Josiah was a good king but his reforms didn't last because
his son was not interested in continuing them, he was interested in wealth and
prosperity. He was a weak king who changed allegiances often and trusted in
other nations. The Lord accuses him of
not seeking righteousness but unjust gain.
Kings had the responsibility of seeing to it that righteousness was done
and justice was meted out to all. The promise
was always that if they would seek those ends then prosperity would come but if
they chose to seek after prosperity then they would lose everything. Jehoiakim was first essentially a vassal of
Egypt and taxed the people heavily in order to pay the tribute the king of
Egypt demanded and then switched his allegiance to the Babylonians and back
again to the Egyptians. Again, he is a
good example of the first things principle CS Lewis put forth.
Just as they did in the wilderness, the people are grumbling
or murmuring about bread. Jesus tells
them to stop grumbling among themselves.
It isn't grumbling that is the problem, but grumbling about God to one
another rather than going to Him. Jesus says
that He is the bread of life who comes down from heaven and they always default
to the argument that they know where Jesus came from and it certainly wasn't
heaven. Was Mary's story about her
child's provenance not known or just not believed? Jesus says that the only ones who will come
will be those the Father draws, the Holy Spirit must act first in order to open
their ears and eyes, and it seems He has no illusion that all will eventually
come, it is an action of the Father to draw them. In order to know we must first believe, it
must be our priority to know Him.
Paul begins this appeal with an interesting word,
"debtors." We aren't debtors
to the flesh, we are debtors to the Spirit.
We owe everything to Him who has saved us so why do we give anything to
the flesh? The Spirit of adoption is the
spirit that is thankful and wants to do all it can to please the one who
adopted us. All of creation groans for the revelation of the children of God,
because all creation was subjected to futility because of the sin of
mankind. Creation somehow longs for us
to be true sons and daughters of the God in whose image we were created. When our desires are ordered rightly, when we
seek the glory of our Father, all creation benefits. The world should be a better place simply
because of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment