Psalm 16, 17; Jer. 38:14-28; 1 Cor. 15:1-11; Matt. 11:1-6
The king speaks with Jeremiah in secret again, asking what he should do with respect to the Chaldeans. Jeremiah repeats what he has told the people, that surrender is the best option because there will be no deliverance. The king instructs Jeremiah not to tell anyone what they talked about and Jeremiah obeys this instruction. Because he keeps his tongue with the officials and no one has heard the conversation between him and the king, they cannot refute his story. Was this deception justified?
What is John asking Jesus and why is he asking it? Jesus’ response to the question is a familiar quotation but it leaves out setting free the prisoners, the one thing John needs. It seems cruel to use that passage but leave out the one thing that would give John hope but it always comes down to faith, if you don’t get the one thing you need or want in this life, can you believe? The early church fathers primarily wrote that John sends his disciples to Jesus to ask this question because he wanted them to attach themselves to Jesus. It is only a relatively recent phenomenon that readers believe John’s faith wavered and he sent to reassure himself concerning Jesus. It is impossible for us to know which of these interpretations is correct but in the end we must deal with the question I posed earlier, can we believe without seeing our hopes fulfilled in this life?
Paul uses the term “in vain” twice in these few verses, once to say that they are to hold fast to what they have received unless you believed in vain and then to say that the trust Christ placed in Paul as an apostle was not in vain. Could we believe in Christ in vain? Yes. It depends on what your belief is in Christ. The king in our first lesson and anyone in that Gospel lesson who believed in earthly deliverance believed in vain. We must be certain what is promised, and set our hopes in receiving the promise. Jesus never promised earthly deliverance for following Him, in fact the fondest hopes of his disciples were never realized, He was crucified, died and was buried. They could never have hoped that on the third day He was resurrected from the dead and now ascended to the right hand of the Father. This is not to say that our earthly lives don’t matter to Him and that we will never receive deliverance from our earthly problems, only to say that such things are not the Gospel. Paul says that Christ’s trust in Paul was not in vain because he received the trust of the Gospel and the mission to the Gentiles and fulfilled the trust obligation with everything within him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Can we say the same?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
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