Tag Archives: Hope

Day 23: Hope for Humanity

Lamentations 5:6-18 :

We have given our hands to the Egyptians,
and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
Our fathers sinned, and are no more.
We have borne their iniquities.
Servants rule over us.
There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.
We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
because of the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin is black like an oven,
because of the burning heat of famine.
They ravished the women in Zion,
the virgins in the cities of Judah.
Princes were hanged up by their hands.
The faces of elders were not honored.
The young men carry millstones.
The children stumbled under loads of wood.
The elders have ceased from the gate,
and the young men from their music.
The joy of our heart has ceased.
Our dance is turned into mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
For this our heart is faint.
For these things our eyes are dim:
for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate.
The foxes walk on it.

Once again, this lamentation continues to describe the horrible oppression that the Israelis were under during their captivity, but it also has a concerning statement to consider. Did you notice that it says: “Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.” Later on in the passage it says: “Woe to us, for we have sinned!” This brings up a couple of issues. In English, it’s pretty easy to interpret the first quote as meaning that the children were being punished for the parent’s sin. The problem with this is that God says very clearly that He doesn’t do that. I want us to look at that promise again.

Deuteronomy 24:16 :

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

God doesn’t punish children for their parents or vice versa. So what is this talking about? I think that the ISV uses more understandable English in that it says: “we continue to bear the consequences of their sin.” It’s not that God is punishing the children of those who sinned. It’s just that He’s allowing them to feel the consequences of sin for a season. One of the powerful things about that is that it can help you to not want to sin in the future and that’s exactly what happened later in Israel’s history as they got back together in the land.

The fact is, these children of sinners also realized that they had their own sin to deal with. They may have been feeling the affects of their parent’s sin, but their own sin was also an issue as they expressed here as well. One of the remarkable things that we saw back when we were studying this time in Israel’s history, is that when the people were given the opportunity to go back to their own land, many of them refused. Some of them actually went back to doing the same things that their parents had done to deserve punishment. Do you remember how distressing that was to Ezra? This book of Lamentations shows us the futility of our condition as humans, but the fact that we can cry out to God for help, shows us that there is hope for us as well.

Day 14: Remembering the Multitude of his Loving Kindnesses

Lamentations 3:28-39 :

Let him sit alone and keep silence,
because he has laid it on him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust,
if it is so that there may be hope.
Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him.
Let him be filled full of reproach.

For the Lord will not cast off forever.
For though he causes grief,
yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
For he does not afflict willingly,
nor grieve the children of men.

To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord doesn’t approve.

Who is he who says, and it comes to pass,
when the Lord doesn’t command it?
Doesn’t evil and good come out of the mouth of the Most High?
Why should a living man complain,
a man for the punishment of his sins?

It may be that man’s most significant problem is that He keeps trying to supplant God. An amazing thing that Lamentations shows us is that we can do this even while undergoing suffering. God Himself may be disciplining us, and we will still try to do something to make things better for ourselves. Jeremiah reminds us, here, that the best thing we can do is to “sit alone and keep silence.” He isn’t saying this because all is lost. In fact, the exact opposite is true. “For the Lord will not cast off forever.” Instead of trying and trying to solve our own problem, it’s time to return to simple faith.

So what is the fact that we should consider as we keep our silence in our suffering? Here it is: God “does not afflict willingly.” Eventually, He will save us. Besides, “Why should a living man complain… for the punishment of his sins?” That’s what we are really doing when we get all upset about our suffering for our sin. We are complaining about our punishment, all the while failing to remember that God doesn’t want to be punishing us in the first place! I do recognize that there are times when we suffer when we did not sin, like Job did, but even then, we can trust that God has something good in mind, like Job came to understand.

The simple fact that we can rest our faith on, is that God intends to “have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.” May we remember this when we suffer.

Day 13: The Greatness of God’s Faithfulness

Lamentations 3:19-27 :

Remember my affliction and my misery,
the wormwood and the bitterness.
My soul still remembers them,
and is bowed down within me.
This I recall to my mind;
therefore I have hope.

It is because of Yahweh’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,
because his mercies don’t fail.
They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness.
“Yahweh is my portion,” says my soul.
“Therefore I will hope in him.”

