Loading summary
Transcript5 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey.
- [00:26]
B
Hey, Bible nerds, I'm back. It's Tia Arango. Today is day 331. We are going to review Lamentations 3 through 5. Right now, I want you to stop. If you have not read yet, don't watch the video. Go read. It should take about 15 minutes because today it's three chapters and then come back and then we can dive in. Okay? Okay, let's dive in. I'm gonna start with context clues again today. Yesterday we got a lot of good context, but there's a little bit more. I don't know if I explicitly said that Jeremiah is the author of limitations. I think I might have touched on it, but I can't recall if I said it explicitly. So I'm here to say Jeremiah the prophet is the author of Lamentations. And that's important because as we jump into the Lamentations 3, it's going to be a lot of I and me language. And I want us all to know that this is Jeremiah the prophet talking again. I just want to remind everyone, yesterday we were saying that Jeremiah had spent like 30 to 40 years warning Jerusalem over and over again to not violate their covenant with Yahweh, because if they did that Babylon, which would overthrow their nation. And of course, again, we know that that happened. So also, I forgot to say that, like, how incredible that God would give 30 to 40 years of mourning before he removes his hand. Like, I just feel like I don't want to skip past that without saying that he is truly slow to anger. He is truly so patient with us. Decades of mourning and decades of waiting and decades of chance after chance, and they didn't listen. So then he removed his hand. But he's so patient and he's so kind with us, and I didn't want to rush past that. So again, in chapter three, this is going to be more of a primary expression of lament and suffering directly from Jeremiah. He wrote this also while all of the pain and destruction was happening. This is a firsthand account. This is not past tense. These aren't distant memories of suffering. This is completely fresh in his mind and in his heart. The pain is raw. And we are reading from a really Raw and vulnerable place all through the whole book, but especially in chapter three. And that perfectly takes us into our nerdy nugget for the day. Chapter three is the climax of the entire book of Lamentations. A reminder that this book is a chiasm, like I said yesterday. So. So everything surrounding chapter three is to beef up what we're gonna read in this chapter. In all of chapter three, when we read, there's actually only one verse where Jeremiah quotes something that God has said. And it's verse 57. And he said, you came near when I called on you. And you said, do not fear. This is the only time that Jeremiah is quoting something from God in its past tense. He just hasn't heard new prophecy from the Lord. Imagine how painful that probably is for someone who's used to hearing from the Lord. It's making me think a bit of Samson. We know. I feel like a lot of times in church we talk about how tragic it is that Samson just had no idea that the power of God had left him. He went out to fight and just didn't know that the spirit of God had left him. But. But. And that is so tragic. Oh my goodness. But imagine Jeremiah having a keen awareness that something in my relationship with God has changed. It's not the same. And he's living moment by moment with this awareness. I can. I can only imagine how hard and painful that is. Even in the middle of all of this out external suffering, there's an internal pain of like, something's different. I'm not hearing from God the way I used to. Like, I can't imagine how hard, how much more compounded his pain is because of that. Because of that reality. And now we're gonna move on to actually splitting up chapter three so that we know more of thematically what's happening throughout the entire chapter. This is still. This is more of a nerdy nugget. We're gonna split it into themes. Chapter. Sorry, verse one through 20. As you were reading, I'm sure you noticed that that's sorrow. More sorrow and more lamentation, chapters one through 20. I mean, just. But a personal expression of sorrow and lament. And then as we move to verse 21:38, it switches. The sorrow turns into a remembrance of God's character, a reminder even maybe for his soul of who God is and who God said he is, that God is still good, that he's steadfast in his character. We see that from verse 21 through 38. And then it shifts again in verse 39 to 45, it shifts to a personal responsibility and an acceptance of consequences. Specifically, verse 39, it said, why should a living man complain a man about the punishment of his sins? And that's right where that change happens, where he's like, there's an acceptance of their role, which is what we talked about yesterday. But he's going deeper in to that in verses 39 to 45. And then there's a shift again in verses 46 to 54, and it's back to sorrow and lament. It's back to the deep pain that he and Jerusalem are experiencing. And then there's another shift, a return actually, in verse 55, it's back to the faithfulness of God. And not only the faithfulness of God, but a pleading that God would defend him, that God would defend Jerusalem. And this is the first time we're kind of seeing that in chapter three. A beautiful way to combine God, I know you're faithful, and also will you be faithful in this and show up for us in the future? And then in verse 64, it changes again to hope for the future. 64 to 66. It's just hope you will repay them, oh 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, hope for the future and hope that God will rescue them. And then in chapter four through five, we go back to just national sorrow, just more of it's not personal. This is about Jerusalem as a whole. We go back into lament, which actually beautifully takes us into our timeless truth family.
