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A time to lament
- 1. The Book of Lamentations
- 2. • Loss of greatness (our place of honor) • Loss of friends and family • Loss of freedom in our own place • Loss of our religion (traditions)
- 3. • God has done it … • because we have sinned • and our spiritual leaders didn’t let us know
- 4. • Harsh punishment of offenders • Un-forgiveness and withholding of healing • Powerful endorsed injustice
- 5. • Market Crash = maybe greed • Starvation = maybe gluttony • Marriages (relationships) broken = maybe selfishness or lust
- 6. • Church no longer the place that people come for help • Maybe gossip … (Romans 1:28-32) • Or our spiritual leaders not speaking truth to powerful in the church or out • Or maybe we, who call ourselves the people of God are just not practicing what is being preached
- 8. • pray • confess and repent • extend ourselves to others and no longer retaliate
- 9. • Speakto, for and about the sins of the people
- 10. • Let us examine our ways and test them (we need to look first at ourselves individually and corporately) and return to God together as a people. If we do we will see the restoration of God. If we do not…..
Notas do Editor
- Planned a year ago May 22 , 2010Business and Faith seminarI want you to make a lot of money. But I also want to encourage generosity and just business and religious practices.Joke about bacon
- 1 [a]How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. 2 Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies. 3 After affliction and harsh labor, Judah has gone into exile. She dwells among the nations; she finds no resting place. All who pursue her have overtaken her in the midst of her distress. 4 The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to her appointed festivals. All her gateways are desolate, her priests groan, her young women grieve, and she is in bitter anguish.
- 5Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. The LORD has brought her grief because of her many sins. Her children have gone into exile, captive before the foe.4: 13 But it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed within her the blood of the righteous.Why didn’t God give the Levites and Priests a land portion but rather made them dependant on the giving of those who did own land and businesses? So that the spiritual leaders could be a vocal, authoritative measure for just business and religious practices. The Levites and Priest were in the same place as the poor who did not have means of their own and needed the generosity of the wealthy to survive. So if the powerful and rich were not living according to the generosity laws and jubilee practices of the covenant they made with God the Levites and Priests would feel that in the same way as the orphan, the widow and the poor. At least that was the idea. The way the economic structure of Israel was set up, when times were good the house of the Lord (the treasury) was filled and when times were thin they experienced the difficulties of the land as did everyone. At least that was the plan. But what actually happened (according to Lamentations) is that the powerful controlled the voice of the Priest and Prophets by either giving or withholding their offerings and gifts to the Temple in both good and bad times. If the spiritual leaders said and did what they wanted they would give. If they did not like what they were doing or saying they would not. And because most any human being will do just about anything to keep food on their families table, the Priests and the Prophets did not challenge the rich and powerful who distorted the plans of God for the good of all and set up a social system that kept wealthy in power and kept everyone else in a place subservient to them. Things have not cahnged much have they?God set up a system where the spiritual leaders would notice, first hand, when greed entered society and expected them to become a voice to name that as sin. But because the spiritual leaders were protecting their own interests and not the interests of God or God’s people, they too where held responsible by God and judged. It is conceivable that if they had spoken out, as Jeremiah is doing in the passage, that the spiritual leaders would have been spared the judgment of God.
- 3:33 For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. 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?Things like loaning money to the poor and then when they could not pay making them indentured servants, we called them farm hands in Rockingham County.Or if one person offended or hurt another instead of forgiving the persons they would seek to hurt them and let them know how hurtful it was. I can imagine one farmer seeing the gate of a rival farmer open and all the sheep leaving the pen. Instead of closing the gate or telling the farmer she watches as the sheep are devoured by wolves and laughs. The next day she offers the farmer top dollar for the rest of the farm and without other options the other must sell.And the spiritual leaders say nothing of such things. Either because the victorious farmer brings in a large amount because God has blessed them or because if they are challenged and told “you have sinned against your brother and the Lord” they may not give at all.
- We live in a world where some feast on filet mignon and lobster, I being one of them, while many of the world literally need to consume their children to survive. Look at 4:10 10 With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed.Today we have similar things happening as parents sell their children into slave labor, rebel and gorilla military service, drug trafficking and prostitution. And we as the church are either unaware or unwilling to speak out against or take action to address such a situation. According to Lamentations, God, in God’s time and in God’s ways, will judge these things. And if it is God’s people that are either doing them or allowing them to happen, they too will be judged. Therefore we must lament them for these things are happening even today, in this moment as we gather here. You see….
- The church it seems is no longer the place where the most people come for help. We must ask ourselves why?
- But there is hope. There was hope for Israel and there is hope for us. And that hope is that … God is compassionate3:21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: 22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”
- 3:28 Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him. 29 Let him bury his face in the dust— there may yet be hope. 30 Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.
- 3:40 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.Ifwe do not, them may God have compassion on us all!