Yahweh is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that a man should hope
and quietly wait for the salvation of Yahweh.
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

If you are still breathing, there is hope for you. That’s the wonderful thing about Hell on earth. As long as we are still alive, we can hope in God because God has clearly promised that anyone who calls on Him will be saved. Those who die in their sins will have no hope. At this point in our study, the sun rises on this lamentation. If I’m not mistaken, this is in the very center of all five lamentations. It would appear that the structure of the poetry points to this by placing it in a prominent place.

When we are weighed down in our sins, it’s important for us remember this: we still have hope. As Christians, we can never lose our hope because we have been given eternal life, not based on our good works, but on Christ. Our sin as Christians, no matter how horrible it is, still cannot keep us from our destiny. It may land us in jail. It could even mean that we must die, but it can’t keep us from our eternal hope. Those who are not Christians, still have hope too. If they haven’t died yet, they can use the breath that they are borrowing to cry out to God. God’s “mercies don’t fail. They are new every morning. Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”

The last paragraph, here, reminds us of the importance of waiting for God. Our salvation often isn’t immediate. I sometimes wonder why, but I believe that one reason may be that it causes us to value it more. In the last statement, it says: “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” The best time to get punished is when you are still young and have enough time to live life the right way. It’s horrible to have wasted your whole life in sin without an opportunity to live for God for very long. I’m so glad that my parents disciplined me as a youth. What an amazing opportunity it has been to live for God, but I also see areas where I wasted vast amounts of time. All of us fall short of the glory of God, but we know the way out. To God we all can say: “Great is your faithfulness.”

Day 157: What Sense Does This Make?

Jeremiah 38:1-6

Shephatiah the son of Mattan, Gedaliah the son of Pashhur, Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur the son of Malchijah heard the words that Jeremiah spoke to all the people, saying, “Yahweh says, ‘He who remains in this city will die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, but he who goes out to the Chaldeans will live. He will escape with his life and he will live.’ Yahweh says, ‘This city will surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon, and he will take it.’ ”

Then the princes said to the king, “Please let this man be put to death, because he weakens the hands of the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, in speaking such words to them; for this man doesn’t seek the welfare of this people, but harm.”

Zedekiah the king said, “Behold, he is in your hand; for the king can’t do anything to oppose you.”

Then they took Jeremiah and threw him into the dungeon of Malchijah the king’s son, that was in the court of the guard. They let down Jeremiah with cords. In the dungeon there was no water, but mire; and Jeremiah sank in the mire.

It’s hard for me to complain about my problems as a Christian when I think about Jeremiah. He had just been given his freedom from a dungeon only to be forced into a muddy well. Wouldn’t he have been better off in the dungeon? I wonder if Jeremiah began to question his decision to ask the king to leave the dungeon? It’s hard to see how Jeremiah could have been happy about anything. Everyone hated him, he was starving, he was in a small space and sinking in mud to top it all off. Is this what it means to serve God? Would anyone decide to follow Jeremiah’s example? How could this be God’s will?

This is really hard to deal with don’t you think? God told Jeremiah to spend his life giving people a message that they wouldn’t receive. Then he told him to use his money to buy property that was going to be taken over by foreign invaders, and then allowed people to throw him into a mud hole to die. Have you ever felt like what God is doing doesn’t make any sense?

As I mentioned before, Jesus knew about these things and He actually told us what we should do in these circumstances. He told us to become extremely glad because these are the kind of things that happen to people that God intends to reward. As bad as things were at this low point in Jeremiah’s career, that fact was that things were going to become very, very good for him in the future. Thankfully, we get to read about that too. For now, we should practice thinking like Jesus told us to think. Let’s not think about the mud hole we are in, let’s consider what it means for our eternal future. Every minute we get closer to our eternal destiny and we can’t even begin to imagine how amazing it will be for us when we arrive.

Jarrin Jackson Jumps for Joy

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Jarrin Jackson is an America lover who love’s Jesus more. He brings the Gospel into politics where it clearly belongs. In this episode of his show, he discusses the goodness he sees in what Trump is doing and some of the badness he sees in what’s going on around us in the world.

Day 131: Our Heavenly Father

Jeremiah 31:7-14

For Yahweh says,
“Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout for the chief of the nations.
Publish, praise, and say,
‘Yahweh, save your people,
the remnant of Israel!’
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth,
along with the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her who travails with child together.
They will return as a great company.
They will come with weeping.
I will lead them with petitions.
I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters,
in a straight way in which they won’t stumble;
for I am a father to Israel.
Ephraim is my firstborn.

