Month: October 2015

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

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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:

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JEREMIAH 1:1-2:30 | PHILIPPIANS 4:1-23 | PSALM 75:1-10 | PROVERBS 24:17-20

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We enter a new book today, authored by a man named Jeremiah who lived some seven hundred years before the birth of Christ.  The son of a priest, Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, but is not immediately willing to accept his calling.  With some reluctance, Jeremiah takes up the cause for which he has been commissioned, and when he does, he loses no time in telling the people the error of their ways. 

Israel has forgotten the God of her forefathers, Abraham and Isaac; has become settled in Canaan for several hundred years now; and has crafted any number of gods for herself. 

And so, Jeremiah is here to tell them what God thinks about all this.  He says:

²⁶ “As a thief is disgraced when he is caught,
so the people of Israel are disgraced—
they, their kings and their officials,
their priests and their prophets.
²⁷ They say to wood, ‘You are my father,’
and to stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
They have turned their backs to me
and not their faces;
yet when they are in trouble, they say,
‘Come and save us!’
²⁸ Where then are the gods you made for yourselves?
Let them come if they can save you
when you are in trouble!
For you, Judah, have as many gods
as you have towns.

Turning now to our continued reading of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we find Paul making some final exhortations to his readers.  His words are timeless and ring true today even as they must have almost two thousand years ago. 

Paul says: ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And then he says, ⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Paul can teach us volumes on how to conduct ourselves on a daily basis!

On the matter of contentment, he says this:  I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

We now turn to our psalm for the day, and find David making a statement about the state of affairs of this world.  Referring to the omnipotence and omniscience of God, he says:

⁶ No one from the east or the west
or from the desert can exalt themselves.
⁷ It is God who judges:
He brings one down, he exalts another.

Finally, two sets of verses from the book of Proverbs which comprise a series of “sayings” authored by Solomon, wise king of Israel:

¹⁷ Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice,
¹⁸ or the LORD will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from them.

May God bless the reading and reflection of His Word.

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ISAIAH 66:1-24 | PHILIPPIANS 3:4-21 | PSALM 74:1-23 | PROVERBS 24:15-16

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Isaiah continues to prophesy of the new Jerusalem, and this is what he says the Lord says about this new city that is to come one day:

“I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.
¹³ As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”

In this new Jerusalem, there will be a coming together of both Jew and Gentile, an event that will succeed the coming of the Messiah to the Jews when there will be no more distinctions under a new covenant. 

The Lord says, ¹⁸ “And I, because of what they have planned and done, I am about to come and gather the people of all nations and languages, and they will come and see my glory. 

But there is also everlasting doom for the wicked who are unrepentant.  They will have their chance to choose their camp, and if they choose to remain unpenitent, there is an everlasting separation of the righteous from the wicked at this time.

And this is what we learn lies in the future:  ²² “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure. ²³ From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the LORD. ²⁴ “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”

Turning now to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we find Paul addressing most likely another debate about the alleged superiority of the Jews in comparison to the non-Jews who have recently adopted the Christian faith. 

These groups of legalistic Jews disseminated a doctrine of compliance to all Jewish practices such as circumcision upon conversion to the Christian faith, and Paul is constantly offering arguments to oppose these irrelevant ways of thinking and practice. 

In this letter, he goes about making his case in a tongue-in-cheek manner, so as to say, you think you’re so cool, well, let me tell you how cool I really am! 

And so, Paul says this about his own Jewish heritage:  If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶ as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

This Law vs. Faith debate is an old one, and Paul’s paramount purpose in addressing it time and time again is to convince his readers that nothing compares to the saving power of simple belief in the work already accomplished by Jesus Christ on the cross and beyond. 

So great is this fact of death and resurrection that translates to a free gift of eternal life that no amount of good works, kosher dietary laws, or even circumcision may attain this, because if that were the case, then grace is made null and void, and our faith is in vain. 

To this end, Paul says:  ⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

But inasmuch as Paul preaches a doctrine of grace, he is quick to point out that he is not sitting smug on the sidelines as if he has arrived at his final destination.  This is a faith that is transformative over a lifetime; it is a journey that teaches us many a lesson along the way. 

Paul explains: ¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Finally, he closes out this part of his letter with these words of encouragement:  ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Turning now to our reading of the psalms, we find David offering a most humble plea to the Almighty for help and victory.  He says:

²¹ Do not let the oppressed retreat in disgrace;
may the poor and needy praise your name.
²² Rise up, O God, and defend your cause;
remember how fools mock you all day long.
²³ Do not ignore the clamor of your adversaries,
the uproar of your enemies, which rises continually.

Finally, a couple of verses from the book of Proverbs which comprise another “saying” by king Solomon:

¹⁵ Do not lurk like a thief near the house of the righteous,
   do not plunder their dwelling place;
¹⁶ for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again,
   but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.

May God bless the reading and reflection of His Word.