Day: October 4, 2015

Click Here For Today’s Reading

JEREMIAH 2:31-4:18 | COLOSSIANS 1:1-17 | PSALM 76:1-12 | PROVERBS 24:21-22

Click on the arrow below to listen to a recording of this post:

Jeremiah is the prophet who has the unenviable task of telling the children of Israel that they have been unfaithful to the God of their forefathers. 

They have forgotten who they are, where they have come from, and just how it is that they have settled and prospered in these lands.  They have taken up any number of gods—idols made of wood, stone, and metal, and are guilty of the foremost thing that has been forbidden them, i.e., idolatry. 

Jeremiah is telling it like it is, and he appears to have a keen sense of cutting wit and sarcasm in the analogies he employs to make his point.  He says, speaking of Israel’s unfaithfulness:

³² Does a young woman forget her jewelry,
a bride her wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without number.
³³ How skilled you are at pursuing love!
Even the worst of women can learn from your ways.

And the Lord’s anger will be soon revealed, says Jeremiah, in these lines:

⁷ A lion has come out of his lair;
a destroyer of nations has set out.
He has left his place
to lay waste your land.
Your towns will lie in ruins
without inhabitant.
⁸ So put on sackcloth,
lament and wail,
for the fierce anger of the LORD
has not turned away from us.

Next, we turn to our New Testament reading, and launch into a new book titled Colossians—yet another letter written by Paul to the believers in Colossae, a city in modern Turkey. 

Paul writes to the young church established by a man named Epaphras, and says to them in the most affectionate way:  ³ We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, ⁴ because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people— ⁵ the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel ⁶ that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.

Paul continues to praise them in his inimitable style of long sentences packed with meaning and feeling.  He says:  ⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, ¹⁰ so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. ¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Paul then speaks of the supremacy of Christ, God’s own son, or God incarnate, and makes a clear and bold statement—one that comprises an important theological tenet or doctrine of the Christian faith.  He says:  ¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

We turn now to our reading of the psalm of the day, and find one in which David is singing aloud the majestic grandeur of the Almighty’s power and might.  He says:

⁷ It is you alone who are to be feared.
Who can stand before you when you are angry?
⁸ From heaven you pronounced judgment,
and the land feared and was quiet—
⁹ when you, God, rose up to judge,
to save all the afflicted of the land.
¹⁰ Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise,
and the survivors of your wrath are restrained.

Finally, a couple of verses from the book of Proverbs in which Solomon, wise king of Israel, cautions against mutiny, implying that loyalty is far worthier: