Can you just see Jeremiah wandering about the ruined city of
Jerusalem weeping at the utter devastation and the remaining populace
scrounging about for sustenance? While he had warned the leaders and people and
suffered for telling God’s truth, persecuted and hunted, he never lost his love
for the people of God or the city of God. His reaction to all that has occurred
is not triumphalism, “I told you so!”, but desolation and lamentation. He didn’t want this to happen, no matter how
he was treated. The truly prophetic
seeks to warn not scold, desires repentance not judgment. Jeremiah should be the model for all
prophets, a man willing to suffer not only for his faithfulness to the word he
was given but also willing to suffer alongside those who did not heed his
words. He was never standing apart from
the people in self-righteousness, he was always hoping for a change of heart. Unlike Job’s friends who were willing to sit
with him a while before pouring out their judgment against him, Jeremiah was
moved to tears over the suffering of the people.
Jesus deals with the self-righteous on two occasions here,
those who find Him to be unrighteous based on their legalisms. First, the disciples
are plucking grain, rubbing it in their hands to separate the kernel from the husk,
and this, the Pharisees determine, qualifies as work and, therefore, a
violation of the Sabbath. Jesus probably
rolled His eyes and shook His head at this before answering. He refers back to a gross violation of the
temple laws by David in eating the Bread of the Presence when he and his men
were hungry and on the run from Saul, which no one got up in arms about, to
show how ridiculous their nit-picking was here.
In the synagogue, the accusers have no sense of the ironic when they ask
of Jesus if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. They believe He can heal! Do they not see how ludicrous, then, is the
rest of the sentence? They acknowledge
that Jesus can do thing they cannot but then dare Him to defend it on
Sabbath. Alignment with God in legalism
against people is not real alignment with God.
The law of love is higher than any other law.
Paul assures the Corinthians that at the last judgment all
shall be changed from perishable to imperishable, the dead and those living at
the time of judgment. At that time there
will be no more death, the work of Jesus will be complete in conquering death,
we will never fear its sting again. His purpose
for this reassuring is that they might know “that in the Lord your labor is not
in vain.” His encouragement is not that they
might simply while away the hours until death, conversing with the flowers as
the Scarecrow sings in the Wizard of Oz, but “always abounding in the work of
the Lord.” So long as we have life we
are to be productive in this work. The
meaning of life changes in Jesus, we work for a different reason and with a
different attitude, but we have now a work of infinite and eternal value to
perform, making known God’s loving-kindness to the world in need of it.
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