Complete notes for Galatians

Complete notes for Galatians can now be found at Dundee Believer.

Jeremiah 6:9-12 - Let them glean the remnant of Israel

6:9

Verse 9 is alluding to the practice of taking the gleanings of a field. I.e. taking the fruit from the crops at the edge of the field. So God is saying that the attackers will do a very thorough job of stripping the land of its people and its assets.

6:10

It seems as if Jeremiah is speaking now. He has seen what is going to happen and wants to give a warning to Judah. But who would listen? They do not want to happen. We can identify with this, for we see many ways in which our own society is going in the wrong direction, bringing trouble upon itself, and has already done so. But if we point out the errors in society we just shouted down, no one wants to listen. “The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.” Sadly this is all too applicable to our own land.

6:11,12

The wrath of the Lord is ready to be released. “I cannot hold it in”. This is not a sudden outburst of rage, for Judah’s sins had been building up over many years, failing to respond to warning after warning. And it will affect everyone, young and old, husband and wife. And it is the Lord who will stretch out His hand against those who live in the land.

Matthew 1:22,23 - It was a virgin birth

1:22,23 (b)

Let me now say some general things about the virgin birth.

I want to say first of all that I absolutely believe in the virgin birth, and I have no problems whatsoever in doing so. In this short post I want to briefly explain why.

The virgin birth makes perfect sense to me, in fact I think it is a theological necessity. You and I are fully human, and that is it. Jesus is both fully human and fully God. So He is unique, and therefore it is not surprising at all that His conception (actually it is His conception, not the birth, that was unique!) was different from ours. Indeed, I think it is essential that Mary was a virgin, and it makes perfect sense to me.

Then people say that “virgin births don’t happen, so how could it happen”. This is the weakest argument against the virgin birth, and the silliest. It was a miracle, and miracles are by definition highly unusual events.Then we need to remind ourselves who God is. He is the creator of all things. He created everything on earth, He created the solar system, He created the galaxy, He created all the billions of galaxies (100 billion is apparently the latest estimate). Now if God can create all that I am sure that a virgin birth is well within His capabilities.

There is one argument that does seem, at least superficially, to have some substance to it. That argument is that apart from Matthew and Luke, there is no direct reference to the virgin birth in the New Testament preaching. They preached about the resurrection all the time, but not the virgin birth. So the argument goes that the virgin birth was just a piece of mythology added on later. However, a little thought shows that there is a perfectly rational explanation for this. Suppose you are Peter preaching on the first Pentecost and you start proclaiming that Jesus was born of a virgin, then someone in the crowd shouts out “don’t be ridiculous, you don’t get virgin births. Prove it!”. What is Peter going to do? There is no proof or evidence that he can offer. But now suppose someone in the crowd shout out “don’t be ridiculous, people aren’t raised from the dead. Prove it!” The situation is now quite different. First, Peter could say “if Jesus is dead, then show us the body! Oh, you can’t can you, the only tomb you have is an empty one!”. Then he can point to the five hundred plus people who saw the risen Christ. He, and all the apostles, could present clear evidence for the resurrection. And, contrary to the arguments of some sceptics, the gospel is evidence supported. So there is a perfectly good explanation of why they preached the resurrection all the time, but not the virgin birth. Moreover, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that have an immediate impact on our lives, the virgin birth makes perfect sense, but is not in the same category.

Complete notes on 2 Corinthians are now available

Complete notes on 2 Corinthians can now be found at Dundee Believer.

Jeremiah 6:4-8 - Take warning Jerusalem

6:4,5

Jeremiah is communicating what the enemies are saying, except that God is using them against Israel. It is really God leading the attack. And the army is prepared to attack at any time. Normally they would prefer to attack during the day, but since it is evening they will attack at night. The message is that there is no escape, the attack will definitely take place. Any thoughts that Judah might have had that there would be no attack are nothing more than wishful thinking.

