Lamentations 3:43
You have covered Yourself in anger and pursued us; You have killed without pity.
Sermons
God's SilenceW. R. Huntington, D. D.Lamentations 3:43-54














Religion takes possession of the whole of our nature. A service professedly of the heart, and of the heart alone, is a hypocritical service, which because of its insincerity God cannot accept, inasmuch as it is contradicted by the life. On the other hand, how can the Searcher of all hearts be pleased with a service which is of the hands, the outward posture and actions only, in which the heart has no share? The true worship and homage consists in the combination of the spirit and the body.

I. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN PENITENCE AND CONFESSION. It seems to this exercise that the prophet here admonishes and invites. The heart has been engrossed by earthly pursuits and pleasures; and these it now quits, directing its contrite sighs to heaven, and lifting with it the clasped hands of penitence.

II. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN EARNEST ENTREATY. In its anguish, in its conscious helplessness, the heart seeks mercy and acceptance with God; the hands are raised as in supplication, to give expression to the imploring petitions.

III. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN BELIEVING CONFIDENCE. There is encouragement to trust in the Lord. The repenting and confiding Church of the Redeemer is ever lifting holy hands to heaven, in expression of that sentiment which is the condition of all blessing. It is the attitude of hope. "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help." And as the eyes of faith behold the God of grace upon the throne of power, they draw the heart upwards; the hands follow, and the posture of the spiritual nature is becoming to man and honouring to God. - T.

Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.
The demand for response is a thing instinctive in us, native to our feelings. We are so made that when any emotion is stirred in the heart, and breaks out into expression, there must be answer or we suffer. The very mechanism of Nature seems to have been planned with reference to this spiritual fact, and, as it wore, in illustration of it. Motion has its rebound, light its reflection, sound its echo. Nature may be, and, as we have too good reason to know, is, upon the highest topics, dumb to man, but to herself she is vocal. Action and reaction, play and counterplay, are the very groundwork of her being. When now we pass over the invisible line that marks off the confines of external Nature from those of human nature, and open our eyes upon the field of our own inner experience, what do we see? We see everywhere the same need of, the same demand for the response; but we do not everywhere see the need satisfied, or the demand met. On the contrary, appeal upon appeal, cry after cry, go out upon the air, and there comes nothing back. And yet the call for response is as real a thing as anything in us. What can the orator do with the unresponsive audience? lie may be able to struggle through the sentences he has prepared himself to utter, but if it is plain to him as he goes along that what he says is nowhere calling forth assent on the part of the listeners, he is half-paralysed. Liturgical worship, as an institution, may be said to rest upon this same principle. A recognition of the mutual interest that lies between minister and people in the act of worship is what makes The Book of Common Prayer the thing it is. "Lift up your hearts," that is well, but how much better to have the reply come back, full and strong, "We lift them up unto the Lord." These are but detached illustrations of the general principle that there is rooted in human nature a craving for response. "As in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." The question arises, Has man a right to demand, or to expect, from his Maker the responsiveness which he instinctively looks for from his brother man? First, then, is it a reasonable expectation on our part that God should take notice of our sorrows and our griefs, and in some way speak, to us about them? The Bible warrants me in answering, Yes. It is the teaching of the Christian religion that whatever there is in man that is good is also in God, and more besides. This is a general inference from the declaration that man was made in the image of God. The original has many characteristics which the image has not. But still the image has resemblance, even though it have not identity. If it had not resemblance, it would not be the image. Hence when we find in the works of Nature certain laws of number and proportion accurately followed; when we discover by chemical process that the same substances always combine according to the same fixed weights; when botany has shown us that the stalks and leaves of a plant are arranged in a carefully adjusted numerical order, we infer that a mind not unlike our own minds, in its general characteristics, must have planned and calculated such results. Apply this reasoning to the facts of the spiritual universe, and what have we as a result? Take the sentiment of pity, that compassionate feeling which strength may entertain towards weakness. It may not be possible to define it satisfactorily in words, but we all know what it is, and we know also that it is found most fully developed as a characteristic in the noblest natures. But why stop at this point? Why make the noblest man you can imagine the supreme illustration of this grace? God is above man, for God made man, and must of necessity, therefore, be man's superior. And shall we suppose that compassion ceases to be possible after we have soared up above the level of man's being? Nay, ought we not to expect to find in man's Maker a larger, deeper, broader compassion than we found in our very noblest man? There is an immense wealth of argument hidden in that question of the Psalmist. "He that formed the eye, shall He not see?" With equal emphasis we have a right to ask, He that formed man's heart so that it could be pitiful, shall not He pity? We do not hold our peace at the tears of others, when we honestly and sorely grieve for them. Why then should He hold His peace at our tears, if pity us He really does? Is there then any way of satisfactorily accounting for the apparent dumbness of God's pity? Does He really, as it might seem that He does, hold His peace at our tears? Instead of directly answering these questions, I purpose to meet them indirectly by suggesting a few thoughts to be pondered by all whom this inquiry in any degree interests. Here is one such suggestion. A voice, in order to be real, need not necessarily be an articulate voice, need not necessarily employ audible sounds. Of our various teachers there are few indeed that speak to us more effectively than the artists and the composers. They do it through the instrumentality of forms of speech peculiar to themselves. So, then, let us not look to God for a sort of utterance He has never vouchsafed, unless by miracle, and let us be reconciled to the thought that if He is to speak to us, it will be in what must seem to all except ourselves the deepest silence. Unquestionably there does sometimes come to persons in affliction, when they take their sorrows patiently, a certain quietness of soul, a calm tranquillity of which all about them take notice. Why is it not a reasonable inference, at least for a religious mind disposed to think the best rather than the worst things of God, why is it not a reasonable inference that this very stilling of the waves is the direct result of God's having spoken? We charge Him impatiently sometimes with holding His peace, when really the fact is that He has been bestowing His peace, and in doing so has spoken in the very truest and most satisfactory sense of all. Under the shadow of some weighty sorrow a group of friends sit silent in one another's presence. Shall we say of them that because their grief is speechless, therefore they are of no help to one another? Most assuredly, No. Do you tell me that the parallel fails, because in the case of the friends their silent sitting in one another's presence is comforting and helpful wholly because at other times, and in other places, they have spoken often and much? And so, I answer, has God in the past spoken often and much, spoken more than once, and more than twice. Through the lips of holy prophets, since the world began, He has from time to time communicated to the human family messages of reassurance. They tell of a new heavens and a new earth; they foretell the day when God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces; they predict a triumph over the grave, and the swallowing up of death in victory. No one can rob us of our heritage in words like these; they have been spoken; they have never been taken back; they are the common property of all of us; and while they stand we have no valid reason for complaining that God holds His peace at our tears. But I have kept the richest and most helpful suggestion till the last. CHRIST is really God's word of answer to those who turn to Him in trouble, all eagerness for His response. Baffled, disheartened, afflicted, distressed, we look at Him, and faith is born afresh. With what tenderness and graciousness, and at the same time with what a masterful touch does He sketch for us the true likeness of the Divine Majesty. Look at Him as the Good Shepherd leading His flock in green pastures, and beside still, waters! Look at Him as the Man of Sorrows, a homeless pilgrim, a seeker of mountain solitudes, misunderstood, plotted against, spitefully entreated, cursed, mocked, and scourged! See how full of pity He is for all who sorrow and all who suffer!" These three are the great ills of life: sin, disease, and sorrow. We note His attitude towards each of them, and it is plainly that of pardoner, physician, consoler. If any word can be imagined more full of meaning than this Word made flesh, speak it out, and let us know what it is. Failing to do that, no longer think of God as one who will not answer, who holds His peace at tears, but trust Him, trust Him as your everlasting Friend.

(W. R. Huntington, D. D.)

People
Jeremiah
Places
Zion
Topics
Anger, Covered, Covering, Cutting, Hast, Killed, Persecuted, Pitied, Pity, Pursue, Pursued, Slain, Slaying, Spared, Thyself, Unsparingly, Wrapped, Wrath
Outline
1. The prophet bewails his own calamities
22. By the mercies of God, he nourishes his hope
37. He acknowledges God's justice
55. He prays for deliverance
64. And vengeance on his enemies

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Lamentations 3:42-44

     8617   prayer, effective

Library
February the Twenty-Fourth Moving Towards Daybreak
"He hath brought me into darkness, but not into light." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 1-9. But a man may be in darkness, and yet in motion toward the light. I was in the darkness of the subway, and it was close and oppressive, but I was moving toward the light and fragrance of the open country. I entered into a tunnel in the Black Country in England, but the motion was continued, and we emerged amid fields of loveliness. And therefore the great thing to remember is that God's darknesses are not His goals;
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

