THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 40 – THE WHOLE MATTER OF SUBMISSION – JUDAH THEN, US NOW - CHAPTER 5 Lamentations 5:6
The complaints (or conditions or laments) continue in this message and reveal the awful conditions for these survivors.
This will be a slightly shorter message because to add this one to the previous exposition, or to the next, will make them very large.
[6]. MOVES OF DESPERATION AND TO WHOM DO WE SUBMIT?
{{Lamentations 5:6 “We have submitted to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread.”}}
When Israel was strong it stood alone with the LORD and He provided everything for them. The more they forgot God the more they resorted to seeking aid from surrounding countries, but it was all to their harm. When a person dismisses what God has available, he is a fool.
I have a real problem with the delusion of climate change as it is called. If any read this and are of the opposite opinion, may I respectfully suggest you carefully examine the true science and what reputable scientists are saying. Here is one of the latest postings that is quite enlightening, coming from really qualified men. If you are of two minds about the climate idealogy or think the scaremongering is correct, please have a look –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LckkSXkr4Nk
It is the radicals in the United Nations pushing climate because there is an agenda behind it. I won’t say much more because it is off topic, but why do you think God gave our world coal, oil, gas and uranium in plentiful supplies? It was not for decoration, but for mankind to use for his needs. God is good and gave us what is needed but of course the anti-God United Nations would oppose that as it opposes Israel.
Our governments are fools in most nations. Socialists and communists rule and they have no time for God whatever. (Praise God that the USA is currently an exception). Therefore all their decisions are stupid – WOKE, and changing names to some indigenous names they never had anyway, and promoting homosexuality, destroying the two genders, and closing down fossil fuel that God gave for man’s benefit. There are more specific things for each nation.
This world has military alliances – NATO is probably the best known and there was one existing between New Zealand and Australia and the United States called ANZUS, born out of World War 2, but the current Australian Government hates the United States so I don’t know what will happen with that.
Judah would not have had to rely on Egypt and Assyria if the people followed God and did what Jeremiah pleaded with them to do. We have an account in 2 Kings that seems to indicate there was some alliance with Egypt and Assyria. I doubt very much that godly Hezekiah drew that up but let’s look at the relevant passage that happened some 200 years or so earlier than Lamentations when Assyria was besieging Judah –
{{2 Kings 18:19-24 Then Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to HEZEKIAH, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, “What is this confidence that you have? You say, ‘I have counsel and strength for the war,’ but they are only empty words. Now on whom do you rely that you have rebelled against me? Now behold, you rely on THE STAFF OF THIS CRUSHED REED, EVEN ON EGYPT, on which, if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him, but if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars HEZEKIAH has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’? Now therefore, come, make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you TWO THOUSAND HORSES, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse one official of the least of my master’s servants, and rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?”}}
What a miserable exchange this would have been – 2 000 horses for surrendering the nation’s sovereignty to Assyria. Rabshakeh was correct about Egypt. They would not have come. Do not trust the word of man and man’s agreements. God was not going to let His honour be trashed by a godless Assyrian and slew 185 000 of them to deliver Judah FOR THE SAKE OF HEZEKIAH AND HIS PRAYER – See Isaiah 37.
Just before we move to our Lamentations verse I want to remind you again of a wonderful prophecy that will be fulfilled after the Second Coming of the Lord. This will occur in the Millennial reign of Messiah (probably right at the start) –
{{Isaiah 19:21 “Thus THE LORD WILL MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN TO EGYPT, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day. They will even worship with sacrifice and offering and will make a vow to the LORD and perform it.
Isaiah 19:22 The LORD will strike Egypt, striking but healing so THEY WILL RETURN TO THE LORD, and He will respond to them and WILL HEAL THEM.”
Isaiah 19:23 “In that day there will be A HIGHWAY FROM EGYPT TO ASSYRIA and the Assyrians will come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and THE EGYPTIANS WILL WORSHIP WITH THE ASSYRIANS.”
Isaiah 19:24 “In that day ISRAEL WILL BE THE THIRD PARTY WITH EGYPT AND ASSYRIA, A BLESSING IN THE MIDST OF THE EARTH,
Isaiah 19:25 whom the LORD of hosts has blessed saying, “BLESSED IS EGYPT MY PEOPLE, AND ASSYRIA THE WORK OF MY HANDS, AND ISRAEL MY INHERITANCE.”}}
EGYPT AND ASSYRIA! That is not allegory, something to be written off because Augustine did not believe it. It most certainly will happen. What a blessing the rule of Christ will be after He returns. I have written fairly extensively on these prophetic matters –
https://sermoncentral.com/sermon-series/eschatology-rapture-bible-prophecy-and-current-affairs-sermon-series-from-ron-ferguson-22819
All the conflicts of the past with Israel, Egypt, and Assyria will be forgotten and the slate wiped clean. That will be a really blessed time when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth. In the reign of Christ/Messiah those three nations mentioned above will be the three leading ones in the world. It won’t be Europe or the United States, but the centre is the Middle East.
