Hoping in Yahweh

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Hoping in Yahweh

• Lamentations 318-24

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Lamentations 318-24

• I thought, "My strength has vanished and my hope
  in Yahweh."
• Remembering my affliction and my wandering is
  wormwood and poison.
• Continually remembering, even my soul sinks
  within me.
• This I will bring back to my mind, therefore I
  will hope.
• The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh, indeed was never
  finished, truly his mercies are never spent.
• New every morning, great is your faithfulness!
• "Yahweh is my portion," says my soul, "therefore
  I will hope in him."

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Dante's Divine Comedy
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Dante's Gate to Inferno

• Through me the way into the doleful city,
• Through me the way into eternal grief,
• Through me the way among a race forsaken.
• Before me nothing but eternal things were made,
• And I shall last eternally.
• Abandon Hope, forever, you who enter.

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Lam 318

• I thought, "My strength has vanished and my hope
  in Yahweh."
• The poet has lost his ability to endure, his
  energy to live . . . .
• Therefore, his ability to hope in Yahweh, to wait
  for God's help and assistance to come.

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The Poet's Reasons for Despair

• 1. The Destruction of Jerusalem (587 BCE)
• The city of Jerusalem 1.1 2.15
• The gates of the city 1.4 2.9 4.12 5.14
• The walls 2.7, 8, 18
• The Sanctuary 1.10 2.7, 20 (altar 2.7 temple
  treasures 1.10 the cessation of festivals
  1.4 2.6, 7)

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The Poet's Reasons for Despair

• 2. Deaths

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The Poet's Reasons for Despair

• 3. Scorn of the Enemy 1.7, 9, 21 2.15 3.46
• 4. Famine and Starvation searching for food in
  the garbage children pleading for food 2.11-12
  4.3-4 cannibalism 2.20 4.9-10

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Lam 319

• Remembering my affliction and my wandering is
  wormwood and poison.

• "for the multitude of her transgressions," 1.5
  (1.14)
• ". . . sinned grievously," 1.8
• "sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her
  priests," 4.13

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3 Types of Sin

• Promethean Sin
• Sin as Sloth
• Philanthropic Sin

• Karl Barth

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Lam 320

• Continually remembering, even my soul sinks
  within me.
• despair may be "the other side of sin"
• "Despair is the premature, arbitrary anticipation
  of the non-fulfilment of what we hope for from
  God."

• Jürgen Moltmann

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Pathos of the Poet

• Writing a Lament to God
• The control of extreme emotions by a tight
  acrostic Poem
• "The first and most central theme of Lamentations
  is mourning."

• Adele Berlin

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Lam 321

• This I will bring back to my mind, therefore I
  will hope.
• "In the contradiction between the word of promise
  and the experiential reality of suffering and
  death, faith takes it stand on hope and hastens
  beyond this world." Moltmann

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Lam 322

• The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh, indeed was never
  finished,
• truly his mercies are never spent.

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Lovingkindnesses

• Steadfast Love chesed
• 1. Generally
• 1.1 Not for things
• 1.2 It involved an action
• 1.3 Done for someone you already know
• 2. Gods Chesed
• 2.1 Un-coerced
• 2.2 Leads to forgiveness

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Mercies

• Yahweh as Merciful rachum
• 1. The nominal root means womb, the adjective
  can be translated motherly affection towards a
  child
• 2. Yahweh is a God who relates to His people as a
  loving parent with compassion.

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God's Mercies

• It, "lies in His readiness to share in sympathy
  the distress of another, a readiness which
  springs from his inmost nature and stamps all His
  being and doing."
• "His compassion at the sight of the suffering
  which man brings upon himself, His concern to
  remove it, His will to console man in this pain
  and to help him to overcome it."

• Karl Barth

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The Quality of Mercy - Shakespeare

• The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
• it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon
  the place beneath
• it is twice blest It blesseth him that gives and
  him that takes
• 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest it becomes the
  throned monarch better than his crown

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The Quality of Mercy - Shakespeare

• His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
  the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth
  sit the dread and fear of kings
• but mercy is above this sceptred sway
• it is enthroned in the hearts of kings, it is an
  attribute to God himself and earthly power doth
  then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice.

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Lam 323

• New every morning, great is your faithfulness!
• It is lovingkindness mercy that is continually
  being renewed.
• Faithfulness constancy, stability or truth.

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Lam 324

• "Yahweh is my portion," says my soul, "therefore
  I will hope in him."
• Portion is often used to refer to God-given land
  to live in.
• Here Yahweh is where the poet intends to live.
• The poet commits himself to hope in God.

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Hope in God Faith

• "Faith binds a man to Christ. Hope sets this
  faith open to the comprehensive future of Christ.
  Hope is the . . . inseparable companion of
  faith." Moltmann

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Hope in God Faith

• "Faith believes God to be true, hope awaits the
  time when this truth shall be manifested."
  Calvin

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