Introducing
March
HIS KINSMEN ACCORDING TO THE FLESH (Rom. 9:3) In Deuteronomy 28 the Lord commands, ‘Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today [as set out in the previous chapter], to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them’ (NIV). That is preceded by the promise of wonderful national and domestic blessing if His commands are obeyed, including urban and rural prosperity, large healthy families in peaceful friendly communities, successful farming and market gardening, guaranteed defeat or prevention of external enmity, and their establishment in the land of promise as God’s own people under His personal protection.
At the time of Jeremiah’s ministry these material and spiritual advantages were dormant, if not dead. They who had been entrusted with the oracles and the Law did not know the way of the Lord, nor the law of their God (5:4-5). Having received the adoption they were backsliding children (3:14), who had forsaken God (5:7). No longer appreciating the divine glory, they were committing shameless abomination (6:15). The covenants and the service of God, the statutes, judgments and divine privileges were set aside, for ‘the prophets prophesy lies, and priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way’ (5:31). The promises, which would include the blessings we started with, were extinguished by idolatry and greed and social and economic imbalance and the old paths walked by the fathers lost (6:16).
If that focuses more on the material, there is a summary of spiritual blessings for the Israelites in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. ‘What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew?’ asks Paul in chapter 3:1 and begins to answer the question, stating ‘first of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God’ (v.2). He continues to answer the question in 9:4-5 adding the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, the promises, the fathers and that of them is Christ as concerning the flesh.
He who was the Christ, of them as concerning the flesh, wept for Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) which did not know the way of peace (v.42). The apostle Paul, imitator of Christ and fellow Jew, had great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart for them. And Jeremiah while faithfully iterating the sins and failures of his fellows and
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