Reflection Day One Hundred and Twenty-Four National Lockdown Wednesday 29 July 2020

Jeremiah 15:15-21                 Psalm 59:1-4, 18-20               Matthew 13:44-46

Collect for William Wilberforce, Philanthropist, 1883

Gracious Lord, you have built up your church

through the love and devotion of your saints:

help us to follow in the footsteps of your servant William Wilberforce

and fill our hearts with love for you and others for your sake;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.          

Amen 

O sovereign God, Jesus Christ established your reign on earth:

let its coming be like a mustard seed that grows into greatness

and like the leaven that mixes with the grain until the whole becomes greater;

to the praise of the one holy and Blessed Trinity,

who lives and reigns for ever and ever.                     

Amen.

Good Day dear friends, 

The writer lets the reader in on what is otherwise is a reserved conversation between God and Jeremiah. After years of living in seclusion, preaching an novel message of individual  responsibility for sins, and having to deal with insults, persecution, and rejection, Jeremiah is drained and he pours out his heart to God. Jeremiah did not beat around the bush and in verse fifteen requested God to remember him and to bring retribution to his persecutors. He, Jerimiah had enough and does not even attempt to shield his anger and frustration. The sixteenth verse shows God , himself had enough and He instructed Jeremiah not to  pray for the people as indicated by the following quote: “As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.”

Like the psalmist, David, who called for God to take action against his enemies, Jeremiah longs for justice on his own behalf. Confident that he has answered God’s call and done what God asked him to do, Jeremiah reminds God that he suffers insult from others on God’s account. Though Jeremiah recorded God’s words as being that of joy and a delight, he also experienced much hurt because of them. He tells God that his is a life lived in loneliness and pain, not by choice, but by God’s command.

Jeremiah’s pain is likened to an “unsettled ache, a war within,” and he, he describes it as “unceasing, incurable, and refusing to be healed.”  Without human or divine support and comfort, Jeremiah felt alone, abandoned and not even his relationship with God seems to bring any form of relief. Jeremiah remained committed to God and to the task that God has given him, though there were times when he would rather not preach or prophesy. It speaks of the anguish that accompanies life in general and ministry in particular.  Just as Jeremiah warned of ruin and called on the nation to repent, God instructs Jeremiah to repent. With the commandment for Jeremiah to repent comes the promise that God will restore him to his work as a prophet. Jeremiah was given the assurance that God will strengthen him to be able to withstand any and everything people do to oppose him. God promises to uphold Jeremiah and redeem him from any hostility that he might face.

Our text does not record Jeremiah’s repentance, but it is implied by his ministry. The story of his life and message speak as powerfully today as it did in his day. The ability to admit and repent of one’s feelings is part of the journey of faith. We, as believers and ministers, would do well to follow Jeremiah’s example. 

The title of this psalm informs us that it was captured at the time that Saul sent his guards to beset David’s house to seize and kill him. These first outbursts of Saul’s wickedness caused David fear and disorder and yet he, David kept up his communion with God, with his prayers and praises.

David prayed for deliverance from the hands of his enemies and for their cruel plans to be defeated as can be seen in the first two verses of the psalm. “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God!  “Awake to help me.”  David called upon God to deliver him, to punish the wrongdoing of his enemies and to protect him from the coming danger. He presented himself as innocent before god and blameless and undeserving of the false charges they created and brought against him. Here we are to understand that the innocence of the “godly” will not secure protection from the wickedness of the enemies, but will at least bring them support and comfort in their troubles and that they may with humble confidence appeal to God. David serves a reminder on the hearer that it is ultimately God that would plead their cause and that for this praise to God was due to the honour of His name.  He, David praised God for his acts of deliverance in history, for His power and mercy on display in his life and continues to show dependence and confidence in God as his future defence against the evil of his enemies. David would praise God in this progressive form.

He would sing.

He would sing aloud,

He would sing aloud in the morning,

He would sing aloud in the morning unto God. 

There are four things that need to be understood in today’s parable namely: The kingdom of heaven; the treasure; the field and the man.

The kingdom of heaven is where God reigns, the kingdom of light as opposed to the kingdom of darkness under the reign of satan.         These two powers are mutually exclusive, in constant conflict with each other, as a battle of good against evil over the control of man created by God and gifted with the power of choice. We can either live in the kingdom of light or darkness, dependent upon the choices we exercise and how we relate to Jesus as saviour or redeemer.  Jesus declared that we are in darkness because of our evil deeds and that when we repent of these we will experience the kingdom of heaven as an utopia with no pain, sorrow, sickness or sin, but in righteousness, peace and joy.

The field is identified as the world. It is described as the collapsed frame of the human race, troubled by hostilities, wrongdoing, forcefulness, disgust, resentment, friction and living under the power of darkness.

God created man and gave him the earth with the command to take care of it, to dress it as a garden, to bring it to its full potential, but greed destroyed it.

A new perspective on the man in the parable is brought about by a special assessment of the purchase and the payment made for the treasure and the field and this new perspective points to Jesus as the one possessing the treasure.

This leaves us with one unresolved issue namely the treasure itself which the man valued so highly that he was willing to give everything to obtain it, and in line with the above perspective on the man, it can only be the church as purchased with the blood of Jesus. Paul told the elders of the church in Ephesus to feed the church of God which He had purchased with His own blood. We cannot be happy with the direction the world is going, nor can we delight in the exploits of humanity. Whilst we should not seek to escape this world, we should work to make it a better and safer place for the children of God. Remember Jesus Christ has paid the price to ransom us from the kingdom of darkness. All we have to do is to yield to His love, and submit to Him as King, and we will enter the kingdom of heaven.