However the world will be one under the King and will worship the King – {{Zechariah 14:9 “And the LORD will be King over all the earth. In that day the LORD will be the only one, and His name the only one.”}}. Just before that happens, Jesus returns to touch down on the very place from where He ascended – {{Zechariah 14:4 “And in that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.”}}
SUBMISSION ALWAYS COMES AT A COST
Judah was, or had been, in submission to Egypt and Assyria, but submission always comes at a cost. There has to be compromise or a surrender of what is sacrosanct or precious. In the case of Judah it was surrendering some of its sovereignty.
Why did they do it? It was because they had weakened themselves though their own godlessness. A godless society will never achieve greatness but will make its own people suffer, and will mortgage itself to others. The debt in the United States is actually uncontrollable, and in Australia, the socialist/Marxists governments have increased the debt so much the nation can’t find enough money just to pay the interest.
The bible knows only one true submission and that is to God. When that priority is correct, no other “substitute submission” is necessary. We can see how bad that is internationally as nations submit to the wickedness of the United Nations and the WEF to their coming individual harm. There is this climate stuff and WOKE agendas, and the destruction of gender and relationships and the huge refugee problems and the United nations thrust for militant Islam for world dominance. Never once has the UN condemned Israel’s enemies, but there have been scores of condemnations of Israel.
Here are a few quotes from researches about these condemnations of Israel from the United Nations:-
“As of 2013, the State of Israel had been condemned in 45 resolutions by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).”
“Israeli Ambassador to the UN noted in October 2021 that since its establishment 15 years earlier, the council had condemned Israel 95 times compared with 142 resolutions against all other countries in the world combined.”
Up to the end of 2023 – “Since 2015 the UN passed 141 resolutions against Israel, more than double the rest of the world.”
“Here is a list: There have been 226 UNSC resolutions relating to Israel since 1948. The US has abstained from less than two dozen of them.” (Seth J. Frantzman - author – analyst). This is quite detailed and loos at the resolutions the US abstained from.
https://sethfrantzman.com/2016/12/24/abstaining-from-history-heres-all-the-un-resolutions-on-israel-the-us-abstained-on/
So much so for national and international affairs. What about Christians and this matter of submission? Paul knew the problem existed – {{Colossians 2:20-21 “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, DO YOU SUBMIT YOURSELF TO DECREES, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”}}
He to whom you submit becomes your master. Sow to the flesh and it becomes your master as you submit to its desires. Submit to the loving God and He becomes your way to contentment in His will.
I think all too often Christians battle the matter of submission to governmental authorities when those authorities are an enemy of the cross of Jesus. When a Christian is forbidden to speak about Christ as is happening now on the streets of Britain and Australia, and I am sure elsewhere, then what does the Christian do?
To complicate the matter Paul wrote -
{{Romans 13:1-2 “Let every person BE IN SUBJECTION TO THE GOVERNING AUTHORITIES for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves”}}
What do we do when the governing authorities are hostile to our faith? That is a big issue but I say submit where possible but your faith must not be compromised.
Peter also had something to say about this – {{1 Peter 2:13-15 “SUBMIT YOURSELVES for the Lord’s sake to EVERY HUMAN INSTITUTION, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right, for such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”}}
I will not sit here and pontificate about the matter as I have shared what I think, and in some matters I struggle with those issues. When I was still teaching, the curriculum was starting to bring in humanist WOKE stuff into schools. Some I bypassed but I did not submit to that but I stood alone. I know it is hard for everyone wanting to be true and loyal to the Lord. May the great God give us wisdom and protect us!
In returning to our Lamentations verse, let us hear from Alfred Barnes to close -
The last thing on this verse will be a quotation from commentator Barnes – [["To give the hand" (from the AV) means to submit oneself. Absolutely it was Babylon that had just destroyed their national existence, but Jeremiah means that all feelings of patriotism were crushed, and the sole care that remained was the desire for personal preservation. To secure this the people would readily have submitted to the yoke either of Egypt or Assyria, the great powers from which in their past history they had so often suffered.”]] (Barnes' Notes on the Bible)
