Messenger Marcus proclaims the glory of the magnificent Jesus, and how we as believers should always boast in Christ alone – and no other.
HOPE IN GOD’S MERCY
Jeremiah chapter 9 verses 22, 24
“Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, 24but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”
This passage has a true new covenant feeling to it; the feel that God is with us, that we are walking with him and talking with him and rejoicing in Him. But the strange thing about the passage of scripture is that it is found in the context of divine judgment! In the middle of a message of divine judgment threatened by almighty God through the prophet Jeremiah to Jerusalem, this glistening verse shines out of the middle of God’s thundering voice as a beacon of hope!
RELIGION NEVER TOUCHES HEARTS
So let’s look at the time that this was written. It was written around the time of king Josiah. Good king Josiah’s entry into Judah came after the kings of Amon and Mannasah who were two of the most wicked Kings in Judah. There had been some kind of of religious reform. The worship of Jehovah God had been reintroduced. However this was mostly ritualistic and religious tradition and had not really touched the hearts of the people who had gone from worse to worse in the rebellion against the Lord. The people were trusting in religion and religious ritual to avert the judgment of almighty God. and as Jeremiah confronted them at the gates of the temple with god’s message of judgment, the religious cry came out again and again, “ the Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord”. The people of Judah were trusting in religion, not understanding that God was not interested in ritual but he wanted their heart of obedience and the returning from the sin of cruelty and lies and adultery and dark things that they were committing.
AN EMPTY BOAST
The reality is that no amount of religion – no amount of religious ritual can make a man clean in the eyes of God. There are people going through religious rituals all the time thinking that this makes them holy. But an empty religious ritual with its “smells and bells” cannot make them right with God. God requires truth in the inner parts. The tragedy about these people was that they were boasting. They were proudly boasting in their wisdom’. They were boasting in their strength; boasting in their supposed military might. They were boasting in their riches.
They supposed that they were secure by their wisdom in forging alliances with other nations. They thought themselves secure because they were going up to the temple of Jehovah. They believed themselves to be secure in their military strength and might. And they thought they were secure in their wealth.
THAT I MIGHT WEEP DAY AND NIGHT
All all the time the prophet was crying out, “ if you don’t repent God is going to send Judgment from Babylon. It was going to be a terrible judgment and the prophet was weeping. He was called a weeping prophet and he wrote……..
Jer 1:1, 2 – Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the desert a travelers’ lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! For they are all adulterers, a company of treacherous men.
THE CONVULSIVE SOBS OF JESUS
Reading this passage reminds me of the CONVULSIVE SOBS OF JESUS our lord as he stood centuries later gazing at the Temple in Jerusalem. He knew that soon the people would be destroyed by the Romans who came in AD 70. The Bible doesn’t say he just wept. the bible says in the original Greek language that he sobbed convulsively saying ………
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (LUKE13: 34, 35 ESV)
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