Jul 26, 2022
JEREMIAH
11-12:
Yesterday
we heard important verses in chapter 9:23-24, verses that Paul
quotes more than once:
“Don’t let the wise boast in their
wisdom,
or
the powerful boast in their power,
or
the rich boast in their riches.
But
those who wish to boast
should boast in this alone:
that
they truly know me and understand that I am the LORD …
PSALM 143:
It seems that prayer is very neglected these
days. Oh yes, we might hear something vague about praying for
victims right after some tragedy strikes. But it seems that every
church has trouble keeping a prayer meeting going. I myself have
trouble keeping my prayer life going. David shows in this psalm
that he has learned secrets of effective prayer. Note how his
prayer is very like how Jeremiah felt in the two chapters we just
read.
JOHN 21:
This is one of my favorite chapters. John again
tells us important information not given in the other gospels. Note
that there is a famous exegetical fallacy here. John does use two
different words for ‘love’ in the dialog between Jesus and Peter.
But this should NOT be taken— as has been so frequently taught, as
showing a play on words, or that John was intending different
shades of meaning. Instead the use of synonyms is just a feature of
John’s style in writing. John does this for poetic variation, like
the parallelism in Hebrew poetry. Another example of this in this
same passage is the variation of ‘little lambs’ and
‘sheep’.
NLT Translation notes:
John
21:7 Then [I—//0] the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the
Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his
tunic (for he had stripped for work), jumped into the water, and
headed to shore.
[Although John has thinly
concealed his identity since chapter 1, it becomes clear in this
chapter that he wants to make it clear that the eyewitness he has
referred to as ‘the disciple Jesus loved’ was himself. (John did
not want to boast of having been a disciple of Jesus, yet at the
same time he wanted to show that this book is an eyewitness
account.) Using this literary device is odd enough in English. In
some languages of the world, translating this device literally
would be so confusing that it is better to rephrase these passages
so that John speaks in the first person. Translators who do this
will add a footnote explaining why John used the third person
instead of the first person. In my opinion, for a podcast like
this, it will be much clearer for listeners to use the same
technique, and this is my footnote explaining my changes to the NLT
text.]
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.