Overview
Lamentations: Jeremiah asks the Lord to see what he has caused. Women eat their children, priest and prophet s are killed along with young and old. The Lord hasn’t shown pity. Terror came like an invitation to a festival.
Jeremiah speaks as if one man representing the people. He has seen and endured this affliction and suffering. He has been thrown into darkness. He starves and his bones ae broken. He has bitterness and tribulation. He can’t escape his chains. God ignores his prayers. God is like a bear or lion waiting to eat him. God’s arrows pierce his organs and he is ridiculed by others. He has no peace or happiness.
Speaking for himself, Jeremiah remembers that the Lord’ love and mercy never stop. Every morning his mercy is new; he will hope in the Lord. It is good for a person to wait for the Lord because he is good to those who seek him. It is good to endure suffering when young and learn to be quiet and to turn his cheek to his oppressor. The Lord won’t cause grief forever, but will have compassion. He doesn’t want to afflict people or deny them justice. For, when God speaks it happens and nothing can happen unless he commands it. Therefore, man should not complain when punished for his sin.
Instead of complaining we should examine our ways, repent, and turn to the Lord. This destruction has happened because of their sins and though they cried out, the Lord didn’t forgive but closed himself from them and gave them to their enemies. Jeremiah weeps for the destruction of his people. He won’t stop weeping until God looks down and sees the destruction. He was hunted like a bird and he called on the Lord who heard him and told him not to fear.
Jeremiah says the Lord redeemed him after seeing the wrong done to him. The Lord heard the enemy’s taunts and plots. The Lord will repay, curse, and destroy them.
Psalm: The Psalmist cries to the Lord to hear him in his days of distress. He wants the Lord to answer him quickly. He is physically afflicted with some illness affecting his whole body and kills his appetite. He feels as though he is all alone and that God’s anger has caused his misery. He is withering away.
But he proclaims that God is sovereign forever and he will have pity on Zion. Nations will fear the Lord because he builds up Zion and listens to the prayers of the afflicted. He wants future generations to know God looks down and sets prisoners free. Future generations will then praise the Lord. They will gather in Zion and worship.
Even though the Psalmist is losing strength in his midlife and his life is shortened, God lives forever and the future generations will dwell secure and be established by the Lord.
Proverbs: Some people just feed arguments and strife like wood or charcoal on a fire. There is a weird thing about people who whisper gossip, we take in their words like sweets and they negatively affect our inner being.
Hebrews: God spoke to us in many ways and the last is in his Son. The Son is heir of everything and created everything. He looks just like God and has the same nature as God. He continues to hold the universe together by his word. The Son also made atonement for sins and is seated at God’s right hand since he is greater and superior to angels.
God never told an angel that he was his Son. Instead, he has told the angels to worship his Son. The angels are his ministers. God has called his Son, God, and he will rule forever with righteousness because he loves righteousness and hates wickedness. That is why he is anointed above his companions. The Son created the earth, which will perish but he will exist forever even after the earth is worn out and replaced. God never told angels to sit at his right hand while he subjects their enemies to them. No, the angels are ministering spirts who serve people who are saved.
What Stood Out
Lamentations: “For he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men” (Lam 3:33). “Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?” (Lam 3:39).
Psalm: “Let this be recorded for a generation to come ... he looked down from his holy height … to set free those who were doomed to die … that they may declare … the name of the Lord … when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord” (Ps 102:18-22).
Proverbs: “The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body” (Prov 26:22).
Hebrews: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3).
Insight
Lamentations: We often have trouble understanding man’s free will and God’s sovereignty. Jeremiah affirms that when God decides something will happen, whether good or bad, it will (Lam 3:37-8). However, it is important to note that man’s will is also imbedded in these passages. For God does not want to bring disaster on people (Lam 3:33) since it is a result of their disobedience. Neither can we blame God when we disobey and he punishes us (Lam 3:39).
