Jeremiah 44 - For the Jews in
Egypt, Jeremiah continues to rant and rave against them. It is because of the evil they did to
provoke God that they have seen Judah and Jerusalem destroyed. “Though I kept sending to you all my
servants the prophets, with the plea not to commit this horrible deed which I
hate, [sacrificing to strange gods] they would not listen or accept the warning
to turn away from the evil of sacrificing to strange gods” (44:4).
Why
do they keep doing this Jeremiah asks, endangering even the precious remnant
they might have been? “To this day they have not been crushed: they do not fear or follow the law. . .” (44:10). Obedience
to God, Jeremiah tells us here, is in some ways a crushing of our own wills,
our own sense of what we feel we must do.
We must put the fear of displeasing God up higher on the list of things
that motivate us. They must not offer incense to the Gods of Egypt. But still they reject his word. The women especially defy him, offering
incense to the “Queen of Heaven.” (Ishtar) Pharoah Hophra will be dethroned and killed by Amasis—his successor--
in 569. Amasis also will be later
slain by his opponents.
Jeremiah 45 – Flipping back to
the time of King Jehoiakim [c.609-598 BC]. We are told that a message was given
to Baruch at the time of Jeremiah’s prophecies in 605-604 BC that God would
soon be tearing down what he had built, uprooting what He (God) had planted in
destroying Jerusalem. But Baruch
is reassured that he will be left unharmed.
Romans 9:1-23 – Paul tells of the
“great sorrow and constant anguish in [his] heart” over the rejection of Christ
by his Jewish brothers—who have had every blessing and gift from God to bring
them to understand and accept Christ (9:4). Paul then says something that is a
little – no very - startling. He says, “For their sake [for the sake of his people,
the Jews] I would wish that I myself were under God’s curse and separated from
Christ” (9:3).
Could Paul really
think this for a minute? But here I think I do understand him. I have had similar feelings myself—not
about the salvation of the Jews. I
don’t worry about the Jews. They
will do fine before God. I worry
about people who CANNOT come into
knowledge of Christ because of deep mental handicaps. And here I must add
something very personal. When I read these words, I think of my mother and
sister, both of whom struggled all their adult lives with schizophrenia. Their lives were full of a misery I
cannot even begin to imagine in all honesty. By contrast, my own life has been so blessed by God, right
here in this life, it often seems very unfair to me. The happiness I have had
and especially the moments of “redemption” I have experienced – those amazing
moments where I have experienced the “intersection of the timeless with time”
(TS Eliot) have been moments so rich, that they make thoughts of a heavenly
afterlife relatively unimportant to me. If there is something more after death,
I would happily give it up if my mother and sister could only come into an
experience of God in some dimension or realm beyond my imagination. I have already been rewarded. They have never really even lived if
true “life” is “in Christ.”
Returning to Paul’s
analysis, however, of the Jews, the real children of Abraham, he posits, are
not those who are descendants through the flesh, but those who are his
descendants through faith. Is this an injustice
on God’s part, he asks? Surely
not, for God’s will is beyond question (9:15); “it depends not upon a person’s will or exertion, but upon God, who
shows mercy” (9:16)
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