The Book Of Lamentations – Part 23 – Clouded Prayer – Refuse And Rejects – John Newton – Israel’s Enduring Enemy - Chapter 3:44-46 Series

THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 23 – CLOUDED PRAYER – REFUSE AND REJECTS – JOHN NEWTON – ISRAEL’S ENDURING ENEMY - CHAPTER 3:44-46

In the last four verses we were thinking about the personal aspect of the people in realising what God had done to the nation and why that had to happen. The people knew their transgression and they reached the most important point in their survival which is repentance and confession. Now we are going to move to verses that return to the physical and spiritual condition of the people.

PART [39]. GOD CAN NOT BE FOUND IN THE THICK DARKNESS

{{Lamentations 3:44 “You have covered Yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through.”}}

We have here a parallel verse to our previous one that deals with God’s direct action. At once, a question arises as to when did this verse apply. There are only two possibilities, the first being after the overthrow as the previous verse does, or before the invasion and overthrow.

God is a compassionate God who had to take action, but would He continue to thrash the people when a lot of them realised the reason for their calamity and repented and did away with their idols? Surely when they confessed and repented, would the LORD not receive them? I think the answer to that is, “Yes.”

Think of a father who punishes his child. He does so but the child realises his error and is sorry for that. Does a father continue to thrash his child after the initial discipline? Of course not. Restoration is what happens; restoration is the LORD’S desire. Isaiah writes of the time when Israel confesses its sin in the Tribulation and is tenderly healed by the Messiah at the Second Coming when He comes to the Mount of Olives. {{Isaiah 30:26 “The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter like the light of seven days, on the day THE LORD BINDS UP THE FRACTURE OF HIS PEOPLE AND HEALS THE BRUISE HE HAS INFLICTED.”}}

The LORD fractured His people Judah using Nebuchadnezzar to do so, but God never overlooks genuine repentance and contrition. After that fracture caused by the Babylonians, the LORD would never shut up heaven against the prayers of the repentant. Remember it is the ministry of the Messiah when He came to earth (and will be later on in the Tribulation) to fulfill this – {{Isaiah 61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. HE HAS SENT ME TO BIND UP THE BROKENHEARTED, to proclaim liberty to captives, and FREEDOM TO PRISONERS.”}}

Would God cover Himself with a cloud so no prayer would ever enter? Who would this be speaking of? Surely it speaks of those who are wicked and unrepentant but who think God ought to hear them in any case. God owes it to them, they believe. Their prayers just don’t get through to God. They are lost in an emerging cloudiness of gloom for them. They have no relief. It is like God is hiding in a cloud. The fault is theirs, not God’s. That was what it was like before the exile in Judah, not for the repentant survivors, at least for those numbers who repented.

This matches a New Testament story Jesus told – {{Luke 18:10-12 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer. The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, ‘God, I THANK YOU THAT I AM NOT LIKE OTHER PEOPLE: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes of all that I get,’”}} That Pharisee’s prayers crashed into the cloud that surrounded God and nothing got through. In fact, they would not even leave the room.

On the other hand the poor tax-gatherer prayed – {{Luke 18:13 but the tax-gatherer, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast saying, ‘GOD, BE MERCIFUL TO ME, THE SINNER!’}} The Pharisee represented the nation hypocritically praying to God before the invasion and God never heeded them, but the tax-gatherer represents the repentant sinners in repentance after the invasion.

God does not answer prayers of the unrepentant sinner (only if it is repentance/salvation), but His ears are open to the repentant one who acknowledges his sin. At Calvary Jesus did not respond to the mockers calling on Him to come down from the cross, or to the blaspheming thief on a cross who asked to be saved from it, but He did answer the repentant thief whom he welcomed into Paradise a few hours later. I believe the Lord, personally welcomed him in there into his presence.