Tag Archives: Jesus

Day 167: Hope in a broken flask

Jeremiah 19-20; John 18

Picture the scene… Jeremiah acquires a clay vessel, a flask of some kind, and assembles all of Jerusalem’s civic and religious leaders to meet him at… the dumping ground. It would be like an unpopular preacher asking the mayor to meet him at the dump! And what was Jeremiah’s message? He holds up his flask and breaks it – and says that Jerusalem will be reduced to pieces and thrown away – like the piles of broken vessels that surrounded them. Great message, eh?

But it is a great message! Hidden in the message of brokenness is a message of hope. For Israel points forward to Jesus. Yes, Israel would be broken – but only to bring forth repentance and restoration. Jesus is the true Israel. And he was broken for our sakes…

We also read of Jeremiah’s brokenness in Jeremiah 20. He was broken by his circumstances as he was captured and beaten. We read of his sorrow and anguish as he doubts his call and he doubts his God. Jeremiah’s struggle is but a whisper compared to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane – as the synoptic gospels say he prayed so fervently that blood dripped from his brow.

In today’s reading, we see the results of those prayers as Jesus stands – strong and sovereign – in the face of arrest. The soldiers can only approach him when He allows it. Even throughout Jesus’ multiple trials, He seems calm and determined. His purpose was to die, His purpose was to be broken.

Just as Jeremiah broke the flask, and Jerusalem was destroyed – so would Jesus be broken and destroyed so that we might be repent and be restored! There is hope in a broken flask. There is hope in Jesus!

Day 165: Two prayers

Jeremiah 13-15; John 17

I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world (John 17:14).

Jeremiah continues to faithfully preach God’s words to Judah. He warns them of Babylon’s invasion (chapter 13) and he describes the drought that will ensue (chapter 14). And then God, knowing Jeremiah’s compassionate heart, tells him not to pray:

The Lord said to me: “Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence” (Jeremiah 14:11-12).

Jeremiah is devastated.

Have you utterly rejected Judah?
Does your soul loathe Zion?
Why have you struck us down
so that there is no healing for us? (Jeremiah 14:19)

And Jeremiah prays for the people anyway! He repents on behalf of the nation. He asks God to remember His covenant. Just as Moses and Samuel had interceded for the people, Jeremiah asks God to save the people for His name’s sake (Jer. 14:20-21). But God will not relent. His mind is set on judgment. It is the only way to bring true repentance from his people.

And then Jeremiah’s life goes from bad to worse. The people of Judah begin to treat him as a debtor and his life is in danger (Jer. 15:10). Jeremiah cries out to God, accusing Him of abandoning him just as He had abandoned Judah. But God will not be accused of wrongdoing! He condescends to Jeremiah and assures him…

I will make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you
to save you and deliver you,
declares the Lord.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless (Jeremiah 16:20-21).

God will not cast off His faithful. We learn from Jesus’ high priestly prayer that God is passionate about the lives of his disciples. He keeps them, He guards them, He sanctifies them, and most of all He loves them.

As we read Jesus’ prayer in John 17 – we can have confidence that, unlike Jeremiah’s prayer for Judah, God listened to Jesus’ prayer for us. We are his children, and He keeps us, He sanctifies us, and most of all, He loves us!

Day 164: Hope and Assurance

Jeremiah 11-12; John 16

Jeremiah begins Chapter 11 with more of God’s complaint against Judah. They have broken his Covenant – the Covenant he made with His people after he rescued them from Egypt. After the law was given and the people were about to enter into the promised land, Moses reminded them of the Covenant. Deuteronomy 28 lists the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. Even after Judah watched Israel fall – they still did not heed Jeremiah’s warning that the curses of Deuteronomy 28 were soon to fall upon them as well.

The people of Judah hated Jeremiah’s message, and men from Jeremiah’s hometown conspired to kill him but the Omniscient God warned him, and vowed to protect His word and His prophet (Jer. 11:19-23).

We find Jesus, in the beginning of John 16, also warning of trouble to come. He warned his disciples that they will suffer persecution. It would seem that walking in obedience is not an easy road!

I think we can resonate with Jeremiah when he complains to God in the beginning of Chapter 12 that it doesn’t seem fair when the evil prosper in this world. Jeremiah asks, “How Long?” How long before we see justice? How long before you make things right? How Long?

God rebukes Jeremiah and warns that things will get worse before they get better – but God’s final word is never one of wrath for His covenant people. He promises in 12:14-15 that after his people are scattered – he will pluck them up and have compassion on them.

This was Jeremiah’s hope. But we have a hope that Jeremiah wouldn’t see in his lifetime. When Jesus was speaking to his disciples about a joy that would come after sorrow  (John 16:16-22) – they didn’t understand that he was speaking of his death and resurrection. But we know. We know the joy of his resurrection and the hope of his return. We have the Helper to guide us in all truth and give us the strength to persevere through the sorrows of this world.

And we have Jesus’ strong-as-rock assurance!

In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).

Day 163: Abiding in the True Vine

Jeremiah 9-10; John 15

The Old Testament uses the vineyard or vine as a symbol for Israel – especially in the book of Isaiah.

In today’s passage from John, Jesus begins chapter 15 by saying that He is the True Vine. In other words, Jesus is the True Israel. Isaiah 5 describes God as the Vinedresser – planting his vineyard and hoping to yield grapes…

My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines […]

What more was there to do for my vineyard,
that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes? (Isaiah 5:1b-2a, 4)

Israel was a vine which yielded wild fruit. We know from our readings in Jeremiah that Israel was an apostate people – whoring after other gods and ignoring the warnings of invasion.

John contrasts the fruitlessness of Israel with the fruitfulness that comes from abiding in Christ.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing (John 15:5).

Abiding is a mysterious and difficult concept. It involves consistent seeking, repenting, praying and obeying. It is a dependence on Jesus for everyday living. Jesus says that abiding is mutual, “abide in me and I in you.” It is the partial fulfilling of the promise made throughout the Old Testament, that God will dwell with his people. As we abide in Christ and He in us, He makes his dwelling in us. This promise will find its ultimate fulfillment in the new earth as He will make his dwelling place with man. In other words, today, He dwells in us through the Spirit, but in the new earth – we will see Him face to face!

Day 160: A Humble King

Jeremiah 3-4; John 13:1-17

Servitude. Is that a characteristic you would expect from God? This is the same God that spoke the world into existence. Are we to expect the mighty, sovereign, all-powerful God to be a servant?

According to traditional Jewish teachings, Jesus, the Messiah, was not supposed to come into the world to wash people’s feet and then die. No. That was a servant’s job. That was a criminal’s job. That was not the Messiah’s job.

But wasn’t it? The people didn’t understand this crucial part of God’s character… humble servitude.

What motivated Jesus to wash the dusty feet of his disciples? Humility. It was also humility that motivated God to condescend to the stiff-necked Israelites. In today’s passage from Jeremiah, most of Chapter 3 was God’s invitation to exiled Israel to repent and be forgiven. After all of the Baal worship, child sacrifice and faithless living, God was still willing to forgive the penitent heart. We do not serve a Haughty God. No! We serve a Humble King.

Where is their room for pride in the presence of this God? His sheer power should cause us to tremble in fear. But his humility causes us to wonder – and to repent – and… to worship.

Humble King

Day 159: The Final Prophet

Jeremiah 1-2; John 12:20-50

We begin Jeremiah today and will spend the next 23 days in this book, the longest book in the bible!

Jeremiah prophesied during the most tumultuous period of Judah’s history. He began his ministry halfway through the reign of Judah’s last good king, Josiah. Jeremiah continued prophesying through the reigns of Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah. These last evil kings of Judah looked to Egypt and Assyria to save them from the dominant Babylon. We know from our readings from 2 Kings, that God gave them over to the Babylonians as his judgment for their apostasy. Jeremiah was God’s mouthpiece during this grievous period.

We read of Jeremiah’s calling in Chapter 1… God’s sovereignty is center stage as he tells Jeremiah in vs. 5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Consider the weight of Jeremiah’s calling. He was to preach against sin to a hard-hearted people. He was to warn of the impending judgment. And mixed throughout the prophesies of judgment, were promises of hope and renewal.

Like all the prophets, Jeremiah was a precursor to Christ.

As we read Jesus’ words in John 12, Jesus was not delivering messages of judgment – but preparing to receive the judgment on our behalf…a judgment so great that he asked to be saved from it…

Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? (John 12:27)

He endured the cross willingly for our sake! He rescues us from the judgment of the last day. His great love compels us toward obedience and He is our hope and source of renewal! He is the Final Prophet – setting us free from the power of sin and death!

Day 158: Restoring and Redeeming

Lamentations 3-5; John 12:1-19

Lamentations 3 is a poem whose main character has suffered greatly. Listen to some of the words he uses to describe his afflictions…
“rod of his wrath, darkness, broken bones, besieged, bitterness, walled me in, heavy chains, shuts out my prayer, cower in ashes…”

He attributes his suffering and afflictions to God. He names God as his judge. And then he says this:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-23).

How in the world could a man who has suffered so grievously under the hand of God speak of his mercies and steadfast love??!!

These are probably the most well-known verses in Lamentations. But rarely do we consider the context!! Just before these verses, the man speaks of the humility of his heart. His soul is “bowed down.” The suffering has changed his heart. He is humble and penitent. There was a purpose for the pain.

Also, through his changed heart, he is able to understand and trust more deeply in God’s Covenant promises. Listen to what he writes later in the chapter:

For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
for he does not afflict from his heart
or grieve the children of men (Lamentations 3:31-33).

This man is encouraging the suffering exiles of Judah to remember God’s Covenant promises. God has only punished the people because his patience did not result in repentance. As suffering works in their hearts to produce repentance and humble dependence upon their God, God will both restore and redeem the nation!

We see the Eternal King of this nation in today’s New Testament reading… riding into the restored Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt. He, too, would suffer – giving his life to redeem His people. And He too would rise to say…

His mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning!

