73.4 Prayer For Justice

(Psalm 10)

Why are you so far away, O Lord?
Why do you hide yourself when we are in trouble?
The wicked are proud and persecute the poor;
catch them in the traps they have made.
The wicked man is proud of his evil desires;
the greedy man curses and rejects the Lord.
A wicked does not care about the Lord;
in his pride he thinks that God doesn't matter.

A wicked man succeeds in everything.
He cannot understand God's judgments;
he sneers at his enemies.
He says to himself, " I will never fail;
I will never be in trouble."
His speech is filled with curses, lies, and threats;
he is quick to speak hateful, evil words.

He hides himself in the villages,
waiting to murder innocent people,
He spies on his helpless victims;
he waits in his hiding place like a lion.
He lies in wait for the poor;
he catches them in his trap and drags them away.

The helpless victims lie crushed;
brute strength has defeated them.
The wicked man says to himself, "God doesn't care!
He has closed his eyes and will never see me!"

O Lord, punish those wicked men!
Remember those who are suffering!
How can a wicked man despise God
and say to himself, "He will not punish me"?
But you do see; you take notice of trouble
and suffering and are always ready to help.
The helpless man commits himself to you;
you have always helped the needy.

Break the power of wicked and evil men;
punish them for the wrong they have done
until they do it no more.

The Lord is king forever and ever.
Those who worship other gods
will vanish from his land.

You will listen, O Lord, to the prayers of the lowly;
you will give them courage.
You will hear the cries of the oppressed and the orphans;
you will judge in their favor
so that mortal men may cause terror no more.

73.3 Social Evils

(Micah 2:1-10)

How terrible it will be for those who lie awake and plan evil! When morning comes, as soon as they have the chance, they do the evil they planned. When they want fields, they seize them; when they want houses, they take them. No man's family or property is safe.

And so the Lord says,"Iam planning to bring disaster on you, and you will not be able to escape it. You are going to find yourselves in trouble, and then you will not walk so proudly any more. When that time comes, people will use the story about you as an example of disaster, and they will sing this song of despair about your experience:
     We are completely ruined!
     The Lord has taken our land away
     And given it to those who took us captive."

So then, when the time comes for the land to be given back to the Lord's people, there will be no share for any of you.

The people preach at me and say, "Don't preach at us. Don't preach about all that. God is not going to disgrace us. Do you think the people of Israel are under a curse? Has the Lord lost his patience? Would he really do such things? Doesn't he speak kindly to those who do right?"

The Lord replies, "You attack my people like enemies. Men return from battle, thinking they are safe at home, but there you are, waiting to steal the coats off their backs. You drive the women of my people out of the homes they love, and you have robbed their children of my blessings forever. Get up and go; there is no safety any more. Your sins have doomed this place to destruction."

73.2 The Greedy Will Be Hungry. (Hungry For Food And For The Word Of God)

(Amos 8:4-12)

Listen to this, you that  trample on the needy and try to destroy the poor of the country. You say to yourselves, "We can hardly wait for the holy days to be over so that we can sell our grain. When will the Sabbath end, so that we can start selling again? Then we can overcharge, use false measures, and fix the scales to cheat our customers. We can sell worthless wheat at a high price. We'll find a poor man who can't pay his debts, not even the price of a pair of sandals, and we'll buy him a slave."

The Lord, the God of Israel, has sworn,"I will never forget their evil deeds. And so the earth will quake, and everyone in the land will be in distress. The whole country will be shaken; it will rise and fall like the Nile River. The time is coming when I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. I will turn your festivals into funerals and change your glad songs into cries of grief. I will make you shave your heads and wear sackcloth, and you will be like parents mourning for their only son. That day will be bitter to the end.

"The time is coming when I will send famine on the land. People will be hungry, but not for bread; they will be thirsty, but not for water. They will hunger and thirst for a message from the Lord. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken. People will wander from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean and then on around from the north to the east. They will look everywhere for a message from the Lord., but they will not find it.

73.1 Justice Is Condition For Happiness

(Jeremiah 22:13-16)

Doomed is the man who builds his house by injustice
and enlarges it by dishonesty;
who makes his countrymen work for nothing
and does not pay their wages.
Doomed is the man who says,
"I will build myself a mansion
with spacious rooms upstairs."
So he puts windows in his house,
panels it with cedar,and paints it red.
Does it make you a better king
if you build houses of cedar,
finer than those of others?
Your father enjoyed a full life.
He was always just and fair,
and he prospered in everything he did.
He gave the poor a fair trial,
and all went well with him.
That is what it means to know the Lord.