6:6-8

We now get more description, and it is of God planning and preparing for the siege of Jerusalem. The people had a superstitious trust in Jerusalem and the temple, they needed to realise that righteousness is what really counts with God, trusting Him and obeying Him. Verse 8 indicates that all is not yet lost. If she took hold of her senses and repented then she could be saved. The purpose of all the graphic descriptions of the coming attack is to seek to make Jerusalem realise what the real problem was, which was her sinfulness. Exactly the same problem was encountered in Jesus’ day.

Matthew 1:21-23 - He will save the people from their sins

1:21

The angel then expanded on the instructions, telling Joseph that she would have a son and he was to name him Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, and means “the Lord saves”. He was to call him this because he would save the people from their sins. Note this last bit. The Bible is clear from beginning to end that we need to be saved from our sins, that that is the whole purpose of the gospel. We are all too ready to forget this.

1:22,23 (a)

Matthew then gives his first quotation from the Old Testament, saying that these things happened to fulfil this saying. This first one is rather controversial, so we will look at it in some depth. First, we need to have a general look at what “fulfilment” of prophecy means. We tend to take it in the sense that a specific prediction was made, and that Jesus was the fulfilment of this. However, prophecy and prediction are not the same. Many, probably most, prophecies in the Old Testament had both a fairly immediate fulfilment, and then a later complete fulfilment. The initial fulfilment would be partial, but demonstrated the veracity and reality of the prophecy, in particular the reality of the thing it was pointing forward to (which was usually God’s plan of salvation in Christ).  The prophecy would show the sort of things that would happen, or what the Messiah would be like.

Here Matthew cites Is 7:14. The controversy arises over the fact that the original Hebrew version can mean “young woman”, not necessarily “virgin”. While the word can mean young woman, most of its uses apply to virgins. However, the partial/complete fulfilment concept is very relevant here. The immediate fulfilment referred to children that Isaiah would father, and this would not be a virgin birth! Moreover, the aspect of the verse that Matthew is focusing on is the “Immanuel” part and the salvation aspects. He is not using this as “proof” of the virgin birth.

Jeremiah 6:1-3 - I will destroy daughter Zion

6:1

“Flee from Jerusalem”. Jesus also told the disciples to flee when the Roman armies were near (Matt 24:16). There was a superstitious belief that God would not let Jerusalem fall, and definitely not let the temple be destroyed. Both these superstitions proved false! Both in Jeremiah’s time and in the first century. We need to beware of superstitious belief masquerading as faith. Destruction was coming.

6:2,3

“I will destroy Daughter Zion”. The people of Judah were about to receive a rude awakening. Today we have the same phenomenon if we think “God won’t send people to hell”, “God will not inflict judgement”. What is your basis for saying this? It certainly is not the Bible! For God frequently inflicts judgement. Indeed, a basic principle of the Bible is that God judges, and that there will be a final day of judgement. Jesus frequently spoke about hell and judgement. Beliefs that “God will not judge” etc are based on wishful thinking and are utterly worthless.

Matthew 1:19,20 - An angel of the Lord appeared to him

1:19

Joseph was a righteous man. Given the customs and arranged marriages of the time it is possible that he didn’t even know Mary that well at the time. He would have been within his rights to divorce her publically, and in so doing would have possibly gained financially. For if he had paid a bride’s price, he would then have been entitled to a refund for Mary’s apparent infidelity. He would also have been entitled to keep any money that Mary’s father had given him as part of the marriage agreement. (As an aside, we are often quick to mock or criticise anything that smacks of arranged marriage. Before we do this we should consider the fact that arrangements in our own society are not exactly wonderfully successful! We should take the log out of our own eye first.) So in seeking to do things privately and quietly Joseph is seeking to protect Mary and her family as much as possible.

1:20

God did not allow Joseph to make a mistake. Joseph was acting out of righteousness and out of a merciful heart. Micah 6:8 tells us to “love mercy, act justly and to walk humbly with our God”.       With the mercy and justice part we can, for the most part, work these things out from Scripture and our character being molded by the Holy Spirit. However, we do not and cannot know everything, and God knows this! But we can trust the Lord, and if there is something unusual that we need to know God is quite capable of informing us. He did this here by sending an angel to Joseph, and informed Joseph that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit.

Jeremiah 5:26-31 - But what will you do in the end?

5:26-29

We can sometimes get the impression that the sin of Israel was “just idol worship”, but this is far from all that happened. It was far from just a matter of “going to a different temple”. People lay in wait to take advantage of others. When morality breaks down people get hurt. Some become rich and powerful through their evil and they devise more and more ways of carrying out evil deeds. Some become rich on the proceeds of crime. Judges become corrupt and do not defend the rights of the poor. “Should I not avenge myself on such a nation for this?” The answer is, of course, yes.

5:30,31

These two verse sum up the situation. The prophets prophesy lies, instead of prophesying the truth, of prophesying God’s words. The priests rule by their own authority. We can apply this to religious leaders. A religious leader is there under God’s authority, but when a nation abandons God they start to act under their own authority. They no longer seek to promote God’s ways, but promote man’s ways instead. We see this most clearly at present in the parts of the church that happily go along with the world’s ways on sexual morality. This is a “horrible and shocking thing”. But the worst thing of all is that “my people love it this way”. The common people were quite happy with the situation.

Such a nation is in deep, deep trouble. 

Matthew 1:18 - The birth of Jesus took place in this way

1:18

Continuing his interest in Jesus’ ancestry, Matthew now gives us the birth narrative. Matthew and Luke’s accounts are complementary, focusing on different aspects. In the genealogy Matthew has given Jesus’ human ancestry, but Jesus is the Son of God, He is God incarnate. So Matthew stresses now the supernatural aspects of His birth. Why is the human ancestry there? For if Jesus is the Son of God, if He is God, then one might argue that the human ancestry is utterly irrelevant. The genealogy was not there just for benefit of the Jews, for it all fits in with God’s plan. It includes key figures like Abraham and David, it points to the global reach of the gospel. 

“Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph”. This betrothal was a far more serious matter than our engagement. In fact, a betrothal could only be ended by formal divorce. A couple were betrothed for a year before the marriage. Matthew emphasises that they had no sexual relations before the birth of Jesus. Jesus was conceived through the Holy Spirit. Luke gives more detail on the angelic visitation, Matthew is more concerned to stress how all this affected Joseph.

God and our emotions

God and our Emotions

Probably all of us are familiar with phrases like “faith not feelings”. Some preaching is criticised for being all about feelings rather than the objective facts of the gospel. There is, of course, a lot of truth and validity to these criticisms. However, if we read the Bible we find that God is actually a lot more concerned about our feelings than we often imagine.

I am currently working through Jeremiah. This is one the most hard hitting, and relentlessly so, books in the Bible. It is incisively clear about the depths of sin in Judah and Jerusalem, and the terrible judgement that was about to come upon the people. Yet that is not all that we find in the book. We also learn about Jeremiah’s emotional state. We learn about his feelings about the disaster that was about to befall his country. We learn about how at times he just wanted to run away from it all. We even learn about how he thought God was a liar! (Jer 15:18).  

And this characteristic is not limited to this book, far from it. We know that Elijah had that famous contest with the prophets of baal. He called down fire from heaven and defeated them, yet shortly afterwards he ran away into the desert. He had had enough and just wanted to die.

The book of Job is full of the outpouring of Job’s heart, including how unfair he thought God was being in allowing all his suffering. The Psalms are full of David expressing his feelings, both when full of joy and when full of despair.

We all know that Abraham had Ishmael as a result of his liaison with the servant girl. Later on after Isaac was born God told him he had to send Ishmael away. Abraham found this very hard because while Ishmael was an illegitimate son, the result of his lack of faith, he was still his son. We might think that God would tell Abraham that was his problem, he shouldn’t have disobeyed God in the first place. But no, we find that God takes account of Abraham’s feelings, and promises to look after Ishamel. 

As always, the Bible is far more balanced than we are. It is true that we must not let feelings rule our lives, but we must not ignore them. More importantly, God does not ignore our feelings, our emotions. He deals with us and our emotions. It will probably not be in the way we expect, nor in the way we would choose. Abraham had to send Ishmael away, Job was never told why he had to suffer so much, Elijah had to get on with the job of being a prophet, Jeremiah had to continue delivering the word of God to a sinful and rebellious nation. But God will deal with our hearts in a way that brings far deeper healing and freedom than we never imagine.

I have made a short Youtube video along the same theme.

Jeremiah 5:23-25 - Your sins have deprived you of good

5:23

“But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts”. Our first reaction to problems is usually to blame someone else, or to blame God. We usually do far better to look first to ourselves, to look to our hearts. The people of Judah and Israel had stubborn and rebellious hearts and had turned away from God and His ways. That was the root cause of all their problems. This nation has turned aside from God and His ways. We even consider God’s ways to be hateful! We should not be surprised if this has dire consequences for us.

5:24,25

Instead of going their own way, the people should have resolved to fear the Lord. If we find ourselves lost then we should resolve to fear the Lord. How do we do this? There are many aspects to this. First, we should worship Him, we should praise Him. We should seek to live our lives according to His ways. There will be somethings that we do that we should resolve to stop doing. There will be positive things that we can do, we should do them. It may seem that these things have no immediate bearing on our problems, but we need to remember that it is the Lord who gives the autumn and spring rains. He is our provider and our protector. When we trust in the Lord, when we look to Him things will start to work out better. When we don’t do this, it is our wrongdoings and our sins that deprive us of the good things.

Matthew 1:2-17 - Who is called Christ

1:2-17

The genealogy is arranged in three groups of 14. Abraham and David are mentioned in verse 1, and they head the first two groups, the third group starts with mention of the Babylonian exile. These mark key elements in Israel’s history. Abraham was the father of the nation. David was the greatest king they ever had, and Babylon marked the lowest point in Israel’s history. The prophecies around Babylon, especially Isaiah (I believe it was actually written by Isaiah of the Assyrian period, not some deutero Isaiah, nevertheless much of chapter 40 onwards has key relevance for the Babylonian exile), looked forward to a restoration. While there had been a physical return from exile in Babylon it was recognised in Judaism that this was hardly a complete fulfilment of the prophecies. There had to be more to come, and that more is found in Jesus!

When it says “father of ...” it does not necessarily mean the immediate father of, it can mean simply descendant of.

So Matthew is expressing things in terms that the Jews would understand and be interested in, but God’s plans went way beyond what the Jews realised. This fact applies to all of us, whatever theology we have, no matter how much understanding we may think we have, God’s plans are far greater and wider than we ever imagine. So there are some interesting features in the lists. Perhaps the most important is that five women get mentioned, and some of these were Gentile women! There is the infamous Jewish prayer thanking God that He had not created him a slave, a Gentile or a woman! God’s promise to Abraham was that all nations would be blessed through him (Gen 12:2,3). 

The first woman to be mentioned was Tamar, who became a prostitute, and the story is described in Genesis 38. Rahab was also a prostitute, and a Gentile, but she is presented in an entirely positive light in the Bible, both in Joshua, and in Hebrews 11:31. We can see this as picturing a key element of the gospel. We are all sinners, and have many unsavoury (or downright ungodly) aspects about us. But in Christ we are made righteous.

Ruth was a Moabitess, yet she even has a book all about her in the Old Testament. So we see that throughout the Old Testament period God was always pointing ahead to something much greater than what they already had. Bathsheba gets mentioned indirectly in 1:6. 

There are some good kings (Asa, Hezekiah, Josiah) and some not so good. 

The list finishes with Joseph, and then Matthew draws attention to Mary, and to his fourteens, Fourteen may have been chosen because it is the numerical number of the name David in Hebrew. 

Jeremiah 5:20-22 - Should you not tremble in my presence?

5:20,21

This is reminiscent of Isaiah 6:9. The having eye but not seeing, ears but no hearing is a comment on the spiritual deafness of the people. They had the word of God both in terms of the Law and the words of the prophets, but they never understood a word of it, never took it on board. Jeremiah is to proclaim this to the people ”you foolish and senseless people”. There is a time to be blunt, and God is very blunt with His people.

5:22

“Should you not fear me?” We can see this today in the churches that delight in ignoring God;s words on sexual morality. What a foolish thing to do! God is our creator, the creator of the whole universe. Why ignore God and choose to listen to so-called progressives!? We should not be surprised if such a path leads to disaster. If we are Bible believing Christians (and there really isn’t any other sort) it is easy for us to say that, for we do believe God knows best. But what about when we face threats or danger in our own lives. Whom do we fear? Do we fear the circumstances, or do we fear God?

God is the creator of all things, and creation reflects parts of His glory. So the sand is a boundary for the sea. We just take this for granted, but God says it reflects something deeper. The sea is so powerful, but there is a limit to how far it can go. It is so dangerous, yet it is limited. Babylon was a very real threat, but there was a limit to how far it would go. It would go very far, but what Judah needed to do was to fear the Lord.

Matthew 1:1 - The genealogy of Jesus Christ

1:1

Matthew and Luke are the two gospels that deal directly with the birth narrative of Jesus. Matthew dives straight in with a genealogy of Jesus. This seems odd to us, Luke’s approach is much more sensible from our perspective, but that is Luke is writing primarily for Gentiles, Matthew is aimed at a more Jewish or Hebrew audience. If we look at the Old Testament we see that most times when a character is introduced there is some mention of his ancestry. Ancestry was very important from a Jewish perspective, hence Matthew starting with the genealogy. By the way, when we say Matthew was aimed at  a Jewish audience, and Luke aimed at a Gentile one, that most definitely does not mean Jews cannot gain much from Luke, and us Gentiles from Matthew. There is one gospel and one Lord.

Critics are keen to point out that there are differences between the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. Yes there are, but that is because they were not intending to give the complete genealogy in “register of births and deaths” sense. They were highlighting a point. Luke starts with Joseph and works back to Adam, and then to God. Matthew starts with Abraham and works forward to Joseph. 

Matthew also begins by declaring that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of David, and the Son of Abraham. That Jesus is the fulfilment of all the promises in the Old Testament is a key theme in Matthew.

Jeremiah 5:15-19 - I will not destroy you completely

5:15-17

God tells Israel that He is bringing a distant nation against them, an ancient and enduring nation. Babylon had a long history, going back some 2000 years. They were militarily powerful and would overwhelm Judah. They would destroy and devour the land and the people. Many object that this is a God of wrath (which He is, but they do not understand what wrath means), but what such people are saying is that sin does not matter, it is of no importance. A key to life is realising the importance and destructiveness of sin. God’s wrath is never capricious. It also comes only after many years of warnings.

5:18,19

5:18 shows there is still hope and that destruction is not the ultimate goal. Israel would not be completely destroyed. Some would survive and go into exile. There they would worship God. They had worshipped foreign gods in their own land, so now they would be taken off to live in those foreign lands. This is like Paul’s instruction in a couple of place in the New Testament to “hand people over to satan”. They wanted foreign gods, well they would get the whole package. In the west our societies are quickly rejecting all our Christian heritage. As a result we will encounter what a truly pagan society is like (we will call it secular, but it amounts to the same thing), and this will not be pleasant.

Matthew - Introduction

Introduction

Matthew is, of course, the first of the gospels. None of the gospels have the name of the authors, but from the earliest days all the gospels were associated with the names we know them by. Despite this there are those who doubt the authorship, but there would be wouldn’t there! I don’t intend to dwell on authorship, you can look in any good evangelical commentary, or the NT Introduction noted at the bottom, if you want to investigate the gory details. I will simply take it to have been written by Matthew, the tax collector disciple known as Levi.

Traditionally Matthew was taken to be the earliest gospel, though nowadays second or third is more common. However, there it is possible he was the first. 

