil of the nations has threatened us before, but now it is too late.

    The Lord allowed it. Like our own national mournings, Jerusalem’s falls become reason for lament.


    Lamentations 5:

    Look, and see our disgrace!

    Lamentations 5:1b

    2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
    our houses to foreigners.

    Everything for which we have worked, all of our hopes for the future – gone.

    3 We have become orphans, fatherless;
    our mothers are widows.
    4 We must pay for the water we drink;
    our wood comes at a price.
    5 We are closely pursued;
    we are tired, and no one offers us rest.


    A Kurdish Syrian woman walks with her child past the ruins of the town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on March 25, 2015. (Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images)
    Kurdish mother with son in ruins of their town AD 2015

    Now I ask us: if the Lord has allowed this destruction of our hopes in past generations, why do we not remember the widows and fatherless forced from their homes in this day?

    7 Our fathers sinned; they no longer exist, but we bear their punishment.

    Woe to us

    Jeremiah continues by telling of men risking their lives to obtain food and of women raped. He laments that princes are hung by former slaves who now rule and they see that young boys are made into slaves.

    15 Joy has left our hearts;
    our dancing has turned to mourning.
    16 The crown has fallen from our head.

    Woe to us, for we have sinned.

    Lamentations 5:15b

    Woe אוֹי is a crying out, a lament.

    The prophet Isaiah had also spoken the Lord’s judgment:

    The look on their faces testifies against them,
    and like Sodom, they flaunt their sin;
    they do not conceal it.
    Woe to them,
    for they have brought disaster on themselves.

    Isaiah 3:9

    The Lord had warned these descendants of Jacob, transgressors of the Law of Moses

    Now His blessings are replaced by woe. Yet Jeremiah closes his lament with a prayer for restoration, a ray of hope for the remnant of Jacob.

    You, Lord, are enthroned forever

    21 Lord, bring us back to yourself…

    Shouldn’t this be the plea of each of us?

    5:21 הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְהוָה אֵלֶיךָ ונשֶׂוב

    shuwb Yĕhovah shuwb

    Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! – NASB

    … so we may return; renew our days as in former times…5:21b CSB


    Ah, here is the hope of Jeremiah for the glory and blessings of the past.

    unless You have rejected us

    Let us go back to the Jerusalem of old. Judah’s king has fallen and Jerusalem reduced to ruble. All of this defeated generation must pray for favor from a foreign land. Yet the prophet closes his lament with humble dependence upon the Lord God. Jeremiah accepts the judgment of God on this generation.

    Lord, bring us back to yourself…

    22 unless you have completely rejected us
    and are intensely angry with us.

    Lamentations 5:22 CSB

    Is God your lord or does your sin provoke His intense anger?

    Why do you cry out to God when you will not bow down to His will?


    Redemption for our sin

    “I will pour out my wrath on sin,” says the Lord. Yet what of our sin which provokes the wrath of God?

    • Jerusalem sinned greatly, Therefore she has become an unclean thing. Lamentations 1:5
    • Our fathers sinned, and are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities. Lamentations 5:7
    • The crown has fallen from our head; Woe to us, for we have sinned! Lamentations 5:16
    • … The sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron stylus. With a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts and on the horns of their altars… Jeremiah 17:1

    Because you people sinned against the LORD and did not listen to His voice, therefore this thing has happened to you.

    Jeremiah 40:3b NASB

    the Messiah Redeemer

    Just prior to a later destruction of Jerusalem, the only Son of God was hung on a Cross for our sins. There He had cried out:

    “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is:

    My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

    Matthew 27:46

    Of all laments for sin, this one only redeems.

    The Redeemer of Israel rejected and hung on a Cross. Roman soldier spears the body of Jesus on the cross.
    He was already dead

    In his earlier prophecies, Jeremiah had predicted Jesus the Messiah and Redeemer of Israel to come in a later day.

    Jeremiah 31:

    Proclaim, praise, and say,
    “Lord, save your people,
    the remnant of Israel!”

    Lament Turned to Joy
    15 This is what the Lord says:

    A voice was heard in Ramah,
    a lament with bitter weeping—
    Rachel weeping for her children,
    refusing to be comforted for her children
    because they are no more.

    16 This is what the Lord says:

    Keep your voice from weeping
    and your eyes from tears,
    for the reward for your work will come—

    Do you recall fulfillment of this scripture at the birth of Jesus when King Herod of Judah ordered the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem?

    28 Just as I watched over them to uproot and to tear them down, to demolish and to destroy, and to cause disaster, so will I watch over them to build and to plant them”—this is the Lord’s declaration.

    The New Covenant

    31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

    Jeremiah 31:31 CSB

    “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

    This is the work of the Holy Spirit, given after Jesus’ Sacrifice and resurrection.


    Though Jeremiah laments the fall of God’s chosen because of their sin, the prophet reassures the faithful remnant that the Lord is faithful.

    51:5 כִּ֠י לֹֽא־אַלְמָ֨ן יִשְׂרָאֵ֤ל וִֽיהוּדָה֙ מֵֽאֱלֹהָ֔יו מֵֽיְהוָ֖ה צְבָאֹ֑ות כִּ֤י אַרְצָם֙ מָלְאָ֣ה אָשָׁ֔ם מִקְּדֹ֖ושׁ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

    For neither Israel nor Judah has been forsaken
    By his God, the LORD of hosts,
    Although their land is full of guilt
    Be ore the Holy One of Israel.

    Jesus was innocent of sin, even unto death on a Cross for the sins of the world. The Messiah of God had been betrayed by a zealous Disciple named Judas, who would repent of his sin too late.

    Jeremiah had also spoken of this time:

    Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him whose price was set by the Israelites, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.

    Matthew 27:9-10

    The LORD has not rejected us, but sent us a pure and perfected Redeemer in Christ Jesus. Do not betray the Lord’s grace given for you on a Cross for your sin. Worship the Lord your God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For the Prophets have lamented for our sins and predicted our Savior.

    Amen.

  • A Light of Revelation to the Gentiles

    A Light of Revelation to the Gentiles

    Birth of John the Baptist Foretold

    Luke 1:5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord…

    The Birth of John the Baptist

    57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59 And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, 60 but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.”

    (a few months later in Jerusalem, which is near to Bethlehem)

    Jesus Presented at the Temple

    22 And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord…

    25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

    29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,
    according to your word;
    30 for my eyes have seen your salvation
    31     that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
    32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

    33 And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed 35 (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

    (Jesus was eight days old; then Joseph fled from the wrath of Herod to Egypt.)

    We have picked up the story of Jesus’ early ministry 30 years later.

    He is filled by the Holy Spirit, baptized by John, faced Satan for 40 days in the wilderness and returned to Nazareth and the surrounding towns to preach repentance.

    Jesus has been rejected by his own brothers and neighbors of Nazareth. The people of Nazareth try to stone Him!

    Jesus moves to Capernaum. He teaches and performs miracles on the Galilean hillsides. All the time, of course, Galilee is under the administration and watchful eye of Rome. A Roman army could occupy any town at any time if they perceived a threat from its people or a charismatic leader with thousands of followers listening to his teaching. Of course, watchful Roman ears would have the intelligence to hear what such a Galilean would be saying to his followers. Rome and the gentile solders certainly knew Jesus prior to His triumphal entry into Jerusalem which would occur just three short years from now.

    Christ Jesus is not only a teacher and friend of the Jews. Jesus IS a light and salvation to the gentile Romans.

    The Prophesy of Luke 1:

    30 …for my eyes have seen your salvation
    31     that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
    32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
    and for glory to your people Israel.”

    (Next we continue Jesus’ journey and witness to Capernaum and Nain in Galilee.)