In the exodus story we are told that God relented or
repented of some disaster He was planning against His people as judgment for their
sins. What caused this repentance on
God's part? It was the prayers of Moses
and the repentance of the people. Here,
the conundrum some present, that God changed His mind, is resolved. He tells Jeremiah to go to the potter's house
and what the prophet sees is a potter who made a mistake and ruined the work he
was doing but he was also able to rectify the mistake, take that which was misshapen
and restore it to his purpose. The clay
was yielding to his touch. The Lord says
that our willingness to listen to His voice and confess and repent of sin is
critical in that if we are willing to do these things He will restore us to His
original purpose and His judgment will be averted. If not, He will use that judgment to reshape
us.
The work God requires is simple, believe in the one whom He
has sent, His apostle. The people prove
that Jesus' cynicism is well-founded when they ask for a particular sign. They had a world of possibilities from which
to choose in asking for a sign, why pick the one thing He has more or less
ruled out? We want bread, feed us like
Moses did. That didn't work out in the
wilderness, why should anyone think it would work now. We do the same thing, give us prosperity when
the Bible tells us again and again that prosperity never led them closer to
Him. Compare the response here to the
response of the woman at the well in John 4.
Jesus speaks of the bread of life and they want it, "Sir, give us
this bread always." Sounds familiar
doesn't it. When, however, He says that
He is the bread of life He knows they will reject Him, will refuse to
believe. He promises eternal life but
they, like we, are materialists, eternity is too ethereal, we live in the now.
The world was originally good but it now corrupted. Not only that but it was never to be the
good. He alone was the good to be
desired and pursued, the creator of all that is good must be infinitely
good. All this should point to Him as
that which we should pursue and possess.
CS Lewis said, "Put first things first and we get second things
thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second
things. We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when
we are being greedy.” In the Gospel the people wanted food more than they
wanted Jesus and so ended up with neither.
Transformation is necessary to get our desires right. If we will have the desires of our heart they
must first be re-ordered. Jesus made the
principle plain when He said to seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness and everything else would be added. Paul says it all begins with mortification,
putting to death the desires of the flesh and living according to the desires
of the spirit which he has just told us about in yesterday's reading.
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