Thursday 20 October

Jeremiah 43:1-45:5

It makes perfect sense in the people’s mind but they are dead wrong.  It was what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians when he says that the God of this Age has blinded the eyes of people.  They think they have done the maths.  They are convinced that they have worked out that it is the incense to the Queen of Heaven that is missing.  If only that stinky offering was still around then the algorithm would work and the money would start rolling in.  Forget this nonsense about the Word of the Lord.  Forget these promises of coming trouble.  Forget all the pleas spoken over and over again by the prophets of God.  We have the secret, we know what we are doing and you are just coming to try to restrict us.  It is no surprise that the same is said by many people today.  It should not shock us that people react violently to Jesus and say that Christianity is an out-moded concept.  They eyes are blinded.  Their maths is wrong.  Their algorithms are leading them to tragic loss.  We need to pray and keep on speaking the word of the Lord.  We need to plead with God that he knocks the scales from their eyes.  We don’t want people to die in Egypt.  Pour out your mercy O God.  Bring people to repentance, bring them to life and real hope in your name.

1 Timothy 5:1-6:2

Loads of hugely significant verses here.  The harsh words reserved for those who don’t care for their family (5:8) are a massive challenge to me to always order my priorities God-family-ministry in my life.  But what I think is really freeing for people in this passage is the revelation that Timothy suffered from frequent illnesses and that Paul told him to start drinking a bit of wine.  What I really like about this is that Paul doesn’t tell Timothy to get more prayer ministry or to increase his faith or anything else that a lot of super-spiritual people have said to me over the years.  There is a lot of nonsense spoken about sickness and healing, and I think a lot of it comes from an inadequate understanding of the now and the not yet of the Kingdom.  We live in the now of the Kingdom; we live in a time where healings come.  We pray for people and fully expect that the awesome creator God will heal them.  But we also live in the not yet of the kingdom.  We suffer from frequent illnesses and we rely on a little wine to soothe them rather than prayer to remove them.  We do both-and.  So we know that a lack of healing need not be our fault.  And if people start telling us it is - if they start pointing the finger of accusation and speak about our lack of faith we can just ignore them.  We could even pour ourselves a glass of wine and raise it in a toast to their greater blessing.

Psalm 119:65-72

Learning God’s decrees is worth a bit of affliction.