Matthew is one of the three synoptic gospels (Mark and Luke being the other two), which cover broadly the same material, but each has its own perspective. Whereas Luke was geared towards a Gentile audience, Matthew is very much the Jewish gospel, aimed at a Jewish audience. Matthew stresses the fulfilment of Old Testament scriptures in Christ. It is also sometimes called the “Royal Gospel”, with its emphasis on kingdom and the servant king. Along with Luke, Matthew gives a birth narrative, but looking at different aspects to Luke.

It is difficult to know exactly when Matthew was written. Most date it after Mark, assuming that Matthew used Mark as a source for some of his material. However, it might be that they both used a common source, in which case the date of Mark is less relevant in dating Matthew. However, the most popular dates among evangelical scholars are between AD 60 and 70. 

Papias, a second century Christian, said that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (Aramaic), and you may hear this claim still being made today. However, there are two things against this claim. The first is that there are no Aramaic manuscripts of Matthew, all the ones we have are in Greek. Secondly, the Greek is of quite a polished nature (better quality than Mark), and gives no indication of having been translated from Aramaic.

There are various ways of looking at Matthew, but many take five main discourses of Jesus as the framework. So we have:

Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7)

Commissioning of the apostles (chapter 10)

Kingdom parables (chapter 13)

Kingdom life (chapter 18)

The olivet discourse (chapters 24,25)

Bibliography

An Introduction to the New Testament, D A Carson, D J Moo, and L Morris, Apollos (1992)

The Message of Matthew, Michael Green, The Bible Speaks Today, IVP (1988)

Zondervan TNIV Study Bible, Zondervan

NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, Zondervan

Jeremiah 5:12-14 - He will do nothing!

5:12,13

“They have lied about the Lord; they said “He will do nothing!...” Today people say that God will not judge, they too are saying “He will do nothing!”. This is a very dangerous thing to say, and to live in the light of this is an even more dangerous thing to do. God will not stand by forever. We are His creation, this world is His world. Those who teach otherwise, those who teach that God will not judge “are but wind”.

5:14

What was God’s response to the empty and deceptive words of the prophets? It was to make Jeremiah’s “words fire and these people the wood it consumes”. Jeremiah would faithfully and clearly speak the words of the Lord, and God would enact these words. Judgement would come. Now as we will see, this was no easy matter for Jeremiah. He had struggles within himself. He faced opposition from others, including the rulers. The fire came in that his words proved true. Judgement did come, Babylon did attack and defeat.

Colossians 4:12-18 - Grace be with you

4:12-16

Epaphras is mentioned again (Col 1:7), he is the one who established the church in Colossae. He was a servant of Christ, and sent his greetings. He was in prison with Paul and wrestled in prayer for them. This implies that sometimes prayer is a struggle. He prayed that they would stand firm in the will of God, and be mature and fully assured. We should seek to see our church members as mature and fully assured. Paul personally commends Epaphras. Luke is mentioned, Luke who wrote the gospel with his name, and Acts. As in other letters, there is mention of a woman, Nympha, in whose house a church met. It is clear from the gospels, and the letters, especially Paul’s letters, that women played a significant role in the life of the early church.

4:17,18

We know nothing about Archippus, though he may be mentioned in Philemon 2. He is urged to complete the ministry that God gave to him. God gives all of us tasks and it is important that we complete these tasks. Various things will come in our way to distract us from doing that. We need to be aware of that, and to overcome these obstacles or distractions. 

Paul closes the letter by writing the final greeting in his own handwriting, probably having used an amanuensis or secretary to write most of the letter. By the way, verses like this make something of a nonsense of the various claims that the letter was not written by Paul.

Jeremiah 5:7-11 - Why should I forgive you?

5:7-9

So often the human response for our trouble is to blame God. Even if we admit that we have some responsibility we think that God ought to forgive us. These verse give a rather different perspective! God had provided Israel with all that she needed, yet she rebelled against Him, going to worship other gods. “Why should I forgive you?” They were also sexually immoral, v8 giving a graphic description of this sin. There are many who say we are too obsessed with sexual immorality, well God is concerned about sexual immorality, it is a serious sin. God would be unjust if He did not punish sin.