Somehow the man depicted in the poem of Lamentations 3 found a way to remember both the pain of suffering and God’s faithfulness. We must trust that God has a purpose for our pain… His purposes involve restoring and redeeming!

Day 157: God’s good plans

Lamentations 1-2; John 11:47-57

Lamentations is an anonymous eyewitness account of the fall of Jerusalem. It is also a masterpiece of Hebrew literature.

The first two chapters have 22 three-lined stanzas forming two acrostic poems. Each stanza begins with a subsequent letter of the Hebrew alphabet – 22 letters in all.

The historical record is made personal by the imagery in Lamentations. The author’s lament is a poignant addition to the account in 2 Kings…

My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out to the ground
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because infants and babies faint
in the streets of the city (Lamentations 2:11).

Meanwhile, we read in John of the Pharisee’s plot to kill Jesus. Both Old and New Testament readings are dark and seem void of hope, but even in the darkest of hours… God is sovereign. His sovereignty gives us hope in our darkest moments – that God’s plan are restoration plans… God’s plans are resurrection plans… God’s plans are good plans!

Day 156: From death to life

2 Kings 24-25; John 11:18-46

Today we read of the death of Judah. We read of the siege, the hunger that ensured, the slaughter and the exile. We read of the burning of the Temple and the lists of all of the temple furnishings carried away by the Babylonians to be sold as scrap metal.

It was all destroyed… The city of David, Solomon’s temple – Jerusalem in all its glory was abandoned and smoldering. Would there ever be hope again? All that remained was grief and the hell of living in exile.

What happened to the promise to David made back in 2 Samuel 7:16, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” Did God break his promise?

We know the answer. Absolutely not! The author of 2 Kings ends the book with a glimmer of hope – the news that king Jehoiachin still lives – and within him lives the seed of David – the seed of the Promised One – the seed of Jesus.

Jesus came and taught us that the way to life is through death. This is the way of the Kingdom of God… “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). This is God’s work – to defeat the power of sin and to bring life out of death.

Even in Jerusalem’s darkest hour – as she smolders and sits desolate – there is hope. For “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” (Psalm 113:7).

Jesus, showed his power over death as he raised Lazarus from the grave. And he asks us the same question he asked of Lazarus’ sister, Martha…

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Keeping up with the Kings

  • Judah: Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa (good), Jehoshaphat (good), Jehoram (son of Jehoshaphat), Ahaziah (killed by Jehu), Queen Athaliah, Jehoash (only surviving son of Ahaziah: good), Amaziah (good), Azariah (Uzziah, good), Jotham (good), Ahaz, Hezekiah (good), Manasseh, Amon, Josiah (good), Jehoahaz, Eliakim/Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah
  • Israel: Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram (or Joram, son of Ahab), Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, Hoshea

Day 155: Gracious delay

2 Kings 21-23; John 11:1-17

2 Kings 21 is filled with the atrocious actions of  Judah’s most evil king. Manasseh rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah had torn down, offered his son as a child sacrifice and consulted evil spirits for counsel. Manasseh’s complete apostasy brought an end to God’s patience with Judah – and he declared that judgment would rain down upon the city of David.

And then Manasseh’s grandson, king Josiah, discovered the books of the Law and realized that destruction was exactly what Judah deserved. He mourned his country’s apostasy and humbled himself before God. And what did God do in the presence of a truly repentant heart? He did as he always does – God relented!

My wrath will be kindled against this place, and it will not be quenched. But to the king of Judah, [king Josiah], …because your heart was penitent, and you humbled yourself before the Lord, […] I also have heard you, declares the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring upon this place’” (2 Kings 22:17-20).

Seriously??!! God delayed the judgment because one man repented. How could I ever doubt God’s goodness and kindness and His overwhelming desire for repentance in his people? Repentance always brings blessing. Lack of repentance ultimately leads to judgment.

Josiah’s response to God’s grace was obedience. Josiah’s reforms were such that he exceeded David in observance of the Law – observing Passover in a way that had not been done since the days of the Judges, surpassing both Hezekiah and even David in faithfulness to God’s law!

But it was not enough to undo the evils of the earlier generations. God’s Covenant was broken, and his judgment – though delayed – was set.

In John, we read of a different sort of delay. Instead of delaying judgment, Jesus delayed healing – and his beloved friend, Lazarus, died as a result. But as we’ll read tomorrow, the suffering caused by the delay, only served to magnify God’s power and goodness.

Both stories of God’s “delays” are stories of grace. How often do I grumble when God delays to answer my prayer or change my circumstances? Chances are, His delay is for my good. His delay is a work of grace!

Keeping up with the Kings

  • Judah: Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa (good), Jehoshaphat (good), Jehoram (son of Jehoshaphat), Ahaziah (killed by Jehu), Queen Athaliah, Jehoash (only surviving son of Ahaziah: good), Amaziah (good), Azariah (Uzziah, good), Jotham (good), Ahaz, Hezekiah (good), Manasseh, Amon, Josiah (good), Jehoahaz, Eliakim/Jehoiakim
  • Israel: Jeroboam, Nadab, Baasha, Elah, Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Jehoram (or Joram, son of Ahab), Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II, Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah, Hoshea