1:10
This verse describes the tragedy of the situation. Jesus came into the world, the world that He had made, yet this world did not recognise Him. Sin blinds, and the greatest evidence of this is that we failed to recognise the Son of God when He came.
There are so many amazing things in this verse. God, the creator of all things, came into the world. Consider the vast difference there is between us and God, just imagine the scale of that difference. We are mere men, but God is eternal, everything was created by Him.
We think we are so wise, yet when the creator of the world came to us we rejected Him.
1:11
The tragedy was compounded by the fact that the Israelites themselves did not recognise Him. For the rest of the world you might say the rest of the world had an excuse, Israel had no excuse. God had created the nation in the first place. He had rescued them from slavery, He had interacted with them, saved them, judged them, spoken to them, revealed Himself to them in many ways. Yet they did not recognise their God when He came to live among them. This is the true tragedy of the human condition.
The juxtaposition of the world and Israel is significant. Israel is in many ways a microcosm of the problems of man and the salvation of God. The Old Testament could fairly be described as a record of the sins of Israel. In Jeremiah in particular we see the utter depravity of the heart of Israel. Then we see the grace of God, the working of God and the promises of a new heart. We also see promises of salvation going out to other nations. The good news is that in Christ there is salvation for all, and it is in Christ that unity between Jews and Gentiles will be found (Eph 2:11-20). This is still true today. Israel will only find true peace when she turns to Christ, the Palestinians will only find peace and prosperity when they turn to Christ. And this is the only way for their to be peace and unity between Israel and Palestine.
No comments:
Post a Comment