February the Twenty-Fifth the Fresh Eye
"His compassions fail not: they are new every morning." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 22-33. We have not to live on yesterday's manna; we can gather it fresh to-day. Compassion becomes stale when it becomes thoughtless. It is new thought that keeps our pity strong. If our perception of need can remain vivid, as vivid as though we had never seen it before, our sympathies will never fail. The fresh eye insures the sensitive heart. And our God's compassions are so new because He never becomes accustomed to
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

Solitude, Silence, Submission
"He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope."--Lamentations 3:28, 29. THUS the prophet describes the conduct of a person in deep anguish of heart. When he does not know what to do, his soul, as if by instinct, humbles itself. He gets into some secret place, he utters no speech, he gives himself over to moaning and to tears, and then he bows himself lower and yet lower before the Divine Majesty, as if he felt
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 42: 1896

"And we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. "
Isaiah lxiv. 6.--"And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Here they join the punishment with the deserving cause, their uncleanness and their iniquities, and so take it upon them, and subscribe to the righteousness of God's dealing. We would say this much in general--First, Nobody needeth to quarrel God for his dealing. He will always be justified when he is judged. If the Lord deal more sharply with you than with others, you may judge there is a difference
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

To the Reader. Christian Reader
To The Reader. Christian Reader, This holy preacher of the gospel had so many convictions upon his spirit of the necessity of the duties of humiliation and mourning, and of people's securing the eternal interest of their souls for the life to come, by flying into Jesus Christ for remission of sins in his blood, that he made these the very scope of his sermons in many public humiliations, as if it had been the one thing which he conceived the Lord was calling for in his days; a clear evidence whereof
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Lord is My Portion. Lam 3:24

John Newton—Olney Hymns

The Disciple, -- what is the Meaning and Purpose of the Cross...
The Disciple,--What is the meaning and purpose of the cross, and why do pain and suffering exist in the world? The Master,--1. The cross is the key to heaven. At the moment when by My baptism I took the cross upon My shoulders for the sake of sinners, heaven was opened, and by means of My thirty-three years bearing of the cross and by death upon it, heaven, which by reason of sin was closed to believers, was for ever opened to them. Now as soon as believers take up their cross and follow Me they
Sadhu Sundar Singh—At The Master's Feet

How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements.
There is another evil and distemper which believers are subject to, and that is a case of fainting through manifold discouragements, which make them so heartless that they can do nothing; yea, and to sit up, as if they were dead. The question then is, how such a soul shall make use of Christ as in the end it may be freed from that fit of fainting, and win over those discouragements: for satisfaction to which we shall, 1. Name some of those discouragements which occasion this. 2. Show what Christ
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

The Practice of Piety in Glorifying God in the Time of Sickness, and when Thou Art Called to Die in the Lord.
As soon as thou perceivest thyself to be visited with any sickness, meditate with thyself: 1. That "misery cometh not forth of the dust; neither doth affliction spring out of the earth." Sickness comes not by hap or chance (as the Philistines supposed that their mice and emrods came, 1 Sam. vi. 9), but from man's wickedness, which, as sparkles, breaketh out. "Man suffereth," saith Jeremiah, "for his sins." "Fools," saith David, "by reason of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities,
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

From his Entrance on the Ministry in 1815, to his Commission to Reside in Germany in 1820
1815.--After the long season of depression through which John Yeardley passed, as described in the last chapter, the new year of 1815 dawned with brightness upon his mind. He now at length saw his spiritual bonds loosed; and the extracts which follow describe his first offerings in the ministry in a simple and affecting manner. 1 mo. 5.--The subject of the prophet's going down to the potter's house opened so clearly on my mind in meeting this morning that I thought I could almost have publicly
John Yeardley—Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel

Meditations for one that is Like to Die.
If thy sickness be like to increase unto death, then meditate on three things:--First, How graciously God dealeth with thee. Secondly, From what evils death will free thee. Thirdly, What good death will bring unto thee. The first sort of Meditations are, to consider God's favourable dealing with thee. 1. Meditate that God uses this chastisement of thy body but as a medicine to cure thy soul, by drawing thee, who art sick in sin, to come by repentance unto Christ, thy physician, to have thy soul healed
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Letter xxvi. (Circa A. D. 1127) to the Same
To the Same He excuses the brevity of his letter on the ground that Lent is a time of silence; and also that on account of his profession and his ignorance he does not dare to assume the function of teaching. 1. You will, perhaps, be angry, or, to speak more gently, will wonder that in place of a longer letter which you had hoped for from me you receive this brief note. But remember what says the wise man, that there is a time for all things under the heaven; both a time to speak and a time to keep
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Of the Character of the Unregenerate.
Ephes. ii. 1, 2. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. AMONG all the various trusts which men can repose in each other, hardly any appears to be more solemn and tremendous, than the direction of their sacred time, and especially of those hours which they spend in the exercise of public devotion.
Philip Doddridge—Practical Discourses on Regeneration

Question Lxxxii of Devotion
I. Is Devotion a Special Kind of Act? Cardinal Cajetan, On the Meaning of the Term "Devotion" S. Augustine, Confessions, XIII. viii. 2 II. Is Devotion an Act of the Virtue of Religion? III. Is Contemplation, that is Meditation, the Cause of Devotion? Cardinal Cajetan, On the Causes of Devotion " " On the Devotion of Women IV. Is Joy an Effect of Devotion? Cardinal Cajetan, On Melancholy S. Augustine, Confessions, II. x. I Is Devotion a Special Kind of Act? It is by our acts that we merit. But
St. Thomas Aquinas—On Prayer and The Contemplative Life

The Mercy of God
The next attribute is God's goodness or mercy. Mercy is the result and effect of God's goodness. Psa 33:5. So then this is the next attribute, God's goodness or mercy. The most learned of the heathens thought they gave their god Jupiter two golden characters when they styled him good and great. Both these meet in God, goodness and greatness, majesty and mercy. God is essentially good in himself and relatively good to us. They are both put together in Psa 119:98. Thou art good, and doest good.' This
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Covenant Duties.
It is here proposed to show, that every incumbent duty ought, in suitable circumstances, to be engaged to in the exercise of Covenanting. The law and covenant of God are co-extensive; and what is enjoined in the one is confirmed in the other. The proposals of that Covenant include its promises and its duties. The former are made and fulfilled by its glorious Originator; the latter are enjoined and obligatory on man. The duties of that Covenant are God's law; and the demands of the law are all made
John Cunningham—The Ordinance of Covenanting

"Take My Yoke Upon You, and Learn of Me," &C.
Matt. xi. 20.--"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," &c. Self love is generally esteemed infamous and contemptible among men. It is of a bad report every where, and indeed as it is taken commonly, there is good reason for it, that it should be hissed out of all societies, if reproaching and speaking evil of it would do it. But to speak the truth, the name is not so fit to express the thing, for that which men call self love, may rather be called self hatred. Nothing is more pernicious to a man's
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

"Thou Shall Keep Him in Perfect Peace, Whose Mind is Stayed on Thee, Because He Trusteth in Thee. "
Isaiah xxvi. 3.--"Thou shall keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." Christ hath left us his peace, as the great and comprehensive legacy, "My peace I leave you," John xiv. 27. And this was not peace in the world that he enjoyed; you know what his life was, a continual warfare; but a peace above the world, that passeth understanding. "In the world you shall have trouble, but in me you shall have peace," saith Christ,--a peace that shall make trouble
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

No Sorrow Like Messiah's Sorrow
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow! A lthough the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the law of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophecies (Luke 24:44) , bear an harmonious testimony to MESSIAH ; it is not necessary to suppose that every single passage has an immediate and direct relation to Him. A method of exposition has frequently obtained [frequently been in vogue], of a fanciful and allegorical cast [contrivance], under the pretext
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate,
CLEARLY EXPLAINED, AND LARGELY IMPROVED, FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL BELIEVERS. 1 John 2:1--"And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." By JOHN BUNYAN, Author of "The Pilgrim's Progress." London: Printed for Dorman Newman, at the King's Arms, in the Poultry, 1689. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. This is one of the most interesting of Bunyan's treatises, to edit which required the Bible at my right hand, and a law dictionary on my left. It was very frequently republished;
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

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