April 19, 2016
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Hounded but Hopeful

Please see the links to our EXTRA Bible Study notes at the bottom of the page.

Opening Prayer

Loving Lord, in the ups and downs of life, You are always the same. I know I can count on You.

Read Lamentations 3:34-66

[34] To crush underfoot all prisoners in the land, [35] to deny people their rights before the Most High, [36] to deprive them of justice- would not the Lord see such things? [37] Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? [38] Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? [39] Why should the living complain when punished for their sins? [40] Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the LORD. [41] Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: [42] “We have sinned and rebelled and you have not forgiven. [43] “You have covered yourself with anger and pursued us; you have slain without pity. [44] You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through. [45] You have made us scum and refuse among the nations. [46] “All our enemies have opened their mouths wide against us. [47] We have suffered terror and pitfalls, ruin and destruction.” [48] Streams of tears flow from my eyes because my people are destroyed. [49] My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief, [50] until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees. [51] What I see brings grief to my soul because of all the women of my city. [52] Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me like a bird. [53] They tried to end my life in a pit and threw stones at me; [54] the waters closed over my head, and I thought I was about to perish. [55] I called on your name, LORD, from the depths of the pit. [56] You heard my plea: “Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.” [57] You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” [58] You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life. [59] LORD, you have seen the wrong done to me. Uphold my cause! [60] You have seen the depth of their vengeance, all their plots against me. [61] LORD, you have heard their insults, all their plots against me- [62] what my enemies whisper and mutter against me all day long. [63] Look at them! Sitting or standing, they mock me in their songs. [64] Pay them back what they deserve, LORD, for what their hands have done. [65] Put a veil over their hearts, and may your curse be on them! [66] Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the LORD.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“‘Man of Sorrows,’ what a name. . .” (Philip Bliss, 1838-1876). Perhaps we, too, need a new sense of God’s heart for a broken world.

 

FURTHER*The high notes of yesterday are not quite maintained. A recital of injustice,
desperate pleas to God and a cry for vengeance are more prominent. Evil and pain are all-pervasive
and cannot be ignored; they act as a constant challenge to faith, and anyone who pretends otherwise
has not plumbed the depths of human agony or faced the questions that it raises. The refusal to take
personal vengeance and the determination to leave things in God’s hands (64) sounds like the new
covenant (Rom. 12:19) and reminds us that the ultimate solution to the problems can only be found in
God.

The high notes of yesterday are not quite maintained. A recital of injustice,
desperate pleas to God and a cry for vengeance are more prominent. Evil and pain are all-pervasive
and cannot be ignored; they act as a constant challenge to faith, and anyone who pretends otherwise
has not plumbed the depths of human agony or faced the questions that it raises. The refusal to take
personal vengeance and the determination to leave things in God’s hands (64) sounds like the new
covenant (Rom. 12:19) and reminds us that the ultimate solution to the problems can only be found in
God.

We do not have complete answers but if, in some sense at least, we are to see pointers to Christ in this chapter it reminds us that God is, in Christ, entering our pain. Christ is the ultimate forsaken one: his struggles in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-38) and his separation from the Father (Mark 15:34) must surely lie beyond human comprehension, but they are the assurance that he stands with us in all our pain, humiliation and questioning. Sin and the suffering it causes are an alien intrusion into the world; they are part of our reality, but not part of God’s intention.

The sufferer here, and the Jerusalem he seeks to comfort, do not yet have the insight afforded by the cross, but he can see that hope lies in entrusting his, and Jerusalem’s, cause to God, returning to him and acknowledging sin (40). The Hebrew word for “return,” here, is often translated “repent”; the basis of repentance is coming back to God. Lamentations, written at the start of the Exile, is not the last word: Judah has yet to appropriate the word of Isaiah 40. There is comfort, sin has been paid for, and a road for return is being prepared. For us that can only ultimately be true in Christ.

Apply

Read again verses 40-42. How can these verses help you when you consider confession and forgiveness?

Closing prayer

Lord Jesus, I thank You that through Your death I have received life; in You I can live fully now, and one day I will live forever.

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