Jeremiah 36 - Years 605-604 BC.  Jeremiah sends for Baruch to write a scroll containing all of his prophesies he has made from the beginning, during the reign of Josiah, down to the present.  He hopes that if the people hear them all, then certainly they will repent of their unfaithfulness before it is too late. During a fast, Jeremiah says “I cannot go to the house of the Lord; I am prevented from doing so” (36:5). So he sends Baruch to the Temple to read it. He reads it all to the people.

Gemariah’s son, Micaiah, reports what is read to the Temple officials meeting in the king’s palace.  Baruch is ordered to there and read it again. The words of the scroll frighten them and they go to tell the king.  But they advise Baruch and Jeremiah to flee. 

The scroll is brought to the King—it is winter and they sit before a fire—and here the scroll is read for the third time.  But the King will have none of it. As Baruch reads the prophesies of Jeremiah, the king cuts pieces off the scroll and throws them in a fire.  He feels no fear of what it says. Jeremiah and Baruch are ordered arrested but Yahweh has hidden them. 

When Jeremiah hears how the King has “received” his words, he proclaims a curse on Jehoiakim: his heirs will never rule in Jerusalem and his corpse will be “thrown out where it will be exposed to the sun during the day and to the frost at night” (36:30). Then he (Jeremiah) orders Baruch to rewrite the scroll.

Romans 4 – The place of God’s promises in the world of faith is examined here.  Paul examines what Abraham did that “justified” him.  Paul’s scripture says that Abraham’s “belief” (JB uses “faith”) was credited to him as righteousness, not anything he did. Paul refers to David too, to something he said—that the blessed (“justified”) are “they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered” (4:7 - quoting psalm 32: 1-2). This blessedness is not something reserved only for the “circumcised.”  Abraham was not circumcised when he acted on his “faith” in God (4:10), his belief that the promises of God to him would someday be fulfilled. Circumcision was just “a sign” or seal of the “justification” he received because of his faith. The promise was made because of his faith, not because of the sign he was given to remind him (and his heirs) of it. Nor was the promise a reward for adherence to the Law, which would be given later through Moses.

It is God’s promise to Abraham, part of which referred to him being “the father of many nations” (4:17) that is the origin of the faith that we and the Jews [and the Muslims] profess. We are the nations referred to here. Abraham relied on that promise even in the face of every good reason to doubt it – this is our model.  In scripture we see the redemption pattern repeated so often and God’s faithfulness to us so concretely demonstrated, that we are encouraged to persist in faith even when it seems absurd. Abraham’s faith is the model, for even without what we (the generations that came after Abraham) have -- the experience of the exodus, the restoration of the Jews after the conquests, the resurrection of Christ -- Abraham trusted in God, obeyed His voice and was found just on that account.