GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 5:5-7
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5 Those who pursue us are at our throat.
We are weary and we find no rest.
6 We bargained with Egypt and Assyria
to get enough bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more,
and we bear their guilt.
When we, suffering under what I have been calling the third cross (the cross of Christians in this lifetime), are weary, and feel as though the devil has us by the throat, and we are wracked with guilt and shame about our sins, then those crosses are functioning properly. The Lord lays those crosses on us to afflict us, to remind us of sin and its consequences, to give us ways to praise and worship God by bearing them, and to take in deeper and deeper lessons in how to love him and rely on him for all things.
A detail that runs throughout Lamentations is that the author is not necessarily in Babylon as he writes. He was an eyewitness to many terrible things in Judah and within Jerusalem. But unlike Ezekiel, Daniel, and Ezra, he never once mentions any of the geographic places of Babylon such as its rivers and canals. Jeremiah was one of those who did not go– even when he had a message for the exiles involving the Euphrates, he sent it through another man, his scribe’s brother, who did go (Jeremiah 51:59). Our poet describes the bargaining that went on with Egypt and Babylon, even calling Babylon “Assyria” to recall the fall of the northern kingdom. Those negotiations and trade deals were for nothing more than bread to eat, but Judah had made too many enemies through wicked kings. The nation had become a stench to the world, and their deals and their bargaining went nowhere. The Jews who were bearing the first cross, the cross of the exile and of those who did not go into exile but suffered elsewhere, reminded them of the sins of their ancestors. How many Israelites died in the desert because they turned away from the spiritual leadership of Moses and Aaron? How many Israelites died in the days of the Judges for the same reasons? How many Israelites of the northern tribes went off into exile for the very same reasons? Enemy hands grabbed the cowardly Zedekiah by the throat, grabbed his sons by their throats, and the Jews of the exile could feel those cold fingers at their own throats, as well. They were weary.
Is “weary” even a word we would use of Jesus Christ on his cross? There is no talk of hunger at all; the end of his life was so near that only thirst was mentioned.
But the mention of bread here also brings to mind one event in the ministry of Jesus. Not the Lord’s Supper– no one even knew about it except his disciples yet, and when he was arrested just an hour or two after instituting the sacrament, the odor of the wine was still lingering on their breath. No, the bread that comes to mind was the bread he did not bargain for, but the bread he multiplied through a miracle. The Feeding of the Five Thousand was perhaps the most spectacular and well-known miracles of his life. It was when the people– thousands upon thousands of them– began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). It was the moment when the people of Galilee had it in mind to make him king by force (John 6:15). But they were looking then for the wrong kind of king. They were looking for “a broke vending machine that would dispense whatever you want.” That kind of king would only give them what their sinful flesh wanted, and not what their souls needed. Their bargain for bread was not the daily bread, the manna, of the Lord’s Prayer. It was sin and more sin. They needed a king who would rescue them from their sins. We need the same kind of king. One who will rescue us from the guilt of our fathers (our original sin) and all of the sins we commit on our own, our bargaining, our quest for a god who suits our lust and our cravings. We need, desperately need, Jesus who showed his kingship by reigning from the tree of the cross. We need Christ, the Anointed One of God, who bore our guilt in our place.
What a Savior we have! He is like a defense lawyer who stands up for us in court, and then when the sentence is given, he steps in and serves the sentence himself, setting us free! There is no one like him in history, in the world, in the unseen realms we know nothing about– nothing and no one like our Jesus! There is no bargain to make with Satan or Hell. We will stand before the judgment seat of God with the robe of the righteousness of Jesus on our shoulders and no other defense than the name of Jesus. And we will look up and see that our Judge has given all authority in heaven and earth to his Son, that same Jesus, who sees our faith and his own righteousness, and who will say: “I have prepared a room for you in my Father’s house. Come. Let us cross over to the other side” (Mark 4:35). And he shall reign for ever and ever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2025
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Lamentations 5:5-7 He bore our guilt