Hope and Faith

Jim:

Jeremiah 37:3-21
In verse 19 Jeremiah asks the king of Judah a question that cuts to the heart of the matter: “Where are your prophets ho prophesied to you, saying ‘the king of Babylon will not come against you and against this land?’” This is a theological way of saying “I told you so.” The truth of God’s word becomes apparent in time. As God’s people, called as we are to faithful obedience, one of our greatest challenges is to live with expectant hope, with patience and confidence that God is working out the divine will. Many will claim to speak for the Lord but will say only what others want to hear. God’s true word is good news inasmuch as it is from God whose will is done and whose reign is near at hand, but what it calls us to do, the standards by which it calls us to live, will likely lead us places we would not have gone of our own volition. The king of Judah had trusted in prophets who told him what he wanted to hear. But when push came to shove those prophets were nowhere to be seen. The prophet who had spoken the true word of God was still there, still speaking, still faithful to his call.

I Corinthians 14:13-25
I like the imagery in verse 20. “Brothers and sisters,” writes Paul, “do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.” I have a pretty clear picture of what “infants in evil” would be like: innocent for one thing. The news is full of all sorts of trouble that people get into, all sorts of awful things that people do to one another. In our own lives we are challenged to live in innocence before God when it comes to the ways of evil, but with maturity in our thinking, our reasoning, our ability to understand what God is doing in our world. It is far more challenging to trust God and to contemplate God’s activity in the world than it is to accept the ways of evil, but it is worth the effort.

Matthew 10:24-33
Verse 29 is powerful: “Do not fear those who kill the body by cannot kill the soul…” We know these words best, perhaps, from Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” The point is that while the world may be able to kill those who trust in God, it cannot break the relationship between God and the faithful believer, and as Luther points out, that relationship is far more important than life itself.