Lamentations 3:43-66
August 4, 2025
“You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us, killing without pity; you have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. You have made us scum and garbage among the people. “All our enemies open their mouths against us; panic and pitfall have come upon us, devastation and destruction; my eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. “My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees; my eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city. “I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, ‘I am lost.’
“I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit, you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’ “You have taken up my cause, O Lord; you have redeemed my life. You have seen the wrong done to me, O Lord; judge my cause. You have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me. “You have heard their taunts, O Lord, all their plots against me. The lips and thoughts of my assailants are against me all the day long. Behold their sitting and their rising; I am the object of their taunts. “You will repay them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. You will give them dullness of heart; your curse will be on them. You will pursue them in anger and destroy them from under your heavens, O Lord.”[
Why was God so angry with the chosen people? They had listened to all that God had said to Moses and agreed that of all the people in the world, God had chosen them, so they vowed to obey all that He had spoken to Moses. You will find those promises in Exodus 19:8: After God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, He established a covenant with them at Mount Sinai. The people responded, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do." Once more in Exodus 24:3, 7: “Moses relayed all the Lord's rules and regulations to the people. They responded again, "All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do." And they did till they got wealth and comfort, and then they rebelled and became like the pagans living around them.
Man wanting to run the show, to be the captain of his life, and look what that got Israel, and it sure looks like our nation has rejected God and the Church; we need to awaken to its calling.
We should recall this Scripture in John 15:18-20, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they would also obey yours.”
In that Jesus is the Truth, not some truth, He is the Truth, and the world does not like truth. So, when you confront the darkness of people's hearts, they will hate you, because they do not want to be exposed.
From our Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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