ANGUISH TURNS TO HOPE

WHAT IS ANGUISH?

Anguish means being in the state of reproach, disaster that has fallen on someone, people or a nation. It’s the state of facing a fury wrath that comes as a result of paying the consequences of a set way in the past.  Anguish can also be defined as the process of going through a punishment of iniquity in the past. Prophet Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah lamented thus for the misery that had fallen upon the people and the beautiful city Jerusalem and Judah.  The prophet agonized over the awful devastation of Jerusalem and the terrible slaughter of human life that he saw around him. No book of the Bible is more intense in expressing grief than this one. However, he did not doubt that God was just in allowing these tragic events to happen. In fact, he went so far to praise God’s faithfulness and His righteousness (Lam. 1:18), “The Lord is righteous, for I rebelled against His commandment. Hear now all peoples, and behold my sorrow; my virgin and my young men have gone into captivity.” His faithfulness see (Lam. 3:23) “They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”  It may be difficult beloved to see how these five laments apply to us today but they do have practical significance 1.  It is appropriate for us when we see the terrible consequences in the human race, to burst in tears before God;  the best example I can use was experienced not long ago but previously, last year 2020 and this year 2021 during the Covid – 19 breakout in the entire world that so many nations have not healed up- to -date. It has been experienced, how the pandemic has brought uncertainties, difficult circumstances and a drastic change and manner of life to humanities in our season. Living us with a worldwide “slogan”;” wash hands, sanitize and wear mask!”  Millions and millions have lost lives, loved ones, businesses, jobs, hope in life. It is not that us, who have remained are so righteous, “But through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not” (Lam. 3:22). There are those beloved brethren that have become like Jeremiah to stand in the gap to intercede that the wrath may not continue. But it’s very unfortunate brethren that people are not convicted to repent so that another decree of the pandemic may not occur again.  In my yesterday’s post about, “CONVICTION AND REPENTANCE” About the second King David’s grievous sins; “When the Satan stood against Israel, and moved David to number Israel” (1Chro. 21:1). More about this, please get from my blogs post; But my point or message to the word for today’s post is this:  From verse seven of the same chapter, we see God being displeased by the act causing Him struck the people with the plague and many fall died that day. If we can read the whole chapter, one will get the knowledge I am trying to bring across. Beloved brethren, before the plague from (V. 9-10) The word of God was sent through Gad the seer to David with three strange offers to choose from ,what he would want the Lord to do for  him. And because I did not include this part in yesterday’s post, with much gratitude allow me to do so in this post today. (V. 11-12)

“So Gad came to David and said to him, “Thus says the Lord; ‘Choose for yourself, either three years of famine, or three months to be defeated by your foes with the sword of your enemies overtaking you, or else for three days the sword of the Lord- the plague in the land with the angel of the Lord destroying throughout all the territory of Israel.’  Now consider what answer I should take back to Him who sent me,” Remember my brethren this is King David, a man after God’s own heart; and in (V. 8) “So David said to God, “I have sinned greatly, because I have done this thing; but now, I pray, take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have done very foolishly.”  The King was convicted in his heart, prayed to God in repentance and asks God to take the iniquity away from him as His servant.

WHAT WAS DAVID’S CHOICE AND GOD’S RESPONSE?

From (V. 13-17) And David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Please let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercies are very great; but do not let me fall into the hand of man.” So the Lord sent a plaque upon Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell. And God sent an angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. As he was destroying, the Lord looked and relented of the disaster, and said to the angel who was destroying, “it is enough; now restrain your hand,” And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” Then David lifted his eye and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, having in his hand a drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem. So David and the elders clothed in sackcloth fell on their faces. And David said to God, “Was it not I who commanded the people to be numbered? I am the one who has sinned and done evil indeed; but these sheep, what have they done? Let Your hand I pray, O Lord My God, be against me and my father’s house, but not against Your people that they may be plagued.”  David was a righteous man and a man after Gods heart indeed. Who, a leader in our generation today can humble himself and stand bold like David putting the blame on himself and his family and not the innocent? Our leaders of today when there is an anguish; do they not get into airplanes and flee to Tarshish like Jonah living the innocent to suffer, but thanks be to God because the outbreak ofCovid-19, there was no airplanes to flee to for safety but a darker world  everywhere  and there was no place for escape whatsoever. Back to my point and in fact the main ONE (V. 18) “Therefore, the angel of the Lord commanded Gad to say to David that David should go and erect an alter to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.”  Let’s skip to (V. 22-30), “Then David said to Ornan, “Grant me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an alter to the Lord. You shall grant it to me at the full price, that the plague may be withdrawn from the people. But Ornan said to David, “Take it to yourself, and let my lord the king do what is good in his eyes. Look, I also give you the oxen for burnt offering, the threshing implements for wood, and the wheat for the grain offering; I give it all. Then king David said to Ornan, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price, for I will not take what is yours for the Lord, nor offer burn offerings, with that which costs me nothing.” So David gave Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the place. And David built there an alter to the Lord, and offered burn offerings and peace offerings, and called on the Lord and He answered from heaven by fire on the altar of burnt offering. So the Lord commands the angel, and he returned his sword to its sheath. At that time, when David saw that the Lord had answered him on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, he sacrificed there. For the tabernacle of the Lord and the alter of the burnt offering, which Moses had made in the wilderness, were at that time at the high place in Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God, for he was afraid of the sword of the angel.”

The revelation and the message is one.  We cannot take someone’s property for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings with that which costs us nothing; So David gave Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the place; We may have stood in the gap to intercede for our families, our nations and the world at large for God’s hand to relent from the uncertainties and the pandemic which we have been facing but, there is one thing that has been a miss- a “SACRIFICE” or a “TRESSPASS OFFERING!”  This is how a trespass offering was done by the children of Israel; (Lev. 5:5-6),”And it shall be, when he is guilty in any of this matters, that he shall confess that he had sinned in that thing; and he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a kid of the goats as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin.”  This will barely depend with an individual’s knowledge, a religion and believer’s knowledge or nationality knowledge. John the apostle’s affirmation (Rev.2:7) “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit of the Lord says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God.”

HOW GOD TURNS ANGUISH TO HOPE

Our generation has no time for tears. We like to see a warm smile and hear the sound of laughter. But if there is a time to rejoice, there is also a season in which to let sorrow do its work. Jeremiah is so identified with God and his contemporaries that he experiences extraordinary grief. On the one hand, the prophet is pained to see that the nation has fallen into disgrace, lost its inheritance to aliens, and forfeited its home to foreigners (Lam. 5:1-3) “Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us; Look, and behold our reproach! Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, and our houses to foreigners. We have become orphans and waifs, our mothers are like widows.” He laments over the poverty and enslavement of the people. Egypt and Assyria, heathen powers, dominate the scene (Lam. 5:4-13) “We pay for the water we drink, and our wood comes at a price. They pursue at our heels; we labor and have no rest. We have given our hand to the Egyptians and the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their iniquities. Servants rule over us; there is none to deliver us from their hand. We get our bread at the risk of our lives, because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is hot as an oven, because of the fever of famine. They ravished the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah. Princes were hung up by their hands, and elders were not respected. Young men ground at the millstones; boys staggered under loads of wood.” Music is silent, joy departs and dancing becomes mourning as sin is punished (Lam. 5:14-16) “The elders have ceased gathering at the gates, and the young men from their music. The joy of our heart has ceased, our dance has turned into mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned!” The heart of Jeremiah is also broken with the things that break the heart of God- the faithlessness and lostness of the people (Lam. 5:17-18) “Because of this our heart is faint; because of these things our eyes grow dim; because of Mount Zion which is desolate,  with foxes walking about on it.”  Yet the final is one of hope. The prophet looks to the Lord for renewal and restoration (Lam. 5:19-22) “You, O Lord remain forever; Your throne from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time? Turn us back to You O Lord, and we will be restored; renew our days as of old, unless You have utterly rejected us, and are very angry with us!” Prophet Isaiah added this from his epistle; there is hope my brethren after the anguish if only we pay the price (Isa. 43:25) “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins.”

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not, they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul. “Therefore I hope in Him!” The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam. 3:22-26).

“Grace to you and Favor from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen and Amen and Amen.”