5:10,11

These are instructions that God would give to Babylon. She would rampage through Israel’s vineyards, causing much damage. Yet she would not destroy them completely. The judgement of God is most severe, but it is not final. In John’s gospel we find the Jews claiming to be descendants of Abraham, being proud of their Jewish heritage. Here we see it says “these people do not belong to the Lord”, referring to those who rebelled against God. The blunt truth was that the “people of Israel and Judah have been utterly unfaithful”. This is the truth that they needed to face up to. The truth of our sin is the truth that all of us need to face up to.

Colossians 4:10,11 - They have been a comfort to me

4:10

We get more names mentioned here. Obviously Paul, Peter, John and the other apostles were extremely important in the very early church, and had a unique role, but they weren’t the only ones working for the gospel, and the gospel was not entirely dependent upon them. There had been a split with Barnabas and Mark (Acts 15:36-41), but this rift had been healed. This reminds us that the early church was not perfect, disagreements did happen. It also shows us that disagreements can be healed. We need to have a mature view. It is a very weak view of unity that cannot cope with disagreement.

4:11

This verse shows that “Jesus” was a normal name. It seems that there were only a few Jews who were working with Paul at this point, and it was something that caused him great sadness. In Acts 28:28 Paul recognised that the gospel was going to the Gentiles and would receive much wider acceptance there. However, this is not the final state. There would always be a remnant, and at some point there would be a significant turning to Christ from the Jews (Rom 9-11), and the two or three Jews who were working with Paul for the kingdom gave him great comfort, serving as a reminder of the long term promise.

Jeremiah 5:4-6 - Their rebellion is great

5;4,5

Jeremiah is leading us through his thought processes. Initially he thought it was only the poor who were not responding to God, because they were foolish. Surely the leaders will know better! But this was not the case. In fact, they had led the way in rebelling against God, throwing off all restraints and obligations that God had put on them. This is very much the case in our own times. The “elite” have led the way in rejecting God, but it is all stratas of society that suffer, especially the poor.

5:6

This verse makes clear that there is no question about God’s judgement coming upon Judah. The imagery of a lion, a wolf and a leopard are used, just to drive the point home. And why is this happening?Because Judah’s rebellion is great, and her backslidings many. God’s wrath and judgement is often portrayed as being capricious, but it is not. It is based on truth and justice.

How to be unmerciful - two ways of going about it!

In Matthew 12:7 Jesus said to the Pharisees:

If you had known what these words mean, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the innocent.

There are two ways of not showing mercy, or denying people mercy. The first, and the most obvious, is to have a judgemental spirit. So if we become aware of someone sinning our response is to condemn them. This is something that is part of our fallen human nature, and we all need to be on our guard against this. We can even take this a step further, so if someone has not actually sinned we invent a sin! This is what the Pharisees were doing here. We all need to be on our guard against this attitude within us, but we recognise that it is a wrong attitude.

So the first way of not being merciful is that we condemn people for real or imaginary sins. But there is a second and less obvious way of denying people mercy, and this is to deny that people are sinners. If we say that people are basically good and just need a little help, or to be given a little slack, then we are actually denying them mercy. For if we are not guilty then there is no need for mercy. To be merciful is to give some good thing to someone that they do not deserve. This is most obvious in progressive or liberal “Christians” who do not seem to accept that man is fundamentally sinful. If we are not sinners, if we are not guilty, then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why did God need to forgive us if are sinners? But this tendency is found in all of us, for if we know Christ and know that His grace, His mercy, His undeserved favour has been given to us, we do not want to go around condemning people, and rightly so. But just as we were desperately in need of mercy (and are daily in need of mercy), so is our neighbour. Moreover, the gift of mercy is a fundamental part of the gospel, it is a fundamental part of what the cross is all about. 