The concept that God does what he wants and we don’t really have a choice stands in opposition to the fact we do rebel and become disobedient doing the things we want in rebellion against him. If we try to understand this with our human reasoning, we can’t reconcile them. Yet when we look though the whole Bible we see that even with our rebellion and sin, God has guided history and individuals to the critical point when Jesus came to pay the penalty for our sins and give us eternal life (Rom 5:6).
We may never understand how this works, but we can give thanks to the Lord that the result is eternal life for those who seek him and find him in Jesus Christ. Whether you believe God’s grace compels us to have faith resulting in salvation or you believe God’s grace enables us to have faith to choose salvation, it is still God’s grace and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves.
Psalm: The Psalmist has an eternal and global view of life. His viewpoint is established in his understanding of God. What he is writing will be used so that all people in the future will praise the Lord. They won’t just praise the Lord anywhere, but they will do it in Jerusalem. Psalm 102:25-27 will be quoted by the author of Hebrews when he explains the eternal nature of Jesus.
If we don’t have an eternal and global view of life, we may miss the bigger picture of what God is doing. Some people look at the effectiveness of their lives, their church, or their mission and wonder if they are stuck in a rut or of no use to the Lord. Rather than doing this, they should look at these things and understand that God took a lowly shepherd and made him a king. They should look at the unnamed prophet who confronted Jeroboam in 1 Kings 13. He made a mistake and was killed by a lion, yet his brief appearance in history help shape what God was doing. The widow that fed Elijah and the woman who provided a place for Elisha both were integral parts of God’s plan but could also be seen as simply living their lives the best they knew how.
We may never know how God is using us in our mundane lives to accomplish his will. However, there will be a day when we will all gather in Jerusalem to worship the Lord. We are all part his plan to accomplish that.
Proverbs: Some foods are not really good for us, but we eat them because they taste good. We all have to learn how to stop before they cause a problem. Too many sweets and other delicious foods turn into fat that can wrap itself around our bodies and cause premature death.
That’s how gossip works. Our sinful nature hears a little rumor and we want to know more. What may have started as a legitimate prayer concern turns into gossip as the words go down into our inner being to wrap around our hearts and open the door for other sins as well. We need to know when to say, “Stop.”
Hebrews: This first chapter of Hebrews sets the tone for the whole book. It powerfully quotes from the Old Testament to prove that Jesus is not a created being or an angel. He is the eternal God and if you want to see God, all you need to do is see Jesus. This is what Jesus told his disciples (John 14:7-9). This is a foundational truth of the Christian faith. If you don’t believe that Jesus is God and God is Jesus, then you are not a Christian but something else. Any cult that believes Jesus is an angel or that he is a created being that became a god should not be labeled as Christian even though they call themselves that.
These cults ignore verse 3 and jump on verse 5 saying that God the Father created the Son quoting Psalm 2:7 that the Messiah, his Son, is begotten. These verses must be reconciled because our faith depends on Jesus being God and not just a created being. When Paul presented the gospel to the people of Antioch of Pisidia he said that the Jewish rulers didn’t understand the prophet when they killed Jesus or the meaning of his resurrection. He explained Jesus’ resurrection is the fulfilment of being begotten as God’s son in Psalm 2:7 (Acts 13:26-33). So begotten should not be construed to mean created in the sense of a father conceiving a child but a way of looking at the resurrection.
Since Jesus is the creator and holds all things together, it is also evident that he couldn’t have created himself. John affirms that in the beginning, which means before anything was created, Jesus was with God and was God. Using the past tense, was, in saying Jesus was God in the beginning also proves that even before the beginning, Jesus is God.
If we miss the fact that Jesus is God, then we are worshiping the wrong god and I don’t think anyone who worships the wrong god is saved. That is how important it is to know Jesus is God.
Application
I want to have an eternal view of life. Then I can understand that Jesus is God. I can understand the importance of sharing the gospel with others. I can understand that I’m a part of God’s plan and will work to accomplish it.
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