- [07:32]
A
The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold, literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode.
- [08:30]
B
And that is God never asks us to suffer in silence ever. I think it's so kind of God to include Lamentations in the canon of Scripture. Because I think it's a message to us that he's not asking us to be quiet in our sorrow. He's not asking us to stuff everything down and not say anything out loud and not tell our community or tell him how painful life has gotten or is getting or whatever we're going through. We have a God who allows us to be vocal about the pain that we're going through. We have permission to be honest about our pain. We have permission to ask questions. He doesn't mind the hard questions that we have. When we're walking through life, we get to hold grief and hope at the same time. One does not cancel out the other. I can be grieving deeply and still have hope in me. And I want us to, because I know. And real life, when we're walking through pain, sometimes that feels impossible. Or it feels like God is asking us just to be hopeful. And we don't have a God who's like that. He doesn't despise the human experience. In fact, he became human so so that he could empathize with the human experience. We don't have a God who only protected himself from suffering. We have a God who suffered. We have a God who suffers alongside his creation. And so suffering and being open about it is not something that God despises. And how kind of him to give us an example of how to suffer. And that he is not insecure when we cry out. Our suffering is never an indictment on who God is or isn't. It's actually an opportunity for us to walk in step with our suffering Savior. I hear people say often that the cross was the greatest suffering in history. And I agree, it was the greatest suffering in history. But I don't know that the suffering itself was the main point of Calvary. The cross is not the suffering Olympics, although it would likely get gold. The cross is about a God who became a man to suffer for and to suffer with his creation. And what a beautiful God we have. What a beautiful story that he wanted to tell his people. God doesn't command us to do something he doesn't already do or didn't already do himself. He's given us an example time after time, of what it's like to suffer and how to suffer well. And I'm so thankful that Lamentations is another example of that. And the cross isn't even the first time we witnessed our Savior suffering. I mean, all through the Old Testament, we have a God who suffers in dealing with his people. I mean, Genesis, Exodus, Hosea. We have a God who's lamenting towards his creation. He just wants to draw us in, draw us near. And that's so beautiful. What kind of God is this? We're not in a relationship with a God that's static. He is dynamic. He feels all of the emotions, and that gives us permission to do the same. I'm so thankful to Jesus that he allows us to feel the fullness of our humanity, because he did first. That's all I have for today. I'm just so thankful. Thank you for letting me walk you through Lamentations. I feel so honored. I love this book. I hope that showed through. I'm just so thankful for the time that we got to walk through it together. If you're on a streak, 331 days. We are so proud of you. Oh, my goodness. That's a big deal. I don't want you to take it lightly. That's incredible. And if you're not on a streak and you wanna start, today's a great day to begin. If you've been on a streak for a week, congratul. Galatians. Reading scripture is so important and we are so proud of you. I'm done for now, but Tomorrow is day 332 and Pastor Manny will be back to walk you guys through. Ecclesiastes 1 through 3. It's a new book. I hope you're excited. I'm excited. Love you guys so much. Thank you for your time and I'll see you again soon. Bye.
- [12:49]
A
Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at the Bible Department and on Instagram Hebible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.