Daily Bible Reading: Jeremiah 10 and 1 Corinthians 13

Jeremiah 10 - People’s idols are not worth worshipping. The natural phenomena they are fascinated with, “unusual sights in the sky” and such-like things, these are not things they should fear or worship. The idols they craft are “like scarecrows.”  They cannot speak; they must be carried about. They “can do no harm, neither is it in their power to do good” (10:5).  “The Lord is true God, he is the living God, the eternal King. . .He who made the earth by his power, established the world by his wisdom, and stretched out the heavens by his skill” (10:10-12).  A lot in this chapter sounds like passages from Job, which apparently was written sometimes after Jeremiah, and continued to examine the life of the faithful servant who must suffer. As for idols, “Every man is stupid, ignorant; every artisan is put to shame by his idol: He has molded a fraud, without breath of life, Nothingness are they, a ridiculous work” (10:14-15).

The misery of the prophet’s personal life is overwhelming: “Woe is me! I am undone, my wound is incurable; yet I had thought: if I make light of my wound, I can bear it. My sons have left me, they are no more, no one to pitch my tent, no one to raise its curtains” (10:19-20). He blames the leaders of the people: “Our leaders are stupid; they do not ask the Lord for guidance” (10:21). The nation “to the north” (Neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar) will turn them “into a desert.” Jeremiah ends with a prayer to God to turn His anger “on the nations that do not worship you and on the people who reject you” (10:25); I detect some anger in him here.

1 Corinthians 13 – Paul’s discourse on love.  Nothing is higher—not prophesy, not knowledge, not self-sacrifice, not faith, not even martyrdom.  Love is patient, kind, not jealous, not pompous, not inflated, not rude, not self-seeking.  It does not brood over injury or rejoice over wrong-doing.  It rejoices in the truth.

When we are spiritually immature, we think like children. But now we must put away “childish things” – “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; [but soon] we shall see face-to-face” (13:11-12).