‘Where is bread and wine?’ This is the question of the seeking heart. To those who are truly seeking, Jesus says, ‘You will find’ (Matthew 7:7). Why do we start asking the seeker’s question? His love lays hold on us. What do we find when we truly seek? His love. The love which prompted us to seek is the love which we find in Jesus Christ. Evangelism, when it is truly God-centred, will also be Christ-centred. Evangelism, which is both God-centred and Christ-centred, becomes effective through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is witness for Christ, which is grounded in walking in the Spirit. True evangelism is grounded in care and prayer. If we truly desire to see the mighty blessing of God in our day, we must care for those who are living without Christ, and we must pray for them. Caring and praying - both are vital if we are to be really used by the Lord to bring his blessing into the lives of others. Caring for those who have yet to find the Saviour, we invite them to consider the question of 1:12 - ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’ Praying for them, we pray that they will ask the seeker’s question - ‘Where is bread and wine?’ (2:12). Caring and praying, we are - by our lives and our words - to invite men and women to consider Jesus Christ and to discover for themselves what he can do in their lives. As we seek to be faithful to God in our Christian walk and witness, we will discover - despite all the difficulties facing the Christian Faith and the Christian Church - the great truth which lies at the heart of Lamentations - ‘Great is thy faithfulness.’
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This is the sixteenth post in a series on Lamentations.
We proclaim the God of love, the God who sent his Son ‘to seek and to save the lost’ (Luke 19:10). God has not changed. He is still the God of love. He still calls out to the lost, ‘Where are you?’. In love, he still invites the sinner to return to him. His love is a yearning love, a passionate love, a love which says to the indifferent: ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’. His love for us is a love which draws out from our hearts a returning love - 'Loving him who first loved me.' Touched by the love of God, the modern questioner finds that the character of his questioning begins to change. The question of the unbeliever gives way to the question of the seeker: ‘Where is bread and wine?’ There is a hunger and thirst which the world cannot satisfy, a hunger and thirst which can be satisfied only by the One whose body was broken for us and whose blood was shed for us. ‘Where is bread and wine?’ It is not the ‘bread’ and ‘wine’ of this world, which satisfies the deepest need of the human heart. It is Jesus Christ ‘the bread of Life’ (John 6:48), ‘the true vine’ (John 15:1).
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This is the fifteenth post in a series on Lamentations.
We must reckon with the activity of Satan when we encounter the questioning which arises from unbelief - ‘the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4;4). How is the problem of unbelief to be overcome? Unbelief gives way to faith, only when God is at work in the human heart: ‘it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:6). The emergence of faith in the human heart is the work of ‘the Lord, who made heaven and earth’ (Psalm 121:2). If we are to combat unbelief effectively, our evangelism must be God-centred.
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This is the fourteenth post in a series on Lamentations.
The Bible’s first question was asked by neither God nor man. It was asked by ‘the serpent’ - ‘that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan’ (Revelation 20:2). We do not introduce the devil here in order to provide ourselves with an excuse for our unbelief. After all, scripture tells us that ‘each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire’ (James 1:14). Rather, we speak of Satan’s question - ‘Did God say?’ in order to emphasize that many of today’s questions arise from unbelief, and not from faith seeking understanding. We speak of the Satanic origin of the Bible’s first question in order to stress that, in today’s world, we are involved in spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12), when we seek to bring the modern questioner from one form of questioning - the questioning of unbelief - to another very different form of questioning - faith seeking understanding.
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This is the thirteenth post in a series on Lamentations.
We may now focus special attention on two of the questions asked in Lamentations ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’ (1:12), and ‘Where is bread and wine?’ (2:12). We read these questions in connection with two other questions, the first two questions asked in the Bible: ‘the serpent ... said to the woman, “Did God say ... ?” ’ (Genesis 3:1), and ‘the Lord God called to the man..., “Where are you?” ‘ (Genesis 3:9). Taking these four questions together, we may find a helpful pattern for thinking about Christian witness in today’s world.
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This is the twelfth post in a series on Lamentations.
As we face modern man’s questions, we must ‘be ready always to give an answer to every man who asks us to give a reason for our hope’ (1 Peter 3:15). In giving an answer, we dare not imagine that we can ever hope to give a complete answer to every question. We must always remember that ‘the secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us’ (Deuteronomy 29:29). The answer which we give is not our answer. It is God’s answer. Man’s question has been answered by God. He has answered it in person. The God of faithfulness - the Word made flesh (John 1:1, 14) - is God’s answer to mans question. The answer which we give must always be a Christ-centred answer.
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This is the eleventh post in a series on Lamentations.
Moving into the third chapter, we find this trilogy of questions at vs. 37-39: ‘Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?’ There are so many different questions being asked today. They are being asked by different people. They are being asked in different ways and with different expectations. What do the question of Lamentations have to say to our day, a day of many questions? They may prompt the modern questioner to think about the question he’s not asking as well as the questions he is asking - ‘Perhaps, there is a God who has his own questions to put to me.’ Lamentations asks its questions within the context of the great declaration of faith: ‘Great is thy faithfulness’ (3:23). This combination of intense questioning and confident faith might well increase the questioner’s expectation of an answer - an answer which while it may leave some questions unresolved, opens the doors to faith.
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This is the tenth post in a series on Lamentations.
How are we to bring good news to a world that is living with questions, a world that shows little inclination to believe the confession of faith - ‘Thou, O Lord, doest reign for ever’ - and little interest in praying the fervent prayer - ‘Restore us to thyself, O Lord’? This is a question which calls for a practical response. It demands a response which will take into account the questions which men and women are asking in this generation. To speak of questions - some spoken in the context of prayer and faith, and others asked with little expectation of an answer - is to acknowledge that there are many different types of questions. This may be brought out clearly through a brief review of the questions asked in the Book of Lamentations. In 1:12, we have a question put to those who despise the Lord’s people, ‘Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?’ In 2:12, there is the question asked by ‘infants and babes faint(ing) in the streets of the city’. (2:11) ‘Where is bread and wine?’ In 2:13, there are questions which raise the question of the comfort and restoration of a fallen people: ‘What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you that may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can restore you?’ The question of the cynics who ‘hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem’ is found in 2:15 - ‘Is this the city which was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?’. In 2:20, we have questions asked in the mood of prayerful moral indignation: ‘Look, O Lord, and see! With whom hast thou dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?’
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This is the ninth post in a series on Lamentations.
