Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 4 and 1 Corinthians 9


Jeremiah 4 – If Israel wants to return to the Lord, she has but to do it.  But they must “remove the foreskins of [their] hearts [take the tough cover off their hearts” (4:4). Today’s English Version, which I like for the simplicity of its language, has nothing like this in its translation – I don’t understand why. It says, “Keep your covenant with my, your Lord, and dedicate yourselves to me, you people of Judah and Jerusalem.”

The Lord is going to bring disaster on the people of Judah from the north; a “lion . . . a destroyer of nations has set out. He is coming to destroy Judah. The cities of Judah will be left in ruins, and no one will live in them” (4:7). Jeremiah engages in some Mosaic arm-twisting with God, accusing Him of having deceived the people with His promises of peace (4:10), but this is not what is going to happen.

The drama of this section lies in the coexistence of two simultaneous realitiesthe destruction, which is coming on Judah because of the hardness of their hearts and their years of unfaithfulness.  But the other is just as real; it is the terrible angst that fills the heart of the prophet, who must convey the harsh message of God to his people but at the same time feels somewhere in his heart that God has been unfaithful to the promise of peace made over and over again to the people. The prophet is an intermediary, the voice of God to His people AND the voice of the people to God. The excruciating tension these two jobs bring to the prophet are captured well in this chapter:
           
“The pain! I can’t bear the pain! My heart! My heart is beating wildly! I can’t keep quiet; I hear the trumpets and the shouts of battle. . . . How long must I see the battle raging and hear the blasts of trumpets? The Lord says, ‘My people are stupid; they don’t know me. They are like foolish children; they have no understanding. They are experts at doing what is evil, but failures at doing what is good” (4:19-22).


1 Corinthians 9 – Paul insists that he is “an apostle.” He has seen the risen Lord; this church in Corinth is his work “in the Lord.”  People who work for the gospel have a right to be supported, but Paul does not claim it.  In an exercise of the same “communitarian” ideal mentioned previously, he does not exercise this right because he thinks it might create obstacles to some he is attempting to reach. He is also still dealing with the boasting question—the boasting or self-inflation of those in the community who think their grasp of the gospel gives them a certain status or aura—grasping the gospel, embodying the gospel, representing it in any way puts a burden on you to serve it, not boast about it. His “freedom” in the gospel makes him want to be its slave, and that means he must try to be all things to all men—he must try to communicate the truth of the gospel to all manner of men so as to “win” them.  We are after an imperishable crown, not an earthly one.

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