Jul 29, 2016
JEREMIAH 17-18:
One
catches so clearly how trapped Jeremiah was in the time of God’s
judgment, and how hot God’s anger was against Judah. Jeremiah’s
audience would not have appreciated him telling them where the Lord
said they could ‘go’! No wonder he so often weeps and cries out in
despair. God’s verdict in 15:2, which shows his sovereign choices,
is repeated in Revelation:
15:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel were standing here pleading with me, I would not show these people any mercy. Make them go away; make them get out of my sight. 2 When they ask you where they should go, tell them that I have said:
Some
are doomed to die by disease—
that's where they will
go!
Others are doomed to
die in war—
that's where
they will go!
Some are
doomed to die of starvation—
that's where they will
go!
Others are doomed to
be taken away as prisoners—
that's where they will go!
Translation
note:
6 [They are like
bushes//He is like a bush] in the desert, which [grow//grows] in
the dry wasteland, on salty ground where nothing else grows.
Nothing good ever happens to [them//him].
PSALM
146:
This is the
first of five Hallelujah psalms. In the GNT, ‘hallelujah’ is
translated, “Praise the Lord.”
1CORINTHIANS 3:
The topic of this chapter is still related to
that verse from Jeremiah that Paul quoted about boasting, but only
boasting about knowing the Lord. And this chapter builds on what
Paul has just said about wisdom, as he moves into discussing how to
think about different Christian leaders.
Translation notes:
1 As a matter of fact, my friends, I could not
talk to you as I talk to people who have the Spirit; I had to talk
to you as though you belonged to this world, as children in the
Christian _faith_.
[I
just want to point out that here I don’t feel the need to translate
‘faith’ as ‘way of believing’. Since there is a modifying word,
‘faith’ is no longer fuzzy. The literal is “infants in
Christ.”]
16 Surely you
know that you are [included in building up] God's temple and that
God's Spirit lives in you!
17 God will destroy anyone who destroys God's
temple. For God's temple is holy, and [we— all of God’s people//you
yourselves] are his temple.
[Translations in English often fail to make
clear that ‘you’ in Greek is plural here. The Corinthians as a
group are being built into the temple of God— as Paul says in
Ephesians 2. It seems a bit more natural or complete in English for
Paul to include himself in the body of Christ, so it is possible to
use ‘we’ and a modifying phrase, as I have suggested above. There
is another verse we will soon read in 2Corinthians where Paul says
that we each individually are a sanctuary/temple of the Holy
Spirit.]
21 No one, then,
should boast about what human beings can do. [(Implicit info:) Because
of being joined as one with Christ,] Actually everything belongs to you:
22 [So that
includes] Paul
[and] Apollos, and
Peter; this world, life and death, the present and the future—all
these are yours,