DAILY MANNA SUNDAY , 09 Oct, 2016

INESCAPABLE SENTENCE 

Text: LAMENTATION 3:1-10

KeyVerse: "Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer" (Lamentation 3:8).

Although Prophet Jeremiah's grieving poetry in our text is a recall of his bitter experience in the 20th and 38th chapters of his earlier book, it is really an expressive symbolism of the sufferings of Judah, following God's judgment on the people. The servant of God is lamenting how Pashur, the son of Immer the priest who was also the chief governor in the house of the Lord, smote him because he delivered God's word concerning the impending divine judgment. Eventually, Pashur put Jeremiah in confinement, leading the prophet to make a futile threat that, "I will not make mention of him [God], nor speak any more in his name" (Jeremaih 20:9). There is also an allusion to the time the prophet was thrown into an empty water pit in a prison yard (Jeremiah 38:6) until he was rescued of God by Ebedmelech, an Ethiopian eunuch. On a broader sense, because Jeremiah's cry is located in inspired Scripture written at the time of the captivity of Judah, it speaks to the suffering of a nation whose people have wronged God and are bearing the burden of judgment. The writer says there is darkness instead of light around him. He speaks of the unrelieved weight of divine fiery judgment upon a person who has turned down all entreaties to forsake rebellion against God. There is some apocalyptic angle to his condition when he declares in his lamentation. It will be too late to cry for help in hell. Inescapable sentence accompanied by unbearable sufferings and torment await the transgressor who refuses to embrace the salvation arrangement of God. The plague, persecution and pestilence that have assailed man since the existence of the world would not be compared to what hell holds in store for sinners and backsliders (Revelation 21:8; 20:15).

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: There is no alternative to accepting Jesus as one's Saviour and Lord.

BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: ISAIAH 13 - 17