Jeremiah 31:7-14: Protected From Our Bad Decisions

This is what the Lord says: “Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations. Make your praises heard, and say, ‘Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’ See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son.

“Hear the word of the Lord, you nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’ For the Lord will deliver Jacob and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they. They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will rejoice in the bounty of the Lord—the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, the young of the flocks and herds. They will be like a well-watered garden, and they will sorrow no more. Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow. I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with my bounty,” declares the Lord. - Jeremiah 31:7-14

"Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping..." Rough situation, full of the broken and vulnerable. The people ask God, "save your people!" God responds that he will save them. It is notable that in his response that the groups he highlights as returning are the "blind", the "lame", the "expectant mothers" and "women in labor". None of these seems like ready contributors to the restored Israel.

But Isaiah makes a point that the vulnerable and impaired are part of the 'flock' that God is redeeming. God isn't redeeming the strong. He is redeeming those whom he has chastised. It says that it was God "who scattered Israel" and it was God who redeemed them from the hand of those "stronger than they." 

That is: they were all among the vulnerable and impaired. They were all part of the "weak" and they are now all part of the "redeemed" and all part of the "blessed". 

There are many Christians who forget that they were also part of the weak, impaired and vulnerable and didn't make the transition to redeemed without God's help. There is a sort of spiritual amnesia that makes believers forget so completely what they experienced that they won't let others commit the same mistakes that they themselves made and, in many cases, still continue to make. The cross is the great place of level ground: we can none of us claim to be any higher that any other and therefore should not put on airs of pride. It just looks foolish. 

 

Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-20: Living Life With Eyes Open

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, - Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-20

 "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened..." There is so much in this world that cannot actually be seen. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control to name just a few. They are real and we feel their effects every day. The problem with these is that we can be conditioned so that we do not recognize them and we are tempted to write them off as mere fantasies.

In these verses, Paul prays that the "eyes of our heart may be enlightened" to see three key intangibles--real but likely to be overlooked because of the default manner of our thinking. He wants that we should see "the hope to which he has called us" and the "riches of his glorious inheritance" and "his incomparably great power". We can't touch, taste, smell, hear or feel these but, for the believer, these suffuse reality. So we need a new sense--a new awareness--to what God is doing with his people.

Without it, we might be left with the depressing, limited reality of the senses we were born with. With  it, we find we are surrounded with the amazing, infinite, plentiful reality of the kingdom of God we were born again into. So I pray I can live life with eyes open, not shut.

Matthew 2:13-23: Sometimes We Can't Let It Go And Can't Get Closer To God

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. - Matthew 2:13-23

Maintaining your position is exhausting. Like Herod, you must always be on the lookout for competitors-peoples who might take away the position that you have fought so hard to obtain--and ruthlessly suppress them. When the magi showed up, saying they had a supernatural sign pointing them to the one who was destined for the very title that you yourself claimed, you use them to find out the truth in the matter and when they don't report back, you kill every possible future rival to your throne that they might have encountered.

Maybe we don't murder our rivals, but we can feel resentful when someone else starts getting the credit. When Guinness Book of World Records listed the kid with the highest IQ in the world, I remember feeling annoyed at that kid even though I never new him. Maybe he or she is socially awkward or had super geniuses for parents or the IQ tests were inherently biased towards people of a certain socioeconomic level. Some way to explain why they weren't listing my name.

When someone else has what we feel we deserve, we find some reason why they didn't deserve it, some way that they cheated, some way that they were unfairly advantaged or someway to remove them from being seen as a competitor. Or we feel they were right to win and the anger turns inward in remorse.

Saying that you don't deserve something and someone else does in front of a crowd is a tough path to humility--and we will often do almost anything rather than go down that path. Herod didn't. Joseph, bringing back Mary and Jesus from Egypt didn't want to settle where Archilaeus, Herod's son, was, because he would have not liked his father being shown up by a refugee, so they went to Nazareth.

One thing we can learn: even in the unfair jealousy of others, God still has a hand, since he used that very anger to get Jesus to exactly where he was supposed to be, per the prophecy.

Another think we can learn: we can't get closer to God if we don't see Him as more important than everything in our current situation. Herod was so tied to being "king" that he got literally and metaphorically farther from Jesus. He couldn't let it go. Sometimes, we can't let it go. Then we can't get closer to Jesus. Learning how to live without attachment to anything but God is the art.