1 February 2011

1 February 2011

Psalm 61, 62; Isa. 52:1-12; Gal. 4:12-20; Mark 8:1-10

The Lord announces that He is coming to deliver His people. As He delivered them from Egypt, so now will he again deliver them from their oppressors, His judgment and wrath are spent and His love remains. The holy city of God will indeed be a holy city, nothing unclean will come into it (see Revelation 22). The prophecy here resembles very closely what John saw as the final result of God’s judgment being poured out on the earth. What happened? Jesus (God incarnate) came to earth and made a way for all humankind to participate in the enjoyment of God forever. There had to be an opportunity for all to enter the kingdom of God and if the nation continued to be disobedient to its call to be a holy nation and a kingdom of priests, then He would do it Himself so that all the world would know Him. They know Him through the Word written, the Word incarnate, and, in God’s plan, through us, whom Peter said are to be a holy nation, and a kingdom of priests. Are we doing any better than Israel did with that commission?

Jesus has provided spiritual sustenance for these who have come to hear Him teach and to work miracles of healing and now the hour is late and His compassion extends to their physical needs as well. They have kept faith with Him and He is concerned that they will faint from hunger as they return to their homes so He provides for that need in a miraculous way. As I mentioned last week, this miracle is at one with the provision of food for the people who were following God in the exodus in the wilderness. So long as they were following Him, He provided for them. He is showing Himself to be at one with the Lord who delivered them from their oppressors in Egypt, God has not changed in His compassion.

Paul reminds them that he has become as a gentile in many ways, he has placed all his hopes on Jesus rather than in anything else in which he might boast. He is like these he formerly scorned in that their only hope for eternal life is Jesus. After he has departed from them others have come to woo them to Judaism and Paul is perplexed at why they would have accepted this message. Why return to the system that has never produced righteousness and which was a precursor to the real thing? A return to Judaism and the law is nothing more than reversion. There is nothing to be gained by it and much to be lost. They need to see that Jesus is superior to all and all that they need.

For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.