Deuteronomy 30:11-31:29
That must have put a real downer on poor old Moses’ day. He’s still reeling from the news that he is not going to enter the promised land and now he is told that his whole life work is doomed to failure. Never mind about composing a song, I’m surprised he didn’t just pick up his quill and start stabbing himself with it. Why on earth did the Lord let Moses in on Israel’s rebellious future - couldn’t He have let him die in blissful ignorance? The verse “the Lord confides in those who fear him” comes to mind, as does the one about the Lord speaking to Moses as a friend. I guess God just wanted to share his secrets with Moses out of intimacy and love and because that is what friends do. But I think it also speaks of how God’s plans are always so much greater than any personal ministries or desires. At the end of the day, the Israel thing was never Moses’ life work - it was God’s. The whole salvation project is God’s redemption narrative, it is not Abraham’s or Jacob’s or Moses’ or David’s. Nor is it mine or yours or anyone else’s. We just play whatever part God wants to give us and if that has a difficult end like Moses or a difficult everything like Jeremiah then we just have to eat that up. All that matters in this life is wedding ourselves to the purposes of God, obeying him and seeking to glorify Him in every single thing. We do get rewarded for that but it may not be in this age - much treasure is waiting for us in the age to come.
Luke 19:11-44
Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem is really significant. Jesus explicitly links the Romans’ sacking of the Jerusalem temple in AD70 with God’s judgement. He also implicitly (through the Parable of the Ten Minas) says that God is going to kill Jerusalem as his enemy because she refused to accept him as king over her. It’s not your usual after dinner speech content! In fact, it borders on the grotesque and would probably put you in The Hague in front of the War Crimes Tribunal. But, as much indigestion as it gives us, I really think we do need to swallow this stuff. Not just because it shows that the teeth of the gospel leave scars in history but also because Jesus wept over it. Jesus wept because his people, his chosen people who he loved had launched a coup against him. Jesus wept because he felt so deeply the loss of the city that he wanted to become the light of the world. The interesting cliffhanger that Luke leaves his readers is whether this is the end of it, whether this killing is the end of the story, or whether Jesus is starting a new thing with something else being grafted in to become his light to the world.
Psalm 48:1-8
Beautiful in its loftiness. Is he talking about my tall and ravishingly attractive wife?
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