turning back

Good evening friends,
Stephen has been reviewing Israel's story. Now he starts getting to a main point: Israel has often turned away from God and God's messengers. Moses provided faithful leadership, and God saved the people from slavery, but the people got scared and build a golden calf. The thing to remember as we read this part (and most of Acts) is that we Christians are just as bed at listening to God. It's often helpful to think about Israel or the Jewish leaders as Christian religious leaders or as you and me. Do the criticisms still fit? More often than I want to admit it, they fit me.

God bless,
Sam

Acts 7:39-46

³⁹Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, ⁴⁰saying to Aaron, ‘Make gods for us who will lead the way for us; as for this Moses who led us out from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’ ⁴¹At that time they made a calf, offered a sacrifice to the idol, and reveled in the works of their hands.

⁴²But God turned away from them and handed them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you offer to me slain victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? ⁴³No; you took along the tent of Moloch, and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship; so I will remove you beyond Babylon.’

⁴⁴“Our ancestors had the tent of testimony in the wilderness, as God directed when he spoke to Moses, ordering him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. ⁴⁵Our ancestors in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors. And it was there until the time of David, ⁴⁶who found favor with God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob.

bones

Good morning all,
This morning we get more warning of doom to come. In particular we see a disturbing image of the bones of Judah's leaders spread out along the ground. Reading this I couldn't help but think about the prophet Ezekiel when God showed him a valley full of dry bones. In that case God makes the bones live as a sign of the coming revival for Israel. Here Jeremiah foretells fields of bones as an image of the dead end Judah's idolatry and faithlessness is bringing them to. The good news is that even from hopelessness God can bring new life. Even these bones can live by God's Spirit.

God bless,
Sam

Jeremiah 8:1-9



At that time, says the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs; 2and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have followed, and which they have inquired of and worshiped; and they shall not be gathered or buried; they shall be like dung on the surface of the ground. 3Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says the Lord of hosts.


4You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When people fall, do they not get up again? If they go astray, do they not turn back? 5Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They have held fast to deceit, they have refused to return. 6I have given heed and listened, but they do not speak honestly; no one repents of wickedness, saying, “What have I done!” All of them turn to their own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle. 7Even the stork in the heavens knows its times; and the turtledove, swallow, and crane observe the time of their coming; but my people do not know the ordinance of the Lord. 8How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? 9The wise shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what wisdom is in them?