Jesus died for an undeserving people in order to give them the gift of eternal life.  We rightly do not want to be judgemental, condemning all around us, but at the same time we need to see our neighbours, our work colleagues, the man or woman in the street, as someone who is in need of God’s mercy, and for whom God would willingly show mercy. Both in ourselves, and with others, we need to see that the gift of the gospel is that we come face to face with our sin, yet instead of being condemned we are forgiven and receive new life. We need this for ourselves, and our neighbours need it just as much as we do. Jesus came to heal the sick, not the healthy.

O Lord, may the people of this land receive mercy, and may we have hearts that can lead people to receive your mercy.

Colossians 4:7-9 - He is a beloved brother

4:7-9

We see here the importance of relationships. Tychicus acted as an envoy for Paul while he was in prison, and is mentioned on several occasions in the New Testament (Acts 20:4, Eph 6:21, 2 Tim 4:12 and here). Three qualities in particular are mentioned here. Here is a dear brother, a faithful minister, and a fellow servant. These are qualities that any of us, especially those in leadership, should seek to have. Paul was sending him to the Colossians to give them news and to encourage them. Onesimus is the focus of the Philemon letter. He was a runaway slave, but became a useful servant of Christ (Philemon 11). I mentioned earlier that slavery in the first century was quite different from the American south type slavery, and we see here that Onesimus is considered an equal.  

Jeremiah 5:1-3 - Still they are swearing falsely

5:1,2

When God told Abraham that He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he pleaded with God to spare the city if there were ten righteous men. Here God asks Jeremiah if he can find one honest person in the city. And this time the city is Jerusalem, not some pagan place. The people made a pretense of praising and honouring the Lord, but pretense was all that it was. People object to the judgement and wrath of God, but when the judgement comes we can be sure that all other options have been tired. The Biblical truth is that God is slow to anger. It is a lie to say that God is never angry. 

5:3

We get a description of all other options have been exhausted. God has struck Israel and Judah before, but they “felt no pain”, i.e. it had no impact on them. God then crushed them, but they did not repent. Instead, they made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent. They become all the more stubborn. Sometimes (often?) people will not respond reasonably!

Colossians 4:3-6 - Let your speech always be gracious

4:3,4

As well as urging the Colossians to pray at all times, Paul also urges them to pray for Paul and his colleagues. The effectiveness of evangelism, or any other church enterprise, is not dependent upon having “star” evangelists or whatever, it is dependent upon God. So Paul asks for prayers that God will open a door for the gospel. Note that it says “our message”. Paul was so closely identified with the gospel. And the message was about Christ. The word “mystery” here is used as a counter to the gnostic type teaching. Paul wanted prayers that he would proclaim the message clearly. We need to declare the gospel clearly so that people can understand.

4:5,6

Attention then turns back to the Colossians. They are to be wise in how they act towards outsiders. The letter has dealt with the danger of them being wrongly influenced by the world, but they are to seek to have a godly influence on the world, as, of course, are we. So we are to act with wisdom, and we are to seek to make the most of opportunities. We are to act and speak with grace, not bashing people on the head. “Seasoned with salt”. So we are to be winsome. This does not mean watering down the gospel in any sense. One can never imagine Paul having anything to do with that! But we are to give people the chance to hear and understand the gospel, and not put any unnecessary obstacles in the way.

Jeremiah 4:29-31 - Alas! I am fainting

4:29,30

The graphic description continues. Verse 29 paints a picture of an army in flight, a land in utter disarray. And what was Judah doing in preparation for all this? She was adorning herself to continue chasing after idols and help from other nations. Yet the “lovers” she sought (ie the idols and other nations) despised her and would destroy her. We should chase only after God.

4:31

The chapter closes with another vivid description of the nation, this time as a woman in labour. Maybe this is depicting what Judah’s seeking after false hopes would bring forth. She would be in great pain as a woman in labour with her first child, but instead of giving birth to new life, with joy making the pain all worth it, she would give birth to death. She would realise at the last moment that she had made love to murderers who would muder her. Sin can seem so enticing, false gods can seem to offer hope, but in the end these things always fail us, always devour us.