“Hear Yahweh’s word, you nations,
and declare it in the distant islands. Say,
‘He who scattered Israel will gather him,
and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock.’
For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob,
and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.
They will come and sing in the height of Zion,
and will flow to the goodness of Yahweh,
to the grain, to the new wine, to the oil,
and to the young of the flock and of the herd.
Their soul will be as a watered garden.
They will not sorrow any more at all.
Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance;
the young men and the old together;
for I will turn their mourning into joy,
and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness,
and my people will be satisfied with my goodness,” says Yahweh.

Modern secular culture has to ignore many obvious human needs in order to maintain its composure and one of those things is mankind’s need for hope. From an evolutionary perspective, mankind doesn’t really have a basis for hope because they believe that mankind was produced by accident. There’s no reason to believe that mankind’s existence at the top of the food chain will remain. The same accidents that produced man could also produce something else in the future. There’s no reason to think that some other thing won’t become more fit for survival in the future. This kind of nonsense is not found in the Bible, of course. Instead, what we find are things like we read here.

The truth of the matter is that God is the Creator and His decisions are all that is required to make things happen. We have been reading about the fact that God intended to make terrible things happen to Israel because they had chosen to walk away from Him, but at the same time, He said things like this. He makes it clear to Israel that He intends to bring them back in the future. Not only will He bring them back, they are to enjoy prosperity, peace and joy. Even before He sends them into captivity, He makes this clear. This message inserts something precious into their minds. Whenever they consider the horrible situation that God forced them into, they will also have the memory that this same God will force them back into their own land and “they will not sorrow any more at all.” That’s what I call: hope technology. God wasn’t intending to simply torment His people. He intended to save them.

Not only is mankind not the product of a series of accidents, they were created by a Father. Israel is a glorious example to Gentiles like us. A father doesn’t torture His children. His intent in punishing them is to make them thrive as he removes error from their lives and sets them up for the future. What we see in this example is God saying: “I am a father to Israel.” He then goes on to explain their final end. Israel’s Father has dedicated Himself to their success and that’s exactly what they will have. As Christians we have this same Father. When Jesus taught us to pray by saying: “Our father who is in heaven…”, He said that we should start by remembering this fact. We go through a lot of problems in our lives too, but we can count on the fact that our Father is dedicated to our success just like He shows us with Israel.

Day 71: From Despair to Hope

Jeremiah 14:19-22

Have you utterly rejected Judah?
Has your soul loathed Zion?
Why have you struck us, and there is no healing for us?
We looked for peace, but no good came;
and for a time of healing, and behold, dismay!
We acknowledge, Yahweh, our wickedness,
and the iniquity of our fathers;
for we have sinned against you.
Do not abhor us, for your name’s sake.
Do not disgrace the throne of your glory.
Remember, and don’t break your covenant with us.
Are there any among the vanities of the nations that can cause rain?
Or can the sky give showers?
Aren’t you he, Yahweh our God?
Therefore we will wait for you;
for you have made all these things.

Right after God’s command that Jeremiah not ask for the good of Israel, we have this prayer. I assume that this prayer was not a violation of God’s request. It doesn’t ask God to keep them from their punishment. Instead, it recognizes both the sins of the current generation of Israelis as well as their relatives. This is an honest confession of sin. The prayer also expresses the concern that God may have rejected His own people. It expresses the fear that there may never be any healing of Israel this time.

Just as in many of the Psalms, this prayer starts out with doubt, and ends in confidence. That confidence appears to be coming from two things. First, there is a reminder of the fact that God had made a covenant with Israel. When God says something, it will always be true and God said that He would bless Israel forever. He said that He would punish them for a while, and return to them and heal them again. When we have God’s word on a matter, it is settled and that is why the Bible is so important to us today as well. The other thing that this prayer mentions is the fact that there is only one God who can save. Looking for salvation from anything or anyone else would be a waste.

In the end we read that the only right thing to do is to wait for God’s salvation. God is the only one who can help and He said that He would. That means that all we have to do is wait for Him to do it. That’s what faith in God is like. It’s when we get to the point where we hear God’s promise to help in His word and then wait expectantly for it. This prayer shows us that even if we aren’t feeling very faithful in our trials, an honest prayer along with God’s word, can bring us back to a place of hope.

Day 70
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