The LORD is righteous, for I have rebelled against His command. Listen, all you people; look upon my suffering. My young men and maidens have gone into captivity. Sermons I. GOD IS RIGHTEOUS IN HIS CHARACTER. It is certainly no progress, but a retrogression towards ignorance and barbarism, to represent the supreme Intelligence as destitute of moral attributes, exercised in the fulfilment of wise and benevolent purposes. Affliction and anguish sometimes obscure men's judgment of the character and the dealings of God. It was not so with Jeremiah, who, in lamenting the troubles of his nation and of himself, did not distort the representation he gave to his countrymen of the attributes of the Most High. II. GOD IS RIGHTEOUS IN HIS LAW. The theocratic government of the Hebrews was based upon the just character and the holy Law of the eternal King. To some minds the reflection might have seemed inappropriate and unwelcome in the depth of disaster. But a true prophet, a true religious teacher, feels bound to set forth the fact that the rule under which men live as individuals and as communities is a righteous rule; the justice of the Law abides although that Law be broken, and although its penalties be incurred and endured. III. GOD IS RIGHTEOUS IN HIS RETRIBUTION. This is probably the thought most prominent in the text. The fate of Jerusalem was a hard fate, a lamentable fate, but it was not an unjust fate. The people reaped as they had sown. An onlooker might readily have acknowledged this, but it was a merit in a sufferer so to do. For the chastened to confess the justice of their chastisement is a proof that already the chastening is not in vain. - T.
The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled. When we see God in our punishments, we begin to take a right view of them; when they are nothing to us but self-humiliations or signs of contempt, they embitter us and harden our hearts; but when we see God at work in the very desolation of our fortunes, we axe sure that He has a reason for thus scourging us, and that if we accept the penalty, and bow down before His majesty, we shall be lifted up by His mighty hand. Zion says that the Lord hath made her strength to fail, the Lord hath trodden under foot all her mighty men, the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. But Zion does not accept these results with a hard heart; no: rather she says, "For these things I weep," etc. Whatever brings us to this softness of heart is a helper to the soul in all upward and Divine directions. Zion confesses the righteousness of the Lord. In proportion as we can recognise the justice of our punishment, may we bear that punishment with some dignity. It has been pointed out that with this beginning of conversion the name of the Lord, or Jehovah, reappears. The people whom God has punished on account of their sins have, in the result, been enabled to recognise the justice of their punishment. Of this we have an example in the Book of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 9:33, 34). In the case of the Captivity, we see the extreme rigour of the law in the expression, "My virgins and my young men," etc.: the most honoured and the most beautiful have perished of hunger, as it were, in the open streets. How impartial and tremendous are the judgments of God! May not virgins be spared? May not His priests be exempted from the operation of the law of judgment? Will not an official robe protect a soul against the lightning of Divine wrath? All history answers No; all experience testifies to the contrary, and thereby re-establishes and infinitely confirms our confidence in the living God.(J. Parker, D. D.) 2. It is the duty of God's children to seek the cause of all their evils in themselves.(1) God is righteous, and layeth nothing upon them but what they justly deserve.(2) They know their own manifold sins, and their exceeding weakness in well-doing, which they cannot see in any others. 3. Though God punish us oft for other causes, yet the matter that He worketh upon is our sins. 4. We must not lessen our sins, but account them most heinous in our own eyes. 5. It is our duty (especially in religion) neither to go further nor to come shorter than God's revealed will; but attend unto it as the servant's eye doth unto his master's hand (Psalm 123:2). 6. It is rebellion against the Lord Himself to be disobedient unto the voice of His ministers teaching His truth (Luke 10:16). 7. We are constrained in our adversity to acknowledge God's hand in those things which in our prosperity we neglected. 8. When God's people are punished, they are not ashamed but willing to tell all men of it, and to declare their sins to be the cause of it.(1) Above all things they desire to have the Lord justified in all men's judgments.(2) They desire that their own example may teach others to serve God better. 9. The manifesting of our punishments unto the world as from God's hand because of our sins can neither dishonour the Lord nor harden others in their wickedness, but is a just occasion of the contrary. (J. Udall.) (A. R. Fausset, M. A.) People Jacob, JeremiahPlaces Jerusalem, ZionTopics Behold, Captivity, Command, Commandment, Ear, Exile, Listen, Maidens, Mouth, Orders, Pain, Peoples, Please, Prisoners, Provoked, Rebelled, Righteous, Sorrow, Suffering, Upright, Virgins, YetOutline 1. The miseries of Jerusalem and of the Jews lamented12. The attention of beholders demanded to this unprecedented case 18. The justice of God acknowledged, and his mercy supplicated. Dictionary of Bible Themes Lamentations 1:18 1125 God, righteousness Library No Sorrow Like Messiah's SorrowIs it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow! A lthough the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the law of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophecies (Luke 24:44) , bear an harmonious testimony to MESSIAH ; it is not necessary to suppose that every single passage has an immediate and direct relation to Him. A method of exposition has frequently obtained [frequently been in vogue], of a fanciful and allegorical cast [contrivance], under the pretext … John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1 Epistle vi. To Narses, Patrician . "Come unto Me, all Ye that Labour, and are Wearied," &C. Meditations for one that is Like to Die. 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