7-18-2021

 Good Morning All!

     Jeremiah 9:24, “but 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.”

     “Tell all books”; the accounts of people who were there or claimed to be there are all the rage.  We like to get the lowdown on some people, especially someone famous.  If we are not particularly fond of the famous person, we like the real lowdown dirt.  Even if we have no strong feelings about someone we like to read or hear the story. 

    We tend to read stories that tell us about people that reveal the real person to us.  We like biographies which humanize the famous, the important or the heroic.  We like “Profiles in Courage” and other stories like that.

    In many ways, the Bible is this type of book.  The Bible is a very revelatory book.  In it, God reveals himself to us.  We learn about God through the Bible.  There are some things that we can learn about God through nature; like He is powerful, orderly, he loves beauty, but this is about all we can learn from nature.  Yet in the Bible, in his book, God reveals to us who He is.  In our verse, God reveals to us that He is just and righteous and that he is merciful (steadfast love). 

    It is interesting to see that God not only has these traits but that He delights in them.  These traits give God joy and happiness; they are the traits which God shows to us in the way that He deals with us.  He is just and merciful toward us and shows us his righteousness.  We celebrate because of God’ goodness to us.  Yet this verse also tells us what God wants from his people.

     In other places in the Bible, God reveals that we are to be imitators of him or that we are to be like him.  God wants us to exhibit the same traits which He has.  We are to love mercy, seek justice and display righteousness.  We are supposed to do this with our fellow man as well and we are to not only act this way but to delight in acting this way.

     God calls us to show this kind of compassion to all we meet, with all that we have contact with.  Throughout the Old Testament, God continually reveals his displeasure with a people that mistreats the poor, the widowed and the orphans.  God repeatedly expresses his anger with a cold and heartless people that shows no mercy to others.  While it is God’s nature to love, we see repeatedly where God is provoked to anger at his children when they do not love others as God loves them.

     God calls his children to live a life of justice and of love.  This life is to be an imitating life where we reflect God’s nature to all we meet.  This can be very difficult; the devil likes to whisper to us how we deserve the things we have; about how hard we have worked to earn them; about how we can boast in our accomplishments.  Yet these lies lead us away from God.  All we are to boast in is Christ and his mercy.  The mercy that led him to Calvary is the mercy we are to show to all that we encounter.  It is a difficult task, one we usually fail at, but it is the task we are called to.  We are to love mercy, do justice and live in the righteousness of Jesus our savior.

Gracious Father, far too often we fail to love as you love, we fail to act as you would have us act; we lack your justice.  Forgive us as we fall; move us to do your will in all that we do.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.             

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret