Call to worship:
17 How long, O Lord, will you look on?
Rescue me from their destruction,
my precious life from the lions!
18 I will thank you in the great congregation;
in the mighty throng I will praise you.Psalm 35:17-18
Gathering Video
Questions for reflection:
How do you see sin impacting Israel’s society then? How about for us now?
In what ways had their leadership failed? Do you see correlations and similar tendencies today?
How can you trace these laments to the sacrificial love of Jesus?
Corporate Prayer:
Our Father in Heaven,
We thank you for being the God who sees all and knows all. You are the One who meets us in our joy and grief, our celebrations and sorrows, our victories and our losses. In every season, please help us to stay centered on Christ. By the power of your Spirit, would you let our perspective be shaped by Your gospel.
In the name of Christ we pray,
Amen
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Notes//Quotes//Slides:
Title: Learning Lament
“Psychological closure for the community remains outside the range of this set of poems. It lay much further ahead and could not be achieved, so dramatic were the experiences they had undergone and were still undergoing. The modern preoccupation with closure impatiently rushes the sufferer to a premature conclusion. Closure must be allowed to take its own time. It is marked by the eventual acceptance that is able to integrate previous suffering into one’s life.”
- Leslie Allen
Psalm Laments:
Cry/Address (vs.1)
Complaint (vs. 2-18)
Confidence & Praise (vs. 19)
Deliverence (vs. 20-22)
“…Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.” - Num. 11:4-6
“how long will this people despise Me. How long will they not believe in Me in spite of all the signs I have done among them?” - Num. 14:11
“whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
- Jn. 6:35
“I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they” - Num. 14:12
Snowflake: “is someone who has a an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, are over-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions.” - Wikipedia
“Here the community is confessing the generational solidarity involved in its sinning.” - Leslie Allen
“The possibility of being beyond redemption is so alarming that many Jews refuse to end their reading of Lamentations with the book’s final verse. To this day, whenever the book is read, it is the custom in many synagogues to repeat verse 21 after verse 22.”
- Phillip Ryken