There is drought and therefore famine in the land. Why?
It is part of God’s judgment against His people that He withholds the
blessing of rain in due season and from there everything goes downhill,
prosperity is lost. This judgment is
God’s way of getting their attention.
Baal was a god who it was believed brought the rain which made the land
fruitful and frequently the prophets bring the accusation against the nation
that they are worshipping Baal and giving him credit for what is Yahweh’s
doing. There is recognition at the end
of the passage that the people have greatly sinned, none have understanding and
a plea for God, for His Name’s sake, not to abandon the nation and the
confession, “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring
rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O Lord our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all
these things.” Is there any place in
your life where you are failing to set your hope on the one who is the giver
and provider of all good things?
What has happened just before our lesson begins that Jesus
sighs deeply in His spirit when He is asked for a sign? He has just fed four thousand people with
seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.
Was that not a sign? If you can’t
see the signs He is giving what difference would another sign make? It is a symptom of every age to ask for a
sign. The attitude, “what have you done
for me lately” is characteristic of human nature. Beginning in Genesis 3 we see that attitude,
that we seek outside God for all things.
We don’t fully believe in His goodness or His greatness and that becomes
the catalyst for going astray in search of what we want somewhere else. We’ve all had times in our lives when we feel
God isn’t being good to us, we don’t get what we pray for and so we take
matters into our own hands or we just give up on Him rather than choosing to
believe what He isn’t giving is actually not good in some way. We become like even the disciples here,
materialists, failing to discern spiritual things.
Paul is fighting the fight with the Judaisers in
Galatia. They have added something to
Christ, keeping the law. Paul says those
two things are different from one another, one is for slavery, for
hopelessness, and the other, the Gospel, is about freedom. Hagar was indeed a slave, the servant of
Sarah and her child was less than a free born son while Isaac was the child of
the wife and therefore free. Paul went
for maximum affront in comparing Jerusalem and the law with Hagar and
slavery. Are the law and Gospel in
opposition to one another? Paul’s answer
to that question is a very clear no, the law was the pedagogue leading to the
Gospel. The law revealed my sinfulness
to me and my need of a savior, Paul’s cry of “O wretched man that I am, who
will deliver me from this body of death?”
We need the law in order to receive the Gospel as the Good News it is,
the Good News in comparison with which nothing else can lay claim to being good.
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