When Abraham bargained with God over Sodom the final deal
was that if he could find ten righteous men in Sodom the Lord would not destroy
the city. Here, the Lord says to
Jeremiah, “Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does
justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her.” One man, not ten, one. Jeremiah first observed the poor but gave
them a pass because they didn’t know better, they weren’t well educated, so he
looked to the wealthy, those who were educated in the law but found nothing
better in them. A prophet must see what
God sees, must side completely with God in the truth. He or she must, however, side with the people
in seeking mercy. This was the lesson
Moses learned in his ministry of leadership, he was the representative of God
to the people and of the people to God. Truth and mercy were both necessary to
do the job. The Lord asks a simple
question that we all need to answer, “How can I pardon you?” We don’t deserve pardon unless we repent and
then only because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Jesus stands before the religious leaders and makes a
defense He should never have had to make.
He is the perfect righteousness of God, the only righteous man who has
ever lived, and they ask Him to make His case for what He is doing in healing a
man who was lame for 38 years. He says
there are multiple witnesses who attest to Him, the Father who sent Him, John
the Baptist, the works He is doing, and the Scriptures, the writings of
Moses. They search the Scriptures and
still miss the truth. They, like the wealthy
of Jeremiah’s day, have all the information they need to know righteousness as
it stands before them and they aren’t seeing that truth. We wouldn’t either except for that other
witness, the witness of the Holy Spirit. Today is a wonderful day to thank the
Lord for giving you that witness that you might have life.
Could we take the word circumcision from the first part of
the lesson and replace it with baptism?
I think we could do that and the argument would be valid. Are all those who are baptized saved? Do they not still have responsibility for
being a disciple? We, the church, bear a
large measure of responsibility to those we baptize, that is why Paul says he’s
glad he didn’t have a ministry of baptism in Corinth. We can’t baptize without discipleship and
what do we do when those we baptize stop going to church, remove themselves
from the body? Don’t we have some
obligation to warn them what they are doing?
Paul’s words bring us back to the question God asked in Jeremiah, “How
can I pardon you?” The question bespeaks God’s desire to pardon and we know
that the answer for one and all, since none is righteous, is Jesus.
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